University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Aether Twins

(USC Thesis Other)

Aether Twins

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content Aether Twins
By
Austin Drexler
Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
May 2017

Aether Twins Page 2 of 13
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................................ 3
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 4
What is Aether Twins? .............................................................................................................................. 4
How did it begin? .................................................................................................................................. 4
The Co-op Game We Deserved ............................................................................................................ 4
My Greatest Inspiration ........................................................................................................................ 5
DEFINING COOPERATIVE GAMES ........................................................................................................ 6
My Definition............................................................................................................................................ 6
The Team versus The Individual .............................................................................................................. 6
Explicit Incentive versus Implicit Incentive ............................................................................................. 7
Explicit Incentives ................................................................................................................................ 7
Implicit Incentives ................................................................................................................................ 8
Putting It All Together .............................................................................................................................. 8
Left 4 Dead ............................................................................................................................................... 8
AETHER TWINS ......................................................................................................................................... 9
The Premise .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Gameplay .................................................................................................................................................. 9
The Process of Designing a Combat System ...................................................................................... 10
Was Aether Twins Successful ............................................................................................................. 11
Lessons Learned.......................................................................................................................................... 11
Don’t Be a One Man Army ................................................................................................................. 11
Work with People You Trust .............................................................................................................. 12
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Aether Twins Page 3 of 13
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to go ahead and credit all my friends, family and teachers whose support and guidance
made this thesis project, as well as attending USC’s Interactive Media Program, possible. First
and foremost, I’d like to thank my parents for supporting me every step of the way, and
encouraging me to pursue my dream. I’d also like to thank my siblings, especially my brother,
for making an honest gamer out of me.
Prior to attending USC, my friend and fellow game designer who would have my back and, more
often than not, helped bounce ideas around still to this day. I’d like to thank Daniel Alamo,
whose creative genius helped Aether Twins stay true to its vision. While at USC, I was
introduced to many talented upperclassmen and underclassmen who I would soon collaborate
with on their projects. I’d like to thank Logan Var Hoef for showing me what a third year thesis
project should be about, as well as Alex Mathew for being my unofficial big sib. I also learned a
great deal working alongside Chris Muriel, Lawrence Jung, and Julian Ceipek. As well as
Thomas Lu who was a huge help to the development of Aether Twins.
I’d like to thank the faculty of USC and my advisors Dennis Wixon, Danny Bilson, and Gordon
Bellamy for their positive feedback and constructive criticism on Aether Twins. As for other
faculty and teachers I’d like to thank Archie Prakash, Mark Bolas, and Jane Pinckard, as well as
Samuel Roberts for providing insight on the thesis project through its various stages.
And finally I would like to thanks my team, namely Sophia Pino, Cristian Guzman, Wyatt Paul,
Eric Pratt, and Anthony Nillson for lending their support, creativity and free time to the project.

Aether Twins Page 4 of 13
INTRODUCTION
What is Aether Twins?
Aether Twins is a two player action adventure videogame with an emphasis on choice for
cooperative combat.
How did it begin?
Aside from being a haphazard attempt to move away from the project’s codename,
“Coop”. The concept I wanted to explore dealt with how players could achieve a cohesive
fighting rhythm without it feeling scripted. While there are a great many games that have
inspired me to tackle this idea. I would often look to the Batman Arkham series and wonder out
loud, “Why don’t they just let a second player play as Robin?” I felt what looked like a simple
tweak to a well-designed combat system would have a huge pay off, and maybe pave the way for
more cooperative open world games.
My obsession with cooperative games dates back to my early childhood. Growing up
with two other siblings, close in age, and only one gaming console between the three of us. One
of the first games we all bonded over was Rampage for the Nintendo 64. It was easy to hold a
grudge after playing Mario Party or Super Smash Brothers, but reminiscing about climbing the
London Tower and swatting down helicopters while your little brother and sister scoop up
panicked pedestrians felt priceless. That feeling of comradery would push us to seek out
cooperative multiplayer titles until we no longer had to share everything.
The Co-op Game We Deserved
It was difficult not to feel a certain way about cooperative games and how repetitive their
design had become. While some of the earliest co-op games came from the Arcade boom, the

Aether Twins Page 5 of 13
vast majority rendered all players on the same screen space restricting movement. At the turn of
the millennium, hardware limitations were not like they used to be in the 80s and 90s. Better 3D
rendering, networked multiplayer, and gaming hardware capable of running MMOs (Massively
Multiplayer Online Games) such as Everquest. The technology was there, but in many ways, the
design simply hadn’t caught up. Cooperative games were still of two main philosophies:
Independence or Codependence. In a blogpost, Co Op Mechanics And Design, the author refers
to these design philosophies as Separate But Equal, But Still Together and Forced
Cooperation. The idea being that, in separate but equal, players were mainly cooperating in the
sense that they have the same goal, but their experience would be similar to a single player
experience. As for Forced Cooperation, obstacles would be designed in such a way that an
individual player could not progress unless their partner was also present. As a result of this
binary, many situations felt heavily authored, like a door that required two people to open, or
teleporting to the next checkpoint because your teammate was rushing to get through the level
like some crazed lone wolf. I was determined to find that one in a million title that did
everything right.
My Greatest Inspiration
All throughout my pursuit of higher learning, I spent the better half of my twenties
thinking about what the ideal cooperative game would look like. Then I delved into Journey and
it’s (at the time) ground breaking cooperative mechanic. Based off Jenova Chen’s GDC talk,
“Designing Journey”, Cooperation in games typically wavered between alienation and
conformity. Where a player can feel alienated from the group because their desire to approach
the game at their own pace. Conversely a player can feel pressured to conform to the play style
of the majority, breezing through content where that individual would have preferred to explore

Aether Twins Page 6 of 13
their surroundings. Journey’s solution to this was to give players meaningful choice: the choice
to leave. In their discrete matchmaking system, players were paired based on proximity. If a
player wandered too far away from their online companion, that companion would disconnect
from their world without any notification or hindrance. By giving player’s the option to leave, it
made the decision to stay much more significant. What’s more amazing was the decision to
restrict matchmaking so that players couldn’t play with their online friends. By restricting the co-
op experience to only happen between two strangers, it completely removed any social
obligation to cooperate and yet players would often choose to complete Journey alongside their
partner.
DEFINING COOPERATIVE GAMES
My Definition
A game that is cooperative is structured play in which all involved participants are interested in a
similar outcome.
The Team versus The Individual
Any cooperative game can be divided into one of two orientations. This simply means
that a cooperative game with a specific orientation will share certain formal elements with other
games of similar orientations. The two types I will use are Team Orientation and Individual
Orientation. Common traits of Team Oriented games are as follows:
• Participants develop roles based on the game’s mechanics
• Divide a task (or tasks) amongst one another
• Going it alone generally has negative consequences
• The Outcome is mutually beneficial

Aether Twins Page 7 of 13
Cooperative games of an Individual Orientation will share the following traits:
• Participants can’t directly interact with one another
• Participant(s) can be expected to independently carry out the same tasks
• Going it alone is the norm
• The outcome is credited to the most skilled player(s), also considered the winner
If we consider team and individual orientations to be polar opposites, then we can imagine
cooperative games falling somewhere in the range of team oriented play and individual oriented
play. While this isn’t a hard rule, let’s assume this is represented as a one dimensional axes.
Explicit Incentive versus Implicit Incentive
Every game worth playing features extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. These rewards can
often give players incentive to put more effort into a game in order to achieve them. While
rewards for cooperative games may vary, their incentives can be categorized as either explicit or
implicit.
Explicit Incentives
A game can feature explicit incentives when the value of an action or a behavior is
extrinsically reinforced by a game’s mechanics resulting in a perceivable advantage or
disadvantage. This can be something obvious like a power up, or a change in mode. In the Atari
game, Pac Man, the explicit incentive for eating fruit is so that you can turn the tables on the
Ghosts chasing you, so to speak. Explicit Incentives can also come in the form of player
strategies. In many MMORPGs there is a clear explicit incentive for the team’s cleric to heal the
Warrior, as the warrior’s abilities allow enemies to focus their attacks on him while the cleric
heals the Warrior so he can continue to bait enemies.

Aether Twins Page 8 of 13
Implicit Incentives
A game can, either intentionally or unintentionally, feature implicit incentives where an
action or behavior lacks any extrinsic value because it is inconsequential or unnecessary to
achieve a desired outcome. These incentives, though not as apparent, can still have a significant
impact on the player experience. This can be as benign as stumbling across some environmental
narrative/ flavor text that conveys a viral meme. Almost anyone who has played Portal knows
exactly what an absolute stranger is referring to when they spout, “The cake is a lie.” This is
because they took it upon themselves to explore the environment and discover a secret room
where a previous test subject repeatedly scribbled this statement onto the wall.
Putting It All Together
By considering cooperative games by their orientations and incentives we can begin to
plot out the range of collaboration on a two-dimensional axis. We can then take a game like Left
4 Dead and list some of its attributes.
Left 4 Dead
Team Orientation:
• Players Develop roles based on the game’s mechanics. Go for either close range or
long range weapons.
• Divide a task amongst one another. This is usually done when fighting off waves of
enemies and each player is covering a specific flank.
• Splitting off from the group won’t end well for you.
Individual Orientation:
• The goal is for players to individually survive at tail end of a campaign.
Explicit Incentive:
• Certain enemies can easily immobilize and pick off stray players.
• Once seized by a special enemy, players can only be rescued by their teammates
Implicit Incentives
• Searching for environmental narrative in the form of writing on the walls.

Aether Twins Page 9 of 13
Left 4 Dead leans more toward a Team Orientation with Explicit Incentives, though it has a
unique shift where players will often prioritize escaping over rescuing teammates during the final
stretch of a campaign. Writing on the walls serves as environmental narrative with interesting
references to zombies in pop culture. If we were to represent Left 4 Dead on our graph, we could
get an idea of the range of player experience within this specific cooperative game. Applying this
method to my thesis project, I wanted to have a more even box, with the game finely balanced
both in orientation and incentive. More importantly, I wanted players to have complete voluntary
control over the range of collaboration.
AETHER TWINS
The Premise

Aether Twins takes place in a fantasy setting where Humans and Spirits, animals with
innate elemental abilities, coexist. The player characters are each warriors belonging to rival
clans, the Black Dragon and the White Serpent respectively. The story begins with both players
imprisoned in cages and lowered into the Overture, a remote dungeon off the side of a canyon.
The only thing that stands between them and freedom are the dungeon’s bloodthirsty inhabitants.
Either fight together or die alone, the choice is yours.
Gameplay
In order to create a system where players could team up and split off almost
instantaneously, I decided to give players equal abilities to establish that they could work
independently if they desired. The second step was to implement a feature in particular that
would allow players to quickly aid one another. I mapped a button to toggle a player state I
would call “Co-op mode” which would bring the player to their teammate. Though if they both

Aether Twins Page 10 of 13
held the button down, they would go back to back. By dedicating an entire button to handle
automatically snap to and follow your teammate around without inconveniencing them, players
could maneuver together without having to keep track of where their teammate was. This also
accounted for skill gaps, where some players weren’t as aggressive or simply didn’t know which
way to go.
In a broad sense, I knew I wanted the combat to be fast paced where enemies were
constantly attacking and players would often find themselves surrounded. Ideally players would
both hold down the Co-op button and make an unbreakable back-to-back formation. Players
could attack in any direction, and after three consecutive attacks, the fourth attack would deal the
most damage quickly depleting an enemy’s health.
The Process of Designing a Combat System
There were quite a few iterations on the overall combat system that required intense
research before I could even script the movement of the characters. I spent much of my time
looking over recordings of gameplay from various hack n’ slash videogames as well as action
adventure games with multidirectional combat and countering mechanics. Eventually, I learned
the hard way that you simply cannot beat the original. This holds especially true when you are
just one person engineering a system that involved over twenty engineers with a wealth of
experience in their field. Soon after the halfway point I found myself reprogramming the fighting
system so that it was more lenient on players. The other major challenge was programming
enemy AI for the players to fight. Fortunately, there were other students whose knowledge
proved crucial to creating a system that could manage large quantities of enemies without feeling
too punishing. Lastly the visual design of the combat had to read from almost any angle. Players
had to know they were attacking, being attacked, as well as if they were affecting their

Aether Twins Page 11 of 13
opponents. Games like Devil May Cry may have well over eight attack animations for just one
player character alone. And each attack had to feel, look, and sound different. Not knowing this
beforehand, it can be easy to over scope; or worse, not having enough variety in your attacks.
When all was said and done, the system did what it was intended to do, but it still had room for
polish.
Was Aether Twins Successful
In short, Aether Twins did offer players the freedom to cooperate; however, what
player’s believed were explicit incentives quickly realized there were only smoke and mirrors.
Team Oriented play wasn’t very compelling, yet at the same time it didn’t feel contrived or
forced on players. The combat was very forgiving, and players of all ages and backgrounds were
able to get through most of the content. An unintentional but positive side effect of having a
button to follow other players was that less experienced gamers didn’t have to worry about
navigating 3D space, allowing them to focus entirely on attacking.
Lessons Learned
Don’t Be a One Man Army
One of the most crucial lessons I learned while developing Aether Twins, was to check
my pride at the door. Just because I knew how to make something, didn’t necessarily mean I
should have made it. Because my team was primarily designers and one producer, I didn’t have
any help on the visual or technical side of production. While I could go to people for advice, all
of the tasks fell to me. Time I spent animating and worrying about exposition could have been
better spent honing in on the overall collaborative elements of the game and staying true to the

Aether Twins Page 12 of 13
player experience. Having a wide range of skills is useful, but you need to consider your limits
whether it be time, or mental/physical fortitude.
Work with People You Trust
Good friends are hard to come by, even more rare is a friend that will tough it out with
you for an entire year, for free. Given the nature of USC, many students have their hands full
earning real credit for classes or taking up extra-curricular activities. It meant the world to me
that the people who stuck around did. And not only did they come through on their end, but they
also kept me at the top of my game throughout the life span of the project. One of my greatest
weaknesses, when it comes to productivity, is getting distracted and putting off a project to
pursue some other tangential subject. Having a team of people interested in seeing the full game
put pressure on me to stick with the idea and see it through to fruition.

Aether Twins Page 13 of 13
Works Cited
Jenova Chen “Designing Journey.” GDC Vault March 2013.<
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017700/Designing>.
Jenova, Chen. “Designing a New Emotional Experience in Journey.” Gamasutra. 3 May 2013. <
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/191646/Video_Designing_a_new_emotional_experience_
in_Journey.php>.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Bardcore!

PDF

The Toymaker's Bequest

PDF

Revisions: an exploration of metafiction and metaphors in game design

PDF

MECHA: a post mortem on exploring independent game development

PDF

Life On A String: an ink painting narrative game

PDF

The Toymaker’s Bequest: a defense of narrative‐centric game design

PDF

OCTOBO: the interactive storytelling plush octopus

PDF

Southland

PDF

Ruben's puppets

PDF

duOS

PDF

The Distance: a cooperative communication game to long-distance players

PDF

The make of The Surveillant: a thesis project ""postpartum""

PDF

The Palimpsest project: producing a cultural shift to enable a systematic shift

PDF

Exit

PDF

Into the sunrise

PDF

Ascension: an analysis of game design for speech recognition system usage and spatialized audio for virtual reality

PDF

The Other Half

PDF

The future of games and health: towards responsible interaction design

PDF

FRKN WKND and video game mixtapes: developing talent and experience through video game mixtapes

PDF

Idhan

Asset Metadata

Creator Drexler, Clyde Austin (author)

Core Title Aether Twins

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 11/28/2017

Defense Date 05/01/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag action,adventure,cooperative play,digital game,Interactive Media,OAI-PMH Harvest,teamwork

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Lermarchand, Richard (committee member), Watson, Jeff (committee member)

Creator Email austin.drexler409@gmail.com,cdrexler@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-459722

Unique identifier UC11266665

Identifier etd-DrexlerCly-5936.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-459722 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DrexlerCly-5936.pdf

Dmrecord 459722

Document Type Thesis

Rights Drexler, Clyde Austin

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA