Two Towers revisited

I just spent some time reading reviews of The Two Towers on the IMDB.

And you know what? The only negative ones I found were from people who were complaining "Why is this bit different from the book? Why is that bit different from the book? Why was this left out? Why was that left out? Why didn't it look like the version in my head?"

And that is why I decided not to re-read the books before the film came out. Because I'd spend my film-watching time thinking exactly the same thing.

Jesus Christ!

Joe posted a link to an MP3 of Oh Holy Night which has to be listened to for its badness.

Useful hints for Gaming

I'm currently reading a fantastic article on AI design that has some great tips that apply to pretty much any kind of gaming experience. Here's my favourite so far:

The most useful data we got from our playtests was a list of things to avoid
At the top of that list is Subtlety
If it isn't totally obvious, it's too subtle
Even if you make something as obvious as you can possibly make it, half the people will miss it the first three times they see it
In Halo the Grunts run away when an Elite is killed
Initially nobody noticed so we had to keep adding clues to make it more obvious
By the time we shipped we had made it so not only does _every single_ Grunt run away _every single_ time an Elite is killed
but they all have an outrageously exaggerated panic run where they wave their hands above their heads
they scream in terror
and half the time one of them will say "Leader Dead, Run Away!"
I would still estimate that less than a third of our users made the connection

I wish people had told me that 10 years ago. I never would have bothered with half the intricate plots that were completely wasted until I hammered home what was going on.

GM (Jumping up and down): Evil McNasty then stabs the player's friend in the back while twirling his moustache.
Smarter than the average player: Hmm, I'm sensing that Evil isn't as nice as he seems. From now on I'll keep a closer eye on .... Ooh! Gold!