New Videogame Consoles

This post doesn't have any kind of moral issue, real or imagined, in it at all. For that I'm deeply sorry. I did see Schindler's List again last night. Isn't it a brilliant film?

This post is going to be about videogames, but I'm going to try and keep it interesting for non-gamers as well.
Moving on, for those that don't know, the new Xbox (Xbox 360) comes out on Tuesday. The idea is that all three console makers (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) will release new consoles in the next 12 months. Their hooks?:

Xbox 360 (Microsoft, sequel to Xbox):
Made for hi-def TVs, good sound systems, etc.
Really good graphics.
Xbox Live (more on that later.)
Streams movies from your desktop, plays songs off your iPods, etc.
$400

PS3 (Sony, sequel to PlayStation2):
Made for hi-def TVs, good sound systems, etc.
Really good graphics. (Possibly really really good graphics.)
Probably interfaces well with other Sony products, but not with non-Sony products.
~$400

Revolution (Nintendo, sequel to GameCube):
NOT made for hi-def TVs, good sound systems, etc.
Good graphics.
Good online stuff.
Can play download NES, SNES, and N64 games (for a fee.)
Really innovative controller (it knows where it is in 3d space, knows which way it's being tilted, etc.)
~$200 - $250.

So, the plan for Microsoft and Sony is to compete with each other on horsepower. They are each trying to gain more control over the current gamer population. Conversely, Nintendo is trying to expand the population (and gain control of the new gamers it brings in.) So far so good.

Ok, I'm sorry, I'm totally going to change this post now. The above stuff still stands in case anyone is curious and wanted a 30 second rundown (my recommendation is wait 9 months and then get a Xbox 360 or Revolution depending on your preference and wallet-thickness.) Anyways, I like reading about game development, etc. Furthermore, it seems to me that there are a lot more Charles Thickens in the world than there are gamers. (I'm going to use you, Charles, as the canonical person who doesn't really play videogames, but has a couple that he/she likes and enjoys playing it with friends. Especially when Futures are involved. I think Todd may also fall into this category.)
So, what features should a game designed for Charles Thickens have?
1) Charles has to be able to control it. I don't know if easy is exactly the right word, but it's the best I can come up with. For example, Mario Kart is easy to control. It's (basically) got a Go button, a Break button, a Shoot button, and a joystick to steer. This isn't many buttons, obviously. Perhaps more importantly, though, these controls make sense and correspond with real life. Charles knows how to drive a real car. Intuitively, playing Mario Kart is no more difficult than driving and occasionally pressing another button. In contrast, Halo is hard to control. It has a Shoot button, a Punch button, a Switch Guns button, a Jump button, a Crouch button, a Grenade button, a Zoom button, a joystick to move around, and a joystick to look around. That's a lot of button (although, to be fair, you can ignore the Crouch and maybe the Zoom button and still do alright.) Furthermore, they are very easy controls to screw up. You can Switch to a worthless weapon. You can stick a grenade to yourself. You can start looking at the sky and not be able to figure out how to look at the ground again. You can Jump off the ledge and die. All of these make Halo very difficult (and frustrating) to learn. Lesson for game design? Don't allow inextricable situations, and make the path to extractedness self-evident. If you're stuck in a corner in Mario kart, what do you do? "Hold B to go in reverse." If you're stuck in a corner looking at the ceiling in Halo, what do you do? "Push forward on the joystick. No, the right one. Oh, your controls are reversed, so press down on it. No, not so far, now you're looking at the floor. Ok, there you go. Oh, you swapped out your good gun. Press Y to switch guns. Oh, I guess you threw away your good gun. Go find a rocket launcher, and when you're over it, hold X to pick it up. But make sure you don't fire it when you're near a wall or looking at the floor or you'll kill yourself instantly." That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
2) Charles has to be able to compete. If Charles and I played Halo, he would never kill me. Never. I'm not even good at Halo. During a game of Mario Kart, though, while I still may win, Charles would definitely get some hits in. If we play five times, he may only win one of the races, but two would be close, and he would hit me with a shell every race. Charles has to be able to plan and achieve interim goals (not getting lapped, not getting fourth place, etc.), even when he can't achieve his ultimate goal (winning the race.) He also needs to get small amounts of satisfaction during the game itself ("Oh man, I totally got you with that shell!") Even if he isn't winning now, he has to see that it is possible for him to win. Lesson for game design? Make a continuum of goals that Charles can achieve, and make the rewards dramatic. (Charles will be more excited to blow the leader end-over-end 150 feet into the air than he would be to just puncture the leader's tires, even if the effects are the same.)
3) Charles has to be able to improve. If you stay an amateur at anything, it sucks. Charles needs to be able to see himself improving as he continues to play. He needs to come closer to winning, and he needs to be able to beat newcomers. Lesson for game design? The game can't be completely random. Better players need to generally perform better. There also can't be any asymptotic skill increases required. For example, don't allow super-items that are very difficult to learn, but once mastered, allow a person to totally dominate the game. Charles will never learn that item, and so will eventually stop improving.
4) Charles can't need to know the maps. Again, a veteran of map Foo in Halo will destroy a newcomer to the Foo arena. The veteran will know where the rocket launcher is, where the invisibility is, where the big tank is, etc. This isn't the case with Mario Kart, and this opens it up to Charles Thickens. Thickens will never learn the maps; but if they all follow the same pattern (go down the track but watch for various obvious environmental hazards), he will still be able to compete. Lesson for game design? Achieve variety in your maps by making them visually distinctive but functionally similar (the sand worm in the sand stage fulfills the same role as the semis in the highway stage or the yetis in the snow stage.)
5) Charles needs to be able to employ consistent strategies. The basic strategy for Mario Kart is: race down the track collecting items. If you collect a blue shell, fire it. If you collect a red shell and are trailing someone, fire it. If you collect a green shell and someone is right in front of you, fire it. If you collect X, do Y. It's not exactly context-free (because you have to know what is going on around you), but you're not worried about other player's strategies (it doesn't really affect you, and they're using the same strategy as you anyways.) The strategy for Halo is much more complicated. It's something like: run around the map collecting guns. If it's map X, Y, or Z, it's critical to get to the middle and get the rocket launcher. Otherwise, try to get a shotgun and a sniper rifle. If someone has the rocket launcher, run away, unless they've fired four shots or are person A, B, or C (we know they suck with the rocket launcher.) Watch out for person D, he always goes for the invisibility. If you have the machine gun, and they have the pistol, jump around while engaging, unless you have the overshield, then just strafe left and right. Generalized: if you have weapon W versus person P with weapon W_p, and P = a, b, c, or d, and you don't have the overshield, and P has fought with someone else (especially e) in the last 30 seconds, or you're next to a health pack, engage. Else, run away. Halo strategies are non-monotonic: you can keep adding qualifiers to the current situation, and Chucks optimal strategy changes. The non-monotonicity of Mario Kart is much less than that of Halo. Lesson for game design? Don't allow a bunch of qualifiers ('unless', 'or', 'but not with') to creep into your optimal strategies.

Ok, I gotta get some work done, so I'm cutting this off. I wanted to get into what it would take for Charles to go out and buy a videogame console and a single player game, and to actually go home and play it, but I've run out of time. So, I'll just pose it as a question to Charles (and Todd) and any other very casual game players out there: What would it take for you to go buy a console and single player game for yourself? How much could it cost? What would the game have to be like for you to spend that amount of money?