I might have gone a little astray, because my last post didn't pertain to anything that was conspicuously stupid.
So let's talk about Super Street Fighter IV.
OK OK: I love the game. Every now and then I catch myself thinking that fighting games are somehow the one true videogame. Somehow, a game like Street Fighter, with its mind games, its one-on-one head-to-head mano-a-mano nature, and its harsh requirements of physical execution, encapsulates everything I want a game to be. But when Super Street Fighter IV was released as an update to ["Vanilla"] Street Fighter IV, something was horribly, horribly wrong.
The Super Street Fighter IV update introducted two new characters, Juri and Hakan. Like every character in the game, they can execute an uber-powerful Ultra Move, which can only be used after getting slapped around. It therefore functions as a dramatic come-back move. You input the controller motion for a single attack, but what comes out is an theatrically extended thrashing. You are treated to sit back and watch while your character automatically goes through all the (cartoonishly) violent motions.
It so happens that these new characters Juri and Hakan have the most uniquely passive and uneventful Ultra animations in the game. Their two Ultra Moves go the longest time without actually striking the enemy. Juri climbs onto the enemy, the camera zooms in, and she slowly makes an erotic threat for several seconds before beating down her target. Hakan, a cartoonish Turkish oil wrestler, comically spins the enemy's body around his slippery torso like a blazingly fast hula hoop, before launching him smashingly against the wall like a bullet.
Super Street Fighter IV is all about punching and kicking your opponent, but the two flagship characters who are supposed to compel us to buy the game have the most distinctly non-game-like Ultra Moves. By un-game-like, I mean they are exceedingly long and uneventful. The camera literally dwells on them while they do not attack. At these two moments, the game ceases to become a game, and furthermore the game expects you to love it.
Almost every Ultra move in the game becomes tiring after seeing them enough times, because they bring gameplay to a complete halt and they last for so long. As a comparison, Balrog (aka Boxer), who is an old returning character from earlier games, simply charges like a bull and lets out 5 devestating punches in quick succession. The camera never dwells. The player on the receiving end may literally feel like he has been hit. The victim has just enough time to realize he's going to get massively clobbered. He then gets clobbered, and the action quickly resumes.
The way that Juri's and Hakan's ultra moves are passive and movie-like, rather than game-like, is supposed to appeal to gamers and make them want to buy the game. Capcom was trying their damndest to sell this upgrade, which is part of an infamous history of incremental tweaks that are sold for full price, and for some sick reason the ace up their sleeve was to insert two inappropriate movies into the midst of battle. Fighting games at heart are immediate, direct, and demanding, but the flagship ultras of Super Street Fighter IV are the most passive elements in the game.
I see this as closely connected to the trend of game trailers that focus almost exclusively on cinematic cut-scenes that are disconnected from actual gameplay and player-control. The gamer is supposed to ooh and aah about how cinematic and movie-like these cut-scenes are, and then fork over their $60 for the privilege of watching them.
I don't know how to conclude, but this brilliant quote will do:
"Non-interactive scenes in a game are not reward, they are a punishment." -Adam Barenblat
8.20.2010
Running and Jumping All Over the Place
Nels Anderson recently asked why indie darlings are 2D platformers. Almost everything he states in the article (about audiences, etc) is true, but none of it really answers the question in the headline. The question should be split into 2 questions:
The commentators pounced on the first question (more or less lazily), but not the second. Obviously indie darlings are 2d because 2d is cheap and simple to program. Importantly, a 2D format also happens to makes it very easy to include inspired visual art. From this theory you would expect to find upon research that most indie games are 2D, not just darlings, and not just platformers.
Now the reason why they are platformers probably has something to do with the question of why ACTION games are such a dominant genre. And another way of asking the question is: why are darling games action-oriented platformers, rather than sports games, or pure puzzle games, or fighting games, or space shooters? Why do we want to run and jump all over the place?
My answer is that they're platformers because you DO THINGS in a platformer. It's usually limited to jumping, bopping, grabbing, or shooting, but all of these things feel really good! A game filled with charts and graphs, or with a deep intellectual understanding of the diamond trade (as mentioned by Anderson in his article), yes that could be cool, but you probably won't find me playing it. I want action.
Running, jumping, bopping, and grabbing, are PRIMAL acts for the majority of multi-cellular organisms on our planet. And they are action-packed! So a more interesting question is, why would anyone want to make a game about anything else? (And the answer would have something to do with the uniquely human pursuit of Edification, which would be an interesting study.) Working from this theory, you would expect to find that the preponderance of popular games has these elements, more or less, regardless of whether they are indie, or darlings, or 2d, or platformers.
Scrolling Platformers
I should mention that the only indie darling 2d platformers I really know about are Braid and Limbo. Both happen to be side-scrolling platformers, not just platformers, meaning your point of view moves from left to right as your character moves from left to right. Primitive platformers like Pitfall! and Donkey Kong had a stationary screen and stationary viewpoint while the characters simply moved around the screen. The scrolling nature of modern platformers is an integral part of their appeal.
Scrolling 2d Platformers allow for a *guided* ADVENTURE with a truly "moving" sense of progression, from present areas to unexplored areas. Every instant of a scrolling platformer gives you exploration and discovery, at the same time, which is psychologically stimulating. Or at least, a notable anthropologist here or there has assumed that an innate disposition toward exploration and discovery was an important factor in the spread of the human species across the globe, although I personally consider that to be a romanticized just-so story.
Moving from one area to another can mean progressing from one inspired piece of visual art to another, which is crucial for an "indie darling". In a platformer you literally TRAVERSE the terrain of a design opus. You don't do that in space shooters, where the scenery is usually vacuous space, and you certainly don't traverse terrain for its own sake in a sports games, or a pure puzzle games, or fighting games. In the case of Limbo or Canabalt, the terrain happens to be visionary.
In a "top-down" perspective game or platformer, the only variety in visuals comes from the floor or ground. When you move between different areas, the floor might switch from a grey concrete to brown floor, and the great top-down games like Metal Gear and Zelda managed to present interesting scenery from a quasi-top-down view. But in a side-view platformer, you have an entire visible world that stretches all the way to the horizon, which you can fill with visionary art and otherworldly ambience (see Limbo, Canabalt).
Other Factors
Gravity
2d platformers also assume gravity as a spicy backdrop by default. Every game must have forces that affect you, and rules that constrain you. The force of gravity has dramatic power in a platformer. It's a constant and familiar force that has important consequences for mortal characters. A precipice in any context is exciting, and if you have to enjoy a precipice in 2-dimensions, a side-view is best.
I'm waiting for a good designer to notice the common inextricable mix of gravity, 2d, and side-scrolling, and tear it apart to make something new. You might say that Braid did this, because it let you reverse time and rise back above a deadly pit that you were just pulled into. Bionic Commando also had a unique approach, because rather than letting you simply jump from platform to platform, it gave you a portable grappling hook from which you could swing and leap.
Heritage
An on top of all this, 2D platforms are easy for developers to conceive of because there's so many formative masterpieces that serve as precedents (Mario, Another World, Elevator Action) and that can be irresistible to the intuition during brainstorming. But I think these earlier platformers came into existence because of all the benefits offered by the format, which I laid out above.
Conclusion
Time and money constrains indie games to 2d, and a basic human desire for action (and art) constrains the popular ones to scrolling platformers. The combination of a 2D side-view perspective and the action of platforming can be especially poignant, because the very environment that you walk across and negotiate can be a traditional piece of graphic art. As the allure of 2D platformers changes shifts from violent combat action of shooting a machinegun at anything that appears on the screen to exploring a more deliberate visual aesthetic, as in Braid and Limbo, that's progress.
And if you ever contemplate why we have all these "platforming" games where all you do is run and jump all over the place, remember that our ancestors were tree-dwelling creatures.
1) Why are Indie Darlings 2D?
2) Why are Indie Darlings platformers?
The commentators pounced on the first question (more or less lazily), but not the second. Obviously indie darlings are 2d because 2d is cheap and simple to program. Importantly, a 2D format also happens to makes it very easy to include inspired visual art. From this theory you would expect to find upon research that most indie games are 2D, not just darlings, and not just platformers.
Now the reason why they are platformers probably has something to do with the question of why ACTION games are such a dominant genre. And another way of asking the question is: why are darling games action-oriented platformers, rather than sports games, or pure puzzle games, or fighting games, or space shooters? Why do we want to run and jump all over the place?
My answer is that they're platformers because you DO THINGS in a platformer. It's usually limited to jumping, bopping, grabbing, or shooting, but all of these things feel really good! A game filled with charts and graphs, or with a deep intellectual understanding of the diamond trade (as mentioned by Anderson in his article), yes that could be cool, but you probably won't find me playing it. I want action.
Running, jumping, bopping, and grabbing, are PRIMAL acts for the majority of multi-cellular organisms on our planet. And they are action-packed! So a more interesting question is, why would anyone want to make a game about anything else? (And the answer would have something to do with the uniquely human pursuit of Edification, which would be an interesting study.) Working from this theory, you would expect to find that the preponderance of popular games has these elements, more or less, regardless of whether they are indie, or darlings, or 2d, or platformers.
Scrolling Platformers
I should mention that the only indie darling 2d platformers I really know about are Braid and Limbo. Both happen to be side-scrolling platformers, not just platformers, meaning your point of view moves from left to right as your character moves from left to right. Primitive platformers like Pitfall! and Donkey Kong had a stationary screen and stationary viewpoint while the characters simply moved around the screen. The scrolling nature of modern platformers is an integral part of their appeal.
Scrolling 2d Platformers allow for a *guided* ADVENTURE with a truly "moving" sense of progression, from present areas to unexplored areas. Every instant of a scrolling platformer gives you exploration and discovery, at the same time, which is psychologically stimulating. Or at least, a notable anthropologist here or there has assumed that an innate disposition toward exploration and discovery was an important factor in the spread of the human species across the globe, although I personally consider that to be a romanticized just-so story.
Moving from one area to another can mean progressing from one inspired piece of visual art to another, which is crucial for an "indie darling". In a platformer you literally TRAVERSE the terrain of a design opus. You don't do that in space shooters, where the scenery is usually vacuous space, and you certainly don't traverse terrain for its own sake in a sports games, or a pure puzzle games, or fighting games. In the case of Limbo or Canabalt, the terrain happens to be visionary.
In a "top-down" perspective game or platformer, the only variety in visuals comes from the floor or ground. When you move between different areas, the floor might switch from a grey concrete to brown floor, and the great top-down games like Metal Gear and Zelda managed to present interesting scenery from a quasi-top-down view. But in a side-view platformer, you have an entire visible world that stretches all the way to the horizon, which you can fill with visionary art and otherworldly ambience (see Limbo, Canabalt).
Other Factors
Gravity
2d platformers also assume gravity as a spicy backdrop by default. Every game must have forces that affect you, and rules that constrain you. The force of gravity has dramatic power in a platformer. It's a constant and familiar force that has important consequences for mortal characters. A precipice in any context is exciting, and if you have to enjoy a precipice in 2-dimensions, a side-view is best.
I'm waiting for a good designer to notice the common inextricable mix of gravity, 2d, and side-scrolling, and tear it apart to make something new. You might say that Braid did this, because it let you reverse time and rise back above a deadly pit that you were just pulled into. Bionic Commando also had a unique approach, because rather than letting you simply jump from platform to platform, it gave you a portable grappling hook from which you could swing and leap.
Heritage
An on top of all this, 2D platforms are easy for developers to conceive of because there's so many formative masterpieces that serve as precedents (Mario, Another World, Elevator Action) and that can be irresistible to the intuition during brainstorming. But I think these earlier platformers came into existence because of all the benefits offered by the format, which I laid out above.
Conclusion
Time and money constrains indie games to 2d, and a basic human desire for action (and art) constrains the popular ones to scrolling platformers. The combination of a 2D side-view perspective and the action of platforming can be especially poignant, because the very environment that you walk across and negotiate can be a traditional piece of graphic art. As the allure of 2D platformers changes shifts from violent combat action of shooting a machinegun at anything that appears on the screen to exploring a more deliberate visual aesthetic, as in Braid and Limbo, that's progress.
And if you ever contemplate why we have all these "platforming" games where all you do is run and jump all over the place, remember that our ancestors were tree-dwelling creatures.
Games Aren't Narratives
Darby McDevitt at GamaSutra says:
I'm with McDevitt. Games don't do narrative well. But wait, there's good news! Games do other things well, which I'll get to in a minute.
I want to go even one step further than him: there is no good reason why the point should even be considered contentious. Almost all the Characterization, Dialog, Plot, Drama, and Acting I've ever seen in games has been on the same level of quality as the script of an old porno or sci-fi B-movie. The dialog is as bad as a porno, and it's just as pointless. Games are an inferior medium for narrative, compared to books or film. The only reason that what McDevitt said is contentious is because modern technology has allowed game developers to become wannabe filmmakers, film being the dominant and most glamorous and most omnipotent art form currently in existence, whereas earlier game technology had no chance whatsoever of even remotely mimicking anything cinematic. Sadly many players actually *like* the wannabe-movie games.
Movies and books are superior for delivering narrative, because that's all they are. Games are superior for *doing things* and *having experiences* in a cool environment that is governed by particular rules. Games engage our motor systems, our tactical planning, our reflex system, and our feelings of "play" and power and capability.. They also happen to be a prime medium for great visual and aural ambience-- for aesthetic treats-- though this is hardly ever exploited in any remarkable way, simply because artistic talent and vision is such a precious and limited resource. Anyway, a game lets you jump off of a skyscraper and live, or repel a battalion of crazed stalinists. Movies and words don't.
Imagine the best game ever, given current technology, and imagine for a moment that it is universally undisputed that it is the Best Game Ever. Let's say, just for the heck of it, that it involves your character doing a lot of running/jumping/grabbing, all of which appear in many popular games, and all of which are primordial and inherently exciting actions shared by almost every living organism on earth. Imagine that every kid on your block is going around saying "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!", and you play it, and you actually agree with them. Now imagine that it happens to have amazing dialog and acting, and a great story. My point and my contention is that if you removed all the amazing dialog, acting, and story-- just cut it out completely-- it wouldn't change anybody's reaction to the game, unless they are some kind of dim-wit who was actually bored by the game itself to begin with. A good game is enhanced by great narrative/cinematic elements, but it is so rare and so uncommon for those things to be done well that it really shouldn't even be encouraged. For me: Geometry Wars, Outrun 2, Street Fighter, Limbo, and Quake 2 MULTIPLAYER are what I would call benchmarks for "pure games" because they are outstanding and have no baloney; Modern Warfare and Super Metroid are rare examples of great games that masterfully, rather than crappily, incorporate narrative elements (like "words") that you read or hear.)
Enough with meaning. I *want* more of a focus on fun, not meaning. I want more of a focus not just on fun, but on the SPIRIT of fun. The spirit of fun is CHEERFUL. I'm sick of chainsaws and blood, and I'm sick of that being such a popular idea of "fun". I'm sick of cringe-inducing dialog lines that are supposed to have some profound relevance to society, or politics, or warfare. I like explosions, but I'm sick of deadly interpersonal violence. Maybe I'm straying from the point, which is that games are an inferior medium for "narrative", and furthermore that most developers are amateurs when it comes to narrative.
Within an interactive medium, my freedom and choices should not be constrained by some developer's half-baked amateurish script or vague recollections of high school english class. They should only be constrained by the rules of the game, and by the constraints of a well-crafted environment. If a developer is really good at "meaning" than he or she should be making movies, writing books, or serving as a well-paid consultant to a talented game designer.
"The needs of gameplay impose harsh demands on writers that must be heeded -- demands that novelists and filmmakers can ignore -- and create a bottleneck that forces redundancy. [...] It is a contentious point, but I strongly believe the claim that games are primarily about what the player does, and not necessarily the story or theme."
I'm with McDevitt. Games don't do narrative well. But wait, there's good news! Games do other things well, which I'll get to in a minute.
I want to go even one step further than him: there is no good reason why the point should even be considered contentious. Almost all the Characterization, Dialog, Plot, Drama, and Acting I've ever seen in games has been on the same level of quality as the script of an old porno or sci-fi B-movie. The dialog is as bad as a porno, and it's just as pointless. Games are an inferior medium for narrative, compared to books or film. The only reason that what McDevitt said is contentious is because modern technology has allowed game developers to become wannabe filmmakers, film being the dominant and most glamorous and most omnipotent art form currently in existence, whereas earlier game technology had no chance whatsoever of even remotely mimicking anything cinematic. Sadly many players actually *like* the wannabe-movie games.
Movies and books are superior for delivering narrative, because that's all they are. Games are superior for *doing things* and *having experiences* in a cool environment that is governed by particular rules. Games engage our motor systems, our tactical planning, our reflex system, and our feelings of "play" and power and capability.. They also happen to be a prime medium for great visual and aural ambience-- for aesthetic treats-- though this is hardly ever exploited in any remarkable way, simply because artistic talent and vision is such a precious and limited resource. Anyway, a game lets you jump off of a skyscraper and live, or repel a battalion of crazed stalinists. Movies and words don't.
Imagine the best game ever, given current technology, and imagine for a moment that it is universally undisputed that it is the Best Game Ever. Let's say, just for the heck of it, that it involves your character doing a lot of running/jumping/grabbing, all of which appear in many popular games, and all of which are primordial and inherently exciting actions shared by almost every living organism on earth. Imagine that every kid on your block is going around saying "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!", and you play it, and you actually agree with them. Now imagine that it happens to have amazing dialog and acting, and a great story. My point and my contention is that if you removed all the amazing dialog, acting, and story-- just cut it out completely-- it wouldn't change anybody's reaction to the game, unless they are some kind of dim-wit who was actually bored by the game itself to begin with. A good game is enhanced by great narrative/cinematic elements, but it is so rare and so uncommon for those things to be done well that it really shouldn't even be encouraged. For me: Geometry Wars, Outrun 2, Street Fighter, Limbo, and Quake 2 MULTIPLAYER are what I would call benchmarks for "pure games" because they are outstanding and have no baloney; Modern Warfare and Super Metroid are rare examples of great games that masterfully, rather than crappily, incorporate narrative elements (like "words") that you read or hear.)
Enough with meaning. I *want* more of a focus on fun, not meaning. I want more of a focus not just on fun, but on the SPIRIT of fun. The spirit of fun is CHEERFUL. I'm sick of chainsaws and blood, and I'm sick of that being such a popular idea of "fun". I'm sick of cringe-inducing dialog lines that are supposed to have some profound relevance to society, or politics, or warfare. I like explosions, but I'm sick of deadly interpersonal violence. Maybe I'm straying from the point, which is that games are an inferior medium for "narrative", and furthermore that most developers are amateurs when it comes to narrative.
Within an interactive medium, my freedom and choices should not be constrained by some developer's half-baked amateurish script or vague recollections of high school english class. They should only be constrained by the rules of the game, and by the constraints of a well-crafted environment. If a developer is really good at "meaning" than he or she should be making movies, writing books, or serving as a well-paid consultant to a talented game designer.
2.18.2010
Batman's Decrypter, or: Pressing Buttons is Fun!
The decryption gadget in Batman: Arkham Asylum is a glorious little nugget of excellent game design.
In the game, you pull out Batman's handheld decryptor gadget when you want to disable an electric forcefield that has obstructed your progress. More specifically, you use the gadget to short-circuit the control panel that controls the forcefield. The decryptor itself looks roughly like a cellular phone, but the important thing is that it presents a kind of mini-game to the player.
Imagine that you walk into a room with two old fasioned clocks. The clocks will open up the door to a secret passage, but you have to set each clock's hour hand to the correct hour to trigger the door. The mini-game is hard to explain, but it's kind of like that, except the hour hands on the clocks are replaced by two analog sticks underneath your thumbs, which happen to move within the confines of a circular edge.
Anyway, the mini-game has four important elements that are crafted so well that I think they illustrate great game design in general:
1. Control
You must physically move your thumbs around on your two analog sticks, somewhat like trying to tune two different radio tuner knobs at the same time, until the two positions of the sticks harmonize with each other. Once they do, the security terminal blows-out, the force-field gate disappears, and you continue on your journey unobstructed. You can think of each force-field as having a "code" in the form of two clocks: for example, 1 o'clock and 6 o'clock. When you move your left thumb-stick to the 1 o'clock position, while holding your right thumb at the 6 o'clock position, a kind of "resonance" is produced by the decryptor which blows out the electronic security panel.
Every security lock has a different combination of frequencies (or clock positions, if you want to call them that, although there's much finer resolution than the 12 notches of a clock), so you have to play the mini-game anew whenever you encounter an electric forcefield. You must twiddle your thumbs, as if fiddling with two radio tuners, in order to arrive at the right combination of the two sticks. And you must hold the correct combination of positions for about a second or two, meaning you often have to do "fine-tuning" as you get closer to your goal. Sometimes you must do this fiddling in a hurry, because poison gas is filling the room or a bomb is about to go off, or what have you. Wonderful.
2. Graphical Feedback
As you move each stick closer to the correct position to blow the lock, a graphical oscilloscope-ish gives you graphical feedback about whether you are getting closer or further from the correct position. The waves displayed on the gadget's screen move frantically when you approach the harmony of the two stick positions. If your two stick positions are completely wrong, the waves on the scope barely move at all, and you know it. It's somewhat like being told "hotter!" or "colder!" when play that game where you search for a hidden object with your eyes closed.
Aside from moving more quickly or slowly, the waves on the retro-looking oscilloscope change in color from brown to green as you get closer to the solution. (And then back to brown again as you accidentally slip past the right position, and try to fine-tune.)
3. Audible Feedback
Sound effects also clue you in to your progress. As you get closer to the correct position (for the given electronic lock that you are trying to decrypt), a delightful whirly/whistley sound gets louder and more highly-pitched. If you get close to the correct position, but lose it again by continuing to move your thumbs, the warbling/radio-like sound effect gets lower and more dull.
The entire mini-game is highly tangible, highly visible, and highly audible. For that reason it's a prime example of good game design, and of what video games are supposed to be all about.
The icing on the cake is when you successfully blow the lock. The terminal blows up in a small shower of smoke and loud sparks. I love it. You get so much feedback about the effort you're putting in, and about how close you are to overloading the lock, and about how DEAD that lock is once you beat it.
Some other icing on the cake is that you literally see Batman's own thumbs mimic your own movements, because your physical controller very closely resembles the fictional decryptor depicted in the game.
Pressing buttons is fun! Turning knobs is fun! And these actions actually mesh with something important that's happening in the game world. It's phenomenal.
The Sad Counter-Example
I have a completely opposite example, of a terribly implemented game nugget, and it comes from Modern Warfare 2, which otherwise does everything so well. In Modern Warfare 2, you sometimes have to place explosives on a door in order to blast it open and attack the enemies inside. What you do is go up to the door, then press a single button on your controller. That single button press initiates a rather long sequence of completely discrete actions: your character pulls out some explosives, then places them on the door, then steps backward a little bit (to avoid the upcoming explosion), then detonates the explosive, then returns to the newly opened doorway so he can start shooting.
Rather than immersing the player with meaningful and relevant button-presses (for placing the bomb, and then detonating it), the game basically plays a short movie for you while your character does all the work. In Batman, the player does all the work, and Batman mimics it onscreen.
Everybody knows it's fun to plant an explosive in a game, and then press down on a button to make it blow-up at the exact moment of your slightest whim. So I don't know what went wrong with Modern Warfare 2.
In the game, you pull out Batman's handheld decryptor gadget when you want to disable an electric forcefield that has obstructed your progress. More specifically, you use the gadget to short-circuit the control panel that controls the forcefield. The decryptor itself looks roughly like a cellular phone, but the important thing is that it presents a kind of mini-game to the player.
Imagine that you walk into a room with two old fasioned clocks. The clocks will open up the door to a secret passage, but you have to set each clock's hour hand to the correct hour to trigger the door. The mini-game is hard to explain, but it's kind of like that, except the hour hands on the clocks are replaced by two analog sticks underneath your thumbs, which happen to move within the confines of a circular edge.
Anyway, the mini-game has four important elements that are crafted so well that I think they illustrate great game design in general:
1. Control
You must physically move your thumbs around on your two analog sticks, somewhat like trying to tune two different radio tuner knobs at the same time, until the two positions of the sticks harmonize with each other. Once they do, the security terminal blows-out, the force-field gate disappears, and you continue on your journey unobstructed. You can think of each force-field as having a "code" in the form of two clocks: for example, 1 o'clock and 6 o'clock. When you move your left thumb-stick to the 1 o'clock position, while holding your right thumb at the 6 o'clock position, a kind of "resonance" is produced by the decryptor which blows out the electronic security panel.
Every security lock has a different combination of frequencies (or clock positions, if you want to call them that, although there's much finer resolution than the 12 notches of a clock), so you have to play the mini-game anew whenever you encounter an electric forcefield. You must twiddle your thumbs, as if fiddling with two radio tuners, in order to arrive at the right combination of the two sticks. And you must hold the correct combination of positions for about a second or two, meaning you often have to do "fine-tuning" as you get closer to your goal. Sometimes you must do this fiddling in a hurry, because poison gas is filling the room or a bomb is about to go off, or what have you. Wonderful.
2. Graphical Feedback
As you move each stick closer to the correct position to blow the lock, a graphical oscilloscope-ish gives you graphical feedback about whether you are getting closer or further from the correct position. The waves displayed on the gadget's screen move frantically when you approach the harmony of the two stick positions. If your two stick positions are completely wrong, the waves on the scope barely move at all, and you know it. It's somewhat like being told "hotter!" or "colder!" when play that game where you search for a hidden object with your eyes closed.
Aside from moving more quickly or slowly, the waves on the retro-looking oscilloscope change in color from brown to green as you get closer to the solution. (And then back to brown again as you accidentally slip past the right position, and try to fine-tune.)
3. Audible Feedback
Sound effects also clue you in to your progress. As you get closer to the correct position (for the given electronic lock that you are trying to decrypt), a delightful whirly/whistley sound gets louder and more highly-pitched. If you get close to the correct position, but lose it again by continuing to move your thumbs, the warbling/radio-like sound effect gets lower and more dull.
The entire mini-game is highly tangible, highly visible, and highly audible. For that reason it's a prime example of good game design, and of what video games are supposed to be all about.
The icing on the cake is when you successfully blow the lock. The terminal blows up in a small shower of smoke and loud sparks. I love it. You get so much feedback about the effort you're putting in, and about how close you are to overloading the lock, and about how DEAD that lock is once you beat it.
Some other icing on the cake is that you literally see Batman's own thumbs mimic your own movements, because your physical controller very closely resembles the fictional decryptor depicted in the game.
Pressing buttons is fun! Turning knobs is fun! And these actions actually mesh with something important that's happening in the game world. It's phenomenal.
The Sad Counter-Example
I have a completely opposite example, of a terribly implemented game nugget, and it comes from Modern Warfare 2, which otherwise does everything so well. In Modern Warfare 2, you sometimes have to place explosives on a door in order to blast it open and attack the enemies inside. What you do is go up to the door, then press a single button on your controller. That single button press initiates a rather long sequence of completely discrete actions: your character pulls out some explosives, then places them on the door, then steps backward a little bit (to avoid the upcoming explosion), then detonates the explosive, then returns to the newly opened doorway so he can start shooting.
Rather than immersing the player with meaningful and relevant button-presses (for placing the bomb, and then detonating it), the game basically plays a short movie for you while your character does all the work. In Batman, the player does all the work, and Batman mimics it onscreen.
Everybody knows it's fun to plant an explosive in a game, and then press down on a button to make it blow-up at the exact moment of your slightest whim. So I don't know what went wrong with Modern Warfare 2.
10.26.2009
A New Kind of Helicopter Game
I watched James Cameron's fantastic True Lies recently. Near the end, Arnold Schwarzeneggar hangs down off the skids of a helicopter as he chases a runaway limousine that's careening down the rails of a never-ending bridge and his wife happens to be a terrified passenger in the limo's backseat. The driver is a lead-footed corpse who just got shot to death, which is why the car is out of control. Arnold's job of course, and the helicopter pilot's, is to get close enough to the limo to pluck the damsel up out of the sunroof and bring her to safety.
Too often games put us into the shoes of Arnold, the trooper's shoes. We get to be a big bad machoman blowing away legions of criminals and mercenaries. Why can't we be that helicopter pilot for once? Flying games are fun. Everybody knows this. And I want a modern flying/driving game that has rescue rather than combat at its core. (Or if not purely rescue, than some other non-violent utilities.)
Choplifter did something along these lines. You swooped down to daringly rescue hostages and prisoners in the middle of a combat zone. I wanna do that, and also maneuver a helicopter over the sun-roof of an out-of-control limo. This mission is complete when your partner-- who is hanging upside down off the skids-- touches his hand to the distressed damsel's hand.
There's some other scenarios out there in the universe I'm pretty sure. Maybe for another mission you can maneuver the chopper into a good position for your door-gunner/sniper to take out some terrorists who have ensconced themselves in various urban high-rises, and who are being very wiley and evase. See how easy it is to resort to violence as a game point? Violence is so solid, and direct, and discrete, and full of accomplishment, and full of tension. The key idea here is that you play as the pilot, not as a shooter. Bonus brownies to a developer who pulls off a modern chopper-pilot game without any secondary violence.
For other scenarios you can try to pursue fugitives who are on foot or driving like mad. Maybe sometimes, or all the time, you have a giant retractable magnet mounted on the underside of your chopper, which you can use to pluck the perp's vehicle right off the pavement and deliver them to the sheriff.
Hell, Dead Rising was a brilliant action game that focussed on a photojournalist. If somebody can make that a great game, somebody can make a great helicopter game. You could even sometimes (or all the time), be a news chopper trying to swoop down on the next big scoop. You could be the coast guard, trying to lower a hook down to a bunch of poor unfortunate shipwrecked people who are about to be eaten by sharks, and....it's really windy, which makes it hard to stay stable. Maybe you are trying to get into position for some Coast Guard agents to fast-rope down onto several small agile pirate boats, as they try to speed across the open ocean and fire missiles at you. Or maybe sometimes you just need to try to keep a spotlight trained on a tricky moving target.
And throughout all this, we need helicopter piloting controls that are at least as satisfying and fantastic as in Grand Theft Auto IV, which really for all its successes and failings, had absolutely fantastic helicopter controls. I'm talking criminally-overlooked helicopter controls.
I want that.
Too often games put us into the shoes of Arnold, the trooper's shoes. We get to be a big bad machoman blowing away legions of criminals and mercenaries. Why can't we be that helicopter pilot for once? Flying games are fun. Everybody knows this. And I want a modern flying/driving game that has rescue rather than combat at its core. (Or if not purely rescue, than some other non-violent utilities.)
Choplifter did something along these lines. You swooped down to daringly rescue hostages and prisoners in the middle of a combat zone. I wanna do that, and also maneuver a helicopter over the sun-roof of an out-of-control limo. This mission is complete when your partner-- who is hanging upside down off the skids-- touches his hand to the distressed damsel's hand.
There's some other scenarios out there in the universe I'm pretty sure. Maybe for another mission you can maneuver the chopper into a good position for your door-gunner/sniper to take out some terrorists who have ensconced themselves in various urban high-rises, and who are being very wiley and evase. See how easy it is to resort to violence as a game point? Violence is so solid, and direct, and discrete, and full of accomplishment, and full of tension. The key idea here is that you play as the pilot, not as a shooter. Bonus brownies to a developer who pulls off a modern chopper-pilot game without any secondary violence.
For other scenarios you can try to pursue fugitives who are on foot or driving like mad. Maybe sometimes, or all the time, you have a giant retractable magnet mounted on the underside of your chopper, which you can use to pluck the perp's vehicle right off the pavement and deliver them to the sheriff.
Hell, Dead Rising was a brilliant action game that focussed on a photojournalist. If somebody can make that a great game, somebody can make a great helicopter game. You could even sometimes (or all the time), be a news chopper trying to swoop down on the next big scoop. You could be the coast guard, trying to lower a hook down to a bunch of poor unfortunate shipwrecked people who are about to be eaten by sharks, and....it's really windy, which makes it hard to stay stable. Maybe you are trying to get into position for some Coast Guard agents to fast-rope down onto several small agile pirate boats, as they try to speed across the open ocean and fire missiles at you. Or maybe sometimes you just need to try to keep a spotlight trained on a tricky moving target.
And throughout all this, we need helicopter piloting controls that are at least as satisfying and fantastic as in Grand Theft Auto IV, which really for all its successes and failings, had absolutely fantastic helicopter controls. I'm talking criminally-overlooked helicopter controls.
I want that.
Redundant Controls
I recently booted up Prince of Persia only to find that the beautiful title screen art was sullied by the gigantic sentence "PRESS START BUTTON". Do we need an instruction telling us to press the button labelled "START" if we want to start?
Game developers have done everything humanly possible to make their games more like movies, and less like games. They've busted out trashy scripts, bad acting, terrible direction, inept camerawork, elaborately cheesy plot "twists", all in a vane attempt to be more 'cinematic'. I wish I could say they busted their asses, but they barely lift a finger in most cases so the results are garbage. But despite all this, they still muck up their beautiful title screens with nonsense like "PRESS START BUTTON".
The subtext of the sentence might be this: go ahead, it's ok to press the start button now. We're presently not in the middle of an ornate "cut-scene" or any long-winded exposition. Yes, we will eventually grab hold of your face and shove it down into this masterpiece of a game here, but we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Right now? It's ok to press START. You won't be missing anything. Our little title screen animation is finished. Nice while it lasted eh?
Maybe the subtext is that don't want their game to be confused with a movie, because their narrative elements and composition is so dramatic and mind-blowing! they're game is so incredible that it might be mistaken for a movie. If it weren't for the PRESS START MESSAGE plastered over the title screen, a crowd of curious movie-lovers might slowly accumulate on your couch waiting for you to pressing PLAY on the DVD player.
Isn't it ironic that the button for games is "START", while the button for movies is always "PLAY"? Think about those words for a moment. It's just further nightmarish proof, positive, that the gaming industry has its priorities horribly, horribly wrong.
Just as a sidenote: the "SELECT" button function has been redundant for decades, possibly centuries. Obviously instead of pressing a "SELECT" button, you can simply use your directional pad to move your cursor between the various choices available at the outset of a game (one or two-player, etc). Instead of pressing "START", you could simply hit one of your action buttons, A or B, to start the game. But there's something cute about naming a button after what it does. The "ESCAPE" key on a computer keyboard comes to mind, and I have this vague inkling that decades ago, in more primitive times when computer machines and code were big new untamed beasts, the key was much more meaningful than it is today.
Game developers have done everything humanly possible to make their games more like movies, and less like games. They've busted out trashy scripts, bad acting, terrible direction, inept camerawork, elaborately cheesy plot "twists", all in a vane attempt to be more 'cinematic'. I wish I could say they busted their asses, but they barely lift a finger in most cases so the results are garbage. But despite all this, they still muck up their beautiful title screens with nonsense like "PRESS START BUTTON".
The subtext of the sentence might be this: go ahead, it's ok to press the start button now. We're presently not in the middle of an ornate "cut-scene" or any long-winded exposition. Yes, we will eventually grab hold of your face and shove it down into this masterpiece of a game here, but we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Right now? It's ok to press START. You won't be missing anything. Our little title screen animation is finished. Nice while it lasted eh?
Maybe the subtext is that don't want their game to be confused with a movie, because their narrative elements and composition is so dramatic and mind-blowing! they're game is so incredible that it might be mistaken for a movie. If it weren't for the PRESS START MESSAGE plastered over the title screen, a crowd of curious movie-lovers might slowly accumulate on your couch waiting for you to pressing PLAY on the DVD player.
Isn't it ironic that the button for games is "START", while the button for movies is always "PLAY"? Think about those words for a moment. It's just further nightmarish proof, positive, that the gaming industry has its priorities horribly, horribly wrong.
Just as a sidenote: the "SELECT" button function has been redundant for decades, possibly centuries. Obviously instead of pressing a "SELECT" button, you can simply use your directional pad to move your cursor between the various choices available at the outset of a game (one or two-player, etc). Instead of pressing "START", you could simply hit one of your action buttons, A or B, to start the game. But there's something cute about naming a button after what it does. The "ESCAPE" key on a computer keyboard comes to mind, and I have this vague inkling that decades ago, in more primitive times when computer machines and code were big new untamed beasts, the key was much more meaningful than it is today.
10.06.2009
Betrayal as a Climactic Plot Point
What's with the fetish for being betrayed by characters who were sympathetic and friendly for almost the entire duration of the game? Sudden betrayals by long-time friends, on the flimsiest and most unexpected motivations, are a bizarre but commonplace part of narrative games. What gives? And what can we do about it?
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
FarCry 1
The support character Doyle, loyal to you throughout the game and voiced extremely well by the voice-actor Cornell Womack, suddenly turns on you at the very end. For what? Money, he says. He was only supporting you so you could do his dirty work.
Was it not enough that the game literally pits 30,000 gunmen against you? A legion of pirate mercenaries who want your head? The one friendly character has to betray you too, and then you have to execute him, and then you have to listen to your character make a heartless one-liner about killing your old friend. Pathetic.
FarCry 2
Had a big-boasted "Buddy System", where several characters of unique national origins (including several women) will come and save your life when you're in a pinch, provided that you have made them your buddy by rescuing them from hostage-takers. So far, so good. True: as characters these buddies were completely ruined by terrible voice direction--the voice acting was so uniformly stiff and vacuous that it has to be attributed to a single voice director or lead designer, rather than to multiple individual actors. Yet as game devices, the buddies were great. They swoop in with pistols blazing just as you collapse into a bloody heap in a hail of enemy gunfire, and they drag you to safety. What a sight for sore eyes, in a shooting game like FarCry 2.)
Then... what happens at the climax of the game? The game pits you against them, and you have to murder them one by one in a small arena, just to proceed. And it's not like some evil Roman emperor coerced you all into combat for his own amusement. No. The characters suddenly and genuinely wish to kill you. It's personal. After beating the game and reading the wiki I'm still confused about how the game's multiple-possible-endings work out (as a function of your choices in the game), but let me just say it was a pretty stupid plot development.
Mirror's Edge
One of your few prominent friends in Mirror's Edge, the incredible parkour game with a striking Swedish design aesthetic, turns against you. I'll give Mirror's Edge a pass though. First of all, I loved the game so much, but second of all her betrayal had some minimal amount of a real human element, and I actually find myself sympathizing with her motivation.
"I want to live, Faith-- not just survive," she explains, when the penny drops. The only way she sees to live a real life is to betray you and all her other associates and abandon the stressful business that you two previously partnered in. She sounds angry, tired, surrenderful, rather than villainous, even though she's fully resolved to sacrifice you for her own sake. So be it. There was enough subtext that the betrayal wasn't a train wreck out of left field. (Can this game do no wrong? It still warms my heart every time I try to criticize it.)
Crackdown
I loved the basic premise of this game! Here is the backstory, as understood at the outset: "This city has a big crime problem. The gangs have gotten out of control. You are a superhero cop, so get out there and destroy these gangs! Lift up automobiles and throw them at the gangsters. Leap off a skyscraper toward a bunch of gangbangers on the sidewalk, crack the cement when you land, and start kicking them in the face . Break the chain of command of the mafiosos, take out the head honchos!"
Perfect. Except at the end of the line you find out that your very own police agency allowed the gangs to come to power, in order to justify their own authoritarian crackdown. This is a somewhat common motif in dystopian fiction, and it's a politically relevant plot twist, so some part of me wants to let it slide. But like Doyle in "FarCry", the voice of your police chief was so VERY WELL ACTED, and very well established as a friendly character. Subverting the entire premise of the game is cheap and gimmicky, and completely pointless. The crackdown on crime was a self-sustaining narrative backdrop: "Use superhuman abilities to stop a crime wave." Excellent. Give us a break with the betrayals and twisted revelations!
FarCry 2 Again
Yes, FarCry 2 managed two gigantically stupid betrayals. So while your friends gang up to gleefully murder you altogether like it's a team sport, the violent sociopathic arms dealer who you have spent your entire journey trying to assassinate suddenly gets on the good foot, teams up with you, and sacrifices his life to save a group of refugees.
Come again? It's a reverse betrayal. I appreciate the idea in fiction that sometimes a mission you have been sent on by your superiors or caregivers sometimes bites you in the ass or reveals itself to be a sinister plot against you or against civilization at large. Great. When you're a hired gun, you have to be ready to find out that your employers don't really have a transparently virtuous goal in mind. But the asinine reverse betrayal of The Jackal in Far Cry 2 demonstrates that the problem is not limited to simple betrayal in a narrative, but inexplicable and inconsistent revelations about certain characters, sudden betrayals being only one instance of that.
"Find the Jackal, and kill him. He's somewhere among a thousand square miles of African savannah and jungle." That was supposed to be the game's premise! It's brilliant, it's simple. It's totally Heart of Darkness, it's totally Apocalypse Now. ...Except if Kurtz had a mood swing at the last minute and joined the Peace Corps. That's right. If only your commanders had better intel from the get-go and could have prepared you for the contingency that the bloodthirsty privateering terrorist and arms dealer The Jackal would jump into the good fight once you finally find him.
The developers or publishers evidently do not realize that the original supposed premise "Go into the jungle, and take this crazy bastard down" had MOMENTUM. It has power in simplicity. It is raw. It aligns with Apocalypse Now, an amazing classic film (which was based on Heart of Darkness.) It did not need to hobble and lean on the junky crutches of a lame "turn-around".
As bad as it was, it would have been more excusable if not for the other ridiculous betrayal they crammed into the narrative (see above).
BioShock
The BioShock team was definitely hellbent on creating the most ridiculous narrative betrayal ever in gaming history. The character who has been guiding you throughout your harrowing journey turns out to (exactly like Doyle from FarCry) have been misleading you purely for his own nefarious ends. Now that's par for the course. But it gets even worse. It turns out that you-- the player character-- are some kind of clone, or something, and your entire existence was pre-ordained by this evil deceiver, and every step you took on your journey was already programmed and brainwashed into your DNA, including the sensational and by all appearances completely coincidental accident (a plane crash) that started you on your journey, bla bla, bla. Wow, what an epiphany. You're really blowing my mind.
System Shock 2
Ah, the predecessor to BioShock, and vastly frightfully better than BioShock in every conceivable way.... and another "guide" character turns out to be a deception. (And this character is also a well acted one! Why the pattern? Are the well-acted ones the only ones that are memorable?) The deception earns a redemption by being so unique among game betrayals, so much so that I don't want to spoil it here.
OK I'll spoil it. You find that your wonderful guide character (who was a helpful voice on your radio) has killed herself, and she has been replaced on your radio by an evil sentient computer program, though I can't remember how much of the relationship was real and how much of it was a corrupt simulation by SHODAN. Yes, I know, all of this sounds incredibly corny if you haven't played and enjoyed the game, but when I found the good Doctor in the chair, in the projection/simulation room, with her gun on the floor nearby, it inspired anger and dread in me, connected wholly to the fictional villain rather than to the game's developers (as in all previous examples).
So....What Then?
The "epiphany betrayal" is nothing new or unique to games, but game developers and writers have taken the ball and run with it. It's an adventure-movie cliche that some character's superficially guides another character through a long journey, only to reveal that they were letting the adventurer do their own dirty deeds for them. ("I will show you how to complete steps 1, 2, 3, 4, ...100, so you can obtain the majestic and precious XYZ. Then I can steal it from you and leave you for dead right when you bring it to me!")
There is nothing that makes a betrayal inherently more dramatic or profound than some other interpersonal plot point. A breakdown in a relationship is much more likely to result from incompetence, cowardice, or some other basic imperfection, than from malice. An epiphany betrayal is an immature and inept overture toward drama. The artists are not crafty enough to see that it cancels out and negates previous conditions that already had more dramatic potential.
I've recently been watching a lot of Hong Kong action flicks by the director Johnny To. Many of them involve brotherhood-type groups of police officers, criminals, hired guns, and so on. Drama comes in when the characters are torn between harshly conflicting loyalties (and/or are forced to risk their own lives for the sake of their friends, often-times with some amount of reluctance). Their bonds of loyalty and admiration are tested, but never broken, except by the most vile and torturous forces (see Triad Election if you like watching that kind of thing, which I don't) . In one crazy scene (not in Triad Election), a low-level mobster is savagely beaten by a (slightly hesitant) enemy who wants him to reveal information that would compromise his crime family. The beaten man can only stupidly repeat the poetic lines of the blood oaths he took when he was initiated into the clan, all the way to the verge of death. As he lies dying, his attacker receives a cell phone call and learns that his own boss has temporarily joined forces with the dying man's boss. He hangs up the phone, promptly apologizes to the dying man, gives him aid, and they go onward to try to complete their new joint mission-- the formerly beaten man survives.
Now something about that is tacky, I know. It's partly the product of some superficial cultural meme about everlasting loyalty that goes back to ancient times, and of the mythos of crime families, and all this. But the point is, when you establish friendship and loyalty, that is a dramatic device in itself. Situations that strain those relationships are dramatic. A complete betrayal, for reasons that blindside you out of absolutely nowhere, is just stupid and gimmicky.
The weird thing about it isn't just that the betrayals of video game plots are completely inconsistent with the established story, but that the developers seem to think that "throwing a wrench into the mix! Completely upheaving the player's/viewer's understanding!" is mandatory for a good climax. Afterall, the friendship that was established over many hours of gameplay sufficed for those many hours of gameplay. There is no reason to ruin a good thing, artificially, with an incoherent betrayal, when there are already natural and man-made forces at play that can destroy your friendship from the outside, and which necessitated your friendship in the first place.
Would Lethal Weapon have been a good movie if Murtaugh suddenly put a gun to Riggs' head because the criminals paid him off? No. The idea that every game plot needs a "plot twist!" like that qualifies as a mental disease at this point. A betrayal is the BEGINNING of a good story about enemies (see: The Count of Monte Cristo, not the end of a story about friends.
The truly sad realization here is that the game writers at issue don't seem to realize that friendship, as a thing that exists in this indifferent/hostile/imperfect world, can be a perfectly dramatic entity in itself and does not require a betrayal to have a lasting effect on the player. The realization kind of creeps me out.
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
FarCry 1
The support character Doyle, loyal to you throughout the game and voiced extremely well by the voice-actor Cornell Womack, suddenly turns on you at the very end. For what? Money, he says. He was only supporting you so you could do his dirty work.
Was it not enough that the game literally pits 30,000 gunmen against you? A legion of pirate mercenaries who want your head? The one friendly character has to betray you too, and then you have to execute him, and then you have to listen to your character make a heartless one-liner about killing your old friend. Pathetic.
FarCry 2
Had a big-boasted "Buddy System", where several characters of unique national origins (including several women) will come and save your life when you're in a pinch, provided that you have made them your buddy by rescuing them from hostage-takers. So far, so good. True: as characters these buddies were completely ruined by terrible voice direction--the voice acting was so uniformly stiff and vacuous that it has to be attributed to a single voice director or lead designer, rather than to multiple individual actors. Yet as game devices, the buddies were great. They swoop in with pistols blazing just as you collapse into a bloody heap in a hail of enemy gunfire, and they drag you to safety. What a sight for sore eyes, in a shooting game like FarCry 2.)
Then... what happens at the climax of the game? The game pits you against them, and you have to murder them one by one in a small arena, just to proceed. And it's not like some evil Roman emperor coerced you all into combat for his own amusement. No. The characters suddenly and genuinely wish to kill you. It's personal. After beating the game and reading the wiki I'm still confused about how the game's multiple-possible-endings work out (as a function of your choices in the game), but let me just say it was a pretty stupid plot development.
Mirror's Edge
One of your few prominent friends in Mirror's Edge, the incredible parkour game with a striking Swedish design aesthetic, turns against you. I'll give Mirror's Edge a pass though. First of all, I loved the game so much, but second of all her betrayal had some minimal amount of a real human element, and I actually find myself sympathizing with her motivation.
"I want to live, Faith-- not just survive," she explains, when the penny drops. The only way she sees to live a real life is to betray you and all her other associates and abandon the stressful business that you two previously partnered in. She sounds angry, tired, surrenderful, rather than villainous, even though she's fully resolved to sacrifice you for her own sake. So be it. There was enough subtext that the betrayal wasn't a train wreck out of left field. (Can this game do no wrong? It still warms my heart every time I try to criticize it.)
Crackdown
I loved the basic premise of this game! Here is the backstory, as understood at the outset: "This city has a big crime problem. The gangs have gotten out of control. You are a superhero cop, so get out there and destroy these gangs! Lift up automobiles and throw them at the gangsters. Leap off a skyscraper toward a bunch of gangbangers on the sidewalk, crack the cement when you land, and start kicking them in the face . Break the chain of command of the mafiosos, take out the head honchos!"
Perfect. Except at the end of the line you find out that your very own police agency allowed the gangs to come to power, in order to justify their own authoritarian crackdown. This is a somewhat common motif in dystopian fiction, and it's a politically relevant plot twist, so some part of me wants to let it slide. But like Doyle in "FarCry", the voice of your police chief was so VERY WELL ACTED, and very well established as a friendly character. Subverting the entire premise of the game is cheap and gimmicky, and completely pointless. The crackdown on crime was a self-sustaining narrative backdrop: "Use superhuman abilities to stop a crime wave." Excellent. Give us a break with the betrayals and twisted revelations!
FarCry 2 Again
Yes, FarCry 2 managed two gigantically stupid betrayals. So while your friends gang up to gleefully murder you altogether like it's a team sport, the violent sociopathic arms dealer who you have spent your entire journey trying to assassinate suddenly gets on the good foot, teams up with you, and sacrifices his life to save a group of refugees.
Come again? It's a reverse betrayal. I appreciate the idea in fiction that sometimes a mission you have been sent on by your superiors or caregivers sometimes bites you in the ass or reveals itself to be a sinister plot against you or against civilization at large. Great. When you're a hired gun, you have to be ready to find out that your employers don't really have a transparently virtuous goal in mind. But the asinine reverse betrayal of The Jackal in Far Cry 2 demonstrates that the problem is not limited to simple betrayal in a narrative, but inexplicable and inconsistent revelations about certain characters, sudden betrayals being only one instance of that.
"Find the Jackal, and kill him. He's somewhere among a thousand square miles of African savannah and jungle." That was supposed to be the game's premise! It's brilliant, it's simple. It's totally Heart of Darkness, it's totally Apocalypse Now. ...Except if Kurtz had a mood swing at the last minute and joined the Peace Corps. That's right. If only your commanders had better intel from the get-go and could have prepared you for the contingency that the bloodthirsty privateering terrorist and arms dealer The Jackal would jump into the good fight once you finally find him.
The developers or publishers evidently do not realize that the original supposed premise "Go into the jungle, and take this crazy bastard down" had MOMENTUM. It has power in simplicity. It is raw. It aligns with Apocalypse Now, an amazing classic film (which was based on Heart of Darkness.) It did not need to hobble and lean on the junky crutches of a lame "turn-around".
As bad as it was, it would have been more excusable if not for the other ridiculous betrayal they crammed into the narrative (see above).
BioShock
The BioShock team was definitely hellbent on creating the most ridiculous narrative betrayal ever in gaming history. The character who has been guiding you throughout your harrowing journey turns out to (exactly like Doyle from FarCry) have been misleading you purely for his own nefarious ends. Now that's par for the course. But it gets even worse. It turns out that you-- the player character-- are some kind of clone, or something, and your entire existence was pre-ordained by this evil deceiver, and every step you took on your journey was already programmed and brainwashed into your DNA, including the sensational and by all appearances completely coincidental accident (a plane crash) that started you on your journey, bla bla, bla. Wow, what an epiphany. You're really blowing my mind.
System Shock 2
Ah, the predecessor to BioShock, and vastly frightfully better than BioShock in every conceivable way.... and another "guide" character turns out to be a deception. (And this character is also a well acted one! Why the pattern? Are the well-acted ones the only ones that are memorable?) The deception earns a redemption by being so unique among game betrayals, so much so that I don't want to spoil it here.
OK I'll spoil it. You find that your wonderful guide character (who was a helpful voice on your radio) has killed herself, and she has been replaced on your radio by an evil sentient computer program, though I can't remember how much of the relationship was real and how much of it was a corrupt simulation by SHODAN. Yes, I know, all of this sounds incredibly corny if you haven't played and enjoyed the game, but when I found the good Doctor in the chair, in the projection/simulation room, with her gun on the floor nearby, it inspired anger and dread in me, connected wholly to the fictional villain rather than to the game's developers (as in all previous examples).
So....What Then?
The "epiphany betrayal" is nothing new or unique to games, but game developers and writers have taken the ball and run with it. It's an adventure-movie cliche that some character's superficially guides another character through a long journey, only to reveal that they were letting the adventurer do their own dirty deeds for them. ("I will show you how to complete steps 1, 2, 3, 4, ...100, so you can obtain the majestic and precious XYZ. Then I can steal it from you and leave you for dead right when you bring it to me!")
There is nothing that makes a betrayal inherently more dramatic or profound than some other interpersonal plot point. A breakdown in a relationship is much more likely to result from incompetence, cowardice, or some other basic imperfection, than from malice. An epiphany betrayal is an immature and inept overture toward drama. The artists are not crafty enough to see that it cancels out and negates previous conditions that already had more dramatic potential.
I've recently been watching a lot of Hong Kong action flicks by the director Johnny To. Many of them involve brotherhood-type groups of police officers, criminals, hired guns, and so on. Drama comes in when the characters are torn between harshly conflicting loyalties (and/or are forced to risk their own lives for the sake of their friends, often-times with some amount of reluctance). Their bonds of loyalty and admiration are tested, but never broken, except by the most vile and torturous forces (see Triad Election if you like watching that kind of thing, which I don't) . In one crazy scene (not in Triad Election), a low-level mobster is savagely beaten by a (slightly hesitant) enemy who wants him to reveal information that would compromise his crime family. The beaten man can only stupidly repeat the poetic lines of the blood oaths he took when he was initiated into the clan, all the way to the verge of death. As he lies dying, his attacker receives a cell phone call and learns that his own boss has temporarily joined forces with the dying man's boss. He hangs up the phone, promptly apologizes to the dying man, gives him aid, and they go onward to try to complete their new joint mission-- the formerly beaten man survives.
Now something about that is tacky, I know. It's partly the product of some superficial cultural meme about everlasting loyalty that goes back to ancient times, and of the mythos of crime families, and all this. But the point is, when you establish friendship and loyalty, that is a dramatic device in itself. Situations that strain those relationships are dramatic. A complete betrayal, for reasons that blindside you out of absolutely nowhere, is just stupid and gimmicky.
The weird thing about it isn't just that the betrayals of video game plots are completely inconsistent with the established story, but that the developers seem to think that "throwing a wrench into the mix! Completely upheaving the player's/viewer's understanding!" is mandatory for a good climax. Afterall, the friendship that was established over many hours of gameplay sufficed for those many hours of gameplay. There is no reason to ruin a good thing, artificially, with an incoherent betrayal, when there are already natural and man-made forces at play that can destroy your friendship from the outside, and which necessitated your friendship in the first place.
Would Lethal Weapon have been a good movie if Murtaugh suddenly put a gun to Riggs' head because the criminals paid him off? No. The idea that every game plot needs a "plot twist!" like that qualifies as a mental disease at this point. A betrayal is the BEGINNING of a good story about enemies (see: The Count of Monte Cristo, not the end of a story about friends.
The truly sad realization here is that the game writers at issue don't seem to realize that friendship, as a thing that exists in this indifferent/hostile/imperfect world, can be a perfectly dramatic entity in itself and does not require a betrayal to have a lasting effect on the player. The realization kind of creeps me out.
9.19.2009
A Game We Need: A Sprawling Parkour Beat-Em-Up
What we need is a game that mixes the parkour of Mirror's Edge with the fluid fighting dynamics of Batman: Arkham Asylum with the urban mayhem of District B13 and Hong Kong gangster movies.
Instead of the stealth / combat split in Arkham Asylum the game would be split between evasive parkour when you're trying to traverse or escape an area and then combat when you're confronted or cornered--or simply when you just feel like dishing some out.
It would take place in first person like Mirror's Edge, for that added oomph. All or most of the fighting is hand-to-hand, because weapons only slow you down. You can dodge and fight your way through a legion of goons while escaping an apartment building. There can be a restaurant shoot-out where you dive behind the bar as a team of gunmen open fire. While they're reloading you dive out to knockout as many as you can before they complete their reload (as signalled by some kind of "DANGER!" icon, arcade style, or simply by tense music) and you dive back again for safety. You should obviously have to run and slide underneath a Big Rig at some point (how did Mirror's Edge miss this?). The spirit of it all would be similar to ONG-BAK , which combined martial arts with athletic escape/chase sequences.
Another fight between you and a small mob can take place on train tracks or a freeway while dodge the oncoming traffic.
I want the immediacy and parkour of Mirror's Edge, but with more enemies and a more developed hand-to-hand fighting system. Later on you can use jiujutsu, which was developed to attack the joints and other vulnerable targets of guys wearing ancient combat armor, against armored SWAT officers. The instant 180 degree spin move of Mirror's Edge should be coupled with attack functions, like punches or kicks, for that good old fashion roundhouse.
The Missed Opportunities of Mirror's Edge
Furthermore the parkour engine could be more developed than Mirror's Edge. That game never required you to use any hanging maneuvers on ledges to descend dangerously great heights. It never required you to press yourself up against the inside of an elevator to avoid gunfire while the doors closed. It never required you to precariously shuffle across the window sills of skyscrapers. Though the game focused on eluding the police by using rooftops and so forth, none of it ever had the brilliance or urgency of Jason Bourne's escape from the hotel while the SWAT team moved through the building in The Bourne Supremacy. The game never includes any actual use of the "kung-fu pop-up with your legs while laying on your back" or "Backwards-roll to standing position after being knocked on your butt" moves. They were included as executable maneuvers, but never had any purpose. Mirror's Edge also never incorporated the "Foot-first Submariner" as I call it, which you can see in Das Boot. A character dives foward feet-first through a small hole with the aid of some kind of hand-hold above the entrance to the hole, somewhat like jumping feet-first into an enclosed tube slide. Jackie Chan did a similar move to get through a small opening above a doorway, but I forget the movie. All of these movies would have meshed easily with the simple control system of up/down movements.
Games like Dynamite Cop, Mirror's Edge, and Final Fight are the main influences I have in mind.
Obviously there should be lots of broken tables, chairs, glass, and railings, as you lay the smackdown and run for your life. That goes without saying. You can even be cornered inside a small plant shop. The mobster goons come inside and put themselves between you and the door. "The only way out of here is through us," they say. So then you dash toward them, side-step, and jump straight through the shop's plate glass display window.
I have no idea what the reason is for having to escape. "Reasons" are pretty overblown anyway these days. Game developers talk about narrative, but because they are game developers and programmers rather than talented directors or authors, their storylines and dialog are usually inept. I would love it if the story was kafkaesque. You simply wake up one day and everybody in the city wants to pummel you. Then as you make your violent and haphazard escape, you only anger more and more parties still, including organized crime.
That's what I want.
Instead of the stealth / combat split in Arkham Asylum the game would be split between evasive parkour when you're trying to traverse or escape an area and then combat when you're confronted or cornered--or simply when you just feel like dishing some out.
It would take place in first person like Mirror's Edge, for that added oomph. All or most of the fighting is hand-to-hand, because weapons only slow you down. You can dodge and fight your way through a legion of goons while escaping an apartment building. There can be a restaurant shoot-out where you dive behind the bar as a team of gunmen open fire. While they're reloading you dive out to knockout as many as you can before they complete their reload (as signalled by some kind of "DANGER!" icon, arcade style, or simply by tense music) and you dive back again for safety. You should obviously have to run and slide underneath a Big Rig at some point (how did Mirror's Edge miss this?). The spirit of it all would be similar to ONG-BAK , which combined martial arts with athletic escape/chase sequences.
Another fight between you and a small mob can take place on train tracks or a freeway while dodge the oncoming traffic.
I want the immediacy and parkour of Mirror's Edge, but with more enemies and a more developed hand-to-hand fighting system. Later on you can use jiujutsu, which was developed to attack the joints and other vulnerable targets of guys wearing ancient combat armor, against armored SWAT officers. The instant 180 degree spin move of Mirror's Edge should be coupled with attack functions, like punches or kicks, for that good old fashion roundhouse.
The Missed Opportunities of Mirror's Edge
Furthermore the parkour engine could be more developed than Mirror's Edge. That game never required you to use any hanging maneuvers on ledges to descend dangerously great heights. It never required you to press yourself up against the inside of an elevator to avoid gunfire while the doors closed. It never required you to precariously shuffle across the window sills of skyscrapers. Though the game focused on eluding the police by using rooftops and so forth, none of it ever had the brilliance or urgency of Jason Bourne's escape from the hotel while the SWAT team moved through the building in The Bourne Supremacy. The game never includes any actual use of the "kung-fu pop-up with your legs while laying on your back" or "Backwards-roll to standing position after being knocked on your butt" moves. They were included as executable maneuvers, but never had any purpose. Mirror's Edge also never incorporated the "Foot-first Submariner" as I call it, which you can see in Das Boot. A character dives foward feet-first through a small hole with the aid of some kind of hand-hold above the entrance to the hole, somewhat like jumping feet-first into an enclosed tube slide. Jackie Chan did a similar move to get through a small opening above a doorway, but I forget the movie. All of these movies would have meshed easily with the simple control system of up/down movements.
Games like Dynamite Cop, Mirror's Edge, and Final Fight are the main influences I have in mind.
Obviously there should be lots of broken tables, chairs, glass, and railings, as you lay the smackdown and run for your life. That goes without saying. You can even be cornered inside a small plant shop. The mobster goons come inside and put themselves between you and the door. "The only way out of here is through us," they say. So then you dash toward them, side-step, and jump straight through the shop's plate glass display window.
I have no idea what the reason is for having to escape. "Reasons" are pretty overblown anyway these days. Game developers talk about narrative, but because they are game developers and programmers rather than talented directors or authors, their storylines and dialog are usually inept. I would love it if the story was kafkaesque. You simply wake up one day and everybody in the city wants to pummel you. Then as you make your violent and haphazard escape, you only anger more and more parties still, including organized crime.
That's what I want.
1.19.2009
Terrible Covert Art
Look at these two different versions of the Ico cover art and compare them in your mind.
(American release):
(Japan/Europe release):
Notice anything strange? Notice how the game that was released for Japan and Europe has the greatest cover art of all time. It's a direct homage to de Chirico.
When I see that box art, I want to buy the game. The composition has an unusually subdued color scheme, which makes it immediately interesting. The image places you in a plausible yet still bizarre architectural setting. The setting is grandiose but eerily devoid of life. The place seems ominous and daunting, but only ambiguously: there aren't any direct or visible threats anywhere but you want to flee it all the same. The visuals give you no clue about who you are. Instead the entire focus is on WHERE you are. And wherever that is, the obvious key is that you don't want to stick around, and more importantly than that you have more than just yourself to look out for.
Notice how the game that was released for North America has some of the worst box art I have ever seen. It has no ambience. It has no atmosphere. It's a jumble of amateurish superimpositions. The focus is on the hero, who appears to have no personality whatsoever. The scenery has no emotional or artistic significance whatsoever. The visuals tell you precisely who you are but absolutely nothing about where you are or what you're doing.
So even though I believe Ico had the greatest box art I've ever seen on a video game, the business people don't want me to buy it. In a different era, you might suppose that the publishers want to market not to people who would recognize a di Chirico painting, but instead to either children or to parents who know almost nothing about videogames but who might buy a game for their child on impulse if they see a playful/combative character on the box (which the bastardized US box art displays). But this is the age of the internet, and even before the internet, kids who played games read game magazines, and knew what they wanted, box art be damned.
Example 2: Mirror's Edge
Here's the Mirror's Edge cover art (at least in North America):
Now here is a piece of concept art that developers made at some point in their creative process:
Now THAT would have been way better covert art. The face cover tells you nothing-- except that the heroine is some kind of corny badass with an eye tattoo. But the city-scape cover tells you EVERYTHING. It tells you that your heroine is dauntless. She's casual and assured even when she's standing 60 stories over the street. It tells you what your mission is: to traverse those rooftops, at dangerous heights, and to deliver that yellow pouch. It puts you in the aesthetic of the game, which is oddly sterile looking white architecture with bold splashes of primary colors. (It could be better if Faith (the heroine) was running instead of standing at ease, since she's a parkour courier, but that's OK. The way she's at ease communicates just as much.)
The Batman movies, and the Batman animated series often used a similar shot of Batman standing high on a skyscraper or gargoyle, watching over the night-time city. They never show you a pointless and inscrutable close-up of Batman's face, since that is boring and tells you nothing.
The insistence on showing pointless character shots, without any situational context or setting, is a weird trend. It's dishonest because it's uninformative and inaccurate. It's pretentious because it tries to suggest that there's something truly appreciable about the character's face, when in fact there isn't anything appreciable-- the marketers/developers are just being fools. Furthermore it's an unartistic cop-out because it does not convey anything at all about the vision of the game. And further still, it's contradictory because as much as the developers want a "character-driven!" image or story and therefore attempt to reveal the nature of their character with a useless face shot, they still refuse to hire competent voice actors and voice directors (and dialog writers) for their characters.
Example 3: Exiled
This is a movie, not a game. But bear with me.
What is that garbage? Well, that garbage happens to be a promo shot of one of my favorite movies of the last few years. Here's what it looked like over in the eastern hemisphere:
Notice anything? Yes, that's right. The first one sucks. Somebody stop the madness.
(American release):
(Japan/Europe release):
Notice anything strange? Notice how the game that was released for Japan and Europe has the greatest cover art of all time. It's a direct homage to de Chirico.
When I see that box art, I want to buy the game. The composition has an unusually subdued color scheme, which makes it immediately interesting. The image places you in a plausible yet still bizarre architectural setting. The setting is grandiose but eerily devoid of life. The place seems ominous and daunting, but only ambiguously: there aren't any direct or visible threats anywhere but you want to flee it all the same. The visuals give you no clue about who you are. Instead the entire focus is on WHERE you are. And wherever that is, the obvious key is that you don't want to stick around, and more importantly than that you have more than just yourself to look out for.
Notice how the game that was released for North America has some of the worst box art I have ever seen. It has no ambience. It has no atmosphere. It's a jumble of amateurish superimpositions. The focus is on the hero, who appears to have no personality whatsoever. The scenery has no emotional or artistic significance whatsoever. The visuals tell you precisely who you are but absolutely nothing about where you are or what you're doing.
So even though I believe Ico had the greatest box art I've ever seen on a video game, the business people don't want me to buy it. In a different era, you might suppose that the publishers want to market not to people who would recognize a di Chirico painting, but instead to either children or to parents who know almost nothing about videogames but who might buy a game for their child on impulse if they see a playful/combative character on the box (which the bastardized US box art displays). But this is the age of the internet, and even before the internet, kids who played games read game magazines, and knew what they wanted, box art be damned.
Example 2: Mirror's Edge
Here's the Mirror's Edge cover art (at least in North America):
Now here is a piece of concept art that developers made at some point in their creative process:
Now THAT would have been way better covert art. The face cover tells you nothing-- except that the heroine is some kind of corny badass with an eye tattoo. But the city-scape cover tells you EVERYTHING. It tells you that your heroine is dauntless. She's casual and assured even when she's standing 60 stories over the street. It tells you what your mission is: to traverse those rooftops, at dangerous heights, and to deliver that yellow pouch. It puts you in the aesthetic of the game, which is oddly sterile looking white architecture with bold splashes of primary colors. (It could be better if Faith (the heroine) was running instead of standing at ease, since she's a parkour courier, but that's OK. The way she's at ease communicates just as much.)
The Batman movies, and the Batman animated series often used a similar shot of Batman standing high on a skyscraper or gargoyle, watching over the night-time city. They never show you a pointless and inscrutable close-up of Batman's face, since that is boring and tells you nothing.
The insistence on showing pointless character shots, without any situational context or setting, is a weird trend. It's dishonest because it's uninformative and inaccurate. It's pretentious because it tries to suggest that there's something truly appreciable about the character's face, when in fact there isn't anything appreciable-- the marketers/developers are just being fools. Furthermore it's an unartistic cop-out because it does not convey anything at all about the vision of the game. And further still, it's contradictory because as much as the developers want a "character-driven!" image or story and therefore attempt to reveal the nature of their character with a useless face shot, they still refuse to hire competent voice actors and voice directors (and dialog writers) for their characters.
Example 3: Exiled
This is a movie, not a game. But bear with me.
What is that garbage? Well, that garbage happens to be a promo shot of one of my favorite movies of the last few years. Here's what it looked like over in the eastern hemisphere:
Notice anything? Yes, that's right. The first one sucks. Somebody stop the madness.
Tattoos and Characterization
Ah: tattoos and video games.
I love Mirror's Edge and can't stop playing it, but Faith's tattoos really irks me, from a creative or compositional standpoint. If we look at Faith's pants and shoes, and watch her do what she does for 5 seconds, we know more about her than her ridiculous tattoos will ever tell us. That's because our actions define us, and people know us even through seeing ONE OUNCE of our actions. Whereas tattoos are just who we wish to be. They're like idols. They're like fetishized shrines of identity. Tattoos are what you want when you *want to* see something when you look in the mirror, BUT WHICH YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SEE because you either lack an appreciative vision of yourself or you are a fraud.
I mean come on DICE!! The bottoms of her pants are TIED, and she has SPLIT TOED SHOES. That is who she is, and it's goddam brilliant. The tattoos are just a brain fart.
The weird thing about Faith's tattoos is that the developers made them so that we would know something about her-- when actually they tell us nothing other than that Faith needs visible reassurance of her own identity. Their reasoning is something like: "she likes technology/computers; THEREFORE she should inject a picture of one into her arm." Which is just a weird argument when you think about it. (And it's especially weird in context of the game's association between technology and the surveillance state.)
Tattoos that memorialize particular events or entities make sense to me, like a military unit tattoo or something. Tattoos that are supposedly an expression of "who a person is / feels like" make almost no sense to me. Why would a person need or require external reminders about a fundamental part of their persona? The whole thing seems to imply that their persona is not fundamental at all, but is more like an adopted decision that gains meaning simply through arbitrary commitment (like a bad marriage), which is why they need/want a depiction of it close to them at all times and for all the world to see. It's like people are insecure about their own souls, which baffles me.
I'm willing to accept that people get tattoos for the same reason they do a lot of other things: they like the look of it. But more often than not tattoos seem, to me, to be some kind of echo chamber of identity. Any virtue which the tattoo supposedly represents should already be completely obvious to the world and to the person themselves. Shouldn't it? Therefore making the image redundant at best, and a little desperate-seeming at worst. The inky representation just rings hollow, since it's just ink--it tries to DO, to BE, and to SAY things just by going through the motions. WELL SIR, NO DICE.
I love Mirror's Edge and can't stop playing it, but Faith's tattoos really irks me, from a creative or compositional standpoint. If we look at Faith's pants and shoes, and watch her do what she does for 5 seconds, we know more about her than her ridiculous tattoos will ever tell us. That's because our actions define us, and people know us even through seeing ONE OUNCE of our actions. Whereas tattoos are just who we wish to be. They're like idols. They're like fetishized shrines of identity. Tattoos are what you want when you *want to* see something when you look in the mirror, BUT WHICH YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SEE because you either lack an appreciative vision of yourself or you are a fraud.
I mean come on DICE!! The bottoms of her pants are TIED, and she has SPLIT TOED SHOES. That is who she is, and it's goddam brilliant. The tattoos are just a brain fart.
The weird thing about Faith's tattoos is that the developers made them so that we would know something about her-- when actually they tell us nothing other than that Faith needs visible reassurance of her own identity. Their reasoning is something like: "she likes technology/computers; THEREFORE she should inject a picture of one into her arm." Which is just a weird argument when you think about it. (And it's especially weird in context of the game's association between technology and the surveillance state.)
Tattoos that memorialize particular events or entities make sense to me, like a military unit tattoo or something. Tattoos that are supposedly an expression of "who a person is / feels like" make almost no sense to me. Why would a person need or require external reminders about a fundamental part of their persona? The whole thing seems to imply that their persona is not fundamental at all, but is more like an adopted decision that gains meaning simply through arbitrary commitment (like a bad marriage), which is why they need/want a depiction of it close to them at all times and for all the world to see. It's like people are insecure about their own souls, which baffles me.
I'm willing to accept that people get tattoos for the same reason they do a lot of other things: they like the look of it. But more often than not tattoos seem, to me, to be some kind of echo chamber of identity. Any virtue which the tattoo supposedly represents should already be completely obvious to the world and to the person themselves. Shouldn't it? Therefore making the image redundant at best, and a little desperate-seeming at worst. The inky representation just rings hollow, since it's just ink--it tries to DO, to BE, and to SAY things just by going through the motions. WELL SIR, NO DICE.
12.11.2008
Degrees in Game Design
Kotaku has reported NYU's plans to offer a degree program for game development in Fall 2009.
A commentator has reigned in as follows:
I couldn't agree more with the root of that commentator's highly-specialized sentiments.
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I think one end result of game design programs will be game designers who know even *less* about the world, but who know more technical things about making games. I didn't think of typography, but I did think of everything else. It seems to me that when games try to "deal" with drama, or with science, or with political intrigue, or with history, or with tragedy, or with philosophy-- I could go on and on-- a very half-ass and high-schoolish understanding of these domains comes across. Yet the graphics are pretty good. (You could say that these factors are direct results of the market. But I would argue that low production values limits the size and diversity of the market.)
The Benefits of Non-game-specific Disiciplines
When we see printed typgraphy out there in the real world, in books or in magazines or ads on television, it's delicately crafted by experts. But in games, it's usually made by programmers or whoever. Years ago, the result was password systems that used highly ambiguous fonts. Password systems have since been abolished, but we still have inefficient and poorly presented graphical interfaces, menu systems, and sometimes hard-to-read text.
Considering the amount of game developers that very obviously want to achieve "cinematic" things in their games, but end up doing it (editing, camerawork, voicing/direction, writing) like inept amateurs without even realizing it, a good education in filmmaking could be pretty useful.
Speaking generally, better education in design could lead to better games too. A good designer strives for simplicity. The good designer tears down inefficient functionality and puts some magically seamless blend of form and function in its place. More talented designers would give us better interfaces, better stage design, better control schemes, and smoother game mechanics.
The over-arching problem is that game developers and publishers don't have a budget to make great cinema or typography or anything. They don't have staff who are gifted in those specialties. They get paid to make a passably-programmed game with good graphics. Film-making is one of the most hugely collaborative arts to ever emerge-- simply watch the credits rolling to see how many very different skills it took to make the movie. The diversity of talent required to make a good modern game is somewhat similar to that, but the division of labor and expertise does not appear to be similar at all. (Example: Grand Theft Auto IV was an enjoyable game, and had a gigantic production staff. But the onscreen text was too small, the controls were syrupy and sloppy, the map/radar systems did not use enough color contrast, the menu system was terrible, the checkpoint system was punishing, the plot had no development, the story was preachy, the multiplayer interface was frustrating and cumbersome. To complement my criticism with some praise: Call of Duty 4 had superb design in almost every facet of the game, and had fewer obnoxious flaws than almost any recent game I can think of.)
Here's the optimistic angle: digital games are a young industry, compared to the highly evolved cultures of advertising or film-making. Maybe one day game developers will be able to live up to the responsibility of using typgraphy, of using 3D cinematic camera-work, of using live voice actors, and of using careful plotting and pacing. I just don't happen to know how degree programs in game development will affect that.
A commentator has reigned in as follows:
I hope [...] lessons in typography [carry] over to your games. So many games use such horrendous custom-made typefaces. The counters are too small, the kerning sucks, tails are added or omitted that obscure the glyph and make it look too much like others... I usually find myself going, "just use Univers and get it over with." Unless you want serifs, then just stick with Garamond. Though I personally prefer Cheltenham.
I couldn't agree more with the root of that commentator's highly-specialized sentiments.
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I think one end result of game design programs will be game designers who know even *less* about the world, but who know more technical things about making games. I didn't think of typography, but I did think of everything else. It seems to me that when games try to "deal" with drama, or with science, or with political intrigue, or with history, or with tragedy, or with philosophy-- I could go on and on-- a very half-ass and high-schoolish understanding of these domains comes across. Yet the graphics are pretty good. (You could say that these factors are direct results of the market. But I would argue that low production values limits the size and diversity of the market.)
The Benefits of Non-game-specific Disiciplines
When we see printed typgraphy out there in the real world, in books or in magazines or ads on television, it's delicately crafted by experts. But in games, it's usually made by programmers or whoever. Years ago, the result was password systems that used highly ambiguous fonts. Password systems have since been abolished, but we still have inefficient and poorly presented graphical interfaces, menu systems, and sometimes hard-to-read text.
Considering the amount of game developers that very obviously want to achieve "cinematic" things in their games, but end up doing it (editing, camerawork, voicing/direction, writing) like inept amateurs without even realizing it, a good education in filmmaking could be pretty useful.
Speaking generally, better education in design could lead to better games too. A good designer strives for simplicity. The good designer tears down inefficient functionality and puts some magically seamless blend of form and function in its place. More talented designers would give us better interfaces, better stage design, better control schemes, and smoother game mechanics.
The over-arching problem is that game developers and publishers don't have a budget to make great cinema or typography or anything. They don't have staff who are gifted in those specialties. They get paid to make a passably-programmed game with good graphics. Film-making is one of the most hugely collaborative arts to ever emerge-- simply watch the credits rolling to see how many very different skills it took to make the movie. The diversity of talent required to make a good modern game is somewhat similar to that, but the division of labor and expertise does not appear to be similar at all. (Example: Grand Theft Auto IV was an enjoyable game, and had a gigantic production staff. But the onscreen text was too small, the controls were syrupy and sloppy, the map/radar systems did not use enough color contrast, the menu system was terrible, the checkpoint system was punishing, the plot had no development, the story was preachy, the multiplayer interface was frustrating and cumbersome. To complement my criticism with some praise: Call of Duty 4 had superb design in almost every facet of the game, and had fewer obnoxious flaws than almost any recent game I can think of.)
Here's the optimistic angle: digital games are a young industry, compared to the highly evolved cultures of advertising or film-making. Maybe one day game developers will be able to live up to the responsibility of using typgraphy, of using 3D cinematic camera-work, of using live voice actors, and of using careful plotting and pacing. I just don't happen to know how degree programs in game development will affect that.
12.09.2008
Unskippable Cut-scenes
Again on the topic of cut-scenes. As Joystiq has reported, Steven Spielberg doesn't like cut-scenes. Especially when there's no option to skip past them.
Since I feel a lot less mean beating up on unskippable cut-scenes, let's start with that.
Unskippable cut-scenes are bad (because they're unskippable)
Other commentators on Joystiq have defended the wide-spread use of (unskippable?) cut-scenes on the basis of "good story." However, buying and playing a game does not signify an agreement to sit through unskippable cut-scenes. When we buy a DVD we expect to be able to easily navigate the content. Not necessarily for the sake of skipping content that we don't like, but for convenience.
Skipping cut-scenes is an obvious matter of convenience. Maybe you're at an extremely difficult section that you have to repeatedly attempt a dozen times in a row, and you don't want to also repeatedly watch the 2 minutes of cinematics that precede it. Maybe you got interrupted the last time you played, and you want to quickly resume at where you left off without wading through cut scenes. Maybe you restarted your game progress, because you wanted to fix your initial character or something, and you've already seen the intro cut scenes 20 times before. Maybe you have to stop playing, but the next save/checkpoint only comes after the end of the cinematic that you're in the middle of.
Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.
The "but it's artistic vision! next thing you know, gamers are going to demand that there's a menu option to instantly max out their level, start anywhere, and do anything!" argument is a lousy straw-man.
Those of us who appreciate the ability to freely turn the pages of our books, and to move between scenes on our DVD's, have never demanded that authors or producers also give us the ability to strengthen the protagonists or change the content of the story. That would be a matter of whimsy, not convenience, which some gamers apparently cannot distinguish.
The notion that cut-scenes should be mandatory because "the story is so good!" is self-absorbed. It's akin to a book author who releases some kind of digital book that is a forced scroll from beginning to end because he doesn't want the reader to accidentally or deliberately mess up or ruin the brilliant pacing of the plot by freely turning the pages.
Even during the specially-implemented SPEED RUN mode of Mirror's Edge, you are forced to watch the ending cinematics every time you finish your run of the last level. That's ridiculous. (The ending cinematic itself is nonsensically rushed and poorly conceived-- but my point is that even if it was the greatest piece of cinema ever devised, I might have an ever-so-slight desire to skip it after my fifteenth attempt at a record-setting run.)
Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.
The only time we as consumers can't skip things is when we go to the theatre or a concert, or arguably on television. WHEN WE OWN A PRODUCT, we expect some minimum of convenience.
...But skippable cut-scenes are pretty bad too
Ouch. Sad but true. They're bad because they're poorly made, way more often than not. And they're poorly made because the people making them do not have cinematic talent or skill.
A commentator on Joystiq has pointed out to those who emphatically agree with Spielberg has said something along the lines of this: modern videogames have the capability for marvelous cinematic sequences--deal with it!.
But on the contrary, it's the game industry itself that has refused to deal with the consequences, and refused to take up the responsibility for actually crafting quality cinema--which would require actual dedicated staff for things like "writing" and "acting" and "direction", not stand-ins from the sound, design, and programming teams.)
I don't personally like Spielberg's style, but he certainly knows something about direction and production. I'm not necessarily embarrassed to watch his work when there's somebody intelligent in the room with me. I don't think he should find a new job, or sub-contract out his work. But let's face it: most video-game cut-scenes are poorly written, poorly acted, and the camera-work is amateurish. And the fact that gamers don't even seem to notice might even mean that sloppy cinematics aren't worth criticizing. But allow me. (And before you think "Ha! But Spielberg's movies ARE embarrassing, you fool!" let me say this: what commonly distinguishes movie campiness from videogame campiness is that the game developers do not realize how campy and corny their masterpiece scene is.)
Good cinematographers, editors, camera-operators, and dialog writers do what they do because they are good at it. They better be, if the studio is risking a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Game developers, on the other hand, go to work and toss on their filmmaker wannabe shoes not because they are good at it but simply because they can, and because they think it's cool. The industry should not have 3D animators acting as the de facto directors and cinematographers and camera operators, or have designers functioning as dialog/text writers. Designers should not be the directors of voicing. It's not their job, and way more often than not, they do it poorly.
An analogous example would be if the author of a best-selling book was also the book binder, the covert-art designer, the marketing copywriter, and directed the production of the audio book. No book publisher would ever, ever allow that, unless the author was obviously an untiring and multi-talented genius, yet video game publishers allow it all the time. In fact they possibly even generally enforce it, through managerial decisions that don't bring cinematically-talented people onto the staff, for budgetary or other reasons.
At best, unskippable cut-scenes are a sloppy programming oversight. Maybe the programmers didn't have the time, will, knowledge, or direct orders to implement "skipping" functionality. Who knows. But at worst, unskippable cut-scenes are the work of over-zealous cinema posers who want to force and preach their half-baked "art" directly down our threats.
The industry should grow up. It's a sobering fact that terrible cinematics (acting, direction, writing) do not affect, or are not perceived to affect, game sales. Gamers like games, and will forgive them for their disgraces or maybe not even notice them. But there are a few other apparent facts to consider:
1) There are more consumers who "routinely/occasionally watch movies" than there are people who play games.
2) The cinematic standard, even for crappy movies, is much higher than the cinematic standard for games.
3) If a game comes along that ever rivals the cultural or popular sensation of a blockbuster movie (like The Dark Knight, or something), it will probably have similar formal quality. And all of us-- gamers, non-gamers, and the game industry-- will be better off.
Anyway, I was glad to point out a few outstanding game productions in my last post about cut-scenes.
Since I feel a lot less mean beating up on unskippable cut-scenes, let's start with that.
Unskippable cut-scenes are bad (because they're unskippable)
Other commentators on Joystiq have defended the wide-spread use of (unskippable?) cut-scenes on the basis of "good story." However, buying and playing a game does not signify an agreement to sit through unskippable cut-scenes. When we buy a DVD we expect to be able to easily navigate the content. Not necessarily for the sake of skipping content that we don't like, but for convenience.
Skipping cut-scenes is an obvious matter of convenience. Maybe you're at an extremely difficult section that you have to repeatedly attempt a dozen times in a row, and you don't want to also repeatedly watch the 2 minutes of cinematics that precede it. Maybe you got interrupted the last time you played, and you want to quickly resume at where you left off without wading through cut scenes. Maybe you restarted your game progress, because you wanted to fix your initial character or something, and you've already seen the intro cut scenes 20 times before. Maybe you have to stop playing, but the next save/checkpoint only comes after the end of the cinematic that you're in the middle of.
Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.
The "but it's artistic vision! next thing you know, gamers are going to demand that there's a menu option to instantly max out their level, start anywhere, and do anything!" argument is a lousy straw-man.
Those of us who appreciate the ability to freely turn the pages of our books, and to move between scenes on our DVD's, have never demanded that authors or producers also give us the ability to strengthen the protagonists or change the content of the story. That would be a matter of whimsy, not convenience, which some gamers apparently cannot distinguish.
The notion that cut-scenes should be mandatory because "the story is so good!" is self-absorbed. It's akin to a book author who releases some kind of digital book that is a forced scroll from beginning to end because he doesn't want the reader to accidentally or deliberately mess up or ruin the brilliant pacing of the plot by freely turning the pages.
Even during the specially-implemented SPEED RUN mode of Mirror's Edge, you are forced to watch the ending cinematics every time you finish your run of the last level. That's ridiculous. (The ending cinematic itself is nonsensically rushed and poorly conceived-- but my point is that even if it was the greatest piece of cinema ever devised, I might have an ever-so-slight desire to skip it after my fifteenth attempt at a record-setting run.)
Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.
The only time we as consumers can't skip things is when we go to the theatre or a concert, or arguably on television. WHEN WE OWN A PRODUCT, we expect some minimum of convenience.
...But skippable cut-scenes are pretty bad too
Ouch. Sad but true. They're bad because they're poorly made, way more often than not. And they're poorly made because the people making them do not have cinematic talent or skill.
A commentator on Joystiq has pointed out to those who emphatically agree with Spielberg has said something along the lines of this: modern videogames have the capability for marvelous cinematic sequences--deal with it!.
But on the contrary, it's the game industry itself that has refused to deal with the consequences, and refused to take up the responsibility for actually crafting quality cinema--which would require actual dedicated staff for things like "writing" and "acting" and "direction", not stand-ins from the sound, design, and programming teams.)
I don't personally like Spielberg's style, but he certainly knows something about direction and production. I'm not necessarily embarrassed to watch his work when there's somebody intelligent in the room with me. I don't think he should find a new job, or sub-contract out his work. But let's face it: most video-game cut-scenes are poorly written, poorly acted, and the camera-work is amateurish. And the fact that gamers don't even seem to notice might even mean that sloppy cinematics aren't worth criticizing. But allow me. (And before you think "Ha! But Spielberg's movies ARE embarrassing, you fool!" let me say this: what commonly distinguishes movie campiness from videogame campiness is that the game developers do not realize how campy and corny their masterpiece scene is.)
Good cinematographers, editors, camera-operators, and dialog writers do what they do because they are good at it. They better be, if the studio is risking a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Game developers, on the other hand, go to work and toss on their filmmaker wannabe shoes not because they are good at it but simply because they can, and because they think it's cool. The industry should not have 3D animators acting as the de facto directors and cinematographers and camera operators, or have designers functioning as dialog/text writers. Designers should not be the directors of voicing. It's not their job, and way more often than not, they do it poorly.
An analogous example would be if the author of a best-selling book was also the book binder, the covert-art designer, the marketing copywriter, and directed the production of the audio book. No book publisher would ever, ever allow that, unless the author was obviously an untiring and multi-talented genius, yet video game publishers allow it all the time. In fact they possibly even generally enforce it, through managerial decisions that don't bring cinematically-talented people onto the staff, for budgetary or other reasons.
At best, unskippable cut-scenes are a sloppy programming oversight. Maybe the programmers didn't have the time, will, knowledge, or direct orders to implement "skipping" functionality. Who knows. But at worst, unskippable cut-scenes are the work of over-zealous cinema posers who want to force and preach their half-baked "art" directly down our threats.
The industry should grow up. It's a sobering fact that terrible cinematics (acting, direction, writing) do not affect, or are not perceived to affect, game sales. Gamers like games, and will forgive them for their disgraces or maybe not even notice them. But there are a few other apparent facts to consider:
1) There are more consumers who "routinely/occasionally watch movies" than there are people who play games.
2) The cinematic standard, even for crappy movies, is much higher than the cinematic standard for games.
3) If a game comes along that ever rivals the cultural or popular sensation of a blockbuster movie (like The Dark Knight, or something), it will probably have similar formal quality. And all of us-- gamers, non-gamers, and the game industry-- will be better off.
Anyway, I was glad to point out a few outstanding game productions in my last post about cut-scenes.
12.08.2008
Who Forgot The Funk?
Rock Band is OK. Rock Band 2 is better, but only if you pay to import the Rock Band 1 songlist and DLC. Not a huge fan of Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. It has "legends" right there in the title, yet Jimi Hendrix isn't REALLY anywhere to be found. I've never played Guitar Hero: World Tour. Also never played Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Definitely won't buy the Rock Band Country Pack.
Personally, I'm waiting for Funk Band: Who Got The SOUL?: Classics of Funk, Soul, and R&B, Comin at You Straight from the Snake Pits of Motown and Stax, And There Won't Be No Scarcity Of That Philly Soul.
A man can dream.
Personally, I'm waiting for Funk Band: Who Got The SOUL?: Classics of Funk, Soul, and R&B, Comin at You Straight from the Snake Pits of Motown and Stax, And There Won't Be No Scarcity Of That Philly Soul.
A man can dream.
12.07.2008
Cut-Scenes, Then and Now
Too Many Game Developers are Filmmaker Wannabes. There you have it.
Even old antique games had cinematic cut-scenes. Maybe a sprite of a UFO would fly across the screen and capture a Princess by beaming her up against her will. Then the UFO flies away. The purpose of the cut-scene is to show the player what to do and what's at stake: That's the bad guy! Get that S.O.B!
Modern technology has permitted game cut-scenes to be so overblown that they no longer have any useful connection to the game as a game. They're only used as stuffing-holes where the heavy-handed developer can do all their indulgent wannabe filmmaking. The cinematics are intended to spray the screen with drama, with "fleshed out" the characters, and inept amateur camera-work, and to dazzle the gamer with new and spectacularly failed attempts at photorealism. In other words, movie-like sequences serve to make games more movie-like, rather than to enhance the game as a game. Meanwhile, important features suffer from the developer's priorities: lack of controller configuration options, sloppy design mechanics, lack of support for things like co-op, permanent score-keeping and leaderboards, efficient user interfaces, native speed-run support, and all that.)
"Movies are exciting. So why not incorporate some movie-like things into our games?", you say?
OK, sure. Why not. A lot of movies are pretty exciting, aren't they, and all we do is sit back and watch. The problem is that even a crappy box-office bomb is held to a standard of dialog/acting/script/plot/character that is leagues beyond the pathetic internal artistic standard of video games. And even as the dialog, plotting, and editing of game cinematics reeks all over the place and embarrasses you in front of your grandparents and girlfriend, you can still tell how much time and resources they put into the inept cinematic visuals. It's sad.
I'm not going to mention any names.
How about I name some games that did it RIGHT. Call of Duty 4, Thief, and No One Lives Forever had great production values for their cinematics-- possibly the best ever in gaming, or certainly in first-person action. The voice-acting/direction and scripting was superb. System Shock 2 was excellent, and did a good job with writing and voicing. Half-Life used no cut-scenes whatsoever, and was an outstandingly immersive and fun game.
NOW GO AND DO LIKEWISE, GENTS.
Even old antique games had cinematic cut-scenes. Maybe a sprite of a UFO would fly across the screen and capture a Princess by beaming her up against her will. Then the UFO flies away. The purpose of the cut-scene is to show the player what to do and what's at stake: That's the bad guy! Get that S.O.B!
Modern technology has permitted game cut-scenes to be so overblown that they no longer have any useful connection to the game as a game. They're only used as stuffing-holes where the heavy-handed developer can do all their indulgent wannabe filmmaking. The cinematics are intended to spray the screen with drama, with "fleshed out" the characters, and inept amateur camera-work, and to dazzle the gamer with new and spectacularly failed attempts at photorealism. In other words, movie-like sequences serve to make games more movie-like, rather than to enhance the game as a game. Meanwhile, important features suffer from the developer's priorities: lack of controller configuration options, sloppy design mechanics, lack of support for things like co-op, permanent score-keeping and leaderboards, efficient user interfaces, native speed-run support, and all that.)
"Movies are exciting. So why not incorporate some movie-like things into our games?", you say?
OK, sure. Why not. A lot of movies are pretty exciting, aren't they, and all we do is sit back and watch. The problem is that even a crappy box-office bomb is held to a standard of dialog/acting/script/plot/character that is leagues beyond the pathetic internal artistic standard of video games. And even as the dialog, plotting, and editing of game cinematics reeks all over the place and embarrasses you in front of your grandparents and girlfriend, you can still tell how much time and resources they put into the inept cinematic visuals. It's sad.
I'm not going to mention any names.
How about I name some games that did it RIGHT. Call of Duty 4, Thief, and No One Lives Forever had great production values for their cinematics-- possibly the best ever in gaming, or certainly in first-person action. The voice-acting/direction and scripting was superb. System Shock 2 was excellent, and did a good job with writing and voicing. Half-Life used no cut-scenes whatsoever, and was an outstandingly immersive and fun game.
NOW GO AND DO LIKEWISE, GENTS.
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