“A short existential game about alienation and refusal of labor.
Or, if you prefer, a playable music video.”
I felt a trace of Tale of Tales’ The Path – in order to fully experience and “finish” the game the player is required to essentially do the opposite of what the character is told; the opposite of conventional designer-dictated narrative. “Don’t stray from the path” as “Get to your cubicle.”
One could play the game forever, but the monotony of the looping routine gradually becomes agonizing.
Suicide is a game element but is used in an odd way that can’t quite seem to decide if it wants to be reminiscent of “Groundhog Day” or “Moon.”
Some of the most memorable moments are those of player-initiated absurdity. Standing alone in a field in your underwear with a cow, while your idling car blocks traffic being one. Most of it involves being in your underwear, actually.
A curiosity about this “follow/don’t follow”, “do what i say” or “don’t do what i say to do” binary is that in the end, everyone can pretty much discern the ultimate intent of the game designer, following an initial mental re-adjustment, but again, that’s the point, isn’t it?
Are the only true player-subversions of perceived or actual designer intentions through cheating, bugs, or exploits, or is it in unexplored emergence? The latter is an exploration of systems and mechanics interplay, whereas the former can be supplemented with player-constructed narrative explanation? Narrative fallacy?
I found the game to be more contemplative than subversive, and ultimately bleak, but moments of beauty persist.
Is it so possible to shut into a box what “experimental” means for games?
If so – couldn’t an experimental game push the boundaries of what we consider a game at all? Something that pushes against the definitions of given categories and expectations we have for them – something more than just incorporating unorthodox or non-mainstream elements?
What makes an unorthodox element? Swink says that most experimental games toy with our core notions of reality and how it behaves – and thus how we expect things should behave in a simulated environment. Don’t all games do this, to some extent?
The question seems to be simply how far does it go – that is, does the sense of reality in the simulated environment match what FEELS appropriate once we’re immersed, regardless of whether or not our sense of what feels right IS right – and how central is the unexpected behavior to the game mechanics?
Portal, Braid and Shadow Physics all make use of a simulated reality that runs strongly contrary to that of our own experience – but still make sense and are consistent, once a mental check and adjustment is made.
Mario and Sonic make use of representations of characters and elements that also run strongly contrary to our own experience in reality, but we don’t see it as experimental. With a Fire Flower I can shoot a fireball out of my hand… and through the water no less. However this isn’t the central mechanic, and isn’t violating a principle of reality as core to us as the idea that time moves only forward.
Is a truly experimental game a not-game? Most experimental games are all still games after all – systems of rules, meaningful decision-making, winning, losing, progressing.
There seems to be a split between what people consider experimental – one side looking at unusual/brain-bending game mechanics, but still couched firmly within the framework of “gamey” principles – and the other looking at more experiential interactive experiences aiming for immersion, but not being games per se.
Something to watch for from the USC EA Game Innovation Lab:
“The player’s voyage through The Night Journey takes them through a poetic landscape, a space that has more reflective and spiritual qualities than geographical ones. The core mechanic in the game is the act of traveling and reflecting rather than reaching certain destinations – the trip along a path of enlightenment.”
“It’s a game that rewards you for slowing down and for introspection,” says Viola, 59, a pioneer in the medium of video art for more than 35 years. “You’re alone and you’re not even told why you’re there. You just fall out of the sky into the middle of this amazing landscape with mountains, sea, desert, and forest, and go wherever you want,” he explains. “The more you do things mindfully, the more is revealed to you.”
Playdead just announced that Limbo is headed to XBLA. Looking forward to seeing this at GDC.
Limbo looks fantastic, and there’s something just so archetypally elegant about that little stroll in the woods; its evocative of Miyamoto’s childhood hillside wanderings, and my own memories of the intersections of exploration and imagination.
Are atmospheric silhouette graphics all that it takes to impress me these days? I think no – Feist and Limbo in particular look to be particularly subtle and refined in gameplay and sound as well – but there still is something to be said for simplicity of visuals taking such a strong position in the indie community now.
One of our tenets is to look closely at what the big studios do, then do the exact opposite.
This is a stylistic as well as practical decision. What happens if non-mainstream style is appropriated, to some extent, by the mainstream (as things often do with very near everything besides games)? What’s next?
Jesse Schell gave a must-watch talk at DICE this year, encapsulating a lot of issues I’ve recently been thinking about. He starts on the topic of the rise of social media games and moves to discussing convergence of social/new media, technology, entertainment and so on through game-like constructs; essentially, gameplay being incorporated into everything else we do.
Part one of this post will outline my experience with one aspect of his talk – the rise of social media gaming.
DEVIOUS, DEVIOUS SOCIAL MEDIA GAMES
As Schell states in his talk, social media gaming – specifically on Facebook – got huge in 2009.
I recently took a month or two to do some research on quite a few – “X-Wars” games, Farm games, Pet games, Quizzes, Puzzles, etc. The ones I spent the most time on were Word Challenge, Farmville, Yoville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, Country Story, Who Has the Biggest Brain, Geo Challenge, and Crazy Planets among others.
Spending so much time on these games pained me, greatly – and yet I still managed to find myself extremely, disturbingly, addicted. I have since broken my habit and am hoping to avoid a relapse.
My experience playing them consisted largely of performing progressively repetitive, task-based, time consuming chores; making up largely an empty gameplay experience, with the system constantly prompting me with its aggressive monetization models, as well as encouraging its its viral spread across my social network.
I can’t conceal my distaste at these strategies for addiction. And yet, again… I was addicted. Briefly, but absolutely addicted.
My experience was that gameplay consisted largely of creating a sense of compulsion and obligation to move on those tasks, and yet there is some fun to be had in these games, true. In particular I enjoyed Crazy Planets with its basic artillery (e.g. Worms) gameplay.
But overall, these were the feelings that these games brought up in me:
Do this! Share this! Share to your friends! Look at this sad kitty that wandered onto your farm! Give him to your friends! Don’t wait or your crops will go to waste! Get your friends to join you otherwise your mafia is too weak! Now spend some real money on in-game currency! Go go go! Be on our game, all the time! Otherwise your fake stuff will go to waste; all of it!
What’s the bottom line?
Here’s the thing though – it works, and it works WELL. All one needs to do is to look at Zynga’s numbers to know that. But is it sustainable? And what of now these highly polished gameplay conventions, now tried and tested in social media, making their way to previously uncharted territory for games? (Part 2)
I definitely encourage everyone to watch Jesse Schell’s talk if you haven’t done so already.
One quick post before I get on my plane back to Shanghai.
In no particular order…
Portal.
Shadow of the Colossus.
Braid.
Half Life 2.
Katamari Damacy.
Why? Just because. No blah-blah this time around. There’s enough brilliant stuff written about these games already. I will write about why the other usual suspects didn’t make the list though (er… later).
You play as a lone person trying to stem the tide of a riot. There is no context given – only black and white to indicate disagreeing opinions.
The game begins with you as a lone dissenter among a raging sea of “white” opinions. If you don’t push against the tide, it carries you along with it.
The game states the goal as bringing as many people as possible to the side of peace. To do that entails entering abstract rhythm matching games for each rioter you attempt to convince. I found it simple but nuanced. Verbally shotgunning a rioter won’t convince anybody – you have to wait; listen.
As your words spread through the crowd you gain more and more converts to your cause, but ultimately you find that swaying the opinions of the masses results in simply a mass reversal and more violence and rioting – your converts put down their placards and take up torches once again. You change colors again and again to promote peace, but the situation escalates nonetheless.
Finally you become gray, your words lose their impact. You can’t convince anyone, because you yourself aren’t convinced of anything anymore.
That’s my take on it, at least. Kudos to Intuition.
Spent some time with the newest releases from Neversoft and Harmonix yesterday.
Guitar Hero 5 plays great. The design is incredibly user-friendly and playing the songs felt fantastic. It reminded me of my first exposure to the series, and washed away some of the pain of subsequent releases.
On a business trip to a studio some years back, I had a chance to sit and play Guitar Hero 2 for a while. I was initially skeptical, as I had thoroughly grown out of my DDR phase, as well as harboring a little bit of, I admit, musician/music fan-pretension. I was fond of Harmonix’s earlier releases but hadn’t felt compelled to pick up the Guitar Hero series right away. Then I strapped on the guitar and within thirty seconds of playing realized I needed to own it, IMMEDIATELY. Guitar Hero 5 brings me back to those moments.
From what I’ve seen so far, the fifth installment is definitely the most approachable and flexible of the series – however even with these highlights I would not have felt so positive were it not for some improvements in other areas…
The art direction of the franchise has always sat poorly with me. In particular, Guitar Hero 3′s character, venue, and animation design were pretty miserable. The animation felt jerky and the entire presentation felt stagey; contrived. In fact, taking context into account, the lead male singer may have been the single most unappealing character design I’ve seen in a game, ever.
The art and general presentation of Guitar Hero 5 represents a huge improvement since that particular low point, although I am still not completely sold on the direction. I say it’s time to dump those old characters, Judy Nails, Pandora, Izzy Sparks and the like – they just haven’t aged well. Obviously the point is to capitalize on a distinct look and artistic personality to associate with the series, but watching cartoon characters play and sing these songs just doesn’t feel right anymore.
Speaking of that bit about cartoon characters… it should be interesting to see what happens regarding Courtney Love’s supposedly upcoming lawsuit. Does anyone NOT think that Activision will kick her ass in court?? That said, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl’s statement definitely resounds with me. Activision at the least should be considering their points very, very seriously. Their treatment of Cobain seems somewhat revealing as to how Neversoft approaches Guitar Hero as not much more than just a game, although they profess the same kind of rabid dedication to music as their primary competitor in this genre.
So enough about Guitar Hero. It was fun, I played for about an hour, looking forward to playing more.
Now, The Beatles: Rock Band – I played a marathon five hour session with friends, and it was absolutely sublime. There’s really not much more to say. I’m hoarse from singing those five hours, and can’t wait to further destroy my vocal chords. The DLC simply cannot come soon enough. It will be the first (perhaps only?) time I buy ALL the available DLC for a game.
In the recent weeks Beatlemania has descended upon me in force, for the first time in years. It feels good.
So the recent extended trailer for Gagne’s Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is out. The animation looks fantastically smooth and well-conceived, but to be perfectly honest the Scandinavian black metal makes me cringe. Personal taste, that’s all. If it must be metal, may I recommend Sunn O)))? Better for atmosphere!
I’m particularly impressed with some of the larger creatures – the snapping one in the corridor actually seems to be genuinely frightening. Here’s hoping for more of those moments. Also, the potential of environment scalability could be interesting in this context – the trailer does flash a brief scene of your ship appearing smaller than it usually does in an open space. Scrolling-tunnel gameplay does eventually get old and is certainly nothing new.
The release of this trailer seems to have generated a lot of excitement tempered slightly by comments on the unoriginality of the gameplay and the origin of the aesthetic. I’m all for old-school/simplistic/subtractive gameplay these days (within reason), but commentary on the silhouette aesthetic has definitely got me thinking.
The look is highly minimal, with a “shadow puppet” sort of contrast between flat black foreground images and saturated colors in the background. Gagne, an animator with decades of animation/film industry experience, has explored this visual style before, and Tartakovsky‘s work on Samurai Jack also comes to mind. However as this aesthetic seems to have become an indie game trend these days, it merits some game-specific analysis.
World of Goo did not utilize this look throughout the entire game, balancing a more colorful look with the high contrast look in certain levels, and actually tied in a somewhat unexpected “digital” art style at a certain point in the game. Regardless, the game art maintained its stylistic consistency well throughout. It’s also a great game, incidentally.
Feist has won awards for its visual design (equal parts shadow puppets, Miyazaki sootballs, and Where the Wild Things Are) without even having been released yet. The vibe reminds me of indie exploration games like Knytt, which had an incredible atmosphere. The silhouette look and the music push what I’ve seen of the game so far in that direction as well.
Patapon for PSP is another obvious one and is pretty much a straight unadulterated expression of the silhouette look.
Am I missing any big ones?
Functionally, the shadow puppet/silhouette look seems to be, in a sense, a return to traditional arcade game aesthetics – albeit in inverse. Both vector and pixel-based graphics of games like Tempest and Robotron 2084 relied on the use of brightly colored foreground graphics over a black background, due to the challenge of providing visuals that would be as playable as possible within the constraints of current rendering limitations. Picture Robotron 2084 on a highly colorful backdrop with flat black characters, and voil?†, you essentially have the shadow puppet look.
The advantage of this look thus has much in common with its minimal ancestors. High contrast of in-game objects lends itself well to simple, straightforward gameplay, minimizing clutter. If the gameplay mechanics work to this end, playability can be improved by a look this simple and contrasted.
Other advantages are more representative of the times. Shadowed foregrounds and characters can create a highly moody look, which can be good for building a certain sense of atmosphere. Compare this with the look of LocoRoco for example: LocoRoco also has flat, simple foregrounds, but with a colorful style that is more reminiscent of well lit Katamari Damacy levels or Saturday morning cartoons – a style that doesn’t lend itself to a compelling atmosphere (despite how good Katamari Damacy is).
Another positive of this visual style – it seems that it can only be good for development costs – the creation of flat shadow characters and environments would seem to be much less costly than creating a modern platformer look like Braid. Also, the de-emphasis of texture and depth can lead to increased polish in surface details or animation, as several of these games have demonstrated.
Anyway, that all being said, I’m looking forward to seeing how Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet turns out. Did I mention I dislike the music? I really dislike the music.
Like many others, I briefly got my hands on the New Super Mario Bros. Wii demo at E3 this June. Still being a sucker for the franchise, I had some fun with it, and despite the simplicity of the DS game on which it was based, I was quite fond of Mario’s recent foray into 2D gameplay. New Super Mario Bros. DS was by no means as complex, expansive, or rewarding as Super Mario 3 and its ilk, but it was a refreshing reminder of the good ol’ days, and carried the promise of hopefully more retro Mario games.
After the initial enjoyment of a bunch of SMB characters running around on an old-school level subsided, I realized why the idea felt so comfortable and familiar. The fact that side-scrolling co-op platformers have been done many times before (from Chip N’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers on NES to Little Big Planet on PS3) notwithstanding, co-op in Mario felt like something that should have been done a long time ago. Considering all the advances Nintendo made in the genre, why did it take them until now to come up with this, after its been done so much before?
This feeling of general surprise at Nintendo’s failure to capitalize on this much earlier was then accompanied by a distinct and sudden memory of playing Super Mario Bros. on NES for the first time and starting up two-player mode with my little brother. I remembered the feeling of disappointment that struck me when I realized that we had to actually take turns playing – we couldn’t play together. The fact that this was a six-year-old’s first assumption on seeing that there was a two-player mode in the game makes me wonder – did it really take a Little Big Planet for Nintendo to come up with this? Having basically invented the 2D platformer in its heyday, this idea couldn’t possibly have been pushing their creative limits that much, could it? And technologically speaking it was certainly do-able.
I just heard about this. WayForward is reimagining A Boy and His Blob for Wii. The original was one of my NES favorites back in 1989.
In spite of my excitement to see this material and gameplay getting picked up again, I’m not sure how I feel about the art style and music. The original game was certainly not cartoonish at all and I feel would call for a less watercolory/Disney art style, although I certainly see the appeal in creating an aesthetic akin to Saga Frontier 2 or Legend of Mana on PSX.
I personally would love to see something Eric Chahi-esque in a Boy and his Blob remake.
Still… this is wild.
Now THIS is more like it! Musically speaking. This remake of the old theme makes it easy to see why the original was so memorable. Despite the fact that hearing this was tremendously satisfying, it would be pretty nifty to have a quirkier approach to the arrangement. Makes me think of Koji Kondo on Mario Galaxy (conventional orchestral) vs. … well damn near every earlier Koji Kondo Mario composition and arrangement.
Despite my endless moaning and groaning, this could be a pretty kick-ass old school platformer on Wii, purely on the strength and potential of the original gameplay concept from ’89.
– The imagery of Love made me recall discussions I periodically have with my artist girlfriend. I show her various videogames that I considered to have new and unique art styles. She responds that it looks almost the same as every other 3D game, even ones i would consider to be very different. These conversations lead to the realization that “large differences” in art direction of most 3D games in reality are only slight differences when considering the overall effect received by the viewer. While the differences in atmosphere, color tone, detail of textures & shapes, and light’s interaction with the environment may be significant between games like Shadow of the Colossus, Half Life 2, Gears of War 2 & Okami, the similarities outweigh the differences. They all consist of objects of certain colors and shapes placed within a 3D environment where light sources determine color intensity & darkening viewed from a mobile camera: essentially, the modern definition of rendering a 3d environment.
– Her primary question is: With technology at the state it is, why isn’t exploration of other methods of visually representing space more common? Can we visually create the atmosphere of walking down a city street without attempting to recreate each individual lamppost or garbage can? Can we rethink digital 3d space in a manner distinct from the legacy of games like Wolfenstein?
– As far as I can figure, there are 2 general methods of at least partially achieving this goal.
– The first is to create a 3D space in the traditional sense, but then apply complex filters to change the viewer’s perception of the world.
– The second is to rethink from the ground up how to make the viewer perceive movement through an environment while viewing a 2D screen.
This mod, by the G3 community, is old news, but I finally gave Planescape a whirl in it.
This is in 1920×1200.
Images speak louder than words here, I’d say.
The lack of a text and menu UI mod to match a resolution this high was somewhat unfortunate but didn’t hinder the experience so much. Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, next…
