Extra Credits

This week, we discuss some of the positive impact our community has on the world.

Good games inspire children to learn through play, whether in the classroom or at home. Understanding the educational needs of different age groups, from kindergarten to middle school, allows designers to create games that give children the opportunity to explore and grow.

The debate about net neutrality rages on, but the meaning of "open internet" vs. "closed internet" is seldom explained. Without an open or neutral internet, corporations like AT&T or Comcast can restrict bandwidth and charge people extra for faster connections or limit access to their competitors' services altogether. In the United States, a January 2014 ruling from the DC Circuit Court determined that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) had no authority to enforce its previous rules about net neutrality. This opened the decision about how to govern the internet's future up to law makers in the US Congress.

Comedy relies on timing, but video games can go beyond the scripted scenes of films or television to create interactive "comedy by choice" that lets each player discover humor on their own.

Match three games like Bejeweled have spawned many clones, but none as successful as Candy Crush. Love it or hate it, it's helpful to understand why so many people play it.

Traditional education focuses on assessment, giving students one chance to get their homework right. Games can provide immediate feedback and teach core problem solving skills.

Games that can track player behavior down to the last click can also keep teachers informed about their classes' progress and give them time to work one-on-one with struggling students.

Games give players agency and teach the core 21st century skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity better than any traditional program of rote learning can.

Games show us the immediate, direct impact of our choices in a way that teaches us to plan for our goals and take control of our future. No lesson could be more valuable for a student.

H.P. Lovecraft and the Call of Cthulhu have inspired many horror games, but the power fantasy that drives most games conflicts with the unfathomable, unreachable terror of Cthulhu.

Games like Spelunky and FTL led a revival of the roguelike genre. Techniques adopted from other genres simplify the learning curve and make these games accessible again for modern players.

The PlayStation Vita tried to create a high end mobile gaming solution, but failed to achieve even a fraction of the sales of low end systems like the Nintendo 3DS or even the iPhone.

Many developers have adopted the trend of giving players early access to a game that's still in development, gaining funding through sales at the high potential cost of a good first impression.

Games like Candy Box, Frog Fractions, and a Dark Room uproot traditional game design that relies on spectacle and action. Instead they build an interest curve by appealing to our natural curiosity.

Open world games offer players great opportunities to explore, but developers must figure out how to organize their team to create an immersive experience across so many hours of content.

Games give players the agency to make decisions, but whether they highlight choices in advance or deliver consequences after the fact changes the experience and the game design itself.

For our 200th episode, we take a look back at all the good things games have accomplished, as an industry and a community, since Extra Credits started in 2008!

The number of games coming out has hugely increased thanks to distribution platforms like Steam and the App Store, but storefronts have become a cluttered mess with inadequate search options.

Skill should be the determining factor in Esports, but many competitive games include a random element such as critical strike chance or card draw that can change the outcome of a match.

Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar.

In turn-based competitive games, the player who goes first gets initiative. Designers must find ways to balance this advantage and keep track of win rates for both players as the game changes over time.

Squeezing money from their highest spending players causes most free to play games to push out the majority of their playerbase.

Historical games can be a great way to learn while playing, but giving the player choice means not re-enacting history as it happened. Systems and mechanics can make the player's choices feel like the choices of a historic figure.

Every quest reward or sellable item in an MMO generates more gold that goes into the economy, causing inflation as the gold becomes more common and less valuable. There are several ways that MMOs can drain that money out of the economy by creating "gold sinks."

Games based on popular movies or books often turn out to be disappointing for fans of the original material. These poorly made cash-in games often spend most of their budget buying a brand license and then rush through development in order to match release deadlines. Especially now when they are moving to the growing mobile and handheld markets, their poor quality leaves a potential new base of consumers with a bad impression of games. Special thanks to Scot for the suggestion! Thanks for supporting us, Scot!

Video game villains that don't match the overall tone of the game distract the player and can become more of a laughing stock than a threat. Game designers must understand the two basic categories of bad guys (mechanics villains and narrative villains) and know not only when to use them but how to approach their design.

Villains are people too. A compelling narrative villain does not just do evil things for the sake of being evil, but because their view of the world or the actions they've taken within it drive them to make choices which they see as necessary, or even good. Instead of just a big boss monster to defeat, these antagonist types force the protagonist to make choices and challenge how they see the world.

Our brains have a tendency to gloss over the minute-to-minute action in video games, leaving us with a few minutes of distinct memories after hours of gameplay. Unlike with books or movies, we have been trained to turn our brains off or "veg out" during our game time, causing us to miss out on the full range of experience games have to offer. We can change this by making a conscious effort to focus on our games, especially when they bring more complex narratives or themes to the table.

Successful game design requires focus, which means the designer must understand what types of play best suits their game and make sure that all the game mechanics support it. Planned gameplay allows many different solutions but gives players time to review their options, practice gameplay encourages strategic thinking within fixed maps or rules, and improvised gameplay forces players think on the fly to adapt to random elements. While some games use one category exclusively, most combine them to different degrees and find success in developing systems focused on a primary type of play.

Too many horror games rely on "cheap" frights like jump scares or cliche monsters like zombies. While they may succeed in making the player afraid for a few moments, they rarely leave a lasting impression once the game is over. More horror should make use of the uncanny, creating scenes and characters that seem mostly normal but are just "off" in a disturbing way. This technique gives players something they can relate to and makes the game world real enough that it seems almost possible that the terror in the game could actually be part of our lives. Plus: Mass Effect costumes for Halloween!

Good horror games have their own pacing that's unique to the genre. To keep the player scared, games use a cycle of tension and release that keeps the player on the edge of their seat. Not knowing when the next scare will hit, but constantly reminded of the danger around them by small clues like scratching noises and dark corridors, players effectively begin to frighten themselves as they wonder what will happen next.

Games are becoming more common than ever, but the time-consuming and expensive methods to rate them for mature content haven't grown along with them. Small games, especially indie games, cannot afford the fee charged by organizations like the ESRB or PEGI for a full rating which requires someone to review the game's content and mark it by hand. Allowing developers to submit their own games which are then subject to consumer review for accuracy would make it possible even for small games to get content ratings, however platforms such as Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and even the App Store would need to encourage developers to use the system.

Early games like the 7th Guest mixed film footage with the interactivity of video games, but the poor quality led to bad results that deterred other games from following their lead. Cloud Chamber, a "massively multiplayer story game" released in 2014, revives the idea of interactive film by centering its action on the players' response to the movies, taking advantage of people's natural inclination to want to discuss what they've seen by developing in-game message boards. Thus Cloud Chamber is able to make videos interactive without the age old flaws of intrusive action menus or pace-breaking player actions.

Games often start by asking the player, "What difficulty would you like to play on?" But how is someone who has never touched the game before supposed to figure out whether they want to cruise along on easy mode or challenge themselves with hard mode? Even the idea of dynamic difficulty adjustment, which modifies the game based on how well the player is doing, can be frustrating for players whose efforts to get better at a difficult section are cut short as the game suddenly drops their difficulty rating. Dark Souls 2 provides in-game mechanics to let players choose their own difficulty preferences and adjust them on the fly simply based on the items and skills they choose - and in this episode, we give you the secret to playing Dark Souls II on easy mode!

Games that ask the player to do nothing more than wait while numbers increase have seen a surge in popularity. They fill a developing modern need for activity, giving players a window in their browser they can compulsively check while cycling between other interests. The fact that they ask for so little makes it easier for them to fulfill a multitasking impulse, scratching the player's itch to feel like they're accomplishing many tasks when their main focus (like listening to a lecture or working at their desk) requires them to sit still.

Norway faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to developing its role in the games industry. Despite some notable successes, the Norwegian game industry has yet to make its mark on the world stage. While the country has a very healthy economy and government support for games as a growing industry, Norway's population is too small to support a game industry by itself. Because of this, game companies must succeed in the global market despite a lack of dedicated business and marketing infrastructure on the publishing side.

Game mechanics often come "first" in the development phase, with a narrative being tacked on later. But when game mechanics become separated from story, the disjunct makes for a bad experience as players become impatient or disinterested. However many of the best games, from Shadow of the Colossus to Dark Souls, have mechanics that enhance the mood created by the story and the characters, and visa versa. Achieving that synthesis is key to the field of narrative design in video games.

Snakes and Ladders, or Chutes and Ladders, has been around for generations, going back perhaps 2000 years to its invention in India. Though simple - or perhaps through its simplicity - the game conveys a deliberate message about life that has stood the test of time. Snakes and Ladders requires no skill, relying purely on luck to demonstrate to the player that fate is beyond their control, and that they will stumble upon both sins that bring them down (snakes) and moral actions that lift them up (ladders) on the passage towards their goal in life.