Guild vs Guild Dominance on the App Store

Viewing trends on the iTunes App store is a fascinating spectacle with the store maturing, evolving and changing constantly over time.

This Friday presented one of the most interesting days to date on the app store and a confirmation of a trend long in the making; Guild vs Guild is BIG.



Of this list, SIX are Guild vs Guild games: Clash of Clans, Marvel War of Heroes, Crime City, Game of War, Knights and Dragons and Modern War. Three of these games are from GREE and one from DeNA, both companies having mastered GvG in their native country of Japan.

So why is the GvG model so lucrative and why is it cleaning up on the app store? There are a number of reasons:

• Guilds give a feeling of belonging and acceptance amongst a peer group no matter who you are.

• As an engaged Guild player, you feel obligated to help your guild and responsible for the performance of your guild.

Holy Wars events in Rage of Bahamut are battles between "Orders" (Guilds) over a fixed time period with virtual rewards at stake.

• You want to actively seek out players who are stronger than you (thus probably spending more money / time / both).

• At the same time, you want to find new players and mentor them to increase the effectiveness of your guild. You are happy to be a philanthropist and give resources that you no longer need to help them early on.

• Engaged Guild players have high LTV and bring in new customers, make new customers increase their spending and increase their own spending as a result.

The downside is that without finely tuned balancing, Only the top guilds can play and you will lose customers that could have their LTV increased over time.

Clash of Clans by Supercell solved this problem by introducing leagues and divisions carefully weighted to balance GvG competitions.

Clash of Clans uses leagues to evenly distribute players in GvG competition with each other.

Currently Candy Crush Saga remains the #1 top grossing app in the west, but this is somewhat of a false illusion. Clash of Clans charts far better in Japan, the strongest territory around the world for revenue per user (ARPPU), meaning that on mobile at least, CoC is still the top draw game. Of course all King games also earn a ton on Facebook so I'm sure not they are not overly worried about this situation.

So GvG - fad or here to stay? Judging on this evidence, I think it's fair to say its here to stay.

Gacha

An example of a Gacha machine in Tokyo, Japan.

Gacha is a monetisation technique used in many successful Japanese free-to-play games. But what exactly is a Gacha?

In Japan (and now in the West too) a Gacha is toy machine into which a customer puts money into. They then twist a crank and out pops a plastic egg, inside of which appears a prize, usually a collectable toy figure, which is part of a complete set.

My completed set of Marvel Gacha I collected in Japan. Look at Dr. Doom!

The caveat of completing the set is that some of the toys are rarer than others, meaning that usually you have to play the Gacha quite a number of times before you can complete the entire set. You also often get duplicates, which encourages you to trade them amongst friends for other figures you are missing. It's actually very fun to participate in the process of trying to collect a Gacha set.

The rare-egg Gacha machine in Puzzle and Dragons, one of the reasons why this game pulls in over $20m a month.

So how does this free-to-play games then? Well in a seriously lucrative way is how! Looking at Puzzle and Dragons for example, players can play the rare-egg Gacha for 5 Magic Stones (the Hard Currency in the game) to collect a new monster. The player never knows what they will get, but they will always get something good, which is key to the popularity of the mechanic.

As this video demonstrates, pulling the handle of the rare-egg machine is a lot of fun, and the surprise, mystery and intrigue is all part of the user-experience that makes it addictive and compulsive to keep playing the Gacha.

Gacha is essentially a gambling mechanic and that's the reason why it's such a strong monetisation technique. In P&D, if a player knew what monster they would get, they would not play the Gacha until one they wanted cropped up. But because there is only a chance of getting the one they want, they have to gamble to get it.

Additionally, a good gacha implementation stacks the numbers very cleverly. Rarity is usually the way to this, with it possible to get a rare, very rare or Super-rare items from the Gacha. Usually you give the player a very rare item, but by mixing in rare items too, when they occasionally get a super-rare, they will feel really happy as it feels like winning an amazing prize for a bargain price.

Kompu Gacha (Complete Gacha)

Going one step beyond a regular Gacha, this technique is now outlawed in Japan due to the crazy
sums of money players (especially young players) were spending on IAP in games.

A Kompu Gacha is a series of Gacha's that must all be completed in order to collect a "grand prize"or
item, such as a epic-rare card or super powerful in-game item. Usually the Gacha starts of in a
mild way, such as a 10% Gacha, but then usually gets harder and harder, going from 10->5->2->1%
chances. This means that the chance of getting the grand prize is incredibly low, but this important
piece of information is never telegraphed to the player.

This resulted in crazy profits for Japanese companies GREE and DeNA who added this mechanic
into virtually every game they had to maximise profitability and revenue.

Though now outlawed in Japan, this mechanic is used by some games in the West. The game
Megapolis by Social Quantum being the most obvious example I can find.

To build the Sagrada Familia, you need to acquire a series of other parts. However, those parts can only be collected via a random selector (Gacha).

I'm personally not against Gacha, as I think it's a fun mechanic and as long as the player always gets something good, it's not a cash-grab. However, I do think Kompu-Gacha is a step too far as it is essentially a pure gambling technique that uses dishonesty to make the compulsive types spend over and over again.

Of course, in the hunt for increasing revenues and profits, I can understand why this technique is still used.

IAP Types

 
In free to play games there are a number of IAP types that can be used for monetisation. Some are very effective, and some are not. Here is a brief summary from my experience.

Here are some additional notes for each of the types:

Impatience

It's counter-intuitive to think that adding friction and frustration to a game would result in generating the most revenue. However, after test after test after test, I've found that Impatience is by far and away the best technique to generate revenue. 

The lives system from Candy Crush Saga is a classic example of impatience. You can wait and get lives for free, but can pay to get more and keep playing.

As long as there is a compelling reason to *want* to speed-up / spend (usually because the loop is so fun), this is a proven and consistent way to generate revenue.

Continue

Continues are a very old monetisation method, the principle dates back to coin-op games from the 70's and 80's, asking a player to pay to keep their progress in a game and keep going. Any game that offers a challenge with progress that you would want to keep is a good candidate for this type of monetisation. Puzzle and Dragons by Gung-Ho is a great example, with extra moves in Candy Crush Saga being another.

Continues are great at "skimming" from a player as they are often cheap but worthwhile purchases for a player to make.

Continues can be purchased over and over, giving them even more fiscal value as an IAP.

Consumable

A consumable can be thought of as many things, but in this case I refer to a consumable as an IAP effect that has a positive one-time only effect. A classic example is from Farmville, which offers many consumables that restore all withered crops for the cost of Hard Currency. If you choose not to pay, then you have to plough your crops and start all over again, which takes time and effort.

Consumable IAP's are another good method for skimming as players pay for convenience. In the case of Farmville, a player in theory never has to pay for this type of consumable if they manage their time correctly, so it feels fair.

Perma-Buff

A perma-buff is a power-up or item that offers a permanent positive effect in the game you are playing. Classic example include builders in Clash of Clans or the Charm of Frozen Time in Candy Crush Saga. Perma-buffs are usually expensive to purchase but the worth to the player is clear and is very good value seeing as the effect is permanent.

 A perma-buff from Farmville. An amazingly desirable item as your crops will never wither again.

A word of caution with this monetisation method, however. It is possible to provide items that are too strong and that can break the balance of the game. For example, you could provide an item which doubles the amount of XP you can gain from all actions. This may then result in players levelling up so quickly that they run out of things to do quickly and leave the game!

Episodes

Some games are broken into episodes / seasons, a little bit like TV shows. When a player hits the end of one episode, they hit a pay-wall as they can only progress if they purchase the next episode outright.

The game Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney was split into episodes for the iOS port of the game. The first episode was free, but the player had to pay for each subsequent episode.

This is a very poor monetisation method as it relies on a number of things. Firstly it relies upon the player to finish an episode to get to the point where a second episode purchase is worthwhile. Secondly, it relies upon your game being good enough or captivating enough that a player actually wants to pay to continue. 

As this is a straight-out pay-wall blocking any further progress, you will see massive drops between episodes and as a result, there are very few players that purchase all episodes compared to the total number that start playing for free.

Additional Content

One of the most common and effective ways to keep players paying for a game is to keep creating new content or gameplay features. Doing so is one of the best ways to improve spending and long-term retention as it re-engages long time players, bringing them back and tempting them to spend.

A new (and fun!) mechanic added to a recent Hay Day update.

The only problem with continuing to create content is that it often leads to the "content delivery trap" where you find that you HAVE to keep delivering new content in order to keep players in your game. If you have a complex game this can lead to lots of difficulties as it becomes harder and harder technically to keep adding to the original binary. It can also lead to wearing out a team out as they have to work on the same product for months or years at a time and often leads to a lack of creativity or execution as a result.

Gacha

The Rare Gacha machine in Puzzle and Dragons. It gives you a random chance of a guaranteed 3* or higher character.

Gacha is a classically Japanese method of monetisation. It's super effective for engaged players, and a very interesting case of human psychology. Check out my post on Gacha for a more detailed look.

Free-to-Play: Basic Game Loop Theory

In the world of Free-to-Play many designers and Product Managers often talk about "Game Loops." But what is a game loop, why is it useful to construct / design one and what benefits does it provide? In this post I'll try and answer that question.

When designing a mobile / Facebook Free-to-play game, session length is usually small, but repeated with regularity. Thus it’s really useful to think of the entire game experience as a loop, which should take approximately 5 minutes to complete. If the player enjoys the game, they can keep playing, but subsequent plays are effectively iterations of the core loop as opposed to a new experience.

To construct a game loop, it is incredibly useful to separate it into three distinct categories:

ACTIONS – Things the user can *DO* in the game, e.g. build a structure, harvest crops, tackle a puzzle, attack the enemy / other player.

REWARDS – Given to the user as a result of successfully completing an action. E.g. XP, Soft Currency, an item.

EXPANSIONS – Available to the user after completing enough actions and acquiring enough rewards. E.g. land expansions, new items, new levels, new buildings, new troop types.

Example

To put this into context, here is the loop from Smurfs Village by Beeline Interactive (Capcom), a top grossing app around the world, and also used in Farmville by Zynga:

A new player is guided through the loop within the first couple of minutes in both games, to quickly explain to the player how to play and progress in the game.

The goal of core loop design is to create a quick, punchy experience that is FUN. A player should want to go through the loop over and over again, because it is fun.

Initially to go through the loop, there should be very little friction, and a player should be able to expand quickly. However, as a player spends longer playing the game, the loop should be harder to complete and take more time. This is where you begin converting a player to a paid user.

Friction should be introduced at each stage of the loop, ideally with impatience. A player should be able to Action, Reward and Expand for FREE. But impatience and friction should be used to halt progress and give the player a question to answer:  Grind through the game or pay to play at a faster pace.

In almost all succesful F2P games, a player always has to pay to play. The question is if they pay with time (grinding) or with real money.

Temple Run

One of the most exciting places to be in the games industry space with now is the iOS market. Literally hundreds of thousands of apps are available to purchase and development overheads are so low that pretty much anyone can publish onto the App Store. The App Store is an interesting place, with content ranging from the truly awe-inspiring such as Infinity Blade by Chair / Epic to scores of Farmville knock-offs, to blatant scams such as Pokemon clones that crash on loading.

Amongst this crowded room of titles, it's hard to stand out, but once such title, Temple Run, has become a massive success. What is particularly inspiring about Temple Run is that it's a great game, it is not solely built around micro-transactions and that it was created by just three people. The folks over at Imangi studios consist of a husband and wife team along with one artist.

The 3 man team that make up Imangi, Kiril Tchangov, Natalia Luckyanova and Keith Shephard.

Temple Run is a very simple game, but has a number of excellent design decisions and choices that make it incredibly addictive and fun to play. The game is a traditional running style game such as early iOS stalwart Canabalt. The player plays as an intrepid explorer, much in Indiana Jones / Lara Croft / Nathan Drake vein who is trying to escape an ancient temple whilst being chased by some rather grotesque and evil looking monkeys. No time is used to explain any sort of plot, it's all left to the imagination of the player, and the title instead focuses on it's quick and punchy gameplay.

Our intrepid explorer, being chased down by the dreaded Monkeys.

Temple Run moves the running style gameplay to 3 dimensions. The player is constantly running forward, and a series of obstacles block his path. The player must therefore swipe the screen in order to navigate these obstacles, allowing our hero to jump over obstacles by swiping upwards, slide underneath low obstacles, by sliding down, and to turn in either the left or right direction 90 degrees by swiping left or right when coming to a junction. Very simple to understand and very intuitive. The user can also use the accelerometer on their device to move the hero slightly towards the left or right, which is used to help the user collect more coins and power-ups that are littered around the game world. The tile controls are used very subtly, meaning that the user only needs to tilt their device a little in order to move our hero, making the game very playable even when holding a device in just one hand, a nice touch.

Difficulty increases over time as our hero starts to speed up and the obstacles start coming thicker and faster making for a very traditional twitch based game. If our hero is caught by the monkeys chasing him, or falls into the water below the temple, the game is over and the user is informed of their high score and can start again.

If this were it for the game, it would still be a great title and a lot of fun, but almost certainly nowhere near a success as it has become. But luckily, Temple Run has a few other killer features up it's sleeve that make all the difference. The first is the use on an in-game shop, that allows the user to purchase more content. What is unique about the shop is that the user earns currency for use at the shop in-game. So every time they collect a coin in game, that coin can be used for items to purchase at the shop. If the user wishes, the user may also purchase a bulk load of coins via an in-app transaction, however unlike pretty much any other game on the app store, all content in Temple Run can be unlocked without spending a single penny. Considering that the game is completely free to download, this is a massive surprise and is a decision to be admired.

The in-game store, with a plethora of power-ups, utilities and extras can be purchased using in-game drops.

There is a wide range of content that can be purchased via the store. Some of the most useful items are power-up enhancers. These increase the effect of in-game power-ups, such as increasing the distance the boost power-up takes the player upon collection, or increasing the amount of coins the user collects from a mega-coin. There are also new player skins, allowing the main hero to be changed to all sorts of weird and wonderful characters, as well as wallpapers. There is also a set of items called "Utilities" that can also be purchased. These are one-shot items that have effects like allowing the user to resurrect themselves in-game after death, or boosting ahead a certain amount of meters before the game starts. Both are very useful power-ups and add a lot to the overall game design. Frequently when playing a game of this nature, a player will have an epic run where they manage to travel a very long distance and earn a high score. However, after dieing, they have to start again, where the pace of the game is far slower than at a higher distance. This can be a frustrating experience for the user as the fun and tension of running at a higher speed is lost. These power-ups therefore allow the user to skip back to the fast speed again, so they can retain the fun factor. However, by making these items one-shot, and expensive to purchase, the game retains balance as the user won't be able to use these effects every time they play, unless they are willing to pay for it. Thus the game has a method to monetise nicely, but also offering the flexibility of allowing free users to have an almost similar game experience.

This is one of the aspects of Temple Run I really appreciate. Too many games on the App Store and deliberately designed in such a way that users get addicted and are put into situations where they are more likely to spend real money. Such mechanics include withering / resurrection of crops / items, build times and energy based systems that prevent a user from playing a game more than a certain amount of times in a day unless the pay. Although these mechanics do result in generating more revenue for a developer / publisher, there is no doubt that such mechanics are sleazy in the sense that players are deliberately targeted for their wallets as opposed to catering to their sense of fun. That's why Temple Run is a breath of fresh air in the top-grossing list of iOS titles.

The last mechanic Temple Run features is a series of mini-objectives. These are seen in many games, but work really nicely in this title. Such objectives consist of running a fixed amount of distance, performing X amount of jumps, collecting X amount of coins and so on and so forth. Completing one of these objectives ramps up your score / coin collection multiplier, making it in the player's best interest to complete these objectives. From a game design standpoint, this adds extra longevity to the title, as users are encouraged not only to play the basic game, but are given reasons to achieve certain goals and missions. It also means that users are rewarded and congratulated throughout the game, and not only when a new high score is achieved. This keeps the game fresh and fun which is incredibly important for an iOS title. Add to this Game Center scoreboard leaderboards and Temple Run is an awesome game as it allows you to compare scores with friends and players around the world. 

Some of the objectives to complete in Temple Run

While Temple Run cannot compare to a multi-hour Triple-A console razmattaz, the game is an excellent example of gaming on the go. It's a title that provides short bursts of twitch based gameplay that is fun to play and rewarding to keep playing with. If ever you are waiting for a bus, a girlfriend who is late for a date, or waiting in the queue at the shops, Temple Run is an excellent go-to-game to help you waste 5 minutes of time, and an excellent example of great iOS gaming.

Street Fighter X Tekken

In what could be described as one of Capcom's most ambitious, experimental and controversial fighting games yet, March 2012 saw the release of Dimps developed Street Fighter X Tekken. When first announced in late 2010, fans of both series immediately became excited, then scared, then hesitant, then intrigued all in one chain of thought. Two of the biggest fighting game franchises of all time crossing over together with iconic character designs from both camps was cause for celebration indeed, but just how would Street Fighter's 2D gameplay fuse with Tekken's 3D mechanics?

The answer in my opinion is this: not well. But before going ahead and justifying while I feel this way, I feel it's time for somewhat of a disclaimer. Fighting Games are by their very nature incredibly deep, almost organic examples of game design. It is often incredibly hard to break them down because of the plethora of characters on offer, the multitude of systems and subsystems found within and because it's almost impossible to predict how a fighting games overall playstyle and balance will pan out after successful strategies and tactics evolve over time. Thus fighting games are often some of the hardest games to design and balance and it's why I find analysing them to be incredibly interesting, if incredibly difficult to do at the same time.

SFxT offers an absolute myriad of different gameplay mechanics and modes... so many in fact that even a diehard follower of the game's progress would struggle to list all of the fundamental systems and modes featured in the game. Now this in itself is a very interesting design choice on behalf of the developers. Fighting games are generally lauded for their deep, rewarding gameplay, but this usually comes at the expense of a high learning curve and harsh barrier of entry that prevents many from getting to grips with the genre at all. In a gaming world where simplified systems are increasingly becoming the norm, this is a very bold and somewhat risky approach to take. The whole accessibility versus depth of gameplay argument merits it's own discussion entirely, so it's not one that I will cover here, and instead will look at the title purely from the perspective of an experienced fighting games player.

Core gameplay in the title takes place on a 2D plane, using 3D graphics, an approach that worked wonders with the Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom series, leading to a resurgence in the Fighting Games genre. However, the title also has a 2 on 2 tag team system akin to the one used in Tekken Tag Tournament, where a team is compromised of 2 characters, but a player can lose a round if either of their characters is reduced to zero health. Thus the game features an interesting meta-game of lifebar and character management where players must continually juggle their available resources so that they do not end up losing a round despite having a character with 100% health waiting in the wings. But more on that a bit later.

First, let's look at how Dimps have fused the 2D gameplay from Street Fighter games with the 3D gameplay from the Tekken series. Street Fighter games have generally speaking, always been about space control and positioning on screen. The legendary Fireball / Dragon trap of the early 90's stems from challenging your opponents horizontal space with a fireball and then using a Dragon Punch to protect your own vertical space should the opponent try to attack you from this angle. Tekken on the other hand can loosely be described as a "battle of time," in that characters normally have sequences of moves and combinations that will tie up the opponent for a duration of time. However, when the sequence comes to an end, the aggressor is usually then left open to some sort of retaliation from the opponent, making the game almost feel "turn-based" in that each player takes a turn to apply pressure and then react to being on the receiving end. A successful 3D strategy then is to try and stay in control of applying pressure for a longer period of time, whilst minimising the amount of time one is on the receiving end. Yes these are gross over-simplifications of both game designs, but it gives you the gist.

Impressively, SFxT does manage to maintain the essence of both of these gameplay designs. Classic SF characters such as Ryu and Ken still have fireballs and Dragon Punches and have the ability to zone out the opponent, whereas Tekken characters such as Heihachi and Kazuya have lots of long block strings and chain sequences that put the opponent into eons of blockstun that also force the opponent to guess between mid and low attacks. Unsurprisingly, the SF characters are better at zoning and the Tekken characters are better at applying up-close pressure. So all is well in this regard right? Well not quite. You see fundamentally these two styles of fighting clash. It's all well and good being great at applying pressure and mixups, but in order to do this, one needs to get in in the first place. Thus in order to prevent the SF characters being overly dominant, characters anti-air normal and special moves feel notably nerfed compared to their equivalents in other SF games such as the IV and II series. Thus whereas traditionally jumping in against Ryu would be an absolute no-no, in this game doing so is not the end of the world, as the Dragon Punch often trades, loses or even misses completely a jump-in attempt, such is the change of the vertical arc this move now has.

An anti-air attempt works! This time at least...

From a design standpoint, I can completely understand this gameplay decision. It enables the Tekken characters to take more risks to get in, so they can get up close and apply pressure so that they can be competitive in the system. However, this has the drawback of often deeply frustrating the defending player. Sometimes one can feel utterly helpless as an opponent jumps in repeatedly, often punishing the defending player when they try to challenge the aggressor. This has the negative impact of punishing a player for trying to implement a "smart" strategy, in this case the defender for trying to defend the space around their character. Now such decisions have been present in Street Fighter games before, the SF III series (with 3S being my personal favourite ever fighting game) featured the parry mechanic which allowed the aggressor to negate completely an anti-air attempt, and the Alpha series featured air blocking, allowing the aggressor to retain some defence in exchange of offence when trying to get in via the air. However, both of these titles offered a fair balance of risk / reward, whereas in SFxT, it often feels semi-random as to whether the aggressor or defender will win an anti-air battle. Whilst this does mean that there is the argument of "jumps are good in this game, deal with it," it does also mean that some characters feel excessively strong because of great aerial prowess, whereas some characters feel rather weak as they seem absolutely powerless to defend themselves from such tactics. Dimps has tried to address this by adding various other subsystems into the game, such as the Alpha Counter, an ability to break out of block pressure at the expense of one bar. However, it ultimately means that in successful team composition, one must have at least one character on their team that can either deal with or apply aerial pressure. Choosing two out and out rushdown Tekken characters just isn't going to work, no matter how good the player in control is.

A boost combo is performed with a chain series, starting from a light attack, through a medium attack to a hard attack. Upon pressing the hard attack again afterwards, the camera zooms in close the to current player and tags in the current player's secondary character.

This leads nicely into the team tagging / switch cancelling mechanic found at the core of the game. The game features "boost" combos that lead into exchange launchers that allow the attacker to bring in their secondary character for free. However, a player can also spend one bar of meter to "switch-cancel" their current move to bring in their secondary character, and this can be done even if an attack is blocked. This leads to all sorts of interesting strategic decisions and tactics. A simple but powerful strategy is to combine a character who as aforementioned is strong in the air with a character that deal lots of damage once in up close. Use your first character to get in, free boost combo to bring in your secondary and deal lots of damage. Another good strategy is to use a character with a lockdown move that keeps your opponent in blockstun, then bring in another character whilst this is going on at the expense of one meter to apply a deadly high / low / left / right mixup to confuse your opponent and break their guard. There are of course, even more ways to use these mechanics and this is probably the area where SFxT shines strongest, offering interesting and fun possibilities to the core gameplay. There is an awful lot more that could be discussed with regards to the specifics and nuances of this subject, but as it works so well, I'll move on.

Another interesting design choice found in SFxTekken is the inclusion of a totally invincible forward roll, universal to all characters for use on wake-up. Whilst not new to either Capcom or Namco fighting games, the way it has been implemented in SFxT is unique for a Capcom game. Effectively, after knocking down an opponent, the defending player has a choice of staying put, backdashing (retaining invincibility as per SF IV) or rolling forwards. This means that pressure on wake-up for the aggressor is severely nerfed. Gone are the safe-jump / "vortex" / loop setups from SF IV (and to a lesser extend SF2) and instead the emphasis on knock-down is to retain position and respond to the choice the defender makes whilst getting up. This means that a large amount of the game is focused around "footsie" battles, as opposed to one knock-down leading to a series of deadly guessing games that many of the stronger characters in SF IV possess. In a game where many of the Tekken characters have insane mid / low rushdown pressure and strings, this is a sound decision, and does add to the gameplay after initially feeling like an overly strong defensive weapon. Unfortunately it also results in the game taking even longer to play itself out than it already does. This is not a fault of this one mechanic, but rather a combination of it allied to other questionable design choices.

This brings me on to another hot topic of fighting game discussion - damage scaling. This is a feature that finds itself in pretty much all fighting games these days, acting as a way to balance the lengthy and more complicated combo systems found in modern day fighters. The decision to add such scaling into fighters makes a lot of sense, it aids newer and intermediate players to keep even with more experienced opponents as they are not completely destroyed by one massively damaging combo due to making one mistake. However, in adding this layer of scaling it also causes other problems. One principal problem is that longer, tougher to execute combos are no longer worth using. The risk in "dropping" the said combo and the meter usage is often not worth adding an extra 50-100 damage, and is better kept in reserve for another opportunity to use. This means that one of the strongest points of SFxT, it's fantastically creative and fun combo system is actually rather pointless, as simpler and more basic combos lead to as much practical damage. Again, this decision is understandable and does have a lot of merit, allowing newer players to fight on a more even standpoint to experienced players. However the scaling in this game does feel excessive at times. As many combos start from a sequence of chained normals, it is really hard to perform combos that deal over 50% damage, even with multiple switch cancels and / or EX moves. Whilst 50% sounds like a lot of damage, one must bear in mind that each player effectively has two lifebars and each character can recover health whilst not in play, thus making a 50% combo more like a 25% combo. This in culmination with the invincible roll / backdash / reversal / quick-stand on wakeup defense game means that this game suffers from a LOT of timeouts, even amongst experienced players. Though early into the game's evolution, many veteran players are already arguing that the damage scaling should be cut back quite some way, to make the game more interesting to play by adding more reward for taking risks in game.

The damage scaling also leads to another problem, inevitable loss syndrome. As dealing massive damage is not really possible in this game, if a player finds themselves down by a large amount of health with 25 or so seconds to go, they have effectively already lost the game. No matter how much meter they have, it's simply not possible to makeup the difference in health with this much time to go. This actually harks back to the days of SF2, where the lack of Super and EX moves meant that players had to grind out wins and that losing by even 1 pixel of health was a bad situation to be in. However, in a game that takes a long time to play, with 50% of the characters seemingly built on being offensive and with a core gameplay system of encouraging players to attack and utilize both characters, this leads to a many frustrating and plainly "unfun" experiences. I feel that because the game offers a 2 on 2 mode, allowing 4 players to compete at once in teams, this decision means that it is more likely that both players will get to contribute to each round in some meaningful way at least once. However as a one-on-one game, this decision definitely detracts from the fun and enjoyability of the game. Another bizzare decision is that Supers and Cross-Arts do not stop the timer. Thus when attempting a comeback, a player can play fantastically well, land a super / cross-art to try and maximise their damage output and be punished for doing so by losing to a time-out because their super animation took so long to finish!

Rolento activating Pandora mode, giving the player controlling Rolento approximately 7 seconds to win the round.

One way Dimps has tried to implement a comeback mechanic is via the "Pandora" mechanic. This allows a player to sacrifice one of their characters in order to offer their secondary character a damage boost and refillable EX meter. Unfortunately this idea is rather convoluted as the player only has 7 or so game seconds in which to make their comeback before their character dies. Pandora also does not grant any invincibility or guard canceling ability and can only really be used effectively as part of an ongoing combo when a prior move generates a wall bounce, ground bounce or crumple. Thus Pandora KO's and comebacks are seldom seen and are very risky to perform. Perhaps this is decisions is as a result of seeing how over-powered and unpopular the X-Factor mechanic was in Marvel vs Capcom 3, and so the ability to make a comeback has been effectively nerfed so that it is only really seen once in a blue moon. This is not necessarily a bad idea, but given how stringent the conditions are to achieve, how hard it is to land damage via a Pandora combo and the unlikely circumstances that need to arise in order to even be able to activate it in the first place, this has the classic "one mechanic too many" feel all over it.

Yes, this is as confusing as it looks.

Finally, it's worth talking about a massively controversial sub-system added to SFxT, gems. Perhaps this title's most unique feature is that each character in the game can be semi-customised with a set of "gems" that provide small stat boosts such as speed increases and damage gains mid-game when certain pre-conditions are met. For example, if your character has four of their normal moves blocked, they will do 10% more damage for the next 15 seconds. From a game design standpoint, this is a really unique and interesting twist to the fighting game genre. Perhaps from seeing countless mirror matches online, gems allow one Ryu user to be slightly different to another Ryu user, optimising their gem loadout for the style of play they prefer. For example, if they are an attacking, aggressive player, they might load up attack gems, whereas if they are naturally more cautious, they might load out defence gems instead. The whole idea feels very much like a traditional CCG such as Magic: The Gathering, whereby a lot of the strategic element of the game can be spent before the match even begins.

Unfortunately, I feel this is an idea that had massive potential on paper but that fails miserably in execution. By having pre-conditions required to trigger gems, it means their effects are not immediately noticeable, meaning that their strategic use is heavily dependent on what happens in a game. Gems also usually only last for a finite amount of time, meaning that even when gems are triggered, you may not be in the best position to actually use them. Even worse, the way that the gems are triggered during a match are extremely distracting to the player, and often detract from the overall game experience as both players look at each other with a bug "HUH?!" expression on their face.


I feel the idea behind gems is actually a very good one and that the idea may see some mileage again in future fighting game titles. However, with the poor implementation of selecting, equipping and triggering gems during a fight, only the most hardcore players will really get any enjoyment out of them. Further, amongst the multitude of other game mechanics and sub-systems found in the title, it seems to be lost in translation and detrimental to the overall game feel rather than adding something new. Perhaps the gem system would have been more effective in a game that had a core experience that was much more simple at heart, such as classic SF2: Hyper Fighting which lacked Supers / EX Moves, comeback mechanics, etc?

Overall I feel SFxT is a very interesting fusion of styles blended into one fighting game. I feel this title struggles overall because of an unfocused game design. Rather than concentrating on or two core mechanics and building the game around that, this game has systems and subsystems pouring out of it's sides. In fact despite this lengthy post, there are still many other design decisions and sub-systems that I have not mentioned! The result is a title that promises much but ultimately feels messy in it's execution. Some ideas are definitely very interesting, unique and fun to use, whereas others feel tacked on, confusing and pointless. I feel that this is a classic example of the "less is more" principle being skimped over for more of a "design by committee" approach. I think that had this title just focused on the tag team mechanic and it's Tekken style counter hit / juggle system, the title would have plenty to offer and with careful attention to game balance and character design could been a classic. Instead it feels like a bit like the a hangover the morning after a heavy night out. Some fun was almost certainly had, but ultimately you're left with a sore head and feeling worse for wear.

Devil May Cry 3

With the HD collection of Devil May Cry just around the corner, and Ninja Theory's reboot DmC out later in the year, I thought this would be a good time to look back at one my personal favourite games, and yet another Capcom masterpiece, the brilliant Devil May Cry 3.

The original Devil May Cry actually began life as a Resident Evil title, and was going to be the first RE title to grace the PlayStation 2. However, the director of the title, Hideki Kamiya, had created a game that was far more action orientated than RE1 director Shinji Mikami had intended the series to be. With the game 80% complete, Mikami made the ballsy decision to start work on RE2 from scratch, keeping more of a horror vibe for the series. However, rather than telling of Kamiya, he realised that the title he and his team had been working on showed real promise, and that it should go ahead, only as a different title. Hence, Devil May Cry was born and the world was introduced to one of the most badass character designs of all time, Dante.

 

Some see him as a metrosexual hipster, some find him to be an ultra annoying cock. But there is no doubt that Dante in his series of games is one cool cat. He is a pretentious, arrogant upstart wannabe, but also a hero with a heart of gold. This sense of character is painted all over each of the Devil May Cry games and the games actually have a sense of being completely designed around this character's persona. The fluidity in his animations, the moves he can perform, the music the game uses, the gameplay itself, they all fit in with the look, feel and personality of Dante.

Devil May Cry 1 was an absolute revelation when first released. It was at the time something utterly new, innovative and cool. It was a clearly a game made by gamers, for gamers and it led to critical acclaim and a cult following. The original DMC introduced to the world to a modern day hack and slash style action game. In the 80's and early 90's, 2D sidescrolling beat'em up's were very popular, such as Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Double Dragon. The DMC series is sort of the logical progression of this style of game, only with a ton of new twists and gameplay styles added to the mix. Whilst it's sequel, DMC2 somehow lost it's way, DMC3 had Kamiya back in the chair as director and thus took everything good from DMC1 and expanded and innovated upon it.

DMC3 is a very freeform game with a complex and deep combat system. The player controls Dante with the left analogue stick, and has a number of actions available to him with the various face and trigger buttons. The player has access to moves with his sword (and later all number of different weapons) and guns, both at the same time. This is something that immediately caught my attention as both a player and as a game design aficionado. Normally, ranged weapons are far more powerful that melee weapons, which is reflective of real life. However, in the DMC series guns are actually not particularly powerful. In fact, they are more used to keep enemies juggled in the air, or to jab away at them from long range. This leads to one of the most iconic images of the DMC series and something that is to this day a joy to behold. Being able to launch an enemy into the air with your sword, and then keeping them juggled in the air using any number of ranged weapons. Not only does it look amazing, but it feels brilliant to perform and is necessary to progress through the game as one in a long series of melee and combo moves available to Dante.

What I particularly love about this mechanic is that it actually started out life as a bug. In the original RE2, there was a code glitch that meant that when an enemy was in the air, if the player kept shooting them, they would keep recoiling in hitstun in the air. However, rather than just scrapping this and passing it of as an error, somebody smart in the team instead realised how cool it looked. Thus the mechanic became a feature and led to the over-the-top action style of game that the Devil May Cry series became famous for. I think this is a brilliant example of adapting an original design. Sometimes you will accidentally find things along the development journey that are actually better ideas than you originally thought of. A good designer can recognise when a mechanic or action is fun and will run with it, rather than dumping it and going back to a hard and fast design.

These are the controls for Devil May Cry 4, but they are almost identical to DMC3 and this image is useful for talking about the intricacies of the control system used in the game.

DMC3 has a wide range of controls, but the strength of the game comes from the tight and complicated control system. Make no mistake, the DMC series is very hard and unforgiving for a new player. The series was designed at a time when Capcom had a number of loyal fans who craved difficult games with technical controls, and DMC is one of the finest example of the depth of gameplay a tight but complicated system can offer. At a basic level, Dante has the ability to slash with his sword, fire his guns (which have an infinite amount of ammo), or jump. The player moves Dante with the left stick and the enemy he will attack is based on who he is facing at a given time. However, the player can use the R1 trigger button to lock-on to an enemy, meaning that any melee or ranged weapon attack will target the currently locked onto enemy. This is a key part of the game, as the player will have to decide which enemy to attack at any given time, as there are often many enemies on screen at once. Whilst locked onto an enemy, Dante can also roll to either the left or right by holding the stick left or right and pressing the triangle button whilst holding the R1 button down. At first this feels rather finicky, but it feels right when playing the game for real.

Through various combinations of button presses and stick taps, Dante can also access a wide range of special techniques and moves. For example, with the rebellion sword he starts with, the player can press triangle, triangle, triangle within a specified time to make Dante go into a pre-canned 3 hit sword slash combo. Dante initially starts with a limited number of moves he can perform, but as the game progresses, Dante gains access to all manner of moves, weapons and even styles. This leads to a plethora of different ways to play the game and one of the best things about Devil May Cry 3 is that a lot of the fun is playing the game and coming up with your own ways of defeating enemies, instead of using a single strategy.

As well as pre-canned combinations, Dante also has access to a range of other types of moves that are all used to extend combos and deal with enemies. For example, Dante has access to a range of moves known as launchers, which as the name suggests, launches an enemy into the air. Once airbourne, Dante can then juggle the opponent in the air using his guns. However, he can also leap or follow the opponent into the air and juggle them with melee attacks. As the game progresses, you can also gain access to powers that allow you to launch both the enemy and Dante at the same time. When in mid-air, you then have the ability to smash the opponent back down to earth, or even knock them up into the air even further again. Oh and if the opponent is smashed down to the floor, don't think the combo is over yet. It's possible to land on top of them, or even pop them back up into the air again via an OTG (off the ground) move. Thus it's possible to perform absolutely insanely long combos that go on for ages and deal ridiculous damage to an enemy.

These combos of course happen to look incredibly stylish, and this is the point of the game itself. You see Devil May Cry isn't just an action game, it's a *Stylish Action Game* and that's what makes all the difference in setting it apart from many of the clones that followed after it. In the top-right hand corner, there is a mar that fills up whenever you use a particular attack. This is known as the "style" meter and it accumulates depending on the number and variety of attacks Dante performs over a small series of time. If you keep hitting enemies and keep hitting them with different moves, it fills up, allowing you access to the all powerful Devil Trigger. However, if you keep missing enemies, or keep using the same moves over and over, it slowly depletes. This small gameplay mechanic is the single greatest piece of genius in the DMC series. The game actually wants you to explore and try out new techniques so that you can fill up your bar and gain access to the various ranks in the game. When the bar is starting out near empty, it starts at D rank (usually followed by a word, such as dope) and then goes C, B, A, S, SS and SSS (Smokin' Sick Style) in that order. Thus just finishing the game is the basic requirement this game offers as a challenge, the *real* challenge of the game is to finish every mission with an SSS rank. Thus to gain those elusive SSS ranks, the player needs to learn to perform all manner of crazy combos and juggles, making the various styles and techniques relevant and making the game insanely fun.

If this wasn't enough, the game also balances nicely a range of different melee styles. Being able to go combo crazy one on enemy is all well and good, but the enemies don't just stand there and let you hit them. Not only must you learn to evade their attacks, you need to know when it's safe to attack them, as some have periods of invincibility where they cannot be hit. You also often attacked by a a crowd of enemies, so an important lesson is to learn which of your moves can be used for crowd control, and which can be used to hurt a specific enemy. To master the game, you need to be able to evade enemy attacks, deal with crowds of enemies and isolate specific enemies to kill. It's also important to know within a group of enemies which one poses the biggest danger, so you can eliminate them first before dealing with the rest. This is all done at 60FPS making for a really smooth gameplay experience where controls are smooth and fluid and you need to think fast, or end up toast.

The various combat styles available to Dante in DMC3

If DMC3 had just one combat style on offer, it would have been a very good, if not great, game. However, there are so many weapons and styles on offer that there is a ton of replayability and fun to be had in this title. One style is known as Swordmaster, which as you might imagine, is based around attacks with sword weapons. However, there is also a Gunslinger style,which focuses on ranged weapons. There is also a Trickster style, a Quicksilver Style, a Doppelganger style a Dark Slayer Style (available to Nero in the special edition at least) and my personal favourite, the Royal Guard style. Each style has a range of unique moves available to it, such as the Royal Guard allowing you to parry an enemy hit and counter attack them as they hit you. Add to this the crazy number of weapons available in the game, such as swords, gauntlets and a rock guitar (you can't make this up) and you have the recipe for one of the finest combat systems ever found in any game, ever. 

To appreciate just how deep the combat system is in the game, it's worth reading some of the combat system FAQS available for the game. DMC3 has a system deep enough to rival most fighting games. Just like a fighting game, it's possible to cancel the downtime of one animation of one move with the start-up of another. So instead of performing a 3 hit slash combo, after the second hit, you can cancel into a Stinger, and then cancel the Stinger into a high-time to launch the enemy. You can then cancel the high-time such that Dante also launches himself into the air with the enemy, and then start cancel combos in the air. And this is just a basic, learn in 5 minutes, style of combo. It's also possible to link combos together, so that as soon as one combo ends, you still recover fast enough before your enemy that you can start another combo at a precise timing to continue the barrage.

Dante fights the Cerberus boss, a 3 headed dog who appears several times during the game

Whilst DMC3's combat system is it's piece de la resistance, there are lots of other notable game design choices that add up to make it so much fun. Destruction enemies reveals red orbs that are then attracted to Dante. These orbs are used as a currency in-game to gain new powers, which means that the game is structured such that not all powers are necessary straight away. Thus the game can increase in difficulty and can offer more variation to the player as the game progresses as new styles and techniques become available and enemies become more powerful and require new strategies to defeat. The game also has some fantastic boss designs, which are not only inventive, but challenging and fun to fight against. All bosses have unique tells and signs that you can use to know when to defend and when to attack. Even challenging bosses, and there are a lot of those, are fair to fight against once you learn their patterns and tells.

The game also has an absolutely banging soundtrack. It's of the hard rock / death metal variety and when first shown off in DMC1 was totally unique as no other game had tried anything like it. It totally fitted Dante and the character of the game and goes really well with the intense stylish action of the game. In fact, after completing the game, you gain access to the Bloody Palace mode which is a series of waves of enemies presented in "floors" which are effectively rounds. There are 200 rounds, and completing all of them with the soundtrack cranked up to maximum is a really fun part of the game and shows off just how good the combat engine is.

There's a lot more that could be said about DMC3, but it's a game that is truly cherished by it's fans. In a way, its a product of a bygone era, as it's difficulty and harsh learning curve and lack of approachability just wouldn't get green-lit by a major publisher today, perhaps explaining why Capcom have decided to farm out the latest DMC game to a Western developer. However, it's a brilliant example of how deep a game can be and how to make a game whereby the system is so much fun that the real challenge and enjoyability of the game is simply to keep playing and find things out for yourself. And for that, I salute you DMC3.