The Best Way to Make a Game Fun? Do Something New.

The worst thing a game can do is bore the player. The easiest way to bore a player is to be repetitive. Whether it be reusing a puzzle, using endless waves of the same enemy, or the same game mechanic for every fight, it gradually will annoy me until I stop playing.


The first apple was great. The second was okay. The third was tolerable. The fourth made me vomit.

At that point, I'm unlikely to buy other games by that developer. So here's a few ways for a few of my favorite genres to avoid being dull.

Real Time Strategy
RTS titles have actually come a long way in avoiding becoming stale. In part, this is due to a lack of new releases in recent years, with only Starcraft II coming to mind as a major title this year. However, a much larger reason is that developers have shifted from a focus on starting with a small base, gathering resources to make your base larger, training and upgrading an army, and then advancing to destroy the enemy base. If you screw up somehow it means that you're set back a good half hour or more of playtime as you have to redo all these steps to try again.


It's a lot easier to blow up a house than to build a new one.

To evade this endless cycle, developers have added more creative objectives, optional side objectives that can make it easier to continue, and more personality to the game's storyline. For an example of the latter, Warcraft III featured an engaging storyline where you played with a Prince through his attempt to seek vengeance for an attack on his people by the undead. He then became corrupted and turned to the dead himself. In the next campaign you played him returning to attack his own people. Starcraft II included a number of missions where you were required to defend civilian populations, rescue prisoners, and perform other tasks that generally made the campaign stay fresh throughout the whole experience. A number of other games allow the player to pick different areas to attack, giving some interesting choices to spice up gameplay. Any new RTS game would be well advised to include these features if they want their game to impress anyone.

Unfortunately, there are still some weaknesses. In some cases, the campaign missions are just too long. For instance, there's one in Starcraft II where you are required to destroy a settlement that has been infested by the Zerg.


Infesting things always involves tentacles!


That sounds well enough, but there's something like 400 buildings you have to destroy, most of which take a long time to blow up. Additionally, you can usually only destroy them during the day because at night the buildings spawn large numbers of enemies that move toward your base. These enemies aren't THAT much of a threat but they do make it difficult to continue your offensive during the night. Even worse, the enemies are all of one type, a bunch of zombie-like foes who shamble without any strategy or tactics toward your main base. As the planet shifts between day and night every five minutes, you're left with having to spend somewhere around 40 minutes destroying enemies and buildings that aren't particularly engaging or interesting.

The original Starcraft campaign featured a similar problem in that the game featured three races, Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, but frequently in each campaign you would only fight one or those for the vast majority of it. This would get somewhat boring fairly quickly as you would keep having to kill the same types of enemy units. In the Terran campaign, you only got to fight against the Protoss once in the entire 10 mission campaign! If you go to the trouble of making multiple races for your game, you should at least allow the player to fight against each of them a few times.

Multiplayer games tend to avoid the problem of repetition because humans are far superior to the AI in their ability to use creative strategies with the tools at their disposal.


Although playing online does pose some other problems.

This makes sure that the game is always a challenge. However, if certain strategies are far superior to all of the other ones, the game quickly devolves in depth to become a matter of execution as opposed to strategy. This is why it is important for developers to continue to support their game through patching after it has been released. The balance problems, where certain units or strategies are far too strong or too weak, need to be addressed to keep the game interesting. With support, an online community can exist for years to come. People still play Warcraft II online and it came out in 1995!


And still features realistic explosions!

First Person Shooters

I addressed this a bit in my article about creating challenging enemies, so I won't add too much more here. Basically, avoid making the game into a series of identical firefights. Add something to spice it up. Make enemies be more intelligent, force the player to use more strategy, add some interesting set-piece events. A great example of this was in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, where for one mission you were shifted out of the action entirely to be the gunnery officer on an AC-130 gunship.


It's a nice change of pace to be able to point and click to blow up the enemy. Leaves a hand free for a beer.

Another instance in the sequel to Modern Warfare was when you had to use a shield to repel enemy gunfire while advancing through a prison against the guards. The enemy bullets make huge divots on the shield and a loud thump as they ricochet off. It really is quite terrifying at first.


It takes balls to want the enemy to shoot at you.

Role-playing games
One thing many RPGs do is reusing the same model of an enemy for much of the game. Sometimes they color them green or red or something to try and trick my brain, but it doesn't work.


No, sticking a couple arrows in its head doesn't make it a new enemy type.

I want to see a progression of different enemy types throughout the entire game. I also want them to use different abilities and attack types. It's much more fun to play against a group of enemies that uses magic, ranged attacks, and melee attacks instead of just one of those three.

The best example I can think of for a game series that has done this consistently well is the Final Fantasy series. Throughout the entire game you face an ever changing mix of enemy models with different creative abilities that you have to prepare for. Almost every boss fight against stronger enemies has some unique elements as well, such as a specific weakness or a powerful attack that you have to prepare for in order to survive.

I would also add that RPGs that choose to use a leveling system need to have choices available when your character gains levels. If you don't have any options as your character becomes more powerful, the game becomes dull much faster. Ideally, these will make your character somewhat unique so that the game can feel fresh each time you play it.

One game that did this well was Dragon Age: Origins. For instance, if you played as a warrior, you could choose to use two handed weapons to deal high damage. You could use a sword and shield to absorb damage for your group. You could also use two different one handed weapons to deal high damage. If you were a mage, you could pick between a number of different types of magic to specialize in healing and support magic for your party, dealing damage to the enemy, or other options. Finally, you could pick two of four specializations for each of the three classes, allowing you to have access to different abilities. This level of customization helped keep the game fresh throughout, as you could choose to make your character whatever you wanted to be.


I chose to make my character show off his pecs.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games
I'll preface this by saying that the only MMO I play is World of Warcraft. However, any MMO that features RPG elements needs to feature all of the above RPG features as well as a few more. The only big annoyance I have with WoW is when the drop rates for items for quests are abysmally low. For instance, if you have a quest that requires you to hack off heads to return to a NPC, you can almost guarantee that half the enemies you find will inexplicably not have a head.


Even when you can clearly see a head on the ground with your knife sticking out of it.

Simply put, if you're going to have a quest that requires items to be found from an enemy, have the drop rate be reasonably high. It should not take fifteen minutes to collect items. That's not fun.

Travel time is also a big nuisance in some cases. Many times, a quest would have you go out and kill an enemy, go back to town to turn in the quest, whereupon you would get a new quest to kill a different enemy at the place you just visited. Why didn't they just tell you to kill all of the guys there at the same time!? Fortunately, the new expansion, Cataclysm, has pretty much removed this problem, but it's important to make sure that it doesn't come back.

A final complaint is when you have quests that demand that you kill one kind of enemy, but that enemy is nowhere to be found. For example, if you have a quest to kill 8 Scourge Siege Engineers at this one location, you may find that out of all the monsters at that place there are only 1-2 Siege Engineers.


But don't worry, there's at least fifty mindless zombies to kill in the meantime.

This means you have to wait for them to respawn, which takes quite a while. This is silly design and shouldn't be done. There should always be enough enemies to fulfill the number you have to kill.

Missile Defense-A waste of effort

I was surprised to see that one of the successful results of President Obama's trip to Portugal was that NATO would support the construction of a missile shield over Europe. Since Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative during his presidency, the United States has spent well over $100 billion on attempts to create a successful missile defense program and has not had a great deal of success.


Emblem of the Strategic Defense Initiative

The ideas for defense against enemy ballistic missiles have been quite varied. Some have included modifying already existing antiaircraft systems-such as the Patriot missile launcher-to target and destroy incoming missiles. These systems were tested in the Gulf War against Iraqi Scud missiles with reports of some success. Unfortunately, this success was considered post-war to be the interception of only a few of the 40 Scuds launched by Iraq during the war. That isn't a great ratio if you're relying on this system to stop the destruction of a major city.


Patriot missile system in action

Another problem with these systems is that they have had issues with friendly fire, on several occasions they have shot down friendly aircraft that were misidentified as enemy missiles.


Oops

Another route that has been pursued is to have ships equipped with the AEGIS missile tracking system shoot down missiles before they are able to land. They have been involved in successful tests, but only against one or two missiles at the most. Again, if more than one or two missiles are launched, this system doesn't strike me as being likely to see much success.


AEGIS cruiser

Another approach that has been proposed is to have a system of satellites in orbit that can destroy enemy missiles with laser type systems. This was never seriously pursued, mostly just put out there as an idea. However, this is the main view that many had of missile defense around the time it was proposed, hence why the concept was derided as being "Star Wars."



Artist's rendition

Anyway, from the ideas that have been posed, ground and sea based systems seem to be the most successful. Unfortunately, their success rate is unlikely to be very high if more than a handful of missiles are launched at the same time. One massive problem to the concept of a missile shield is that Russia is estimated to have more than 3,000 strategic nuclear weapons along with an unknown number of tactical nukes. An additional problem is that at least a significant portion of these are designed to be delivered by bombers or by submarines, two methods that missile defense shields are not designed to defend against. Even if a system was able to achieve a 90% success rate of missile defense, that still leaves a few hundred nuclear weapons available, sufficient to destroy most of the United States and Europe.

On the other hand, the main goal of the proposed missile defense system in Europe is to stop an Iranian ballistic missile from being able to hit a major target. These systems are likely to have a much better chance of halting an attack like that. Personally I think the much greater deterrent is the fact that Iran would be turned into glass if they launched a nuclear weapon at all. I don't think any country in the world is insane enough to make a nuclear attack with the full knowledge that they would be utterly destroyed by the counter-attack. All that the missile defense system in Europe will accomplish is to antagonize Russia.


And you don't want to antagonize Russia

The potential benefits of a missile defense shield are not worth the price, which includes both money and foreign relations. The system has not been proven to have a great deal of success so relying on it does not make any sense. The possibility of widespread nuclear death has been around for decades and it has been successfully stopped through the use of a secret, high tech weapon.



Let's keep using it.

Plan for the Future, Live in the Present

Many people I talk to are anxious about their future after college. Will I be able to find a job? Where do I want to live? Where do I want to go to grad school? In some cases this anxiety can interfere with their lives now, it's difficult to focus on your statistics class when you are wondering if you'll be able to find work with a degree in Leisure Studies. However, it's important to keep in mind that the present matters as well, if you focus on the future too much you can't enjoy what you do now.

This video based on Alan Watts work made me think about this quite a bit:

Creating Challenging Enemies

After replaying a few videogames that I enjoyed in my youth, I noticed one big problem. There isn't much of a challenge to the enemies. This led me to think about the usual ways developers use to make opponents more difficult and which methods work best.


The challenge level of many current games

Method 1: Add more enemies
This is the Serious Sam approach to difficulty-add a whole ton of additional foes and the game will indeed be harder. Bonus points if the game requires the player to individually click for each attack-eventually their finger will get tired.


Eventually they'll get tired!

Although this method does work, I find it to be a cop out. In many action RPGs your character will not even take significant damage from these types of enemies because you have sufficient armor and hit points to resist their attacks. This means that you don't succeed in adding a sense of danger and challenge-the player never feels menaced, just inconvenienced.


A similar obstacle would be a room full of kittens you have to pet

Method 2: Add health and damage to the enemies
This is another pretty easy approach to make the game more difficult-just make the monsters harder to kill and make them injure you more. This is better than method 1 because it at least makes you feel that enemies are a real threat, but it's difficult to balance. It's hard to find the sweet spot of difficulty where they are hard enough to pose a threat but not at an unreasonable level of challenge.


The tricky seesaw of game balance

The other problem with this method is that it may not fit the game world very well. For example, in the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all of the monsters increase in strength along with your own character. This means that toward the end of the game every common bandit will still be an equal threat for your battle-hardened warrior who has won thousands of engagements, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If this method is chosen ideally it should be implemented by making different enemies appear that look like they should be more challenging. For instance, if you were fighting bandits and thieves at the start of the game, add better equipped mercenaries or knights later on.


This enemy might pose a plausible threat at the start of the game-not at the end of the game

Method 3: Limit the player's resources
This is one of my favorite ways to add difficulty to a game. It forces the player to consider what to use in every situation as they may need that grenade or healing potion more later on. Many RPGs and survival horror games use inventory limits to impose this on the player-you're physically unable to carry everything you might want so you have to pick and choose what you take with you. Other RPGs don't have limits to your inventory but you don't have unlimited cash so you have to pick what to buy very carefully.

However, this system poses a difficult balancing act once again, as there may be situations where limiting player resources results in being stuck in a situation with no way out except reloading or restarting the game from an earlier point. This results in the player being forced to slog his way through a bunch of stuff he's already done earlier-or more likely to quit the game entirely.


and you really don't want to be stuck in the torture dungeon

Method 4: Make enemies only vulnerable to specific attacks
This is another one of my favorite methods-and can be done in many different creative ways. Add a specific weakness to an enemy-such as taking extra damage from silver weapons. Require the player to use a certain item to damage their foe-such as a stake to kill vampires. However, it's very important that there be a way for the player to KNOW what the enemy's weakness is before or during the encounter, so that they can potentially prepare for and beat it without having to go to Gamefaqs. You can do this by having hints in the game-such as NPCs you talk to in town or a book you find saying that the enemy is afraid of light.

You can also ask the player to use logic-for example the first boss in Final Fantasy Nine is a big plant. Astute players might realize that plants tend to not like being set on fire.


The dreaded Plant Brain

There should also be some visible or audible sign that you have successfully identified the enemy's weakness-anything from a shout of agony to simply taking significantly more damage from your attacks.

Method 5: Impose additional restrictions on the player
This is a great way to not only make the game more difficult, but to make the game feel more unique and original. In Final Fantasy Seven-players need to have various materia which have to be equipped to cast magic spells that can cause damage to enemies or heal allies. At one point in the game, players have all of their materia stolen by Yuffie.


Don't trust anyone who dresses like this

Obviously they want to get it back, but Yuffie is kidnapped by an enemy and the player has to fight their way through them without being able to use their magic to help. What I found extremely clever about this part of the game was that while you weren't able to cast magic and this was an abrupt, unexpected occurrence, there were ways around it. The store in town sold items that could be used to cause high damage to enemies, as well as healing potions that you could use to substitute for the cure spell.

In the Trauma Center game for the Wii you have to perform surgery on patients. You are used to being able to see the entire patient's body so that you can treat them quickly. Well, in one scenario you get involved with a car crash in a tunnel with no lighting. All you have available to light the scene is the flash on a camera that needs a few seconds to recharge. So you have to remember what's going on as the flash dims and you return to being completely in the dark so that you don't injure or kill your patient.


Nothing could possibly go wrong with doing surgery in the dark

Method 6: Make the enemy smarter
Unfortunately, making good AI for opponents seems to be extremely difficult. They are able to execute what they are programmed to do with perfection but they are also extremely predictable. Even in FPS games with the best enemy AI, after you've been through one or two rooms of enemies you pretty much know what they will do for the rest of the game. In RTS games, after the first few difficulty levels the AI is made more difficult by giving it resource gathering bonuses instead of making it better at the game.


Artificial Intelligence has not reached this point yet unfortunately

I think the best way to make the AI seem more intelligent is to constantly add new tricks that the enemies use with the precision that the AI can offer.

Using a FPS game where you attack a facility as an example, in the first engagement the enemy is stunned by you showing up and just returns fire while in the open as you gun them down. The next guards you meet are prepared and use cover to protect themselves. After that, there's an alarm in the room that you have to keep them from pressing and summoning reinforcements. Later on they turn the lights out in the room so you're blind and have to return fire to their muzzle flashes or at their flashlights. Maybe a later room has tear gas or something that floods it and you have to deactivate it.


Far too many FPS games stop at the second stage of AI-they take cover and then you spend the rest of the game popping out to blast at them for a few seconds before returning to your own cover

Summary
There are many ways to add difficulty to a game but if you want to separate your game from the pack, try and use more creative options. Don't just add more monsters with more health and damage-try and force the player to think. There are already tons of games out there that add enemies with slightly more health and damage-players won't remember those. They will remember trying to suture bleeding lacerations from the light of a camera flash.

Designing Choices in Games

Most recently released role-playing games have added moral choices or dilemmas as a core part of game-play. Unfortunately, few of these games succeed in making them interesting. They only offer "good" or "evil" options, which limit the player to being an angelic fairy of holiness or a complete jerk.


Choices need more depth than this

In order to make these choices actually elicit thought on the part of the player there are some basic requirements.

1. Make every choice viable to complete the game.
In some games you can make choices that make it almost impossible to finish the game. In Baldur's Gate, for example, the game has a reputation system which goes from 1 (extremely evil) to 20 (Heroic and noble). Unfortunately, only the heroic and noble option is viable to complete the game. If you are good, merchants will give you a steep discount on items and most people will react favorably to you. If you choose to make an evil party and your reputation drops below a certain point your game becomes a living hell. You will be attacked by the guards in every town, merchants will refuse to sell you items, and as you travel you will be ambushed by large war parties from the major cities.


The game is rather difficult to beat when a giant army of mercenaries attacks everywhere you go

It may be realistic that the major towns have a bounty on your head when you're evil, but from a game play context it's a nightmare. If you give the option to play as an evil character it needs to be a viable choice.

As an additional problem, every other character in the game who joins your adventuring party has their own alignment of good, neutral, or evil. Good and neutral characters will leave your party if you become too evil, evil characters will leave your party if you become too good. This means that if you use these characters in your group you have limitations to the choices you can make-otherwise you'll lose half of your strength and be unable to finish the game without a tedious trek around the world to find some more people of like-minded beliefs to join you.

2. Don't make one path grant benefits that are much better than the rest.
The worst route you can take for making a moral choice system is to offer unequal rewards. Players will almost always seek to take whatever route offers the best items, the most money, and the most experience. If you have a quest with one choice that gives the player a couple healing potions and one that gives the player a tremendously powerful weapon, why on earth would anyone pick the one that offers healing potions?


No offense meant healing potions, but you're just not as fun as a new sword

In the Baldur's Gate games, persuading an enemy not to fight or letting them go is almost always the worst possible choice. You don't usually get any experience points for releasing them and you also miss out on all the items and gold they might be carrying.

This isn't to say that you can't offer different rewards for different options, but they need to be properly balanced. Otherwise players aren't going to think about what choice is the best morally or pragmatically, they will think about what choice gives them the best loot.


Hmm I don't know if I want to kill hi-wait I get a TANK if I kill him? When and where do you want him dead?

3. Don't make good and evil moral compasses for players.
This is more of a personal preference of mine than anything else, but I despise games that choose to give you a good/evil compass. Many recent games use this device, such as Infamous and Prototype.


At least the cover of the game makes being evil look viable

The problem I have with these moral compasses is that they are again placing an artificial device in the way that will take precedence over your actual beliefs when it comes to making choices. To get the best armor/weapons/ending to the game you are required to play as a complete evil bastard or complete good hearted soul. If you pick a choice in between the two, a pragmatic option, you don't get the best toys to play with.

On the other hand, I can also see why a lot games choose this type of system. It makes it easy to design all of the choices-you just make an evil and a good option. If you add additional options, it adds a great deal of development time and expense to the game. If you have different endings to the game based off your choices throughout, it's also a lot easier to just have two or three to worry about as opposed to a dozen or more.

However, if you must use some sort of numeric value to rate the player's choices throughout the game, it is better to make it based off something other than good and evil. Two games I can think of that do this well are Mass Effect and Arcanum.

In Mass Effect you can make Paragon actions, which tend to be forgiving and generous to others, and Renegade actions, which tend to be pragmatic. You are allowed to make either paragon or renegade choices in some situations based off your level in that side. For instance, a paragon choice might be to let someone who tried to rob you go after you beat him up with a stern warning to turn his life around. A renegade option might be to throw him out of the window of a skyscraper.


The renegade/paragon scale of Mass Effect

The best part of this system is that you aren't limited to only one side or the other, you can choose to make paragon or renegade decisions whenever you like. The only disadvantage to not going fully down one track is that there are a few persuasive choices that you need extremely high renegade or paragon scores in order to accomplish. However, if your score isn't high enough to make them it doesn't ruin your game. Thus, you feel free to pick whatever option seems best to you.

Arcanum is a steampunk RPG where magic and technology exist in the same world. You can choose to have a character who uses swords, armor, and magic or a character who uses molotov cocktails, grenades, pistols, and shotguns. Or you can pick a character in the middle who uses elements of both.


Unfortunately the game is also so old that including any screenshots would be a bad idea

However, the game features a compass between magic and technology-as you choose abilities that let you use magic the compass tilts toward magic, as you choose technological abilities it tilts toward technology. Highly technological characters cannot use or be affected by magic as well, so if you try and use a healing spell on your character it will not be as effective. A highly magical character cannot use firearms or explosives effectively. If you pick a character in the middle, they can use items from both sides, but not to their maximum effect. This makes choosing abilities when you gain levels extremely interesting-there are many variables to consider, making it take a great deal of thought.

4. Make major choices have effects later in the game.
If you want players to care about each decision, it's good to make big decisions have a lasting effect on the game. That doesn't mean that picking between some money and a healing potion needs to change the ending of the game, but some certainly should have significance.


I told you we should have taken the healing potion!

Let me conclude with a few examples of well designed choices. In one of the downloadable modules for the first Mass Effect, a group of terrorists has taken over a mining facility on a large asteroid and have aimed it at the planet below where millions of people live. The terrorist's leader has locked up a group of the miners and scientists in a room with a bomb rigged to go off. He makes an ultimatum-let him go or he will detonate the bomb and kill all of the hostages. You can choose to release him and potentially allow him to make a similar attack again or you can go after him and all the hostages will die. You suffer no changes in loot or experience for picking either route-it's all up to you.


Although the hideous nature of Batarians does tend to bias me toward killing him

Another example-you are sent to kill the leader of a nation or city because he has been imprisoning a specific group of the population. However, when you go after him he explains the reasons behind his actions. Perhaps that group was responsible for terrorist attacks against the population and he's trying the best he can to protect his people. The leader isn't a caricature of evil, as most games make the bad guy, he's a realistic, human figure. What choice do you make now? Should you kill him? Let him stay in power? Take him prisoner?


A decision becomes much more challenging to make when it's about someone whose awkward situation you can understand

Even better, make the choice be about a character you've known throughout the whole game and grown to like. One of the members of your party was hit by a corrupting spell by an enemy sorcerer that causes him to go into a berserk rage every few days. The first time this happens he kills a few innocent civilians before you can restrain him and it wears off. Do put him in restrains and try and find someone to dispel the curse? Do you kill him outright for killing civilians? Do you keep him with you but restrain him before he's going to go berserk because you like the guy and couldn't bear losing him?

I want to see more games that offer complex choices like this, not simple ones that are biased by rewards or other ancillary factors of the game. Difficult options force me to think and care about the world that was created and will keep me coming back for the next expansion or sequel in the series.

Dissent is Good-Why Moderates are Important in Politics

One of the growing trends in American politics for the last decade is for inter-party dissent to be smothered. Throughout the last two years, most votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate have been split between Democrats and Republicans, with maybe one or two members of each party voting against their party's view every now and then. Publicly disagreeing with the party line is not acceptable. I find this extremely worrying because if no one is allowed to disagree then many major problems are ignored because no one is voicing them!

This is particularly true in the Republican party, where the moderate Republican is rapidly becoming extinct. In 2004 Pat Toomey ran a very successful primary campaign against Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania by accusing Specter of being a RINO-Republican in name only. Although Specter narrowly won, the race showed that having a moderate political philosophy is a huge liability in the mindset of most voters in primary elections.

After Specter voted for President Obama's economic stimulus plan he felt forced to change parties if he wanted to have a chance of keeping his senate seat. The Republican leadership was outraged with him for voting against the party line. As Specter said afterward:
"A senator is supposed to be able to exercise his judgment without being excommunicated, and when I voted for the stimulus that was the end of my relationship with the Republican Party."


Specter's love of bears was also an issue with voters

The rise of the Tea Party in this election cycle shows this phenomenon worsening. Representative Mike Castle of Delaware lost his primary bid against Tea Party supported Christine O'Donnel because of the perception that he was too liberal. Polls taken prior to the election showed "a growing feeling among Republicans – 55 percent, according to the poll – that Castle is too liberal." After his loss, Castle commented that voters "were very energetic, they were very committed, and they didn't want to hear any other point of view."


The mandatory election loss pout

This is almost nonsensical because Mike Castle is not even much of a moderate republican. He voted against almost all of President Obama's proposals. The only moderate view Castle has expressed is that he believes trying to repeal healthcare reform is a waste of time because of Obama's veto. He was still open to it if Republicans won enough of a majority in the election or if they won the 2012 presidential election.

There are certainly other issues affecting this election cycle than simply a desire among voters for politicians to cater strongly to the party platform. Many voters are upset with incumbents and want new people in office. Senator Specter also had the additional problem of having to woo a new group of voters after he changed from Republican to Democrat. But I think the growing dissatisfaction among members of each party's base with moderate candidates is a large part of the problem.

But why do I care? If voters want politicians who are more conservative or liberal in their view isn't that fine?

Allowing the expression of dissenting opinions, which in politics tends to come from more moderate members of the party, is incredibly important because of two psychological phenomenon that all people are subject to.

One is groupthink. Essentially, in the desire for harmony, groups tend to want one unanimous decision expressed. This causes dissenting views to be suppressed and has led to many poorly thought out decisions throughout history. The problem worsens when the members of a group have similar opinions to begin with. The perception is that a group must present a united front to the outside world in order to prevent opponents from being emboldened and taking advantage of any divisions noted within the group.


"Your arm must be in the air at all meetings!"

To some extent, I see why this is important. If one member of your organization goes out in public and speaks against the group's view at every turn, that makes it appear as if your group cannot control its members and shouldn't be taken seriously. But very few of the people who have been criticized or even ejected by their party or organization have been guilty of this. They have simply written an article or spoken to a reporter while making it very clear that they are voicing their own personal views. When people are evicted for that, it goes beyond trying to look like an effective organization to forming a group of yes-men.

The other is confirmation bias-our tendency to immediately accept information that agrees with our views while ignoring information that conflicts with them. I have certainly noticed this while writing papers. It's very tempting to completely ignore a conflicting paper so that it looks as if all the evidence supports your idea. However, it's frequently not even a conscious bias, you just tend to notice information that matches what you think.

If dissenters aren't allowed to voice their view, you will find that horrible choices are made because the evidence wasn't thoroughly considered. A good example is the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, where the CIA aided a group of Cuban exiles in an attempt to take over Cuba. It was thought that the population would aid the group and that an easy victory would occur. However, British intelligence had already shared with the CIA the information that the vast majority of the Cuban population supported Castro. This, along with other problems, was ignored and the invasion went on to a spectacular failure.

In order to avoid these two biases, you need strong dissenting voices to break the group out of its malaise. Otherwise you end up with choices that are extremely easy to make and also sometimes extremely wrong. That is why I am worried about the demise of moderates in US politics. They are the force in the party that will agree when the other side has a good idea.

These problems aren't by any means limited to politics. Hugh Montefiore, a trustee of the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth resigned in 2004. The reason: "I have been a trustee of Friends of the Earth for 20 years and when I told my fellow trustees that I wished to write on nuclear energy, I was told that this is not compatible with being a trustee."


Designing this button was the last straw for Montefiore

Rather than considering whether there was room for different views on ways to halt the progress of global warming, the organization simply said he was wrong and wanted him out. That is not a functional group relationship.

One of the ways that I determine if a group works well together is how it handles a dissenting opinion. A non-functioning group will ignore the dissenting view completely. This may be done by saying that the group has already agreed, so there is no need for further discussion. It may be done by pointing to the group's own carefully selected evidence and saying that there is no need for more research. It may be done by kicking the dissenting member out of the group entirely. In some cases in the past, it has been done by ordering the dissenter hung or decapitated for daring to disagree with the King.

If the group is functional, it will at least consider the opinion and any evidence behind it. In many cases, a dissenting view is the only way that a major problem with an idea can be found. For example, if you're planning to build a dam in a river, one member of your planning team might point out that the location of the dam will restrict the seasonal flooding that farmers downstream have been relying on for centuries to fertilize the soil through spreading silt. This may be ignored if the economic benefits of the dam are considered to outweigh the farmer's needs, but it is important for that fact to be at least noticed in the planning process.


However, there is a point when dissent shouldn't be tolerated

Zero Tolerance Policies Make Zero Sense

Schools are responsible for educating millions of children across the United States. One element of that responsibility is to maintain the safety of children while they are at school. Restricting the presence of weapons at schools is a good policy, it's hard to learn when you know that several of your classmates have knives, guns, or other lethal weapons in their backpacks. Unfortunately, some school districts and administrators have gone overboard in the application of laws designed to restrict the presence of weapons in schools and have involved the criminal justice system inappropriately in the punishment of these children. This is usually accomplished through the creation of a "zero tolerance" policy for the district.

A zero tolerance policy provides a mandated minimum penalty to ANY student who brings anything that can be construed as a weapon into a school. This may be suspension, expulsion, or referral to the police depending on the district.

For one incident last year, a 6 year old boy was suspended for bringing a camping utensil to school to use for lunch. The school district claimed that it had no discretion in the matter because the code of conduct of their district mandated a suspension for any type of knife regardless of possessor's intent. No flexibility allowed.


Apparently the face of a potential murderer

For another example,

In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old was asked to write a "scary" Halloween story for a class assignment. When the child wrote a story that talked about shooting up a school, he both received a passing grade by his teacher and was referred to the school principal's office. The school officials called the police, and the child spent six days in jail before the courts confirmed that no crime had been committed.

Spending time in jail for writing a fictional story is certainly an example of appropriate punishment for a thirteen year old!

There are at least a few dozen of these types of stories that draw media attention every year, as students are suspended, expelled, or even jailed because school administrators don't apply common sense to these cases. There are certainly many more that go unrecognized.

A bit of background on the origin of many of these district policies:

In reaction to a series of school shootings, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Byron Dorgan introduced the Gun Free Schools Act. The law's actual wording:

(1) In general.--Except as provided in paragraph (3), each State receiving Federal funds under this Act shall have in effect a State law requiring local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year a student who is determined to have brought a weapon to a school under the jurisdiction of local educational agencies in that State, except that such State law shall allow the chief administering officer of such local educational agency to modify such expulsion requirement for a student on a case-by-case basis.

Feinstein after the bill passed

The federal law itself stipulates that local educators are supposed to regulate penalties for students on a case by case basis. Thus, common sense is written into the law. I don't think it was the intent for students to be expelled for bringing butter knives or plastic knives into school for the purposes of cutting food.

However, the event that greatly accelerated the spread of zero tolerance policies was the shooting at Columbine High School. Parents demanded that their school districts keep their children safe. Unfortunately, the route that many schools took to do this was to adopt these policies, thinking that a harsh penalty would deter violence.

This goes against recommendations made by the secret service based on an investigation of 37 school shootings. The investigation showed that kids do not go on a killing rampage on a whim, there is a pattern of behavior beforehand. In most cases, they had told multiple people and made plans before the incident. Instead of banning anyone who brings weapons to school, it is better to focus on educating students to tell teachers or administrators when someone has made plans to attack. Additionally, these reports must be taken seriously and investigated appropriately.

The real effect of zero tolerance policies is shown in increasing rates of suspensions and also expulsions:

While students are reporting school crime at the same level as in the 1970s, the number of youth suspensions has nearly doubled from 3.7% of students in 1974 (1.7 million students suspended) to 6.8% of students in 1998 (3.2 million students suspended). In Michigan schools, 3,500 students were expelled during academic year 1999-2000.

All of those suspensions and expulsions are not related to zero tolerance policies, but they are certainly part of the reason behind the dramatic increase in a few decades.

The goal of school is to provide an education for our youth. Numerous studies have shown that suspensions lead to increased dropout rates.


As suspensions increase, so do dropout rates

Children who leave school early do not get an effective education and are more likely to be involved in crime. It is in the best interests of our children and the country to provide children with every opportunity to get the best education possible. The decision to suspend or expel a child from school needs to be made very carefully and ideally provide the child with a chance to correct their behavior.

It makes no sense to remove a child from school entirely simply because they made the error in judgment of bringing a butter knife, aspirin, ibuprofen, or other innocuous object to school only to discover that it is considered a "weapon." This is especially true when the federal law itself indicates that these policies should be considered on a case by case basis-indicating that common sense needs to be applied to punishing children for violations.

As the American Bar Association puts it:

Zero tolerance policies for students adopt a theory of mandatory punishment that has been rejected by the adult criminal justice system because it is too harsh! Rather than having a variety of sanctions available for a range of school-based offenses, state laws and school district policies apply the same expulsion rules to the six-year-old as to the 17-year-old; to the first time offender as to the chronic troublemaker; to the child with a gun as to the child with a Swiss Army knife.

Adults - especially those who teach children - are expected to have the skills and knowledge to teach behavior in age-appropriate ways. Unfortunately, zero tolerance as practiced today is not rooted in theories of pedagogy or child or adolescent development. It teaches children nothing about fairness, and often creates injustice.

Brief History of Artillery Development

Artillery has progressed from serving an ancillary role in siege warfare to being a major branch of every military in the world. When determining the scale of victories or defeats, the number of guns captured was factored in alongside casualty listings. But how did artillery evolve to play such a major role in the victories or defeats of nations? This article covers the early development of artillery to its use by Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, whose changes in tactics and strategy showed the true potential of artillery to every nation in the world.

Introduction

Francis Bacon, a significant English philosopher, statesmen, and author, credited the three greatest inventions of his time in his work Novum Organum in 1620. He chose the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder. Gunpowder had changed the face of modern warfare by Bacon’s time, forcing new tactics and strategies to develop on the battlefield. Additionally, industries devoted to the manufacture of firearms, artillery, and gunpowder emerged in every European country.


Austrian field piece

Route to Europe

Gunpowder, and its first military uses in rockets, cannons, and other weapons, originated in China. Through trade, firearms technology slowly diffused across Asia to Europe, disseminating to most countries by the fourteenth century. Initially, cannon were not powerful enough to knock down castle walls, but most armies saw great potential in the technology. Many nations invested in small artillery pieces, and the formula for gunpowder was experimented with to improve destructive potential.

Improvement of Gunpowder

A great advance was made when European powder-makers added liquid to gunpowder in an effort to reduce both the dust produced in manufacture and the hazard of accidental explosions. The paste produced was allowed to dry in granules, leading to the term “corned” powder. This powder turned out to be both more powerful and easier to load into cannon. The power was increased because the powder ignited simultaneously, producing a coordinated explosion. Previously, the gunpowder first ignited by the application of flame would explode independently, ejecting a good portion of unlit powder, thereby reducing overall explosive yield.


Example of Black Powder

The Hundred Years War

The Hundred Years War featured the first large scale European employment of cannon in warfare. For the most part, the cannon employed were fairly small pieces, such as the bombard cannon pictured below. Despite their small size, the improvements in gunpowder composition increased their performance tremendously, enabling them to take down castle walls. The traditional advantage that walls gave defenders was reduced greatly. A fortress considered unassailable a century before could now be seized.



A typical smaller bombard.

Cannon also proved their worth in defense on the field. In 1453 at the Battle of Castillon toward the end of the conflict, six thousand troops under Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury marched against a defending French force. The French were set up in a defensive position with over three hundred cannon arrayed against the English. As English forces charged forward, French bows, firearms, and cannon inflicted horrendous casualties. This battle foreshadowed the critical role artillery would begin to play in field combat, inflicting mass casualties to advancing troops at great distance.

The Fall of Constantinople

Also in 1453, the changes artillery would cause to the nature of fortifications were revealed through the final advance of the Ottoman Empire against the venerable Byzantine Empire’s capital of Constantinople. Constantinople was defended by tall, thick walls which had kept it safe from attack for centuries, even as the rest of Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire. The Turks deployed a gigantic great bombard artillery piece to fell the walls along with other smaller bombards. Their great cannon took 200 men and sixty oxen to emplace and could fire only seven times a day.


The Great Bombard used by the Ottomans

Some of the weaknesses of artillery of the period were revealed in this siege, as well as their strengths. The great bombard itself was rather ineffective. The cannon was inaccurate and took an extremely long time to reload. The Byzantines were actually able to repair most of the damage inflicted by the great cannon before it was readied to fire again.

However, over a period of weeks, the Ottoman’s artillery began to inflict heavy damage to the walls, aiding the final assaults that took the city. The siege showed that cannon, given enough time, could eventually bring down defenses impervious to all previous siege weapons. This would lead to a revolutionary change in fortifications as the old defensive models used throughout Europe based on Roman or Medieval styles were no longer effective.


Mehmed II advancing alongside his great bombard.

Weaknesses of Early Cannon

Early artillery was hindered by several factors. Many cannon weighed a tremendous amount, causing them to become effectively immobile once they were deployed. Precision targeting was impossible. At best, gunners could aim for a general area on the field. They were also were rather unreliable and dangerous. James II, a Scottish king, was killed in 1460 when one of his artillery pieces exploded near him. Artillery had a slow rate of fire as well, due to the nature of their construction. Breech-loading artillery was difficult to implement due to engineering limitations of the time, so most pieces were front loaded, a much lengthier process.

An additional problem that early cannon faced was caused by manufacturing limitations. Each piece was crafted and cast individually. This made it difficult to keep artillery in working order, as each piece was effectively a unique model of gun. Muskets shared a similar weakness when any of their components became damaged. A gunsmith would have to craft a new piece that fit into the body of the weapon, as standardized, replaceable parts had not been invented yet.

Improvements to Cannon

The mobility and strength of Cannon were improved throughout the 15th century. Field carriages that allowed them to be pulled into place by horses or oxen were created, allowing them to be moved intact to the field rather than in pieces. Advances in iron casting technology allowed the gun barrel’s size to be reduced. Engineers developed trunnion, which were cylindrical projections from the gun barrel into the carriage that allowed the piece to be depressed or elevated far more easily than before. This allowed gunners to change their targets on the field more rapidly.


A field piece with trunnion visible on the sides of the barrel.

In the early 17th century, several more improvements were made. The shot and powder of cannon were combined into a single cartridge in the 1620s, which made cannons far easier and safer to load. They were placed into a small fabric bag that was destroyed when the gun fired. Unfortunately, residual fragments of the bag tended to foul up the gun barrel. A new tool, called a worm, was created to clear out any remaining bag fragments to keep the gun ready to fire.


A worm used to clean out gun barrels.

Grapeshot and canister shot were also developed to enhance the effectiveness of artillery at close range. Both of these types of shot consisted of numerous small metal balls inside a metal case or fabric bag. When fired, the casing was destroyed and dozens to hundreds of lethal objects were shot forward in a wide angle, similar to a shotgun. This was absolutely devastating to infantry and cavalry at close range, and added a significant amount of versatility and power to artillery-they were able to employ solid shot for longer ranged combat and switch to canister or grapeshot as the enemy approached to inflict horrendous casualties



Diagram of a Grapeshot Canister

Advances in artillery tactics-Gustavus Adolphus

The visionary Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus brought artillery into the forefront of field combat in the early 17th century. Whereas many nations were focused on creating fielding larger cannon, Adolphus believed that mobility and training were more important for creating a potent artillery force. In that vein, he chose to employ dozens of smaller cannon that could be rapidly shifted to fire into critical areas of battle. They were deployed in flexible batteries that fired into the gaps between his musketeer and pike formations, devastating any enemy troops attempting to penetrate these seemingly open areas.

Adolphus revolutionized the training of artillerymen. His cavalry, foot, and artillery all drilled on the field together in combined arms exercises. His artillerymen were far better prepared for combat than the artillery of other nations due to this vigorous training that more accurately simulated battlefield conditions. At the Battle of Breitenfeld between Protestant and Catholic forces, the Swedish artillery fired three to five volleys for every returning volley of the Catholic artillery. When Catholic cavalry attempted to charge the Swedish positions multiple times, they were driven back by intense artillery bombardment, at a rate of fire unmatched by any other army at the time. Adolphus’s flexible formations also showed their worth when Catholic infantry moved in a flanking attack on Swedish lines. Swiftly shifting his troops, Adolphus brought his artillery and troops to bear on the flanking attack, devastating it with barrages of artillery and musket fire.


Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Breitenfeld

Adolphus’s employment of highly mobile, highly trained artillery was a groundbreaking shift in battlefield tactics. It changed the face of warfare entirely, influencing Napolean and many later generals in their own battle formations. Artillery advances focused on creating lighter, more mobile guns that were capable of shifting to new threats on the battlefield. Better training and equipment allowed the rate of fire to increase dramatically, allowing artillery crews to make major differences on the battlefield.

Cannon had evolved from serving as a limited support weapon used to level fortifications to a core component of every general’s army. No one could afford to neglect their artillery services, and the mobility and power of guns continued to increase throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, serving critical roles in all major conflicts of the time. In future articles I will show the continued progression of artillery through the major conflicts of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.