The Designer's Scroll

Going to GDC 2010!

2010-03-07T05:51:00.000-05:00

I'm really looking forward to GDC this year, my fourth. My second GDC was in some ways a little bit of a disappointment, but the more I think about last year (my third), the more I realized I had a really good time and I know I will again this year.

As Darius recently posted, we'll be kicking off the fun before we even land at SFO. We're having our first "plane jam" on the way to GDC. We'll be hacking away at a few games of ours during our plane flight with discrete (and small!) goals for what we can accomplish by the end of the flight. He lays out all the advantages in his Going to GDC Jam post. It should be really interesting to see if it turns out as well as we expect it will. We're hoping others try the same concept as well!

Darius started a Twitter hashtag, #GoingToGDC, for those going to GDC to chat about what they're up to. I made a Twitter list of my own so that we can see all of the chatter from people who've said they're going to GDC this year. Hopefully people will find this useful.

Last night, we also created http://twitter.com/GameConfTweet, a joint Twitter account that we'll use to live-Tweet from sessions and other noteworthy and stimulating conversations and goings ons at GDC this year, and at other game development conferences we go to from now on. Should be fun!

More AngelXNA (documentation) to Come

2009-09-28T20:43:00.001-04:00

There are a few reasons why my attention to AngelXNA has picked back up lately:

Jeff has been actively developing AngelXNA
The Global Game Jam is coming up in just a few months! (more on that very soon)
I was asked to give a presentation on game prototyping and AngelXNA at WPI for the Game Development Club’s New Developer Track (which I’m very happy they still put on), and… I did.

The talk itself wasn’t stellar. I made several “newbie speaker” mistakes (like not introducing myself and not explaining more of the background of AngelXNA) and I didn’t have a chance (I was asked to give the talk very last minute) to get to know my audience better, so the emphasis and aim of the talk may have been a bit off.

Regardless, it was a good experience, and it demonstrated to me that AngelXNA could really use some more love in the documentation and specifically the “getting started” departments before it’s ready for Prime Time (Global Game Jam 2010).

So I’ve decided it’s time for me to revisit the ol’ girl and see what I can do to help. Immediate tasks are:

Go through the existing documentation and clarify some of the particularly unclear parts
Write up a few significantly more detailed pages on some of AngelXNA’s key features (Actors, Messaging, and Input come to mind)
Create a few one-week games to test out just how well AngelXNA meets its goal (of making such a process easy and fun) to jog my mind through new ideas for AngelXNA and new insight into how to make it super-easy to pick up

As always, I draw inspiration from Ruby on Rails, which is the web development framework that completely reinvigorated my love for web development and made it fun again. In particular, the official community Rails Guides are, in my opinion, a Gold Standard by which to judge all other documentation. I’d love to have just a few guides to AngelXNA that approach a Rails Guides-level of quality.

If any of you have used AngelXNA, I’d love to hear your feedback on how we can make it easier to pick up or just friendlier in general.

GameLoop 2009: looping it up like it's 2009

2009-09-03T23:07:00.013-04:00

GameLoop 2009: looping it up like it's 2009

First, some thoughts and observations about GameLoop...

Traveler's guide to GameLoop. You can recognize GameLoop by its:

Game developers and similar with wide variety of interests
Highly-engaged conversations
Extreme nerdiness
Total awesomeness

Things that I say I did at GameLoop, but without pictures, I can't prove it

Attended some great talks including ones on

Player trust
Prototyping
Successful side-projects

Met some really cool people including

Shane Liesegang (the famed CynicalPanda)
Chris Canfield (Mr. "one-bad-game-a-week" himself)

Oh wait, I do have pictures:

Photos by Vincent Diamante

So now that you believe me that I was there, I'll tell you how it went: IT WAS AWESOME.

No, really. It was even better than last year, and that's saying something, as I still think about some of those conversations when I'm designing games and otherwise thinking about game design.

Of course, it helped that attendance was more roughly doubled this year from last year. Microsoft's NERD center was a great location, too. We had a good number of differently sized and designed rooms, which helped foster a nice diversity of formats for the meetings.

OBLIGATORY SESSION HIGHLIGHTS
(you know you want them)

Prototyping:

This was one of the best game talks I've ever been a part of. I think every single person there (there were about 15 of us) contributed, the conversation flowed naturally, and a lot of great ideas were shared.

Highlights from my notes:

Some companies use GameMaker to prootype a game design that is then handed off to (hardcore, C++) programmer(s) to create in full
The value of prototyping

to programmers:

Get to see the big picture
Get to explore some of the key details

to designers:

test out the little details of a design
can focus a prototype on one key, risky design idea to test whether it's feasible

Shane: look at prototypes scientifically: test one thing and treat the process as a true experiment
Sandboxing: this is apparently a technique used at Bungie where they can "sandbox" out a part of the game engine to experiment. The code is easy to hack inside the sandbox, and "hacking" is embraced as a philosophy for such a project
We talked about "what kind of questions can we answer with a prototype?"

Technical question: e.g. will free-flowing water break our physics engine?
Design question: e.g. can players fall in love with a dog that's powered by modern AI techniques?

Often a prototype is best when it's designed to focus on the intersection of key technical and design questions. This allows a team to make informed decisions about whether to keep or cut big and/or fundamental features early on in a project.
Prototypes are good for UI experimentation (Microsoft and others have practically mastered the art of measuring UI usability)
Prototypes can be a very powerful communication mechanism: it can help get everyone on the same page and tease out differences in peoples' visions of the game
Prototypes can be great for helping team members learn about each others' jobs via cross-disciplinary groups. They can also help determine what role a new hire should take within a team (and see how they work with others).

Successful side projects:

This get-together was a great example of the kind of kick-ass, super-casual exchange of ideas that can happen at an un-conference like GameLoop. We started with quick introductions on what brought us to the session. It turned out that most people choose the session for the same reason I did: we wanted to share what we've learned about how not to succeed in side-projects and possible, just maybe, pick up some good tips from those who've actually been successful with their side-projects.

It turned out that I had more successful side-projects in mind than most, though, so I ended up contributing more positive ideas than I expected I would, which was nice. I also learned a lot from what everyone said, so here are some highlights from my notes:

It helps to have someone or someones you care about who expect you to finish

Even mild, self-imposed social pressure can be very motivating!

Time-box the project so that you're encouraged to push on towards finishing before the project looses steam
Working in teams is great, but keep the team as small as possible
Also keep the project as short as possible

I need to break away from bullet format to effectively share what I felt was a critical part of the conversation.
In talking about the virtues of limiting project length and team size, I found a few ideas gelled very strongly in my mind...

The problem with a project team that's too big is that it's easy for team members to loose interest in the project. The more people in the project, the more likely it is that someone will lose interest, thus harming the project greatly. The longer the project, the more likely it is that someone will lose interest, including you! So schedule and scale your project so that it will not overstay it's welcome, so to say.

someone please let me know if this made sense...

Also:

Focus on activities that are not what you do at work!

One more session, for good luck...

Player trust:

Highlights from my notes:

The running mechanic in Mirror's Edge was all about managing players' expectations

The red-items-are-for-actions mechanic was there to offset what could have been a crushing lack of confidence in a player's mind that taking long jumps, etc. was worth the risk

Sometimes games explicitly develop the expectation that they will betray the player's trust. See: Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

(I Wanna Be the Guy is another good example of this)

Conversely, surprise is also important to a lot of good game design
Portal is a good example of balancing surprise and trust successfully

Like Mirror's Edge, it develops a strong visual language to communicate with players

Having a regular reward schedule can help a lot
Consistency is important: e.g. a random green turtle will not explode (in Super Mario Bros)
Breaking the 4th wall can also be a part of player trust

In Donkey Kong Country, the game teaches players that where there is a banana, there is something to keep you from dying while jumping or tumbling to grab it

We inherit trust from past games we've played

But as designers, it can be tricky knowing what games your players will have played and what they've learned from those games

Advanced examples:

Far Cry 2 teaching players to say "fuck it" and accept a high level of chaos is a really great triumph of player trust -- when it works (which for many, it doesn't)

It's important to let players know why they failed -- or they may stop trusting the game to be fair and understandable
It can help a lot to give players an explicit "out", for example: time-rewinding in Prince of Persia and Braid

Independent Game Conference East (IGC East) Wrap-up

2009-05-13T00:29:00.001-04:00

This was the first year the Independent Game Conference East has been held, and I think it was a great start. My hopes for IGC East were to do some good networking and see a few interesting sessions, and I feel I got even more than I bargained for. I’d like to recap a few personal notes on the experience and then share some notes and highlights from a few especially outstanding sessions.

Getting lost in Boston

I had the honor of being Scott Macmillan’s (Macguffin Games) ride to Northeastern University both days. This was an interesting experience for me not only because Scott is, well, and interesting guy, but also because I have very little driving experience in Boston. I expected it to be quite a learning experience, and it certainly was.

We got lost several times (we even asked a man for directions, at one point) but always quickly corrected ourselves and made our way to our destination eventually. Unfortunately, some last minute coding along with difficulty finding the parking garage (we drove right past it, geniuses we are) meant we missed the opening keynote by Vladimir Starzhevsky (Creat Studios), which I heard was pretty good.

In the end, I’m glad to have some more Boston driving experience under my belt (I even learned where the super-secret detour entrance to The Pike is!) and ultimately Scott was happy to have the extra computer which necessitated the use of my car to get to the event. In fact, we enjoyed the experience so much that we opted to drive there again the next day. (Nothing like an adventure!)

Demo Night, networking, tapas

One of the big highlights of IGCEast was Thursday’s Demo Night. Demo Night was a great community event. Besides the joy of getting to see so many interesting games shown off, it was nice to be able to show my support for my Boston indie friends and meet some interesting people who had come by to network and learn.

After Demo Night finally ended (for real) at 7:30, we headed over to The Savant Project tapas bar, where Mike Cavaretta of the New England Gamers SIG was hosting a nice, casual get-together. I really enjoyed the food there, and the atmosphere made for some good, casual hanging out. You can find some pictures from that event on the NE Games SIG blog here.

Sessions of note

The rest of what I have to recap from IGC East is session-specific. I will point out in particular the last session highlighted here, which was Dallas Snell’s keynote from Friday morning. Snell’s talk really inspired me and amped up the flames in the fire that’s been burning for me lately to make a true social game.

Standard disclaimer applies: these are simply my notes from the sessions, and any errors are mine and mine alone.

Rapid and iterative prototyping

Eitan Glinert and Ethan Fenn from Fire Hose Games talked about “Rapid and Iterative Prototyping”. Some pearls of wisdom they shared:

make friends, and then ask them for help and advice
deadlines are critical
take advice with a grain of salt
test all the time (they tested with “outsiders” once a week, every week)
(as a result of testing) identify and remove bad ideas
“do it now, get it right later”
don’t argue about design ideas: implement, then test
have playable builds all the time
don’t pay testers: messy business liability and food can actually work better

Eitan also recommended that you start your prototyping by working full-time, because you can get so much more done that way. That said, he admitted at the end that these days the company is making ends meet by doing contract work, so clearly there’s a careful balancing act there.

Game design panel

This was a powerhouse panel made up of five highly experienced (some even legendary) game designers. The panel was made up of:

Steve Meretzky (Playdom)
Linda Currie (Creat)
Chris Foster (Harmonix)
Christopher Zirpoli (Auto Assault)
Cardell Kerr (Turbine)

The discussion was broken down into ten “Really Important Topics” (RITs), so I’ll break my notes down by topic as well.

1.) Project Goals/Vision

Meretzky: “one person should be the “keeper” of the vision
Foster: “Harmonix has “The One Question” (ex: “Is it an authentic band experience?” for Rock Band) that helps them make design decisions
Kerr: “Your vision is the razor with which you focus your game”

2.) Balance

Meretzky:
- playtest with many different types of players
- balance frequency of rewards
- know when to balance
- Sometimes players ask for a game to be easier, but then find it’s too easy
Zirpoli: Perception is everything – the game must feel balanced to players
Kerr: if you don’t understand the game’s balance to begin with, you won’t be able to understand how players are breaking it after launch

3.) Interfacing

Zirpoli: know your platform: “How do people play games on this platform?”
Meretzky: putting even one click between the main UI and an action provides a barrier to users; try to make every interesting action one click (or one immediate action).

4.) Collaboration

Foster: “you won the design process, but you don’t own the design”
every voice on your team represents part of the game’s audience
the designer must act as a sort of arbiter [my paraphrasing]
Foster: unravel arguments to integrate the essence/hidden wisdom within every idea

5.) Meaningful Choices vs. Joy of Discovery

It was hard to take notes on this as it was a frantic, unstructured conversation, but the essences is this: it’s important to explore for your game the right balance between making it clear how your games works and allowing players to experience the joy of discovery through discovering as they go.

6.) Communication (and follow-through)

It’s way, way better to communicate 105% of the information than 95%. If you only give 95% of the information, people will stop trusting you and communication will break down.

7.) Constraints

Constraints help focus a game’s vision. Sometimes a game’s best and most unique elements are born from constraints. “don’t be afraid to follow your situation to its logical conclusion” and think creatively about how you can embrace your constraints.

8.) Don’t overdesign

Foster: No one reads design docs.

(I interpreted this part as: remember to keep the design simple and the product of the team’s communication and exploration – do not write the “Design Bible” for your game and expect everyone to live and die by it.

9.) Iteration! (You Will Guess Wrong)

Zirpoli: As game designers, we don’t build with stone, we build with clay

“Great tools enable iteration”

Foster: Iteration is about learning what you don’t know [love that one!]

10.) Research & QA

This conversation largely retreaded what was discussed in the “Don’t overdesign” part, and Damien Shubert’s GDC talk about building better design docs was highly recommended.

Foster: Remember to keep design an “active conversation”

Nothing casual about social games

This was Dallas Snell’s keynote from Friday morning. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for those who couldn’t attend it, it was the kind of presentation that loses a lot if you can’t be there to experience it as it was delivered. However, I will summarize his key points that he came to at the end.

Essentially, the point of his talk is that human beings are wired such that our social connections are primary to our well-being and sense of wellness; thus, we should be making games that help people develop social connections.

He referenced a scientist’s great work (I really need to look this up some time -- I believe it was the same work that inspired Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Blink”) about how people, when interacting, have what are called “bids”. Bids are mostly-subconscious attempts to connect with someone else. Often they’re as innocuous as some small bit of body language that must be reciprocated by the other person in order to strengthen the relationship.

Snell proposed that the popularity of Facebook and Twitter may be largely due to the fact that they facilitate bids between people. So, he suggests, we should make games that also facilitate bids. And he also recommends that we tap into player’s social graph, as it’s a powerful part of our lives. This is exactly the way I’ve been thinking about how to make a meaningful social game, so it was really great to hear.

Conclusion

IGC East was a really great experience. The best talks were edifying and inspiring, the networking was solid, and the sense of community was palpable. This event helped show that there really is a substantial Boston game development community. Between the Boston Post Mortem, GameLoop, and now IGC East, it’s clear that Boston is really maturing as a development scene, and it’s awesome to be a part of it.

BarCamp Boston 4 Wrap-up

2009-05-08T23:02:00.001-04:00

BarCamp Boston 4 was the first BarCamp I’ve attended, and it certainly did not disappoint! I’d heard great things about it, and last year’s BarCamp-inspired Boston GameLoop set my expectations even higher.

What was great was that there were people with so many different technical and personal interests there. We had lots of people with computer science backgrounds (duh), but also many with electrical engineering backgrounds, as well as backgrounds in business and design. It made for a great environment where you never knew quite what you’d get, but there was always an interesting voice to hear from.

The informal nature of sessions is great, and all the good session leaders knew this: they always encouraged us to chime in and start the “real” conversation going throughout the room.

Session highlights

Here are some notes from a couple of the many stand-out sessions I attended.

Co-working

The co-working session was run by the two main guys who run Betahouse, a co-working facility in Central Square. They intended for the session to be a group discussion, but not surprisingly we all seemed to be most interested to hear about what co-working is like, how they maintain a good culture, and what lessons they learned.

Interestingly, several attendees were planning to start or were about to start up co-working facilities of their own, so it sounds like the co-working community is growing quickly (but hopefully not too quickly!) these days. I enjoyed the talk, and I think it gave everyone a lot of interest in co-working and confidence in its future in Boston.

Rails tools

I haven’t had the chance to check most of these out yet, but here were a few tools that people mentioned several times and/or raved about at the session:

RubyMine (allegedly buggy in its pre-release state, but it’s now in 1.0, and it seems pretty neat to me, from my short use of it)
rakeweb (testing via “faking web requests”)
httparty (easy http, esp. good for consuming REST)
auth_logic (auth)
clearance (auth)
ar_mailer (oldie but goodie?)

Here are some hosts that were recommended:

heroku
linode
slicehost
I’m still pretty happy with Dreamhost, especially since they now support Passenger

Stata Center

I think the Stata Center was a great venue for the event, and I’ll be happy to do it there again next year, if the organizers are for it. Its quirky is a great match for the BarCamp atmosphere.

Conclusion

BarCamp Boston 4 ruled: can’t wait for BCB5! Also, you can read what people tweeted about the event here.

[Photo credits: Steve Pomeroy and faz the persian, respectively. Post inspired by Matt Wiseley’s great Edit Your Web blog]

AngelXNA spreads her wings!

2009-05-01T11:49:00.001-04:00

Jeff Ward and I are proud to announce today that we’re officially presenting AngelXNA 1.0 to the world.

AngelXNA is a game prototyping engine built upon Microsoft’s XNA framework. It offers all the power of XNA, plus several key features including:

In-game interactive Console (ala Quake/Half-Life)
Super-simple Logging (to system, Console, and/or files)
Basic Actor framework

Layers
Texturing with transparency
Data-driven Actor generation (Actor templates + “level” files)
Interval-based transitions, such as color, size, rotation, and positio
"Animations" (texture swapping at defined intervals)

Messaging system (global switchboard)
Config file processing
Event-driven input from a mouse, keyboard, or Xbox 360 controller

Binding inputs from a config file

What’s a prototyping engine?

The idea behind AngelXNA is to provide a game prototyping framework that will help amateur and professional game developers alike with prototyping game ideas. With AngelXNA, we’ve tried to take away a lot of the boring, unnecessary work that goes into making any game, even a small one meant merely as a proof-of-concept or prototype to explore a single or small set of game ideas.

Ready to get started?

For you brave hackers, here’s the 1.0 tag for the project. You can grab the project using Mercurial or just grab a zip/gz/bz2 file from the “get source” dropdown in the menu.

The documentation is hosted on the project’s wiki.

Version 1.0 is, of course, meant for true early-adopter types. We’ve written up high-level documentation that is commensurate with that of the original Angel engine itself.

For version 1.1, we plan (so far) to have pathfinding working (possibly in addition to some other simple AI routines), but more importantly, we’re hoping to get feedback from our early adopter users on how to improve the documentation of AngelXNA and of course the engine itself.

Have fun and please let us know what you think.

This weekend: BarCamp Boston 4!

2009-04-22T11:04:00.001-04:00

I’m really looking forward to attending BarCamp Boston this weekend. This will be my first BarCamp, but I’ve heard great things about it.

Last year’s BarCamp inspired Darius and Scott to run the very first Boston GameLoop un-conference, which really rocked. I still think about the topics discussed there and the ideas we shared about multiplayer game design, what true “viral” marketing is and isn’t, and more.

A few of my ex-coworkers and some people I’ve met during some great interviews recently will be there as well, so the crowd is already showing signs of excellence. BarCamp seems like the kind of experience that’s almost completely defined by who you interact with, so I think I’m justifiably optimistic.

I love the casual format of the BarCamp concept, it seems to practically guarantee that people will be talking about the topics that get them fired up. I’m sure there will be lots of great idea sharing and that the experience will be very inspiring.

Rockstar web-games integration with GTA: Chinatown Wars

2009-04-15T10:39:00.001-04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how games can integrate with the web and provide players with a natural connection between the main game experience and the meta-game, where progress tracking, further exploration, and competition with other players can often become enriched in significant ways. So when I noticed that Rockstar now lets owners of it’s recently-released GTA: Chinatown Wars track their rampages on their Rockstar Games Social Club website, I tried the new feature out right way.

I love the idea, and the implementation is very well-done. It has me going back to Chinatown every few days to do a few more rampages, which are one of the most fun parts of the game for me. It seemed to me that originally, the game intentionally forced you to hunt for the rampages or assumed you’d enjoy stumbling upon them randomly. But this new feature shows you pretty much exactly where each rampage is and, also significantly, shows you how well you’ve done on each one.

It also has me reflecting on how well they integrated the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support into the game. Basically, once you’ve initialized the connection between your Nintendo Wi-Fi DS account and Rockstar’s Social Club site, you just click on your computer from any safe house (which is where you go to save your game, manage your drugs, etc.) in the game and press the sync button.

It feels very natural, and in my opinion it strikes an almost perfect balance between immersion and natural meta-gaming. The laptop makes a lot of sense in Chinatown’s world, and the idea that it would track your crazy antics in the game seems very consistent with Chinatown’s old-GTA feel of zaniness and embraces the fact that it’s a game. The laptop connection asks for no more suspension of disbelief than anything else in the game, and provides a natural bridge to the meta-game.

Punishment, confidence, and improvisational play (reflecting on Clint Hocking’s GDC ‘09 talk)

2009-04-08T11:15:00.001-04:00

One of the very best talk of GDC ‘09 was Clint Hocking’s talk on improvisational play. That article does a good job of summarizing his talk. The element that I want to talk about is the part about giving players the confidence to embrace improvisational play, as opposed to simply seeking the fastest or most direct route to mastery.

Interestingly, in a prior GDC ‘09 talk at Indie Games Summit, Jason Roher suggested that single-player games (that is, single-player games with no AI-controlled simulated second player) are an evolutionary dead end because the player will always seek the “steepest descent” towards the strategy that maximizes mastery over the game. Really took these comments to heart, but I think that Clint’s concept of improvisational play may well be the answer to Roher’s concern.

Surely, Roher is right that there is a optimizing, dominating mindset that us “veteran” gamers (to use Nintendo’s recent choice of terminology) have grown accustomed to and will often default to. I think that expectation that is reinforced not only by male culture in general, but also by the way in which most games punish us harshly for failure. While we as designers expect players to fail as part of the learning process, we tend to offer harsh consequences to that failure: Start over. Try again. You fail.

We punish players by making them replay parts they don’t necessarily wish to replay. Making players replay a level made a lot of sense back in the days of Pac-Man and Galaga: it encouraged the kind of one-more-quarter repetition that lead both to more revenue for the arcades but also a high-score-driven culture of mastery. But so often what we end up doing is boring a player by forcing her to play parts of the game that are no longer challenging to her before letting her test and hone her skills on the part that is a challenge.

We punish them by mocking or insulting them. I don’t think I need to say much more about this: designers do this either simply because it matches their mindset when playing games or because they see it as a great way to give your game an edgy, competitive feel. However, I believe that at best it reduces your motivational techniques to “tough love” and at worse it reflects a puerile male-oriented attitude that dominance and humiliation are the best way to encourage a player to strive for more mastery and to risk fewer mistakes.

We also punish players for failing by making the next part of the game less fun or more tedious. This is actually a very tricky problem to get around in a game. An easy example of this is Bioshock’s Vita-chambers. The Vita-chambers are a phone booth-sized device that resuscitate the player when he dies. Many (veteran) players disliked these chambers because they violated their expectation that total mastery (no mistakes) is the only correct solution to a challenge. But some players disliked them for a significantly different reason: they offer an easy but boring solution to any problem: just keep running at your enemies, using your weakest (or most plentiful in ammunition) weapon regardless of how many times it gets you killed. It’s boring, but it’s effective. The terrible thing about it is that it has the opposite effect (on some players) to the one that Hocking praises it for: it discourages them from exploring creative solutions.

Now, I believe that for most players, the Vita-chambers have a positive impact on players, giving them a sense of confidence that the game will not punish them too harshly for trying new strategies to begin with. But the danger lies in the fact that you’re betting that the player will interpret their respawned state as an invitation to make more risks, rather than an invitation to “quit screwing around” and use a simpler, more obviously dominant route to success (such as I described above).

John Carmack talked about walking this line in a great article he recently posted where he reconsiders a few elements of Wolfenstein 3D’s design during the process of porting the game to the iPhone.

There was some debate about the right way to handle death: respawn with the level as is (good in that you can keep making progress if you just get one more shot off each time, bad in that weapon pickups are no longer available), respawn just as you entered the level (good -- keep your machinegun / chaingun, bad -- you might have 1 health), or, what I chose, restart the map with basic stats just as if you had started the map from the menu.

Carmack’s choice was to simply assure players that even if they die, they will still be perfectly able to beat the level, but only on his terms (as he is the one deciding what “basic stats” to restart you with).

This is clearly a very hard problem to solve, but I believe it lies at the heart of the challenge of giving players the confidence to encourage them to take more risks and be more expressive of their selves with the way in which they explore your game space. Without dealing with this issue, players may always adopt a purely competitive, antagonistic attitude towards the challenges they encounter in the game. If that’s the case, then their game experiences will always skew towards being limited to a mindset of mastery as opposed to improvisation.

I think the good news here is that we need only encourage players to take on this mindset to begin with; the fun of exploring the game’s possibility space will then take over. In other words, once we can help players put aside prejudices and expectations from 20+ years (or is that 4,000+ years?) of mastery-oriented game design, they will naturally embrace what mechanisms we offer to ease the unnecessary pain of failure and use them as an excuse to be more bold, more creative, and, ultimately, have more fun with our games.

Quick Highlights from GDC 2009

2009-04-01T12:30:00.001-04:00

GDC 2009 was awesome. It was an amazing week. For this post, I’ll stick to a quick recap of a few highlights, and I might even get a little sentimental towards the end. GDC, after all, is both a stimulating intellectual and unique emotional experience for many people, myself included.

First, there was the Indie Games Summit, which was awesome. In fact, I’d say that for the first time in my three years of GDC, the summits were even better than the main conference this year.

I attended mostly the IGS, hopping over to Worlds in Motion summit just once, for a great talk about Tiny Adventures, Wizards of the Coast’s Facebook D&D game. IGS was just packed full of useful, candid, fact-filled presentations from Stardock, Hothead Games, thatgamecompany, 2Dboy, and more. (links are to coverage of their talks, if you’d like to read more)

It’s really great to see indie starting to cultivate this really open community and helping each other out more and more. As Ron Carmel (2Dboy) said: “we’re your friends, not your competition!”

As Rasmus Boserup said in his GDC recap, a huge part of what makes GDC great is in the people you meet. But I’d also say that I enjoy seeing how others meet up. It’s great to see such sharp and active minds coming together to share knowledge and support each other as we explore and advance our beloved medium.

A few more highlights: I really enjoyed discussing Scott Macmillan’s game design with Scott and Corvus Elrod, and a Thursday night dinner that Corvus arranged (in addition to the one Darius posted about here) stands out as a highlight as well, even compared to the usually-supreme speaker party that follow it.

This year, I apparently even helped someone realize their own (great) role within the games industry. I made an off-hand remark (to him) about a friend of mine being a (social) “hub” in the games industry, something that I figured was obvious to everyone. Perhaps it was obvious to everyone but him up to that point, because he later told me he’d never quite realized that he’d actually become that much of a social connector.

He also told me that he realized it was always a goal of his to awesome people meet each other, and so he was happy to have become accomplished at that. This reminded me of one of Darius’ networking tips about being useful to other people first, and it really touched me.

It helped me realize just how much being a great “connector” is also a long-term goal of mine, and a skill I think I improved at this year’s GDC. Looking back, some of my best memories of this past GDC were of introducing people to each other and seeing the beginning of what will hopefully be a great friendship come from it. That’s the gift that Darius and Susan Gold gave me when they first helped me make it to GDC two years ago, and it’s a gift I love to pass on.

I’ll post more about the talks themselves next, but I wanted to be sure to start with a sentimental reflection on GDC ‘09. Thanks go to Scott’s wonderful reflection on the “post GDC buzz” on his company blog for that inspiration!

Game of Nom Post Mortems

2009-03-09T22:32:00.002-04:00

All three core developers for our Global Game Jam game, Game of Nom, have now posted post mortems of the development process.

Jeff & I wrote Game Developer Magazine-style post mortems and covered a lot of technical details of the project (among other things), while Amanda gives a nice short artist’s perspective on her experience with the project.

The only other thing I have to say is that if you’re a fan of the Global Game Jam and would like to keep up with other supporters and/or preparations for next year’s event, you can join our Facebook group.

Update: Amanda migrated her blog into her Tumblr blog, so I've changed the link accordingly.

My Games of 2008: Civilization Revolution, Braid, GTA IV

2009-03-05T08:12:00.001-05:00

This is a continuation of my series of brief write-ups for games I played in 2008.

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution

Why I played it

I was highly intrigued and inspired by the bold challenge that Firaxis took on with this game. Re-imagining one of gaming’s most beloved and deepest strategy games for consoles? It sounded more like a joke than an actual game.

As someone who plays a lot of both console and PC games, I was also curious to in particular to see if I felt CivRev would appeal to me in ways that the PC versions of the game cannot.

What I liked about it

CivRev appealed to me in several ways that differentiate it from its PC sisters. For starters, simply being playable on a console that I have in my living room was nice, as it meant the entire gaming experience wasn’t an exercise in seeing just how long I can stand to sit on the rather uncomfortable chair that sits in front of my PC.

Since the games move faster and are considerably shorter than in most modes of the PC versions, the thought of playing all the way through the game was also much more palatable. No longer did I need to chunk out 40+ hours to get my “civ fix”.

All in all, I’d say this game was a huge success, and I really hope they make more games like this one. I even hope that some of the “less is more” lessons this game demonstrates can turn into refinements of the (hopefully) inevitable Civilization 5 for PC.

Braid

Why I played it

This one’s easy: Darius and the Experimental Gameplay Sessions at GDC.

I remember seeing Braid briefly at the EGS of GDC ‘07 during what I believe was a section showcasing Crush and talking about games that let you play with time and space.

Both games intrigued me greatly, but Darius could never stop talking for almost two years about how great even his first play-through of (a very early prototype for) Braid was and how unique he believed the game would be.

What I liked about it

In some ways, for me Braid was a tough pill to swallow. I don’t often play games full of puzzles as hard as those in Braid. I knew it would be worth it to stick it out and work my way through the game, though. Blow was completely right about the elated sense of accomplishment you get when you finally solve a tough puzzle in the game.

I really loved the game’s visuals and music, and especially the way they tie in together to express the unique dynamics that make up the meat of the puzzles.

I actually enjoy obtuse/pretentious storytelling if and when it’s kept to a relative minimum, and I feel that Braid’s overt storytelling was not too much. I enjoyed having my mind stimulated on multiple levels and I definitely believe the story elements added to the game.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Why I played it

GTA 3 single-handedly made me care about the Playstation 2 and revived my faith that console games could, even in today’s market, truly create new and awesome game experiences for players.

The previews for GTA IV made it clear that it was Rockstar’s most ambitious title yet, and I liked that they’d put their focus on making a relatively smaller but more detailed city and a meaningful plot with compelling characters.

What I liked about it

I did really enjoy the story. I think the few few hours of the game, where you really start to understand who Niko and his brother are stand out as gaming memories and always will for me. The depth and multi-dimensionality of Niko actually caused me to rethink my relationship to a game avatar in the way that few games have (Shadow of the Colossus, comes to mind).

Advertising a tactics-oriented combat game

2009-02-25T16:02:00.001-05:00

I recently encountered a clever and innovative ad for the new Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo DS on a games-related website I was browsing. In it, five tactical challenges are presented, each offering three solutions for you to chose between. After you made your choice, the ad animates the units to show you the results. In each case, only one result works best, and the idea is to teach you both what the game is like and how to succeed in it.

It’s worth noting that Fire Emblem is famous for being punishingly difficult, mostly because it’s easy to lose a valuable fighter permanently (once dead, characters never come back) due to a single mistake. So this kind of ad shows that they’re aware of how daunting it is to learn the game. I also think it’s admiral that they’ve attempted to actually show you what the game is like to play, rather than talking about the story’s clichés or simply advertising how awesome it is that the game is on the DS, or something like that.

Shortly after engaging with this ad (what an odd and great thing to be able to say about an ad!), I came across Jamie Fristrom’s blog entry in which he talks about why he generally prefers more strategy-oriented games to tactics-oriented games. His main problem of “highly tactical” games is that “It's fairly easy to crunch the numbers and figure out which choice is the right one” and that this in turn essentially reduces the gameplay to puzzle-solving.

What I think he seems to be missing about these games, though, is that the decisions are never as straightforward as this ad, for example, lets on. Sure, given a such a small and tightly pre-defined mini-battlefield like that presented in the challenge, you can come up with three choices and judge only one of them as “correct"; but to do so is misleading.

It’s misleading because in reality, the scenarios in tactical games like Fire Emblem are designed such that higher-level planning is required in order to succeed. What’s more, there is never one easy way to “crunch the numbers” and figure out the “right” answer. It’s always dependent on both your choices of which fighters to bring into battle (not to mention your choices about how you developed, or chose not to develop, each character) and also, of course, on how you choose to go about maneuvering your pieces around.

For example, in the scenario from the ad I’ve presented in the image above, the actually “correct” answer is D.) Don’t leave your Cavalier unguarded, n00b. You should have thought ahead and kept one of your guards within his perimeter – and the Cavalier out of harm’s way – while the other headed southeast to single-handedly block both red axe-men. But of course, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure in the full scenario there would have been many other ways to tackle the problem.

In short, the big difference, to me, between a game like Fire Emblem and a very tightly constrained tactical game like Chess, is that in Fire Emblem there are always too many choices involved in your performance in a given scenario for the decision making to ever devolve into the kind of number-crunching that Jamie talks about.

So ultimately the question is whether this innovative web advertisement will do more harm by making the game seem too puzzle-like or more good by introducing to those who may enjoy it the microcosmic decision-making process that lies at the heart of the game. I think that both the micro-managing tactical decisions and the overarching strategy involved in the game together are what makes it great, so it’s a shame the ad can’t reasonably show both aspects. It’s a great start, though, in terms of making more informative – not to mention fun – ads for games.

You be the judge: you can play the scenarios on the game’s website.

The Game of Nom: A Global Game Jam 2009 Post Mortem

2009-02-17T01:08:00.001-05:00

Introduction

This is a brief post mortem of the Game of Nom, written in the style of those published in Game Developer magazine. Nom was made by Amanda Cosmos, Darren Torpey (from whose perspective this Post Mortem is written), and Jeff Ward (with music and sound effects by Jonathon Georgievski) at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT lab for the IGDA’s 2009 Global Game Jam.

The entire production, from concept to final executable, took place over the course of 47 hours on the weekend of January 29-February 1st. The game was developed using Microsoft’s XNA framework (version 3.0).

What went right

1.) Having a visual artist as a core team member

Having Amanda focus on our visual design was a total godsend for our project. She quickly established an appropriately (and ironically) cute aesthetic for our game which was based on a fundamentally cynical and jaded perspective on the struggles of the human condition.

This allowed our game to not only look good, but also give us an idea of how well the core concepts would present themselves to players. Amanda was also able to work with Jonathon so that we could effectively schedule in our sound asset needs. The results are obvious in the endearingly cute facade the game maintains, which seems to be one aspect of the game that players consistently enjoy.

2.) Simple, effective tools for code collaboration and asset sharing

At the very start of the project, we setup an account on GitHub.com and used Git as our (distributed) source control software to allow Jeff & I to develop and evolve the same code simultaneously without having to suffer frequent and highly disruptive merge sessions where we resolve conflicts between our changes.

For the most part, Git worked like a dream and left overt collaboration as something that needed only be done for design and tutoring reasons. As an added bonus, this lets us share our open-source code freely with everyone on the web without any further effort on our part.

We also had a simple Windows directory share set up by the wonderfully helpful GAMBIT lab techs, which made moving art assets between Amanda, Jeff, and I effortless. This allowed us to quickly iterate on the art assets and greatly improved the overall cohesiveness of the game on an aesthetic level.

3.) Having familiarity with with the XNA framework

We could not have made Nom what it is in such a small amount of time without Jeff’s knowledge of and previous experience with the XNA framework. He was able to mentor me on how to quickly get a lot of simple things like animation working in XNA.

C# is a wonderfully powerful language and also helped us quickly implement the simple data structures needed to run the game. It saved us a lot of time not having to worry too much about detailed memory management or recall especially-arcane C++ syntax to implement a Singleton pattern.

4.) Focusing on core gameplay mechanics, towards simple dynamics

Given the limited amount of time and programming resources we had, it was essential that we focus our efforts on only those gameplay-related mechanics that were strictly necessary. By focusing on just a few mechanics like dragging Noms around, forming them into groups, and managing what they’re eating, we were able to polish the controls much more than we could have otherwise.

5.) Having a strong theme and intended meaning for the game

While it is sometimes fun (and worthwhile) to endeavor to make a game by just “throwing some code together and seeing what’s fun”, with such a tight schedule and an artist whose talents we could leverage from the very beginning, it was useful to know what our game was really “about” right from the get-go. This allowed us to focus on the gameplay dynamics we were attempting to create right from the beginning (see What Went Right #4) and empowered Amanda to work towards a cohesive visual design from the very beginning (see What Went Right #1).

What went wrong

1.) No game engine on top of XNA

As much as XNA helped us get started and implement some basic features relatively quickly, we could have saved precious hours spent implementing things like sound systems and object managers if we had even a bare-bones game engine on top of which to build.

Simple state machine code (preferably with some kind of basic Strategy Pattern scaffolding), sound & music management, and menu & UI helpers alone would have saved us at least ten hours of work – a sizable chunk of the time that Jeff & I could have used to develop some better groundwork code for the project.

2.) Relative inexperience (on my part) with some basic game coding

While I have a good amount of experience with game design in general, it’s not often that I need to throw together such basic code structures as a main game logic loop, non-event-driven controls, and the main draw loop. It also took me some time to get used to the way that XNA (or our interpretation of how to use it) handles simple things like asset management.

3.) Delaying UI work until late in the project

Work on UI elements not directly related to core mechanics was left until too late in the project for comfort. Everything from the UI elements displaying how much time has passed an how many Noms have died (the key indicators of your progress and success) to the start, pause, help, and end-game screens and menus was left for the last minute.

This meant that instead of working on tweaking the core controls or balancing the game’s dynamics to convey the human dynamics of group work (as was the game’s intended theme), I was focusing my late-game efforts on simply making it playable without a manual and a tall supply of patience.

4.) Playtesting by the whole team was all but forgotten until too late

We knew that in order to make the game fun and convey the idea it was trying to explore, we’d need a considerable amount of time to balance things like how easily groups break apart and how quickly Noms starve. Unfortunately, basic last last-minute concerns (like those mentioned in What Went Wrong #3) distracted Jeff & I and we failed to give Amanda a playable version of the game until very, very late in the project.

This is probably my single greatest regret from the whole experience. The game was playable, as a game, for at least eight-twelve hours before our deadline, and yet she never really had a chance to play it and offer feedback during that time. Even the most basic kind of feedback, like whether it was too hard or easy to win would have helped the final product immensely. Given that Amanda works as a playtester professionally, this oversight seems particularly regrettable and silly.

5.) We were too hands-off with sound and music

We started the project with a strong concept of how music would integrate with our game. The idea was that early on, when your Noms were working together in small, frenetic groups (or even alone in a few cases), the music would play at a fast, 120 beats per second (as given in the form of a “constraint” for all of the games made at MIT for the Jam). Then, as your groups got bigger, slower, and more lethargic, the music would fade into a slower, 60 bps version of the song to represent the massive, inertial weight of the large groups. Then, as the groups broke up the music would go back to the fast version and so on and so forth as the game progressed.

I still believe that if we’d taken the time to work with Jon more closely and consistently throughout the project, and if we’d taken the time to polish the way we used the music he made for us, it could have served as a very compelling part of the game experience.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we feel that the Game of Nom was a pretty decent success and something we can be proud of, especially given the circumstances of the event. The game was almost fun by the end of the weekend, and if you can get past how hard it was, the dynamic of balancing how large to make your groups and how fast you can move them around and manage what they’re eating can be compelling.

From start to finish, it actually acts like a game, even if the goals and mechanics are not as obvious to players as we’d wanted them to be. The game’s theme, about the difficulties of working together sustainably and effectively in groups, may not come across strongly, but the core ideas are there.

I know we all learned a lot about birthing a game from concept to completion during these brief two days of work, and we hope that eventually people will find the game fun to play and that our future projects will benefit greatly from what we’ve learned.

Global Game Jam 2009

2009-02-14T00:35:00.001-05:00

Our very first Global Game Jam was a huge success! So much can be said about such a great event, but I’ll stick to some personal accounts and reflections for now.

First, on the topic of the webcasts: despite how inherently boring it may be to watch a bunch of people sitting at computers typing, I actually really enjoyed watching my fellow jammers around the world develop games at their sites via the Ustream-powered webcasts that were featured on the Global Game Jam website during the event.

The website

Designing, building and administering our website turned out to be a very challenging and rewarding experience. Thankfully, I was working with two great teammates, Susan Gold, an amazing woman who of course was the main organizer of the whole Jam, website included, and Foaad Khosmood -- GGJ Organizer from UC Santa Cruz -- who pretty much single-handedly built the site based on our design discussions.

We had roughly a mere three weeks to build the whole thing from scratch. Thankfully, we quickly found Foaad, who is an expert with the Drupal content management system (CMS), and determined that a Drupal-based site would meet our needs and could be built in about two weeks and change (because of Foaad’s expertise, mind you).

The event

I participated in the event as a programmer at the MIT location, graciously hosted by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT lab. It was an awesome weekend. We all gathered together (about 20-30 of us) in the lounge at 5pm to watch Kyle Gambler’s humorous and wise keynote advice, hear the “constraints” (read: inspirations) put upon our games, and form groups.

Phil Tan, who ran the MIT site’s jam, had us brainstorm game ideas based upon the constraints/inspirations given to us, and then we presented our ideas to everyone else. After that, we wrote our ideas down in short form on index cards and pinned them to the a giant board, where we then put index cards with our name and primary role (programmer, visual artists, sound engineer, etc.) on the concept we were most interested in pursuing.

That system seemed to work out very well. Jeff Ward & I, who had already decided to work together and (thankfully) were both inspired by a similar concept, found our primary art-help in a friend of ours, Amanda Cosmos, because… um… I guess she liked our idea the best (or maybe just because most other people were still waffling over what concept to go with and she was eager to get started).

The games!

I’ve only had a chance to play a small handful of games created during the jam, but I’m vowing to play at least 20 or 30 of them (they’re all short – it was a requirement put upon them by the jam) in the coming months, and I’ll be sure to post about a few notable ones up here.

(Okay, just a few quick hits: check out The Beat and Move Mouse to Fulfill Destiny)

The games can all be downloaded directly from the GGJ website via the game browser. You can search by location, platform, and/or genre. There’s also a voting system to help you find the most-loved games.

If you have any comments on how we can make the website better for playing this year’s games or better for next year’s event (or if you just need help with it for any reason), send me an email (web@globalgamejam.org) or check out our Facebook group that we created for discussing the GGJ and everything related.

IGDA Leadership Forum 2008

2009-02-13T22:22:00.002-05:00

This week I finally got around to viewing some of the talks from last November’s IGDA Leadership Forum. Videos, slides, and even very well-written summaries of each talk are available on the site, and I highly recommend giving them a look. I had heard that the IGDA’s Leadership Forum is a great event, but even still I’ve been impressed by the quality of the talks.

My favorite talk I’ve seen so far is the one given by Don Daglow (Stormfront Studios). He talked about how he’s spent 30 years in the industry and survived amazing amounts of adversity while maintaining his passion for his work.

His main message is that the rhetoric of career success as a meteoric, unchallenged rise to your ultimate, world-shaking destiny is total BS, and that we have to expect that there will be “fumbles, strike-outs, and own-goals” along the road and not beat ourselves up for it or begin to doubt ourselves because of it.

Yeah, yeah -- you’ve heard it all before, right? I’m sure you have, and so have I. But Daglow has a very genuine presentation style that makes you feel like you’re in the room with him and that he is truly, as he says, just sharing what he’s learned from a lot of reflection and begging us to dare be even bolder and stronger than he has been during his long time in the industry.

I’ll run through some highlights of his talk now, embellishing it a bit with some thoughts of my own. To hear it the way he said it, check out his talk on the site.

During his talk, he suggested you have a conversation with yourself. Simply write down the answer to the following question. (He recommends really writing it with pen and paper, since it means more to us when we do it that way. I’ll recommend you write the answer in full-form, meaning you essentially repeat the question as you answer it)

Here are his three questions that he gives to answer:

My proudest moment working in the games business is when:
I knew that games were what I wanted to do ever since I:
Of all the kinds of work I do or have done, I’m happiest when I’m:

What are these questions about? The first is about pride in what you’ve done. It shows you what you’ve really valued about what you’ve done in the past. It also helps you get in touch with

The second is a deep, “primordial” connection with that first time you connected with your dreams. It’s about knowing what’s fundamentally driven your passion to work with games.

And the third is about finding joy in every day… because, ya know, that’s a big part of what makes it something worthwhile to spend your life on.

Honestly, I’d love to just re-type his entire talk. Please, just go watch it. Unless you’re 100% sure of yourself, where you are in your career, and that you’ll never face the kind of adversity that makes it hard to keep your focus and joy in life, I believe you’ll take something valuable away from his talk. At the very least, it’s a good story, and well worth hearing.

Daglow also maintains a blog, which seems to cover many issues similar to those he focused on in his Leadership Forum talk.

Global Game Jam 2009 is commencing!

2009-01-30T06:54:00.014-05:00

It's happening now! Check out the first annual Global Game Jam website to learn more and watch the action (see below).

Wanna get psyched about the event and/or the games that will come from it? Feel like a laugh? Check out the keynote video on YouTube, featuring the wisdom and wit of Kyle Gabler. It's funny. Nay, I'd go so far as to say it's 2D Boy funny. So check it out.

During the event, which has started in three locations (for example, New Zealand, which I believe has two locations, has started) you can watch the action via Ustream-powered webcasts on the front page of the site.

After the event, all the games will be uploaded and available on the site, with user-rating and commenting features enabled as well. (and of course I will write up some highlights on this here blog)

I'll be participating in the event from the MIT location, which is being hosted graciously by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

Personally, I'm fighting off a few nerves this morning, since I haven't sat down to make a game in 48 hours since the Boston Game Jam in 2007, almost exactly two years ago.

However, I am taking Kyle's advice to heart and bearing in mind that the worst thing I can do is show up caring way too much the game I help make comes out. Besides, it really couldn't be any... ~~worse~~, err... nice-first-try-but-probably-not-worth-playing than Buddha Quest, especially as compared to Max McGuire's Shift, which continues to amaze and inspire me in regards to what can be made a game jam.

Let the games be made!

My Games of 2008: Dragon Quest VIII, Sonic Spinball, and SimCity

2009-01-23T01:00:00.012-05:00

This is a continuation of my series of brief write-ups for games I played in 2008.

Dragon Quest VIII

Why I played it
I remember really enjoying the utter simplicity of the old Dragon Quest/Warrior games, and this new one boasted a great visual style. I'd also heard that the world "map" is rendered wonderfully far out into the distance and makes traveling fun. I guess that tickled the explorer-gamer in me and made for an appealing combo.

I also hadn't bought a traditional JRPG in a long time.

What I liked about it

[Visuals and Gameplay] As I expected, I really enjoyed the game's visuals and simple gameplay. Easy, almost relaxing gaming. (except that the beginning of the game, before you're allowed to explore outside the starting city, is way too long)

Sonic Spinball

Why I played it

This was one of my favorite Genesis games back in the day, and I wanted to see if it maintained its fun after all these years. Also, we were doing one of our weekly "classic games" night at my friend's place, and I wanted to bring in some more 16-bit console action.

What I liked about it

[Gameplay] This game has definitely maintained its charm and fun-factor. It was a blast to play. I feel this game created a great mix of classic pinball gameplay with small goals like "emptying the vat of ooze so that you can go and collect the emerald". It's wonderfully reminiscent of old Sonic games and fun in its own right.

[Graphics/Art] The game's graphics, animations in particular, are quite charming and help make the board feel much more alive than what you find on a simple pinball machine. The art work also helps a lot with the old-school Sonic nostalgia.

SimCity (SNES)

Why I played it

I've always loved the simple, tight design of the original Sim City. Especially as compared to its sequels, the original SimCity makes me happy as a gamer because I can much more easily understand what's going on in my city and why, which is a critical failing of later installments.

Also, we were doing one of our weekly "classic games" night at my friend's place, and I wanted to bring in some more 16-bit console action.

What I liked about it

[Gameplay] It's still maintains that solid, core SimCity appeal. It ended up being too slow paced for the short event at which we played it, so we tried getting the old (SNES) cheat code to work. Unfortunately, it's much more complicated than the PC's famously simple "MONEY" cheat, so we failed to get this working.

It's too bad, too, because we might have had fun playing around with different scenarios, such as seeing what happens when you build an airport in the middle of a residential zone.

My Games of 2008: Ace Combat 4, 5, and 6

2009-01-04T23:44:00.006-05:00

This is the first installment of a series I hope to continue throughout the year where I intend to go through most (if not all) of the games I played last year and give them a quick write-up.

I'm doing this largely because I want to reflect on what motivates me to play the games I choose to play, why I choose to play so many different and different types of games, and what I truly enjoy about them.

At MIGS '07, Jon Blow and Kellee Santiago talked about making games that truly enrich us. This year, I want to come to a better understanding of what truly enriches me about games. Ultimately, I hope to learn enough to better inform my choices this year of what I play.

It'll be a lot of work, but I think it will be well worth it. I figure that if I share this on the web, then perhaps a few readers might learn something about what they like -- or might like -- to play, too.

[Note: the format will undoubtedly evolve over time, but I hope to at least talk about why I played each game and what I enjoyed most about them. Other topics will probably be option on a per-game basis.]

Ace Combat 4

Why I played it
I actually wrote about this on this blog a while back . I really enjoyed the original Air Combat for the PlayStation, and I'd always wanted to try one of the newer games. Then I saw it on sale for cheap from GameStop.

What I liked about it

[Story] I really enjoyed this game's story. I had no idea that they even tried to give these games compelling stories. But the storytelling in this game was great. The story is told through the eyes of a young man orphaned by war. His town is occupied by what turns out (unsurprisingly) to be enemy force that you fight against throughout the game.

Towards the end of the game, your actions and presence in the game's world gets closer and closer to the town until it's so close it feels like it hits home.

[Gameplay] It's a wonderful mix of easy-to-manage arcade-style controls and challenging missions with enough targets to make you feel like you're really making interesting choices about how to approach each mission and enough challenge to make you think about how you could perform better.

Ace Combat 5

Why I played it

I really enjoyed playing through Ace Combat 4, and AC5 was available on GameFly.

What I liked about it

[Story] This one also had a compelling story. The storytelling was somewhat more straightforward than that of AC4. You play the leader of a squadron who's leader disappears in the beginning of the game. The plot that unfolds is rather epic and even involves a few memorable characters.

Ace Combat 6

Why I played it

I enjoyed playing through Ace Combat 4 and 5, AC6 was available on GameFly, and I wanted to experience the enhanced visuals the Xbox 360 allowed. I also heard the story, while being very Japanese (not a bad thing, as I like a lot of anime, for example), was actually quite good.

What I liked about it

[Story] I did enjoy the story. Again, it was a rather different kind of story than that of AC4 and AC5. This time the story follows the footsteps of a mother whose family is torn apart by the war. The story has a few plot twists, dramatic events, and a nice finale.

You also occasionally hear the story of a man on the other side of the war, which adds to the intrigue.

[Gameplay] The major difference between AC6 and AC4 and 5 is that in AC6 each mission offers more targets than you can possibly engage in one go. That means that you have to choose which part of the mission you want to tackle. This adds to the significance of your choices and of course helps with replayability. I consider it a very nice, subtle innovation and refinement of what makes Ace Combat fun.

The addition of super-weapon like abilities that you are occasionally granted as a reward for your progress was a nice addition as well. It lets you further strategize about which targets to take out manually yourself and which to save for the "nuking" that you can deliver once the extremely powerful air-strike is given to you.

All My Games of 2008

2008-12-31T18:21:00.003-05:00

For unknown reasons, I was inspired to write up a list of every game I've played this year. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe I've just been listening to the Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I too much. Maybe I plan to do something ambitious like write up a (very) short-form recap of each game and what I liked best about it. Maybe I'm just insane.

Regardless... since it was requested, I've decided to post the list up here. I marked the platform next to each one, but then decided to separate them into separate lists by platform, anyway.

These are all in no particular order:

Xbox 360

Ace Combat 6 (X360)
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (X360)
Assassin's Creed (X360)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (X360)
Gears of War (X360)
Mass Effect (X360)
Rock Band (X360)
Rock Band 2 (X360)
SoulCalibur IV (X360)
Mirror's Edge (X360)
Battlefield: Bad Company (X360)
Hunter: The Reckoning (X360)
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (X360)
The Darkness (X360)
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (X360)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (X360)
Castle Crashers (X360)
Rez HD (X360)
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (X360)
The Darkness (X360)
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (X360)
Braid (X360)
Grand Theft Auto IV (X360)
Halo 3 (X360)
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (X360)
Fable II (X360)
Virtua Fighter 5 (X360)
Beautiful Katamari (X360)
Fable II Pub Games (X360 Arcade)
Duke Nukem 3D (X360 Arcade)
Catan (X360 Arcade)
Bomberman Live (X360 Arcade)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (X360 Arcade)
Castle Crashers (X360 Arcade)
Puzzle Fighter HD (X360 Arcade)
PacMan: Championship Edition (X360 Arcade)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Xbox)

PS2

Disgaea (PS2)
Shining Force EXA (PS2)
Ace Combat 4 (PS2)
Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Far Cry 2 (PC)
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)
Mass Effect (PC)
Peggle (PC)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC)
World of Goo (PC)
Left 4 Dead (PC)
World of Goo (PC)
Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (PC)
StarCraft (PC)
Team Fortress 2 (PC)
WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos (PC-MAC)
WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne (PC-MAC)
World of Warcraft (PC-MAC)
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC-MAC)
Spore (PC-MAC)
Aquaria (PC)
Bookworm Adventures Deluxe (PC)
Everyday Shooter (PC)
Heroes of Might and Magic 5
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization (PC)
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (PC)
Virtual Villagers 2 (PC)
Virtual Villagers 3 (PC)
Zen of Sudoku (PC)
Harvest - Massive Encounter (PC)
Max Payne 2 (PC)
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rails Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One (PC)
Prey (PC)
FEAR (PC)
Ultimate Doom (PC)
Magic Farm (PC)
Chocolatier (PC)
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)
Puzzle Quest (PC)
Evil Genius (PC)
Westward (PC)
Castles 2 (PC)
The Typing of the Dead (PC)
MINERVA: Metastasis (PC)
Company of Heroes (PC)
Gunrox (PC)
Build-a-lot 2 (PC)
American McGee's Grimm (PC)
Aveyond (PC)
Tomb Raider: Legend (PC)
Death Worm (PC)
Crayon Physics Deluxe (PC)
Azada (PC)
Verge (PC)
I Wanna Be the Guy (PC)
Shift (PC)
Shift 2 (PC)
The Wonderful End of the World (PC)

Genesis

Sonic Spinball (GEN)

SNES

SimCity (SNES)

Web

You Have to Burn the Rope (WEB)
Cursor x 10 (WEB)
Off-Road Velociraptor Safari (WEB)
Minotaur China Shop (WEB)
Duels Warstorm (WEB)
Nile Online (WEB)
Sonny (WEB)
GemCraft (WEB)
The Last Stand 2 (WEB)
Duels Warstorm (WEB)
Gladiatus (WEB)
Travian (WEB)

Wii

Wii Sports (WII)
Boom Blox (WII)
Wii Music (WII)
De Blob (WII)
LostWinds (Wiiware)
My Life As the King (Wiiware)
Dr. Mario (Wiiware)
No More Heroes (WII)
Metroid Prime 3 (WII)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (WII)
Wii Fit (WII)
Rayman Raving Rabbids (WII)
Samba de Amigo (WII)
WarioWare: Smooth Moves (WII)
Super Mario Galaxy (WII)
MySims (WII)
StarFox 64 (Wii Virtual Console)
Harvest Moon (Wii Virtual Console)

Gamecube

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (NDS)
Kirby: Canvas Curse (NDS)
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (NDS)
Cooking Mama (NDS)
CrossworDS (NDS)
Prism: Light the Way (NDS)
Pogo Island (NDS)
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day (NDS)

Hmm... only 138 games this year. (though I'm sure I forgot a bunch) I'll shoot for 150 next year. Playing more indie games will help with that, I'm sure.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Amazing Zelda music recreation, "Wind Waker Unplugged"

2008-12-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

This recreation of Zelda music (mostly from The Wind Waker) blows me away. I've been listening to it over and over again for a few days now:

I really hope the creators of The Wind Waker get to see this someday. What a treat.

Wind Waker is my second favorite Zelda game (just barely falling behind A Link to the Past)... this is really making me want to play through it again.

User-made Boom Blox levels pay homage to classic games

2008-12-30T14:53:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Kotaku (and, more directly, the lovely Robin Hunicke) for bringing my attention to this:

Boom Blox (and a few others, like deBlob ) made me particularly happy to play my Wii and bring it around for sharing with others in 2008. If you have a Wii (or are asked to recommend a few games to someone else with a Wii) you should try these games.

Just in case you DON'T already have a 30-title-long play list for this season

2008-12-26T19:40:00.002-05:00

Darn you, internet. Every time I look away for a while (guilt steadily building over the neglect) and come back I find you're even better than you were before. But your gifts are not without their drawbacks, and in particular, you have made my backlog of games to play -- in the next three months -- even more formidable.

So where do I start?

Well, there's Rock Paper Shotgun's 12 games of Christmas:

At least for my part, I've played Audiosurf, Spore, and You Have to Burn the Rope to my satisfaction. Also, Left4Dead continues to rock my world, but it tends to fall heavily under the "socialize with friends" category, and as such doesn't directly compete with the other games.

World of Goo I just need to put more hours into, period. I've loved what I've seen so far and simply need to commit. Why is it so hard to commit to just sitting down and having a great time with a game as purely fun as World of Goo, anyway? Vaction will fix that, I swear it.

And then there's my Steam "Favorites" list, in which I put games I'm "currently playing" or fooling myself into thinking I'm still intending to finish. Like Bioshock... I wish I could (un-) quit you!

Highlights (I have 25 games in the list in total... yeah, I have a problem) include:

Aquaria
Bioshock
Bookworm Adventures Deluxe (if only I was better at word games!)
Everyday Shooter
Eets
Fallout 3
Peggle Deluxe
FarCry 2 (that one's in both lists... hmm...)
Left4Dead (ditto)
World in Conflict

And that's not to mention the list of (other) indie games I need to check out in the next week or so while I'm on vacation. Thanks for the recommendations, Petri, TIGSource, and others (indirectly, via Twitter and blogs).

Update: Just noticed Steam's holiday sale. Trials 2 is $2.50... so I'm buying it. =P

Oh, and Aquaria is $16 and World of Goo $15 right now -- so buy them if you haven't already... or gift them to a friend who you really like. (Also: 10-75% off everything on Steam ending January 2nd)

A decade of madness: Edmund McMillan's crazy compilation CD

2008-12-23T00:40:00.001-05:00

I've decided to order Edmund McMillan's 10-year celebration CD. It's a mere $10 and contains a whole heck of a lot of animations, movies, sketchbooks, and distinctive games from McMillan's first decade of his creative expression as an artist. Each game, from what little I've seen, seems both visually unique and intriguing in at least one of its gameplay concepts.

I actually bought Gish back in July '07 when it was first released on Steam. I'd heard good things about it and back then it seemed to shine as an especially bring star in the indie game scene sky. (plus, I just loved the fact that such a unique game was on Steam)

I'm not really sure what to say about McMillan's work in general, largely because I haven't put in enough time actually playing his games. His aesthetic values seem to have quite a broad range. He seems quite inspired and also quite often disturbed, perhaps in equal parts. The title of the CD, "This is a Cry for Help" sounds like tounge-in-cheek recognition of his odd style, and I really like artists who know and readily admit who they are, quirks and all.

If you're curious -- censored and uncensored (NSFW!) trailer videos for the collection are available back-to-back over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun (courtesy of GameTrailers and YouTube, respectively). If anything else on the CD inspires me in particular (in a way I can put to words), I'll be sure to post more about it on here.

Good Old Games

2008-12-11T22:35:00.002-05:00

If you follow PC gaming at all, you've probably heard about GoG.com (a.k.a. Good Old Games).

I think it just about goes without saying that GoG.com is the best thing to happen to classic PC gaming since GameTap, and I'm glad to say they're off to an even better start, in my opinion (and I've always been a big GameTap fan).

GoG.com is a very well-designed website. The visual design and navigation is simple; it's core colors are shades of gray, but each page is designed to use images well to make the content "pop" and help guide your eyes around the page. Key information is well-chosen and displayed front-and-center. In a stroke of brilliance, they have a nice-looking, easy-to-understand guide to every resource, like the original game's manual, that you will be able to download if you buy the game.

I also love their business model and professionalism. They respect their relationship to their buyers in a way that I feel is so commonly missing in today's industry. Their key value proposition is that they pick great classics, make them work reliably on Windows XP and Vista, and then offer you an easy download-and-install system that basically guarantees the game will work -- and all for dirt-cheap prices (usually $6 or $10 for a title or title pack). And did I mention they're also 100% DRM-free? When you buy a game from them, you own the right to download and install it whenever and wherever you like, as many times as you want.

Their community section is forum-like in structure, and is broken out nicely by game. They highlight games you've bought in a side-box which links you to those game's sections in the community, where you can easily ask questions of other players or ask support questions. I've yet to use it much, but it seems quite active, and they a big deal out of tracking which issues have been solved. It's yet another thing that gives me confidence in how serious they are about supporting their buyers.

As someone who solicits a fair amount of email from companies whose products and services I enjoy, I must say their emails and promotions are particularly well put together. For example, just today they emailed me about their new feature: gift certificates -- just in time for the holidays! What I liked about the email, besides its great visual design and tasteful use of text and highlighted games (box art), was that it explained that the gift option would be available on every game page in their catalog. As in: "Here's a new feature and oh, by the way, it's so well integrated with the product that we don't even need to give you a link that you need to open."

Ironically, it was the clear, non-pushy manner in which they informed me of a great new feature that prompted me to immediately visit their site and finally make the purchase I'd been planning on for a while, the original Jagged Alliance. I then learned that you can download your game directly or use a nice, simple Adobe AIR-based download manager app they've set up (to help with those LARGE game downloads). I found their checkout and confirmation system, from web forms through confirmation emails, to be very well designed. The overall experience was just great.

If you're interesting in checking out some good old games, I highly recommend giving their site a browse. Here are a few gems I've picked out to highlight the breadth and quality of their current offering : Decent 1 & 2, Ghost Master, Unreal Tournament 2004, Jagged Alliance 2, Castles 1 & 2, and Freespace 2.

You can also vote for which games should be added to their catalog. In fact, Castles 2 was one that I voted for on that wishlist a month or so ago -- and now it's in the catalog. =)

The Wonderful End of the World

2008-08-02T00:44:00.009-04:00

The Wonderful End of the World was recently released on Steam. I've played it for a while now, and I'm quite happy with my purchase. It's a very competent Katamari Damacy clone, full of charm, creativity, and genuine delight.

The world map lays out all the levels you can play, and the ease and freedom to move between the levels, and try the timed, timeless, and free-play modes on each as you see fit is nice. The world map provides a simple unlocking mechanism that helps guide you through your first visits, and the last level is only unlocked when you get an A or better (no A-'s!) on every other level.

One of Wonderful's best achievements is in the delightful creativity that many of the levels show. One level, for example, has you picking up 3D magnet poetry-type blocks. Another level has you collecting 2.5D sprites (ala Doom or Duke Nukem 3D). It's an odd twist, but a fun one. The final level has you collecting an entire city while a deliciously menacing heavy metal and piano medley plays in the background.

The music is unquestionably one of Wonderful's strongest features. I've found myself thinking of its main theme song a number of times since I started playing it, and there's a fairly good variety of different songs, too. It definitely fits the odd flavor the game borrows heavily (and successfully) from KD.

My only real regret with this game is that there isn't more content. Much like Katamari Damacy before it, it seems to run out of goodies right when you're most enraptured by its magic. However, it's priced very cheaply as well, so I can hardly complain (especially since I actually bought it for $9 on Steam when it was first released).

I think that anyone who enjoyed Katamari Damacy's silly but oddly compelling sense of fun and frivolity anywhere near as much as I did would also enjoy experiencing The Wonderful End of the World.

GameFly and Ace Combat

2008-07-31T17:27:00.006-04:00

I signed up for GameFly a week or so ago, after having it recommended to me in general by Trapper and Steve. I signed up specifically for the purpose of catching up on the Ace Combat series, because in a way I've always reserved a special place in my heart for it.

You see, when the original PlayStation launched at the end of '94, I had no means to buy one and wasn't completely sold on the idea of the so-called "next-gen" (synonymous with "3D", in those days) game movement. It was already clear, from my perspective, that console games were losing their innocence as Sony pioneered ground-breaking "look, games are actually cool [for boys in college]" marketing and helped transform the industry.

I did, however, have a number of chances to play the early Playstation games, as I'd befriended a rather odd but kind (and young-at-heart) man who ran a local video rental store. Phil would let me play games on the system in the store from time to time, and this let me discover a few gems and get a first-hand experience of what these newfangled 3D games were all about.

One of the games I loved most of all of them was Air Combat (Ace Combat in Japan). Simple and arcade-y as it was, it delivered a real sense of exhilaration and a huge doze of "cool".

After that, though, the sequels were as lost to me as most games in the sea of garbage that seemed to characterize the "32-bit" generation and over time I felt like I'd lost my connection to the series. Since then, I've occasionally considered buying one of the PS2 releases, but it has always seemed like too big a risk to justify. After all, maybe Air Combat was only cool because it was of my first experiences in a 3D game world.

Then the other day I noticed Ace Combat 4 in the store for less than $20 and decided the time and price was right. I ended up really enjoying it -- so much so that I was sure I wanted to play through the rest of the series from that point on, namely AC5, AC Zero, and AC 6, the new one recently released for the Xbox 360 (one of which I now own).

But I wasn't sure just how much I'd love each of them, and I wasn't about to throw down $100 to own the majority of the series. I mentioned this at work and Steve made the obvious suggestion: rent them from GameFly. (Actually, he said rent AC6, because we tend to focus on the 360 rather than the PS2 in general during our discussions, but I knew I'd want to play the titles in between 4 and 6)

So I signed up, and so far my experience has been great. Their website is rather clean and easy to use, they send the next game out the same day they receive the one I just sent back, and I'm loving the freedom that getting to experience practically any modern console game for no additional cost affords me.

I signed up for the two-game plan, so I can always split my interests up nicely. For example, I can tear through the Ace Combat series while still trying out new games, ones recommended to me by a friend, or just quirky games I find that might just be up my alley.

So far, I've played Battlefield: Bad Company (simple fun -- good for a rent), Ace Combat 5 (quite good and much better than I expected), and Assassin's Creed (pretty poor start, but I'll give it some time to warm up).

Console and handheld gaming just became much more appealing to me now that I can try out games for just the right amount of time, practically free of financial consideration.

I've also been enjoying GameFly's (loosely-affiliated) GamePie application on Facebook. It's a pretty simple app that makes it easy to note games you've played/own, rate them, and comment on or review them for others. If you use Facebook and like giving your two cents or simply reminiscing about games, I recommend giving it a try. They have something in the range of 40,000 games in the database it draws from and plan to expand that. It's one of the easiest web interfaces I've used for looking up games.

StarCraft Turns Ten

2008-04-01T07:36:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe it's been 10 years since I walked into the games store in the Mall of New Hampshire (I believe it was called "Software, Etc." back then) and chose the Protoss-cover StarCraft SKU.

I believe I can even remember my very first play through the game. In particular, I remember my first time through one of the inside-a-giant-building missions.

It's a great testament to the quality of Blizzard's production that the game still feels and plays quite well. Of course it seems dated, especially in terms of interface. Still, though... 10 years. Maybe it's more of a comment on how little RTS games have changed/improved in the last five or six years, but StarCraft still feels like it's only 4 or 5 years old to me.

TF2 Fan Love

2008-02-16T16:32:00.003-05:00

Group Shot, originally uploaded by bread_man_017.

I've really enjoyed the fan tributes to Team Fortress 2 that have been appearing on the web lately. These creative re-creations, like my favorite, the LEGO one above, are fitting tributes such a lovably character-filled game.

Here are some other highlights:

KirbFortress... cheasy, but cool. It's actually a large wallpaper. Check it out here.
(I wonder which character this person plays in Super Smash Bros...)

This one speaks for itself -- this person created a custom PC that looks like an engineer's sentry gun and is actually quite a beefy gaming machine at the same time. Kudos.

MIGS 2007: A Challenge to Expand Our Perspective

2008-02-02T00:30:00.000-05:00

Last November I had the joy of attended the Montreal International Game Summit for the first time. Jason's been hyping it up on his blog and in person for so long now, I figured I'd try my luck and enter the GDC '07 giveaway for a free ticket to (and travel funds for) MIGS '07. Turns out I was the lucky winner, so Darius and I headed up to Montreal in November for the summit.

During the two days of the conference, I attended the design track almost exclusively. Overall, there was a good variety of specific topics, yet above all I felt that a strong theme arose: that of our need to challenge our complacency and our traditional perspectives on what games are and what games can be... and what kind of games we should strive to create.

The challenge

Jonathan Blow's keynote speech made it easy to pick a clear center-point on these discussions. Though of course the other speakers I'll mention here did not specifically intend to build off of or even up to Jon's talk, it was nonetheless uncanny how close in theme these talks all seemed to me and many other conference attendees with whom I talked.

Thankfully, Gamasutra has posted a great recap of Jon's talk. In essence, Jon asked us to imagine games where the value of play goes beyond simple quick-fix style entertainment rewards. Like those few TV shows that have endeavored to actually improve the lives of its viewers, we can create games that people are motivated to play because it generally enriches their lives.

In particular, I appreciated Jon's metaphor of producing food versus drugs. Most games, he argues (and I agree) are the interactive media equivalent of drugs -- they provide us with quick, cheap thrills, and the games are architected to addict us to the consumption of these small rewards in (nearly endless) serial. Jon's challenge is that we can also focus on making games more like food: games that are inherently valuable to play and are ultimately enriching.

Kellee Santiago, speaking of thatgamecompany's newest project, Flower, offered a fittingly similar metaphor. She said that TGC's goal is to make games that help meet a broader variety of the various emotional needs that people have than most games have in the past. Likening these emotional needs to the various vitamins that our bodies need to survive, she demonstrated some prototypes TGC has created for Flower, which is currently focused on the "vitamin" of serenity.

It's truly radical stuff. Kellee gave several demos of prototypes that explored gameplay possibilities for Flower by approaching the problem from notably distinct perspectives. I particularly enjoyed the audio track samples she played (and at generous length).

The music alone could easily make a compelling experience of serenity; I can only hope their experiments with gameplay will find a suitable synergy between the aural and interactive elements. I almost dare not dream of synesthesia as supreme as that in Everyday Shooter, but I wouldn't be surprised if Kellee and Jenova (Chen, one-time fellow USC Interactive Media MFA classmate and co-founder of TGC) are hoping for just that.

Other themes and highlights

Nintendo's Koizumi Yoshiaki talked about his experience designing Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Sunshine, and (the excellent) Super Mario Galaxy. His talk focused primarily on lessons learned in camera design for 3D games and how Nintendo's teams focus on "easy play". His general concern for brining 3D games back to a place of accessibility for more people (and in particular, for those who stopped playing games when they went 3D) was inspiring. (and I must say I think they did very well with SMG)

Perhaps even more noteworthy than the content of his presentation itself was the demonstration of Super Mario Galaxy's two-player mode, wherein the second playing controls an on-screen pointer that can collect the game's numerous, ubiquitous star pieces and also stun enemies to help the player controlling Mario accomplish the game's primary goals.

Ben Sawyer shared his story of exploring "first games" -- games that "gamer parents" can enjoy playing with their kids. Beyond his rant about the low quality of existing offerings along these lines, his talk was rooted in an almost reductionist look at game design. Ben is challenging game designers to come up with games that will help young kids (as young as 2 or 3 years old) become "games literate" to the point where they are capable of playing games with their parents.

One of the key goals is to create a game that helps the child learn the basic concepts of action and reaction: the child needs to come to understand the relationship between the inputs they give (hitting buttons, shaking the controller, jumping on a pad, etc.) and the affects it has in the game.

At the same time, the parent needs to be having fun as well. The trouble comes from the fact that it's hard for a parent and child to interact in the same game world when the child has not yet developed a sense of responsibility for their actions in the game.

(This is a very interesting topic for me and I'd love to write more on this topic... in particular, I'd like to see how well Super Mario Galaxy and how well it meets these criteria.)

Even though I forgot to post my notes from it for so long, I still wanted to share the inspiration I got from the event and some of the reflection it effected for me. The quality of the talks (and the company) at MIGS 2007 was quite excellent, and it was definitely a motivating and refreshing experience.

(For a wonderfully photo- and people-centric recap of the event, see Jason's posting on his blog.)

For the Team! The Glory of Team Fortress 2

2007-10-09T23:25:00.000-04:00

When Valve announced that a Steam pre-order of the Orange Box allowed entrance into the Team Fortress 2 beta you know I signed up right away. I've been an avid Team Fortress Classic (TFC) fan for many, many years. When it first came out, TFC (then dubbed Team Fortress 1.5) completely changed the way I thought about multiplayer FPS play. It took a while to learn the game, but once I got the hang of it I never looked back and it has remained one of my very favorite multiplayer games ever since.

So of course, I have been one of the millions who have looked forward to Team Fortress 2 since it was first announced/hinted at by Valve around the time of TFC's release. Back then, it was pitched as a realistic, hardcore, military-themed, squad-based game much in the vein of what the Battlefield series has since become. When they announced that TF2 would actually be a remake of TFC, I was surprised and yet quite thrilled.

After all, I've always felt that TFC remains one of the best multiplayer FPS experiences despite it's age. The opportunity, then, for its original designers to finally get a full AAA budget to develop one great Team Fortress game to stand the test of time (and contrast nicely next to all its me-too'ish competitors) was just as awesome as it is rare. TFC always seemed like the kind of game that history would ultimately forget: its media buzz-worthiness and popularity as the #1 Half-Life mod was quickly and thoroughly eclipsed by Counter-Strike (and later Day of Defeat, to an extent).

So enough about history! Team Fortress 2 is finally "done" and released and it is just awesome. I have yet to be able to pour too much praise on it and I've been recommending it to my friends whole-heartedly. Besides being an all-around rock-solid game with lots and lots of polish (this game stands up surprisingly well to the super-polished Halo 3 in terms of production values), TF2 is probably the most newbie-friendly multiplayer FPS ever. The designers and artists have obviously spent a great deal of (fruitful) effort to make each part of the game as self-explanatory as possible, and where simple images and visual cues are not enough they have provides brief, helpful videos describing how the game works. On top of that, they have a very neat system of telling you about your "personal best" accomplishments whenever you find yourself at the wrong end of a shotgun and waiting to re-spawn. They also show you who killed you and this usually -- because of how tight the game's design is -- also tells you how you died and gives you some clue as to how to do better later. Darius wrote a good post about how this has made TF2 the first multiplayer FPS he's enjoyed playing online.

I just love how strongly the game revolves around its nine classes. Each class is very well defined and more importantly well distinguished from the others. This means that whenever you see an Engineer or a Sniper you can quickly asses their threat to you, how they may help you (if they're on your team), and how you may want to interact with them. It also means that the game feels a bit like nine distinct experiences in one settings. I just love how much you feel distinctly different when you play each class and how it helps you continually re-think your strategies, learn the ins-and-outs of each map, and continually keep the experience fresh.

I'll probably end up doing a full review of the game at some point. TF2 really feels like that rare kind of game that, like its predecessor, will truly stand the test of time. I hope that the game will provide a lot of people with a friendly welcome to the world of multiplayer FPS games. I know that I've been having a ball playing the game (esp. with the super-easy in-game voice chat) with several of my friends. I'm even working on a screen-scraping statistic-aggregating web app where my friends and I can see each others achievements, compare our tastes, and trade stories of our most fun and satisfying moments playing the game.

I didn't get a chance to talk about the game's great sense of humor and lighthearted feel, so I can definitely say I'll be posting about TF2 again sometime soon. Until then, you can check out my TF2 stats via my Steam Community profile page.

Back in the Game(s)

2007-08-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

After a brief (okay, not-so-brief) hiatus from blogging, I'm glad to say I'm finally back.

So why the long silence? I'm not sure, actually. I could take the easy route and simply say: "life was busy" -- and well, it was! But of course that's never a real excuse for not blogging. After all, blogging lets us reflect on and share many of the parts of our busy lives that matter the most -- and sometimes that's what makes it all worth it after all is said and done.

Besides being busy, though, I guess I also felt I was in a bit of a soul-searching phase. Having redoubled my faith in games and refreshed my motivations to work with them and the people who play and make them, the question remained of where to go next in my career. Of course, there have been many things that I wanted to write about in this blog in the last several months, but somehow I felt that I wanted to return to blogging only when I felt I could do so whole-heartedly.

Now that I've had my break from putting up a "public face" and time to reconsider my priorities and motivations, I can gladly say that I am most certainly back, and this time, I believe, it will be for good!

First up on the queue: my new job, more highlights and impressions from GDC '07, and some thoughts on and praise for Bioshock.

Why I love games

2007-03-15T18:06:00.000-04:00

In a recent interview at a game dev company, I was asked a fairly typical and straightforward question: "Why do you want to work on games in particular?"

I can hardly believe how relatively unprepared to answer the question I seemed to be. Besides being a question that I had expected to be asked, it's also something I've thought about many times and a question I've answered in many in-depth conversations in the past. Perhaps the problem was that I'd never actually attempted to articulate my answer succinctly in a few sentences, not to mention under some amount of pressure. That part of the interview process was rather informal, though, so it gives me some amount of pause that I feel I fumbled on my response to the very question that I should have by all means been able to answer best.

The experience helped me realize how great a question it really is: why do I care about games so much? I'd like to take the time to (begin to) answer the question for myself, but I'd also like to hear some of my peers answer the question as well. At the end of this post, I'm going to call on a few friends in particular who I am hoping will follow suit.

(PSA: I'm not even going to try to shorten the length of this post. As much as I appreciate brevity and aspire to express my ideas as concisely as possible when blogging, I think this is one of those times when my desire to just-get-it-out-there-for-goodness-sake will have to take priority.)

Games are a big part of who I am

Games were the biggest influence inspiring me to continue pursuing my artistic skills. As my dad enjoys recalling, it was almost always images inspired by Mortal Kombat (which he graciously brought me to arcades to play) and Command & Conquer (which he bought me for Christmas one year and changed my life forever) that kept me drawing on a consistent basis. So games weren't just something I always enjoyed playing -- they were something through which I found my joy of creative expression. To me, games have always clearly represented a great gateway for enrichment in terms of simultaneously entertaining and edifying play.

Games are what got me into philosophy. Alpha Centauri in particular helped me understand that a lot of classic and modern philosophy deals with issues that have only become more important as the technology of Western civilization has progressed. AC and Civilization were the first pieces of media that really pushed me to consider how technology, economics, and politics play together in the real world. They really helped me understand and appreciate written history.

Perhaps most importantly, though, games were one thing that was always there for me, not just as something to keep my mind away from boredom or to distract me from the occasional lonely times, but as a very deep reminder of the beauty of life and the endless ways in which we, as artists, craftspeople, and engineers can create products that truly reflect our joy for life and allow us to share it with others.

I know that at least one of my friends can't help but snicker every time I mention this, but those who share my love for Final Fantasy III (US) and who shared the same sort of experiences with it as a kid understand well what the game meant to me. In a very profound way, FF III and a select few other games served as a consistent reminder of greater things in life. They were anchors to some of my greater spiritual beliefs and reminders that there's more to life that what the troubling halls of middle and high school and the seemingly dreary world of so-called "adult life" had to offer.

Infinite horizons

As I grew up and particularly as I went through college at WPI I became more and more convinced of the virtues of games as a hobby and profession. The last three years in particular have been encouraging, with the rapid growth of casual and serious games and Nintendo's revolution being particularly noteworthy.

I'm find it very refreshing and inspiring to see how well the industry is starting to diversify. (We may have a long way to go in terms of solidarity and mutual appreciation, but still....) My dreams and vision for the future of games has never diminished and has only grown over time. It now seems almost self-apparent to me that there is something fundamentally play-oriented about our nature as humans, and games provide the structure to make play meaningful on so many social and personal levels for those who play them. Thus, as electronic games have the advantage of being essentially restricted only by the imaginations of those who make them, the potential of the medium is nearly limitless.

The nature of play and the foundation of interacting with an environment in a structured way makes games an incredibly powerful force for persuasion, edification, and entertainment. With games, we write the rules as developers and as players. We can explore new worlds (imagined, emotional, or otherwise), prototype solutions to non-trivial problems, learn about the relationships between our decisions and their corresponding outcomes, and so much more.

I know the pieces fit

Looking at it from the view at 60,000 feet, it's obvious, even from an almost purely logical point of view, why I desire to work with games as a life-long pursuit. It's simple, actually: I want to constantly aspire to improve and apply my skills to help with the development of things that serve a purpose about which I feel strongly supportive. Ultimately, I'd like to work with a medium or media that allow me to express my creative desires to help others see the beauty in all aspects of life. I want to work with brilliant, passionate people with a whole-hearted love for life and a genuine desire to make the product of their labor no less than the fullest possible realization of their dreams, speaking in short and long terms. (And in general, I just love working with people who love working together!)

Despite all of its troubles, this really is an awesome industry -- my GDC '07 experience really convinced me of that. I just love seeing the industry from all sides, even the outside, e.g. academia and film people's perspectives. I love hearing everyone's perspective, listening to their stories, and learning what makes making games fun and rewarding for them. I love this industry if only because of all the great people in it and the great diversity of hopes and dreams that games people have been, are currently, and will continue to cook up into new experiences.

Developers and producers in the so called "mainstream/hardcore" games market are starting to see the writing on the wall and are making efforts to change how they develop in the name of sustainability. Those sick of the traditional industry are striking out in a myriad of different ways, with pretty darned inspiring results thus far. And perhaps best of all, it seems that we're finally establishing a strong and well-recognized "indie" scene. Go read Jon Mak's interview with Gamasutra about Everyday Shooter or read about the success of Armadillo Run and tell me it doesn't help reaffirm your faith that games can be innovative and still get due exposure, providing enough financial sustenance to keep their artists focused on what they're so great at.

To wrap it all up...

So why do I choose games? I choose games because in my mind interactive entertainment seems to exist at an almost impossibly beautiful meeting point of my creative and life-accomplishment desires. I see games as the vehicle through which pretty much all the things I love most in life will continue to manifest in greater and greater forms throughout my life.

So for now, I hope this sufficiently answers the question of why I love games and want to work on them for a living -- or at least starts the process of answering it. Indeed, exploring why games mean so much to us may be the ultimate expression of our love for them and the very thing that will always keep us coming back to games, in one form or another.

If anyone who reads this would also like to make a similar post, please leave a comment here linking to your post as I'd love to hear them. You don't have to love the industry as much as I do or anything, but I know that at the very least Craig and Darius should have plenty to say about this. Why do you guys love games so much and what makes you want to work on them (professionally or just on the side)?

My current IGDA web work (and a bit more)

2007-03-14T12:50:00.001-04:00

Much of my volunteer and on-the-side work for the last 6 months has been with the IGDA Education SIG. I started volunteering with the IGDA as a webmaster for the Columbus chapter of the IGDA. Last fall I was offered the opportunity to join the IGDA Education SIG as a Technology Co-officer, along with Darius, and, of course, I took the job!

« Education SIG »
My efforts with the EduSIG have largely revolved around our curriculum initiative. We've endeavored to see if we can get games educators to put their syllabi and other relevant information about their classes up on the IGDA wiki. We've created some templates to hopefully make the task more manageable and step-by-step instructions, including pictures and video, to help teachers overcome the hurdle of learning this "new" wiki technology.

« IGDA Website, etc. »
So what's on the horizon now beyond the EduSIG's continuing curriculum efforts? The IGDA is in the process of considering a full restructuring of their web presence including a full website front- and back-end redesign, and I have already joined that conversation as I hope I can offer some practical advice and perspective on different ways we can meet our goals.

Since I have a fairly strong background in web work, I hope that I can use my skills (and time) to help the IGDA make a great, fresh start on the web. The potential is there for the IGDA to set a great standard and a strong foundation for web collaboration between games-related parties for years to come. The wiki and forums were a great start, but more can be done to solidify the usefulness of those tools, and a great deal of progress can be make in terms of visibility and adoption by all SIGs, for example.

« Tools SIG »
Speaking of collaboration via the web, I'm starting to become active with the just-started IGDA Tools SIG. My first action was to contribute my notes from the excellent GDC '07 roundtable for "technical issues in tools development" onto the wiki. I'd like to now set up more scaffolding on the wiki and get involved in tools-related discussions on the IGDA forums to help keep the exchange of ideas flowing.

A great starting point, I suspect, will be to start getting some good pages up on the wiki to cover some tools and books that are of use to tools developers. Some links from my notes already lead to non-existent pages relating to tools and books mentioned at the roundtable; I hope this "hypertextualization" of the notes from the meeting will inspire others to share their comments from the meeting, bring up related questions, and demonstrate the kind of help that a wiki can provide in keeping track of all the ideas we generate through our discussions. (I also hope someone who took notes at the roundtable on Thursday, which I didn't attend, could put notes from that meeting up on the wiki as well)

« Wikipedia (aka "The Big One") »
One of my many goals-in-the-back-of-my-mind for GDC was to meet Elonka Dunin and pick her brain regarding some Wikipedia questions I had. We had several great talks, culminating in the establishment of a simple plan to get Darius & I acquainted with and established within the Wikipedia community. (I love how having a few drinks at a GDC party and running into people -- whom four days prior you'd never even met -- can lead to such stimulating and rewarding conversations -- more on that in another post, soon, I promise!)

So why the sudden boost in interest in Wikipedia? First, I will say that Wikipedia could really use more people like Elonka up in its higher 'ranks' and I hope that Darius & I can support her in her mission to become an administrator there. Second, Wikipedia's coverage of games is, in my opinion, in drastic need of more attention. As such, it'll be great to have an experienced mentor like Elonka as I attempt to give my best to the Great Wiki. I'm glad to see that there's already a WikiProject for video games, and I look forward to helping out with that initiative.

« Game Jams! »
One other thing: It seems that people are doing a lot of game jam-like events lately and that the idea is spreading quite a bit. Perhaps we (who have participated in and/or run these events) should start contributing our knowledge on the topic to the wiki. Some discussion on forums could help, too....

Zoom, zoom, zoom!
So, with my battery recharged with lots of web-related efforts, I'm off!

My First GDC: Impressions of GDC 2007

2007-03-12T17:10:00.000-04:00

GDC 2007 is over now, and with it the hustle and bustle of 12,000+ people has once again left the many halls of San Francisco's Moscone Centers West, South, and North. The story of GDC '07 is not a trivial one to tell. It's a story with many facets, and no one person ever gets to experience them all on a given year. I want to do my best to tell the parts that I saw, though: they paint a very interesting and colorful picture of what I see as a thriving and healthy industry that's just filled with truly exceptional people. Of course, this is my first attempt at such an account, and I make no pretense to actually know what I'm talking about, but I will attempt to share my impressions, at least in part, to the best of my ability.

All things indie (but without the Jones)

One of the things I love most about GDC is the great presence of the indie development "scene", in its many forms. I love seeing indie developers, and really all those with an "indie" developer heart, endeavor to keep it real and remind us that often the best games are the simplest and/or smallest ones. Somewhere between the sponsored sessions, business meetings, special topic roundtables, and other various gatherings of developers, there are, scattered about, lectures, presentations, and demonstrations from "the kids" -- a semi-amorphous contingent of young (and young-at-heart) games geniuses, humbly (well, usually humbly) sharing their surprisingly lucid and clear insights, which have been refined and variously inspired by one another and so many others during their time working in and around the industry. I enjoy being exposed to all of their varying passions -- for history, experimental gameplay, emerging and existing trends, and arguing for trends that we need to take leadership on.

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) was awesome this year, and will see (with any luck) no less than three titles showing up on GameTap many to enjoy. I was glad to see a lot of great developers get the attention they deserve, and to learn what humble, dedicated artists these people are. But perhaps best of all, I loved seeing how integrated the indie attitude seems to be with many other parts of the industry. While it often seems that so many game developers are stuck in a rut of limited perspective and resignation to the ways in which our industry is lacking, it's great to see that there are also people from all parts of the industry who desire to see all parts of the industry improve, along with the attitudes of those within it.

A great mix

Overall, perhaps the greatest thing about GDC is that there are so many different types of people, with so many different relationships to and within the industry. There are so many people from the business, research, and development areas of the industry (for simplicity, I'll pretend that academia is actually part of the industry, for now), and by and large they all have many great opportunities to interact with one another.
One of the reasons I most wish I could attend each GDC twice is that I'd really like to attend more of the tutorials. I wish I could have been at the serious and casual game summits, among others. (next year I'll probably endeavor to bounce around more) The sheer breadth of what's covered, with the option of experiencing each track in less or more depth is a real joy for people like me who like to dabble in a bit of everything every now and then.

Go forth, young developers, and mingle

Speaking of great opportunities for people to interact, I was very impressed by just how feasible this really is. One of the best opportunities to meet new people and reconnect with old friends are the lunch breaks. During these breaks, you can easily grab a pre-prepared lunch and sit down with... well, pretty much whomever you want. I found that pretty much anyone would happily have you join their company if you just had the guts to go ask.

I get a really good vibe from most developers that they're willing to interact with anyone at least once: you always get a chance to at least meet them and hopefully make a good impression. And even then, it's not about who you are, it's about what you do. I think people at GDC respect you most for your actions, rather than your words, so the bonds that form are strong and the shows of friendship earnest.

Smart and passionate people all around

I'm glad to say I had the great pleasure to meet a lot of really interesting people and even hang out with a few of them and get to know them a bit. My mind was opened up even more than ever by people talking about business, game design, tools creation, history, and much more. And perhaps more importantly, I found several of the talks and demonstrations to be quite inspirational. Chaim Gingold's "Spore's Magic Crayons" talk was particularly noteworthy -- at the end of it, I just wanted to run home and start playing around with some game design ideas that were bouncing around in my head. (and this was at the VERY END of the conference when I was so tired I was bordering nausea).

Hot damn, GDC

After five hears of nearly endless hype from Darius, it's remarkable that I can honestly say that GDC was even better than I'd ever imagined. Sure, it's got its bumps and blemishes here and there, but if nothing else it's a wonderful time for a bunch of great people to come together, exchange ideas, and meet news ones who've joined our exciting, inspiring and thriving industry. A conference is only as good as those who organize, contribute to, and attend it, and the people of GDC are top-notch.

So how about that GDC '08?

More GameTap Goodness

2007-02-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted about GameTap, and I feel the hard work the GT people have been up to has finally warranted another post.

There have been great improvements to GameTap since the last time I wrote about it that I could hardly list them all even if I tried, but I'll name a select few that really stand out in my mind.

Major Improvements

GameTap Recommendations
The "GameTap Picks" section now contains multiple lists, which change fairly regularly and provide a much greater variety of criteria. For example, this week they're featuring lists for, among others:

Fun for Kids
Gruesome Games
X-Treme Sports
Staff Picks
Two Player Picks

I especially like the "Two Player Picks" list. It's great to see GT thinking more and more about multiplayer play through their service. After all, it *is* the internet.

These lists are in addition to the usual "new games" and "upcoming games" lists.

I realize that it may be too messy of a situation to deal with (in terms of relations with publishers), but if possible I think it would be great if they had a LONG list of games on the way and games that are possibilities to be added with a voting system where subscribers could approval-vote for games to be added.

Favorites Lists
This one was just added this week: you can now make your own favorites lists in a manner very similar to YouTube (only less buggy). So far, there's still no sharing system that I know of, but it's great to be able to see my own favorites lists displayed for me just the way the ones the system makes are shown.

Save State!

Many games now have a save system where you can essentially do a save and load state ala ZSNES. It's pretty well done, and makes some old toughies much more fun and actually possible to play through within a reasonable time frame. Specifically, I'd recommend Comix Zone as a great example of a game SAVED by this feature.

UI Enhancements

In addition to these major improvements, there have also been a bunch of relatively small interface improvements that add up to a much nicer interface.

Scroll wheel support
I'm very happy to say that they've added one of the features I recommended to them early on via the built-in suggestion system, which is to allow you to scroll through lists with the mouse scroll wheel. It's a wonderful way to peruse at your desired speed and makes the ever-growing library much more reasonable to sift through.

Improved Search
Speaking of perusing through the 832-title strong library, the search box now has a button you can press to have the display fly to a random game within the (alphabetically ordered) list of all games.

I've been thinking it would be nice if they implemented a "live" search where the results fly by as you type, but this new button helps achieve the same benefit of helping people find games they didn't know about.

Miscellaneous

They've also improved the quick-view widgets at the bottom of the screen to show download status in a much nicer way. It also allows you to see more than just the last 5 games you've looked at, with scroll buttons to see others now included.

Performance

Finally, I was amazed to find out today that apparently they've programmed GT to take almost no system memory when minimized. Even when it took 40mb of memory when being used, as soon as I minimized it it dropped down to 4mb, which is almost non-existent as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how exactly they did it, but I applaud this great improvement.

I think the GT people are doing a great job with continually updating the GT UI and adding key features. All they really need now (as I see it) is better savegame handling for PC titles and the ability to download updates when the program isn't running to save on startup time. Oh, and seriously, guys, release Fallout & Fallout 2! With Silent Hill 3 in there, you can't seriously tell me that Fallout is too graphic or mature! =P

Game Jammin' in Boston!

2007-02-01T12:14:00.001-05:00

Better late than never -- I'd like to talk about how great it was being a part of the Boston Game Jam, which took place over the weekend of January 20th and 21st.

Fifteen professional (well, 14, plus me) Boston-area game developers got together under the great gold dome at MIT to try and create a variety of working, usable games in less than 36 hours' time. We worked our butts of in the MIT Education Arcade lab, which they so generously invited us to use for the weekend.

As far as resources went, the usual suspects were present: desktop PCs, laptops, a projection screen, pizza, coffee, and doughnuts supported us as we worked. Each morning, coffee, doughnuts and (sadly underrated) muffins were brought into the lab to ensure no one was running on empty.

The games turned out very well, in general. My favorites were Shift, Slidewalk, and Nightshifted. Shift is a really cool almost-game simulation of people in conflict over resources on a player-spinnable world. Slidewalk was the result of Kent Quirk and son's work that features impressive (for the time frame) 3D graphics.

The game that David Ludwig and I made, which we ended up titling Buddha Quest (it was meant to be a humorous game), turned out pretty well given my lack of experience with Python and the fact that he and I had never before worked together.

We ended up having to scope the game down a lot, even though we'd already chosen a fairly attainable goal. In the end, I think it was the first half day where I had to re-aquaint myself with Python that took away critical time. I think we learned a lot from the experience, though. I know I gained a good amount of confidence from it and as it turned out Dave and I ended up working together quite well, I thought.

If/when we work together on a project like this again, we figure we'll try to start with a technology that we're both quite comfortable with and go from there. What I do know for certain, though, is that it will be a good time and well worth committing a whole weekend to it.

There's nothing quite like getting a bunch of developers together and banging out some games to get the creative juices going. Seeing the quality of developers there and given that it was our first even and that some people had to back out at the last minute, I'm also encouraged to know that the company will always be great. (Speaking of company, here are a few more accounts of the event, from Duncan Watt, our wonderful sound guy, and Dan Roy).

Here's to games, development, and fun!

Speaking at the GDC 2007 Academic Workshop

2006-11-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Now that the GDC 2007 Academic Workshop has been officially announced, I'd like to mention the awesome news that I will be speaking as a part of the event. That's right -- I'm actually going to GDC for the first time this year and I'll be speaking!

Suffice it to say, I'm very excited about it. My understanding is that I'll be talking about our (the IGDA Education Special Interest Group) wiki-driven curriculum knowledge base initiative, but it's apparent that the exact structure and content of the event is far from fleshed out (and probably will be so until the day before).

I hope to post more about our wiki KB initiative(s) in the near future. My work with the EduSIG has been my main focus lately. I've been learning a lot about how Wikipedia runs its initiatives and organizes its authors (when it does) and I'll be trying to reflect on the lessons they've learned to help us succeed with the IGDA wiki.

X Reasons the Games Industry Doesn't Suck

2006-09-20T07:27:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, Jason Della Rocca's talk on "at least 10 reasons why the games industry doesn't suck" inspired me to get on with writing some of the thing that have been on my mind that I've wanted to share on this blog.

As I sat down to write this, it occurred to me that perhaps others feel the way that "della", Darius and many others including myself feel about this industry being full of exciting potential, a great amount of which is starting to become realized. The sources of this great progress may be under-reported (and underrated!), but they are actually rather numerous and noteworthy. Some of it is right under our noses, some of it takes a broad perspective such as that which Della, Earnest Adams and others take on the games community to notice.

I don't know if my own perspective is broad or deep enough to state things any better than Jason and friends have done already, but I did have a neat idea that I hope catches on. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to start this process by listing five reasons why the industry doesn't suck. I propose that anyone who reads this list and has their own games-related blog do the same. If you can't think of 5 off the top of your head that you're passionate about, then start with three and add more later. I know I'll be adding to my list over time. (Though if you can't come up with five, you're just not trying hard enough. Yes, I know, skepticism may have to be set aside, if only for a moment -- but come on, you can do it!)

One last comment before I give my list: the style here, in terms of depth and linkage is definitely leaning towards brevity. Maybe I can offer you little more than a few choice words and some intriguing links. If so, then great.

Okay, so without further ado, here are my first five reasons why the games industry doesn't suck:

1.) Developers, developers, developers. As Steve Balmer once so famously emphasized, it's all about developers. Culture matters; players matter; market forces matter; but it's the developers who make the games. The developers are the ones who make the games and shape the experiences we have with them. Talking about games helps us appreciate them, playing games can bring us joy and fulfillment, but it's those talented developers among us who make it all possible. Need I even state that there are a great number of fantastically talented developers out there? Designers come first to mind, at least for me. Gods like Miyamoto, Wright, and Meier being most obvious. But there are so many more; artists, writers, and programmers who bring us to worlds we've never seen and emotions we've sometimes forgotten.... "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."

2.) Money, money, money. The root of all evil, but also the embodiment of perceived value. Corporations may control, fame may corrupt, and the all-important "bottom line" may chill our romantic views of the industry, but in the end, the presence of so much money flowing into the industry proves one critical truth: people value games.

3.) Serious independent development initiative. As futile as it may seem trying to run an independent games company in today's industry may seem, the ongoing success stories of many groups currently visible and many more fledgling prospects yet to hit the limelight should serve as an inspiration to us all. Relatively big players like Valve are standing up for their right to control the profitable distribution of their games. Manifesto Games has struck out to provide a business-serious alternative publishing alternative for those bold enough to dare step out of the rat race and bring the focus back to innovation and exploring the many avenues to fun. Actually, the stories here are too many and diverse to do justice here. If you don't know about all this activity, I recommend you grab your favorite search engine and take a little time to familiarize yourself with these great companies and initiatives. They may well be paving the way for the real future of our industry.

4.) Games education. Early as it may be in its development around/next to/within an already premature industry, the games education community is starting to grow in a very serious way. The IGDA has just started up a new Education Special Interest Group for helping games educators across the world learn from each other, share resources, and develop a common lexicon for all aspects of game development. From what I've seen so far from our intrepid adventurers into this new field of study, a lot of great ideas will come out, and maybe, just maybe we can form a better bond between academia and industry than that which has resulted from most fields.

5.) Nintendo. There, I said it. No, this isn't about "I'm a fanboy and deep down you know you are too" or anything like that. What I'd like to argue is that Nintendo's success will be good for everyone in regards to the future of games. Think about it: If you're Microsoft or Sony, you figure: you've got the traditional/core games market in your pocket -- let Nintendo take all of the early risk seeing how much they can broaden the market. After all, it isn't as though the general consumer market isn't used to buying electronics from Sony and Microsoft. They can rest assured that when that market is proven, they can jump in a take a big 'ol piece out of it. (Heck, for that matter, who wants to guess the conversion rate of casual-gaming Wii owners to players who also play on XBox Live Arcade?)

And then there's the money. More players equals more money (see point #2 for why that's not necessarily a bad thing). One might also conceive that the Wii will offer fertile ground for alternative pricing models and games that cater to a radically different set of expectations of what a game must be/contain. How about no more forcing players to replay parts they don't like just to (supposedly) extend the number of hours the player will get out of it? How about more emphasis on just making it fun for a nearly endless amount of 10 - 30 minute play periods over the course of years if not a lifetime?

Oh, yeah, and then there's fun. Fun. Sometimes I feel like Microsoft and Sony actually believe that they sell hype, pure and simple. It's as though the word "entertainment" means MTV-pop-culture shove-the-new-stuff-down-everyone's-throat salesmanship. Nintendo, it seems, has always kept the emphasis on fun -- good, solid games that can stand the test of time. To me, that's an invaluable focus to have from such a relatively big player in the industry.

And with that, I've made my first five attempts to shed the light of things-are-looking-up. Now, please, please, please, if you have a games or general blog of your own: help me continue this list! Reiterate what I've said if you agree; put an emphasis on a different angle of something I've talked about if you don't entirely agree but have something else positive to say (for example: money itself is bad, but the attention it brings can be good in X way...); go read Della's 10 reasons and see what you're inspired by; do whatever it takes to get those juices going and please contribute.

If you link to this post in yours I'll be sure to see it in track-backs and we can all contribute comments to each others' posts. I'll see you there!

Jason Della Rocca @ Boston PostMortem and the Blogger Beta

2006-08-28T09:28:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to make a quick post to mention that Jason Della Rocca indeed gave a great presentation at the Boston PostMortem last Tuesday about why the games industry doesn't suck. As I expected, it was mostly about all the great research that's being done, steps that are being taken towards cultural acceptance (and disemination!) of games, and all the new business models that are being tried out with some encouraging success. Oh, and did he mention that the IGDA is great? He probably slipped that in there, somewhere. His talk also fulfilled my #1 criterion for a good talk: he made me want to write. So I have a bunch of posts that I should be making in the near future. (Oh, and it was good to finally have the chance to meet him and Rudy Geronimo)

And speaking of which, I'm wondering if anyone (I know there's only like 4 - 10 of you right now) who reads this blog would mind if I switch to the Blogger Beta. It sounds like a HUGE improvement for Blogger (some of which I've waited for for some time) and the only down side is that until you upgrade your blogger accounts, you won't be able to sign in to post comments, though you could still do so annonymously if I enable that (note to Google: WTF? That's a terrible side effect; shame on you). I don't actually know of a reason why you should't upgrade your account, but I understand if some of you might not want to and would mind having to post annonymously. If I don't hear within a few days I'm going to make the switch.

AMD/ATI Merger

2006-07-26T18:51:00.000-04:00

While browsing BetaNews the other day, I saw the announcement of the merger of ATI Technologies and AMD. First impression: very interesting... and probably good for gamers and future gamers, in the long run.

Of course, the announcement says little about the company's long- or even mid-term strategies for providing compelling solutions to the PC gaming and general PC-using population. However, I think the possibilities are interesting. The merger certainly brings to mind thoughts of the "shuttle" computers of the near future -- now at bargain prices?

I also think it's interesting to hear official word of combining graphics back into the CPU system at a time when physics accelerators are starting to get serious consideration and (some) marketing. Many gamers may breathe a sign of relief at knowing that they won't necessarily have to juggle two extra cards in their systems just to play the modern marvels of gaming that come across their fancy.

Sure, it may seem worrisome that yet again large, games-related companies are merging, but given the circumstances and who the two companies are, it seems much more like a match made in heaven than an omen of darks times to come. Both companies have a lot of experiences fighting to gain recognition at times when their primary competitors are almost completely dominant of a market. Both companies have also shown that, by and large, they can produce some seriously well-designed hardware that can often offer a better "bang for your buck" than their competitors.

I know that some have been quick to express distress with the idea (presumption?) that the new, larger company would only offer their products along with one another. I don't think this will be the case, however. Both companies have always known well that their customers tend to prefer to design their own custom creations. Gamers desire choice and flexible pricing options keeps the upgrade market lubricated and constantly moving. Of course, they will try to make their joint systems look so lovely that we simply can't resist, but I think they'll realize that it's too risky to bet the whole company on completely replacing all the options that their competitors will offer.

Finally, this merger makes me once again reconsider the future of technological advancement for PC games. We all know that pure graphical improvements are no longer enough to captivate players, and many are beginning to speculate on what the next big advancements will be, with physics and AI as the most obvious candidates. A coworker of mine commented, upon hearing the news of this merger, that the joint systems won't make sense because PC gamers tend to upgrade their graphics cards much more often than their CPUs. While this has roughly been the case in the past 7-8 years, I'm not so sure it will continue to be the case. If AI and physics (both non-GPU-intensive aspects of PC game processing) are the waves of the future, it would seem that simply buying a new video card is unlikely to the focus of gamers' upgrading strategies. Perhaps, then, the new ATI+AMD offerings will be able to find the perfect balance of graphics processing power and raw CPU power that game developers need to make their visions a reality in our computer rooms and bedrooms of the near future.

At any rate, I'll remain hopeful that this will help spell a future where a prospective PC gamer can purchase a suitable rig for an even lower price than they can today. It may be a key component to allowing the PC gaming scene to stay afloat with its own strong sense of identity and, of course, a fair market share.

Girls & Games: A Matter of Perception

2006-07-19T19:04:00.000-04:00

I've had some thoughts about girls and games floating around in my head for a while, so when The Escapist released their "Girl Power 2" issue, which contained some rather interesting and enjoyable articles, I knew it was about time to let some of those thoughts out.

In particular, I enjoyed the article "Asexuality Actually" in which John Walker challenges the now well-accepted belief that nearly all electronic games are made for (young) males and repel females by their very nature. Disregarding the ones that magazines tend to focus on the most (FPS's in particular, I'd say), most games, and in deed most best-sellers, are hardly gender-specific, at least at the surface.

I'm not writing this now to argue for or against the idea, though. But I would like to offer what few specs of insight I may have on this matter.

Lately, I've been wondering why it was that until right around the time that I started college, I didn't think and had never thought of games as a males-only activity. In hindsight, that does seem quite odd and apparently it's a rare perspective to have as an 18-year-old male. For a while I couldn't imagine why this was. Perhaps it's just because I usually try to see through to the essential nature of media like films and games and as such the target markets of individual titles doesn't occur to me much. At the same time, I probably was just taking for granted the idea that games are just targeted to their existing players without much thought about how predominantly male that audience is.

But then I remembered something that still gives me pause. One of my first experiences with video games was watching a girl play through Super Mario Bros. while showing me all the hidden 1-up mushrooms she knew about. It totally blew my mind that someone could just remember that the hidden blocks were there. Looking back on the event, it was always that sense of wonder that I remember. Only recently did it occur to me how odd it was for a girl who had mastered a game to be showing a boy how to play it.

What's my point? My point is that so much of the anti-girls (and even anti-adults) stigma against games is a matter of perception. Games are perceived to be for boys only and so most girls hardly give them (the greater body of games, that is) a fair shake. This, of course, leads me back to why I think the Wii could be such a revolution for the games market. I truly believe that as soon as you get people to pick up the freehand controller and try out a few games (assuming the right kinds of games are made) their perception of games and the market will be forever changed. But more from me on that argument will have to wait for another time.

A Few Tidbits/Random Updates

2006-07-13T22:12:00.000-04:00

And now, just because, here are a few tidbits from the games side of my world at the moment:

GameTap continues to rock my world. I got a call from a nice woman with a deep southern drawl asking me if it would be okay if Turner sent me a free PC game controller to thank me for being a loyal GameTap customer since its original get-go. Why sure, I said, that would be just fine.

I've never received something for absolutely no particular reason at all like this before. Of course, they're right that I've been a loyal customer, and I'm sure they don't even realize I've been pimping their service on a semi-regular basis on my blog for a while. Though I do have to wonder if they hope to get blog-attention when they have promotions like this. Who knows. (they probably want me to put it on my MySpace account... sorry, guys, not too big into that yet)

The closest I've ever come to winning something games-related out of the blue like this was an Unreal Tournament tournament that I unexpectedly took 2nd place in despite being a one-man-team again teams of two (my partner dropped out shortly before the tourney). But I guess that's neither here nor there.

In other news:
Just today I've started participating in Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar Alpha 1 Beta (that's what they call it, I swear) program. So naturally (if you consider NDA's to be a force of nature), I won't be talking about that game for quite some time (that is, until they release it). So don't ask me! LOTRO? Is that some kind of Japanese robot? I have no idea what you're talking about and I've never heard of something so completely absurd in my life. (they don't make games that you can play online -- what are you smoking?)

Let's see... oh yeah, I'm pretty psyched on a few IGDA-related accounts, too. One of my game designer idols, Brian Reynolds (designer of Alpha Centauri, Civilization II, and Rise of Legends, to name just a few classics he's responsible for), is the new IGDA Chair. I hope he's not a metal chair, because those are cumbersome and can cause back pain over time. But seriously, it's cool to see a very well respected game designer up on the IGDA board. I hope it helps some developers out there open their eyes to the genuine potential and promise of the IGDA.

Perhaps even more exciting is the prospect of the IGDA's Jason Della Rocca and Rudy Geronimo coming to the Boston Post Mortem next month. Jason's the Executive Director of the IGDA for those of you who don't follow anything IGDA-related (for shame!). Rudy is the Operations/Community Manager for the IGDA and as such I've been working with/under him as a volunteer web programmer for the (somewhat fledgling) Columbus, Ohio (USA) chapter of the IGDA.

According to the Post Mortem coordinator, Kent Quirk, we may have the pleasure of their company next month as Post Mortem in fact serves as the Boston-area chapter of the IGDA. Some make fun of the fact that we're not too terribly vocal about our relationship with the IGDA, but to be perfectly honest, I don't think it's as silly as it seems. For an organization as inherently grassroots (or quasi-grassroots) as the IGDA, I think it makes sense that each chapter just does things however it works out for the developers in that area. In our case, it happens to mean keeping things very informal and low-key.

At any rate, Post Mortem is always fun and it would be nice to get a chance to meet Jason and Rudy in person for once (as opposed to simply via email and/or message boards).

More News from Valve - Team Fortress 2 is Coming!

2006-07-13T21:44:00.000-04:00

At long last, Gabe Newell has announced the pending release of long-famous vaporware title Team Fortress 2. Not only that, but at EA annual summer press event today Gabe showed off a "portal" technology that allows the Source engine to create portals like those in Prey (which was a pretty good demo, by the way, so check it out if you haven't already). Apparently, it's slated to be used in a game that will somehow be a part of the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 package.

This is the first time I've personally heard mention of a HL2:E2 package, per se, but the idea seems to make a lot of sense. Consider the fact that a big part of Valve's pitch to consumers regarding its dream of sustainable episodic game development is the idea that technological developments can be rolled into releases incrementally and much more flexibly at that. Having a new (and yet long-awaited) multiplayer game (TF2), some neat portal-based trickery, and what I can only assume will be another expectation-exceeding chapter of HL2 goodness sounds like a solid package to me.

Okay, now back to TF2 for a moment. I'd like to mention here what my friends have often heard from me about why I've always held out hope for TF2. As much as the game was announced seven or eight years ago now, really the industry has hardly trumped the game's original ambitions. To be sure, the Battlefield series has done a great job with the basic concept, but those games, if only in their level design, feel nothing like a Valve title and in many ways still strive to achieve what TF2 set out to do so long ago.

That being said, Battlefield is particularly good at the quasi-realistic approach to a modern combat-styled squad-based tactical FPS. So it's encouraging to know that Valve is taking a less realism-focused approach (aesthetically speaking, at least) and is going for a stylized, campy 60's spy film-style look. In a way it seems like a bold (and certainly unexpected) move from a company that has always focused on (and in some ways, reinvented) graphical realism in their games. But if they can pull it off, I think they'll get a lot of credit for it and help promote a broader perspective on what they're capable of pulling off.

At any rate, this "holiday season" is shaping up to be one serious ass-kicker if Valve can keep to its schedule and release its next first-party salvo by this winter.

Important Choices Must Be Informed Choices

2006-06-08T22:14:00.000-04:00

A somewhat impromptu post here, but on a topic I've wanted to register some chatter on for some time.

One of my design "pet peeves", especially when it comes to RPGs, has been called out by Edge in their June 2006 issue. I'm so glad a well-read source has come out and voiced this concern, because it's a significant one: too many games force you to make an important choice before you know how it will affect your game.

Or to put it another way: games will ask you things like how difficult you want it to be or what character class you'd like to play as before you have any idea of what effects your choice will have on your play. How hard is the game relative to others of its type? How much experience with similar games am I expected to have? These questions and many more remain unanswered and usually not even hinted at when the time comes for me to make a game-defining choice.

Besides the obvious alienation and/or frustration a player may feel at being forced to make an irrevocable decision before they have any meaningful criteria upon which to weigh their options, there is a greater loss suffered. The fact is that making interesting decisions the consequences of which you can predict or hypothesize about can often be the most fun part of a game to begin with. In real-time strategy games, this helps explain why defeat can sometimes be the greatest experience you can have. It can encourage you to re-visit the challenge and approach it from a different angle.

Now, I don't mean to gloss over the fact that many developers have in fact attempted to remedy the problems associated with games that are highly influenced by early, relatively uninformed decisions. Some games like those in the Civilization series (esp. Civ 4) have done an admirable job of trying to explain which difficulty level you should start with, often based upon your experiences with past Civ games.

But I prefer that, whenever possible, designers work this need into the game much the way a good tutorial can work relatively seamlessly into a well-thought-out game. For example, when I was designing a fantasy RPG I called "Octavia", the game's design revolved around the idea that players would gradually make more and more significant decisions about what powers to develop and how to use them, and in particular the beginning of the game would seek to introduce players to the central concepts, let them feel those concepts out a bit, and then as them to make some decisions about how they will focus their character's development for the rest of the game.

Okay, so I'm not the first (or even the 30th) designer, amateur or not, to attempt such a thing. Certainly many titles could be cited as heading in the same direction. But it seems like we never get much farther than the "prolonged/enhanced tutorial" level of thoughtfulness when it comes to dealing with this issue.

If I ever pick the Octavia idea up again, I'd like to try to extend this concept further into and throughout the game. For example, the game's original concept included a focus on demonstrating (and letting players play with, of course!) the karma-esq nature of destruction-begetting-destruction and peace-begetting-peace. How about designing the game such that players are encouraged (if not forced outright) to incrementally make decisions as to how they will further their character's development. Think of a system akin to dual- and special/elite-classing in D&D. You develop your character along the lines of the original "rails" you chose to follow. But then as time goes on you eventually fork or branch your efforts into other paths.

This probably sounds a lot like a traditional RPG. The trick is in designing it in such a way that the decisions you make about forking or branching your focus are meant to reflect your new-found or further refined understanding of the game both in terms of how to "master" it further and also in terms of how you will most enjoy it.

Okay, so this is all pretty abstract and high-level. Still, I'm glad a source like Edge has brought some attention to an important, and relatively practical, concern such as this. I hope to see much more experimentation with these kinds of ideas in the years to come.

Starting to Get Steamy In Here

2006-05-26T07:50:00.000-04:00

Those who know me know that I've always been a fervent supporter of Steam. Mostly, as I think is understood, my support comes from a desire to see such alternative publishing methods grow into their own as they may be the great salvation that indie game development will need to continue contributing to our industry in a meaningful way.

Of course, Steam has its share of faults and drawbacks. I can perfectly understand what people dislike about Steam, and indeed it still has a long way to go before I'll consider it a full-featured games (and games media) delivery/exploration system.

Nonetheless, I must say that Valve seems to be doing a bang-up job with Steam thus far, especially in the last 6-8 months. Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia showed the breadth of game types that can be offered via Steam, and Darwinia's presence on Steam even encouraged its makers (Introversion Software) to not leave the industry and in fact continue on to make another new and interesting game, DefCon. Sin Episodes has made a fairly good debut on Steam as well this month.

In less than a week's time, Valve will release their first episodic expansion to Half-Life 2. To generate hype and motivate purchases, they've started to release (at this point, daily) a series of short teaser videos for the game that show off the new scripting, animation, and facial modeling technologies the game features. These videos arrive directly via Steam and they've added a "My Media" section to everyone's Steam account so that you can keep track of the videos you've downloaded.

And now, as though all that wasn't enough, apparently Atari-branded PC games (like, all of them, save Dungeons & Dragons Online) are going to be sold via Steam for $20 a pop. Wow.

Things are looking up for Steam, and with it, in my opinion, all of the games industry.

The Revolution's Giant Risk and Why It's Well Worth It

2006-02-24T23:31:00.000-05:00

The latest (here in America) issue of Edge Magazine has a nice feature that examines the question of whether the Playstation 3 has already won the console war. Assumed is that the known war is between the PS3 and the XBox 360, both of which, in the long run, are expected to perform fairly equally. The argument, in short, is that with all else being equal (the online component being uncertain, to say the least), the greater publisher support that the PS3 has makes it appear to have the early (or early-mid-game) victory.

Of course, this is not at all to count out Nintendo's codename Revolution system before it has had its say. But they do bring up a good point: not only does Nintendo's Revolution strategy currently appear vague and abstract, what few things are known about it (namely: the basic pricing model, target audience(s), and key input device) serve best to bring up many significant and troubling questions.

To me, this is the most frustrating part of hearing people talk about the Revolution at this early stage. All we really know right now is that there's this crazy/intriguing "Freehand" controller and that Nintendo aims to capture a significantly larger and more diverse gaming market than any have captured in the past. The steps in between are completely open to speculation.

And yet, it seems as though people think that the Freehand controller itself is meant to be the Revolution's only real feature. Well, okay, that and the fact that it's cheaper than its immediate peers -- but how many gamers really grasp the value of that to the greater market in the long run? It would be idiotic, on our or on Nintendo's part, to assume that a flashy and intriguing new idea alone will shatter the walls separating current gamers and would-be gamers. And it's silly for gamers and industry commentators to assume that Nintendo intends for the controller alone to sell the system.

It may seem ironic, but by going for a simpler (or more fundamental?), if less proven, model/foundation for console gaming, Nintendo seems to be making the greatest risk of all. If they don't have a seriously well-thought out and ready-to-adapt philosophy and strategy for the Revolution, it could easily fall flat on its face, dooming itself to, at best, relative obscurity as a "kids and novelty only" toy that only the young or truly bored will buy.

But therein lies the trick, methinks. Nintendo is taking the biggest risk, perhaps, but for the best of reasons: it realizes that only a rat can win a proverbial rat race and there is, if you'll parden my extension of the metaphore, a whole kingdom of animals after which it could fancy itself. It recognizes that ultimately there's only so much cheese a mouse can eat before it's just plain had enough. (and there only so many mice in the population)

How many outside the gaming market have given up on console games because all they see is the same crap (or even good but uninteresting material) over and over again? How many of us supposedly within a key gaming market (semi-hardcore, old-school gamers with decent amounts of expendable income) are ourselves getting sick of the same crap over and over again?

For a while now, I've been telling people that the Revolution is the only upcoming console that I truly look forward to. It's the only console where I think to myself: I can really see that becoming a valuable addition to my entertainment life in a way that I'm not already experiencing.

Don't get me wrong: I think the PS3 and XBox 360 are great. I'm sure they'll have lots of great games and even a good handful that truly impress me and do something new and fun (ala Katamari Damacy or Guitar Hero). But most of the potential I see in those systems could arguably be achieved on a system only with only marginally more powerful -- but hopefully much better thought out -- technology than in the current generation (if developers are also given much more mature tools). In other words: I can see easily that exact sort of potential really coming through in the Revolution.

Think about it: what system could be better suited to a Guitar Hero sequel, spin-off, or inspiration than the Revolution? Certainly a GH-style game would work well (in fact, wonderfully) on any of the systems, but when it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter how much Sony or Microsoft say they want to be in everyone's living room -- what matters is whether the product is inviting enough and cheap enough for people to buy it.

I picture a near-future where I almost unquestioningly bring my Revolution around with me whenever I go to visit friends and family with full confidence that a good time will be had by all. Why? Because the potential is there, and I think it's actually simpler and more feasible to achieve than many skeptics would have us believe. After all, the common (would-be-gamer) person just wants to have good fun at affordable prices in social settings and in solitude. Companies like Harmonix just want people to enjoy themselves while experiencing what it's like to play/perform music.

And if the Revolution catches on, more and more companies will start to think the same way. That is when we can start breaking down all the artificial barriers -- in our minds as gamers and in the minds of those in the industry -- on what games can and should be. That is when we can begin to just accept gaming as another great part of our lives for our joy and enrichment.

If we can get there, or even make great beginning strides along that path, then it will be worth every bold, uncertain step it took to get there, and Nintendo knows it.

Congratulations Harmonix - Edge Awards 2005

2006-02-01T08:47:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Harmonix Music, makers of such gems as Amplitude and Guitar Hero, for winning a runner-up award for "Best Developer" (of 2005) from Edge magazine.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give an award of my own to Harmonix. By virtue of Guitar Hero's unprecedentedly enthusiastic reception at my (large, father's side) family's Christmas gathering in 2005, I hereby award Harmonix with the "Best Game for the Whole Family" award for 2005.

Now... Nintendo, if you're somehow listening, I fully expect you to give Harmonix a run for their money on this award next year with some launch or near-launch window titles on your beloved "Revolution" system. I mean it! Don't make me come out there.

Planet Juveniles

2006-01-29T15:21:00.000-05:00

Way to go, Planet Half-Life.

Today I happened upon Planet Half-Life while investigating the Half-Life 2 CTF mod.

They (PHL) had a poll on the front page as follows:

Would you date Alyx?
( ) Yes... IN MY BED!
( ) I'm taken.

Where do I even begin?

First and foremost is the fact that this poll blatantly assumes that the site's readers are attracted to Alyx, the main female character in Half-Life 2, and completely juvenile in their attitudes towards sex. In particular, there's an obvious implication that the reader is a young, immature male.

What was the point of the poll, anyway? To see how many of their readers are pathetic enough to even bother answering it? I don't think I've been this disgusted by a piece of fansite idiocy in years.

Some More Praise for GameTap

2005-12-14T16:35:00.000-05:00

I feel the need to write a little more about GameTap and why I like it so much...

Heroes of Might and Magic I, II, & III have now been added, meaning that GT now has all four core games making up the Heroes series.

Just imagine how good this could be for sales of the fifth game, Heroes V? How many more people will know how great Heroes can be now that the III one (pretty much unanimously considered to be the best of the series) is available to be played by thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of gamers who missed them in their heyday?

What's so great about a service like GameTap is not only that it lets generations new and old play all these classic oldies. It also lets us play all these games, like Heroes III, that are still the state of their art. (Yes, I said art, Roger; deal with it.)

And the games keep on coming... if you haven't tried out GameTap and have computer gaming interests that spread beyond modern games (of the last 5 years), you've got to check out GameTap. You can even give subscriptions to GT as Christmas gifts (or anything gifts). Not too shabby.

First Impressions: Funkiball Adventure

2005-12-09T08:22:00.000-05:00

Funkitron, a small, independent game development company in the Boston area has just released their newest game, Funkiball Adventure: Lost Legends. Funkitron's focus has always been on the casual games market, releasing such successful titles as Scrabble Blast!, Boggle Supreme, and Slingo Deluxe.

With their newest game, though, Funkitron is branching out into some more traditional (old-school) games and hoping for a cross-over hit with Funkiball Adventure. What starts off safely nested in the tradition of Breakout-style games turns into a wild and notably unique adventure across the world, with a few pleasant surprises along the way. Here are a few of my first impressions...

The two things that stand out the most about Funkiball are it's strong aim towards the casual gamers market and its strong sense of adventure and narrative. The story isn't deep, and it isn't meant to be -- it's just meant to guide you along the levels, give the game a sense of style, and explain your objectives to you without being too obtuse about it. From what I've seen, it definitely achieves these goals.

I'm impressed by the graphics in this game for a few reasons. First of all, they aren't meant to be hyper-realistic. The game has its own unique style and you won't find yourself forgetting which Breakout-style game you're playing while enjoying this one. Secondly, the background and character art work well to help carry the feeling of a background -- and in some ways living -- storyline to the game. The graphical experience is also supplemented by a few little flourishes that are quite nice to have. For example, when you collect a piece of (all-important) loot, the paddle glows or emits a little beam of light corresponding to the type of loot. Very nice.

The games sounds are, in my opinion, a bit of a mixed bag. Some sounds are a bit on the light side and lack the "oomph" that can really add to a destruction-oriented game like this. On the other hand, many of the other sounds are right on. Many of the most important ones -- like those for loot (non-powerup collectibles that plan an important part in this game) -- sound good, and the sound effect for the gold coins, in particular, are very satisfying.

I've read that the game supposedly does some neat and innovative things with its music, but I've only been playing for a little while now and haven't yet spotted the effect(s). Maybe that's part of the idea -- that they are subtle in how they add to experience. For now, though, I can't comment.

Okay, so how about gameplay? What does the game feel like and how do the levels flow? One of the things I like most about the game so far is that the various levels have different feels to them -- this isn't just the same three levels over and over again.
At its core, Funkiball clearly follows the tradition of Breakout games -- all of the core mechanics are here, including powerups, different types of bricks, and floating "enemies" to mix things up.

However, the game does well to emphasize its Indiana Jones-esq adventure theme and the levels almost feel as though they have a purpose beyond just "busting stuff up." (I also imagine this effect will be even more pronounced for more casual gamers.) The game sports a fun little "travel the map" device to lay out its levels and has a very well thought-out five-star rating system. Five criteria will earn you one star each if you can achieve them in a level. This provides a good reason to go back and replay levels. There's some more depth to this feature that I've yet to explore, though, so I'll leave it there for now.

The aim towards casual gamers is quite apparent in Funkiball, and I for one thinks its a genuine strength of the new title. Helpful text appears at the bottom to alert you of a new power-up, power-down, or piece of loot you've collected and to suggest new techniques to help you accomplish your goals.

In most Breakout games, pausing the game (something casual gamers probably do much more often than others) was a sure way to lose a ball, as it's difficult to get your bearings back in time to save the ball when you unpause. Funkitron has obviated this pitfall of the genre by putting a (clearly visible) three-second delay before balls will start moving again after the game is unpaused. As much as this feature could, in theory, help people to "cheat" the game by adding a helpful pause whenever they need it, I think this will end up being a very good thing for many players.

Finally, I'd like to make a few comments about the Breakout genre related design decisions apparent in Funkiball Adventure. First of all, you are allowed to whip your paddle across the screen as fast as you can with your mouse. No artificial limitations are imposed here ala Break Quest's physics-modeled velocity system. I personally think this is great, and in fact it's vital that you learn to whip the paddle at Mach III if you want to get the 100% Loot Star in many levels!

Additionally, Funkiball also introduces the long-awaited (for me, at least) ability to "charge" the paddle up and really WHACK the ball with added force (and before the ball is five pixels from the dead zone). This both serves to speed up the ball (which is good if you want to earn the Speed Star or make a shot with tricky timing) and make it more powerful so that it will break through more bricks. This mechanic works VERY well and adds a lot to the game. It may even be fair to say that this feature alone is the deal-maker that single-handedly makes this game stand out from its peers.

So there you have my first impressions of Funkiball Adventure. I'm hoping to do a full review in the near future, and if I do I'll be sure to note it here in my blog.

First Impressions: Civilization IV

2005-11-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

Sid Meier's Civlization IV was released last week, as was Call of Duty 2. I imagine that I'll be posting thoughts and impressions from both games up here, but I want to start with my first impressions of and comments on Civ IV.

Let me start by cutting right to the chase: Civilization IV is The Third Coming. Forget Civ III -- it never existed. Since essentially none of the new features that Civ III added worked well, they effectively don't count. Think of it as a somewhat failed prototype. Civ IV is the real deal. All the features and ideas that Civ III played around with (and a few new ones, like religion) are back, only this time they work. Oh, and they're fun, too.

I honestly believe that this is Civilization as Sid Meier originally envisioned it. This is it: the game of Civilization. Sure, there's still a lot of room for improvement, even in the places that have already improved greatly in this iteration. Sure, it's not all that it could be and some features are lacking in a certain elegance or spark that they could have had. Forget that; it doesn't matter: this game is fun, fun, fun.

First of all, menuing is kept to a minimum. Your advisers' windows are still their own entities, but that's good as they have a lot to visualize for you and you want to be able to explore them as you will. The city menu can be opened, but only if and when you want to analyze the city and make an interesting choice. Otherwise, you can easily direct it's military and production from outside of any menu.

Combat is another big change, and I couldn't be happier with it. It's way better than it used to be: a total success. Instead of confusing issues with a different attack and defense value for each unit, every unit now has only one power rating. What makes combat interesting is that every unit has different perks (such as: +25% power when defending a city) and you also choose new perks for them as they level up. And yes, the experience system is almost perfect in this game; it's fun and it doesn't bog the game down one bit. Oh, and battle is pretty fun to watch in all its 3D-rendered glory.

The usual level of customizability is present so that you can set up a small, icy world for a one-on-one battle to the death or a huge, sprawling archipelago world where sea battles wage constantly. Numerous difficultly levels are presented as usual, and it seems that they may be implemented even better than before. The game also has a lot of little things that make every game unique. For example, the terrain is much more interesting now as it has all kinds of resources scattered about, some of which simply boost food or production and some of which can even double the rate at which you build certain Wonders of the World.

But more than any set of features or specific improvements, I think the most important thing for me to say is that the game just feels right now. That's why I feel this is the Civ that Sid's always wanted. I can understand now why he seemed so genuinely excited about this iteration in his recent interviews. At his age and with his experience, I hardly expected to hear him talk about one of his longest-running game series as though it's really coming alive again for another round. But indeed it has.

A Few Gripes Against Tom Chick's Call of Duty 2 Review

2005-10-27T05:05:00.000-04:00

I'm a little ticked by two (relatively small) things from Tom Chick's recent Yahoo! Games review of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2.
The main infraction is that he (twice!) credited Infinity Ward with creating United Offensive, the expansion pack to the original Call of Duty. CoD:UO was created by Gray Matter Studios, makers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (and Redneck Rampage, by the way). The fact that Infinity Ward didn't make it was actually quite obvious given the fact that was highly visible from the fact that it meant that IW was able to focus on CoD2 for the entire two years since the original game was released (how the heck else would CoD2 be able to come out now?).

Also, if he every played United Offensive, he saw Gray Matter's logo displayed (probably citing them as the developers) in the game's opening. But that's all irrelevant anyways: a journalists checks their facts, esp. when they're as critical as given someone acclaim for making an excellent game. United Offensive is one of the very best expansions I've ever played, and I'm actually playing through it again currently and having a ball.

The next gripe is a pet-peeve of mine. I'm seriously sick of hearing "journalists" complain about the proliferation of World War II games. First of all, everyone and their mom has made this complaint, so stop beating a dead horse. Seriously. At any rate, what annoyed me was when Chick praised CoD2's D-Day invasion level for being engaging and fun, despite the fact that we're probably played through the a similar D-Day invasion "10 or 20 times." Ten or twenty times? I'd like to see that tally.

First of all, I think that's a gross exaggeration. How many WW2 FPS games have there actually been? Not counting expansion packs, which don't really count since relatively few people play those... Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942 (hardly counts as totally multiplayer), and maybe a few more. That means that at most FPS fanatics (like me) have probably only played 6-7 WW2 games, and one or two may not even have D-Day invasion scenes (though it's likely that they all do).

Regardless, though, Chick makes a bold (and common) assumption to think that all or even most FPS fans like me have played every WW2 released. I'm quite the FPS player myself and yet I've never played or even seen someone play Metal of Honor: Allied Assault (in fact, no one I know has ever played it, to my knowledge). Certain memes, like the too-many-WW2-games one get carried along way too easily, in my opinion.

That being said, I agree that there are a striking amount of WW2 out there, and more are being made all the time. While this may be a topic for another post, I'd like to mention that in some ways it's a great thing. The proliferation of WW2 games has encouraged, as far as I can tell, a good deal of innovation within the genre. For example, Call of Duty showed us how to really make players feel like they're part of a larger force and Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 really showed how to make squad-combat and tactics an integral part of an FPS (and it told its story very, very well).

Response: Five Ways to Save Video Games

2005-10-26T05:10:00.000-04:00

A Games.net opinion piece got my attention today. Specifically, a few careless analyses by the author, Sidney Shuman, seemed to demonstrate the fact that a drastically (and dangerously) shallow and misguided viewpoint was being taken in some places. The article was called Five Ways to Save Video Games, and it ended up given dishonorable mention to three of the most important games in history as top offenders.

I'll get right to the point: Half-Life and System Shock 2 were criticized for utilizing the "sole survivor of a catastrophe" cliche as the heart of their plots. I almost don't know where to begin with describing how naive these labelings are. First of all, Half-Life did not pit you as the sole survivor -- a good deal of the games revolutionary appeal was that you actually interacted with NPCs in interesting ways (only two interesting ways, but that was big for its time).

But that's not even the real problem I have with their labeling. The real problem is that they are overlooking the fundamentally critical fact that Half-Life wasn't about it's story -- it was about it's storytelling. The authors of almost every critical retrospective of Half-Life I've read realize this, yet somehow Sidney misses it. Similarly, System Shock 2 was all about its storytelling. It didn't rely on having a gripping story; it didn't have to. What it had was storytelling that constantly kept your imagination going at 100mph and genuinely kept your nerves on end.

What really ticks me off about this kind of oversight and what amounts in my mind to ignorant classics-bashing is that it distracts attention from what really matters in games -- the experience that the player has. As far as I can tell, Sidney's intent was to in some way shock us with the revelation that these supposedly awesome games fell into the usual pitfalls. It's true that they fell into some typical gaming pitfalls, but not at all for the reasons Sydney names in the article. Further, the games mentioned are clearly the counter-examples to whatever rules are being presented, as they are the definitive titles that in so many minds defined what games should be like in certain ways. In Sidney's defense, the article does say that "[they] forgive [System Shock 2]" for using the cliche. But forgiveness isn't necessary; it isn't as though SS2 was guilty of a bad story but somehow made up for it in other ways. System Shock 2 showed us how a simple story can be just right for a tense and involving game so long as the story is told well and in ways that befit the game's pace.

You see, I agree with Sidney that game designers need to seriously reconsider how they think about game plots. But the reason they need to do so is because they need to learn (from the likes of HL and SS2) that the plot itself shouldn't be what players think about in the game. The story -- what is happening, where they fit into it, and how they're affecting its events -- is what players should be thinking about. As has been said by many others before me, the story that players care about in Half-Life is simply everything they've done and seen up to that point. The plot is just a way to help guide the designers' and the players' minds through the story to understand what's happening. Why will I be ambushed by marines in the next room? Because they're here to kill all the scientists, and I'm one of them -- I've seen too much (and I have saved games and screenshots to prove it!).

The second thing I wanted to point out in response to Sidney's article is that Final Fantasy (VI or VII, take your pick) shouldn't be labeled as a chief offender in the "epic plot cliche" category. Final Fantasy is the series of games that largely defined how to do epics right in games. Some day, I'd like to dedicate a post to just that topic alone, but for now let me just say the following. Final Fantasy makes epics work because they (at least try to) make you care about the characters and the world you're trying so desperately to save.

If there's a general message I'd like to get across, it's this: avoid criticizing games you don't understand. If you don't know why a game succeeds in offering a compelling experience, don't pretend to be able to criticize it for using common idioms. In all likelihood, it's games like the ones you're criticizing that show why those idioms seem like good ideas to designers to begin with, and the fact is that most designers are just very, very poor copycats. Complaining about the lonely survivor cliche and then panning Half-Life for using it is like complaining about a proliferation of World War II movies and blaming Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List for both taking place during World War II. In case it isn't obvious: the irony is that neither of those two movies are even about World War II (or the Holocaust) -- they're about people, and they're two of the finest popular film examinations of the nature of a man's heart I've ever seen or heard of. So please, think before you label.

Is the Gaming Press Featuring the Wrong Games?

2005-10-25T20:49:00.000-04:00

In this month's column, Matt Sakey points out the fact that over-promising seems to be the de facto way to publicize your game in the current market. (Has this ever not been the case? In the last 10-15 years?) Sakey aptly points to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion as an excellent counter-example (even better if the game turns out to be good and a huge hit). A more proven example is EA's Red Alert 2. It was a genuine shock when they first announced the game, stating firmly that it was in the later stages of beta testing (including design/balancing tweaks) and would be released in 6 months. And in fact they did released the game right on schedule. As a result, RA2 was undoubtedly the most polished game of the series and sold well to boot, recovering an almost terminally disenfranchised fan base, so much of which had been jaded by the shortcomings of the much-delayed and over-hyped Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Amazingly, it seemed that EA actually learned from prior mistakes, specifically those made with prior Westwood games.

His comments are very conveniently timed for me, as the media coverage of the recently released Quake IV has pushed me to my limit with this kind of seemingly unbounded foolishness. It would be an understatement to say that I was highly disappointed to see Quake IV on the cover of Edge magazine this month (October 2005 issue). Allow me to explain why, at some length.

First of all, let me make it clear: I like Raven Software, the people who made Quake IV . They have an outstanding track record and have even innovated several times, though arguably in somewhat negligible ways. I'd also like it to be clear that I make no assumptions about the overall excellence or worthlessness of Quake IV. From the reviews I've read, it sounds like an entirely mediocre FPS with technically excellent graphics and maybe a cool feel to it. That means that it's probably just about right for a great number of gamers out there (I'm sure I'd even like it, myself). But those are not the gamers who complain about a lack of innovation in the industry -- or at least they'd better not be.

And that's really the heart of what bothers me so much. There seems to be a great hypocrisy occurring here. The editors of many good games magazines like PC Gamer and Edge talk about a need for more innovation; their readers talk about a need for less coverage of the next "whoopie-do" FPS in favor of something more uniquely creative and potentially revolutionary. At the same time, these magazines seem to feature, time and time again, hardly anything but the next three first-person shooters, seemingly regardless of whether they actually seem likely to add anything significant to the industry at all. Understandable as it may be from the standpoint of a short-term business viewpoint, it feels nonetheless disingenuous, degrading, and frustrating. And if it doesn't change, it may well contribute to a widespread dampening innovation in electronic games, especially high-budget ones.

That said, I'm very glad to see that PC Gamer more or less panned Quake IV in their review. Or perhaps I should say they panned it in the text of the review. The four pages dedicated to the review (as opposed to the usual one or two pages other games get) certainly gave the wrong message, in my opinion, since there ultimately wasn't much to say about the game. In their defense, you could say the reviewer used the four pages to talk about how little there was to talk about, further shining an appropriately humiliating light on the shallowness and uncertain identity of Raven's latest product. I suspect it had more to do with them "wanting to give their readers what they wanted." But have they?

It seems to me that we've learned nothing from the utter failure of Doom 3 to provide any value beyond purely insubstantial graphical innovation in static realism and a few cheap thrills. (Well, okay, in PC Gamer's case, they'll undoubtedly stand behind their overwhelmingly good review of Doom 3, which was written by their editor-in-chief, so I guess that's just a lost cause....)

I realize this will sound like pure hindsight is coloring my memory, but I can remember clearly that Doom 3 never quite convinced me of its potential. In fact, I remember reading PC Gamer's original world-exclusive first preview of the game way back when. I remember reading Carmack and friends' comments about how they were going to stick to the old-school Doom feeling and style of gameplay, eschewing such modern decadence as exhibited in such games as Half-Life and System Shock 2.

Such comments struck me as rather perplexing at the time, and for good reason. How could you stick to the good old-fashioned Doom formula when you could clearly only render a few enemies on the screen at once? Doom was all about rooms full of demons, waiting for you to blast them to bits with total abandon. But Doom 3 was supposedly going to be about suspenseful lighting and sudden surprises. So what gives? Someone should have called it out as suspect; we probably all should have.

Id's supposed design ideals reeked of utter nonsense, and it really, really showed in the final product. I won't go into a rant about Doom 3 's failures here, partly for time and length concerns, and partly because Craig Perko has already done such a good job of ripping Doom 3 a new one.

And now, the meat of the point I'm trying to make with this post: we need to learn to know better than to expect great things from a game when the evidence suggests that mediocrity is more likely. I can forgive the media for covering games like F.E.A.R. and Prey heavily: both games promised (at least some) innovation and were developed by reputable companies. But what did Quake IV promise... team-based combat? Did anyone really believe they'd accomplish that in a way that even holds a candle to the likes of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 or even Call of Duty? Was Quake IV supposed to innovate in terms of graphics? It's claim to fame there would have been that it's the Doom 3 engine with more than four characters on the screen at once (sometimes, at least); sorry, that's just not a very bold claim by today's standards.

Ah, yes. Now I remember. People were excited about it because it's the next Quake game. After all, it's freakin' Quake, for goodness sake. But the Quake series has always been about tech demos and multiplayer. Well, Quake IV never even tried to offer a unique and compelling multiplayer experience, so we can forget that, which leaves us with only graphics to be considered. It made a lot of sense for the first three games to focus on technology -- the engine was always at the top of its game (no pun intended), destined to become the foundation of many great games to come.

These days, however, Id has some stiff competition from the likes of Valve and Epic. It seems to me that very few people are genuinely excited about the Doom 3 engine in particular anymore, and games journalists no doubt are amongst the relatively unimpressed. Beautiful (and fun) games like Far Cry have shown us that there's much fun to be had in the great (virtual) outdoors and vehicular combat has suggested a rebirth in our awareness of the bliss of mobility and adventure in games (for another example, consider all the fuss about mounts in any MMORPG). Doom 3's performance in open areas is famously abysmal. That doesn't mean it's not a good engine; I'm sure it's a great engine. But it does seem to suggest that the level of hype over Quake IV was entirely unwarranted.

It's not that I don't love first-person shooters; I absolutely love them, and I own far more FPS games than any other genre. And it's not that I don't get excited about new FPS games and their wonderful, awe-inspiring graphics. I'm all but drooling in anticipation of games like Oblivion. But the games I truly look forward to, and the ones which I believe deserve the most attention from the press, are the ones that also offer interesting gameplay innovations -- gameplay that will keep you coming back for more and more of that delicious (and pretty) gaming action and really make your purchase and time worthwhile. If the gaming media wishes to remain legitimate as a source of genuine criticism, and especially if high quality magazines like Edge and PC Gamer wish to keep a high level of credibility and gotta-read-it quality, they need to think more carefully about what, why, and yes, Matt, when they decide to begin covering and hyping a game.

They Hunger: Lost Souls Announced!

2005-10-22T08:51:00.000-04:00

This is the best Half-Life-related news since... Half-Life 2. Neil Manke and friends over at Black Widow Games, have announced They Hunger: Lost Souls. Since you may not be familiar with Manke and why this is a big announcement, let me familiarize you. Manke and friends originally got famous for their outstanding Quake levels. PC Gamer loved them so much, they commissioned Manke to do U.S.S. Darkstar and then (upon its outstanding success) They Hunger, which itself spawned four sequels. Both Darkstar and Hunger were some of the best single-player content ever released for Half-Life, which really is saying something.

I can also honestly say that They Hunger changed what I thought was possible in terms of atmosphere in first-person shooters. Moreover, I'd be willing to bet that it's what inspired the "We Don't Go to Ravenholm" chapter of Half-Life 2 itself. Undoubtedly, They Hunger exhibited the highest level of quality anyone could have imagined coming out of the mod scene. And now they're back for real.

Lost Souls will be a commercial title (no doubt for a fraction of AAA title costs) allowing the team to match the new standard for quality that Valve has set out with Half-Life 2. I always dreamed of what Manke and friends could do with a next-generation engine like Source, and my dreams (and the shared dream of many) will finally be coming true! (/me jumps for joy)

Lost Coast Release is Imminent

2005-10-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

Valve Software announced today that The Lost Coast is planned for release next week. I for one am looking forward to it greatly. It's not a game, no. It's a tech demo built out of abandoned content originally intended for Half-Life 2. But there are a few reasons why I'm looking forward to it. In general, I think that the work that Valve is doing with their Source engine and Half-Life 2 is good for gaming for a few reasons, but I'll leave those for another post.

The most obvious and present reason I'm looking forward to it is that as of a few weeks ago, I have, for the first time in my life, a very serious and well-prepared computer gaming machine. I bought NVIDIA's wonderful GeForce 6600GT card (from Chaintech), which matches up very well with my AMD 3200+ w/ 1GB of RAM. The worst part of my machine now is the monitor -- but it's more than fair and the price was right, if you know what I mean (it was free).

I will say, though, that I really respect and admire what Valve is doing here. It's a tech demo, but it's a playable tech demo. You can play with it. And did I mention it's free? And of course it demonstrates the marvel of what a year of technological advancement and a few tightened constraints on hardware requirements can do.

The focus technology of The Lost Coast is, of course, the High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting. But that's far from the sum total of what Lost Coast is said to bring to the table. Also of note are the highly detailed character models, or at least the one we know of for sure -- the now famous fisherman. The fisherman undoubtedly sports the most graphically realistic real-time-rendered represenation of a person we've ever seen. (Well, okay, Unreal Engine 3 may also be capable of roughly the same stuff, but I've yet to see a real demo of that to prove it, though we'll know for sure soon.)

Alright, that's enough "gee-wiz what awesome graphics" hype for now. Sorry if this indulgence into such common-folk drooling over graphics offends my more elitist readers, I just couldn't resist.

(Updates to follow.)

Approaching the Shadow of the Colossus

2005-10-19T20:55:00.000-04:00

Shadow of the Colossus, the newest title from the people who made the famed Ico, was released yesterday. Darius piqued my interest in it, as did IGN's review, which scored the game a whopping 9.7/10 points.

I've never played or even seen someone play Ico, but from what I've always been told of it I'm confident I would like it. So, as I happened to come by a local games store today I picked it up. I was impressed that the nice girl (behind the counter) there knew of Ico and Shadow and happily located and passed over the disks to me. (I also picked up my third copy of Amplitude, to give away as a gift -- a topic for another post)

Okay, so I've only played it for about two hours, meaning I've defeated the first three colossi with only a small amount of side-tracking exploration of the world. With that context laid down, here are my initial impressions, thoughts, and reflections relating to the game.

First of all, I'd like to take a shot at describing the general aesthetic of the game. This is a game of wondrous exploration and travel, punctuated pointedly by distinct conflicts with an enemy roughly 4,000 times your size. It's just you and your horse; and there's a mysterious voice coming (or so it seems) from the sunshine from the sky into a rather magical and significant temple. The voice tells you to kill, so you seek out your target and eliminate it, defying all possible intuitions as to the importance of being larger than your opponent in battle.

The feeling in this game is of wonder... this is clearly a magical world, and yet it's so barren. Only the various (and sparse) wildlife scattered throughout the land show signs of genuine life. Visually, the game is about light and dark. Super bright spots dull out the rest of the world from your view when in sunshine; in darkness a sense of almost surreal calm and cool fills the air. Each battlefield is a mix of light and dark areas, with a bright sky in which the light is so often eclipsed by the massive silhouette of your most present antagonist.

Spacially, it's about getting from point A to point B. In travel, it's very two-dimensional. Follow your map, and occasionally your nose, and you'll arrive at your destination. But in battle it's very three-dimensional, yet in a decidedly non-Euclidean way. You must get from point A to point B, but point A is where you are (wherever that is) and point B is on a moving target -- a moving target that is targeting you. So it's a dance, really. You dance with your colossal foe, hoping to use the nature of its titanic proportions to your advantage.

Emotionally... well, that part is just beginning for me. I'll only say this: the profound sense of wonder seems married to a rather macabre sense of mortal doom. You hunt down your over-sized opponents to defeat them. But your victory seems to mean losing a part of yourself, perhaps to eventually be given to another, but at a cost unknown. For whatever reasons, the game reminds me of a dream. You're on an adventure and it's all very exciting. You have a worthy goal and the will to pursue it. But as it goes along you begin to realize more and more that it's really a nightmare, and your final destination is hardly any different from where you began; it may in fact be precisely where you began. Only once you get there (again?), you now must bear the burden of understanding fully the nature of the journey and who you truly are.

That's all for now. I'll definitely update with further impressions as my experiences with the game grow.

I'll close with one parting tidbit: I can feel it... I can start to see it now. I'm starting to understand what the game that will eventually eclipse Final Fantasy VI in my heart will be like. Shadow is only a beginning. But it's part of the beginning of something big.

GameTap Trial Period Ending Soon

2005-09-28T08:11:00.000-04:00

For those who may be interested, the chance to get 4 months of GameTap for $30 is running out (afterwards they're shooting for $15/month) on Sept. 30th. Visit the GameTap website to try it out. If you're still not sure if you should try it, see my initial impressions.

GameTap: Initial Impressions

2005-09-16T16:36:00.000-04:00

Finally, GameTap is here. What is GameTap you ask? It's an online downloaded games and multimedia playground service that, for a start at least, is focusing on allowing users to play dozens (if not soon hundreds) of "classic" games. Games range in dates from Intellivision to modern Windows games like Splinter Cell and Heroes of Might and Magic IV. GameTap first came to my attention when Matt Sakey, in his infinite glory, mentioned it in his article about saving old and obscure games from extinction.

The service is run by Turner Entertainment, so it certainly has deep pockets backing it up. Hopefully this means they will be aggressive and will continue to improve the system and add games in the near future.

So without further ado, here are my initial impressions of the system by selected criteria:

User Interface

The user interface is a mixed bag.

Text is clear and easy to read. I had no problems finding the menus I wanted, though there is still a lot of room for improvement. The interface uses a strange sort of 3D simulation look which many will find unnecessarily flashy and obtuse.

Overall, the interface is pretty good, but I cannot help but long for a somewhat more minimalist look to the system. Unfortunately, this type of aesthetic is most likely at odds with the MTV/G4 Tech TV look that the system so obviously strives for.

Administration

Setting up an account was easy, though unfortunately they require you to give your payment information in order to make an account. So really, you're signing up for 4 months for $30 as an introductory rate. I don't know if you can cancel on the months after the first one, but personally I don't care because I think $30 is a fair price for the first 4 months.

Updates to the library are automatic. Unfortunately, they prevent you from otherwise using the system (why, when all it's adding is more content?) and hang the computer (badly, even with a P4 3.4Ghz processor).

I have a problem right now where Beyond Good and Evil and Rainbow Six won't start up. I figured it was a common problem, so I waited about a week to see if it just went away. It didn't, so late yesterday night I sent in a trouble ticket explaining the problem. Officially, they had 24 hours to "get back to me" on the problem. However, early this morning I'd already received a response from a representative. In his response, he explained to me clearly what I was supposed to do. All I had to do is to run this nice, simple utility they'd put in my Start menu (in an appropriate place) and click on a button there to send them the report. I did so, and casually inquired as to whether the utility was new. In his next response, the representative confirmed that it was new and "extremely handy," thanking me for running it. He informed me that the problem should be solved in the next version of GameTap, which was due to go "very soon."

Assuming the problem is solved soon, I will be quite happy. Regardless, the response was fast and friendly. Hopefully, they'll maintain this level of customer service as the system gets more and more populated.

Game Highlights

* Beyond Good and Evil (oh, yeah!)
* Heroes of Might and Magic IV (even though III was a better game)
* Worms Blast (good general interest game)
* All the Sonic the Hedgehog games (sweet)
* Shining Force (They also have Shining in the Darkness, I'm hoping for Shining Force II)

Multiplayer

Unfortunately, GameTap does not yet support online multiplayer, though it is implied that they realize this would be a killer feature. As it is, they do at least make it fairly easy to play with two people on a keyboard, save for the fact that you can't make your own control schemes. (Grah!)

Feedback

Finally, I feel I should mention that despite all the problems (some major) I have with the system, they do one important thing right: Feedback is VERY easy to give. I've already submitted two suggestions. It only takes a few clicks and typing into a text field to send a suggestion. Very well done interface; now let's just hope they're listening.

Overall, I'm quite happy with GameTap so far. I'm having a ball playing all the games, and it's nice to see many titles that I've never heard of or played. If Beyond Good and Evil is any indication of the quality of the lesser-known (or lesser-selling, at least) games they intend to offer, it certainly bodes well for GameTap's future.

Edge Magazine: First Impressions

2005-09-14T09:36:00.000-04:00

I've finished reading through (front to back) my very first issue of the UK's Edge magazine. Edge has long been touted as simply the best video games magazine, period. So when my friend, Dave Ludwig, showed me the (August 2005) issue of Edge that he'd bought at Barnes & Noble (who are now exclusively selling Edge in America), I had to give it a try.

Within a week, I'd decided to buy Dave a new copy of the same issue and keep the one he lent me. It's so good I wanted to keep the issue forever. So why is it so good?

Language

Edge is clearly a magazine that is aimed towards the older gaming audience. You know, that audience of people who grew up playing games. (emphasis on the fact that we grew up, please)

The targeting of an older and more educated/sophisticated audience really shows in their use of language. I'm already getting used to it, but perhaps a dozen times (in a single issue!), their writers had me searching for context -- or a dictionary -- to fully appreciate what they are saying about a game. Mind you, I don't read nearly as much as I should, so this is likely to happen any time advanced vocabulary is used. Still, it's nice to have a gaming magazine challenge me to learn new ways of expressing my thoughts and ideas.

Indeed, the advanced vocabulary goes along with a more sophisticated outlook on games. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on that sophistication right now, so I'll have to blog that at a later time.

Of course, quite amusingly, this issue is compounded by the fact that they seem to be using quite a few British colloquialisms in their writing. I actually enjoy seeing new phrases and wondering if they're simply above my vocab level or whether they're just being "so darned British."

Skepticism

As much as I respect the idea that journalists should try to stay positive in their outlook of things-to-come, I think it needs to take a rest in the games journalism field. The fact is that most of what we see is, ultimately, crap, and it's time gamers look for journalists who are willing to tell it how it is. We need honesty and we need journalists with a far enough view and wide enough perspective to point out the industries fallacies and not sugar-coat everything.

The main feature of the August 2005 issue is a "look inside the future" (of gaming consoles). Throughout the issue, the voices expressed are predominantly critical of Sony and Microsoft's marketing strategies and skeptical of their claims and tunnel-vision arguments.

This is not mere sophomoric skepticism, however. Many writers express their concerns in a very educated way, citing precedent and noting trends. Indeed, I agree with most of what was said. But regardless of which parts I agree and disagree with, the opinions are well made and were obviously not censored by a "sunshine and roses" editor.

Expert Testimony

On the topic of who-says-what, I must whole-heartedly applaud Edge for its choice of whom to ask for opinions on the so-called "next generation" of games. (The "next generation" of games, for those of you unfamiliar with games industry hype machine, is a nebulous term that refers to a generation of supposedly radically improved games which will be made possibly by new hardware)

The majority of people interviewed were seasoned veterans of the industry who have been making games for long enough to appreciate how dubious the premise of a "new generation" of games is. Such people as David Perry and Gabe Newell (and many in between) were interviewed. Most of them had different perspectives on the current and near future status of the industry, but all of them had interesting, and often wise, things to say.

Interesting Columns

The columns in the August 2005 issue definitely left me with a strong impression of the quality and breadth of the magazine's discussions of games as an art, craft, hobby, and cultural entity.

This issue's columns covered a nice variety of issues. One was about the emotional impact that a good ending -- or the lack of a good ending -- can have on a player. The second was about the lack of religion in games and churches who are trying to get back into the popular mindset through contemporary media such as the web. Finally, the idiocy of Microsoft and Sony implying that numbers (hardware specifications) can give a fair indication of the quality of games is illustrated by comparison to using the height and eye color of a man to imply the quality of his character. Take that, Sony and Microsoft; he's just about dead on!

Multi-Market Coverage

Though it's a bit early to get a good feeling on this, so far I've felt that the magazine's coverage of PC vs. console vs. mobile games has been very fair and even. What's more, they don't treat PC games, by and large, as though they're a separate hobby from console gaming. While it may be true that the majority of gamers play (predominantly) on either the PC or consoles, it sure as hell isn't true for all of us.

I've always wanted to read a magazine that appreciates the fact that, in a very real way, PC games simply focus on different genres, if you will, than console games. Therefore, if so many gamers enjoy many different genres, why should we act as though PC and console games are exclusive? I haven't touched a sports game since Madden 95, but I love smooth and sexy platformers like Sly Cooper. Similarly, I haven't played a traditional, turn-based computer war game... ever, and yet I love most RTS and simulation games I play.

In other words: I play games for what they are, and not what audience they're "meant" for. Hopefully, Edge will turn out to be a magazine for people like me.

Layout

Now here's a controversial, or at least highly debatable, aspect of any magazine. Personally, my design aesthetics tend to be quite odd. I find some magazines, like Play, to be too minimalist and almost post-modern in their presentations. (not to mention the text is just too damned small -- a particularly bad decision as gamers get older and older)

On the other hand, I dislike the super-flashy look in which sites like IGN and GameSpot drown their content. I'm trying to read about games, for goodness sake, stop flashing things in and out of my vision to distract me.

Overall, I like the visual design of Edge. The text does seem a bit small to me, but I do see this as a necessary evil and I feel it's well justified by the quality of what's written with the text. One may wonder if too many pictures are used at times -- especially with game reviews -- but I'd say the jury is still out on that one. I like pretty pictures, and they choose them well.

Cultural Perspective

The first thing that grabbed my attention about Edge, and the reason I borrowed it from Dave in the first place, was the (August 2005) feature on World of Warcraft. The amazing thing about the feature is that it wasn't a review, preview, or retrospective. It was simply a no-bullshit, ground-up look at one of the greatest gaming phenomena of our day. What I mean is they looked at the game from a player's perspective; they actually started a few characters, joined a few guilds, and talked to people about how and why they play.

The article tried to speculate on why so many people are playing WoW. In particular, they wished to shed some light on why so many non-PC gamers and non-gamers (or "casual" gamers) were playing WoW -- and playing it in a committed, almost (gulp) hardcore way. I can honestly say that it was one of most interesting and enriching articles I've read about games in years.

Indeed, when I first finished reading the August 2005 issue of Edge and started to reflect upon it an interesting thought occurred to me. I honestly felt like I'd gained something far more than a merely up-to-date view of games; I felt as though I'd actually become more sophisticated in my view and understanding of games, even if only marginally so. But hey, that was just one issue. I can't wait for the next one!

A Rockstar Out of Control?

2005-08-15T17:41:00.000-04:00

Personally, I'm a bit upset with Rockstar right now. I'm concerned about some of what they've done and said recently. I think that Rockstar is setting a bad precedent and a bad message to the public.

One of their recent press releases has said two things that to me seem not only wrong in the moral sense, but which may well be very dangerous to the games industry as a whole.

First, their statement mentions something along the lines of how finalization is a very involved process and it's not uncommon for unused material to be left on the disk. The first thing I hate about this statement is the implication that they are vindicated by other people's wrongs. Just because it's "not uncommon" does not mean it's acceptable. In fact, it's all the more reason why they should be ashamed of it. EA has also been pulling this kind of BS recently, citing how it's so common in the games industry for people to be almost criminally overworked and under-compensated (arguably, anyway).

Secondly, to my knowledge, what is "not uncommon" in the industry is for unused material such as extra textures or an unused shade of green to be left on a disk, maybe a spare gun model or two. Shame on Rockstar for implying that such minor oversights are fairly comparable to leaving obviously objectionable material on their disk, esp. when they probably knew well that it would violate their agreement with the ESRB (and therefore retailers and customers).

The second thing I dislike about their statement is the way in which they point the finger at the so-called "modder" who unlocked their content. They are muddling the concept of a modder adding (semantically, morally divergent) new content to a game and the fact that they put unacceptable material on their disk and did not disclose it to the ESRB, who clearly demanded they do so. The difference is essentially comparable to the difference between some guy putting a gas powered engine in a nail gun and killing people with it and Black & Decker shipping millions of portable, gas-powered nail guns to people without licenses.

The end result of this is that Rockstar is itself making this whole situation much worse because it is making game developers sound unreasonable, clueless, and out of control. They are (proudly?) holding out a blase attitude towards the generally accepted needs of society and pretending as though they are being sufficiently professional about it because others are doing it (so they say).

Oh, it's "not uncommon" for unchecked material to be left on disk, huh? Well, it's also not uncommon for an industry or medium to become regulated damned near out of existence, either (or at least it's easily conceivable). Imagine, if you will, that robots started going wild and killing people (a somewhat extreme example, but bear with me). In the wake of such accidents, it's hard to imagine a whole lot of free-spirited and unregulated companies surviving to compete for the consumer dollar on robots. It's hard to believe that Wal-Mart (or any other major store) would carry such products, and it's a fair bet that the American government would over-react and start banning (or trying to ban) robots and related technology.

Perhaps the example seems far-fetched or far removed from games. Like it or not, computer games are being seen my a lot of Americans right now in just such a light. People see computer games as though they're vicious, evil little robots designed by mad scientists who care not for the health of children and wish only to make a profit off of their destruction. We cannot allow this image to propagate far or allow it to stick in the minds of Americans.

If you agree with me here, let us all speak out loudly and clearly against the implications Rockstar is making. We do want to work with the rest of society to keep the right content in only the right hands. We want nothing more than to further and further legitimize our medium and offer it safely to the largest number of people possible. We do care about and wish to support the needs of parents who wish to look after the upbringing of their kids and we do not wish to cause them harm!

Again, let us say it loud and clear. The process of growing up into established society is just beginning for us, and it is an important step. The IGDA is at the front of this initiative along with the ESA, the ESRB, and others. Go check them out if you're interested in being part of the solution.

The Need to Make the Sell

2005-08-11T18:02:00.000-04:00

In Tom Sloper's column this month, Tom has responded to an email I sent him in response to the writer he answered in his column in May. The writer told Tom about how he has done both programming and art-related works in preparation for his games career. His complaint was that whenever he goes to an interview for an art position he's seen as a programmer and whenever he goes to an interview for a programming job he's seen as an artist.

Tom's response in May was essentially that the writer needed to start considering specialization so that he would be good enough at something that he'd be appealing to the potential employers.

My response, for those of you who can't go read it right away, was essentially that it sounds like the writer is failing to sell himself as a programmer to the programming interviewers and as an artist to the artistic interviewers. I also argued that the need to do so is not only sensible in general but that for games jobs in particular interviewers should be looking for an interviewee's ability to communicate ideas effectively. If you can't communicate your own value as a programmer or artist, what good will you be trying to work with others on projects?

Originally, I was sparked to write my response because I fancy myself somewhat of a generalist myself. My argument is that those with well-rounded educations are more effective with their skills than their peers.

I imagine few in the industry could say that they've never experienced the frustration of working with programmers who can't communicate well. From artist/designer to programmer the wrong code is created, features are misunderstood. In the other direction, the best (potential) features are misused or missed entirely and adapting to changes in the systems is as fun as gouging your eye out with a spoon. I know from the accounts of pros that that it's far easier to work with artists who understand basic programming concepts and limitations.

So as an employer wouldn't you want to hire programmers and artists with a fair understanding of "the other side" of a production? So that's my argument about interviews for game development positions -- that interviewers should be looking for candidates who have a good general understanding of the game development process and who can communicate well. So if you can't even communicate the value of your own experiences and skills to the interviewer, why should they believe you'd do better with development teams and management in the company?

The funny thing is that I have a real hard time taking my own advice here, in a sense. I often feel as though I have little to show (read: to sell) of my experiences and skills. Partly, I am correct, and this is due to the fact that I've finished very few of my projects I've started. Partly, it's also because I am very young and new to my career. Okay, fair enough.

But being strong-hearted and idealistic on the inside but meek and reclusive on the outside is no good. I have to face up to who I want to be as a game developer and how I really, truly want to pursue my career. If I don't do that it's no good, it's all a waste of time. So in a way my own letter to Tom, having subsequently been published on the IGDA's site, that now comes back to haunt me.

Cool.

Considering World of Warcraft

2005-07-22T12:46:00.000-04:00

I'm screwed. That's it; I'm done.

I think I'm out of options. I have no choice but to try playing World of Warcraft.

There are several reasons, really, why I've come to this place in my life. Let's start with a few...

1.) Greg Kasavin reviewed it, and gave it 9.5/10 points. He's the same guy who reviewed (and loved) Guild Wars. (I also love Guild Wars.) I looked at his games collection and his taste in games -- this guy seems to really get it. He's also been working with Gamespot since 1996.

2.) He says the game is good for people who don't always have a lot of time to play. In fact, they have a feedback system to help you level faster for a time if you haven't played for a week or two.

3.) He really does say all the right things about how it's a game I simply must experience as a gamer. And for me, that's a big selling point. With most of the games I buy, including Guild Wars, the purchase is largely motivated by a desire to experience something new. Katamari Damacy is a great example of this. I mean -- I bought a PS2 pretty much just so that I could play KD and a few other radical titles, like Amplitude.

4.) My friend, Ty, has been playing it for the greater portion of the summer. I told him that I was skeptical of the game's ability to overcome the hurdles that MMO's face, but nonetheless was secretly interested in seeing how his experiences went. As it turns out, he and I have had some good conversations about MMO's in general, and WoW in particular. The result is that he's just about convinced me of its value. Almost. Combined with the above points... I think it's just too much.

5.) Okay, this really was the last straw. The entire game came to my home recently on PC Gamer's demo disk (which for me turned into a DVD this month -- yay!), along with the offer of a 14-day free trial. In the end, I think this is what I've truly been waiting for.

And now it's here.

Crap.

Cheating in Jedi Knight II

2005-06-27T08:57:00.000-04:00

Recently, I had a great time while cheating my way around Raven Software's excellent game, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. There were a few reasons I did this, and I'd like to discuss what I learned from it as a game developer.

The first reason I began using cheats in JKII is that there are several parts of JKII that just are not any fun whatsoever for me. None. In fact, they are so aggravating that without cheats I might not bother re-playing the game at all (as has been the case with far too many games in the past).

Second, it's a damned shame that just about as soon as you get all your kick-ass Jedi powers in the game -- it's over! Cheating certainly allowed me to fix that problem post-haste.

Third, I wanted to explore the game world and experience the majesty of its Star Wars universe on my own terms. Let me say that again: I wanted to explore the game's world on my terms.

Before I go any further, I should mention that I'd beaten the game twice before ever touching a single cheat code. It's also worth noting that the only reason I went back to play Jedi Knight II was to see what new fun I could cook up by cheating. And that's exactly what I found so interesting about the experience: I was cooking up new fun in a game I otherwise would no longer be interested in. In fact, I was able to reach new levels of Star Wars-y goodness via these cheats.

The second thing to mention is that several of these "cheats" are really just hidden functionality that does not explicitly benefit the player. I will explain all this in detail below.

The first type of cheats I used were the traditional get-around-the-game's-limitations cheats, which were probably first put into games as debugging tools (and certainly are to this day). Interestingly enough, players such as myself now use these to simply skip the less desirable parts of games and otherwise relieve the aggravation of annoying (and needlessly required) parts of games. These cheats included such classics as turning clipping off (which also adds the ability to fly) and invincibility.

The next category of cheat I used aren't exactly cheats in the sense we usually mean. They do not give resources or break/make exceptions to rules of the game or anything like that. What they do is essentially add new features to the game, some of which the player may make strategic use of.

First, there's the "g_saberRealisticCombat 1" code which turns on what is arguably the game's most killer feature: light sabers dismember and damage you and your opponents realistically. If it touches a neck, the head comes off; if it touches the middle of a leg, the leg gets cut in half. First of all, this (obviously) adds to the coolness of the game in general. Second, it makes your kills much more cinematic in a truly awesome way. Third, it helps you learn how to control your saber in general.

Normally, the game doesn't give you any useful feedback on what you're doing right or wrong in combat. With this cheat on, it's very obvious what is going right and wrong -- at least at the end of a battle, and that's when you have the most time to reflect upon your actions, anyway.

The "cheat" code "thereisnospoon" causes the camera to rotate around your character cinematically while the world moves in slow motion. At first, I couldn't see how this would be useful or practical. Then, I thought to map it to a key on my keyboard; the fun shortly thereafter ensued. First, I used it to simply get full enjoyment from some cinematic kills on my enemies. But that evolved into a new game of its own: figuring out the timing perfectly such that the camera would be looking in the right place at the right time to get the view of the carnage.

Combined with the realistic combat code, this really helped me learn to control my saber. In other words, cheating enhanced the normal elements of the game in a way which actually helped me do what the designers intended.

There are also the almost obligatory "spawn entities" cheats here, as well. The wonderful (and unexpected) thing is that most enemies and allies you can spawn come with functional, pre-defined AI that will allow you to fight them as you would any other enemy in the game -- anywhere, anytime, however you like. They will even automatically fight each other if they are of opposite alignments (Good vs. Evil). It's very cool.

The third type of cheat I used were of the More Power variety (insert Tim the Tool Man reference). For example, I often enjoyed experience of using unlimited level-3 Force Lightning on many different levels of the game. Without cheats, there are only (I believe) three levels on which you can ever use it -- what a waste! The benefits of these cheats are, I hope, fairly obvious.

While using these cheats certainly reduced what many would see as the challenge of the game (nearly eliminating it altogether, in fact), for me they more importantly opened up doors to new challenges that I created for myself. For example, the challenge would be to find the most cinematic and bad-assed way to mutilate my opponents with my lightning. Or I might reduce my health to near-death and then put myself in a sudden death situation where I must use my lightning to kill my opponents without ever being hit.

Ultimately, it's when you combine all three types of "cheats" in the game that the fun really begins. You use the first type to get to a cool part of the game (a dramatic canyon, for example) and skip the boring stuff (like tedious, time-consuming jumping puzzles). Then you use some power-ups and some special features to spawn dozens of enemies (and possibly some allies) and duke it out in grand Star Wars tradition.

It seems a shame that with all this technology in place Raven (JKII's makers) wasn't able to add in some sort of side-game that made it easier to stage multi-Jedi fights. I'm sure the reasons were for timeliness of release and quality control. Perhaps they could have gone the Half-Life 2 route and released a free add-on (e.g. Half-Life 2 Deathmatch) for the mod scene and enthusiastic players like myself.

At any rate, I hope this account will help communicate a few ideas that are important for game developers. The first is that allowing players to get around the necessity of repeating every single (esp. tedious) part of you game can be a great thing that allows players to have more fun in your game. The second is that fewer levels, characters, etc. but more emphasis on what really makes your game cool can ultimately result in a game with more replayability and variety overall.

Finally, I'd like to say that I think we need to change the way we, as designers, think about cheating in general. Part of this is learning the all-important (and general) lesson of releasing control to the user (in this case, the players). I also think that we need to develop some better terminology to describe the acts that players take that are less radical (and involved) than full modification/total conversion but which take the game in new directions from the one(s) it was meant for. For another great example of this, see Darius' post on cheating in The Sims 2.

Most importantly, we must learn to stop thinking of cheating as necessarily breaking our games. Sure, cheating may break the game you designed or at least the one your level designers had in mind when they crafted their content. But there's much more than pre-defined levels to most games. Sometimes, it seems, it is the players who will ultimately find the true fun that lies in our games by changing the rules and digging out the obscure stuff we never thought about. We must open our minds to these possibilities -- indeed these inevitabilities -- and embrace them in the games we make.

(FYI - I learned to cheat in JK II from our friends at GameFAQs.)

PC Gamer Still Pushes Good Messages; A Few Comments

2005-06-23T21:29:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take a moment to post a few comments inspired by the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine.

First, there's Supreme Commander. SC is Chris Taylor's spiritual successor to his brilliant design, Total Annihilation. It surprises no one that the game looks awesome and VERY true the essence of the first game and its radical design philosophy that worked so well. Two things I read in PC Gamer's preview of SC pleased me greatly.

First, it's good to see that Dan Morris, long time editor and now editor-in-chief for the magazine, remembers what a classic TA remains to this day. I've always held that there are really only four camps of RTS games (with mixing certainly allowed). There's Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Age of Empires (though AoE games have always seemed very Warcraft-like to me), and Total Annihilation. The notable thing is that TA is the only one that's like Total Annihilation. And it's a really great game! (more on TA in some future post...)

Second, I'm glad that Morris pointed out how disturbing it is that Taylor and friends had such a hard time selling the idea of SC to publishers. I'm sure it had to do with how old the original TA is ("no one will remember it") and how little it actually sold in the end. Of course, anyone who actually played games back then will probably remember that TA had very little marketing and exposure. The word just barely got out that it was genuinely unique and just plain goddamned awesome. What bothers me is that publishers can't see the obvious brilliance of combining the mass-unit appeals of RTS games with high-intensity action and a de-emphasis on menial resource management, etc.

Next, I'd like to mention how glad I have been so see PC Gamer (and Game Informer alike) sing the good praises of Spore. I also was quite amused by their insistence on emphasizing the fact that Spore -- and several other PC titles -- beat the pants out of XBox 360 offerings at E3, critique-wise.

Another thing I really love about PC Gamer is that they cover the mod communities, and not just for the newest and hottest games (or yesterday's hottest games, as the mod communities naturally lag behind the games they're modding). In fact, their coverage of the mod scene has been growing over time. Perhaps this is because the mod scenes are getting more and more serious (and talented). Perhaps it's because they realize that the $50 price tag is too expensive for more than a few purchases every few months for many of their readers. Perhaps they just think the games are awesome. All of these are good reasons, but for whatever the reasons are -- good on ya, PC Gamer!

This month, they highlighted, among other things, a whole bunch of Star Wars mods for various games. I find this particularly appropriate given the crappy (as usual) movie tie-in Star Wars games that are being released right now. For those who own the original games, the mods are free Star Wars games that are better than the new, pricey ones. For everyone else, copies of the "old" games being modded can be picked up for $20 in most cases, $30 max.

On a side note: I'd like to see them devote some space -- even a quarter page -- each month to recommending older titles that are (arguably) better versions of the lesser current titles. I know that most PC Gamers I meet are unaware of all the classics sitting out there (for $10 in most cases) and how those games really are just as good as they used to be.

Along with this, perhaps once or twice a year, say during the slow times, they could devote a few pages to recommending different types of games -- especially those in genres that have fallen asleep -- as alternatives for bored gamers to picking up some new title because, well, it has cool marketing or something. For example, "Instead of waiting for the next Far Cry game to come out, spend $20 or $30 and pick up two of the best (space) shooters ever - Tie Fighter and Freespace 2. If you haven't tried those games, there's no better time than now."

I guess this all leads into a greater rant/set of suggestions, so I'll leave the rest for another post. The point is that having read PC Gamer religiously for almost a decade now, it's good to see that they can still see what's truly quality in the industry and report it to their many readers.

Our Fellow Youths, the Roboticists

2005-06-13T20:53:00.000-04:00

Reading Lance Ulanoff's recent article on the follies of the robotics industry, I couldn't help but notice the many similarities between what he argues plagues their industry and what many have (astutely) been saying about the games industry lately. In fact, it's fair to say that the very title of his article: "Robotics: Grow Up!" was more than suggestive of the current state of the games business.

In this week's column, Ulanoff cites many weaknesses in terms of viewpoint, focus, and good old-fashioned business sense that are holding the robotics industry behind. I am sure that his arguments will sound familiar to anyone who's been reading about the angst of today's game developers and the proposed solutions that may well help us get out of the hole in which we're stuck.

Ulanoff point out that roboticists love of robots most often seems to come first, and making products that people want comes second. Also, most robotics businesses, according to Ulanoff, seem to be run almost exclusively by the type of engineers who are best at making the products. These people are not, of course, the ones who know how to make ends meet for the actual businesses themselves.

The term "robot" itself, Ulanoff argues, may well be hurting the industry due to the lofty standards that television and movies have put in our heads. At the same time, the lofty standards (read: ivory tower/academic) of the developers themselves are leading companies to strive for impossible goals instead of focusing on realistic -- and more likely to be profitable -- aspirations.

Ulanoff suggests that by simplifying goals, working together with other companies, and bringing in good business people who understand marketing and end-to-end business, the robotics industry may well find itself a profitable one indeed.

I submit that with just a few word changes, you'd have a damned good argument for the games industry. It's undoubtedly no coincidence that both industry were born, essentially, of geeks who loved to make toys out of their favorite technologies.

I recommend reading Ulanoff's article if you too have pondered the future of the games industry. Learning from the trials of others is one of the best ways we can learn how to overcome our own obstacles ourselves. (On a side note, I find PC Magazine's columnists produce very interesting reading, even when I disagree with them on occasion.)

Reviewing Sergeant Baker

2005-06-01T08:11:00.000-04:00

I'm currently writing a review of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 for Game-Brains.com. As some of you may know, I only review products that I like. My goal, typically, is to get the Good Word out on titles that people shouldn't miss or that are significant enough that people should at least hear about them even if they never get a chance to play them.

Brothers in Arms is definitely one such game. Being a big fan of Call of Duty, it's no small statement for me to make when I say that BiA may actually be a better game. (Maybe.)

The thing that makes BiA stand out from the (large) crowd of similar WWII games is that you play as Sergeant Matt Baker and are in direct command of a squad of one to four soldiers. Usually the squad consists of two pairs of men, one of which is your fire team (for forward defense) and the other which is your assault team (for kicking ass).

Did I mention the game is immersive? It has a very good way of giving you that "oh shit shit shit" feeling and getting you to cower behind cover as often as (or more often than) you charge fearlessly into enemy territory, firing wildly with abandon as you might in other FPS's. The addition of the fact that you're directly responsible for the lives of your squadmates really adds to this tension as well. One false move and they'll be lying in the mud faster than you can say "FUBAR."

So I figured that BiA would be a good exercise in some form of what's being called New Games Journalism. The essential idea behind NGJ is that in order to capture meaningful information about a topic (in this case, games) some amount of subjective reporting is needed.

I could just write about BiA in the traditional style. It certainly has X levels with Y number of weapons. I could talk about how believable the sounds are and how accurately the towns are modeled. Perhaps I should. The reasons I don't want to are that other sources undoubtedly will already be doing that and (more importantly) it wouldn't get across what it actually feels like to play the game. Since the feeling is so important to the game, such omission would be an error most grievous.

That being said, I'll admit that what I'm going for right now is a fairly extreme example of subjective reporting on a game. Here's the concept: the entire review is written as though it's composed of pages ripped from Sgt. Matt Baker's personal journal that he (presumably) wrote in every night. In it, he recounts the battles, traumas, and trials of the past day. He talks about the aura of the forgotten and/or bombed out French towns they occupy, the oppressive sense of dread he and his comrades feel, and his struggle to somehow find a way to get his men through alive.

Through "Baker's Journal" I will attempt to get across what the experience of playing the game is like. Of course, this all rides on the idea that the game is so realistic and believable that I really can tell you what the game is like simply by pretending as though my experiences in the game were the real thing and writing them up as such.

In some places, this feels wrong. The game certainly isn't perfect and there are a few things that really take away from the realism in a significant way. (In particular, the fact that your squadmates who die come back in the next mission really takes away from the realism and drama of the game.) But perhaps the goal of telling the story of BiA is greater than the story of what design flaws the game has. After all, in a typical review I would list off the game's weaknesses and then tell you that ultimately it doesn't matter (at least, for me it didn't). So why mention them at all?

Certainly, there is something to be said for laying out all the game's strengths and weaknesses and letting readers decide whether they think they'll enjoy the game (enough to warrant a $50/40/30 purchase). Yet, I feel that people already get plenty of that kind of information from the multitude of games news services in print and online. And why shouldn't journalists work in synergy, with various sources covering different aspects of games?

I know that I for one have always wished there were more places I could go to really get a feeling for what a game is like. I want to know what the game feels like, for goodness sake. That's what will ultimately stick with me and what will ultimately determine my satisfaction with the game.

I just hope I am able to get that across.

Thoughts?

Reflections on Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-19T10:29:00.000-04:00

Okay, so first of all I feel the need to justify this post. There are a few reasons why I've decided to make it.

1.) Star Wars is truly one of the greatest media sensations our generation (and the previous one as well) has experienced. General and diverse media studies are certainly an important part of my study of games. Since my reflections on all types of media relate (in my mind, at least) to games, these comments too are relevant.

2.) Glen Beck is right. Today is a day for geeks to unite. It is a day for us to stand tall and proud and yell it from the highest skyscrapers -- we are geeks and we are loving it!

3.) Come on -- it's Star Wars -- you GOTTA BLOG IT! Don't tell me you're not gonna bloooooog it! You gotta blog it!

Okay, so without further ado...

Let's start with the basics:

Yes, I enjoyed Episode III.
Yes, it's the best of the first three.
Yes, the second half is much better than the first.
And yes, the ending makes it all worth it.
Very well done.

In short, the dialog (and often the acting) is terrible. The plot points are mind bogglingly idiotic (breaking the -- was that glass? -- of a starship???!!!) The special effects are truly awesome and no doubt a massive labor of love for hundreds.

But you already knew that, right? I certainly did going in. The question for me was how well would they tie these last three episodes to the original three? To answer, basically the movie slowed down, the characters had a chance to breathe (and hence evolve a little depth), and the visual design gradually (and brilliantly) transitioned to the early-80's look of the original trilogy. Magnificent. I loved it.

It is true that plot holes and inconsistencies abound. I don't think these really hurt anything, though. Not really. I mean, on the one hand it is great when you can get a feeling of one long, sweeping, consistent plot (see: The Lord of the Rings). But on the other hand, Star Wars has always been about the sense of struggle between light and dark, fate and courage, etc.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that the feeling is right at the end of Episode III. I would love to watch Episode III again and then immediately watch the original trilogy (or at least A New Hope) right after it. I think it would flow very well, and that really is saying a lot.

In a time like this, when I'm trying to reflect on a media sensation as significant as Star Wars, I feel compelled to focus on what really makes Star Wars S T A R W A R S. The tricky thing is that I think Star Wars means very different things to different people.

Then again, this is my blog. So I guess I should just reflect on what Star Wars means to me. That's a really good question, actually. My first exposure to Star Wars was at a pretty young age. My dad had the original trilogy on video cassette and always told me that I should watch them some times since they were very good movies.

Actually the first time I think I saw a Star Wars movie was when I was like 6 or 7 years old and they showed us The Empire Strikes Back, probably in the hopes of sedating us for a while. Needless to say, I couldn't make heads or tails of it back then. In fact, it's taken many years of occasionally revisiting the trilogy to really figure out what it means to me.

Personally, I do think that The Empire Strikes Back is overall my favorite from the whole series and for two reasons. First, it has the greatest sense of menace in it. I mean -- it's about the bad guys winning, after all. And need I cue up John Williams' "Imperial March" to remind you just how menacing the empire is in that movie? Need I remind you about the subversive treachery we see and feel at the Cloud City?

The second, and more important, I imagine, reason I love The Empire Strikes Back the most is because it really gets to the hearts of the characters in the story. Cheesy as Mark Hamill's acting may be, the actual scenes on Dagobah really are wonderful in their subtlety, if not their depth.

I always love movies that deal with the struggles young people have growing up as they try to find their identity. The struggle of finding where our parents end and where we begin is a tough and often poignant one. I really like the way in which Empire deals with that. I think it also helps that so much of the communication between characters is inherently odd in some sort of way. Talking to a short little green guy, a ghost, and a telepathically linked sister provide more interesting interactions than Jedi hanging awkwardly out of the door to a starship staring blankly at each other and delivering their lines deadpan.

So I guess to me Star Wars is best when we get the chance to see the humanity of the characters. This is what is best about Episode III. Towards the end, we get to see what everyone is really made of. Politics and lectures fail; action takes over. The proverbial shit hits the fan. The going gets tough; the tough get going. We see many of the best lightsaber fights, we see the resolve of the Light Jedi finally come to bear, and we see two friends come to grips with their failure to save Anakin from his tragically juvenile emotional state and petty world view.

By the end of Revenge of the Sith we get that all important feeling that the characters we've come to know are in fact real people. We see, once again, that surprisingly human quality we enjoyed so much in the original trilogy. And we are home.

Thoughts Provoked by Gaming Steve's Spore Podcast

2005-05-18T11:06:00.000-04:00

Gaming Steve's podcast from GDC 2005 where he talks about seeing Will Wright's Spore. Here are some thoughts this podcast provoked from me.

At one point, he mentions how he was surprised at how little coverage of Spore there was in the media just after the GDC. He was particularly surprised that most of the publicity he saw (or a good amount of it) was actually negative.

I have to say that I for one am not even remotely surprised by this. As a matter of fact, I think it really should be expected. There are a few reasons for this. First, it is a well known phenomenon that whenever something new is presented to people on the Internet (if not elsewhere), and especially gamers on the Internet, there are always a good number of people who wish to criticize what others laud.

Second, Spore truly is a large and ambitious game. These games in particular are always targeted with criticism, for reasons of conservatism, jealousy, hype-control, and the fear of utter joy (no, really).

Third, I imagine that most reporters simply don't know what to make of Spore. I really don't think we've seen anything that's really like it in terms of a total package. And I believe that the total package will produce something beyond what most people have dared imagine. (I'll talk about this a lot more in a later post, of course.)

In fact, I believe that in general the press coverage and most other media about Spore will have a very hard time presenting the game for what it's worth. It's one of those situations where as much as the press and the average player can appreciate the sheer coolness of a new game (or game feature), the long-term implications of its introduction to games are beyond what most people ever imagine or talk about. This was also the case, in my opinion, with the "Gravity Gun" concept in Half-Life 2.

Games like Half-Life 2 and Spore (though Spore probably much more so, ultimately) introduce new paradigms that change the way we think about the gaming experience.

Okay, so all that said, the other thing that provoked me in Gaming Steve's podcast was his mention of Peter Molyneux "spinning in his grave [if he were dead]" over the appearance of Spore.

First of all, why the reference to Mr. Molyneux as though he is dead? The man works with two or three of the hottest IPs in the industry in active development and some exciting and ambitious new titles (check out The Movies) in the works.

Secondly, I think that perhaps Steve is missing the importance of realizing how "light" each aspect of Spore (apparently) is. Though we certainly cannot compare two in-progress games to each other, it may well turn out that Black & White 2 has phenomenally better AI and RTS elements than Spore.

Let us not overlook games like The Movies and Fable. The Movies seems to be combining the concepts of cultural entertainment media to sim-like gameplay. Here is a concept that Spore doesn't even go near with a ten parsec pole. Fable in its own right is attempting to redefine the RPG by expanding the idea of dynamic characters and worlds that respond to and interact with player characters in unprecedented ways.

Granted, Fable and Spore seem to be working with some of the same (high-level) concepts and (low-level) technologies, but the similarities are mostly theoretical and technical as opposed to practical. That is, both games are doing their own good, unique work and don't really compete against one another directly.

Sure, one can imagine Spore 2 involving more RPG elements and creeping up on Fable's territory, but such a Spore 2 is far off and would be a monolithic endeavor (which isn't to say they won't try it...). By then, I'm sure Molyneux would have found new heights to bring RPGs to with the Fable series. If he didn't, well certainly then he should be worried. But not until that day, if it ever comes.

The point here is that I think we need to recognize the fact that both Wright and Molyneux are doing excellent work and are both pursuing their (sometimes shared) dreams in their own ways. I don't think either has anything to be jealous of besides each others' technology. But that is to be expected. Who knows, maybe one day we'll have more open source material in and around the games industry and people like Will and Peter will be able to work together in synergy. We'll see. (Again, more on this in a later post.)

Well, I guess that'll do for now. I'm working on getting myself into the habit of posting more often, so hopefully this spur-of-the-moment sharing of thoughts will be the start of a new trend for me.

Looking Back on the GDC, Part I

2005-04-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know (which is probably most of you), Darius and I are currently working on a project for the Student SIG (Special Interest Group) of the IGDA. We're endeavoring to document the wisdom we've gained from our experiences running the WPI Game Development Club.

All things "WPI GDC" have always been a topic of great, passionate interest of mine. With that, naturally, goes a rather significant emotional attachment. I've always found it difficult to not feel connected to the club in a strong way, even if only by virtue of the four tireless years I put into it.

Of course, my connection to it is much stronger than that. The GDC was always my greatest passion throughout my undergraduate career. It was the one thing into which, above all, I put my greatest work and with which I showed my finest commitment. But this was no accident. I stuck with the GDC and devoted myself to it because it represented the most important ideas I felt fit to pursue in college.

Friendship, community, creativity & innovation, games, leadership, and networking all came together for me in my work with the GDC. I made a lot of good friends, and learned a heck of a lot. I even made a few games. =)

I will undoubtedly be writing quite a bit more about my experiences with the GDC in this blog. Indeed, the story of the GDC is far from over. And in this time of reflection and new beginnings in my life, looking back at the GDC can well lead to looking forward to my future.

The spirals continue ever on...

Technorati Tags: games development students organizations

Data Visualization in Games

2005-04-15T17:34:00.000-04:00

Many of the games I might endeavor to create involve systems involving a number of factors which interact together in synergy. The trouble this can cause is that players can easily loose track of, or never quite understand, the meaning of the current state of the game.

It is important for players to be able to understand the significance of the state of the game. If they cannot do so, they cannot make informed decisions, and hence the fun of playing the game is reduced (I'll elaborate more on this in the future).

And so this all begs the question: how can we effectively communicate the world's state to players? Please note that the key word here is effectively.

Well, first I will limit my consideration of output media (at the hardware level) to a display screen. While other methods of communicating with players are interesting, none save sound are readily available on most computers. As for sound... well, that's a whole other post.

Okay, so focusing on visual display of data, we come to the field of study known as data visualization. Data visualization deals with the matter of displaying any type of information visually in such a way as to promote cognition. In particular, we are usually looking to display data in such a way as to cater to the strengths of the human mind for finding patters and trends.

One common example of data vis is a weather map. On a weather map, we often juxtapose color-coded spots to indicate levels of rain, snow, etc. We gradiate the darkness of the color (green is common) to indicate intensity. This turns out to be quite effective because the human visual mind is good, in general, at picking up clusters and comparing color differences.

If we simply saw a mess of numbers clustered together, we wouldn't easily pick up the boundaries of areas, since the numbers all look roughly the same (assuming they're all two digits long) to our visual mind (until, that is, we actually process the meaning of them, which is slow and cumbersome, in general).

So when we're displaying a mess of information to a player, it makes sense to consider the principles that data visualization folks have been developing and borrow their techniques. This way, we can hope to create an easy-on-the-eyes and easy to comprehend representation of the multi-dimensional state or sub-states of a game.

Of course, unlike a lot of data vis which is done for information discovery, in games we'll usually want to focus on getting specific information across. The message hidden in the data should be clear and we should be able to predict it.

Unless, of course, the game is emergent in a way that exceeds our wildest dreams. How would you visualize that?

Simple Mechanics, Great LARP: Meteor!

2005-04-07T23:10:00.001-04:00

Greg Costikyan recently (today) described the recent Fastival role-playing convention:

"In Denmark, one of the things I did was attend Fastaval, Denmark's largest roleplaying convention. Anders Hojsted squired me around, while Jost Hansen vacated his apartment in Aarhus to give me a place to crash. Fastaval is apparently the "elite" Danish con; while others still host a fair number of sessions based on commercial RPGs, that's definitely not the case at Fastaval. Instead, "writers" (the word they use) compete to create interesting roleplay scenarios, generally with a fairly minimal rules set, but with interesting set-ups, characters, settings, and/or plot-lines."

Hmm... reminds me of a game I once (okay, twice) played called Meteor!. Meteor! is a fairly free-form LARP (Live-Action Role-Playing Game, for you muggles) that was designed by my friend, Craig Perko. Meteor! ran numereous times at the WPI Science Fiction Society's Gaming Weekend events and separately as well. The game has always been a lot of fun and was also the first LARP I actually felt inspired to play.

Why did I play it you ask? Because of the sheer, cheeky style of it. Meteor! featured such lovable characters as The Shedder, Ash, Jedi, and Mr. T -- all side by side at once! Perhaps best of all, the mechanics of the game's design were very simple. In fact, the game only really needed Game Masters to resolve combat, which was done via the old Rock-Paper-Scissors system, if you must know. =)

I'm sure Meteor! will come up many times again on this blog in the future. It was fun trying to figure out how to help GM's understand the dynamics of the game via visual aids and look-up references. More than that, it showed me a beauty I could appreciate both as a designer and as a player.

Player Agency and the Input/Output Challenge

2005-04-05T10:06:00.000-04:00

Reading Chris Crawford on Game Design today, I particularly enjoyed the section where he talks about motor-skill-based, physical games. He says that one of the most important distinctions between videogames and games in general is that in most games (physical games, I presume he means, so as to not contradict his previous, broad definition) we utilize our whole body, whereas in videogames it's almost entirely in the thumbs.

This gets me thinking, as I often find myself doing, about input and output mechanisms for games. It seems to me that the dynamics required to attain certain types of engagement in games require input and output mechanisms we've yet to dream up and/or figure out how to design and produce.
I tend to look at this from the perspective of MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics). (Bear in mind that this extension of that particular framework for thinking about elements of games is not directly based upon LeBlanc and company's original theory, so far as I know it.)

Basically, I see the input and output mechanisms themselves, for example analog or standard buttons on a controller and a television set w/ speakers as the mechanics of the physical interaction -- what it takes to give input to or receive output from the game.

The dynamics of the physical interaction, then, have to do with what types of activities a player might consider doing in relation to the controller. For example, tapping a button furiously as fast as you can, or holding down an analog button as lightly as possible so that your character will, for example, sneak by guard undetected.

The aesthetics of the physical interaction, in turn, are the... let's call them paradigms, if you will, of the physical interaction. They're the physical feelings people get playing the game. These might range from relaxing to tense to energizing.

To be honest, I find it hard to imagine what the "aesthetics" of physical interaction with a game are. Part of me suspects that that's because computer games as we know them have had so few mechanics. With such limited mechanics, certainly the range of possible dynamics (physically speaking) is limited and in turn the aesthetics of our physical computer game experiences are few. As a matter of fact, the physical aesthetic of most of our games seems to "zombie" as anyone who's ever watched another play a computer game would probably attest.

The exception here seems to be when players are so involved with a game that they physically shift or move in the process of playing as a natural, almost involuntary response to their desire to affect their character in game. This can often be seen with first-time players of a game such as Super Mario Brothers. A new player will often lean in the direction they wish to jump as they press the buttons and will raise their hands with the controller as they make their jumps.

I remember having similar tendencies when I first started playing games (though I remember this only faintly). I think that what stopped it is that at some point I became fascinated by the fact that I didn't need to move physically (save the thumbs) to make Mario jump. I could explore Miyamoto and friends' virtual world without any physical investment.

But this brings us to a very important question: "How much are we missing as a consequence?" I believe we are missing a lot. Anyone who's played and enjoyed (or watched others enjoy playing) Dance Dance Revolution would probably agree. Talk about an alternative physical aesthetic for a game!

One of the faculty candidates that I helped interview for the position as head of the new Interactive Media and Game Development curriculum at WPI was Robert Lindeman. Lindeman's research is in input mechanisms for virtual worlds. He was the first of six candidates to come to WPI to talk, and even without seeing the later candidates I knew that I would be happy if he was ultimately chosen for the job because new input mechanisms are so important for the frontier of games.

Hopefully whoever is chosen for the job will have an appreciation of the need for new input mechanisms for games. I hope that whoever heads the program will help start communications with other departments (Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in particular) to get some joint projects going to study input mechanisms for games. It's one of those great interdisciplinary areas of computer games that seems to have all but died out of people's notice.

Let's get it back!

Thoughts?

Keeping Your Eye on the Target and the Meaning of Fun

2005-03-28T10:18:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed one of Earnest Adams recent (and shortest) Designer Notebook entries. This one is on the "The Perils of Bottom-up Game Design" and is found at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041018/adams_01.shtml.

In particular, I was glad to see the comment at the bottom about how this design misstep falls under the broader category of "failing to put the player first."

I believe that failing to put the player first is arguably THE fundamental design and process flaw that kills the most games. This ties into many things I've been thinking about lately. The general idea is that game developers are violating one of the most fundamental and important concepts of engineering: Keep your eye on the target.

Apparently, the concept is so far lost on us that we don't even consider our target at all on many projects!

Lately, I've been encouraging my peers to be careful with their use of the term "fun." Using the word "fun" is a cop-out and avoids the most important question you can ever ask as a top-down designer: what effect(s) should the game have on its players?

Instead of saying "the goal of the game is to be fun", say "the goal of the game is to create a constantly building sense of tension, interspersed with brief moments of relief." You might also write some thoughts about how this effect will ultimately be desirable for players, and this will undoubtedly help you identify your target market.

I find myself often frustrated with those who say that "we can't really determine what makes a game fun or how to consistently produce fun." First of all, this statement usually comes with an implied addendum of "... unless we just copy other games." Of course, even when we copy other games, we usually end up sucking anyways. So as EWA would say: "Bad game designer -- no Twinkie!" Second, the justification for this statement is usually something along the lines of either "it's because fun is subjective" or the person will give a few examples of games that seemed like they should be fun but weren't.

It seems to me that all designers are doing is saying the following:
FunGames is an undefined set with undecidable membership. Well, DUUUUUH. That's because fun is an abstract concept. In fact, it's an abstract and highly subjective concept. And we don't know how to define it, at least not yet.

But what I'm saying is that we're barking up the wrong tree. Of course we can't define what "fun" is -- most of us haven't even figured out what joy is in our day-to-day lives or why we like the games we do. However, we do have some idea of what dramatic tension is, of what horror is, of what the joy of accomplishing a task is. Further, there are countless volumes written on human psychology (and even more and better work to come) that we can use to characterize and create models for how humans experience various sensations.

Therefore, we need to focus on those elements -- the atomic or close to atomic elements of what creates entertainment -- and use them as the basis for our understanding of fun in general and the goals of a given game project in specific.

I'll let it rest there for now.

In the Beginning...

2005-03-28T03:10:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well. Here it is -- my very first post in what may well become my long-running blog dedicated to the discussion of games and other interactive media.

I am starting this blog now, at the beginning of the Spring of 2005, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, I wish to have a place to dump all my thoughts. Well, duh, it's a blog. But more than that, I wish to constantly challenge myself to put words (and whenever possible, well-written words) to my thoughts, rather than leaving them to simply fight it out amongst themselves inside my head, ultimately doomed to be lost in all their abstract etheriality.

Secondly, I wish to have a place from which I can attempt to spark interesting discussions about games amongst my peers.

Thirdly, I wish to have a place from which my voice can, for whatever it may matter, be heard. I may be young, I know I have a lot to learn, and I may have a lot I must experience and accomplish before I can effectively communicate an interesting idea... but hey -- I can always try! God knows I'll always have my doubts about my abilities and my worth as an intellectual thinker, but God also offers me a confidence to believe in my ability to share the light I have within me with the rest of the world. And thus it shall be done!

I will say one more thing here: For a while now, I have been both excited and skeptical about the long-term value of blogs. Does the world really need 3 terabytes of blabbermouthing from every damned person with a chip on their shoulder and the will to type? Is an unguided, unstructured monologue really the best way for us to share our ideas?

The answers, of course, depend on the context from which you are asking the questions. What I have decided is that blogs do have an important place in today's intellectual musings. For many people, such as myself, I believe a blog can be a great place for ideas that otherwise may fall by the wayside to be put out for other to see. Beyond this, there are the three reasons I gave above and many more than can be given to motivate the continuance of the blogging phenomenon. And so now I submit my first serious attempt to make good of this wonderful new tool at my disposal.

Here's to new beginnings!