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One other aspect that I focused on early on in terms of what the game is about that

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I was not completely successful with was the following thing. Not only is this a puzzle game not an action game

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But what does that mean?

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Let's come up with a strong statement about what that means because the the stronger and clearer the statement the more it can guide

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Design decisions whereas this statement. This is a puzzle game not an action game is not necessarily again

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Actionable right since that there still needs to be some more steps between that and telling you the answer to decisions, right?

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Hello everyone

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Welcome to the braid anniversary edition podcast episode 4

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This time we have Casey Miratori back as the interviewer and me as the interviewee and we're going to talk about game design and

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One of the main topics of discussion is the way that I made design decisions early on when figuring out what game braids should be

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I made some decisions that were pretty unintuitive in that I chose not to follow relatively well established

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Guidelines about what you should do when you want to design a game and have it be good. I did something else instead

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We'll get into details about what those ideas about design were and why I didn't think they were appropriate for braid

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And hopefully it'll make a pretty interesting discussion. I'm also in an interesting mood right now

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This is the first one of these introductions that we've recorded after braid anniversary editions been published

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So it's out you can play it if you like the kind of thing that we talk about here. There's lots

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Lots more of this kind of discussion in the game with illustrations and there are new puzzles and all sorts of good stuff

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You can get the game on every major console or on Steam

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And if you're a Netflix subscriber, you can play on your phone just as part of your subscription fee

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It doesn't cost anything extra. So go ahead and give it a try and I hope you enjoy the game now. Let's get into the discussion

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I'm not really sure where we should pick back up, but let me

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Let me suggest the following

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Okay, when you first start designing this game you went on vacation

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vacation and you found that like one thing kind of led to another and very quickly it built out to

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Something approximating worlds 2 3 & 4 with the sort of exception that you had included a why?

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equals time level I think which eventually got removed but otherwise it's sort of similar

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It's like 2 is what 2 is in the release game

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I mean the obviously they've been refined and all that but the the meaning of the worlds and what happens in them 2 3 & 4 happen

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You even have the text in there not the final text but text that's like sort of similar

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Well, and the text is we could clarify it's in a different form than you see it in the final game, right?

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Why don't you final game?

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It's in a somewhat interactive screen where you run by some books on

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Podiums and it changes the text between stuff back then

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it was

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More like the minimal thing you would have to put text into the game

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So there would be before each level just a screen that's you know, not in the game

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It's just a different mode and it's like press spacebar to start the level right whatever

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But there's a bunch of text and in general it was you know all the text for that world on the screen

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so it was like a bigger text dump and you couldn't really go back and read it if you skipped it and all these things that

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you would expect from a

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relatively short

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amount of effort on a game

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Yeah

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now

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That doesn't really

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Explain then where this the extra worlds came from so there are more worlds than that in braid

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And so what I wanted to kind of ask was could we maybe walk through a little bit more of the design process that followed as

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to

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was there were there other things that were happening that might be interesting to discuss and

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You know just kind of right off the bat one thing comes to mind which is that you removed y equals t

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Yeah, that's not the only thing I removed

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So so maybe if you could talk about sort of how the design progressed from there before we start talking about any specific thing

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Well, so a general statement about what I'm doing the whole time

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is

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having

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Ideas which may be high level or vague about

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Wouldn't it be interesting if time became this way and I should point out as well

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like I said even going into that vacation the idea was more like

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It's generally a physics game and rewind is like one element of it

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But I think even by the end of that prototype from the initial week

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By the time I had two more

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Worlds with rewind and the worlds weren't like worlds full of puzzles

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But they were worlds with a few things to do each and I could sort of imagine where you would go from there

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It didn't feel like I was out of ideas, right?

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So then I thought well, okay, maybe we're just focusing on rewind, right? I realized that very early

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Okay, so sometime even on the vacation or shortly thereafter were you like I probably don't need to add anything else like just time

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Will give me everything I need to keep adding mechanics to this game. I think on the vacation

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I was probably mostly cranking on the thing and then afterward there's a little bit of reflection like oh, yeah

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Okay, this is what this means. Okay. I mean maybe that's even an overstatement of it because as soon as you decide

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Like hey, I'm gonna have another world

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With rewind exempt objects and I'm gonna have another world where time is tied to space

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You're already starting to take up the structure of the game. That would have been other phenomena, right?

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It's almost like

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You kind of stumbled into that as just hey

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I need to add these things and then I'm gonna do this and then when you stop and look back you're like, oh well

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That's kind of what the game is now

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Like like that's just what had to happen for what I was doing and it's like that's just pretty much the same thing

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That's just better. Well, you could imagine sticking to the original idea and like okay

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There's also gonna be like quantum superposition or something. Yeah, and

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Then if if the structure of the game is that rewind now has some number of worlds

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Then maybe there's a two-tiered structure. Yeah, we're now there's quantum superposition

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That also has to have some number of worlds and whatever and that's a little bit more like what the structure of the witness was

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like is less

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regular of a structure than that. Yes, but you

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Know I did have this mindset that I wanted the game to be scopable

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To something that I would complete in a relatively short time

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In fact, the original idea was to do the game in something like a year

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Which design wise it sort of design wise it did right and we could maybe talk about that in a little bit

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but I remember also just

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You know, I had done this prototype in December January

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and I was working on a happy cake and stuff after that and it was GDC time and whatever and

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So it was by April that I really started working on it full-time and I had this idea like okay by December 31st

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I'll finish the game which of course it actually went much longer than that, right?

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But I believe I was also kind of racing with you if I remember correctly

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racing with me because you had

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Sushi bar samurai or something. Yes, or your current idea was that you were going to finish it by the end of the year

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Yes, so I was like I'm gonna also have a game by the it wasn't exactly a race

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But like I'm gonna get my game done by the end of the year also

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it's like, you know when you have this thing where you're

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You've had a bunch of projects that don't really go where you want right you it's useful to employ

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motivators wherever you can get them and so I think that was

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One of them. Okay, I think it was the first version of sushi bar samurai

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I don't actually remember now. So maybe maybe it was something else. Well sushi bar samurai basically shipped one a month

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from

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2005 January. Yeah every month

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Yeah, the game sucked but like the that's what I was thinking

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That's what happened with a couple of those versions

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I think I think there were one or two in the middle that would have been good

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But um, well if you had designed them they would have been so, you know, but but I think the point that you were

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iterating these versions of the game I think with some I remember hearing some plan from you about like

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I'll get to the end of it by like the end of the year. Yeah. Yeah

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I mean, I would have liked to have done that for sure. I mean and you know, yeah

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But so that that was the expected

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Cadence and I don't think I had firmed up on that

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Schedule during the original prototype, but something like that was what I had in mind like a year is a long time to make a game

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Yeah, you know so

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Quake was one of the more notorious

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Games that took a lot of research and development prior to this and that I believe was a year and three quarters or something

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It was yes, I'm like 18 months including all the initial research

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And stuff leading into it and they had documented all that and stuff and they gave a speech at GDC. I actually remember

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A brush gave this speech about how they did quake, right? Yeah

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This was earlier than braid time, but it sticks in the memory. Yeah

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And there is a question first question from the audience right someone raises their hand

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He says calls on them and they say if I want to follow in these footsteps and do it

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What you have figured out?

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How long is that going to take and he said?

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You know, I think it would be about the same 18 months and

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There was just a hush went over the wrong. Awesome. Like this was such a terrible prospect and unheard of you know

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This was like 1998 or whatever, right?

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Which is weird because there were notorious games like mech warrior 2 that had taken like five years or whatever

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But in general nobody wanted to spend 18 months on a game at that time now

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Fast forwarding to like eight years later or whatever it was

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um

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Seven six years later

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I think that was more normalized but myself as an indie on like a limited budget and and again wanting

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I had all these friends who started projects that just sort of trailed off and never got done

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And I had done that at smaller scale and yeah, one way to prevent that from happening is

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To make sure the schedule isn't that long, right?

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So that was the plan and it sort of went that way, but maybe getting ahead of myself a little bit

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By the end of the year. I had a playable game. Yes. Yes from end to end

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Before we talk in detail about that. I can go back and finish answering the other question

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but at that point

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That I had a playable game. I also looked at it and said oh

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Well, this can be better now than what it is. I see how to improve it

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and

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And I kept seeing very good ways to improve it

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You know for a while and when you say very good ways to improve it just for folks who don't know

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What exactly are you talking about because are you talking about the art? Are you talking about the design?

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Are you talking about everything? You know, what do you really everything? So the art is an obvious one, right?

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It was still programmer art. Yeah at that time

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I had made animations and stuff, but they were programmer animations. You know

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Nobody was going to give this game of the year award

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In the art category, right? Right design wise

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I believe

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I

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Actually should go back and look but i'm pretty sure I had

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Most of the worlds or possibly even all of them

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represented to some degree

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Like there's just some puzzles in each one and then there's a you know

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You kind of want to flash it out and figure out the structure of the game and if these are

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you know

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Puzzles made out of puzzle pieces like they were at the time

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You need to have enough to make a puzzle in each world

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Right and even even if that weren't the constraint it's still awkward maybe at a game of that size to have some

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Areas with a lot of puzzles and some with a few although again, um

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With the witness I made the opposite decision

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But that works better because of the structure of that game being bigger and like there was a decision early on the opposite decision

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opposite decision

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Well in great it's very regular right there are 12 puzzle pieces in each world

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Okay, right. Okay. And so if a world doesn't have 12 puzzle pieces, maybe i'm not done designing it. I see

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And in the witness it was more like

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Going into it. I see that the design space is going to be more irregular than that. So i'm simply going to avoid

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any structure of that kind

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Because basically you'd have to cut too many puzzles or add too many puzzles to some of the sections

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If you tried to pick like the the median number or something and have everything hit that it just wasn't going to work

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Right even in braid

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There's probably a little bit of that like there are probably if I thought harder on some worlds

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There are really good puzzles that could be there

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But I was done thinking about it because there were 12

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12 gotcha, okay, uh, and then the worst thing than that actually is I don't have 12 and so I need to start to make

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Filler right right and that's sort of why the number is 12. It's because that was

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the degree to which

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I found that I didn't really need

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filler

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to

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Okay to have enough so maybe some world in braid would really have liked to have been 13 or 14

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But it was just better to go. Okay the the world where I have the least ideas for puzzles

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They hit about 12. So we're just going to call it 12 and

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Because I want it to be regular. Yeah, and you know, I probably made the decision for 12 provisionally before I had that verification

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I see but

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It was a guess that turned out to be okay. Gotcha. Yeah

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anyway, so

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With regard to how did I come up with the different worlds? I just had ideas

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And of course, I would have an initial guess about whether this was a good idea, right and some ideas

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are interesting

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but

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Seem like they're going to hit a brick wall really fast some ideas are

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Sound cool as a high level idea

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But I couldn't even find a way to make it actionable like a mechanic again, right?

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Can you give any examples?

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Do you remember any of these ideas that basically got tabled because they didn't work out?

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Well, I could start by talking about ones that I actually implemented. Okay. Well, there's two

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So you already mentioned that t equals y right?

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which is

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uh

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Mildly different from t equals x right? It's the same implementation detail technically

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It's like you just decide that the other axis. Yes is controlling the thing and

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And interactively it's a little bit different because it's cute that you know, you jump and so

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Jumping has an up part and a down part. So a jump

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Automatically has a forward in time and a backward in time piece. Yes, right now

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The thing is the jumps are pretty short in the game. They're like much shorter than mario jumps for reasons. Okay

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what reasons

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We could put a bullet point on that and come back. It's a pretty big discussion. All right

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um that

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with the other objects in the game so the primary other object i'm looking at so that the

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Level that was in the early version of the game was a little monster guys being shot out of cannons, right? And

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If because if they're walking very slowly in the amount of time that a jump takes

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they don't go very far and so they'll go forward and back but

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There's just not much of a state change that happens there, right? On the other hand if I shot them out of cannons

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If they if the velocity is really fast that they get shot at yeah

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Then they'll change appreciably over a time frame like that, right?

222
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But then it becomes kind of hostile to play and so this one level that I made was you're climbing up a trellis and

223
00:16:42,100 --> 00:16:46,340
There's cannons shooting across it and you're sort of trying to navigate

224
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around

225
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Find the path up that will not result in you being beamed right which is a

226
00:16:53,780 --> 00:16:58,900
in some sense a static a static solution for that exists because at any

227
00:16:59,300 --> 00:17:05,460
Y coordinate there will be monsters at any xy coordinate, right? Right? Um, but to make that work

228
00:17:07,380 --> 00:17:12,500
Like I said, I had to shoot the monsters out pretty fast and it was it was a relatively unfriendly level. Okay?

229
00:17:13,460 --> 00:17:18,820
And I didn't have a lot of other ideas for it and also the general

230
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tenor of the rest of the game is

231
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The levels are horizontal and they're a little bit vertical enough to make interesting situations and suddenly

232
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When t equals y it's like well

233
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You end up with levels that are probably really tall

234
00:17:34,180 --> 00:17:38,900
Okay, probably I mean maybe I could have thought more about it and avoided that or at least

235
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Levels where you go up to the top and all the way back down and up to the top and all the way back down

236
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Right, and you know, I was just thinking about what are the possibilities there?

237
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And I never came up with anything like

238
00:17:52,100 --> 00:17:56,100
There's always this thing where you start with an idea and it's not working out that well

239
00:17:56,980 --> 00:18:03,140
But maybe if you get over some hump and find a few things, it'll click better, right?

240
00:18:03,380 --> 00:18:07,060
It's like two atoms forming a molecule. It's like maybe they repel each other

241
00:18:07,060 --> 00:18:12,340
Yeah, but then you get them into the correct energy well and they'll like snap into an equilibrium, right?

242
00:18:12,340 --> 00:18:15,540
Sometimes design is like that and for that thing

243
00:18:15,540 --> 00:18:19,380
I just didn't ever find it and so then there was still the idea

244
00:18:20,100 --> 00:18:26,500
I could keep it in the t equals x world just as an ending thing to make it a little bit different and that just

245
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Like a like a little punctuation on the end like a surprise, but the other worlds don't have something like that

246
00:18:32,660 --> 00:18:36,820
And it just wasn't that good in the end, right?

247
00:18:36,820 --> 00:18:42,660
So yeah, I didn't and also like some of the other monsters. There's almost no interaction with it all

248
00:18:43,140 --> 00:18:47,780
Like in the very beginning of the game. I don't think there were the plant monsters that go up and down

249
00:18:48,660 --> 00:18:52,340
But those were added not too long after I don't write and

250
00:18:53,300 --> 00:18:55,300
Unless I made horizontal ones

251
00:18:55,860 --> 00:19:00,900
Right, right. There's almost no interaction you can have right right between

252
00:19:00,900 --> 00:19:08,820
Climbing upward and yeah avoiding those monster guys. I mean it could be that they would kill or don't kill like other monsters

253
00:19:09,220 --> 00:19:13,860
But that's also kind of statically determined and uninteresting right? Yeah, so

254
00:19:15,460 --> 00:19:17,460
Yeah, it just wasn't good

255
00:19:18,020 --> 00:19:25,060
You know, right, right and I saw that relatively quickly. Although that said it's possible that I missed something right and there was a

256
00:19:25,060 --> 00:19:31,860
Cool there, but I guess another thing is that you didn't really seem to have trouble coming up with 12

257
00:19:32,660 --> 00:19:37,620
Yes, yes equals access. So maybe it was just like well, I see how to do the t equals x thing

258
00:19:37,620 --> 00:19:39,540
I don't see how to do the t equals y thing

259
00:19:39,540 --> 00:19:43,540
So do I really need to do the t equals y thing right? Yeah, maybe the answer was just no

260
00:19:44,420 --> 00:19:47,940
That is how it turned out and if it didn't turn out that way

261
00:19:47,940 --> 00:19:49,940
I probably would have found a way to do it

262
00:19:49,940 --> 00:19:56,180
That is how it turned out and if it didn't turn out that way, I probably would have looked harder at it

263
00:19:56,180 --> 00:19:59,380
Right. Yep. Okay. So another thing that I implemented

264
00:20:00,340 --> 00:20:01,940
and

265
00:20:01,940 --> 00:20:06,500
Was in one of the versions of the game, although probably not in the very first one

266
00:20:07,460 --> 00:20:09,460
You know again

267
00:20:10,180 --> 00:20:12,180
thinking about the physics

268
00:20:12,340 --> 00:20:15,460
Basis of the game originally. What are some things about?

269
00:20:15,460 --> 00:20:19,620
Physics at a small scale. Well things are quantized, right?

270
00:20:20,420 --> 00:20:24,020
Yeah, and so there's a lot of stuff about that with like the speed of light

271
00:20:24,580 --> 00:20:28,580
We've moving like in increments or something like blackbody radiation

272
00:20:28,580 --> 00:20:36,500
Yeah, for example being only solvable like that's how quantum mechanics was discovered was like if you try to solve the equations for

273
00:20:37,060 --> 00:20:39,060
like

274
00:20:39,060 --> 00:20:40,180
You know

275
00:20:40,180 --> 00:20:48,500
You know what when things get hot what wavelengths should they emit and how much it was like nonsensical and didn't match measurements

276
00:20:48,740 --> 00:20:51,940
Okay, and then to match measurements it turns out like oh

277
00:20:52,900 --> 00:20:57,060
If you can only give off photons at certain discrete energy levels

278
00:20:58,260 --> 00:21:00,660
Then this all works out and that's that's actually how they

279
00:21:01,860 --> 00:21:04,840
Started looking at quantum mechanics, which is mildly terrifying

280
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:09,320
Because you don't normally think of things in the real world as being quantized

281
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:12,520
Yeah, but they are

282
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So

283
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:21,720
God ran out of bits. I guess and I don't think that's what happened but um

284
00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:29,320
Anyway, so so there's a mechanic based on this quantization. What what if since the game is about time now?

285
00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:33,080
Yeah, then the quantization would affect time

286
00:21:33,080 --> 00:21:35,720
and so what I implemented was

287
00:21:36,760 --> 00:21:42,360
Again time the whole game is paused. Okay, and then instead of you know

288
00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:46,200
How you use the arrow keys and you have the jump button, right? Yes instead of those being

289
00:21:48,520 --> 00:21:50,360
Continuous inputs

290
00:21:50,360 --> 00:21:55,720
You get this little like control HUD that pops up over your guy that has like the four arrows in the jump button

291
00:21:55,720 --> 00:22:00,120
Well, I remember this and then you hold them down because you might want to go diagonal or something

292
00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:05,880
Yes, so you or if you just want to go forward you tap forward and release it and your guy goes a certain amount

293
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,400
Running the continuous simulation for a fixed amount. I see

294
00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:14,680
if you wanted to go diagonal and jump you hit all three of those and then release them and

295
00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:20,040
He does that. I see so you kind of it's like a turn based braid turn based

296
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:24,040
but with the same simulation underneath because right I

297
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:29,480
Mean you could invent in a whole entire turn based version of the game and some people might do that, right?

298
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:35,880
It didn't seem along the lines of what I wanted to do. Okay, like this wasn't a game where you go into totally different

299
00:22:37,120 --> 00:22:40,360
Simulators in every world. It was a game where right?

300
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:46,320
It's the same one, but it's modified right, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I

301
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:48,960
did that and

302
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:55,240
Again, I had trouble coming up with puzzles and controlling such situations

303
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:58,960
To make them interesting

304
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:01,600
and it was just this mode of

305
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:06,920
Having a discrete time step that then played out in a simulation

306
00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:10,120
It was pretty sloppy and it was hard to even think about what was gonna happen

307
00:23:10,120 --> 00:23:13,760
Like what's a typical thing that happens in this game? Well, there's a monster

308
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:18,080
maybe he's walking away from you toward a wall and he's gonna bounce off and then

309
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:23,200
You want to jump on him, right and can in continuous mode

310
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:29,640
In the beginning that might be hard to learn like when to jump and how if you want to bounce off him, right?

311
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:33,680
Right in this mode. It was way even more awkward

312
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:36,440
right learn right and

313
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:43,080
The end result just wasn't good like okay. I'm doing this interaction and that's cool, but

314
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:49,360
I'm not getting more out of the interaction than I put in that's part of the magic of design, right?

315
00:23:49,360 --> 00:23:51,360
I find the thing where

316
00:23:51,360 --> 00:23:57,080
You do a certain amount of contrivance or a certain amount of setup for the situation and then you get out of it

317
00:23:57,320 --> 00:23:59,320
all these cool things

318
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:01,800
as

319
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:04,520
As fuel as like payload for your game, right?

320
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,120
It's like it's like splitting a molecule or something

321
00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:10,280
I was just gonna say that so that's a really interesting way to put it

322
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:13,360
I don't think I've ever thought of about it that way. That's

323
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:18,280
That's very useful to people who don't know much about game design such as myself

324
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:23,280
So so basically what you're saying is you have to think about the design process

325
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:28,840
In in almost like you were thinking about a power plant if it's costing you more

326
00:24:29,360 --> 00:24:32,400
to get design things out as

327
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:37,520
What you're actually implementing to put in you're probably doing something wrong

328
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:42,960
And you should try to look at a different thing or yes or move to a different space because

329
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,880
All you're gonna end up doing is making a very procrustian thing

330
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,600
With not a lot of richness. Is that a kind of fair?

331
00:24:50,120 --> 00:24:56,000
Absolutely, and I've played lots and lots of games. Yeah people who didn't get that because if you follow, you know

332
00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,040
There have been presentations at conferences about how do you design games?

333
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:06,120
How do you design puzzle games? It's like come up with different mechanics that do things and it's like, okay

334
00:25:06,120 --> 00:25:13,760
But but all these ideas that you put into your game and implement have cost right firstly your implementation cost

335
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:17,920
your maintenance cost of making sure that

336
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:22,600
when they interact forget even the interactions being interesting, but like

337
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,760
Your game has to survive the interaction

338
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:33,280
Right, right. It has to do something that makes sense and is playable and there has to you have to have a plan for can the art

339
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:38,320
Represent it and all these other represent it at all and then in a way that

340
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:47,080
Feels like the player can get what's going on. Yeah, right. Like there's a rule that I have that I think some some people understand

341
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:49,560
which is

342
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:54,160
You know if you have a lot of invisible game state, especially in a single-player game

343
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:59,480
Yeah, it's very hard to play and it's very inscrutable. Yeah, and so the role of like

344
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,080
graphics and sound effects and

345
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:07,840
Vibration and whatever else is in part to help communicate that hidden state

346
00:26:08,360 --> 00:26:12,960
So that you can learn it better and and yeah stand better what's going on

347
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:16,240
Yeah, so if you make a bunch of rules with a bunch of weird hidden state

348
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,440
you're making that job very difficult to do and

349
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:25,800
You know, maybe impossible you see that I think a lot in in like RPGs

350
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:33,640
Especially like tabletop inspired RPGs were like they've implemented this big rule set that like a dungeon master would have been reading from

351
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:39,440
Yeah, but it's almost impossible to surface that to a player who isn't familiar with that

352
00:26:40,120 --> 00:26:43,000
Tabletop game. I've definitely had that experience. I don't know

353
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:48,640
How it's determining how much damage this spell is cat? I have no idea right?

354
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:53,840
There's numbers everywhere and all this stuff and it's just like I believe you that you've got something in there

355
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:57,120
That's doing it. It also kind of reminds me of something from UI design

356
00:26:57,120 --> 00:27:03,200
I've noticed separately which is like the harder it is to program a UI's logic control flow in your code

357
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,520
Usually the less good the UI is yeah, because there's just

358
00:27:07,120 --> 00:27:12,360
It's there's just too much stuff that might be happening for the user to really understand and you know

359
00:27:12,360 --> 00:27:15,760
Oh, we have a lot of bad UI these days. Okay

360
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:21,100
The other thing to say about that right it's not just these other internal things that I said but like

361
00:27:21,100 --> 00:27:25,420
The other costs are what does the player have to learn to play your game?

362
00:27:25,420 --> 00:27:28,780
And then what do they have to think about to solve puzzles?

363
00:27:28,780 --> 00:27:33,060
Yeah, and what do you have to think about to design puzzles? And these are very insidious costs

364
00:27:33,300 --> 00:27:38,580
Okay, because you can be paying them and not realize it and right and that is a thing to avoid

365
00:27:38,580 --> 00:27:40,580
So I've played a bunch of puzzle games

366
00:27:40,940 --> 00:27:44,380
I'm thinking of specific ones that I'm not gonna mention right

367
00:27:45,100 --> 00:27:46,140
where

368
00:27:46,140 --> 00:27:51,580
There's just a lot of setup of different objects that they quote teach you about right?

369
00:27:51,580 --> 00:27:55,820
And then it's like here's a level with these things and what do you do in the level? It's like

370
00:27:56,540 --> 00:27:59,020
You just kind of untangle

371
00:28:00,060 --> 00:28:01,340
what

372
00:28:01,340 --> 00:28:03,580
They set up in the level and there's no

373
00:28:04,220 --> 00:28:09,980
Deeper more enlightening principle to it. There's no surprise. There's no revelation. Yep, there's no

374
00:28:10,780 --> 00:28:13,340
you getting better at anything aside from

375
00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:15,340
untangling messy

376
00:28:17,020 --> 00:28:21,820
Situations in your head, which after you've done that a couple times. It's just the same thing over and over again

377
00:28:21,820 --> 00:28:27,340
Yeah, right. And so that is a failure mode that a lot of puzzle games fall into

378
00:28:28,300 --> 00:28:30,300
and the designers of those games

379
00:28:30,940 --> 00:28:35,740
Do not even see after they've done it that they fell into that they're just what it's a puzzle game

380
00:28:35,740 --> 00:28:37,260
Look, I made the puzzle game

381
00:28:37,260 --> 00:28:41,340
If you understand I did the thing where you put the McCann's

382
00:28:41,340 --> 00:28:46,780
You have the things with different mechanics that are combined to solve the puzzle and here they are in some rooms

383
00:28:47,500 --> 00:28:53,580
And obviously players can sit down and solve this puzzle. So I made a good puzzle game and it's like well, no the good part

384
00:28:54,460 --> 00:28:56,460
Yes is very presumptuous, right?

385
00:28:56,460 --> 00:29:03,340
Yes, good is difficult and it is something that we have not done a very good job

386
00:29:05,180 --> 00:29:07,740
Talking about I really ever

387
00:29:07,740 --> 00:29:10,780
because I

388
00:29:10,780 --> 00:29:14,940
Often look for resources that are good for this sort of thing and don't find them. Yeah

389
00:29:15,820 --> 00:29:19,500
I think it's very weird because I think valve did a lot of damage here

390
00:29:20,860 --> 00:29:28,060
Really? Yeah, because a lot of people really liked games like portal and whatever right and they were vocal about

391
00:29:28,540 --> 00:29:30,540
how design for those games

392
00:29:31,180 --> 00:29:33,180
went

393
00:29:33,660 --> 00:29:35,660
and

394
00:29:35,660 --> 00:29:38,700
I mean really so portal one

395
00:29:38,700 --> 00:29:42,940
I think is a better game design wise than portal to portal two is kind of just like a mess

396
00:29:43,260 --> 00:29:47,580
Okay, that happens when you throw a big team at something and it's not really a coherent vision. Okay

397
00:29:48,620 --> 00:29:52,140
I think the reason both games do well primarily is because they're really funny

398
00:29:53,020 --> 00:29:57,420
Yeah, I think portal one is funnier than portal two. Yeah portal two is a lot bigger

399
00:29:57,420 --> 00:29:59,740
So it's like we make up for it in volume, right?

400
00:29:59,740 --> 00:30:02,940
It's harder to be it's harder to have as much good like story in here

401
00:30:02,940 --> 00:30:08,060
It's harder to have as much good like story and humor as in in in a larger game

402
00:30:08,060 --> 00:30:14,380
I think so a lot because valve has a good reputation or had a good reputation and

403
00:30:15,020 --> 00:30:21,660
A lot of developers are like if only I could be valve, right? Right? I think they don't

404
00:30:22,380 --> 00:30:25,900
They don't receive the information. I

405
00:30:26,700 --> 00:30:30,500
Don't want to say critically but like, you know anytime

406
00:30:30,500 --> 00:30:32,460
Well, okay

407
00:30:32,460 --> 00:30:37,620
If there's someone who's an expert in a topic and you're like a rank beginner and you don't know that much

408
00:30:37,620 --> 00:30:43,140
Well firstly, it's probably a waste of time to get advice from the expert because he's thinking about stuff that you don't even know what it is

409
00:30:43,140 --> 00:30:46,380
Right, right. Yeah, but let's say you're a little bit more

410
00:30:46,380 --> 00:30:52,980
Let's say you have base competence then if you listen to someone who's like a super expert and has way more experience than you

411
00:30:54,860 --> 00:30:58,500
Probably you should just believe whatever they say because again, they're just like way better than you

412
00:30:58,500 --> 00:31:02,900
Okay, but again like different experts will tell you different things, right?

413
00:31:02,900 --> 00:31:08,700
And so you're already like forming taste by choosing right who to listen to and what sounds better

414
00:31:08,700 --> 00:31:10,700
but it's very precarious because as a

415
00:31:11,140 --> 00:31:13,500
Beginner you don't really know better. Yeah

416
00:31:14,620 --> 00:31:17,420
This happens in programming a lot. Oh, yeah. Yeah and

417
00:31:19,180 --> 00:31:21,180
Then you know

418
00:31:21,700 --> 00:31:23,700
Once you're intermediate

419
00:31:23,700 --> 00:31:29,420
You really should have enough of an opinion that when somebody tells you something

420
00:31:30,460 --> 00:31:33,140
Like you shouldn't exactly be doubting them

421
00:31:33,140 --> 00:31:39,740
But you should be expecting that by the time I become as good as this person is at the thing that they do

422
00:31:39,740 --> 00:31:43,420
I would naturally have a different viewpoint and a different

423
00:31:43,420 --> 00:31:46,140
I'm not trying to be an exact clone of this person

424
00:31:46,140 --> 00:31:50,500
In fact, if I want to contribute to this field, I had better be different from them

425
00:31:50,500 --> 00:31:55,860
Right in an interesting way, right and I should be trying to surpass them and to surpass them eventually

426
00:31:56,500 --> 00:31:59,160
Like I don't want to be you know

427
00:32:01,220 --> 00:32:06,220
Egotistical to think that I'm better than them now, but if I want to surpass them eventually I

428
00:32:07,100 --> 00:32:10,300
Should be able to see things that they missed or something, right?

429
00:32:13,020 --> 00:32:16,140
That's always been my mental model somewhere, right?

430
00:32:16,140 --> 00:32:22,100
Right. And so what I perceive though is like somebody famous and successful like valve

431
00:32:22,100 --> 00:32:27,020
I'm personifying valve now, right one thing which they tend to like yeah

432
00:32:27,540 --> 00:32:30,420
They don't seem to want to be individualistic about it

433
00:32:30,420 --> 00:32:30,660
No

434
00:32:30,660 --> 00:32:37,140
but they give talks and then like everybody just assumes the talk is amazing and nobody writes critically about it like

435
00:32:37,580 --> 00:32:39,580
hardly at all, right and

436
00:32:39,620 --> 00:32:44,860
and again, I don't mean think critically in terms of like deliberately try to shoot it down, but just like

437
00:32:44,860 --> 00:32:49,660
Run the ideas like do more than just accept the ideas as being true

438
00:32:49,660 --> 00:32:55,900
Like right live in them a little bit and see if you come to the same conclusions like ideas

439
00:32:56,500 --> 00:32:58,500
should quote-unquote

440
00:32:59,020 --> 00:33:00,460
form

441
00:33:00,460 --> 00:33:03,180
together some kind of structure that's

442
00:33:03,900 --> 00:33:05,900
internally consistent and

443
00:33:06,780 --> 00:33:10,260
Doesn't lead to bad outcomes. Okay and leads

444
00:33:10,780 --> 00:33:12,780
productively to something that you want

445
00:33:12,780 --> 00:33:17,220
And you know if you're an artist maybe what you want is a little different from what valve wants, right?

446
00:33:17,220 --> 00:33:22,060
Right, or I mean maybe not maybe but that means you don't have any ideas, right? Right. So

447
00:33:22,540 --> 00:33:26,660
Anyway, they had a certain way of talking about puzzles where I

448
00:33:27,580 --> 00:33:33,060
Remember this they would talk about the aha moment and like that was the goal of a puzzle and the thing is that's

449
00:33:33,660 --> 00:33:35,660
It's true to an extent

450
00:33:35,660 --> 00:33:39,740
They also had another thing if you care to comment on it during this

451
00:33:39,740 --> 00:33:43,900
Which is they were like right right the set of objects

452
00:33:44,460 --> 00:33:46,460
vertically and horizontally

453
00:33:46,460 --> 00:33:53,620
That fill in the squares. Yeah, those are the two things. I remember them saying explicitly like things you could explicitly say they were

454
00:33:53,620 --> 00:33:58,060
Well when I talked about some of these other games, yeah that had bad designs

455
00:33:58,060 --> 00:34:01,540
I was thinking explicitly of that kind of matrix where you fill in the squares

456
00:34:01,540 --> 00:34:07,140
Okay, because that's a very mechanical thing to do it is and you can do that and you can show that you have a

457
00:34:07,140 --> 00:34:11,300
It is and you can do that and you can show that you have done it and then you're done designing

458
00:34:11,300 --> 00:34:15,420
Yeah, which is not how you make something good at all. I see

459
00:34:15,900 --> 00:34:17,500
I

460
00:34:17,500 --> 00:34:21,900
Don't know if we want to go. I'm sure most people listening have no idea what we're talking about there

461
00:34:21,900 --> 00:34:23,380
We could go into that

462
00:34:23,380 --> 00:34:26,380
Maybe in a minute but to go back to this aha moment thing. Yes

463
00:34:26,940 --> 00:34:30,220
like it's it is true that

464
00:34:31,580 --> 00:34:33,780
puzzles where you just grind away and

465
00:34:33,780 --> 00:34:37,420
And then you come to some solution and the solution

466
00:34:37,940 --> 00:34:43,380
Does not feel special in any way. Yeah, and you don't know anything new. Yeah

467
00:34:43,740 --> 00:34:49,140
Those are relatively thankless puzzles that feel like work and after you do a bunch of those you'll like nope out of a game

468
00:34:49,140 --> 00:34:55,820
Or whatever right on the other hand if you solve a puzzle and you're like, oh my god, I get it right

469
00:34:57,220 --> 00:34:58,860
That is

470
00:34:58,860 --> 00:35:00,980
by definition a more

471
00:35:00,980 --> 00:35:03,460
enjoyable experience like a more

472
00:35:04,220 --> 00:35:08,900
Punchy experience and it will lead you to liking a game more right now valve

473
00:35:08,900 --> 00:35:14,260
The problem is they're very focused on they think of their game as a product, right and

474
00:35:15,100 --> 00:35:21,740
They're iterating on product design. And so from that standpoint. Yeah, this whole aha moment thing

475
00:35:22,980 --> 00:35:28,140
Makes sense because it's just it's the way to get your customer to like your game

476
00:35:28,140 --> 00:35:31,900
Yes, right and that is all true, right?

477
00:35:33,100 --> 00:35:35,100
but I think

478
00:35:36,500 --> 00:35:38,500
My standpoint has always been

479
00:35:39,020 --> 00:35:41,660
It's missing some things right?

480
00:35:42,540 --> 00:35:45,220
Yeah, both both in terms of

481
00:35:46,260 --> 00:35:51,220
Like why does your life have meaning if you're a designer of this stuff? Yeah, and also

482
00:35:51,220 --> 00:35:56,980
How okay so coming up with aha moments like how do it what is actionable about this, right?

483
00:35:56,980 --> 00:36:01,380
Yeah, how do I make these things and how do I make them good versus not good? Yeah, I

484
00:36:02,100 --> 00:36:05,100
Was just gonna add a very slight thing. I don't think it's that important

485
00:36:05,100 --> 00:36:11,220
But I was gonna say like it's definitely true that for valve they actually when you said, you know

486
00:36:11,220 --> 00:36:12,660
They think of it as a product

487
00:36:12,660 --> 00:36:19,260
They definitely do and not necessarily even in a cynical way that maybe Apple thinks of something as a product

488
00:36:19,260 --> 00:36:23,660
Yeah, they literally are just like we like they literally would say

489
00:36:24,180 --> 00:36:29,300
We believe that like the economics tells us if we've done a good job supplying value

490
00:36:29,300 --> 00:36:32,860
Like they literally think they think of it in almost the way that a commodities producer does

491
00:36:32,860 --> 00:36:38,060
It's like if people want this product and buy this product. That's how we know. We've done a good job and

492
00:36:38,620 --> 00:36:41,180
We are not trying to be you know

493
00:36:42,300 --> 00:36:46,460
Anything more than that. We think that's why we provide value, which is fine

494
00:36:46,460 --> 00:36:50,660
But it's definitely a different approach. Like you said art game earlier. They don't want that

495
00:36:50,660 --> 00:36:53,740
They're not pretending to do that. They they are

496
00:36:54,460 --> 00:37:02,460
intentionally doing something else indeed and in fact, you know, I've never worked there but in my interactions with people who have it's pretty clear that like

497
00:37:03,500 --> 00:37:07,060
They don't believe in the designer who has the good ideas, right?

498
00:37:07,060 --> 00:37:10,660
Yes, they believe on iterating on a design by having

499
00:37:11,260 --> 00:37:14,260
everybody throw their ideas at the thing and then

500
00:37:14,260 --> 00:37:17,660
you know the ideas will fight and the

501
00:37:18,660 --> 00:37:24,660
The market the playtest market will determine the meritocracy will determine what the ideas should be in this game

502
00:37:24,660 --> 00:37:31,140
Now the problem is that's another word for design by committee sort of it's a little bit more of a of a

503
00:37:32,420 --> 00:37:34,420
one that contains a

504
00:37:35,300 --> 00:37:40,460
Play testing cycle within it. So it's more reality-based than if you just have some random ass committee

505
00:37:40,460 --> 00:37:44,500
Deciding things it's it's maybe the best version of design by committee, right?

506
00:37:44,500 --> 00:37:50,620
But it's still yeah, it still leads to very boring results in my opinion and I think that shows in their recent games. Okay, right

507
00:37:52,420 --> 00:37:54,580
There are other companies like that

508
00:37:54,580 --> 00:37:56,500
I also think things about good or bad

509
00:37:56,500 --> 00:38:01,780
But they're they're just one of the major ones and the one that a lot of people know about who who design a lot

510
00:38:02,420 --> 00:38:04,580
Who designed a couple of major puzzle games?

511
00:38:04,580 --> 00:38:06,860
And so it's a good reference point that a lot of people know about

512
00:38:06,860 --> 00:38:11,860
So I don't wish to actually gossip about valve, but what I do want to say to cap that off is just

513
00:38:12,740 --> 00:38:17,500
I felt that the way that they spoke about these things whereas it was better than nothing, right?

514
00:38:18,020 --> 00:38:23,500
Combined with the propensity of people to just take what they said and think that that's everything to say on the matter

515
00:38:23,500 --> 00:38:28,620
Yeah, it ended up being a little bit misleading or leaving people in a place

516
00:38:29,980 --> 00:38:34,780
That was not good enough to design good games from because they were not good enough

517
00:38:34,780 --> 00:38:39,420
To design good games from because this whole idea of the aha moment

518
00:38:39,900 --> 00:38:45,540
Again, it's it's true, but it's incomplete. And so the what I tell people to think about is

519
00:38:46,540 --> 00:38:47,900
Okay

520
00:38:47,900 --> 00:38:49,380
why

521
00:38:49,380 --> 00:38:55,180
What is that aha moment for first of all? Okay, is it just to get people to play your game?

522
00:38:55,180 --> 00:38:58,860
Is it just the equivalent of like in an RPG?

523
00:38:58,860 --> 00:39:05,660
We give people a little bit more loot on a certain schedule so that they feel compelled to keep bashing the monsters, right?

524
00:39:06,380 --> 00:39:08,380
Or is there more to it, right?

525
00:39:08,740 --> 00:39:10,740
Can you if you think you're an artist?

526
00:39:12,220 --> 00:39:20,660
Then you should have some opinion about the content of those moments, right? Like imagine somebody, you know making a film. Mm-hmm

527
00:39:21,020 --> 00:39:23,020
and they're just like

528
00:39:23,660 --> 00:39:26,420
Or telling you how to make films and they say

529
00:39:26,420 --> 00:39:30,740
Well, there should be one one thing I don't make films. So it's a little bit hard

530
00:39:30,740 --> 00:39:33,460
I'm reaching for this but like one one thing that makes

531
00:39:34,660 --> 00:39:36,660
dialogue

532
00:39:37,700 --> 00:39:39,700
Fulfilling is that

533
00:39:40,740 --> 00:39:43,300
Do when you know at some point you have

534
00:39:43,780 --> 00:39:49,380
Characters get emotional and they reveal things about their personality or whatever, right?

535
00:39:49,700 --> 00:39:52,660
So on the one hand, it's like okay, that's a very general statement

536
00:39:52,660 --> 00:39:55,700
You can take that in a very cynical way. That's like

537
00:39:57,220 --> 00:39:59,460
Okay, so to make my film interesting

538
00:39:59,460 --> 00:40:06,180
I'm gonna do these paste at certain points right throughout the running time and as long as I put them enough with enough density

539
00:40:06,980 --> 00:40:12,340
Then people will sit all the way through the movie, right? And that's kind of what valve was saying to some extent, right?

540
00:40:12,580 --> 00:40:13,860
right, but

541
00:40:13,860 --> 00:40:20,580
Okay. So firstly if I'm an artist I care about what exactly these characters are

542
00:40:20,580 --> 00:40:22,900
and yeah

543
00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:29,380
what what they're saying to each other and and how their personalities interact and

544
00:40:29,940 --> 00:40:33,940
That's what I really should be thinking about and if I really am thinking about that

545
00:40:34,660 --> 00:40:39,860
then maybe it's not a problem to come up with dialogue that creates these interesting moments because

546
00:40:40,900 --> 00:40:44,740
I'm working with the interesting subject matter at a more core level. Yeah, right

547
00:40:44,740 --> 00:40:48,100
And so then I maybe I don't need this tip about

548
00:40:48,100 --> 00:40:51,540
making sure interesting things are said and maybe

549
00:40:52,260 --> 00:40:58,580
Maybe if I follow the tip about making sure interesting things are said, I'm actually going to make kind of bad scripts

550
00:40:58,980 --> 00:41:02,580
Right. Whereas if I'm working with the interesting character material

551
00:41:03,780 --> 00:41:10,580
Maybe I just naturally get better scripts, right? You know, I I think this is kind of a bad analogy

552
00:41:10,580 --> 00:41:12,580
But it is no, it's not a bad analogy

553
00:41:12,580 --> 00:41:17,620
Because I could I could think I could probably clean it up a little bit. Okay, so in screenwriting

554
00:41:17,620 --> 00:41:23,940
We do have this exact thing, right? I mean we I don't write screenplays, but I mean they have it. I

555
00:41:24,900 --> 00:41:31,060
So in screenwriting you do have this and I think the problem is people mistake

556
00:41:32,900 --> 00:41:37,620
Observations about what tends to be true of well-written scripts

557
00:41:37,620 --> 00:41:45,700
Yeah for prescriptions on how to write good scripts. Yes, and I think the same could be said for game design

558
00:41:45,700 --> 00:41:49,540
This reminds me. You could probably go search this. Yeah, right

559
00:41:50,100 --> 00:41:55,060
There's some thing that I read I it kept coming up for a couple of years, right?

560
00:41:55,060 --> 00:42:01,300
There's like some guy who was like a music producer back in the days of music labels. Okay, and he was like

561
00:42:01,300 --> 00:42:07,060
All hit songs have one of the following things and it's like 12 different things

562
00:42:07,460 --> 00:42:08,500
like

563
00:42:08,500 --> 00:42:12,180
Repeating phrases. Yeah, or like yeah, you know

564
00:42:12,740 --> 00:42:15,540
Oh baby in it or something like that like

565
00:42:16,180 --> 00:42:21,060
So many things like that that like you read them and like yes, they're true of all these songs, but

566
00:42:21,620 --> 00:42:25,460
You just pattern matched on what you saw about songs and maybe you just

567
00:42:25,460 --> 00:42:31,860
Like that's not the same as these things make the song good. Well, I'm actually saying something a little bit subtler than that

568
00:42:31,860 --> 00:42:36,900
I'll be explicit. So Sid Field wrote a book called screenplay. It's one of the most famous books

569
00:42:37,460 --> 00:42:42,340
In screenwriting history in terms of like its effect on the industry

570
00:42:43,540 --> 00:42:49,540
And this book was the thing that basically codified the three acts of music

571
00:42:49,540 --> 00:42:56,820
um, and this book was the thing that basically codified the three act structure for movies

572
00:42:57,220 --> 00:43:00,420
Yeah, um as a thing everyone was supposed to do

573
00:43:01,460 --> 00:43:04,260
And if you look at what this says, it's like, okay

574
00:43:04,340 --> 00:43:09,940
You know act one is generally this act two is generally that act three is generally this they tend to break up at about

575
00:43:10,020 --> 00:43:12,740
This much time in the movie and all this sort of thing

576
00:43:13,540 --> 00:43:15,780
and what you I think would

577
00:43:15,780 --> 00:43:21,060
What you would take away from that in a positive sense is if you looked at that and said okay

578
00:43:21,220 --> 00:43:24,420
If I wrote a screenplay and it kind of doesn't fit that that well

579
00:43:24,740 --> 00:43:29,060
that might be a good indication that I need to work on it a little bit more because

580
00:43:29,540 --> 00:43:35,300
Maybe I haven't quite tuned it to fit in a movie format as well as it could or something like this. Yeah

581
00:43:35,620 --> 00:43:40,580
This the not very positive way to take that or the thing that would probably make things worse is

582
00:43:40,900 --> 00:43:42,900
When I sit down to make a screenplay

583
00:43:42,900 --> 00:43:46,180
I just literally type in those three parts

584
00:43:47,060 --> 00:43:50,580
Because i've been told that's what makes good screenplay and that's going to be horrible

585
00:43:50,580 --> 00:43:54,420
And that's going to be like that's going to be like most movies you see nowadays where it's just

586
00:43:55,220 --> 00:44:02,420
It just feels like someone turned to crank and like the climax happened here because that's when sid field said it would happen

587
00:44:02,420 --> 00:44:03,940
And that's it and

588
00:44:04,500 --> 00:44:09,300
So I do think there's there is a value to looking at structural things and saying

589
00:44:09,300 --> 00:44:14,340
Good X tend to look like this but that's more of just a litmus test

590
00:44:14,340 --> 00:44:20,660
You can employ to see where you're at currently. It's usually not a great idea to go

591
00:44:21,220 --> 00:44:24,340
I'm gonna make that intentionally because

592
00:44:25,140 --> 00:44:30,740
That means you're gonna everything's gonna feel forced. Yeah. Well also I think a role for that kind of thing

593
00:44:31,300 --> 00:44:34,500
Again across media and games as well. Yeah is

594
00:44:34,500 --> 00:44:38,180
To help people who are new if you sit down and you're like

595
00:44:38,660 --> 00:44:42,420
I want to write a screenplay. Oh, it's it's like a bunch of scenes. Yeah

596
00:44:43,620 --> 00:44:45,620
If you do that, it's like

597
00:44:46,100 --> 00:44:49,780
Pretty easy to come up with something that's a mess or not very good

598
00:44:49,780 --> 00:44:55,860
And then you don't necessarily have a conceptual framework yet for why yeah, why is it not good?

599
00:44:55,860 --> 00:44:58,900
And how do I make it better? Yeah, whereas something like this

600
00:44:58,900 --> 00:45:03,940
Um, it's like here's a structure of films that works. You could be like, oh, right

601
00:45:04,740 --> 00:45:11,060
Now that I think that kind of thing should be taught loosely as not here is

602
00:45:11,540 --> 00:45:14,740
What all things should converge upon which unfortunately

603
00:45:15,540 --> 00:45:20,980
This seems to be a failure mode of human beings is they tend they tend to do that with everything, right?

604
00:45:20,980 --> 00:45:24,500
Yes, but if you keep it loose like okay, generally it's like this

605
00:45:24,500 --> 00:45:26,500
But of course, they're not going to be able to do that

606
00:45:26,500 --> 00:45:29,940
Like okay, generally it's like this, but of course, there's a lot of freedom around it

607
00:45:29,940 --> 00:45:31,940
But your first goal is someone learning

608
00:45:32,580 --> 00:45:37,460
Should be to understand why this structure works what it does that avoids

609
00:45:38,020 --> 00:45:43,860
Problems and failures exactly and then you internalize that and now you can do it yourself

610
00:45:44,500 --> 00:45:49,700
Without needing that structure exactly right and usually they're not meant to be procrustian

611
00:45:49,780 --> 00:45:55,460
Like there are examples of great screenplays that don't really look quite like the three-act story structure

612
00:45:55,460 --> 00:45:58,100
So, you know that it's not a requirement

613
00:45:58,900 --> 00:46:05,060
It's just a thing that tends to be a structure that is consumable as a 90 minute to two hour thing

614
00:46:05,540 --> 00:46:10,740
That humans understand right but it's not there are other things you could put on the screen

615
00:46:11,140 --> 00:46:14,180
And we know that there are they're just more rare, right?

616
00:46:14,180 --> 00:46:20,260
So it's not even a thing that it has to have it's just you know, they're these things and the valve matrix

617
00:46:20,820 --> 00:46:24,980
Approach which I don't really know if it's valid. I think people had probably done that beforehand

618
00:46:24,980 --> 00:46:28,180
But that sort of idea feels similar to me

619
00:46:28,580 --> 00:46:33,460
This is something that a lot of good games probably do have you can see that there are a lot of

620
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:37,700
Interactions between mechanics and they're not all just like one-offs or something

621
00:46:38,340 --> 00:46:42,900
But it's not like just if your game does the matrix thing then it's good

622
00:46:42,980 --> 00:46:47,140
That's not what is actually going on there, right? Absolutely not. So um

623
00:46:49,220 --> 00:46:51,940
Yeah, so so when I do this kind of a thing, right

624
00:46:51,940 --> 00:46:55,140
And so the witness especially is about

625
00:46:55,940 --> 00:46:59,700
This kind of surprise that val would call an aha moment, right?

626
00:47:00,420 --> 00:47:03,700
But braid also is in a simpler way

627
00:47:04,740 --> 00:47:06,740
and when I do that

628
00:47:09,380 --> 00:47:14,260
Like the fact of the aha moment is fine, but what i'm thinking about is like

629
00:47:14,980 --> 00:47:16,980
What is the actual idea?

630
00:47:16,980 --> 00:47:22,500
And why is that actual idea interesting right and how clearly is the idea?

631
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,120
communicated in the level and

632
00:47:25,460 --> 00:47:30,820
Are there other things about the level that are getting in the way of communicating that idea and

633
00:47:31,460 --> 00:47:35,060
By communicating I don't even mean necessarily super clearly

634
00:47:37,140 --> 00:47:38,500
That can be a thing that happens

635
00:47:38,500 --> 00:47:43,620
But sometimes sometimes you're talking to a player's conscious mind and sometimes you're talking to their subconscious mind

636
00:47:43,620 --> 00:47:47,300
Which is actually very way more active than most of us think it is

637
00:47:48,180 --> 00:47:54,820
Um, yes, and is actually responsible for way more of what you do than you think like we have this model that like my language

638
00:47:55,380 --> 00:47:57,380
decision-making thing

639
00:47:57,380 --> 00:47:59,380
Part of my mind is me

640
00:48:00,180 --> 00:48:03,780
And then the rest of it is just like I don't know. It's some little thing in the background

641
00:48:04,100 --> 00:48:08,200
It's really the opposite right and if you ever doubt that then just have a conversation

642
00:48:08,980 --> 00:48:11,300
Where you're saying stuff like i'm saying right now

643
00:48:11,300 --> 00:48:15,300
Fluidly i'm saying a sentence and just ask yourself. Wait, where do these words?

644
00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:20,260
Come from right. Am I planning the words right if so

645
00:48:21,140 --> 00:48:24,820
Can I see the plan? Yeah, if it's a conscious plan

646
00:48:25,540 --> 00:48:27,540
Where is it? Yeah

647
00:48:27,780 --> 00:48:32,100
Right and so even just regular conversations that you're having all the time

648
00:48:33,300 --> 00:48:37,780
It's much more like they're being produced by something that you have no visibility into

649
00:48:37,780 --> 00:48:43,300
but you make a story that it's intentional and

650
00:48:44,420 --> 00:48:49,540
A matter of your moment to moment will to say these things, right? Right?

651
00:48:50,100 --> 00:48:54,260
And like your your conscious mental state is more about

652
00:48:55,540 --> 00:48:58,820
deciding or being cool with the fact that

653
00:48:59,700 --> 00:49:01,940
You are making these decisions

654
00:49:01,940 --> 00:49:08,260
Rather than them actually being decisions or what whatever well you can especially see this in like

655
00:49:09,300 --> 00:49:09,860
uh

656
00:49:09,860 --> 00:49:15,220
Action game things as well. Oh, yeah, it's like look if it really was all conscious play

657
00:49:15,540 --> 00:49:17,540
Then the instant you know

658
00:49:17,540 --> 00:49:24,500
How you should jump on top of this monster head and you just would but actually it's just it's so continuous and

659
00:49:25,220 --> 00:49:28,180
complex that there's you just it trains up and

660
00:49:28,180 --> 00:49:34,740
You know after an hour or two of play suddenly you're like perfect at it without even ever thinking you just you just do it

661
00:49:35,380 --> 00:49:41,940
And there's not really a lot of reason to believe that somehow only action things are getting trained up that way

662
00:49:42,420 --> 00:49:49,140
It would make a lot more sense if everything you do is sort of getting stuff pushed down into the subconscious area

663
00:49:49,460 --> 00:49:54,900
Where you're having all this head prediction and all these other things. It would be weird if suddenly

664
00:49:54,900 --> 00:49:59,700
You stopped having that capability just because it was phrased as a logic puzzle or something

665
00:49:59,700 --> 00:50:04,660
Yeah, it's really pretty much most things like one model you could have for it is that

666
00:50:06,820 --> 00:50:13,380
The conscious part of your mind that is actually supposedly making decisions in all of this

667
00:50:13,940 --> 00:50:19,380
Is a relatively low bandwidth piece that is pretty slow and

668
00:50:19,380 --> 00:50:22,820
Useful yes, but you

669
00:50:24,580 --> 00:50:28,660
Know can't really handle that much necessarily right and so

670
00:50:29,140 --> 00:50:33,940
The world is full of information and full of things happening. Yeah, and and

671
00:50:34,580 --> 00:50:36,580
Even your body is very complicated

672
00:50:37,220 --> 00:50:41,780
Like what percentage of what's going on in your body? Are you controlling consciously?

673
00:50:41,780 --> 00:50:43,780
Yeah, the answer is 0.0.0

674
00:50:43,780 --> 00:50:49,140
Yeah, I like the precision of that answer john. I don't think it was precise enough

675
00:50:49,140 --> 00:50:53,060
But you know, there are parts of your mind that are participating

676
00:50:53,940 --> 00:50:55,940
In that right, right?

677
00:50:57,860 --> 00:51:00,340
Anyway the point being as a designer

678
00:51:01,060 --> 00:51:07,540
You can play with these things and you can have an interesting time and you can try to do something either something

679
00:51:07,540 --> 00:51:14,340
purely artistic or something a little more pragmatic or some mix of the two and

680
00:51:13,860 --> 00:51:19,860
It's a very interesting rich space to talk about it and i've talked about it in speeches in various ways

681
00:51:20,420 --> 00:51:24,580
My viewpoint is just one viewpoint, right? And I think the problem is

682
00:51:25,300 --> 00:51:27,300
that we have a

683
00:51:27,860 --> 00:51:30,500
paucity of designers who are

684
00:51:30,500 --> 00:51:36,660
Even considering any of this. Yeah, right. And so if you want to hear about people

685
00:51:36,900 --> 00:51:39,540
Who are doing this kind of stuff?

686
00:51:40,820 --> 00:51:42,260
It's like

687
00:51:42,260 --> 00:51:47,860
It's a one-digit number of people. Yeah, and some of them don't do that much of it, right?

688
00:51:47,860 --> 00:51:53,220
And then even with someone like me, it's like i'm releasing a game every 27 years right now

689
00:51:53,220 --> 00:51:54,100
Perfectly

690
00:51:54,100 --> 00:51:56,740
And then you're like, oh my god, I'm going to do this

691
00:51:56,740 --> 00:52:01,380
It's like i'm releasing a game every 27 years right now, right? Right. So

692
00:52:02,180 --> 00:52:06,660
You know it is what it is to bring it slightly back to something you said before as well

693
00:52:07,620 --> 00:52:09,700
putting two and two together it seems to me that

694
00:52:10,500 --> 00:52:12,500
one of the things you said earlier about

695
00:52:12,900 --> 00:52:17,220
uh braid for example, or at least the decision about what to do there

696
00:52:18,260 --> 00:52:19,700
is

697
00:52:19,700 --> 00:52:25,940
You'd mention sort of you don't really want to compete with triple a because if you're competing with triple a

698
00:52:25,940 --> 00:52:28,740
You're going to lose you can't put together

699
00:52:29,460 --> 00:52:33,460
The kinds of spectacle that they can just on a purely budgetary basis

700
00:52:34,020 --> 00:52:38,260
You know, let's get more specific about this so that people know what we're talking about. Okay. Okay

701
00:52:38,900 --> 00:52:40,900
you've got a game and

702
00:52:41,060 --> 00:52:46,900
Let's say there's some set of things in the game now. Well braid there's keys gates monsters

703
00:52:47,780 --> 00:52:49,220
Yes

704
00:52:49,220 --> 00:52:52,580
And we'll talk for a minute about just like noun kind of things

705
00:52:52,580 --> 00:52:59,300
But if you really want to be comprehensive like there might be like verbs that you can do like jumping

706
00:52:59,460 --> 00:53:04,340
Right verb not really a noun right right, but a long one axis

707
00:53:05,060 --> 00:53:06,180
and

708
00:53:06,180 --> 00:53:08,180
Whether the verbs should be

709
00:53:09,060 --> 00:53:13,060
Listed in what we're about to say or not. It's sort of two different ways of doing it

710
00:53:13,140 --> 00:53:17,620
Okay, the easiest way to think about it is just all nouns, right? So like you might have

711
00:53:17,620 --> 00:53:22,580
Player is a noun right and monster is a noun. Yep, like goomba style monster

712
00:53:22,580 --> 00:53:27,140
Yeah, I don't want to use that word because it's copyright Nintendo. Okay, so i'm gonna say monster. Okay, um

713
00:53:28,660 --> 00:53:33,620
It's copyright italy, um goomba are yes the circle

714
00:53:34,580 --> 00:53:36,580
uh so

715
00:53:36,740 --> 00:53:42,900
This idea of good design quote unquote with very sarcastic quotes. Okay

716
00:53:43,700 --> 00:53:46,260
Not just regular sarcasm quotes. Okay, um

717
00:53:46,260 --> 00:53:48,820
Is that you just want to make sure?

718
00:53:49,860 --> 00:53:50,660
that

719
00:53:50,660 --> 00:53:53,860
Any two things interact with each other and so

720
00:53:54,900 --> 00:54:00,260
Does player interact with monster? Why yes both by jump, right?

721
00:54:00,260 --> 00:54:07,060
I could kill the monster or a monster overlaps with me and kills you and kills me right? And so if you make a list

722
00:54:07,620 --> 00:54:12,980
Of you know, people have probably seen this kind of matrix where you have, you know 17 nouns

723
00:54:12,980 --> 00:54:16,900
Yeah, you list them both across and down so that everything

724
00:54:17,540 --> 00:54:22,340
Is cross-referenced to itself along the diagonal like think of a spreadsheet if you don't know what a matrix is

725
00:54:22,340 --> 00:54:29,220
Yeah, a spreadsheet where you have the rows and columns you put all the nouns down the rows and all the nouns across the column

726
00:54:29,220 --> 00:54:33,460
So now you have in the same square in the same in the same order. You have a big square to fill in

727
00:54:34,020 --> 00:54:40,020
And the diagonal is just does this thing interact with itself which you you probably ignore although maybe not right?

728
00:54:40,020 --> 00:54:45,140
But so then under and in fact, everything's redundant because like the upper

729
00:54:46,180 --> 00:54:49,620
The upper triangle and the lower triangle are just the transpose of each other

730
00:54:49,620 --> 00:54:54,980
So I suppose it depends how you look at it if it's if it's a transitive action where it's like

731
00:54:55,300 --> 00:54:57,380
Player acts on Goomba is this

732
00:54:57,380 --> 00:54:58,340
Yeah

733
00:54:58,340 --> 00:55:03,700
In this case in this case, yes, so it's player acts on Goomba would be via jump

734
00:55:03,700 --> 00:55:07,940
So it may or may not be and you could put a check there and then Goomba acts on player

735
00:55:07,940 --> 00:55:12,100
Kills the player you could put a check there and the idea is you just want check marks

736
00:55:12,660 --> 00:55:15,860
check marks in all the boxes, right and

737
00:55:16,500 --> 00:55:21,060
then you have a design space that is not like dead and

738
00:55:21,860 --> 00:55:26,740
That's true like and in fact earlier games had a lot of dead design space

739
00:55:26,740 --> 00:55:30,500
So it is the kind of thing that you solve the problem is though

740
00:55:32,100 --> 00:55:36,340
It's like you're bringing this conceptual machinery to bear to solve this

741
00:55:36,340 --> 00:55:39,860
Kind of an easy problem that anyone who becomes a good designer

742
00:55:40,660 --> 00:55:47,540
Already intuited. I see, you know, like if you have things in a game that don't affect each other

743
00:55:48,580 --> 00:55:53,780
You end up in situations where it feels kind of bad or whatever and the rule that you can learn

744
00:55:53,780 --> 00:55:57,460
that's much simpler than draw this matrix and put all the things in it is just

745
00:55:59,140 --> 00:56:02,100
Your game is often richer if things affect each other

746
00:56:02,100 --> 00:56:11,220
And you know, it seems to me also that it it's maybe phrased a little bit poorly or framed a little bit poorly when presented in the matrix format because

747
00:56:11,700 --> 00:56:14,020
It seems to me. It's more interesting to just go look

748
00:56:15,060 --> 00:56:17,540
This is just a good spot check for you to find

749
00:56:18,260 --> 00:56:21,940
possibilities like if you're sitting around thinking about something and it's like

750
00:56:22,740 --> 00:56:29,380
You kind of a little stuck. Yeah, think about is there any are there any things that you haven't looked at for interactions?

751
00:56:29,380 --> 00:56:35,140
And look at possibilities there because the thing that doesn't really make sense to me about the matrix formulation

752
00:56:35,940 --> 00:56:36,740
is

753
00:56:36,740 --> 00:56:40,660
Games usually don't quite break down that way like in braid

754
00:56:41,300 --> 00:56:48,020
It would suck if monsters and keys didn't interact that is a worse game if you took that away

755
00:56:48,020 --> 00:56:53,700
Yeah, I don't think I know if anything important happens between the

756
00:56:53,700 --> 00:56:58,180
Like goomba going like to a cannon

757
00:56:58,660 --> 00:57:04,580
Or something like this like well things where i'm just like I don't know if that matters and it's like I wouldn't necessarily

758
00:57:04,580 --> 00:57:12,180
Think it was bad or good if it did it's just a possibility. There are lots of things that don't interact. So for example, uh bullet shot out of cannon

759
00:57:12,180 --> 00:57:17,140
Yeah, does not interact with key in any way. It does not interact with gate in any way

760
00:57:17,140 --> 00:57:20,420
Okay, it does not interact with cloud in any way. It doesn't interact with

761
00:57:20,420 --> 00:57:24,420
You know fire pit full of spikes. Yeah, it doesn't interact with

762
00:57:25,860 --> 00:57:30,900
Stuffed animal dinosaur at the end of the level. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it doesn't interact with book podium

763
00:57:30,900 --> 00:57:34,420
Right like and so as we said earlier

764
00:57:35,300 --> 00:57:41,060
This is deliberate for braid because actually for the design to be good with regard to the

765
00:57:41,620 --> 00:57:46,100
Perturbations of the rule set that happened with time. Yeah, I wanted a stable simple

766
00:57:46,100 --> 00:57:51,860
Rule set that was easy to understand and actually if I had done this square matrix thing

767
00:57:52,660 --> 00:57:53,860
before

768
00:57:53,860 --> 00:58:00,900
Adding the time rules. I probably would have ended up with a more complicated rule set. Yes more importantly

769
00:58:03,380 --> 00:58:08,100
One of the things that you get out of that kind of very dense full interaction matrix is

770
00:58:08,900 --> 00:58:11,860
Like more surprised like the player didn't necessarily

771
00:58:11,860 --> 00:58:16,260
Think that these two objects would interact and maybe it's not even likely. Yes

772
00:58:16,580 --> 00:58:21,460
But then once in a while they do interact right and something cool happens and you're like

773
00:58:21,460 --> 00:58:26,580
Oh, I should have expected that and it seems plausible and natural and whatever and that's enjoyable

774
00:58:27,540 --> 00:58:33,300
I didn't want that right. I want that to come from the time stuff, right? Not from like the baseline stuff

775
00:58:33,300 --> 00:58:36,020
And so if you go do that with the baseline stuff

776
00:58:36,660 --> 00:58:38,660
You're like doing two things at once

777
00:58:38,660 --> 00:58:45,460
So do that with the baseline stuff you're like doing too good of a job with the baseline stuff and you're you're crowding out

778
00:58:45,780 --> 00:58:49,780
it's like, you know if you're if you're mixing a song and

779
00:58:50,500 --> 00:58:54,660
Like you want the guitar solo to be the point

780
00:58:55,540 --> 00:58:56,660
but

781
00:58:56,660 --> 00:59:00,900
You're turning the drums way up. Yes, like whatever all the other things, right? Yes

782
00:59:01,700 --> 00:59:06,100
That is sort of a meta point, which is that this particular full

783
00:59:06,100 --> 00:59:08,100
interactivity space

784
00:59:08,760 --> 00:59:10,600
idea

785
00:59:10,600 --> 00:59:15,160
is an idea of how to make a game good and it is

786
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:21,640
contextual whether you want to do that or not if you have very sophisticated ideas about what you're doing and

787
00:59:22,520 --> 00:59:24,680
And you know what you're doing then

788
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:27,880
you

789
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:36,440
May well do the opposite in fact now, of course the general heuristic applies that you should know the rules to break the rules, right?

790
00:59:36,600 --> 00:59:41,080
It's a tool right? It's like it's something you can use to see what areas you haven't explored

791
00:59:41,080 --> 00:59:46,200
Which is useful as long as you don't feel compelled right to fill it all in

792
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:52,600
Because you thought that was the point or something. Absolutely, right? Um, the thing that you said about

793
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:55,560
the matrix thing being a tool

794
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:59,560
I think that's the correct way to use

795
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:05,800
Something like that is hey, I'm kind of stuck this. Yeah, this design isn't working for me. Yeah

796
01:00:06,600 --> 01:00:10,840
You know, sometimes our mind just isn't that good at sometimes

797
01:00:10,840 --> 01:00:15,080
It's very good at like honing in on like exactly what's wrong, but sometimes that's hard

798
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:20,760
Yes, and then you can use a tool like that to just put your attention on every

799
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:25,000
Because this space is very intangible the space of like what interacts with what yeah

800
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:29,000
It's not visible anywhere. And so you could look at this matrix and be like, okay

801
01:00:29,560 --> 01:00:33,000
Do I want the bullet shot out of the cannon to interact with?

802
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:40,280
The ring the time control ring. Yes. Do I want it to hit the time control ring and bump it sideways or something?

803
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:43,320
In some games you might in this game

804
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:49,080
I did not right because I didn't want the result of any puzzle to be have the bullet bump the time control ring

805
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:54,040
That would have made a worse game, right? But in a lot of games it makes a better game, right?

806
01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:59,320
So for example, spelunky, I think is one of the most successful examples of a game

807
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:04,600
That leverages this kind of multiple object interaction in a way that

808
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:09,880
Has a long lifetime through the game that keeps giving you surprises and that's delightful and funny

809
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:15,320
Even though it usually results in you losing the game, right? It like feels fair and it feels funny. This is actually

810
01:01:15,320 --> 01:01:21,480
In spelunky 2 I felt it was mistuned to where the game was just really sadistic and I didn't want to play it

811
01:01:21,480 --> 01:01:28,440
Okay, so something about the first one kind of hit a better it. Yeah, it it worked better for me personally

812
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,200
But yeah, so that kind of thing again interesting

813
01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:39,480
Conceptual tool like you should understand the idea of lining everything up in a matrix because that's a certain kind of illustration

814
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:42,600
Of what it means for things to interact with

815
01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:47,960
and if you understand that then you can use it as you're saying as a kind of

816
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:53,800
Analytical tool occasionally right but the failure mode is to think that

817
01:01:54,520 --> 01:02:00,920
The goal is to fill out the matrix with check marks and yeah, not only that that's necessary

818
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:06,520
But that it's sufficient. Yes, and yeah, almost everybody thinks that is sufficient. Right?

819
01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:13,160
And that's why we get so many bad puzzle games and I would also add a separate thing, which is that I

820
01:02:13,800 --> 01:02:15,800
It seems to me to be both

821
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:21,320
Both a bad idea to fill the whole thing out. Yeah, and also

822
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:27,480
insufficient to fill the whole thing out because when I think about games and try to map it onto that

823
01:02:28,120 --> 01:02:29,640
ontology, I

824
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:32,280
Don't know why you would a priori say

825
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:38,680
That it's a 2d matrix. What if I want three things to interact in some cases or four or what if I want

826
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:45,400
These two things to interact but I want there to be five different ways. They interact whereas this thing over here

827
01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:51,320
There's only one and so again it even if you took it as a prescriptive thing

828
01:02:51,320 --> 01:02:53,320
I'm gonna go fill out the whole matrix

829
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:57,480
As a naive game designer I walk into that and go I

830
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:02,920
Still don't really know exactly what that means because there's so many other things

831
01:03:02,920 --> 01:03:06,440
I've obviously seen in games that don't actually fit that model

832
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:12,920
Even if we talk about filling it all the way in but that's what I meant earlier or it's an example of what I meant by

833
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:16,120
seeing this kind of device and like

834
01:03:17,320 --> 01:03:19,320
Reading it in yeah

835
01:03:19,800 --> 01:03:23,960
Looking at how it fits in this framework with the other things that we've been talking about

836
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:28,440
Looking at how it fits in this framework with the other things that you know

837
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:34,600
Yeah, right. Yeah, and then does it make a consistent picture or to what degree does it make a consistent picture?

838
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:38,840
How seriously should I take it? Yeah, and a lot of people just don't really run that

839
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:41,480
Process right right. Yeah

840
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:44,360
And

841
01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:48,440
And and yeah, so let me ask you to elaborate on

842
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:55,400
On uh one other thing that got said in all of this just to maybe wrap up this section of what we've been talking about

843
01:03:55,720 --> 01:03:56,760
Yeah

844
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:58,760
You said that in this game

845
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:04,760
Uh, the jumps are much shorter than mario jumps. Yes, and that is not an accident apparently

846
01:04:04,840 --> 01:04:07,800
So why is this the case lots of reasons?

847
01:04:07,880 --> 01:04:12,040
So it's over determined as we say which means that even if you got rid of some of these

848
01:04:12,600 --> 01:04:14,600
It would still be correct for the rest of them

849
01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:20,440
Okay, so you really really in braid for many reasons want these jumps to be short. I will start listing reasons

850
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:22,520
Okay, and um

851
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:24,600
As part of the framing could you also say

852
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:31,000
How did this come about like like did you just throw in a value at first and then it got refined over time or like

853
01:04:31,160 --> 01:04:35,720
Is there any also like procedural? Yeah, I do not really remember. Well, so so to lay down the ideas

854
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:39,080
There's this initial fundamental question. Yeah

855
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:41,400
Which is

856
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:43,480
How does jumping even work mechanically? Yeah

857
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:44,520
Yeah

858
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:50,840
Do you press the button and just a jump goes right or do you hold the button and you like jump higher?

859
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:57,560
Right as long as you hold it, which is how super mario brothers works and right was considered to be

860
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:03,000
An innovation at that time that made it a lot more friendly and playable like if you go back and play like

861
01:05:03,640 --> 01:05:05,640
load runner or whatever

862
01:05:06,040 --> 01:05:08,760
Um, I think load runner had jumping but whatever, you know

863
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:14,040
All these old platformer games that had jumping even donkey kong. I think it just goes it goes a prescribed height. There's no

864
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:18,600
There is a little air control. I think is there air control in donkey kong

865
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:23,320
There might not be a little bit. Maybe but it might just be either you jump up or you jump sideways

866
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:28,200
I'm not sure but it only always went the same height but jumping was very limited for a long time and

867
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:30,360
this

868
01:05:30,360 --> 01:05:33,240
You know, so the super mario brothers jump is both

869
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:38,040
Much more controllable both in terms of like holding the button. Yeah

870
01:05:38,040 --> 01:05:41,080
To control height and air control. Yes, right

871
01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:45,720
And it's also just really big like it goes up a large portion of the screen

872
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:47,000
Yes, which is good

873
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:52,280
If you want to give players a lot of freedom about where to go or what to try all these are good things and

874
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:57,240
The more control you give them over the jump the more they have like

875
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:00,760
Recovery from slightly not doing the right thing

876
01:06:01,240 --> 01:06:05,400
Which means your levels can actually be harder and people can deal with them

877
01:06:05,400 --> 01:06:09,560
Like you can throw more at them and people can deal with them. So these are all good design decisions

878
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:16,280
In the context of that game right now again, the problem is people look at that and say oh therefore

879
01:06:16,280 --> 01:06:22,520
These are good design decisions period right right and that is not how it works. Right? Right? So, okay braid

880
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:24,920
different game, right

881
01:06:25,080 --> 01:06:31,160
Firstly is another aspect of what I already said, which is I wanted the base rule set to be simple

882
01:06:31,160 --> 01:06:37,720
Right. I didn't want you to be solving a lot of puzzles with the base rule set, right because then

883
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:45,880
We're taking up space that would be used by the time stuff or just muddying it like right like if okay

884
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:49,480
There are a lot of things in braid which are of the form

885
01:06:51,000 --> 01:06:53,560
Here's a gap that's too wide to jump right

886
01:06:54,280 --> 01:06:57,160
Clearly you need to get across it, right? How do you do that?

887
01:06:57,160 --> 01:07:02,840
Right, how do you do that right and that's already kind of an ambiguous situation. Like if you throw that at a player

888
01:07:03,800 --> 01:07:07,800
They're gonna try to jump across the gap a little bit even if it's way too far, right?

889
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:15,240
So that's problem number one, especially if they have rewind right now if you give them a tool whereby

890
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:20,920
By holding the button more or less they can jump further or less far

891
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:23,480
That makes all of those situations

892
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:27,480
Both harder for you to design because you have to make it so that they're really far jump

893
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:33,240
Obvious not only can't cross the gap, but obviously can't cross the gap right?

894
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:36,760
It has to be clear to people that they shouldn't be trying to do that right?

895
01:07:38,200 --> 01:07:42,600
And you're muddying the situation for the player because any situation they're in they're like

896
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:46,040
What are the tools that I have to solve this puzzle with?

897
01:07:47,320 --> 01:07:52,600
And one of the tools is always going to be the jump button and that's true in braid, too

898
01:07:52,600 --> 01:07:57,240
But but the jump button in braid does one very simple well-defined thing

899
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:03,960
And the less simple and the less well-defined it is just the less clear in any context

900
01:08:04,440 --> 01:08:09,960
That it is to the player whether it's part of the right answer. That's like how you figure out puzzles is

901
01:08:11,800 --> 01:08:16,520
You maybe put forth propositions in some way like maybe it's this

902
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:20,760
Right, maybe it's that and some of those you can discount right away like oh, yeah

903
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:26,200
You clearly know because I can't jump that far right right and the less clear you make that the harder you make

904
01:08:26,680 --> 01:08:31,400
The general puzzle solving process across the entire game right?

905
01:08:31,640 --> 01:08:35,880
So for example also there's a little bit of momentum on

906
01:08:36,440 --> 01:08:39,080
The braid character movement there's some speed up

907
01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:45,000
And there's a there's a much faster like slow down to stop because you don't want to feel like you're skidding on ice all the time

908
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:49,240
Right having no momentum feels really bad. It feels like a crappy indie game, right?

909
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:51,240
having a lot of momentum

910
01:08:51,960 --> 01:08:58,280
It starts to be a factor in puzzle solving like if I already start running before I throw the switch

911
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:01,160
I can get to the target place right sooner

912
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:04,680
Right, then if I throw the switch and then start running and that's the kind of thing

913
01:09:04,680 --> 01:09:08,200
I don't want that in the solution space of this game ever right right

914
01:09:08,200 --> 01:09:14,120
I don't want a puzzle where you solve it by already being running when you throw the switch because that's not about time

915
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:17,720
That's about like your running mechanics, right? Right and so

916
01:09:17,720 --> 01:09:20,440
All of the design of the player mechanics

917
01:09:23,640 --> 01:09:26,360
Was about this right it was about

918
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:30,680
Pre-curating it before I even know what all the puzzles are going to be exactly

919
01:09:30,680 --> 01:09:35,960
It's about pre-curating it to be simple and not to cause problems. Okay, that's number one, right?

920
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:38,040
reason number two

921
01:09:38,040 --> 01:09:42,360
And so basically all of that stuff you just said it's very clear. It's like, okay

922
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:49,400
In braid the goal is not really to replicate any of the gameplay from super mario brothers super mario brothers

923
01:09:49,960 --> 01:09:55,880
Is about doing these action puzzle sequences where giving players really interesting controls

924
01:09:56,600 --> 01:10:04,120
Is part of creating the richness of that space. Yes in braid the idea is you're supposed to be logically kind of like figuring out

925
01:10:04,600 --> 01:10:09,560
What is the correct sequence of events here not sitting around spending a lot of time figuring out?

926
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:14,760
Not sitting around spending a lot of time figuring out just how to do the air control to like

927
01:10:15,240 --> 01:10:17,240
Go up through the thing or something like that

928
01:10:17,560 --> 01:10:18,680
so

929
01:10:18,680 --> 01:10:20,680
This is these design decisions are basically

930
01:10:21,400 --> 01:10:26,840
Have to be different in braid because the type of thing the player is supposed to be doing is just drastically different

931
01:10:27,560 --> 01:10:32,840
Yeah, and like the just the the conceptual focus of the game is in a totally different place

932
01:10:32,840 --> 01:10:39,240
Right and you need as a designer to be maintaining that at all times. Okay, so number two, okay number two

933
01:10:39,800 --> 01:10:43,640
Decided early on braids a puzzle game. It's not an action game as you just said

934
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:48,200
What are puzzles like in this universe? Well, they're pretty much

935
01:10:49,000 --> 01:10:51,000
It's hard to get somewhere

936
01:10:51,000 --> 01:10:54,600
and so the goal is get to that place and the way we indicate that place is by

937
01:10:55,160 --> 01:11:01,720
Putting a collectible there or a key or something right and that's how you know that you successfully got to the place

938
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:03,240
All right

939
01:11:03,240 --> 01:11:09,960
Now I think I already to some degree although this became further refined as I kept working on the game

940
01:11:10,280 --> 01:11:12,280
but to some degree I knew

941
01:11:13,080 --> 01:11:16,920
I wanted puzzles that are relatively simple in the sense that

942
01:11:17,480 --> 01:11:20,760
They're not like all a set of 17 steps

943
01:11:20,920 --> 01:11:25,880
And that's what makes them hard is to figure out the order and the timing for the 17 steps because again

944
01:11:26,440 --> 01:11:30,120
That's probably not about cool time manipulation stuff exactly

945
01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:32,840
Okay, like like any game

946
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:35,720
Can make you do 17 things

947
01:11:36,840 --> 01:11:40,440
In order to solve a puzzle and once you've solved a couple of those

948
01:11:41,160 --> 01:11:45,800
If it's only about figuring out the order a number of things to do

949
01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:51,160
That just gets boring. Those situations are isomorphic to each other very quickly, right?

950
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:55,960
So I had some sense that it's like I want to focus on the time stuff. And so

951
01:11:56,520 --> 01:11:58,760
I don't want the puzzles to be massively

952
01:11:58,760 --> 01:11:59,800
complicated

953
01:11:59,800 --> 01:12:01,800
I want them to be

954
01:12:01,960 --> 01:12:03,960
As simple as I can make them

955
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:06,760
While

956
01:12:06,760 --> 01:12:11,880
Highlighting the cool thing and again that became more refined during development

957
01:12:11,880 --> 01:12:14,360
But I believe I had that idea in the beginning

958
01:12:15,240 --> 01:12:17,240
And so once you have that idea

959
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:20,040
You're like, okay

960
01:12:20,040 --> 01:12:24,360
Well, also what is it about puzzles often? They're hard, right?

961
01:12:25,400 --> 01:12:27,400
What makes a puzzle hard

962
01:12:27,400 --> 01:12:29,400
There's kind of two classes of things

963
01:12:29,400 --> 01:12:34,360
There are things that are on focus to what you're trying to achieve and there are things that are off focus, right?

964
01:12:34,680 --> 01:12:38,120
Things that are on focus that make a puzzle hard is like well

965
01:12:38,440 --> 01:12:41,400
I'm not used to thinking about time behaving in this way

966
01:12:41,400 --> 01:12:44,600
And there are some consequences of it that I haven't visualized yet, right?

967
01:12:44,600 --> 01:12:50,440
So so I i'm having a hard time solving the puzzle because I don't realize that there's some effect that I could bring to bear

968
01:12:50,440 --> 01:12:51,960
Right

969
01:12:51,960 --> 01:12:56,120
And as a designer you have control over like how much you hint that or

970
01:12:56,120 --> 01:13:01,960
Whatever, right, right, but when people realize that it's on topic. It's like oh, that's what the game's about

971
01:13:02,440 --> 01:13:06,840
Now I understand more about the time thing, right? Right something that's off topic

972
01:13:07,560 --> 01:13:08,680
is

973
01:13:08,680 --> 01:13:12,520
Well, this puzzle is hard because i'm trying to think about it and again

974
01:13:12,520 --> 01:13:18,520
There's a lot of steps and right keeping that in my mind like a chess master is very hard for me because i'm not a chess master

975
01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:22,360
Right, right. Another one that I was thinking about very heavily early is

976
01:13:22,360 --> 01:13:25,400
This is all about jumping. I promise. Um

977
01:13:26,200 --> 01:13:28,200
I can't see the whole puzzle

978
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:34,280
Right. There's like some stuff off the screen to the left and to the right and up right

979
01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:38,120
And i'm kind of trying to remember all these elements, right?

980
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:43,320
That makes a puzzle much harder than I can just look at the screen and see all the things right

981
01:13:43,320 --> 01:13:45,880
And so early on I had this idea that

982
01:13:46,520 --> 01:13:49,160
I wanted a puzzle to fit on a screen

983
01:13:49,160 --> 01:13:55,000
Because that removes a lot of this incidental difficulty, right? Right, right, right. So that leads to

984
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:57,800
compact designs

985
01:13:57,800 --> 01:14:03,080
That are simpler in terms of number of walls and number of rooms and whatever right but also

986
01:14:03,720 --> 01:14:06,200
We've put we've now stated two constraints

987
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:09,080
we've said

988
01:14:09,480 --> 01:14:12,280
Puzzles are about it being difficult

989
01:14:13,320 --> 01:14:15,640
To get to a particular place

990
01:14:15,640 --> 01:14:18,840
Which often you know reading between the lines

991
01:14:18,840 --> 01:14:24,360
This is a game with gravity and you jump and platforms. Right. So right usually up is hard

992
01:14:24,760 --> 01:14:30,440
Right, right. Yes, or across to someplace that is separated by something you would fall down through

993
01:14:30,440 --> 01:14:31,960
Right, okay

994
01:14:31,960 --> 01:14:33,400
and

995
01:14:33,400 --> 01:14:35,400
We want puzzles to fit on one screen

996
01:14:36,280 --> 01:14:39,320
Okay, so the height that you jump right

997
01:14:39,960 --> 01:14:42,360
Determines how interesting the puzzle is

998
01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:45,880
Right, and it needs to be short enough that you can fit

999
01:14:46,520 --> 01:14:52,440
A puzzle of the interest level that you want of the maximum interest level that you write on one screen

1000
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:56,200
Right if that's not true if you jump half the screen

1001
01:14:56,760 --> 01:14:59,720
Then a puzzle could only ever be like two jumps max

1002
01:15:00,520 --> 01:15:05,800
Yeah, you could almost see this in something like going from donkey kong

1003
01:15:05,800 --> 01:15:09,320
I never thought of it this way, but in going from donkey kong to

1004
01:15:09,320 --> 01:15:15,960
Super mario brothers if you have the super mario brothers jump in donkey kong the entire game would take two jumps

1005
01:15:15,960 --> 01:15:19,240
You just jump to the mid level then you jump right to the top, right?

1006
01:15:19,240 --> 01:15:24,840
So you can immediately see like yeah the the complexity that you want on one screen

1007
01:15:25,640 --> 01:15:26,280
Yeah

1008
01:15:26,280 --> 01:15:31,080
Tells you exactly how high the jump can be because if it's higher than that you can't make the game

1009
01:15:31,080 --> 01:15:33,560
Yeah, like literally. Yeah now, okay

1010
01:15:33,560 --> 01:15:37,160
So everything that I just said here is that you can't make the game

1011
01:15:37,160 --> 01:15:42,760
So everything that I just said here is very particular to braid specifically

1012
01:15:43,320 --> 01:15:51,400
But the meta skill that I would encourage people to develop is yes a priori while figuring out what your game is to be able to see

1013
01:15:52,200 --> 01:15:54,200
enough of this kind of constraint

1014
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:57,640
for your domain that you're working in that

1015
01:15:58,440 --> 01:16:04,680
You then can do something much closer to the right thing out of the gate than you would otherwise, right?

1016
01:16:04,680 --> 01:16:07,560
Yeah, there is this old idea in games

1017
01:16:09,640 --> 01:16:13,560
And it seemed true at the time when people were saying this the idea was

1018
01:16:14,600 --> 01:16:20,200
Oh, you know the you can design a game, but the first time a player actually meets your game

1019
01:16:20,680 --> 01:16:25,960
They're just gonna the play test result is going to be totally different than anything you ever expected

1020
01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:30,760
And that's why you have to play test the iterate and you can't really a priori design and like

1021
01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:36,120
That's a little bit true, but it's actually not that true. Like if you're a good designer, you actually should kind of know

1022
01:16:36,680 --> 01:16:40,120
What's gonna happen? I in fact remember you saying this

1023
01:16:40,600 --> 01:16:42,600
Uh, you did a podcast

1024
01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:47,320
on for the notion podcast, okay, yeah taking a app or something

1025
01:16:48,120 --> 01:16:53,640
And you literally said something to the to the effect. I thought this was really interesting. So I wrote it down you said

1026
01:16:54,120 --> 01:16:59,160
I usually can actually at this point now with this amount of experience. I have

1027
01:16:59,160 --> 01:17:05,080
I usually can get pretty close early on when I first started doing games, which was in the 90s

1028
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:08,360
I had no ability to do that. My brain didn't work that way

1029
01:17:08,360 --> 01:17:12,760
So somehow I absorbed it by doing a bunch of game stuff you were talking

1030
01:17:13,480 --> 01:17:19,000
Whenever I hear quotes from myself, I get annoyed by how unspecific the sentences are that i'm saying

1031
01:17:19,000 --> 01:17:21,720
It sounds like a bunch of vague. That's what happens when people talk

1032
01:17:21,720 --> 01:17:24,520
I know right as opposed to write and like I

1033
01:17:25,160 --> 01:17:27,560
So to me I took that as like oh, okay

1034
01:17:27,560 --> 01:17:29,560
John perceived

1035
01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:34,760
What you just said about playtesting you perceive that to sort of be the case early

1036
01:17:35,160 --> 01:17:40,840
But at some point you crossed over into like having done so much thinking about it that now

1037
01:17:40,840 --> 01:17:43,560
It's just not that surprising what players do anymore

1038
01:17:43,800 --> 01:17:46,360
Is that a correct reading of that like over time?

1039
01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:51,240
You just feel like you guess better about what a player will do with two important caveats

1040
01:17:51,240 --> 01:17:56,040
Okay, right. One is i'm not really talking about people who have never seen a video game before

1041
01:17:56,040 --> 01:17:59,560
And who pick up the gamepad and say hello computer into it or whatever

1042
01:17:59,560 --> 01:18:01,560
Right hello

1043
01:18:01,560 --> 01:18:03,560
Hello computer

1044
01:18:03,560 --> 01:18:05,560
That's a very generational reference

1045
01:18:05,560 --> 01:18:08,840
If you're talking into the mouse, this doesn't count for everybody else

1046
01:18:08,840 --> 01:18:13,080
And then the second one is you are assuming a cooperative player who wants to

1047
01:18:13,560 --> 01:18:15,560
Work with you to have a good time

1048
01:18:15,560 --> 01:18:19,320
Right because of course you can have an antagonistic player. That's a different thing. Yeah

1049
01:18:19,960 --> 01:18:21,400
um, but

1050
01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:23,160
Yeah, like

1051
01:18:23,160 --> 01:18:25,160
it's

1052
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:26,360
It's

1053
01:18:26,360 --> 01:18:31,400
Definitely it gets harder the more unconventional it is what you're doing and the less like

1054
01:18:31,960 --> 01:18:36,360
the more experimental relative to previous games is what you're doing but

1055
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:39,320
Generally speaking

1056
01:18:39,320 --> 01:18:43,560
It is a skill that can be built and you are not

1057
01:18:45,560 --> 01:18:51,240
Uh, you do not have to be going in blind right you can make these kind of choices

1058
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:53,240
And use them

1059
01:18:55,480 --> 01:18:58,760
To generate a good experience that mostly

1060
01:18:59,560 --> 01:19:01,560
works the way you thought like the

1061
01:19:02,120 --> 01:19:05,720
The example that I was probably talking about in that podcast

1062
01:19:07,240 --> 01:19:12,680
That was a watershed moment for me in the sense that I designed a whole thing which was the

1063
01:19:14,200 --> 01:19:19,160
The introductory area of the witness which is a closed off area where inside

1064
01:19:19,160 --> 01:19:23,880
You're sort of learning how the game works and then we let you out into an open world after that, right?

1065
01:19:23,880 --> 01:19:27,480
And so it's like a smaller open world, but very small, right?

1066
01:19:27,480 --> 01:19:34,040
And I just designed that like in a week and programmed it and all it doesn't take that long to design but like

1067
01:19:34,680 --> 01:19:38,200
Programming it iterating it whatever without any kind of play testing

1068
01:19:38,200 --> 01:19:43,320
I was just like I think someone's gonna come over here and they're gonna see this and they're gonna wonder about that. Yeah

1069
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:47,480
And then I you know play tested it quote unquote

1070
01:19:47,480 --> 01:19:52,040
Play tested it quote unquote at packs. I remember I just dropped the game down

1071
01:19:52,680 --> 01:19:56,680
Completely unsupervised like the the station was like unmanned

1072
01:19:56,920 --> 01:20:03,720
Apparently like I was hanging out in the shadows watching. Yes, it was in a booth shared with chris hecker

1073
01:20:04,600 --> 01:20:06,600
and andy

1074
01:20:06,760 --> 01:20:11,240
Andy shots this game, which I think was monaco at that time, but I think it was

1075
01:20:11,960 --> 01:20:13,960
I feel like yeah, okay

1076
01:20:13,960 --> 01:20:20,680
And they were each trying to draw big crowds. So it was kind of like crowding out the little witness station that had nobody manning it

1077
01:20:20,680 --> 01:20:27,640
Because because to defend to create space I would have had to be there right and I didn't I wanted like this mysterious thing

1078
01:20:27,640 --> 01:20:32,280
So lesson was don't ever do that in a shared booth if you want to create that effect

1079
01:20:32,760 --> 01:20:39,400
Um, but nevertheless during during places when it wasn't during times when it wasn't totally crowded out people came up and played the game

1080
01:20:39,720 --> 01:20:41,720
It would sort of auto it had a timer

1081
01:20:41,720 --> 01:20:47,320
Where if it was idle for you know a minute or something a minute it would put up a warning

1082
01:20:47,640 --> 01:20:49,640
And then after another minute it would restart

1083
01:20:49,640 --> 01:20:55,000
Yeah, right if there was no further input and so it just ran itself and it would restart from the beginning

1084
01:20:55,400 --> 01:21:02,040
In the hallway just it's basically like the game is right now. It's a little bit less polished. Yeah

1085
01:21:02,680 --> 01:21:06,920
or you walk down a hallway you do a panel you're in this area and

1086
01:21:06,920 --> 01:21:10,440
Basically everybody who played it played it

1087
01:21:11,320 --> 01:21:15,320
Like I thought it would go. Yeah. Yeah and got out into the game and then

1088
01:21:16,040 --> 01:21:18,040
Sort of knew what they were doing in the game and

1089
01:21:18,680 --> 01:21:24,840
To be further explicit. There are no words anywhere in this opening sequence. It's like just

1090
01:21:26,600 --> 01:21:33,480
Visual things that that you notice and then go interact with right and um

1091
01:21:33,480 --> 01:21:37,640
That that was great. Like I didn't exactly know that that would work if it had failed

1092
01:21:37,640 --> 01:21:42,440
It would have been a relatively low risk thing. Right? Yeah, I could have always come up and helped people or something

1093
01:21:42,440 --> 01:21:44,440
Right. Right. Yeah, but it just worked

1094
01:21:45,080 --> 01:21:49,240
And that that was an existence proof for me that like okay

1095
01:21:49,640 --> 01:21:56,280
This is not only are we doing really weird unusual game design here that people need to learn stuff

1096
01:21:56,280 --> 01:21:59,240
But that amount of learning can happen rapidly

1097
01:22:00,280 --> 01:22:02,280
consistently and pretty much

1098
01:22:02,280 --> 01:22:06,440
consistently and predictably yes and predictably and without

1099
01:22:07,880 --> 01:22:09,880
Words, right

1100
01:22:09,960 --> 01:22:14,840
I wish that I could make that like that's a lesson that was very very clear for me

1101
01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:20,620
That I wish I could communicate to other designers convincingly, but if you didn't like have that experience

1102
01:22:22,120 --> 01:22:28,600
It's like you hear someone tell you that and you're like, okay, whatever it doesn't land the same way right but to bring it back to braid

1103
01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:31,800
um

1104
01:22:31,800 --> 01:22:36,440
I was sort of just iterating on stuff that I had seen initially in braid, right?

1105
01:22:36,520 --> 01:22:43,080
Like there's something about a platformer level that's very simple and easy to read right features tend to be meaningful

1106
01:22:43,240 --> 01:22:46,200
Yeah, and yeah like by the end of braid

1107
01:22:47,000 --> 01:22:49,420
I was just very interesting in this communication

1108
01:22:51,220 --> 01:22:57,560
Property or this this aspect of communication that i'd seen in the levels and I wanted to do a whole game about that

1109
01:22:57,560 --> 01:23:04,440
And that's where that came from. So are we done with the list of reasons that the braid jump has to be shorter or not?

1110
01:23:05,560 --> 01:23:11,240
Because you listed sort of three basically, but I don't know if there was a four those are the main

1111
01:23:11,960 --> 01:23:13,720
ones

1112
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:17,960
It's mostly the conjunction the fact that there's an and there between

1113
01:23:19,480 --> 01:23:21,480
Puzzles are about getting places

1114
01:23:22,120 --> 01:23:25,000
And you need to see the whole puzzle. That's the biggest one. That's the biggest one

1115
01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:32,200
There's probably a bunch of other smaller things that contribute as well, right even just dexterity in some sense like

1116
01:23:33,000 --> 01:23:35,000
The holding down the mario button thing

1117
01:23:35,720 --> 01:23:37,720
Is in that game?

1118
01:23:38,760 --> 01:23:43,800
Unless you're playing it at a super high level, which of course you can go on the internet and watch videos of people doing this

1119
01:23:43,960 --> 01:23:45,960
Yes in that game. It actually

1120
01:23:46,120 --> 01:23:47,800
helps people

1121
01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:51,480
with a variety of dexterity levels relative to the game because again

1122
01:23:51,480 --> 01:23:55,320
You just have more malleability in what you're doing and how you're responding to situations

1123
01:23:56,360 --> 01:23:58,360
But in a puzzle game

1124
01:23:58,760 --> 01:24:05,640
It's like it only adds dexterity in some sense because it's like oh I need to jump this high to get to the puzzle

1125
01:24:05,960 --> 01:24:08,360
So I have to so I have to hold it at least

1126
01:24:09,400 --> 01:24:12,040
This long and maybe if I don't totally do that

1127
01:24:13,160 --> 01:24:16,920
Right. Don't I can't solve the puzzle but I should be able to by just holding down the button, right?

1128
01:24:16,920 --> 01:24:22,600
It's like that's a different way to get at what I was saying before but it really is a different phenomenon

1129
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:29,320
like what I was saying before was that the puzzle is not about holding down the button and now what i'm saying is

1130
01:24:30,120 --> 01:24:32,120
holding down the button

1131
01:24:32,600 --> 01:24:38,680
Should not be a way to fail the puzzle, right? Right. Like I I don't so

1132
01:24:39,400 --> 01:24:43,960
One other aspect that I focused on early on in terms of what the game is about that

1133
01:24:43,960 --> 01:24:49,480
I was not completely successful with but for the time I was okay was the following thing

1134
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:53,400
Not only is this a puzzle game not an action game, but what does that mean?

1135
01:24:54,280 --> 01:25:00,840
Let's come up with a strong statement about what that means because the the stronger and clearer the statement the more it can guide

1136
01:25:01,400 --> 01:25:03,400
design decisions whereas

1137
01:25:03,960 --> 01:25:05,960
The statement this is a puzzle game

1138
01:25:07,080 --> 01:25:10,120
Not an action game is not necessarily again

1139
01:25:10,980 --> 01:25:13,160
Actionable in the sense that yeah

1140
01:25:13,160 --> 01:25:19,400
There still needs to be some more steps between that and telling you the answer to decisions, right? Right?

1141
01:25:20,520 --> 01:25:23,400
So here's a stronger version of that statement

1142
01:25:25,080 --> 01:25:30,520
Which I very explicitly formulated to myself, okay because it is a puzzle game not an action game

1143
01:25:33,160 --> 01:25:36,360
Once you figure out the answer to a puzzle

1144
01:25:37,240 --> 01:25:38,600
you should

1145
01:25:38,600 --> 01:25:43,400
Then just be able to solve the puzzle there should not be an action element

1146
01:25:44,040 --> 01:25:48,200
That is hard that you also need to be able to do to solve the puzzle

1147
01:25:48,280 --> 01:25:54,280
I see and then so that's a statement about solutions and then you can walk that one step to

1148
01:25:56,280 --> 01:25:58,280
What do you do as a player

1149
01:25:58,360 --> 01:26:05,800
Who doesn't know the solution you attempt solutions, right? Yeah, if you have a concrete idea about what solution you are attempting

1150
01:26:05,800 --> 01:26:09,720
It should not be dexterity based to the greatest extent possible

1151
01:26:09,720 --> 01:26:13,080
It should simply be that you try the thing now

1152
01:26:13,640 --> 01:26:18,600
I think in the game as it stands today. This was not completely successful just because

1153
01:26:19,400 --> 01:26:22,920
You watch people who are new at the game. They're trying to jump on a monster's head

1154
01:26:22,920 --> 01:26:25,800
They miss or whatever like all these things happen

1155
01:26:25,800 --> 01:26:31,400
Well, we also know for a fact because it has now been documented indelibly that brian

1156
01:26:31,400 --> 01:26:39,160
Brian mariani could not finish braid despite being one of the people who has played more hours of the witness than anyone

1157
01:26:39,640 --> 01:26:44,360
On planet earth because he could not successfully jump on one of the bounce

1158
01:26:45,720 --> 01:26:52,920
Not goombas because that's trademarked monsters. Yes. Now he may just be much less of an action gamer than most people as well

1159
01:26:54,200 --> 01:26:59,160
also, though standards are really different today than even they were back then like

1160
01:26:59,160 --> 01:27:02,680
In the 2000s they were hard platformers

1161
01:27:03,240 --> 01:27:05,480
And if you go back to the 80s or the 90s

1162
01:27:05,800 --> 01:27:11,480
Platformers were really hard and tweaky because that was just the only way to get gameplay out of them really

1163
01:27:12,040 --> 01:27:16,280
Like also there's probably an expectation in 2008

1164
01:27:17,080 --> 01:27:20,200
Because there hasn't been the iphone

1165
01:27:20,920 --> 01:27:21,880
gaming

1166
01:27:21,880 --> 01:27:24,280
scene and all these other things that

1167
01:27:24,840 --> 01:27:27,320
anyone who would find a

1168
01:27:27,320 --> 01:27:31,480
Sure to be esoteric game like braid, which is probably what you're thinking when it comes out

1169
01:27:31,480 --> 01:27:34,360
Yeah, will be a relatively accomplished gamer

1170
01:27:34,360 --> 01:27:36,360
Yeah turned out not to be the case

1171
01:27:36,360 --> 01:27:38,920
But at the time no one would have thought like oh

1172
01:27:39,240 --> 01:27:44,280
All of these potentially casual gamers might check this out or that that isn't what anyone would have been thinking

1173
01:27:44,280 --> 01:27:49,480
Yeah, and you know, so what I would just say is this decision was successful and I did

1174
01:27:51,080 --> 01:27:54,440
This statement about there shouldn't be an action barrier to solving things

1175
01:27:54,440 --> 01:27:58,440
was very clearly successfully executed

1176
01:27:59,000 --> 01:28:04,040
relative to the platformers of 2000 to 2005 which were like

1177
01:28:04,760 --> 01:28:08,200
Very hard made for gamers and whatever right?

1178
01:28:09,640 --> 01:28:13,400
And it's just you know in sometimes these things are just hard, right?

1179
01:28:13,400 --> 01:28:18,680
Yes. Now there are also other design parameters to this right? So for example

1180
01:28:19,560 --> 01:28:21,560
How could you make it easier?

1181
01:28:21,560 --> 01:28:26,600
to jump on monsters well, maybe if I slow them down

1182
01:28:27,560 --> 01:28:31,480
So that they're it's more like they're in one spot and they move slowly right?

1183
01:28:31,480 --> 01:28:35,320
It's easier to target because you're sort of more targeting a space on the ground

1184
01:28:35,320 --> 01:28:40,440
Right than where they are the problem is that has a pacing effect across the entire game

1185
01:28:40,440 --> 01:28:46,040
Now anytime anybody's solving a puzzle it takes a lot longer is slower and all this stuff, right?

1186
01:28:46,040 --> 01:28:49,480
Yes, and then like okay. I have a certain amount of time to do this

1187
01:28:49,480 --> 01:28:53,160
and then like okay. I have a certain amount of space for rewind buffers

1188
01:28:53,960 --> 01:28:57,160
If that's like 20 minutes on the most complicated level

1189
01:28:57,960 --> 01:29:02,760
If it takes three times as long for the monster to go that's effectively six minutes

1190
01:29:03,480 --> 01:29:06,840
Right, it starts getting scary like these kind of things happen. So

1191
01:29:08,360 --> 01:29:10,680
I think I did a good job given

1192
01:29:12,200 --> 01:29:17,320
The context I was working in yeah, but but I don't think you can objectively say that there's no

1193
01:29:17,320 --> 01:29:22,120
Right action skill required to solve puzzles because there definitely is it's just not that much

1194
01:29:22,440 --> 01:29:28,680
Compared to what it would have been in another game or what it would have been if I decided that this was an action game right?

1195
01:29:28,680 --> 01:29:30,680
Right, right. Yeah

1196
01:29:37,400 --> 01:29:40,280
In this episode Casey Muratori asked the questions

1197
01:29:40,840 --> 01:29:43,160
Jonathan Blow answered the questions

1198
01:29:43,160 --> 01:29:49,500
Jason Brisson produced and Will Torbett edited. Thanks very much and we'll see you next time