Strange Design

Considering: Waste & Inefficiency in game development teams

At a friend's suggestion, I recently read The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries.  It was sometimes a bit fluffy, and I think it could have been a much tighter book if it were about 30% slimmer.  But there are a couple of really interesting ideas in there, and I'd like to talk about two of them.

The main topic, especially in the first part of the book, is all about making informed decisions - a process Ries called "validated learning."  He quips that the best way to achieve failure is to execute on your plan perfectly - and end up with a product nobody wants.  By getting real feedback from customers as early as possible, you avoid the worst types of mistakes, and get to put the maximum amount of time and energy into improving something people want.

This concept seems pretty sound, but the process of implementation seems a bit... fuzzy to me.  Yes, information is good.  And I can certainly see how feedback very early can help, especially "real" feedback, based on customer behavior.  But not all products scale into new markets in such a way that early tests become invisible later on.  If you're testing a new soda, you can run trials in a couple cities.  But if you're writing political jokes for the news, or making episodes of a nationally syndicated tv show - that sort of process doesn't really obtain.

Re-defining Waste

But it's part 3 where I found myself really finding some fascinating insights.  Part 3 of the book is no longer discussing how to build your ideas - it is about eliminating waste and increasing efficiency.  It draws heavily on Toyota's "Lean Manufacturing" strategy, so in that spirit I'll try to illustrate the central idea:

Imagine that you have a plant which makes cars.  There are 20 divisions within this plant.  One division makes wheels - they fabricate enough wheels for 100 cars each day.  Another division makes seats - enough for 100 cars each day.  Another build the engines - enough for 100 cars each day.  Overall, the factory produces all necessary materials for 100 cars each day, across 19 divisions.

But that final division is the "assembly" division - and they can assemble only 50 cars a day.  So your total output is 50 cars, not 100.

A very reasonable way to think about this situation is to say that the assembly division is working too slowly - you need to staff them up, or somehow get them to 100 cars a day.  But the Lean Startup thinks differently - to the Lean Startup, 19 of the 20 divisions in this plant are wasting 50% of their effort every day.  Fully half of everything being made is just waste.  Fabricating 100 engines when only 50 are used is the height of inefficiency!

Instead of trying to fix the assembly division, all other divisions should cut their production in half, and then see if they can do something extra to improve the assembly process.  Perhaps the undercarriage could be assembled by the leftover staff from two divisions?  Maybe parts could be fed to the assembly staff in a better order, organized by some of the people who used to be fully occupied with fabrication?

This approach seems a bit odd - but there is a very important concept, which is that everyone is working towards a single goal - making cars.  If you allow divisions to focus too much on their individual bits of that process, you can have 95% of your staff working at half efficiency, with all of them blaming the 5% who is actually working without any waste.

If you can, by re-organizing every division EXCEPT assembly, get to a point where you are building and assembling 70 cars a day, you then have a good basis upon which to expand your total output.

Don't Bother the Programmers

This concept really resonated with me, because of a phenomenon I've dealt with for more than a decade called "don't bother the programmers."  The idea behind it runs like this - programmers have important work to do, and they are always behind.  Therefore, you shouldn't bother them.

But this never works out very well - because invariably a lot of what the programmer do turns out to be only marginally useful.  Sometimes a feature which takes 2 weeks to build ends up being something easy to cut, or turns out to not really add much to the product.  Management can't find and eliminate these sort of issues ahead of time - it needs to be a living process.  That means programmers need to be involved in the development, not just working off a static list of features.

I've seen every discipline be the bottleneck at one time or another - and in every case everyone who isn't part of that bottleneck feels really good about not being in the hot seat.  But by the Lean Startup method, there is no such thing as being successful within your department but failing overall - the team lives and dies together.  That means bottlenecks are more a result of everyone else working piecemeal, rather than one particular person / group not working fast enough.

Week of Gaming #60 - 11/27/11

After last week's board-game digression, I'm back into the electronic spaces.  There's a big focus on iOS games recently, as I prep for major pushes into those spaces with my own products!

Games of note this week:

1 - Triple Town

2 - Ghost Trick

3 - Great Little Ware Game (iOS)

4 - The Recycler (iOS)

5 - Tiny Heroes (iOS)

Tiny Heroes (iOS)

I linked to this via a penny-arcade link, and have had a decent time with it.  It's a tower defense / dungeon keeper hybrid, where you place traps to prevent heroes from escaping with your treasure.  New traps open up each level - giving it a vaguely Plants vs. Zombies feel.  But unlike that game, most of the traps in this game are pretty situational - read "Not worth using."  The best part of the game, for me, is the wide array of clever achievements which unlock even more traps.

The Recycler (iOS)

Full disclosure - this was put out by some friends of mine.  It's a breathtaking example of minimalist design - there is almost nothing in the game at all.  But the clever recycling theme is pretty engaging, and probably worth $1.  The basic game is this - you are given a group of objects, and you need to remove those objects which don't belong.  You are sorting for a recycling bin, so you need to isolate either glass, plastic, metal, or paper.  This is pretty trivial in the early levels, but eventually it gets to be quite a challenge to distinguish various types of plastic / clear glass and so forth.  It doesn't feel frustrating, because this is actually a skill I've cultivated in real life.  Simple, elegant, pleasing.

Great Little War Game (iOS)

This game looks like a hex-based Advance Wars, but after a few levels you discover that it's anything but.  Advance Wars is all about interesting economic advantages, and momentum-based shifts in power.  GLWG is much more of a broad-crowding slog.  Your units can't move through one another, so they get clumped up in really badly, and if you didn't have a clear plan from the outset you'll find yourself totally swamped and unable to do anything interesting.  Worst of all, many of the interesting "tweener" units from Advance Wars are not present - so there are very few strategic variations on the proper responses to various situations.  Well presented, but not very interesting.

Ghost Trick

Ghost Trick is really heating up - I'll finish it in the next few days, and I'm very eager to do so.  The writing has been really top-notch.  There haven't really been an "puzzles" as I would use the word, but the game is very nice overall.  It's broken into nice distinct pieces, it's well-written and engaging, and there are all sorts of strange mechanics in place, so it certainly feels fresh.

Triple Town

I have just one complaint about Triple Town - the scores reset on Sunday, not after a week.  I got 1.6 Million points this last weekend early Sunday morning, and within hours my "current high score" had been "reset" to 0.  Grrrr.

Week of Gaming #58 - 11/13/11

Still no Xbox, and very little free time on the horizon as I prep for 2 iOS game launches and a trip to sell my board game next week.  But a few games are good enough to make the cut, even in these dire circumstances!

Games of note this week:

1 - Dungeons of Dredmor

2 - Triple Town

3 - Ghost Trick

4 - Starcraft 2

Wow, that looks exactly like last week's list...

Starcraft 2

The good news is that the other players in my group have improved their skill, so we had several really enjoyable 2v2 games last week.  It was my Zerg with three Terran players.  First game I ran my ground army all over my opponents - it was pretty one-sided.  Second game I used a very early small attack to cripple one opponent - and then managed to turn that into a very successful attack on the other opponent when he ran to help.  A bit dickish of me, but a short game.  Third game was really back-and-forth, with lots of early action across the Xel Naga towers.  I camped in my base to build a significant air-power force, and got one really good attack in.  Then my opponents countered, and wiped me out to almost nothing - but my ally swooped in and won the game for us.  Very satisfying.

Our final game was 1v1v1, I switched to Protoss vs two Terrans.  I jumped to early observers, saw ghosts in production, and then got nuked before I could bring an Observer back home.  Not my best game by a long shot.

Ghost Trick

I've just reached midnight in the story - I love the time limit which keeps the tension high.  Everything in the game has been pretty linear and simple thus far - but it's been entertaining, and the character work is still pretty top-notch.

Triple Town

Oh Triple Town - I feel I may have broken you.  My last game saw an early completion of 2 floating castles (one upgraded!) and a score of nearly 1.2 Million points.  I'd write a strategy guide for the game, if I didn't think it would require so many diagrams...

Dungeons of Dredmor

My strategy guide has become the go-to source for early players to learn about the game, which is quite flattering.  I'm having a hard time not trying to fix all of the systems which are still a bit "loose" - but then how could I enjoy playing?  Last week all of my characters were dead at the same time - so instead of various games in progress, I'm down to just a couple starting-out characters.  My current interest is trying to break 100% block percentage - I think it can be done.  Shields, Unarmed, Master of Arms, Berserk, Deadshot, Smithing, and Fleshsmithing.  We'll see how well I fare.  Hardest part will probably be crafting two heroic Bronze Aspis shields...

Considering: Puzzle Games

I've designed more than a few games over the past 13 years, but I've never released something which I would call "a puzzle game."  That's set to change soon, (in the next month or two) and as a result I've spent the last few months immersing myself in puzzle game designs.  As a card-carrying geek I have, of course, done my share of puzzles in my time.  When I play a professor Layton game, I'm happy if 30% of the puzzles are novel.  (Curious Village: 22%, Diabolical Box: 34%, Unwound Future: 28% thus far...)  So I thought I'd dip into two puzzle-related themes: a discussion of what elements make a puzzle game really shine for me, and a list of my favorite puzzle games.

Clear Actions or Clear Goals... Not Both

Here's an interesting first premise: a compelling puzzle game should have either a clear goal (Tetris) or a clear action to take (Triple Town) but NOT both.  This comes from something I heard a few years back which really resonated with me

"there are only two questions man can asks himself that mean anything. Why did God create the world? And what do I do next?"

(This particular phrasing comes from Uncanny X-Men #45, but I believe I first heard it elsewhere... not sure where.)

We (players) need motivation to take action, and motivation comes in two broad flavors: to advance a goal, or to fulfill an immediate need.  Both types of motivation are powerful, and lots of games employ them both.  Combat-based RPGs, for example, do a great job of blending world-saving ambition with a need to horde health potions and upgrade armor.  But puzzle games are different, because of the way they manipulate uncertainty and the unknown.

Puzzles are all about illuminating hidden information, and therefore you cannot build a puzzle without creating something which is initially obfuscated.  Consider a classic wood-block puzzle, in which some pieces, but not all, can be initially removed.  The end goal is clear (disassemble the puzzle) but exactly how that goal is achieved is unclear.  Conversely, some puzzles give you very clear methods for advancing (any Tower Defense Game) but obscure what, exactly, you should be doing with those methods (since the composition, timing, abilities of each creep wave is a surprise.)

Content which grows Geometrically

If a puzzle game doesn't get too hard for me to beat - then it probably won't hold my attention.  But if I can't beat the game I'll stop playing.  So for a game to really hold my attention, it has to show me challenges I can't beat (yet), and then give me choices about which challenges to tackle next.  I'll keep trying the "too hard" bits every so often, and then eventually I'll master them.  That's an awesome feeling, but it doesn't come unless a game offers both puzzles of wildly varying difficulty & non-linear progression through those puzzles.

Situations which Encourage Community

A game like Loops of Zen is pretty awesome, but it doesn't give you any situations which can be expressed in words to other human beings.  To really ignite my puzzle-game fires, a game needs to have something about it which can be expressed in words, so that I can talk about it with my friends.  Sometimes this takes the form of a strategy-swapping session, and sometimes it's all about me expressing how awesome the game is to people who haven't played it yet.  I'm a firm believer in the idea that video games should encourage interactions between people, and so this is a key concern for me when exploring a fundamentally solo activity like a puzzle game.

My Favorite Puzzle Games

Heaven & Earth.  This is one of the most amazing, most pure puzzle games ever.  EVER.  The slightly date graphics can be hard to push through for some people - for an updated taste check out the lovely Figure Ground web version.  Play through the first 12 puzzles, and feel your mind expand.  Then your head spins at puzzles 13, 25, and 37 - when new mechanics emerge.  So, SO worth your time.  Then grab the full download for the other 95% of the game.

Adventures of Lolo (1,2 &3)  Some classic puzzle games on the NES.  Dexterity played a small part in the solutions, but the real challenges were all mental.  Some surprising and unexpected depth comes to the fore as you play these games.  I occasionally got stuck for days on a particular puzzle, before I could wrap my head around the mechanics of the solution.

Lode Runner  There have been many versions of this game - the one I played to death back in 1985 was Lode Runner II on my Apple IIe.  I started at level 1, and played as far as I could before running out of lives.  My personal best was somewhere in the mid-80s (I can't recall the level number exactly, much to my chagrin.)  If the iOS version is anywhere as faithful to the original as the video makes it appear, I'll be all over it.  (Note - I was unable to find a link to a real, classic version of Lode Runner to play.  I found literally hundreds of remakes, youtube videos, etc - but I would appreciate a link to something I could actually pass around.)

The Lost Vikings 2  An early game by Blizzard, The Lost Vikings 2 was an amazing action-puzzle game, in which you asynchronously controlled 3 characters with orthogonal abilities to navigate increasingly complex spaces.  This game beats out the Gobliiins franchise, in my opinion, though both games have significant merit.

Picross 3D Did you know they are still supporting this DSi-era gem?  All the fun of classic picross puzzles, plus sweet, sweet victory animations.  My girlfriend played all the way through this one, and monopolized my DS for months in the process.

Pandora's Box  This game doesn't seem to be playable in any form now, which is a shame.  It's designed by Alexi Pajitnov, who also created Tetris.  This was Microsoft's first attempt to take control of his talents - Hexic HD was the second.

Plants vs. Zombies  This game is not only fantastic fun, it's a joy to play.  My favorite tower defense-style game by far (though I like Vector TDX for a more "pure" TD experience).  This is also one of only two "modern" games on my puzzle game list, which means you probably have several ways you could buy yourself a copy right now.

How to increase your return on development dollars, and run a country into the ground.

In November of 2009, a data analysis was performed on all console titles released in the previous 12 months.  The study looked for correlations between a game's metacritic rating, sales, and marketing budget.  The results were less than thrilling for designers.

The data showed that there was not much correlation between a game's metacritic score and its sales, but there was a very high (nearly linear) relationship between marketing budget and sales.

The conclusion was that marketing dollars turn into sales in a direct fashion, while "quality" dollars (those spent on development) did not.  Thus, the researcher wrote, if your budget gets tight, you should always cut quality.

This paper really upset me, because I have a deep-rooted desire to see games become a mature, successful industry with reasonably consistent quality standards.  Cutting quality in favor of marketing might make sense on an individual project level, but it clearly hurts the long-term credibility of the games industry.

A similar situation, it seems to me, exists in American politics.  (It's probably the case in any country with a similar election system, but I'm not qualified to make that comparison.)  In American politics there are three fundamental ways to win an election: Get Lucky, Outspend your opponent, or Have a solid record of successful representation.

Of those three possibilities, I would prefer to vote for a candidate based upon criteria #3.  But developing a record of successful representation is HARD.  Even if you are a really dedicated, noble elected official, it is often the case that circumstances prevent you from really proving your chops.  Congressional representatives, governors, even Mayors - don't have many opportunities to exercise direct influence and prove their mettle.

The only other way to really improve your chances of winning an election is to outspend your opponent.  This is why so much political activity centers around money - because acquiring lots of money for your campaign is the most effective way to win.  It's not the only way - lots of upsets happen every year.  But, in general, American politicians are selected on the basis of their ability to raise campaign donations, rather than their ability to serve as public officials.

Hopefully the parallel is clear.  Voters/consumers wand to elect/buy based upon ability/quality, but end up choosing a politician/game based upon campaigns/marketing.

I don't really know what can be done about this situation - it's been a joke for more than a hundred years in America that you can't win an election on principles.  Votes are cast and products are purchased without much care, and I don't think there is any possible way to improve upon that.

Probably the best I can do is to make a personal commitment to be thoughtful in my own choices, and try to pass those thoughts on to whoever is willing to listen.

 

 

Week of Gaming #57 - 11/06/11

Starcraft 2 has become a big part of my game mindset again, which is great.  City of Heroes and DC Universe Online are both free to play now, which really makes me wish I had more free time to devote to them!  But I've been really focusing on my personal projects, and only playing a few best-of-type games.

Games of note this week:

1 - Starcraft 2

2 - Ghost Trick

3 - Triple Town

4 - Dungeons of Dredmor 

Dungeons of Dredmor

I currently have no characters in progress.  The nature of Dungeons of Dredmor is that your characters tend to die, but I've never had all of my attempts dead at the same time.  This might actually be a good excuse for me to ease back on my Dungeons of Dredmor habit for a few weeks.

Triple Town

This is just a quick diversion - I've become skilled enough at the game that the turn limit is really hitting me hard.  Being forced to take breaks from Cityville or Zombie Lane or Ikariam didn't ever bother me - but being forced to stop playing right in the middle of a sweet combination is... bleh.  I have no motivation to buy more turns - I just stop my session on a down note.  Daniel Cook, the designer, recently wrote on Google+ that he didn't find that the turn limit was a limiting factor for most players.  I don't understand how anyone could become a skilled player and not hit a huge depressing wall in the form of the current turn limit.

Ghost Trick

Ghost Trick is a game that really thrives on its writing style and storytelling cohesion.  Thus far the game has done a great job of mixing visual cues, story elements, location clues, and text.  We meet a funny chef in one early episode.  Ha.  But a few hours later we return to his restaurant, and discover that a shady deal gone wrong has killed a couple of detectives.  Upon further investigation, we find out that his restaurant is actually the center of a sting operation to catch the criminal organization which is driving the other plot points were originally investigated.

So is the chef a main character?  No.  He's just an easy example of how we are introduced to characters in believable ways, and then return to those characters for more depth later.  Awesome.

Starcraft 2

A year after launch, and finishing the single-player campaign, I'm finally playing regular multiplayer games of Starcraft 2.  Interestingly, I'm focused on playing as Zerg.  Starcraft has always had well-differentiated races, but the early economic differences between the races has forced me to really just play one for a few weeks, to get a sense of its style.  For the Zerg, that means becoming comfortable with the new Queens.

Queens do a few things, but mostly they just cast "Inject Larvae" - which gives 4 additional larvae every 40 seconds or so.  The number of larvae you produce is a big limiting factor in your economy all game long, so using the Queen consistently is a big deal.  The Queen also extends creep, which is a pretty impressive feature.  Zerg forces move 30% faster on creep, which means that units who get speed upgrades (Zerglings, Roaches) get REALLY fast on creep.  An extra Queen is a pretty easy way to ensure that you are reinforcing yourself in record time.

Mass Victory - Development Diary #3

It's been quite a few months since my first post about Mass Victory, when the game was finally starting to come together.  My second post came in May, when I was finishing up my first round of serious playtests.  I'm doing some final clean-up on the game now in anticipation of bringing it to the Board Game Convention in Dallas in two weeks ("BGG.con") so I thought it was a good time to talk about some of the final  rules revisions I've put in place.

The Motivation for Change

By this past June or so, I was very happy with how the game played.  I could play it with people and have a really good time.  I had lots of innovative ideas at work, people picked up the game quickly, and overall I felt like I had a slam-dunk.  I've continued to play the game with family and friends since that June, and nothing has really stood out to me as broken.  But I still want to improve the game, and I think I can do that without really "changing" anything.

You see, I built the mechanics of the game such that players move along two parallel curves of development.  (Man, I'm referencing myself a lot today!)  The first curve is upgrading their personal ship - fun!  More power!  Winning the game!  The second curve is repairing the worldship, and thus bringing the game to an end state.  A really nice bit of inter-player dynamics is the realization that controlling when the game will end is, generally, more important than being in the lead right now.  But the point is that players need to move along that curve, and moving along the curve together makes the game more interesting.

So I'm looking to adjust the start and end points on that curve a bit.  I'm letting player ships start with slightly higher stats and/or slightly stronger abilities.  That essentially means players begin the game on turn 3 - which just serves to shorten the game a bit (not a bad thing) and guarantees that all players reach that "turn 3 power level" at exactly the same time.

I'm also going to remove a few choices from player turns - choices which were seldom-used.  Eliminating choices doesn't weaken anybody relative to the other players, and it gives me a good pool of rules for expansions.  So, without further ado, let me talk about the five modest changes I've made to my final rulebook.

Change #1 - Actions after you move, not before!

Since the very first version of my first prototype, I've given players the choice of taking their 1 Action either before or after they move their ship.  It's a small choice, and it makes sense to me from a story point of view.  But I'm cutting it.  Very few people used it, and it cuts down on quite a bit of text in the manual and player reference card.  It also solves a counter-attack problem which I had to patch in a rather messy way previously - ending your movement near another ship was dangerous, because if you didn't destroy them they could attack you on their turn, before moving away.  I also had a rule that ships couldn't attack on the Outpost, to stop silly first-turn battles.

Nobody will miss this rule.  I can even put it on a ship as a ship power.  Win/win.

Change #2 - Sensors, not Cargo Space, drive Card Limit.

The five attributes of your ship (Thrusters, Mining Robots, Cannons, Field Sensors, Cargo Space) have been pretty locked down for a year or more ("Cannons" used to be "Lasers" - but that's just chrome.)  Attributes generally range from 1 to 5, and Cargo ranges from 10 to 50.  I had an idea that your Card Limit (the maximum number of Research Cards you can have in your hand) should be driven by your Cargo Space.  I came up with the formula "2 + Cargo Space/10" - which meant most people started with 3 cards, and could eventually get up to 7.  That worked well, and it meant that people with more mass tended to have more cards.  Perfect.

Except that some players ("kids") didn't really understand "Cargo Space/10" - especially for oddball ships which had cargo ratings of 8, 16, 22, 30, 36, or similar.  So, after much deliberation, I've decided to let Field Sensors drive your Card Limit instead.  Formula is now "2 + Field Sensors."  This works out to be essentially the same, and so much simpler for everyone!

Change #3 - Static Mining Bonus.

There are two main ways to gain resources (mass) in the game - Mining, and Excavation.  These are supposed to be similar, but not interchangeable.  Here's the old breakdown comparison:

Mining:

• Reduces speed
• Gains minerals equal to die roll.
• Gains bonus of mass + sensors for white gems.

Excavation:

• Costs 1 Blue mass
• Gains minerals equal to die roll.
• Gains bonus of mass for white gems.

Excavation has an up-front cost, which is big in the beginning of the game but pretty trivial by the mid game.  Cannons can also be used to blow up ships, so it's important that Excavation be strictly worse than Mining.  But the only real bonus to Mining was the "+ sensors" mineral bonus when you rolled a white gem.  That was statistically significant - but not in a way which was obvious to new players.

So I settled on a new, statistically equivalent bonus for mining: +2 Red Mass.  If you mine, you just get 2 more Red Mass than you roll, for free, guaranteed.  This makes Mining way more awesome in the early game for players looking at Research Card costs in their hands, and helps level out the fact that the Red Planet is far away from the starting action.  (Red Mass is, by far, the easiest sort of mass to accumulate, but most of it is hidden on moons, which are face-down at game start.)

Change #4 - Teams of Two.

Mass Victory has always been a team-based game, even though it's not uncommon for one or more players to play the entire "team" by themselves.  I've worked hard to ensure that the game can be played by two teams of three, three teams of two, four teams of two, three teams of three... lots of viable combinations.

But this is a bit of a nightmare to explain, especially since it's something players need to know right away when setting up a game.  So I've decided that all teams will have exactly two ships - period.  I'll put something in the end about "Hey, maybe try teams of three." to indicate to comfortable players that the option is viable.  This shouldn't really bother anyone - five players will still need someone to double-up.  But it makes the game language much simpler when I can assume that teams all have exactly two members.

Change #5 - How Mass Accumulates on Planets & Moons.

This has been the biggest, and most volatile system in the game.  I've always wanted the game to simulate mass moving around between bodies - moons bloating up from debris and falling into planets, black holes being formed, etc.  I started with a no-loss system, where games started with a certain amount of mass, and none was ever created or destroyed.  That was awesome, but it became too much bookkeeping.  My most recent system had players placing spent mass into orbit in spaces adjacent to their ships, and then allowing all such mass to "drift" during movement phases.  That added some nice semi-random mass accumulation to the game, but it was still a lot of bit to move around.

It was also possible under that system for some mass to "fall into the sun" - where it was removed from the game.  This made mass accumulation on planets and moons very slow, depending upon how aggressive players were with their drift decisions.  I didn't like this, but I thought I was stuck with it.  Mass accumulation was just too important - too central to the game.

Of course, I eventually came up with a simpler solution which was, frankly, also much easier to understand.  Instead of placing mass into the orbital track, and over some number of turns randomly distributing it across the solar system, why not simply roll a die when it was spent, and place it directly onto some planet or moon?  All at once, turns were sped up, bookkeeping was eliminated from the movement phase, and mass accumulation finally matched up with my projections during games populated by timid players.

Incidentally - that image at the top of the post?  That's my new card-back image.  I got a set of ships and cards printed via The Game Crafter, and I'm very happy with the results.

30% More Content! - Remembrances from a PSP developer

Between 2004 and 2009 I worked on quite a few PSP games:

• Prince of Persia: Revelations
• Prince of Persia: Rival Swords
• Blitz: The League
• Godzilla: Unleashed
• Army of 2: 40th Day

Working for Sony on the PSP wasn't fundamentally different for working for Nintendo or Microsoft - every hardware provider had a list of dos and don'ts which you had to adhere to pretty exactly.  It's strange to remember now, in the days of open-platform development, but the '90s and '00s were a time of strict manufacturer creative control.

Sony was riding high at the time, so while their creative restrictions might have been a bit more strict, nobody thought they were unreasonable.  However, in retrospect, the creative restrictions imposed by Sony for PSP developers were a pretty bad idea.

Not a Portable PS2

When the PSP was announced, everyone thought it would be a portable PS2.  Imagine playing PS2 games on the go!  Developers were given some specs which, to put it bluntly, turned out to be outright lies.  The initial PSP hardware was a portable PS1 - not a portable PS2.  But many of the early projects for the system were ports (or simultaneous-releases) of the most popular PS2 games.  To make this work, developers had to slash content mercilessly, remove particle effects, downgrade textures, and reduce character counts.

Sony didn't like this trend at all - they feared that the PSP would be an "also-ran" device, with inferior versions of the games they were already selling for the PS2.  So Sony introduced one of the most infamous mandates ever: Any port which appeared on the PSP had to have 30% more content than the original game.

30% More What?

I can almost imagine some board room executives making this mandate in good faith - but in practice it was an absolute quality-killer.  Teams already struggling to finish their projects were now given the unenviable task of creating 30% more content in the same period of time.  How could they do that?  By cutting the quality of the game overall.  130% of the content at 50% of the quality leaves any game in a sorry state.

The other big problem this mandate created was the fact that instead of allowing teams to determine what the PSP was actually good at (Patapon, Loco Roco) Sony was issuing clear directives for how to put out low-quality ports.  The fact that these directives were designed to prevent the proliferation of low-quality ports didn't matter - that was just an ironic side-note.

Imagine you need to buy a present for your boss.  Your boss doesn't want any pets, so she delivers the following memo to all executives: "If anyone gets me a pet, it must not be a dog, bird, or fish.  Any cats must be declawed, female, and at least 1 year old.  All pets must be housebroken."  Your boss might be trying to dissuade people from buying pets - but that memo also reads like a set of instructions for exactly what type of pet to buy.  This effect was in full swing on the PSP - people were clamoring at the gates to produce more and more low-quality ports, rather than finding unique expressive techniques.

Across the Divide

At this same time, Nintendo's DS was really taking off.  That device had no clear mandate at all - Nintendo themselves didn't seem to really shower it with praise.  Early games like XX/XY were rather odd mash-ups, and many people were uncertain that the device would prove itself.

But Nintendo kept exploring new techniques for the handheld, and eventually strong third-party games like Trauma Center turned it into a powerhouse.  Apple has taken this same approach with the iPhone - just let people try out different techniques, and let the market indicate where things should go.

The Takeaway

The PSP wasn't a bad device - it was just badly positioned.  Sony insisted that people buy it for a specific reason - and as it turns out that reason wasn't very compelling.  People really wanted portable game experiences and media center capabilities - not PS2 ports with extra content.  Sony put a strangle-hold on developers, and ended up choking off the lifeblood of their own device.