A brief interruption to the Call to Arms: Michael Abbott has generously allowed me to contribute to his latest Brainy Gamer Podcast, by encouraging me to blather on and on in response to his thoughtful interview questions. Give it a listen to hear my thoughts on art school, Gears of War, and playing video games on the last day of your life.
Entry 00: Puppy by Steve gaynor
Entry 01: Couples Counseling by LB Jeffries
Entry 02: Family Commute by JC Barnett
Entry 03: Last Call by Borut Pfeifer
Entry 04: Sellout by JP LeBreton
Entry 05: Resonance by Michael Clarkson
Entry 06: Strange Land by Steve gaynor
Entry 07: Jump by Duncan Fyfe
Entry 08: Potter by Steve gaynor
Entry 09: Survival by Coleman McCormick
Entry 10: Bubmershoot by Dan Bruno
Entry 11: Friends Like These by Justin Keverne
Entry 12: Bereavement in Blacksburg by Manveer Heir
Entry 13: Fruit of the Womb by Roberto Quesada
Entry 14: Peace by Christiaan Moleman
Memories. Feeling. Meaning. Conflict.
They can all be expressed through interaction-- games. Interactive experiences are driven by design. And we're all designers. Of any discipline involved in game-making, design's door is open widest. There is no barrier to entry. Players, artists, teachers-- we're all designers.
The challenge then is to express through interaction an experience that the player will find meaningful-- something novel, poignant, interesting, personal, or enlightening. As video game designers, we've explored a few forms of conflict with great fidelity: mostly direct and violent; mostly expressing the feeling of prevailing over one's rivals.
So, Fullbright proposes a public thought experiment; a decentralized game design symposium; a call for new takes on interactive expression. If we've succeeded by now in conveying feelings like "exhilaration," "fear," and "victory," and conflicts such as "individual power vs. strength in numbers," "man vs. rule system," "entropy vs. order," and "good vs. evil," the Call to Arms focuses on some more elusive aesthetics. Here's the procedure:
Below are my initial proposed feelings:
Next, my initial proposed conflicts:
This exercise bears something in common with Clint Hocking's "Seven Deadly Sins" elective from the Game Design Workshop; for a starting point, check out how one team of designers at this year's GDC expressed Gluttony with a card game. Alternately, note how BioShock used a character-based approach in expressing Altruism vs. Self-Interest, and whether its mechanics supported the implications of that conflict. Or, how Jason Rohrer explored the bittersweet melancholy of aging with Passage.
Scroll to the post below this one to view Fullbright's treatment of the sadness of loss for a simple example entry (and let it embolden you to be un-self-conscious about posting your own ideas!)
What is meaningful to you? How can that be conveyed to others through interaction? Design play to share that experience with others. Heed the call to arms!
As a companion piece to my post "Dead Men" below, my friend Chris published a different article of mine singing the praises of Kane & Lynch over on the Shacknews blog. My post "Noir"was also graciously linked by Simon Carless on Gamasutra's blog, GameSetWatch. I'd like to extend my gratitude to them both for spreading my words around.
I think that my heavy evangelism of Kane & Lynch, along with my posting of "Dead Men" immediately after "Noir," and finally relating that game to the "noir mindset," may have given off a bit of a false impression, though. While I do think that K&L is admirable for affecting some of noir's most compelling narrative approaches, it's not "THE GAME" that epitomizes that theoretical overall production I outlined in "Noir." "Noir" described a game that, to my knowledge, does not exactly exist at present. There are a few reasons that Kane & Lynch isn't that game.
1) Scale of production: Kane & Lynch is a full-scale commercial production that aims for "triple A" status. It includes a full singleplayer/co-op campaign as well as a separate, full-featured competitive multiplayer game mode. It uses a graphics engine that has been updated to current-gen standards which, while not on par with the cutting edge of Unreal 3 tech, attempts to wield all the visual bells and whistles of its contemporaries. It was released across three current-gen platforms, and boasted a fairly massive intercontinental advertising campaign. Perhaps to its detriment, Kane & Lynch was a "big game" in every applicable respect. Conversely, a noir game will fully embrace a narrower production scope, intentionally modest level of graphical fidelity, and low-intensity approach to marketing/distribution.
2) Scale of Conflict: While the personal conflicts that drive Kane's character arc are compelling, and the narrative itself largely maintains a direct, visceral and human scale, the physical conflict acted out by the player is a different thing entirely, maintaining the status quo of mowing down hundreds of faceless enemies over the course of a video game. The noir approach does not embrace the flood of cannon fodder common to contemporary action titles, but instead promises an experience buoyed by its characters' internal conflicts, and only punctuated by sudden outbursts of violence that are meaningful to the player's understanding of the gameworld. Noir and Rambo do not mix; the handful of deaths in Kane & Lynch that do truly matter are diluted by the dozens upon dozens in between that are completely meaningless. Interestingly enough, the one of the only action games that makes a genuinely compelling experience out of killing as few people as possible also comes from Io Interactive: the Hitman series.
So, I'll apologize if my message with "Noir" and "Dead Men" seemed to be, "here is a description of the noir approach, and here is a perfect example of that approach made reality." Not quite: as a story and character study, Kane & Lynch is as successful an attempt as almost any action game you might compare it to, and owes much to the noir mindset; as a game however, while executed well for what it is, doesn't attempt to alter the paradigm of the traditional big budget, wide-release, AAA shooter production.
But halfway there is a good start.
I'd been aware off and on that Hideo Kojima keeps (or I should
say, kept) a public blog, but had never taken the time to read through it. Today I started digging into his posts from the beginning, and I think they're quite fascinating. His posts focus very little on game design or theory in any way-- at most he mentions in passing the goings-on of the development process at Kojima Studios. Instead, his blog entries are heavily diaristic, and demonstrate that he is an extremely observant and reflective person. The detail of his descriptions of everyday occurences and abstractions of reasoning are interesting to follow; he has a unique viewpoint, and while I find game-based writing to be useful, I think I enjoy Kojima's observations on life at large more interesting than I would his notes on game design. It's a shame his blog didn't even last four months (late Sept. 05 to early Jan. 06) but the volume of writing during that time is generous.
Upon reading his blog, I felt jealous of Kojima. Not for any of the prestige aspects of his career, but for the simple daily amenities he describes. I miss living in a city where I can walk to anywhere I care to visit. I miss having trains to ride on. I miss ducking into a cafe or record shop on a whim, just because I'm passing-- of seeing people, masses, milling about the sidewalks. I miss the corridors of the city streets. Tokyo and San Francisco are an ocean apart, but the rhythms of the lifestyle aren't so distant. Living in Sugar Land is an exercise in isolation-- when I walk to a shop, it's down long, curved, four-laned streets, lined with nothing but fences until you reach the highway. The sidewalks are empty; there are no other people around, just cars with mirrored windows streaming by. Passing the occasional jogger feels like crossing paths with another nomad in the desert. A city like San Francisco is alive-- the streets are there to be walked by me. The streets here are just for the cars to get to a house or a store. Maybe one reason I like being in the office so much is because I'm surrounded by people there.
I'm also jealous of Kojima for all the photographs of his meals:
I wish my diet were more like that. Here, I'm limited either to what I bring from the grocery store (I'm not big on cooking in the office) or what other guys in the office want to eat out or order in. My grocery stuff is either soup or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and restaurant food normally consists of something like fried meat with sauce and bread. But rice, fish and vegetables-- it's light, always tasty, relatively healthy, and won't weigh you down in the afternoon. It is not Texas cuisine.
Kojima also writes often about the dreams he has. I wish that I remembered dreaming more than I do. The last couple of nights I have had some dreams, but that's the exception. I don't know if I'd dreamt anything before that since I moved to Texas. If I dream, it's usually the dreams of a repressed mindstate-- images of violence, sex, taboo. The recurring dynamic is of movement contrained, and for a long time was of careening down a highway, out of control. Pair those together and the frequent image was of myself in the driver's seat of a car that's gone out of control, constrained to the point of being unable to reach the pedals or turn the wheel. These images make sense metaphorically, but the more visceral blood & sex stuff makes less sense to me. Is my id really so eager to exercise itself?
I'm going to try reading the rest of Kojima's blog entries today or this weekend. I also picked up Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance for the PC the other day at a used book store. I tried playing through it when it was first released and just couldn't make it. The complete absurdity of the plot and the extreme long-windedness of the exposition couldn't motivate me through the gameplay, sparse as it was. I hope I'll make it through this time. I think it deserves another chance.
Blog comments: ENABLE!
If you're reading this, feel free to drop a comment. I've only been taking e-mail feedback up til now, and I've gotten some good ones.. but I figure no reason to keep he comment system turned off. If I don't like it, I can always go back to the old way.
I'm also going to put up the first development shots of BENEATH pt. 2 today. Figure I've been working on it for a little while now, I ought to start documenting it.
I haven't been updating the blog!
Beneath Pt. 2 is in the thick of the planning stages right now. I am going to dive back into WorldEdit and try to wrap up the story. I hope this one won't take quite as long to build. It's pretty ambitious. Once that's spun up, this space will see more words.
I also need to get back into writing for Idle Thumbs. When I put something there, you'll get the commentary track on this blog.
I promise not to make a liar out of myself by letting this blog sit silent. See you soon.
Why hasn't this blog been frequently updated of late?
I'm back from a trip to Portland, and I've finished Blood Money, and I swear this blog will resume normal operation shortly. I really want to get back to work.
Hi there.
Why don't we talk about why I'm making this blog? There are about two reasons.
The first is that I want somewhere to put out my thoughts on video games. I've been looking for a place like that for a while.
My first shot at it: starting in September 2004, I published three issues of the quarterly print zine The Journal of the Compugraphical Video Entertainment Medium (dig the joke title.) I wanted to write out a bunch of high-minded thoughts I'd had about narrative and game design and the role of the player and the player character and politics and gender and motivation in video games. So I did. But I wanted to take the air out of it a little, so I hamstrung it with that overlong pretentious title, Kinko'sed the entire thing, and started selling and giving away copies. I managed some good material in there, like interviews with Greg Kasavin of GameSpot, Jacob Andersen of Io Interactive, and Craig Hubbard of Monolith. I made a couple bucks off of it, got the title known around town a bit, and started writing about games for a local paper, which lasted about six months or so.
But after three issues, the zine had run its course, and I moved out of town so I stopped writing for the paper. I was looking for a new place to continue writing about games, so I hooked up with Idle Thumbs, a transatlantic website about video games and the industry. I was really into it at first and put up a lot of material, posted news, reviews, opinion pieces, helped with the site artwork, and so forth. That lasted almost six months. By now I've realized that the editorial process at Thumb is completely broken, and I'm not interested in the site much anymore. Again a homeless writer.
So, here I blog.
Second thing: I'm not much satisfied just writing about the game industry at this point. I'm much more interested in the hands-on design and development side of games. Flat out, I've got to be all up in the games industry, helping it happen. I'm working on becoming a level and scenario designer, and I want to use this space to talk about the nuts-and-bolts stuff which that entails. I want to talk about design philosophy as well as the ins and outs of making successful playspaces for specific systems. And I want a place to paste up material from the levels I'm working on for my portfolio and to hash out the processes I'm going through there. I'm looking at a progress diary. A video game blog.
-What will you find here?-
+ Media and commentary on pieces I'm constructing for my level and scenario design portfolio
+ Thoughts and commentary on game design issues and the games industry
+ Thoughts and commentary on specific games I've been playing
I don't know if I'm just doing this for myself or for an audience, but I hope that if you are reading this, you're interested in the same things I am, and that you'll get something out of this blog. Not that there's anything here yet. But soon.
