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[In this exclusive Gamasutra postmortem, Torpex Games co-founder Jamie Fristrom (Spider-Man 2) presents a fascinating post-release analysis of the XNA-utilizing Xbox Live Arcade co-op title, which debuted in July 2008.] While waiting for a lecture to start at GameFest a couple of years back, I was thinking about Geometry Wars and how the dual stick analog controller was what made it possible. Is there any other kind of game mechanic that would be just as suitable? I wondered. What if you control two ships at the same time? I scribbled a note to myself on the GameFest stationery. At the time, Bill Dugan and I were trying to get our startup, Torpex Games, off the ground. We were going the standard route: pitching ourselves to publishers and asking if they had any licenses or ports they needed done. Despite our long track records with the industry, we weren't getting much traction, and I had some free time, so I decided to make a game, really quick, just for fun, using XNA Game Studio, which had just recently become available. What I had was just a quirky experiment in controlling two color-coded ships at once, but after showing it to our friends Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias of Magic: The Gathering fame, who suggested we make it cooperative, and agreed to help us, we discovered how addictive it was -- we couldn't stop playing. Although we kept the quirky experiment in controlling two things at once (now called "Uberschizoid" mode, which is a unique hardcore challenge for those up to it) we realized that Schizoid truly shone as the ultimate teamwork game Things snowballed from there -- we found ourselves becoming an indie developer (or a small publisher, depending on how you look at it) and doing something more satisfying than turning out a licensed game for a big publisher: we were creating our own game on our own terms, and it would go on to be one of the winners of Penny Arcade's PAX 10. In the spirit of candor, "What Went Wrong" is going first, rather than "What Went Right".
What Went Wrong1. The Single Player Problem I can't think of a game that needs teamwork as much as Schizoid. The obvious question is "What do you do about single-player?" Originally, we didn't even want to have a single player mode, but decided to include one for two reasons: one was because Xbox Live Arcade games, up to this point, haven't been allowed to have Xbox Live in the trial. Another reason was because we knew that gaming is still predominantly a single-player hobby, and we were afraid that if we didn't have a single-player mode at all, it would be commercial suicide. So we experimented with a bot wingman, knowing that it wouldn't be as fun as the co-op: either the wingman would be too good, ruining the fun for you, or not good enough, becoming a frustrating liability -- and that's what we found. On easy levels the wingman bot practically wins for you (in the level Scorpio Dawn, for example, you don't even have to touch the stick) but on the harder levels, where strategy matters, the bot -- who is, after all, just a bot -- does some boneheaded things. Although we kind of enjoyed those later bot levels -- it became a game of figuring out how to win despite the bot -- the comparative weakness of the single-player mode was confirmed in focus tests, where they would give the co-op game four or five stars but the single-player game only three, or fewer if they were frustrated. But we didn't know what to do about it -- although improving the bot AI (which we did do a little, believe it or not) made the game easier, it didn't make it more fun. What we decided to do, ultimately, was try to put in very strong messaging that it was intended to be a co-op game: we called the single-player mode "Training Mode"; we repeatedly put "Most Co-Op Game Ever" in much of the text; and we put in nag screens saying "Be Sure To Try Co-Op!" With all that, it's not clear that the message got through. Most of our reviewers, for example, while giving us great testimonials about our co-op mode, seem to be doing some sort of mental review algebra where they say, "Hmm, co-op's a 9, but single-player's a 5... let's split the difference and give them a 7." (The exeception is one French website that explicitly split it out, giving us one rating for co-op and a different rating for single-player.) (Page 1/4) Next
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Comments
For a game that had so much going for it (developer sympathy, PR, originality, etc), I'm sorry to say it was really disappointing in so many ways. I'd be curious to know how much external opinion you looked for, and how much you listened to it, because some of these issues look like the kind that would should up quickly in a focus group (even an informal one).
Hm, I'm a little puzzled by some of these comments, some of which I have never seen before - your ship has almost no inertia (the turning of the ship is just an animation), and the enemies most definitely collide. The color scheme choice is fundamental to the gameplay, so a rainbow of enemy colors is out, unless we redesign the gameplay for 6-headed aliens.
With the medals system, you don't have to replay a level you've already completed, if you have "golded" the level - you just skip right past. As far as focus groups go, we did lots of end-user testing. The skipping-right-past is a result of this feedback - our first pass at the checkpoint system was basic, 10-level checkpoints with no skipping if you golded the levels, and people found it too frustrating; we ended up with what we've got in there now. I happen to think it's great because you can make steady progress in a chamber that you're stuck in without even working at the difficult level, by working on prior levels to try and gold them, which will set you up in all future games to start the difficult level with more lives.
One issue we have in Schizoid that we might possibly have picked up from focus tests: I think many players think that dying is bad in Schizoid, whereas usually it's not a big deal. You've got a 10-life pool and if you lose 8 lives or whatever, it won't matter at all if you hit a checkpoint. The loss is forgotten and irrelevant, immediately. But when the player dies in our game, we show off a giant dazzling explosion and vibrate the controller and we shake the screen a little bit (because, you know, big dazzling explosions are cool) - and I wonder if some players are getting frustrated if they die 5 times in a row, when really they are quite possibly doing really well. That might have been a question we might have thought to specifically ask users - "You just died. What's your impression of how much this is going to impact your next few minutes playing the game?"
Bill Dugan
President
Torpex Games
Jamie's write-up explains the fundamental problem with a game like Schizoid and it's heavy coop focus very well. I say problem only in the sense that it isn't a game that has the mass appeal that most "normal" games tend to. Doesn't seem like there's a really good solution, the game is just meant to be played a certain way. Most games these days seem to eschew doing their particular thing well and instead try to do everything; 20 hours of singleplayer, 20 multiplayer modes, etc. Maybe it's just my particular gaming habits but I like games that are stripped down to just the fun gameplay and aren't wrapped up in a whole lot of junk just to get to experience the raw mechanics. Schizoid does this very well and that's why I'll keep coming back to it again and again.
Also I work in Bellevue so if you guys ever need some user feedback/testing, I'd be all over it.
thanks for the response. The detail about the importance of death is quite interesting, but it's not just about the visuals: dying in a level means no gold medal and one less life to reach the checkpoint. Why not just save progress after each level? The other bits about inertia and collision, well, I guess I think the game would be much better with NO inertia at all and wider collision detection between enemies so they don't pile up as much as they do (which also contributes to the pixel-perfect issue).
Anyway, outside of specifics, the question is: Do you think you went too hardcore with the game? If so, do you regret it?
BTW, I have an explanation on my website http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3796/postmortem_torpex_games_schizoid.php for the chain of design decisions that led us to the checkpoints + gold system. It's a system that requires you to master some levels to progress, but you get to choose which levels you master and which ones you cheese your way through.
-Jamie
http://www.gamedevblog.com/2008/09/schizoid-post-mortem.html
The points about TCR are also well taken. We underestimated how much work these required, and quite frankly, some decisions by Microsoft left us scratching our heads. If we must have leaderboards accessible everywhere, why did they not build a basic one into the blades (like achievements?). If we have to worry about load times from memory cards, HD, *and* DVD, how is this less work for a low-budget title?
I liked Schizoid, but in the end, finding a friend who also likes it, and can play when I can, proved tough. Here's a thought: Maybe if Microsoft allows gifting, you can coax them to sell the game in pairs! Now that would work!
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