Diablo 3 - the item game

In item games, the main goal of players is to continuously upgrade their gear. Diablo 3 (D3) is the perfect example: kill monsters in order to drop better gear in order to kill monsters faster. Bungie just released Destiny, an item-game FPS budgeted with half a billion dollars. Yet Destiny could learn from Diablo 3. So here are some thoughts about the item game in D3.

Prevent farming ...

In D3, like in D2, the drops are completely random: with a few exceptions, nearly any item can drop from any monster or wreckable object (e.g. jars). The odds are just higher for harder monsters, and way lower for wreckable objects. The exact drop rates are secret (except the 10% legendary drop rate from Kadala). This secrecy has led to various rumors and tinfoil hat theories about how loot can be influenced.

D3 has, or used to have, farming spots such as the Decaying Crypt, but they were mostly for XP, not for drops. In D3, farming boss monsters actually brings fewer drops than farming normal or elite monsters. This contrasts with Diablo 2, where players were grinding bosses like Baal or Diablo for XP and loot. So in a way, the grind in D3 is less boring than in D2.

... Yet allow farming

As of October 2014, there are 2 exceptions to what I just wrote: 1) bounty rewards like RoRG or Helltrapper, and 2) Hellfire Amulet.

The RoRG was introduced in February 2014. It is a mandatory item to reach the game's highest difficulty levels. Players have to camp Act-1 bounties to get one with good rolls. To farm as quickly as possible, players join co-op games to split farm: instead of spending 15-20 minutes completing the 5 bounties together, they each complete a bounty in 5 minutes. I am surprised that the developers did not see it coming: split farming is very clearly not how we want players to play the game. Yet nearly a year later, they still have not changed the bounty system.

The Hellfire Amulet is not as mandatory compared to the RoRG. But its bonus is so useful that all of the top players have it. Farming it is somewhat more fun than farming for RoRG, since it is a quest in itself: a) hunt for the 4 Keywardens on the game's largest maps to obtain 4 keys, b) combine the 4 different keys into a portal, c) kill 2 super bosses at once, a somewhat more difficult task than the Keywarden hunt, and d) combine 4 super bosses' loots to obtain a Hellfire Amulet.

The Reaper of Souls expansion

From launch in May 2012 until the retirement of the Auction House (AH) in February 2014, players were mostly buying their gear from the AH, and sometimes grind-crafting it. They nearly never dropped it themselves. Legendary weapons had 7-8 affixes. After the AH retired, Loot 2.0 arrived, and the expansion Reaper of Souls (RoS) shortly after that. Legendary weapons now have 4 primary and 2 secondary affixes. Secondary affixes do not matter much (e.g. more XP when killing a monster), so RoS drastically reduced the item entropy.

The expansion also reminded me of Blizzard's somewhat elegant solution to a common MMO problem. Most MMOs in the early 2000s had the same problem: players who have been playing for a year have too much of a head start compared to players who have been playing for 3 months. New players are hopeless, especially in PvP situations. World of Warcraft solved this problem with what I call expansion gating: WoW vanilla capped the character level at 60 and item level at 92. Until the first expansion came out to increase these two caps, players were gated there. The advantage of expansion gating is that it gives the same chance to old and new players. The main drawback (if any) is mudflation. Diablo 3 is no different: level-70 items have twice more DPS than level-60 items. Thus when the expansion launched, players threw away all the gear they had acquired before.

Few links to other end-game activities

Item games have a great loop, but it is not enough in itself. D3 launched in May 2012. The Auction House (AH) launched in May 2012 too, so players could play two games in one: the action RPG and the auction game. Note that you did not need to play the aRPG to play the auction game, but you did need to buy gear off the AH to play the aRPG well. Had it been the opposite, I think the game would have been much better.

In July 2012, the developers realized that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. Since launch, the game also allowed players to hunt for achievements and start new characters (in softcore or hardcore). In August 2012, the developers added the leveling up grind through 100 Paragon levels. Every Paragon level increased the chance to drop an item and the amount of gold dropped by 3%. In February 2014, Paragon levels became infinite, and the 3% bonus was removed. Clans and communities were also added in February 2014. Since August 2014, players can compete on the greater rift leaderboards, and start new seasonal characters (in softcore or hardcore). Interestingly, the item game is completely independent of all other end-game activities (except the AH and the original 100 Paragon levels increasing magic find and gold find). In other words, the item game of Reaper of Souls could be directly copied into another game without having to also copy the other activities.

Flair, learning and visuals in Wario Land and Wario Land II

Wario Land and Wario Land II are two Gameboy (and/or Gameboy Color) games from 1994 and 1998 respectively. They have a few features I found worth an article.

Flair, or Get smart

Think outside the box

Very fancy mechanics such as breaking the fourth wall happen during boss fights, such as the one with Psycho Mantis. In Wario Land and Wario Land II, the player has to break the wall of the level very often in order to collect coins or find a path to the end of the level. At first sight, this breaking the level could have a negative influence on the magic circle. But in practice, it just rewarded the player for thinking harder about exploration. It certainly did not give the level an impression of open-sandbox-world because the breaking could only happen once in a while, and not everywhere. But it added fun and rewarded the searching player nicely.

In fact, the feeling of a destroyable world was nearly never felt in the two games, except a few times such as during the Wario Land battle with boss Funfun.

In the first level of Wario Land II, the player can choose to stay asleep in doing nothing. This lets Wario sleep and opens a branching in the story. It took me quite much time to figure the way to unlock the alternate story branch, because doing nothing was not an intuitive way to solve a problem. But I found it very funny when I saw Wario concluding the level still sleeping (middle screenshot), while he is usually congratulating the player for the money and treasures he gathered (right screenshot). So it was not frustrating and somewhat rewarding to see this scene happen.

Monster infighting

Monster infighting is tricking enemy monsters into fighting each other. It happens in Doom and (apparently) 70 other games. There is also a little trace of monster infighting in Wario Land, but it is more rewarded than in Doom. Mostly only Pouncers (heavy falling spiked cubes) and Pikkarikun (a cloud throwing lightning bolts) could turn other enemies (such as the small Pirate Gooms) into gold coins. Unlike Doom, there was a strategy for each of Pouncer and Pikkarikun to use them as "infighters". For Pouncer, the Gooms had to be thrown under it when it was up. For Pikkarikun, Wario had to be protected under a floor and a Goom had to pass between Wario and Pikkarikun.

Learning design

The game design = learning design talk by Gee at FDG2010 is illustrated very often in the two games, but particularly well in Wario Land II. The Big Kamukamu (a fish) boss encounter, for instance, is a check that the player can make his/her avatar swim well enough to kill the boss.

As usual, most bosses strategies deal with dodging their attacks, finding their weak point(s) and attacking at the good time. Most have three phases, the third one killing the boss being the hardest and the most intense. However, there is a learning-by-the-example phase before two bosses: Awabo (a bubble) and Ghost. Before those two encounters, Wario sees Captain Syrup, the final boss, being imprisoned by the boss. It ignites a bit of schadenfreude from the player towards the Captain. However, the player is warned: the way Syrup is kicked out is what Wario must avoid when he fights.

Visuals

Except throwing enemies, burping is the only ranged-attack (first on the left). Japanese version of Crazy Wario is actually Drunk Wario, and Penguins throw beer mugs (second). Surrealism (third). Typical Japanese TV entertainment color shades? (fourth)

[Conf] Game design = learning design = game design

On June 19th, James Gee gave the opening keynote at FDG2010. You can find the abstract page xix. Here are some notes I took during the talk.

Games convey learning better than schools do.

A concentrated sample is a basic language sample for a 1-year-old kid learning language. But people do not speak simply enough, they do not send basic samples only. Nature's solution is: kids filter and simplify what they receive, they can only process simple sentences. Kids are built to be limited. What could be a boss battle in language? For games, the problem is: how to be sure players get only the bits of information they need to progress. Games are guided experience on concentrated sample for future learning. Each level is a preparation for the following level, each level is learning. A boss is here only to test if the player is prepared to learn more. A better player is a better learner.

Experts only know one thing, they overvalue it and undervalue their other knowledge. WoW is distributed experts who also understand other classes' expertise. With the Damage Meter add-on, DPS free-riders are spotted.

Learning is helped by the emotional impact found in games. Why would I save people in the game? Why would I play? The story is here to kick-in emotions and motivate players. Stories are the only way to do it.

There is always performance before competence. The problem is trainees need to trust their trainers, otherwise they fear to perform. In games, there is performance: it is players looking at other players or NPC. Bonus: the intelligence is distributed. The community helps learning. This works particularly well with modding.

A game is fair when players admit I can win if I get better.

For Baby Boomers, intelligence meant speed and efficiency. For today kids, it is adaptation.

[Literature] A qualitative study of Ragnarök Online private server in-game sociological issues

Back in November 2009, I mentioned the multiplayer game design issues impacting social life inside RO. The paper has been accepted at FDG2010. You can read the final version.

I conducted interviews and observed players' behaviors in an official server (2000 users at peak time) and two private servers (200 and 2000 users at peak time). On the examined private servers, the social environment and some of the game mechanics were more adapted to players' needs. Examples are:

• a broader choice in avatar customization
• the ability to observe parts of the game world while not being logged-in (the Control Panel)
• less constrained groups
• events and GM taking the player community more into account
• easier XPing (leveling in RO is the main activity, and it's a lot of grinding) thanks to rates and the Warpra+Healer combo
• @commands enabled to players so that they can see who is online, sell merchandises with a character while playing with another and compare prices

Clearly, the Warpra+Healer totally changed the game. Champions could camp the respawn of MVP (boss monsters) and kill them relatively quickly with Asura Strike. This left virtually no end-game challenge for guilds other than the bi-weekly War of Emperium (battles between guilds in castles lasting between two to three hours).

RO bosses

Appearances and atmospheres

The Mummies series follow the same principle seen with Doom II monsters. A Mummy can first be encountered on the second and third floors of Pyramid dungeon. Then, on the fourth floor of Pyramid dungeon, Ancient Mummies appear, along with Osiris, a MVP. The higher the pyramid floor, the more difficult the Mummies, until Osiris at the fourth floor of the Pyramid. In my opinion, putting in parallel a spatial feeling of "going up the floors" and increasing the monster difficulty makes the player excited about "what's next floor?" and "will I be strong enough to kill them?".

As I described before, the atmosphere really matters to introduce the boss. In a video from Doddler fighting one of the last boss, Nidhoggur Shadow, a particular importance is given to the NPC broadcast in the area. Naght Siegel, the MVP standing at the top of Endless Tower required to empty all the floors of the tower during 2 hours and a half.

The game evolves

RO Vanilla

Golden Thief Bug is one of the first bosses of RO. It has always been in the game since its first launch in August 2002, along with Baphomet or Eddga. But after 7 years for kRO and 6 years for iRO, the players have started to kill these MVP very fast: less than 15 seconds for Eddga, 40 seconds for Baphomet and Golden Thief Bug in 50s.

And even without being totally "overpowered", some players find ways to exploit/use the system to kill MVP, such as this wizard using the warp as a protection to kill GTB, or this wizard killing Turtle General in 5 minutes with Ice Wall. I am obviously not talking about high-rate-server no-cast Creators inflicting ridiculously big damage to any monster (but "Hakuna Matata" in Portuguese is really cool!).

Episode 10 and after

However, Gravity game designers have realized their 200,000-HP 3k-attack MVP were not a challenge for high-level players anymore, and they progressively increased the difficulty of the MVP they released such as Lord Knight Seyren (1.6M HP, 10k attack) in the Episode 10.2 of March 2006, Gloom Under Night (2.3M HP, 7k attack) in the Episode 11.1 of May 2007, or Satan Morocc (20M+15M HP, 32k attack) in the Episode 12 of December 2008. At the same time, Gravity game designers also increased previous MVP such as Orc Lord which was granted the Earthquake skill, inflicting ridiculous damage. As Doddler writes:

Basically, earthquake is an extremely powerful attack that strikes all players on screen. Its based on the monsters physical attack power, though it is calculated as a magical attack. The key feature of earthquake is that the damage it deals is split across all players on screen. The more people who are within range of the boss monster when it casts the skill, the less damage the player takes.

But groups in RO are limited to 12 players, and as Doddler wrote when commenting (look for the "Orc Lord on Valkyrie" post) a video he recorded while fighting Orc Lord,

Like many earthquake MVPs, Orc Lord basically doesn't do anything that can be seen as a challenge other than earthquake. Unfortunately, earthquake is really a bad thing to deal with when you have no cranials, immunes, and limited access to assumptio. As you can see, our strategy generally involved simply falling over when it did end up using earthquake. More than that, the plan was to burn it down in a way that it would never use earthquake while in power up. We were successful in that, though just barely. Another 2 seconds and we would have been toast.

However, RO game designers also tried to innovate and create group strategies to beat MVP. MVP are no longer solo-able but require highly-organized players to group together. This new MVP design provided a challenging non-PvP activity for guilds. As Doddler writes,

The MVP's that I think gravity has done a 'good' job in making fun requiring interesting strategies to beat are:

Beelzebub - For reasons mentioned above [even though it is hard to coordinate the group, his attacks can be countered and his hellflys should be tanked as well, see Doddler's post for a full description]

Fallen Bishop - Same as beelzebub really but scaled down to be easier. Pneuma blocks hells judgement, sanctuary blocks evil land, magnetic earth stops dark/holy grand cross. Tank holds the whole crowd with evil armor... Holy cross will hurt but its managable (crusaders have 50% resist to holy so they're the best tanks). You can counter critical wounds with sacrifice if you need to but its not required here. If you can kill the banshees with an AoE (like focus arrow strike), its even easier. Could probably be done in a killer/priest/bard/scholar/tank combo.

Ktullanux - Textbook boss control. Split mob/boss on different tanks, counter stormgust knockback by using the terrain, block physical hits with safety wall. Ever use magic rod to counter his waterball? Its pretty cool.

Gloom Under Night - Very powerful physically but his abnormally slow attack speed and reaction time highlight defensive skills.

Atroce - Throws around some hefty attack power at high speeds. Pulse strike keeps you watching where you're standing but can be blocked, and you have to watch out for his magnum break counter to being attacked by multiple melee attackers. His two hand quick is scary, but it can be dispelled.

Kiel-D-01 - High powered melee attack, a powerful fire attack and a deadly dark blessing make Kiel tough, but his mob can be reduced drastically, and constant safety wall will keep the tank safe from his relatively slow attacks. Don't forget green potions.

Memory of Thanatos - Weaker than most people give him credit for. His main strength is in his mob, which can be mostly removed without problem. Exile really means you need two people that can take his hits, but otherwise its a simple exercise in monster control. If you can dispel his two hand quicken, its easier to just tank him on a magnetic earth than to use safety walls, as the magic is more destructive than his melee.

This might seem a blunt copy/pasting of Doddler's post, but I could not formulate it better and with more details.

Complaints

As Doddler explains in a RO's MVP System and it's Flaws post in April 2008, weaker MVP's can be killed in a very small group, some are even easy enough to take solo, with the high tier bosses taking a sizable party with many player roles and coordination, and the higher tier MVPs are harder to deal with, usually requiring anywhere from 5-10 people to properly fight. This system of weak, medium and strong MVP seems to provide an appropriate challenge to lower-, medium- and higher-skilled players. However, bosses are free for all, that is to say bosses are what would be referred to as world bosses in other MMORPG's, bosses that appear within the game world where any other players in the game world can attack, influence and interfere with bosses as you fight them. Except for Endless Tower and Orc Recollection, there is no instance.

As a result, some players often stay "camping" on a map, they wait for the monster's re-appearance to kill it first and get the drops. While Heimdallr, a community manager on iRO's forums, wrote he was sure that instancing will become more common in RO as time continues, MVPs are still wandering freely outside instances and are still being camped. A very common strategy consists of sending the same Monk character, capable of inflicting much of damage in one shot, in suicide missions. A player writes Champ solo Atroce really, /memo, fist, inn regen, buff, warp back rince and repeat. I actually mention this problem in my paper about RO private servers. As one of the main activities for high-level players is hunting MVP (along with WoE), camping Champions are spoilsports. A potential solution could be to let many MVPs use the Full Heal skill: this skill can only be used in an idle state (ie not in combat) and regenerates the all the HP of a monster. This happens naturally for all monsters in other MMOGs such as WoW.

Doddler also complained about MVPs. He listed 4 major points to fix:

• A too big contrast between frequently dropped mudflated useless items, and valuable rare (less than 1% drop chance) drops
• Players should play by the boss set of rules, not the opposite (RO game designers tried to address this with the post Episode 10 MVPs, see previous section)
• Ankle Snare, a Hunter skill used to trap monsters, works on MVP
• Earthquake, especially when MVP are in Power Up mode (attack and def multiplied by 3, cf Episode 10.3 monsters), deals ridiculously big damage to players

Even though I have played RO, I am not a RO expert as much as Doddler. However, I think that Earthquake requires really good gears and can be tanked by a party. Bosses in WoW sometimes require weeks to understand, see for instance Yogg-Saron's world first by Ensidia. Not all monsters can use Earthquake, and maybe those who can use Earthquake require the group to follow specific strategies yet undiscovered? Nevertheless, I perfectly understand how frustrating it can be to keep facing failure when trying to kill a boss because not everyone in the group has godly equipments such as Asprika (reduces 30% of elemental attacks, ie 30% of the damage received from Earthquake!). But these god equipments require items (only collectible in very coveted guild castles) to unlock painful long quests to accomplish, such as The Seals or Fallacious Okolnir.

Bosses and game mechanics

In a previous post I explained bosses often have a special appearance or atmosphere surrounding them in order to make the player understand the encounter moment is particular. The game mechanics part of a boss is as unique and special as its appearance: there is an extra-ordinary strategy to follow in order to win the fight, but the player keeps his/her ordinary abilities : run, jump, throw/shoot, smash, etc.

Taxonomy

According to en.allexperts.com, a boss can be:

Adjective	Description	Example
strong	more life, more damage, usually has a weakness revealed from time to time	Mushihime-sama: this boss
stylish	medium-sized but faster than the player, more skilled, nearly perfect, often the antagonist seen as a better protagonist	Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth
giant	big, single weak point or simply a bigger version of a normal monster	Final Fantasy X: Sin
stealthy	hidden or invisible, need to be revealed	MGS: The Fear
final	the antagonist, the bad guy behind the plot, has at least several phases/battles	Mystic Quest: Dark King
mini boss	weaker than "normal" boss, special strategy which has to be learnt but can become common	Doom II: Hell Knight
non-antagonist	not a fight but rather a competition/challenge to win	Super Mario 64: racing versus Koopa the Quick
stalker	repeatedly seen in different stages of the game, getting stronger at each new encounter, troublemakers, the hero and him/her may become friends after the last encounter	Pokémon Red/Blue: Giovanni or the Rival
hidden	fought just before or just after the supposedly-final boss, needs a task to be done before, might sometimes be totally unbalanced so that the player keeps trying to finish the game	Golden Sun: Deadbeard
team	multiple normal or a bit better than normal monsters acting together, combos	Tales of Symphonia: Defense System, Zelda Ocarina of Time: Twinrova
puzzle	invulnerable unless a puzzle is solved; the puzzle grants the player a super weapon, lowers the boss' defense or traps the boss	God of War: Minotaur
tricky	can not be defeated with the current abilities, but a special item can be used to kill the boss instantly	Warcraft III: the Mannoroth blood fountain where Grom Hellscream drinks to kill Cenarius
timed	player-independent, wait for the boss to die or kill him before a certain time	Final Fantasy VII: Emerald Weapon
multistage	change depending on how heavily damaged	Wario Land II: Captain Syrup
unbeatable	invincible or way too powerful, it is written in the storyline that the player has to loose, the boss becomes defeatable later in the story	Baldur's Gate II: first encounter with Jon Irenicus
easy	after a hard lvl, surprise!	Incredible Hulk: The Leader

In practice

Bosses combine multiple of the aspects mentioned above (you can use the checkboxes to determine in which categories your favorite boss fit). In MGS for instance, Snake, the hero, can fake death to kill The Fear. The Fear is supposedly a stealth boss, but this secret way to kill him makes him a trick boss. Similarly, Ugh Zan III, the very last bost in Serious Sam, combines strength, a puzzle, a giant shape, multistage and it is the final boss (killing it ends the story). I find the Croteam studio has done a very good work on Ugh Zan III, whether about the plot leading to the boss encounter, the 3D design or the puzzle the player has to solve to kill it. This is worth a video :-)

A boss is an opportunity for the game designer to be creative and try new things. The innovation can sometimes be really appreciated by the plaers, and become new standards for boss startegies. For instance, in MGS, if the player does not wish to struggle through this battle [against The End], the player [...] can simply turn off the console and wait for seven days (or set the system clock a week ahead). This will result in a secret cutscene in which The End has died of old age (according to wikipedia about The End). Another boss in MGS, Psycho Mantis, breaks the fourth wall, according to destructoid:

Psycho Mantis begins showing off and bragging about his telekinetic powers.
First off, Psycho Mantis proceeds to read the actual memory card you have in your system. If you have played any other popular Konami game at the time (particularly Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) Psycho Mantis will remind you how much you like “Castlevania,” eventually even commenting on how much you have saved during the game.
After displaying this impressive (and pretty darn innovative) feat, he asks you, the actual player (!), to place your controller on the floor so he can show you how powerful he really is. Upon your abiding to the creepy video game boss’s wish, Psycho Mantis grabs his head and, using the built in rumble of the DualShock, has the controller shake uncontrollably, even, if you happen to have to set it on a high table, making it fly in the air and tumble to the ground below.
If that weren’t already enough, once the battle begins you realize that there is no way to beat Mantis. Since he can read minds, he manages to dodge every single attack you throw at him.
Through trial and error (and most likely a guide), you eventually figure out that, in order to beat him, you must unhook your controller from port #1 and attach it to port #2. Once this is accomplished, Psycho Mantis will actually comment how he can’t read your mind anymore.

Original

Chad Concelmo, the destructoid game critique for the encounter with Psycho Mantis, wonders why more game designers have not experimented with this innovative and ridiculously original gameplay technique. I think the reason is playing with the fourth wall might become dangerous as the player is not immersed in the game anymore. A boss should not be taken only as a punctual challenge to the player, it is also, as I explained a situation of narratic climax. The encounters with The End, The Fear or other Psycho Mantis in MGS are memorable (this word appears 8 times in Conselmo's article) because each of them is unique. These humans with super powers and weird physical particularities (The End was born in the early 1860s and can summon the spirits of the "holy forest" he waits in to revive his stamina through directed sunlight according to wikipedia, The Fear has a 20-cm long tongue, Psycho Mantis' has mental powers and a mask covering his horrible face) are beaten by Snake, a normal-looking soldier with exceptional capacities, not weird powers. Psycho Mantis predicting the player's moves seemed previously unfair, but the fight becomes more achievable when the player learns how to kill him. And when the boss is finally killed by the player, the first reaction is "I did it!". Thus, breaking the fourth wall seems to work fine if the aim is to make the player solve himself the puzzle boss he/she is fighting. It is like boxing in Wii sports: the fight occurs also outside of the game, and that immerses the player even more.

Breaking the fourth wall "the other side" could consist of a mise en abyme. In a PS3 game for instance, it could be funny to play the same or another console game. Beating the boss at this console game inside the PS3 game could be the only way to defeat him/her/it. You could think about playing GTA 2 versus Jimmy Pegorino in GTA IV. In all Pokémon games, the protagonist's bedroom contains a console (Nes, SNES, Game Cube, Wii) but I do not think the protagonist can use them to play actual games.

Don'ts

Repetitive bosses always following the same strategies in a game are boring. Creativity matters.

Players can cheat often in boss battles. For instance, in Mystic Quest, casting Heal on the Dark King deals ridiculous damage (more than 20K while the boss has 40K HP) on the boss, ending the fight in 2 or 3 turns. In Mega Man 1, when fighting against the Yellow Devil the player can exploit the Pause Button/Thunder Beam glitch. This glitch seems to be known from many players. use Pause with a special gun to shoot each time the game starts again. In repeating Pause/Start, the player can shoot without being shot. To my mind, this is a bad design (or a bug) that should have been addressed when conceiving the weapon behaviors.

You have to burn the rope is a concept-game in which the player only faces a boss. The strategy to kill it is obvious and reminded to the player. I think easy bosses should not appear too often, otherwise players get bored of the lack of challenge. Anyway, I wonder which percentage of players go directly to burn the rope, and which percentage try to kill it by other means (eg throwing axes or jumping above).

Boss and Climax

In theatre, plays are composed of 1 to 5 act(s). An act can also be used for major sections of other entertainment, such as film, television, variety shows, music hall, and cabaret.. Similarly, traditional platform game levels can be compared to scenes and fighting a boss the end of an act. In Super Mario 64 for instance, when Mario gathers enough stars, he can meet Bowser. Interestingly, "playing" the comedy follows the same rythm and breaks as "playing" a game. To achieve climax at the end of an act in the game, the death of a boss may be eventually followed by a cinematic scene. Actually, the following cinematic scene also helps the game designer launch the player on a new part of the story or recall the final objective and how to achieve it: "You have collected a new artifact, congratulations! Remember that to reach the bad guy, you need 3 more. You can find one here [blinking red dot on the map]".

According to Clive Thomson in a wired.com article, a boss battle is the most mythopoeic part of gaming. Bosses stay in players' minds, and players often compare bosses, share their "favorite boss list" (as this gamespot thread shows) or exchange startegies. Players really like to talk about their game. As a consequence, players really like the boss system: a poll from The Escapist (N=129) shows that to the question "boss battles: yay or nay", 90% of the players answered yes and 10% no. I have previously detailed how boss monsters in a given level of Doom II or Dildo Tank become normal monsters in the following levels as the player has learned how to beat them. As an example of how much bosses can impact players, the Cyberdemon and Spiderdemon, the most impressive and powerful monsters that could be considered as bosses in Doom II, make noise when they move. From a game design perspective, the aim of the noise in Doom II might be to scare but also to warn the player. I think the noise contributes a lot to the "post-traumatic" state of mind the player is left after having played Doom II. As a player promoting the game to his friends writes, Before too long, you may realize that you're actually becoming quite paranoid, or even frightened because this game is very intense. At this point you should probably take a break, because I don't want to get sued if you have a heart attack.. Similarly in Plants versus Zombies the player receives a letter from the evil Dr. Zomboss. While all the letters previously received from the zombies were stained with misspellings, the perfectly-spelled one from Edgar Zomboss (see screenshot below) shines with a very formal register. The player undeniably wonders what is going to change as a zombie that can spell words correctly enters the game.

Shadow of the Colossus (SotC), a very poetic game from 2005 praised for his atmosphere and original design, contains only bosses. As it can be read in the wikipedia entry for SotC, the game is unusual within the action-adventure genre in that there are no towns or dungeons to explore, no characters with which to interact, and no enemies to defeat other than the colossi.. Beating each colossus requires its own strategy, but I will write about that later...
I strongly recommend the SotC OST.

I can hardly imagine a game with no boss. Games rely on a story, and the plot usually contains a conflict between the hero and his/her/its opponent(s). Just before the situation is brought back to normal (ie resolution), the player has to take part in a rising action to finally face the climax which consists of fighting the disruptive element(s). As the events happening to the hero are unusual, the player feels like he/she has to help the hero/heroine. This involvement can be seen at the back of kids' cereals box: the maze-games usually say "Help this guy find the exit" or "How is this girl going to find the solution?". For computer games, some NPC asking for the hero's help such as Toad in Super Mario 64 also make the player feel he/she is needed. Anyway, in the end, when the hero's task is done and everything comes back to normal (ie Falling action), the player can let the hero/heroine in his/her world and stop playing. But how can the plot of the game end if the player has no final disruptive cause to address? Killing the "bad guy that controls everything evil" seems an obvious solution, but multiple-endings games like Arcanum allow the player to choose his/her own solution. As a gamefaqs.com author writes, you can even skip the last boss fight, if your have maxed Intelligence and Persuasion. You can engage in a philosophical debate with the boss, and convince him that his plan is morally wrong. While the game provides the plot, the player should be the only one to decide how to solve it.

What is a boss?

(Geek) historical and cultural fact: the first game in which a boss appeared was dnd in 1974. In this dungeon-crawl RPG, a golden dragon was keeping the last treasure of a dungeon.

In single-player games, a boss is used to ensure a player has taken the time to level-up (raise their abilities through fighting anonymous easier foes) before progressing to a new section of the game. A boss is also a closure of Gameplay Progress according to Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen in Patterns in Game Design, p229.

A boss is usually bigger than the hero. As an example I found a kind of evolution in the difficulty of Doom II monsters:

• the Imp (brown) throws fire balls but can be killed in one shot (60 HP)
• the Hell Knight (light brown, horns) needs a bit more work (500 HP)
• the Baron of Hell is really resilient (1000 HP)
• and finally the Cyberdemon has an audible step when he moves (4000 HP)

In the early levels, the player may consider a Hell Knight as a difficult monster, maybe an end-of-level boss. But in the last levels, Hell Knights are very common. The player has become used to it and has possibly found a strategy to kill them (a particularly relevant one can be monster infighting). Only the Cyberdemon could be considered as a real big boss: it appears once or twice in the whole game (I remember having encountered it at least once with the ultra violence difficulty level). Anyway, the encounter with this boss (particularly in the 8th level) should teach the player that he/she should use monster infighting to be able to kill difficult monsters. The same principle is followed in Dildo Tank: the end-of-level boss is a common monster in the next levels, but the player knows which strategy to follow to beat them, and even sometimes many of them at a time. Bosses teach the player some play skills.

By the way, from an art design perspective, the monster sprites are set once and for all. As the player progresses in the game, there is no need to add new sprites: the previous end-of-level boss's sprite still fits "normal" monsters. This makes the art designer focus on fewer but higher quality monster appearances.

On another hand, a boss is an element of the scenario/storyline. In Wario Land III, killing a boss sometimes gives a music box, but ending a level gives a new power like swimming or brawling. In Mystic Quest, battlefields (see screenshot nearby) can help the player earn more experience before trying to enter a dungeon and kill the boss at the very bottom of the dungeon. This is rather a grinding/bashing solution which is not really pleasant as it does not really teach the player anything, but simply increases the level of the character.