§GAMERISMS
Simon Parkin kicked off an energetic discussion this week with this piece written for the New Statesman. In it, Parkin contends simply and emphatically, that the term ‘gamer’ has become too charged to reclaim, and the idea of a ‘gamer community’ is a non-starter. “If you love games,” Parkin says, “you should refuse to be called a gamer.”
http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/12/15/december-15th/
§
What is the usual canon of games for gamers? I want to add onto what Simon seems to be implying: not only do we need to stop the stereotype perpetuated by assuming people who play games are ‘gamers’ at our events and in the representational aspects of our games, but we also need to interrogate how, even if all of these were solved, games assume a certain kind of player is playing it.
/.../
When games like Candy Crush Saga or The Sims are brought up, it’s only because of the profit they’ve made and not why they are great models of design. For instance, imagine if video games took to The Sims as a model to iterate on instead of Halo or GTA III. Maybe 60-second loops of fun and player agency wouldn’t be so central?
/.../
To classes with mostly non-gamers, students found my game as a new way of engaging with a person, building empathy. They adopted a bit of my mentality and viewed the world in my perspective. The point for them wasn’t to necessarily accomplish anything, but to understand. It’s because my goal was to say something personal to the player, and if someone doesn’t view games as something for communication, they are not going to engage with it that way. It seems to me that gamers are more likely to dismiss artistic expression in games than non-gamers.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/the-meritocracy-of-video-games/
§
Mortal Kombat 4 showed an attempt to communicate something beyond the shock and gore that was characteristic of the series, and it paved the way for a group of PS2 games that took themselves just a little more seriously.
/.../
One of the most significant things about Mortal Kombat 4 is how it de-prioritizes the spectacle event, as it doesn't communicate spectacle but solitude.
/.../
Through a formalist lens that prizes "good design" above other forms of expression, Mortal Kombat 4 would be seen as simplistic and unsatisfying in its disregard for balance, but it gains a key expressive element.
http://fengxibox.blogspot.ca/2013/12/on-mortal-kombat-4.html
§MINDZ
Can Bullet Hell Games Be Meditative?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY-45DjRk_E
§
We need to be able to show the difference between madness and malice, because ideologies spread in a way that madness doesn't.
http://madnessandplay.blogspot.se/2013/12/getting-shot-at-in-all-my-guises.html
§
This is why Depression Quest is not simply an “empathy game” that MAKES you understand depression, and why it is something more valuable.
http://videogamesoftheoppressed.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/depression-quest-and-active-empathy/
§THE REST
The Five Foundational Design Pillars Of SOMA
1) Everything is story
2) Take the world seriously
3) The player is in charge
4) Trust the player
5) Thematics emerge through play
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/the-five-foundational-design-pillars-of.html
§
Extra Credits: Incentive Systems and Politics (Part 2&3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu5QZmPG8zk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X2es__Wtuk
§
Learning to Run: Part 2
http://www.electrondance.com/learning-to-run/
Showing posts with label incentive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incentive. Show all posts
Monday, December 30, 2013
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Crit Shit 18th december
§SWEDISH
Lösningen är inte att göra våldet i äventyrsspel mer realistiskt och känslomässigt laddat. Lösningen är att inse att det går att göra äventyrsspel utan att vada i blod. För någonstans måste spelutvecklare lära sig att konflikt sällan är lösningen på ett problem. Det brukar snarare vara orsaken.
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16065
§
”Proteus” är nämligen, precis som ”Bioshock Infinite”, ett spel som ställer sin värld i centrum. Men till skillnad från ”Bioshock Infinite” gör det en poäng av att inte låta någonting komma mellan världen och spelaren. Alla system som normalt tävlar om din koncentrationsförmåga är helt bortstrippade."/.../
Bioshock Infinite” vill vara ”Proteus”, men istället reducerar det sin värld till en kuliss ju längre vi spelar. Det blir aldrig någonsin bättre än den magiska, första blicken av Columbia. Det ger oss en glimt av någonting vackert och egensinnigt och sen låter det oss slösa bort resten av vår tid med att hänga i krokar, åka linbana och skjuta ihjäl människor.
/.../
Ett verk som ”Bioshock Infinite” borde inte vara designat för folk som vill leka. Det borde vara spännande och intressant snarare än roligt. Utmanande intellektuellt snarare än spelmekaniskt. Bärande på sjukdomsinsikt istället för beroendeframkallande feedbackloopar. Det borde problematisera sina karaktärer istället för att förvandla dem till svartvita stereotyper. Varför förutsätter man att spelare inte är mottagliga för sådana värden i spel? Varför antar man att de är dumma, naiva, knappt läskunniga, ständigt på jakt efter en stunds förgänglig underhållning? Varför tror man att de inte klarar av att inse storheten i Columbias värld om de inte betraktar den från ett vapensikte?
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16010
§CLIPS
Incentive Systems and Politics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa-vQ0L77LY
§
Errant Signal on The Stanley Parable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiCLKmEAa1I
§
The Importance of Modding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNzj0GVMDI
§
Interviews with people from the business
http://criticalpathproject.com/
§
On Contrast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyzYGPAqSw
§METAL GEAR SOLID
Let's Analyze Metal Gear - The Hexagon Motif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn9dfDheSSo
§
Metal Gear Rising is, politically and philosophically, absolutely 100% a Metal Gear title, and it’s enthusiasm to show that it is makes it possibly the most thematically blunt Metal Gear ever made.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/quick-notes-on-metal-gearrising-how-you.html
§GONE HOME
I began to query my experiences in order to disentangle the strange contradiction of a company making the kind of game that I dearly want to be made, but that I could not enjoy in its intended form. I wanted to know what made my first experience of it so unpleasant, and why it never quite worked for me as a narrative. This investigation turned out to shed light on some wider issues of interest.
/.../
My problem with Gone Home is related to the literary versus genre divide, except in games we must deal with both functional genres (FPS, adventure, RPG) as well as fictional genre.
/.../
Indeed, it is by waving the flag for this ideal that the game tries to convince you it has something challenging to say about its moral precepts, which alas it doesn’t since it never seriously engages with its ‘opposition’. The game (knowingly?) relies upon you sharing its values for its narrative appeal – which would be what you’d expect in most genre fiction. It’s a long way from what is expected in literary fiction, though.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/gone-home-and-the-constraint-of-genre.html
§THE LAST OF US
Uncharted is adolescent, TLOU is adult, say they.
In truth, TLOU is naught but a grown up Uncharted.
/.../
To top it off, your short-term ludic goals are supplemented with long-term activities in levelling up Joel and his weapons. And true to form, their thinness fail to conceal their purpose at distracting you from the game’s insecurities.
/.../
The writers of Naughty Dog still live within cutscenes – this is where the bulk of the plot occurs, where the characters most vividly interact. TLOU, like Uncharted, divorces narrative from gameplay, as mandated by the idiom: here is a shooting segment, here is a puzzle segment, here is a walking segment, here is a cutscene.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/the-ladder-of-us/
§
In depth on The Last of Us Part 3: The Highlights and Low Points of the Narrative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZLnpBA1mM
§
[The Walking Dead & The Last Of Us]... are works of Neo-Romanticism.
http://complicatethenarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-romantic-dead.html
§DESIGN
The worse things in a game can become, the better it feels when you beat it.
And then I wonder why I don’t want to play more Dishonored. And I think the reason comes from Arkane’s own admission that the game is a power fantasy. In some ways, games are better when they are – and this is a peculiar-sounding phrase – a vulnerability fantasy.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/23/games-are-best-when-things-go-wrong/
§
I'd argue that Metro 2033's failure to communicate it's intentions not only doesn't hinder its point, it *is* the point.
/.../
If Bioshock is trying to make the point that unchecked greed leads to the destruction of the thief as much as the victim, it only supports this up to a point. The player consumes just as much Adam and ammo following the selfless route as the selfish. Metro 2033 looks good in this light: quieter, more meditative, waiting patiently for you to learn what you've been doing wrong all these years. It's a game that could only have come from an eastern European development culture whose holy grail is absolute simulation as opposed to absolute cinematic integrity, where implementing ideas that a player may never experience is not a failure but the defining characteristic of interactive media.
http://exitwarp.blogspot.se/2010/10/novus-homo-thoughts-on-metro-2033.html
§QUEER
Would it Matter if Master Chief Were Gay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPVjgTG1Rqg
§
Looking at Dys4ia, LIM, Howling Dogs, and Mainichi, the differences in design is so apparent, that being developed by queer women is the least interesting thing about them. Yet, that’s how they are packaged, and the only time they are allowed to be highlighted.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/not-a-monolith/
Society has taught us that the female voice is the most trustworthy.
/.../
Cara Ellison already breached this topic last year in her article “Mother’s Legacy: Engendering AI in Video Games,” stating that the terror stems from an instinct to see the female as the mother, the fear coming from seeing your mother as your “own worst enemy.” “Videogames use this idea of the controlling mother figure to play with us, to scare us,” she stated. “She’s meant to be caring, protective and helpful but she often turns out a bitch from hell.”
/.../
When we hear GlaDos in the beginning of Portal, we have to listen to her. We trust her despite the seedy undertones of her tests, and when she ultimately betrays us, we are let down and disturbed. SHODAN is the same way, especially in System Shock 2, when she uses the voice of one of the female survivors to lure you to her lair and gain your allegiance. You’ve been manipulated both times into believing that this voice is your chance for survival when in actuality, it doesn’t care about you.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/glados-stanley-parable-and-evil-female-ai/
§OTHER
What this discussion highlights is the strange inter-disciplinary space we now find ourselves within, where each research domain has its own specialty but where the mythologies that are effective within each domain can be different without contradiction.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/neuromythology-for-game-design.html
§BONUS
HULK BELIEVES WE DON'T WATCH MOVIES JUST TO SIT THERE AND HAVE THE "BELIEVABILITY METER" GO UP AND DOWN. WE DON'T WATCH FILMS TO AVOID BASIC TRUTHS IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTANT SEARCH FOR THAT INDESCRIBABLE "SOMETHING ELSE". WE WATCH FILMS BECAUSE THEY FEED OUR SOULS. THE CINEMA OF MORALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD REAL VALUE TO US AS A CULTURE.
/.../
MEANING CLOUD ATLAS IS AT ONCE HIGHLY STYLIZED GRANDEUR, BUT IT TRULY MANAGES TO FEED YOUR SOUL. HULK KNOWS THAT SOUNDS FLOWERY. HULK KNOWS THAT THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE MAY FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY...
YOU JUST HAVE TO EMBRACE THE CONCEIT.
http://badassdigest.com/2012/10/08/fantastic-fest-review-cloud-atlas-david-foster-wallace-and-the-cinema-of-mo/
Lösningen är inte att göra våldet i äventyrsspel mer realistiskt och känslomässigt laddat. Lösningen är att inse att det går att göra äventyrsspel utan att vada i blod. För någonstans måste spelutvecklare lära sig att konflikt sällan är lösningen på ett problem. Det brukar snarare vara orsaken.
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16065
§
”Proteus” är nämligen, precis som ”Bioshock Infinite”, ett spel som ställer sin värld i centrum. Men till skillnad från ”Bioshock Infinite” gör det en poäng av att inte låta någonting komma mellan världen och spelaren. Alla system som normalt tävlar om din koncentrationsförmåga är helt bortstrippade."/.../
Bioshock Infinite” vill vara ”Proteus”, men istället reducerar det sin värld till en kuliss ju längre vi spelar. Det blir aldrig någonsin bättre än den magiska, första blicken av Columbia. Det ger oss en glimt av någonting vackert och egensinnigt och sen låter det oss slösa bort resten av vår tid med att hänga i krokar, åka linbana och skjuta ihjäl människor.
/.../
Ett verk som ”Bioshock Infinite” borde inte vara designat för folk som vill leka. Det borde vara spännande och intressant snarare än roligt. Utmanande intellektuellt snarare än spelmekaniskt. Bärande på sjukdomsinsikt istället för beroendeframkallande feedbackloopar. Det borde problematisera sina karaktärer istället för att förvandla dem till svartvita stereotyper. Varför förutsätter man att spelare inte är mottagliga för sådana värden i spel? Varför antar man att de är dumma, naiva, knappt läskunniga, ständigt på jakt efter en stunds förgänglig underhållning? Varför tror man att de inte klarar av att inse storheten i Columbias värld om de inte betraktar den från ett vapensikte?
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16010
§CLIPS
Incentive Systems and Politics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa-vQ0L77LY
§
Errant Signal on The Stanley Parable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiCLKmEAa1I
§
The Importance of Modding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNzj0GVMDI
§
Interviews with people from the business
http://criticalpathproject.com/
§
On Contrast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyzYGPAqSw
§METAL GEAR SOLID
Let's Analyze Metal Gear - The Hexagon Motif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn9dfDheSSo
§
Metal Gear Rising is, politically and philosophically, absolutely 100% a Metal Gear title, and it’s enthusiasm to show that it is makes it possibly the most thematically blunt Metal Gear ever made.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/quick-notes-on-metal-gearrising-how-you.html
§GONE HOME
I began to query my experiences in order to disentangle the strange contradiction of a company making the kind of game that I dearly want to be made, but that I could not enjoy in its intended form. I wanted to know what made my first experience of it so unpleasant, and why it never quite worked for me as a narrative. This investigation turned out to shed light on some wider issues of interest.
/.../
My problem with Gone Home is related to the literary versus genre divide, except in games we must deal with both functional genres (FPS, adventure, RPG) as well as fictional genre.
/.../
Indeed, it is by waving the flag for this ideal that the game tries to convince you it has something challenging to say about its moral precepts, which alas it doesn’t since it never seriously engages with its ‘opposition’. The game (knowingly?) relies upon you sharing its values for its narrative appeal – which would be what you’d expect in most genre fiction. It’s a long way from what is expected in literary fiction, though.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/gone-home-and-the-constraint-of-genre.html
§THE LAST OF US
Uncharted is adolescent, TLOU is adult, say they.
In truth, TLOU is naught but a grown up Uncharted.
/.../
To top it off, your short-term ludic goals are supplemented with long-term activities in levelling up Joel and his weapons. And true to form, their thinness fail to conceal their purpose at distracting you from the game’s insecurities.
/.../
The writers of Naughty Dog still live within cutscenes – this is where the bulk of the plot occurs, where the characters most vividly interact. TLOU, like Uncharted, divorces narrative from gameplay, as mandated by the idiom: here is a shooting segment, here is a puzzle segment, here is a walking segment, here is a cutscene.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/the-ladder-of-us/
§
In depth on The Last of Us Part 3: The Highlights and Low Points of the Narrative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZLnpBA1mM
§
[The Walking Dead & The Last Of Us]... are works of Neo-Romanticism.
http://complicatethenarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-romantic-dead.html
§DESIGN
The worse things in a game can become, the better it feels when you beat it.
And then I wonder why I don’t want to play more Dishonored. And I think the reason comes from Arkane’s own admission that the game is a power fantasy. In some ways, games are better when they are – and this is a peculiar-sounding phrase – a vulnerability fantasy.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/23/games-are-best-when-things-go-wrong/
§
I'd argue that Metro 2033's failure to communicate it's intentions not only doesn't hinder its point, it *is* the point.
/.../
If Bioshock is trying to make the point that unchecked greed leads to the destruction of the thief as much as the victim, it only supports this up to a point. The player consumes just as much Adam and ammo following the selfless route as the selfish. Metro 2033 looks good in this light: quieter, more meditative, waiting patiently for you to learn what you've been doing wrong all these years. It's a game that could only have come from an eastern European development culture whose holy grail is absolute simulation as opposed to absolute cinematic integrity, where implementing ideas that a player may never experience is not a failure but the defining characteristic of interactive media.
http://exitwarp.blogspot.se/2010/10/novus-homo-thoughts-on-metro-2033.html
§QUEER
Would it Matter if Master Chief Were Gay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPVjgTG1Rqg
§
Looking at Dys4ia, LIM, Howling Dogs, and Mainichi, the differences in design is so apparent, that being developed by queer women is the least interesting thing about them. Yet, that’s how they are packaged, and the only time they are allowed to be highlighted.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/not-a-monolith/
Society has taught us that the female voice is the most trustworthy.
/.../
Cara Ellison already breached this topic last year in her article “Mother’s Legacy: Engendering AI in Video Games,” stating that the terror stems from an instinct to see the female as the mother, the fear coming from seeing your mother as your “own worst enemy.” “Videogames use this idea of the controlling mother figure to play with us, to scare us,” she stated. “She’s meant to be caring, protective and helpful but she often turns out a bitch from hell.”
/.../
When we hear GlaDos in the beginning of Portal, we have to listen to her. We trust her despite the seedy undertones of her tests, and when she ultimately betrays us, we are let down and disturbed. SHODAN is the same way, especially in System Shock 2, when she uses the voice of one of the female survivors to lure you to her lair and gain your allegiance. You’ve been manipulated both times into believing that this voice is your chance for survival when in actuality, it doesn’t care about you.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/glados-stanley-parable-and-evil-female-ai/
§OTHER
What this discussion highlights is the strange inter-disciplinary space we now find ourselves within, where each research domain has its own specialty but where the mythologies that are effective within each domain can be different without contradiction.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/neuromythology-for-game-design.html
§BONUS
HULK BELIEVES WE DON'T WATCH MOVIES JUST TO SIT THERE AND HAVE THE "BELIEVABILITY METER" GO UP AND DOWN. WE DON'T WATCH FILMS TO AVOID BASIC TRUTHS IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTANT SEARCH FOR THAT INDESCRIBABLE "SOMETHING ELSE". WE WATCH FILMS BECAUSE THEY FEED OUR SOULS. THE CINEMA OF MORALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD REAL VALUE TO US AS A CULTURE.
/.../
MEANING CLOUD ATLAS IS AT ONCE HIGHLY STYLIZED GRANDEUR, BUT IT TRULY MANAGES TO FEED YOUR SOUL. HULK KNOWS THAT SOUNDS FLOWERY. HULK KNOWS THAT THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE MAY FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY...
YOU JUST HAVE TO EMBRACE THE CONCEIT.
http://badassdigest.com/2012/10/08/fantastic-fest-review-cloud-atlas-david-foster-wallace-and-the-cinema-of-mo/
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