keith

when i play a game which uses point assignment for character traits/stats, it fires off the part of my brain which is in control of life reassessment.  this is the same part which realizes you need to quit your job or which looks back to see if your life ended up as you hoped it would.

each level up, the player will ask themselves “what kind of person am i?”.  the choices may feel fleeting or even calculated (theorycrafting), but that gut feeling which is used to decide between the visual rows of “constitution/charisma” can go deeper.  to back up that decision, they will subconsciously dream up reasons and flashes of narrative which serve to apply a personal memory to their story and act as a filler for any gaps in your flow (usually, time before the onset of the game)  “i am more interested in magic than defense, since as a child i used to spend nights on the roof lighting bugs on fire using my mind”

games which this mechanism serves well are ones which do not rely heavily on cinematic transitions from set-piece to set-piece, but instead want the player to wander and discover things on their own.  the feeling of freedom goes hand-in-hand with those of personal choices and customization.  if used along with cinematic storytelling, care needs to be taken to make sure none of the directional plot points or dramatized events conflict with the choices which the player has made.  if i can put all my points in agility, i shouldn’t be crippled halfway through the game due to a dormant genetic defect!  if they are irrelevant to the story (note: story not gameplay) and the story is high quality, then the player will create their own sub-plot to explain the stats.  if done right, it is a quick way to help your players be more engaged in the story you are unfolding.

in order for any game to inspire the user to dream, it needs to have at least a minimum of produced storytelling.  a good example of this is Torchlight.  they did a good job of using slight touches of narrative through fairly well voice-acted monologues to keep the game from feeling lifeless.  any less cinematic than this though, and the player won’t care why they are picking one stat over the next.  don’t create work, give tools which help immerse the player.

in software, one of the most important things you can do is giving form to the invisible.  a framework for checking “last success” should support every cron, daemon, app server and regularly scheduled script.

it should be purposefully focused by not asking for a current running state and instead ask for “when did you last do your task successfully?” this creates a mindset of focusing on the bigger picture to avoid getting lost in little everyday problems

background processes are the plumbers which keep sites alive and we should focus on making sure all of them, every single cron on every machine, has a hook to the mothership so we know that the little guy is still ok

in my awesome fortress of solitude:

• Batman Returns
• Half Baked
• Ocean’s 13
• Star Wars I
• Star Wars II
• Star Wars III
• Fanboys
• Star Wars IV
• Star Wars V
• Star Wars VI
• In Bruges
• The Last Samurai

terri should really leave for the weekend more often.