According to Eurogamer, "Fallout man" Ashley Cheng (allow me to introduce myself, I'm "BioShock man" Steve gaynor) has asked forgiveness for saying in his personal blog that he's disappointed that the design of Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 look "conservative."
It's one sad-ass day when somebody has to present a mea culpa for calling a spade a spade. The low-level mechanical changes and additions might be debated by hardcore fans, but to the uninitiated viewer, Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are outright continuations of the same 2D isometric games I was playing in high school. They might have smoother gameplay, the character models and environments may be rendered in three dimensions and have fancier particle effects, but on an experiential level these are games expressly for the existing fanbase: safe, predictable qualitative refinements in mechanics and presentation, the most conservative possible approach.
The funny thing is, the closest comparison to this situation that I've considered is the game Cheng is currently working on: Fallout 3 could have taken an incredibly conservative approach if it had gone into production as the isometric-3D direct continuation of Fallout 2 that was once under development by Black Isle. That might have satisfied the entrenched, but I'm personally glad to see Bethesda's Fallout 3 trying to create a new, different, more personal experience out of the Fallout universe. How successful any of these projects will turn out is yet to be seen, but I know which has piqued my interest, by virtue of eschewing conservatism.
7.02.2008
Conservatism
6.09.2008
Nameless
I saw this on GameSetWatch earlier today: a trailer for Square's upcoming "Nameless Game," along with an insightful writeup by Chris of niche blog Chris's Survival Horror Quest.
The game itself sounds wonderfully clever: first off, it takes the idea of the "haunted video tape" from The Ring and rolls it into a video game cartridge-- the one you actually put in your DS and play. Part of your time is spent playing the game contained on the haunted cart: an 8-bit Dragon Quest-like RPG which exhibits graphical corruptions quite authentic to media of the time, according to Chris. The other side of the game is first-person 3D exploration seemingly set in eerie deserted apartment buildings, giving off a Silent Hill vibe. Tying it all together, your actions in the 8-bit game-within-a-game affect the state of the 3D gameworld and vice-versa, creating a surreal dialogue between the game you're playing and the game your character is playing... in the game. It sounds just brilliant.
I love how it embraces the specific language of a bygone era of video games and uses it as a tool of subversion, presupposing that the player will be familiar with the touchstones it's referencing and then playing with the assumptions of that informed audience to upset their expectations.
I love how the 3D and 2D games are supposed to be deeply intertwined. It's not like playing Space Harrier in Shenmue as a little distraction; instead, you're indirectly communicating between two digital worlds via your play in each. Awesome.
I love how it takes a staple of Japanese urban myth and casts the physical media you've actually purchased as a supernatural artifact. Like buying a book that's about a cursed book... which is in fact the book itself. It extends the game's mythos into the real world in a way that is quite rare.
And I love that it's a game about playing a video game. Yeah, it's "meta" as hell, but it speaks through an act that its target audience all shares, kind of the collective unconscious of people who have all been playing video games since the 80's. It's speaking to a community, like a film that speaks directly to film lovers: "you get it; this is for you." That the trailer begins with footage of the cart being booted up on a DS just reinforces its self-referential nature. Much like No More Heroes, it's the opposite of the all-inclusive blockbuster that lives under the mass market umbrella, which I think is incredibly important as a means of maintaining balance... and also because I feel like I'm one of the people it's aimed at, which is nice.
Also just a note that I love dedicated, passionate niche sites like Chris's-- people that drill deep into a particular subset of media and clearly take joy in immersing themselves in the genre. Chris, for instance, is on a quest to play every survival horror game ever made-- or at least the ones that live up to his exacting criteria. It takes a certain devotion to explore every nook and cranny of your chosen twisting back alleyway, and I really appreciate the folks that put in all the work to share their expertise with the rest of us.
In any case, Square's "Nameless Game" could be great or it could be a total wash; who can say this early just from a short trailer? But conceptually, it's off the charts. If it does turn out to be great, and it does get translated to English, I'll be tickled pink. If it fails, it won't be for lack of potential!
4.29.2008
Credo
Reject genre
Genre is repetition
Genre is not design, it is mimicry
Genre is safety-- copying proven mechanics as a method of risk mitigation
Relying on genre is reiterating the experiences of an established archetype
Deconstruct genre and repurpose the relevant components to your own ends
Design toward the novel experiences of uncommon characters
Express feelings you've had in your own life; convey them to the player through interaction
Embrace adaptations; use an existing fictional character's arc of experience as an aesthetic target
Utilize the MDA framework; strive to achieve verisimilitude of player response through meaningful interaction
Simulate all facets of a character's experience, not just those that are easy or familiar
I do not want to continuously inhabit the role of the one-dimensional superhuman dynamo gunning down waves of enemies. I do not need more power fantasies, juvenile wish fulfillment, or violent catharsis.
Give me new roles, new worlds, new feelings. Design.
4.16.2008
Wonderful
A gorgeously-written review from Edge magazine:
Digital Extremes has created a Frankenstein’s monster that actually works. Its mind is sound, its looks beautiful, its sutures invisible and its stolen parts functional in all the intended ways. It has no soul, of course, nor distinct personality, but that’s the nature of the beast...It's a shame the author is credited only as "Edge."
Easily dismissed as a pastiche, Dark Sector proves that grand vision is no prerequisite for sharp design and arresting play. But it’s a shame to see Digital Extremes, such an obviously talented studio, deferring still to the wisdom of others. One day, this skilled weaponsmith will find a story to tell.
4.15.2008
3.24.2008
Flattery
Some days it must feel really good to be Cliffy B.
[UPDATE 2/26/08]: New kid on the block-- 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand!
Click for big3.11.2008
Idealism
Three movies I love, which speak to anyone who wants to make a difference through the entertainment media:
Ed Wood -- Tim Burton's masterpiece. Profiles a strangely chipper lost soul of a man (Wood, played by Johnny Depp) who putters around film soundstages as a gofer but desperately wants to direct movies himself. When given the chance, he finds he's utterly unequipped to do so, flaunting his neuroses as he fails painfully and absolutely. Sometimes your best just isn't good enough, no matter how much you want it. Soul-crushingly sad and depressing for anyone at the bottom who dreams of one day making it big.
Barton Fink -- The Coen Brothers' surreal tale of a celebrated playwright's failed attempt to illuminate the plight of the common man, and break into Hollywood at the same time. While Barton's aloofness is unfortunate, his intentions are good; regardless, his minor sins are repaid with interest as his livelihood, family and everything he aspires to are crushed before him simply for trying to make great art.
Sullivan's Travels -- Surely part of the inspiration for Barton Fink. A minor film director aspires to create socially meaningful film about the plight of the common man (his dream project: an adaptation of "O Brother Where Art Thou," a made-up book spoofing The Grapes of Wrath and decades later the name of a Coen Brothers film.) His producers tell him he doesn't know the first thing about the common man, so he sets off on a journey of discovery, riding the rails dressed as a bum and accompanied by the plucky Veronica Lake. After many trials, Sullivan realizes that making stupid crap for the lowest common denominator to laugh at has value after all, and gives up on his high ideals of "art" and "social impact."
Any more to add?
3.03.2008
Takeaway
My third year at GDC was as exhilarating, thought-provoking and completely exhausting as my prior visits; I wouldn't have it any other way. While most attendees I talked to were similarly enthused about the experience overall, a sentiment that frequently came up was that this year's conference 'lacked direction' compared to earlier years. People I talked with seemed to have trouble finding a thesis, and felt there was less overall excitement about making games than there had been in the past.
I won't say my reading of the conference is more correct than anyone else's, but I did attend a number of sessions that seemed to share a common thread. The message I got from GDC relates to thoughts I've been having on game design lately, so I may just be seeing it from my own skewed perspective. But GDC did at least help to push my thinking on these issues forward, for which I am grateful. It got me thinking about the character-driven "ungame."
The thread ran through the following sessions I attended: the Conflict Resolution Without Combat roundtable; Jonathan Blow's Design Reboot; Clint Hocking's I-fi: Immersive Fidelity in Games; Ray Kurzweil's Keynote, The Next 20 Years of Gaming; and the Are Games Essentially Superficial panel discussion.
I began the conference proper at the Conflict Resolution roundtable, which I simply observed. The intention of the session was right-headed: how do we stop making games that resolve conflict through killing and violence? Answers proposed by the attendees ranged from negotiation (talking your way out of a fight) to fleeing (the excitement of evading a fight) to bluffing and intimidation (scaring your opponent into surrendering from the fight.) What I wondered was, why is the fight presupposed? Why are we pitching ways to mitigate traditional, direct conflict between two parties? The value of this topic wouldn't seem to be in figuring out ways to extract the violence from the same old mano a mano, confrontation-and-domination style of conflict we're used to, but in finding entirely new ways to achieve the desired aesthetic response in the player-- tension, moment-to-moment investment, success. Someone brought up Sid Meier's Railroads, wherein conflict arises from a number of different railroad companies vying to buy up the same land and put each other out of business financially. Someone in the roundtable objected and said that the game described doesn't actually feature conflict then. I was bewildered; are we in the design discipline so fucking stunted that we can't classify anything but "kill or be killed" as conflict? Indirect conflict, like trying to succeed financially in Rollercoaster Tycoon, or emotional conflict like when you mistreat an NPC in an RPG (or hit an animal with your net in Animal Crossing) and then feel guilty about it, should enter our design vocabulary as easily as shooting, stabbing, or conquering an enemy nation through force.
Skipping ahead, I attended the Are Games Essentially Superficial panel, moderated by Rusel DeMaria and populated by Ken Levine, Chris Taylor, Peter Molyneux, and Louis Castle. DeMaria introduced the session by describing a game he'd worked on: it was set during the French Resistance of WW2. The player controlled Resistance fighters pushing back against the Nazi occupation. He described how he skinned the save/load screen with a calendar of the time period, and players could click on a date to read about an event that happened on that day in history if they so chose. However, he was quick to point out that the game itself was about fighting and explosions, so that it would "still be fun." Ken Levine talked about building a high-bodycount FPS then adding a small moral quandary on the side, of saving or killing the Little Sisters. Chris Taylor talked about making Total Annihilation, in which his goal was to create a "kickass RTS," but then tweaking the fiction of the game so that all the units on the battlefield were robots instead of people: a traditional war where technically no one died (he also noted that most likely "nobody but me" cared or even noticed this element of the game since it only really existed in the instruction manual.) Molyneux described the good/evil dichotomy which ran through his traditional combat-based hack-and-slash RPG, Fable.
All I wondered was, why was the approach to the "positive impact model" of game design taken by these industry luminaries simply to build familiar violent conflict and dress it up with a little side-order of moral intrigue or bloodlessness? I pictured someone ordering a Diet Coke with their bacon triple cheeseburger. I even took the mic during Q&A and asked, "Why are you pasting a history lesson on top of a game about fighting and explosions? Shouldn't the approach be to make the entertaining core interaction of the game be the positive thing itself, instead of having a little tiny positive thing off to the side of a standard commercial game? Can that be profitable?" I got shut down pretty harshly by DeMaria, who said "Yeah, but you just have to make it a really great game," and then announced that they were out of time. Thanks for that. The point stands that a true "positive impact model" of game design would come out of exploring entirely new, inherently positive core interactions, instead of dressing up the direct, violent conflicts we're used to with a little happy face button. Perhaps games like Animal Crossing, The Sims, Harvest Moon, or Chibi Robo are models we should work on applying to our mainstream, hardcore space.
In between, I attended Jonathan Blow's Design Reboot and Clint Hocking's I-fi talks.
Blow covered a lot of ground, but focused on the idea that both designers and players are guilty of taking the path of least resistance towards the feeling of easy validation: simply throwing tons of cannon fodder at the player and reveling in a false feeling of power as they're all mowed down, or a game like Peggle which is infused with so much randomness as to only be a step above Pachinko, then throws tons of flashing lights and fanfare at the player when they "win" largely by pure dumb luck. Blow pointed out that as games become higher budget, developers and publishers must attract the largest possible audience to recoup their investment. In the current paradigm, this means taking familiar, challenge-based genres like FPS or RPG, and making them wildly idiot-proof so that millions upon millions of players with little-to-no investment in the experience can plow through them without getting frustrated. This dilutes the core value of these experiences-- exploring the games' systems and using your own reasoning and understanding of the gamespace to legitimately prevail over your obstacles-- and leaves the player only with empty fanfare as they mindlessly mash through linear pathways, guided by the hand each step of the way so that their experience diverges as little as possible from any other player's. He suggested we needed to turn back the clock, scale back production scope, and begin exploring entirely new forms of interactive experience and challenge that might appeal to more people, as opposed to sucking the life out of interactions we've already charted to the nth degree over the last 10 years. We need to pretend our current understandings of shooters, brawlers, and RPGs don't exist; instead, we need to start shining lights down all those paths we've ignored in favor of safe territory that we know "works." We need a design reboot.
I strongly agree, though some of the thrust of his talk seemed misguided. He focused on how games should be legitimately challenging, or on the current crop being dumbed down. I agree that, with the current popular genres noted, overcoming mechanical or logical challenge is an important aspect of a satisfying experience. I just hope that he isn't discounting games where this sort of challenge-- the challenge of mastering an overt ruleset to avoid a failure state-- is foreign to deriving satisfaction from the experience. A true design reboot would wind back the tape all the way past the idea of binary winning and losing, of defeating or mastering a system whatsoever. What I'm talking about is coexistence with the system, instead of confrontation with it.
Hocking's I-fi talk described "immersion" as a binary state achievable by appealing to either the right brain or left brain-- either through fully engaging the senses via audiovisual output, or fully engaging the logic centers of the brain through elegant and satisfying interactive systems. He described the glorious failure Trespasser as an appeal to full systemic immersion: integrating what would traditionally be HUD elements into the gameworld itself, attempting to simulate a hunter/prey ecosystem, affecting a realistic physics system, procedural animation, and a player character that actually existed physically within the gameworld. On a different level, he described traditional games like chess as achieving mental immersion via outstandingly elegant overt rulesets which immerse the devoted player entirely within the possibility space of the pieces moving across the board. He said that while games like Bioshock successfully appeal to the senses, video games are regardless fighting Hollywood on their home turf when they try to out-audio/visual the movies. Games that concentrate on systemic immersion play to the strengths of our medium and draw the player into the game itself, as opposed to trying to keep their fickle attention with surface presentation elements.
The inherent conflict here is that games currently have a greater ability to present convincingly realistic visuals than convincingly realistic systems. Characters and worlds may look incredibly lifelike and appealing, but still behave in mechanically hollow ways-- a character like Alyx looks much more convincing than she acts. How can a game reconcile its ability to convince players to look without being able to convince them to feel? Aren't engaging systems inherently abstracted, like chess, whereas engaging audio/visual experiences inherently lifelike? Similarly, if we're talking about games as a mass medium looking to overthrow Hollywood, aren't "gamey" games which challenge the player to digest and master a unique formal ruleset the wrong way to go? Samyn's distinction states that "games are not what is interesting and new about this medium!" Games as we know them have been around for ages, and are occasional pastimes but never mass medium that is meaningful to people on a daily basis. Rules, winning and losing don't drive people to consume a creative work-- familiar human experience and emotional resonance are what speak to people, and overcoming a formal system is not expressive on these levels. I wonder if perhaps the most immersive systems are ones we aren't even aware of: the systems that invisibly govern our own world, like physics and biological processes, the ones Trespasser wrestled with, as opposed to the overt formal systems that govern a chess match.
Lastly, I'll mention Ray Kurzweil's rather astounding keynote address, titled The Next 20 Years of Gaming. Kurzweil presented a great deal of very convincing research showing how the efficiency and miniaturization of computing technology has increased at an exponential rate and will continue to do so on into the future; according to his examples and projections, within 30 years we will be able to fully simulate a human brain, transmit sensory information directly into a user's nervous system via non-invasive technology, and track a person's full range of bodily state and motion via internal nanomachines. We as players will be able to believably inhabit artificial worlds populated by fully-simulated human beings. Technology will allow us to virtually exist in places we've never been before.
In other words, technology is marching towards the personal holodeck-- one that takes place entirely within the individual user's perception, and is populated by fully simulated human minds. In this world, people will use simulated experience simply to be in a place they currently aren't-- to exist in another locale, real or imagined, populated by personalities they've never met before. The rules of these simulated worlds will be the rules of our world-- physics, light and shadow, human perception-- not the simplified and abstracted rulesets of today's video games. These simulated worlds will not themselves be games; if one wants to play a game in a simulated world, they will pick up a virtual chessboard or soccer ball and issue their virtual companions a challenge. Just being there will be what matters.
So, like many people were asking after GDC08 ended: where's the point?
What I derived was that we as designers need to take ourselves outside of our current understanding of mainstream game development: we need to reconsider our presumptions of direct confrontation and conflict, formal rulesets and mechanical challenge; we need to consider video games as something other than games since, considering Samyn's distinction, interactivity is what's so engaging about the medium, not winning or losing; we need to stop diluting our current understanding of games to appeal to a mass audience, and instead find new sorts of interactions that don't rely on memorization, reflexes, mechanical facility and frustration as core dynamics; we need to look toward the future when our machines will be powerful enough to fully simulate our own world, when the engaging aspect of virtual experience-- which video games are the first formative steps towards-- won't be learning rules or skillfully manipulating an input device, but rather exploring an intriguing location populated by interesting people and things-- interesting because they are new and different, not because they are a challenge we enjoy overcoming. We need to start futureproofing our discipline now by laying the groundwork for that non-confrontational, informal virtual experience we'll be having in a few decades time. We need to start leaning on interactivity itself as the means of immersion, as opposed to well-conceived formal rules or convincing surface presentation. We need to give our players inviting, populated worlds, and then simply allow them to explore and enjoy, instead of exploit and dominate-- the character-driven "ungame." We need to start building our own future, now.
That's what I got out of GDC.
2.23.2008
Thanks
Thank you to everyone I met over the last three days, who have made this my most incredible GDC yet (you know who you are.) It was wonderful meeting you all in person for the first time, and having that opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences, if only briefly. In the past, my most exciting memories from GDC were events; this year it was the people. I'm sincerely looking forward to seeing you all again soon.
2.09.2008
Wager
[Thank you to everyone who has added thoughtful response to this post:
Borut Pfeifer took my bet, as did my friend Marek Bronstring. Michael Samyn contributed an important distinction to the argument. N'Gai Croal was kind enough to lend his considerable insight to the issue in a pair of posts, working from a wide base of media criticism. John Walker lent his thoughts to my, Borut, and N'gai's pieces in an entry on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It is heartening to see so much knowledge and passion enter into this debate.]
I'm not normally a gambling man, but I'm in a betting mood. Maybe a bit pessimistic, too. And I'll bet you that video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have. I'll bet you that fifty years from now they'll be just as mature and well-respected as comic books are today.
I feel this way due partly to the inherent formal obstacles to video games' wide acceptance, and partly because of the uninspiring mindset prevalent among the developers and players of games. I make the comics comparison because I believe the two media have much in common at a high level.
Video games are hard for people to get into. The barrier for entry is higher than perhaps any other popular entertainment medium. To read a book, all you need to do is go to a library, pick one up, and start reading (which isn't usually an obstacle considering the high literacy rate in the modern world.) At the advent of popular film, you only needed to walk to a movie theatre and pay your nickel (or nowadays, ten bucks) to see the latest release. Processing the experience isn't an issue: sit, watch, and you've received an experience equal to anyone else in the audience.
Television brought moving pictures into the home, and presented a more significant obstacle: the large sum required to purchase a television set. But this was a one-time fee, and once installed, the viewer needed only tune in, sit down, and enjoy. Cable television, VHS, DVD, satellite, all required a nominal entry or recurring fee and specialized hardware, but the media received was passive and accessible. It required no physical investment or learned skill to enjoy.
Then came the internet; the fee for entry was highest of all, requiring a home computer, and the physical and skill investments were equally taxing: one had to frequently interact with a mouse and keyboard, know how to type, and understand the interface of their chosen operating system and the conventions of the internet well enough to get online and navigate effectively. But the received media itself was familiar-- static words, images and video-- and the required skills could be picked up from a suburban gradeschool or common office job. As the relative price of a home computer dropped and usability of the web increased, the internet became the new millennium's shared media experience of choice.
How do video games fit into this scheme? Their popular debut fell between television and home video, and was highly accessible: Pong, Pac Man and Centipede arrived in bars, movie theatres, bowling alleys and arcades, and one needed only drop in their quarter and try their hand. Sure, they were more like electronic carnival games than any sort of meaningful media experience, but they touched lots of people and indoctrinated them into the conventions of video games. Home games such as the Atari and NES came next, gradually overtaking the popularity of arcade games and putting standup cabinets out of business. These home consoles had major barriers to entry: the high financial cost of the unit itself as well as each game cartridge, the physical requirement that one constantly be manipulating a control pad or joystick while taking in the experience, and the skill investment of learning how to excel at them without failing. Home PC games became popular at this time as well, and only rebalanced the same barriers: PCs were significantly more expensive than home consoles but had less general usefulness than they do now, while still requiring constant input and mental investment in deciphering play mechanics to avoid failure.
Over time, the technical and systemic complexity of video games have increased, while the barriers to entry have largely remained undamaged. Taking inflation into account, the cost of a home console unit has stayed largely constant since the mid-80's (and the price of a competent gaming PC has similarly kept pace;) controllers have sprouted more buttons, gyroscopes, and analogue sticks than ever; and it's still extremely common for games of high quality to be too difficult for a non-gamer to play effectively.
In other words, the very nature of interactive games bars them from ever truly gaining mass acceptance, and therefore mass cultural relevance. The strength of video games, what makes them unique, interesting, and affecting, is that they engage in a dialogue with each individual player. They ask you to invest yourself in the experience, to explore and understand the logic of their gameworld, and to activate the experience by doing. Video games require you to be involved, to take responsibility for your actions onscreen. They expect more out of you than film, television, the internet or a book does. You get from video games what you're willing to put in. The audience at large only wants to take.
People don't want to enter into an agreement that requires them to be constantly fiddling with a complex input device. They don't want to expend effort understanding an interactive space. They don't want to face failure while trying to be entertained. They simply want to sit back and enjoy. They want media that will go on without them. They want received experience. Passiveness. They want to relax in front of the television set, doing not much of anything.
That is one aspect of why video games will never be a relevant cultural medium.
The second is the form of expression itself used by video games, and the pervasive attitude of the people who create and consume them.
The mode of expression in a video game is the interactive system. The simplest game would contain one system. Pong, for instance, is born out of the interplay of three systems: player input moves the paddles up and down; the ball bounces back and forth according to a simple physics simulation; a score increments based on the ball leaving one or the other side of the screen. So, you move your paddles to affect the ball, which affects the score. Fast forward to a popular contemporary game like Grand Theft Auto 3, Halo, or The Sims. The number of systems in constant interplay is countless. One must be systems-literate enough to process the outputs and required inputs of these webs of interactivity to gain any benefit from the experience. Compared to film, television and books, which all use plain talk and linear plot to express their meaning, video games speak to the audience in a completely different language. They are not an extension of normal everyday experience the way that popular, passive media is; the interactive system wields its own unique semiotic vocabulary and grammar. It is alien, unfamiliar, other. This isn't to say that film doesn't have its own grammar; but it's a grammar used for viewing the familiar and dramatic through a specific lens. Receiving meaning through personal dialogue with an interactive system is an altogether different beast.
This is one way in which comics are similar to video games. Comics speak to the viewer through their own complex set of symbols and conventions, born of a marriage between graphic design, illustration, and prose. At their best, comics exploit this mode of communication to its fullest, best demonstrated probably in the work of Chris Ware. He uses his incredibly deep understanding of the language of comics to express human experience in a way that no other medium could, instead of fighting against the constraints of the page. One could similarly say that games are at their best when they demonstrate a deep understanding of how interactive systems communicate with the player, and convey human experience in ways that no other medium could. Also like video games, Wares' comics require physical and mental investment by the reader: one often has to turn the entire book round in circles to view images or text that are oriented at 90 degree angles to one another, track panels that wind around and underneath one another, or lean into a page to decipher minuscule drawings and text.
But comics and video games are alike in another way: they both remain marginalized, infantilized media, where the Wares are the rarest exception and the medium in general holds little to no value outside of very specific circles. The highest ideal of the vast majority of creators is to force the medium into being something it's not, and the largest segment of the audience consists of juveniles, in age or mindset, who haven't "graduated" to more respected forms of entertainment.
Browse the racks of a standard comic shop, and the books on the mainstream shelves will be filled with flashy illustrations depicting laughable actions stories, absurdly-proportioned women, and superheroes. Likewise, browse the racks of an Electronics Boutique and you're bound to find mostly sports stars, Japanese children's cartoons, burly men with guns, and women in shameless, implausible dress. The medium infantalizes itself through its chosen subject matter. Based on surface alone, I can't blame the outside viewer for thinking little of the medium at large.
But content aside, the majority of both comics and games aim squarely at being something they're not-- movies-- and become less compelling experiences for the effort. Mainstream comics feature vaguely lifelike renderings of idealized humans in action-packed situations (sound familiar?); they are drawings of movies, instead of being comics for comics' sake. Clearly the same applies to mainstream games, aiming for "realism" in visuals and juvenile coolness in character and story, trying to be "cinematic" without understanding that the real value of a video game comes from being uncinematic, unrealistic; from embracing the otherness of the form and expressing human experience in ways that a movie never could.
Film and novels never had to overcome the stigma of starting out as children's distractions. They may not always have been respected artforms, but they were at least always seen as entertainment, if low-brow, aimed at adults. But like comics, video games are never going to grow up. Some sixty years after the wartime comic book boom, the vast majority of comics are still male wish fulfillment trash sold to children, poor drawings of stills from movies that no one would want to fund or film. A small subset, represented by the catalogues of publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly, is mature and thoughtful, looking to express relateable human experience in a way unique to the medium, aimed at readers who have an appreciation for the form. And an even tinier sliver, zines and underground publications, embraces the experimental and avant garde, attempting to push the boundaries of the medium and catering only to those most passionate and inquisitive as to what the future of comics might be.
Likewise, the overwhelming majority of video games, the big 99 percent, are adolescent male fantasy or cheap cash-ins: army men, sports cars, cartoons and zombies and superheroes, trying (and failing) to reproduce the realistic rendering of film, trying (and failing) to be "cinematic" by inserting frail little fake movies throughout the experience; a small subset tries to exploit the medium in thoughtful ways and express something unique or meaningful through interactive systems-- maybe the The Sims systemically mirroring everyday life, or Ico expressing a tender relationship without words. And there's that tiny, marginalized sliver of experimentalism represented by The Marriage, Passage, or any number of other no-budget independent projects that toil in obscurity, trying to expand what games can be. And at this rate, that's all there will ever be.
As they are now, games will remain marginalized and juvenile like comics. I believe that only the rarest developers will be able to exploit what makes games unique and powerful, and the rest will remain flashy male power fantasies, selling but lacking significance. The development and publishing community at large are not trying to change this, and the audience does not seem to want it. Without addressing serious barriers to entry and core design philosophy issues, I do not believe that games will be accepted and respected as a valid medium of expression, ever. Video games have the potential to say great things, but they currently do not have the means to say them to very many.
The odds are stacked. I say games are never going to grow up. Care to make a wager?
[ADDENDUM: After receiving some comments, I expanded my point a bit. Below, I clarify a few issues.]
I'd like to clarify that I'm not talking about the ratio of good vs. crap product, or the ratio of "art" versus "non-art." I'm not talking about quality or artfulness at all. I'm talking about broad cultural relevance to the lives of the general population.
90% of all creative endeavor is crap, but at least with film, television or books it's culturally relevant crap. And the good stuff is rightly respected, because it can speak to anyone who might take it in.
The good 10% of comics and games are lost because the medium itself isn't relevant to the viewership at large. Even the games that are great, the ones that I can read as being valuable, are almost always hidden under the juvenile veneer of big guns, tanks, zombies, robots and so forth. Much like The Watchmen is a legitimately great comic, it's inaccessible to people outside the limited group that understand how it reworks the popular superhero context. To anyone outside the fanship, it's just a comic about guys in tights, just like Half-Life 2 is simply another game about shooting monsters.
Games could lower their barrier to entry: we've seen it in The Sims, where the only required input is clicking and then choosing an action. No memorization of keybinds, no reflex-based gameplay or required facility with a gamepad. Accessibility of interface doesn't translate to simplification of the range of expressable interactions. Why has no one taken the lessons from the Sims-- the ones that have made it one of the most successful and enduring franchises in video game history-- and applied them to other types of games? Direct input-- having a "jump button" and "shoot button," etc.-- limits accessibility.
Filling a game with explicit failure states requiring replay of level segments upon death limits accessibility. Why are the games we focus on so concerned with life-or-death situations? Why is violence the only kind of conflict we've refined to such a level of fidelity? It's easy and it sells to the established market. The situations and conflicts expressed in games don't relate to most people's lives. Games don't pursue the kinds of headings you see in a video rental store-- romance, drama, comedy. Our designs still hinge on simple actions-- "shoot gun," "drive car," "solve puzzle."
Suits and investors need to be concerned with this shit. Who do you want to be backing further down the line: an insular, stunted medium like comics, or a full-grown, culturally-relevant, and hey, PROFITABLE, medium like film? We aren't going to reach that point by catering to the current hardcore. And we're not doing ourselves any good by assaulting the casual gamer with the deluge of crap that's been thrown at the Wii audience so far. We're going to expand our customer base by trying to give them new, subtle, interesting approaches to interactive experiences that are universal and human. We need to give them access to this form that we already know is so great, and fill it with content that they can identify with, get something enriching out of.
I don't know if that's going to happen. My bet still stands.
[NOTE: On manga: After receiving a number of comments, I feel I should address this aspect.]
I am familiar with the cultural relevance of manga in Japan. It's a wonderful medium that grew up with Japan's baby boom following WW2, and has blossomed into an element of everyday life there. The variety of art styles and subject matter is unprecedented, depicting everything from young boys' adventure stories to soap opera-style dramas for housewives and niche volumes on playing the flute or cooking pasta, and everything in between. Manga is available at any newsstand in a wide variety of forms, and read by millions on trains, at cafes, and at home.
Which is why I don't say that video games are heading down the path of manga. I could make a post about how games should be more like manga, and in fact I think we're seeing some of that positive influence now, especially coming from, unsurprisingly, Japan: Cooking Mama, Phoenix Wright, Trauma Center, and more tackle interactions that games in the past have hardly touched. It's good.
Overall, the Japanese video game market is receding, and game development at large seems to be driven by the west. Manga is lovely, but this post is not about how games are or aren't like manga.
[NOTE: On box office: Many people have brought up sales numbers for games, and film adaptations]
I'm not arguing that games are going to "die" or that they don't make money; clearly games now make a lot of money. My note about fostering an industry that will be "profitable" is meant in the longterm-- I don't think that games in their current state have created an effective framework for a sustainable industry. If we only cater to the hardcore and the very casual, we create a revolving door when those groups start to lose interest, either by "growing out" of hardcore games or finding nothing interesting past Tetris and Zuma. We would do well to create a lifetime market.
Many have directly equated games' financial success with cultural relevance; someone even went to far as to say that Halo 3's retail release was "covered by every major news outlet," as if that seals the deal: video games must be just as important to people's lives as TV or movies are, right? I seem to remember 'every major news outlet' covering the death of Superman in the early 90's as well. It's a silly leap of logic to make.
The idea that film adaptations of comics being successful means that comics themselves are a "significant form of cultural discourse" is completely misguided. Films are co-opting comics to bolster their own success; movies are the significant form here, not comics. Do all those millions of people who watched Spider-Man the movie also read the comics they're based on, much less consider the broader comic form as something relevant to their everday life?
I'd wager not.
2.06.2008
Concepts
A former colleague sent me this link which, as a fan of Monolith's games, I found really excellent. It's the flickr photo album of Monolith's art director, which includes concept pieces for the NOLF series and FEAR as well as sketches and studies from life. The drawings themselves are quite nice, and I always love seeing original concept work from great games. It's interesting seeing early sketches from FEAR that line up with comments I remember Craig Hubbard making about revisions that occurred over the course of that game's development: for instance, Jin was originally to be sniper support for the FEAR squad, which is why they gave her the red trigger finger on her glove; in the sketch here we see an early Jin with her rifle (which, by the way, appears to simply be the G2A2 with a large silencer attached. Not ideal for sniping considering how it handles in FEAR.) Similarly, it would seem that the ghoulish Assassins originally carried submachine guns. Lots of interesting behind-the-scenes insight to be found.
Oh, here's a funny connection I discovered while researching FEAR during my time in Texas: one of the main factions in FEAR is the ATC, Armacham Technology Corporation. Around midgame you raid their offices and mow down wave after wave of their private security force, including opponents in hulking powered combat armor, trying to discover the secrets behind Paxton Fettel and all the strange goings-on in and around the city's Auburn district. Displayed throughout their facilities are graphics and replicas of orbital satellites.
Funny thing is, the ATC first appeared in the backstory of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the first game that Hubbard was the writer and project leader for. According to an article on shogomad.com, Armacham is "one of the dominant megacorporations" in the Shogo universe:
Armacham Technology Corporation got its start with the manufacture of commercial satellites and ground-based communication systems. Eventually, they would expand to encompass civilian and military vehicle manufacture, musical equipment, security systems, and, predictably enough, MEV and MCA ["mobile combat armor"] technologies. Their MCAs (they discontinued their MEV lines after some early experiments) immediately caught the attention of the private sector and various military organizations alike.So, in both FEAR and Shogo, ATC manufactured communication satellites as well as powered combat armor for private and military use. Is the implication that FEAR and Shogo take place in the same universe, with the events of Shogo simply occurring many centuries further down the line? Going a step further, do the events of NOLF also take place in this same universe, some 40 or 50 years before the events of FEAR? I haven't seen any evidence of this last connection, but it's interesting to consider all three of these stories occurring within one strange little off-kilter alternate reality.
Well, enough geeking out for me! To get back to the point: I do wish more game concept art like the above were available, anywhere, in art books or online. It's nice seeing all the concept pieces in No More Heroes' New Game + mode, but why aren't all those concept works up online somewhere in high resolution (aside from a few nice images I found scattered throughout IGN's NMH screenshots?) IGN also houses a handful of gorgeous character concepts from Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins, but I unlocked all the concept art in that game and I know there's more to be found. Where's the rest of the great foundation sketches that led to the visual look of all my other favorite games? Granted I probably just haven't searched hard enough to find more of this kind of material, but it seems only the most wildly successful franchises make their concept art easily accessible, usually in the form of an expensive art book like the one for Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft. Either that, or you get something like the anemic little "art book" that shipped with the Persona 3 special edition, which Atlus practically might as well not even have bothered with.
Have you got any good links to more video game concept art available online? Leave a comment, I'll appreciate it.
[Update: After a bit of googling, I found Creative Uncut's game art galleries. Much of it is devoted to concept art from fairly minor fighting games and JRPGS, but some interesting properties are represented including Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Chrono Trigger, Okami, and Zelda. More resources to come, hopefully!]
[Update2: RPGamer has an extensive collection of concept art for nearly every RPG they list, both Western and Japanese. Click an upcoming, series, or other game title, then click "art." Their set of Mass Effect concepts is rather nice, for instance. Too bad the site is genre-specific.]
1.25.2008
Phrases
There are certain game titles that speak to me more than others. I'm personally tired of literal-minded, object-based titles-- a title that names a specific entity within the game itself in straightforward terms. These would be things like Halo, God Hand, Portal, Persona, The Darkness, Metal Gear Solid, Mafia, or Metroid. They serve their purpose: they're easy to remember, speak aloud, and type out; they're distinctive; they represent a core element of their product. But, I don't know, they don't really excite me. Maybe because they're the status quo.
Lately I've been digging phrase titles. They're usually a few words or even a full sentence, somewhat abstract, and don't directly name a major component of the game. The best are in the declarative or imperative. Here are some titles I can get behind, quality of the game itself notwithstanding:
The World Ends With You
No More Heroes
Beneath a Steel Sky
Calling All Cars
You Are Empty
Death to Spies
Faith and a .45
Devil May Cry
A Mind Forever Voyaging
You Don't Know Jack
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Destroy All Humans!
There are a lot of games that would have great phrase-titles if they just cut off the part before the colon and used the subtitle by itself. For instance:
Contents Under Pressure
Dark Corners of the Earth
You Are the Wheelman
No Remorse
Back to Nature
Another Wonderful Life
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way gets double points for having a great long-form phrase both before and after the colon.
I know I must have missed a bunch of great ones that would also fit the bill. I suppose I just wish game titles didn't feel the need to be so literal. Is this marketing driven? Would "You Are the Wheelman" automatically sell X copies fewer than "Driver: You Are the Wheelman?" Is this why the team at Monolith followed up the commercially-underwhelming No One Lives Forever series with F.E.A.R. (and now, further, is dropping the acronym thing for Project Origin?) I couldn't say.
Use your game titles to speak to me.
1.15.2008
Jaunt
Went on a bit of a voyage this morning. Well, more like a short jaunt. But I dug up some interesting material that I'd missed first go-round.
- I believe I came upon Magical Wasteland via his comments on someone else's blog (lovely how that works.) This post on industry keynotes is particularly scathing and hilarious (though I gather it's old news for those more attentive than me.) I was also happy to rediscover this awful piece of writing which I myself had noticed a while back.
- Via the above, I read through a good deal of Unobscured View, a blog on the business of game development by an honest-to-god industry veteran of 20+ years. This eye-opening post in particular might make one think very bad things about the prospect of entering into a deal with a large publisher.
- Borut Pfeifer is another blogger/developer who's had an article or two published on Gamasutra/GameSetWatch. His link collections are much funnier and more exciting than mine.
- I'm a year and a half late on this piece as well, but it seems terribly right-headed and sensible. I like to think that the article comes as a challenge: for game criticism to become a relevant field, we as developers need to get up and make games that are worthy of serious criticism. Easier said than done, but I'll give it a shot if you will.
1.14.2008
School
Something I noticed while paging through the latest Game Developer magazine (January 2008, Frontline Awards/Portal cover): there are 14 ads from institutions offering coursework for aspiring game developers, versus 12 ads from dev studios looking for talent.
Just an observation.
1.10.2008
Lineup
Thanks again to the kind folks at GameSetWatch for republishing this guide. As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. He has received fifteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. Are Games Essentially Superficial? Exploring the Positive Impact Model of Design Chris Taylor Game Design/ Overview: This panel will introduce the "Positive Impact Model of Design." The Positive Impact Model is, in part, a mindset adopted by designers to consider the ultimate impact of their games, and it is, in part, the beginning of a road map to creating games that add the ability to teach or inspire players while fulfilling the essential requirements of commercially successful games. I think it’s something a lot of us wrestle with: does our work have worth? How can we enrich a player’s life through experience? Game Design/ Overview: Assaulting you with a variety of different perspectives about what it means to design and build a game, and the consequences of those viewpoints. I’ve listened to Blow’s version of this talk from the Game Design/ Overview: Many games use combat as their conflict resolution medium. This session is intended to collaboratively explore non-traditional and innovative methods of resolving conflict within games. Another issue of personal interest to me: how do we make engaging games based on character conflict without resorting to binary combat mechanics? Game Design/ Overview: The immersive fidelity of a game is a quality not well defined in game design. This presentation identifies formal tools for enriching the immersive qualities of games with the aim of enabling developers to make better decisions about how to achieve the desired degree of immersiveness in their games. Clint Hocking has made the most interesting presentation at each of the last two GDC’s I’ve attended. The Q&A session afterward feels more like a thesis defense. I have thoughts of my own all built up in opposition to the term “immersion,” so I’ll be interested to hear Hocking share his version of the concept. Matt Costello Game Design/ Overview: The industry has made a quantum shift in what's doable in game design – great graphics and cool mechanics are now part of everyone's domain. And so, more and more developers and publishers are looking to the future and what differentiates their game from the rest of the titles vying for market share. And more and more, the answer is pointing to story and characters, with hot writers brought into the mix to create a deeper dimension in gameplay. Learn how and why hardcore game developers are incorporating the fundamentals of story development into their titles, and hear a variety of takes on why this benefits everyone from the publisher to the player in this first-time gathering of some of the leading names and some of the biggest games in the biz. Games need effective writing to prop up the player experience, something which most titles currently lack. Always interesting to hear opinions on the intersection of game design and traditional story.
As in the past two years, I will again be attending the Game Developers Conference. The conference proper (following the first two days of summits and tutorials) begins on February 20th, featuring literally hundreds of presentations on all aspects of the craft, business and theory of video game development. Last year I shared my personal list of sessions to look out for (along with special guest Harvey Smith!) and this year I'm giving it another go. Below, find the wide smattering of sessions I'm planning to attend, schedule permitting. They're mostly in the game design track, but also feature a few entries from business and production. If you're going to be at GDC, hopefully this list will come in handy. Maybe I'll see you there!
Theory
Ideas, observations, and what the future holds
Keynote
The Next 20 Years of Gaming
Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
Louis Castle
Peter Molyneux
Rusel DeMaria
Kenneth Levine
60-minute Panel
60-minute Lecture
60-minute Roundtable
60-minute Lecture
Tim Willits
Denis Dyack
Mary DeMarle
Matthew Karch
Michael Hall
Deborah Todd
60-minute Panel