The new promise of motion control, while very exciting, makes designers' lives a "living hell," says Jason VandenBerghe, creative director at Ubisoft and director of Red Steel 2 during his GDC Europe lecture on Monday.
"It's profoundly different! It messed up the whole industry!" he said, adding, "Damn you Nintendo and your innovations!" he declared -- joking that after such an outburst his life was likely forfeit.
Still, developers have a responsibility to train the player: "We're game developers, we've done this before, we know how to do this," he says. "Tutorials! But we have to be clever and hide our tutorials inside the levels, see, because we're talented game developers!"
Red Steel 2 had two types of slashes the player could execute: horizontal and vertical. "We figured you could handle that. We were wrong," he said. The result was absolute chaos: "'The Wii Motion Plus doesn't work.' That's what people would tell us."
"We said, 'okay, we're game developers, we fucked up! Two kinds of slashes, that's too much. We need more detail.'" So the team made a tutorial that told players that to slash by swinging the Wiimote, and then added in the vertical and the horizontal elements later.
It was a two step tutorial, and the result was even more chaotic: "Because now, instead of people saying I don't understand, people said 'yeah, I get it, it just doesn't work!'" said VandenBerghe.
The conclusion the team drew was that they had focused again on too much detail. The problem was the word "swing." What does "swing" mean? Everyone has a different interpretation of the word, and the action.
Players already have a belief in how these things work, but they aren't really aware, because they're accessing muscle memory, he says. People need more time to learn new physical movement. So how do you solve this? By becoming teachers, rather than tutorial designers. "I made a creed for my designers," he said. "We're not interested in tutorials for motion control -- we make lessons."
"This is a large shift, not a small one. It took us a really long time, and we never really achieved it," he said. They put a live model teaching players, and the result was mostly success -- after that, says VandenBerghe, he never saw someone go through the tutorial and not be able to succeed at the combos. "Which was astonishing, because previously nobody knew that the combos existed," he added.
They took the characters out of stress, and required the player to repeat each step 3-5 times. "The reviewers loved us for that." But repetition is important. "When you're learning a physical skill, boredom means you've learned it. It's the goal!" said VandenBerghe, adding "My career's going to go down in flames now."
Then he discussed sales for a moment, citing VGChartz's sales of 270,000 units, which VandenBerghe neither confirmed nor denied, but seemed to indicate was in the ballpark. Reviews were almost exclusively positive, so what happened? The conclusion is that not everybody likes to move when they play games.
Ultimately, Red Steel 2 was released on a single console, with only a certain demographic that were interested in it, and then only a certain number that owned the Wii Motion Plus controller, and then only a certain number that wanted to move around while playing a game.
How many popular games are there that force you to move? Not many, he notes. There's Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and Rock Band drumming, Donkey Konga, and then Red Steel 2. "The market seems to be telling us something," he says. "This is not a point of excitement for many. I don't know how many people there are, but it's probably not higher than 20 percent."
So what does this mean for motion control gameplay? "We're fucked!" he says. The market is tiny for people that will play games that they have to stand up to play. "In general, this is a risky game."
That said, VandenBerghe thinks that "today we can improve this model. My recommendation to you is if you're shipping a motion game, you can ship on multiple platforms. No console maker will want you to, but the market will want you to."
Then if the console makers would put the peripheral in the box, another issue is removed. "The future is bright, if the following two things happen – motion control standard in the box, and games ship multiplatform."
Designers will have to learn to teach, he says, and we can make all manner of new experiences if we can learn to be good teachers. Many players won't want to change, and won't be interested in exertion. But most importantly, "If the hardware is an add-on, motion control will remain niche."
Mr. VandenBerghe is making excuses. This is not helpful.
If your game is not successful at retail, based on however you define "success" (turning a profit, building a franchise, propelling the hardware), there is only one question to ask: What Did We Do Wrong? You have no one to blame but yourselves. There are lost gems and cult classics, yes. I'm a big fan of underdogs. But if a video game fails at retail, there will be concrete reasons why. No excuses.
Back in the Arcade Games Era, a video game was packed into a fiercely competitive environment for scarce resources - kids' quarters. Your game had only seconds to hook the kids in, and keep them playing, before they walk away to try the other 30 machines in the room. Most arcade games would fail, and the strongest would survive and thrive.
On my lunch break today, I stopped at Target and saw that Red Steel is on sale for $30. I'm interested in the game. I want to like it. Now give me a good reason why I should buy. Convince me to cross the line. Have you and your team successfully done this, Mr. VandenBerghe? I don't think so. If the game was enticing enough, exciting enough, and offered enough strong content (what Vincent Flanders calls "heroin content"), I would have bought the game at $50. But I didn't do this, and I remain hesitant now. Why is this? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Red Steel 2? What did we do wrong?
Don't complain to me about motion controls. And don't try to tell me motion control isn't popular on the Nintendo Wii. That's rediculous. Wii Sports is the single most popular video game ever made. Wii Play, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Kart, Just Dance - all make excellent use of motion controls. Heck, the swordplay in WSR is spectacular. I want sword fighting like that! I want to be able to knock enemies off of bridges and mountains and slash them into the ocean. I want to feel empowered by fighting against overwhelming odds.
Why does Red Steel 2 have a tutorial mode? I HATE tutorials in games. I especially hate it when I'm required to go through it before starting the game. I just picked up Excite Truck, and it's a terrific game in many ways, but I just wanted to throw my Wiimote out the window over that stupid tutorial mode.
Arcade games should never have a tutorial mode. The controls should be immediately accessible and easy to grasp. I want as few barriers to entry as possible. Every barrier only angers me and brings me that much closer to walking out. Just today, I walked out of a Starbucks because their wifi connection was a pain in the neck. I knew another coffee shop that didn't make me jump through hoops to go online, so I packed up and walked over there. It's the same way with video games. Heck, if anything, the internet has made me crankier.
Does Red Steel 2 have multiplayer? The Wii is a console for the Social Games Era. Playing with friends and family is an absolute must. In fact, I'd say local multiplayer is even more important than it was for the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. If you're offering a FPS title for only one player, that's a major strike against you. I don't care about technical hurdles. I don't care about how hard it is to design. I got to play 4-player on GoldenEye 64 in 1997. I don't want excuses in 2010.
How is the design of the game world in Red Steel 2? Is it diverse? Or is it the same brown-ish Western town again and again? Are my actions and abilities a natural extension of this world? Does the gameplay gel with the level design and the art design? Is the action fast and immediate? Am I always three seconds from death (as Robotron was once described)? Do I battle through a variety of environments, or is it just the same big, boxy arena again and again?
Yes, the graphics are great. Congratulations to the art team. But graphics should never be the top priority. Priority #1 is Control. The control scheme must be absolutely precise and perfect. If I get to slash a sword with the Motion+, then I want to slash a sword just like I can in WSR. Priority #2 is Play Mechanics. What is the core of the game? Focus on that like a laser beam. This is where multiplayer comes in. A perfect example would be F-Zero X. The core of that game was 4-player racing, so everything was designed around the multiplayer experience. Graphics took a back seat to precision controls, rock-solid framerates, and sheer speed.
Gameplay over graphics. It has always been this way. I don't know why today's game designers can't seem to figure this out. They're far too dazzled by polygons and lighting effects and ignore the core of their games. As a result, most of them are deemed failures and wind up in the used bins at Gamestop. I grew up playing videogames in the '80s, so I'm used to greatness, and I don't have time or patience for anything less. A harsh environment, yes. That's the world we live in, and we just have to deal with it.
I actually added the caveat in the talk that I am biased, wanted the game to do better, and that these ideas must be taken with that as an understanding. I hope I was _quite_ clear on that point at the talk - and it's true. You make excellent points, all.
My hope was that we could see through my bias on these points and examine the two core ideas I wanted to bring to the front: the idea that learning how to teach physical motions is hard for game designers, and the idea that people don't seem to want to stand up and exert themselves to play.
In no way was I trying to "blame" the game's success or lack thereof on these factors - I was trying to arm the audience with the tools I think they would need to make their motion control games successful.
So, I agree with most of what you've said here, and hope that even though my perspective may be skewed, there may still be value to be had by looking through the lens of our experience.
You make very good points, and thank you for being so kind as to respond to my cranky rants (I really need to cut down on the coffee intake). If it makes you feel any better, I'm rooting for you guys to succeed, too. I want to see the Red Steel series to hit big. It's frustrating that it hasn't, or that it continues to sell slowly.
Since I have your attention (hopefully), let me ask you a question: what about the retail price? When Red Steel 2 was at $50, I wasn't interested at all. There were all those other Nintendo games that I have to get for myself and my girlfriend (I'll be going to Bogota with a ton of Wii games for Christmas). But now that I see it selling for $30, the pull is much stronger. I'm very tempted to pull the trigger, and I wonder how many others feel that same way.
I think a lot of third-party Wii games would be much more successful if they were sold for $25-$30. There's only so much money to go around in this economy, so each purchase must count. I think Just Dance took off largely because its $30 price made it an easy buy to new gamers (the Expanded Audience that entices and frustrates everyone).
Likewise, there's also the question of the Long Tail. We all know about the Evergreen Wii titles that just keep selling and selling forever. Does this suggest that the Wii market is far more patient with these games, that they're willing to wait longer to buy them? I don't mean that they expect the games to end up in the $20 bins, but that they aren't conditioned to pack in all at once on the opening week. That Hollywood mentality hasn't trickled down to them.
Red Steel 2 is still available everywhere. It still has a chance to reach a larger audience. What could be done to take advantage of that? Wouldn't social media - Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube - be an effective route to pursue? I know from my own experience that I rely heavily on Youtube videos in purchasing videogames. I'd like to see the games in action, see them more in depth. That way, I have a better idea of what I'd be buying. Most game review sites and magazines are useless, frankly.
I'm thinking of how effective Ubisoft used Youtube to add a groundswell of support for Just Dance. I think everyone should follow that strategy. After all, the Nintendo Wii is the console of the Social Games Era (as opposed to the older Cinematic Games Era). We should take advantage of this environment.
As for the technical hurdles of mastering motion controls, I think it's only a matter of time before the full potential is realized. I remember how long it took game designers to get joysticks to work properly. "Poor controls" was a major problem in the '80s. But I'm also optimistic in that I see a great opportunity for the Nintendo Wii, especially those developers who have been working hard and paying their dues. If there's a learning curve to the technology, it will be the Red Steel teams that have an edge. I think this industry push to dismiss the Wii as "casual games" will be seen as a terrible mistake.
Sooner or later, someone's going to master the new formulas, and motion controls will really take off. It's only a matter of time. That's my hope, at least. But it's not going to happen until we put in the hard work and confront the tough questions.
Thanks again for taking the time to write. If any of my ideas seem helpful, by all means, steal them.
Loved these pictures: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/16/the-red-steel-2-directors-field-guide-to-wii-r emote-swingers/
There is a lot of passion in the delivery there, and I love seeing games made by passionate people.
I'll give you the 'why I didn't buy' as well, and mostly it is multiplayer. Not the vs. kind, but the "my kids aren't watching me play" kind. I rarely have time to sit and play on my own, so simply having something like the assist in Sin & Punishment or SMG2 makes all the difference in the world at my house. That said, once the game goes for like $20, I may pick it up anyway, and add it to the stack of single-player games I'm always planning to play ;).
I wanted to talk about your points though.
1 - learning how to teach physical motions is hard for game designers
2 - the idea that people don't seem to want to stand up and exert themselves to play
The first one is thoughtful, at least I really agree with the point. The way I'd phrase it is that motion controls take practice, which makes complex motion controls (ie where more than a single motion works) difficult for pick-up and play success. Though I guess WSResort does a pretty good job of teaching swordplay and angles with the cutting mini-game.
Your second point really hits home to me. My dad enjoys the Wii and asks me to bring it along whenever we visit (1-2x per year). However, he specifically asks whenever we talk about which game to play: "do I have to stand-up to play?" That has lead me to not getting games like Tiger Woods, though we tend to go golfing whenever we are together, specifically because I know he will want to play sitting -period-.
However, the success of Just Dance seems to very much counter my personal experience. So, my thinking goes actually to a different place. Perhaps the type of game and the associated player may be what you are seeing? Meaning the percentage of all players who want to stand up to play may be something like 80%, but the % of hardcore players who want to stand up to play may be something like 5%. A more casual game (WiiSports/WiiFit/Rock Band/Just Dance) may then overlap with a larger audience of motion desiring players than a more core game (Red Steel 2).
Additionally, I would guess you saw that play session length affected the outcome? The casual games listed above tend to have shorter play sessions than would be expected for RS2, and the Amazon reviews (which are very positive btw) seem to also point out that the game is exhausting to play, which I take to mean that playing a session typical to the type of game that RS2 is leaves a player exhausted. In other words, playing RS2 as long as a player would normally play this type of game is exhausting, which pushes it towards shorter play sessions or really long play sessions that are physically exhausting and painful.
Not sure what it all means, but the points seem to reinforce the thought that motion controls tend to work best on more casual games.
"The result was absolute chaos: "'The Wii Motion Plus doesn't work.' That's what people would tell us." "
"It was a two step tutorial, and the result was even more chaotic: "Because now, instead of people saying I don't understand, people said 'yeah, I get it, it just doesn't work!'" said VandenBerghe."
I think we need to read into these responses. To me this is the crux of failure of these types of games on Wii.
Wait...before you yell at me you need to hear what I have to say.
Now the immediate impression to take from this is that motion controls don't work, aren't precise enough, etc. However, it is my opinion that the reason people are making this statement is much more complex than it would seem apparent. I would like to refer back to the dawn of time when the game Doom was made.
Doom had support for mouse controls. No one would disagree, now, that the mouse is not an absolutely superior solution to the keyboard controls. At the time however it was cutting edge technology. Everyone had to learn new skills. Because a "skilled gamer" could not instantly win with the mouse, it had an effect of hurting ones feelings and the result was gamers en-masse saying that the mouse controls were not as accurate as the keyboard controls. It took many years for this opinion to change.
I believe we are seeing the same thing here. When we use the terms "casual" audience and "hardcore" audience we are sidestepping the reality of the issue.
Oh wait, I forgot to state something at the start of this. Red Steel 2 is an excellent game and an excellent implementation of motion controls. Some of the criticisms are valid (it could have had more variety to the level design for instance) but any of my criticisms would be nit-picking. I'm working form the assumption that this is in fact a great game.
Back to the argument. Why do "casuals" (shudder) love the wii and "hardcore" hate it? It's far too convenient to believe the argument that the expanded audience are being duped and don't know any better.
Imagine these 2 scenarios:
a) You are not very good at games. You find the little thumb sticks awkward and have never really gotten the knack of it. You pick up a wii game. It's skills match those that you have learnt from real life (tennis, bowling). You find you are quite good at wii bowling and are able to win a few games.
b) You have spent years honing your skills at first person shooters and amongst your friends you are considered the tres cool of gaming. Your thumbs have a muscle memory position to a thousandth of a degree. You pick up wii bowling. You lose repeatedly.
I don't agree personally that the problem is that people don't like to get up and play games. It's that you haven't let the wookie win.
The difficult issue, with "hardcore" games at least, is to solve one of two problems: How to make regular people want to play more complex games (eg how do I convince grandpa to play Red Steel), or alternatively, how to encourage encumbant gamers to learn these new skills. This is part of what Jason is referring to I guess. But I think maybe you are skipping the most important step which is making the player realise, of his own volition, that perhaps the controls "are" accurate and that they are accurately predicting that you don't know how to swing a sword.
When the wii first came out these arguments of the controls not being good enough, were arguable, but at least somewhat convincing. With motion plus added on however and the same arguments being applied you have to question when is it going to end? If these arguments don't cease than you have to look at where the error lies, is it the hardware or is it the user?
That's enough from me I hope my point is made clear.
As someone who enjoyed Red Steel 2 I found this discussion very interesting. It's surprising to me that so many people had such difficulty in grasping the core motions of the game. I had found them to be nothing but intuitive, though I suppose that is rather subjective. To me, the degree to which the game tutorialized actions felt to be a bit excessive in parts, but I imagine this would be necessary for those who instinctively perform the motions in a different way than the game expects.
As motion controls are becoming more common, the diversity of player movements and how games cope with them will almost certainly become a larger issue and should be explored in depth. After all, there's really only one way to press a button (sloppy thumbs and other difficulties aside), but there are probably as many ways to perform a motion as there are players of a game. I don't think anyone's stumbled upon a clear solution, as all of the options available (abstracting motion parameters that trigger an action, including multiple correct motions, mapping the motions 1:1 or as near as possible and having the game react, etc.) have some tangible downside. Until games can record each player's unique motion for an action and utilize that with consistent accuracy, games that strive for complex interactions via motion will have to do a lot of teaching and hand holding to make sure that players grasp the technique of a particular action.
So while I understand the heavy use of tutorials in Red Steel 2, in my opinion the way they were handled was somewhat hit and miss (though I must re-iterate that I enjoyed the game quite a bit). The tutorials themselves, as well as the way they were implemented, ranged from incredibly subtle and useful to jarring and obvious. I won't take the time to go through all of the methods used (as there are a surprising number of them), I'll just hit what I felt were the highlights and lowlights.
The most effective teaching tool in the game, in my opinion, was also the most subtle. Strewn throughout the game's environments, as part of a wide array of random breakable objects, are simple wooden cutouts in the rough shape of a person. When you attack those objects with a sword, they come apart in different ways depending on how you attack. Some types of attack allow you to cut a couple pieces off before the dummy topples, allowing you to do a basic combo or two. A similar parallel for the gun play in the title were the numerous rows of bottles and cans which were deliberately set up along railings in very visible yet out of reach places. These simple objects did more to reinforce the basic play mechanics in my mind than most of the explicit tutorial sections. And they did so entirely within the continuity of the game world and the context of exploratory play.
Less graceful but still quite important was the element of repetition. Forcing players to repeat a motion multiple times successfully when they learned a new move, while sometimes tedious, was actually really beneficial. By the end of the game, players can potentially have a very large repertoire of moves, and if I hadn't been forced to perform each of them multiple times, I probably would have only remembered half of the moves I wound up utilizing regularly.
But the most poorly implemented tutorials from my perspective were the ones Mr. VandenBerghe mentions specifically in his presentation. These were pop-up text windows with pictures of a real person performing the basic actions of the game (be they swinging the wii-mote, or pointing it at the screen to shoot). Based on the anecdotes in his session, it sounds like such a blunt-force-education tactic was probably necessary for some players, but the downsides impact everyone. I can accept the need to articulate this very basic information to new players in the most concrete terms possible, but the incongruity of the images with the very distinct visual style of the game was jarring and unfortunate and really pulled me out of the game world (more so than pop-up text blocks normally do ;). I'd be curious to know if the team tried implementing similar tutorial images but of a style more fitting with the visual continuity of the game, and if that small level of abstraction diminished the effectiveness of the tutorial.
At the end of the day it really comes down to a conflict between subtlety vs overtness. It seems like the developers erred on the side of caution with Red Steel 2, and I don't think anyone can really blame them (especially when faced with those play testers). After all, there are probably some people who played all the way through the game without breaking a single one of those wood cut-out people that so clearly articulated the mechanics to me. I guess I just wish more games would implement a gradient effect between implicit and explicit based on the player's performance, or even a menu option. And even when being explicit, there are ways to do so that don't break the narrative or immersion of your game, provided you have the time and resources to implement them.
On the completely different note of sales, in addition to a lot of the reasons already presented by others, I think Red Steel 2 (and many other core-focused wii games) suffered greatly from the lack of demo distribution. I was interested in Red Steel 2 since its announcement, but wasn't actually planning on buying it at first. That changed when I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play it at PAX '09. Once I felt the way the controls and gameplay worked, it was catapulted to must buy status in my mind, and I think a lot of other gamers would have felt the same if they'd had the opportunity to try it.
Well that's more than enough from me. Interesting talk, Mr. VandenBerghe. I hope I get the chance to play Red Steel 3 in the not too distant future.
Sorry about the delay in responding - I was distracted by the SPECTACULAR architecture in Cologne. Wow.
@Daniel - your points are all valid, and are all topics we discussed internally. At the end of the day, though, large companies function on an "inertia" model where the belief that a game will do/is doing well is often the key factor in determining how much extra "oomph" you can get on the release. That was the factor here - the game was always in a risky place, and at the end of the day, the launch was weak. Would you invest further in a product that was doing only so-so? Not many good businesspeople will.
I appreciate the interest though, and your thoughts are right on track. Worry not - we're thinking along the same routes. Sometimes, you just gotta wait for the right window. :P
@Russel: Just Dance, DDR, and the other "dance" genre games are a bright point exception to the rule here, and it does give one hope, don't it? :) Keep in mind, though, that dancing, in general, has a wider appeal than swordfighting, and I think that's part of what we're seeing here, but it's worth exploring in more detail. I think part of it, too, may be that there have been dance games for a _long_ time now, and the audience is in general better prepared to understand what is being offered and why. Interesting thoughts.
Yes, playtime was something we examined at length - we paced the game to give the player plenty of time to relax after a big fight, and tried to make sure that there wasn't more than about 5 minutes of vigorous activity required at a time, ever (and that was the max - most fights didn't last more than 90 seconds).
@Glen: I tend to agree with your comments - your example of the tutorial pacing is spot-on. I don't want to claim that our solution was the best you _could do_ - certainly if we went back and did it again we'd want to integrate the tutorials into the experience better and make them smoother... but we were struggling to find a solution to this problem right up until the end, and what you see is the result of that. I was very proud of the team that we cracked the puzzle at all - it was a _whopper_ of a problem for us.
Anyway, thanks all for the comments. :) Very interesting stuff!!
If your game is not successful at retail, based on however you define "success" (turning a profit, building a franchise, propelling the hardware), there is only one question to ask: What Did We Do Wrong? You have no one to blame but yourselves. There are lost gems and cult classics, yes. I'm a big fan of underdogs. But if a video game fails at retail, there will be concrete reasons why. No excuses.
Back in the Arcade Games Era, a video game was packed into a fiercely competitive environment for scarce resources - kids' quarters. Your game had only seconds to hook the kids in, and keep them playing, before they walk away to try the other 30 machines in the room. Most arcade games would fail, and the strongest would survive and thrive.
On my lunch break today, I stopped at Target and saw that Red Steel is on sale for $30. I'm interested in the game. I want to like it. Now give me a good reason why I should buy. Convince me to cross the line. Have you and your team successfully done this, Mr. VandenBerghe? I don't think so. If the game was enticing enough, exciting enough, and offered enough strong content (what Vincent Flanders calls "heroin content"), I would have bought the game at $50. But I didn't do this, and I remain hesitant now. Why is this? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Red Steel 2? What did we do wrong?
Don't complain to me about motion controls. And don't try to tell me motion control isn't popular on the Nintendo Wii. That's rediculous. Wii Sports is the single most popular video game ever made. Wii Play, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Kart, Just Dance - all make excellent use of motion controls. Heck, the swordplay in WSR is spectacular. I want sword fighting like that! I want to be able to knock enemies off of bridges and mountains and slash them into the ocean. I want to feel empowered by fighting against overwhelming odds.
Why does Red Steel 2 have a tutorial mode? I HATE tutorials in games. I especially hate it when I'm required to go through it before starting the game. I just picked up Excite Truck, and it's a terrific game in many ways, but I just wanted to throw my Wiimote out the window over that stupid tutorial mode.
Arcade games should never have a tutorial mode. The controls should be immediately accessible and easy to grasp. I want as few barriers to entry as possible. Every barrier only angers me and brings me that much closer to walking out. Just today, I walked out of a Starbucks because their wifi connection was a pain in the neck. I knew another coffee shop that didn't make me jump through hoops to go online, so I packed up and walked over there. It's the same way with video games. Heck, if anything, the internet has made me crankier.
Does Red Steel 2 have multiplayer? The Wii is a console for the Social Games Era. Playing with friends and family is an absolute must. In fact, I'd say local multiplayer is even more important than it was for the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. If you're offering a FPS title for only one player, that's a major strike against you. I don't care about technical hurdles. I don't care about how hard it is to design. I got to play 4-player on GoldenEye 64 in 1997. I don't want excuses in 2010.
How is the design of the game world in Red Steel 2? Is it diverse? Or is it the same brown-ish Western town again and again? Are my actions and abilities a natural extension of this world? Does the gameplay gel with the level design and the art design? Is the action fast and immediate? Am I always three seconds from death (as Robotron was once described)? Do I battle through a variety of environments, or is it just the same big, boxy arena again and again?
Yes, the graphics are great. Congratulations to the art team. But graphics should never be the top priority. Priority #1 is Control. The control scheme must be absolutely precise and perfect. If I get to slash a sword with the Motion+, then I want to slash a sword just like I can in WSR. Priority #2 is Play Mechanics. What is the core of the game? Focus on that like a laser beam. This is where multiplayer comes in. A perfect example would be F-Zero X. The core of that game was 4-player racing, so everything was designed around the multiplayer experience. Graphics took a back seat to precision controls, rock-solid framerates, and sheer speed.
Gameplay over graphics. It has always been this way. I don't know why today's game designers can't seem to figure this out. They're far too dazzled by polygons and lighting effects and ignore the core of their games. As a result, most of them are deemed failures and wind up in the used bins at Gamestop. I grew up playing videogames in the '80s, so I'm used to greatness, and I don't have time or patience for anything less. A harsh environment, yes. That's the world we live in, and we just have to deal with it.
My hope was that we could see through my bias on these points and examine the two core ideas I wanted to bring to the front: the idea that learning how to teach physical motions is hard for game designers, and the idea that people don't seem to want to stand up and exert themselves to play.
In no way was I trying to "blame" the game's success or lack thereof on these factors - I was trying to arm the audience with the tools I think they would need to make their motion control games successful.
So, I agree with most of what you've said here, and hope that even though my perspective may be skewed, there may still be value to be had by looking through the lens of our experience.
:)
-Jason
Since I have your attention (hopefully), let me ask you a question: what about the retail price? When Red Steel 2 was at $50, I wasn't interested at all. There were all those other Nintendo games that I have to get for myself and my girlfriend (I'll be going to Bogota with a ton of Wii games for Christmas). But now that I see it selling for $30, the pull is much stronger. I'm very tempted to pull the trigger, and I wonder how many others feel that same way.
I think a lot of third-party Wii games would be much more successful if they were sold for $25-$30. There's only so much money to go around in this economy, so each purchase must count. I think Just Dance took off largely because its $30 price made it an easy buy to new gamers (the Expanded Audience that entices and frustrates everyone).
Likewise, there's also the question of the Long Tail. We all know about the Evergreen Wii titles that just keep selling and selling forever. Does this suggest that the Wii market is far more patient with these games, that they're willing to wait longer to buy them? I don't mean that they expect the games to end up in the $20 bins, but that they aren't conditioned to pack in all at once on the opening week. That Hollywood mentality hasn't trickled down to them.
Red Steel 2 is still available everywhere. It still has a chance to reach a larger audience. What could be done to take advantage of that? Wouldn't social media - Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube - be an effective route to pursue? I know from my own experience that I rely heavily on Youtube videos in purchasing videogames. I'd like to see the games in action, see them more in depth. That way, I have a better idea of what I'd be buying. Most game review sites and magazines are useless, frankly.
I'm thinking of how effective Ubisoft used Youtube to add a groundswell of support for Just Dance. I think everyone should follow that strategy. After all, the Nintendo Wii is the console of the Social Games Era (as opposed to the older Cinematic Games Era). We should take advantage of this environment.
As for the technical hurdles of mastering motion controls, I think it's only a matter of time before the full potential is realized. I remember how long it took game designers to get joysticks to work properly. "Poor controls" was a major problem in the '80s. But I'm also optimistic in that I see a great opportunity for the Nintendo Wii, especially those developers who have been working hard and paying their dues. If there's a learning curve to the technology, it will be the Red Steel teams that have an edge. I think this industry push to dismiss the Wii as "casual games" will be seen as a terrible mistake.
Sooner or later, someone's going to master the new formulas, and motion controls will really take off. It's only a matter of time. That's my hope, at least. But it's not going to happen until we put in the hard work and confront the tough questions.
Thanks again for taking the time to write. If any of my ideas seem helpful, by all means, steal them.
emote-swingers/
There is a lot of passion in the delivery there, and I love seeing games made by passionate people.
I'll give you the 'why I didn't buy' as well, and mostly it is multiplayer. Not the vs. kind, but the "my kids aren't watching me play" kind. I rarely have time to sit and play on my own, so simply having something like the assist in Sin & Punishment or SMG2 makes all the difference in the world at my house. That said, once the game goes for like $20, I may pick it up anyway, and add it to the stack of single-player games I'm always planning to play ;).
I wanted to talk about your points though.
1 - learning how to teach physical motions is hard for game designers
2 - the idea that people don't seem to want to stand up and exert themselves to play
The first one is thoughtful, at least I really agree with the point. The way I'd phrase it is that motion controls take practice, which makes complex motion controls (ie where more than a single motion works) difficult for pick-up and play success. Though I guess WSResort does a pretty good job of teaching swordplay and angles with the cutting mini-game.
Your second point really hits home to me. My dad enjoys the Wii and asks me to bring it along whenever we visit (1-2x per year). However, he specifically asks whenever we talk about which game to play: "do I have to stand-up to play?" That has lead me to not getting games like Tiger Woods, though we tend to go golfing whenever we are together, specifically because I know he will want to play sitting -period-.
However, the success of Just Dance seems to very much counter my personal experience. So, my thinking goes actually to a different place. Perhaps the type of game and the associated player may be what you are seeing? Meaning the percentage of all players who want to stand up to play may be something like 80%, but the % of hardcore players who want to stand up to play may be something like 5%. A more casual game (WiiSports/WiiFit/Rock Band/Just Dance) may then overlap with a larger audience of motion desiring players than a more core game (Red Steel 2).
Additionally, I would guess you saw that play session length affected the outcome? The casual games listed above tend to have shorter play sessions than would be expected for RS2, and the Amazon reviews (which are very positive btw) seem to also point out that the game is exhausting to play, which I take to mean that playing a session typical to the type of game that RS2 is leaves a player exhausted. In other words, playing RS2 as long as a player would normally play this type of game is exhausting, which pushes it towards shorter play sessions or really long play sessions that are physically exhausting and painful.
Not sure what it all means, but the points seem to reinforce the thought that motion controls tend to work best on more casual games.
Thanks for sharing and being open to share.
"It was a two step tutorial, and the result was even more chaotic: "Because now, instead of people saying I don't understand, people said 'yeah, I get it, it just doesn't work!'" said VandenBerghe."
I think we need to read into these responses. To me this is the crux of failure of these types of games on Wii.
Wait...before you yell at me you need to hear what I have to say.
Now the immediate impression to take from this is that motion controls don't work, aren't precise enough, etc. However, it is my opinion that the reason people are making this statement is much more complex than it would seem apparent. I would like to refer back to the dawn of time when the game Doom was made.
Doom had support for mouse controls. No one would disagree, now, that the mouse is not an absolutely superior solution to the keyboard controls. At the time however it was cutting edge technology. Everyone had to learn new skills. Because a "skilled gamer" could not instantly win with the mouse, it had an effect of hurting ones feelings and the result was gamers en-masse saying that the mouse controls were not as accurate as the keyboard controls. It took many years for this opinion to change.
I believe we are seeing the same thing here. When we use the terms "casual" audience and "hardcore" audience we are sidestepping the reality of the issue.
Oh wait, I forgot to state something at the start of this. Red Steel 2 is an excellent game and an excellent implementation of motion controls. Some of the criticisms are valid (it could have had more variety to the level design for instance) but any of my criticisms would be nit-picking. I'm working form the assumption that this is in fact a great game.
Back to the argument. Why do "casuals" (shudder) love the wii and "hardcore" hate it? It's far too convenient to believe the argument that the expanded audience are being duped and don't know any better.
Imagine these 2 scenarios:
a) You are not very good at games. You find the little thumb sticks awkward and have never really gotten the knack of it. You pick up a wii game. It's skills match those that you have learnt from real life (tennis, bowling). You find you are quite good at wii bowling and are able to win a few games.
b) You have spent years honing your skills at first person shooters and amongst your friends you are considered the tres cool of gaming. Your thumbs have a muscle memory position to a thousandth of a degree. You pick up wii bowling. You lose repeatedly.
I don't agree personally that the problem is that people don't like to get up and play games. It's that you haven't let the wookie win.
The difficult issue, with "hardcore" games at least, is to solve one of two problems: How to make regular people want to play more complex games (eg how do I convince grandpa to play Red Steel), or alternatively, how to encourage encumbant gamers to learn these new skills. This is part of what Jason is referring to I guess. But I think maybe you are skipping the most important step which is making the player realise, of his own volition, that perhaps the controls "are" accurate and that they are accurately predicting that you don't know how to swing a sword.
When the wii first came out these arguments of the controls not being good enough, were arguable, but at least somewhat convincing. With motion plus added on however and the same arguments being applied you have to question when is it going to end? If these arguments don't cease than you have to look at where the error lies, is it the hardware or is it the user?
That's enough from me I hope my point is made clear.
As motion controls are becoming more common, the diversity of player movements and how games cope with them will almost certainly become a larger issue and should be explored in depth. After all, there's really only one way to press a button (sloppy thumbs and other difficulties aside), but there are probably as many ways to perform a motion as there are players of a game. I don't think anyone's stumbled upon a clear solution, as all of the options available (abstracting motion parameters that trigger an action, including multiple correct motions, mapping the motions 1:1 or as near as possible and having the game react, etc.) have some tangible downside. Until games can record each player's unique motion for an action and utilize that with consistent accuracy, games that strive for complex interactions via motion will have to do a lot of teaching and hand holding to make sure that players grasp the technique of a particular action.
So while I understand the heavy use of tutorials in Red Steel 2, in my opinion the way they were handled was somewhat hit and miss (though I must re-iterate that I enjoyed the game quite a bit). The tutorials themselves, as well as the way they were implemented, ranged from incredibly subtle and useful to jarring and obvious. I won't take the time to go through all of the methods used (as there are a surprising number of them), I'll just hit what I felt were the highlights and lowlights.
The most effective teaching tool in the game, in my opinion, was also the most subtle. Strewn throughout the game's environments, as part of a wide array of random breakable objects, are simple wooden cutouts in the rough shape of a person. When you attack those objects with a sword, they come apart in different ways depending on how you attack. Some types of attack allow you to cut a couple pieces off before the dummy topples, allowing you to do a basic combo or two. A similar parallel for the gun play in the title were the numerous rows of bottles and cans which were deliberately set up along railings in very visible yet out of reach places. These simple objects did more to reinforce the basic play mechanics in my mind than most of the explicit tutorial sections. And they did so entirely within the continuity of the game world and the context of exploratory play.
Less graceful but still quite important was the element of repetition. Forcing players to repeat a motion multiple times successfully when they learned a new move, while sometimes tedious, was actually really beneficial. By the end of the game, players can potentially have a very large repertoire of moves, and if I hadn't been forced to perform each of them multiple times, I probably would have only remembered half of the moves I wound up utilizing regularly.
But the most poorly implemented tutorials from my perspective were the ones Mr. VandenBerghe mentions specifically in his presentation. These were pop-up text windows with pictures of a real person performing the basic actions of the game (be they swinging the wii-mote, or pointing it at the screen to shoot). Based on the anecdotes in his session, it sounds like such a blunt-force-education tactic was probably necessary for some players, but the downsides impact everyone. I can accept the need to articulate this very basic information to new players in the most concrete terms possible, but the incongruity of the images with the very distinct visual style of the game was jarring and unfortunate and really pulled me out of the game world (more so than pop-up text blocks normally do ;). I'd be curious to know if the team tried implementing similar tutorial images but of a style more fitting with the visual continuity of the game, and if that small level of abstraction diminished the effectiveness of the tutorial.
At the end of the day it really comes down to a conflict between subtlety vs overtness. It seems like the developers erred on the side of caution with Red Steel 2, and I don't think anyone can really blame them (especially when faced with those play testers). After all, there are probably some people who played all the way through the game without breaking a single one of those wood cut-out people that so clearly articulated the mechanics to me. I guess I just wish more games would implement a gradient effect between implicit and explicit based on the player's performance, or even a menu option. And even when being explicit, there are ways to do so that don't break the narrative or immersion of your game, provided you have the time and resources to implement them.
On the completely different note of sales, in addition to a lot of the reasons already presented by others, I think Red Steel 2 (and many other core-focused wii games) suffered greatly from the lack of demo distribution. I was interested in Red Steel 2 since its announcement, but wasn't actually planning on buying it at first. That changed when I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play it at PAX '09. Once I felt the way the controls and gameplay worked, it was catapulted to must buy status in my mind, and I think a lot of other gamers would have felt the same if they'd had the opportunity to try it.
Well that's more than enough from me. Interesting talk, Mr. VandenBerghe. I hope I get the chance to play Red Steel 3 in the not too distant future.
@Daniel - your points are all valid, and are all topics we discussed internally. At the end of the day, though, large companies function on an "inertia" model where the belief that a game will do/is doing well is often the key factor in determining how much extra "oomph" you can get on the release. That was the factor here - the game was always in a risky place, and at the end of the day, the launch was weak. Would you invest further in a product that was doing only so-so? Not many good businesspeople will.
I appreciate the interest though, and your thoughts are right on track. Worry not - we're thinking along the same routes. Sometimes, you just gotta wait for the right window. :P
@Russel: Just Dance, DDR, and the other "dance" genre games are a bright point exception to the rule here, and it does give one hope, don't it? :) Keep in mind, though, that dancing, in general, has a wider appeal than swordfighting, and I think that's part of what we're seeing here, but it's worth exploring in more detail. I think part of it, too, may be that there have been dance games for a _long_ time now, and the audience is in general better prepared to understand what is being offered and why. Interesting thoughts.
Yes, playtime was something we examined at length - we paced the game to give the player plenty of time to relax after a big fight, and tried to make sure that there wasn't more than about 5 minutes of vigorous activity required at a time, ever (and that was the max - most fights didn't last more than 90 seconds).
@Glen: I tend to agree with your comments - your example of the tutorial pacing is spot-on. I don't want to claim that our solution was the best you _could do_ - certainly if we went back and did it again we'd want to integrate the tutorials into the experience better and make them smoother... but we were struggling to find a solution to this problem right up until the end, and what you see is the result of that. I was very proud of the team that we cracked the puzzle at all - it was a _whopper_ of a problem for us.
Anyway, thanks all for the comments. :) Very interesting stuff!!
-Jason