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March 24, 2008 - Developer Diary - by
Design Director
Mark Terrano
Wits and Wagers Achievement Design
We have a slightly different approach to Xbox Live Achievements in
the Wits & Wagers game. In a typical ‘core gamer’ experience we would
use the achievements system to highlight extreme skills and recognize
completion of major portions of the game; Wits & Wagers is a different
game – designed for a casual and family audience…and we want our
achievements to reflect that.
The trivia questions in Wits & Wagers are intentionally very tough
compared to other types of trivia games – because the game is the most
fun when nobody knows the exact answer but people have a good idea what
it ‘might’ be. When you think about it – by making the trivia questions
very hard we make it more competitive for everyone. Wagering on answers
is about what you think the other players know and how those answers
stack up with the odds (the more ‘out there’ an answer is the higher the
jackpot if it is in the right range).
Since anyone with access to a search engine could quickly become a
‘trivia master’ with near-perfect knowledge I thought rewarding that
‘skill’ with achievements would be going against the player activity we
wanted most. The best online experience is like the living room
experience you have with friends – you learn a few facts, laugh at the
ones you got wrong, and you cheer each other on. Our achievements are
more social, recognizing that you got online and played, or that you
made the game more fun for others.
Some typical Wits & Wagers achievements:
House Party – Playing local with 4 players
Body Movin’ – Danced through all the rounds of a single game
My Favorite – Getting an MVP (Most Valuable Player) award in a game
Friendly – Play 50 games online
Sure, for those core gamers with a rocking Gamerscore and a few pages
of achievements to their name the Wits & Wagers achievements might seem
like cake (so delicious and moist); but for casual players who have
never invited friends into a game or played online at all, these are
just as challenging and relevant to their skills as gamers. If you play
a lot of games, make friends, offer a little help to those that need it,
laugh out loud & enjoy yourself – you will quickly be on your way to all
the best things in life and have the achievements as a bonus.
March 17, 2008 - Developer Diary - by Programmer
Matt English
Wits & Wagers was introduced
to the board game world in 2005 and since then has become the most
awarded party game of all time. Players answer unique trivia questions
and then bet chips on their own or other player’s answers. If they put
their faith in the right person, they will accumulate more and more
chips. If they bet big and lose it all, they’ll fall behind.
Wits & Wagers is to our
knowledge the first Xbox LIVE Arcade game to allow couch-to-couch
gameplay, which means a group of people on one console can play against
other groups of people on distant couches. This is not necessarily
special among 360 games on disc, but for Xbox LIVE Arcade games, we are
providing the first where more than one person per console can play
together in multiplayer games online. When playing both the board game
and our early prototypes, we had immense fun playing together with a
party of people and wanted to ensure that players can get that
experience all the time. With that in mind the decision was made to do
what it took to let groups play together over Xbox LIVE.
 This
all came to a head quickly when creating the networking base for Wits &
Wagers. We used a relatively new technology in Microsoft’s new
networking base QNet. QNet is a wonderful library that takes away a lot
of the pain normally associated with network programming. Unfortunately
by being one of the first groups to use it there were still some very
tricky issues that we needed to solve in order to allow groups of people
to play together over Xbox LIVE.
The interface for starting and
joining multiplayer games is one of those important and tough things to
get right. With such a “group friendly” game it was vital that we make
it as quick and straightforward as possible to get into a game of Wits.
It had to be easy to have several people sit down and play at one
console, simple to bring friends online, and quick to add other online
players, as well as mixing all of the above.
We went through a large number
of iterations to get the right feel for the interface, while taking into
account technical limitations with both Xbox LIVE and QNet. A unique
path we took with Wits & Wagers is not having separate buttons on the
main menu for local and Xbox LIVE gameplay, but instead to combine them
to a single “Play” button. One of the limitations that can be seen the
first time you play Wits is not being able to add players on your
console after you have joined or started an online game. This affected
our design of the user interface and pushed us closer
to the streamlined flow we now have for getting into a game. Each
screen the player goes to, between the main menu and the game itself, is
set up for a specific type of player to join: a local player, an invited
friend, or a remote player. In the end we have something that, I feel,
is a user interface which both gaming veterans and people who don’t
regularly play video games can use to get a game of Wits & Wagers
started seamlessly.
Wits & Wagers is, at its
heart, a party game. This gives us a great game right off the bat for
offline multiplayer. The next question that arises is, “How do we make
this experience better and how to we create the same feeling on Xbox
LIVE?” There were two parts to our plan for this. The first part being
the integration of voice and video into the game. When you have the
Xbox LIVE Vision camera connected to your console you will be able to
select a television set as your character. This allows you to be your
own character and still visually communicate with everyone else right in
the game. Voice chat also was a must and was included. The second part
of this plan was the expression in characters themselves. We wanted to
give
 the
player a representation of themselves and be able to communicate through
the avatar and have fun with it. These avatars move marionette style
front and center throughout the game. These movements allow the player
to have their character perform surprisingly expressive dances using
nothing more than the right thumbstick.
The last major addition to
Wits & Wagers that I want to talk about here is our use of the new Xbox
360 controller, the Xbox Big Button Pad. This allows you to go from
start to finish in Wits & Wagers using a lighter one-handed controller.
We’ve found that a lot of new players feel much more comfortable playing
with the Big Button Pad and hopefully this will allow you to play Wits &
Wagers with more family and friends.
Wits & Wagers has been a fun
and popular game since 2005 and I’m very happy we had this opportunity
to bring it into more living rooms. We have been working on Wits &
Wagers for months now and we can’t wait to dance with everyone on Xbox
LIVE when the game is released later this month. |
Wits & Wagers is the fun trivia party game where you don’t need the
right answers to win! For each question, bet on the answer you think is
closest to the truth, whether or not that answer is your own.
