How I Should've Done It: Roy Cooling

This is the first installment of my "How I Would've/Should've Done It" section, much like the other random sections I have on my blog. I intend to use this to suggest ways how I would've done a certain part of a game, either design wise or story wise. However, with the whole ye who has no sin cast the first stone idea, I will first stone myself (?) by putting one of my stories up on the chopping block. That story is given by a contact named Roy Cooling.

In a nutshell, Roy Cooling is the agent of the Federal Bureau of Superpowered Affairs. There's a problem regarding medi-porters, a device that teleports heroes to a hospital when they're in danger. Paragon citizens are starting to grumble about the medi-porters being reserved for heroes and not being given to regular people, and as such, a protesting group has formed. This was all sparked by the announcement that the corporation behind the medi-porters was releasing a better, more stable version to ensure heroes are protected. The president of the corporation, along with the details on the new prototype, are kidnapped/stolen by rogue police officers. It's revealed that the man behind the rogue cops was the leader of the civilian protesters who convinced the cops to help them out. However, it's then revealed that there is a different group pulling that man's strings, the Sky Raiders, a group of hired mercenaries. However, the rogue cops then turn on the civilian and try to kill him, as he's the only one who knows their identities. The player either succeeds or fails in stopping that. The player then goes after the Sky Raiders to recover the prototype and the president of medi-corp. However, it's then revealed that the Malta organization is pulling the strings of the Sky Raiders to get the device for themselves. The player puts a stop to it and all is well, medi-corp promises to hand out medi-porters to the severely sick and elderly.

So! First things first, the main problem, I feel when looking back at this, would be too many twists and turns. I would outright remove the inclusion of Malta in this arc and leave it as just the Sky Raiders. The problem is that with so many twists the story becomes difficult to track and loses its focus. I think the story would be much stronger if it was focusing around the Sky Raiders as the "big bad", focusing in on their backstory that they're all ex-military who were essentially rendered useless by the presence of supers. They would have every reason to want to get their hands on the medi-porters. You can keep the political commentary/grey area of the Rogue PPD and the civilian protesters, as they may or may not have a point that it is wrong and that they're doing all of this in order to make things right. However, when it comes down to it, the Sky Raiders don't care about righting the wrong with the civilian populace, they care about evening the playing field that was leveled so long ago by supers.

There are a lot of other details that would have to be smoothed out with this in mind, but I think it would make for a much smoother story. Of course, I could always be wrong, and that's the beauty of this! I fully admit that this, and any future "How I..." posts are going to be flawed and imperfect and will not please everyone or even anyone. However, I find that it's a fun exercise to look back on older work and think about how I would've liked to improve upon it. What do you all think?

Handling The Shutdown of City of Heroes

What?! But I was just about to hit level 22!

On November 31st, 2012, the servers for City of Heroes were shut down at 11:59 pm, PST time. Well, technically, it was 12:03 on December 1st, which just goes to show that nothing is on time in the game industry, even the destruction of a beloved game. The day before, one of the other designers at Cryptic studios asked me how I was handling the shutdown of the game. I adopted my New Yorker attitude and said that I had known this was coming for two months and that I was completely fine with it. This is what they call "asking for it" in horror movie circles. The day of the shutdown, I had the realization that the game I played for so long, the game that got me into the industry, out to California, and helped me meet my fiancee, was going to shut down. I would no longer be able able to play it, and everything I worked for over the past three years would just be gone.

It was this final thought that really hit me. Dean MacArthur, Roy Cooling, the new Positron Task Force, all the maps I worked on, the intense cutscenes, the giant shivan, War Dog, they would all just be memories. Still, this thought didn't really hit me until after the shutdown of the game. I was there on ventrillo with a bunch of the other designers, but it wasn't until after I left that everything hit me. I was talking to my fiancee about it, and I had realized everything that I just talked about. To be very honest, I was angry, I was furious about how unjust it all felt. I imagined that this is what it felt like to have a game you were working on be cancelled. It was infuriating to know things that people liked, or even loved, would never be seen again.

Luckily I was neither Gotham's white knight nor burned horribly by a clown.

 I wanted to dwell in my anger, because, well, it felt good, especially since the last moment was tragic; I was trying to show my fiancee the ending of Dark Astoria, but virtue crashed around 11:55 and I was only on mission 4 of Dream Doctor's arc, which, by the way, I was cursing myself for making those missions so long. I decided that my last minutes on City of Heroes would be spent on the first character I made, Sainted Seeker, wearing the first costume I ever made. Over the next few days I thought about many things, including when I first got the game, and I realized something about the closure and about City of Heroes as a whole.

Eight and a half years ago, in June 2004, eighteen year old me decided, on a whim, to take the bus to the mall to pick up a game called City of Heroes. I read about it in an issue of PC Gamer (I think) and decided I would give it a shot because it sounded cool; at the time I was really into Neverwinter Nights and wanted to try something different. I always laugh to myself when I think about that moment when I went to Game Stop and picked up the game. That moment was one of many defining moments in my life; if I had never picked up the game, then, well, a lot of things wouldn't have happen. But I did! And even when I stopped playing, I picked it up again two years later when City of Villains came out. I played the game throughout college, grew and mature while it was present in the background, and now here I am.

The long and winding road. Not seen here - making evil villains to stomp good guys for fun.

It occurred to me that I never could have imagined how much of an impact the game would have on my life when I first picked it up. City of Heroes played the role it needed to play in my life. Thinking of that, the anger I had towards the situation turned into a gratefulness for the game's existence. I'm still sad that it's gone, and that's OK, but I'm not angered or trapped by the situation. I am, however, also looking forward to the future.

I've heard a lot of people talking about City of Heroes was great, how there will never be anything like this ever again, etc. I have to strongly disagree about that. The essence of what people found in City of Heroes can happen again, but it may be somewhere that we aren't aware of; for me, writing stories in City of Heroes eventually transformed into having a career as a game designer, having an amazing group of friends from Paragon and outside Paragon (I can be social), and having an amazing fiancee (hope you all aren't sick of me mentioning her). What I'm trying to say is that what people enjoyed about City of Heroes can exist elsewhere; maybe it doesn't exist right now, but it will again one day, just by the sheer fact that it already existed in the first place. It might not be in the form you may think, it may not even be a video game or an MMO, but it will happen again.

When you view it like that, the entire thing seems like a great big adventure. What is next? What will be the next big life experience after this? What's going to be the next great game that comes along to grab my creativity like City of Heroes? Basically, it becomes a large expectation, looking for something new - it's an adventure!

This is how I've experienced the shutdown of City of Heroes. Life is an adventure, and this is not the end of something like City of Heroes but just a new turn on the path towards something great. It's also a challenge! Paragon breaking up was sad, but I realized that this is a challenge to me - are the people at Paragon really my friends, or were they just my friends because it was easy to see them every day? If I want this friendship now with everyone there (except Hosun), I need to work at it, I need to stay in touch. The same goes for everyone else out there who met friends in City of Heroes.

I think I've gone on for a pretty long time now without talking about anything related to game design, and I also think my writing has been all over the place. So, I'll end it here, and I'll end it with some game design advice - don't make blind jumps. Players should always know where they're going to be jumping.

Especially if you're driving a space ship.

Excuses for not Blogging

As people might have noticed, I didn't have a blog post up today. There's a good reason for that! Over the past week, I've been super busy moving to a new place and also preparing for the Advent/Christmas season. What this means, at least for the former, is that I have no internet in my apartment through which to write a well-written, thought out blog post. Now, I know no one is expecting those, given my previous blog posts, but I figured I would try to nail that with this one.

Anyway, my deepest apologies for not having this updated this week. Next week's post will be regarding the shut down of City of Heroes; it's something that is on my mind that I want to make a definitive judgement about, however, it's one of those things that takes time to sink in. I don't want what I say to come off as angry or vindictive, since making a post like that would be pointless. I also haven't forgotten about the Roy Cooling re-write! That will be coming the week after next.

Also, in case anyone is wondering, my move went smoothly! The following video represents my overall feelings about my new place: