GameblurgKids Talking About the Future

I’m in the middle of my 30 seconds of chaos. I’m being surrounded by enemies, but I could care less. Last time I checked, there was a shotgun in my hands. Madly, I sprint in circles, letting my 12-gauge indiscriminately handle my enemies one-by-one. Feeling my blood boil and heart race after my triumph, the smoke settles and I walk into a small room nearby with the hopes of finding spare ammo and suddenly I’m blindsided!

However, this attack is not by another enemy, but by a bothersome barrage of cut scenes. Seconds later, I witness my avatar run into the room, deliver ‘D’ grade dialog about saving the town and pick up a sheet of paper and then play resumes.

The lure for the cut-scene is simple: things look prettier, developers don’t have to waste time testing cut scenes as much as real play, and they eliminate exercises that would threaten to bore the player (driving long distances, conversations, etc.). Opportunities like opening/closing acts present practical usage of cut-scenes, but while playing, our cinematic moments have a tendency to destroy a gaming experience when ill-placed.

These cut-scene-ridden games take place like the following: shoot, scene, battle, scene, battle, longer scene. There’s just something so incoherently stupid about this formula that I can’t comprehend. Imagine a roller coaster. When you’re stuck in your seat throughout the ride, you are being thrown across a loopy obstacle course that’s full of exhilarating highs and lows.

What never happens is the stop of the ride (as long as you don’t aggravate the conductor): you stay on the roller coaster until the end of the ride (unless you’re that sick of your ride/life). Now, imagine an ordinary, fun roller coaster, except every 30 seconds, you’re getting off, the conductor gives you directions on what loops you’ll be going through next, and then you get back on 20 seconds later. Sound familiar?

With careful planning, testing and execution, video games can play out short occurrences and small shocking moments inside of the game itself, and avoid a disconnecting video laced in the gameplay.

There’s an innate problem that cut-scenes have when they’re poorly placed. They disrupt the fluidity that a game should have in it’s goal to keep a player completely involved. What I want is to keep my brain immersed in this gaming activity. What I don’t want is a developer babysitting me on my quest for a piece of paper that’s 5 feet away from my avatar while giving me driving instructions across the island of inevitable, crappy doom.

There are so many problems with cut-scenes, but not enough solutions. What are yours? What do you think convinces developers that these short cinematic moments are a better alternative that in-game interaction?

Some time ago, we celebrated Microsoft’s Jane Lynch. At the time, we hadn’t seen either Nintendo or Sony make a move to grab a spokesperson and create memorable ads to sell videogames, services, etc. Luckily, I was wrong, or too impatient. So impatient, that if I would have waited a few months, I would’ve seen this guy.

Any guy with a “the” in front of his Twitter name (@TheKevinButler) and the ability to humorously advertise something as useless as the PlayStation Move is welcome with open arms. Contrary to some of our previous words, Kevin Butler almost makes me want to invest in these thing. Almost.

Your turn, Nintendo. I’m sure Katt Williams is still open.

All I want is a pretty world to excite my imagination. Ideally, if I can dive into a game and forget what time of the day it is when I come back to reality, I’m a happy camper.

A lot of times, people think they want realism when what they really crave is internal consistency within a given universe.

In the January edition of Game Developer, Zen of Design author Damion Schubert subtly but swiftly dissects what gamers really want in their games.

A beautifully crafted game will envelope you in a culture of its own. Just as long as you aren’t peeking around the corners at work looking for zombies, you should be fine.

The Xbox 360 has received a bump in hardware sales throughout the past 2 months which brings the question: Where has this sudden rise come form? Is it the booming software sales? No. It is because of its strategic product bundling? No. The responsibility of the recent Xbox 360 surge lies on the shoulders of the audacious Jane Lynch.

The witty actor (who’s credits include The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) and Role Models (2008) ) stars in a slew of Microsoft’s “It’s More Fun Time” commercials, promoting Xbox’s ability to generate “fun” in the family household. What you don’t notice is Lynch’s gifted ability to sneak into your heart with her brash sarcasm and sly humor.

In order for the other companies like Nintendo and Sony to compete with the mammoth “Jane wave”, they could be a shoo in for a celebrity frontman/woman of their own.

A nice wholesome lady like Lisa Lampanelli, or a strategically placed f’bomb from an equally hilarious Katt Williams will have the family excited about purchasing consoles for this holiday season! Or you could just yank Jane from Microsoft. She’s funny as sin, and we’d be hard-pressed to blame you.

Our finger of disapproval doesn’t shake without friendly suggestions to follow, and if there’s anything we’ve aimed to teach you today is this: our world is jaded and celebrities sell stuff.

Recently, the taste of a rumored Dead Space 2 stimulated the curious sensations of the gaming blogosphere via mysterious silhouettes and messages.

A sequel to a creative title garners my personal excitement, but whenever the bar is set high, there’s always the heartbreaking possibility of expectations being crushed by the notorious sophomore slump.

Thus, there are issues we’d love for Dead Space producer, Visceral Games, to address in its upcoming title.

For instance, there’s something mildly distasteful about operating a slow protagonist in a fast-paced environment, much like the alien-infested atmosphere Dead Space creates. Sluggish melee options, clunky avatar movements and slow reloading time all constitute to a lack of fluidity during gameplay.

There’s also something disgusting about delivering cheap scares at awful camera angles. In a horror movie where survival games may draw inspiration from, this idea is cute, but in an interactive environment where I fend for my life/sanity, this idea further aggravates me, especially when I’m handicapped by gaudy camera positions.

During the down time of the ship’s exploration, the lack of the main character’s involvement in the story’s progression leaves me with a dull, empty feeling as random superiors bark orders at me. At some points during the game, I became very passionate (passionate, angry, same thing) during the intense skirmishes and it would be nice if my character could share similar emotions in the middle of these exhilarating situations with me.

Games that reach so far into the creative box for ideas have the tendency to leave the simple, practical elements of creating a game behind. A third person shooter in an accelerated atmosphere should not be plagued by a sluggish protagonist who is further handicapped by technical miscues and poor story involvement.

The sophomore slump can rip a franchise’s survival hopes to shreds, and could even threaten the potential of a intellectual property as strong as Dead Space, but with the right glue, Visceral Games can mend the few broken miscues and create another stimulating, fruitful roller coaster (preferably, without the headaches).

There is a big reason why the competitive fighting game genre has few premier franchises: it’s surprisingly difficult to rewrite what Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken have planted in the minds of players worldwide. How do you put a different touch on a world that other franchises have a stranglehold on?

Fans of fighting games have slim pickings. Compared to the other videogame genres to choose from, fighting gamers have a specific allegiance to franchises that run deep. Who can blame these players? These franchises have been around for a long time for a big reason: they have consistently done the hard things really well.

This may not come as surprise to industry veterans who have succeeded or tried to emulate the magic of a fighting game, but to those who don’t lose sleep over programming woes, the problems of creating a sophisticated fighting game with good balance, unique characters and an enticing culture run deeper than the average eye can tell.

Although the surface of a conventional fighting game is simple (one-on-one battles), its inner workings require much thought. Large rosters are a nice thought but the size of a game’s roster becomes irrelevant when their powers are not balanced.

The problems are rooted deep when approaching the road to solving balancing issues. Imagine in front of your game console of choice and you find yourself inside of the character menu, but your selections are influenced deciding if it’s feasible to endure an uphill battle because of their lack of offense and exploitable defense.

When you create a game with overpowered, or “God”, characters, some characters become invisible because of their uselessness. Why not create a 5 man fighting game if they can overpower the rest of a 25 man “roster”?

A fair physics engine must be in place in order for any player to experience a fair fight using his/her choice of characters. A balanced roster erases unfair advantages and introduces strategy. Now, instead of merely choosing the best characters, the player must rely on his/her own skill in order to pull out the win.

Regardless of a roster’s balance, it must not only be diverse, but full of fun and unique characters. Because of the genre’s conventions, escaping clichéd ninjas and martial artists is imperative to creating a special and distinctive experience. If we dive outside of the realm of customary fighting game characters, we could begin to experiment with new personalities:

Now that we have our working physics and interesting characters to exercise those mechanics with, they all need a fun world to play in, and that’s where the culture lies. From the powers that are at your “deposition” to the atmosphere that you and your opponent do battle, the predominate behaviors, attitudes and design characterize a title.

What characteristics your game presents are an important part in establishing an identity. Take the Mortal Kombat franchise for instance: the game showcases overzealous blood and the dismemberment of body parts in an attempt to pitch the idea of deadly bloodshed.

While a sleek “user-interface” will induce a calming effect, a ragged and grungy arena menu will suggest aggression and intensity. Language, music, art also play vital roles in determining the “feel” that will help a game to survive in past its initial release date.

Creating a new fighting game franchise goes against the heavy hitters 10 years worth of headaches and troubleshooting that an inexperienced team hasn’t began to think about. With a full plate of fixing physics hiccups, constructing a list of characters and cultivating a new environment in a crowded genre is a task only for a determined team to shake and reinvent a tired genre for the better.

Starting a brand new fighting game franchise without a license is like trying to find an alternative for the pencil and pencil: things that are “in place” are hard to replace because we’re so used to them.

But remember, someone started drafting iPods when the world was addicted to CD players.

There’s only 1 thing worse than following a tool for hours: following a tool that doesn’t talk.

During the silent times, your tool not only does nothing, but continues to say nothing. During the frantic firefights, sure, we’re attacking but I’m not a fan of playing with a thoughtless puppet.

When you spend hours with any game, your avatar stops being a tour guide and becomes an interactive accomplice. A vast majority of our games focus on one main character and it’s important to consume the player through this gateway because the main character is responsible for the game’s progression.

A great example of providing insight into a lonely protagonist is shown through the movie I Am Legend (2007).

I Am Legend features a character named Robert Neville who finds himself in a lifeless Los Angeles as the last man standing, years after a cosmic apocalypse infects the world around him.

The drawing point of the movie is the focus of Neville in this mysterious situation and the delusional world that solitary confinement has cultivated around him.

In order to defend its self, Neville’s mind created life around him to preserve his sanity. This results in activities like turning mannequins into neighbors and animals into friends to protect his mind.

Neville vibrantly spoke to his neighbors about women that he was interested in. He holds conversations with his dog about his daily activities as if the dog were capable of understanding him as a human being would. He created his own world by interacting with his environment as if it were normal.

During one of the many acceptance speeches for the leading role inI Am Legend (2007), Will Smith mentioned how humbled he was by the award. To paraphrase one of his many speeches:

“[...] the movie featured only me for hours, and I’m thankful that the audience still enjoyed it enough to give me an award for my performance.”

Imagine if Robert Neville stayed silent the entire movie, only motivated to take action from the instruction of commanding officers. I have to admit that I don’t feel much attraction towards the idea of following a mute.

When you’re forced to spend so much time following anything, you begin to form a relationship: especially if that “thing” is a human being. If that particular thing lacks personality and depth, it will fail to gauge affection, interest or care for its well-being.

Let’s examine Dead Space’s main character, Issac Clarke, as another example of a protagonist in a secluded atmosphere.

• Our avatar’s attire consists of a dull-toned, generic suit that has little personality. (Every variation seems to suck, no matter how many upgrades.)
• Issac has no input on his missions because he has no voice, which portrays a lack of personal control, and thus, a tool.
• Because he’s silent, and merely takes orders, the introduction of his life and family outside of his setting lose meaning. Why should I care about Issac’s wife when I don’t even care about Issac?

If there is supposed to be any synergy between the player and avatar, it would be benefit the relationship if both expressed the emotions that certain situations evoke.

When the surrounding environment stimulates extreme emotion, there is room to create a persona for the player to relate to and more importantly, attach him/herself to in order to dive into the world entirely.

It’s as if you’re putting on an intriguing mask, and your interest in what the mask will turn you into begins to grow.

• What’s the story behind this thing?
• What is the expression it’s trying to convey?
• Could anyone recognize me if I went streaking?

In the videogame medium, it’s important to utilize our main strength to its highest potential: interaction. This extends further than commanding your character to pick up an item.

It’s about getting inside of your character’s head and gaining an understanding of the person that you’re spending the next 10+ hours with. If the person behind the character on screen is full of personality, why can’t the character be just as interesting?

We all have that one friend who happens to be better at Rock Band/Guitar Hero than ourselves, so when he comes over, what happens?

You get demoted to bass. No no, I don’t want to hear it: it sucks.

Yeah yeah, I know. “Bass isn’t so bad.” “It’s the soul of the band.”

No thank you. There used to be a day where a lively rhythm guitar was a second choice instead of playing the murky cords of an uneventful bass guitar.

As cute as the instrument is, I’d prefer not to repeat the same hum-drum melodies over, and over through the course of a 4 minute song.

Unless you’re utterly friend-less (lucky you), there are a few groaning instances where all pretend rock stars have had little choice but to play bass:

• You suck.
• Your friends suck, but want to take on a few hardcore Metallica solos on the medium difficulty.

I don’t want to hear anything about programming, or “adding 1 player would create a 5 man roster, and take up all the slots”. This is injustice. I’d like to enjoy some of my favorite songs without raping my fingers or being bored to death.

It’s as if I’m trying to find the middle ground again: my inner peace. Alright, I just personally would rather play with a controller than play bass guitar again for another 3 straight hours. Activision/MTV, can you help me out?

For the past few weeks, I’ve struggled to return back to Resident Evil 5. I feel as if I need motivation to devote an hour of my day to something away from work. Foolishly, I imagined the compelling thought of a treading through a zombie infested wasteland would provide an enjoyable escape from the daily life behind me. But after forcing myself through a shamelessly dry beginning, I’ve just given up.

Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 is littered with hazardous gameplay. Aggravation and annoyance lie around every corner because someone decided that attending to a variety of simple simple issues would cripple a sloppy schedule.

Many of my problems revolve around the silly idea of making game’s experience easier to endure. Who would’ve thought that operating a game’s controls shouldn’t be a challenge? I should not struggle to operate my knife in the middle of rabid zombie dogs running full speed at me.

Other hazards that aid this game in sucking harder than it should:

The pacing drags the game along at a snail’s pace.
(Contributing factors include: Chris’ inability to do more than 1 thing at a time, unnecessary cut scenes, frequent pauses when encountering environment/objects.)

The game suffers as you enter sections where the environment is illuminated by a brilliant and believable sunlight. There are points during these situations where I loose track of where my aim is. Both elements just do not react well to one another.

The vital things I need to do in this game (killing stuff) require anal retentive button combinations. I refuse to get used to this overcomplicated way of simple commands. (LB+LR=Slice, LR+A=Reload) Meanwhile, the ‘X’ button remains an unoccupied option for user accessibility.

The power, or the lack of, felt during this game also discouraged me. When things get really hectic, when you’re supposed to spend that coveted 30 seconds of heightened excitement mowing zombies down is spend reloading or scrounging for ammo. I’d rather not play a game where I’m always running for cover and reduced to prey.

Depressing and disappointing, I grew. Gradually, I went from excitement, to boredom to agitation, to disinterest. Eventually, I grew tired of the game, and shut off the console. By the end off all of this, realization of Capcom’s moronic save system soaked in. I was aware, but I shrugged off Capcom’s inability to incorporate a manual saving mechanism, as I had little intention to return to this massive headache.

Played on Xbox 360, so excuse the references if you aren’t familiar with the layout. I’d assume a similar layout is established throughout the other systems.

Because of our juvenile reputation, the thought of there being depth behind the creation of videogames reignites a combination of confusion and skepticism. The confusion and skepticism equally befuddle those who believe “murder simulators” and “game stations” to produce nothing more than entertainment.

To the ignorant eye, one without an abundance of knowledge in our profound department passes games off as an interactive way to spend your free time. While this assessment may hold true in some cases, the generic classification of videogames as a whole reeks of a narrow view from those who stare inside of our world’s misinterpreted window.

An aid to this problem is to validate these videogames, and brand the authentic art that goes into creating a videogame, and to discuss the matter, intelligently. Critiquing our work and the projects of our peers provides the impression that there is room for legitimate interpretation of what was thought to be play things. I’m not posing an argument that provides an answer to the question if those eyebrows will ever diminish completely, but I’d like to assist in the goal to reduce the apprehension.

Shawn Elliot, an Associate Producer at 2K Boston, recently provided grounds for respectably intelligent minds to speak on many matters that are surrounded by the thought of grading and examining videogames. In the symposium, the minds of Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb, Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland, Dan “Shoe” Hsu of Sore Thumbs, as well as the blog author, Shawn Elliot, plan on holding discussions about said topics. Although, the topic is currently “Review Scores”, the savvy gabfest provides insight to their own particular process of producing cerebral judgment.

Luckily, there is an increasing interest from our industry’s professional writers, but unluckily, feeble writing still exists in an attempt to impersonate the thoughtful evaluation of videogames. “Even worse is when the paragraphs that constitute a template are themselves composed of yet more methods of avoiding actual analysis,” notes an abhorrent Shawn Elliot. “I mock the overuse of words such as compelling not because there is anything wrong with the words themselves but rather with the way that they’re used to replace real explanation. We know that any guy in the game store can say he likes or doesn’t like a game’s graphics or story. We recognize that it’s our responsibility as paid writers to say something more than “I like it” or “it’s good.” Replacing “like” and “good” with “compelling” isn’t even trying.”

When I think of criticism, I imagine dismantling a specific piece (videogame) and determining how they function. Deciding how the game works as a whole by way of keen study and analysis, and express the honest reaction that I receive from playing a videogame, without showering it with an irrelevant deduction about a game’s technicality. In other words, as Robert Ashley, one of gaming’s prolific freelancers, says, “explain myself into a lie”. The goal is to critique videogames without dumbing the text down with technical babble, help people think about what they’re playing and intelligently interpret the videogame’s meaning, This is the most important part because this is where the honesty is received, this is where the player’s gaze is captivated by the magic that a game intends to display.

As I discovered the symposium, I grew curious about another way for to become a more responsible blogger/enthusiast/critic. While a critic needs to understand how videogames work, and have an abundance of knowledge of creating and designing them, that doesn’t fill the void of cultivating a framework necessary to exhibit thought behind videogame using literary theory and computation.

In March of 2006, “Unit Operations – An Approach to Videogame Criticism” was published by Ian Bogost in an attempt to create an anatomy for analyzing the creativity in videogames. Bogost argues that a marriage of literary theory & computation creates a useful framework for the interrogation of cultural artifacts that “straddle” these fields. Interestingly, Ian wants to “encourage the use of criticism as a tool for understanding how videogames function as a cultural artifact & how they do so along with other modes of human expression.” The book is divided into 4 parts: 1.) From Systems to Units, 2.) Procedural Criticism, 3.) Procedural Subjectivity,and 4.) From Design to Configuration.

Throughout the book’s opening, Bogost makes it clear that his substantiation behind his theory isn’t exactly for people outside of our world, but the theory in its own right is an attempt to get those same skeptics to understand our world. “Critical theory, informatics, and videogames are all highly specialized fields, whose practioners when they write seriously tend to do so for one another rather than for outsiders.” Bogost’s quote above refers to the practice of critiquing games, and the process behind such. Judging art as complex as a videogame “require(s) a considerable amount of abstruse knowledge and experience to practice effectively.” The problem, or barrier rather, is that “the humanities and informatics are afflicted not only by intellectual obscurity but also by professional mystery, perhaps because they are so deeply rooted in our daily lives.” For example, an attribution to our barrier that shields outsiders from understanding this subject lie with our infatuation with jargon. Because videogames are a tightly knit and young province, few readers/players, aside from our industry’s practitioners, can (or “would bother to”) explain the aesthetics behind the abstract visuals of Q-Games’ PixelJunk Eden or the excitable atomosphere that Sony’s simple The Last Guy cultivates.

Intuitive critiques aren’t for everyone, and in no shape and form, will ever be. There are many people who are satisfied with the simplicity that the surface offers. You can’t force the acception of deep meaning of movies, or paintings to some people: they’re fine with pretty pictures and shiny colors (I am unshamefully guilty of this. I just don’t care about Vin Diesel’s horrendous acting: I’m satisfied with his ability to look cool while blowing stuff up). Underneath this shallow cover is for the interested and intrigued enthusiasts who grow captivated with the depth. The exploration of this layer is for students and/or professionals. I’m comfortable understanding that this form of criticism will appeal to a different crowd, mostly in part because I’m a student (videogame design), and an editor (videogame blog), and a player of videogames. Obviously I like this stuff on more of a grander scale than your stereotypical adult does, so I want to explore what I love. Aside from myself, there are many peers who are involved on the same level, if not more, so I’d like to think that I’m writing for them, and vice versa. Anyone else is more than welcome to join the audience.

The videogaming field can be overbearingly esoteric at times to even the informed individuals, which explains the sleepless nights spent on researching ways to analyze the field. It’s rare to come across interpretation of an avatar’s mobility and how it relates to the story/universe or particular reasons why a game’s universe reacts to player instincts the way they choose to. Critiquing isn’t an impossible task, but because I want to avoid sucking at it, I’d like to take it one step at a time, and I believe many of the examples I’ve listed above will aid in completing broad goal of obtaining a wider social acceptance. This will not only help me grow a deeper conscious my field of hobby and career, but assessing a medium in which I plan on creating art for will help understand why people enjoy playing games: therefore, augment the ability pull people into games that I’d like to help create. So I’d advise videogaming students, professionals, and other curious spectators to pay attention to insightful conversations such as Shawn Elliot’s Symposium and theoretical pieces like Ian Bogost’s “Unit Operations“. Open your minds to the depth of our art, and if desired, accumulate the talent to asses it.

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