The Digital Toybox

Radio Play

2012-05-09T13:44:37-07:00

A recent submission to BigThink has gotten me to thinking about the possibilities of interactive radio, or audio gaming. I hesitate to call this ‘interactive audio’, because that particular term has come to signify art installations and the likes of Rez and Music 2000. However, to take the “video” right out of video games and present the player with an interactive, audio-only experience.. would that be possible? Has it already been done?

Here’s Jad Abumrad’s video, on how radio creates empathy through co-authorship of an imagined experience:

I have to confess an obstacle to my usual lines of research, given that there are already slews of interactive audio games and software, and so-called ‘interactive’ radio stations. If there are any audio games already out here, I’m finding it very hard indeed to spot them.

Radio is, of course, already a fairly interactive medium, best expressed in talk shows. Through telephones and with the advent of email, text messaging and Twitter, these shows have allowed their listeners to put their views across and so change the course of discussion, with similar interactivity to be seen in many music shows. Never do I recall seeing the radio equivalent of an RPG, though; a radio play in which the listener can choose which direction the protagonist should take.

I think the closest I’ve gotten is a board game named CD Adventure: Search for the Lost City, which is an audio-reliant board game. Most games which incorporate sound do so simply to replace the rolling of dice, or they do as this game and Mall Madness do, and direct players towards certain tasks. In CD Adventure, certain squares on the board ask you to take a card, which in turn asks you to skip to a certain track on a CD. Because each card corresponds to a location on the board (swamps, rapids and so on), these tracks can then set a proper scene, with sound effects and character actors to deliver instructions to the player.

The actual gameplay could be accomplished just as easily by reading the instructions off the card, but CD Adventure was designed so that characters from within the game would seem to come to life. By doing this we remove the common act of a player reading aloud from a card, in which they are the deliverer of information to everyone else. Instead that duty falls to an apparent external entity; an agent whose actions influence everyone else on the board. It’s a powerful tool for uniting each player on the board, rather than having them constantly compete. Atmosfear is another game which does this to great effect, albeit through a linear video rather than a stack of audio files.

My friends and I developed a particular hatred for one character whose name I cannot now recall, whose smarmy voice could often be heard sending my token back to the beginning of the board. This creates a far different social experience to that of a player whose own roll apparently dooms them or grants success, where they’re left blaming merely chance or the card in front of them for their misfortune. Other board games in which instructions are read from cards do not have this element of theatre to them, and so do not have recognisable characters. Yet we do develop exactly this sort of relationship with the animated – and often vocalised – citizens of our digital toyboxes.

At a basic level, I wonder what could be achieved by having ‘make your own adventure’ books available on audiotape, or creating horror games in which players may be startled into wakefulness and led down new paths in a story, similar again to the video board game, Atmosfear. At a more egalitarian level, I wonder at the possibilities for developing games for the blind.

One imagines that a truly rich audio gaming experience would have the capacity for spoken feedback, and this has been within our technological grasp for years now. Considering we can command our Xbox 360s to play media, and our iPhones to invite friends to our parties, surely we can ask Kinect to equip the lit torch, or direct Siri take the left-hand turn down a steampunk alleyway?

We’d have to rethink the genres we could port to audio gaming though, and we’d probably have to invent some new ones. To propose an audio-only shooter is ridiculous, but imagine the possibilities of an interactive detective story, or a strategy game which is played as though you are Mission Control, receiving communicae via radio from your moonbase. The latter could still be done using a screen, but what changes would we see to the drama behind a game which doesn’t involve an aerial view and flashing green placement grids?

I’m confident in one aspect, though: radio has proven that audio can be a powerful tool for evoking empathy. Games have made huge strides in the past decade, towards achieving the sort of richness which books and film take for granted. Could a push into audio gaming show us a new path?

Digital Collector’s Edition Soundtracks: A Missed Opportunity?

2012-04-25T03:22:12-07:00

Steam’s catalogue moved in an interesting new direction yesterday, as the digital download service announced the option to purchase soundtracks for Darwinia and Defcon. My heart leapt at this, as while game soundtracks are much easier to find now than they were 10 years ago, many do still ask you to import a physical CD from overseas, buy a collectors’ edition, or hunt through reams of MP3 download services. I can’t even recall where I got the Darwinia soundtrack from, in the end, but it stands as a grand example of chiptune music, and it’s a pleasure to see Trash 80 and DMA-SC’s work made more accessible.

Unfortunately, if we look closer, we see that Steam is not quite making a bold step into the convenient sale of game soundtracks. Both are offered as DLC options, which require us to buy the base game first. I’m unsure quite how this works out, but I assume and hope that the MP3 files are simply ‘unlocked’ by having the respective game in your Steam library, and that they act as ordinary music from then on. It is an incentive to buy more, whether you principally want the game or its soundtrack, but for me personally, it feels like a missed opportunity. The possibilities offered by a digital download platform have been ignored in favour of an existing, retail model.

Side-By-Side: Timeline and +Me

2012-04-19T17:33:14-07:00

Embedded within my (rather scattered) web routine are the inevitable, all-too-frequent checks on Facebook and Google+. I visit the former far more frequently than the latter: partly because notifications are built in to a number of other Google products; mostly because the people I’m connected to on Google+ tend to share articles rather than thoughts. It’s only today that I thought to compare the two networks’ profile pages, though.

Google launched its current layout just this month, with many improvements to its UI and a profile layout which bears much more of a resemblance to Facebook’s Timeline. I commend both ‘sites for introducing a banner space, which really helps to personalise a profile where custom themes are never allowed. I’ve also publicly decried Facebook’s approach to Timeline, which forced me to delete my account and start a new one, for personal reasons. Despite the fact I still have to tidy my re-booted Timeline every other night, I am generally a fan, though. I only tidy as I prefer to keep timely stories on there, since I believe that Facebook’s layout does not lend itself well to my occasional, rambling thoughts and linked media.

Of the two social networks, I do find that I prefer Google+’s approach, and I’m now beginning to look upon Timeline as a missed opportunity. Certainly neither is a perfect service, but I begin to wonder why Facebook devotes so much on-screen space to the cover image (the horizontal banner), when very few people seem to have photographs worthy of putting in here. I have had to rely upon a raygun gothic-themed image, choosing to carry my business card branding through, because unlike a couple of my friends and most of the celebrities I follow, I do not have any professional portraits. Compare this with Google+, and it’s clear that the user’s square-format portrait takes precedent. It is as though Facebook expects each user to treat their Timeline as a page rather than a profile, and I wonder now if that was a good move.

My criticisms achieve very little, of course – I use these services at no financial cost, and my fellow users learn to work around anything which they too might consider to be a shortfall. With that having been said, I’m somehow confident that Google+ represents me better, particularly for not displaying my connections so prominently. Google profiles do include a small panel, just below the user’s portrait, which will show any mutual connections you (as the viewer) may have, but that is something I consider very relevant and reassuring to social networking. The fact I have gone to the effort of manually tagging 243 photos with locations (because Facebook still stubbornly refuses to read meta-data, even for dates) is considerably less relevant, to my eyes. I also mourn the photo bar of yore, in which Facebook would allow you to hide those photos in which you were tagged in, but might not want shown on your profile. Now, if I want to be tagged in photos of a fun night out, I have no choice but to allow them on to the top of the pile, under that ‘photos’ thumbnail. Google+ seem to have responded to this, and it offers an alternative to the horizontal ‘cover art’ bar, which comprises a series of photos of your choice, as below:

At the end of the day, it seems to me that Google+ has found a worthy niche, breaking away from Facebook by actually sticking to what its elder competitor used to do. Where Facebook channels its users into making profiles which look like corporate pages, Google+ have offered a design which puts the user themselves further forward, also giving them a little more control over how they appear. It may lack the vibrant activity which Facebook still enjoys, and I experience this in the fact I’ve never physically met any of the people who appear in my stream, but in many ways I feel it is now a more appropriate home for me as a person.

If only some social networking APIs - and more importantly, other people – would actually use the thing…

Incidentally, you’re welcome to follow me on Facebook and Google+, though the latter is a bit light on anything but posts from Google Reader.

Pinterest: For All to See?

2012-04-04T10:31:33-07:00

Pinterest has had something of a buzz about it in these past few months, and although I’m now late to the party, I’ve finally been granted access to create an account of my own.

I first encountered Pinterest after hearing word of it and duly proceeding to pinterest.com. What I was saw seemed a little too busy for my eyes, but the concept was clear: post ‘stuff’ onto a web-based board of your own devising, sorted into a variety of categories. It seemed to be something between the ‘likes’ section of a Facebook profile and a tumblelog, of which I have many.

Now that I’ve been allowed in to try Pinterest, I find it has much more in common with Tumblr than I had first thought – right down to the reblogging and the dashboard stream, albeit one which is presented differently. The only major difference I can find is that Pinterest does not allow pseudonymity between blogs. I now feel quite strongly that this is something of an understated feature in Tumblr.

On Pinterest, every one of a user’s boards is available to view under their profile. Tumblr allows users to post to their individual blogs, or to view the comments and activity for each, but does not have this style of profile. This means that unless a user explicitly links to their other blogs in the description or layout, no-one may know there is any sort of link between them. This is because Tumblr portrays each blog as a username, so if you follow my Maps in Games project through your own Tumblr dashboard, you will only ever see posts attributed to either “maps-in-games” or the user who submitted a post – never “sinnyo”, “ludometer” or “raypunk”, which are the usernames for some of my other “tumblelogs”.

There are pros and cons to doing this:

Pinterest quickly becomes a simpler way to share all your interests, making it much more social, while Tumblr stands as more of a curating service, with isolated blogs on a particular theme.
Pinterest becomes yet another service in which we find we may have to self-censor, while Tumblr maintains an easy anonymity, allowing people to create dedicated channels if they feel they need to.

One of the joys I find in Tumblr is the sheer diversity of its content, and this includes content of an erotic nature, which can be deeply moving, artistic and inspirational. I make no real secret of my ‘main’ tumblelog, which does include ‘NSFW’ work, but nor do I want to expose people to it in inappropriate settings. It’s a tough call for a service whose ‘mission’ is to have its users express what inspires them.

Like I’ve said, there is a clear ‘pro’ – Pinterest is evidently a fun tool for people making wishlists, sharing fanart and fashion tips, or who feel confident (or free) enough to abandon privacy concerns about the content they post. I was simply fascinated by this little-publicised feature (or lack of one) in Tumblr, which actually leaves me feeling freer to express myself.

Women in Games Development

2012-02-09T15:11:29-08:00

As my Goodreads friends will already know, I am currently reading Introducing Feminism: A Graphic Guide. I’m reading up on the subject after a long-running and heated debate about women in games development erupted on my Facebook wall. I’ve always been interested in the topic, but it feminism fascinates me now more than ever, and I’m dead pleased that the debate itself will soon be mentioned in Develop.

We were discussing the “merits” of women in games development, in pretty broad fashion: why they need promoting; if it even merits discussion; and why and how women are discouraged from this and other, supposedly masculine fields. It is in this particular frame that I find myself drawn to Virginia Woolf’s work. To quote Jenainati and Groves’ book:

In A Room of One’s Own, [Woolf] explored the cultural and economic constraints on female creativity, and pondered the historical and political obstacles which have hampered the establishing of a female literary tradition.

Of course, her work also went on to decry the ridiculous social pressures which were put upon those women who dared to have minds of their own. Interestingly, her work also covered a very real and present double standard which is applied to the assertion of feminine sexuality – but I digress. The important point I found was that in the late 1920s, Virginia Woolf was pushing for greater female representation in the literary genre. Books were being written by men, for men and women, with only a masculine viewpoint on who and what women are. Not only does this have an impact upon employment, barring all but a few women writers, but it also has gross a social impact. Women were left to the mercy of an overwhelmingly masculine media view, dictating the value of their own identities worth in society. This does arguably spur the more pioneering women to challenge the medium and write their own stories, but that sort of motion is till fraught with obstacles.

Now look at the present day. I even cited literature in one of these discussions, as an example of a medium with good gender representation: for every J.K. Rowling there’s a Philip Pullman, and for every Stieg Larsson there’s a Patricia Cornwell. But sacrifices had to be made and campaigning had to be done to get to this point. Would anyone argue that diversity amongst authors makes for anything but a better medium?

This is why we need to encourage women into games, with an eye to achieving something more balanced and sensible. Theoretically no woman is actually blocked from this industry (though reports of sexism in the workplace and at interview still crop up), but they are subtly discouraged, certainly in comparison to men. The fact that video games themselves remain a somewhat masculine medium does not help, and it’s likely borne of the cycle in which women are discouraged from designing them, and so a woman’s perspective is not felt in future games’ design process.

It’s hard to argue that games have as much of an impact upon our society as books have done and continue to do, but many academics and developers are making powerful arguments that they can and should. The day may come when, as Jane McGonigal suggests, games will have a social responsibility ingrained in their structure, and that they will achieve good. The pressing question is: will that game be made purely by men?

Parks as Game Spaces

2012-02-07T05:49:45-08:00

Despite best intentions, I am still not yet a professional game designer, although work does slowly continue over at our Blue Demon Studio. In the meantime I work as an admin. assistant, helping to run a variety of charity and community groups. Fear not – I’m not about to write a lengthy CV post! What I am interested in is the surprising crossover between these two types of work, and as ever, I hope you are too.

My task at the moment is to create a leaflet and generally spark a recruitment campaign, engaging locals in a ‘friends’ group for our municipal park. Such groups essentially act as a buffer between councils and the public, bridging the gap between those who might wish to use a park, and the authorities who own it. Where this community bridge is in place, each party can then contribute in a much more meaningful way to improving the green space, and generally livening the community up. It was only when I started looking past the peripheral, graphic design concerns in this task to those sorts of motivations that I realised how relevant games design can be to this sort of community work.

I choose to see parks as game spaces. My focus at the moment lays in engaging local people with this space, bringing them on board so that the ‘friends’ group has more power to enact change. The best way I know how to do that is to convince them that their actions will have an impact. Of course, parks are arguably far more interactive than many games, because the fundamentals of that space can be altered after release. There is also an element of illusion, however. No one person is going to be suddenly granted the right to ban dog walkers, or uproot great rows of trees and install more football pitches instead, just as World of Warcraft‘s Chosen One is not allowed to single-handedly assassinate King Varian Wrynn and claim Stormwind for the Horde.

There’s a similar analogy amongst councils, who are far from tyrannical conservatives – I’m not trying to make a political point here! – but they do generally want to keep green spaces under their control. There are a variety of very logical reasons for this. Councils and politicians both stand to benefit from granting local communities an illusion of participation and choice in what happens locally, though it’s up to groups like ours to actually enact some of the more reasonable change – patching in the death of the Lich King, if you will.

All of which basically engages me as the park’s community manager, helping to balance the fundamentals of this metaphorical game space against delivering on promises to users who signed up on the basis of interactivity. My goal is certainly the same in either sphere – I just want to see people having fun.

Women in Game Worlds

2011-12-30T14:45:30-08:00

'Left 4 Dead' is an agile and adaptive game with an impressive cast, but where are the female equivalent to Bill and Francis in this and other games?

When a friend and colleague of mine showed me a clip of some brilliant dialogue from PS3 title Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, he then asked if I recognised the female character in it at all, since the animators made use of motion capture during their performance. I didn’t, as it goes – I heaven’t seen Farscape or Starget SG-1 - but I realised I couldn’t see past Chloe Frazer’s slim physique, attractive hairstyle and general air of an action girl in her late twenties. She looks like every female character I think I’ve seen in games, at least outside the mould of the pneumatic dominatrix.

I don’t mean to single these games out in particular, nor rant unnecessarily about a topic which has already been covered with greater authority on quite a few occasions (but which sadly has yet to yield results). In fact, although I haven’t played Uncharted 3 myself, I was told to look out for its antagonist, as her placement on billboards marks some new ground for games. Katherine Marlowe is her name, though the Uncharted wiki link there is probably awash with spoilers. In her we have an older woman of rich and interesting character, who one hopes is unlikely to confront the game’s protagonist in an underbust corset with a whip in hand as so many villains seemed to at the turn of the century.

The points I want to get across are twofold:

matters of equality,
and downright interest.

The former is a tricky one, as while I can point to casts like that of Left 4 Dead and ask for the biker chick, successful businesswoman and female army veteran, men too can be quite limited when it comes to a choice of protagonist. Marcus Fenix (Gears of War), Axel Stone and Adam Hunter (Streets of Rage), and the admittedly shadowy Master Chief (Halo) represent one type, of the gruff-voiced and muscle-bound hero. More realistic characters come in the form of Tommy Vercetti (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), Louis and Nick (Left 4 Dead), and Nathan Drake (Uncharted). It’s understandable, as men and women alike probably derive greater pleasure from inhabiting the skin of a good-looking, cool and capable hero. But where is the female Gordon Freeman? It’s still far more common to find variety in the body types and ages of male characters than female ones, and most women really are reduced to eye candy, be it as a result of impractical armour or somehow inhabiting a world in which men are allowed to be ugly, but less glamourous women appear to have been nudged out of the gene pool. I recently saw this in Overlord, though it’s common to many such adventure games:

Two scenes captured in close sequence, of wives typical to the Overlord's realm, and the male NPCs with which he interacts.

The latter point is the more positive one to make, and is really the crux of my wish. Not only do I want there to be a character I can relate to somewhere in these games, but I want the more realistic ones to do a better job of portraying reality. The world is filled with interesting characters, from the real ale enthusiast to the camp confidante and, of course, the science fiction geek. There’s a broad spectrum of men in games (though you’d be hard pressed to find a feminine man portrayed at all, let alone done well), but women are relegated to narrow types, and it just makes game worlds that little more dull.

I don’t much care for the token blonde thrown into a military unit of socially- and racially-diverse males – her figure is stunning and her presence such a transparent box-ticking. Show me the single mother trying to raise four kids in your gang’s neighbourhood; the misandrist W.I. leader who’s realising the futility of her attitude in face of the Outbreak; or the non-conformist teenager who embodies the real and genuine population of masculine women. There are men this interesting throughout the games I play, but the closest I think I’ve come are Midna and Tetra from the Legend of Zelda series, both of whom surrendered their individuality upon becoming the token princess.

As ever with issues I try to cover in this blog: I just think it would be more fun.

Social Cataloguing

2011-06-26T09:06:47-07:00

I’m currently working on a social website, due for a public beta launch pretty soon. Working on the project has led me tothink long and hard about the medium, and about social cataloguing in particular. This aspect of the so-called ‘social web’ is particularly fascinating to me, as I love organising and displaying collections. The web as a whole has developed some pretty consistent standards, all of which allow obsessive-compulsives like myself to pour hours into a website which in turn benefits from my input to a community, and the raw data of what it is I own and buy.

Examples

I’ve used quite a few such websites in my time, but the ones which have stuck are Goodreads and My Animé List; I also have collections up on Board Game Geek and Gdgt, and Amazon, although its features are arguably quite insular. Firstly, what is it about these ‘sites which makes them social catalogues, and where do the common features lay?

Goodreads' home dashboard

Goodreads is a combined book catalogue, reviews website and social network. My Animé List works on a similar premise, but for Japanese-influenced TV, DVD and comics media.

It encourages its users to search a variety of catalogues (from Goodreads’ own to local and foreign Amazon stores) for books in their collection. Users can then rate these, arrange them upon virtual shelves to suit their tastes, add reviews or just appreciate the bulk of their collection.
Goodreads features status updates quite prominently. These inform others – within the wider community, closer friendship circles or whole other networks (e.g. Facebook) – of one user’s activity within their own collection. One user can invite another to follow their reviews, keep track of what they’re reading, and offer to do the same in return. This ‘toing and froing’ of content forms the backbone of Goodreads’ community.
Users and Goodreads both end up benefiting from a near-spontaneous side-effect of this activity; they can target recommendations. This seems to my untrained eye to be where social cataloguing ‘sites start to earn an income, as easy links to purchase a book your friend has recommended to you make for a very effective advertisement. There are other, more conventional adverts, of course.

Board Game Geek's home index

Board Game Geek is a much older-looking website, similar to My Animé List in that their design places greater emphasis upon user input feedback. They’re targeted at more ‘hardcore’ fans, in relative contrast to the minimalistic Gdgt.

“BGG” and “MAL” allow their users to browse large, manually-submitted databases of media and read detailed information on their releases and make-up.
Board Game Geek prides itself on hosting a variety of board game manuals, some of which can be hard for collectors to find; it also provides links to market websites like eBay in the same mode.
My Animé List features a prominent ‘recommendation engine’, actually powered by its users. By forming links to media which they believe to be similar and writing a short explanation, these users provide visitors and members alike with informed suggestions. It also taps into the ‘fansubbing’ community, allowing fans of subtitled animé (as opposed to the more common dub releases for Western audiences) to base their community on “MAL” ‘s catalogue.

Gdgt's home dashboard

Gdgt certainly stands out for its interface, but shares the same fundamental features as the ‘sites above – particularly My Animé List’s focus on informed user reviews and recommendations.

Users can browse its catalogue of gadgets, find a product they may own or are interested in, and gauge its worth or find an answer to any issues they may have, all without signing up.
The website is predominantly targeted at experts, although it encourages non-experts to make use of their input as two sides of the same coin. In summary, Gdgt seems to rely upon a particular type of user – one who’s enthusiastic about solving other people’s technology problems – in order to create its community. Maintaining a collection of your own is a secondary attribute to this, though it’s still valuable to its users, presumably to back up their status and expertise.

Social Cataloguing Communities

In all these examples, community is built up not from the catalogue, but users’ interactions with the catalogue. Each does have an impressive database to which any user can refer, in the same way they might at Wikipedia, IMDB or MobyGames; where these become social cataloguing ‘sites, capable of attracting an active user base, is that value shifts from the data to the user and their actions. I believe that the rewards here are manyfold:

The user is drawn in by the prospect of curating ‘their own collection’. Although some may find brief and compulsive reward in ‘logging their collection, the majority of users do this as a basis for further social interaction. Users being made to feel like they own a collection does, however, foster loyalty and emotional investment at a foundation level.
Interest can then develop from these collections in different ways: in Goodreads, the fun lays in seeing if your friends have any books in common; at My Animé List and Gdgt, it lays in sharing your expertise about the media and devices you own. These sorts of incentive – to compare, impart knowledge and compete – keep the users logging in regularly, and generating more content in the form of reviews and commentary.
As a result of this, the ‘site owners create a community whose investment in the ‘site keeps them coming back – ripe for impressions by advertisements. The users are also motivated to generate recommendations as mentioned before; these have their own value to retailers and service providers.

That, I think, is why I find social cataloguing ‘sites particularly intriguing. They start with a catalogue, add social elements, and then basically rely on user momentum to keep the ‘site running. There usually comes a time when users take over the roles of cataloguing, allowing administrators to move away from databases, and instead manage this fascinating social medium.

Genre Genre

2011-06-01T14:17:17-07:00

Returning once more to the subject of genre: just where do we – or indeed can we – draw the lines?

I’ve recently had cause to sit down and tame a very elusive beast: the video game genre. As a serial cataloguer and self-contradicting fan of labels, I’ve often sorted my games out in my own head. Putting them into various piles based on their stylistic category for the benefit of others, however, has gotten me thinking.

I started by looking at other examples:

the Wikipedia listing of game genres;
the ways online shops sort their game products;
and cataloguing websites both for games and other media.

There is some common ground, and Wikipedia – perhaps as is to be expected – covers the most. Because its purpose is not to sell games effectively (necessitating clear and concise categories which even the most inexperienced gamer might grasp), and its format is that of an article rather than an open database, the custodians of this article have narrowed games down to the following types:

Action
Action-adventure
Board & card game conversions
Music
Party
Programming
Puzzle
Role-playing
Simulation
Sport
Strategy
Trivia
Vehicle simulation

The article also lists genres according purpose, notably including adult and casual games. The debate about whether a casual game is a genre or not is – to my mind – deeply misguided, since most of the casual games I’ve played have fallen under the role-playing or simulation umbrella. Adult games are an interesting one however, and a good example of the ‘meta-genres’ I observed in my own list of genres (I’ll return to this idea in a moment). Adult films and erotica are, of course, quite well-defined genres within film and book media. Unlike sci-fi, horror and fantasy, the adult genre refers to both a demographic and the type of content – irrespective of whether the book or film may exhibit other generic traits.

It’s because of quirks like this that I realised my own list should be split into three meta-genres, or ‘types of genre’, if you will. I’ve named them demographic, inherited and mechanical genres.

Demographic Genres

This rather small category of genres is a repository for those works whose content is overwhelmingly guided by the target audience. Adult games – just like adult films and books – fall into this category because they exist to provide erotic entertainment. Most or all elements of the game are geared towards providing that experience.

Although they make for disturbing bedfellows, lifestyle and childrens games work on a similar principle. I would concede that they could be weaker genres in this context; many a childrens’ game would also be considered an action or puzzle game. Again the demographic does dictate much of these games’ makeup though, and it’s fair to say that their being classed as a lifestyle or childrens’ game is what helps consumers to pick them out from the shelf. Just why the adult genre is better-defined is surely the topic of another blog. It could be because erotic entertainment is a simpler principle to understand, or a result of the stigma attached to pornography. Perhaps it’s also because some mature gamers enjoy ‘childrens’ games’ – who knows?

Inherited Genres

This is where I started, having written before on the way I felt some historical games should be classed as just that, rather than coming under the ‘first-person-shooter’ bracket wit the likes of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath and Halo 3. These games have no thematic similarity with the earlier Call of Duty games, beyond the presence of guns and a ruleset inherited from its mechanics.

Borrowing heavily from existing media (hence these being ‘inherited’), I devised the following list:

Action adventure
Crime
Educational
Fantasy
Historical
Horror
Humour
Sci-fi
Sport

Despite my persistence however, classifying the likes of LittleBigPlanet, Angry Birds and even Sonic the Hedgehog in this way is plainly impossible. Sonic games could at least be classed as action adventures, and while it sounds more like a mechanic, I believe that games of this type have come to form their own narrative and plot structures.

Though one would expect an element of (inter)action from a game anyway, there is some unique feedback between the player’s involvement and the adventure within the story which manages to define them as a whole. Action films like Die Hard, Sucker Punch and Terminator offer a similar experience, but because of the passive nature of film, the ‘action’ element comes to the fore and the ‘adventure’ becomes implied.

Mechanical Genres

These genres were the ones I’ve most tried to avoid, but had to concede as worthy ‘types of games’. Mechanics can definitely define the game and the type of player that they attract, so why should they not sit alongside the established genres listed above? I feel a need to stress the importance of that ‘sitting alongside’, since the medium has matured to a point where the narrative in a game has just as much allure as its mechanics. Gone are the days when most gamers would play games simply to test a high score – instead we long for rich experiences, and so I feel we deserve to filter horror out from history, and humour out from sports.

What really surprised me was just how many genres I felt I needed for this category. Though I’ve decided to leave behind the markers of the retro era (like ‘jumping game’, ‘dungeon game’ and so on), it seemed foolish to ignore the specific appeal a turn-based strategy game might have over real-time strategy, or the changes in narrative and plot which a first-person perspective brings to a shooter, compared to a third-person one. There are many gamers who will ignore a whole experience if it does not fit their preferred mechanics, and so I bowed to democracy:

Adventure (point & click and text-based)
Board game
Card game
Driving
Fighting
Hack ‘n’ slash
Music
Online world
Party
Peripheral
Platform
.. and the list goes on.

There are, of course, some games which fit purely into a mechanical genre: digital versions of Monopoly, the Mario Party series and Virtua Fighter to name a few. Many of the best-known contemporary titles fit into one or more of these and an ‘inherited genre’ as well though, and that fact got me to wondering if there’s a direct correlation.

The Mix

Take for example the Halo series, Portal and World of Warcraft. All are prized for their well-executed mechanics, but also for their plots and themes, which in turn generate a fierce fandom. Halo leans very heavily upon action, being a first-person shooter, but it distils solid science fiction through its cliffhanger narratives and enigmatic teaser trailers. Portal too combines a subtle plot with stellar mechanics, all the while ensuring that GLaDOS sits right up there with HAL and the T-1000 on a list of memorable sci-fi nemeses.

My intention with this article was not to come to some sort of conclusion based on generic appeal, but this has been a hard result to ignore.

An Adventure of Sorts

2011-05-18T14:47:26-07:00

Magicka is a game which has crept up on myself and my game-playing friends, and taken us all completely by surprise. It isn’t a perfect game, but it is one of the most innovative – and definitely the funniest – games I’ve played to date.

This Arrowhead Studio project was released on Steam at the beginning of the year. Were I forced to fit it into a genre or theme, it would be something of a ‘fantasy adventure shmup’. Take bits from World of Warcraft and dungeon-crawlers like Baldur’s Gate, smother in a Monty Python glaze, and you’re getting close to a recipe for this delightful oddity.

"Magicka" 's selection of spells is not only vast, but spectacular.

The game allows you and up to 3 friends to pick up wizarding staves and don colourful robes, and embark upon a quest to rid the land of marauding orcs, led by Warlord Khan. In fact its entire premise is summed up within minutes by the game’s delightful narrator, Vlad – a mentor who literally hands you a bullet point list and shoves you on your way to play the game.

Following a short introduction, in which we learn of the corrupted wizard Grimnir and his wish to unite the world’s magicks, we are ushered through the halls of a wizarding academy in order to attend a party in our honour. Jocularity has its pitfalls when wielding arcane forces however, and the party is accidentally dropped into the castle’s dungeons. An obstacle course follows, in which on-screen popups and handy switching devices teach the new wizards their craft.

It is at this time – in co-op games of Magicka at least – that all hell breaks loose, and the game designers are well aware of this. Grant four players some cartoony avatars and the power to set things aflame, and chaos can only ensue. Indeed my party of 4 had to replay the tutorial 4 times, simply because we kept ‘accidentally’ destroying each other.

To the game’s real credit, its formula does not change from here on out. Ever the lurking mentor, Vlad (who assures us that he is most definitely not a vampire) guides our valiant wizards from village to city to forest, most of which run rampant with goblins and other foul creatures. Rid an area of its foes, recover, and move along; its formula leaves the game experience very open to player input, best sought through voice chat.

Combining beams of complimentary magic can devastate enemy ranks; crossing opposites will reduce your party to bloodied chunks.

The players are quickly given a full suite of 8 elemental forces (water, life, shield, cold, lightning, arcane, earth and fire), which can be combined to form different spells. Some of these ‘magicks’ can also be learned later on, often after defeating certain groups or bosses. By encouraging us to experiment, the game further establishes its light-hearted and laid-back approach, making for some spectacularly gory battles indeed. It’s hard not to learn a valuable lesson in crossing opposite forces, when attempting to heal someone who’s casting an arcane spell. I didn’t think seeing dismembered chunks of wizard spatter across the battlefield could be so funny.

Above all else, Magicka is a game experience, and its writing acknowledges this. The FMVs are short but hilarious, and its characters and parodies are truly memorable. It is, however, an experience to be shared, and while group play can be a tricky environment in which to learn the game’s nuances – in which case a solo run through the tutorial might be wise – the game is very tough upon a single player.

Its challenges do not – as far as I can tell – scale depending on the number of wizards present. Indeed, having so many criss-crossing magic beams on screen at once may lend further difficulty to the game, but it’s as nothing compared to the overwhelming difficulty curves a solo player will have to climb, even early into the game. Indeed I would struggle to recommend this game to anyone looking for a comical, solo game; try Psychonauts instead.

We as a group also had some difficulty with the game’s default controls, and as I understand it, a patch which allowed users to alter these key bindings does not always come bundled into the Steam download. A verification of files later, and I was able to fix the developer’s controversial choice: to place self-healing functions on the middle mouse button of scroll-wheel peripherals.

Pre-empt the control issues however, find some friends to play with, and you’re set for a laugh a minute. Magicka manages to be technically impressive game indeed, and its magic abilities are delightfully complex, but simple in their logic. They and the other gameplay elements allow players to have their own fun with a game rich in cult parody and memorable battles.