![Patrick Holleman](/img/default-banner.jpg)
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Patrick Holleman
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Добавлен 27 авг 2015
I wrote a series of six books on some of the classics of videogame design, and now I'm turning the best lessons of those books into videos. My work tends to be a little more data-driven and has a slightly more academic tone than most gaming channels, but I'll be leaving most of the really dry stuff in the background. Just remember that if you're interested in the nitty-gritty details behind any of my conclusions, you can always find a link to the original books or articles just below the video.
How Skyrim's NPCs Organize the Open World Experience
In this video, we examine how the designers of Skyrim used networks of NPCs to help organize the open-world experience of the game. Open worlds can sometimes be difficult to approach at first because of the dizzying array of choices they present. But Skyrim's designers were able to create a subtle, guiding path for players to find the game's content and make an informed choice about what parts they wanted to pursue.
My website: thegamedesignforum.com
If you want to read more about NPC sociology and classification: thegamedesignforum.com/features/reverse_design_ff6_5.html
My website: thegamedesignforum.com
If you want to read more about NPC sociology and classification: thegamedesignforum.com/features/reverse_design_ff6_5.html
Просмотров: 2 139
Видео
What Avengers: Infinity War Has In Common With Final Fantasy VI
Просмотров 2,8 тыс.5 лет назад
The Avengers: Infinity War and Final Fantasy VI have one big narrative decision in common: the villain is the main character. In order to make narratives with 14 main characters work, the writers of both stories chose to make their villains the center of the story. This video explains how they did it. BOOK THIS VIDEO IS BASED ON: www.crcpress.com/Reverse-Design-Final-Fantasy-VI/Holleman/p/book/...
The 5 Kinds of NPC Speech
Просмотров 5 тыс.5 лет назад
NPC speech breaks down into five basic categories. This video defines each category of NPC speech, and examines different games to see how game designers use NPCs to fulfill both game design goals and storytelling goals. Patreon: www.patreon.com/thegamedesignforum Book Series: www.crcpress.com/search/results?kw=reverse design Games recorded: Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy V Final Fantasy VI Final...
Level Analysis Ep. 1 - DKC: Mine Cart Carnage
Просмотров 3,1 тыс.6 лет назад
This video looks at the Donkey Kong Country level Mine Cart Carnage. This level features a very interesting cadence shape (the "trill' cadence), built on the back of an interesting, time-based expansion challenge common to DKC. This channel is supported by Patreon: www.patreon.com/thegamedesignforum You can read more (a lot more) about this kind of analysis in the book it came from: thegamedesi...
Level Analysis Ep. 2 - Portal 2: The Fall & The Reunion
Просмотров 1,4 тыс.6 лет назад
This video analyzes the cadence which appears in two chapters of Portal 2. In those two chapters, the player is introduced to the blue, red and white gels, and their interesting kinetic properties. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this level, however, is the way it uses expansion iterations to make its puzzles more difficult a classic Portal design trope. This channel is supported on PA...
The Art of Losing: Into the Breach and Roguelike Design - The Game Design Extracts Episode 2.5
Просмотров 16 тыс.6 лет назад
Is the strategy RPG genre really compatible with roguelike elements like procedural generation and permadeath? This video looks at how both Into the Breach and FTL use roguelike elements, with vastly different results. Patreon (where you can get lots of bonus content) - www.patreon.com/thegamedesignforum I interviewed David Brevik for a book I wrote on Diablo II - thegamedesignforum.com/feature...
Cadences: Finding the Voice of Any Level's Design - The Game Design Extracts Episode 2
Просмотров 9 тыс.6 лет назад
How do game designers decide what kind of content to put in their levels? This video examines the iterative strategy first used by Nintendo legends Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, a technique I call "cadences." Want to see another video and two extra articles all about how cadence analysis works on different kinds of games? They're available to my Patreon backers. www.patreon.com/thegamede...
The History and Evolution of Videogame Design - The Game Design Extracts Episode 1
Просмотров 16 тыс.6 лет назад
In 1978, a game designer named Tomohiro Nishikado stumbled upon the central principle of videogame design. Things only got more interesting from there. This video examines how videogame design evolved over time, dividing that history into three eras: the arcade era (1978-1985) the composite era (1985-1998) and the set piece era (1998-present). Patreon: www.patreon.com/thegamedesignforum Website...
Chrono Trigger and Structural Perfection
Просмотров 165 тыс.6 лет назад
THE NEW CHRONO TRIGGER BOOK IS NOW A REALITY! www.crcpress.com/Reverse-Design-Chrono-Trigger/Holleman/p/book/9781138323735 New videos are being funded by Patreon. www.patreon.com/thegamedesignforum Twitter: tgdfweb
Didn't Ghosts N Goblins came before SMB and did everything that Mario did but better?
Both Ghosts N Goblins and Moon Patrol dabbled in using genre A mechanics to solve Genre B problems, but they lacked the back-and-forth rhythm and high-level organization that SMB had. Videogames from 1986-1998 inherited their use of the technique directly from SMB, and it shows in the way levels are organized.
I miss you......
I make videogames now! RUclips will delete any links I post, but you can search for "Quartet RPG" or "My Familiar RPG" or even "Threads of Time." I work on all of those! (There's barely anything public about the last one.)
@@patrickholleman9323 I figured it was probably something like this! I myself make videogames too hehe Your research is great, gonna check those games out!
thank you! amazing!
thank you from Brasil!
Hi, I've read throgh the whole mario world book. This video series would be so awesome to see get revisited. This video talks about some cadence patterns that were not described the Super Mario World book, like Trill and Staircase. Is there be a definitive resource where I could view diagrams of each cadence pattern?
Because the series and Patreon never really took off, I didn't get around to publishing any more material on DKC and Yoshi's Island cadences. (I'm now working as a game developer.) I have considered doing a Yoshi's Island book, but it's not likely anytime soon. There's also a MAGFest panel I did in either 2015 or 2016 called "Level Design in the 90s" that has a 1-hour long presentation about YI and DCK cadences. It's in their archives somewhere, but hard to discover (I can't find it in 10 minutes of searching). Thanks for the comment!
I always LOVED "Quest 10". After two extremely climactic dungeons that reveal the true origin of Lavos, you're introduced to a wondrous magic kingdom in the sky. The plot appears to stall and you just get to explore for a while. When you arrive in Zeal Palace though, the palace music and Schala music create a deep sense of intrigue: Something very important is happening here...but just *what* is it???
I thought I was crazy, thank God somebody agrees with me.
I think I have to disagree with your fundamental analysis Patrick. Yes, I can restart early on and call it a "bad run" - but the reality is that I can just be fairly annoyed at the start that things didn't go quite the way I wanted. Actually, if I just choose to continue playing and aim high, I find that I end up winning the majority of the games anyways because the game is lost only when it is lost. Sorry, your interpretation just doesn't make sense to me. Similarly, in Into the Breach, even if I start with a bad run, I find losing to be rare. It's really not that hard to recover if you know what you're doing.
Awesome video! Thank you a lot!
It's been 5 years, but I hope Into the Breach is still relevant :) Anyways, I know this was the point of the video, but I feel like you put too much emphasis on loosing, and in the case of Into the Breach, on the fact that you can escape with a levelled up pilot (which doesn't help that much in the whole scheme of things). First, the boss in FTL *is* an issue. I love this game, I think it's great, but the boss sucks. Not because it's hard, but because for the average player, that boss is a level and upgrade check. That's also why "having a bad run", which is a thing I do not respect at all usually (like, I don't think I've ever restarted a roguelike) makes sense here. You can know early on if you have what you need or not for dealing with the boss. It also means FTL's battles don't represent what the game expects of the player difficulty wise. FTL isn't a game about surviving and getting further, it's a game about upgrading as much as possible to get ready for its final boss. But for Into the Breach (and probably all the great rogue like), having a "bad run" doesn't mean you lost, it just means the game will be more difficult. Most roguelikes can be beaten without taking damage, or without upgrades for example. And Into the Breach is pure strategy, so it's on the easier side, since usually modern roguelikes also have a time pressure. But really, unless you made some really weird choices of team compositions or upgrades, every battle should be solvable. And while the final battle is a difficulty spike, it's not as insurmountable as the flagship in FTL. If you feel like you haven't cleared enough second objectives to get the island bonus and give up, you'll probably get to a "good run" faster, but you'll also miss out on the great moments of tensions where you win by the skin of you teeth. It's like savescumming instantly in a stealth game, even though there are many systems in place to make the chase and dealing with guards as fun as stealth. (And not dealing with more difficult situations also mean you're losing on some previous personal experience) Lots of strategic games are at their best when you plan everything, and then something slightly goes off the rails, and you try at all cost to get out of this bad situation. Because that's what the games usually wants, that's where you use the tools the game offers, that's where the tension is. Sure, perfectly executing a plan can feel good, but it isn't as good of a narrative.
Love your videos. Very clear and calming. Keep it up!
>no elite
Excellent series! I think there's one aspect you might be missing here when talking about ironic npc dialogue in modern games. Sure, many people use walkthroughs and videos to get through these games, but the games also provide tools other than dialogue to direct the player. Elder Scrolls games post-Morrowind make ubiquitous use of map markers (GTA does the same), to the degree where when you are instructed to find a key, there's often a map marker revealing its location within the dungeon! This has two effects: 1) it leads the player to not see exploration as a challenge or puzzle -- they know the answer is almost always going to be revealed if they just follow the waypoints; 2) it makes waklthroughs and videos seem like less of a transgression (the game was going to reveal the secret anyway, so why wait?). Many mainstream modern AAA RPGs are very action-focused. They minimize the amount of friction to get the player back into combat, which is the central challenge of the game. What ironic dialogue there is in these games usually comes across as tedious, irrelevant and immersion-breaking ("I don't need direction! I have a waypoint!"). Earlier 3D open-world games like Morrowind and GTA Vice City provided far less in the form of waypoints, fast travel, etc. These games were non-linear sandboxes in the sense that you had to bounce around a large, open, 3D environment talking to NPCs and experimenting with game mechanics to progress through quests and storylines. There was an incredible freedom in these games, because you could often solve one challenge in many different (often even unintentional) ways. The sense of achievement came from the exploration itself and your creativity in solving the problems (use the helicopter that you kept from an optional side quest to skip to the end of a challenging mission in GTA 3; levitate to the boss room and skip the dungeon in Morrowind, use your faction status to talk the boss out of a fight). Ultimately triple A designers decided that this degree of freedom created too much friction (that plus unpredictable player solutions often break heavily scripted quests in increasingly complex 3D environments). Less involved players get stuck or bored and stopped playing. Narrative cutscenes in the PS2 era were less visually impressive and a "sense of achievement" derived from exploration and experimentation wasn't enticing enough for a broad audience. So later games like Skyrim and GTA V opt for a very linear quest design that prevents the player from diverging from a scripted path. Most of these games can be described a little brutally as: earn a new (admittedly epic) narrative cutscene by completing a series of combat challenges.
I really enjoyed hearing the vocal cadence of one of my favorite video essayists come through in your voice here!
10:30.. this is probably one of the most interesting things Chrono Trigger does and why the pacing never really bores you. In 10 or 20 hours of CT you feel like you have been through a more of an epic story than for example 150 hours of Assassins Creed. Its amazing how you fill in the gaps with your imagination and let the 'power of suggestion' do the job. Lost on the other hand was a mess, but then again. One is a masterpiece, the other a mediocre show that tries way to hard to be mysterious and spend far too much time on a stupid love story (Kate, Sawyer and that doctor dude, whatever his name is).
Really well done. It’s mostly your passion for these stories that shines through and makes it so endearing. I hope you can make more videos like this in the future.
There is also a 4th era around 2008 or 2009, I would call it "The HD era" . an example : the gap from the game gta san andreas/vice city stories (released 2006) to gta 4 (2008), making the game the first time in HD graphics style
Can you do a video over the evolution of souls like games? I feel like that would be very interesting
This video is BEAUTIFUL and insightful! Can't wait to see from you a similar analysis with a more recent point of view, and maybe with some interesting guesses on what could be the next trend/trends
Excellent balance of theory and entertainment. The examples from the games are thoughtful and amusing. Thank you.
<3
Loved this! Thank you for making such a thoughtful and informative video
FF6 is overrated
Man, I love how in-depth your videos and analyses go. I hope to utilize a lot of this info if/when I make a game.
I had the exact same thought about Infinity War. When I play FF6, I had rented it and thought the game would end on the floating continent. I had to return it just after starting the world of ruin and was so distraught until I could rent the game again several weeks later. Infinity War is the only movie I've seen with the balls to do something similar, and everyone felt the same way I did after the FF6 metamorphosis
Rare drops... That's a lootbox simulator - Diablo franchise used this to generate excitement.
Sounds like you suck at roguelikes, just back off and let real men play them.
His name is Glenn you savage. Always name him Glenn, name Nadia Marle, and name Magus Janus.
Easily the greatest game of the entire era. The music, the story, the replay value. I’m 37 and still mildly obsessed with Chrono Trigger.
Just ordered your book and looking forward to reading it!
This is genius writing, legit. It leaves a couple plotholes that beg to be addressed, but they are far and few between in the game as a whole.
CT has no plot holes.
This is all straight nonsense and I can prove your points is easily wrong. For example the Crono’s actions drastically changed history because of their action that affects the future itself. 1. Rescuing Leene, it would had never happened because Marle came to be and without Crono, Marle would had lived out her days as Leene and the original one never have been rescued and therefore Frog actually never became the hero that he is and might had affected the final battle with Magus. 2. Ayla might had never saved Kano if it was’nt for Crono as they would had still been prisoners when Lavos crashed in the Tyrannous Lair. 3. The many events that happened to Schala in the original time line and when Cronos intervened proved that Crono being their changed history to the point that the black omen end up existing for millennia.
1. Marle was already alive, hence Frog rescued Leene. The Marle disappearance nonsense was the Entity, anyway. 2. She already did. She was on the way there even without you. 3. This is why most CT fans don't care about Radical or Cross or any of that other crap.
Sadge no more videos on level analysis... Would be fun to take a look at some YI levels or even SMW hack levels too see what went wrong or what didnt go wrong
8:23 Things changed because Crono and his party affected the past and produced a different future. It's a second timeline.
Chrono Trigger is really exceptional. It is the GOATpiece of mankind achievement, only possible if you have a dream team.
Just ordered the book!
At several points I backed out of the video, quite convinced that I must have accidentally clicked on some totally unrelated Lost theory video And you wrote a whole book about CT and you say "Luck-uh"?? It's LUKE-uh!
FYI, I'd have a higher likelihood of considering buying your book if you provided a sample chapter or two I could read.
Almost half the book is available, and has always been available, on thegamedesignforum.com
@@patrickholleman9323 oh, sorry !!! Thanks!!
There's an NPC named Bill, he likes to drink milk
I must disagree with you. The developers themselves disagree with you, they explained in GDC talk that they do not feel save scumming is the ideal way to play. Most game designers in general would disagree with you. I don’t have more than 15 hours in Into The Breach, but I can assure you that without scumming, a 3 island victory on normal was more than possible for me. I only abandoned a timeline once, and even then, the only reason was due to my final pilot being locked into a scenario which would inevitably end in their death the very next turn, and valuing bringing a pilot home than not, I chose to tactically retreat. Playing through your mistakes and making your lives feel MORE meaningful, not less, is the purpose of a roguelike’s design. You play past your mistakes, learn, and overcome. Fail faster is a fine mindset for making games, but in playing them, no. By save scumming you’re effectively rendering permadeath null and void anyway.
It really is a master piece. I modelled a pen-and-paper RPG after the pacing and other mechanics of this game and my friends went ballistic with praise.... If they had just played this game like I kept trying to get them to, they would have known that I was nothing but a fraud LOL
Great video, thanks a lot
lol Luck-uh
Everyone knows how great CT is. This video was really unnecessary and seems like it's trying too hard to state something completely obvious.
The Tragedy taught me exactly what was suggested here, that the playable characters do not have the capability to affect time away from its intended outcome. Lavos existing, however, is not an intended part of that outcome, so the Entity needs the player characters. However, it understands that they are not ready, so it sends them on a series of quests that teaches them their mere presence is not enough to alter the event. At the same time, they are gaining strength, which means the Tragedy is less about what they can do to affect time, but rather how time, better defined as the events they experience, affects the player characters. My view is that Crono in 2300 deciding to fight Lavos would not throw himself in front of Lavos like he did later. It took everything that happened before he would. The Entity knew it.
Excellent video, we need more videos like this breaking down the game. Definitely going to look into your book!
ene-TRON* masa-moon-nay**
The idea that one starts this game and enters an area maybe thinking ‘oh games a fair’ while playing a game (meta)mans then go off on several quests that don’t actually matter…much like a game often appears, I like that.
How much do you reckon these design choices were deliberate vs them being a product of the creators instincts? I've always wondered how close the interpretations of the viewer coincide with the creators conscious intent and how much was just the result of the subconscious.
Doesnt matter either way. We can still distill the information for our own learning purposes
the effect of chrono in the sea palace: Sara gets absorbed into lavos, turning her into the time devourer, as she is now the one to send all of the characters to different times to save them.