Discussing game design: Things I learned from Project M 24/03/2016 update

[Vigilante]

Having been a small part of the efforts to help bring Project M to life, no one can really walk away from that without learning a good deal about game design. Things that seemed like they would be easy to do suddenly are seen with a new gaze and you realize that many of the things you have once taken for granted about game design actually don't measure up to what you believed. Balance changes you once thought would fix everything about a game actually cause more problems than they actually address, you start to realize your own biases and how you need to stop looking at the trees and focus on the forest... etc... The fact is, it was pretty enriching.

I wanted to start a discussion about game design by basically talking about the things I have learned, the many realizations I've come to grasp with. Now, this won't be a place where I'm going to reveal some crazy secrets, I really won't unless I got an ok from the people who were in charge, and I'm mostly going to focus on personal experiences and the various epiphanies that really hit me with my time there. I learned much, and yet feel that there is so much more to game design that I haven't gotten a clear grasp on. I'd like to do this little bi-weekly segments where I'll discuss these specific thoughts and I'd love to see how you guys would react to them.These are my learning experiences, some who were in PMDT with me may not all agree on those assertions.


Next one:

Managing the hype:

http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-10-01-2016-update.425650/#post-20856762

Teamwork, limits and specialties:

http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-26-12-2015-update.425650/#post-20716854

Balancing for fun, legacy and fanservice in mind.



I won’t mince words here: Balancing a game takes a lot of work, and it is a road paved with many failures. You will fail to reach good balance over, and over, and over again until you eventually learn from these failures and deliver an acceptably-balanced cast. Even then, you could still do better. You will never make and interesting game while reaching a perfect balance.



Now, technically-speaking, balancing a game can be very easy. If every character has the same exact moves, size and properties, you made a perfectly balanced cast. However, that is neither fun nor interesting. Super Smash Bros. is a series with asymmetrical balance. Each character plays differently, has different physics, different systems. That alone makes it impossible to reach perfect balance. Some characters will be better than others. It will inevitably happen, no matter what you do. And honestly, this asymmetric balance is what makes smash… well… smash.



Variety is very important when it comes to making a smash game. Personally, I am a Roy main. I also use Falco as a secondary, and for fun… I use Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Wolf, Young Link (Melee), Ike, etc… if you look at the characters I tend to select; the majority of them tend to fall relatively quickly. On the other hand, I will not touch Jigglypuff, Peach, or other characters that have floaty jump mechanics. I like Luigi more as a character than Mario, but I will choose to play as Mario over Luigi any day in a Smash game. I have a bias toward fast-fallers, that much is evident. Nevertheless, there are people who gravitate towards characters with more floaty physics like Hungrybox for example. Some like Fly Amanita might gravitate towards characters with more atypical movesets (Ice Climbers, Lucario). When you look at every physical component in a Smash game, each character you make will have a distinct feel that will resonate with some players. Making characters feel distinct increases the odds that a player picking up this game finds a character that appeal to them.



Now, this game is very similar to Melee in feel, which also means that as far as smash games go, the extremes are wider apart. The difference between Jigglypuff and Falco in terms of physics is wider in Melee than in any other Smash game for example. That leaves more room in between for characters to fill different niches. Every niche is important, and that includes the strange characters like the Ice Climbers that operate on different rules from the rest of the cast. They may not be commonly played, but there is a group of people who enjoy these atypical characters.



Now, Super Smash Bros. is a crossover game. And that comes with its share of things to keep in mind. The first is that well… characters have a history. It bleeds into every aspect of balance such as physics (e.g. Sonic can’t be expected to run slower than most, if not any of the cast), movesets, animations, etc… On one hand, the fans of these series have certain expectations. It’s all right for Ganondorf to fight in a ruthless manner, but you can’t have friendly and awkward Luigi curb-stomp foes in a brutal manner. It has to be more cartoonish to reflect that aspect of Luigi’s personality. You also expect some fanservice, and that's what we appealed to when adding Donkey Kong’s signature rolling attack from Donkey Kong Country for instances. People play Super Smash Bros. in part because they love the characters and they want these characters to feel like they imagined they would. In any new, non-crossover franchises, you don’t have to deal with such expectations. There are other challenges attributable to having a lot, and sometimes too much freedom, but there also aren’t these limits when balancing a character. In a crossover, you have to find clever ways to incorporate fanservice into balance. The Donkey Kong rolling attack helped DK’s approach to some extent while at the same time providing fanservice.



There are also the earlier games in the series to consider. Captain Falcon didn’t really have anything you could consider “iconic” that could have been given to him as a fighter until Super Smash Bros. 64. However, certain moves like the Falcon Punch became ingrained into gaming culture to the point of becoming an Internet meme. While one could argue for a way to balance Captain Falcon better by replacing his Falcon Punch with something more efficient, it is something that if you take it off, it will take away one of the things that made the character special in the first place. The same could be argued about Roy’s down tilt that is a very signature launcher used by many Roy players, or Luigi’s 1% damage taunt for example.



Furthermore, when balancing for fun in mind, while it is very important to consider the player’s fun itself, it is also very important to consider the opponent’s enjoyment of the matchup as well. A character may be very fun for a player, but everyone who is fighting that character might be groaning and annoyed at the very idea of having to endure that matchup. Keep in mind, I believe that some people do grossly over-exaggerate with their hatred of certain characters, likely because they lost badly once, but when the frustration starts spreading to a large part of the community and the reason is sensible, it warrants some intervention. It is important to let other people comment on the characters you are working on. If you are working on that character, chances are that you have been playing a lot “as” the character and not very much “against” the character. It is important to fight your own creations as well as let other people fighting you give their honest opinions, even if you disagree with them. Report everything, even if you don’t like what you hear. The job of a character designer is not to make the character they want to play, but to make characters that enhance the roster.



Being able to take criticism, admit that you are wrong, and that your work needs to be polished further, or even scrapped can be difficult, but it’s necessary. While it’s great to make a game that’s fun for you, if you’re going to build a community, you have to consider other people. There can be no tournaments without a strong community.



Finally, a character has many matchups, and each matchup must be meticulously considered. A matchup between two given characters might be fun, fair and enjoyable, but then you switch one of them for another, and there’s an unfair and not very enjoyable matchup. Keep in mind that you can’t get rid of matchup advantages and disadvantages, but you can make them “acceptable”. As long as it feels like the character has a chance of winning, it’s already pretty good. Stages also need to be considered. Some characters perform better on certain stages as opposed to others. You also need to test matchups on each stage. It’s hard to be that thorough, but at the very least, when you’re testing out characters, you can’t just stick to one. When I first started, I wrote my “entrance” exam on Zelda. She was a character that I didn’t like. She was floaty, slow, the opposite of everything I normally like in a Smash character. I played as her for hours on end to try and understand how she plays. And then I had to do that with many characters that I mained for a while before I ended up becoming a full time Roy main near the end. If all you play is one character, then you view the balance in the eyes of this of someone who plays only a single character. Your experiences are legitimate, but they are also limited. I didn’t have a clear main until development pretty much almost ended.



All in all, when dealing with a crossover game, you have to balance in very creative ways. You need to do some research, look into other games featuring the said character, play them, take notes, and see if you can fix that character’s issue with something canonical if possible. If not, you still need to make sure animations keep the character’s demeanour and personality in mind, you need to consider different play styles and create new possibilities, and you need to consider both sides of a matchup. It’s a lot of things to consider, but it is also very interesting. Working within limitations fosters a lot of creativity.



Archives:

Training wheels:

Whenever you are working on a game that has both a party and a competitive component, most people tend to believe that if you try to please one side, you must automatically forsake the other, but my time with the PMDT has proven me otherwise. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, one could perform an L-cancel, which reduced your landing lag after performing an aerial attack by half rounded down (done by tapping the shield button right before landing), and that has carried over to Project M. This mechanic originated from Super Smash Bros. 64 under the name of smooth landing. In this game, a successful smooth landing would cancel all landing lag. In Melee, for most competitive players, the difference between an L-cancelled attack and regular landing lag is very noticeable, but that is not as easy to notice in the eyes of a novice player. Competitive players have in-depth knowledge of how long the landing lag should last in the first place, while for a party smasher, it may not have even crossed their mind to even think about it. It makes it more challenging to a newcomer in the competitive scene to accurately judge if they have successfully L-canceled or not. In Project M, there is a brief white flash upon a successful L-cancel. That doesn’t change the mechanic itself, but it serves as a very helpful training tool by providing the feedback these players need.

Training wheels such as this one serve several useful functions. The first is that it allows the competitive meta to be much more accessible to newcomers. One barrier of entry that those wanting to improve their abilities in Super Smash Bros. Melee is that players must actively look for tutorials on how to accomplish these advanced feats. One might check a youtube video, or read a guide on Smashboards, but it takes deliberate effort. Anything that reduces the amount of effort needed to find the information required to execute these techniques will increase the likeliness that the player will persist in their quest for knowledge. Of course, the ideal solution would have been for Smash games to have tutorials in the form of “event-matches” that explains the timing and method to these techniques. Think of the Mario and Luigi games that tell you exactly when to press the attack button for extra damage. You may use these button prompts to help you get the right timing, but once you feel confident in your timing, you can remove them and gain a nice boost to your damage from doing so. It eases you into the timing then rewards you for taking the training wheels off.

The second function acts as a means of leveling the playing field. Often, people talk about leveling the playing field by making things less complex, and thus reducing the gap between skill levels. However, it is also possible to level the playing field in a different way: Giving everyone equal access to knowledge on how to improve. As stated before, not everyone will care enough to find out or even be aware of these mechanics to actually look them up. With everyone aware of how to execute these skills, anyone who wants to improve can improve.

Training wheels also speed up the learning process. One reason some individuals may be less likely to fully go through with mastering a technique is the frustration hailing from the impression that one hasn’t been making much progress. The player may feel like he has hit a wall or is dragging himself slowly through the process as opposed to seeing a clear difference in a short amount of time. What training wheels do is making the initial learning curve smoother, allowing the player to quickly learn the basics of the technique. Afterwards, the player’s learning will follow a more regular growth rate, but the player will be past the hurdle where most tend to give up.

Training wheels can also potentially, but not always, provide a “safety net”. Now, there really isn’t a mechanic like that in Project M, but I’ll use Smash 4 as a starting point. In this game, there is an add-on that you may attach to your character called the smooth lander. The game lacks any semblance of an L-canceling mechanic, but as I understand it from my very limited experience trying this game, it basically acts as a sort of auto-cancel, reducing landing lag after landing from an aerial attack. Now, if you take this and put it in a game that does have L-cancelling, it could potentially have some pretty interesting implications.

Now imagine that the game functions like Melee or Project M and an L-cancel reduces landing lag by half rounded down. The smooth lander could for example auto-cancel your landing lag, reducing it by a third. However, if you successfully L-cancel with the smooth lander equipped, you cancel 4/10ths of your landing lag, a little more than if you had failed, but a little less than if you didn’t have the training wheels. This would have several interesting applications:

1. It would provide for those who are still learning or don’t want to learn a means to fight against more experienced players and not feel as helpless.

2. It would still reward learning players whenever they successfully L-cancel, but the lack of the full benefits of the L-cancel would encourage taking the training wheels off eventually.

3. The advanced players would be faced with more of a challenge while playing with the learning player.

Keep in mind that this is the kind of thing that would likely and rightfully be banned from a tournament setting, but a safety net would make the process of learning these techniques less grueling while allowing non-competitive smashers to somewhat keep up in friendly matches without gaining the full benefits of mastering the technique. No depth is lost, but accessibility increases. The skill gap for friendly matches also lessens with no cost to the depth of the mechanics. The visual aspect of the white flash is great, but another one could be added while the smooth lander is equipped. For instances, small prompts like “Too early!, Almost! or Perfect!” could appear to provide feedback to those attempting to L-cancel with the add-on equipped. That would serve as a great way to teach the timing.

This kind of training wheels function could easily be applied to other advanced techniques. For example, the very same feedback prompts I have just mentioned could be utilized to teach power shielding. A reflective shield add-on could exist and very briefly increase the duration of the reflective state of the shield when raising it against a projectile. Again, there would be a drawback. The reflected projectile from a slightly off powershield would have its power a third of the projectile’s original power, whereas a perfect powershield with the reflective shield might send if back at half power.

For wavedashing, now that would seem rather difficult as that would be more difficult to evaluate and get feedback on. While not possible with a current Gamecube controller, I turn to the Hori gamecube controller for inspiration. Now, I am not advocating using this controller for smash, but there are things about its design that fascinate me. You may notice from this controller that is has a very similar layout to the Gamecube controller, but also has additional buttons such as an additional set of shoulder buttons. That is because it is a Wii classic controller, and thus requires more buttons. In an ideal world, this design solution would require Nintendo to remake the Gamecube controller but add two shoulder buttons. Imagine yourself in this ideal scenario. Now you take one of these shoulder buttons and make one of them make your character jump and air-dodge diagonally, working as an auto-wavedash. Of course, you need to point your stick in the direction you want to wavedash. In the air, it would air-dodge you diagonally towards the ground in any direction held, basically acting as a waveland. That would be a good tool for the less-experienced smashers to fight on better grounds with skilled players. Of course, they could only wavedash at a fixed distance, limiting their options somewhat. If need be, this feature could be deactivated.

The key point to remember about these conceptual ideas it that it is important for those learning advanced skills to feel rewarded for their efforts and they should always have a distinct advantage over those who do not put in the effort required to improve, or else, what would be the point in trying? However, it is also important for newcomers to think “I can do it!”. Many believe that depth and accessibility are mutually-exclusive concepts, but the truth is that they can co-exist, and Melee has been a living proof of that by allowing for both engrossing competitive play and intense party experiences. Project M’s white flash upon L-cancelling seems like such a small addition, almost insignificant even. However, that alone has improved accessibility to the competitive meta in a very significant manner. Communities are like vampires, they survive on new blood. Hopefully, they'll never sparkle though.

I'll try and keep you guys updated through twitter @Vigilante_Blade whenever I update this thread with a new topic. Just keep in mind, I also use it for other stuff.

 

[zpxociv]

I don't want to be trained to do repetitive non-decisions like L-cancel. Auto L-cancel was a step in the right direction and I never looked back after using it.

 

[Vigilante]

I don't want to be trained to do repetitive non-decisions like L-cancel. Auto L-cancel was a step in the right direction and I never looked back after using it.

I am well aware of the debate on L-canceling, but how do you feel about the concept of training wheels mechanics in general?

 

[zpxociv]

Training for inputs disgusts me. If a game's input require hours to master executing a simple command then it's flawed controls as far as I and many others, the majority in fact, is concerned. It also encourages fast, jerky movements that can harm the hand and cause blisters. I'm never going to be anything but casual because I know better than to deal with poor input mechanics that disregard ergonomics. For many reasons, screw training, screw fast inputs, screw all that overly-technical nonsense tourney players drool over. Git gud? How about git a game with a decent input scheme in the first place. This is why Sakurai did what he did to Brawl and sm4sh and you can forget ever seeing technical jank on any future smash. The majority has spoken.

 

[Vigilante]

Then again, many games do train you, and it's not just smash. Bayonetta trains your to understand the timing needed for a perfect dodge. Mario & Luigi trains you to get the perfect timing as well. Those are almost universally beloved mechanics. Wouldn't it be boring to have nothing to learn?

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

Then again, many games do train you, and it's not just smash. Bayonetta trains your to understand the timing needed for a perfect dodge. Mario & Luigi trains you to get the perfect timing as well. Those are almost universally beloved mechanics. Wouldn't it be boring to have nothing to learn?

I think what he means is that why should people train and concentrate on pressing the buttons right, rather than learning how and when the use the controls in certain certain situations like you're implying.
Yes, people like enjoying mastery over certain skills, but not when it's frustrating and superfluous. "Finally, I know how to press the buttons, now I can play the game"

 

[Zach777]

While I agree with, Z zpxociv on auto l-canceling and it being a non-decision, it is important that ALL video games make you learn inputs. A first time video game player has to learn how to hit buttons and use the control sticks in order to play in the first place.
Saying that all competitive players drool over hard and technical inputs is a gross stereotype by the way. I know that many PM players love how the game has easier inputs than Melee while retaining Melee's speed (for the most part) and depth.

 

[Vigilante]

While I agree with, Z zpxociv on auto l-canceling and it being a non-decision, it is important that ALL video games make you learn inputs. A first time video game player has to learn how to hit buttons and use the control sticks in order to play in the first place.
Saying that all competitive players drool over hard and technical inputs is a gross stereotype by the way. I know that many PM players love how the game has easier inputs than Melee while retaining Melee's speed (for the most part) and depth.

Yeah, the point I was trying to make is that while technical depth is a great way to increase replayability, access to information and good learning tools increase accessibility to the competitive meta. I never really meant for this to turn into a debate about L-canceling (albeit I am one who loves the concept of it), but whether you like it or not mechanics like the white flash for exmaple can help new players become better at the game by boosting them through the initial hurdle of learning the proper timing.

 

[zpxociv]

L-cancel wouldn't bother me so much if it added some sort of effect that would be situational, something you'd consider whether to do or not to throw off your opponent, such as if meteor smashes could create a ground shockwave similar to yoshi's ground pound from a hard landing or end softly and faster without a shockwave. Also I despise the Gamecube's shoulder triggers, they did no favors for my opinion on L-cancel. What I will never like is Luigi's cyclone recovery requiring way too fast inputs for many people. That's prohibitive and elitist of the PMDT to include. Fighting games were traditionally about input skill advantages but smash originally seemed like it refrained from this mentality in favor of a mental game and character matchups but melee ruined this and PM continued to go in this direction. Smash should have kept itself different, there are plenty of fighting games that cater to input elitists.

 

[CORY]

out of respect for vig's original thread intent, take the lcancel discussion over to here.

in regards to what you were talking about, vig, i agree fully about the lcancel flash : O it makes it so much easier to tell when i messed up the input. i don't think i had anything near a decent lcancel success rate until they put that into pm, so i could start getting a better idea of when i messed up.

for general skill grinding, the only thing pm would really need would be programmable cpu's (ala the melee 20xx stuff) for training mode, so you can test out responses in real time against certain situations.

 

[Vigilante]

I'll ignore the Zpxoiv's comment not out of disrespect but because this is going off the intended topic. I would just caution people about calling others elitists based on disagreements. As smashers, we ought to know better.

The next topic is far away, but I've decided that it would be about balancing with fun, past iterations and fanservice in mind.

 

[Deleted member]

the L canceling debate is always interesting because both stances are so opposite. i prefer L canceling to be in the game, partially because it allows me to differentiate myself from worse players, and partially "because it feels like smash"- you can reasonably argue that smash shouldn't have it at all, but Project M was derived on the ethos of melee and there really is no getting around that.

when i started playing melee was right from the beginning when smashboards was founded. i spent the first year and a half or so merely reading the boards before registering. as such, i was around when L canceling was "discovered" on the internet at large. To me, L canceling is and always will be an advanced technique you can use to eliminate half of your landing lag. I didn't join later like a lot of you guys did when it had already been considered the standard for competitive play, and I will probably never see it as something that should have been "fixed" like automatic L canceling was. I generally dislike the idea of making our game "Melee for babies" to the point where I made that my custom title in the Dev team for subtle irony.

As an aside, games that require technical proficiency are prohibitive and elitist. It is your relative goodness that allows you to differentiate yourself from the relatively worse players around you. If you are unwilling to do that or dislike it, you are opposing the base nature of the game from a competitive standpoint. It's kind of like if you don't tolerate the propensity for luck if your games, you should probably not play games that foster them like card games or pokemon. That's not to be mean or anything, that's just how this game is. We didn't put all the advanced techniques from both melee and brawl into the same game so you could ignore them and still expect to perform well.

 

[Zach777]

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to bring the thread off-topic. I love the idea of training wheels mechanics. Something I always thought Smash should have is automatic recovery where the game takes over for you when you are knocked offstage. It would be an optional assist for noobs who have issues with even that part of Smash but still want to play with friends.

Also, I myself have learned much from the development of PM and I wasn't even on the PMDT.

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

Training wheels are inherently bad.

Assuming you make a game from scratch. It feels odd and not intuitive that you have to create training wheels for mechanics you have set up for your game. It implies it wasn't designed well at all.
Shouldn't it be accessible out of the box? As for Smash (and your examples), I'm not sure how much modification could be done to design them better w/o making things really unstable. IMO, it's better to have mechanics that are easy execute, but require a length of mastery to be practiced over time to know when and where to use them correctly. That's what creates real depth. A good example of this in Smash would be learning how to DI.

 

[Vigilante]

In a sense, the advanced techs are very, very, easy to learn honestly. The main issue with them is that they are not actually alluded to in the games themselves. I believe that simply showing their presence to the player would be enough to increase its accessibility. These techs are plenty accessible skill-wise. It is information that is lacking.

Well... maybe not powershielding. The timing is hard even for many pros.

I wouldn't quite agree that everything about a game needs to be immediately accessible however. The core mechanics, certainly, but leaving space for people to master is also quite important.

 

[Chevy]

The control scheme for Melee is actually very well designed aside from the terrible control stick zones. It isn't "overly technical" or flawed, the advanced techniques are all combinations of other simpler and intuitive options. You can't have all of the options we have available to us without the technical hurdles required to input them. The alternative is a bunch of ridiculous situational macros that give you far less control and make everything terribly unintuitive.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I agree training wheels are a good thing if it is helping someone learn the game.

White flash is an example of it done well even with people disagreeing on the mechanic.

At the very least it is a visual showcase that yes, you did it.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

PM made a lot of correct choices design wise, the L-cancel flash was one of the best, even for match videos. Unfortunately the training mode for all smashes are pretty much terrible, and lack many important things, like input and hitbox display.

 

[Zach777]

Which PM drastically improved by adding their debug mode. Just plug in a GC controller, hold R, L, and down on the d-pad. Then press start to see if frame by frame is on. If yes, then hold R and right on the dpad. Whalla, hitbubbles are displayed.

So much good things are in PM.

 

[Vigilante]

The second article: "Balancing for fun, legacy and fanservice in mind" was added to the first post.

 

[Dark Sonic]

I think of the L-cancel flash as an analog to input display in other fighting games. Nowadays we all think of an input display option as a given, but that wasn't the case in older games. If you were practicing the shoryuken (forward->down->downforward->attack) and weren't getting the right move...you had no quick way of knowing what you were doing wrong. The important thing is that the player understands HOW they are messing up and can know what success is supposed to look like.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I think of the L-cancel flash as an analog to input display in other fighting games. Nowadays we all think of an input display option as a given, but that wasn't the case in older games. If you were practicing the shoryuken (forward->down->downforward->attack) and weren't getting the right move...you had no quick way of knowing what you were doing wrong. The important thing is that the player understands HOW they are messing up and can know what success is supposed to look like.

It's even better, because you can see it during matches unlike input display. It's also good for players watching since they know what got L-Cancelled in a combo. That alone makes it similar to a 2d fighting game giving you certain visual clues like a ! sign over your character's head if they block the wrong way (like in Arc Sys games) or characters flashing white during option selects.

 

[Vigilante]

Teamwork, limits, and specialties:

When talking about game design, it’s very easy to have ideas of grandeur. “If I was making this kind of game, I would do this, this and this”. It’s nice to fantasize, but the reality of it is that game design is always more about concessions. There are always limitations, and you must work within them. The main reason why few people take Peter Molyneux seriously anymore are his grand claims he makes about his games that he always falls short of. Mind you, I think he actually believes what he says, but if he took some time to consult his co-workers about it, he would realize that what he’s asking of them simply isn’t possible, at least in the current state of game design technology.



Companies have budget and time constraints, certainly, but even without those, there are things you simply cannot do in current hardware and storage space. Project M development had the additional hurdle of being limited by software. Essentially, Project M is a patch, and that means that each and every file obeys certain “rules”. For a character for example, there were limits in the amount of additional things we could add to a given character. Each character has a memory limit imposed by the game, and thus, some ideas had to be scrapped simply because adding them would freeze the game upon picking the character. Samus and Zero Suit Samus for example had very little available unused space to exploit and that meant that every change needed to count. It meant that a lot of care had to be put into cleaning up the code to take as little space as possible, and many had spent hours on end looking through the entirety of a character’s code to figure out ways to cut some of the fat.



Keep in mind that animations also took up space, and that also meant that animators had to work very tightly with coders. Animations also had to be done in very specific ways. One thing I learned when I was helping another PMDT member with modeling for an animation was that the camera was a very important consideration when thinking about animations. I mimicked Naked Snake’s knife combo from MGS3 in my basement in front of a bad camera in order to help one of my colleagues create a new forward smash for Solid Snake. It turns out that the attack would have been very difficult to see because the camera was zoomed out too far. I was asked to do several takes, and the one that was picked was an exaggerated version of the movement.



1. Wider, exaggerated slashes are easier to take notice of in a zoomed-out camera.

2. It needed to be more forceful to give a feeling of power.



He also made me begin my movements from Snake’s idle pose and finish into it again. That is a necessity for a smooth animation. Truth be told, I knew nothing about animations at the time, and despite that, it did give me a fairly valuable lesson.



For our assembly coders, it wasn’t just about making codes. For some of the more complicated aspects, it was also about reading through the entirety of Brawl’s original source code to find the exact location of a code they needed, and sometimes, they had to do it several times over. It was not a simple thing that just anyone could do, and that made these coders extremely valuable. They had to work within strict limitations, and yet they kept finding ways to break these limitations. If it were not from these people, additional characters, modes, movesets, articles… none of these would have been possible.



Now what about aesthetics? They were limited by the software again. Certainly, there were memory concerns, but one of the concerns we would see very often is slowdowns. Some stages simply could not handle some models. One way we decided to stress test models was to play a four player match with the character model. For example, there was a time when four Roys on Dracula’s castle slowed down the game and that is an issue we wanted to avoid. That meant altering the model until it fit. Brawl used low poly models, and that meant that we would often have to take more beautiful models and made them less detailed in order for them to:



1. Play smoothly on any stage.

2. Fit with Brawl’s aesthetic.



Some modellers only really know how to make high poly models, and have a difficult time deliberately making low poly models. It takes actual adaptation to make a less detailed model actually look good within the game’s engine, and that took a lot of revisions.



Each of these people had a very specific set of skills that not everyone can do well. Because of this, it is very important to consider that while you may have certain ideas you want to make into a reality, you can’t do it alone and sometimes, there are better ways to do it, or you can’t do it at all and you need someone else to tell you that.



I wasn’t someone with a lot of technical skills. I did work on polishing a few characters, do some PR, minor coding, website write-ups, playtesting, etc… but I wasn’t particularly amazing at any of these fields. However, I had many ideas, and some made it in, and some didn’t. Nevertheless, I relied on people to make them a reality. I had to consult with coders when making alterations to complicated mechanics like Lucario’s aura system. I had to consult with playtesters like Sethlon when making a change to a character such as Roy. If I had ideas for a character model or animation, I sent the modellers and animators some reference to help them better understand what I had in mind. In some cases, I sent them game footage. In other instances, I sent them pictures, or even drew what I had in mind. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to play through an entire game to find inspiration. Ike’s blue flame considered to be added into the game after some of us had played through Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. For one of our unfinished characters, I literally made animations which were kind of janky and sent them to people who are much better than me at animating in order to give them better ideas. Most of the time, they would make things better than I had in mind. I wrote down very detailed design concepts, had them proof-read by other people and modified them.



Respecting others and giving them the freedom to make and try things is very important. I am not an animator as I’ve said. There are things that I didn’t take into account when conceptualizing a move set. These people can tell me whenever what I’m thinking about isn’t possible or can be done in a better way. They view game design from a different perspective due to the kind of work they do. It is very important to consider their opinions, but also let them contribute their expertise. I remember asking SilentDoom about polishing some Roy animations, or sending drawings back and forth to Thany for a few works, and each and every time, they put their own touch on it and it was better for it. I remember drawing the turbo booster concept art in MS Paint of all things and to my surprise, they took it, made a few alterations and it is now part of the game. I could never have made these things a reality without them. I will stress it again, respect people who can do things you cannot. They view things from a different lens, and that really makes teamwork come together.


It meant sometimes having someone tell you "This cannot be done" or "there is a better way to do this, let me try something". Theorycrafting is easy, but sometimes, you'll ask things of your team that are not optimal. Nevertheless, they know things you don't. Listen to what they have to say. That is very important.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Teamwork, limits, and specialties:

When talking about game design, it’s very easy to have ideas of grandeur. “If I was making this kind of game, I would do this, this and this”. It’s nice to fantasize, but the reality of it is that game design is always more about concessions. There are always limitations, and you must work within them. The main reason why few people take Peter Molyneux seriously anymore are his grand claims he makes about his games that he always falls short of. Mind you, I think he actually believes what he says, but if he took some time to consult his co-workers about it, he would realize that what he’s asking of them simply isn’t possible, at least in the current state of game design technology.



Companies have budget and time constraints, certainly, but even without those, there are things you simply cannot do in current hardware and storage space. Project M development had the additional hurdle of being limited by software. Essentially, Project M is a patch, and that means that each and every file obeys certain “rules”. For a character for example, there were limits in the amount of additional things we could add to a given character. Each character has a memory limit imposed by the game, and thus, some ideas had to be scrapped simply because adding them would freeze the game upon picking the character. Samus and Zero Suit Samus for example had very little available unused space to exploit and that meant that every change needed to count. It meant that a lot of care had to be put into cleaning up the code to take as little space as possible, and many had spent hours on end looking through the entirety of a character’s code to figure out ways to cut some of the fat.



Keep in mind that animations also took up space, and that also meant that animators had to work very tightly with coders. Animations also had to be done in very specific ways. One thing I learned when I was helping another PMDT member with modeling for an animation was that the camera was a very important consideration when thinking about animations. I mimicked Naked Snake’s knife combo from MGS3 in my basement in front of a bad camera in order to help one of my colleagues create a new forward smash for Solid Snake. It turns out that the attack would have been very difficult to see because the camera was zoomed out too far. I was asked to do several takes, and the one that was picked was an exaggerated version of the movement.



1. Wider, exaggerated slashes are easier to take notice of in a zoomed-out camera.

2. It needed to be more forceful to give a feeling of power.



He also made me begin my movements from Snake’s idle pose and finish into it again. That is a necessity for a smooth animation. Truth be told, I knew nothing about animations at the time, and despite that, it did give me a fairly valuable lesson.



For our assembly coders, it wasn’t just about making codes. For some of the more complicated aspects, it was also about reading through the entirety of Brawl’s original source code to find the exact location of a code they needed, and sometimes, they had to do it several times over. It was not a simple thing that just anyone could do, and that made these coders extremely valuable. They had to work within strict limitations, and yet they kept finding ways to break these limitations. If it were not from these people, additional characters, modes, movesets, articles… none of these would have been possible.



Now what about aesthetics? They were limited by the software again. Certainly, there were memory concerns, but one of the concerns we would see very often is slowdowns. Some stages simply could not handle some models. One way we decided to stress test models was to play a four player match with the character model. For example, there was a time when four Roys on Dracula’s castle slowed down the game and that is an issue we wanted to avoid. That meant altering the model until it fit. Brawl used low poly models, and that meant that we would often have to take more beautiful models and made them less detailed in order for them to:



1. Play smoothly on any stage.

2. Fit with Brawl’s aesthetic.



Some modellers only really know how to make high poly models, and have a difficult time deliberately making low poly models. It takes actual adaptation to make a less detailed model actually look good within the game’s engine, and that took a lot of revisions.



Each of these people had a very specific set of skills that not everyone can do well. Because of this, it is very important to consider that while you may have certain ideas you want to make into a reality, you can’t do it alone and sometimes, there are better ways to do it, or you can’t do it at all and you need someone else to tell you that.



I wasn’t someone with a lot of technical skills. I did work on polishing a few characters, do some PR, minor coding, website write-ups, playtesting, etc… but I wasn’t particularly amazing at any of these fields. However, I had many ideas, and some made it in, and some didn’t. Nevertheless, I relied on people to make them a reality. I had to consult with coders when making alterations to complicated mechanics like Lucario’s aura system. I had to consult with playtesters like Sethlon when making a change to a character such as Roy. If I had ideas for a character model or animation, I sent the modellers and animators some reference to help them better understand what I had in mind. In some cases, I sent them game footage. In other instances, I sent them pictures, or even drew what I had in mind. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to play through an entire game to find inspiration. Ike’s blue flame considered to be added into the game after some of us had played through Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. For one of our unfinished characters, I literally made animations which were kind of janky and sent them to people who are much better than me at animating in order to give them better ideas. Most of the time, they would make things better than I had in mind. I wrote down very detailed design concepts, had them proof-read by other people and modified them.



Respecting others and giving them the freedom to make and try things is very important. I am not an animator as I’ve said. There are things that I didn’t take into account when conceptualizing a move set. These people can tell me whenever what I’m thinking about isn’t possible or can be done in a better way. They view game design from a different perspective due to the kind of work they do. It is very important to consider their opinions, but also let them contribute their expertise. I remember asking SilentDoom about polishing some Roy animations, or sending drawings back and forth to Thany for a few works, and each and every time, they put their own touch on it and it was better for it. I remember drawing the turbo booster concept art in MS Paint of all things and to my surprise, they took it, made a few alterations and it is now part of the game. I could never have made these things a reality without them. I will stress it again, respect people who can do things you cannot. They view things from a different lens, and that really makes teamwork come together.


It meant sometimes having someone tell you "This cannot be done" or "there is a better way to do this, let me try something". Theorycrafting is easy, but sometimes, you'll ask things of your team that are not optimal. Nevertheless, they know things you don't. Listen to what they have to say. That is very important.

That's freaking inspiring.

Seriously, a good team can make the best out of the most limited resources, a game is as good as the team who developed it.

 

[Vigilante]

That's freaking inspiring.

Seriously, a good team can make the best out of the most limited resources, a game is as good as the team who developed it.

Thanks, I appreciate this. To be honest, I feel that being limited really fosters creativity. These kind of forced us to think about solutions from different perspectives as opposed to going to some of the more direct and obvious solutions. I feel that's what it must have been like working on older gaming systems. For example, in Super Mario bros. 3, they had to be clever with the limited colour palette and in some levels, they had to make 1-ups blue instead of green. Without limits, at times, one might be tempted to brute force through a problem. It works, but it not always elegant.

So yeah, even though these limits were difficult to work around, I think that it forced a certain amount of cleverness out of us, so there is some positive to it, I believe.

 

[Sundark]

This is a wonderful thread. All of the PMDT I've ever been able to talk to personally or otherwise directly has had a pretty inspiring take on game design (or things that fall into this category), and this just sends that home further.

 

[Vigilante]

Managing the hype:



When waiting for a game that they really want, fans are insatiable. They will latch on to every piece of information that they can find about it and devour it like a bunch of famished piranhas. This is just the nature of fandom and there is no getting around that. Getting information about desirable new features will generate excitement, also known as “hype” in this case. Hype is a powerful tool since elated players will be more likely to talk about your work, share the news and generate new potential fans. Furthermore, having people talk about your work keeps it in the public eye. Games that fall into development hell and don’t reveal any sort of information for a long time can run the risk of falling into obscurity. People can be fickle and interest is lost more easily than it can be gained. This is an age where people have very little attention span and will move on to other things.



For example, I used to play a little Free to Play game called Rusty Hearts. It was a really fun beat them up MMO with a dungeon-crawling element. I was quite into this game, but one day, the studio responsible for making this game shut down, and the game shut down with them. A group of programmers who had already started modding the game due to the game having seemingly been abandoned and not updated for months decided to take their mantle and revive the game on custom servers under the name “Rusty Hearts Revolution”. I followed that game regularly, but as of recently, there hasn’t been any public updates in a few months. It is still in development, but the lack of updates has made me check less and less often. Much like how operant conditioning works, if you stop rewarding a behaviour, people stop doing it over time. While I am still interested in the final game, someone who is curious but have not had any investment in the game prior may have given up by now and changed his focus on a different game, or assume that development has ceased.



Giving out some news to your fanbase serves several purposes, including letting them know that you are still working on the game and there is tangible progress happening. Being told about something as minor (but still very important) as a new costume for example makes the fans feel rewarded for their wait. It makes them feel that the developer is not fooling around. It retains their attention and shows commitment.



However, there are some caveats to consider. If you rapid-fire your big guns in quick succession, you will certainly generate a very elevated hype spike for your fanbase at that moment in time, but you will either only have minor news to provide for a very long time, or even worse, have no news to provide your fanbase for an extended period of time. Ideally, you want to space your announcements strategically. You want a hype spike followed by sustained smaller news to keep people talking about the game until the next hype spike. My negative feelings about Brawl aside, their development team did it especially well. There was some news every week, some were smaller things like announcing an assist trophy, and some were big, like a new character. I remember going to check the smash dojo every week, never missing a single news update during that time, until the entire roster was leaked.



The need to space out news is why leaks are a very serious concern. Whenever information is leaked, information that would otherwise create hype spikes become less and less potent and then, you are left with less information that can surprise the fanbase and thus foster interest retention. Your information nukes become mere firecrackers. Furthermore, it halts development, as information has to cease circulating internally until the cause of the leak is found and dealt with. If there is a leaker in the midst of the development team, there is a chance that this person may leak again. If there is a security flaw in how information is being shared, it must be addressed. Whenever Project M files and information were compromised, it heavily slowed down development, sometimes to a grinding halt. Furthermore, this created a very heavy atmosphere in the development forums, which inevitably caused a fall in the team’s morale. A less engaged team works less efficiently. Certainly, the leakers gained temporary Internet fame, but other than that, both the team and the fanbase paid a price for it.



There is also the concern of when information is ready to be shown. There used to be a time when the team would openly stream development builds, showing unfinished characters. While many people enjoyed that practice, in the long term, it became apparent that it was causing issues with the game’s public opinion. The shown builds were unfinished, and thus glitches, unbalanced movesets and unpolished ideas and assets were shown to the public, unfiltered. Many were left to assume that this was the level of quality that was representative of the game. Furthermore, it showed many concepts that would grab the interests of certain fans that would then have to be scrapped for specific reasons. A specific example that I can recall is a build of Bowser that could spit a large fireball. Many found the idea really interesting, but the move was incapable of being properly reflected, caused glitches due to file limitations (if I recall correctly), and it caused severe imbalances. The idea was worth attempting, but showing it to the fanbase who were excited for it and then removing it angered a portion of the fanbase. While we had valid reasons for this removal, the fans did not know these reasons. Even if we had explained it to them, they did not experience this moveset and may have found our explanation wanting. Had they not seen that build, they likely would not have reacted so negatively.



Furthermore, when developing a game, there are many things that you “want” to do but are unsure of whether they can actually be done in the first place. As a rule of thumb, you should only announce an incoming feature when you have a working prototype of it and you are certain that you can realize that feature in full. Whenever we presented All Stars mode in Project M, we had it working, with a few chinks to work out. Some minor things like stock icons not showing the appropriate character, not having renamed the option in Special brawl, etc… still needed to be worked on. Nevertheless, while the feature was not 100% complete, we knew it could be achieved.



Whenever certain features got leaked, some of them were not set in stone. Some things were being worked on, but had a reasonable chance of being completely scrapped, often due to limitations. Whenever that occurred, it left players believing that they had “lost” content, even though they never would have made it in the game in the end.



In conclusion, keeping information form the fanbase until the time is right is often a necessary strategic move. Of course, some information needs to be 100% clear from the get go. For example, Nintendo is known to frustrate consumers by not talking about which controllers will be supported in an upcoming game until the game is pretty much out the door, which negatively affects people who want to make an informed purchase decision. In Project M’s case, the project’s goals had to be clear, and when we took important and sometimes divisive decisions, we informed the fans. Some basic information needs to be made available right away. We owed it to the community that had supported us all of this time. Nevertheless, it left me with a better understanding of why video game companies are so secretive and how they divulge information.

 

[Sundark]

Another excellent writeup. One thing I've noticed catching on in the Smash community (the subreddits specifically) is the term "transparency" and, while maybe not as much, the idea that it is owed to the community. This idea is on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes radio silence can breed negative feedback in a large way, and if it's possible to offer some form of explanation, you can avoid that easily. On the other hand, sometimes that sort of thing is just impossible, or quite simply not at all necessary. Public relations in general is becoming more and more important in the Smash scene, and as we approach esports levels, it's something I think everyone needs to work on.

On the PM side of things, I always thought the PMDT was great at offering up bits and pieces of new information, whether in minor Art Tuesdays posts or big version trailers. Hearing about the repercussions of leaked content is especially enlightening, as seeing what some people have seen in certain leaked builds post-disbandment, I wonder if things would have looked different in 3.6 if certain earlier leaks had never occurred and delayed development.

 

[Vigilante]

Another excellent writeup. One thing I've noticed catching on in the Smash community (the subreddits specifically) is the term "transparency" and, while maybe not as much, the idea that it is owed to the community. This idea is on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes radio silence can breed negative feedback in a large way, and if it's possible to offer some form of explanation, you can avoid that easily. On the other hand, sometimes that sort of thing is just impossible, or quite simply not at all necessary. Public relations in general is becoming more and more important in the Smash scene, and as we approach esports levels, it's something I think everyone needs to work on.

On the PM side of things, I always thought the PMDT was great at offering up bits and pieces of new information, whether in minor Art Tuesdays posts or big version trailers. Hearing about the repercussions of leaked content is especially enlightening, as seeing what some people have seen in certain leaked builds post-disbandment, I wonder if things would have looked different in 3.6 if certain earlier leaks had never occurred and delayed development.

Well, even having been on the inside, even I don't know what could have been different. Though, I think it's safe to say that without the periods of slowed progress, a few more features could have been finished or implemented. Demoes may have come out sooner than they have.

Sometimes, leaks weren't even due to bad intent. It may have been a PMDT member who showed it to a friend they thought they could trust (like someone they regularly play with) and that trust was broken. It actually happened to me at one point, and I managed to find out who the culprit was by feeding someone I was doubtful of with false information. There once was an info leak on 4chan about Little Mac being in development. That was because I took a model from someone else, put it in a Project M stage, took a screenshot on my phone and showed it to him, telling him not to talk about it. I fooled him into revealing himself as only he could have seen that falsified leak.

I felt pretty bad about that, but working in Project M had me look at the people around me in a different light. People approached me, and some did only to try and get information out of me. Mind you, the majority of the community were just enthusiasts who really wanted to just talk about the game, and it was honestly really nice interactions. I've received a lot of requests. Some I knew wouldn't work if we tried to implement them. Surprisingly, a lot of highly-skilled players have a very poor sense of balancing a game. it shows how game design and skill aren't always hand in hand.

 

[Vigilante]

Why my next entry will be very late:

I won't go into details, but someone I deeply care about is undergoing health issues. Severe ones... For the next few weeks, I will be spending most of my time helping that person, taking medical appointments, cleaning after him, feeding him, and I hope that person will live through it. I still have some free time, but my mind isn't exactly at ease. I will get back to this eventually, I just want to always have an eye on him whenever I can.

 

[Zach777]

Sorry to hear that. Take as much time as you need. We all hope your friend has a speedy recovery and best wishes.

 

[JayTheUnseen]

As someone with a casual interest in game design, this was a great read.

I agree, not just any group of people could have made the mod that is Project M. It took a lot of skill; some skills that ordinary game developers don't even have to develop, due to the limitations the PMDT had to work with. That they were able to overcome said hurdles and deliver a mod with excellent design and a professional level of expertise shows that they are easily a match for those people that create their own games from the ground up.

Any who doubt that the PMDT know how to program, animate, and design with the professionals... I don't know what to say.

So kudos to you and all the PMDT!

 

[Zi^]

Why my next entry will be very late:

I won't go into details, but someone I deeply care about is undergoing health issues. Severe ones... For the next few weeks, I will be spending most of my time helping that person, taking medical appointments, cleaning after him, feeding him, and I hope that person will live through it. I still have some free time, but my mind isn't exactly at ease. I will get back to this eventually, I just want to always have an eye on him whenever I can.

oh.
i'm really sorry :C
good luck c:

 

[Vigilante]

I should start doing new articles soon, probably in two weeks. I don't want to put my personal life drama out there publicly, but the reason I took so long to come back to this was because a loved one is going through health issues, which could end up being lethal. I've been going in and out of the hospital daily and juggling work and other responsibilities. He should leave the hospital soon while we wait for tests, so I should have a bit of free time.

 

[Zi^]

I should start doing new articles soon, probably in two weeks. I don't want to put my personal life drama out there publicly, but the reason I took so long to come back to this was because a loved one is going through health issues, which could end up being lethal. I've been going in and out of the hospital daily and juggling work and other responsibilities. He should leave the hospital soon while we wait for tests, so I should have a bit of free time.

Happy to know that everything is fine c:

 

[Vigilante]

I wouldn't say everything's fine, I just can't do much to help at the moment. But thanks. Now new article!

Creative vision:



Sometimes, a developer will make a decision that will prove divisive to the gaming community, sometimes to the point of completely alienating certain subsets of gamers. Often, that said decision will seem to have been made arbitrarily without any rhyme or reason. That developer made his game to be played a certain way, but then learns that players want to experience his game in a different way than he had intended them to. Instead of taking the feedback and trying to address the issue, he recoils back and he holds firm on the issue. He will not make these changes, even at the detriment of his fanbase. His excuse: “This is my creative vision”.



A somewhat recent example of this occurred in March 2014 when TowerFall’s director Matt Thorson responded to the demand for online multiplayer for his game by stating that local multiplayer was a much more personal experience and that’s just how he wants people to play it. In other words, “this game won’t have online multiplayer because it goes against what I intended”. Now, I respect Matt Thorson’s dedication for local multiplayer and his love for games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, which we share, but I don’t believe that his “creative vision” serves as an appropriate excuse. While he has a right to be unwilling to make it online, that decision limits the potential fanbase he could gain from addressing this criticism.



Creative vision is a trap a lot of developers fall into. When making a game, you tend to have an idea of how the player will interact with it. For example, when I was demoing Project M in college campuses, several people chose to play the game as a party game as opposed to a competitive fighter. My initial internal reaction was a burning desire to show them all of the cool and complex things they could do in this game, to show its potential as an esport. However, I saw that they were having fun. My focus may have been almost exclusively on the competitive aspect of the game, and their idea of fun may have been different from mine, but I quickly realized that it was fine.



Video games are by definition, an interactive form of media. Taking this into account, whenever we play a game, we take our personality, perceptions, tastes, thoughts and feelings into our experience. While one person can play a Legend of Zelda game primarily for the puzzles and dungeons, another might focus more on the exploration aspect. A more competitively-minded player might play Pokémon with more of a focus on competitive battling and building strong Pokémon, while someone who’s more into collecting might prefer to focus on catching each kind of Pokémon and completing the pokédex instead. Someone might be saddened by the bittersweet ending of Lufia 2, while another might not be too emotionally-attached to the characters. This is why Let’s Players call their playthroughs “transformative experiences”. No two playthroughs is the same. Two different people will inevitably play the same game differently and come out with a much different experience. Taking this even further, even one person playing a game a second time will have a different experience since the second time around, they bring their prior knowledge of the game with them and may choose to focus on different things as well.



For the later, I have a fine example. Anyone who has played a Fire Emblem game is aware that it makes heavy uses of RNG. If I play this game multiple times, I may end up with units that have drastically different stat distributions. On one playthrough, a certain unit could save me from a pinch, while in the other playthrough, things will play out differently. Maybe another unit will land that lucky critical that will make him my MVP. Each playthrough tells a different personal story.



Creative vision is a concept that narrows thinking on the part of the developer. A developer should always keep in mind the interactive nature of video games and how the creativity of the player can play a large role in how they experience the game. A creator should always be mindful of the many ways people experience their games, especially those they hadn’t considered before. For example, Capcom had taken note of players finding combos in Street Fighter II despite them not being intentional and built on that unintended mechanic. The makers of Fire Emblem at Intelligent Systems likely did not expect people to reset their games when they lost units, but they took note of it and added a quick soft-reset input (L, R + Start) in their later games to make the process easier. Keep in mind that this is a game where you were meant to ruthlessly feel the consequences of letting a beloved unit fall in battle. Nevertheless, they saw fit to adapt their games to how some people “want” to play their games as opposed to forcing them to play in the way they envisioned.



With Project M, while the main focus was to create a competitively-compelling game, we grew increasingly aware that a subset of the fanbase played this game as a party game, which is why we added new game modes like turbo mode which threw the balance out of whack in favour of silly, overpowered mechanics. It is also the reason some effort was made to change the properties of certain items in the hopes of making them more enjoyable and why we created a brand new item. It is also the reason why we added classic stages like Hyrule Castle that would have been deemed illegal in tournaments. Those have little to no benefits to the competitive experience we were aiming for. However, instead of being shackled by our creative vision, we opened our minds.



Taking into account different playstyles isn’t exactly easy to do, but the reward is great. For instances, the creative vision for Monster Hunter as a series was to have players come together and play locally, working together, communicating together. That model can work in Japan, where there are places people can congregate to such as literal Monster Hunter Cafés. It is a much smaller, more condensed territory. However, the reality is much different in the West. The population is much more spread out, and there are no easy-to-find gathering spots for hunters to congregate. Local-multiplayer-only portable gaming is a much harder thing to achieve here. With Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, they decided to do online right, and it paid off. MH4U sold better than any other Monster Hunter game in the west. They themselves even attributed the success of the game to that. They decided to go the logical route as opposed to stubbornly refusing to allow the option because of their creative vision. The likely reason why they resisted this change for so long is because they had a very Japan-centric outlook. They may not have even considered that western countries are very different and that their game series plagued with cultural blindness until quite recently. The best way to know how people look at your game is to just speak to people and observe their play styles. But don’t just speak to your fans, they’ll mostly agree with you. Get feedback from people who are critical of you. They’ll be more likely to be honest with you. Don’t be afraid of criticism. It is a tool that can help you improve. As soon as you justify your poorly-received decisions with “It is my creative vision”, you have ceased to grow as a developer.

https://twitter.com/Vigilante_Blade/status/713070789533294592

 

[Zi^]

I wouldn't say everything's fine, I just can't do much to help at the moment. But thanks.

Oh. I'm sorry. I hope that soon everything will be fine. :C
Nice article btw

 

[Vigilante]

Oh. I'm sorry. I hope that soon everything will be fine. :C
Nice article btw

Ha ha, it's fine, there's nothing I can do now except to wait. Though I expect I'll have months of lack of sleep to deal with.

 

[Zi^]

Ha ha, it's fine, there's nothing I can do now except to wait. Though I expect I'll have months of lack of sleep to deal with.

Oh.
Yay.
I'm happy for you, I-I think.

 

[Vigilante]

Hello everyone. This will not be the usual kind of write-up. I am not a sociable person, and that often makes me come off as standoffish. There are not many people whom I can consider as friends, and even today, I have a very small circle of friends. Project M helped me widen that circle in many ways. It made me feel as if I was part of something greater than myself.



I faced some hard times recently. Long story short, my brother has cancer, and it is inoperable I learned of the results today. His time in this world is limited, and I have to be ready for his inevitable slow, painful death. Had this happened a few years ago, I would have felt mostly alone in this. I have a few great friends outside of the smash community, but I can count them on one hand. However, I’ve met great people through this project, and when some of them learned of what I was going through, they reached out to me, asked me how I was, and offered help and support. I did not necessarily take them up on their offer, but simply knowing that they were there was nice. Some asked for news almost every days, offered to come over, to get my mind off of things… It may not take the bad news away, but I didn’t have to spend all days thinking about it alone in my room, ruminating dark thoughts. I’m not exactly Mr. Positive in the first place.



Things will keep being difficult for my family. Taking care of a dying person is difficult for your morale, health and sleep schedule, especially when you love them dearly. Watching them suffer, unable to do anything to ease their pain except pumping hard drugs into them that renders them nearly comatose is heart-wrenching. It’s rough, but I carry on. I’ll be fine, I always end up fine.



I would have been fine without the kindness from the community. I’m a Roy main in Melee, I know all about surmounting bad odds. However, I always have someone I can talk to. The reason I so vehemently defend the competitive Smash community against unfair accusations of being “elitist” and “hostile” is because I know this is the ramblings of a bunch of ignorant individuals who have never attended a tournament, or people who have attended one acting high and mighty and then getting rebuffed for it. Like any tight-knit communities, the smash community cares about its members. Whenever you give to that community, it will give back to you whenever you need it.



You don’t have to give much, just give people a good time. Start with a friendly greeting, be a good sport, and end with a smile and firm handshake. That is the bare minimum that will help you keep the community great. Whenever I demoed Project M, that’s really all I did to help get the scene started. I just stood there with a sign, asked people if they wanted to try the game out, when played a bunch of friendlies and talked about stuff. Then these people dragged other people to play, downloaded the game, played it with others, talked about it with their friends, and that’s how the scene got started. Project M has had many challenges to face, and were it not for the intervention of certain third parties, I have no problems thinking that Project M would have been a mainstay staple of almost all Smash tournaments. Project M helped me forge many friendships. A notable one being my good friend André Gilles whom I met due to Project M. He has been with me every step of the way during my hard times, and will likely continue to be there. My friend Ashley whom I met from the Roy PM chat did whatever she could to help keep my mind off of things by playing Monster Hunter with me online. Heck, the Roy chat itself has kept up to date with my troubles and offered to lend their ear.



I might not be making a whole lot of sense today. I’m exhausted. Thanks.

Edit: Argh, I'm stuck with the Hayato avatar. Nohr master race.