[Game Design] No Levels?

I've seen this concept thrown out in the game design notes in enough games now to warrant a post about it. I started tracking development of The Repopulation (TR) again after many months. There is a post there about the concept of no levels. To me the concept of no levels does not apply to that game's design. TR staff claim that there are no levels, just "progress your character through the 75+ skills we have and the 100s of abilities offered."

Levels are just one way to represent character progression. Whether it's the typical experience level used in so many games or, solely, the gaining of new skills and skill levels as proposed in TR. Notice, the word "level" is still used. Levels are levels no matter how you use them. How would one even represent character progression within a "no level" design??? Possibly through the accumulation of equipment, wealth, etc?

In the end, gamers will still relate to those skill levels as levels, just like gamers have done since the old Alternative Advancement (AA) levels in Everquest and all the way up to present with Rift's introduction of Planar Attunement (PA) levels. How many times have you seen people talking in global chat channels about "LFM L50 mages with 300+ AA" or similar? Enough to prove my point I'm sure.

I'm struggling trying to figure out where designers have gotten the idea that the introduction of some elusive no level design is an essential component of the sandbox game design. Humans are significance junkies. We feel the overwhelming desire to assign significance to everything we can. I believe that any so-called No Level game design will ultimately fail because that design fails to give the human customer a tangle means for them to quantify one of our basic psychological human needs; the need for Esteem (see Manslow's hieracrchy of needs). Levels act a goal and attaining those goals produces the feeling of achievement and self-esteem. When other lower level players interact with higher level players, goals are created consciously and subconsciously which continue to drive the process. This creates a never ending cycle of achievement and goal setting.

No Levels is a No-Go.

What? It's 2011?!

I honestly can say that I have no idea where the last year has gone. So many things have changed since I started this blog and now I see that I haven't posted anything in over a year. That's horrible on my part. Upcoming gaming stuff:

• Started playing RIFT in Beta and continue to play to this day
• Battlefield 3 will be coming out soon and I should be returning to play with my old clan. If things go wonky again with certain people, I will try out 21CW again (as a player, not an admin).

Also, I found out that someone at a game development university in Texas has posted a Unity Course for newbies to Unity. I'm really looking forward to starting it and will find time somewhere.

Once upon a time, I was a General.

I had previously posted that I started playing Bad Company 2, a Battlefield game made by EA games. In that post I also mentioned that I was playing it with my clan, Team Rip. Shortly after the Bad Company 2 beta ended and the game went live, one of the clan members mentioned an organization called 21st Century Warfare (or 21CW for short). After playing with 21CW for only one week, I knew that I was in the midst of something much better than my years of clan gaming and I quit playing with Team Rip.

21CW is an organized and structured online tournament that involves two sides, the Coalition and the Opposition fighting over control of various parts of the world. Each side is represented by a Division that changes after each campaign. 21st Century Warfare has its own private battle server, its own private TeamSpeak server, and each side is provided their own private forums. Each tournament consists of a campaign. When you register to play you will be placed on 1 of the 2 sides and you remain as part of that force for the entire campaign. Campaigns usually last around 10 weeks and battles are held every Saturday from 12pm to 12am.

I joined up during Campaign 28 as a Recruit and by the end of the 6 week campaign I was promoted all the way up to the Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA). In real life, the SMA is the senior enlisted member of the Army, and is appointed to serve as a spokesman to address the issues of enlisted soldiers to the Army's highest positions. In 21CW, its the lowest rank of upper leadership called the HCO staff. I was then asked by the General that was picked for Campaign 29 if I would be his second in command, Major General. I agreed and off we went. However, he disappeared shortly thereafter and I was offered the position of General (the army's commanding officer). The tournament administrators said that I was the first General in tournament history to have such little tournament experience under their belt. That made the whole situation a bit daunting but none the less I embraced the opportunity.

Everything went great during the campaign and after I pushed to make changes to our communications paradigm amongst other things, everything flowed much smoother. In fact, it went so well that by the end of week 6 it was mathematically impossible for the other army to win let alone tie us. So we agreed to end the campaign early with a victory for my army and move on to the next campaign.

 

 

So now, it's back to being a private and we'll see where things lead me.

Memory: Anchors Aweigh

This morning while surfing on my Sirius radio, I came across the end of Anchors Aweigh played by the US Navy band. I know it's insane but I actually started getting choked up as memories came flooding back. In 1995, I attended boot camp at Recruit Training Great Lakes, IL and I remember this tunnel we would march through where we would sing one verse of the song while marching through and another different verse when we marched back through on our return. It was a competition between company drill instructors to see who could get their company to sing the song the strongest and we made our drill instructors proud by winning that competition. Let me tell you, the power with which a company of young men can bellow Anchors Aweigh flawlessly makes me a bit misty now at 33 years old. It's one of those things that I don't expect anyone else to understand unless you were in the same situation. It was a very impressionable time in my life and now that all the resentment I had for the bad things I encountered has melted away, I only remember the good times and that was one of them.


Here are the verses:

Verse 1

Stand, Navy, out to sea, Fight our battle cry;

We'll never change our course, So vicious foe steer shy-y-y-y.

Roll out the TNT , Anchors Aweigh. Sail on to victory

And sink their bones to Davy Jones, hooray!

Verse 2 (most widely sung)

Anchors Aweigh, my boys, Anchors Aweigh.

Farewell to foreign shores, We sail at break of day, of day.

Through our last night on shore, Drink to the foam,

Until we meet once more. Here's wishing you a happy voyage home!

My long awaited return to Battlefield.

It's been quite awhile since my clan (TeamRIP) has returned to EA Games Battlefield series. The Battlefield series are First-person shooter (FPS) games. FPSs are a video game genre which centers the gameplay around gun- and projectile weapon-based combat through the first person perspective. FPS games have even been used over the years as a recruiting ground for the US military.

I started playing the series with their first game called Battlefield 1942. Battlefield 1942 was one of the first mainstream games to represent a dramatic shift in FPS game play mentality not only favoring individualism, but simultaneously encouraging teamwork and coordination. The teamwork and coordination are what won me over and kept me playing the series over the years. However, for the past couple years my clan moved away from the BF series and tried other FPS games. Finally, returning with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This game is not for the weak of heart. It's intense but extremely satisfying. Teamwork and coordination are a must and it's very evident when a team lacks those two qualities.

We have our own server which allows us to have control over what maps and modes are run. It also gives us the power to remove people from the server that are breaking the rules and/or ruining gameplay for the other players. If you play, Bad Company 2 or are looking for a clan that centers on teamwork, coordination and having fun, come join us. Play with us for a while and see if our style of gameplay fits with yours. We'd love to have you. Below is a banner of our server, click on it and you'll be able to join the server right away. Alternatively check out TeamRIP and see what our clan has to offer.

Training

Well this entire week up until Friday I'll be in training at work...yeaaah. So I won't have time to post. I did however just install the Project Reality modification for BF2. I played it over a year ago and it is by far the single best modification I have played for any FPS genre game. Off to have some fun.

Unity goes free!

In an interesting development at the Unite conference, Unity Technologies, provider of Unity, announced that version 2.6 of the Unity platform is will now be available at no cost. You can find the download here. This is outstanding news for the hobbyist like me. For years I’ve pit Unity against Torque when it comes to the best development platform for me. To date, it has been Torque because you get the source code which Unity does not allow access to and that’s extremely important when decisions have to be made about which middleware to choose. Game Developer magazine recently published results from a survey they conducted that shows backs up that fact. For most, not having the source code is an instant turn-off to a product and I honestly feel the same.

However, a price tag of $0 will make many people overlook that fact. This will bring in a lot more potential buyers and I’m sure that Unity Tech is hoping that this free version will act as a springboard for purchase of Unity Pro.

To echo what someone posted on the GarageGames forum regarding this very topic, “I kinda believe GG and torque3d left the hobbyist market.” Even though I love Torque, I feel the same. As a hobbyist, I’ve started feeling left out when T3D went live. There is no way I’m going to pay $1000+ for software that will see less than 8 hours per day use. I think it’s time to check out Unity.

Regardless, Good luck to Unity, I say.