What makes MW2‘s multiplayer experience so rewarding? The answer is of course that the developers Infinity Ward have designed the game meticulously, in particular the maps on which the action takes place. By deconstructing these maps, we can attempt to understand the underlying gameplay design principles.

The most obvious principle is that Infinity Ward have ensured there is no dominant position on any map. Advantageous positions of course make it easier for you to kill the enemy, and harder for them to kill you. Features of advantageous positions include:

• Elevation. This reduces your exposure, improves visibility and offers a better angle for headshots on the enemy
• Cover. A solid object to hide behind means you can pop up into firing position and quickly drop into safety to reload.
• Limited access. The fewer routes the enemy can approach from, the easier to spot attackers and quickly take aim.

and so on. To make the game fair and therefore enjoyable, game designers must use these features with caution. Omitting them would simply create extremely dull environments, so MW2′s maps make subtle use of these advantageous features, coupling strong positions with serious weaknesses.

This ledge on the Afghan map gives clear long-range lines of sight but is exceptionally vulnerable from the rear. At the far end of the map are reinforced bunkers, from which the screenshot below is taken. Cover and vantage are both good, and the low light leaves the shooter cloaked in darkness, making them hard to spot at distance.

However, since these bunkers are potentially very strong points, the map designer clusters two together, so that each poses a tactical threat to the other. To make these appealing spots even riskier, explosive barrels are placed in a particularly juicy spot, further deterring a player from camping there at least until the barrels have been destroyed.

For the few spots that offer clear tactical advantage without high vulnerability, Infinity Ward has wisely made reaching them a risky proposition. The Highrise map features a second-floor window (below) with excellent angles, low light and few weaknesses; however, it can only be reached by jumping around on dangerously high and sorely exposed crane beams. I’ve had many a profitable game repeatedly picking off beam-runners too stubborn to accept that I wasn’t going to let them reach their beloved camping spot.

Highrise also boasts a very unorthodox but effective position (‘A’ below), which allows a player to surprise anyone emerging from the southern building. Position A is suspended off the building on a platform and therefore hard to notice if you’re focusing on the more obvious threats near the helipad ahead. However, this excellent spot is awkward to reach and treacherous to leave. Your only exit route is to laboriously climb up over the side, leaving the player vulnerable for a few seconds – as such, once your cover is blown at A, you’re pretty much screwed.

By balancing the maps’ positions of strength, MW2 keeps players continually on the move as hiding spots become discovered and teams move to flank their opponents if repelled in a frontal attack. It doesn’t take an expert to see that movement makes for a more exciting game than static trench warfare; indeed, movement impetus and variable pacing is a well-known tactic of game design. By running around, players cover more ground and experience greater ranges of contact, from long range to hand-to-hand. In short, players are pushed into experiencing of much as the game as possible. Map scale also follows this principle. Although the maps are generally larger than MW2′s predecessors there is still ample variety, with both compact and sprawling maps encouraging bloody scrambles, patient stealth and all gameplay tactics in between.

Through prolonged play it becomes apparent that Infinity Ward also designed the multiplayer maps not to punish players for their choice of weapon and style of play.

As we’ve seen earlier, Afghan has some excellent sniping spots; but for those more inclined for close quarters combat, the map also features twisty cave areas and this tight rocky outcrop.

For those who enjoy a sneaky ambush, the maps offer plenty of safe havens and cover from which to spring. Terminal, set in an airport, offers some novel cover spots including this flower bed.

That said, some levels are better suited to some loadouts and styles of play.

This is healthy for the game, since it prevents a strong player sticking to the weapon and tactics they’ve perfected and dominating every map. Wasteland, for instance, is a sniper’s paradise.

This sort of position is close to ideal for a sniper: sure, it’s open, but the lines of sight are immense. Given this much visibility, even a modest sniper can pick off an unprepared enemy with ease. Short range weapons here are far less useful; however, Modern Warfare 2 offers players multiple ways to use territory to their advantage. For those who don’t like the patient precision required of snipers but want to use this spot effectively, the map designers helpfully place a machine gun nearby.

In the right hands the machine gun can be just as effective as sniping, rewarding those who get their kicks by spraying bullets indiscriminately. For the sake of equality, there’s a gun at the other end too and the long grass can quickly give a well-camouflaged player cover from fire.

This interplay demonstrates that every strategy has a valid counter-strategy. If you’re facing a sniper, the maps give many opportunities to hide. To counter this, snipers can flush out hiding opponents by using thermal sights and heartbeat sensors. To counter that, players can employ perks that make them invisible to these devices. Rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock. And for those who’d like to avoid this long range battle altogether, Wasteland also features an intense and dark section of trenches. Here, I’ve planted a Claymore landmine by one of the trench entrances to trap anyone who comes this way.

These indoor areas also give vital cover from the game’s aerial attacks, earned by successful killstreaks, for example killing five players in a row. At the first warning of an incoming enemy helicopter or Harrier, there’s typically a mad panic to get indoors. Skilled opponents will of course follow, but again the game provides an alternative to the hunt. Brave players can switch to a loadout armed with anti-aircraft weapons and perks and shoot the air support down for the good of the team. Thus good play gets its reward (air support usually brings many more kills) but not to the extent that it leaves the opposition team entirely devoid of options.

Through careful design, and no doubt thousands of hours of playtesting, Modern Warfare 2′s maps reward some surprisingly different approaches: caution and risk, patience and aggression, short range and long range. Admittedly the balance will never be perfect, and Infinity Ward are continually tweaking the game to overcome new glitches and overpowered strategies. But I consider Modern Warfare 2 a great example of thoughtful design achieving some difficult goals, and being clearly rewarded by the sales figures.

The avatar

Yes, that’s me on the left. We can see the avatar as the natural extension of the Xbox gamertag, created back in 2003. Personification is the trend: game companies are keen to give players flexibility to define an identity for themselves online. Certainly a name alone no longer cuts it. It’s worth remembering that Xbox Live controversially remains a chargeable service, so there is a clear impetus to at least equalise with competitor online services, the Wii being the obvious parallel.

Rare, the avatar designers, say they were keen to find the balance between toylike and overly realistic (there’s that uncanny valley again), but I think the result is bland: approachable, but far too close to Nintendo’s territory and too limiting to create anything with real character.

However, the new avatars do have a couple of interesting features. A friend’s status is now reflected by their avatar’s pose (eg. asleep = offline) and apparently avatars will be embedded in small games in future. Microsoft have, in essence, created a hook around which gaming experiences can hang, which is a smart move.

Functionality

There are some minor functional changes, probably the most significant of which is that you can now install games to the hard drive and run them from that. Not only is this long overdue, given that it’s been standard practice on PCs for 20+ years, but it also tackles one of the 360′s major flaws: its extremely noisy DVD drive. It also allows for faster switching between games, which will suit those players who like to throw tantrums when they start losing.

There’s also the new ability to ask your Xbox to download items remotely, although this does of course rely on you leaving it on all the time.

Interface and IA

The interface itself isn’t much changed, except that the blades have become panels and adopted the increasingly-clichéd Cover Flow stance. More usefully, there’s a welcome tightening up of the IA, which means hours wasted fishing around in Settings should be a thing of the past.

Migration

The detail I’ve been most impressed by was the migration experience itself. Upgrades are one of the areas where just a little user focus can have a huge impact: compare firmware upgrades for the iPhone with most older handsets. The entire upgrade took just four minutes (excellent for what is essentially an entire OS upgrade), with seamless plug-and-play operation and an explanatory video upon relaunch.

Reaction

Somehow, we’ve reached the age where a firmware upgrade for a console can create a buzz—almost universally, people seem to love the NXE. The really interesting question is why, which I’ll write a followup post about shortly.

Personally, I’m not as glowing as others. I actually quite liked the old Xbox personality: hardcore over casual, masculine over feminine. This update softens that stance, and I think it’s a mistake to drift towards Wii territory. Minor gripes aside, it is an undeniably well-crafted piece of work, tackling known problems, creating extensibility and, most importantly, getting people talking about a rather old console in the lucrative run-up to Christmas.

I realise I’m a little late to the party with Portal, but I just don’t play games as much as I used to. My free time has collapsed of late and, as a veteran from the ZX Spectrum days, I’m sick of the industry treading the same paths over and over again.

So nowadays I have one or two favourites that I put decent effort into (Forza Motorsport 2 is my current long-term squeeze), and then have quick flirtations with the few quirky games that interest me and break the mould a bit. Quirky games like Shadow Of The Colossus, Vib Ribbon, Animal Crossing, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. Climbing up gigantic monsters, picking flowers, dancing over loop-the-loops, defending clients against miscarriages of anime justice.

And now I can add Portal to that list. Shooting holes in the space-time continuum and jumping through them.

Portal is a little sidegame bundled with Valve’s The Orange Box (Half-Life 2, plus two bonus episodes). HL2, while absolutely marvellous, is pretty standard first-person shooter fayre: pick up guns, shoot people, save the day. Portal takes the same mechanics, removes the weaponry and bad guys, and gives you a device that fires portals. Shoot two and they become linked, so that you walk into one and emerge from the other. Your goal: get to the end of each increasingly tricky level.

This changes everything. Suddenly you can access any point you can see. Up becomes down becomes left becomes right. A shoot-em-up becomes a multi-dimensional puzzler.

Clearly this could be completely unplayable without a well-designed learning curve, but luckily one of the things Valve Software do brilliantly is to progressively reveal complexity. Advanced concepts (shooting portals underneath gun turrets so that they fall onto another turret) are introduced steadily, the levels are designed beautifully to give that perfect mix of experimentation – affordances galore – and guidance.

And it’s funny. Genuinely funny. I’ve never found a game funny before. Admittedly I’m a sucker for passive-aggressive malfunctioning robots, but even the gun turrets say “No hard feelings” in a Bambi-ish voices when you destroy them. Swoon. And an inanimate metal cube with hearts on it has developed more of a cult following than any humanoid ass-kicking hero.

Anyway, writing about games, to paraphrase someone or other, is like dancing about architecture. If you get a chance, play it. It warmed the cockles of even a jaded gamer like myself. If you need any more convincing, watch the end credits (spoiler-free):

There doesn’t seem to be a great lot of advice for people who know their fundamentals but need to shake off the rust. So I’ve had to make my own tiny training list:

• Remind myself of some basic tactics to get my eye in
• Brush off a couple of sharp but not overly theoretical openings – I’m thinking Sicilian (Sveshnikov as Black, Morra Gambit as White), Benko Gambit against 1. d4, or maybe Dutch Leningrad.
• Finally understand the endgame (my eternal weakness)
• Most importantly, play lots.

As a kid I played a fair bit but spent a long time doing what I thought was studying – playing through games, nodding sagely at nice-looking moves, but never really putting the graft in to improve. Can’t say that I’ll put in the graft this time either (I’m hugely busy, and it’s not likely to ease off) so I think my only chances of making any sensible progress are by playing, not worrying about my grade, and learning from my mistakes.

In retrospect, I think that’s why I never progressed the way I should have as a kid: my grade sat around 80-90 and never accelerated like most juniors. Too much trying to get better, not enough playing for the love of the game. Bit like this blog, recently…

I’ll be particularly interested to see how they tackle the constraint-freedom axis. While customisation and flexibility are obviously Good Things, complete freedom a la Second Life can feel rather unstructured and even aimless, even to an enthusiast like me (another post to follow on this). So I expect Sony will tighten things up a bit, with pre-packaged content, gestures and so on, rather than rely on ground-up community creation. Of course, if they go too far it just becomes another nasty walled garden that people will try to work around rather than in. Tricky.

One more thing though: isn’t it great that there’s finally something to excite us about the PS3? The Wii is still fresh and infinitely more interesting, but I do have concerns over whether it’s able to handle really meaty games. But that too is a post for another time, specifically after I’ve bought one and the fading-novelty test applies.

Note to self: Never turn on your laptop ‘to kill some time’ when you can’t sleep.

Categories: sony, playstation, home, virtual, ps3

Obviously I’m delighted – it seems like a great company with a good understanding of UCD and some big plans for the future. I’m also looking forward to being a Londoner, although it’s taken me many years to warm to the idea. I still have research to do – a place to live, learning where to go, and so on. But I have the first step already covered (see left).

As for Nottingham, I’ll miss it, but it’s time to move on. Invites for my leaving do (6 April) have been sent out by email – if you’d like to join us, check your Inbox or email me for details.

Aside from the job hunt, I must confess I’ve been putting Final Fantasy XII above blogging right now. It’s as impressive as it is hard. Honestly, FF games really haven’t ever been all that difficult (I just re-completed VIII in about 25 hours) so I suppose it’s good to see the challenge ramped up a bit. But, equally, I play games to relax and it’s doing quite the opposite. If I die to Elder Wrym again I may end up throwing the damn thing out of the window. And yes, yes, my characters are clearly too low in level (average 23), but I know I can beat it. Once I do that, the celebrations can really begin.

Case in point: my flatmate Jos has a ‘gaming chair’, donated over Christmas. In short, it’s a mattress bent at 90°, with speakers behind the head and a substantial sub-woofer under the seat. Plug some phono cables in and you’re away.

The challenge was set. We had to test this with some serious software. Something cutting edge, using the latest in audio technology. We settled, of course, on World Championship Snooker 2004. The audience coughs could be heard halfway down the A52. A shot into a pack of reds was like a set of firecrackers going off inside your heart.

Despite its obvious (?) quality, it has a silly design flaw that bugs me far more than it should. The volume controls – below – clearly create an expectation (a mental model, if you will) that volume is the ‘master’, controlling the overall sound level, and bass is just a tone control, adjusting how tinny or meaty it sounds.

Beyond the misleading labelling, there’s also a circle around the volume, further reinforcing its primacy, and it doubles as an on/off switch – turn beyond zero and it clicks off – in a way common to many master volumes.

Not so. They’re actually two separate circuits – Volume for the tweeters behind your head, Bass for the sub woofer. Totally independent. So when little Johnny sneaks into the living room for a covert midnight game of, I dunno, Manhunt, he wakes up the entire street despite the volume switch being on zero.

Expect more of these truly anal gripes over the coming months.

Categories: design, sound, volume, controls