No Fun Games is proud to present Pax Britannica, a one-button real-time strategy game we made for the GAMMA4 design competition. Our team includes designers/programmers Henk Boom, Renaud Bédard and me, artist Daniel Burton and composer Ben Abraham. Unfortunately we were not selected and will not be showing off our game at GDC. However, we had a great time making the game and I’m glad we finally get to release it to the public!

Windows Download

Coming Soon

The game was designed for 1-4 Xbox 360 controllers hooked up to a PC (the keyboard controls are A-F-H-L). Holding down the button spins the needle on the radial menu in the middle of the player’s factory ship. The needle will only travel as far as the player’s current resources allow. Releasing the button creates a ship that corresponds to the quadrant that the needle is pointing at: fighter, bomber, frigate, or a factory ship upgrade. Ships you spawn fight automatically using the latest in artificial aquatelligence technology. The player who keeps their factory ship alive wins!

We had been hoping to fix a few things for an official release, but the game has been “out there” on TIGSource for a few weeks now. In fact, we’re thrilled by all the positive feedback we’ve gotten! Pax Britannica has been picked up by the Indie Games Weblog, Bytejacker, PlayThisThing, and GayGamer. Furthermore, Darius Kazemi made this awesome video review:

Enjoy the game, and please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

You can listen to it here:

• Download the podcast directly [mp3]
• Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes
• Subscribe to the podcast feed

Since I somehow neglected to mention it here, I also had a terrific conversation with Corvus Elrod and Deirdra Kiai as part of the Brainy Gamer “Summer of Confabs” a few months ago. In it we discussed sexist game marketing, Orson Scott Card’s involvement with Shadow Complex, and some of our favourite indie games of the year. Do give it a listen if you haven’t already!

2000

The autumn years of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation brought us some real gems. Perfect Dark, Rare’s successor to GoldenEye, forced us all to buy 4 MB of extra RAM in order to enjoy four player deathmatch with an abominable framerate. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was destined to be the black sheep of the series, but it has found significant critical appreciation with age. We clicked and looted our way through the hellscape of Diablo 2 (including the long-teased “cow level”). Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 found broad appeal outside of skater culture for its deeply challenging trick chaining system, establishing a fan base that would justify dozens of sequels.

2001

This year saw the release of Grand Theft Auto 3, a game that spawned the 3D sandbox genre. A decade later, countless imitators are still iterating on its innovative core concept. Halo: Combat Evolved was the “killer app” for Microsoft’s new Xbox, and revealed the potential of first person shooter games on consoles. Two personal favourites were also released that year: Final Fantasy X, one of the finest in the series, and Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game I played continuously for roughly seven years.

2002

The highlight of this year was Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, a century-spanning horror masterpiece. Most memorably, the game quantified sanity and played frightening tricks on the player as it depleted. Warcraft III introduced RPG elements to the strategy genre and spawned the incredibly successful mod / subgenre Defense of the Ancients. Timesplitters 2 was a tremendous multiplayer game, and one of the few of the era that supported four player spliscreen. Finally, Metroid Prime brought Samus into three dimensions while the maintaining the series’ trademark atmospheric loneliness.

2003

There were several great games released this year, but first in my heart is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. With gorgeous cell-shaded graphics, distinctive character and enemy design, beautiful music and sound, and a gigantic oceanic world to explore, it’s my personal favourite of the series¹. Meanwhile, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time introduced time-manipulation to Jordan Mechner’s beloved platformer, Beyond Good & Evil became a cult classic for its beautiful world and memorable characters, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic showed us that Luke should have definitely gone to the dark side (they have sassy robots).

2004

Valved defined this year with two pieces of software: Half-Life 2, which showed the storytelling potential of first-person shooters, and Steam, the groundbreaking digital distribution platform. Idiosyncratic Japanese designers Keita Takahashi and Hideo Kojima released Katamari Damacy and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater respectively. The former is a delightful game that defies classification, the latter is the most focused and tight entry in the series to date. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was remarkably ambitious, introducing a gigantic world map spanning three cities, farmland, mountains and desert. What it lost in focus, it recovered in remarkable scale and variety.

2005

With the next generation right around the corner, this year was defined by late era console games. Developers finally had the knowledge and experience to take full advantage of the hardware, and they did so to great effect. Resident Evil 4 surprised everyone by reinventing the third person shooter, and is one of the finest action games of the decade. Double Fine Productions, founded by former LucasArts designer Tim Schafer, released their hilarious debut title Psychonauts. Punk developer Suda51 made his Western debut with Killer7, a game that noone understands but many people enjoy. Finally, the mournful Shadow of the Colossus gave many of us our first inkling of what this whole “games as art” idea was all about.

2006

The beautiful ink painting-inspired Okami was one of the first titles to be declared the Playstation 2’s swan song; the console would continue to see excellent new releases into 2008. Gears of War build on Resident Evil 4’s over-the-shoulder camera, added exemplary cover mechanics and became the must-have shooter of the next generation. Meanwhile, Nintendo found incredible success with the Wii. The console included the surprisingly fun tech demo Wii Sports, a game destined to be a perennial at family get-togethers. Finally, the long-awaited RPG Mother 3 was released in Japan; it would receive an unofficial translation by dedicated fans two years later.

2007

“Fall 2007″ has become a synonym among gamers for “a large number of great games released in a very short amount of time”. Bioshock introduced us to the underwater objectivist paradise of Rapture, which featured remarkable storytelling in every inch of its rich world. Portal was an instant classic with its innovative puzzle mechanics and terrific dark humour. Team Fortress 2 showed the refinement of a decade of development, and Valve admirably continues to support it with free content. Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare succeeded with a thrilling campaign and addictive multiplayer meta-game. Finally, Harmonix’s Rock Band brought the peripheral-based music game trend to its logical conclusion. These five tremendous games (and many more) were released between August and November!

2008

It was the year of indie, as World of Goo, Castle Crashers and Braid led the charge for independent games to be taken seriously in the mainstream. Suda51 released No More Heroes for the Wii, a title that was more palatable to the average gamer without sacrificing his trademark eccentric style. Sins of a Solar Empire married real time and 4X strategy with unprecedented galactic scale; I’ve been something of an evangelist for this game ever since. Clint Hocking’s Far Cry 2 became the benchmark for first-person immersion and open-world shooters. Grand Theft Auto 4 was met with exultant praise on arrival, then promptly forgotten about. On more sober recollection, it’s generally agreed that the living breathing city of Liberty City was the game’s real star.

2009

It’s difficult to take a long view on this most recent year, especially since I’m still playing through half of this year’s strong contenders². Here’s what I’ve been enjoying so far: ThatGameCompany’s Flower showed that art games can be beautiful, accessible and rather zen. Chilean studio ACE Team introduced us to the mad world of Zeno Clash, a first-person brawler with a unique punk fantasy aesthetic. Demon’s Souls introduced innovative asynchronous multiplayer mechanics, but will surely be remembered more for its crushing difficulty and tremendous atmosphere. Batman: Arkham Asylum was certainly the superhero simulator of the decade. Having successfully iterated and refined the meta-game formula, Modern Warfare 2 has been my multiplayer mainstay over the holidays.

My favourite passtime has changed a lot in the last decade. I look forward to seeing what the next ten years have in store.

¹ Michael Abbott can back me up on this one.
² I still haven’t played Uncharted 2 and Brütal Legend!

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a something of a sleeper hit for me. I had enjoyed the previous entries in the series, but only as World War 2 simulators with little lasting appeal. If it hadn’t been bundled economically with Assassin’s Creed¹ at the time, I doubt I would have even bothered to check it out. It was therefore a complete surprise when Modern Warfare delivered a one-two punch: an exciting campaign with some truly memorable set-pieces and an addictive MMORPG-inspired multiplayer. I was absolutely floored, and have been an Infinity Ward adherent ever since.

Modern Warfare introduced an innovative multiplayer metagame: collecting experience persistently as you play, unlocking new guns and perks as you increased in level. Completing difficult gameplay challenges earned an experience bonus, while weapon-specific challenges unlocked useful attachments. Perks allowed the player to enhance their avatar with increased speed, greater damage, more ammunition, etc. These RPG-like mechanics gave players long term goals to pursue between matches, while the extensive customization allowed players to explore the endless permutations of combat style. Modern Warfare was the most popular game in Xbox Live for several months, and it’s easy to see why.

Modern Warfare 2 was released last month, the third game in recent years to be labelled “the largest entertainment launch ever”². The critical discussion centered around the controversial “No Russian” level, where the player takes on the role of an undercover agent during an airport massacre. I think Mitch Krpata said it best; the level is “meaningless except in its capacity to shock”, and compares poorly to the AC-130 sequence from the first game that was “chilling in its clinical detachment”. While the recycled sequences are beginning to wear thin, the overall campaign was still excellent and very exciting.

However, like Michael Abbott’s students, I’m much more interested in talking about Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer, whose improvements deserve unconditional praise. Infinity Ward managed to simultaneously inject a cornucopia of new content while refining and perfecting existing systems. The result is game that supports a wide variety of play styles, and has a lot to offer both veterans and newcomers. I’d like to examine the small refinements Infinity Ward introduced to accomplish this.

One of the most obvious improvements is the deemphasis of frag grenades, a source of many frustrating deaths. The first Modern Warfare had a level 41 perk that tripled the number of grenades a player would spawn with. This perk became ubiquitous in multiplayer, as grenade spamming was an incredibly effective strategy. Players could haphazardly launch a barrage skyward to pick up a kill or two (particularly on small maps like “Wet Work”). In Modern Warfare 2, the grenade slot is renamed “equipment”, and players can only hold one grenade at a time. Furthermore, the range and damage of these grenades has been reduced. This quashes grenade spamming tactics and encourages players to explore other options for that slot (such as a Blast Shield or Tactical Insertion).

Another noticeable improvement is the addition of new secondary weapon types. In the first game, a pistol was the only sidearm option (unless you used the “Overkill” perk to spawn with two primary weapons). This made it difficult to justify choosing a sniper rifle or shotgun, as it left you extremely vulnerable in medium range confrontations. Modern Warfare 2 moved shotguns to the secondary weapon slot and introduced new machine pistols and rocket launchers. Improving the quality and variety of secondary weapons allows players to be more experimental with their primary weapon choice. For instance, submachine gun users can equip a Thumper to clear out rooms, while snipers can compete at medium range with a TMP machine pistol. Overall, this makes the multiplayer class customization much more creative and personal.

On the topic of secondary weapons, the addition of lock-on rocket launchers provides a crucial counter-balance to the new killstreak rewards. While it was ostensibly possible to take down an attack helicopter with an RPG in Modern Warfare, it was extremely challenging to properly line up the shot. Thus, Infinity Ward introduced a number of launchers that sacrifice free-fire kills for the ability to lock on airborne targets. This gives a losing team some relief against helicopters and harriers, and even allows players to take out the other team’s UAV reconnaissance. To justify their high skill requirements, more advanced killstreaks (AC-130, Pave Low) are equipped with flares that can divert a limited number of seeker rockets. These mechanics add an interesting layer of strategy to the killstreak arms race.

While killstreak rewards provide positive feedback for the winning team, Modern Warfare is already highly skewed towards very strong players. Thus the addition of deathstreak rewards gives the losing team a fighting chance and makes the game much friendly for new players. Players who have died several times in a row can spawn with more health, drop a live grenade when they die, or make a last stand with their primary weapon. “Copycat”, the most interesting deathstreak reward, allows players to copy the loadout of the player who killed them, effectively giving new players early access to the more advanced weapons and perks. The introduction of this negative feedback system has a stabilizing effect on the game, and generally reduces the frustration of losing.

Finally, Modern Warfare 2 carefully rebalances and synthesizes the weaker perks³. This is accomplished in part by the addition of pro versions of each perk that are unlocked by completing specific challenges. These advanced perks provide a small secondary benefit, usually of little consequence, to the perk’s main function. For instance, the first game had a perk called “Dead Silence” that muffled the sound of that player’s footsteps. While theoretically useful for stealthy players, in practice it was easily outclassed by every other perk in that tier. In the sequel, silent footsteps became a secondary effect of the pro version of “Ninja” (invisibility to heartbeat sensors). Overall, the perk system has been rebalanced such that there are many useful options in each tier, greatly increasing the number of interesting loadout permutations.

While these changes may seem minor, they have a dramatic effect on the balance and flow of Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer. They greatly reduce the number of capricious deaths, somewhat levelling the playing field for new players. More importantly, the greater variety of weapons and perks allow players to capitalize on the spectrum of play styles that Modern Warfare 2 supports. Infinity Ward has skillfully iterated on their past success and created a multiplayer game that is superior in every way.

¹ Ironically, I thought Assassin’s Creed was rather underwhelming.
² Halo 3 was the “biggest launch ever” in 2007, Grand Theft Auto 4 in 2008.
³ However, I have no idea how SitRep got through playtesting. It’s useless.

Anamanaguchi – Dawn Metropolis

With the chiptune scene becoming increasingly important and interesting, it was only a matter of time before a band like Anamanaguchi showed up with a radical new take on the genre. While many chiptune artists create rocking music using synthesizers and NES sound chips alone, Anamanaguchi complement their sound with live guitar, bass and drums. The synthesis of the two worlds is difficult to categorize; it has the excitement of metal, the timbre of a vintage video game, the rhythm of dance-punk. Dawn Metropolis is an exciting album, pure and simple.

Mos Def – The Ecstatic

Mos Def made a big impact in the late 90’s, both with Black Star and his excellent solo album Black on Both Sides. Unfortunately his releases this decade have been somewhat lacklustre, and adherents have long anticipated a return to form. I doubt The Ecstatic is exactly what they were looking for.

The album doesn’t statically capture his old sound, but rather reflects the tribulations and blessings of the interim decade. Songs with Middle Eastern vibe (”Auditorium” and “Wahid” in particular) echo the complexities of America’s increasing involvement in that part of the world. In contrast, “Life In Marvelous Times” and “Casa Bey” explore the obligations of fulfilment and plenty. It’s a remarkably mature and complex album, more authentic than an anachronistic carbon copy of Black Star.

Fever Ray – s/t

Fans of the Swedish electronic duo The Knife had a lot to be excited about this year, as Karin Dreijer Andersson released her highly anticipated solo album under the alias Fever Ray. The album is significantly murkier and slower paced than the band’s other material; the formerly danceable elements of The Knife’s sound (layered synthesizers, tribal drums) are translated to be mournful and foreboding. The exploration of deep pitch shifting is particularly interesting, given Karin’s haunting voice and distinctive accent. The entire album has a shamanic vibe, an aesthetic that’s reflected in her live shows.

Metric – Fantasies

I’m surprised I haven’t seen this album on more “best of” lists, especially given the long gap since their last record. Have we started taking excellent Metric albums for granted now? Fantasies is loaded with hits: “Help I’m Alive”, “Gimme Sympathy”, and “Front Row” all charted in Canada. The new songs are layered with synthesizers and vocal harmonies; in contrast the lyrics are more romantic and personal. Metric is really hitting their stride as a band, and as a fan I’d be quite content to see more of the same in their next album.

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

Like many people, I became aware of Dirty Projectors after the 2007 release of Rise Above, a cover album of Black Flag’s Damaged reinterpreted from childhood memory. It was a really interesting experiment, but the cognitive dissonance caused by knowing the original songs made it a bit difficult to appreciate.

Bitte Orca, on the other hand, is composed of entirely original material and is significantly stronger as a result. The band’s idiosyncratic formula contrasts Dave Longstreth’s strange soaring voice with soft vocal harmonies by Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian. While the singing is usually backed by extremely minimal instrumentation, the guitar and drums occasionally crescendo to incredible effect (ex: “Useful Chamber”). I suspect this is the kind of formula you either love or hate, but to me it’s absolutely magical.

Honourable Mentions

• Regina Spektor – Far
• Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3
• St. Vincent – Actor
• Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
• Sieber, Kammen, Fulton and Schatz – Braid OST

That’s my perspective on 2009 in music! Did I miss any of your personal favourites? I’m always open to new music suggestions, so please do drop me a comment with your picks.

This week I attended the Montreal International Game Summit, a professional conference for game developers. Since that is not my profession (yet), I managed to get a free pass as a student volunteer. This was a compelling arrangement, even if it meant I didn’t always have my choice of presentations (I particularly regret missing Brenda Brathwaite.) Fortunately, the talks I did attend were also terrific, so I thought I might share some of what I learned.

Jason Graves – The Music of Dead Space

Did you notice the music in Dead Space? Neither did I, yet it’s an absolutely fundamental element of the horror genre. Composer Jason Graves explained the unique challenges involved in creating “the scariest game ever”. He explained how a soundtrack with consistent themes and progressions makes the player feel safe and strong, so an effective horror soundtrack has to be dissonant and arrhythmic. His compositions were partly inspired by the surreal techniques of Modernist composers, including odd directives that are difficult to express using standard music notation (ex: play this scale as quickly as you can.)

In a fascinating intersection of music and programming, each track in Dead Space has four dynamic layers of intensity. The chosen layers depend partly on the player’s distance from objects in the environment labelled as “fear emitters”. These objects are usually monsters, but can also include hallways, corners, bodies, etc. The music slowly crescendos as the player approaches these objects, a subtle and interactive method of inducing dread.

Nathan Vella – Indie in 2D

Capybara Games is an independent game studio that assembled from members of the Toronto IGDA. Their premier game is Critter Crunch for the PS3 and iPhone, an awesome throwback to the era of “hardcore puzzle games” (think Yoshi’s Cookie) with gorgeous art and animations.

Co-founder Nathan Vella talked about finding the right people for a video game startup; real partners who share your creative vision. He explained how nearly everyone Capybara hired had been introduced through friends and acquaintances. The hiring process for a small company should be casual and instinctual: hang out, have a conversation, look for shared passions.

He also emphasized the importance of a shared aesthetic goal. He revealed the piece of concept art that served as the vision for Critter Crunch, and showed how little the final game diverged from it. Every team member kept that concept piece on their desk, ensuring that everyone pulled in the same direction.

Randy Smith – How To Make Games That Aren’t Fun

Randy Smith is a game industry veteran. Formerly a game designer at Looking Glass studios, he recently co-founded the indie studio Tiger Style Games and released the excellent arachnid simulator Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor for the iPhone.

In his presentation, he explored the question: do games need to be fun? This is ostensibly the metric by which video games are judged. However, in other media there is plenty of room for work that is engaging and worthwhile without being “fun” (ex: the film Schindler’s List).

Randy noted that many games have dark themes (death, murder, loss, anger) but treat them in a very light manner. They neglect to explore the consequences and ramifications of actions and events. As Penny Arcade recently demonstrated, Nathan Drake kills hundreds of minions without concern or guilt. While such games are entertaining, the scarcity of games that address the human condition in a serious way is emblematic of the immaturity of our medium.

While he didn’t have an easy answer for how to address these issues, he proposed a thought experiment “not fun” game called Hospital Director. He suggested giving the player choices with no right answer: should a busy hospital send an overworked doctor home or risk her making a mistake? He also put forward some ideas about creating emotional connections and leveraging interactivity.

Marc LeBlanc – Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics

I’ve written about my own take on the MDA framework, but at MIGS I had an opportunity to meet one of its co-creators. At the end of his presentation, I took the chance to ask him two burning questions I had since reading his paper:

Do you feel MDA is compatible with Scott McCloud’s six layers of art? If so, how do they intersect?

Prefacing his response with the fact that he had read Understanding Comics a long time ago, he replied that to him the six layers of art purely described games at the Aesthetics level. In that sense, he asserted that McCloud’s layers are actually orthogonal to MDA. He was also sceptical of McCloud’s system where artists “accumulate experience and level up” to gain access to the esoteric aspects of art.

According to MDA, the Aesthetic level only includes emotional responses in the player that were intended by the designer. Why make that distinction?

Marc replied that MDA is intended as more of a design tool than a criticism paradigm. Thus, an unintended unpleasant aesthetic response should really be considered a flaw and therefore be fixed in the design phase. He conceded that there was room for emergent aesthetic responses, and that designers should pay close attention to such player behaviour.

I copied Marc’s answers above from memory, I apologize in advance for failing to capture shades of meaning. I may address my own views about his answers at a later date.

Chris Hecker – Meaningfully Mass Market

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the biggest entertainment launch of all time, making $550 million dollars in one weekend. Sensationalist headlines often tell us that the video game industry is now bigger and more profitable than Hollywood. In his presentation, Chris Hecker revealed the numbers behind such claims and explored the idea of what it means to be meaningfully mainstream.

While video games are making record profits, they lag behind film and music in terms of unit sales. To quote someone who had the good sense to take notes at the presentation:

Gone With the Wind, the most successful film by revenue after adjusting for inflation, sold 35 million “units” in the United Kingdom alone in 1940, at which point that country had a population of 43 million. Even more astonishingly, it sold 202 million tickets in the United States — which had a population of only 130 million at the time. “Everyone went twice!” Hecker exclaimed. “This is mass market reach.”

Put otherwise: “Celine Dion is beating every game we’ve ever made.” He also refuted the claim that the average gamer is 35 and female. When “games” are deceitfully defined to include cards and board games, then two main market groups emerge: 18-34 males and senior women. These two groups average to a mythical 35 year woman who is not at all representative of the gaming demographic.

How can games avoid the “cultural ghetto” that comic books have fallen into? Chris asserts the answer is to target a more varied audience and take more creative risks:

Not all bands are trying to make Thriller. They’re not all trying to hit every single person in their entire audience with a single work, which we try to do routinely. We have such incredibly narrow sets of users that we don’t actually have a reasonable description of a mass market audience. Film can do both The Dark Knight and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and it makes the medium richer for it. You can rent one when you’re in one mood, and the other when you’re in another mood. We don’t provide for that.

He concluded with an introspective challenge to game developers: “What are you trying to say, and why? And are you trying to say it with interactivity? If you can answer those, you’re on the right track.”

Finally, I also attended presentations by Jakub Dvorsky of Amanita Design, Jason Della Rocca, Jeff Goodsill, Paul Winterhalder, Valve’s Jason Holtman, Jonathan Cooper and Dorian Kiken from Bioware, and a business panel featuring Clint Hocking. I regret not being able to reproduce your great talks from memory!

MIGS was a terrific experience, I learned so much and was surrounded by people with a passion for game development. I’ve thankfully taken some of that energy home with me, to reinvest in making and writing about video games.

Photographs by CasualCapture.

The response was overwhelming; of the nine people I had e-mailed, seven of them were interested in participating. The project was suddenly much larger than I had anticipated, but I didn’t have the heart to turn anyone away. The eight of us (Henk Boom, Thomas Hibbert, Phil Jones, Renaud Bédard, Alex Charlton, William Mitchell, Kyle Sama and I¹) formed the facetiously titled collective No Fun Games.

You might be surprised to learn that our original game idea had nothing to do with music, shoot ‘em ups or The Beatles. While we explored a number of different game ideas, we settled on creating a murder mystery game set in an JRPG-style lumber town. We gave the development version the nickname Pulp².

Pulp’s main character was “Penny”, a local girl with a knack for mysteries. She teamed up with retired Sherlock Holmes analogue “Detective Powell” to solve the murder of his former partner “Dr. Watson” (we never really settled on official names). You can see Phil’s concept art for some of the characters above.

We developed an elaborate back story which outlined the motivation behind the murder and its connection to the protagonists. However, our ideas for the game’s actual plot and structure were little more than a skeleton. Truthfully, we possessed neither the inclination nor the talent to write good fiction and this was ultimately the game’s downfall.

On the programming side, we put together a basic game engine in Python with the help of the Pygame and PyOpenGL libraries. It gave us the bare essentials, allowing us to add actors to the screen and assign them behaviours. As seen above, we created a simple world for Penny to run around and interact with (the Fez spritesheet was placeholder art lent to us by Renaud).

Sadly, this is as far as the Pulp project ever got. Despite our best intentions, we drifted apart over the summer. Everyone had personal commitments, internships, and travel plans. We simply didn’t have the time or motivation for leisure coding. By July, Pulp had reluctantly become vapourware. Fortunately, this wasn’t the end of No Fun Games.

By late August, things in my life were starting to slow down. I was back living in Montreal (after spending the summer at IBM in Ottawa), and had a couple of weeks off before the fall semester. Blessed with free time, I decided to reconnect with my teammates for a final sprint. Naturally, we wanted to release something after all our hard work.

Of course, not everyone had the luxury of time off. While we all wanted to participate, only Henk, Thomas and I had the hours to spare. Our artist Phil was also interested, but couldn’t commit to the heavy art demands of the murder mystery concept. With this in mind, we decided to drop that idea and reuse the engine we had created to pursue an entirely different genre.

The concept for Norwegian Wood came from our desire to explore the burgeoning intersection of music and gameplay. We wanted to create a game where listening and following the rhythm played a strong role in the player’s experience, but less directly than a game like Rock Band.

This idea manifested as a shoot ‘em up game where the bullet patterns are timed to the individual instruments. The decision to use The Beatles’ music was somewhat incidental; I happened to be listening to Rubber Soul when the game concept occurred to me. However, the song has certain qualities that make it rather ideal. For instance, the notes are quite discrete, making it easy to divide the instruments and record timestamps. More importantly, using a calm lilting ballad with subtle dark undertones contrasted nicely with the upbeat synth-metal used in most shoot ‘em up games.

Henk, Thomas and I got together at school to work on the game, working nearly full time for two weeks. We managed to create a playable prototype within a few days, then put the majority of our work into refining and iterating on the core gameplay. We also placed a strong emphasis on player feedback, bugging everyone around us to playtest it.

After chasing down the cross-platform bugs and ironing out the details of deployment, we finally released Norwegian Wood in late September. Thanks in large part to friends on Twitter spreading the word, we’ve had thousands of hits, hundreds of high scores and some very positive feedback. We’re thrilled that so many people have enjoyed our game, and promise to put all that excitement right back into making more of them.

To summarize Gamasutra-style, here are some lessons we learned during development:

What Went Right

1. Working Together Locally
While most of the work on Pulp had been completed remotely, it came at a cost to communication and motivation. For Norwegian Wood we decided that there is really no substitute for face-to-face time and met up in person every day. This was extremely effective, both for making consistent measurable progress and sharing a common creative vision.

2. Recording Global High Scores
The online high score table was a minor last-minute addition to the game. However, as Eric Swain pointed out in his insightful Indie Spotlight, it added a ton of value in terms of competition and replayability. “Even after all these years and innovations it is still a huge motivation to play. [...] It isn’t all about competition, but the close knit community that get formed in that competition.”

3. Sidestepping Copyright
It took a lot of thinking to come up with a way to release a music game without infringing on The Beatles’ copyright³. Despite our doubts, having the user provide their own mp3 turned out to be a very successful strategy. Of course, it’s a shame that we picked the one band whose music can’t be downloaded legally. In the future, we’d very much like to reexplore this concept with Creative Commons licensed music.

What Went Wrong

1. Big Team Woes
Starting out with such a large development team on Pulp was a major challenge. Responsibility was spread too thin, and no one felt like they had creative control of the game on an individual level. In retrospect, I would recommend a team of no more than 4 for your first indie collaboration. Furthermore, it helps to have a fairly autocratic team leader.

2. Summertime Blues
I had assumed that summer would be the perfect time for students to pursue a side project. Working nine to five at an internship means having evenings off and lots of free time, right? Sadly, I was way off. The temperament of summer is lazy and leisurely; it’s hardly a season for picking up additional work. Furthermore, working full-time turns casual hacking into an unpleasant chore. Counter-intuitively, students would much rather attempt side projects while they’re juggling exams and assignments in the fall.

3. Storytelling Failure
We were incredibly naive about the process of writing a story for Pulp. We had the big picture ideas and the game mechanics, and just assumed that the moment-to-moment narrative experience would flow from that. We quickly discovered that writing a good story is an extremely demanding task, one we were ill-equipped to handle. Lesson learned: if you insist on having a narrative element to your game, make sure you have a dedicated writer (or semionaut) on the team.

Thanks again to everyone who was involved in Norwegian Wood, including those of you who playtested it and helped spread the word on release day. Making this game was a terrific experience, and it taught me a great deal about game design, programming and project management. I look forward to applying these lessons to my next game!

¹ Ben Abraham was also briefly involved as music director, he wrote us a lovely dirge for Pulp.
² Funny how Pulp turned into Norwegian Wood. The arboreal theme is coincidental.
³ Actually, Nick suggested this approach. Thanks Nick!

The game project that I’ve been quietly working on this summer is finally ready for release! It’s a rhythm-based shmup inspired by the Beatles song Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). You can download it for PC, Mac and Linux on the game’s website:

Norwegian Wood – No Fun Games

I have more to say about the game’s development process, but I’ll save that for a postmortem post later this month. For now, enjoy the game, and please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek defined MDA in 2001 [PDF link]. It stands for mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, the three layers that define a game. These words are often thrown around casually in game design discussions, but in MDA they have very specific meanings:

• Mechanics are the formal rules of the game. These rules define how the game is prepared, what actions the players can take, the victory conditions, the rule enforcement mechanisms, etc.
• Dynamics describe how the rules act in motion, responding to player input and working in concert with other rules. In programming terms, the “run-time” behaviour of the game.
• Aesthetics describe the player’s experience of the game; their enjoyment, frustration, discovery, fellowship, etc. In simple terms, what makes the game fun?

We can illustrate these concepts with the classic game Pac-Man. The pathfinding logic of the enemies is defined by a formal set of rules. Each ghost has a unique seeking mechanic: Blinky targets the tile that the player currently occupies, while Pinky targets four tiles ahead. Together, these rules create a dynamic wherein the player becomes boxed in by Pinky in the front and Blinky from behind. The enemy dynamics present a challenge to the player, creating an aesthetic of fun and excitement.

In his post on MDA, Schreiber also offers the following example:

In a First-Person Shooter video game, a common mechanic is for players to have “spawn points” – dedicated places on the map where they re-appear after getting killed. Spawn points are a mechanic. This leads to the dynamic where a player may sit next to a spawn point and immediately kill anyone as soon as they respawn. And lastly, the aesthetics would likely be frustration at the prospect of coming back into play only to be killed again immediately.

As illustrated above by Clint Hocking² (lead designer of Far Cry 2) and Ben Abraham (blogger, musician, Far Cry 2 enthusiast), designers and players experience games from different perspectives.

Game designers only have direct control of the game’s mechanics; the mechanics work together to generate the dynamics, which in turn generate the aesthetics. They want to make their games fun and engaging, but only have indirect control of the player’s experience. Schreiber calls this a “second-order design problem” and it’s the reason why game design is challenging. Thus, designers tend to see mechanics and work outwards.

Conversely, players are immediately familiar with their own emotional response to a game regardless of whether they understand the underlying rules. One can enjoy Wii Sports tennis without necessarily knowing the exact dimensions of the virtual court. Only through hours of observation and deduction do the dynamics and mechanics gradually become clear.

We can see the contrast between these two perspectives in Clint and Ben’s writing about Far Cry 2. Clint’s GDC 2009 presentation reveals how the game inflicts “random, small losses” in order to keep the player alternating between “composition” and “execution”. This explains how the attrition mechanics create dynamics that force the player to improvise, resulting in a challenging and immersive aesthetic. Ben, on the other hand, insightfully chronicles the aesthetics of games. This does not imply that his appreciation is shallow, rather that he sees games in terms of personal experiences and emotional responses rather than abstract systems of rules.

How do the three layers of MDA compare with the six layers of art proposed by Scott McCloud? Schreiber suggests that they are nearly parallel: “mechanics are roughly equivalent to [...] structure; dynamics are analogous to craft; and aesthetics are similar to surface.” While there is ostensibly strong similarity between the two frameworks, I believe that they diverge on a crucial point.

McCloud’s six layers of art are ranked according to importance; novices concern themselves with surfaces while masters concentrate on ideas and forms. Schreiber compares aesthetics to McCloud’s concept of surface, which are the “production values, finishing, the aspects most apparent on the first superficial exposure to the work”. However, McCloud defines ideas, the innermost layer of art, as “the impulses, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies, the purposes of the work”. This is also strongly analogous to MDA’s definition of aesthetics³. The idea that the innermost and outermost layer are so strongly related is irreconcilable within McCloud’s strongly ranked framework; why then do aesthetics make perfect sense within MDA?

I suspect the reason is that, while MDA’s three layers are also ordered, they are not ranked according to importance or value. Mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics are equally valid and interesting perspectives for understanding a game. While surface is superficial and inconsequential, aesthetics describe concepts that are crucial to an artistic study of games: sensation, discovery, fellowship, expression, challenge, narrative, etc.

McCloud’s six layers of art and MDA are both useful ways of understanding and deconstructing video games. However, this fundamental difference prevents us from drawing easy parallels between them.

¹ Months ago Nels recommended I read about MDA, good advice I managed to completely forget. Apologies!
² Correction: CLINT HOCKING.
³ One could argue that McCloud’s idea/purpose refers to the emotions and impulses of the creator, not the player.

What’s interesting about the series is the contrast between how unremarkable many of these games are in a larger sense and how important they are on a personal level. Did the creators of Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe know that they would inspire Jim Rossignol’s lifetime of gaming? Do these influential games have common characteristics, or are they imbued with greatness by the emotion and (later) nostalgia of the player?

I doubt these questions have easy answers, but I’d like to explore these themes by profiling five games that have greatly influenced my life.

Tank Wars was the precursor to games such as Scorched Earth and Worms. Players took turns firing at each other with a variety of explosives, adjusting their shots for gravity and wind. It even featured crude destructible environments, a neat trick for the era.

Tank Wars was not the first game I ever played (that honour likely goes to Super Mario Bros. on my friend’s NES.) It was only one of the many DOS games I played on another friend’s old computer, alongside titles like Hugo’s House of Horrors and Jazz Jackrabbit. Why, then, does Tank Wars stand out so strongly in my memory?

I believe it’s because Tank Wars was the first game I ever played that had cooperative multiplayer. In other games you could pass around the controller, time-sharing the protagonist. However, Tank Wars gave me and my friend individual agency, then expected us to work together to overcome the computer. This simple change made a world of difference. We had to coordinate tactics. We were accountable to the “team” for our performance. We shared victories and losses.

Michael Abbot pronounced “co-op gaming” as his 2008 Game of the Year. I suppose it’s my pick for GOTY ‘93.

I’m sure this will make some of you feel quite old: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, released for the SNES in 1996, was indeed the first RPG I ever played.

A bit of context for this: my parents reluctantly bought me a Super Nintendo for my birthday in the Spring of ‘95. It was my very first video game system, and I cherished it. In its box was a card that urged me to subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine, so I dutifully handed over my allowance money later that Summer.

Each issue included a feature called “Epic Center” entirely devoted to RPGs, a genre concept that was entirely new to me. Stories that went beyond the instruction manual? Characters with personalities? Giant worlds to explore? These ideas blew my little mind, and I poured over each volume as if it were gospel. After the cover of issue 82, I knew exactly what I wanted for my birthday the following year.

In many ways, the action elements of Super Mario RPG made it an ideal starting point for a newcomer to the genre. The light platforming eased me into new concepts, such as turn-based combat and equipping items. Inventory management was particularly problematic; it took me ages to figure out that you could revive fallen party members with items. On the other hand, it taught me a variety of unusual habits that I carried with me to other games. I timed my attacks with the A button in Chrono Trigger and Pokémon, only realizing years later that most RPGs didn’t have such a system.

I’ve played through Super Mario RPG many times over the years, and it has held up very well with age. I still chuckle at the silly one-liners (“Who do you think you are? Bruce Lee?”) and quirky enemies (among them a wedding cake and a pastiche of the Power Rangers). It’s terrific to see the game’s legacy live on through the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series.

It must be difficult for people who grew up on PC games to understand the fuss over Goldeneye. The success of Doom inspired hundreds of imitators, planting the roots of first person shooters firmly in the PC market. At the time of Goldeneye’s release, they were already enjoying online deathmatches in Quake. Why would anyone get excited over a movie tie-in with clunky controls and unremarkable graphics?

For those of us raised on Nintendo, Goldeneye was a completely new experience. Still becoming accustomed to the third dimension introduced by Super Mario 64, we were now allowed to navigate this space from a native angle. I didn’t just control a character on the screen, the person on the screen was me. In other words, Goldeneye was the first game that felt truly immersive.

Despite my earlier claims, Goldeneye was also innovative even in comparison to its PC brethren. For instance, it moved the focus of FPS games away from constant killing. Goldeneye rewarded stealth, and encouraged the player to silently and effectively achieve the mission objectives. This gave the game a strong sense of pacing, with highs and lows of intensity.

Unfortunately, as Mitch Krpata pointed out, the game has not aged well. The graphics are so crude that it’s often difficult to tell what’s going on, and the framerate is abysmal in multiplayer matches. Still, I credit Goldeneye for introducing me to a genre that I have come to love.

In the early 2000’s, my parents finally bought the family a computer. This was very exciting to me, as I finally had a chance to catch up on the last decade of PC games. Having enjoyed Warcraft 1 & 2 at a friend’s house, I knew exactly which game I wanted to play first.

Despite being a terrific RTS, I’d be hesitant to call Starcraft an important influence on my gaming tastes today. In fact, I suspect that less than half of my playing time was actually spent in-game; it was the Campaign Editor that really captured my imagination.

If you’ve never used Starcraft’s editor, you might not know how robust it is. Beyond being able to shape the terrain, place resources and modify unit statistics, the Campaign Editor allows you to define triggers. A simplified form of event-based programming, they implement logic such as:

CONDITIONS:
-Player 1 kills at least 1 any unit.
ACTIONS:
-Display for current player: You have slain your first foe!
-Modify resources for Current player: Add 100 Ore.

Using triggers, I could coax Starcraft into becoming any kind of game I wanted. I experimented with making RPGs, racing games, and sci-fi survival horror. Furthermore, it was easy to import the custom maps to Battle.net and test them out with other enthusiasts on the “Use Map Settings” playlists.

In terms of personal “gaming education and influences”, Starcraft’s Campaign Editor may be the most important. It planted the seeds of programming and game design in my young brain, seeds that have blossomed into an academic pursuit of Software Engineering and (hopefully) a future career in game development. I can only hope that LittleBigPlanet and Kodu will do the same for the little nerds growing up today.

Unfortunately, not all of my “gaming education” has had a net positive effect on my life. I played Final Fantasy XI from April 2004 until January 2007, from the end of my last year of high school until halfway through my first year of university². At the peak, summertime with no school and a part-time job, I suspect I played over 40 hours a week. It’s shocking and shameful for me to put that into numbers, but it’s the truth.

Some people talk about being “addicted” to an MMO. This may be an accurate metaphor for some people, but in my life I think it was much more subtle. I didn’t fail out of school, miss work or even stop learning karate. I suspect it wasn’t externally obvious that I played an MMO at all.

However, the part of my life that the game did consume was my leisure time. Instead of watching TV, reading a book, exploring a new hobby or playing a different game, I would play Final Fantasy XI. That’s exactly the problem with MMOs: no matter how much time you put into them, you can always benefit by playing more. As Jonathan Blow explained: “It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else.”

There were some positive aspects to play Final Fantasy XI. I got to play and interact with people from all over the world, including one or two that I keep in contact with to this day. I learnt quite a bit about the psychology of MMO players, including the strange social hierarchies and superstitions that develop. Most importantly, participating and coordinating with ~60 other people to take down some of the strongest monsters in the game was a truly unique gameplay experience.

Playing Final Fantasy XI made me into the person I am today because I’ve learnt from my mistakes. It was my first and last MMORPG, an unforgettable experience that I hope never to revisit.

¹ Check out Michel’s take on the series as well.
² In Quebec, there are 2-3 years of CEGEP between high school and university.

This chart shows how the site’s RSS subscriptions have grown since June 2008 (according to Feedburner.) These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do illustrate that I’ve had a very fortunate year! The big spike in October came from being linked by Kotaku and the front page of Digg in the space of a week (many thanks to Maggie Greene.)

This year I wrote 41 posts, overhauled my blog design twice, and made my first two non-trivial games: Inventory Tetris and Rockwell, Papyrus, Skia. There’s more to come! I’m currently hard at work on a substantially larger secret project in pygame, and experimenting with flixel when I have a moment to spare.

More significantly, this last year saw the game blogging community really begin to gel. The conversation that started in blogs and comments moved to Twitter and the #GBConfab IRC channel, then came full circle as cross-posts, podcasts and shared experiences. The game writing archive Critical Distance was born out of this spirit of collaboration, and will hopefully serve to further expand the conversation.

In fact, the game blogging community is already so large that I do not feel that I can adequately thank everyone individually. Therefore, I’d like to thank all of you for your support, your critical insight, and your humour. I look forward to many more trips around the sun writing and learning with you all.

To all my quieter readers: thanks for sticking around, and happy Canada day!

When I first listened to Future Of The Left’s “The Hope That House Built”, my first thought was: “that’s the filthiest guitar I’ve ever heard!” Their latest album Travels With Myself and Another is dirty, hungry and excellent throughout. With indie rock tending toward dreamy Pet Sounds pop these days, their heavier sound is both refreshing and distinctive.

Could this trio of teenagers (16, 21 and 19 respectively) from London spark a modern swing / rockabilly revival? I certainly hope so! Kitty, Daisy & Lewis’s self-titled album consists mostly of covers, but they have a unique contemporary take on the classics. Beyond genre novelty, the band’s sheer instrumental ability shines through, particularly Kitty Durham’s wailing harmonica. This is a band to watch, without a doubt.

Regina Spektor’s latest album Far was released yesterday, and I assure you it will be playing on repeat at my place for the foreseeable future. A Soviet-born, Bronx-raised folk singer, Regina’s music is defined by its contradictions. Her songs are playful and mournful, traditional and experimental. If “Dance Anthem Of The 80’s” (embedded above) made you smile, I strongly suggest investigating her entire discography.

Finally, the story of Connie Converse is as peculiar as it is heartbreaking. In the 1950’s, this aspiring musician was living in an apartment in Greenwich Village. Her melancholic, thoughtful, feminist music was perhaps too avant-garde for contemporary recording companies, and she was never picked up. Disillusioned, she packed up and disappeared.

However, her private recordings were rediscovered decades later, “unearthed from the bottom of a filing cabinet.” As Lucy Foley [via Simon Parkin] explains, her music is remarkable:

This woman wrote her songs before the Beatles showed up. Before Elvis showed up. Before rock ‘n’ roll showed up. Long before the singer songwriter paradigm showed up. Connie Converse was writing songs in the fifties of such intimacy, wit and poignancy that would not be heard in the mainstream until Joni Mitchell came along, a hundred cultural light years later. There’s an uncanny quality in Connie Converse. Her songs go on journeys into yearning, into the uncanny.

You can hear more about this outstanding lost musician on WYNC’s Spinning on Air, and purchase an album from the people who rediscovered her work.

That’s all from me, but if you’re looking for more music check out Nav’s Summer selection over at Scrawled in Wax.

Little Wheel [Play]

Many game bloggers have tackled the subject of adventure games and their unfortunate fall from grace in mainstream gaming. It’s quite possible that the golden age of Lucasarts was the artistic peak for traditional adventures. However, enterprising developers are breathing new life into the genre by switching to a shorter format. While some companies are exploring this new niche by releasing episodically, indie developers such as Vector Park, Amanita Design and OneClickDog are creating short self-contained adventure stories.

OneClickDog’s latest release is Little Wheel, a 15 minute flash game about a brave little robot who is tasked with reviving a dead world. The protagonist is animated in a way that’s as charming and expressive as Wall-E, and the artwork is drawn in striking silhouette. It also features a terrific low-key jazz soundtrack.

Beyond its aesthetics, Little Wheel is an adventure game that isn’t shy about rewriting genre rules. On-screen elements that can be interacted with are clearly circled in white, eliminating the need to hunt pixels. There is no inventory, and each puzzle is confined to a single screen. It’s not a particularly challenging game, but it also isn’t difficult for the wrong reasons.

Little Wheel is a charming title that’s well worth spending a lunch break to explore.

Blueberry Garden [Download]

Blueberry Garden took the grand prize at this year’s IGF, and was finally released earlier this week. With its hand drawn graphics and zen atmosphere, it’s very obviously an indie title (though it falls short of a bingo). However, its gameplay is anything but typical. The goal of the game is to shut off the faucet that’s slowly drowning the garden. More fundamentally, Blueberry Garden is a game about exploring, and it introduces two innovative twists on the formula.

Firstly, the avian gentleman’s powers are tied directly to the garden that he inhabits. He gains abilities by consuming the fruit of local trees. The player can spread their seeds, planting new trees in strategic locations to overcome obstacles. Furthermore, many of these powers manipulate the garden’s terrain, raising or contracting it. The world of Blueberry Garden is an organic entity that shifts and changes with the player’s actions.

Secondly, the game uses a distinctive system to unlock new areas. Rather than impede the player with locked doors, Blueberry Garden uses altitude to divide the map. The avian gentleman assembles the objects he finds in the world (cameras, tomatoes, pencils) into a tower of stuff, which in turn allows him to glide to new ledges. The unique vertical level design unites with the flying mechanic to form a truly exceptional platformer.

Today I Die [Play]

I find Daniel Benmergui to be one of the most personally inspiring independent game developers. His games are minimalist and offbeat, strongly authored yet loose and free form. His most recent title is Today I Die, a game “about the daily choice of waking up in the morning.” He elaborated on this concept in an interview with Rachael Webster:

“We are conditioned to look at life as a series of milestones and achievements, so anything that is not one of those seems to be irrelevant. Like, what you do every day. The game is not about someone who suddenly changes her life in a single, spectacular moment like movies show people doing. It’s about a constant choice, an everyday choice.”

Today I Die is an interactive poem. Words can be swapped out and rearranged, and changes in the text are reflected in the world. Conversely, actions in the world generate new words for the player to manipulate. The unusual gameplay can take a little while to get the hang of, but take Corvus’s advice: “don’t read it like a game, play it like a poem.”

Zeno Clash [Download]

ACE Team’s Zeno Clash is a harbinger of a new class of games, dubbed Single-A games by designer Steve Gaynor. Falling somewhere between lo-fi indie and professional mainstream, they often showcase the graphical fidelity of the latter while maintaining the team size of the former.

Zeno Clash is a first person brawler built on Valve’s Source engine. It’s set in a dark “punk fantasy” world inhabited by a unique cast of strange and wonderful creatures. Among them are Father-Mother, a tall hermaphrodite creature with a very protective family, the Corwid, insane hermits who refuse to be slaves of reality, and the Hunter, a blind mercenary who commands explosive rodents. It’s a wonderfully imaginative setting, and ACE does a great job of slowly establishing the world and its inhabitants.

While I very much enjoy the game’s first-person fistfights, there are a few limitations. For instance, the guns come in two varieties: underpowered and overpowered. Neither camp strikes a good balance with the melee combat. Also, the ‘E’ key is mapped to far too many functions: locking on/off, changing targets, picking up weapons and eating fruit. A game that often demands precise timing deserves equally precise controls. However, these are minor qualms and the brawling mechanics are fundamentally solid and fun.

I started Zeno Clash with very high expectations, and it somehow managed to meet and exceed them. Hopefully the upcoming Xbox 360 port will expose this great game to an even wider audience.

Michel McBride-Charpentier explored some of these methods in a post entitled How Designers Turn Heads. The most naive solution is to “simply temporarily remove camera control from the player and send it off somewhere with a script”, a blunt method which sacrifices player immersion and denies the interactive nature of games. A step above this is the Gears of War approach, where “the camera can be focused on a special event at the press of a button.” This offers the player a simple binary choice: look at the event or ignore it. This method is still artificial and inelegant, as it relies on a “giant blinking controller button prompt” to indicate that something is happening.

The best approach is to guide the player organically, catching their eye with elements that fit seamlessly into the game world. In this school of thought, Valve is peerless. The Half Life series is a testament to subtly managing the player’s navigation while maintaining the illusion of a big open world. I’d like to explore some of the methods they use to do this, using screenshots from my recent playthrough of Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

Flock of Birds

One of the most obvious tricks that Valve uses is having the player startle a flock of birds which fly off in the direction of a distant object of interest. Their sudden movement captures and directs the player’s attention. As Michel put it, “Birds are never just birds in Half-Life 2.”

For instance, near the beginning of the game, the player approaches a cliff overlooking a small abandoned factory and startles a group of crows¹.

As the birds take off, they fly toward a rooftop where the player can catch a glimpse of a Hunter robot stalking them. This neatly foreshadows the upcoming encounter.

Getting the player to look at the birds can also be inherently useful. Valve occasionally uses them as a proxy for the player, demonstrating the consequences of nearby danger.

Halfway through “Under The Radar”, the player has been tasked with taking out the Autoguns that are defending a nearby Combine bunker. As the player crouches to enter their firing range, he/she startles a nearby crow.²

The Autoguns swiftly target and dispatch the bird, warning the player that they must remained crouched in this area or suffer a similar fate.

Ammo & Supplies

Another method that Valve uses to draw the player’s attention is the careful positioning of supply crates. In many first person shooter games, unmarked crates and barrels may or may not hold health and ammo. The player must therefore break everything in sight in order to replenish their supplies. In Half Life 2, however, ammo caches are clearly identified by a yellow marking. The player will therefore consciously look out for them and navigate toward them.

For example, halfway through the Antlion den, the player spots a yellow ammo crate sitting in front of a wooden plank wall.

On approach, an Antlion Guardian breaks through the barricade and attempts to slash the player. This prompts the Vortigaunt companion to comment on this new enemy, and once again foreshadows a future confrontation.

In another example, a shield battery can be seen next to a fallen ally at the end of a dark hallway. This encourages the player to investigate the corridor.

At the end of the passage, the player finds a hole in the floor. The presence of additional health and shield supplies at the bottom indicates that the player should jump in and explore it. Like breadcrumbs, the path through the following underground tunnel is also marked by scattered supplies.

By using supply caches as navigational tools, Valve provides game world incentives for staying on the right path. Furthermore, since they disappear after being picked up, ammo and health provide one-directional guidance. There’s little chance of the player inadvertently following the chain of supplies backwards.

Barnacles

Barnacles are passive ceiling-dwelling enemies. They drop down a long sticky tongue that latches on to anything it touches, pulling up prey to their razor-sharp mouth. They’re used in many creative ways in Half Life’s level design, including inciting the player to look straight up.

For instance, toward the end of “This Vortal Coil”, the player walks into a cavern where a Barnacle’s long tongue is hanging down.

The player looks upwards to kill the enemy, only to discover a web cache with health and ammo embedded in the ceiling. Had the Barnacle not directed the player’s attention, the concealed supplies would likely have gone completely unnoticed.

Graffiti

Finally, Valve will occasionally make use of suggestive graffiti to lead the player’s eye. This approach is a bit lacking in subtlety; why would anyone tag a wall with lines and arrows? Fortunately, it’s a technique that’s used sparingly.

The shed that houses the Autoguns features some suspicious markings, possibly tagged by someone named “Mooee”?³

Turning the corner, the player finds a Zombine hammering on the back door. This communicates that the door is locked, and that the player should seek an alternate entrance.

Valve subtly guides the player’s attention toward significant events and objects by using elements naturally found in the game world. This allows the player to retain control of their perspective without getting lost or confused, and contributes to an overall immersive experience.

¹ “A murder of crows” is the official compound noun. Much more poetic!
² Note too the placement of the ammo create in the drainage tunnel, indicating where to go next.
³ Seriously, what is this supposed to say?

Last month, head editor Ben Abraham and his crew of bloggers launched Critical Distance, a game criticism archive and compilation blog. They’ve been doing a terrific job, linking out to fascinating new sites and really expanding the conversation.

With exams over, I recently had a chance to contribute something: a post wherein I attempt to connect my love of indie games with my interest in music history. A quick note about the unusual format: it’s not intended to be an in-depth comparison, just a light exploration of the concept via various game bloggers.

I’ve reproduced the post here for archiving purposes (and RSS convenience), but be sure to check out the great conversation at Critical Distance.

Punk & Indie Games

By the mid 1970’s, Rock & Roll sounded nothing like the energetic blues-inspired pop songs after which the genre was named. The soundscape was now made up of concept albums, rock operas, synthesizers and 30 minute ballads. The music was elaborate and pretentious, carefully constructed by trained musicians and backed by symphony orchestras.

Then a bunch of angry teenagers yelled into their mics, strangled their guitars and killed rock and roll forever. They were fast and cheap and young and refused to compromise. Punk music made people remember what they had loved about rock in the 50’s and 60’s; the raw energy, the excitement, the emotion, the counterculture.

The game industry today shares many qualities with the bloated, elaborate, high-concept music industry of the 70’s. Budgets are skyrocketing, endless sequels are the norm, and team sizes range in the hundreds. At the same time, many of us pine for the kind of games we grew up with, the ones that made us fall in love with the medium in the first place. As Greg Costikyan put it:

You love games. You sometimes despair at the conventional game market. You look to the fringes — to indie games, to tabletop, to serious games and game for change, to anything outside of the industry mainstream — to try to recapture the sense of wonder and bliss that games once wrought in you.

Are indie games then the new punk? Are they tearing down an establishment that’s long in the tooth and has forgotten what it’s really all about? They certainly share the DIY attitude and a predilection for lo-fi technology. Jesper Juul argues:

Indie video games are like punk rock, short, low production costs, wrestling our art from the claws of big corporations.

Japanese designer Suda 51 has also called for more “punk games”, albeit with a fairly unique definition of what that means.

Suda said that a truly punk game will strike a chord with gamers the same way the Sex Pistols, Joy Division or Nirvana impacted his view of music. “We need to create that kind of game… I’d like to ask publishers to help us and support us [to make more punk games],” he said.

However, Greg Costikyan pokes holes in these comparisons:

The punk aesthetic is relentlessly anti-intellectual. [...] [However,] the Ramones themselves proved remarkably articulate and intelligent. And the punk revolution was equally fuelled by art-house poseurs, like the Talking Heads, who treated the anti-intellectual pose ironically. [...] But really. The East Village, 1973, is not gaming in 2008. And Jonathan Blow, say, is not Joey Ramone, despite a certain similarity in Brechtian cool.

I don’t think there’s one right answer to this question. Punk and indie games are similar in some ways and dissimilar in others, and it’s disingenuous to draw out the connection farther than reality. However, I can’t help but find a certain measure of excitement in the comparison.

[Punk & Indie Games - Critical Distance]

Tom’s post was also my first exposure to Grifball, a sport-like player-created game mode in Halo 3. Robust mapmaking tools and heavy official support now make it a poor fit for the consensual model², but Grifball remains interesting both as a case study for emergent gameplay and as a unique well-balanced game mode.

Grifball was invented by Rooster Teeth (a production team best known for their Halo machinima Red vs. Blue) and named after Grif (an orange Spartan character from the aforementioned series.) The game is a modified version of Halo’s “Assault” mode, with the following custom rules:

• The map is set to a custom version of Foundry that has been edited into an empty square court with opposing goals.
• The players are all equipped with melee weapons (Gravity Hammer and Energy Sword) with infinite ammo. Grenades and equipment are disabled.
• Weapon damage is doubled and player health is set to 10%, so the Gravity Hammer’s concussive blast can sometimes kill in one hit.
• The player currently in possession of the bomb is granted 150% speed, overshield and bright orange armour.
• Players respawn at their goal after 3 seconds.
• The bomb timer is set to 1 second, so there is no chance to defuse it.
• Planting the bomb at the opposing team’s goal scores a point and ends the round. The team that’s ahead after five rounds wins the game.

It’s worth noting that none of these changes require external mods or hacking, but rather are easily accomplished using Halo 3’s powerful map editing tool. If mapmaking isn’t your thing, you can grab the Rooster Teeth version off Bungie’s file sharing service or wait for the official playlist during double EXP weekends.

What’s fascinating about Grifball is how well it emulates a sport (or rather a sport game.) Like basketball or hockey, players must alternately think offensively and defensively as the bomb changes possession. Movement suddenly trumps aiming, as players must gauge distance for successful attacks and create openings to score. The best players are the ones who can move in tricky, unpredictable ways and psych out their opponents. In terms of skill and strategy, Grifball has much more in common with virtual rugby than it does a shooter.

Grifball is also surprisingly deep and well-balanced, especially for a game that was assembled on top of a rules calibrated for ranged fighting. For instance, the game’s three weapons create a rough circular hierarchy³ (shown in the diagram above.) Defensive players must therefore alternate between using the sword to chase down the bomb carrier and the hammer to take out their support. Experienced offensive players can also use the repulsion of the Gravity Hammer to propel a jumping bomb carrier over the heads of the defending players, a sort of “Hail Mary” play that can be very effective. There’s a deep rabbit hole of player vocabulary and strategy to explore, if you’re so inclined.

In his post, Tom Armitage proposed that consensual games like Grifball are so good because they have survived thousands of Xbox Live players playing and refining them. Grifball is now nearly two years old and is enjoyed by several divisions of competitive league play. If you’re one of the 8 million people who owns Halo 3, I strongly suggest giving this unique player-created game mode a shot.

¹ “The creative use of a video game in ways unexpected by the game designer’s original intent.”
² The rules are entirely enforced by the game, therefore there is no need for mutual consent.
³ Experienced players would probably argue that it’s a bit more complex than that (see this chart).

With final exams beginning to wind down, I’ve had a chance at last to get back to playing Mother 3, the Japan-exclusive sequel to the cult SNES RPG Earthbound. The game was translated to English by the dedicated fans at Starmen.net, and was finally released last Fall to much excitement and acclaim.

I’m currently about halfway through the game, having completed chapter 4 by personally dispatching a disgruntled bass guitar¹. The game is noteworthy in countless ways, but what has really struck me so far is how much the game diverges from the Earthbound formula. This is peculiar, given how ostensibly similar the two games are. To use a cooking metaphor, it’s as if the designers used the same ingredients, but tweaked the recipe and ended up with a very different dish.

As I was assembling my thoughts on the game into some semblance of a thesis, I happened across an interview with lead designer Shigesato Itoi in which he expressed exactly what I had been struggling to say:

When we were working on [Earthbound], RPGs were all basically “road movies”. The main character would set out on a journey and go from town to town. By laying this out in a spiraling fashion, an RPG’s structure would start to resemble a simple board game.

But I felt that there was a limit to this road movie/board game style of moving from one spot to the next. Kind of like, “Okay, I made it this far, but what’s happened to the people in the last town?” [...] That’s when I thought of an RPG in which you stay in a certain town for a long time.

[...] The game would have character relations, and the people would all have their own lives. This way, we could do all sorts of things in the game. For example, someone who recently hung laundry out to dry would be wearing those clothes the next day. I wanted to make an RPG in which you could grow closer to the people as time went on.

In my opinion, this is the key difference between Earthbound and Mother 3. The former is about a journey to far off places, while the latter is about seeing the same place from many different perspectives.

The first half of Earthbound is organized in such an explicitly board game manner that it’s difficult not to conclude that this was an intentionally facetious choice. The first four towns are laid out in a crooked line, the latter three being directly connected by a single highway. Their names, in order, are Onett, Twoson, Threed and Fourside. There is a strong sense of progression as you travel down the road, and until very late in the game there is no necessity (and little incentive) to backtrack.

By contrast, the entire first half of Mother 3 is spent in and around the first town: Tazmily Village. However, in that time you sequentially control four different protagonists: Flint, Duster, Salsa and Lucas. Each chapter reveals a facet of the village’s collective character; Flint demonstrates their good nature, while Salsa exposes their naivety. Furthermore, several significant events are shown from a different perspective in each chapter, slowly revealing a complete picture of what actually took place. Finally, we get to see how the village slowly changes under the effects of the peddler’s meddling². Progression is decoupled from displacement, and is instead tied to the development of Tazmily Village as a character.

It took me a while to wrap my head around exactly what Mother 3 was doing. I was stuck in Earthbound’s board game progression mentality, and was anticipating the illusory “next village” just over the horizon. In retrospect, I’m glad that Mother 3 took the time to develop this small cast of quirky characters.

¹ Yes there are minor spoilers in this post. Lose the ball and chain!
² An attack on industrialization worthy of Tolkien.

Like all stupid ideas, it began on the Internet:

As a man with a weak spot for questionable mash-ups, how could I refuse?

Of course when Zelda: Spirit Tracks was announced, it was only a matter of time.

Nintendo marketing department, I await your call. I build crowds, guaranteed.

This semester I attended “User Interface Design”, a class that encouraged us to think critically about the ways in which people interact with systems. While the course work naturally focused on software interfaces, the principles of good UI design are universal. Whether you’re creating a website, a toaster, a lamp or a door handle, intuitive design relies on understanding human psychology.

In my ongoing quest to contextualize everything I learn in terms of video games, I’d like to explore how the principles of user interface design might be applied to make games more accessible.

In his book The Design of Everyday Things¹, Donald Norman defines three principles of control design:

1. Visibility: It Should Be Obvious What a Control Is Used For.
   If I press this button, what will happen? If I want to unlock the door, which control should I use? A system with good visibility allows the user to easily translate goals into actions.
2. Affordance: It Should Be Obvious How a Control Is Used.
   The system should provide “strong clues to the operation of things”. A button affords pushing, a lever affords pulling, etc. The user should know how to operate a control just by looking at it.
3. Feedback: It Should Be Obvious When a Control Has Been Used.
   Once the user has pressed a button, the system should react in a manner that clearly communicates what has just been accomplished. If nothing has happened, this fact should also be obvious.

By following these principles, we can create systems where “the relationships between the user’s goals, the required actions, and the results are sensible, meaningful and not arbitrary.”

These principles can be applied to at least two layers of interaction in video games: the interface between the player and his/her agency in the game (usually an avatar) and the interface between the avatar and the game world. While a lot can be said about the latter², I’d like to explore two ways in which these three UI principles can be applied to a game’s physical interface.

Visibility for Controllers

Because controllers are designed to support a wide range of games, their buttons cannot usually be labelled according to the functionality that they provide. Instead, buttons are labelled according to letters, numbers and symbols, and the game must provide additional documentation that translates A to “Jump” and R1 to “Shoot”. This violates the principle of visibility, and is a source of considerable frustration for inexperienced gamers.

However, some games use clever tricks to get around this problem. The Legend of Zelda series and Beyond Good & Evil, for instance, facilitate the translation by integrating the documentation right into the player’s heads-up display. Since the buttons cannot be physically relabelled, they are instead relabelled on screen. Not only does this improve visibility by mapping game functions directly to buttons, it also removes ambiguity for context-sensitive actions.

Eric Swain also pointed out the following about controls in Beyond Good & Evil:

It has a simple set of unified controls that transition from one mode to another. From this point of view, the R2 button is not the run button, but the move faster button. The hovercraft and the spaceship both use the same buttons to maneuver as Jade does on foot. On the PS2, the X button will always be action, the O button will always be item and the Square button will always be attack.

By using these kinds of labelling techniques, game designers can compensate for generic controller design and provide consistent visibility.

New Affordances

While traditional controllers have inherent visibility issues, the next generation of interfaces may circumvent the problem by harnessing new affordances. Touch screens and motion controls can actually improve visibility by reducing the representational gap between player action and game agency.

Consider a baseball game on the Wii: the player’s goal is for their avatar to swing at a ball. A motion controller affords physically imitating the desired action. Similarly, the touch screens found on the iPhone and Nintendo DS afford pressing directly on the object that the player wants to manipulate.

In both of these cases, “how the control is used” is conceptually very close to “what the control is used for”. There is effectively no translation or thought required between “what” and “how”. Therefore, the nature of the affordance provides visibility. I believe that this interface quality goes a long way in explaining the success of these consoles with non-traditional audiences.

To many people, video games are user-unfriendly software. Improving the UI design by applying proven principles will hopefully go a long way in opening up the medium to new audiences.

¹ Sadly I haven’t yet read the book, it was quoted extensively in the assigned textbook.
² For instance, check out Iroquois Pliskin’s great post on affordance in puzzle design.

Inspired in part by Petri Purho’s “5-minute game” magic trick, I decided to see if I could put together a small functional game in the scope of an afternoon. I didn’t quite meet my time goal (for reasons I’ll explain below), but finally did put together a small game called Rockwell, Papyrus, Skia.

The goal of the game is to identify which text sample won the game of rock, paper, scissors based on their typeface. I’m a bit of a wannabe font nerd, and I thought this would be a neat way to combine my two interests.

Why wasn’t I able to finish the game in one afternoon? My initial plan was use the LÖVE engine’s graphics library to load the Fonts I wanted to use. However, I ran into a snag: I either had to distribute copyrighted Fonts with the source code, or dynamically load them from the player’s machine. The latter approach was tempting, but fonts files are stored across several system folders and I was only interested in a handful of commonly used fonts. In the end I decided to render the text in advance as images, which lengthened my development time to two and a half afternoons.

You can run the game yourself in two ways:

1. Download the Windows-only executable.
2. Run RockwellPapyrusSkia.exe to play.

or…

1. Download and install LÖVE (it’s multi-platform and very small).
2. Download the source files.
3. Double click RockwellPapyrusSkia.love to play.

You can access the source code by unzipping the .love file, and everything is GPL licensed so you’re free to distribute and modify the game as you please.

I hope you enjoy my second silly game. While it has served me very well, I don’t think I’ll use LÖVE again for my next project. It’s great for rapid prototypes, but I’d like to work with something a bit more powerful in the future. The lack of mouse hover callback, for instance, meant I couldn’t change the pointer to a hand when hovering over buttons. I’ll start checking out alternatives such as XNA and pygame.

While you could be forgiven for dismissing the game due to its designed-by-committee visual design, I contend that beneath its surface lies a unique and intriguing battle system that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. It’s a seamless mix of real time combat and strategic deck building that allows a skilled player to defeat a challenging enemy in seconds without taking a hit.

The first MMBN game was released in 2001, back when the Internet (with a capital ‘i’) was still new, exciting and a completely legitimate setting for a video game. Mega Man is the “netnavi” of a young boy named Lan, and together they roam the web defeating viruses and battling the sinister terrorist organization known as WWW. The viruses and navis are all modelled after classic Mega Man enemies, such as Heat Man, Quick Man, Guts Man, etc. The plot and characters are typical JRPG fluff, but generally fall short of being obnoxious or annoying.

The combat takes places on a pair of adjacent 3×3 grids, with Mega Man on the left and his enemies on the right. Both are constrained to moving within their grid, and trade shots across the divide. Enemies move and fire in patterns, and the player must react accordingly while counterattacking with the classic arm cannon. However, to defeat enemies efficiently, the player must use battle chips.

Every ten seconds the game pauses and the player is presented with a selection of five chips from their folder, from which they select a handful to bring with them into battle. These chips represent a variety of offensive or defensive abilities, such as bombs, swords, shields and recovery. Multiple chips can be selected if they are of the same type or have the same letter, and some can even be combined to form stronger attacks. While this might sound overwhelming all at once, new elements are introduced gently and the whole system builds up in a logical and consistent way.

Last year I compared the MMBN series to The World Ends With You, and I still think the comparison is apt. Both games fuse action and RPG gameplay with light deck building and collection mechanics. While TWEWY was innovative and experimental, I would argue that Mega Man Battle Network unites these disparate elements in a more cohesive manner.

If you’re interested in checking out the series, I recommend starting with MMBN2. The first game was good but didn’t fully explore the potential of the mechanics it introduced. Conversely, I felt the third game added too many new elements which diluted the battle system, a trend that unfortunately persisted for the remainder of the series. In Goldilocks terms, MMBN2 is “just right”.

[This post is part of the Hidden Gems series.]

I picked up a copy of Burnout Paradise last month, an open world racing game that’s over a year old now but is still commendably being supported by its developers. However, the timing of my purchase wasn’t by chance; I decided to take the plunge because the developers finally added the option to restart a race without having to drive back to the starting line. In my mind this was a major flaw, the one that made me initially lose interest and walk away from the demo. With that sorted out I could finally sit down and really enjoy the game.

However, after having played for a few dozen hours or so, I’ve realized that being able to restart a race goes against the entire design philosophy of Burnout Paradise. Not allowing restarts wasn’t an error or a mistake, but rather an extremely purposeful design decision. The developers at Criterion expressed it thusly:

The lack of retry really isn’t an issue. You may disagree, but we don’t feel it is and retry would have introduced loading into the game, which we didn’t want to do. In fact, we hate loading with a passion now. Games like Burnout Paradise and Uncharted Drake’s Fortune [...] keep you IN THE GAME rather than watching what is usually a very dull screen.

While wanting to avoid loading screens is a noble cause, I think the real reasons run much deeper than this. The game expects the player to wander, and thus is designed for downtime and variety.

Firstly, Burnout Paradise is as much about racing and wrecking cars as it is about exploring and experimenting. So much of the game’s content is actually expected to be enjoyed between races: destroying billboards, performing unique jumps, adding cars to your collection, etc. Marc Bell went as far as describing the game as “a platformer whose dude just happens to be a car”. By using the restart feature and constantly being in a race, the player ends up skipping all the neat between-race content that comes naturally when exploring.

Secondly, the game doesn’t stand up well to repeating the same course over and over. The Burnout series isn’t a highly technical racer like Gran Turismo or F-Zero. With its rubber band A.I. and slow-mo crash sequences, it was clearly designed for light-hearted (but still challenging) fun. This also means that there’s a certain amount of luck involved in any win, and this fact becomes painfully obvious when you can instantly restart a race. You begin to notice that you can win most races by brute force, not improving your driving skills but simply grinding until you happen to catch a lucky break and boost to the finish line. It’s the same reason that a Mario Kart cup has you playing four different races in a row: fun based racing games work best with variety.

The developers never intended for you to drive back to the starting line after losing a race. Instead, they wanted you to continue from where the last race left you, find the closest traffic light and start a new completely different event. In all likelihood it would even be in a different category; follow up a race with a stunt run or marked man event. Instant restarting destroys all the variety that the designers built right into the game.

I’m not saying that the restart patch was necessarily a bad thing. It’s a handy feature and one that I appreciate having. However, it’s an addition that clashes badly with the overall vision of what Burnout Paradise is about.

I also think this situation has interesting implications for game design. What if all games were patched by popular demand? What if Square released the “bring Aeris back to life” patch? What if the Bionic Commando developers released a “jump button” patch? Do players really know what they want?

Here are his picks for this month:

Greetings, Quixotic Engineer readers. I’m quite tickled that I have this opportunity to share my recent musical obsessions with you, which Matthew graciously invited me to do. Now, to the music:

Aleks & the Drummer is a local favorite of mine, based here in Chicago. It consists of ‘Aleks’andra Tomaszewska on farfisa organ alongside her siren-y vocals and Deric Criss on drums. I saw them open for The Octopus Project in 2007, and in 2008 they finally released the EP May a Lightning Bolt Caress You, filled with tracks that manage to sculpt out a space that brings to my mind space-age choirs. The ethereal landscape that is provided by Aleks through her two chosen instruments is well complemented by the driving force and reality that is Deric’s percussion.

I’ve always had a mild obsession with Grace Jones, ever since I first saw her in “Conan: The Destroyer”. Years later I would discover her music, and then my friend Josh showed me this video from her recently released Hurricane. The album itself is rather spotty, though the tracks that do stand out do so quite forcefully, and well. This was the first single, and seems to be perfectly suited for the economic crisis in which we find ourselves. Needless to say, it’s been played a few times since I’ve heard it.

Two notes: this video is much better viewed in HD and is NSFW. I have a special place in my heart for Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, given his treatises on gender and a voice that seems to reverberate with that special quality we attribute to the soul singers of the past. From his new album, The Crying Light, this song has a very soft touch in its instrumentation, in contrast with the floating majesty of Antony’s voice.

There exists no actual video for the song I wanted to share for Goblin Cock, but this happened to aurally work its way into my brain quite effectively regardless. Goblin Cock includes the talents of Rob Crow, a rather prolific artist, if not widely known. What we have is a doom metal band that doesn’t take itself seriously, nor is completely lost in genre with gruffly presented lyrics. The result is the doom metal sound with only two acknowledgements: well-written in its form and fun.

Thanks again to Denis for graciously accepting to guestblog, check out more of his great work at Vorpal Bunny Ranch.

Tag: The Power of Paint [Download]

Tag is a game designed by a group of students at DigiPen, and was a winner at the 2009 IGF Student Showcase. It’s a first person puzzle game wrapped in a shooter, along the lines of Portal. You are equipped with a paint gun, which you use not only to colour the bleak greyscale cityscape but also to explore the game space. Painting a surface green makes it bouncy, red increases your speed and blue allows you to stick to walls.

The video embedded above is a developer walkthrough of the entire game. I urge you to watch only as far as you need to be convinced that this game is brilliant, then go download and play it for yourself. It may lack the polish, setting and dark humour of Portal, but, used in concert, the three paint abilities are just as mind-bending as the portal gun.

Gravity Bone [Download]

I highly recommend playing the game before reading further, it’s very difficult to say anything meaningful about Gravity Bone without spoiling the fun.

That being said, better writers have already gotten to the heart of what makes the game so delightful. I particularly like Duncan’s take on the matter:

The game asserts the existence of a deeper fiction and plot threads that will never be resolved. It establishes a pace of simple, episodic missions, and ends before anyone would predict. Gravity Bone is a 300-page novel that ends on page 60. Because the art style is so charming and pronounced, players might think that that’s the big attraction and therefore the extent of the game’s creativity. Gravity Bone’s purpose is to manipulate expectations by cutting them short, which is why it’s effective at all. Everyone who plays Gravity Bone gets played by Gravity Bone. If you remember the debate over Portal’s shortness from a year and a half ago, the consensus was that Portal’s brevity was beneficial. Here, it’s essential.

Like No More Heroes and You Have To Burn The Rope, Gravity Bone subverts assumptions that are so fundamental to the fabric of gaming that veteran gamers cease to notice them altogether. In this case, the assumption is that the main character’s narrative arc and the player’s learning arc define the length of the game. However, as Kieron Gillen put it: “The hero could always be shot before his adventure starts, and the illusion of games arc is always that – just an illusion.”

Spelunky [Download]

Spelunky caught my eye when John Harris wrote about it in his fascinating @Play column at GameSetWatch. In the words of creator Derek Yu: “My goal was to create a fast-paced platform game that had the kind of tension, re-playability, and variety of a roguelike.” You must guide your little Indiana Jones downwards through procedurally generated dungeons, struggling both to survive and to escape with as much treasure as you can grab.

I was born too late to participate in the golden age of Nethack, and my interest in the roguelike genre is still largely theoretical. They fascinate me as intricate game systems, even if I have little experience actually playing them. However, by wrapping a roguelike in the familiarity of a 2D platformer, I think Spelunky reduces the barrier of entry for newcomers like me. Most importantly, it does so without compromising the elements that define the genre. Deaths come quickly and mercilessly, resource management is key, and loitering is discouraged by means of a ghostly time limit.

If you’re one of the many bloggers who fell in love with Shiren the Wanderer, I strongly urge you to give Spelunky a shot.

Treelings [Download]

Finally, friend and fellow Canadian blogger Nels Anderson put together a short game at the Vancouver chapter of Global Game Jam. It’s incredibly polished for a game that was made entirely within 48 hours, check out how the main character moves around while idle and how the vine blossoms as you ascend. Kudos to Nels and his team!

There you have it: four innovative indie games that can be played in the span of an afternoon. Happy gaming!

Over the last few days I was given the opportunity to fly out West for an internship interview with a large Redmond-based software company. The interview was a really great experience and probably deserves its own post down the road, but today I have something far nerdier to talk about.

While I was in the Seattle area and looking for touristy things to do, Mister Raroo suggested that I check out Pink Godzilla, an independent gaming store famous for its selection of rare imports and retro titles. I’m not a collector and most of the neat stuff was out of my price range, but I had a great time looking around and talking to the friendly and knowledgeable staff. I took loads of pictures, but here are some of the highlights from my visit:

This is the “retro wall” covered in used NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, and Playstation titles (click through links for close-ups). Old games have awesome box art.

Apparently there was a licensed Platoon game for the NES? It looks pretty terrible and only vaguely related to the film.

A mint Japanese copy of Ikaruga for the Dreamcast, located in their rare games cabinet.

One of the most expensive rare games, an unopened copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn.

This appears to an entry in the extremely weird Japanese games series Cho Aniki.

There were a bunch of awesome game soundtracks, including this pair from the Katamari Damacy series.

You can check out the rest of the series over on Flickr. Pink Godzilla is a fascinating store, if you’re ever in the Seattle area I highly recommend going out of your way for a visit.

Although I’m not taking part in this year’s Global Game Jam, I coincidentally decided to also put together a small game over the last two days. It was a feat only made possibly by the friendliness of the LÖVE 2D engine, a free weekend and several pots of tea.

Inventory Tetris a silly idea I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while now, a literal interpretation of a phrase often heard in reviews and forums. I chose to parody Resident Evil 4 specifically (the merchant makes me laugh), but I thumb my nose equally at Diablo, Deus Ex and every other game that turns inventory management into a block puzzle. If the main character isn’t even seen carrying a briefcase, your commitment to spatial realism is moot.

You can run the game yourself in two ways:

1. Download the Windows-only executable.
2. Run InventoryTetris.exe to play.

or…

1. Download and install LÖVE (it’s multi-platform and very small).
2. Download the source files.
3. Double click InventoryTetris.love to play.

You can access the source code by unzipping InventoryTetris.love, and everything is GPL licensed so you’re free to distribute and modify the game as you please. I hope you enjoy my silly little game, please leave your questions, comments and bug reports (I’m aware of one or two) below.

Update: I’ve uploaded version 1.1, which fixes the “left side” bug and corrects a minor audio issue.

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics continues to be a fascinating read. This is, in large part, because so much of his analysis of comics can be directly applied to video games, a new medium currently sorely lacking in critical vocabulary. McCloud has a knack for asking the right questions, and the further I read the faster the little wheels in my head begin to spin. The first chapter of the book asked the question “what is comics?”, which led me to question the definition of video games.

The second of McCloud’s concepts that I’d like to explore is his idea of the six elements of art (illustrated above). He believes that “any artist creating any work in any medium will always follow these six steps whether they realize it or not”, and that their order is innate. “All aspects of comics have the potential for self-expression” argues McCloud, “but the more a creator learns to command every aspect of their art and to understand their relationship to it” the more likely they are to focus on innermost aspects. Indeed, he makes the case that an artist’s skill is fundamentally related to the depth of their understanding in relation to these layers.

As they are innate to art itself, these six layers can also be applied to video games. I’d like to propose the following framework for how this might be done, using McCloud’s definitions as guidelines:

6. Surface: “Production values, finishing… the aspects most apparent on the first superficial exposure to the work”

In video games, this layer is best exemplified by cutting-edge graphics, sophisticated visual effects, high fidelity audio and overall technical polish (lack of bugs). These elements are very impressive, and can contribute greatly to the sense of immersion and suspension of disbelief. However, the surface is shallow and ultimately says little about the quality of the game.

5. Craft: “Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention and problem-solving”

The fifth layer (craft) is the realization of the concepts of the fourth layer (structure), and as such describes the concrete elements that make up a game. The aspects defined exclusively in this layer include:

• Level design
• Balance
• Difficulty
• Camera control
• Control layout
• Game feel

The key distinction in the fuzzy line between structure and craft is that the latter describes execution. For instance, I’m sure you’ve all played a game with a terrific concept that was ultimately made worse by sloppy controls, steep difficulty curves and poor level design. In other words, craft is to structure as engineering is to science.

4. Structure: “Putting it all together… what to include, what to leave out… how to arrange, how to compose the work”

The fourth layer describes the game in a conceptual manner, at the level of a detailed design document. It builds upon the skeleton defined by the first three layers, fleshing out abstract ideas into detailed systems.

What are the rules of this game? What is the role of the player, and how will they interact with the system? If there is a story, what is it about and how will it be told? Who are the characters? What will the art and music direction be? The structure of a game is defined by answering questions such as these.

3. Idiom: “The ’school’ of art, the vocabulary of styles or gestures or subject matter, the genre that the work belongs to… maybe a genre of its own.”

While the value of legacy genre descriptors is highly questionable, in a general sense most games are deeply rooted in the paradigms established by their predecessors. For instance, modern first person shooters are the evolution of the vocabulary and perspective established by Wolfenstein 3D and Doom in the early 90’s. Mario Kart, Gran Turismo and Wipeout are very different games, but they share the common goals and language of the racing genre.

Of course, games should never be restricted by genre. Indeed, games that defy classification (Katamari Damacy and Indigo Prophecy are examples) deserve our attention, as establishing a new idiom is a feat of significant creative ability even if the game lacks craft or surface polish.

2. Form: “The form it will take… will it be a book? A chalk drawing? A chair? A song? A sculpture? A comic book?”

In a general sense, the form is the medium: video games. However, video games take many different forms: PC games, console games, handheld games, mobile games, etc. Each form has a unique identity, with idiosyncrasies, strengths and limitations, and usually addresses a particular audience.

1. Idea/Purpose: “The impulses, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies, the purposes of the work… the work’s ‘content’.”

Put another way: what does this work mean? What is its thesis? What insights about life, the universe and everything does it communicate to the player?

Unfortunately, at this point in our medium’s history the answer is that most games mean very little. RPGs in particular classically have the veneer of “good vs. evil” or “value of friendship” morality lessons, but when the game mechanics revolve around combat and violence it’s clear that the commitment to these ideals is shallow. In reality, the thesis of Dragon Quest is closer to “fighting monster after monster until you’re strong enough to kill stronger monsters”. I love a good dungeon crawl, but consuming media with such shallow purpose is insubstantial and unfulfilling in the long run.

However, if we love video games, it’s because every once in a while a game crosses our path that speaks to us on a deeper level. A gem like Braid comes along and compels us, sending us in search of true meaning (fruitfully or otherwise). Games like System Shock, Planescape: Torment and Silent Hill 2 come along that give us meaningful experiences and reveal the exciting potential of this nascent medium.

In the future, I’d like to take the time to refine this framework and explore its implications for critique and design. For now though, I’d very much appreciate feedback and criticism both on my interpretation of McCloud’s six elements, as well as the basic premise that they represent.

Over the holidays, I picked up a copy of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. It’s a comic about comics as a medium, and the concepts and vocabulary (abstraction, closure, transitions, etc.) that define it. McCloud avoids using specific artists, styles, genres or themes as a template, focusing instead on a critical universal examination of the artform. As someone who recently rediscovered comics, it’s been a truly fascinating read. The book also interests me because I can relate many of his ideas to another nascent medium that is of particular interest to me: video games.

In the first chapter of Understanding Comics, McCloud asks “what is comics¹?” He begins with Will Eisner’s definition “sequential art”, which he considers too broad (for instance, animations are sequential art) and gradually refines to: “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”

This, of course, made me wonder: “what are video games?” What qualities define video games as a medium, and could be used to distinguish non-video games. We could begin by examining video games as a compound word, where a game is generally defined as:

Activity engaged in for diversion or amusement
- Merriam Webster Dictionary

Note that this definition already implies a purpose, entertainment. This quality is true of the large majority of games, but does it truly define the medium? We’ve seem games such as The Passage and Execution whose function is less amusement and closer to the purpose defined by McCloud for comics: “intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” “Video game” therefore works poorly as a compound word.

This raises many questions: is “game” then a legacy term? Have video games outgrown “games” in the same way comics have outgrown “comedy” (via Latin, from the Greek komikos)? Would the term “interactive art” be more appropriate? Note that “art”, however, implies a value judgement and therefore cannot define the medium. While these are interesting considerations, they don’t answer the question of “what are video games?”

Next, we can examine what definitions already exist for video games. Merriam Webster defines a “video game” as:

An electronic game played by means of images on a video screen and often emphasizing fast action.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who let out a frustrated groan at the “emphasizing fast action” bit. However, there is some value that can be gleaned from this definition. I think defining video games as being “played by means of images on a video screen” is valid, and helps to distinguish video games from card games, board games and sports.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American English defines them as:

A game in which the player controls moving pictures on a television screen by pressing buttons or moving a short handle.

While pragmatic and largely accurate, this strikes me as a particularly narrow definition. For instance, specifying a “television screen” excludes both PC and handheld games. Must the player input controls by a button or “short handle”²? What about Wii Fit, which is played entirely with the balance board?

Finally, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary includes the following definition:

Any of various games played using a microcomputer with a keyboard and often joysticks to manipulate changes or respond to the action or questions on the screen.

Ignoring the bit about keyboards and joysticks, this definition introduces an intriguing point about microcomputers. Video games are software, but do they have to be? It’s certainly possible to display images on a video screen without a processor.

However, what distinguishes video games from film is not a “short handle” or “fast action” but interactivity. The player “responds to the action” and the game changes what is displayed on screen accordingly. The quality of interactivity necessitates a computer processor, therefore video games must be software³.

While it lacks the succinctness of McCloud’s comics definition, I would propose the following definition for “video games”:

Software which displays images on a video screen, interacts with a player or players and is intended to provide challenge and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

Note what this definition excludes: a board game isn’t played on a video screen, a screen saver isn’t interactive and an Excel spreadsheet isn’t intended to produce an aesthetic response. Wii Fit, The Passage and Final Fantasy meet the criteria, and it’s likely that future games will as well⁴.

However, you don’t have to take my word for it! I invite you to please challenge my definition and come up with your own. How would you define video games?

¹ This isn’t a typo, McCloud defines the entire medium as “comics” singular.
² …or a long handle for that matter!
³ Occasionally only hardware, I suppose.
⁴ Until video screens become obsolete?

Fleet Foxes – s/t

A delightful, dreamy folk album that evokes the softer side of Jethro Tull. It’s lovingly and masterfully crafted from beginning to end. “White Winter Hymnal” is the perfect song for a chilly December afternoon, and “Ragged Wood” feels like a long walk through a familiar forest.

Girl Talk – Feed The Animals

I’ll admit, this album would likely have been higher on the list if I didn’t consider it an immense guilty pleasure. Thumbing his nose at the RIAA and other creativity destroying goons, Girl Talk gleefully samples across eras and genres to create his distinctive sound. The tracks are light and fluffy like the pop music they sample, transitioning from earworm to earworm at a furious pace. Like no other artist, Girl Talk coaxes harmony out of cacophony.

Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple

This album came as a complete surprise to me, as their breakthrough effort and its massive hit “Crazy” left me cold. I picked up The Odd Couple on a whim and discovered an urgent, poignant pop/soul/hip hop album that was uniformly excellent all the way through. I can’t imagine why singles like “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” and “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)” didn’t chart well.

Santogold – s/t

I wrote about Santogold’s terrific debut album back in May, and I’m still listening to it regularly today. It’s a lovely eclectic record, M.I.A.-like on “Creator” while “Lights Out” is upbeat alternative. Amazingly, the disparate tracks come together to produce a refreshing coherent whole.

Shugo Tokumaru – EXIT

In October I described Shugo Tokumaru as falling “somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and the Katamari Damacy soundtrack.” EXIT is a quirky potent mix of pop, folk, and elements that I can only assume are uniquely Japanese. It’s dreamy and clever and, frankly, I’m nuts about it.

Honourable Mentions

• Beck – Modern Guilt: It didn’t reach very far artistically, but it’s the return of the catchy concise Beck we didn’t see on 2005’s The Information.
• Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue: More honky tonk indie rock? Yes please.
• TV on the Radio – Dear Science: It featured some very solid singles, but didn’t grab me as a whole.

Happy new year, I’ll see you all in 2009!

UPDATE: I’m sheepish about admitting this, but the list previously included Cross by Justice, an album I was quickly told was released in 2007. It was new to me! Thanks to Denis for the correction.

This last week, I was invited to take part in an incredibly ambitious podcast by Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer. As part of his gamers confab series (in which I was kindly invited to participate back in September), he has invited nineteen fellow bloggers to talk about their personal favourite games of 2008. Amazingly, the twenty of us picked twenty different titles, showing just how diverse this year in gaming has been.

The three volumes run for about an hour each, which may seem a bit daunting if you’re not a regular podcast listener. However, the discussion is insightful, entertaining, delightful and well worth your time. You can find my conversation with Chris Dahlen and Michael “Sparky” Clarkson in the second half of Volume 2.

• Download Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3 [MP3]
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe to the feed

I also wrote up my top 10 games of 2008 for Snackbar, as part of their staff picks series. Once again there was very little selection consensus, a stark contrast to 2007’s focus on titles such as Bioshock and Portal. A pessimist (*cough*) might say that this is a symptom of the large number of “great but flawed” titles released this year. I choose to believe that this is the natural progression of video games maturing as a medium. The audience for games is no longer homogeneous, and neither are our tastes.

Brick (House) – Ben Folds vs. The Commodores [MP3]

Sometimes I have silly ideas about mixed brick metaphors.

This just goes to show that my poor audio editing skills are second only to my poor photoshop skills. Thanks to Ben for the audio isolating tips.

My second review over at Snackbar Games is now up, wherein I compare Sam & Max: Season One for the Wii to a sitcom. I doubt I’m the first to describe it as such (the name and format certainly lend themselves to the comparison), but I think I’ve made a convincing case as to why it is apt.

Snackbar Games – Sam & Max: Season One (Wii) Review

On an unrelated note, I know a number of us are compiling “best games of 2008″ lists this month (some happily, others not so much), but a year is a long and memory is short. I can hardly remember what February was like, let alone what games were released that month.

With this in mind, I took a moment to scrape the Giant Bomb release calendar and compile a master list of games released in 2008. I hope its handy in jogging your memory about some of the great titles released last winter (hint: No More Heroes).

December is also a great time to be a music fan. All the music journalists are coming out with their top 10 album lists and you get to discover all the cool stuff you missed that year. This is how I discovered Janelle Monáe’s debut EP Metropolis: The Chase. It caught my eye for exploring science fiction themes with a quirky Blade Runner inspired android love story. Her sound is a wonderful experimental blend of R&B, funk and spoken word, reminding me quite a bit of Outkast (she was featured on two songs off Idlewild.) Altogether a terrific start, I look forward to her first full length album.

I first heard of Max Tundra’s latest album Parallax Error Beheads You from Chris Dahlen, who has already called it his favourite of 2008. I’ve been on a bit of a lo-fi kick these past few months, so it really hit the spot for me. Composed entirely on a Commodore Amiga 500, I would categorize it as progressive pop (you can’t get away with extended synthesizer solos without someone throwing in the “prog” word.) It may not suit everyone’s tastes, but I love it.

Nav may currently be on blogging hiatus (working on his PhD, which I’m told involves writing long essays and purchasing a tweed jacket), but that hasn’t stopped him from sharing interesting music on Google Reader. The latest is a band called The Happy Hollows, whose recent EP Imaginary is “free” if you’re willing to spam five friends about it. However, the album is so good that it’s almost worth losing respect in the eyes of your peers for. Fitting somewhere between the Fiery Furnaces and the White Stripes, they tell rambling stories and like to mix up the tempo. The Happy Hollows are another new band to watch.

7/10 – The Doyouinverts [download]

Finally, a comedy song about the romantic woes of a video game reviewer that Kieron Gillen described as “my life, basically.” This song is so funny that the very though of some of you not clicking through to listen to it compelled me to transcribe it:

[Show/Hide Lyrics]

That’s it for December, happy listening!

As often happens with hyped-up games, Mirror’s Edge fell short of many people’s lofty expectations. Some complained about its length (I managed to complete the story mode in two solid evenings of gaming). Others criticized the cliché-ridden story, which was seemingly written with the philosophy that: “Sudden betrayals are shocking, the more the better!” However, I think most people would have overlooked these flaws if DICE had managed to nail the gameplay. Unfortunately, Mirror’s Edge is the victim of a compromised vision.

On paper, the gameplay is flawless. The controls are tight and responsive, and the first person perspective rarely interferes with gauging distances and completing jumps. Furthermore, it’s easy to identify which objects are interactive and which are not. Why, then, does the game feel so frustrating? Why is it a constant struggle to figure out which way to go? Leigh Alexander explained it thusly:

I received a really interesting letter from a designer pal of mine who is a little bit fatigued of hearing arguments that hinge on the flaws in the game mechanics. In fact, he says, the mechanics themselves are perfect, the controls work precisely how they’re supposed to, and if players are finding the game frustrating, it’s not because of that. It’s the level design.

I wouldn’t say that the level design in Mirror’s Edge is necessarily terrible. It’s just that it often feels like the game and level designers worked in separate rooms, and never quite arrived at a common vision. As Chris Dahlen put it: “I’d say that its core problem is that it looks like Rock Band 2 but plays like Mega Man 9; you want to settle in and enjoy the thrill, but imagine if Rock Band stopped the song every single time you hit a bum note.” The game feels like a compromise between two ideas, and is worse off for it.

The mechanics indicate that the game designers focused on Faith’s speed and agility. They envisioned the parkour to play like Skate or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: choosing a path through the obstacles dynamically while using your reflexes to execute the motions flawlessly. Ramps and pipes are highlighted red from your perspective, facilitating quick decisions. The goal is to never stop; it should be possible to complete a level without losing momentum. Choosing your own path through the wide open rooftops is essential to this vision of the game.

The level designers, however, saw Mirror’s Edge as a puzzle game. It’s up the player to figure out how to get from point A to point B using the environment and Faith’s climbing and leaping abilities. To this effect, they designed lots of indoor pipe puzzles and narrow hallways. They also hid runner’s bags in hard-to-reach areas, and rewarded the player for stopping to pick them up. Careful, calculated movement is the goal.

This disparity is evident in the use of “runner’s vision”, a button which points the player in the right direction. On the rooftops this mechanic works quite well, as the player can usually see a path to the next objective and can plan their route accordingly. In the buildings, however, it often points through walls or in the opposite direction of where you’re really supposed to go. This is likely intentional on the part of the level designers, as it forces the player to observe their surroundings and solve the puzzle.

The guard fights are also a symptom of this design clash. If the goal of the player is to never stop running, then guards become another type of obstacle that must be dispatched and disarmed as quickly as possible. However, many levels force you to eliminate x number of guards before continuing. Faith’s fighting mechanics allow her to take on one or two guards with ease, but forcing her to confront an entire S.W.A.T. team is a recipe for trial-and-error frustration.

Despite my criticisms, I enjoyed Mirror’s Edge a lot more than reviews led me to believe I would. The moments when the game got it right were exhilarating, and Time Trial mode distills the best of the fast fluid parkour gameplay. For its sheer innovation it deserves a spot in your holiday playlist, if only a rental.

This Wednesday I attended Gamma 3D, a game design event being thrown by Kokoromi and connected to the Montreal International Game Summit. There is serious indie talent at these events; last year’s Gamma 256 featured the much-discussed Passage among others. The theme of this year’s competition was 3D stereoscopy, explained thusly by the organizers:

“It’s very typical of games right now to toss [3D stereoscopy] in as some back-of-the-box bullet point,” says Kokoromi co-founder Heather Kelley. “We wanted to throw it out there as an actual design challenge, and not treat it as some buzzword.”

Adds co-founder Phil Fish, “Right now, Ubisoft is working on a 3D stereoscopic game, and we’re seeing it more in TV and film. So we asked the question: is it worthwhile? Is there anything you can really do with it?”

I had a chance to check out this year’s exhibit with a badass pair of 3D goggles in hand, and was thoroughly impressed and the quality and creativity of the games being exhibited. Here are some of my personal favourites:

Note: these games are all available for free download at the Gamma 3D site.

super HYPERCUBE – Kokoromi/Polytron

Super Hypercube was programmed by my friend Renaud (who writes the excellent blog The Instruction Limit.) The game is an exercise in 3^rd grade geometry, challenging you to rotate a randomly generated cube cluster so that it fits through a hole in the wall. I thought the game was a great twist on Tetris block rotation, and it evoked a similar skillset. While Renaud himself was quick to admit that the game could be played without 3D goggles*, the addition of stereoscopy certainly helped by improving the perception of depth. I was also very impressed at the level of visual polish. You can’t tell from the screenshot, but the multiplier indicator is projected from the object you’re manipulating (an idea I’m told was inspired by the holographic menus in Dead Space.) You can read more about the game over at Renaud’s blog.

*In other words: the goggles do nothing!

Paper Moon – Infinite Ammo & Adam Saltsman

Paper Moon is a gorgeous platformer that will doubtlessly (and perhaps unfairly) draw comparisons to Braid. Objects in the foreground and background can be toggled by the player to create platforms, open doors and defeat enemies. The stereoscopy isn’t tacked on; it’s impossible to tell the depth of objects in the game without 3D goggles. While I didn’t notice any particularly interesting puzzles using this mechanic, I think the concept has a lot of potential and I hope the Infinite Ammo gang continue to explore it. It was also casually mentioned to me that the character artwork was created using cardboard cutouts, a process I’d certainly like to hear more about.

The Depths To Which I Sink – Jim McGinley

I’ll admit: at first I couldn’t tell if this was a game or a screensaver. On closer inspection, I would describe the game as fl0w set in a world of polygons. I didn’t actually get my hands on the game so I’m fuzzy on the exact mechanics, but the gist is this: the player-controlled worm can move in the third dimension and can only break the square panes at the same depth. If you’re not convinced you’ll have to see the game in action, it’s much prettier with a pair of 3D goggles.

As a somewhat unexpected bonus to attending Gamma 3D, I also got to meet Chris Remo of the excellent Idle Thumbs podcast!

If I had to review my conversation with Chris, I would say:

You are going to be blown away! – gangles.ca

Many thanks to Kokoromi for putting on such a terrific event, they’re doing more work than most to promote “games as art.” I look forward to next year’s competition and, if I get my act together, I may even try to submit something myself.

I’ve put up my photos from the event on Flickr, and be sure to check out my friend brilli.am’s write up of the event as well.

I’m roughly a dozen hours into Fallout 3, and so far my experience has been very entertaining but highly inconsistent. Every flash of brilliance, moment of wonderful storytelling and interesting nook of the vast capitol wasteland has been marred by stiff character animations, sloppy A.I. and show-stopping bugs. I thought I might take a moment to chronicle some of the ups and downs on the roller coaster of quality that is Fallout 3.

HIGH: Having your character gradually evolve his or her stats and appearance while growing up in Vault 101 was a terrific introduction to the post-apocalyptic Fallout universe. It was highly interactive and allowed the player to establish their personal narrative right from the outset. Furthermore, it helped to contrast restrictive life in the Vault with bare survival in the Wasteland, a major theme of the game. In fact, it’s a shame that I had already seen so much of this particular sequence from the prerelease promotional material, but I suppose it’s my own darn fault for peeking.

LOW: While the NPCs look fine when they’re standing still or gesturing, the illusion is shattered once they start moving. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why their movements look unnatural, but I suspect the leading cause is the fact that characters don’t move their shoulders when they walk or run. I haven’t seen animations this bad in years, especially not on modern systems.

HIGH: Stepping out into the sunlight of the D.C. wasteland for the first time was spectacular. Bethesda absolutely nailed the environmental aesthetic, and the impressive draw distance meant that the ruins stretched out for miles in all directions. Every crumbled building, abandoned playground and irradiated cola bottle told a story of the pre-war world. Thankfully, this is a truly seamless transition into the third dimension for the Fallout franchise.

LOW: The artificial intelligence of both friend and foe is sub-par. Assailants charge right at you and have difficulty navigating obstacles and terrain. I have yet to see them take advantage of cover or hold a strategic position even if their weapons have a range advantage. Furthermore, the pathfinding occasionally glitches in spectacular ways. I once walked into Megaton to find a friendly old man NPC dead in the middle of town. It turns out this is a known bug, where NPCs can occasionally die from “falling off walkways or radiation exposure near the bomb.”

HIGH: There are new quests, cities and characters hidden in every nook and cranny of the wasteland. Furthermore, because of the open-ended mission structure and large number of quests, you’re encouraged to start wandering as early and as often as you’d like. If the goal is to promote exploration, then Fallout 3 does “open world” better than Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto 4 or even Far Cry 2.

LOW: After installing a new broadcast dish at the Washington monument, I found myself locked out of the GNR building (Galaxy News Radio, not Guns ‘n’ Roses.) Apparently this is another known bug, but this time it was preventing the completion of one of the main storyline missions. In a more linear game this would have required a new playthrough, however…

HIGH: …this is not the case in Fallout 3. The game prides itself on having multiple solutions to every problem, and this situation was no different. It turns out I had two options for progressing: either raise my lock picking skill to 100 to enter a second story door, or simply skip the quest entirely and move straight to the next storyline NPC.

Once you get into the swing of it, the charm of the gigantic world and its fascinating inhabitants glosses over the game’s many glaring flaws and glitches. It’s just a darn shame that a game as good as Fallout 3 lacks not only polish, but in many cases basic quality assurance.

My first review of the indie puzzle game World of Goo was posted earlier today, you’ll have to click through to Snackbar to check it out:

Snackbar Games – World of Goo Review

For game reviews to move away from buyer’s guides and toward true criticism, I believe price must no longer be a factor in scoring. Portal is a great game at $20 or $60, even if it’s likely a bad investment in the latter case. However, since I avoided saying it there I’ll say it here: World of Goo is a steal. Spending $20 for one of the best games of the year is a no-brainer. Spending $20 to support indie developers is a no-brainer. Spending $20 for a game released on OSX and Linux is a no-brainer. Please purchase and play this wonderfully creative game, you absolutely will not regret it.

In the latest episode of the Brainy Gamer podcast, Michael and his guests Leigh and Mitch have a fascinating discussion contrasting two recent horror releases: Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming. The consensus is that, while Dead Space is technically impressive and features innovative use of the third person perspective, it lacks the subtle psychological elements of a traditional survival horror title. I’d hate to reduce the impact of their arguments by summarizing them, so you’ll have to listen for yourself if you’re not convinced.

The most significant contrast between the two games is their approach to frightening the player. The Silent Hill series is lauded for its use of environment and pacing to instill a sense of perpetual dread in the player. Dead Space, however, relies on more direct scare tactics: enemies jumping out of vents, seemingly still bodies leaping at you, lights suddenly going out, etc. Furthermore, the main character is heavily armoured and outfitted with an arsenal of impressive sci fi weaponry. In horror terms, the game is more Aliens than Jacob’s Ladder (or even Alien.)

While the vast majority of frightening moments in Dead Space follow this direct formula, there are a few exceptions that I feel are noteworthy. These moments managed to scare me effectively and subtly. I’d like to highlight a selection of them here (with minimal plot spoilers):

• As mentioned earlier, the game is very technically impressive. This includes the lighting and shadow effects, which are spot-on. At one point in the game, I was once walking into a narrow corridor that was being brightly lit from behind. Entering the doorway, I suddenly noticed that the shadow on the ground in front of me had outline of one of the ship’s ghoulish inhabitants. I quickly spun around to confront it… but there was nothing there. It may have been my imagination, but I could swear that the game scripted an out-of-place enemy shadow in that one spot for exactly that reason. In any case, I was impressed that the game had me literally jumping at shadows.
• One setup that was repeated frequently in the game is that enemies move out of sight just as you turn a corner. In one such instance, however, the creature I caught a disconcerting glimpse of was a regular human passenger. He looked at me, walked away and disappeared down a hallway a la G-Man. Counter-intuitively, this freaked me out more than any of the horrible monsters I had seen previously. Who was this man? Why did he evade me? This fear was compounded by the fact that I had picked up an audio diary earlier that claimed that there was a serial killer on board.
• The “strategic dismemberment” of enemies is another technically impressive aspect of the game. It was also surprisingly effective at enhancing the fear. In one of the developer diaries for the game, it was mentioned that the dismemberment strategy was based on the fact that it’s difficult to make fine movements under pressure. For instance, the victims in horror movies always struggle with their car keys. The stress induced by the careful aiming is only made possible by the excellent controls, an aspect that is contrary to most survival horror games. Personally, I also think it’s a more interesting combat restriction than ammo limitations.
• Finally, I was impressed by the parts of the game that involved entering a vacuum. The noisy machinery found inside of the USG Ishimura was suddenly silenced once I stepped into space. In this environment, enemies took on a whole new light. Not only could they could sneak up on me without making a sound, but I was also rapidly running out of air. Furthermore, there were several points in the game that involved dodging gigantic machinery in the vacuum. Having a ten story machine move silently was surprisingly unnatural and disconcerting, and really played with your sense of scale.

I’m no veteran when it comes to survival horror, but I hope this convinces you that there were a few creative scares among the more generic ones. For more discussion, I highly recommend Daniel Purvis’ impressions of Dead Space and Iroquois Pliskin’s treatise on the psychology of horror.

When I finally did manage to track down a copy, the opening screen immediately validated my purchase: (read the alt-text if the picture is too blurry)

Soul Bubbles tells the story of an apprentice psychopomp, a spirit responsible for escorting souls to the afterlife. The path to the netherworld is full of danger, so the young spirit is instructed to surround the souls with a protective bubble to keep them safe. This soul-filled bubble can be guided down the perilous path to the next life by blowing it in the right direction.

Along with the wind, which is directed with the stylus, the player also has several masks at their disposal. The tiger mask can cut down obstacles and split the bubble to fit in tight spaces. The hummingbird mask is used to draw new bubbles, and the elephant mask deflates/pops them. These tools are mapped to buttons of the DS’s directional pad.

There are 8 worlds in Soul Bubbles, and each is named after a different culture’s version of the afterlife. Commendably, they opted to forgo familiar mythological worlds such as Hades and Valhalla in favour of fairly obscure ones. These include the indigenous Australian’s dreamworld Altjeringa, the Irish otherworld Tir Tairngire and the Spanish city of gold Quivira. The environments in each world, including the music, reflect their cultural and geographical origins. The puzzles in each world also revolve around a specific theme. For instance, the obstacles in Tomo-Kahni revolve around fire and water, while in Pemako they involve playing with gravity.

Soul Bubbles is a game that was clearly made with a lot of love and, as with many things, it’s the small details that make a big difference. The wind, for instance, doesn’t only move your bubble, but also causes grass to sway, leaves to fall and dandelions to shed their seeds. These plants can also be cut with the tiger mask and pushed aside by the bubble. These small cosmetic details, together with the beautiful watercolour graphics and rich varied environments, come together to make one of the most visually stunning handheld games I’ve ever seen.

Furthermore, while the game is quite easy overall, the fact that the developers took the time to introduce new gameplay mechanics in every stage is commendable. If you’re a tourist gamer like I am, you’ll really appreciate being introduced to new ideas at every turn. As such, while your goal remains the same in each level (escort the bubble to the end) the game remains fresh throughout.

While there are games for the DS with tighter mechanics and more difficult challenges, there are few that are as soothing as Soul Bubbles. It’s a game that rewards patience and exploration over speed and reflexes. Fortunately, the world is a beautiful tapestry with rich international music that’s well worth exploring.

[This post is part of the Hidden Gems series.]

This is more of an open question than a well-formed idea, so I’m hoping you all can help me out on this one.

A few weeks ago I read an article by Noel Murray over at the A.V. Club. His synopsis of indie rock band Pavement’s career is worth a read, but the opening paragraph is what that really struck me as insightful:

Here’s how it goes sometimes: A guy likes movies, initially because he’s attracted to story and spectacle, but after a while, he sees so many movies that he starts to get tired of the same kinds of structure and style repeated over and over. So novelty starts to take precedence over quality, and the cineaste starts grooving on such esoteric virtues as slowness and murkiness. Or consider the music buff, who often gets jaded quickly and starts tossing around words like “overproduced” and “middle-of-the-road” to describe songs they can’t abide, while championing acts that traffic in drone and distortion.

It made me wonder if the same principle applies to gaming enthusiasts. It’s fair to say that we champion games such as Killer7, Earthbound and God Hand because we’re desperate for a fresh, distinctive experience. We defend Silent Hill for having bad combat controls (it enhances the fear!) and are thrilled by Mega Man 9’s retro aesthetic. We often value creativity and ambition more than execution, quality and enjoyment (ex: S.T.A.L.K.E.R being a critical darling despite horrendous glitches and flaws.)

There’s been a lot of talk in the gaming press lately about the gap between the vocal minority present on blogs/forums and the average gamer. For instance, EA argued that, despite the online uproar, most people neither notice nor care about the DRM measures taken with Spore. Peter Molyneux specifically requested that potentially jaded reviewers include non-gamers in their appraisal of Fable 2. Furthermore, consider Leigh Alexander’s experience:

Even when I go to GameStop, where you’d expect that most of the shoppers would be something “like us.” I end up chatting with other customers and am always disoriented — believe it or not, people shopping at GameStop usually haven’t heard of Kotaku. They haven’t heard that the game they’re in line to buy was delayed twice or is made by the wrong studio.

Then, when those people start to talk to me about what they’ve been playing lately, I’m always surprised to learn that they enjoyed, say, Kane and Lynch. They didn’t notice the problems reviewers did. They never heard of Gerstmann-Gate. They don’t know who he is, and they certainly don’t know who I am. They thought The Darkness was the best game they played last year. They like Geometry Wars but not Braid. They love Madden and don’t even know that “we” snub it.

In other words, they’re normal consumers, and their opinion is different than ours.

Are gaming enthusiasts out-of-touch with what the average gamer wants? Are we so blasé with games that we value novelty over quality? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Many thanks to Chris Dahlen for linking me to TV on the Radio’s latest album Dear Science, because it’s one of the loudest, freshest, funkiest records I’ve heard this year. His review over at Pitchfork says it better than I ever could, but it you like to think and dance (possibly at the same time) I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out. You can stream high quality versions of the album’s singles on their website.

I’m likewise indebted to Chris Furniss for introducing me to the music of Shugo Tokumaru. Fortunately I made this discovery early enough in the month for me to catch his show at Pop Montreal last Friday. He’s a virtuoso guitarist, and managed to coax such a rich sound out of six strings that you could have sworn he had an entire band backing him up. His latest album EXIT has been on repeat at my place for the last few weeks, it falls delightfully somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and the Katamari Damacy soundtrack. Another unconditional recommendation, pick it up and tell your friends.

Earlier this month I was browsing through Talib Kweli’s back albums on Sven’s recommendation and I stumbled upon this gem, a 1998 collaboration with Mos Def called Black Star. It has everything you’d expect from a great hip-hop album: biting social commentary, fat beats and tight flow. Sadly this is the only album they’ve ever collaborated on, so you’ll have to check out their respective discographies if you want more.

Now if you excuse me, I believe I hear Mega Man 9 calling my name.

The flagship episode of the Gamers Confab features Brinstar of Acid for Blood, Manveer Heir of Design Rampage and myself. In it we talk about the culture of SingStar, the big promises made by game designers and how much we love Good Old Games. Thanks again to Michael, Brinstar and Manveer, I had a blast talking with you and I hope you all enjoy listening to us.

• Download the podcast directly [mp3]
• Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes
• Subscribe to the podcast feed

Nintendo: BA for Life

The NES was the first console to move away from the joysticks of the Atari generation, opting instead for what would become an iconic design in gamepads. Despite my previous complaint, note that A is indeed mapped to the right of B. D’oh!

Following their ancestor’s example, nearly every Nintendo console is mapped this way. This includes the SNES, Virtual Boy, Gamecube, every iteration of the Game Boy, DS and Wii Classic Controller. The only dissenters are the Nintendo 64 (bottom right picture), which maps B in a location traditionally reserved for Y, and the Wiimote, which maps A and B on different surfaces entirely.

Sega & Microsoft Love AB

In the early days, Sega was hot on Nintendo’s heels. The NES had A and B buttons, so the Genesis added a C *. When the SNES added the X and Y buttons, Sega one-upped them by adding a Z to the Saturn. The Dreamcast controller was more minimal, perhaps inspired by Sony’s popular newcomer, the Playstation. The one element that all Sega controllers share is the AB orientation (the Game Gear labelled them 1 and 2, but arranged them in the same way.)

* It’s worth noting that the short-lived Atari Jaguar had A, B and C buttons oriented the opposite way. It also featured a full numeric pad, for a grand total of 17 individual buttons!

The first iteration of the Xbox controller, nicknamed “Duke”, was bulky and unpleasant to hold. The four main buttons were on a strange slant, putting the B almost directly above A. Fortunately, Microsoft quickly responded to public criticism and began packaging the Japan-exclusive “S” controller with their system. The new gamepad was smaller and straightened out the button layout, a mapping they largely reused for the Xbox 360.

Sony Goes Both Ways

The main buttons on the Playstation gamepad don’t use letters, but are instead labelled , , and . The original Playstation saw three types of controllers over its lifetime, adding dual analog sticks in 1997 and rumble in 1999. In recent years the DualShock line has seen slow incremental improvements, but they haven’t strayed far from the original design (mercifully they abandoned the boomerang concept.)

In North America and Europe, games commonly use to confirm (the role of A) and to cancel (the role of B.) In Japan, however, the symbol is commonly associated with maru (right) while is identified with batsu (wrong.) Therefore the roles are reversed, confirms and cancels. While the controls of most games are localized with this in mind, games such as Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid were left with their original mapping (to the general confusion of Western players.)

I hope this has been an enlightening trip down memory lane. With all the variety in gamepad mapping, it should come as no surprise that even veteran gamers can be betrayed by their muscle memory sometimes.

Last fall featured one of the strongest holiday games lineup in recent memory. Games such as Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Team Fortress 2 and Rock Band were all arriving within weeks of each other and life was good. However, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there were just as many major titles that fizzled in the last year. Consider the following sampling from Metacritic:

Lair, average review score 53:

Lair has major problems with its use of motion-controls, despite nailing basic movements. Flat out broken contextual sequences, a choppy camera, and groan-inducing level design are hardly reasons to recommend it.

Haze, average review score 55:

To be blunt, the actual gameplay of Haze is mediocre mixed with a side order of boring and I have to say this is really disappointing because we know the developers, Free Radical of Time Splitters fame have done much better games with far superior gameplay.

Alone in the Dark, average review score 58:

Every good idea here is brought down by bad basic design, including a shoddy third-person camera, a too-slow first-person mode, and bizarre forced switching between the two.

Too Human, average review score 65:

The game is simply schizophrenic; it attempts to be all things to all people and never succeeds in executing any of them well. The end result is in dire need of polish and focus, and that doesn’t solely apply to gameplay mechanics.

These were all hotly anticipated games, many coming from companies such as Silicon Knights and Free Radical that have a reputation for excellence. Even with experienced developers and boatlods of production capital, they managed to churn out games that were bland, buggy and unbalanced.

Some might blame the publishers for pushing games out the door without proper QA. Others fault the complexity of modern graphics and physics. While these are all valid complaints, these problems have been around for decades and are unlikely to change. What’s new is the culture of hype that surrounds these games.

The plague of endless previews in modern games journalism is inflating player expectations. Major titles come prefaced with up to a year of screenshots, videos, press releases, developer diaries, exclusive interviews, etc. These are little more than carefully worded company blurbs, but they get promoted as news by most gaming blogs. Furthermore, any independent opinions and reviews are stifled by NDAs and embargo dates. After ten months of glowing words and big promises, who could fault a gamer for expecting that the best thing since sliced bread was coming to their home console.

To combat this cycle of hype and disappointment, I firmly believe that games journalists must move away from pushing promotional material as news. Commendable online publications such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Giant Bomb already feature scaled-down preview coverage and increased original content. We can only hope that more blogs will follow their example, or we’re all in for a lot of disappointment.

In the meantime, I suggest following Yahtzee’s advice and defaulting to pessimism cautious realism whenever a new title is announced.

Straight out of Springfield, Missouri, Ha Ha Tonka’s Buckle In The Bible Belt is full of foot-stompin’ roots rock about hardships in the Ozarks. While the rest of the album is great highway driving music, the track “Falling In” (embedded above) really stands out for its indie rock ballad sensibilities, strong vocal harmonies and overall catchiness. The bluegrass inspired “St. Nick on the Fourth in a Fervor” is also worth a listen.

I would place Apes & Androids‘ sound somewhere between the electric rock opera bombast of Muse and the low key funk of Beck. It’s a strange mix but they make it work. The track “Riverside” starts off with subdued folk guitar but crescendos into a cacophony worthy of a Final Fantasy boss fight. Their album Blood Moon is a mixed bag, but features gems such as “Hot Kathy” and “We Don’t Understand You.”

Love Is Where The Smoke Is is lead singer Jamie Fooks’ bedroom work of passion. The Calgary native taught herself to sing, play, compose and digitally record throughout the album’s creation. Jane Vain & The Dark Matter’s debut is surprisingly well polished while maintaining the lyrical honesty of an enthusiast. Feist, eat your heart out.

Finally, I picked up David Byrne and Brian Eno’s latest collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. While it’s more accessible than some of their earlier work (following the trend of the later Talking Heads albums), they’ve snuck in a few strange tracks such as “I Feel My Stuff.” The flash widget embedded above actually streams the entire album, a commendable move that certainly embraces the spirit of the digital music revolution.

The story begins in a cellar in 18th century Gotham, where a group of robed cultists (including a young Thomas Jefferson) prepares to sacrifice a young woman to gain control of a demon they have summoned. The ritual goes awry and the men flee the evil presence they have unleashed, locking the girl inside with it. Scarred by what they have seen, they decide to dissolve their group and forget the incident.

Back in the present day, Batman pursues the Riddler, a character portrayed in most comics as a minor criminal, Bruce Wayne’s intellectual equal at best. However, his latest crime spree has been inexplicable and cruel in equal measure. In their first confrontation, he nearly hangs a security guard and makes his escape while Batman resuscitates him. He kidnaps four infants and holds them for ransom (despite the fact that none came from rich families), drenches Batman with blood at the hospital, and has no qualms with sacrificing his henchmen. He’s slowly and deliberately leading the hero somewhere, but for where and for what purpose?

The fact that the narrative revolves around the protagonist being lead by mysterious forces is one of the story’s strongest points. The comic isn’t really about Batman or the Riddler, but rather about the conclusion of a three hundred year old ritual and the dark origins of Gotham. This is also the story’s strongest connection with the Hellboy series, where the titular main character often journeys at the whim of spirits, ghosts and demons.

Dark Knight, Dark City was released in 1990 as Batman #452-454, but unfortunately has yet to be collected in a trade paperback. I hate to recommend a story that’s difficult to get a hold of, but for what it’s worth I managed to find all three volumes on eBay for a reasonable price.

Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor is a blatant Elite Beat Agents clone. Like EBA, there are notes on the bottom screen that must be pressed with the stylus in time with the music. It also splits up section of the song with a cartoon narrative, in this case featuring the familiar cast of Looney Tunes.

However, it’s what Cartoon Conductor does differently that make it truly remarkable. The most important distinction is that, like the Looney Tunes cartoon, the game only features public domain classical music. EBA may have Bowie and Freddie, but this game lets you rock out to Wagner, Beethoven and Bach. What’s great about this is that you’ll instantly recognize every single one of the songs, they’re burned into our collective unconscious from movies and television.

You may now be thinking to yourself that EBA’s drum-like style of play, while ideally suited to 4/4 pop songs, may not mesh well with symphony music. The designers had this in mind and tweaked the gameplay accordingly. Instead of dancing to the music, you lead the orchestra as the titular conductor. Rather than strike each note, you press the first note of the series and glide the stylus to the next in time with the music. This makes sense physically, as each series corresponds to one directing arm movement. They mix things up occasionally with a Guitar Hero-style cascade of falling notes, which must be pressed when they line up with circles at the bottom of the screen.

The designers commendably applied the paradigm of being the conductor to every aspect of gameplay. For instance, at the beginning of each song you are requested to tap the screen thrice, just as a conductor would tap the score with their baton (thank you Wikipedia for the terminology.) Unlike the Guitar Hero series, where a missed note results in silence or harsh feedback, messing up in Cartoon Conductor causes the orchestra to hit the note off-key. This is a really interesting response mechanic, one that I hope future rhythm game designers pay attention to.

For a licensed DS title, Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor has a surprising amount of polish and depth. If you’re a fan of rhythm games, especially Elite Beat Agents, I highly recommend checking it out. Furthermore, it’s easy to find (having only been released in June) and comes at a budget price ($20.)

I plan to make Hidden Gems a regular segment at the Quixotic Engineer, so expect to see more great overlooked titles profiled in the future.

Here are his top picks for this month:

As a regular reader of The Quixotic Engineer, I always look forward to the monthly Musical Box posts – so it’s quite the honour to get to do one myself! My thanks to Matthew. Without further ado, here are some of my recent musical faves.

Mark Kozelek has been making music for over twenty years, first with Red House Painters and most recently with Sun Kil Moon. I loved Sun Kil’s first disc, Ghosts of the Great Highway, and looked forward to their most recent release, April, with a great deal of anticipation. It was worth it. “Moorestown” (above) does a lot to showcase the bittersweet ache at the core of Kozelek’s work, which is littered with tales of love and loss, elation and pain. Fun fact: Kozelek played the bassist of fictional band Stillwater in the film Almost Famous.

I came across Jenny Owen Youngs in a simple 10 or 20 second clip from the second season opener of Weeds. The song, “Fuck Was I” is like much of Youngs’ music: dark, cynical and yet somehow sweet at the same time. It’s an oddly disconcerting yet disarming combination and I’ve literally listened to this track 50 times in the past few weeks. 2005’s Batten the Hatches, which this song is from, is well worth the listen.

Finally, someone combines my love of Indian classical music and long guitar solos! Niladri Kumar has become adept at melding the old and the new and is quickly becoming a rock star in the world of Indian classical, so much so that he has invented his own electric sitar, the ‘Zitar’. This short clip highlights both his virtuosity and capacity to mix rock star flash and classical rigour. Unfortunately, there is much less of Kumar’s more traditional work online, which is a shame as it’s also excellent. If you’re curious, I’d recommend starting with his disc Revelation, which you can hear clips of here.

Finally, in perhaps the most aptly named album I’ve heard in a while, we have From Here We Go Sublime by The Field. It’s spacey, electronic and yet somehow manages to remain remarkably organic and melodic. It’s perfect music for spending late summer evening watching time drift by. The clip here is a fan-made video, but it’s done by the same user responsible for the Girl Talk mashup vids.

That’s it for July, thanks again to Nav and be sure to check out more of his work over at Scrawled In Wax.

Back in April, there was a lot of excitement around the rerelease of a game called Ikaruga on Xbox Live Arcade. The game seemed to have garnered praise from all corners, including many people whose opinions I’ve come to greatly respect. My anticipation grew, and when the game was finally released I immediately jumped on my console to give the demo a whirl.

I was dismayed, this is the game everyone was excited about? It was brutally difficult and I had burned through my lives in no time at all. It seemed the only way to advance was to play the same section over and over until you had memorized the enemy attack patterns and developed an extremely itchy trigger finger. In other words, it felt like every other 2D shoot ‘em up game (commonly labelled a shmup) I had every played, albeit with very pretty graphics and an interesting polarity mechanic.

This experience left me a little confused. It wasn’t the difficulty issue that threw me off, I’m well aware that there are those who still love brutally challenging titles. However, for reference, Triggerheart Exelica, an equally difficult shmup, had been rereleased on XBLA two months earlier to little fanfare in the general gaming community. Ikaruga’s mean review score was 25% higher than Triggerheart Exelica’s, but the games seemed extremely similar to me. Why was Ikaruga apparently a vastly superior title? Why couldn’t I see it?

I struggled with this for a little while, and challenged whoever would listen to expose the game’s hidden greatness to me in clear terms. The answer finally came from a fellow named The Ghost, who wrote an audio blog [mp3] that directly addressed my confusion. In it, he said the following:

If you don’t want to play the same level over and over again, trying to perfect your run and really learn the game you’re not going to like this game. [...] If you don’t want to step up to the challenge, you’re going to miss a lot of the little details that make the game really great, like how the bullet patterns are set up, the strategy to building chains, how many enemies come at you. The strategy and the level of thinking that goes into a solid run of something like Ikaruga [...] is pretty intense, and it has a huge reward at the end of it.

He went on to explain:

If dying over and over again doesn’t sound like a good time to you (and I can understand why it wouldn’t) then the game’s not going to seem that good, because you’re not going to have all those extra elements that actually make it endearing and fun and interesting and really appreciate the design. It’s going to seem like just another shmup, just another of these millions and millions of shmups out there. It’s not going to seem special or anything like that. Once you do get into it, the way it’s designed is superb, top of the game, great example of what a shmup can be when it’s really well designed and thought out.

The answer was clear: since I am not a shmup fan, I can neither see nor appreciate the small details that make Ikaruga so great. I believe there are two dimensions to this lack of understanding:

1. Context: Having played very few shmups, I don’t have the context with which to compare Ikaruga to other games in the genre. I can’t grep the differences to figure out what they did differently.
2. Depth: Because my skill and interest levels are so low, the depth of the game’s mechanics are lost on me. I can’t appreciate the difference between a clever enemy attack pattern and an obvious one.

Here’s another example: one of my favourite columns over at GameSetWatch is John Harris’ @ Play series. It features in-depth discussions about a niche subset of retro RPGs called roguelikes, named after the influential PC game Rogue released in 1980. To quote Mr. Harris:

Roguelikes are dungeon-exploration computer games [...] set in a randomly-generated world. They are known for their tremendous difficulty, unpredictability, permanent character death, and the large number of methods they use to inflict that death. They were most popular in college computer labs in the 80s, and while they never achieved widespread success, the genre nevertheless persists to this day, and its dedicated cadre of devotees will argue night and day that these are the greatest computer games ever made.

The column is fascinating because of the writer’s encyclopedic knowledge of roguelikes, which he uses to discuss their history, mechanics, bestiaries and enduring fan-base. However, some of his most interesting columns set about deconstructing roguelikes that didn’t quite work.

Take for instance his thorough critique of Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. In it, he penalizes the game for allowing the player to preserve XP and items upon dying, which breaks a fundamental element of roguelike design and introduces grind. He also discusses how Izuna does away with the traditional food requirement in favour of other mechanics (such as weapon durability) with mixed results. His expertise in the genre gives his insight as to the small details that differentiate a decent roguelike from a great one.

One final example of this would be the lukeward reception of Halo 3 by some of my game blogging colleagues. I don’t wish to insult their judgement, as they make up a large portion of the previously mentioned “people whose opinions I’ve come to greatly respect.” Their comments about the lackluster storytelling, excessive launch hype and inflated reviews are certainly valid. However, as a huge fan of console shooter I can’t help but feel that they may have missed some of the small details that make Halo 3, gameplay-wise, the cream of the console shooter experience.

Neither of the Halo sequels has brought about the same dramatic revolution that the “golden tripod” (weapon, grenade, melee) did back in 2001. However, each has brought about their own small changes that helped to further refine and expand the already stellar experience. In the case of Halo 3, they managed to finally completely balance their armoury, while at the same time nearly doubling its size. Furthermore, the equipment system (bubble shield, regenerator, etc.) added a fourth leg to the player’s toolset without sacrificing balance or control convenience. It’s these small details that make the difference between a great console shooter and a mediocre one (ex: Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox.)

Despite my digression, the point I’m trying to emphasize (with the cunning use of bold) is that unless you’re experienced with a genre, it’s very difficult to notice the small details that seperate a decent game from a great one. If you’ve ever been tempted to call a popular game “overrated”, it might be worth shifting your paradigms with this in mind.

Bloom aims to recreate the optical effect known as the Airy disc. In the real world, when light passes through a circular aperture such as your eye it diffracts, causing flaws that limit the maximum resolution of even a perfect lens. These defects are negligible for normal incoming light, but very bright sources can appear to bleed into surrounding darker objects.

In graphics processing, this effect is simulated by blurring the bright parts of the frame buffer image in post-processing. In simpler terms, the bloom effect is only applied once the objects (3D vectors) have been converted into an image (pixels), a process known as rasterisation. A mathematical function (usually Gaussian blur) is then applied to the bright parts of the image, which blends the brightness into the surrounding pixels. Not only does this simulate the Airy disc, but it often has the added benefit of smoothing out aliasing artifacts (”jaggies”) and particle effects.

While it was a staple of late ninteties tech demos, Ico, released for the Playstation 2 in 2001, was one of the first video games to use a bloom filter in real time. The effect helped give the game’s ruined castle a distinct sun-washed look, an aesthetic that was repeated in its prequel Shadow of the Colossus four years later.

Ico was ahead of its time in many ways, and bloom did not see common use on consoles until the seventh generation began in 2005. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 could render graphics with high dynamic range, meaning a larger contrast between very bright and very dark objects (high-end PCs had this capability several years ealier.) Under standard lighting white was the brightest possible frame buffer value, but with HDRR the graphics processor could distinguish between a white t-shirt and the white of the sun. Combined with the massive increase in hardware capability, it suddenly became trivial to add a bloom filter to games and, unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

To properly illustrate my concern about the proliferation of bloom, I’d like to show you some examples of bloom gone wrong:

Need For Speed: Most Wanted: This must be America, because the streets are paved with gold!

Call of Duty 3: A relatively benign example. Everything looks fine beneath the horizon, but oh my the sky is on fire!

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The reflecting waterfall might be forgivable, but the flowers?

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The ruins in the background are an indistinct white mess. [full size]

Halo 3: The weapon and explosion effects in Halo 3 use a whole lot of bloom.

Heavenly Sword and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune: Notice how the white shirts bleed into the environment around them.

Two Worlds: The nefarious duo snow and lightning have turned everyone and everything white. [full size]

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Would you believe that this screenshot inspired this entire post? What a disaster.

I’m not trying to suggest that modern graphics are insufficiently photorealistic. Quite the opposite in fact; it’s the drive for realism that’s pushing developers to add bloom to as many games as they possibly can. However, as the screenshots above demonstrate, too much bloom is as detrimental to realism as none at all. What’s worse is that the fine detail that high resolution gaming can provide is being lost in a sea of brightness. Like in Ico, using highly noticeable amounts of bloom should be an aesthetic choice, and not broadly applied to all games.

Notes:

• Many thanks to Renaud for helping me with the technical aspects of this post.
• I’d also like to thank the many people who suggested games with too much bloom to check out.
• For additional reading on bloom, check out The Instruction Limit, Gamasutra, and the XNA Creators Club.