§§§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.]
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Crit Links 28/11
I found myself creating a series of characteristics that I believe would be found in any Great Work of gaming. In short, I found myself identifying something like a Platonic Form for gaming’s great works, a Form I will call “The Meaningful Game.”
§
The Delta of Randomness - Can You Balance for RNG? - Extra Credits
§
Inquisition manages to undermine a lot of its own dramatic pauses.
Let's talk about a minstrel.
/.../
The combination of the two songs, neither of which has a counterpart for an alternate choice, very strongly suggests one "correct" narrative interpretation of events: the Inquisitor sided with the mages, supported the rebellion, and had to fight Samson.
/.../
Leliana's presence during Dragon Age II is mostly a secret. And yet in a way, in the pubs and taverns where the Bards have ears, she was there all along.
Because her work so often involves autobiographical events, [Nina] Freeman says she is sometimes accused of being self-absorbed or egotistical. But rather than an exercise in vanity, she sees her work as the opposite: an opportunity to look back at herself and her choices with an unflinching and critical eye.
“I think it’s good to be self-reflective, because otherwise, what are you doing? You’re just letting other people shape who you are instead of being self-critical and learning from your actions. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do in retrospect, to try and be a better person, because I think I do a lot of things wrong.”
I like to think there's an element of subconscious deliberation at work, because a lot of the time I'll get half-way through making a game, and then suddenly its 'meaning' will dawn on me," she says. "I like this approach because a lot of the time it's cathartic and surprising. I didn't realize what Rain, House, Eternity was really about until I had nearly finished it, and it was a powerful, deeply personal moment for me, and it also allowed me to make an ending that was much more appropriate than what I'd planned."
While most games fetishize nostalgia (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, Downwell, Every Other Bit Game Ever), Homesickness reminds you why the past should stay in the past.
§
More Ways to Use Randomness - What is the Goal of RNG? - Extra Credits
§
Yet while most media coverage congratulated Nintendo for finally making a female version of the famed character an option, the actual context of Linkle's existence reeks of that unique Nintendo brand of faux progressivism. It might sound good on paper, but in practice only shows how little Nintendo actually understands about what the problem is.
As Anita Sarkeesian might point out, Linkle is a classic example of the "Ms. Male Character" trope.
§
As a teenager I was duped by Metal Gear Solid. As an adult, I remain only cautiously optimistic about D4.
5 Queer Video Games Breaking the Mold
It would seem that, finally, with Dad Quest, the concept of dadification is freed from the shackles of patriarchy. No longer are fathers supposed to be grizzly, gravely, possessive guardians. Instead, Dad Quest encourages parents to literally throw their children into situations that allow them to figure it out the world for themselves.
§
These moments all share a common theme; they actively ask the player to step back from traditional forms of videogame interactivity. Yes, traditional methods of input are utilised: triangle allows Joel to pat the giraffe, and Conway and Shannon’s conversation is still navigated utilising clicks of the mouse. But these scenes are not dominated by their interactivity in terms of prescriptive button inputs and subsequent movements on screen. Rather, they are defined by their interactive inaction. And yet, they are deeply engaging moments.
§
This blog is about my personal journey (roughly chronologically) through 40 years of computer role-playing games (CRPGs). I play each game and discuss its strengths and weaknesses, its place in the history of RPGs, its influences, and just what it's like to play the game today.
§
The Delta of Randomness - Can You Balance for RNG? - Extra Credits
§
Inquisition manages to undermine a lot of its own dramatic pauses.
Let's talk about a minstrel.
/.../
The combination of the two songs, neither of which has a counterpart for an alternate choice, very strongly suggests one "correct" narrative interpretation of events: the Inquisitor sided with the mages, supported the rebellion, and had to fight Samson.
/.../
Leliana's presence during Dragon Age II is mostly a secret. And yet in a way, in the pubs and taverns where the Bards have ears, she was there all along.
Because her work so often involves autobiographical events, [Nina] Freeman says she is sometimes accused of being self-absorbed or egotistical. But rather than an exercise in vanity, she sees her work as the opposite: an opportunity to look back at herself and her choices with an unflinching and critical eye.
“I think it’s good to be self-reflective, because otherwise, what are you doing? You’re just letting other people shape who you are instead of being self-critical and learning from your actions. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do in retrospect, to try and be a better person, because I think I do a lot of things wrong.”
I like to think there's an element of subconscious deliberation at work, because a lot of the time I'll get half-way through making a game, and then suddenly its 'meaning' will dawn on me," she says. "I like this approach because a lot of the time it's cathartic and surprising. I didn't realize what Rain, House, Eternity was really about until I had nearly finished it, and it was a powerful, deeply personal moment for me, and it also allowed me to make an ending that was much more appropriate than what I'd planned."
While most games fetishize nostalgia (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, Downwell, Every Other Bit Game Ever), Homesickness reminds you why the past should stay in the past.
§
More Ways to Use Randomness - What is the Goal of RNG? - Extra Credits
§
Yet while most media coverage congratulated Nintendo for finally making a female version of the famed character an option, the actual context of Linkle's existence reeks of that unique Nintendo brand of faux progressivism. It might sound good on paper, but in practice only shows how little Nintendo actually understands about what the problem is.
As Anita Sarkeesian might point out, Linkle is a classic example of the "Ms. Male Character" trope.
§
As a teenager I was duped by Metal Gear Solid. As an adult, I remain only cautiously optimistic about D4.
5 Queer Video Games Breaking the Mold
This '80s influence upon popular videogames continues
on into the 2000s, managing to reveal itself both without much filter
and in fusing with the anti-hero archetype that arose at the turn of the
century.
This antihero archetype is what Brenton J. Malin dubs the “hypersensitive killer.” It arose with such TV shows as The Shield and The Sopranos.
He is at once relentlessly immoral yet more in touch with his emotions
than his peers, depicting the “extremely contradictory masculinity of
the turn of the 21st century,” according to Malin. It would seem that, finally, with Dad Quest, the concept of dadification is freed from the shackles of patriarchy. No longer are fathers supposed to be grizzly, gravely, possessive guardians. Instead, Dad Quest encourages parents to literally throw their children into situations that allow them to figure it out the world for themselves.
§
These moments all share a common theme; they actively ask the player to step back from traditional forms of videogame interactivity. Yes, traditional methods of input are utilised: triangle allows Joel to pat the giraffe, and Conway and Shannon’s conversation is still navigated utilising clicks of the mouse. But these scenes are not dominated by their interactivity in terms of prescriptive button inputs and subsequent movements on screen. Rather, they are defined by their interactive inaction. And yet, they are deeply engaging moments.
§
This blog is about my personal journey (roughly chronologically) through 40 years of computer role-playing games (CRPGs). I play each game and discuss its strengths and weaknesses, its place in the history of RPGs, its influences, and just what it's like to play the game today.
Monday, November 9, 2015
9/11
§VIDEOS
The Importance of GoldenEye’s Guns! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios - YouTube
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Why Nathan Drake Doesn't Need a Compass
§
Viral Dusty Dead Identity Quiz - Minicrit
§
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Videogames and You!
§
RetroAhoy: Soul Edge - YouTube
§ARTICLES
Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.
§
The Dusty Dead seeks to expose the narrative wiring that underpins our collective engagement in and identification with fiction
§
Critical Distance is proud to present this Critical Compilation of Nintendo’s series-spanning heroine Samus Aran, curated by Video Game Heart‘s Grayson Davis.
§
an extended look at what makes Catan great. I’ll be examine the game’s major systems, the rules underlying them, and the emotions they create.
§
Hi, Alexandra the Translator is back—with more wordweaving, bits, and pieces.
§
The beauty of Barksdale’s work is in capturing the creeping unease that can come from wanting other people’s lives to make too much sense.
§
It's based partially on real people and events, but fictionalized and edited to make for a more coherent story—it's more like two truths and a lie. But because the character has a similar gender identity, people assume it's literally me. That wouldn't happen if I were a white guy writing about a white guy, since white guys are seen as more Universal Representatives of Humanity than genderqueer people of color.
§SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE FISH
On a personal level I look back at my huge contribution to the games that we’ve made and I have had to watch Dan get the credit time and time again. I’ve had journalists assuming I’m Dan’s PA, I have been referenced as “Dan Pinchbeck’s wife” in articles, publishers on first meeting have automatically assumed that my producer is my boss just because he’s a man, one magazine would only feature Dan as Studio Head and wouldn’t include me. When Dan has said “Jess is the brains of the operation” people have knowingly chuckled and cooed that it’s nice of a husband to be so kind about his wife.
§
i'll be leaving games.
§
Cathedral-in-the-Clouds: contemplation in the digital age
The Importance of GoldenEye’s Guns! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios - YouTube
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Why Nathan Drake Doesn't Need a Compass
§
Viral Dusty Dead Identity Quiz - Minicrit
§
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Videogames and You!
§
RetroAhoy: Soul Edge - YouTube
§ARTICLES
Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.
§
The Dusty Dead seeks to expose the narrative wiring that underpins our collective engagement in and identification with fiction
§
Critical Distance is proud to present this Critical Compilation of Nintendo’s series-spanning heroine Samus Aran, curated by Video Game Heart‘s Grayson Davis.
§
an extended look at what makes Catan great. I’ll be examine the game’s major systems, the rules underlying them, and the emotions they create.
§
Hi, Alexandra the Translator is back—with more wordweaving, bits, and pieces.
§
The beauty of Barksdale’s work is in capturing the creeping unease that can come from wanting other people’s lives to make too much sense.
§
It's based partially on real people and events, but fictionalized and edited to make for a more coherent story—it's more like two truths and a lie. But because the character has a similar gender identity, people assume it's literally me. That wouldn't happen if I were a white guy writing about a white guy, since white guys are seen as more Universal Representatives of Humanity than genderqueer people of color.
§SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE FISH
On a personal level I look back at my huge contribution to the games that we’ve made and I have had to watch Dan get the credit time and time again. I’ve had journalists assuming I’m Dan’s PA, I have been referenced as “Dan Pinchbeck’s wife” in articles, publishers on first meeting have automatically assumed that my producer is my boss just because he’s a man, one magazine would only feature Dan as Studio Head and wouldn’t include me. When Dan has said “Jess is the brains of the operation” people have knowingly chuckled and cooed that it’s nice of a husband to be so kind about his wife.
§
i'll be leaving games.
§
Cathedral-in-the-Clouds: contemplation in the digital age
Saturday, October 24, 2015
24/10 Videos
§VIDEOS
Game Maker's Toolkit - Adaptive Soundtracks
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Point and click puzzle design
§
Balancing an MMO Ecosystem - Getting a Mix of Player Types - Extra Credits
§
Power Creep in Hearthstone - What It Teaches Us About Games - Extra Credits
§
Future Proofing Your Design - Looking at Hearthstone and Planning Ahead - Extra Credits
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Ico, and Design by Subtraction
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Redesigning Death
§
The Power of the Abstract
§
Why Do "Girl Games" Matter? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
"Video Games are Not Special" - Minicrit
§
Shenmue, QTEs, and Mechanical Subversion - Minicrit
§
Retro Review(s): Fatal Frame 1 & 2
§
Assassin's Creed Syndicate Review
§
What You Never Noticed About Myst | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
Frame Rate - How Does Frame Rate Affect Gameplay? - Extra Credits
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Puzzle Solving... or Problem Solving?
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Is Until Dawn a Good Horror Movie?
§
Mechanical Minds - Nuclear Fruit, Part One
§
Buried in Bundles - Final Bosman
Game Maker's Toolkit - Adaptive Soundtracks
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Point and click puzzle design
§
Balancing an MMO Ecosystem - Getting a Mix of Player Types - Extra Credits
§
Power Creep in Hearthstone - What It Teaches Us About Games - Extra Credits
§
Future Proofing Your Design - Looking at Hearthstone and Planning Ahead - Extra Credits
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Ico, and Design by Subtraction
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Redesigning Death
§
The Power of the Abstract
§
Why Do "Girl Games" Matter? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
"Video Games are Not Special" - Minicrit
§
Shenmue, QTEs, and Mechanical Subversion - Minicrit
§
Retro Review(s): Fatal Frame 1 & 2
§
Assassin's Creed Syndicate Review
§
What You Never Noticed About Myst | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
Frame Rate - How Does Frame Rate Affect Gameplay? - Extra Credits
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Puzzle Solving... or Problem Solving?
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Is Until Dawn a Good Horror Movie?
§
Mechanical Minds - Nuclear Fruit, Part One
§
Buried in Bundles - Final Bosman
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)
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
14/4
No Place for Hideo
§
Sometimes when I play with someone new to games, they’ll ask me ‘How did you know that was the solution?’ and the answer is simply because I’ve been here before. On the surface it looks like skill, but in reality it’s a sign that we’ve learned to be obedient. A lifetime of playing games has taught us to be followers, and it is now a major factor in slowing down innovation and experimentation in games.
/.../
Researchers in Copenhagen and New York have both looked at building point-and-click adventures with replayable puzzles that redesign themselves each time you play, for instance. Others have looked at giving RPG characters emotions that affect how they behave in battle, protecting their loved ones, becoming distraught if they see close friends die.
/.../
`Core’ gamers are a tamed breed – companies know how they think, what they want, and how to make them feel like their needs are being met. They are the people who never ask why a door can’t be opened, they never ask why Mass Effect characters can only die in cutscenes, they never explore the same conversation tree twice expecting new dialogue. At the start of this piece I talked about playing with people newer to games, or the people who are routinely made to feel embarrassed for playing ‘casual’ games, and how it can seem that they make strange decisions that break the conventions we would never dare to. This is not a reflection on them for playing without preconceptions – it should be a reflection on us, as people too entrenched in what games are to be able to think about what they could be.
§
The desperate situation in which the denizens of Hyrule found themselves seems to be a result of their own belief. They waited for a hero when none were forthcoming, dooming themselves with blind faith. Despite enacting this same familiar fairy tale journey, Wind Waker takes this warning to heart. It’s a fairy tale against fairy tales, showing reverence for received stories even as it warns that they should not be blindly trusted.
/.../
The final scene shows Link and Tetra (back to her old piratical self) embarking on a journey to find a new life and new land among Wind Waker’s endless seas. Link rides on his old red boat, but its magic is gone. It’s still a vessel but no longer a guide binding him to a predetermined path. This time, Link’s in the lead, and the stories these kids tell will be their own.
/.../
By letting go of the past and its recurring players, the King, our storyteller, breaks the recurring Zelda cycle and frees them from its grasp.
§
This is the nine most popular posts on Electron Dance.
§
Errant Signal - Life is Strange (Spoilers)
§
Romance in Games - Can We Play with Lasting Relationships? - Extra Credits
§
Made-up Game Awards
§
Resogun Post Mortem Part 1
§
Extra Credits - Four Realistic Predictions - What the Future Really Holds for Games
§
Mario 3D World Review
§
From Bioshock to Portal, twenty-first century games have emphasized the antagonistic relationship between the player and the game world that that player occupies, indicating the illusory nature of player choice and decision making in gaming.
/.../
Device 6, of course, certainly has its own own unique vibe among the sea of “games about games.”
/.../
This may be the ultimate solipsism of video games, the promise that each one of us can be a hero, that each of us is, in fact, Prince Hamlet, whether we chose to be or not, as we save the world or the princess, thanks in part to our own unique effort—an effort taken on by hundreds and thousands of players who feel uniquely chosen themselves. And that’s the rub. That’s the recognition that Device 6 provides the player and that differentiates it from the other “games about games.”
§
Although I had been interested in EVE and its stalwart community prior to reading about what has come to be known as “gaming’s most destructive battle ever,” it wasn’t until I saw game-maker CCP erect a physical monument in Reykjavik for those lost in battle that I got hooked. That was the first time I had seen any physical commemoration of an in-game event by any game company.
/.../
This white paper, subtitled "A Comparative Analysis of Real Structural Social Evolution with the Virtual Society of EVE Online," enumerates the ways in which the development of a social infrastructure within New Eden mirrors that of “real-life” civilizations. In the analysis, the authors credit the need for the Council of Stellar Management since the political development of the society of EVE has surpassed the point of tribal and stratified structures, reaching a point of complex social hierarchies and government institutions that designate a civilization status.
§
A Brief History of Graphics
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
List of video games that have grown the most with time
Many games grow with time. Some become outdated and bested and do not. But perhaps it's not that simple. Super Mario Bros is certainly outdated and bested by its many successors, yet in hindsight it seems even more impressive for its time. This list is more on-the-fly than well-thought-out, although I've taken the above into consideration while making the (chronological) list.
Super Mario KartI haven't played any other racing game which I've enjoyed as much as Super Mario Kart, and that includes Mario Kart 64. So I guess it has to be on this list.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time/Super Double Dragon
My two favorite sidescrolling beat em ups have yet to be beaten!
Super Probotector: Alien Rebels/Contra
Yep, still my favorite run n guns.
Soul Blade
I thought that after having a bunch of Soul Caliburs around, this game would become moot. Well, I still love it. It has a slower pace compared to the newer titles, and I enjoy it much as I enjoy Street Fighter 2 after many years.
Micro Machines V3
We need more (racing)games with the main mechanic of Micro Machines! The running game Speedrunners utilizes it, and so should others.
Super Mario 64
They got so much right on the first try at 3D platforming it's crazy. The manveuering and camera controls aren't the best by todays standards, but the platform design is still super fresh.
Planescape Torment
Was not disappointed when replayed a couple of years ago. Still my favorite RPG.
Fallout 2
Although it's very buggy and I don't wish to play it again, the open world structure of the game is still very impressive. I don't like open world for the sake of open world, but this game has reactivity and makes the open world feel like one world, manages to fill it with narrative and soul.
Unreal Tournament
This is probably just me, but I still love this game and don't bother with any other area shooters, basically.
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask
Could not appreciate the adult themes of Majoras Mask first-time around. It seems to have gotten a bit of a revival in the critical community the last couple of years due to its artistic integrity.
Metal Gear Solid 2
What made me appreciate Metal Gear Solid 2 on a whole new level and really see the MGS franchise in a different light was this article. Since then, the game has for me become the pinnacle of subversive play.
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill hasn't delivered very much in the last 14 years, and I've gotten tired of most horror anyway. So this game, couched in psychonalytical themes, is still the gold standard.
Parsec47/rRootage/Noiz2sa (Kenta Cho)
After a couple of years playing a lot of shmups, I started getting tired of the lack of procedurality in most games. These three have a lot of it, and thus it never completely feels like starting over and just waiting to getting back to the level you were on before to give it another shot. Sadly, I've been searching for this type of game ever since and come up with, well, Geometry Wars, and nothing else I enjoyed.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
The formula was completed with this one, I believe. After that it was just a bonus, and not always a good one either.
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
It was the first Zelda game for a new console that I played "as a grown-up". It couldn't have been anything else than disappointing, since the Zelda franchise (basically just A Link to The Past and Ocarina of Time) was such a big part of me growing up. I haven't replayed it since its release, but I have come to view it in a different light due to all the critical writing on it. And in retrospect it has perhaps even more weight, considering that the games that take place chronologically after Wind Waker don't have Ganondorf in them. So in a sense it's a goodbye to that villain.
Super Mario KartI haven't played any other racing game which I've enjoyed as much as Super Mario Kart, and that includes Mario Kart 64. So I guess it has to be on this list.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time/Super Double Dragon
My two favorite sidescrolling beat em ups have yet to be beaten!
Super Probotector: Alien Rebels/Contra
Yep, still my favorite run n guns.
Soul Blade
I thought that after having a bunch of Soul Caliburs around, this game would become moot. Well, I still love it. It has a slower pace compared to the newer titles, and I enjoy it much as I enjoy Street Fighter 2 after many years.
Micro Machines V3
We need more (racing)games with the main mechanic of Micro Machines! The running game Speedrunners utilizes it, and so should others.
Super Mario 64
They got so much right on the first try at 3D platforming it's crazy. The manveuering and camera controls aren't the best by todays standards, but the platform design is still super fresh.
Planescape Torment
Was not disappointed when replayed a couple of years ago. Still my favorite RPG.
Fallout 2
Although it's very buggy and I don't wish to play it again, the open world structure of the game is still very impressive. I don't like open world for the sake of open world, but this game has reactivity and makes the open world feel like one world, manages to fill it with narrative and soul.
Unreal Tournament
This is probably just me, but I still love this game and don't bother with any other area shooters, basically.
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask
Could not appreciate the adult themes of Majoras Mask first-time around. It seems to have gotten a bit of a revival in the critical community the last couple of years due to its artistic integrity.
Metal Gear Solid 2
What made me appreciate Metal Gear Solid 2 on a whole new level and really see the MGS franchise in a different light was this article. Since then, the game has for me become the pinnacle of subversive play.
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill hasn't delivered very much in the last 14 years, and I've gotten tired of most horror anyway. So this game, couched in psychonalytical themes, is still the gold standard.
Parsec47/rRootage/Noiz2sa (Kenta Cho)
After a couple of years playing a lot of shmups, I started getting tired of the lack of procedurality in most games. These three have a lot of it, and thus it never completely feels like starting over and just waiting to getting back to the level you were on before to give it another shot. Sadly, I've been searching for this type of game ever since and come up with, well, Geometry Wars, and nothing else I enjoyed.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
The formula was completed with this one, I believe. After that it was just a bonus, and not always a good one either.
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
It was the first Zelda game for a new console that I played "as a grown-up". It couldn't have been anything else than disappointing, since the Zelda franchise (basically just A Link to The Past and Ocarina of Time) was such a big part of me growing up. I haven't replayed it since its release, but I have come to view it in a different light due to all the critical writing on it. And in retrospect it has perhaps even more weight, considering that the games that take place chronologically after Wind Waker don't have Ganondorf in them. So in a sense it's a goodbye to that villain.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Halloween 12/11
§HALLOWEEN
Spooky Halloween Spectertacular
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/2rlzn2/the-final-bosman-spooky-halloween-spectertacular
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Extra Credits - Horror That Lingers - How the Uncanny Instills Fear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSKtTBjSBg0
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Extra Credits - Shiver with Antici-pation - How Horror Games Create a Tension Cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyiAR2BXtKU
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The Evolution of Horror in Videogames | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZYUN8EoNk
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Errant Signal - Alien Isolation (Spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh-FjR4lWOY
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Horror, in general, and escapism, in particular, is often more popular in times of economic downturn, when you want to be somewhere else.”
/.../
There’s a disillusionment from the classic era of cyberpunk that makes a revival now seem fairly natural, I think.” Natural or not, the revival is in full force, and it’s becoming a strong and subversive undercurrent in the indie games space.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/187163-cynicism-recession-and-the-resurgence-of-cyberpunk/
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So, what horror games do I look forward to? There are a couple. I guess I'm most excited about Silent Hills, after all. Especially after finally playing P.T I'm really excited, which is a first in a while when it comes to the Silent Hill franchise, and when I give it some thought, when it comes to blockbuster horror titles. And although I hope P.T isn't representative of what Silent Hills will be in terms of gameplay, and indeed is both too scary and too puzzley for me to bear as a full-length game, I do enjoy the direction it seems to be taking. It's refreshing, and hopefully will have an engaging story, considering it's Kojima and Del Toro designing the damn thing.
Besides Silent Hills, there is also Epanalepsis, a spiritual follow-up to Catachresis (one of my favorite games/horror games from last year), which just might be coming out before the longest night of this year. Catachresis was horror just as I love it - not too scary, with a heavy story focus, and a world of nostalgia, or wonder, or sadness, or something else sublime. Not just horror with monsters and flight-or-flight, but a space inhabited with people (or the remnants of such) and thus infused with complex social, secondary and tertiary emotions which in combination with just the right amount of anxiety, uncanniness and fear might spark something profound.
Then there's also Soma from Frictional Games (Penumbra, Amnesia) to look forward. I didn't enjoy Penumbra nor Amnesia very much, but they're bound to make something which I will enjoy eventually, considering how good their theory and blog is. If nothing else, the discussions surrounding their creations are fertile ground for the video game community and the betterment of future horror games, so there's always that.
Finally, Draugen by Ragnar Tørnquist. If there's anyone doing good story in video games, it's Ragnar with hir Longest Journey series. Inspired by Whedon's writing, and treading by now familiar Dear Esther-esque ground, this just might turn out to be quite awesome.
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What about this Halloween then, and the horror games (worth playing, which for example excludes games such as "Among the Sleep") of this year? Well, a lot of short games, that's what. Besides "You Won't Tell Anyone, Right?" by Oxeren, a chilling 15 minutes game dealing with heavy stuff such as abuse, trauma, anger and forgiveness, I would like to single out one artist - Kitty Horrorshow. Hir Chyrza and The Cradle of Eve are among the most disturbing and awesoome Lovecraftian games I've played. Lovecraft (as a genre) has always been something which exalts and inspires me, yet fails to deliver (with some notable exceptions being Eternal Darkness, Nestlings, and a few other games). But these pieces here - wow. Chyrza and Dust City are first person walking simulators, while The Cradle of Eve, Pretty Girl and daymare #1: "ritual" are interactive fictions made in Twine. Continuing with interactive fictions, there is a game which isn't quite horror, but it is Kitty Horrorshow (or well, 1/18th seeing how the game is a collab by 18 different contributors). The game in question is You Were Made For Loneliness, a wonderful entity of unrealized potential - as a game, as a work of interactive fiction, as unfulfilled love, as a missed chance at story synthesis, and much more. Many different strands and voices appear in the game, and although they do relate thematically and complement each-other nicely, there is still something missing there which would make the work a coherent one, say, the voice which remembers actually twining the different voices together somehow, being more than just a vehicle for exploring different voices. But what it lacks in unity, it makes up for in covering the ground which makes up the many faces of love - desperate, across time and space, sinister, earnest, bleak, hoping, caring, yearning. It made me remember what Avellone said about how love is depicted in video games and that they would be going for something else than romance in Pillars of Eternity, something I look forward to exploring:
So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after. The really long piece of writing furthest down in this blog post is an excerpt from one of the memories the player-avatar has in "You Were Made...", a piece I think Avellone would approve of.
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Now, finally, for some lists. Best implementations of horror in works of interactive fiction - a short list indeed!
my father’s long, long legs (michael lutz). Slow, meticulous madness and the ways in which it affects those close to it. "Basically a short story about a family in which the father, one day, goes down into the dirt-floor basement with a brand-new shovel and begins to dig…and dig…and dig. And he won’t stop digging."
Shrapnel (Adam Cadre). My favorite work from Cadre, together with the most classic of classics that is Photopia. Shrapnel is the post-traumatic stress disorder of Jacob's Ladder combined with the jumbled identity-mismatch and shifting time-realities of Philip K. Dick.
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Most interesting horror-like games from 2013 and 2014 not already covered:
Knock Knock. There is a wall which separates the spectral from the carnal. Horror is often about the protrusion of one unto the other, when sacred barriers which keep at bay turn derranged and thus derail the order of things, be it the fleshy id-monsters usurping the phantasmatic super-ego in the form of zombies, or the terrors of modernity haunting the body-politics with its savage instrumentality (well, that too might actually be in the form of zombies, this time as wage-slaves, but I had Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs in mind specifically). Knock Knock seeks to further tear down barriers, and one of the ways in which it does this is by asking you as a player to interact with the world outside of the video game, by means which have origins before and outside the designers creative capabilities. A haunting experience, in more ways than one.
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. The downward spiral of conflating humans with tools, humanity with filth. Here piggy, piggy!!!
Year Walk. Swedish folklore in a forest of mythical encounters. Quite unique and beautiful, albeit mostly an atmospherical experience.
§§§§§
Example of a player-avatar memory from You Were Made For Loneliness :
Each night I spend in front of this enchanted window innocculates me to the mundane. Each night I become more and more tolerant, inured, and I must dig deeper and find stranger sights, or come away unsatisfied, all my nerves intact. I must go deeper into the woods, link by related link.
The mouth of the woods is bright and vivid, wreathed in the familiar and comfortable. Dubstep remixes, clips from popular television, people hurting themselves comedically. Click one and the cabaret begins, glitter and distraction, vapid entertainment in fast, short doses. Continue clicking, following a winding trail of related videos. One might lose hours in this way and find nothing at all, but there are times, after wandering long and far enough into pale-faced circadian interruption, deep into night and well beyond sleep's reach, a link appears to something unusual, something wrong.
Click this link and proceed to watch two minutes of garbled footage with stop-motion dolls dancing naked in a rusty sink. A MIDI song drones and taps, exhumed from some ancient homepage of internet pre-history. Compression artifacts swim across the screen like a membrane, like ectoplasm, distorting everything, masking anything that moves too quickly. Now all of the related videos are strange, unnerving, uncanny, and there are no more cats to be found in the side-bar, no more dubstep remixes to anchor one to the familiar. Just more strangeness, more smiling digital shadow-plays waiting to take your hand and lead you deeper.
'im in the weird part of (the woods) again'
Most shut their browsers, attempt sleep, tell their friends about some of the fucked up videos they watched last night, joke, laugh, ha ha. But when they return to the woods again they stay close to its mouth, close to light and innocuous distraction, wary now of links that would pull them off the path and into slithering uncertainty.
I do not want to stay at the mouth of the woods.
My list of favorites is a menagerie of jittering 3D characters, melting puppets, mask-wearing figures writhing and moaning in dark, dirty rooms. These are my anchors, the lines that lead me directly back to the stranger inner-depths. Many are contrived, manufactured things, deliberate and calculated to seem disturbing, frightening, psychological. These are trite, but at least they bring one closer to the true exhibits: videos not designed to be unsettling but unsettling despite, videos made with candor and sincerity and put forth by people who don't see the strangeness of their own creations, find beauty where others find quiet revulsion. These are the purest, the most deeply upsetting, the most profoundly addictive. In them, one can see the creator's desperation to communicate, to entertain, to be funny or cute or artistic, and the unnerving results of their failures are their own breed of fascinating.
The authenticity, the honesty, is what makes these so deeply frightening. Like the difference between a slasher movie and a snuff film found in an empty house. It is a difference appreciated by few, feared by most, analyzed by seemingly none.
None but myself. And, as I am soon to find, one other.
A favorite video of mine: a pot-bellied CGI farmer stands shirtless in a field of whipping corn-stalks beneath a gunmetal blue sky. His house, a cardboard prop in the background behind him, is empty and unlit. He waggles his finger, singing a droning song with a synthesized voice. His animation loops around on itself, forward to back then back to fore. His eyes are black holes in his immaculate flesh-colored face. The content of the video is too absurd to be deliberately frightening; its creator's intention is unknowable, but I would guess humor, or artistic experimentation. And yet watching that sky, the dark reeds of the farmer's field lashing as in a tornadic wind, upsets me deeply. I have watched this video at least sixty times. The comments are always the same.
dafuq
nightmare fuel
lyrics?
im in the weird part of (the woods) again
Only tonight, just now, as the song concludes abruptly and the farmer's face freezes in a rictus of artifical unlife, I see a comment that separates itself.
nerva_blood_radio (6 hours ago) says:
i have heard this song whispered. i would let that sky take me and pull me apart.
I stare at the comment in surprise, admiration, curiosity. A warmth in my core, something like elation, begins to grow. Elation, or relief to know that there is someone else who can see beauty in the bizarre, who can find wonder in those things that frighten and confuse and disturb so many others. Someone else who can stare at such displays of unflagging surrealism and wish to be lost within them.
I send them a message, something I have never done.
"Beautiful comment. I wish more people had your perspective. How do you feel about robots?"
Three sentences composed in half as many hours. I am fearful; I have never known how to communicate with people. I betray my strangeness even in simple conversation, and they are immediately repelled. But I must reach this one, I think, because they understand the way I understand. I force myself to be concise for fear of sounding desperate. Finally I send the message, along with a link to another of my favorites, a home-made animatronic mannequin singing its praises for its creator, waxing euphoric, twitching artificially to the sound of a cacophonous synth-music arpeggio that echoes its way up from the deepest point of the Uncanny Valley.
Days pass, and in that time I spend more time thinking and hoping and dreading a response than I care to admit. Then it comes.
nerva_blood_radio:
aaahaa... shes a good signer... so happy—— thank you!!!! i like this one tooOO ... maybe youll like it too... click?.......... bye....
I click the attached link.
The title is a garble of meaningless shapes. The comments are in Chinese characters. In the frame is darkness, enough that I'm required to full-screen the video and shut off my second monitor. Compression artifacts swim and churn, poorly-recorded silence warbles in my ears. My eyes adjust, and I think that what I'm seeing is a cramped apartment. A white square, maybe a refrigerator, dominates the left side of the screen, sentinel of a kitchen that is little more than a linoleum-tiled alcove. The video seems to be recorded from a camera that has been left running on a table. There is no sound except the guttering background silence for seven minutes. Then there is a moan, long and wailing and distant as though from another room. It sounds pained, show a derelict might wail in the throes of some chronic malady. Then, in the last seconds, a shape, a fragmented blob of muted light, shifts to the side at the far end of the 'kitchen.' The video ends.
It was a face, I realize.
A face that had been staring at me from the moment the video began. A face so perfectly blended with the swimming low-res shadows that I had failed completely to notice it, until that slight, final movement betrayed it as a living being rather than a cluster of wan light. For seven minutes they sat in utter darkness, staring at a camera left recording on a table. For the first time in memory I look around myself, into the darkness of my apartment, fearing that something may be there with me.
I have never found anything so chillingly sublime. I return nerva_blood_radio's message to thank them, and link them to another of my favorites.
For weeks, this becomes our relationship. Each night I check for their response, view it, shudder physically, respond. There are times when we link one another to something we have already seen, and there is a delight in that as well, an affirmation of kinship. A few times I become brave and ask questions, 'how've you been' and 'what're you up to'. They never answer these, and I stop asking. Soon we exchange personal e-mail addresses so that we can link one another to videos from more obscure sources. Videos in formats that I've never heard of, requiring special codecs and foreign language packs, videos with viewcounts in the single-digits. With each night that passes, their strangeness, their horror, their beauty increases.
I begin to imagine nerva_blood_radio as a sort of digital goddess, a monstrous cybernetic deity, a slithering wire-queen nestled deep down in some web-strewn data-swamp, divine matron of all that seeks a way beneath one's skin. I begin to worship her. I begin to love her. She, this deity, becomes my muse, my reason to wake, the force that drives me and the sole supplier of my greatest addiction. She had exposed me to a world beneath the skin of all that I had known but to which I felt immediately that I belonged, a world of dancing skeletal mascots and videos washed out by grain and comperssion to the point that they conveyed no real imagery at all, only visual chaos and noise and emotion. Emotion that's impossible to explain to anyone who has never woken up sweating and panting and crying from a nightmare they can't remember. A world of people in cramped apartments like mine all over the world, gathered together to present each other with caught fragments of nightmares and glitchy half-broken tone peoms told not with words but with filthy, empty rooms and twitching shapes.
One night she sends me a video with no description. She attaches it directly to an email message, something she's never done before. No context, no source link, none of her usual stuttered, seductive cadence prefacing what I am about to see. Just a single video file, the name of which is a meaningless scramble of characters. I download it, run it with a homebrew video player which translates the name into blocky white characters at the bottom of the frame as the video begins to play:
crushed_locust_doesnt_die
Pavement, a road somewhere, lined with dust and brush. Wan blue-purple light and slivers of orange horizon (dusk) as the camera moves, its wielder breathing hard, walking slowly toward something. A shape, dark and small, immobilized on the road. The camera-holder approaches the shape and leans down, taking a long, deliberate shot of the thing on the ground. It's a fat locust with a long body and a wounded leg, laying on its side in the dust, the far back tip of its thorax burst open as though it had been clipped by the windshield of a passing car. It struggles weakly along the ground. The cameraman giggles, an oily, wheezing sound, lowering the camera until the lens is nearly touching the black, unblinking eye. The camera adjusts its focus. The black eye gleams. More wheezing, more harsh-breath giggling as the camera pulls back and jostles. A foot appears, rubber-booted and wide. A loud grunt and the foot descends on the body of the locust, slamming down on the pavement with a flat 'clap' sound. The foot withdraws and the cameraman is giggling and lowering the camera to survey the wreckage of the locust's body. It is visibly destroyed, the chitin of its green exoskeleton splintered and broken, seeping insect slime. The body is still for several moments, then continues attempting to drag its way across the pavement, its ruined legs continuing to work and twitch despite the assault. The cameraman's breathing halts. The locust glowers up at the camera from the weeping pit of its shattered eye. The cameraman loses composure, swings his arm to the side, camera in hand, and there's grunting and more of that same flat clapping sound, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The cameraman is breathing hard. Camera turns forward again, finds the locust, lowers to the ground. The pulpy mess scraped across the pavement gives no indication that it once was a living creature. Tiny pin-points of orange dusk-light glimmer in the smear, and the body is a shattered memory made of a thousand broken slivers of carapace. A single twisted leg is the only discernible shape, connected to the splattered remains by a thick yellow strand. More wheezing, panicked laughter. Labored breathing.
The leg continues to move, but it is not just the fading rictus of death. It continues to move, continues to push, continues to struggle against the road. The cameraman makes a high, loud, protean noise. The image blurs as the camera swings away somewhere. The video ends.
I stare at the dark terminus of the video and my hands are shaking.
My mind hastens to consider the implications. My first question, strangely, is why did she like this? Death and snuff are not her forté. Her lack of preface confuses me as well. What did she want me to think? What did she think?
Then I begin to consider the greater implications of an insect pulverized into nothing but a dark smear of viscous biology, and yet which continues to struggle, continues to move. There is no way the video was faked, I know. It was filmed spontaeneously, unknowingly, perfectly.
I reply: "Incredible. Where did you find this?"
She responds almost instantly. I wonder if she was waiting for me to view it, staring at her inbox and awaiting my reply as I've so often done with her. I feel vain at this thought, arrogant. Does a goddess hang on the words of a worshipper?
Her reply:
he, he, he!!... i cant tell you that... its a secret... a very very special top secret, they do not want me to have it! do not know i have it!... i took it... and i showed it to you... nobody else... just you... :)... he, he, he!!...
I am floored. I feel exalted, a once-lowly element elevated by selection for something beautiful and tremendous. My breath quickens. I must send her something that rivals the splendor of what she has given me, something that will astound and enchant her as she has me. But I can think of nothing. My god-kissed elation begins to turn to panic. I do not have her sources, her seemingly inexhaustible wellsprings, none of the darknets which must be part of her dominion.
I open a dozen browser tabs and immediately point them all to the most obscure, disparate, abnormal and uncanny places I know. I spend hours pulling threads and biting my nails. No sleep. I keep searching, so eager to return the kindness she has done me, to please her and prove my worth to her after she has shown me such staggeringly particular attention.
I fail.
I lay back in my chair and press my palms to my eyes. I have spent hours, but have produced nothing. I have failed the only one who ever understood me and shared my insight and challenged my perception. My body craves sleep, but my mind rages.
From outside my window, two bright beams flash, a vehicle turning. I hear a tire squeal, a trash can upend itself, a vehicle speed away. Curious and dejected, I move to the window and look out into the streetlit night.
A dark shape moves on the pavement. With no deliberation, I grab my cell phone and go outside.
I walk downstairs, down to the street and out across my apartment's parking lot. I go to where I saw the shape, and though it is little more than a twitching, pulpy mass, I instantly recognize it. It is a raccoon, destroyed by the careless tires of an automobile. But it is more than that. I switch to my phone's camera, begin recording video. This is a gift.
The small mound of viscera is barely discernible as a living animal as it bleeds and writhes in my viewfinder, leaving a trail of congealing blood in its wake. A tiny jawbone juts upward at an insane angle, fragments of bone litter its pelt. It should be dead, and yet it struggles, pulls itself along the street towards the grass of the far side, separating itself into twitching islands of dark gore. And as it does so, I film it. I film it for whole minutes.
I return to my apartment. I transfer the video to my PC, and without editing, without changing its file name, I attach it to an email and send it to her. Then I stare at my inbox, awaiting a response. For minutes there is nothing, and my lungs feel as though they're shrinking. Then a window opens up for an instant messenger I wasn't aware I'd left running.
nerva_blood_radio (02:44:39): !!!!!!!
nerva_blood_radio (02:44:56): aaahaa, haa, haa, its so goooood!
nerva_blood_radio (02:45:09): where did you find it???
(I have not used this program since I've known her. I don't know how she got my handle. I don't care.)
mothstatic (02:46:12): I filmed it myself
mothstatic (02:46:16): on my phone
mothstatic (02:47:00): I heard a truck spin out so i went to check it and it had hit the raccoon but it kept moving like the locust in the video you sent me
mothstatic (02:47:11): I came straight home and sent it to you
mothstatic (02:47:31): you're the only one I sent it to
Further minutes of non-response, and I'm wringing my hands and pulling skin from my lip. I want her to tell her why I did it, why I sent it only to her, that I love her and worship her and that without her I would still be at the mouth of the woods. I nearly begin to type, but she preempts me:
nerva_blood_radio (02:54:01): you are so good to me.....
nerva_blood_radio (02:54:16): i love you!!.....
My heart is beating through the backs of my ribs and I struggle to breathe. I struggle this way for a minute, then begin to type, but a final message from her blinks onto my screen and then she disconnects.
nerva_blood_radio (02:55:21): send me more...
nerva_blood_radio has logged off.
Panic and elation are fighting for control of my spine. I shut off everything, take off my clothes, lay down on my futon. I don't manage to sleep until the sun has been up for hours, and when I do I sleep through until dark.
The next day, she has sent me no messages. I return to the woods and spend hours there, digging harder than I ever have, scouring every corner she ever showed me for something new and shocking and perfect to surpass the video I had taken. I can find nothing. Everything is either manufactured or hokey or senseless or ham-fisted. Even those things that used to thrill me fail to compare to the simple, terrible perfection of a ruined raccoon continuing to struggle across a road with a body that should not be alive.
The next day, the same results. I turn up nothing. No messages from her. I see the first headline news clip announcing some unknown phenomenon that is affecting the biology of increasingly large creatures in various countries. I'm beginning to feel somehow like I'm running out of time. In my inept anxiety I bite the skin around my fingernails until it bleeds.
The next day more news has crowded out the dubstep remixes and reality television recaps and autotuned parodies. From a distance, looking indirectly at the thumbnails of all that is presented to me, I divine an overwhelming bleakness. The sense of losing time heightens. I set about my work.
Hours into the night, I have had no success. Then a sudden, piercing sound comes from somewhere beneath me, down a floor, somewhere in my apartment. I begin to hear more panic-sounds, footfalls, shouts and cries. I take my phone from my desk and run outside, down to the source.
Neighbors I have only met in passing have crowded outside an open apartment door. The apartment inside is dark, and a man within is yelling, blathering wet, meaningless syllables. People are muttering words like 'gun' and 'dangerous,' shouting things like 'don't' and 'doesn't have to' and 'talk this out.' I shoulder my way forward until I can see into the room.
A naked obese man is laying back against a bare far wall. His face is puffy and streaked with tears and mucous. Each time someone addresses him, he howls something meaningless. There is a pistol in his hand. When he is not howling, he turns his head to look out his open window, looking remorseful, almost pensive. Then, all at once, he begins to raise the gun to his head. Already my fingers are around my phone, trying to pull up the video recorder. My neighbors are shouting now, jostling me. I hit record, try to find a shot, but I am being moved and churned and I can see nothing through my phone. The obese man says something I cannot hear, but which sounds like 'never' and 'to heaven,' and he puts the gun to his temple, and he pulls the trigger.
The gun barks, more quietly than I'm expecting. My neighbors are screaming. A dark fan of blood has sprayed a greasy feather-shape across the wall behind the man. He slumps down and lays still for a moment. Then his body is convulsing. His legs kick up and drum down hard against the floor, his arms whip and lash at his sides, his ruined skull lolls back and forth on his neck. His body rolls forward, puts its arms up, begins wriggling like a bloated worm trying to move forward. My neighbors continue to scream and jostle me, many of them fleeing the hallway. I stare down at my phone, at a message telling me that there is no storage capacity left. I stop recording and review the footage I have taken, and it is useless. Indiscernible. My heart writhes in my chest when I think of the perfect moment that has just been squandered, which can never be repeated, which would have been the most excellent offering.
The few neighbors remaining in the hall cover their mouths and turn away. Most have left, either in fear or maybe to call the police. The obese man's body continues to squirm and bleed and twitch and drum its heavy feet up and down. I stare at my phone, then at the body, which seems to be trying to pull itself closer to me. Then I see the gun, and my most perfect idea comes to me.
I check the hallway to see if anyone is looking. Everyone has their backs turned. The suppurating body has wormed its way into a corner and is struggling helplessly. As quickly and quietly as I can, I step forward into the room, step over the body, reach down and take the gun, slipping it in the front of my pants and hiding it beneath my shirt. Then I leave, climb the stairs, return to my room, lock my door.
I dig an old webcam out of a large tupperware container filled with cords and obsolete peripherals. It takes minutes to hook up, install drivers. Then I pull open the instant messenger and look for her name. Blessedly, she's online.
mothstatic (01:52:19) says: I have something for you, can we video
nerva_blood_radio (01:52:21) says: yes.
Sirens are howling. At the mouth of the woods, all of the brightness, all of the distraction, is gone, replaced by stern faces reporting on what is happening to the world, what is happening to the bodies. I can hear my neighbors downstairs continuing to scream and lament. I can hear the feet of the body beating the floor.
The instant messenger window expands. I see my own face, bathed in white light, framed by the darkness of my room. On her end, I see only moving shadows, the vague impression of green light streaking in strange patterns, a silhouette shaped like a crucifixion.
nerva_blood_radio (01:54:12) says: you have been so very good to me.
mothstatic (01:54:37) says: You showed me so much. I would never have found any of the beauty you showed me.
nerva_blood_radio (01:55:00) says: this will be your contribution to that beauty. i will ensure you are remembered.
I adjust the angle of my webcam, roll my chair back so that both myself and the floor around me are in frame, because I expect that is where my body will fall. I take the gun out of my pants.
mothstatic (01:56:09) says: are you recording?
nerva_blood_radio (01:56:12) says: yes.
mothstatic (01:56:28) says: I love you.
nerva_blood_radio (01:56:40) says: prove it to me. :)
The barrel is sliding between my teeth. My finger wraps around the trigger. From somewhere deep within the woods, I feel a cold wind rise.
Spooky Halloween Spectertacular
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/2rlzn2/the-final-bosman-spooky-halloween-spectertacular
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Extra Credits - Horror That Lingers - How the Uncanny Instills Fear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSKtTBjSBg0
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Extra Credits - Shiver with Antici-pation - How Horror Games Create a Tension Cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyiAR2BXtKU
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The Evolution of Horror in Videogames | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZYUN8EoNk
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Errant Signal - Alien Isolation (Spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh-FjR4lWOY
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Horror, in general, and escapism, in particular, is often more popular in times of economic downturn, when you want to be somewhere else.”
/.../
There’s a disillusionment from the classic era of cyberpunk that makes a revival now seem fairly natural, I think.” Natural or not, the revival is in full force, and it’s becoming a strong and subversive undercurrent in the indie games space.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/187163-cynicism-recession-and-the-resurgence-of-cyberpunk/
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So, what horror games do I look forward to? There are a couple. I guess I'm most excited about Silent Hills, after all. Especially after finally playing P.T I'm really excited, which is a first in a while when it comes to the Silent Hill franchise, and when I give it some thought, when it comes to blockbuster horror titles. And although I hope P.T isn't representative of what Silent Hills will be in terms of gameplay, and indeed is both too scary and too puzzley for me to bear as a full-length game, I do enjoy the direction it seems to be taking. It's refreshing, and hopefully will have an engaging story, considering it's Kojima and Del Toro designing the damn thing.
Besides Silent Hills, there is also Epanalepsis, a spiritual follow-up to Catachresis (one of my favorite games/horror games from last year), which just might be coming out before the longest night of this year. Catachresis was horror just as I love it - not too scary, with a heavy story focus, and a world of nostalgia, or wonder, or sadness, or something else sublime. Not just horror with monsters and flight-or-flight, but a space inhabited with people (or the remnants of such) and thus infused with complex social, secondary and tertiary emotions which in combination with just the right amount of anxiety, uncanniness and fear might spark something profound.
Then there's also Soma from Frictional Games (Penumbra, Amnesia) to look forward. I didn't enjoy Penumbra nor Amnesia very much, but they're bound to make something which I will enjoy eventually, considering how good their theory and blog is. If nothing else, the discussions surrounding their creations are fertile ground for the video game community and the betterment of future horror games, so there's always that.
Finally, Draugen by Ragnar Tørnquist. If there's anyone doing good story in video games, it's Ragnar with hir Longest Journey series. Inspired by Whedon's writing, and treading by now familiar Dear Esther-esque ground, this just might turn out to be quite awesome.
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What about this Halloween then, and the horror games (worth playing, which for example excludes games such as "Among the Sleep") of this year? Well, a lot of short games, that's what. Besides "You Won't Tell Anyone, Right?" by Oxeren, a chilling 15 minutes game dealing with heavy stuff such as abuse, trauma, anger and forgiveness, I would like to single out one artist - Kitty Horrorshow. Hir Chyrza and The Cradle of Eve are among the most disturbing and awesoome Lovecraftian games I've played. Lovecraft (as a genre) has always been something which exalts and inspires me, yet fails to deliver (with some notable exceptions being Eternal Darkness, Nestlings, and a few other games). But these pieces here - wow. Chyrza and Dust City are first person walking simulators, while The Cradle of Eve, Pretty Girl and daymare #1: "ritual" are interactive fictions made in Twine. Continuing with interactive fictions, there is a game which isn't quite horror, but it is Kitty Horrorshow (or well, 1/18th seeing how the game is a collab by 18 different contributors). The game in question is You Were Made For Loneliness, a wonderful entity of unrealized potential - as a game, as a work of interactive fiction, as unfulfilled love, as a missed chance at story synthesis, and much more. Many different strands and voices appear in the game, and although they do relate thematically and complement each-other nicely, there is still something missing there which would make the work a coherent one, say, the voice which remembers actually twining the different voices together somehow, being more than just a vehicle for exploring different voices. But what it lacks in unity, it makes up for in covering the ground which makes up the many faces of love - desperate, across time and space, sinister, earnest, bleak, hoping, caring, yearning. It made me remember what Avellone said about how love is depicted in video games and that they would be going for something else than romance in Pillars of Eternity, something I look forward to exploring:
So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after. The really long piece of writing furthest down in this blog post is an excerpt from one of the memories the player-avatar has in "You Were Made...", a piece I think Avellone would approve of.
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Now, finally, for some lists. Best implementations of horror in works of interactive fiction - a short list indeed!
my father’s long, long legs (michael lutz). Slow, meticulous madness and the ways in which it affects those close to it. "Basically a short story about a family in which the father, one day, goes down into the dirt-floor basement with a brand-new shovel and begins to dig…and dig…and dig. And he won’t stop digging."
Shrapnel (Adam Cadre). My favorite work from Cadre, together with the most classic of classics that is Photopia. Shrapnel is the post-traumatic stress disorder of Jacob's Ladder combined with the jumbled identity-mismatch and shifting time-realities of Philip K. Dick.
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Most interesting horror-like games from 2013 and 2014 not already covered:
Knock Knock. There is a wall which separates the spectral from the carnal. Horror is often about the protrusion of one unto the other, when sacred barriers which keep at bay turn derranged and thus derail the order of things, be it the fleshy id-monsters usurping the phantasmatic super-ego in the form of zombies, or the terrors of modernity haunting the body-politics with its savage instrumentality (well, that too might actually be in the form of zombies, this time as wage-slaves, but I had Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs in mind specifically). Knock Knock seeks to further tear down barriers, and one of the ways in which it does this is by asking you as a player to interact with the world outside of the video game, by means which have origins before and outside the designers creative capabilities. A haunting experience, in more ways than one.
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. The downward spiral of conflating humans with tools, humanity with filth. Here piggy, piggy!!!
Year Walk. Swedish folklore in a forest of mythical encounters. Quite unique and beautiful, albeit mostly an atmospherical experience.
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Example of a player-avatar memory from You Were Made For Loneliness :
Each night I spend in front of this enchanted window innocculates me to the mundane. Each night I become more and more tolerant, inured, and I must dig deeper and find stranger sights, or come away unsatisfied, all my nerves intact. I must go deeper into the woods, link by related link.
The mouth of the woods is bright and vivid, wreathed in the familiar and comfortable. Dubstep remixes, clips from popular television, people hurting themselves comedically. Click one and the cabaret begins, glitter and distraction, vapid entertainment in fast, short doses. Continue clicking, following a winding trail of related videos. One might lose hours in this way and find nothing at all, but there are times, after wandering long and far enough into pale-faced circadian interruption, deep into night and well beyond sleep's reach, a link appears to something unusual, something wrong.
Click this link and proceed to watch two minutes of garbled footage with stop-motion dolls dancing naked in a rusty sink. A MIDI song drones and taps, exhumed from some ancient homepage of internet pre-history. Compression artifacts swim across the screen like a membrane, like ectoplasm, distorting everything, masking anything that moves too quickly. Now all of the related videos are strange, unnerving, uncanny, and there are no more cats to be found in the side-bar, no more dubstep remixes to anchor one to the familiar. Just more strangeness, more smiling digital shadow-plays waiting to take your hand and lead you deeper.
'im in the weird part of (the woods) again'
Most shut their browsers, attempt sleep, tell their friends about some of the fucked up videos they watched last night, joke, laugh, ha ha. But when they return to the woods again they stay close to its mouth, close to light and innocuous distraction, wary now of links that would pull them off the path and into slithering uncertainty.
I do not want to stay at the mouth of the woods.
My list of favorites is a menagerie of jittering 3D characters, melting puppets, mask-wearing figures writhing and moaning in dark, dirty rooms. These are my anchors, the lines that lead me directly back to the stranger inner-depths. Many are contrived, manufactured things, deliberate and calculated to seem disturbing, frightening, psychological. These are trite, but at least they bring one closer to the true exhibits: videos not designed to be unsettling but unsettling despite, videos made with candor and sincerity and put forth by people who don't see the strangeness of their own creations, find beauty where others find quiet revulsion. These are the purest, the most deeply upsetting, the most profoundly addictive. In them, one can see the creator's desperation to communicate, to entertain, to be funny or cute or artistic, and the unnerving results of their failures are their own breed of fascinating.
The authenticity, the honesty, is what makes these so deeply frightening. Like the difference between a slasher movie and a snuff film found in an empty house. It is a difference appreciated by few, feared by most, analyzed by seemingly none.
None but myself. And, as I am soon to find, one other.
A favorite video of mine: a pot-bellied CGI farmer stands shirtless in a field of whipping corn-stalks beneath a gunmetal blue sky. His house, a cardboard prop in the background behind him, is empty and unlit. He waggles his finger, singing a droning song with a synthesized voice. His animation loops around on itself, forward to back then back to fore. His eyes are black holes in his immaculate flesh-colored face. The content of the video is too absurd to be deliberately frightening; its creator's intention is unknowable, but I would guess humor, or artistic experimentation. And yet watching that sky, the dark reeds of the farmer's field lashing as in a tornadic wind, upsets me deeply. I have watched this video at least sixty times. The comments are always the same.
dafuq
nightmare fuel
lyrics?
im in the weird part of (the woods) again
Only tonight, just now, as the song concludes abruptly and the farmer's face freezes in a rictus of artifical unlife, I see a comment that separates itself.
nerva_blood_radio (6 hours ago) says:
i have heard this song whispered. i would let that sky take me and pull me apart.
I stare at the comment in surprise, admiration, curiosity. A warmth in my core, something like elation, begins to grow. Elation, or relief to know that there is someone else who can see beauty in the bizarre, who can find wonder in those things that frighten and confuse and disturb so many others. Someone else who can stare at such displays of unflagging surrealism and wish to be lost within them.
I send them a message, something I have never done.
"Beautiful comment. I wish more people had your perspective. How do you feel about robots?"
Three sentences composed in half as many hours. I am fearful; I have never known how to communicate with people. I betray my strangeness even in simple conversation, and they are immediately repelled. But I must reach this one, I think, because they understand the way I understand. I force myself to be concise for fear of sounding desperate. Finally I send the message, along with a link to another of my favorites, a home-made animatronic mannequin singing its praises for its creator, waxing euphoric, twitching artificially to the sound of a cacophonous synth-music arpeggio that echoes its way up from the deepest point of the Uncanny Valley.
Days pass, and in that time I spend more time thinking and hoping and dreading a response than I care to admit. Then it comes.
nerva_blood_radio:
aaahaa... shes a good signer... so happy—— thank you!!!! i like this one tooOO ... maybe youll like it too... click?.......... bye....
I click the attached link.
The title is a garble of meaningless shapes. The comments are in Chinese characters. In the frame is darkness, enough that I'm required to full-screen the video and shut off my second monitor. Compression artifacts swim and churn, poorly-recorded silence warbles in my ears. My eyes adjust, and I think that what I'm seeing is a cramped apartment. A white square, maybe a refrigerator, dominates the left side of the screen, sentinel of a kitchen that is little more than a linoleum-tiled alcove. The video seems to be recorded from a camera that has been left running on a table. There is no sound except the guttering background silence for seven minutes. Then there is a moan, long and wailing and distant as though from another room. It sounds pained, show a derelict might wail in the throes of some chronic malady. Then, in the last seconds, a shape, a fragmented blob of muted light, shifts to the side at the far end of the 'kitchen.' The video ends.
It was a face, I realize.
A face that had been staring at me from the moment the video began. A face so perfectly blended with the swimming low-res shadows that I had failed completely to notice it, until that slight, final movement betrayed it as a living being rather than a cluster of wan light. For seven minutes they sat in utter darkness, staring at a camera left recording on a table. For the first time in memory I look around myself, into the darkness of my apartment, fearing that something may be there with me.
I have never found anything so chillingly sublime. I return nerva_blood_radio's message to thank them, and link them to another of my favorites.
For weeks, this becomes our relationship. Each night I check for their response, view it, shudder physically, respond. There are times when we link one another to something we have already seen, and there is a delight in that as well, an affirmation of kinship. A few times I become brave and ask questions, 'how've you been' and 'what're you up to'. They never answer these, and I stop asking. Soon we exchange personal e-mail addresses so that we can link one another to videos from more obscure sources. Videos in formats that I've never heard of, requiring special codecs and foreign language packs, videos with viewcounts in the single-digits. With each night that passes, their strangeness, their horror, their beauty increases.
I begin to imagine nerva_blood_radio as a sort of digital goddess, a monstrous cybernetic deity, a slithering wire-queen nestled deep down in some web-strewn data-swamp, divine matron of all that seeks a way beneath one's skin. I begin to worship her. I begin to love her. She, this deity, becomes my muse, my reason to wake, the force that drives me and the sole supplier of my greatest addiction. She had exposed me to a world beneath the skin of all that I had known but to which I felt immediately that I belonged, a world of dancing skeletal mascots and videos washed out by grain and comperssion to the point that they conveyed no real imagery at all, only visual chaos and noise and emotion. Emotion that's impossible to explain to anyone who has never woken up sweating and panting and crying from a nightmare they can't remember. A world of people in cramped apartments like mine all over the world, gathered together to present each other with caught fragments of nightmares and glitchy half-broken tone peoms told not with words but with filthy, empty rooms and twitching shapes.
One night she sends me a video with no description. She attaches it directly to an email message, something she's never done before. No context, no source link, none of her usual stuttered, seductive cadence prefacing what I am about to see. Just a single video file, the name of which is a meaningless scramble of characters. I download it, run it with a homebrew video player which translates the name into blocky white characters at the bottom of the frame as the video begins to play:
crushed_locust_doesnt_die
Pavement, a road somewhere, lined with dust and brush. Wan blue-purple light and slivers of orange horizon (dusk) as the camera moves, its wielder breathing hard, walking slowly toward something. A shape, dark and small, immobilized on the road. The camera-holder approaches the shape and leans down, taking a long, deliberate shot of the thing on the ground. It's a fat locust with a long body and a wounded leg, laying on its side in the dust, the far back tip of its thorax burst open as though it had been clipped by the windshield of a passing car. It struggles weakly along the ground. The cameraman giggles, an oily, wheezing sound, lowering the camera until the lens is nearly touching the black, unblinking eye. The camera adjusts its focus. The black eye gleams. More wheezing, more harsh-breath giggling as the camera pulls back and jostles. A foot appears, rubber-booted and wide. A loud grunt and the foot descends on the body of the locust, slamming down on the pavement with a flat 'clap' sound. The foot withdraws and the cameraman is giggling and lowering the camera to survey the wreckage of the locust's body. It is visibly destroyed, the chitin of its green exoskeleton splintered and broken, seeping insect slime. The body is still for several moments, then continues attempting to drag its way across the pavement, its ruined legs continuing to work and twitch despite the assault. The cameraman's breathing halts. The locust glowers up at the camera from the weeping pit of its shattered eye. The cameraman loses composure, swings his arm to the side, camera in hand, and there's grunting and more of that same flat clapping sound, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The cameraman is breathing hard. Camera turns forward again, finds the locust, lowers to the ground. The pulpy mess scraped across the pavement gives no indication that it once was a living creature. Tiny pin-points of orange dusk-light glimmer in the smear, and the body is a shattered memory made of a thousand broken slivers of carapace. A single twisted leg is the only discernible shape, connected to the splattered remains by a thick yellow strand. More wheezing, panicked laughter. Labored breathing.
The leg continues to move, but it is not just the fading rictus of death. It continues to move, continues to push, continues to struggle against the road. The cameraman makes a high, loud, protean noise. The image blurs as the camera swings away somewhere. The video ends.
I stare at the dark terminus of the video and my hands are shaking.
My mind hastens to consider the implications. My first question, strangely, is why did she like this? Death and snuff are not her forté. Her lack of preface confuses me as well. What did she want me to think? What did she think?
Then I begin to consider the greater implications of an insect pulverized into nothing but a dark smear of viscous biology, and yet which continues to struggle, continues to move. There is no way the video was faked, I know. It was filmed spontaeneously, unknowingly, perfectly.
I reply: "Incredible. Where did you find this?"
She responds almost instantly. I wonder if she was waiting for me to view it, staring at her inbox and awaiting my reply as I've so often done with her. I feel vain at this thought, arrogant. Does a goddess hang on the words of a worshipper?
Her reply:
he, he, he!!... i cant tell you that... its a secret... a very very special top secret, they do not want me to have it! do not know i have it!... i took it... and i showed it to you... nobody else... just you... :)... he, he, he!!...
I am floored. I feel exalted, a once-lowly element elevated by selection for something beautiful and tremendous. My breath quickens. I must send her something that rivals the splendor of what she has given me, something that will astound and enchant her as she has me. But I can think of nothing. My god-kissed elation begins to turn to panic. I do not have her sources, her seemingly inexhaustible wellsprings, none of the darknets which must be part of her dominion.
I open a dozen browser tabs and immediately point them all to the most obscure, disparate, abnormal and uncanny places I know. I spend hours pulling threads and biting my nails. No sleep. I keep searching, so eager to return the kindness she has done me, to please her and prove my worth to her after she has shown me such staggeringly particular attention.
I fail.
I lay back in my chair and press my palms to my eyes. I have spent hours, but have produced nothing. I have failed the only one who ever understood me and shared my insight and challenged my perception. My body craves sleep, but my mind rages.
From outside my window, two bright beams flash, a vehicle turning. I hear a tire squeal, a trash can upend itself, a vehicle speed away. Curious and dejected, I move to the window and look out into the streetlit night.
A dark shape moves on the pavement. With no deliberation, I grab my cell phone and go outside.
I walk downstairs, down to the street and out across my apartment's parking lot. I go to where I saw the shape, and though it is little more than a twitching, pulpy mass, I instantly recognize it. It is a raccoon, destroyed by the careless tires of an automobile. But it is more than that. I switch to my phone's camera, begin recording video. This is a gift.
The small mound of viscera is barely discernible as a living animal as it bleeds and writhes in my viewfinder, leaving a trail of congealing blood in its wake. A tiny jawbone juts upward at an insane angle, fragments of bone litter its pelt. It should be dead, and yet it struggles, pulls itself along the street towards the grass of the far side, separating itself into twitching islands of dark gore. And as it does so, I film it. I film it for whole minutes.
I return to my apartment. I transfer the video to my PC, and without editing, without changing its file name, I attach it to an email and send it to her. Then I stare at my inbox, awaiting a response. For minutes there is nothing, and my lungs feel as though they're shrinking. Then a window opens up for an instant messenger I wasn't aware I'd left running.
nerva_blood_radio (02:44:39): !!!!!!!
nerva_blood_radio (02:44:56): aaahaa, haa, haa, its so goooood!
nerva_blood_radio (02:45:09): where did you find it???
(I have not used this program since I've known her. I don't know how she got my handle. I don't care.)
mothstatic (02:46:12): I filmed it myself
mothstatic (02:46:16): on my phone
mothstatic (02:47:00): I heard a truck spin out so i went to check it and it had hit the raccoon but it kept moving like the locust in the video you sent me
mothstatic (02:47:11): I came straight home and sent it to you
mothstatic (02:47:31): you're the only one I sent it to
Further minutes of non-response, and I'm wringing my hands and pulling skin from my lip. I want her to tell her why I did it, why I sent it only to her, that I love her and worship her and that without her I would still be at the mouth of the woods. I nearly begin to type, but she preempts me:
nerva_blood_radio (02:54:01): you are so good to me.....
nerva_blood_radio (02:54:16): i love you!!.....
My heart is beating through the backs of my ribs and I struggle to breathe. I struggle this way for a minute, then begin to type, but a final message from her blinks onto my screen and then she disconnects.
nerva_blood_radio (02:55:21): send me more...
nerva_blood_radio has logged off.
Panic and elation are fighting for control of my spine. I shut off everything, take off my clothes, lay down on my futon. I don't manage to sleep until the sun has been up for hours, and when I do I sleep through until dark.
The next day, she has sent me no messages. I return to the woods and spend hours there, digging harder than I ever have, scouring every corner she ever showed me for something new and shocking and perfect to surpass the video I had taken. I can find nothing. Everything is either manufactured or hokey or senseless or ham-fisted. Even those things that used to thrill me fail to compare to the simple, terrible perfection of a ruined raccoon continuing to struggle across a road with a body that should not be alive.
The next day, the same results. I turn up nothing. No messages from her. I see the first headline news clip announcing some unknown phenomenon that is affecting the biology of increasingly large creatures in various countries. I'm beginning to feel somehow like I'm running out of time. In my inept anxiety I bite the skin around my fingernails until it bleeds.
The next day more news has crowded out the dubstep remixes and reality television recaps and autotuned parodies. From a distance, looking indirectly at the thumbnails of all that is presented to me, I divine an overwhelming bleakness. The sense of losing time heightens. I set about my work.
Hours into the night, I have had no success. Then a sudden, piercing sound comes from somewhere beneath me, down a floor, somewhere in my apartment. I begin to hear more panic-sounds, footfalls, shouts and cries. I take my phone from my desk and run outside, down to the source.
Neighbors I have only met in passing have crowded outside an open apartment door. The apartment inside is dark, and a man within is yelling, blathering wet, meaningless syllables. People are muttering words like 'gun' and 'dangerous,' shouting things like 'don't' and 'doesn't have to' and 'talk this out.' I shoulder my way forward until I can see into the room.
A naked obese man is laying back against a bare far wall. His face is puffy and streaked with tears and mucous. Each time someone addresses him, he howls something meaningless. There is a pistol in his hand. When he is not howling, he turns his head to look out his open window, looking remorseful, almost pensive. Then, all at once, he begins to raise the gun to his head. Already my fingers are around my phone, trying to pull up the video recorder. My neighbors are shouting now, jostling me. I hit record, try to find a shot, but I am being moved and churned and I can see nothing through my phone. The obese man says something I cannot hear, but which sounds like 'never' and 'to heaven,' and he puts the gun to his temple, and he pulls the trigger.
The gun barks, more quietly than I'm expecting. My neighbors are screaming. A dark fan of blood has sprayed a greasy feather-shape across the wall behind the man. He slumps down and lays still for a moment. Then his body is convulsing. His legs kick up and drum down hard against the floor, his arms whip and lash at his sides, his ruined skull lolls back and forth on his neck. His body rolls forward, puts its arms up, begins wriggling like a bloated worm trying to move forward. My neighbors continue to scream and jostle me, many of them fleeing the hallway. I stare down at my phone, at a message telling me that there is no storage capacity left. I stop recording and review the footage I have taken, and it is useless. Indiscernible. My heart writhes in my chest when I think of the perfect moment that has just been squandered, which can never be repeated, which would have been the most excellent offering.
The few neighbors remaining in the hall cover their mouths and turn away. Most have left, either in fear or maybe to call the police. The obese man's body continues to squirm and bleed and twitch and drum its heavy feet up and down. I stare at my phone, then at the body, which seems to be trying to pull itself closer to me. Then I see the gun, and my most perfect idea comes to me.
I check the hallway to see if anyone is looking. Everyone has their backs turned. The suppurating body has wormed its way into a corner and is struggling helplessly. As quickly and quietly as I can, I step forward into the room, step over the body, reach down and take the gun, slipping it in the front of my pants and hiding it beneath my shirt. Then I leave, climb the stairs, return to my room, lock my door.
I dig an old webcam out of a large tupperware container filled with cords and obsolete peripherals. It takes minutes to hook up, install drivers. Then I pull open the instant messenger and look for her name. Blessedly, she's online.
mothstatic (01:52:19) says: I have something for you, can we video
nerva_blood_radio (01:52:21) says: yes.
Sirens are howling. At the mouth of the woods, all of the brightness, all of the distraction, is gone, replaced by stern faces reporting on what is happening to the world, what is happening to the bodies. I can hear my neighbors downstairs continuing to scream and lament. I can hear the feet of the body beating the floor.
The instant messenger window expands. I see my own face, bathed in white light, framed by the darkness of my room. On her end, I see only moving shadows, the vague impression of green light streaking in strange patterns, a silhouette shaped like a crucifixion.
nerva_blood_radio (01:54:12) says: you have been so very good to me.
mothstatic (01:54:37) says: You showed me so much. I would never have found any of the beauty you showed me.
nerva_blood_radio (01:55:00) says: this will be your contribution to that beauty. i will ensure you are remembered.
I adjust the angle of my webcam, roll my chair back so that both myself and the floor around me are in frame, because I expect that is where my body will fall. I take the gun out of my pants.
mothstatic (01:56:09) says: are you recording?
nerva_blood_radio (01:56:12) says: yes.
mothstatic (01:56:28) says: I love you.
nerva_blood_radio (01:56:40) says: prove it to me. :)
The barrel is sliding between my teeth. My finger wraps around the trigger. From somewhere deep within the woods, I feel a cold wind rise.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
19/10
§§§§§THIS WEEK§§§§§
Cave! Cave! Deus Videt – Episode 0Who would have thought, a game where you explore the paintings and the secrets therein of artist Bosch? Both music and graphics are unique and exciting. The narrative reminds me much of the works of Joestin Gaarder, an old childhood favorite of mine. It's The Matrix and Alice in Wonderland and Sophies World set in a world of intriguing history, art, religion and the potential growth that comes with the alienation of youth.
Dog of Dracula: Barbecue Densetsu/Dog of Dracula 2: Cyber Monogatari
Wonderful neo/cyberpunk noir pastiche which is both hillarously funny and dead-serious as the same time. Despite its very short length, it managed to draw me in and care about the world and its inhabitants which left me wanting more, much more, and also to consider what video games I've played gave me the most laughs (list below.
East van EP/Oracle (ceMelusine)
I love the people behind Silverstring (ceMelusine is part of Silverstring), because of Glitchhikers, and because of Azraels Stop. This game wasn't as interesting, although more evocative than increpares newest "let your mind fall to rest", which too is a form of tarot-reading. Imagery is quite sublime, but it's not something I'm prone to return to, nor give much thought in retrospect, as opposed to the aforementioned games.
Girls Like Robots: NerdfestHey, a girls needs to have fun, right?
Niddhogg (Messhof)
Played it with a friend. Crazy, wicked fun I haven't had since Samurai Gunn! Hopefully will be seeing much more of this. I hate to say this, but I enjoyed it more than Johann Sebastian Joust (and I hate to say it beause I'm all for physicality in video games, alternative controllers and folk games).
Octodad: Dadliest CatchThe second really funny game this week I played! Humor is a rarity when it comes to video games, especially humor which isn't all scripted and script, but comes from the interaction with the world. Seems like a worthy successor to the original game. The coop is killer.
Rehearsals and ReturnsNow when it's finally free to download, I gave it a spin. It is interesting in the way that it feels compelling without having very much there to begin with, but it probably could be realized better somehow. Even just by letting people choose whom to interact with. Since the game is so much about player input, it could have gone further yet and probably be more cathartic for it.
Spelunky
Yeah. So it came out on the PS4 and me and my friend thought we'd give it a try. I can sort of image us sitting there, playing it a month from now, cursing ourselves and the game. But honestly I just don't think it's for me - too frustrating. But I do love cooperative video games and although they seem to be all the rage right now, I still feel there is a shortage on good ones.
Stopped playing: Wasteland 2. Yes, the second part of the game is better. And yet, I started to grow tired well before the second part, and now that I'm like 80% in, I'm giving up for now. I'd give it a 7/10, probably 8 if I'm in a good mood, which I'm not anymore since I feel it doesn't do the things it sets you up to believe it will do. Well, some of that surely is my own fault, but still - I'm tired of wanting to roleplay and act as if the things I feel and do carry weight, only to realize that they indeed do not, and I was a fool for thinking so. The only recourse then is to play a game parallel to the video game in front of you, where the motivations of your characters make sense. But try to mesh this world of fantasy in your head with the one on the screen in front of you and the world of your imagination gives way to the two-dimensional illusions of programming. I get the choice to pick a character which has kids and I can enter the age of this character, say 50+. Do the kids make any appearance of any kind in the game? No. And people still call me "youngster". Sure, I use this person to talk with people, because in my mind this character is the leader of my ranger pack. But it doesn't make any difference. Yeah, I can add more charisma to this character so that they gain levels faster and thus become "more experienced" ("older") than my other party members, but meh. A couple of levels of difference after 50 hours?
I just wish I'd come across an RPG where after playing it I wouldn't feel that I tried to give way too much credit to its ambitions, expected way too much in terms of reactivity to the way I play and feel and act and roleplay. There are other problems with Wasteland, such as the fact that "choices" don't seem to matter, and I don't only mean that in the way that there doesn't seem to be any gravitas to ones interaction with the world (although that too is true, since the characters aren't well-developed enough for me to care all that much, basically the same problem I have with Bethesdas games and the former Fallouts, although Fallout 1 & 2 made up for that with a really mysterious, interesting and alive world and its open-ended system of exploring it), but that many of the choices that you'd think matter (do I choose repair mechanic or computer science) seem to come down to... whatever. It just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for my character which has perception as a skill, because it doesn't matter who has perception as a skill, and because my character isn't changed by being perceptive in any way, and me being perceptive barely matters for other characters as well - mainly it gives me the opportunity to spot more digging grounds where I can dig for buried scraps which means more money. In the end it doesn't matter also because there is probably another way of solving the problem in front of you, and it doesn't matter which one you choose. Chances are you have both options available in the party anyway, unless you want to roleplay and not game the system by having each party members specializing in certain fields, but then you'd just go back to playing that parallel game in your mind, which at least I need some small input from the outside world (game system) in order to stay interested in. If you don't have the skills in the party, eh, just blow the wall up instead of kicking it down. It will just cost you some money. In the end skills become cash. Everything becomes cash. And loot. Loot everywhere. And the numbers don't add up, either, seeing how I've maxed skills and still see the "impossible" icon on chests and locks and whathaveyou, which according to the explanation of how the skills are implemented in the game just doesn't make sense. Sure, it's interesting that you can play "on the fly" and just roll with the punches as superbunnyhop would have it, and fail at half the things you try to do. But eventually I just stop caring due to everything being random - contents of chests and such - and just feel that opening stuff is a waste of my time.
I am disappointed. Planescape seems to be a game about something else entirely, so I do hope Inexile deliver on those promises (every combat encounter will count, etc) even if they believe that what they did with Wasteland 2 was good for Wasteland 2.
LOL
XD
§PATHOLOGIC!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts (yes, all of them)
§INTERACTIVE FICTION
Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1850151847/ice-bound-a-novel-of-reconfiguration
§
Our design for Ice-Bound rejects both branching-path models of interactive story as well as overly simulationist approaches, targeting a middle-road aesthetic of sculptural construction that marries a focus on quality output with the player's exploration of both an emergent expressive space and an AR-enabled art book.
http://www.fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_paper_23.pdf
§
This paper introduces a new set of design-time visualizations for combinatorial interactive narrative authoring. By using these visualizations during thd creation of Ice-Bound (an interactive narrative iPad game) we were able to author content within a large combinatorial possibility space, and achieve both desired player freedom and content responsiveness
http://fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_paper_10.pdf
§
First up is combinatorial narrative, as we think this is the heart of what sets Ice-Bound apart from other story-games. It’s fairly complex, but we’re going to try and distill it down into something easily digestible.
http://ice-bound.com/news/combinatorial_narrative/
§
Riffing on the dramatic concept of Chekhov’s gun, which states that everything introduced into a story should serve a narrative purpose, we’ve taken to calling our model “Chekhov’s dollhouse.” Do you put the spotlight on the gun over the mantelpiece, and bring it (and the violence it implies) into your story? Or do you put the focus somewhere else? Unlike branching path models, where making a choice is usually irreversible and high-consequence (even if the consequence is only wondering what you missed), with our model you can freely rearrange the story as much or little as you like before committing to a single configuration, as easily as rearranging the furniture in a dollhouse.
http://ice-bound.com/news/combinatorial-narrative-part-two/
§
Conventional game design often denies players the act of interpretation./.../
I just want to raise the question as to why there isn’t a lot of interpretation going on in games. My hunch is because of the canonized idea of games mostly being composed of rules that need to be fairly communicated to the player, vagueness is discouraged.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/further-thoughts-on-the-tarot-and-interpretation/
§
"You are Kickstarting Ice-Bound; an interactive piece of sculptural fiction and, uhm, what is sculptural fiction?"
"It's a term I've started using to describe a break away from the "branching path" model of interactive narrative. I also sometimes call this the "rat in a maze" model, because a) you can't usually see the big picture, b) often have no way of knowing what, if anything, you're missing when you make a choice, and c) it's usually difficult to go back and try again: you either have to restart from scratch, or laboriously retrace your steps. "Some of my recent projects, including Ice-Bound and 18 Cadence, are experiments towards a different approach: one where you can see the whole story at once, and make small, reversible decisions about its form, rather than big, high-consequence choices. The analogy is to the act of sculpting: iteratively making changes, large and small, until you arrive at something you're satisfied with. This is interesting to me because it pushes the player away from being an "actor" within a story, to something more like a "director" or "editor." I've always wanted my players to feel like they're collaborating with me in telling a story, and sculptural fiction is a move closer towards that ideal.
http://indiegames.com/2014/10/aaron_a_reed_on_ice-bound_and_.html
§
Elegy for a Dead World: A Game About Writing Fiction
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dejobaan/elegy-for-a-dead-world-a-game-about-writing-fictio
§OTHER VIDEOS
The True Legend of Hyrule
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/qsso4i/the-final-bosman-the-true-legend-of-hyrule
§
Majora's African Roots pt. 1 (Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask) - Culture Shock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1iv1Ws5XU
§
Extra Credits - Digging Deeper - Do Games Have Less Value than Other Media?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPUlN0dnKk
§
All Games Are Created Equal
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/r270r0/the-final-bosman-all-games-are-created-equal
§
Should League of Legends Be a High School Sport? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypx5rbkAzpk
§
Why Does Mario's Jump Feel So Awesome? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2oV2DQ2dEA
§
James Recommends - Analysis! - Wasteland 2 - A New Old School Fallout Game?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpSA7MAQxlE
§
Extra Credits - Big Bad II - What Makes a Good Villain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDx5nG7koA
§
Interplay Part 1: Meteoric Rise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srdR55V7D-s
§OTHER ARTICLES
Alien: Isolation is an interesting game. It is the latest entry in a lineage of games that I refer to as horror simulators. It does an excellent job at creating tension and uses a lot of the knowledge built up over the years to great success. But, because it has such a laser focus on a certain type of play a bunch problems arise and other parts of the package suffer. It is a great game in many ways, truly excellent really, but there are some fundamental problems. These lead to, for me at least, a devastating flaw: At its core it fails to be a faithful emulation of the original Alien (1979) movie. Before we can properly discuss the game, we need to talk some video game history and design theory. Over the past, there has been two different schools of horror games. One that has a horror wrapping on top of standardized gameplay (horror wrapping) and one that tries to recreate the happenings of a scary movie/novel (horror simulation). The former is quite well known and started with games like Lurking Horror (1987). Mechanically, the game played like other contemporary adventure games, but took place in a scary setting with events meant to frighten the player. The latter one is a bit harder to nail down precisely, but I would say it started out with a 3D Monster Maze (1982), a game that is neatly captured in its name: the player is trapped in maze and needs to escape a monster (in this case a heavily pixelated T-Rex).
/.../
Just as the horror genre stagnated in the mid 2000s, because horror was merely a wrapping, the same might happen if we fail to move beyond "chased by monster" scenarios. While there is nothing wrong with these sort of games, I think it would be foolish to be satisfied with just that. There is so much more to explore in horror, and the success of recent horror simulators gives me hope that video games can handle it.
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2014/10/thoughts-on-alien-isolation-and-horror.html
§
Just as there are real contradictions to the exercise of sovereign exception, the use of such power within the rules of a video game, even one whose trademark is branching-path storytelling, remains a technical impossibility. Mass Effect seems to solve this problem by making the agency of Shepard rather illusory. As players, we are meant to feel that we share Shepard’s sovereign power, but the intrinsic contradictions of that power, mirrored by our subordination as consumers to the game design, give the Spectres a deeper, if more problematic, meaning.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/blasto-sacer/
§
“The project that ended up on the shelves would never have been signed off by anyone up front,” Barlow says of the total overhaul of the classic Silent Hill formula. “It wasn’t like right back at the start we just pitched what became the game and everyone came on board. It very much just kind of meandered.”
/.../
“The driving thing was exploring different ways of using interactivity,” Barlow says. “There’s so much data that games take on board about their player – we know where you are, what you’re looking at, how long you spend looking at things, what you’re doing – but 99 per cent of games don’t use any of that.”
http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-making-of-silent-hill-shattered-memories/
§
Water Temple Analysis: Part 1
the design of the Water Temple is incredibly flawed on both large and small scales. But perhaps this also achieves an effect that matches up with what the Water Temple is trying to achieve in the context of the game’s narrative?
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2014/10/water-temple-analysis-part-1.html
Cave! Cave! Deus Videt – Episode 0Who would have thought, a game where you explore the paintings and the secrets therein of artist Bosch? Both music and graphics are unique and exciting. The narrative reminds me much of the works of Joestin Gaarder, an old childhood favorite of mine. It's The Matrix and Alice in Wonderland and Sophies World set in a world of intriguing history, art, religion and the potential growth that comes with the alienation of youth.
Dog of Dracula: Barbecue Densetsu/Dog of Dracula 2: Cyber Monogatari
Wonderful neo/cyberpunk noir pastiche which is both hillarously funny and dead-serious as the same time. Despite its very short length, it managed to draw me in and care about the world and its inhabitants which left me wanting more, much more, and also to consider what video games I've played gave me the most laughs (list below.
East van EP/Oracle (ceMelusine)
I love the people behind Silverstring (ceMelusine is part of Silverstring), because of Glitchhikers, and because of Azraels Stop. This game wasn't as interesting, although more evocative than increpares newest "let your mind fall to rest", which too is a form of tarot-reading. Imagery is quite sublime, but it's not something I'm prone to return to, nor give much thought in retrospect, as opposed to the aforementioned games.
Girls Like Robots: NerdfestHey, a girls needs to have fun, right?
Niddhogg (Messhof)
Played it with a friend. Crazy, wicked fun I haven't had since Samurai Gunn! Hopefully will be seeing much more of this. I hate to say this, but I enjoyed it more than Johann Sebastian Joust (and I hate to say it beause I'm all for physicality in video games, alternative controllers and folk games).
Octodad: Dadliest CatchThe second really funny game this week I played! Humor is a rarity when it comes to video games, especially humor which isn't all scripted and script, but comes from the interaction with the world. Seems like a worthy successor to the original game. The coop is killer.
Rehearsals and ReturnsNow when it's finally free to download, I gave it a spin. It is interesting in the way that it feels compelling without having very much there to begin with, but it probably could be realized better somehow. Even just by letting people choose whom to interact with. Since the game is so much about player input, it could have gone further yet and probably be more cathartic for it.
Spelunky
Yeah. So it came out on the PS4 and me and my friend thought we'd give it a try. I can sort of image us sitting there, playing it a month from now, cursing ourselves and the game. But honestly I just don't think it's for me - too frustrating. But I do love cooperative video games and although they seem to be all the rage right now, I still feel there is a shortage on good ones.
Stopped playing: Wasteland 2. Yes, the second part of the game is better. And yet, I started to grow tired well before the second part, and now that I'm like 80% in, I'm giving up for now. I'd give it a 7/10, probably 8 if I'm in a good mood, which I'm not anymore since I feel it doesn't do the things it sets you up to believe it will do. Well, some of that surely is my own fault, but still - I'm tired of wanting to roleplay and act as if the things I feel and do carry weight, only to realize that they indeed do not, and I was a fool for thinking so. The only recourse then is to play a game parallel to the video game in front of you, where the motivations of your characters make sense. But try to mesh this world of fantasy in your head with the one on the screen in front of you and the world of your imagination gives way to the two-dimensional illusions of programming. I get the choice to pick a character which has kids and I can enter the age of this character, say 50+. Do the kids make any appearance of any kind in the game? No. And people still call me "youngster". Sure, I use this person to talk with people, because in my mind this character is the leader of my ranger pack. But it doesn't make any difference. Yeah, I can add more charisma to this character so that they gain levels faster and thus become "more experienced" ("older") than my other party members, but meh. A couple of levels of difference after 50 hours?
I just wish I'd come across an RPG where after playing it I wouldn't feel that I tried to give way too much credit to its ambitions, expected way too much in terms of reactivity to the way I play and feel and act and roleplay. There are other problems with Wasteland, such as the fact that "choices" don't seem to matter, and I don't only mean that in the way that there doesn't seem to be any gravitas to ones interaction with the world (although that too is true, since the characters aren't well-developed enough for me to care all that much, basically the same problem I have with Bethesdas games and the former Fallouts, although Fallout 1 & 2 made up for that with a really mysterious, interesting and alive world and its open-ended system of exploring it), but that many of the choices that you'd think matter (do I choose repair mechanic or computer science) seem to come down to... whatever. It just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for my character which has perception as a skill, because it doesn't matter who has perception as a skill, and because my character isn't changed by being perceptive in any way, and me being perceptive barely matters for other characters as well - mainly it gives me the opportunity to spot more digging grounds where I can dig for buried scraps which means more money. In the end it doesn't matter also because there is probably another way of solving the problem in front of you, and it doesn't matter which one you choose. Chances are you have both options available in the party anyway, unless you want to roleplay and not game the system by having each party members specializing in certain fields, but then you'd just go back to playing that parallel game in your mind, which at least I need some small input from the outside world (game system) in order to stay interested in. If you don't have the skills in the party, eh, just blow the wall up instead of kicking it down. It will just cost you some money. In the end skills become cash. Everything becomes cash. And loot. Loot everywhere. And the numbers don't add up, either, seeing how I've maxed skills and still see the "impossible" icon on chests and locks and whathaveyou, which according to the explanation of how the skills are implemented in the game just doesn't make sense. Sure, it's interesting that you can play "on the fly" and just roll with the punches as superbunnyhop would have it, and fail at half the things you try to do. But eventually I just stop caring due to everything being random - contents of chests and such - and just feel that opening stuff is a waste of my time.
I am disappointed. Planescape seems to be a game about something else entirely, so I do hope Inexile deliver on those promises (every combat encounter will count, etc) even if they believe that what they did with Wasteland 2 was good for Wasteland 2.
Funny/Humoristic Games
That's funny...Day of the Tentacle
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Deadline, or, Being Douglas Adams
(Gunther Schmidl)
Grim Fandango
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(Douglas Adams/Steve Meretzky)
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Slavoj Žižek Makes A Twine Game
(Cameron Kunzelman)
The
Apprentice II: Knights Move (Herculean Effort Productions)
LOL
Dink Smallwood
Katamari Damacy
Katamari Damacy
Little Girl In Underland (Lively
Ivy/Erin Robinson)
Psychonauts
Sam & Max Season 1&2
The
Journey Down: Over The Edge/The
Journey Down: Chapter Two
(Theodor Waern)
Thirty Flights of Loving/Gravity Bone
(Brendon Chung/Blendo Games)
Warioware
Inc: Minigame Mania
Dog of Dracula: Barbecue Densetsu/Dog
of Dracula 2: Cyber Monogatari
Jazzpunk
Portal 1 & 2
Soviet Unterzögersdorf (Monochrom)
The Secret of Monkey Island (and the
rest of them)
The Stanley Parable HD Remix/The
Stanley Parable Demo (Galactic Café/Davey Wreden)
§PATHOLOGIC!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts (yes, all of them)
§INTERACTIVE FICTION
Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1850151847/ice-bound-a-novel-of-reconfiguration
§
Our design for Ice-Bound rejects both branching-path models of interactive story as well as overly simulationist approaches, targeting a middle-road aesthetic of sculptural construction that marries a focus on quality output with the player's exploration of both an emergent expressive space and an AR-enabled art book.
http://www.fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_paper_23.pdf
§
This paper introduces a new set of design-time visualizations for combinatorial interactive narrative authoring. By using these visualizations during thd creation of Ice-Bound (an interactive narrative iPad game) we were able to author content within a large combinatorial possibility space, and achieve both desired player freedom and content responsiveness
http://fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_paper_10.pdf
§
First up is combinatorial narrative, as we think this is the heart of what sets Ice-Bound apart from other story-games. It’s fairly complex, but we’re going to try and distill it down into something easily digestible.
http://ice-bound.com/news/combinatorial_narrative/
§
Riffing on the dramatic concept of Chekhov’s gun, which states that everything introduced into a story should serve a narrative purpose, we’ve taken to calling our model “Chekhov’s dollhouse.” Do you put the spotlight on the gun over the mantelpiece, and bring it (and the violence it implies) into your story? Or do you put the focus somewhere else? Unlike branching path models, where making a choice is usually irreversible and high-consequence (even if the consequence is only wondering what you missed), with our model you can freely rearrange the story as much or little as you like before committing to a single configuration, as easily as rearranging the furniture in a dollhouse.
http://ice-bound.com/news/combinatorial-narrative-part-two/
§
Conventional game design often denies players the act of interpretation./.../
I just want to raise the question as to why there isn’t a lot of interpretation going on in games. My hunch is because of the canonized idea of games mostly being composed of rules that need to be fairly communicated to the player, vagueness is discouraged.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/further-thoughts-on-the-tarot-and-interpretation/
§
"You are Kickstarting Ice-Bound; an interactive piece of sculptural fiction and, uhm, what is sculptural fiction?"
"It's a term I've started using to describe a break away from the "branching path" model of interactive narrative. I also sometimes call this the "rat in a maze" model, because a) you can't usually see the big picture, b) often have no way of knowing what, if anything, you're missing when you make a choice, and c) it's usually difficult to go back and try again: you either have to restart from scratch, or laboriously retrace your steps. "Some of my recent projects, including Ice-Bound and 18 Cadence, are experiments towards a different approach: one where you can see the whole story at once, and make small, reversible decisions about its form, rather than big, high-consequence choices. The analogy is to the act of sculpting: iteratively making changes, large and small, until you arrive at something you're satisfied with. This is interesting to me because it pushes the player away from being an "actor" within a story, to something more like a "director" or "editor." I've always wanted my players to feel like they're collaborating with me in telling a story, and sculptural fiction is a move closer towards that ideal.
http://indiegames.com/2014/10/aaron_a_reed_on_ice-bound_and_.html
§
Elegy for a Dead World: A Game About Writing Fiction
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dejobaan/elegy-for-a-dead-world-a-game-about-writing-fictio
§OTHER VIDEOS
The True Legend of Hyrule
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/qsso4i/the-final-bosman-the-true-legend-of-hyrule
§
Majora's African Roots pt. 1 (Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask) - Culture Shock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1iv1Ws5XU
§
Extra Credits - Digging Deeper - Do Games Have Less Value than Other Media?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPUlN0dnKk
§
All Games Are Created Equal
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/r270r0/the-final-bosman-all-games-are-created-equal
§
Should League of Legends Be a High School Sport? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypx5rbkAzpk
§
Why Does Mario's Jump Feel So Awesome? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2oV2DQ2dEA
§
James Recommends - Analysis! - Wasteland 2 - A New Old School Fallout Game?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpSA7MAQxlE
§
Extra Credits - Big Bad II - What Makes a Good Villain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDx5nG7koA
§
Interplay Part 1: Meteoric Rise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srdR55V7D-s
§OTHER ARTICLES
Alien: Isolation is an interesting game. It is the latest entry in a lineage of games that I refer to as horror simulators. It does an excellent job at creating tension and uses a lot of the knowledge built up over the years to great success. But, because it has such a laser focus on a certain type of play a bunch problems arise and other parts of the package suffer. It is a great game in many ways, truly excellent really, but there are some fundamental problems. These lead to, for me at least, a devastating flaw: At its core it fails to be a faithful emulation of the original Alien (1979) movie. Before we can properly discuss the game, we need to talk some video game history and design theory. Over the past, there has been two different schools of horror games. One that has a horror wrapping on top of standardized gameplay (horror wrapping) and one that tries to recreate the happenings of a scary movie/novel (horror simulation). The former is quite well known and started with games like Lurking Horror (1987). Mechanically, the game played like other contemporary adventure games, but took place in a scary setting with events meant to frighten the player. The latter one is a bit harder to nail down precisely, but I would say it started out with a 3D Monster Maze (1982), a game that is neatly captured in its name: the player is trapped in maze and needs to escape a monster (in this case a heavily pixelated T-Rex).
/.../
Just as the horror genre stagnated in the mid 2000s, because horror was merely a wrapping, the same might happen if we fail to move beyond "chased by monster" scenarios. While there is nothing wrong with these sort of games, I think it would be foolish to be satisfied with just that. There is so much more to explore in horror, and the success of recent horror simulators gives me hope that video games can handle it.
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2014/10/thoughts-on-alien-isolation-and-horror.html
§
Just as there are real contradictions to the exercise of sovereign exception, the use of such power within the rules of a video game, even one whose trademark is branching-path storytelling, remains a technical impossibility. Mass Effect seems to solve this problem by making the agency of Shepard rather illusory. As players, we are meant to feel that we share Shepard’s sovereign power, but the intrinsic contradictions of that power, mirrored by our subordination as consumers to the game design, give the Spectres a deeper, if more problematic, meaning.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/blasto-sacer/
§
“The project that ended up on the shelves would never have been signed off by anyone up front,” Barlow says of the total overhaul of the classic Silent Hill formula. “It wasn’t like right back at the start we just pitched what became the game and everyone came on board. It very much just kind of meandered.”
/.../
“The driving thing was exploring different ways of using interactivity,” Barlow says. “There’s so much data that games take on board about their player – we know where you are, what you’re looking at, how long you spend looking at things, what you’re doing – but 99 per cent of games don’t use any of that.”
http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-making-of-silent-hill-shattered-memories/
§
Water Temple Analysis: Part 1
the design of the Water Temple is incredibly flawed on both large and small scales. But perhaps this also achieves an effect that matches up with what the Water Temple is trying to achieve in the context of the game’s narrative?
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2014/10/water-temple-analysis-part-1.html
Thursday, August 21, 2014
21/8
§HISTORY LESSON
A few years ago Kirk Battle, going under the pseudonym L.B. Jefferies, was one of the most prolific critics of the burgeoning amateur bloggers arising from the boom of 2007 and 2008.
http://www.critical-distance.com/2014/08/15/episode-19-a-critic-by-his-window/
§
43 hours after the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter launched it was funded. Fargo was at inXile's office outside Los Angeles at the time. The team was "doing a little jig" he says. "It was like a New Year's Eve countdown. The first 10 years I couldn't even get the trademark. Then another eight years of hardcore pitching getting nowhere. It was a great moment."
/.../
"It was amazing to me," Fargo recalls. "When you do contracts they come from anywhere but trust. You have 10 pages of pain about how to get paid. What happens if you're not on time? They could take your project away from you. They could take your trademark. They could shut down your company. They could take over your company. They could sue your company. You can have damages that are related not just to that but to their stock market price dropping. You can be on the hook literally for a billion dollars for screwing up a contract. I came from that world to, 'here's the money up front, Brian. We trust you.' What a difference."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-08-05-the-long-journey-of-wasteland-2
§
The Secret History of Videogames & The Military | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsNrHwPdIDc
§ZELDA
Some could argue that, because Yuga is the one who patronizes and objectifies women, and because Link eventually kicks Yuga’s ass, the game itself is presenting these behaviours as unacceptable. I disagree. Just as a text is not feminist just because its heroine is strong a game does not become un-sexist when it features a villain rather than a hero acting in a sexist manner. Let’s face it: The Legend of Zelda’s history does not do it any favours.
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/07/28/my-last-princess-women-as-objects-in-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-between-worlds/
The Zelda series is a garden you can keep inside your drawer, not a wide, expansive landscape that absorbs you. The environment in Oracle of Seasons, and to a less direct extent, in other Zelda games, is both an enemy and a lover. It’s the uncomfortable source of conflict, theme, plot — it’s something to be feared and understood and respected, but also something to overcome. It has authority over me as the game system, but it can also be gamed. It can destroy me, and it can also be destroyed. It has a precarious but learnable pattern. Master that pattern. When it swings left, go right. Harmonize with that pattern, like Din’s dance. Master the dance, and master nature.
http://www.pushselectmagazine.com/2013/07/17/man-vs-dungeon-ecology-in-zelda-and-the-conquest-of-nature/
§VIDEOS
Game Theory: World of Warcraft will SAVE the Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDfNoCjtXvQ
§
Queer Mechanics in Tabletop Games
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vxuNdMCF-dlHcWFf5mYAGw55FwqNFtSYPYk83zB8O8I/edit#slide=id.g24620197_09
§
PlayStation Now Is Here. Streaming is Popularizing. God Save Us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeX38RD52-4
§
How Are Games Biased Against the Disabled? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyASY5wv_Qo
§DESIGN
Wayward Manor goes most wayward in terms of game design, such that the possibility of interacting inside a Gaiman story in a meaningful way becomes impossible. We are left with a game that, rather than immersing us in story, stands as proof that games don’t just need better writer to make game stories better.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/how-does-wayward-manor-fit-neil-gaimans-ouevre-it-doesnt/
§
Violence is seldom framed for what it is: uncontrollable, self-perpetuating and unpredictable. Games treat violence as a stable fuel for their ambitions.
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/08/13/everything-looks-like-a-nail/
A few years ago Kirk Battle, going under the pseudonym L.B. Jefferies, was one of the most prolific critics of the burgeoning amateur bloggers arising from the boom of 2007 and 2008.
http://www.critical-distance.com/2014/08/15/episode-19-a-critic-by-his-window/
§
43 hours after the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter launched it was funded. Fargo was at inXile's office outside Los Angeles at the time. The team was "doing a little jig" he says. "It was like a New Year's Eve countdown. The first 10 years I couldn't even get the trademark. Then another eight years of hardcore pitching getting nowhere. It was a great moment."
/.../
"It was amazing to me," Fargo recalls. "When you do contracts they come from anywhere but trust. You have 10 pages of pain about how to get paid. What happens if you're not on time? They could take your project away from you. They could take your trademark. They could shut down your company. They could take over your company. They could sue your company. You can have damages that are related not just to that but to their stock market price dropping. You can be on the hook literally for a billion dollars for screwing up a contract. I came from that world to, 'here's the money up front, Brian. We trust you.' What a difference."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-08-05-the-long-journey-of-wasteland-2
§
The Secret History of Videogames & The Military | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsNrHwPdIDc
§ZELDA
Some could argue that, because Yuga is the one who patronizes and objectifies women, and because Link eventually kicks Yuga’s ass, the game itself is presenting these behaviours as unacceptable. I disagree. Just as a text is not feminist just because its heroine is strong a game does not become un-sexist when it features a villain rather than a hero acting in a sexist manner. Let’s face it: The Legend of Zelda’s history does not do it any favours.
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/07/28/my-last-princess-women-as-objects-in-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-between-worlds/
The Zelda series is a garden you can keep inside your drawer, not a wide, expansive landscape that absorbs you. The environment in Oracle of Seasons, and to a less direct extent, in other Zelda games, is both an enemy and a lover. It’s the uncomfortable source of conflict, theme, plot — it’s something to be feared and understood and respected, but also something to overcome. It has authority over me as the game system, but it can also be gamed. It can destroy me, and it can also be destroyed. It has a precarious but learnable pattern. Master that pattern. When it swings left, go right. Harmonize with that pattern, like Din’s dance. Master the dance, and master nature.
http://www.pushselectmagazine.com/2013/07/17/man-vs-dungeon-ecology-in-zelda-and-the-conquest-of-nature/
§VIDEOS
Game Theory: World of Warcraft will SAVE the Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDfNoCjtXvQ
§
Queer Mechanics in Tabletop Games
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vxuNdMCF-dlHcWFf5mYAGw55FwqNFtSYPYk83zB8O8I/edit#slide=id.g24620197_09
§
PlayStation Now Is Here. Streaming is Popularizing. God Save Us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeX38RD52-4
§
How Are Games Biased Against the Disabled? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyASY5wv_Qo
§DESIGN
Wayward Manor goes most wayward in terms of game design, such that the possibility of interacting inside a Gaiman story in a meaningful way becomes impossible. We are left with a game that, rather than immersing us in story, stands as proof that games don’t just need better writer to make game stories better.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/how-does-wayward-manor-fit-neil-gaimans-ouevre-it-doesnt/
§
Violence is seldom framed for what it is: uncontrollable, self-perpetuating and unpredictable. Games treat violence as a stable fuel for their ambitions.
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/08/13/everything-looks-like-a-nail/
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