Designing Non-Toxic Game Communities

In this video from 2021 CIMFest, game designers and community managers discuss how to remove toxicity from game communities.

Originally scheduled for 2020 GDC, this roundtable on Designing Non-Toxic Game Communities was canceled due to the pandemic. We are so grateful to the Georgia Game Developers Association for allowing this roundtable to occur during Columbus Interactive Media Festival (CIMFest).

Participants:

• Sande Chen (moderator)
• Brad Merritt, director of game design for Cartoon Network
• Kat De Shields-Moon, PR manager for Schell Games
• Joshua Quinnett, senior community manager at Gallium Studios
• Judy Tyrer, founder of 3 Turn Productions 
• Jared Creasy, community manager at Tripwire Interactive
• Isiah Turner, lead community specialist at Hi-Rez Studios
• Kimberly Unger, Content Lead at Oculus

Upcoming: Women in Games Meet the Winners Series

Happy to be interviewed in the Women in Games Global Games Awards Meet the Winners Series, coming up tomorrow! July 1st at 1 PM EST. Find out when the stream is starting on the Women in Games Twitch channel at www.twitch.tv/wigj

Last week, I spoke at the Serious Play Conference on Design Principles for Early Education Apps.  In addition to new recommendations, I echoed what I've been saying in "What's Wrong with Pre-K Game Apps."

When asked for apps that I've been excited about, I praised Dragonbox Big Numbers and Bedtime Math.  

Instead of a bedtime story, why not a bedtime math problem? What do you think?

The Joys of Fan Fiction

In this article, game writer Sande Chen looks at the fascinating depth of fan fiction and wonders what this means for the fan/creator relationship.

At a StoryForward NYC event, "The Business of Collaborative Storytelling" speaker Steele Filipek noted the interplay between fans and creators.  With the popularity of crowdfunding sites, storytellers just like game makers need to consider this closer relationship with customers, also known as the fandom. There are tricky legal issues when fans decide to go further, writing their own fictional works, or for developers, making mods.  Some famous authors, like George R.R. Martin, are strongly against this practice.  Others are OK with letting fans play with their characters as long as it's not for profit and comes from a hobbyist spirit.  As story creators, we want our customers to engage and became enthusiastic fans, but how do we balance the needs of the audience with our own control over the material?  Academics, unperturbed, study fan fiction for its way of twisting norms, its exploration of gender and sexuality, and because like glimpsing parallel worlds, fan fiction provides insight into all the pathways not taken.

The relationship between fans and author can be contentious, as evidenced by what happened with the aftermath of the Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris. Harris' supernatural characters had been traveling on different story trajectories since the books had been picked up for adaptation into HBO's TV drama, "True Blood"  Harris herself was influenced or inspired to change aspects of her writing based on the show.  For instance, the vampire Bill in the book series ends up as King of Louisiana as a nod to his TV counterpart and was not killed off as intended.  Harris even sanctioned other writers to extrapolate her characters' stories in the book, Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories From the World of Sookie Stackhouse.  However, there was large-scale anger within the fandom over the ending of the series, which had become more paranormal romance than mystery, over a number of issues.  This led to a multitude of interesting "fix-it" fictions.

Harris contended that these fans were upset over not getting what they wanted: a Happily Ever After (HEA) for Eric and Sookie.  While to some fans, the Eric/Sookie OTP (One True Pairing) had been telegraphed, as one Reddit fan indicated with the following chart, and her marriage to Sam seemed forced, as was discussed in The Love Triangle, the reasoning for this anger was multifaceted. Subsequent post-series fanfictions paired Sookie not only with Eric, but with Sam, Bill, Alcide, Quinn, Felipe, Victor, Eric's human descendant, a wendigo, some random werewolf, and with no one, as Sookie can be an empowered woman, proud to be single and unattached.  In many stories, Sookie grows into her fae bad ass self, embracing her supernatural power, and orchestrates Eric's rescue and/or her revenge.  One fansite owner felt betrayed to find out book Sookie would end up spurning her supernatural ties, despite her fae heritage, her demon godfather, her werepanther brother, shifter husband and other supe exes, to exult in small-town normalcy (or hypocrisy, as Sookie herself had suffered greatly from their ostracism).  The fansite owner had seen an allegory in the making about tolerance and minority rights, and now was very bitter.



Another source of anger, which is more understandable in the current climate and #MeToo revelations, is Sookie's dismissal of her brutal rape by Bill. In the book, she never acknowledges the rape and even continues to have a soft spot for Bill.  Fanfiction authors corrected that oversight and wanted badly to rescue Eric, who had already endured 300 years of sexual servitude and sacrificed his wealth, station, and friends to protect Sookie, from another 200 years as a not-so-willing sex slave.  Sometimes, Sookie is punished for being so uncaring such as in one story, where her telepathic son commits suicide due to his mother's close-mindedness, her eldest daugher dies from domestic violence, and her youngest runs off to become a vampire and Eric's eventual lover.  In another, Eric finds a more suitable and caring half-fae lover while Sookie boils with jealousy.  Even within Eric/Sookie OTP, they may not get a HEA but a lot of times, they do.  Or they find an uneasy continuance, such as in the story where Eric has an online relationship with Sookie using a pseudonym. There are simply so many different fictional avenues.

Other fans exacted a more demanding cost to the magic that brought Sam back from the dead other than Eric's heartbreak.  Sam came back changed, with scary results.  The wish cleaved Sookie into 2 people with 2 separate lives since the magic was not used properly.  A sacrifice of a life for a life was required.  Sookie suffers an additional "curse" of eternal life.

In a transmedia mindset, all of these stories with different outcomes and pathways are interesting, but what do they do to the brand?  From a business standpoint, we do want this continual interaction with fans, but eventually, we will need to clarify a stance.  Do you have any stories or advice on how to manage this relationship?  Do tell.


Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

What Game Designers Can Learn From Cinema

In this article, game designer Sande Chen explores the ways film directors are masters of audience manipulation and what that means for game design.

Last Monday, I had to opportunity to hear game director and writer Sam Barlow talk about the inspiration behind his award-winning game, Her Story, at the BAFTA Master Class in Lincoln Center.  Surprisingly, it began with an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's famous movie, The Birds.  I'm a graduate of USC Cinematic Arts who has studied Hitchcock in cinematography class, so I was all for it; it's just that usually, when speakers talk about film and games, it's about the differences, not the similarities or what we can learn from the great film directors of the past.

Barlow didn't talk about the visual language of films, but more about Hitchcock's deft manipulation of the audience's expectations.  It's similar to what writers would call "hopes and fears."  However, these are not the characters' hopes and fears, but rather, those of the audience.  We know The Birds is a horror film about birds, so we the audience anticipate a bunch of scenes with birds attacking.  In fact, at the beginning, we may not even mind if the main character gets attacked because she comes off as smug and spoiled.

Barlow points out that the birds don't start attacking right away.  There's a build-up of anticipation.  The first attack, depicted in this scene, doesn't happen until some 30 minutes later. 

When there's a switch from mystery to suspense, the audience knows more than the characters and therefore can shout at the characters, "Don't do that!"  They become invested in the story.  What the audience knows or doesn't know is up to the director.

In contrast, traditionally, readers of mysteries marveled at the grand reveal of the killer in a whodunit.  Nowadays, more often than not, in a TV crime show, we may already know who's dead and who killed the victim.  Our viewership has become more sophisticated because we're more interested in the how and the why of the crime.  We are active viewers.

Can this work in interactive fiction?  As Barlow explains, Her Story builds upon viewer expectations about police procedurals. The player has certain expectations as to what might be happening and dives right into the investigation.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose experience spans over 10 years in the game industry.  Her credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the 2007 RPG of the Year, The Witcher.  She is the chapter leader of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Educational Games: The Big Picture Part II

In the weeks after the publication of "Is the School Market Still Just a Mirage?" on the Games and Learning website, I have seen that it has led to discussions about the state of the industry and perhaps some soul-searching as to how to improve the situation.  Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen wrote on the LinkedIn discussion that while the article was U.S.-centric, the lessons hold true for Europe as well.  This issue of commercialization ranks high on the list of concerns for educational game developers globally.  Other developers, however, are not yet at that stage of worrying about profits, but more generally are concerned about:  How do I fund the development of my game?

This important question is the focus of the second article, "The Real State of Learning Game Funding."  Much like in the book, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, I relate advice from developers who have walked the walk and come out with thousands of dollars to fund their projects.  What are other developers doing that you can learn from?  Read and find out.

In particular, check out the audio interview, which covers material not included in the article.


 

I would consider this article to be the most business-oriented of the four, but maybe that's why it's the most important.  While this stuff is not as fun as working on the game design, the nitty gritty details of how to find funding and how to make money are vital to a new business.  This often can be lacking in creative endeavors.  If you're starting up an educational game company, I think you'll find this article very informative.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Player vs. Designer: Tracking User Experience

In this article, game designer Sande Chen gives advice on how to interpret player feedback and how it impacts user experience.

Have you heard the advice, "Take the note under the note"?  As a young screenwriter, I found this advice baffling, especially when in my first Hollywood meeting, the director said one thing and then the producer completely contradicted the director, asking for a rewrite that I thought was impossible if I followed the director's wishes.  Yet, they were smiling in agreement, seemingly both on the same page.  What the heck was going on?  Life would be much simpler if there were a feedback interpreter at every meeting.      

The problem with feedback is that not everyone can clearly enunciate what is wrong.  Moreover, people may be just bad at giving feedback.  They can only tell you what they felt when they went through the material while you fight back the urge to point out that if only they had read this section, they would understand everything.  The thing is, if they missed that section, that's feedback in itself.  What's important is not the actual words in the feedback, but what you can interpret about the user experience.

Last week at the 2015 New York Comic Con Livestream panel, Writing for Video Games, which was broadcast on Twitch, I eluded to this topic when asked about how to deal with player feedback.  I described a situation whereby designers reacted to player feedback in a MMO and then ended up making the situation worse. 

Matthew Weise, Caitlin Burns, Sande Chen, Steele Filipek at NYCC

In this example, the player response to this MMO world was loud and critical.  The whole thing was too boring.  Too many talk-to quests and not much killing.  I could see that the writer(s) were trying to develop a story, but not many players found the story interesting, especially when they wanted to kill something.  You could blame the players, but the fact is, in a kill-centric MMO, players want to kill.  It's not a MMO about diplomacy.

The designers took that note and in the next release, changed tactics.  Now, there were very few talk-to quests and lots of Kill-10, Kill-Collect, and boss fights.  It was Kill, Kill, Kill.  But the players were more upset than ever because bottlenecks were appearing everywhere.  Players complained that they had to kill hundreds of these mobs and how it was so boring to kill the same thing over and over.  What happened?

Now, you might interpret this feedback as players complaining about everything.  They complained about story quests and then they complained about kill quests.  It might seem that way, but let's examine that first note more closely.  Instead of taking the feedback at face value and replacing all the story quests with kill quests, the designers might have realized that this was an issue of pacing.  Story quests aren't evil.  Neither are kill quests.  They're just part of the user experience.

In this day and age, we're lucky that we can get player feedback so quickly.  This relationship doesn't have to be adversarial.  There's no right or wrong in how somebody feels.  However, we do have to develop a filter to interpret the feedback.  Zeroing in on the user experience is one way of putting player feedback in focus.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

IGDA Webinar: Interactive Fiction - An AI Based Overview

In this video, writer Emily Short reviews different ways to provide player choice in interactive fiction and how AI can be part of this process.

Who Needs a Fourth Wall?: Co-Designing A Game With Players

In this article, aspiring game designer Gabby Taylor remarks that co-designing games with players can be part of a great marketing plan that can either succeed or backfire.

Game development, in an ideal setting, is all about creativity. Brainstorming awesome ideas, refining those ideas, and polishing the execution of those refined ideas is what we do. But for some reason, we’ve mostly been doing this within the context of a game, never reaching through the fourth wall. Of course, once we caught on to that little fact, we did what we do best. Enter stage left: Co-designing games with players. 

The basic idea of co-designing with the players is simple: start with a basic idea, and implement suggestions that get tossed at you from people. In the end, the development process itself doubles as a brilliant marketing scheme (who doesn’t want to buy something fun they helped make?. #IDARB, a game that used design suggestions through Twitter, did a great job with this. Like all great ideas, though, this needs some refining.

 
The major sticking point is that this requires public interest, which not all of us are capable of garnering (I’ll be the first to admit to that fault). Going back to the #IDARB example, it really only took off once indie superstar Tim Schafer not only offered a suggestion, but also passed it along to his fans. Once the people have noticed, you need to work quickly to maintain interest (notice the difference between when it first started on Jan 3 to the updated version on Jan 10). The problem here is we can’t predict what goes viral or how, and this has a big risk of going one of two ways: either we keep putting in our own ideas and showing updates and essentially just developing traditionally, or we keep trying to get eyes and interest and come off desperate and pathetic.

I’ve been experimenting with trying to get people to co-design a game I’ve been working on for a few years called Avalon. Like I mentioned before, I am by no means any good at marketing or getting attention, but I’ve found that suggestions don’t usually come snowballing in like they did with #IDARB. They come in spurts-- one suggestion on name spelling here, maybe two suggestions on combat a bit later, with another suggestion about a week after that for adjusting graphics. I’ve pretty much been just working traditionally with frequent updates, while walking the razor’s edge between invitations and pleading for feedback (sometimes not so successfully, which I think has foiled a lot of my better attempts).

A minor sticking point to co-designing is picking and choosing which ideas you implement. Not all ideas can get in, lest the game become overloaded and the design break down entirely, but part of maintaining interest is making sure you implement enough of them in such a way that they’re recognizable as their ideas and the game still flows nicely. Shunted ideas are all well and good, but ignored players are former players who will tell their friends they’re being ignored. Want to watch your game go from 60 to 0 in no time flat? That’s how you do that. And trust me, if trying to capture interest initially is an uphill battle, trying to recapture interest after the game falls on its face is like a fight up Everest. This is another reason you need to implement ideas very quickly, and update as soon as it’s in.

Co-designing a game with players requires tact, great people skills, and a very quick workflow. While it’s a constant balancing act between failure and shining success, the experience and the payoff can be amazing, such as with #IDARB. Just remember: the internet has no attention span, but it will never forget failure.

Gabby Taylor is an aspiring game designer and head of GreyBox Studio. When not making design documents, she contemplates going outside, and sometimes even takes a few steps when feeling particularly frisky.

February 2014: Co-Designing with Players

This month's topic was suggested by John Krajewski.

With the emergence of crowdfunding as a viable publishing avenue, players are not only consumers but also lately, becoming stakeholders as well as participants in game development.  Companies are embracing these direct-to-consumer business models and in tandem, the more active role of players.

Another funding model, early access or alphafunding, allows players to play through games-in-progress (for a price) and offer up suggestions for improvement.  Minecraft is an example of a game funded through early access.

Of course, we have already seen how player involvement can make a difference in game design via metrics in social games, but this is more personal and more community-based.  Fans are now part of the process.

How has co-designing with players changed your design perspective?  Do you think that this will become the standard in the future?

As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog.  Topic suggestions and articles are welcome! 


John Krajewski is studio head of Strange Loop Games, creator of the liquid physics puzzle game Vessel. He is currently leading development of a suite of commercial and educational games: a social/mobile game called Picture This, a cell biology exploration game called Sim Cell and H3i5T, a social algebra game. Prior to founding Strange Loop, he was Lead AI Programmer at Electronic Arts Australia, designing and developing AI systems for open world games. His portfolio of games includes Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, The Suffering, and Destroy All Humans.