videogames

Spore: Pre-Production Through Prototyping

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Maxis Senior Development Director Eric Todd shifted foot to foot as Namco’s Keita Takahashi slowly gathered up his notes and folders, grin plastered to his face, slowed by the occasional autograph hunter. It seemed like every time Takahashi thought he was ready, he realized he had failed to retrieve something else. Eventually he cleared off the podium and exited stage left. Just as Eric Todd stepped forward, to belatedly start his lecture, Takahashi swooped by again to collect one last article before dashing to the hall doors, seeming suddenly preoccupied. Todd blinked at the audience and introduced himself.

“Prototyping”, Todd declared, “is the heart of a virtuous pre-production cycle”. He explained the premise of the lecture – that he would be discussing the value of experimental models before dedicating one’s self to any one approach to a software problem. He then explained that the following would be an “advanced” talk, that would assume you already knew what he was talking about – so he wouldn’t hold back in his explanations or references. Todd rattled off a list of books that the audience might do well reading, to better understand what he was about to say – none of which, it turned out, were altogether necessary.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Taninami, a thirteen-year veteran of Namco’s arcade division, was assigned five years ago to find a solution to the Japanese “network game problem”. Whereas the US has enjoyed about thirty-five years of network connectivity, online games have never really caught on in Japan; for some time, received wisdom placed the blame on a nonexistent or comparably obscure architecture. And yet, now that broadband is prevalent, the market still barely exists.

So why is that, Taninami asked. Flipping the question around, he then asked what makes network games fun. He concluded that pleasure comes in part from the game itself – provided it’s a good game – and in part from the company the player keeps. He called this situation a “relationship of multiplication”: if the opponent fails to play fairly, then the game fails to be enjoyable. As far as Taninami was concerned, that social angle was the biggest problem.

As Taninami had a limited budget, he figured there was no point in wasting resources on development, when there are already so many well-made games available; instead, he poured all of his attention into the network aspect, conducting reams on ridiculous reams of research on how to ensure a fun level of competition. For the game, he selected Counter-Strike, due to its popularity elsewhere in the world. He asked Valve for a license to promote the game in Japan; they said okay and everything was in order. Almost.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

“What’s Next?” Panel

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Following the theme of the 2006 conference, a panel of five industry veterans (of various levels of celebrity and influence) gathered to discuss “what’s next” for the game industry, what with the pending change of hardware generations, the new and changing attitudes about game design to come about in the last twelve months or so, and serious concerns about the stability and structure of the game industry as it is now.

Gathered for this occasion were EALA VP of creative development Louis Castle, NanaOn-sha president Masaya Matsuura, Midway art director Cyrus Lum, Cerny Games founder Mark Cerny, and the inimitable Dave Perry, formerly (and presumably eventually again) of Shiny Entertainment.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

An Existential Panel

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The panel stretched its joints by working out if there was any consensus as to how the balance of power is situated in the casual game universe. The thread of design was established to start at the developer and run through to the consumer in the following pattern:

Developer -> Publisher -> Distributor -> Retailer -> Customer

The implication seemed to be that the developer and the consumer should be the parties with the greatest degree of control, as they’re ultimately the parties that are communicating. Joel Brodie indeed opined that consumers are the ultimate controlling force; they buy what they want, and they don’t buy what they don’t want. Dave Williams figured the balance was pretty even among all parties. Mr. Gwertzman was certain that publishers and portals are the “God” in the equation, while Nixon and Welch agreed that retailers are the major factor in what gets seen and purchased, therefore what developments receive support.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

An Introduction to Casual Games

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

All day Tuesday, a board of twenty industry insiders swapped off on a series of panels dealing with the current state of the casual game industry. To start the proceedings, a selection of five speakers from a variegated spectrum of backgrounds outlined the basic nature of casual games, as they are today.

Unlike past years, the idea this time was to present an overall “übertheme”, broken down into digestible segments. That theme, roughly hewn, was a comparison of casual games now to where the industry was three years ago. On that note, since 2003, the industry has gone from about fifty million dollars in revenue, nearly all of which came from Internet downloads, to five times that sum in downloads alone; meanwhile, other revenue streams have become more important then before. There are now two annual conferences, dedicated to casual games. And even just as far as GDC representation, casual games have gone from a handful of sessions to over twenty related sessions, including this full-day tutorial.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Future of Mobile Gaming and its Enemies

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

EA Mobile senior VP (and former JAMDAT CEO) Mitch Lasky kicked off his keynote at the GDC Mobile segment of Game Developers Conference 2006 with an extended spiel about his history with JAMDAT Mobile, the changing fabric of the industry, and what he sees as the biggest obstacles (and avenues) to future growth and maturation.

According to Lasky, one of the biggest forces for change has been his own company, JAMDAT — and in its current form, as the mobile division of Electronic Arts, Lasky sees it as perhaps the most important force for future change.

Lasky explained how Jamdat went, as he put it, from a value of zero to $684,000,000 in six years. When they began, they were a team of six people; previous to the EA merger two months back, JAMDAT was already the biggest mobile publisher. To contrast, The amount EA paid for JAMDAT is five times greater than Maxis fetched, making it the biggest EA transaction to date.

Of course with this kind of growth, it is only natural for other developers to go public in search of similar success. Lasky suggested the search was ultimately futile, as at the time JAMDAT went public it was “fundamentally different.”

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

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.

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.

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.

Worlds Are Colliding!: The Convergence of Film and Games

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

This year’s final IGDA San Francisco/Bay Area Chapter meeting – held Tuesday, the sixth of December at the Sony Metreon’s Action Theater in San Francisco – featured three representatives from Industrial Light + Magic and two from LucasArts. The assembled personages spent an hour discussing how, thanks to their new joint facility in San Francisco’s Presidio district, they can share resources more easily than before.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Method

  • Reading time:5 mins read

So.

* Zelda 1 and 2.
* Dragon Quest in general.
* Riven.
* Shadow of the Colossus.
* Metroid II.
* Half-Life 2.
* Phantasy Star II.
* Metal Gear Solid 3, in particular.
* Lost in Blue.
* OutRun.

There is a common thread to all of these. It has to do with the gameworld, and the player’s method of interaction with it.

Stacking boxes to make your own path or eating the parrot in Half-Life and Metal Gear are the same as the magic wand in Zelda 1 or the structures in Wanda that serve no apparent purpose except to look at them, climb on them, stand on them, ponder about them. Building a spear in Lost in Blue is the same as gaining that level or buying that copper sword in Dragon Warrior, as finding a heart container or a boomerang in Zelda, as making that leap of logic in Riven, about that device halfway across the island.

The technique names in Phantasy Star are the same as the number system in Riven, as the clues in Zelda, as the Erdrick lore is in Dragon Warrior, as the artifacts are in Lost in Blue. And these are the same as the boxes and the parrot and the spear and the boomerang.

These are all different approaches toward the same, or similar, ideals. Player progression relies on personal growth and curiosity. Within its own laws, the gameworld is responsive to nearly all actions allowed the player. There is a strong focus on trial and error. On exploration on both the micro and macro levels. On pushing the limits of the gameworld to see what happens, and maybe being punished half the time. On intuitive leaps of reasoning, within the given laws. On patience. On innate appreciation of the intangible within a greater scheme.

The laws and structure of the gameworld are a framework filled with an open question. Rote progression is never a problem, and yet the purpose never particularly lies in the plot. Or in completion. Any story, any imposed goals are simply excuses. MacGuffins. They’re there to get you out the door. To give you an anchor, a point of reference. Maybe a path to walk down. The real joy, the really important material, comes in the unimportant treasures of providence provided by the player’s presence in the gameworld, by interfering as an outsider in a self-contained system.

The player, as Link in the first Zelda in particular, is not particularly meant to traverse Hyrule. He has no weapon. He has no defense. He has no health. There is no path specifically laid out for him, and yet there is a certain logic to be exploited — inconsistently, though consistently enough. At no point does the game call for the boomerang, or the wand. The game can probably be beaten without the sword, if the player is so inclined. Yet the tools are there to be made use of.

The world of Riven is alien to the player, and presents a barrier at every turn — and yet there is a logic behind it all; a reason why everything is where and as it is. As an outsider this lack of familiarity is an initial barrier. Later that same outside perspective and status puts the player in a rarified position. The simple joys of Riven come again from a whimsical turn of that same relationship with the gameworld — from sitting on a sun-baked stone stairwell, listening to the birds and the insects and the surf below. Imagining the coolness of the shadows and the moss on the stones. Appreciating what would go unappreciated were the player to belong here. Finding one’s own treasure in a broader system.

And yet none of these games are wholly open. Unlike Morrowind or Fallout or Baldur’s Gate, there is a clear and immediate structure. There is a limit to the options available to the player. The rules and the logic of the worlds are all simple and compact. There are only so many actions. There are only so many items. There are only so wide a world, so many levels, so many set pieces, so much of a variance in direction. There is a specific ultimate task before the player, a specific direction to move in. Save the princess. Learn about these Biomonsters. Figure out what’s going on in this world. Defeat the Metroids. Survive and maybe escape. Defeat the Colossi.

The secret to success in all cases is in understanding the reasoning of the gameworld, and the method of understanding — as in life — is experimentation. It is in the quirks, the exceptions, the trivialities — that with no clear explanation — that the searching mind finds the most wonder and curiosity. And it is in these quirks that such a mind imbues the most meaning, specifically for their lack of meaning, their lack of purpose. Their lack of structure, and all it implies about the gameworld and the player’s presence within it.

It is in these imperfections that we find beauty and we find reality. In which humanity and therefore something we identify as truth shows itself. In which we see hints of a structure or a randomness beyond our comprehension, that is greater than us, that is greater than our mission and yet that leads us to our fate. It is here that we find significance, that we find meaning, that we find verification for our continued efforts.

It is this which drives us on.

Yes, videogames are toys.

  • Reading time:6 mins read

I don’t think anyone’s saying that there isn’t human potential to videogames. It’s just that they aren’t really living up to that potential yet. Even in the best cases. Give ’em a couple of decades.

Ebert hasn’t spent much time with them. He hasn’t really thought about them. Freeman’s basically on mark in saying the problem is, we don’t really have the vocabulary down.

I responded to Ebert, telling him that although he was essentially right as far as he went with his argument, he was a little off base in what he was using to judge. He says the main problem with videogames is that they ask for user input, so there isn’t any “authorial control” to them. Well, sure there is. The control is, as with film or novels, in the rules that the fictional world goes by. The difference is really just in what the different media study.

Film is about the juxtaposition of imagery over time, and what that can do to us. Videogames are about cause and effect, and what that ultimately can do to us.

The reason most videogames are kind of trivial right now is that few games really bother with the idea of consequences. I don’t even necessarily mean within the gameworld itself, although in some cases that could be a good step. I just mean emotional consequences. Given that almost all videogames are based on physical violence, you can see how they’re a little hard to take seriously.

This is the problem with the whole “videogames are supposed to be fun!” argument. Not really. Videogames are supposed to elicit some kind of emotion in the player. It’s the quality of that emotion which the medium and indeed the game must be judged on. That, and the elegance with which the emotion is elicited.

This is not to imply that every videogame must be “serious” — meaning Important or Dark or Thoughtful or Artsy or what-have-you. Or that most should be. Or that any should be, really. I still can’t bring myself to play killer7 because the beginning annoyed me so much. I’m just saying that they should try to be a little more human, is all.

Ideally, every videogame offers us a unique perspective of the Way Things Are. The way life works. What the rules are, what the possibilities are.

Are there any videogames out there that revolve around the bizarre way rules work when you’re a child? I don’t mean the invisible walls that don’t let you explore that part of a level just “because I said so”. I mean all of the little lies and half-truths and simplifications that are handed to us, either to get us to obey or to shut up or to mask that our parents don’t really know the answer — or just to toy with us. What about a game that explores that world, and the fear that comes along with potentially violating a rule by accident. The fear that comes with being called in that certain tone of voice, even if you don’t remember doing anything bad.

There are so many interesting things to explore. Instead we’re mostly just collecting trinkets and shooting things. See something, shoot it, get points. Cause and effect. We’ve still yet to progress past Space Invaders.

I guess maybe the reason I like older games so much, especially things like scrolling shooters and fighting games, is how honest they are. Somewhere in the last fifteen years, between the RPG explosion and the SNES and 3D and full-motion video, things have gotten kind of distracted. There’s this idea that videogames are better than they ever have been, that because people have (in some cases) learned how to put together the old pieces rather more competently than before, we’re at the heights of the craft and the art of game design. It’s all inbred bullshit. A group hug about how great Videogames are for their own sake. It’s a lie, like William Gibson’s computer-generated pop stars. Or like pop music as a genre and an industry, really.

Everyone’s been so busy looking down that something’s gotten lost and no one’s much noticed: the justification for any of this shit being here to begin with. Why are we doing this? Why are we playing videogames? Why are they being made? The only answer is that it’s because they’re videogames!

…

Now. This is real, and it’s a real problem. Most people just don’t have a name for it yet. They don’t know how to describe it. The industry’s getting restless. People are always complaining about sequels and about EA and about lack of good IP. Japan’s gaming industry has been imploding for a while. People keep predicting crashes. People keep talking about how jaded they’re getting, and about how much better videogames used to be. To shrug off any of that, no matter how much you might be thrilled with things as they are now, is pretty hard to excuse.

For all the talk about how healthy the industry is, how much money it’s making, as a percentage of the population videogames have exactly the same market saturation they did twenty years ago, during the NES era. There’s just more on the market, and the people who buy videogames are getting older and buying more. New people aren’t really playing videogames. And if they are, they’re doing it at about the same rate as existing players grow disillusioned.

…

If modern videogames tend to take the player for granted, I guess it’s because they take videogames for granted. Everyone does, really. Videogames are videogames. They’re Mario and Pokemon and Grand Theft Auto and everything we’ve ever seen. That’s all kind of poisonous. It’s best we just put it out of our heads. Those are examples of what has been done with videogames. Most of them are very well-done, for what they are. They’re just sketches, though. Videogames can be so much more interesting. So much more relevant. To see how, don’t look at videogames; look into yourself. Look at your life. Look around your town. Look at the news. Society. Look at why you like anything. Look at what makes Catch-22 such a great work and not just a funny story about World War II.

For those of you have attained enlightenment from widget-gathering, feel free to ignore this whole argument.