The Basics of Bartle’s Types

When you're creating a game, you always need to think about the player. Sometimes this is as simple as figuring out what things the player is likely to do and creating feedback for those choices. Sometimes it's accounting for all the ways you need to clearly say "no," like putting in impassable walls or adding an "I don't want to do that" response when you type in something like "EAT rubber chicken with pulley in the middle."

But the most important thing you can do is figure out what kind of player you want enjoying your game. From there, you figure out what kind of content you can give them. Once that ideal player is accounted for, you can start looking at how to create content other types of players can enjoy, too.

Richard Bartle (Credit)

That can be difficult to classify. There are about as many types of players as there are people, after all. But never fear! There's already been some pretty interesting research into trends in player behaviors. The most basic of these is known colloquially as "Bartle's Player Types."

Almost 20 years ago, a researcher named Richard Bartle worked out a system that classified players by their objectives in MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons, a sort of proto-MMO). There's a bit more to the research, but he found he could start by putting people into four different groups of player types. These types are called Explorers, Achievers, Socializers, and Killers.

Explorers are players who are most interested in, appropriately, exploring the game. This can be researching things in a game's codex, finding every nook and cranny in the landscape, and exhausting things like dialogue trees. Games like the Elder Scrolls series are almost tailor-made for these sorts of people.

Achievers get a lot of satisfaction out of beating the game, of course, but they also enjoy, say, finishing quests, completing special events, filling out their character's talent tree, et cetera. Completionists are often Achievers. These kinds of players have been much easier to cater to since Achievements and Trophies became more commonplace.

Socializers love to talk, not only with characters, but other people. They love the social aspect of games. These people are big into participating in multiplayer content like trading Pokémon or playing CTF in shooter games. They're also the players you're most likely to see in RP guilds in MMO games.

Killers are, of course, your PvPers and raiders. They love defeating monsters, other players, and giant bosses. Their biggest thrill is conquering a combat-based challenge. I'm guessing you can think of more than a few AAA games that can scratch this particular itch.

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Now, nobody is meant to be exclusively one type or another. Most people are varying percentages of each category. I find most people I play games with are heavily interested in at least two types of gameplay with a lesser interest in the other two.

This isn't something you can always map onto players in every game type and genre. It was originally an observation made in a multiplayer scenario, after all. But it's a very helpful tool to look at the kind of content you're creating and what kind of person is mostly likely to enjoy it. It's also totally worth reading the original paper, if this kind of thing intrigues you. It's not a perfect system of analysis, by any means, but it really opens your mind to some of the principles of game theory.

Most really successful games take two routes: They either appeal almost exclusively to one or two player types, or they offer a wide range of content for each type. Again, the execution of this depends a lot on what kind of game you're looking at. 

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For example: Gone Home, an indie title, was more interested in Explorers and Achievers. Since it's an indie adventure game, it doesn't have any interest in creating content for Killers or Socializers. The most recent Tomb Raider, an action/adventure game, had plenty of content for Killers, Achievers, and Explorers, but its interest in Socializers was so minimal that there's an achievement just for talking to the handful of NPCs that can carry on a conversation.

 

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An MMO like World of Warcraft, on the other hand, is especially interested in creating content and rewards for a wide variety of players, so they work to make as much content for as many player types as possible (regardless of what the forums might say). They have things like PvP, Achievements, hidden items in the geography, and support for Guilds and roleplay.

Try to look at other games and figure out what kind of player types they might be focused on. Try to figure out how they were able to draw in players with specific kinds of content, and see if they were successful at really knowing their audience. Did they include content for other kinds of players, as well?

Using game theory examples like Bartle's Types can help you figure out the answers to some of your most important questions: what kind of a game are you making? What kind of player do you want? And what kind of content are you trying to offer them?

By Annie Craton Design Lead for NORA

Debugging – The Importance of DIY

As with any game in production, we at GravTech Games have encountered our share of bugs. Some going from having the wrong value being plugged in all the way to needing to look into the Unreal Engine 4 source code to find the one thing that messes up the code and keeps us from compiling. And like any other game these can take time to fix, it’s unavoidable. However the real topic I want to touch on is the importance of fixing your own bugs and issues before asking for outside help, even if you aren’t the one who made the bug. Doing so can make you into a stronger programmer, less dependent on others, but also (and this part is probably most important) the issue becomes less of a time sink for the team. While this is a good practice in any work environment it is especially important while working on NORA because our team works remotely.

In most normal work environments I could lean over and talk to a fellow teammate about an issue I’m finding with their code and get a more immediate answer to the problem. However, when working with different people all living in different places and even time zones this becomes difficult. Instead of being able to lean over to my teammate I instead have to write a message with the problem in Skype, and then wait for what can be hours and hope I get an answer to the question, which might not even happen. Even worse, this can take up the other person’s time when helping. One person spending 1 hour on a bug is 1 hour of dev time spent. But two people both spending 1 hour on a bug is 2 hours of dev time spent. This slows down the productivity of the team and the turnover rate for getting tasks done. This is where fixing your own issues comes into play; with it our productivity can increase by not wasting time waiting on an answer. With that in mind here is my debugging process for when these situations arise:

Talk it through:

Talk it out with yourself, try to envision the problem, know what’s going on, and then find where it’s messing up. Sometimes just reviewing the code you have written can give you the “Oh that’s what it is, of course” moment and then you move on. When you explain something to someone you go in detail about whatever you’re explaining and sometimes when programming going into every little detail can show you what the issue is.

Knowing how to read code:

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This goes beyond being able to read your own code but just to all code in general. Imagine a scenario where you write a function and it works fine for every application you have for it. Now imagine that it’s months later and you’re finding issues with it and you’ve completely forgotten what it is that you did in the function and said “My code is perfect, there’s no need to comment it”. Knowing how to read code comes in here to help even with your own code, because I for one will admit that I have had this happen to me and I was very thankfully I could read the very poorly written code so I could see the issue. This also works well when debugging other people’s code because other people think differently and therefore code differently, so being able to understand what they’re doing is the first step to finding the issue.

Don’t be afraid to learn:

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Knowing what the issue is and knowing how to fix it are two different things. And with a new engine like the Unreal Engine 4 there are bound to be issues with implementing your own functionality. Thankfully for us there is a plethora of forums with people attempting similar things to us who have found different solutions. Several months ago we were having an issue with the project only building from Visual Studio on certain machines. The issue being that to build the project the project was looking for a build.bat file in the install folder for the engine and we had it installed in different locations. Since the engine is still moderately new and not many people have worked on big team projects with it while using source control there wasn’t an easy solution to this problem. However after about an hour of searching on the internet for people who had similar problems I finally found one person who said he fixed the issue by using environment variables to store the file path for the install folder. From there I had to learn how to use environment variables in Visual Studio for how we needed it and then the problem was fixed. This would have been very problematic to the team had it remained an issue.

Ask for help:

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Yes, I started this as a do it yourself, but some problems you just can’t solve alone. However this should be the second to last thing you do. And if you’ve done your research, you’ve stared at a screen for hours and still nothing then sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is just what you need. You need a different perspective and someone to talk things through with. Even if it takes up their time as well as yours if it’s a problem you can’t fix on your own then it’s a problem you can’t fix on your own and you need help. And if after getting help and you still haven’t made progress on the issue then you might have to go to the last resort, rewriting the code. I had an issue on a past project where the entire collision system was broken and the person who wrote it was no longer on the team. We spent a full day looking at his uncommented and very confusing code and it got us nowhere. We eventually had to rewrite the entire system to fix everything.

In the end problem solving is a time consuming and not-always-fun mini-game we have to play. But if you can learn how to play it correctly then it becomes less of a hassle and it makes you all the stronger for doing it.

Maintaining Motivation

Today I thought it would be an interesting discussion to write up about one of the most important skills in life. Motivation is one of the most valuable tools in an artists, or anyone’s, toolbox, and yet, so few people seem to truly have the drive to work at it.

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I know what you are thinking, the hand raising in the back of the classroom “uh, Patch…motivation is a noun describing a reason to do things, not a skill which normally is described in verbs, such as drawing.” On this, I choose to strongly disagree. Acquiring motivation doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't come out of nowhere. I liken it to when you are drawing out in public someplace “trendy,” Starbucks or something, or people view your work, and they are like “O-M-G, you are so-o-o-o talented, I wish I could draw! Less-than-three.” Every artist hears that and they appreciate the sentiment, the compliment, the kind words, and uplifting intention, but really “talent” didn't get the person where they are. Hard work did. Countless hours of hard work, and to simplify it down to a quality that people colloquially akin to someone being born with such as “talent” is to diminish all of that effort. Motivation is very similar. You aren't just born with it and never again have another chance to roll the d20 and get a critical hit from your previous critical fail.

“Okay Fine, it’s a “skill,” but if it’s a skill, how does one get better at it?”

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I am glad you asked voice in my head, thank you for not speaking a language I don’t know this time!   Well, to be someone that people refer to as “motivated,” I would say you need to develop a habitual work ethic.  If you truly are going from ground zero, due to depression, or years of laziness, then feel free to start small.  Maybe just tell yourself that every single day, before you leave your bedroom, you will draw a circle.  EVERY DAY. Something that small.  Or you could just take a deep breath and be like, “Thou shalt not wallow in bed for an hour deciding to get up on days after a really good party when I have the day off and I have plenty of stuff to do, but I want another 5 minutes of sleep, that never ends up another 5 minutes of sleep, and I know that but the covers are so warm, and just 5 more minutes, okay time to get up, just 5 more minutes.” Then realize you wasted 3 hours of your day, and did nothing you wanted to do. Start on working on these things, these little (or sometimes bigger…) pushes to get out of bed. Breaking these little lazy habits. Then grow from there. Truly kick yourself if you fall back into these negative space bad habits.

Like all skills in life that a person wants to practice, you need to objectively look at your behaviors, and decide which qualities to keep, and which to throw away. Do you have bad line quality? Then you need to restudy it, redraw it, restudy it, correct it, redraw it, practice, practice. Critically assess your mistakes. Are you unmotivated? Critically assess the areas that time is being thrown away from doing things you “want to do, but never get around to” like that book, or that drawing, that’s been on the backburner for 2 years while you tell people about it, but it’s so hard to pin point down that key plot point that’s missing while you are playing League of Legends.  Which brings up another, very quick topic.  Plan your day. Play league, great, it is fun. But plan the time around it. If you want 2 hours of League time, and you need to practice drawing, and you have a day job, how can you make that all work? I would say proper planning of your day is definitely part of developing motivation.

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“Alright, I’m convinced, but what does that have to do with art and vidya garmes…”

Seriously, if that was your thoughts, I will find you. I will FIND YOU, and I will paint yellow daisies and ice cream and unicorn farts all over your super edgey grim dark depression piece that represents the void in your soul since he walked out of your life. Being self-motivated is a HUGE part of art, and if its even possible, it’s an even bigger part of indie game design, when you have no boss staring you in the eyes every day, no “beatchu” sticks to keep you in line, and all long term glimpses of glory, but you have deadlines to hit.  It is one of the hardest mountains to climb in that kind of work environment, and its one that everyone needs to scale. So get out there and start scaling…preferably in Y.

Want to help us stay motivated? Check out our Indiegogo campaign and help us Save the NORA! Click here for the Indiegogo Page

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By Patch Johnston, Character Art Lead for NORA

Crowdfunding Kick-Off

GravTech Games announces their crowdfunding campaign for NORA Act 1 has begun on Indiegogo. They seek to raise $25,000.00 to aid the development of the game through Alpha, with a PC public Alpha release late fall of 2015. This 3 Act saga, being developed in Unreal Engine 4, hopes to successfully bridge the gap between story and gameplay, providing the player with a truly interactive experience from start to finish. “We want to avoid instances where the player feels like they’re just watching the story or experiences gameplay that takes them out of the story,” says Brandon Carboni, COO and Project Manager for NORA.

NORA is a sci-fi psychological thriller game featuring Captain Abigael Blake and her ragtag crew of smugglers on their way to complete the most important mission of their lives: travel deep into enemy space to retrieve a mysterious alien envoy. Along the way, Abigael must overcome old enemies, a contentious crew, and the threats of madness and mutiny in order to make it back alive. If players want to succeed, they must solve puzzles, explore the ship, and navigate the tempestuous relationships of the NORA’s crew. As captain, it’s up to the player to keep everything from falling apart. In the NORA’s current state, that’s easier said than done.

The NORA Act 1 Indiegogo campaign started Monday, March 23rd, 2015 and will continue for 30 days until April 21st, 2015. “We’re thrilled about launching our Indiegogo campaign,” says Kevin Gray, CEO, “Not only does our team deserve some much needed upgrades, but it would significantly shorten our development timeline.” Coincidentally, this crowdfunding campaign marks the second anniversary of a company and with successful funding they’ll be able to ship their debut title before 2016.

Click the link below to check out GravTech’s Indiegogo Campaign for NORA Act 1 and learn more about the game and the company.

Click here - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nora-act-i/x/10042283

What Game Development is All About. The Gamers.

To be honest, I haven't had a chance to check our Company PO Box in a little over two weeks. Normally it's full of junk mail from loan companies and business supply stores so it's not on the top of my to-do list. There is this awesome Chinese Food place right next door to it, so while picking up some Lo Mein I had a chance to check the box tonight. What I found, blew me away.

Transcription:

"To the developers at GravTech Games,

I have been a gamer for a lot of years, about thirty I guess, and I've seen our hobby go through a great deal of change for the better. Unfortunately we've been seeing some setbacks recently in the form of non-gamer ideologies and a corrupt media making the industry more about making the 'right kind of games,' and judgement based on who you know rather than merit. Our industry has always been one of the most inclusive and diverse out there but now the myth is being spread, again, that gamers are dangerous and hateful.

I am a supporter of the online revolt to expose that corrupt media. I want an environment where you can make the art, games, that you want without political or idealogical pressure. I want an industry where you judged on merit and skill, not who you know in the press. I want an industry where you can speak out about your art without worrying about censorship or calls to suppress your games in the market.

Most of all I want to rebuild the bridges between developers and gamers. I want to thank you for all your hard work, without devs making games there would be no us. Keep up the hard work, we have your six.

Thanks,

Trever"

My handwriting hasn't improved much since kindergarten, so I hope you forgive the format of my response.

Trever,

Wow. First of all thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me personally. I can't wait to frame it and put it up on the wall by my desk as a reminder of why we do what we do. It's unfortunate how gamers are currently being treated by the mainstream media and similar critics. But you know, it's funny, the gaming community has been nothing but accepting of us and we still scratch our heads the more these current happenings go on.

You say that without devs there would be no gamers, but let's be honest, we're reliant on each other. Every day I wake up I have to keep in mind who NORA is for. Yes, we're building our vision, but we're aiming to meet your expectations. My business mind screams when I hear that "gamers don't need to be your audience," because that makes absolutely no sense. The first word in our target audience is gamer and I have no intention of changing that.

Gamers are alive and well, and I can assure you, developers are listening. Just one thing, you take point, we'll go where you lead.

Warm Regards,

Kevin Gray

Character Voice Exercises and You

One of the most challenging aspects of writing NORA, from the perspective of a writer and a narrative designer, is the fact that we’re looking at a closed environment with thirteen different characters, including the player character and the eponymous artificial intelligence. A ship needs a crew, after all, and even in the far future, these things still can’t pilot themselves with any sort of finesse.

That means that we have twelve men and women that the player can interact with. And because we’re trying to get the player to want to interact with these people, they have to be interesting enough to talk to and care about. More than anything, we want these characters to be memorable.

To that end, we've had to develop twelve characters who each have their own wants and needs. They have their own ideas. They have different backgrounds— they’re from different places across the galaxy, and they’re from a good range of socioeconomic situations, which means they’re all going to have different opinions and ideas. They’re all going to approach problems in distinct ways.

One of the ways we’re working to express that is in their voice. Not just how the actor reads the character, but in the character’s literary voice. How all the things about them shape the way they talk and how they react to other characters and situations. So we have to make sure they all don’t sound like the same person.

This is a common problem writers have when they’re first starting to develop the unique style that sets them apart. It’s difficult enough to figure out how you sound, let alone how make-believe people that exist only in your head sound.

One of the exercises that I have found helpful is to write out a character's personal history and some of the important aspects of their personality. Are they extroverted or introverted? What are their hobbies? Are they loud? Quiet? Funny? Thoughtful? Clever? Get it on paper (or a word processor, as the case may be), so it’s all in front of you.

Next, I make a list of things I want to figure out about the character. This is subjective, but I like to include some things such as:
Cadence: How quickly or slowly does the character talk? What is their diction like?
Vocabulary: What kind of words does the character use? Do they use a lot of slang? Are they well-read? Are there any personality traits that might affect that (An arrogant person might use demeaning language or show off their larger vocabulary, for example)?
Verbal Tics: Does the character have any verbal stopgaps (Um, er, uh), and how would their mental state affect that?

I find it’s also helpful to look at a character’s temperament or their thought process and how their language informs that. You could also look at how their language might change depending on who they talk to. You don’t talk to your professors the same way you talk to your friends, after all! Try and think about what you need to know about the character and extrapolate from there.

After all this is written down, I like to do a “dry run” and think up some monologues or quick lines of dialogue to see if I can write something that sounds unique to the character. It’s kind of fun to see how I can make sure all the things I just learned apply to their dialogue now.

The best thing to do is to make at least a few of these for different characters. While you go through them, keep in mind the other voices you’ve already developed. Once you’re done, you've got a bunch of people who all sound different from each other in natural ways.

These are exercises that have helped us while working on NORA. I recommend trying it out and seeing if it works for you. Hopefully, you’ll get a sense of the effort it takes to take thirteen people, place them aboard a ship, and make sure they all actually sound like individuals.

--
Annie Craton, Design Lead for NORA

Empowering a Team Part 2 - Maintaining Trust with Transparency

Ever had a really crappy job? And I mean really crappy, not just a place you’re dissatisfied with. I’ve had a couple really awful jobs, but I’d like to share a story about the worst one I ever had. When I first left college I started a job at a pharmaceutical sales call center. I won’t use any names, but my job was simply call people, primarily elderly patients, who requested information on the clinics we ran and book them for appointments, let’s just call them, “the clinic”. Within 4 months I was approached by one of the owners of the company and asked if I’d be willing to step up into corporate management and manage the Customer Service division for the entire company.

This proved to be one of the more difficult positions I’ve held in my life. My job description was simple, I fought refunds for the company. Within my first 6 months I managed to save the company over $2 million in potential refunds. I started living a comfy life and began to thrive. Then almost 1 year after I ascended to the position things started to unravel.

The company, which had a 3-way equity split of ~33% per shareholder, began having disputes amongst the leadership. One of the owners became greedy and dug up the past of another owner. He spread this through the entire company and built an army to take down his once business partner. What’s sad is that his plan worked. He soon acquired 51% of the company and kicked his partner out. My thriving career soon became a game of office politics and resembled an early episode of House of Cards and not a medical clinic.

So why do I bring this story up on a video game development blog? Well simply, this clinic is now starting to fall apart due to how they manage their team and treat their customers, and anyone leading a team of their own can learn from their errors. They lack one element that successful companies thrive off of; transparency. Transparency is one of those things that a lot of people in leadership fear, which I've never understood. Transparency builds trust, which is a crucial ingredient in getting the most out of your team.

At the clinic, corporate was separate from every aspect of the company. You never knew what would happen next and it cultivated an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and distrust. Rumors began flying around and people started retaliating against corporate change. Those who spoke out would often be greeted with termination or suspension, causing more panic. Now, as a leader, you must recognize this toxic behavior and not allow it. If your people are constantly concerned with losing their jobs or forming alliances to further their office political campaigns, how are they going to accomplish their work? Short answer, they won’t. Transparency reduces the need for office politics. If everyone knows what’s going on and the company does a good job of maintaining transparency, then there’s no need for people to be scheming around trying to get answers or to protect their interests.

Transparency also boosts communication. At the clinic you had to send things up the chain of command to get it moving and if you stepped outside that protocol you were significantly reprimanded. This process was time-consuming and by the time the information got the right person it was often too late. You cannot let the process get in the way of doing business. At GravTech, we encourage our team to go directly to the source. If they need something done, go to the person who can get it done. Of course they still need to notify the appropriate leads to ensure we’re all staying on the right track and not running off in all different directions, but it’s not about waiting for permission to get things done.

Lastly, transparency builds trust with your audience.  At the clinic, the main issue was the wording of the paperwork they would sign with us. It was essentially a waiver of rights that gave me precedent to fight the patients on their legitimate requests for refunds. However, when being sold the process generally happened so quick that many patients would never read what they were signing, and even the ones that did, many didn't understand the scope of what rights they were relinquishing. I fought the company to change the wording multiple times and even to change the policy to a full refund policy. Those suggestions fell on deaf ears and our patients would be left frustrated in the dark and often flock to our competition. Transparency with your customers means setting appropriate expectations for your product or service and not pulling a veil over their eyes during the sales process or strong-arming them. People deserve to be treated like people regardless of who they are, where they come from, or anything else. They never deserve to be treated as a number, a wallet, or a punching bag.

It’s simple; treat people with respect and people will be more apt to respect you, regardless of who they are.