Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport
§
Into the Black: On Videogame Exploration
§
Near-Impossible Super Mario World Glitch Done For First Time on SNES
§
Game Writing Pitfalls - Lost Opportunities in Games - Extra Credits
§
Ingenious Solutions in Video Game Design: A Long-form Analysis
§
WIRED by Design: A Game Designer Explains the Counterintuitive Secret to Fun
§
Classic Game Postmortem: Loom
§
Get Anticipated - The Final Bosman
§
What if you could talk to the monsters? The Wuss Mode: Monsters Won’t Attack mod for SOMA [official
site] doesn’t quite allow you to hold conversations with the denizens
of Frictional’s latest creation but it does prevent them from chasing
you around the place until you die. I’m excited to try this because
it might just improve the game significantly, simply by focusing on the
fact that fear does not need to be followed by violence and death.
§
“One of the weirdest / saddest design exp I had: [Bioshock 2]
playtesters carefully loot every container for hours, then report hating
every moment.”
- Zak McClendon, Lead Designer on Bioshock 2
/.../
I
was a moth to the dull flame of the hidden packages of GTA III
(Rockstar, 2001), pieces of virtual tat that simply add one to a
meaningless counter. I continued to burn rubber for hour after hour
until I had found every last package. They’re just one example of
the now ubiquitous collectible. Today I’d like to introduce the collective noun for the collectible: a fucking plague.
/.../
thank
God for those first-person secret box games dubbed “walking
simulators”. At least there aren’t any items to hunt, right? We don’t
need rewards for our activities! Oh reallllly?
/.../
Will
O’Neill, who wrote Actual Sunlight (2014) and provided words for Planet
of the Eyes (Cococucumber, 2015), tweeted that he walked an entire
football pitch in Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture (The Chinese Room,
2015) hoping to trigger a scripted response but there was nothing. He
felt the game was forcing him to do tedious things for fear of missing
out. O’Neill is not the only one to feel like his time is being
squandered by these games. But when players who are into walking
simulators complain they have no reward other than walking – you know
something has gone wrong. It’s our old friend the overjustification
effect: once you wrap an incentive around something people enjoy doing,
it performs a weird kind of alchemy that transmutes the fun into
drudgery, into work.
/.../
When I played Fuel, it was easy to
concentrate on the driving and forget about those paltry liveries and
vista points because they were too sparse, but the scrum of missions and
sidequests and collectibles had come to define GTA more than its
cityscapes. I had hated GTA: San Andreas, with prior GTA experience
convincing me to conquer everything – but San Andreas was overwhelming
and I was left dejected.
Yet all I needed to do was forget about the objectives and collectibles.
All I needed to do was get in a car and drive.
§
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” says the pick-up artist. “I’ve just got more game than you,” says your roommate who wears too much cologne. Comparisons between dating and gaming are commonplace in our web-obsessed culture, and thanks to a recent profile on Tinder from Fast Company, it turns out this connection is less superficial than you might think.
/.../
According to Tinder CEO Jonathan Badeen, Tinder uses a variation of ELO scoring to determine how you rank among the site’s userbase, and therefore, which profiles to suggest to you and whose queues your profile shows up in. Invented by physics professor Arpad Elo to determine rankings among chess players, ELO assigns ranks by judging players’ presumed skill levels against each other.
/.../
The result is a system where your ranking is more determined by how you compare to other people rather than personal stats. The system has since been adapted for use in football, baseball, and even videogames such as League of Legends and Warcraft. So when translated to Tinder, the algorithm can be understood on a basic level as one where who you match with determines who the app shows to you. Get matched with those with a high ELO, and the site will start populating your queue with the people Tinder as a whole finds more desirable. Get matched with those sporting a lower ELO, and the site will only show you people who don’t get as many matches from high-ranking users. Your ELO is determined by the supposed desirability of the people who think you’re worth dating.
/.../
So if you want Tinder to think you’re cool, you need to match up with a greater number of popular users and fewer unpopular users.
/.../
Essentially, the key isn’t how many people find you attractive, but which people think you’re worth dating.
/.../
What if higher-ELO people match with you, but you’re actually interested in the type of people who normally have lower-ELO ranks? Just because other high-cheekboned and full-lipped ELO titans aren’t interested in them doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be. You might even be driven away by traits that Tinder as a whole finds more attractive. But because the high-ELO community has deemed you worthy, your queue will be filled with them while the type of people you’re actually interested in remain out of reach.
/.../
Dating is often framed as a competition, where one has to strive to attract as many people as possible. In this context, it might make sense to use a system born out of competition to rank which “leagues” people fall into. But the end goal of dating is one of the biggest cooperative endeavors people can take on together. Which raises the question: Is a system born out of a war game like Chess really the most appropriate way to judge compatibility?
§
What gives Homesickened its gut punch is that, ultimately, it is a story about trying to go home, but how, for many of us, we can never really do that again. It’s a story about loneliness, isolation and the consequences of putting more value in things than in the people around us. The ironically wistful reproduction of CGA DOS conventions is, after all, the earnestly resigned sigh too heavy for the software designed to render it.
§
Blow says he designs puzzles to be "first and foremost a representation of an idea, non-verbally." Rather than just being a tricky thing for a player to solve, he wants each puzzle to say something to the player. He does this by actually writing out a sentence for each puzzle.
/.../
Here's where Blow reveals The Witness' greatest trick: It's not only that he's not scared of players getting stuck, but that getting stuck is actually a key part of the process. It's a requirement to the feeling he wants the game to create. "I try to make puzzles in The Witness as simple as they can be," Blow says. "You just don't get it. It's not only that you don't get it, but you don't feel like there's anything to tell you how to get it. It's as much of a brick wall as possible, with no red herrings or anything. So eventually, when you manage to stick your head through that brick wall and see what's past it, it's the most magical.
§
Critical Switch: Winter 2015
Zolani Stewart - Bernband 14:50
Austin Howe - Party Size in JRPGs 07:36
Austin Howe - Dead Sun 10:24
Zolani Stewart - F-Zero and The Language of Space 10:50
Austin Howe - Rest In Pain 15:19
Zolani Stewart - Petrichor 07:57
Austin Howe - BBSD, Ludocentrism, Abstract Themes 06:09
Zolani Stewart - An Intro to Minimalism 15:10
Austin Howe - Republican Dad Mechanics 07:37
Zolani Stewart - Mirror's Edge: The Landscape of Sound 09:15
Devon Carter (Guest) - JRPGs and Simplicity 11:20
§
Critical Switch: Summer 2015
Austin C. Howe - Shovel Knight and Interrogation 07:27
Zolani Stewart - Expanding Interactivity 13:30
Austin C. Howe - FFVII and Jazz Standards 09:40
Austin Howe - Intro to Game Design and Drama 09:15
Crit Switch Podcast! 26:55
Heather Alexandra - Procedural Generation in Game Design 08:25
Zolani Stewart - Menus and UI 04:05
Game Design and Drama: The Resistance Curve 09:06
§
At
the end of disc one, Squall and Friends face Edea on a parade float in
Deling City. After the fight, when Edea seems defeated, she conjures an
enormous ice shard and propels it through Squall’s chest. Squall
stumbles back and falls off the platform. He sees Rinoa above, reaching
to him as he falls. Squall closes his eyes and dies. The entire remaining game time, from the beginning of disc two to the second half of the ending movie, is a dream.
§
Leigh suggested that it might be fun for us to do a letter series as I played, combining her nuanced understanding with my fresh eyes to explore just what it is that makes FFVII the game it is. I agreed, and we started to write.
§
What we see in gaming right now is not colonialism, but evolution: the
changes that need to take place for the art form to survive and thrive.
Rather than imagining games as a community of chosen people whose
integrity must be protected, everyone must take a broader view of the
form and the multitudes it already contains.
§
Those who dwell in the Friend Zone are not imprisoned by the object of their desire; they are imprisoned by desire itself, always entreating them to chase their own tail. The walls they build and occupy play host
to a thousand doppelgangers, each wearing the mask of one person. They
think they hate the person, but they hate only themselves. They think
this person imprisoned them, but they must have imprisoned themselves.
/.../
Reading as I am in the year 2015, I must describe K’s behaviour as
rapey; I must say he’d fit right in amongst the denizens of The Friend
Zone, nestled snugly between the Nice Guys™ and the Creepers. It’s
possible that his actions appeared dashing in the eyes of the book’s
1915 audience (as well as the eyes of the Internet Man). Regardless, the
plot confirms for us that they were unwelcome and inappropriate, since
Miss Burstner vanishes into the woodwork following the evening’s events.
/.../
My work on Friend Zone prompted me to read it as an elegy for
the Internet Man, delivered 100 years before the fact. Like the Internet
Man, K has exploited his station: lorded it above anyone he
could, believing this to be his birthright and purpose. Like the
Internet Man, K is too busy chasing tail to comprehend the shape of
his crimes. His verdict is as much about big inscrutable forces as it
is about a peculiar personal failing; it plays out neither with K’s
complete consent nor fully against his will.
§
Ethan Carter's final cutscene is a story unlock, whereas Verde Station’s last scene is a total shocker that does not, in itself, answer the big questions. HOWEVER. Both games refute the lazy pejorative “walking simulator” albeit in different ways.
/.../
an interesting distinction between Ethan Carter and Verde Station. The latter is much more authoritarian about gating progress, yet the former more inviting to the explorer-player, save for the endgame. Which is the better game? The question is how you like your mysteries spun. If a player figures out the story in the first few minutes, then the player is consigned to watching pieces move into assigned positions - and this is one of the reasons why Gone Home gates progress through the story.
/.../
I’ve yet to see environmental storytelling as coy and understated as Kairo, although that game confused many of its players, because Verde Station still needs to rely on lore in the form of handwritten notes scattered around and messages stored on terminals. But it might be better to see Kairo as a special case because I’ve previously discussed how limiting it is to tell a story in a dead world. Certain messages are corrupted a little too conveniently, so the world feels like a puzzle authored just for you as opposed to a real situation you’re trying to make sense of.
§
[The Talos Principle]
human race perishes but, in its dying moments, initiates a long-term computer simulation in which it is hoped a sentient intelligence will evolve to carry on the torch of humanity... but the simulation itself is frightened to die. But it’s much more than that. It’s a story of individuals pulling together to “save the world” and what exactly that means. It’s a story of a species facing the end with dignity. It’s a meditation on what it means to be sentient. It’s a story of programs desperate to understand the strange prison they are born into and the “god” that presides over them. And virtually all of this is told through text, some with a conversational component.
/.../
“I was actually trying really hard to avoid retelling the same story,” he explains, “since I really hate repeating myself, but everything kept evolving into that direction, perhaps partially because Croteam enjoyed The Infinite Ocean. I think some of the mistakes I made in my first few drafts came from trying to avoid similarities. What I ended up deciding was that if The Infinite Ocean is a game about an AI becoming a god, Talos is about an AI becoming human.”
§
The saddest aspect of the QR texts is that as you move further towards the end of the game, they thin out, making it clear how many programs never made it through and the world grows more cold and lonely. Rather than the Garden of Eden, the simulation is both purgatory and graveyard – many of the child programs fall into depression or go mad.
This ethical aspect of the simulation is never made explicit, although Gehenna does sail much closer to these particular rocks. Elohim continues to iterate from one child program to another, attempting to find the program that will finally defeat the simulation and thus be the candidate for upload to physical hardware. But many of the AI already seem to be self-aware and these programs are being put through mental torture. I’m not sure the creators of the Process, Alexandra Drennan and her team, thought this far ahead, as if they assumed only the successful AI would feel anything at all. But they were trying to save humanity and these abused children were the inevitable price.
/.../
“I always intended for a certain amount of ambiguity there. It's the messiness of the story – how the simulation was made out of disparate parts, how it malfunctioned in odd ways, how maybe the very malfunctions ultimately helped it succeed – that makes it human to me. Elohim is part of that. He's supposed to be challenged, yes, but he takes that too far, out of desperation, out of fear. To the player's character Elohim is just a test, but to himself the whole God thing is more than an act, it's his whole reality. Maybe he endangers the entire Process by his actions. Maybe he actually does a better job than intended by accident. Maybe underneath it all he always knows how it's going to end, no matter how much he denies it. To me, that messiness and ambiguity is a more realistic reflection of how we deal with these things in the real world.
“I should probably also point out that there are deliberate references to Jesus and his moments of doubt in Elohim's lines, another syncretic element of the story, another retelling. There's a reversal of roles at the end, God in his doubt submitting to man: let your will be done. The end of the game, in many ways, is about Elohim's moment of humanity, a kind of precursor to the humanity about to be realized."
Showing posts with label super mario. Show all posts
Showing posts with label super mario. Show all posts
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Critical Links 3/12
§§§MGSV
He is, just like all the other Snakes in all the other Metal Gears, just a bloke with a mullet who crawls around on the floor a lot. There’s no shame in that: the amorphous, interchangeable character of Snake is one of the more compelling blokes in all of contemporary video games. But that isn’t enough for MGS V. It wants us to see him not only as the greatest warrior of the 20th century, but also as the greatest man to have ever lived. General. Tactician. Visionary. Father. Philosopher. But he’s none of these things. He’s simply really good at solo sneaking missions, just like his cloned son before him.
/.../
AND AND AND it’s not even Big Boss at all, which makes the whole thing, which hardly made sense to begin with, stray even further away from possibly ever making any sense. The destructiveness of the game's violently unnecessary twist cannot be overstated.
[It defintely takes a special sort of madness to keep writing the Metal Gear Saga, and it takes a different (?) sort of madness to continue to invest so much of oneself into the world of Metal Gear when it just barely makes sense anymore. It's very hard to let go of the series because it can't let go of itself, and what's even worse, the very fact that it can't let go of itself and explores similar themes and concepts in every game but adds new layers and world building to it every time is precisely why I love the series to begin with! But after MGS4 I just felt that it kind of hurt more than it felt good, and although that game was far from my favorite in the series, I could live with it being the last game. Peace Walker came and well it was good, but I kinda lost interest although I tried to hang on anyway. And then this fifth game -- I don't even know. I'm still waiting for someone to write something so that I can appreciate the game for its hidden genius, but all I can find is disappointment. On some level I do get the twist that we are big boss and always have been, and it ties into the existential themes of past Kojima games where we were told to find ourselves, our own paths, effectively becoming just men with guns (and thus not soldiers), but I don't think all of the bollocks that is MGS5 makes up for that. Yes it's a neat Kojima ending that it's not really an ending, and that we all waited for Kojima to make sense of Big Boss and it all for us, and that instead zie just trolls us and tells us that this is the end for hir involvement in the saga and that it is now up to us to make the legend come alive, up to us to decide what it was all about. Up to us to create our own meaning instead of trying to piece it all together and find meaning in some sort of passed-on canon without contradictions. MGS was never about that, just as it was precicely about neurotic attachment to building upon existing canon. Everything MGS is just that sort of paradox.
But still. You know?]
§
Whether intentional or not, Kojima's stylised, fetishistic view of military life seems to be saying "This is why people go to war: to enact the media that excited them so much."
In other words, Snake doesn't have to do anything overtly evil for us to determine that he's not exactly the nicest man. It's just that so many war games put the player in the role of a psychopath that we simply take his egregious actions for granted.
§
Raiden is at the whim of the designer.
The true ending of Metal Gear Solid 5 takes it one step further. We don’t need Raiden anymore, because we’re doing that job ourselves. From that perspective, it makes sense why this new game focuses so much more on gameplay and less on half hour long cutscenes: the real story is about the player becoming Big Boss.
§
Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)
§
Two Minute Game Crit - Metal Gear Solid: Crouch and Zoom
[perhaps we could use some crotch and zoom in the series as well - to balance out all the tits and zoom?]
§§§SUPER MARIO
Game Maker's Toolkit - Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design
§
Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level
§
Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine
§
Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
§
The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated. This self-deception is antithetical to the genius of “Mario” games. From “Donkey Kong” to “Super Mario 64,” Mario games have always felt like creations in pursuit of abstract ideas rather than homages to any specific history or design tradition.
§§§MISC
Errant Signal - (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing
[I do feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want less player privilege/powergaming/less wish-fullfillment and more roleplaying/violence/what the players don't know that they need in games, and in this context - more Fallout 1&2 and less Fallout 4. And I really want what Planescape Torment or Unrest attempts in a AAA with Mass Effect's budget. I'm thinking that might be a while, and so I just have to be grateful that the difference between indie and non-indie is shrinking, which also means that indiegames can be really fucking beautiful and large in scope. There was even one game kickstarted that specifically wanted to do Mass Effect but different, but yeah the scope was just a couple of hours on that one. We'll get there eventually!]
§
I wanted to start from one simple word, one that is used by marketing departments and journalists alike; it pervades reviews, previews, the lexicon of indie games and it trickled down to gamers themselves. The word ‘addictive’. Gaming is, as far as I know, the only community in which the word addictive is considered a positive.
[This piece is really personal and hit home for me, even if my story with depression is quite different and has made me play less and not more games for the last ten years (but before that, yep, had me playing Baldur's Gate 2 constantly for three months).
§
Kuchera expresses the relief he feels at discovering Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be an unplayable buggy mess, such that it no longer binds him to go out and buy the game. It’s an unburdening, a release from one’s unspoken, self-imposed obligation, shared, Kuchera notes, by many fans of the series. The supposedly preposterous thing here and the reason it’s being presented as a curious twist of nature is people are glad they don’t have to buy a game from a franchise they’ve come to enjoy. They’re pleased to be able to write it off. It means they can move on to the next enormous franchise, as if a Metacritic score is the magic word to break their curse.
[Hi, my name is Ada and I'm an addict...]
§
How Modern Language Breaks Scrabble | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
[An interesting aside to how language breaks Scrabble is how high-level Scrabble play is so divorced from regular Scrabble playing that is barely the same game. How else could an American who doesn't speak French win the French national championship?]
§
What Makes a Good Video Game Companion? ? RagnarRox • Game Design++
[Awesome design document. Companion Cube for the win! Although I would like to question some of the assumptions in the video, the one concerning utility especially. But still, it is a tool for the toolbox.]
§
The internet is full of people speculating on whether they caused a certain event to happen in Stanley or whether it was poor chance.
These events serve to unsettle and disorient the player. They make it so that you’re never sure if you’ve fully explored the game and fully understood what is going on or if it has another surprise waiting for you the next time you start it up. By making the edges of the game vague, The Stanley Parable prevents you from getting comfortable and keeps you in a state of wonder.
[The strength of Playable Teaser is similar - in keeping the horizon of possibilities fuzzy.]
He is, just like all the other Snakes in all the other Metal Gears, just a bloke with a mullet who crawls around on the floor a lot. There’s no shame in that: the amorphous, interchangeable character of Snake is one of the more compelling blokes in all of contemporary video games. But that isn’t enough for MGS V. It wants us to see him not only as the greatest warrior of the 20th century, but also as the greatest man to have ever lived. General. Tactician. Visionary. Father. Philosopher. But he’s none of these things. He’s simply really good at solo sneaking missions, just like his cloned son before him.
/.../
AND AND AND it’s not even Big Boss at all, which makes the whole thing, which hardly made sense to begin with, stray even further away from possibly ever making any sense. The destructiveness of the game's violently unnecessary twist cannot be overstated.
[It defintely takes a special sort of madness to keep writing the Metal Gear Saga, and it takes a different (?) sort of madness to continue to invest so much of oneself into the world of Metal Gear when it just barely makes sense anymore. It's very hard to let go of the series because it can't let go of itself, and what's even worse, the very fact that it can't let go of itself and explores similar themes and concepts in every game but adds new layers and world building to it every time is precisely why I love the series to begin with! But after MGS4 I just felt that it kind of hurt more than it felt good, and although that game was far from my favorite in the series, I could live with it being the last game. Peace Walker came and well it was good, but I kinda lost interest although I tried to hang on anyway. And then this fifth game -- I don't even know. I'm still waiting for someone to write something so that I can appreciate the game for its hidden genius, but all I can find is disappointment. On some level I do get the twist that we are big boss and always have been, and it ties into the existential themes of past Kojima games where we were told to find ourselves, our own paths, effectively becoming just men with guns (and thus not soldiers), but I don't think all of the bollocks that is MGS5 makes up for that. Yes it's a neat Kojima ending that it's not really an ending, and that we all waited for Kojima to make sense of Big Boss and it all for us, and that instead zie just trolls us and tells us that this is the end for hir involvement in the saga and that it is now up to us to make the legend come alive, up to us to decide what it was all about. Up to us to create our own meaning instead of trying to piece it all together and find meaning in some sort of passed-on canon without contradictions. MGS was never about that, just as it was precicely about neurotic attachment to building upon existing canon. Everything MGS is just that sort of paradox.
But still. You know?]
§
Whether intentional or not, Kojima's stylised, fetishistic view of military life seems to be saying "This is why people go to war: to enact the media that excited them so much."
In other words, Snake doesn't have to do anything overtly evil for us to determine that he's not exactly the nicest man. It's just that so many war games put the player in the role of a psychopath that we simply take his egregious actions for granted.
§
Raiden is at the whim of the designer.
The true ending of Metal Gear Solid 5 takes it one step further. We don’t need Raiden anymore, because we’re doing that job ourselves. From that perspective, it makes sense why this new game focuses so much more on gameplay and less on half hour long cutscenes: the real story is about the player becoming Big Boss.
§
Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)
§
Two Minute Game Crit - Metal Gear Solid: Crouch and Zoom
[perhaps we could use some crotch and zoom in the series as well - to balance out all the tits and zoom?]
§§§SUPER MARIO
Game Maker's Toolkit - Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design
§
Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level
§
Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine
§
Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
§
The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated. This self-deception is antithetical to the genius of “Mario” games. From “Donkey Kong” to “Super Mario 64,” Mario games have always felt like creations in pursuit of abstract ideas rather than homages to any specific history or design tradition.
§§§MISC
Errant Signal - (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing
[I do feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want less player privilege/powergaming/less wish-fullfillment and more roleplaying/violence/what the players don't know that they need in games, and in this context - more Fallout 1&2 and less Fallout 4. And I really want what Planescape Torment or Unrest attempts in a AAA with Mass Effect's budget. I'm thinking that might be a while, and so I just have to be grateful that the difference between indie and non-indie is shrinking, which also means that indiegames can be really fucking beautiful and large in scope. There was even one game kickstarted that specifically wanted to do Mass Effect but different, but yeah the scope was just a couple of hours on that one. We'll get there eventually!]
§
I wanted to start from one simple word, one that is used by marketing departments and journalists alike; it pervades reviews, previews, the lexicon of indie games and it trickled down to gamers themselves. The word ‘addictive’. Gaming is, as far as I know, the only community in which the word addictive is considered a positive.
[This piece is really personal and hit home for me, even if my story with depression is quite different and has made me play less and not more games for the last ten years (but before that, yep, had me playing Baldur's Gate 2 constantly for three months).
§
Kuchera expresses the relief he feels at discovering Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be an unplayable buggy mess, such that it no longer binds him to go out and buy the game. It’s an unburdening, a release from one’s unspoken, self-imposed obligation, shared, Kuchera notes, by many fans of the series. The supposedly preposterous thing here and the reason it’s being presented as a curious twist of nature is people are glad they don’t have to buy a game from a franchise they’ve come to enjoy. They’re pleased to be able to write it off. It means they can move on to the next enormous franchise, as if a Metacritic score is the magic word to break their curse.
[Hi, my name is Ada and I'm an addict...]
§
How Modern Language Breaks Scrabble | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
[An interesting aside to how language breaks Scrabble is how high-level Scrabble play is so divorced from regular Scrabble playing that is barely the same game. How else could an American who doesn't speak French win the French national championship?]
§
What Makes a Good Video Game Companion? ? RagnarRox • Game Design++
[Awesome design document. Companion Cube for the win! Although I would like to question some of the assumptions in the video, the one concerning utility especially. But still, it is a tool for the toolbox.]
§
The internet is full of people speculating on whether they caused a certain event to happen in Stanley or whether it was poor chance.
These events serve to unsettle and disorient the player. They make it so that you’re never sure if you’ve fully explored the game and fully understood what is going on or if it has another surprise waiting for you the next time you start it up. By making the edges of the game vague, The Stanley Parable prevents you from getting comfortable and keeps you in a state of wonder.
[The strength of Playable Teaser is similar - in keeping the horizon of possibilities fuzzy.]
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Her Story and other
§HER STORY
On that last interview, it's important to note that the clips you bring back with every search are ordered chronologically rather than given a permanent random ordering. This seemingly minor detail is significant because the final interview clips often get edged out of a search's five clip cap. This is an astute way to bake hard answers into the game without having to gate them artificially, thus retaining Her Story's sense of openness.
§
What’s interesting is how Barlow doesn’t seem to sweat the idea that the mystery might be solved quickly, or whether that mystery itself is all that important to Her Story.
§
So I’m assuming we all took slightly different routes through the story and I’d be interested to know your favourite or most memorable AHA moments because I’m thinking they’ll vary due to those different pathways.
§
There is a freedom in Her Story, and it is the freedom that comes from the game getting out of the way: you don't have to arrange your thoughts for the computer to then check at the end. You don't have to show your workings. It's not Cluedo. You don't actually have to arrange your thoughts at all. Ultimately, the game's about prejudice as much as detective work; it's not Her Story but Your Story as you weigh the evidence and apportion motives as you see fit
§
Barlow decided to make a game by himself and never looked back. His very first idea was to place the entire game around a police interview, and the reasons behind that are more intriguing than you'd think.
§
Her Story: Walkthrough Guide and Discussion
§OTHER
The Legacy of Super Mario Bros.
§
MGS5 Analysis: E3 2015 Trailer - Liquid & 'Solid', Venom Schizophrenic?! Godzilla Reference? - 1Hour
§
Most danmaku games share certain commonalities./.../However, Warning Forever (produced by Hikoza Ohkubo) marks a strong disjuncture with these expectation.
/.../
whereas in most danmaku games the player learns the bosses’ patterns, the reverse is true in Warning Forever.
/.../
A skilled player should therefore switch rapidly between many playstyles to prevent (or at least slow down) the boss becoming too challenging to defeat by progressing too far down any single dominant evolutionary tree.
§
Errant Signal - Sunset (Spoilers)
On that last interview, it's important to note that the clips you bring back with every search are ordered chronologically rather than given a permanent random ordering. This seemingly minor detail is significant because the final interview clips often get edged out of a search's five clip cap. This is an astute way to bake hard answers into the game without having to gate them artificially, thus retaining Her Story's sense of openness.
§
What’s interesting is how Barlow doesn’t seem to sweat the idea that the mystery might be solved quickly, or whether that mystery itself is all that important to Her Story.
§
So I’m assuming we all took slightly different routes through the story and I’d be interested to know your favourite or most memorable AHA moments because I’m thinking they’ll vary due to those different pathways.
§
There is a freedom in Her Story, and it is the freedom that comes from the game getting out of the way: you don't have to arrange your thoughts for the computer to then check at the end. You don't have to show your workings. It's not Cluedo. You don't actually have to arrange your thoughts at all. Ultimately, the game's about prejudice as much as detective work; it's not Her Story but Your Story as you weigh the evidence and apportion motives as you see fit
§
Barlow decided to make a game by himself and never looked back. His very first idea was to place the entire game around a police interview, and the reasons behind that are more intriguing than you'd think.
§
Her Story: Walkthrough Guide and Discussion
§OTHER
The Legacy of Super Mario Bros.
§
MGS5 Analysis: E3 2015 Trailer - Liquid & 'Solid', Venom Schizophrenic?! Godzilla Reference? - 1Hour
§
Most danmaku games share certain commonalities./.../However, Warning Forever (produced by Hikoza Ohkubo) marks a strong disjuncture with these expectation.
/.../
whereas in most danmaku games the player learns the bosses’ patterns, the reverse is true in Warning Forever.
/.../
A skilled player should therefore switch rapidly between many playstyles to prevent (or at least slow down) the boss becoming too challenging to defeat by progressing too far down any single dominant evolutionary tree.
§
Errant Signal - Sunset (Spoilers)
Sunday, July 27, 2014
27/7
§DESIGN
Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0
§
Extra Credits - The Fighting Game Problem - How to Teach Complicated Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_xG1Yg_QoM
§
Design Club - Super Mario Bros: Level 1-1 - Game Analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE
§
Design Club - Portal: Test Chambers - Tutorial Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_AsF3Rfw8w
§
Design Club - Mark of the Ninja - Stealth Games and Visual Cues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vJNqseX-rs
§
Extra Credits - Choices vs Consequences - What Player Decisions Mean in Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iklM_djBeY
§
Let's Talk About Boring Upgrade Systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR-EuyU2hb8
§
Errant Signal - Civilization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBlEscMLjy0
§MISC VIDEOS
Can We Ever Stop Toxic, Racist, & Abusive Gamers?? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvISdKG7Ng
§
Why Do People Do Sick and Twisted Things in DayZ? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3B2s-wswcM
§
Extra Credits - The Waiting Game - Why Weird Games Become Cult Hits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk93AyICH0
§
Why is SEX So Terrible in Videogames? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vASCpg8TetY
§MISC ARTICLES
Zelda: Sales Numbers in Context
http://www.zeldainformer.com/articles/zelda-sales-numbers-in-context#.U7qOVbGA91S
§
If “Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen and soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts,” as the age-old sports quote playfully asserts, then Call of Duty is an adult game played by children and Super Smash Bros. is a children’s game played by adults.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/melee-masterpiece-melee-demon/
§
Lovecraft’s protagonists are always men of learning, the brightest sparks of all that we have built; their understanding makes their fall so much the greater.
The terms used to illustrate this dark realization are many. The scholar Timothy Evans (in his essay “A Last Defense Against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft”) describes the structure with reference to the tropes of a detective story, in that the Lovecraftian narrative “leads not to a solution (like a detective story), but to a realization of the illusory nature of truth and the unknowability of the cosmos.”
/.../
In this vein, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is an almost textbook Lovecraftian horror. The creeping darkness that hounds the cultured protagonist – remember, he is an archeologist – is a profoundly alien and horrifying presence.
/.../
But Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a very different beast.
/.../
What A Machine for Pigs presents us with is moral cosmic horror – that the universe, despite the walls and roof of laws and morals and the illusion of progress, is a ravenous and bloody place; that the world’s turning is predicated on suffering; that time and time again, despite whatever moral window-dressing we put up to improve the decor, we cannot bleach away fresh bloodstains.
http://gamesarenotart.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/a-machine-for-pigs-and-cosmic-horror/
§
A secret box is a game which is built around some form of content and challenge is trivial or absent. The emphasis is on conveying moments or ideas to the player rather than testing the player's abilities.
/.../
So screw your “walking simulators”. I've got a mountain of secret boxes over here that I'm anxious to explore.
http://www.electrondance.com/screw-your-walking-simulators
§
Hollywood needs a love story. It’s hard to imagine a film like Her without one. But love stories assume not only that direct, sensual connections between beings is possible, but that such relations are our ultimate goal. Mountain imagines Her as if the film been titled It instead. It offers a subtler version of what a life attached to unfamiliar things might feel like. Not comfort or intimacy, but estrangement and confusion, mixed with curiosity and wonder. But most of all, while Her depicts a future on an alternate timeline we must struggle to believe, Mountain reminds us that we need not wait to commune with things. They’re everywhere, overwhelming us, sticking to us, piling up around us. And they are here not to save you, nor to destroy you. They are just here. What if that were enough?
http://bogost.com/writing/mountain/
Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0
§
Extra Credits - The Fighting Game Problem - How to Teach Complicated Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_xG1Yg_QoM
§
Design Club - Super Mario Bros: Level 1-1 - Game Analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE
§
Design Club - Portal: Test Chambers - Tutorial Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_AsF3Rfw8w
§
Design Club - Mark of the Ninja - Stealth Games and Visual Cues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vJNqseX-rs
§
Extra Credits - Choices vs Consequences - What Player Decisions Mean in Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iklM_djBeY
§
Let's Talk About Boring Upgrade Systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR-EuyU2hb8
§
Errant Signal - Civilization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBlEscMLjy0
§MISC VIDEOS
Can We Ever Stop Toxic, Racist, & Abusive Gamers?? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvISdKG7Ng
§
Why Do People Do Sick and Twisted Things in DayZ? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3B2s-wswcM
§
Extra Credits - The Waiting Game - Why Weird Games Become Cult Hits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk93AyICH0
§
Why is SEX So Terrible in Videogames? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vASCpg8TetY
§MISC ARTICLES
Zelda: Sales Numbers in Context
http://www.zeldainformer.com/articles/zelda-sales-numbers-in-context#.U7qOVbGA91S
§
If “Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen and soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts,” as the age-old sports quote playfully asserts, then Call of Duty is an adult game played by children and Super Smash Bros. is a children’s game played by adults.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/melee-masterpiece-melee-demon/
§
Lovecraft’s protagonists are always men of learning, the brightest sparks of all that we have built; their understanding makes their fall so much the greater.
The terms used to illustrate this dark realization are many. The scholar Timothy Evans (in his essay “A Last Defense Against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft”) describes the structure with reference to the tropes of a detective story, in that the Lovecraftian narrative “leads not to a solution (like a detective story), but to a realization of the illusory nature of truth and the unknowability of the cosmos.”
/.../
In this vein, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is an almost textbook Lovecraftian horror. The creeping darkness that hounds the cultured protagonist – remember, he is an archeologist – is a profoundly alien and horrifying presence.
/.../
But Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a very different beast.
/.../
What A Machine for Pigs presents us with is moral cosmic horror – that the universe, despite the walls and roof of laws and morals and the illusion of progress, is a ravenous and bloody place; that the world’s turning is predicated on suffering; that time and time again, despite whatever moral window-dressing we put up to improve the decor, we cannot bleach away fresh bloodstains.
http://gamesarenotart.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/a-machine-for-pigs-and-cosmic-horror/
§
A secret box is a game which is built around some form of content and challenge is trivial or absent. The emphasis is on conveying moments or ideas to the player rather than testing the player's abilities.
/.../
So screw your “walking simulators”. I've got a mountain of secret boxes over here that I'm anxious to explore.
http://www.electrondance.com/screw-your-walking-simulators
§
Hollywood needs a love story. It’s hard to imagine a film like Her without one. But love stories assume not only that direct, sensual connections between beings is possible, but that such relations are our ultimate goal. Mountain imagines Her as if the film been titled It instead. It offers a subtler version of what a life attached to unfamiliar things might feel like. Not comfort or intimacy, but estrangement and confusion, mixed with curiosity and wonder. But most of all, while Her depicts a future on an alternate timeline we must struggle to believe, Mountain reminds us that we need not wait to commune with things. They’re everywhere, overwhelming us, sticking to us, piling up around us. And they are here not to save you, nor to destroy you. They are just here. What if that were enough?
http://bogost.com/writing/mountain/
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