Better Than the Worst:
A Newbie’s Guide to Sidestepping Ridicule
The 2008 Revival
Part Five

By Jeremy Bursey (Pepsi Ranger)

And so we reach a new chapter of the “Better Than the Worst” universe. Now that the engine has changed significantly since February 2001, I think it’s time to regard its latest tricks. This will be uncharted territory for all of us, so grab onto your wooden rails, steel your stomachs from motion sickness, and don’t get wet when the waves start crashing onto the deck. Only those still holding on get to make great games.

Lesson #9: If You’re Lazy, Walk the Plank.

“When did we step aboard a pirate ship?” you may ask. Well, given the community’s knack for pillaging Final Fantasy games for ideas, I’d say we’ve been on a pirate ship since day one. We rip shamelessly. We make crap games for the sheer desecration of all that’s holy (or should be) in OHR land. We set fire to gaming integrity for the sake of getting the recognition we want today. And we fight back when a critic blasts our work (though, I must admit we’ve gotten better about that one over the years). To suggest we’re the victims on the beach is a gross misjudgment.

So now that we’ve established where we are (not to be confused with “Arrr!”), it’s time to recognize our role on deck.

As game designers, it is our objective to devote heart to our projects, like the pirate captain who travels to the ends of the earth to find his treasure. We must pour into our designs like they’re our children, giving them whatever they need to reach their best.

Now, don’t be fooled into thinking that loving the story idea—those concepts that seem cool (like the whole rescue the damsel from the dragon cliché)—is enough. Rather, our heart should be in finding the best way to present the story. In the case of the pirate captain, wanting treasure isn’t enough: he must flip over every rock and speak to every chieftain about the map’s cultural symbols before he stands a chance.

This means “I’m too lazy to draw animations” won’t cut it. The captain who gets lazy doesn’t find the treasure; he gets overthrown in a mutiny. Likewise, the crew that doesn’t pull its weight amassing the sails gets thrown off the ship. There’s no room for lazy authors here. If you want to avoid a scathing review, pull your weight. If you want to present a memorable game, put some heart into it. It starts with loving your project. If you can’t hold the idea into your chest, you need to get rid of it and do something else.

Lesson #10: Get that Heart Beating.

“Okay, so we’ve gone through the whole process of learning the engine, discovering new tricks, yada yada; we even think we have heart. Fine. What now?” Well, now it’s time to do something with it.

I mentioned in Part One that I wouldn’t tell you how to make your game. Seven years later, I still hold to that. But I maintain that the statement applies only to the design process (i.e. draw graphics first, then rip music, then create characters, etc.). It doesn’t mean I won’t suggest ideas to make your game better.

If we can agree that we have heart, then I think it’s safe to keep going with this lesson. For any newbie (or old-timer as the case may be) that can’t be bothered with details, you may walk the plank here.

Assuming some of you are still with me now, I’ll move on.

One way to pour heart into your project is to consider the details. Take Fenrir-Lunis, for example, a guy we know as the bar-raiser for graphics. With each game he releases, he steps up his own artistic level another notch. Does he owe his perfection to anyone? No. Does he owe it to himself? Not unless he’s anal. In truth, there’s no public reason for him to keep devoting hours upon hours to perfecting his graphics. But he does it anyway because he knows the presentation will be that much better.

“But graphics aren’t everything, right?” That’s not the point. The point is heart. Fenrir-Lunis (and I may be totally projecting his feelings toward his games here, but I think I’m right) loves the games he makes. He wouldn’t keep making and remaking Vikings of Midgard if he didn’t. Or better yet, consider White Owl, the legendary creator of Fantasy Under a Blue Moon X. Not only did he want to get his presentation right, he remade the game five times to ensure it matched his vision. Many authors can’t be bothered drawing curves in their coastlines. Who comes out on top?

Now, I could beat the graphics card into the dirt here, but again, that’s not the point. The point is to immerse the player into a detail-rich game that only an author with heart can produce—to make a clock that ticks rather than a clock that’s dead; to put that no smoking sign in the bathroom, just over the chain smoker’s head. The point is to stop the hero in his tracks while the player marvels at the intricate setting before him.

“So what you’re saying is, graphics are everything, right?” No. Start using your brain here. It’s not about graphics. It’s about detail. Let me take this a step further.

Consider the following scene: a hero walks into a shop, sees a shopkeeper, a plant in the corner, a shelf or two, a cash register, and a rock. In most RPGs, commercial and indie alike, the player has three options: to talk to the shopkeeper, to buy from the shopkeeper, and to walk around the room. That’s it.

Kinda bland, right?

Now, we could bring efficiency into this argument, saying that if the only thing important to the game is the shopkeeper, then there’s no reason to give the player anything else to do. For a streamlined game, this would be very true. It could even fall in line with heart if the author’s utmost desire is to keep the player moving. But most of us don’t play games to get them over with. We play them because we want to experience something we can’t experience anywhere else.

This is where we have to reexamine the scene.

First of all, a real store has two scenarios: popular or dead. If popular, people will shop there. If dead, the store will be empty and the shopkeeper will probably complain about it. In either case, the shopkeeper won’t be happy unless he owns the store, is psychotic, or just scratched off a winning lottery ticket while waiting for customers to walk in. How many times have you walked into Walgreens to see the clerk smiling, content with the direction of his life? I couldn’t name you any (unless they’re retired and just want to get out of the house). This reality, unfortunately, is generally overlooked in games (in favor of the cardboard “Welcome to Trinket City! How may I help you?”—Buy/Sell/Equip/Stick Thumb Up Butt/Save/Exit). Perhaps it’s time to change that.

And what about that plant in the corner? Is it basic scenery (as found all over the world) or is it a special breed? If it’s unique, maybe the hero could interact with it. What about the shelves? What’s on them? Don’t leave me in the dark, man. Is it food? Beverages? Dog treats? What about the register? Would the shopkeeper treat the hero differently if he examined (activated) it? Areas don’t have to be boring. Keep the player interested in your world. You do have a rock setting in the corner, after all. Exploit it!

Don’t think I’m done here. There’s more.

What if the shop has another NPC walking around? Is he just walking around, admiring the limited view, or is he actually shopping? Thanks to the advancements of timers and Alter NPC commands, NPCs don’t have to be limited to one action. A creative designer (with heart) might find a way to have that NPC pulling objects off the shelf, or even shoplifting the store. And who says the NPC has to stay? If he wanders into a door tile, why not just have him go through it? That’s what real people do.

Think about it. What’s more exciting? An NPC that just walks around the room, or one that lights a cigarette and smokes it out of the blue?




Would you, as a player, rather see a housekeeper wandering the halls like a zombie, or would you find it nice to see her dusting tables whenever she gets close to one?




Make no mistake: implementing details of this nature, whether adding a merit badge to a boy scout’s uniform or creating a readable book for a bookshelf, is dedicated work. You must have heart to see it through. How you choose to present those immersing details is subjective, of course, but you must give the player something if you want to treat him right.

And I’m not suggesting your game needs everything, mind you. I tend to saturate mine with tiny details and various Easter eggs, but that’s just what I feel my games deserve. During a playtest of Halloween Quest 3, I made a suggestion to RMZ to add animation to his cut scenes (because that’s what I like to see in games). But he didn’t think the game needed them. After considering his viewpoint, I agreed. His game didn’t need them. Yours might not, either, whereas mine does. Each author can decide what level of immersion his game needs. The important thing at the end of the day is to implement its needs, whatever they may be. Don’t get lazy. If you can’t handle that, stop sharing your projects. We sure as heck don’t want to play half-assed games.

Lesson #11: If You Made Notes, Resist the Urge to Read Them.

“Holy crap, Batman,” you may be thinking. “You just smacked the creators of Game Design 101 in the face.” Yeah, well, I gotta stick to my gut here. This lesson will end up being controversial, thanks to the foundation of traditional teaching being so rigid, so I’m not gonna spend much time on it. I figure article upon article, discussion upon discussion will raise points on this very topic (under different conditions, likely), so I’m just gonna state my opinion and move on.

Not everything has to be written down. Yes, there is a time for outlines, sketches, and even plots, as Lesson #4 will testify. But it’s a bad idea to glue yourself to them. Here’s why:

To borrow a method Stephen King discusses in his book On Writing, he says that instead of creating plots, which can kill a character’s authenticity, create “what if” statements and then experience the story as the protagonist experiences it. When you watch the character unfold (as the author) the same way a reader would, you find he might just adopt a third dimension. Not only that, the story becomes more exciting for everyone when the author himself has no idea what happens next.

And yes, there’s a risk this can fall apart. A great risk, in fact. But the ones most likely to fall are the authors who missed their calling as accountants. A capable storyteller will find a way to make the story work if he goes in blind, whereas a rigid storyteller (the one who sticks to his notes) will quickly lose the reader in a maze of convenience, and then the story will suck.

So how does this apply to game design? Well, if you, as the author, make the game one level at a time, one story point at a time, you’ll find your character can grow more genuinely than if you had everything mapped out beforehand.

For example, if you pre-mapped his journey from his home to the castle in the mountain, you’re probably gonna have a straight road with nothing in his way (save the obligatory random battles). Eventually, you’ll find this gets very uninteresting really fast for the player. But if you handled his journey another way, let’s say you created his house and nothing else, you’ll find that the world is your oyster.

Let’s go deeper. You build his town, place the usual shops and inns wherever they belong, stick a well in the central square, and put a wall around everything. Fine. But you notice the wide-open field leading to the castle is bare. You decide to populate it with grass. For kicks, you also make one of the grass tiles a different color—brown for argument’s sake. Then you start designing the castle.

“Wait! What about that brown grass tile?” you start to think. You go back and consider it. Maybe something is eating the nutrients out of the town’s vegetation.

According to your plan, your hero is supposed to wake up, run an errand for his mom, get pigeonholed into visiting the castle, and go on a quest to free the king’s daughter from robbers. Very straightforward; very rigid. And that’s it. Nothing in the plan mentions the possibility of some weird creature killing the town’s vegetation (which might be starving its people).

But now you consider it. That’s a heck of a lot more interesting than rescuing some diva from a band of Sherwood Forest rejects. Your whole plan just went down the toilet, but for a good cause.

You didn’t need that plan anyway.

Working this way can also give you deeper characters. Remember that smoking NPC a few paragraphs up? That’s the town mayor. He was originally gonna just wander the room, the same as every other NPC in RPG land does, and no one would care any different. But after I drew him, I saw his arm was angled a little strangely and thought, “Hmm, I bet he’d look fitting with a cigarette.” A couple hours later, I had a chain-smoking mayor walking around as a normal NPC one minute, lighting up his cigarette the next, and stamping it out a minute after that (taking drags every fifteen seconds). Considering that he’s doing this in a “No Smoking” zone, I’d say that’s quite the nice detour from plan. Am I wrong? I think it’ll give the player a warm fuzzy feeling to see.

So don’t bother with notes unless you have zero imagination. Or if you have to use them (I find stat balancing and reward distributions are easier with notes), make sure they won’t infringe on the player’s experience down the road. When all is said and done, the most important element here is to enhance the player’s experience. Preplanned notes, laziness, and all around apathy tend to put that in jeopardy.

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