On Saturday, the plan is to move the blog from WordPress onto a new URL that I registered a while back, and never got around to completing the website on. Because I’m a lazy bastard. The new location will most likely be the currently fictional and fantastical http://themachination.net/blog.html. Or something to that effect. Because we’re professional like that.

Anyway, expect an update tomorrow. Yep, it’s that adventure game thing that I promised from many moons ago. See, we do get around to this stuff. It just takes time, and sweet, sweet procrastination.

Anyway, to the morrow ladies and lads of the internet. Keep out of trouble, or whatever you kids are up to these days.

Miles

Yes, Roger Ebert recently decided to restate his previous argument: that games are not, and can never be, art. And yes, the internet promptly rose like a fire-filled tsunami against this tiny agressor. And yes, I’ll be surprised if the poor man doesn’t wake up with every hackable machine in his house programmed to scream “GAMES ARE TOO ART, YOU MORAN” every time he logs on. And yes, yes, yes, I know I’m a bit late to the party. But I’ve got an open letter full of well-researched Ebert-bashing prose under this jump, and I think you just might be interested in reading it. Go on. I’d advise you read the original article first, though.

Mr. Ebert (I begin, chortling at strange irony of being polite on the internet), your attempt to prove your hypothesis through sheer power of rational, philosophical thought alone (as if you’re a  theologian attempting to prove or disprove the existence of god without ever personally meeting the chap) is commendable – but trying to argue about something you don’t know much about is always going to seem ridiculous. More than that – on our side of the debate, it’s extremely hard to defend a genre without using any examples from it.

(The entire comments section right now is “Ok ok ok, but THIS GAME, you HAVE to try that one. It’s totally art.)

You repeat your argument that “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.” – Well, the comments section has been citing games right and left. I don’t blame you for not trying them all, but at least don’t claim to KNOW that no game is art based on a video of three games shown at a lecture.

You’re also missing the point when you mention that games have Objectives, while Art does not. The AUDIENCE never has an objective, true, but the CHARACTERS in any decent story certainly have objectives. They also must follow rules, stay within boundaries, and use procedures to achieve their goals- these are the basic building blocks of any decent plot, as much as they are for games. Games place the audience inside the role of a character- of course they must then give them objectives! A movie where no character had any goals would be no less worthless than a game without objectives. Oh, I suppose Ebert could cite stories such as Waiting for Godot, but I would say then it ceases to be a story and becomes a representation of a series of events.

(Oh ho ho! Notice how I cleverly use Ebert’s own argument against him, hoisting him on his own proverbial petard! Truely, I am a wordsmith of the highest caliber.

Having routed his main arguments, I go for the kill.)

To defend one of the few examples Sangtiago gives: Flower proves, if nothing else, that games can be Visual art, as much as a painting. But, what am I saying- we are no longer debating whether or not games are art, we are debating about whether or not they are GOOD art, or HIGH art, which every single person on this comments section has a different definition for.

I personally believe that anything that can make at least these primitive attempts – any medium that can make BAD art – is capable of eventually making good art. These examples are poor, yes, but I hope you won’t say that you can’t see the potential. And of course, almost every gamer on this board seems to believe they have played a game that is art. Even assuming we are all idiots: Would it be too corny of me to say that 3300 comments can’t be wrong? I’m sure someone up there must have made that joke already.

-Jack McNamee

Student, Gamer, Artist(???).

(No, I didn’t actually sign my name at the bottom in the actual comment. That always seems pretentious.)

As expected some of these heroes worked and some of them sunk faster than an opera singer in a diving bell, and this made me think just why. CONCLUSIONS, because I don’t have time to faff about with my hectic playboy lifestyle at the moment: Setting and context.

The setting, in this instance, always justifies the character, their actions and their mannerisms, and when it does not, the character in turn will reflect poorly upon the story, its events and their own actions. Take my newfound whipping boy Alec Mason from Red Faction Guerrilla . Sure this guy’s going to be disgruntled upon witnessing his brother die and Mars going the way of City 17, but to be brutally honest, he never displays an ounce of compassion toward other miners, any clear sense of his present setting or any hint of his grand motives, beyond REVENGE REVENGE AND POSSIBLY SOME MORE REVENGE AFTER TEA. See, Alec is an uncanny character because he does not, first and foremost, fit his setting. If he were the protagonist from, say, Madworld, then his unjustified romping and stomping would probably be a hell of a lot more justified, however, here he is, bogged down in the thralls of reality, with little respect for his own lore.

On the other side of the coin, there is something like Ratchet and Clank. Ratchet and Clank has always revelled in its scope for absurdity – quirky characters, ludicrous weapons, and plots worthy of a silent movie villain. But here’s the thing, Ratchet, Clank and their compadres are these well crafted individuals of cunning and wit, and complete unwavering respect for their setting. Ratchet and Clank CAN get away with mowing down hordes of faceless enemies because that’s what the universe demands. It fits the ethos of the shootem/beatemup without ever straying into serious territory, whilst managing to deliver a compelling story. Crazy, right? This is why I, and everyone else of the face of the Earth should love Ratchet and Clank UNCONDITIONALLY.

My third example here is Final Fantasy XIII. I should probably hide the fact that I haven’t played the earlier ones unless I want to be pelted with stones in the streets. Shit, too late. First off, I’m going to get the fact that I like the game off my chest, but to be honest, I’m liking everything other than the game a lot more than the actual gameplay at the moment, but I’ll come back to that later. Final Fantasy XIII… somehow manages to exist in this vacuum between reality and complete absurd fiction. Within the first half hour of playing, a resistance team named NORA is revealed, comprised of individuals who look like they spent six hours getting dressed in the morning, and showing complete, and utter ignorance for our surround. Shit, some guy just died, let’s all banter jovially and tousle little Jimmy’s questionably well kempt hair. To be honest, it kind of works in this weird way. I mean, even by looking at half the costumes that these characters wear, you can see that they are in silent, arrogant defiance of their surrounding, and the world seems to be down with this. Maybe FF XIII sort of exists in this delicate juxtaposition, sustaining an air of humour, whilst melodramatically monologuing about everyone’s dead relatives. I’m going to divert quickly to talk about the gameplay here for some contrived reason, hey, get back here, this is relevant!

The gameplay is not bad, it just lacks depth, but where it does shine is its consistency with the game’s themes. There was this one battle with Vanille (The enigmatic kook singularity, whom, for some reason I find quite endearing) and Sazh (Probably the coolest guy in the history of the universe who has a Chocobo chick living in his hair) in which they fight these two bizarre hybrids of woodland and train. Throughout this whole crazy battle, this jazzy lounge music would play, turning the whole event into a comedy of errors, casting a humorous reflection on the game’s bizarre themes. Back on track.

So, what have we learnt other than this took way longer to write that I suspected? Characters, or more so heroes are made by their context and setting. They are forever reliant on the balance between themselves and their context in order to create a compelling character narrative, however, when a juxtaposition is created, our old friend satire is reeled into the fray. Say Alec Mason did reveal his intentions as a raving psychopath, it would have been a lot more like Saints Row 2, which clearly states that Volition should stop trying to be so serious.

Miles Newton – Prisoner of some jerk’s idea of education

When you think Shadow of the Colossus, I’m sure the first things that crawl from the depths of your minds are white knuckle boss battles and vast mysterious lands, and you couldn’t be further from the truth. The game itself provides and unforgettable experience, but after almost a year between buying it and finishing it, I have always wondered what made it the subject of the long impassioned rants that I’ve bombarded my friends with.

Something was shining through from the moment I began to explore the Forbidden Land and traversed my first piece of hazardous landscape, and that was the way in which things moved. Pulling ourselves back to the present, it’s almost impossible to identify a game in which the character doesn’t move like a mechanised puppet, fastened to the controller and restricting the player’s ability to interact with the world that the developer has strived to so believably render. You could rationalise this by stating that it would be to the detriment of the gameplay if done otherwise, but I think this mentality is being used as a cover for formulaic game design.

In Shadow of the Colossus, the character moves like a human would. Wander trips, he stumbles, leaps, lurches and rolls both in accordance to his own actions and those of the environment surrounding him, and this adds unprecedented depth to the players interaction and lending subtle suggestion toward his person and character. Wander is just a boy, desperate to bring his loved one back to life, so he steals away into the wilderness without training, driven only by desperation. Whether or not this is how everyone will view him is completely open to discussion, but cleverly brought about through such subtlety, suggesting that gameplay can have a powerful impact upon subtext.

Although it is often bemoaned by fans that Shadow of the Colossus featured cutscenes in contrast to its predecessor Ico, there are so many small, yet emotionally gripping moments within the game that take advantage of the fact that the player is in control. I daren’t divulge these key moments without warning, but generally speaking a complete control over Wander’s actions sort of discards the game context and suspends the player’s disbelief. Take a game like God of War for instance. If you want Kratos to run up that monster’s arm, you just hit square triangle circle, whereas here it’s only you, locked it a battle of chance and strategy as you clamber slowly up the Colossi’s mane, struggling for finger-holds in amongst the fur and stone. *SPOILER* During the endgame sequence there was a moment in which Wander is dragged towards his inevitably death as the player is forced to take control of the struggling man – jumping forward and hopelessly trying to grab handholds as he is drawn towards the enchanted pool; the player in control throughout the entire gut wrenching experience. *END SPOILERS*.I clearly remember the first time I engaged a colossi, and the sheer terror and excitement it brewed within me; never before had I had such a connection with the character’s action. Considering the depth of both immersion and emotion that this feature adds within the experience, I’m astounded that it hasn’t been more extensively experimented with, however one developer dared to take a risk on such endeavours, who would have thought it would have been EA.

Mirrors Edge was a daring piece of work that aspired to put the player into the shoes of a courier traceur named Faith as she traverses a metropolitan terrain with grace and ease; the first person adding depth to the player’s immersion, and it was great. Discounting the terrible enemy encounters, the game had created a spiritual relationship with Shadow, in a sense, as it too embraced the essence of movement and control and took it in its own direction. Conversely, Mirrors Edge lacked substance. Although it was an excellent piece of gameplay design, it almost felt squandered on such a bland setting; one that effectively limited the potential of the gameplay itself.

Entertain the thought, if you will of a hybrid of both styles. Shadow excelled in creating an intense connection with the player with its human analogous movements and reactions, whilst Mirrors Edge provided the first person perspective, complimentary to full body model interaction with the environment. Whilst setting Shadow of the Colossus in first person would be at best hazardous, the model provides an excellent base for exploring player/ environment interaction. Say for instance that Mirrors Edge was set in a more natural environment; the player traversing intricate terrain and stalking foes with agility, yet always knowing that they may stumble, trip or fall. The potential is seemingly endless, and almost completely unexplored as game design trends tend to favour features that will placate their audience instead of challenging and allowing them to accept a broader range of concepts.

The aesthetic of movement it really something that is at best, underdeveloped in games, and I’m sure that this has animators screaming for change. Fumito Ueda, creative director from Shadow of the Colossus was an impassioned animator; a sound reflection on his resulting work, but I’m not convinced that this is solely the influence of one infatuated with movement. Gameplay needs to evolve in equal measures, and not just as an act of accommodation. The addition of more intimate player/ environment interaction calls for an integral gameplay revision, one that wouldn’t be as simple as adding tried and tested new features, but would be potentially more rewarding. Maybe this has been met with hesitation because developers feel that they’d have to draw compromises and take extraordinary risks to meet these standards, but could they be achieved, amazing new heights in gameplay and narrative potential could be reached.

Miles Newton – Once again I’ve been shackled to the MACHINE. Expect shorter entries until my next break.

I’ve often wondered why some people, myself included see games from radically different positions than other seemingly like-minded people. Games, externally, are pretty misleading – someone asks you what you do for a job and you break into a sweat – “I make games you respond with apprehension” as the person you’re facing straightens their posture, and with a sneer states “I’ve always thought games were a bit of a waste of time”. Much like a lot of things, people will take considerably different positions within and without a knowledge base, but almost none more than the video game will establish such division between those who understand and those who do not. I’ve always wondered what created these barriers – I’m sure that at some stage everyone has enjoyed a game of some sort, but I’m beginning to think that it takes a certain experience to plant the seeds of a certain way of thinking; an experience that takes such a firm grasp upon our minds; a feeling so strong that we spend our lives compelled to seek it and understand it, and those who do must live with the knowledge that it is their duty to share it amongt their kin.

Video games were somewhat of a mutual topic between my friends and myself, even before I got the chance to own a computer or console of any sort. Perhaps it was the persistent separation that drove me to create my own ideas, as I waited impatiently for a chance to visit my friends and burn through another level of Doom. Paradoxically, games always felt second to the imagination as we re-enacted Doom with our rubbish plastic ray guns; the borders between reality and fiction vanishing into the aether as we created our own timeless adventures, often spending entire days buried in the depths of our imagination. When I wasn’t with my friends, I’d create my own absurd mental fantasies as I longed to relive those experiences – every flat surface of my house filled with crude sketches of monsters and my own stories that I’d created for these games.

At that age, the ongoing imagination transcended the games itself. The game providing a base for our own creative tangents, eventually disappearing as we built our own fiction; our own worlds to explore, even if that meant running around a forest with a plastic Ak-47, taking turns at advancing each ludicrous twist and turn of our personal fiction.

There was a certain internal sadness when we moved quite some distance and I lost contact with these friends, as my imagination lingered but my output was somewhat stifled. Games inevitably slipped into the category of plain entertainment as I whiled away my introverted primary school years, until I found mutual grounds in gaming with a good friend of mine. We would regale each other ad nauseum about games, as he tried and failed to bring me into the sheer joy he experienced from Final Fantasy.

I’d lost touch with the game. Entertainment had re-established itself as the product of our experiences, rather than the action of playing itself.

The conviction in this guy’s voice as he spoke of these games, these enrapturing experiences; it all made me really consider my own values in gaming, and my connections to the experiences I had, had on a more emotional level. School progressed and I had found this mutual fascination with more and more friends, but I still found that their experiences had never really risen above plain entertainment as the majority of my friends only really considered it a pastime. This frustrated me a little.

Once again, friends and experiences vanished as I moved to the school in which I’ve spent my time at to the present; I’d had a gutful, but regardless I met more interesting people. Irrespective of the slump in creativity that haphazardly established itself at this time, I’d remembered what I had discussed with this guy previously, and my good friend and co-writer as our shared love for games grew to an unexpected experience.

After around one and a half years of meandering through years 6 and 7, my outlook on games was completely revised as my friend Jack (that chap who sometimes writes something clever here) casually told me that he was messing around with an idea for a game. At the time I was seriously considering a career in the special effects industry as I enjoyed building things and blowing things up in equal measures, but this moment cut to the soul of my latent creativity and proposed a serious idea that I’ve held to this day.

Why not make games.

It seemed obvious. I’d always found myself interested in creating things, but I always favoured the meditative bliss of the game as I’d never found an output. When the idea of actually making games arose, I was dumfounded, it just seemed perfect. For hours we’d pour over a sketchpad and brainstorm, trying to match concepts that were never intended, and when we didn’t have a sketch pad, we had animated conversations. This process continued for some years until we’d came to a point in which we had one big incoherent mess with no unified concepts, or stable ideas at all. It was a bit like assembling a jigsaw puzzle mid-air with pieces from every kit imaginable until it reached the point that we decided to just can it for good. Regardless of this monster we’d created, we’d truly learnt. We may not have gained a stabled understanding of how games were put together at the time, but this gave us an excellent platform to build from. From there we went on the refine our ideas, and actually come close to making games.

Games take time, ideas and commitment.

November 2008. I’d assembled what I felt like the perfect team of delightful misfits to work on our first title Silhouette. We battled, we forged, we cursed the gods, but eventually we caved leaving a great deal of assets unused, and The Behemoth community slightly puzzled (sorry about that guys we still want to do it sometime), but once again we grew. By taking the next step we ultimately put ourselves into an incredibly challenging situation, and lack of organisation and forethought tore us apart. I don’t consider it a failure at all, there’s still the potential to finish Silhouette, but most importantly we all took a short and incredibly harsh lesson in team dynamics.

Since then we’ve floated ideas, began work on concepts but have generally grown closer. Knowing that it may be a long time before I manage to assemble an actual team drove me to start this blog as an outlet for my ideas. Actually, the blog was born out of my attempt to document the death throes of Silhouette and our potential projects (and as an impulsive step into creating a web presence), and has since grown into something. I must stress something.

I’ve always liked writing, and I owe a lot to this routine practice, but I figured that whether or not I’m especially good at it, I’d hope to transfer some of my thoughts and ideas onto paper, so that other people may stroke their chins and nod approvingly, or raise their fists and defiance. At the moment I’m a little stumped as to where this blog should be heading as it has been a shamble of ideas and styles over the last year, and looking back, it would be hard to think that it was the same blog. I guess I really want to return to what made me such an impassioned gamer in the first place; that creativity, the imagination that shone through the mere realm of entertainment. To me games are most certainly entertainment, whether it be a new experience for myself, or just doing something stupid with my friends, but it will always reach further than that. Games are an intricate matrix of ideas, concepts and theories, worth more than just a cursory glance, just as they are worth more than an underdeveloped concept. They are there for our appreciation, our interpretation, but really they are there because we’ve shown them nothing but love since we were brought into this world, destined to enjoy, and maybe to create and share what has made us who we are.

Miles Newton – The Machination

Red faction Guerrilla is a simple, fun shooter with an excellent destruction engine. I’m glad I got that out of the way, let the vitriol commence.

If there’s one thing that annoys me, it’s when a game promises me the moon, then gives me a bucket of rocks. I should be used to this now, every developer has made bold sweeping claims about their intentions, then in one way or another been forced into a compromise or a cut. But it’s when the game rides that feature on into the sunset, then expects everyone to accept what they’ve made, then it’s just a boot to the crotch of the unsuspecting gamer.

Red Faction GUERRILLA is exactly what it says it isn’t, actually, a more accurate title would probably be Red Faction Grand Theft Auto Mars, and that’s fair, the concept flies. HOWEVER. It flies a little too well, to the extent that it almost begins falling apart in the process. I purchased Red Faction Bomberman 3D under the suggestion of Rock Paper Shotgun podcast. Here they recommended playing it on hard, for that real hard-as-nails guerrilla experience – living on the edge, deciding who lives and who dies, so I kindly accepted their challenge. At the time, my mind was already making some pretty influential suggestions as toward this game’s potential – stealthily undermining the man, taking out key locations like a ghost and bringing the hammer down on the law. This happened with the reliability of the Hindenburg.

The problem with Red Faction Vigilante 8 is that it suffers in each of its key components; sort of providing an unsatisfying version of events to whoever was looking for a more in-depth experience. As a hollow action game, it gives a bit of a momentary testosterone/ adrenaline explosion as you plough through buildings with bulldozers for arms, but there are so many little frustrations that douse your momentary enthrallment and pull you straight out of your experience by the ankles.

Stealth is something that should be taken carefully. I feel that stealth should be an intrinsic part of a game, and not just an arbitrary sequence pinned up here and there for the sake of something to talk about; Red Faction Rampage Total Destruction squandered an excellent chance. Any potential for stealth was immediately flattened the second the EDF became the league of extraordinary telepaths – having an enemy launch into an immediate uproar, the instant you so much as plant a bomb is TEDIOUS. There was one part in which I was instructed to destroy some wind towers, within this maze of buildings, so I took this as a chance to test something out. Well concealed behind a metal box, I had a plain sight of a couple of EDF goons, so I planted a bomb out of their sights. Immediately they sprung to life like the wind up psychopaths they are and converged upon me, it was around then I closed the game. This game had a ridiculous amount of potential regarding stealth, and it threw it all away for no apparent reason, maybe this is indicative of things to come.

This was intensely frustrating, not so much because it made the game worse, perse, but because I did have these truly intense moments that were quickly torn away from me. Upon playing more, I’ve found that this stealth system is a bit hit and miss, but as soon as they spot your space-ass, they’ll mercilessly and senselessly send the legions after you until you’re a smear in the dirt sort of unbalancing any story you were at least trying to rationalise in your mind.

Upon closing the game, I took some time to brood and reflect over the last 4 or so hours I’d burned away, and I came away utterly confounded. The soul, was apparently soaring around the aether because the more I looked at this game, the more it seems like a wholly empty commercial experience. Alec Mason, miner, turned THOUGHTLESS MURDER in the blink of an eye. I hate it when games pitch characters into abnormal situations, like murder, then expect the character to blunder on stoic-ly without a single thought for the men he’d cleaved down in his wake. But the lack of soul wasn’t even exclusive to Alec himself; the EDF are portrayed as this band of mindless, idealistically broken soldiers who want to ceaselessly kill everyone for no apparent reason. You know, I’d be fine and dandy if the plot revealed that they’d gotten some kind of crazy Mars disease, and the miners do add to this by referring to them as the “drones”, but that doesn’t explain anything. I think if there’s anything that really churned my cider, it was probably this. The gameplay is what it is, a vehicle for the story that is sometimes incidentally fantastic to the extent that a story becomes less important, but they even missed this mark. The overbearing nature of the morality of the situation just kept boring into my mind, and ultimately I think this is what drove me to quitting, much like how I felt with Borderlands.

I don’t intend to cast Red Faction Guerrilla into the murky depths of horror; it certainly isn’t bad, in fact it makes a nice little mindless destructive romp when you’re in the mood. But it’s when they underpin the concept with such confusion and frustrating features that they transform a simple game into a hulking mass of slightly faulty parts. It simply can’t justify its difficulty or its cause.

A couple of days after writing this (and I do like to think that I’ve taken the time to let it mature) I have decided to flex my game-designery muscles and take a blow torch to the core of any game I’ve reduced to ash. After all, I’d appear to be a bit of a one trick pony if all I could do was complain, so I’d like to see what would happen when the game was rebuilt and restructured so that it could overcome its flaws. So sit tight, suspend your disbelief, ignore my blinding self faith and enjoy what is to come.

Miles Newton – The Machination, criticism department

Portal was a lovely game. It was the epitome of mainstream indie – fantastic puzzle and level design, clever visual design, and humour so black that it would put coal to shame, and this is precisely why we loved it; it was incredibly short and sweet. Portal 2 is promising co-op, a large elaborate story and levels that would baffle Escher himself. The things that exactly made Portal such a wonderful little game were things that never expected a sequel regardless of its quality, and all Portal 2 seems to be doing is trying to prove that you can’t have too much of a good thing.

Portal, was a great little solo concept with ideas that were incredibly endearing for the expanse of EXACTLY ONE GAME. Any further than this, and they’re destined to become spoilt and stale which would be a shame. The other day, I so wittily likened portal 2 to a cake with too much icing, I then instantaneously realised how clever this pun was and got cracking on this article, and things are starting to fall into place.

I think to really get a grasp of the issue here, we going to have to introduce our good friend the example. Super Smash Bros was an excellent micro concept – it was a fighting game, but it took the path of a progressive story mode with all the lovability of your favourite Nintendo characters, and a bunch of quirky enemies. About the time Brawl rolled around, I felt things had gone stale – the story mode had turned into a full blow platformer, the character list was nigh on incomprehensible, and it had downright robbed itself of the charm of the original. Portal, much like Smash Bros relied on a few simple ideas, and great execution, and when you start adding more and more concepts into the mix, it ends up like trying to assemble a house of cards in a tumble dryer – stable concepts deteriorate and lose sight of original visions and charms, quickly overshadowing any possible innovations.

I have no doubt that Portal 2 will be good, in fact Gabe Newell himself boldly proclaimed that it will be their best game ever. Deus Ex invisible war was good except for the fact that it had the shining expectations of Deus Ex stamped all over it, and I feel that portal will go the same way. It will live up to its master’s expectations, but it will never quite fill the unique imprint the original left in the market all those years ago. It just simple can’t.

Miles Newton – Holiday Aficionado

The Rock Paper Shotgun Electronic Wireless show
Good honest chaps talking about good honest games. There are a lot of gaming podcasts out there, but these guys have a certain comforting rapport that makes British chaps blathering about games sound like listening to some fine jazz.

Gamers With Jobs Podcast
This feels like a genuine, spiritual cousin of RPS in which a bunch of passionate gamers, and game journalists alike share their thoughts on games, game design and everything else imaginable including technology, board games and lamenting the fact insulting anyone would forego their journalistic integrity.

Giant Bombcast
Okay. I haven’t actually listened to this one, but I was put onto it by Gamers With Jobs. From what I hear, it’s a great podcast packed full of awesome content – weighing in at around a hefty 2.5 hours. Giant Bomb have great material, so this one is bound to be entertaining.

Insomniac Games Full Moon Show
I was a little hesitant to include this, not because it isn’t good, but because it’s specific to a certain, awesome, company. This is a great podcast. Obviously, I’m into game design, so the thought of an entire podcast, packed to the gills with developers talking about development is very exciting news indeed. This one might not be as appealing if you’re not an Insomniac fan, as they tend to talk about what they’re up to a lot, but it’s definitely worth a listen.

Australian Gamer Podcast
A very entertaining podcast filled with variety, crushing criticism and occasionally Yahtzee. I like this podcast for a number of reasons, but primarily because they let their discussions rampage in which ever direction they see fit, leaving little room for closeted opinions or factual accuracy

Rum Doings.
Well, this isn’t a gaming podcast but I don’t really care, it demands your ears. This one is made up of soothingly spoken John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun fame, and impassioned aristocrat Nick Mailer as they don’t talk about pressing British topicality, and instead drink fine rum and engage in off-topic discussions of great import.

Miles Newton – Lazy git

It was a bit like canned jumpy moment within a horror film, the instant in which rational thought stops caring and redirects its efforts straight into the face of panic, but this was different. This was the potentiality of panic, the sum of irrational thoughts and expressions, generating a thousand impossible circumstances. It was a lot like waking up from a nightmare, alone and frightened in the dark, everything is out to get you; every last shadow, concealing its ulterior motive behind its encapsulating veil. However, this was more of a “what if” situation; what if that sound was the mighty air horns of an invading nation, slipping in, in the dark then arrogantly awakening us to their presence; the muffled wails of secretive machinery, toiling away beneath the mountain I live upon, or simply the creak of a door.

Sound is a brilliant medium because it embodies the gaps and ambiguities that our minds are so quick to give meaning, letting afterthoughts and indecision linger and breed. Out of these moments comes complete, yet fleeting and momentary control in which the individual can create their own emotions. This is something that games could benefit from.The power of the human input is in no way a sign of laziness on the half of the developer in creating explicit stimulation, but the balance that allows gamers to manifest their own interpretations within the scope of a situation.

But how much leverage or freedom is too much? Will creating more ambiguous aural experiences compliment, confuse or simply fade into the background? Creating sound effects within the context of the situation, is being used constantly in games, but to what degree should sound be left to the interpretive imagination of the player, in order to fill a richer, more diverse, and consequently more impacting atmosphere? Succeeding at this is going require criteria, and in lieu of elaborating ad infinitum, here are a couple key points that I’ve derived from my experiences.

Know your context.

A common error that I can see arising here is that a developer will mistakenly toggle the degree in which sound can be perceived, out of the context of the game. This would be the difference between orchestrating a scene in Half Life 2 in which you are locked in conflict with the Combine as you hear APCs roar past in the distance, helicopters whir over head and the metallic groan of the bridge around you, as opposed to centralising all audio elements on only what is present. In this situation, there is no right or wrong decision without first considering the impact of the sound in contrast with the players’ focus. The principle spans as wide as genres, and as narrow as a single event, but getting the right sounds in the right places at the right times can do wonders in crafting an experience that the player can partake in shaping.

Ignore your context.

Paradoxically, sometimes it will be an effective move to surprise the player in a similar sense that hearing what I thought was a horn at 3 in the morning surprised me, however this is not without its own conventions. Sound in this situation is not only designed to surprise, but to once again provoke an entirely original stream of thought from the player, to make them realise the possibilities. It’s a bit like traipsing through the darkness only to hear a far off mechanical roar “Is it an enemy, is it a friend”, what if that sound only existed to give us a stern reminder of what is happening around us, or what could potentially? This is the untapped power of surprise – not just a sudden jolt that puts you on the edge of your seat, but the lingering emotion that allows the mind to transform what it observes into its own reality.

In my time I’ve played a lot of games, and I can confidently say that sound is both an under realised and extremely powerful element. So many times in which I’ve experience that “wow” moment in a game, sound has been an equally powerful element as the immediate visuals and interaction that have allowed it to create a perfect harmony of sensory excitement, and something I’d like to see explored a lot more often.

Miles Newton – Dandy Spaceman

Without first understanding, our actions are without personal consequence, but the repercussions of our actions may run deeper than we can observe, so far as undermining the fragile mantle of our moral and social bonds with the unknown. The difference here is that we have a choice. We as humans are not forced into linear, moralistically deadened journeys. We have the capacity to shape our views and understandings, and in doing so we may then learn to lay aside our prejudices and preconceived notions and become more mature, considerate people.

Right now, you’re probably wondering what that was all about. Well, okay. This is actually an excerpt for something I wrote in an english presentation on deconstructing and evaluation our perceptions of external cultures, so I felt it was an appropriate micro analysis to tie in.

Miles Newton – Apocryphal git