We All Fall Down

Global Mobile Games: New Business Models, Hit Games, and Mobile People from Around the Planet

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Current rumbling in the design community suggests that mobile games have yet to find their real application, and most games for the platform are just ports of established console or handheld ideas; they aren’t really based on the intrinsic character of the mobile platform. Taking in mind the control problems, the group began to discuss new ways the platform provided to interface with a game. Perhaps the camera could be used to sense rotation, so the user could swing the phone like a golf club. Some phones have rotation, stroke, and squeeze sensors that could be put to use.

Someone then observed that a game that requires a camera would have trouble getting “live;” not all phones have cameras. The only way to get carriers to support a game is if you design it for the lowest common denominator, technologically. Bringing carriers into the conversation set off a chorus of groans. Someone noted that carriers do not, really, understand content, and wondered whether not going straight to a carrier – rather, developing for a publisher that was in a position to negotiate with carriers – would give developers more freedom to push the envelope; to develop less “safe” games.

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Audio Production for Halo 2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

“The main Bungie approach to games,” O’Donnell said, “is this is entertainment. When someone sits down, you want to keep him entertained the whole time.” This starts from the moment the console is powered up; over the corporate logos, a custom piece by Steve Vai leads into the game’s opening theme. “The music at the beginning of the game,” O’Donnell continued, “is the overture.” It establishes a theme, to be used throughout the game. From the title screen, O’Donnell pressed “start;” as the game loaded, a motivated piece of music began to play against the Halo 2 logo.

O’Donnell explained he never wants to see the word “Loading”: It’s not entertaining. You always want the player to feel like something exciting is about to happen. “I never want an excuse for someone to get up and leave the game, if possible.” The key to that is flow. O’Donnell prefers to think of audio as a cohesive whole; he would rather not have any one piece stand out.

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Real-time 3D Movies in Resident Evil 4

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

One of the final lectures on Thursday was from Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, lead designer on Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. One of many distinctions in this game over previous entries in the series is an absence of prerendered cutscenes; any cutscenes present are rendered in-engine, and sometimes include QTE segments (as popularized in Shenmue ). At other times, the player must tap the Action button to make Leon run faster. Overall, the experience is a more dynamic one than in the past.

The reason for this, Hirabayashi said, speaking quickly through translation, is that he feels a videogame is a package as a whole; although pre-rendered movies are pretty, they passive, and pull the player out of the game. At least real-time movies are not as distracting, as the game remains consistent. Furthermore, when you change things during development, it often means you have to go back and re-render your cinematics to match again; this takes time and resources that could be better used elsewhere. Real-time cinematics remove that problem.

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Normal and Displacement Map, Sitting in a Tree

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Factor 5 designer Matthias Worch began Wednesday morning with a brief lecture on asset creation for next-generation games; his focus was on the distinctions between full-on digital and maquette models, as newer technology has come to make older techniques seem attractive. Before Worch began, however, he already had two problems. One was that, as his next-gen projects have yet to even be announced, he was unable to use his own material in the demonstration. The other problem was that his lecture began twenty-five minutes later than scheduled; to well use what time he had, Worch skipped straight to the demonstration.

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Labor Relations 101

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

After the McConnell lecture on quality of life, Gina Neff, from UC San Diego, took the podium to address the audience on the growing question of unionization in the videogame industry. Rather than push any one answer, Neff’s goal was to clear some misconceptions about unions, and to offer a palette of options, to get the audience thinking about what the industry really needs, perhaps to craft its own solution.

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The Business Case for Improved Production Practices

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

After lunch Tuesday, the Summit presented an hour-long lecture from Steve McConnell, Chief Engineer of Construx Software. McConnell’s goal was to illustrate the value of improved planning in software development, for development teams and management alike. Counter to intuition, McConnell explained, greater structure means greater morale, as the team members know what to expect. Greater morale means greater productivity. “Will a systematic approach hurt creativity?” McConnell posited. Not necessarily, he explained. It can, if you’re dumb and lazy about how you apply it. Otherwise, structure can be of benefit. It is orthogonal to creativity; there is no real connection between the two.

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How Serious Games is Helping the Commercial Industry

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The Monday afternoon session featured Sherpa Games founder and president Warren Currell moderating a panel of three: Dean Ku, the vice president of marketing for dance pad manufacturer RedOctane; Ubisoft Director of New Business Management James Regan; and Roger Arias, from Destineer Studios. The format was question and answer with Currell directing a series of three questions to his panel regarding Serious Games and the consumer market. With those questions expended, an audience Q&A session would begin.

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On the Building of a Roster

  • Reading time:9 mins read

Some analysis.

The following characters have been in every KOF:

    • (Kyo), Benimaru
    • Terry, Joe
    • Ryo, Robert
    • Ralf, Clark
    • Athena
    • Yuri, Mai, (King)

    • Kim, Chang

The following characters have been in every KOF since they were introduced:

    • Iori
    • Leona
    • Mary
    • (Shingo)
    • K’, Maxima, Whip
    • Kusanagi

Ash, Duo Lon, Shen Woo

Tizoc
Gato
Malin
Maki
Adelheid
Mukai

Characters in parentheses qualify with some
qualifications. Characters in italics are new as of KOF2003, so their
appearance in the list is in many cases incidental though acurate.

This list is descriptive, not prescriptive. Nevertheless, on a
statistical basis, it is instructive to see how many characters, and
which characters, the main series has as-yet been unable to do without.
Note that several of these same characters have been absent in spinoff
games, like the EX series, and several have yet to appear in crossover
games like the CvS series or BattleColiseum. Or even in Max Impact —
although I’ll get to that. This is, however, a study of the main series
and its common fabric to this point. So at the moment we can overlook
those cases.

There are fourteen key characters (including Kyo and King) who have
always been present, and an additional eight (counting Shingo yet
ignoring Kusanagi and the 2003 cast) who joined late yet have remained
in the series ever since. This makes a total of twenty-two central
characters (by virtue of persistance more than focus).

Let’s take a look at these twenty-two.

      • Kyo, Benimaru
      • Terry, Joe, Mary
      • Ryo, Robert, Yuri
      • Leona, Ralf, Clark
      • King, Mai, Athena
      • Kim, Chang
      • K’, Maxima, Whip
      • Iori
    Shingo

Some observations. This includes every major team
leader: Kyo, Terry, Ryo, Athena, Leona/Ralf/Clark (hard to separate
them), Kim, King/Mai, Iori, K’. These are the teams which have
persisted, and made up the series so far.

The other characters, who are not leaders in their own right —
Benimaru, Joe, Mary, Robert, Yuri, Chang, Maxima, Whip, Shingo — fall
into a couple of groups. Benimaru, Joe, Robert, and Maxima fall into
the sidekick category. In most cases they exist to support the hero
characters. You notice in each of those four cases, the sidekick is a
companion or counterpart to a KOF protagonist, of some era or another:
Kyo, Terry, Ryo, and K’. I don’t imagine Joe or Robert bothering with
the competition if Terry or Ryo didn’t go, and likewise if Maxima
weren’t around to give him some grounding, K’ would never show. The
sidekicks also help to flesh out the main characters, by giving them
someone to bounce off of.

Mary, Yuri, and Whip serve a similar function; Yuri and Whip are
sisters of protagonists, while Mary is Terry’s girl. In the first two
cases, the roles and psychology of Ryo and K’ are further augmented by
the presence of family. Whip gives K’ that last reason to bother, while
Yuri helps to cement Ryo’s identity as more than just a hotheaded bozo
in an orange gi. He someone to take care of and bicker with. Ryo would
be less full of a character without his sister. Mary strikes me as less
important, though I like her well enough. I even have a two-inch
plastic figure of her. As Andy does, she makes Terry somewhat less of a
“lone wolf”. It’s not as bad as Andy, though, as she isn’t distracting
in the same way. Terry doesn’t need someone riding his ass to keep
competetive, as Kyo does; likewise, Andy strikes me as someone who
would really prefer to do his own thing rather than sit in Terry’s
shadow. I’m surprised he stuck around as long as he did. Mary — she’s
harmless, even if SNK doesn’t really know what to do with her (as
evidenced by how she bounces from team to team). She’s really just
there because she’s an interesting and iconic character.

While we’re here, I suggest that Robert is even less important. He’s
basically a clone of Ryo, for one. For another, Ryo doesn’t need him as
much as he needs Yuri. Yuri is family, and as such has an inner route
to Ryo’s personality; Robert is just a fellow student of Takuma. Ryo
never relies on him; neither does Yuri. He’s there to fill space.

Chang and Shingo. Well. Each of them is a special case. Shingo, in his
weird way, has become the main character of KOF since he showed up. Or
maybe the player’s avatar. The everyman, against whom to contrast all
of the other characters. He helps to give perspective to the whole
experience. In contrast, Chang is there because he’s always been there
and because the game needs a “big” character. And because SNK hasn’t
figured out anything better to do with Kim’s team. That said, I find
the new dynamic in 2003 kind of interesting; with Choi gone, Chang
becomes something of a sidekick to Kim and Jhun. Almost a Joe-like
role. He’s got more of an identity now. This could go somewhere.

So. Now, for the hell of it, let’s take a look at the Max Impact roster (minus the new characters):

    • Terry, Rock
    • Kyo, Iori
    • Ryo, Yuri
    • Ralf, Clark
    • Leona,
    • Athena
    • Mai
    • K’, Maxima

    • Seth

That’s interesting. It hits every team leader in the
above list, except Kim and King. Kim is, of course, replaced in this
game with a bisexual female doppelganger named Chae Lim. So he’s here
in spirit, if replaced with a much more inviting body. That just leaves
out King, who, you note, was absent in the arcade version of 2002
anyway (even if she was replaced as soon as it hit the consoles). So
although in some senses she should be an A-list, it’s not without
precedent that she’d be out.

Outside of the primary characters, however, note that only Yuri and
Maxima make the cut, leaving out Benimaru, Joe, Mary, Robert, Chang,
Whip, and Shingo. Note however that Yuri and Maxima are the only two
supporting characters who serve an important role in defining their
respective primary counterparts. I’ve already talked about Mary and
Robert. Joe is welcome and helpful, though if you need to lose him, it
won’t hurt Terry. If you’re paring things down, K’ probably doesn’t
need two emotional crutches; Maxima will do. Benimaru, he serving as a
replacement for Kyo on several occasions, is the only one who really
feels weird to omit. Kyo’s been alone too much lately to really need
him, though; without Shingo to guide (and Shingo is an easy loss, love
him though I do), Benimaru is left to float. He’s not immediately
important in the way that Yuri or Maxima are — so he goes.

In their place, we get Rock and Seth. Rock is there for mass
appeal, because SNK wants Max Impact to sell and everyone loves Rock.
Seth is there so the game has a black character (for similar reasons),
and to include one random bit of “color” from the more recent games.
Just so the roster doesn’t feel entirely obvious or, well, old.

In other words, Rock and Seth aside, the Max Impact roster pretty much
pares down KOF to the bare minimum before you start making unacceptable
compomise (like having one Ikari Warrior, say). At least, again, from a descriptive standpoint.

Assuming SNK intends to add a bunch of characters back into the
follow-up to Max Impact, who didn’t make the cut, who will they be?
Statistics say (and this in no way accounts for random deviation) they
wll largely be samples from the following list:

    • King
    • Benimaru
    • Joe
    • Whip
    • Mary
    • Robert
    • Chang

    • Shingo

Most of these characters, I note, actually should work
better in 3D than the primary ones. Just think about a 3D Whip, for
instance. Or Benimaru’s whirly-kick. Or heck, just Chang in general.
Joe and Mary are from a sort-of 3D background anyway. Most of these
characters are close-range, which suits the format just fine.

Although Robert feels in some respects superfluous, think about the
costume possibilities. He already has three outfits. And control-wise,
he’s gone through so many changes that another alteration for a unique
close-range style won’t seem all that weird.

The only ones who seem like maybe-stretches are King and Shingo.
And recall they’re the ones in parentheses; they both got ditched once,
when Eolith couldn’t find a way to make them fit.

Shingo, I can almost see making it just because he’s Shingo. Just to throw the fans a bone.

King feels, to me, the hardest to adapt to a 3D fighting style. She
just relies so much on her distance game. Still, I’d love to see SNK
try with her; she would add variety to the roster. And again, there’s
the costume thing.

Note now that the above list of additions comes to 6-8 characters:
roughly half of Max Impact’s roster of returning characters. Let’s say
the next game raises the roster size by one-half, for a total of 30
characters. That’s a nice average size for even a main-series KOF.
Assuming SNK implements teams (which it feels like they wanted to in
Max Impact; they just didn’t have enough characters to warrant it),
that makes ten teams. Hey, that’s healthy as hell. It should satisfy
anyone, and make the game feel a lot more legitimate.

Assuming that — and it is an arbitrary assumption on my part,
based mostly on past experience, what it looks like they wanted to do
with the first game, and what seems reasonable to me — the proportion
of old characters in the above list of possible additions is just about
exactly the same as the number of old characters in the original game:
7:10. So — and again, I’m just saying this wildly — should SNK add
all of the above characters, and then get Falcoon to design two new
characters for the game, it will be entirely consistent with the design choices they made in the original Max Impact.

What does that mean? Nothing, really. I just find it really interesting, on a theoretical level.

Fighting against type

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Guilty Gear really does do something different from Capcom’s or SNK’s games. When I play a non-SNK 2D fighter, I’m usually a little confused at how few moves the characters have, and how simple they are to pull off. Aside from the number of moves, though, Capcom’s games tend to feel roughly similar to SNK’s. They’re harder, meaner, they don’t take any nonsenses; otherwise, there’s a lot of common ground.

Guilty Gear, though — uh. Well, I hadn’t really spent a lot of time with the games themselves, until today. The most I had done was jump in, hit a bunch of buttons, study the animation and say, yes, that’s interesting. Now I’m trying to get into the game’s head. And. It’s weird. Each character’s movelist is maybe a dozen lines long at most. Most of those are command moves (forward+punch, say). You might have a quarter-circle or two. Or, rarely, a half-circle or a dragon punch motion. Most characters have the exact same motion for a DM-style move, and the exact same fatality. (That’s qcfx2+hs.) And that’s it, really. There are hardly any moves in the game. And yet, somehow the attacks tend to be more obscure than usual.

It’s hard to wrap the brain around in a few hours. I can’t tell whether or not it’s being different just to be different. The system does seem to work. It almost reminds me of Smash Bros., though. Maybe a slightly more erudite take on it. Suddenly Isuka makes more sense to me.

On the other end of the fence, there’s KOF2000. I hadn’t played a 2D KOF for a while. Going back to it after Max Impact, it’s almost like that same feeling; like I’m switching to a Capcom game. Everything feels so simplistic, by comparison. Max Impact requires so much more to play that I almost feel like I’m on cruise control with the main series. I don’t have to pay attention to the sidestepping, or the stylish moves, or safe falls (so much). The game moves so much more slowly; I have so much more time to react. I have so much less on my mind.

I’m more and more convinced SNK hit on something close to great with Max Impact. On the one hand, it’s more appealing to the casual eye than SNK’s 2D games — and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s a lot easier to jump into and have fun with than the main series. At the same time, it’s also one of the most complex fighting games I’ve played. If you want to play it well, it’s going to occupy every bit of mental processing you’ve got.

The only problem is that it doesn’t go far enough in either direction. It’s not Soul Calibur, and it’s not Virtua Fighter 4. If it’s appealing, it’s not appealing enough to woo people who don’t already give a damn. Maybe it’s a good entry-level SNK game, for the SNK-curious. If it’s complex and challenging to play, it doesn’t have the intricacy and balance it needs for experts to take it seriously as a competitive platform. What it is is a sketch. It hints at the game SNK can make. That maybe they will make, someday, that will bridge some gap, plug some hole, tap some market that no one else has paid attention to. The game which will make them a household name.

It’s almost the most important game SNK’s made. Not quite. It does point in that game’s direction, though.

Juste “Like Alucard” Belmont, indeed.

  • Reading time:9 mins read

Hell. I’m going to do a track-by-track commentary on the Harmony of Dissonance score. I’m going through the sound test here (which doesn’t always have the actual title of the piece — though I’ve mostly got them, too).

title screen – “title screen”

Adequate. Tense, symphonic. It sets the right tone, ending on something of an uncertain chord. Higher-quality samples than used in most of the score. This is part of what clued me into thinking the samples used in most of the in-game music were chosen intentionally. A couple of later pieces are of even a higher quality; they sound like they might even be digital recordings. That seems unlikely, considering how much space that would waste. Either way, it seems odd these high-res samples (or the space for them) were just sitting around, and not used.

name entry – “name entry 2k2”

Yes, this is a piece of weird genius. It’s a heavy reimaging of the name entry theme from the FDS version of Akumajou Dracula, put through a Willy Wonka hallucination. Notice the warbling instruments and strange intervals used in the intro. Add to those the flitting, spinning, up-and-down flute noise and the pedal tone in the background. Bring in the stumbling, crunchy drums, and the jagged, clashing organ chords. Leave the bass to mumble underneath, while the parts on top start to scream, whine, and argue with each other. The tension builds. What really strikes me here, and in future pieces, is how much the individual parts actually talk to each other. They’re speaking, responding, building on what came before. Sometimes misunderstanding, causing even more friction. It’s really organic stuff. Unpleasant in a sense because it brings to mind all of the really bad arguments we’ve had. All of the misunderstandings, all of the nightmares where everything seems completely out of our control. And we’re just left spinning, trying to get through it all.

Then it all drops out, and we’re back to the bass intro. We’ve made a cycle. The tension drops away. We feel relieved. Vivified. And we’re ready to go for another spin.

intro – “prologue (theme of maxim kischine)”

This is, for me, the least interesting piece in the game. And it shows up thrice in this sound test alone, with different titles. With its monotonous, off-kilter Victorian formality, it works all right in Juste’s “decorating room”. As a character theme, though? It feels out-of-place. The thing which I find most interesting about “prologue” is how stuffy it is. Musty. It makes me think of the wallpaper in an old, creepy house.

entrance – “successor of fate (theme of juste)”

One of the major centerpieces of the score. In some ways, it’s the most traditional Castlevania piece in the game. It can sit along other major game and character themes, and not seem too out of place. It’s got more going on, though. I hardly know where to begin.

The first thing I note about it is the detached introduction. After the ornamental organ intro, we get an almost proud, formal strike with those reedy chords. The entire piece is a little more aloof than usual. A little more classical. A little more structured. A little more noble-sounding, while still accessible. In other words, it’s Juste right.

After the main theme repeats a couple of times, there’s a bridge where the uncertain qualities present in most of the music here build up a little. Questions. Anxietes. Before they can get too far, though, the main theme comes back in and stomps them down with a firm, yet gentle thud. And as if to say, hey, don’t worry, Juste really knows what he’s doing, and it’ll be okay, the rest of the notes of that phrase are synchopated a bit, and a warm bass begins to bubble underneath. The corners of the tune’s mouth turn up just a little. That’s my favorite part.

marble corridor – “offense and defense”

Here’s the meat. I’ve written about this before. This is the one piece which would make the score for me, even if everything else stank. I’m not going into detail. It’s too complex. Just listen to how the parts speak to each other, particularly the highs and the lows. Listen to how they spiral. How the tensions get woven and unwoven and lead to new anxieties. This piece is pure paranoia. It’s relentless. Ruthless. It makes me shiver, it makes my eyes water, it makes me clamp my jaw, it makes me very uncomfortable. It’s possibly the most moving piece of chip music I’ve heard.

Hell, I just noticed the piece’s title. That pretty much sums it up, compositionally.

shrine of the apostates – “approach of deplore”

A nice little piece. It doesn’t stand out much, at first. It does grow on a person, though. I like its start-and-stop nature, as if it’s constantly pausing to collect its thoughts. Some interesting chords here. Some nice things going on in the background if you listen closely. One of the lighter, least offensive pieces in the game. And as with many pieces in this score, the bass work is worth noting.

luminous cavern – “luminous caverns”

This seems like an experiment in ominous chords. It’s got some potential, especially after the drums come in. It sounds like it’s building to something rather grand. Unfortunately, it never really evolves. More and more things just get layered on top, making the piece kind of monotonous in the end. That in itself is kind of effective, though, when you add in the throbbing drums. It eats away at the mind. I think I’d trade this specific flavor of torment for something a little more interesting to listen to for its own sake, though. This is maybe a bit too expressionist for me, even.

aqueduct of dragons – “aqueduct of dragons”

Almost a relief after “Luminous Caverns”. As with “Approach of Deplore”, this strikes me as more of an album track than a single. It carries on the tone well, and explores its own slight variations. The best part here is the rhythm. I kind of want it to evolve more, though. I feel like it has more to say that it never quite gets around to, leaving me with a nice little sketch.

chapel in the sky – “chapel of dissonance”

Another standout track, though not quite as multifaceted as the earlier ones. This one’s a crowd-pleaser. It kind of covers the same ground as “offense and defense”, though on less disturbing and difficult a level. It strikes me as maybe a little too obvious how the light, untroubled intro gets contrasted wth the angsty latter half.

clock tower – “clock tower”

Yet another major piece. Up until the tension takes over, the thing which most strikes me is the drum and bass work, and the way everything else feeds off that, rhythmically. Again, I wish it had more space to work with its ideas.

skeleton cave – “skeleton den”

Pure atmosphere. This is filler, really. Doesn’t even attempt to be melodic. It tries a few tonal and rhythmic experiments, particularly toward the end. Nothing exceptional, though. Strikes me as a scratch track that someone shrugged and threw into the game because it held up well enough.

castle – “to the center of the demoniac castle”

This must play more than any piece in the game. It’s the main roaming music, so it has to hold up and be kind of middle-of-the-road, while maintaining a certain tension. And that’s what it does. It’s anxious. It wants to get moving and find what it’s there for, so it can get out of this foul place. It really does help in keeping up the sensation that something is happening, or is about to happen, until you actually get where you’re going.

theme of death – “dark covenant”

I don’t know what’s up with these brooding, unmelodic themes. I don’t understand it in film scores, either. You’d think if you were to assign a theme to a character, you would want something more than just a sprawling mood piece. Something like this just doesn’t strike me as a theme, as such. It is adequate background music for slogging through text boxes, though.

boss (loop patterns a-c) – “Archenemy” (?), “Dark Door” (?), “Knight Head” (?)

I’m not sure if these titles actually goes to these pieces. These are all variants of an okay boss theme. Pretty traditional. Lets you know something is actually happening, for once. I think a boss battle is a pretty good time to kick the player in the face and wake him up. This does it, while still fitting into the general theme of the score.

epilogue 1 – “epilogue 1”

Reminds me of “Prologue”. Funny, that. Puts my mind in a fog.

game over – “game over”

I just about fell over when I heard this the first time. “HAR, HAR”, I said. And meant it. I then added a “Ho Ho!” It still makes me giggle a little, even though I know it’s there. I just forget.

theme of dracula – “incarnation of darkness”

See above comments about Death’s theme.

last battle – “last battle”

Appropriate. Reminds me a little of Phantasy Star series final boss music. There is a certain grandness to it, melodically. A feeling of earnest struggle against something way too strong. It wants to be victorious. It just can’t… quite… reach… the knife. It’s in a bad spot. And this is do or die. Etcetera. It’s satisfying.

epilogue 2 – “beloved person (variation)”

Reminds me of the opening sequence to Castle of Illusion.

credits – “successor of fate (variation)”

JESUS CHRIST HOW WHAT WHY? So, yeah. I guess the soundtrack COULD have been like this. I’m glad it’s not, though.

extra stage music 1 & 2

Boss rush music. What do you want? It’s not written like the rest of the score. That’s because Michiru Yamane did it. Or so I recall.

extra stage music 3 – “vk2k2 (vampire killer 2002)”

One of the only versions of Vampire Killer since the original that I actually like. I enjoy how it gets transposed up a notch after the first repeat. And I like how the “DUNDUNDUNDUN!” bit is handled, with everything dropping out of the background. Sort of weird how it transitions into Clockwork. It works all right, I guess — though it makes looping harder than it should be.

extra stage music 4

Cute. This didn’t surprise me as much as the Dracula Denetsu game over music, though.

theme of merchant – “seller of fine goods”

Fun! I love how low-res it is. Gives it character.

theme of maxim kischine – “prologue”

Argh!

theme of lydie elranger – “beloved person”

It’s back again.

item collection room – “prologue”

Argh!

A response to a videogame critic

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Relativity is the most important factor to consider when assigning scores. In lack of an absolute objective meter — which implicitly we can’t have in these matters — what we’re left with is our own subjective assessments, that we distill to make relatively objective conclusions. The question is how we calibrate that relativity.

It seems to me that your case with San Andreas and Castle of Shikigami is miscalibrated in the same manner as most game reviews, in that you calibrate your relatve objectivity to your assumptions about what your average reader might consider “worthwhile” rather than to, frankly, the most solid foundation you have — that being the work itself: how well it succeeds in what it sets out to do, and whether you feel that its goal was a worthwhile one in the first place.

It would be one thing if you rated San Andreas higher because you felt it succeeded better at what it set out to do, regardless of which game you’d rather play. To compare them directly to each other, however, with a goal of determining some mythical absolute value for your average reader, is ludicrous. It’s exactly the issue that you complain about in this article.

For the sake of comparison, let’s take Roger Ebert’s system of review. If he really enjoys a mindless action movie, and feels it does everything it sets out to do as well as it could be done, he might well give it four stars. If he is frustrated with a much more challenging and worthwhile movie, because it fails in a few key areas, he might give it two and a half or three stars. This is not because the former movie has more content in it, more features, covers more ground than the arty movie. It’s just because it is more successful. Given an personal choice between the two, he would not hesitate to recommend the latter over the former. It’s almost certainly a better movie. It just doesn’t accomplish its goals as well.

I would argue, from what I have seen of San Andreas, that it falls short of its goals in a lot of places. It’s got some great ideas that it doesn’t really know how to follow through on. After you leave the first city, most of the game’s potential falls apart. Not only that; it also limits the player in a lot of silly ways that the earlier games in the series did not. Does Castle of Shikigami 2 have the same problems? I don’t know. I’ve not paid much attention. People seem pleased with what it has to offer. I’ve seen nowhere near the same kind of annoyance that I’ve seen with San Andreas. For what that’s worth. And I think it’s worth something.

Psychology

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So. Videogames tend to be built like videogames. People tend to play videogames like videogames — even if playing them that way hurts the experience. People go to great lengths to do stupid things in videogames just because they must collect every item, do everything that can be done, before they finish. And videogames know this.

Why is that treasure chest placed in that out-of-the-way room that no one has reason to go to? To reward someone who goes down there. Why do most people go down there, even if it’s clearly not the right direction? Not out of curiosity, but because they expect a reward. It’s become a task, almost. (Again, look at how RPGs tend to be made.) Some second-guessing is fun, if it’s clever and unobvious. Much of it is just tiresome. Everyone’s nodding, saying, “Yeah, we get it. We’ve been here before.” And yet there’s this unwritten code, that everyone’s afraid to break. It leads to leaps of logic like the player being expected to wander around and level up for two hours to beat a boss. That’s just plain fucking bizarre. Grotesque. Picture it, for a moment. What FUCKING reason do you have to do that?

Same for the perfectionist impulse, where you must collect everything — just because it’s there to collect. And the games now take way too much advantage of this, as a result of people reacting in that dysfunctional way to start with. It’s a natural compulsion, so the games treat it as if people actually gain joy from it. When it’s really more of a feeling of obligation. A quirk of mental chemistry, because the game presents it as a viable option. And now we’ve come to expect it so much that we become pissed off when we can’t finish a game with a perfect save file. Same with speed runs and sequence breaking for the sake of sequence breaking and all of this inanity that comes out of that stew of boredom, idle greed, and the natural human response to a lack of consequence.

Doukutsu Monogatari makes me wonder. It’s weak here, but. Perhaps a way to discourage, say, hoarding in a game is to make it so you can’t get a good ending unless you play it in a sane, non-videogamey way.

Silent Hill 2 also comes into this a little, as does the discussion about hardware — although you don’t really need advanced hardware for this. Not in a basic sense. I mean. Some version of this goes as far back as Ultima. Further, probably.

I don’t mean imposing arbitrary (or strict story-based) limits, of the kind we’re all so used to and annoyed with. Damn, I can’t get through this door because I have the Zippomat instead of the Gizmodrome. Or I haven’t given this item to this other character, triggering this plot event. So I can’t progress until I do it. What I mean is, sure — let the player do whatever he wants within the boundaries of the game world. Yet if the player is obviously behaving in a manner inappropriate to the situation, just because he CAN, or because he’s used to second-guessing what videogames are asking of him, it will result in — well. Not punishment, so much as consequences.

Someone else can come up with specific examples, I’m sure. As well as too many examples of when a game’s charm comes from exactly that freedom to put your trinkets in a row. Or from subverting the system (though that’s not what I’m talking about here, exactly; I’m all about subversion within the established rules — which is why I can appreciate Nippon Ichi’s SRPGs even as I am unwilling to play them). I’m just working in vague generalities. And I don’t know where they’re going.

What are the possible ramifications here? Is a lack of consequene for the player’s acting like a yo-yo, or like (simply) a gamer, part of why videogames are still so fucking adolescent? Clearly, a good portion of their existing audience — probably the most vocal and obvious segment — would do as well to grow up as the games they’re playing. How much are the two sides encouraging the current situation? What are the dynamics?

It basically is a question of motivation. In Shenmue, there’s such potential to get absorbed in the gamey nonsense — and some people do, and become lost and annoyed. For the most part, though, I just feel compelled to drink in the situation. Play it as if I’m living a life, rather than play it as a game. It’s actually rather boring if you try to second-guess it and to treat it as a typical videogame. I think maybe its fault is that there is little aside from boredom to dissuade the player from going all OCD and missing the point. If you linger too long, I hear that Long Di eventually comes and kills Ryo. That’s a long way out, though. I’ve never had to worry about it, even at my slowest poke of a pace. It’s likely boredom will drive anyone on by then; the only reason to remain, in fact, is to find out what happens if you don’t do what you’re expected to.

What might be an organic solution? I don’t know. You probably don’t want to wall the player in. As much as we like to make fun of it, the “But thou must!” mechanism is pretty omnipresent. It seems to me that it’s best to allow the player to make those bad decisions (sorry, Nintendo!), and to naturally wind up in an undesirable circumstance as a result. That’s the way we learn, y’know? On the one hand, don’t encourage acting like you have a mental problem — so if the player goes there, it’s his own doing. On the other, make him feel like a genuine idiot for behaving so erratically.

I think the latter would be most effective as an end effect, rather than a snap response to walking outside certain boundaries: the game cuts short, or the player gets a bad ending that shoves in his face all of the junk he’s done, or what-have-you. This would allow some leeway for the player to stray. No one’s perfect, after all.

Would a more immediate response help as an additional deterrent? I don’t know. Something in me says that this might just encourage a person, out of curiosity to see what else the game has to say about him. Any attention is a reward of some sort. And a lust for trivial reward is the main motivation for behavior lke this.

Perhaps the issue of motivation isn’t something that can be explained in a rational, mechanical way — since it relies so much on the ephemerals of emotion and tone. And because we all interpret our signals in different ways. The Zelda discussion seems to show that. What motivates me to explore Hyrule is much what would motivate me, were I put in Link’s position. What motivates some others is less experiential; more… baubly. It has to do with the gameplay mechanisms for their own sake, rather than to the end they were implemented to start with. With, in effect, how the game plays as a game. And that mentality has determined where the series has evolved as it has been refined, as it has with RPGs and so many other games.

I want to say that something’s lost here. It’s hard to define to people who aren’t tuned to it to start with, though. Or to explain why it’s so important. Hell, it’s a big part of the reason why I play videogames. And so, I expect, it is with many others before they become distracted or mis-trained because of the mental level that videogames so like to tap into. The feeder-bar level of gratification.

It’s seriously unhealthy, I think, where videogames are now. I think, in a manner, they promote and hone OCD and ADD-oriented levels of behavior and thinking. And although it might sound a stretch, I think that might be one factor in why so many gamers are such… insufferable fucks, to be blunt. And the sad thing is, this is gaming’s audience, so there’s a feedback loop. Games are developed for people who already exhibit these signs, and those games just promote them all the more.

Yet. Videogames can operate on a more human level. How much needs to come from the player, seems to depend on the game. For its time, Zelda promoted a much richer mindset. Myst and Riven piss off the core gamer demographic, which tries to approach them like puzzle games, even as they reward people who come at them looking for something more involving. And even Treasure’s games — say, Ikaruga and Gradius V — have a transcendent emotional quality to them, born out of their self-conscious design. They depend on the player’s familiarity with videogames, to make a grander set of statements about the medium itself, and the way we interact with it.

I guess the situation can be summed as follows:

Q: How do we get players to behave like human beings?
A: We motivate them on a human level.
Q: How do we do that?
A: That’s the key, isn’t it.

I was about to go on, and say something about discouraging unhealthy lines of thought — then it struck me how vague that is. More like discourage OCD and ADD-oriented thought strains. I would love videogames to mature enough to allow, or even encourage, the player to explore unhealthy modes of thought. Silent Hill 2 has a passive reaction to the player’s way of thinking; if the player behaves in a suicidal way, for example, the game decides that the main character went to Silent Hill to kill himself. A more tangible set of reactions might be interesting. Not sure how that might be achieved, though.

A while ago, I explored the idea of an emotional change in the player’s avatar, depending on the player’s actions. For instance, in an RPG, you, the player have the option to wander around and kill things, to grow stronger and more experienced and whatnot — yet you lose a bit of yourself every time you kill. A little bit of civility. Of humanity. And that will affect the way the avatar will interpret and interact with the game world. The more you kill, the more unpleasant the game becomes. The more hardened the character becomes, until he becomes something of a psychotic monster. The type who would just wander around and kill anything he came across, for no good reason. He will be treated as such, in-game. Most important, this can’t be seen from a clinical distance. It has to be done in a way that the player will grow uncomfortable with the way things are progressing.

I think Fable experimented with a bit of this line of reasoning, though it couldn’t take it far — so in the end it became something of a cartoon illustration of ideas someone else might want to reinterpret and implement more seriously in another five years or so.

That quality of discomfort seems the most important one, for barrier-building. As long as we’re dealing in emotions, anyway. Whether that discomfort be moral, ethical, fear-based, or just plain boredom and disappointment must, I guess, depend on circumstance.

Again, I would love to get to the point where it would be possible to make an effective Clockwork Orange of sorts; a truly transgressive experience. I’m afraid that’s not really feasible until we’ve established some barriers, though. Made them standardized. The most transgressive a game you can get at present is something like a Kojima game, which rebels against the assumed contract between game and player on a mechanical, on a conceptual level. That’s all nice. I don’t know if we’re really there until it will actually mean something to do that on an emotional level. And until gamers are accustomed to behaving like human beings, that’s not going to happen.

EDIT: Discussion continued here.

Move-Blocking

  • Reading time:9 mins read

In the original Zelda, the closest thing to a block puzzle consisted of pushing a single block one space. In effect, it’s just a hidden switch; not a puzzle-as-such. A secret trigger. The same as the book or andiron you move to open the staircase behind the bookshelf in the old mansion. Whoa, you think. Who knew that was there.

This is how Zelda works: obfuscation. Any object might hold any amount of potential. You’re never told you can bomb walls in the dungeons — and usually you don’t need to. Yet if you do, you can often make shortcuts or find secret areas. No one tells you you can push against the walls, in the second quest, to phase through. It’s just another hidden quality.

No one tells you you can burn bushes, or bomb rocks. No one tells you you can move blocks. No one tells you about those warp staircases. Or that the statues come alive when you touch them. Hell, is there a reason those stones look like turtles?

This all gives the game environment a sense of mystery and vitality. You have the surface: walls, trees, cliff faces. And then you have another level, where you’re never quite sure what’s possible and what isn’t. Anything could, hypothetically, mean anything. Anything could be anywhere.

That’s where the awe and wonder come from: this sense of endless possibility, once you start making discoveries. Once you get a taste of the world’s hidden logic. It all feels magical. You feel like maybe, just maybe if you’re clever enough, you’ll find something, some secret no one else has ever seen before. I had dreams about this stuff. About a whole other world I’d find, by burning just the right bush.

And the reason this all works, again, is that the world doesn’t feel set out for the player. Beyond the forbidding nature of the overworld — where the game sets barriers just out of difficulty; you don’t want to stray too far, lest you find yourself in real trouble — there’s this whole second layer. It’s totally hidden. If you find it, it’s your own doing. It’s up to you to make of it what you will.

The dungeons don’t exist for the player to go through. They don’t have special puzzles set out in a special order, so that the player can solve them and take all of the dungeon’s treasure and kill all of the monsters. They’re not tests. They’re just there. Because they’ve always been there. Relics of some earlier time, that we can’t know about. They’re meant to be dangerous. Dank, abandoned holes in the ground where monsters have come to lurk. Maybe if you survive you can pull something neat out of there — just because no one else has been stupid enough to enter in centuries. That’s up to you, though.

And so on. This is the quality that I associate with Zelda. It’s what attracts me to the game, from the gold cartride to the music at the title screen, to that cave in the first screen where you pick up your first item — your sword — to Spectacle Rock, to the bizarre hints the old men give, to that place on the upper-right, where you have to climb up through the rocks, to “IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY”, to the way the Power Bracelet is just sitting there, under that suit of armor, right in the open.

You just never know.

It’s what makes it more than just a series of gameplay mechanisms and items and characters. Which is what the series has been since the third game, to one extent or another.

The whole lock-and-key exploration thing, in particular, is a problem. If not inherently, then at least in the approach that we’ve come to accept.

You must acquire tools to expand your range!

…

um.

That’s not what I get out of Zelda. I mean. Technically, yeah, it is a mechanism in the original structure. To say it’s a focus of the game, though, and inherently enjoyable, is kind of like saying… oh, I don’t know.

You’re tarnishing something, with that attitude. Mistaking a process for a purpose. Ritual for meaning.

Maybe it’ll help to break down the tools in the original game, and how they relate to the game’s progression. Offhand, the ladder and the raft are the only two items I can recall which are immediately… practical, in this sense. In that they inherently open new territory. And compared to the way these mechanisms are used in other games, they’re relatively tame.

There are only a couple of docks in the game where the raft may be used. And you don’t really know what the docks are for. You don’t see any destination. You don’t think “Gee, I wish I had a raft so I could get over there…” You don’t even know what’s over there. Or realize you could get there over the water. It doesn’t occur to you. Later you find a raft, and you start to wonder what to do with the thing. You go to the dock, and you’re magically carried away to a place you have never seen before. It all works on a similar hidden level to what I was talking about before. The raft kind of unlocks a hidden purpose — much as the flute does, especially in the second quest.

And the ladder — well. It’s automatic, in a similar way though on a smaller scale. It isn’t dramatic at all; it’s just practical. Hell, a ladder isn’t even perhaps an ideal item for its use in the game: for bridging gaps. It’s just, it works. The game doesn’t make a big deal of it. It’s just — “oh, you know, you can use this to cross gaps now.”

I don’t know that there are too many places where the player just can’t progress without a ladder. Most of the map, most of the dungeons are open either way. Sometimes, though, there are gaps. The player is used to it. He isn’t waiting for a way to bridge them. He just accepts that he isn’t able to cross them. The game makes the barriers clear enough.

And after he gets the ladder, he still can’t — not unless the gaps are very narrow.

The tools, when they come about, present themselves as useful or wondrous rather than as neccessary. (In truth, you do need them; that isn’t the immediate concern, though.) In future games, you don’t have that. You just expect the items. You never really appreciate them, for how handy they can be, for the extra levels they bring to the experience, because you NEED them to progress.

It sounds paradoxical in a way; you never really value them, because they’re too precious. Precious to the point where they’re obstacles because you don’t have them. And when you find them, you don’t think “hey, neat!”: you think “Oh god, finally.” Or, worse: “Oh, there it is. Now I can do x.”

Ugh.

How logical. How… insensitive.

The deal is — gameplay mechanics aren’t interesting or fun just because they exist. They exist to solve some kind of problem. That problem should usually have some emotional component, or consideration — since, ultimately, the goal of a videogame is to engage, to affect the player.

The player is not engaged, not affected, implicitly because he has a task and is told to complete it: there’s a barrier; now find a way across! Keep expanding! Affecting the player is a more subtle, more indirect process. The more mechanical, the more mathematical your design, the more artificial it feels. The more the player feels like he’s just being taken for a ride (in one sense or another), rather than having a human experience of some sort.

I think maybe the most interesting items in Zelda are the ones that don’t need to be there. The magic wand — there’s no reason for it, except that it’s special. It serves no purpose in the quest, lending that much more reality to the items which do serve a purpose. It’s more plausible that they’re not just there because the player will need them. It feels more like luck that the player can find a use for them.

And hell, there’s even a magic book — even more useless than the wand, as it serves no purpose but to add a second, unneeded function to the original, unneded function. Yet it’s in another dungeon, as another treasure linked to a previous treasure. These were treasures to someone, and now they’re treasures to Link, and the player.

The boomerang and magical boomerang are helpful, but never needed. The magical one, especially; it’s just another upgrade. And heck, they’re not even treasures in an official sense; you just pick them up from felled opponents. You MAKE them treasures.

Would the game not be as interesting if I actually needed all of this crap? I think that is so. I feel it is so. It’s special because it’s special to ME; not because I need it. I need my latch keys and my state ID, but they’re not special to me. What I consider treasures are the things which help me, which make my life more full — yet which I could, technically, function without.

I could survive without good food. That makes it all the easier to appreciate. I could survive without what people I care about (and they might not always be there for me); that makes me care about them. When you’re young, you don’t give a huge damn about your parents because you need them to survive. When you’re a teenager, they even become an obstacle for that same reason. When you’re older, and you don’t depend on them anymore, you can learn to appreciate them as people instead of as parents.

You see what I’m saying?

Silent Hill 4: The Room (Xbox/Konami) ***1/2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have been away for a few days. On the bus today, as I reflected on my return, I began to tense up. It was strange to feel; I thought I was cured of this. I haven’t had this sensation since I left home and found my own apartment. Then it struck me: bills. Obligations. I don’t have the rent this month. Reality. Fuck.

As long as I’m away, at least I am removed from these problems. I might be hit by a car, or I might get jostled by a street person or yelled at by a light rail employee or frowned at by a cashier at the market, or I might just lose my way — yet it’s a fantasy violence. I grit my teeth, shudder a bit, and move on. None of it matters.

When I come home, it matters. It’s all that matters. Home is reality. Today, I’m safe. No bills. There are no new surprises. I can relax. I am safe, for now.

This is the kind of horror that The Room depicts.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The Car Door is Miyazaki

  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Castle of Cagliostro is better than I expected, even knowing its reputation. What struck me after seeing it — aside from how reminded I was (and with good reason) of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door — was how imperfect the movie was. How imperfect Lupin seemed, in comparison to how he might have been. After all his effort and his skill and lucky chances, he, indeed, in a move which must put a gleam in Robert McKee’s eye, fails his mission.

This is part of the standard screenplay arc; the hero must rise to a height, then fall so he might rise again. See any boxing movie ever made, and note the moronic misunderstandings every couple must face three-quarters of the way through a romantic comedy, just so the man can make it up to the woman and they can realize how stupid they were for acting like completely different people just long enough to create tension. The difference here is, although we have a pretty good idea that Lupin will succeed, somehow, in the end, it never is certain. When he does succeed, he does it not because the plot demands it (although again, it does) so much as because he has earned it: not because he must, but because he might.

This works because we see him fail. Lupin is a flambuoyant man. He swings for the ropes, and although he knows what he’s doing, there’s a certain element of risk built into this behavior. Sure, Lupin can control himself — but that’s different from being in control. And with as small a window of success as his stunts need, if it’s not one darned thing it’s another.

Take a look at the episode on the rooftop, where Lupin intends to cross the several hundred yards of empty space, to a tower. He has one plan; life has another. That he is rescued by a sight gag — should we always be so fortunate — does little to dampen the near-disaster he put himself into. By the time Lupin does so suddenly, and arbitrarily, fall, we are prepared for it. We aren’t prepared in that we expect it; just in that it comes from somewhere. Yes, these things happen — and oh damn, he almost made it. It feels unfair, and frustrating — because we know on another day he might have succeeded. Chances are, he would have. Those are just the odds. What is all the more upsetting is that it is not until then we fully realize all that had been riding on Lupin. Even his archantagonist, Zenigata, had been on his side; with Lupin’s failure comes that realization so many antagonists come to: that without the protagonist, they have no reason to be.

The solution, then, is to stack the odds. The rest of the movie plays out much as one might expect: all the characters play to their strengths; the world is set to its normal order, perhaps a little wiser, perhaps a little sadder. We get perspective on the unending battle of the TV series. We feel wistful. And the oddly-silent credits roll.

Still, what we got is better than it need be. Better than, maybe, it should be, for what it is. A movie based on a long-running cartoon: this ain’t the kind of place you expect to go looking for truth, much less of the standalone sort. The characters jump into play with no real introduction; if you don’t already know the cast, why would you be watching a movie like this? No introductions are really needed, though. Relationships are implied, and used to the extent that the movie implies them. No one needs announce himself, as the personality is evident. One look from Lupin, and you know who Fujiko is — even if you don’t, really. She isn’t in the movie enough for it to matter, anyway. If you’re still burning for information, she clarifies the matter towards the end, saying nothing that first look didn’t.

I don’t know if I need to see this a dozen times. Then, for what the movie is, maybe it would be a failure if I did. It is worth the time, however.

Oh, and Konami almost certainly borrowed from this when designing Castlevania.