Yearly Archives: 2006

Firaxis Railroads Take Two

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation under a title I no longer remember.

This Thursday evening in San Francisco, Fixaxis followed an uneventful awards presentation with a smaller, boozier, more informal get-together of its own. Across the Metreon catwalk from the Walk of Game ceremony, Firaxis laid claim to the cozy SoMa Room: a carpeted, dimly-lit bar-centric private club-cum-meeting area.

Following a time of kabobs and schmoozing, the projector flipped on, the movies began to roll, and the assembly of journalists and industry insiders was introduced to a trio of new Firaxis products (one down from the advertised four): the modern-day remake of Sid Meier’s Railroads; the CivIV expansion Warlords; and the major new curiosity of the evening, CivCity ROME.

No fool like a clever fool

  • Reading time:2 mins read

McCoy presents to me what is perhaps the ideal representation of the Doctor. It’s either he or Troughton; they’re too similar. Of all the Doctors, these two are the most “clever”. They play (as Thom notes) the classic Shakespearian fool; their power lies mostly in subterfuge. In appearing stupid, or at least harmless, such as to disarm those around them and thereby to give them the upper hand.

To some extent or another, nearly every Doctor has had his tricks to this end. Hartnell just seems like a crabby old man. Davison is a wounded puppy dog. Tom Baker plays a very similar role to McCoy and Troughton, though through such a filter of mockery that you really don’t know what to make of him — thereby making him seem insane, and thereby, indirectly, probably not a threat. Though he’s erratic enough that maybe he shoots himself in the foot as often as not. Colin Baker seems like such a pompous ass that you dismiss him out of hand. McGann is so earnest, and keeps throwing out so much information that he shouldn’t know, that he’s either endearing or just plain batty — though I think more effectively than Tom Baker, in that at no point does McGann seem like a potential threat. Not sure what to say about Eccleston or Tennant.

The only Doctor who does not seem to possess this vital — and in my mind character-defining — quality is Pertwee, the “James Bond Doctor”, which probably accounts for his being my least favorite, despite his charm and warmth and whatnot. The other Doctors tend to get ranked according to the efficacity of their particular ruses.

And of all Doctors, I think McCoy and Troughton are both the easiest and most dangerous to underestimate.

Role for Ten

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Starting with Peter Davison, the ending credit shifted from “Doctor Who” (as all previous Doctors had been billed) to “The Doctor”, with the explanation that this was the character’s proper name. That continued up through at least McCoy (I don’t remember about McGann), then the show ended. When it returned last year, Eccleston was again credited as “Doctor Who” — sending the fanboys into a tizzy, because that’s not the character’s name! How could Davies be so stupid! (This among so many other things, like the episodes being the wrong length and the TARDIS windows being too wide.)

The answer is that it’s almost certainly the proper billing. From the position of an audience member, it’s more precise; where the “Doctor” billing comes from is the incredible sense of literalism that John Nathan-Turner brought to the show in the early ’80s (about the time the show began to go downhill, I’ll note). The science must be “real” science (or at least more credible-sounding nonsense), since this is a serious show; the sonic screwdriver is an easy out for writers, so now the Doctor must find a unique and realistic way to pick every lock; the Doctor is from outer space, so let’s make the intro a starfield to illustrate that; we’re in the Eighties now, so let’s use neon piping for our logo so we’ll look all up-to-date; the Doctor is mysterious, so let’s throw question marks on all his clothes, to illustrate that…

Thing is, there’s a difference between a character and a role. The person in the role of Doctor Who plays a character named The Doctor. It’s not that different from how you’ll see, say, “Schoolboy #1” listed as a role — even though the boy’s friend clearly referred to him as “Jim”. Point is, he doesn’t play “Jim”, or “Pete”, or “Ichabod”, he plays “Schoolboy #1” — whose name might incidentally happen to be “Jim”, or “Pete”. That’s the role he serves in the production. By the same stretch, the role is most unambiguously “Doctor Who”. That this is not the character’s name is kind of beside the point.

After all this, it’s worth noting that Tennant is being billed as “The Doctor” again. The reasoning here is that Tennant, as a long-time fan of the series, insisted, since he’s the one playing the part, that he be credited by the character name. Or the “correct” name, from his standpoint. I suppose that’s his business.

The Grail

  • Reading time:1 mins read

What do you look for in an RPG? What should it accomplish for you? What should it feel like to play it?

It should inspire me in such a way that I feel hundreds of hours of inane plotting and longing-to-be-retired game systems are worth slogging through. Generally that inspiration takes the form of “there is something amazing out there, somewhere — and lots of lesser wonders, that are up to me to realize”. And I should feel like every one of those discoveries (material or not) is a victory won, in its own right. A personal accomplishment.

Actually, uh. That’s the way I approach just about everything in life. So.

Motivation

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It occurs to me that most people are lonely, to one extent or another. And that this is the driving force behind most of the things that people do.

Telltale Games: Bringing Great Stories to Life

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Reflecting back a year, Conners recounted the fan reaction at the last Wondercon, when he first announced Bone. People were upset; everyone who responded assumed Telltale would make it into “a crazy action game”. Conners said, in retrospect, that was a natural assumption. When you look at what’s out there now, that’s the image that video games tend to carry – in particular games based on licensed properties. Nevertheless, what’s important, is to match match your gameplay with the kind of story you want to portray.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Foreign Data

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Back in the early NES days, the way Nintendo presented their games, all bunched together in an “official” lineup that you’d see repeated to you with every new game you bought, it’s like those games were the straight-out canon. Straying from the first-party line was sort of a risk; a trip into the unknown. Outside of some major players like Capcom and Konami, no one really talked about the “other” publishers very much. And yet every company had its own template, to distinguish its lineup from anyone else’s. You could tell a Konami game by the gradiated silver border; a Capcom one by the weird perspecive grid thing, with the box art centered on top of it; a Broderbund one by the entire bottom of the front cover being silver, leaving a little room for an illustration up top.

Now, most of the major companies had appealing templates, with reasonably appealing illustrations — and most of the games themselves looked reasonably appealing. If you didn’t understand exactly what the games were, from a title, a painting, and a couple of screenshots, you could hazard a guess based on the company’s other games and be intrigued. Some companies, though, they just creeped the hell out of me. Like Data East or Acclaim.

You look at boxes like this, and your brow furrows. In particular, the ones toward the bottom — Star Voyager and Winter ames and 3D Worldrunner — have layouts sort of similar, though not identical, to Nintendo’s “black box” template. Star Voyager’s screenshots show red lines on a black background, with what looks like an NES pad at the bottom of the screen. The Winter Games art depicts glowing neon outlines of people in snowsuits, leaving tracers. You look at these boxes, or any ads for Acclaim’s bizarre lineup, and you wonder. Mind that there weren’t any decent reviews out there for third-party games. To find out what these game are, you’d have to shell out money for them — and yet you’re ten years old. You don’t have fifty bucks, and if you did you’d probably spend it on something “safe”, from Nintendo or Konami, instead. These strange boxes will remain on shelves, and in the ads in game magaines, staring at you, making you uneasy, their mysteries locked out of your reach.

I mean, what on (or off) Earth is Lunar Pool? I’m reminded of when, as a boy, I was left in Epcot Center to wander unsupervised for half a day.

Now we know what most of these games are. We can go back and investigate the ones we’ve missed. We no longer have these page-sized masses of mystery glaring at us. And yet, even if you do dig in — have you seen how glitchy Karnov is? Or Breakthru? Are these games fun the way Konami’s and Nintendo’s games are fun? Is there something that no one’s explained to us? It still feels risky — a little dangerous, a little unnerving — to wade into these waters. Maybe those older, cooler, clearly wiser kids who skateboarded and could play arcade games like I never could said and did all sorts of things I didn’t understand — maybe they’d understand them. Maybe when I was older too they’d not seem so alien to me.

Today we’d just reject the games as crap. Look at the reputation Deadly Towers has achieved, thanks to Seanbaby and Something Awful. And yet — not having played it — to me that game was one of the most mysterious things on the NES. The box art, the screenshots — they seemed to hint at something beyond my grasp. So many times I almost went for it; after asking the Kay-Bee clerk for one last look at the box, I’d tell him this time I’d buy the game. I never quite dared. Instead, I have almost a full collection of Nintendo black-box games, and early Konami and Capcom releases. Ah well.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:14 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, then later BusinessWeek, under the title “Revolution Pressing the Right Buttons“.

There’s only so much you can do with a button. You press it, something happens. You don’t press it, something doesn’t. If it’s an analog button, and you press it even harder, maybe that thing will happen even more: maybe you’ll run faster, or you’ll punch with more vigilance. Maybe if you hold down a second button when you press that first one, something subtly different will happen. Instead of lashing out with a whip, say, the little man on the TV screen will throw a boomerang. Either way, he still attacks; the second button just changes how he does it. Those are more or less our options: do something, do more of something, or do a different kind of something. It’s all very straightforward. So too, then, is the history of game controllers.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:8 mins read

What if the GBA had had two more buttons, as people kept asking for at the time? What difference would that have made?

You know, aside from fighting games, I don’t see what use the extra two buttons would be. Few games really use more than that for anything significant, and if they do they’re often rather clumsily designed. The GBA has two shoulder buttons that rarely get used for anything much.

Even now, how many DS games use the extra buttons to any particular effect?

As much as I enjoy certain fighting games, I find it kind of stupid that they’re always used as an excuse for a million buttons and a standard layout for controllers. If people want to play fighting games, they can go buy a fighting pad — which most people who are serious about the genre, which includes most people who bother with it, do anyway.

Of course, you can’t easily do that with a handheld. Still, what are fighting games on a handheld besides a novelty? NeoGeo Pocket aside. Which has… two buttons.

But the shoulder buttons are awkward to use, so perhaps that’s why. Anyway, games don’t have to use every button on a controller. Don’t more buttons just increase the available options?

Shoulder buttons aren’t really meant to be action buttons. They’re basically useful for state issues. For changing the nuance of the face buttons — much as with holding up to use the secondary items in Castlevania, versus simply mapping it to a third button.

The more you can abstract the actions, the better. If you’ve got an attack button, try to put all direct attacks on that button. If you’ve got a jump/propel bodily button, try to put everything jumping or flying or swimming or whatever-related on that button. Context (including the context of state-shifting buttons like triggers) narrows down the verb, so the player doesn’t have to think about it.

That’s kind of the idea behind Ocarina, with its context-sensitive jumping and junk. It just wasn’t implemented too well there. RE4 does basically the same thing, except it gets it basically right. In that case, “A” is basically the “DO SOMETHING” button — and what you do is determined entirely by circumstance and what other buttons you’re holding down.

In this light, the point about few GBA games using the shoulder buttons still holds. Between the two shoulder buttons, that basically gives you six face button functions — and yet how many games take advantage of this?

But using the shoulder buttons for state shifting isn’t practical. And besides, a diamond layout lets you pretend the buttons are a second D-pad, for all that implies. And again, isn’t it simply better to have more available options, even if those options are rarely used? Having fewer buttons limits the types of games you can create.

Let’s not be silly. State-shifting is not only practical; it’s one of the only significant concepts in control design to be introduced in the last fifteen years. I’d love to hear what makes it impractical.

Though I guess it’s nice, using the face buttons as a second D-pad is an incredibly specific and imperfect use, that is almost never implemented. Though I might adore Bangai-O, this argument is just as silly as saying every system needs six face buttons so people can play Street Fighter properly.

Of course having fewer buttons limits the possible variety of games. Which is why the PS2 has so many more kinds of games on it than the NES does.

…

As for the “more choice = inherently good” argument: not really. Arguably so at best. See older relatives, who get confused when there’s more than one button on a controller. See the Brain Training game for the DS, that asks people to ignore all of those strange, extra buttons on the system. The most important element in any videogame is an intuitive interface — something that anyone can pick up and quickly understand. An ideal default interface will also offer flexibility on a game-to-game basis, meaning it can’t be too specialized.

The other benefit here is that the fewer input options there are, and the more intuitively they are designed, the more care and consideration developers have to put into control design. Sure, some people will always screw up their work no matter what help they’re given. Might as well rein in the margin for confusion as well as practicable, however — if just for the sake of the end user.

Of course, the question is one of balance. How little functionality is too little to be functional, and how much functionality can you include before you generate clutter — therefore distraction and confusion — in the name of very specific implementations?

State-shifting address this issue elegantly by providing few options then tiering them to accomodate extra depth, for those circumstances where it is desired or required. Think of it in terms of a reference tool. Is it more ideal to have every possible item you might want to read about all on one page, or do you want to break it down into categories, then subcategories? The more you want to know, the more specific the knowledge you desire, the deeper you delve. No clutter. No noise. No distraction. Or a significant reduction in all of this, anyway.

Here are a bunch of games that (arguably) require two joysticks, so ha! And see, I didn’t even mention a FPS yet! And I’ll pretend not to mention fighting games either because you clearly hate them so much!

Yes, exactly. So what?

Mind that I like just about every game you’ve mentioned. Almost.

But you said there were barely any games like that! So there’s a bunch, and I can keep on going! What else are you going to dismiss just because it doesn’t fit into your ideal scheme, huh?!

Look, it’s the same fighting game argument again: Street Fighter uses six buttons, so every controller must have six buttons or else you can’t play street fighter! Except weaker. I’m not dismissing the existence of fighting games or first-person shooters or these random and rare double-joystick games you seem so fixated on; I’m dismissing their import in dictating an idealized default input method, specifically because of their specialized nature.

Again, if you want to play fighting games it’s easy to buy a fighting game controller that’s more suited to the genre than a standard pad ever could be. If you want to play FPS games, a standard pad will never be ideal for them anyway, conceived as they are for a completely different control scheme, so there might as well be a specialized controller to better facilitate them.

I mean, hell. Ikari Warriors wasn’t even designed with two joysticks in mind; it had a rotary stick, the purpose of which was to allow strafing. A more accurate compromise there is using a shoulder button for strafe-lock. Chu-Chu Rocket’s control scheme was a compromise to start with; the game would be better suited to something like a stylus or a mouse interface.

Beyond the stylus, the DS also has the internet thing going — making for an even more ideal Chu-Chu platform.

Which kind of illustrates the point that not every game is suitable for every platform, and no single input device can account for every special demand. There will always be a compromise, and the question is as to where to draw that line.

What you’re asking for is an all-in-one device that accounts poorly for every possible variable, and not only will that never be entirely satisfactory on its own right; it’s also the wrong approach to a deeper problem. By this logic, what else should the average controller include? Should it rattle when you shake it, to make Samba De Amigo more feasible? I’m sure if the feature were included, Kojima would find something to do with it. And then of course it would have to be included in every future controller, or else if Kojima’s game were ported to that system it wouldn’t play exactly right!

Just, come on already.

The question is perhaps both easier and more difficult for handhelds. It’s easier if other platforms are available, that offer different potential. It’s harder in that you can’t just switch controllers so easily. Although, actually, I can think of some ways around that as well.

In the case of the GBA, the question is whether two or four buttons are more ideal. In the long run, given how few games even used the triggers for anything of note, having only two face buttons certainly didn’t seem to hurt it too much, or to constrain too many developers. Would the extra two buttons have done any harm? Well, from what we’ve seen it doesn’t look like they’d have done much good. And, you know, omit needless buttons. Complication for the sake of complication does little save muddy the water.

The four buttons work as a concession on the DS because the main focus is on the touchscreen. The oversupply of buttons helps to balance that off and encourage pedantic gamer-types just as the touchscreen draws in non-gamers. The GBA doesn’t have a mitigating factor, so there the buttons would just be buttons.

Right, like anyone would get confused or put off by two extra buttons.

See, the problem here is that you’re a gamer.