Games are primarily conceptual / performance art; games are culture; it's more important to witness a game than to play it.
/.../
Invoke other games or cultural phenomena; your game is a piece of interconnected culture, not a walled garden.
/.../
We often think of game development as a technical discipline, but so much of a video game has nothing to do with code or technology. You don't have to release a software patch to update a game; all you have to do is to change how people think about it and interact with it. To totally murder this metaphor: your voice is the most powerful auto-update utility ever.
§
Chapter One introduces a bunch of theory and argues that how the participatory nature of videogames does not render them immune to textual analysis.
/.../
Chapter Four makes the argument that ‘action’ is too reductively considered when we talk about videogames and that ‘looking’ and ‘listening’ are acting in their own right. To say a play ‘does nothing’ during a cut-scene greatly misunderstands how bodies engage with moving images.
§
Propaganda Games: Sesame Credit - The True Danger of Gamification - Extra Credits
§
The Arcade Review #2
§
"I was surprised how many people watched my rather strange film. At the same time, looking at the stats, I was even more surprised how few of the viewers actually watched the entire movie to the end. There is a lot of scrubbing going on. I somehow thought I'm the only one who jumps around on the timeline of internet videos, but it's everybody." His reaction was to produce a new short film, which eventually would become a short computer game, called Plug & Play. The idea was to give the viewers, who are all so eager to jump around the narrative, more control over his movie. At the same time he wanted to have more control over the way the audience experiences the film by not allowing to skip the narrative without interacting with it and therefore become part of it.
§
It’s a time when we’re increasingly within reach of each other, unbounded by physical distances due to digital technology, yet the overwhelming volume of information and possible number of connections to be made leaves us … where? Through Plug & Play‘s black-and-white binary world of male and female electronics—the plug and the socket—Frei seems to propose that we have become obsessed with fitting in with each other. The tragedy, it is suggested, is that we find it to be a difficult desire to fulfill.
/.../
The duration required for us to reject one another has been decreased substantially through these digital roulette wheels. And yet the time and effort required to actually connect with one another, to become friends or lovers, has not lessened at all.
§
motherhood is often kept out of the creation, consumption, and conceptualization of popular culture. A society ruled by the Kingdom of Fathers, as Rich
describes, relies on the devaluing of motherhood while also
simultaneously tasking motherhood with the most invaluable work on the
planet. A mother’s reward for breeding humanity is exclusion,
marginalization, and disregard. At most, motherhood appears in popular
culture as a concept: a perfect, selfless mirage or a horrid, selfish
monster. Her story is never told in full: from her exclusion in
something as silly as #dadbods, to the continued absence of significant
maternal stories in mainstream videogames, TV shows, and films,
patriarchy puts the mother in opposition to pop culture—after all
there’s no quicker way to kill a trend than to see your mom do it,
right? However, 2015 revealed glimpses of the mother’s elusive profile.
/.../
While
mothers are busy getting refrigerated, there’s no shortage of videogame
dads who capture the multiplicity of a three dimensional human being.
The dadification of games took place long before fatherhood became the
focus of a few “gritty” big-budget titles. As an echo of our culture,
the paternal mentality has defined videogames for most (if not all) of
the medium’s existence: from Space Invaders to Pac-Man, the notion of
protecting your territory, conquering death through iteration, and
measuring success through monetary gain birthed the medium, and
continues to dominate game design to this day.
/.../
So we return
to the million dollar question: what would a truly maternal videogame
look like? There’s no doubt that Toby Fox’s Undertale relies on the
inhumanly selfless portrait of motherhood, but it does so with a
purpose.
/.../
Most players kill Toriel on their first
playthrough, even if they’re aware of the game’s morality system. But
this choice, rather than serving as a reflection of the player’s lack of
moral fiber, instead holds the mirror up to videogames themselves.
This, Undertale says, is the kind of player patriarchal game design
produces: impatient, quick to quit, and more than willing to sacrifice
their own mother and humanity in the name of…what, even? Progress? A
positive feedback loop? This vague and arguably meaningless concept of
“leveling up” through “experience points”—whatever the fuck that even
means in this context? As games like Undertale show, maternal game
design isn’t just about telling worthwhile yet disregarded stories. The
popularity of paternal game design is indicative of deeper issues,
ranging from how we as a society measure success and who and what our
laws protect.
/.../
After decades of paternal game design, I am
eager to unleash the potential of videogames born of woman. Motherhood
deserves more than a cursory glance, and play deserves the benefits of
creation instead of destruction. If and when that will happen, no one
can say. But in 2015, we captured a glimpse of what fruit it can bear.
§
The only visible measure in Orchids to Dusk is the oxygen level on the left of the screen (and there’s no way to refill it).
/.../
It’s like directing your own funeral.
§
The beautiful terror of Year Walk is that in it, your deepest fears and anxieties are based on the truth. In a deranged twist of events, what I am experiencing is essentially a love story.
/.../
My deepest fear is to have her eyes burn through mine and see her mouth the words, “I don’t love you anymore.”
At the end of the jump scares, ominous soundtracks, and haunting creatures, the fear of loss and betrayal is what lingers the longest in my Year Walk. We give ourselves entirely in seeking the truth and yearning for love to the point of a physical and emotional breakdown. Perhaps this journey is the most accurate description of love and heartbreak: a series of signs and symbols we have to decode, and we receive either the answers that provide us warmth, or remain lost in the freezing woods until we are freed to walk again.
§
As an adult, how does one learn to play electronic games? With no older sibling or friend down the block to teach, no community of mates to check in with, no memory of games from childhood, how does one begin, how does one progress?
/.../
I really think this could be easier. Can’t someone create a graduated list of games for adult-onset players, a series of games to take on, in sequence, that would build familiarity and component skills and even attitudes, in a conscious way? Most players I know have only the blurriest memories of how one learns this stuff, little sense of the parts that make up the whole: sorting it out might be an interesting project.
§
“The journey is more important than…the other thing,” muses one of your passengers, too enraptured by the pure alcohol of the drive to bother to complete philosophical cliches. And in a sense, that’s Glitchhikers. The emotion is more important than what the emotion might mean. Just being in the game matters more than…the other thing. The antithesis of other videogames, where making me feel something, some specific and preferably unclaimed by another developer emotion is the only and final goal, Glitchhikers allows me to ruminate, to imbibe, to simply “be”.
§
[Three Fourths Home]
the dream of climbing the social ladder puts emphasis on the economic costs and benefits of ‘making it’, but ignores the more immaterial costs, such as separation from one’s family and loved ones. That narrative does not factor in those costs because they are not part of its implied values.
the family is almost entirely dependent on a medical corporation, possibly a health insurance company.
another effect of the family’s limited options and urgent needs is that they are hoping Kelly becomes a part of that same oppressive structure, which is very twisted if you think about it, but it’s a consideration that they cannot afford to do.
People don’t fight back against the powerful abusing their power, they beg them.
in CL [Cart Life] there is a sense that one may very well hold on and live another day, if they try hard enough, if they know their way around the city, if they balance everything just right. And even that is a slightly more optimistic perspective than Three Fourths Home has to offer, because systems can be read, can become not scary but familiar, and they can be manipulated. TFH offers nothing but a one-way street, with an emphasis on the emotional resonance of that mechanic, but also on its inevitability: there are no choices to be made, the dialogue options offer only superficial alternatives. The player has no power to shape the story, because the Meyers have no power to shape their story, like they have no power over the tornado that is approaching their house.
§
Is Language a Virus? Starring Punished "Venom" Snake | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios
§
So, let's talk sex games.
§
Sex games, part 1: sex as bodies
§
Sex games, part 2: sex as gesture / sex as poking
Showing posts with label mgs5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mgs5. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Critical Links 3/12
§§§MGSV
He is, just like all the other Snakes in all the other Metal Gears, just a bloke with a mullet who crawls around on the floor a lot. There’s no shame in that: the amorphous, interchangeable character of Snake is one of the more compelling blokes in all of contemporary video games. But that isn’t enough for MGS V. It wants us to see him not only as the greatest warrior of the 20th century, but also as the greatest man to have ever lived. General. Tactician. Visionary. Father. Philosopher. But he’s none of these things. He’s simply really good at solo sneaking missions, just like his cloned son before him.
/.../
AND AND AND it’s not even Big Boss at all, which makes the whole thing, which hardly made sense to begin with, stray even further away from possibly ever making any sense. The destructiveness of the game's violently unnecessary twist cannot be overstated.
[It defintely takes a special sort of madness to keep writing the Metal Gear Saga, and it takes a different (?) sort of madness to continue to invest so much of oneself into the world of Metal Gear when it just barely makes sense anymore. It's very hard to let go of the series because it can't let go of itself, and what's even worse, the very fact that it can't let go of itself and explores similar themes and concepts in every game but adds new layers and world building to it every time is precisely why I love the series to begin with! But after MGS4 I just felt that it kind of hurt more than it felt good, and although that game was far from my favorite in the series, I could live with it being the last game. Peace Walker came and well it was good, but I kinda lost interest although I tried to hang on anyway. And then this fifth game -- I don't even know. I'm still waiting for someone to write something so that I can appreciate the game for its hidden genius, but all I can find is disappointment. On some level I do get the twist that we are big boss and always have been, and it ties into the existential themes of past Kojima games where we were told to find ourselves, our own paths, effectively becoming just men with guns (and thus not soldiers), but I don't think all of the bollocks that is MGS5 makes up for that. Yes it's a neat Kojima ending that it's not really an ending, and that we all waited for Kojima to make sense of Big Boss and it all for us, and that instead zie just trolls us and tells us that this is the end for hir involvement in the saga and that it is now up to us to make the legend come alive, up to us to decide what it was all about. Up to us to create our own meaning instead of trying to piece it all together and find meaning in some sort of passed-on canon without contradictions. MGS was never about that, just as it was precicely about neurotic attachment to building upon existing canon. Everything MGS is just that sort of paradox.
But still. You know?]
§
Whether intentional or not, Kojima's stylised, fetishistic view of military life seems to be saying "This is why people go to war: to enact the media that excited them so much."
In other words, Snake doesn't have to do anything overtly evil for us to determine that he's not exactly the nicest man. It's just that so many war games put the player in the role of a psychopath that we simply take his egregious actions for granted.
§
Raiden is at the whim of the designer.
The true ending of Metal Gear Solid 5 takes it one step further. We don’t need Raiden anymore, because we’re doing that job ourselves. From that perspective, it makes sense why this new game focuses so much more on gameplay and less on half hour long cutscenes: the real story is about the player becoming Big Boss.
§
Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)
§
Two Minute Game Crit - Metal Gear Solid: Crouch and Zoom
[perhaps we could use some crotch and zoom in the series as well - to balance out all the tits and zoom?]
§§§SUPER MARIO
Game Maker's Toolkit - Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design
§
Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level
§
Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine
§
Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
§
The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated. This self-deception is antithetical to the genius of “Mario” games. From “Donkey Kong” to “Super Mario 64,” Mario games have always felt like creations in pursuit of abstract ideas rather than homages to any specific history or design tradition.
§§§MISC
Errant Signal - (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing
[I do feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want less player privilege/powergaming/less wish-fullfillment and more roleplaying/violence/what the players don't know that they need in games, and in this context - more Fallout 1&2 and less Fallout 4. And I really want what Planescape Torment or Unrest attempts in a AAA with Mass Effect's budget. I'm thinking that might be a while, and so I just have to be grateful that the difference between indie and non-indie is shrinking, which also means that indiegames can be really fucking beautiful and large in scope. There was even one game kickstarted that specifically wanted to do Mass Effect but different, but yeah the scope was just a couple of hours on that one. We'll get there eventually!]
§
I wanted to start from one simple word, one that is used by marketing departments and journalists alike; it pervades reviews, previews, the lexicon of indie games and it trickled down to gamers themselves. The word ‘addictive’. Gaming is, as far as I know, the only community in which the word addictive is considered a positive.
[This piece is really personal and hit home for me, even if my story with depression is quite different and has made me play less and not more games for the last ten years (but before that, yep, had me playing Baldur's Gate 2 constantly for three months).
§
Kuchera expresses the relief he feels at discovering Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be an unplayable buggy mess, such that it no longer binds him to go out and buy the game. It’s an unburdening, a release from one’s unspoken, self-imposed obligation, shared, Kuchera notes, by many fans of the series. The supposedly preposterous thing here and the reason it’s being presented as a curious twist of nature is people are glad they don’t have to buy a game from a franchise they’ve come to enjoy. They’re pleased to be able to write it off. It means they can move on to the next enormous franchise, as if a Metacritic score is the magic word to break their curse.
[Hi, my name is Ada and I'm an addict...]
§
How Modern Language Breaks Scrabble | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
[An interesting aside to how language breaks Scrabble is how high-level Scrabble play is so divorced from regular Scrabble playing that is barely the same game. How else could an American who doesn't speak French win the French national championship?]
§
What Makes a Good Video Game Companion? ? RagnarRox • Game Design++
[Awesome design document. Companion Cube for the win! Although I would like to question some of the assumptions in the video, the one concerning utility especially. But still, it is a tool for the toolbox.]
§
The internet is full of people speculating on whether they caused a certain event to happen in Stanley or whether it was poor chance.
These events serve to unsettle and disorient the player. They make it so that you’re never sure if you’ve fully explored the game and fully understood what is going on or if it has another surprise waiting for you the next time you start it up. By making the edges of the game vague, The Stanley Parable prevents you from getting comfortable and keeps you in a state of wonder.
[The strength of Playable Teaser is similar - in keeping the horizon of possibilities fuzzy.]
He is, just like all the other Snakes in all the other Metal Gears, just a bloke with a mullet who crawls around on the floor a lot. There’s no shame in that: the amorphous, interchangeable character of Snake is one of the more compelling blokes in all of contemporary video games. But that isn’t enough for MGS V. It wants us to see him not only as the greatest warrior of the 20th century, but also as the greatest man to have ever lived. General. Tactician. Visionary. Father. Philosopher. But he’s none of these things. He’s simply really good at solo sneaking missions, just like his cloned son before him.
/.../
AND AND AND it’s not even Big Boss at all, which makes the whole thing, which hardly made sense to begin with, stray even further away from possibly ever making any sense. The destructiveness of the game's violently unnecessary twist cannot be overstated.
[It defintely takes a special sort of madness to keep writing the Metal Gear Saga, and it takes a different (?) sort of madness to continue to invest so much of oneself into the world of Metal Gear when it just barely makes sense anymore. It's very hard to let go of the series because it can't let go of itself, and what's even worse, the very fact that it can't let go of itself and explores similar themes and concepts in every game but adds new layers and world building to it every time is precisely why I love the series to begin with! But after MGS4 I just felt that it kind of hurt more than it felt good, and although that game was far from my favorite in the series, I could live with it being the last game. Peace Walker came and well it was good, but I kinda lost interest although I tried to hang on anyway. And then this fifth game -- I don't even know. I'm still waiting for someone to write something so that I can appreciate the game for its hidden genius, but all I can find is disappointment. On some level I do get the twist that we are big boss and always have been, and it ties into the existential themes of past Kojima games where we were told to find ourselves, our own paths, effectively becoming just men with guns (and thus not soldiers), but I don't think all of the bollocks that is MGS5 makes up for that. Yes it's a neat Kojima ending that it's not really an ending, and that we all waited for Kojima to make sense of Big Boss and it all for us, and that instead zie just trolls us and tells us that this is the end for hir involvement in the saga and that it is now up to us to make the legend come alive, up to us to decide what it was all about. Up to us to create our own meaning instead of trying to piece it all together and find meaning in some sort of passed-on canon without contradictions. MGS was never about that, just as it was precicely about neurotic attachment to building upon existing canon. Everything MGS is just that sort of paradox.
But still. You know?]
§
Whether intentional or not, Kojima's stylised, fetishistic view of military life seems to be saying "This is why people go to war: to enact the media that excited them so much."
In other words, Snake doesn't have to do anything overtly evil for us to determine that he's not exactly the nicest man. It's just that so many war games put the player in the role of a psychopath that we simply take his egregious actions for granted.
§
Raiden is at the whim of the designer.
The true ending of Metal Gear Solid 5 takes it one step further. We don’t need Raiden anymore, because we’re doing that job ourselves. From that perspective, it makes sense why this new game focuses so much more on gameplay and less on half hour long cutscenes: the real story is about the player becoming Big Boss.
§
Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)
§
Two Minute Game Crit - Metal Gear Solid: Crouch and Zoom
[perhaps we could use some crotch and zoom in the series as well - to balance out all the tits and zoom?]
§§§SUPER MARIO
Game Maker's Toolkit - Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design
§
Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level
§
Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine
§
Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
§
The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated. This self-deception is antithetical to the genius of “Mario” games. From “Donkey Kong” to “Super Mario 64,” Mario games have always felt like creations in pursuit of abstract ideas rather than homages to any specific history or design tradition.
§§§MISC
Errant Signal - (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing
[I do feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want less player privilege/powergaming/less wish-fullfillment and more roleplaying/violence/what the players don't know that they need in games, and in this context - more Fallout 1&2 and less Fallout 4. And I really want what Planescape Torment or Unrest attempts in a AAA with Mass Effect's budget. I'm thinking that might be a while, and so I just have to be grateful that the difference between indie and non-indie is shrinking, which also means that indiegames can be really fucking beautiful and large in scope. There was even one game kickstarted that specifically wanted to do Mass Effect but different, but yeah the scope was just a couple of hours on that one. We'll get there eventually!]
§
I wanted to start from one simple word, one that is used by marketing departments and journalists alike; it pervades reviews, previews, the lexicon of indie games and it trickled down to gamers themselves. The word ‘addictive’. Gaming is, as far as I know, the only community in which the word addictive is considered a positive.
[This piece is really personal and hit home for me, even if my story with depression is quite different and has made me play less and not more games for the last ten years (but before that, yep, had me playing Baldur's Gate 2 constantly for three months).
§
Kuchera expresses the relief he feels at discovering Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be an unplayable buggy mess, such that it no longer binds him to go out and buy the game. It’s an unburdening, a release from one’s unspoken, self-imposed obligation, shared, Kuchera notes, by many fans of the series. The supposedly preposterous thing here and the reason it’s being presented as a curious twist of nature is people are glad they don’t have to buy a game from a franchise they’ve come to enjoy. They’re pleased to be able to write it off. It means they can move on to the next enormous franchise, as if a Metacritic score is the magic word to break their curse.
[Hi, my name is Ada and I'm an addict...]
§
How Modern Language Breaks Scrabble | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
[An interesting aside to how language breaks Scrabble is how high-level Scrabble play is so divorced from regular Scrabble playing that is barely the same game. How else could an American who doesn't speak French win the French national championship?]
§
What Makes a Good Video Game Companion? ? RagnarRox • Game Design++
[Awesome design document. Companion Cube for the win! Although I would like to question some of the assumptions in the video, the one concerning utility especially. But still, it is a tool for the toolbox.]
§
The internet is full of people speculating on whether they caused a certain event to happen in Stanley or whether it was poor chance.
These events serve to unsettle and disorient the player. They make it so that you’re never sure if you’ve fully explored the game and fully understood what is going on or if it has another surprise waiting for you the next time you start it up. By making the edges of the game vague, The Stanley Parable prevents you from getting comfortable and keeps you in a state of wonder.
[The strength of Playable Teaser is similar - in keeping the horizon of possibilities fuzzy.]
Saturday, October 3, 2015
3/10 (MGS5 and Killscreen)
§METAL GEAR SOLID
Metal Gear Solid V: Dissociative Disorder (Story analysis + Review)
§
Metal Gear Solid V is a stellar game, with top-notch stealth action and a malleable world that leads to all sorts of memorable moments. Too bad the ending is such a mess.
§
Rumors have suggested that Konami was unhappy with how much money Hideo Kojima spent on his most recent epic, which might explain why one of Metal Gear Solid V’s most pivotal story missions isn’t actually in the game.
§
The Thing with Metal Gear Solid V
§
The big secret that we’d all feel embarrassed for doubting was that Quiet’s in a bikini because if she covers her skin she’ll die. Because of … some cruel … nano-science. Skin parasites! “Let’s design a babe who literally CAN NOT wear the usually expected amount of clothing involved in desert warfare!” Okay! Let’s make her really normally pretty! The verbalised narrative will be like “she’s hurt” and the visual narrative will be like “she’s coming to fuck you” and the combined narrative will be philosophy of violence? Remember when we did this with the supermodel war orphans and it was totally deep?? Fuckin’, brilliant, like I will drink to THAT my man.
§
I didn’t expect to voluntarily bleed so much for my enemies in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Nor did I expect the game to encourage a self-sacrificial approach when so much of the promotional trailers talked about Snake’s descent into villainy.
/.../
I’ve always wanted to play a game that let me love my enemies as Jesus might. MGSV becomes this enemy-converting power fantasy where I get to preserve the lives of my enemies, offer them a job, and promise to fight for them when they come under attack.
§
The Phantom Pain and the Best Tutorial Ever Made
It knows tutorials are often drab affairs, so it takes you by the hand while leading you into one of the craziest introductions that I have ever seen.
§FROM KILLSCREEN
But to talk about Kafka is to talk about fables. The Trial is an allegory for the impersonal and arcane law; The Metamorphosis is an almost unaccountable fable for, perhaps, the life of the writer or the way in which our family lives fall apart. Corpse of Discovery works as a fable for a life spent at work, for the way in which the alien and unfamiliar fall into tedium, or for our own lonely approach to death.
§
Yet very few games are about memory in any meaningful sense and, from this perspective. Rememoried is a welcome attempt at filling this curious lacuna.
§
In fact, as Offworld points out, the gallery show that Anna gave in New York, before being hit by the car, included an installation called "empathy game." It consisted of a pedometer and a pair of Anna's old boots. The challenge was to walk a literal mile in Anna's boots in order to score a point. Writing about it, Anna described it as a reaction to empathy games, "especially how privileged folks will use them as a kind of shortcut to allyship, using a game like dys4ia as a substitute for truly educating themselves on issues surrounding trans women's lives and how to support them."
The point of the installation was that you could walk a mile in Anna's shoes and not learn anything about her experiences or how to actually help her or other trans women. The same goes for other personal games. And, as you learn by the end of Ohmygod Are You Alright?, despite the widespread championing dys4ia has received, it hasn't helped much with Anna's financial problems, nor her sense of loneliness and failure. She has reached many with her games but it seems not many have reached back.
§
For a game about the way a computer approaches chess, Best Chess really is all about pandering to and toying with the irrational needs of humans.
§
This idea of games avoiding familiar narrative structures has been a central focus of Erin’s work as a game developer.
§
Stasis is full of trembling ghosts, people who struggled to connect with others in life and ultimately embraced the solitude of death. John’s story is just an instantiation of this motif, and by no means the most compelling one in the game. If you were to play through Stasis without stopping to take in all the optional content, you would experience an aesthetically appealing, linear, cliche-ridden adventure -- you would feel cold and alone. But by placing your adventure in the context of all the other tragedies aboard the Groomlake, a kind of familial intimacy develops. It speaks to why we subject ourselves to known horror in the first place: confronting death has the ability to bind us together. It is the thing we all have in common.
Metal Gear Solid V: Dissociative Disorder (Story analysis + Review)
§
Metal Gear Solid V is a stellar game, with top-notch stealth action and a malleable world that leads to all sorts of memorable moments. Too bad the ending is such a mess.
§
Rumors have suggested that Konami was unhappy with how much money Hideo Kojima spent on his most recent epic, which might explain why one of Metal Gear Solid V’s most pivotal story missions isn’t actually in the game.
§
The Thing with Metal Gear Solid V
§
The big secret that we’d all feel embarrassed for doubting was that Quiet’s in a bikini because if she covers her skin she’ll die. Because of … some cruel … nano-science. Skin parasites! “Let’s design a babe who literally CAN NOT wear the usually expected amount of clothing involved in desert warfare!” Okay! Let’s make her really normally pretty! The verbalised narrative will be like “she’s hurt” and the visual narrative will be like “she’s coming to fuck you” and the combined narrative will be philosophy of violence? Remember when we did this with the supermodel war orphans and it was totally deep?? Fuckin’, brilliant, like I will drink to THAT my man.
§
I didn’t expect to voluntarily bleed so much for my enemies in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Nor did I expect the game to encourage a self-sacrificial approach when so much of the promotional trailers talked about Snake’s descent into villainy.
/.../
I’ve always wanted to play a game that let me love my enemies as Jesus might. MGSV becomes this enemy-converting power fantasy where I get to preserve the lives of my enemies, offer them a job, and promise to fight for them when they come under attack.
§
The Phantom Pain and the Best Tutorial Ever Made
It knows tutorials are often drab affairs, so it takes you by the hand while leading you into one of the craziest introductions that I have ever seen.
§FROM KILLSCREEN
But to talk about Kafka is to talk about fables. The Trial is an allegory for the impersonal and arcane law; The Metamorphosis is an almost unaccountable fable for, perhaps, the life of the writer or the way in which our family lives fall apart. Corpse of Discovery works as a fable for a life spent at work, for the way in which the alien and unfamiliar fall into tedium, or for our own lonely approach to death.
§
Yet very few games are about memory in any meaningful sense and, from this perspective. Rememoried is a welcome attempt at filling this curious lacuna.
§
In fact, as Offworld points out, the gallery show that Anna gave in New York, before being hit by the car, included an installation called "empathy game." It consisted of a pedometer and a pair of Anna's old boots. The challenge was to walk a literal mile in Anna's boots in order to score a point. Writing about it, Anna described it as a reaction to empathy games, "especially how privileged folks will use them as a kind of shortcut to allyship, using a game like dys4ia as a substitute for truly educating themselves on issues surrounding trans women's lives and how to support them."
The point of the installation was that you could walk a mile in Anna's shoes and not learn anything about her experiences or how to actually help her or other trans women. The same goes for other personal games. And, as you learn by the end of Ohmygod Are You Alright?, despite the widespread championing dys4ia has received, it hasn't helped much with Anna's financial problems, nor her sense of loneliness and failure. She has reached many with her games but it seems not many have reached back.
§
For a game about the way a computer approaches chess, Best Chess really is all about pandering to and toying with the irrational needs of humans.
§
This idea of games avoiding familiar narrative structures has been a central focus of Erin’s work as a game developer.
§
Stasis is full of trembling ghosts, people who struggled to connect with others in life and ultimately embraced the solitude of death. John’s story is just an instantiation of this motif, and by no means the most compelling one in the game. If you were to play through Stasis without stopping to take in all the optional content, you would experience an aesthetically appealing, linear, cliche-ridden adventure -- you would feel cold and alone. But by placing your adventure in the context of all the other tragedies aboard the Groomlake, a kind of familial intimacy develops. It speaks to why we subject ourselves to known horror in the first place: confronting death has the ability to bind us together. It is the thing we all have in common.
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)
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
23/4
§BIOWARE
Garrus Vakarian is the Mass Effect series.
http://www.unwinnable.com/2014/04/14/garrus-and-the-turians/#.U1M6c4VOKHh
§
Comparing Baldur’s Gate II’s romances to Mass Effect’s is not only an interesting way to look at how BioWare as a company has changed over the past twelve years, but also the way that gamer culture and video games in general have changed.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/from-jaheira-to-liara-a-brief-survey-of-bioware-romances/
§DESIGN
And yet, parenthood as described by videogames on a whole generally tells us this is what children are: dreadfully bothersome creatures who suck up all your energy and tolerance, baited with rewards.
/.../
BioShock Infinite’s vision of parenthood is finding someone of a younger generation to help you do the things you were doing anyway, indistinguishable from a minion but for your tone of voice. In this manner, your daughter is a walking, talking pair of pants that give your bullets fire damage. The Last of Us carries a similar message more expertly told.
/.../
Still, she plays second fiddle to Joel because, ultimately, the game revolves around Joel growing up
/.../
So to the extent that BioShock Infinite and TLOU are about parenthood, they conceive it as control. Two of the biggest games of recent years dealing with a narrative as old as humanity, and this is the best they can figure: two father-figures to whom a daughter is but a mechanism for their own wish-fulfillment.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/parenthood/
§
The primary approach we'll be looking at is a series of questions that storytellers can ask themselves to help create story ideas, interesting scenarios, player characters, and all that humus.
http://playersdelight.blogspot.se/2014/04/how-to-develop-interactive-story-idea.html
§
Comedic Games - Can We Make More Funny Games? - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh_kdu8LnvE
§
We have progressed to the point where we are brave enough to ask, if we take away the > prompt, is it still interactive fiction that we are playing?
Twine is just one way of asking this question. Inklewriter and ChoiceScript ask it in similar sorts of ways; StoryNexus, Versu, and Seltani come at different angles.
http://storycade.com/war-pestilence-famine-death-twine/
§
Design/war has to change, to stay new, to always be one step ahead of the player/protagonist, and so the real question is not “how did Kojima land here?” but rather “can Kojima think his way out of this?” In the drive for new narrative elements, Kojima has written himself into a creative corner. What we’re seeing isn’t just the product of a sexist world view, but instead a designer who, in his attempt to invent, to push, to surprise his audience, ends up going to a powerfully regressive and brutally violent place.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/04/ground-zeroes-the-sexual-violence-of-metal-gear-so.html
§
So there you have it. Thomas Was Alone and Dark Souls 2. Same game, basically. Because psychology.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2014/04/thomass-dark-soul-is-alone/
§ZELDA
Because it calls Link’s will into question, because it’s tinged with uncertainty, and because it captures the illogical flow of a dream, Link’s Awakening feels more human than other Zelda games.
/.../
Link has no grand reason to follow the owl or to wake up the fish—it’s not the Virtuous Thing To Do, just a possible route off the island. As in the haze of sleep, the only choice is to go forward despite a dearth of logic.
/.../
Since it’s so easy to get swept up in this push, it takes a while to realize that Link’s actions aren’t necessarily good. The townspeople were just fine without Link (except for the occasional dognapping). The monsters who guard the musical instruments aren’t causing problems for anyone. Link is the one storming into their homes, breaking their things, and taking away their drums and violins.
/.../
Dreams don’t make sense. They’re forces of nature, beyond our control. They’re human, and by that measure alone, Link’s Awakening transcends its staid fantasy roots. Whether the game is Link’s dream or the Wind Fish’s, they both face something that many of us confront every morning when we emerge from our dreams into another, supposedly more meaningful reality.
http://www.avclub.com/article/when-zelda-traded-heroism-murky-morality-dreams-203416
§DEPRESSION
Errant Signal - Actual Sunlight + Depression Quest (Spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js1OsJZq2Vg
§COMMUNITY
Game Theory: Flappy Bird, PewDiePie, and Pasta Sauce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyXcr6sDRtw
§
Shenmue's moment has passed, and as intoxicating as its grounded, gloriously detailed open worlds were at the turn of the century, it's hard to see one man isolated from the industry recapturing their grandeur for an audience spoiled by Skyrim and Los Santos, regardless of whatever budget comes his way. The Last Guardian, meanwhile, could suffer similarly: when Team Ico's last effort came out nearly a decade ago, it was a time when more esoteric, ethereal and overtly artful games were something of a rarity.
/.../
Yet either way, the world of games has become so broad, so varied and so dynamic in Half-Life's absence that the idea of a bespectacled scientist redefining that world all over again seems impossibly quaint - and it leads me to believe that, should that day ever arise, my response won't be an excited scream, but rather a resigned sigh.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-12-i-never-want-to-play-shenmue-3-half-life-3-or-the-last-guardian
§
It is unlikely Luftrausers will undergo any major aesthetic change as a result of what Simins and Dubbin said, but the conclusion of this exchange brings a better understanding of what Vlambeer intended by creating Luftrausers. No one has to agree with either side, but our understanding of Luftrausers’ place in game culture was deepened.
That’s not controversy. That’s criticism, and I wish we had way more of it.
http://patrickklepek.tumblr.com/post/82006821614/help-me-out-i-dont-understand-how-people-could-be
§
In Sweden, politicians are learning to settle their differences the civilized way: with video games.
http://www.dailydot.com/esports/starcraft-sweden-political-tournament/
§QUEER
In these shaky times, it is perhaps appropriate to recount to ourselves why a male protagonist is simply impossible in videogames, and pray that this reminder will usher dissent back to the hell from which it spawned.
/.../
3. You would have to implement unruly testicle physics which is currently very tough to design for. All that flopping about when a male is physically active can make for very inappropriate content. On that note, randomly generated erections test negatively with focus groups, and nobody can figure out how to implement ‘the character accidentally sitting on himself’ as a game mechanic.
/.../
6. Males are a notoriously diverse bunch – it’s highly unlikely that any one male character will sit perfectly well with every male player. Since someone probably won’t like him, this places developers in a lose/lose situation avoidable only by abstaining entirely. That’s why every videogame cast consists solely of inoffensive abstracted geometry.
/.../
10. Males are typically busy at being politicians and talking about snooker, so they generally do not fall within the contexts of most videogame settings. Such fun-hating character traits seldom lend themselves well to home entertainment. Most games, meanwhile, center around flighty adventures that ultimately save the world, for which female protagonists are far more realistic and believable, given their innate romanticism.
/.../
19. The gender of the main character of a videogame is trivial - it may as well be one as the other. To place so much value on it is to overstate the whole subject.
20. On the importance of the main character’s gender, it is simply unforgivable to compromise the artistic vision of a team of 300 designers, programmers, artists and so on, working in conjunction with publishers, investors, shareholders, testers, researchers and so on, who all coincidentally have the same vision from the get-go and never have to compromise with one another or pursue such bourgeois trifles as commercial success.
http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/14954/article/why-we-can-t-have-male-leads-in-videogames/
§
There have been plenty of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes reviews, some of which have been greatly revered and lauded as brilliant pieces of writing but, barring the Telegraph’s review, they have all failed to do so much as acknowledge the existence of tape number 4 which depicts rape and child rape.
/.../
The whole of Ground Zeroes is simply a catalyst, a back story for the upcoming Phantom Pain. Paz and Chico’s rapes function only to further Snake’s story, to give him a reason for revenge and to have been in a coma. They are victims for the sake of the progression of another character; the scenes are careless, clumsy and childish. In his desperation to achieve “what movies and novels have achieved” Kojima has created a piece of work that shows complete disdain for the only female character in the game, a fetishisation of Paz’s pain and has failed to create any meaningful portrayal of sexual violence.
http://introskeptive.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/chicos-tape-4/
Garrus Vakarian is the Mass Effect series.
http://www.unwinnable.com/2014/04/14/garrus-and-the-turians/#.U1M6c4VOKHh
§
Comparing Baldur’s Gate II’s romances to Mass Effect’s is not only an interesting way to look at how BioWare as a company has changed over the past twelve years, but also the way that gamer culture and video games in general have changed.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/from-jaheira-to-liara-a-brief-survey-of-bioware-romances/
§DESIGN
And yet, parenthood as described by videogames on a whole generally tells us this is what children are: dreadfully bothersome creatures who suck up all your energy and tolerance, baited with rewards.
/.../
BioShock Infinite’s vision of parenthood is finding someone of a younger generation to help you do the things you were doing anyway, indistinguishable from a minion but for your tone of voice. In this manner, your daughter is a walking, talking pair of pants that give your bullets fire damage. The Last of Us carries a similar message more expertly told.
/.../
Still, she plays second fiddle to Joel because, ultimately, the game revolves around Joel growing up
/.../
So to the extent that BioShock Infinite and TLOU are about parenthood, they conceive it as control. Two of the biggest games of recent years dealing with a narrative as old as humanity, and this is the best they can figure: two father-figures to whom a daughter is but a mechanism for their own wish-fulfillment.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/parenthood/
§
The primary approach we'll be looking at is a series of questions that storytellers can ask themselves to help create story ideas, interesting scenarios, player characters, and all that humus.
http://playersdelight.blogspot.se/2014/04/how-to-develop-interactive-story-idea.html
§
Comedic Games - Can We Make More Funny Games? - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh_kdu8LnvE
§
We have progressed to the point where we are brave enough to ask, if we take away the > prompt, is it still interactive fiction that we are playing?
Twine is just one way of asking this question. Inklewriter and ChoiceScript ask it in similar sorts of ways; StoryNexus, Versu, and Seltani come at different angles.
http://storycade.com/war-pestilence-famine-death-twine/
§
Design/war has to change, to stay new, to always be one step ahead of the player/protagonist, and so the real question is not “how did Kojima land here?” but rather “can Kojima think his way out of this?” In the drive for new narrative elements, Kojima has written himself into a creative corner. What we’re seeing isn’t just the product of a sexist world view, but instead a designer who, in his attempt to invent, to push, to surprise his audience, ends up going to a powerfully regressive and brutally violent place.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/04/ground-zeroes-the-sexual-violence-of-metal-gear-so.html
§
So there you have it. Thomas Was Alone and Dark Souls 2. Same game, basically. Because psychology.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2014/04/thomass-dark-soul-is-alone/
§ZELDA
Because it calls Link’s will into question, because it’s tinged with uncertainty, and because it captures the illogical flow of a dream, Link’s Awakening feels more human than other Zelda games.
/.../
Link has no grand reason to follow the owl or to wake up the fish—it’s not the Virtuous Thing To Do, just a possible route off the island. As in the haze of sleep, the only choice is to go forward despite a dearth of logic.
/.../
Since it’s so easy to get swept up in this push, it takes a while to realize that Link’s actions aren’t necessarily good. The townspeople were just fine without Link (except for the occasional dognapping). The monsters who guard the musical instruments aren’t causing problems for anyone. Link is the one storming into their homes, breaking their things, and taking away their drums and violins.
/.../
Dreams don’t make sense. They’re forces of nature, beyond our control. They’re human, and by that measure alone, Link’s Awakening transcends its staid fantasy roots. Whether the game is Link’s dream or the Wind Fish’s, they both face something that many of us confront every morning when we emerge from our dreams into another, supposedly more meaningful reality.
http://www.avclub.com/article/when-zelda-traded-heroism-murky-morality-dreams-203416
§DEPRESSION
Errant Signal - Actual Sunlight + Depression Quest (Spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js1OsJZq2Vg
§COMMUNITY
Game Theory: Flappy Bird, PewDiePie, and Pasta Sauce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyXcr6sDRtw
§
Shenmue's moment has passed, and as intoxicating as its grounded, gloriously detailed open worlds were at the turn of the century, it's hard to see one man isolated from the industry recapturing their grandeur for an audience spoiled by Skyrim and Los Santos, regardless of whatever budget comes his way. The Last Guardian, meanwhile, could suffer similarly: when Team Ico's last effort came out nearly a decade ago, it was a time when more esoteric, ethereal and overtly artful games were something of a rarity.
/.../
Yet either way, the world of games has become so broad, so varied and so dynamic in Half-Life's absence that the idea of a bespectacled scientist redefining that world all over again seems impossibly quaint - and it leads me to believe that, should that day ever arise, my response won't be an excited scream, but rather a resigned sigh.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-12-i-never-want-to-play-shenmue-3-half-life-3-or-the-last-guardian
§
It is unlikely Luftrausers will undergo any major aesthetic change as a result of what Simins and Dubbin said, but the conclusion of this exchange brings a better understanding of what Vlambeer intended by creating Luftrausers. No one has to agree with either side, but our understanding of Luftrausers’ place in game culture was deepened.
That’s not controversy. That’s criticism, and I wish we had way more of it.
http://patrickklepek.tumblr.com/post/82006821614/help-me-out-i-dont-understand-how-people-could-be
§
In Sweden, politicians are learning to settle their differences the civilized way: with video games.
http://www.dailydot.com/esports/starcraft-sweden-political-tournament/
§QUEER
In these shaky times, it is perhaps appropriate to recount to ourselves why a male protagonist is simply impossible in videogames, and pray that this reminder will usher dissent back to the hell from which it spawned.
/.../
3. You would have to implement unruly testicle physics which is currently very tough to design for. All that flopping about when a male is physically active can make for very inappropriate content. On that note, randomly generated erections test negatively with focus groups, and nobody can figure out how to implement ‘the character accidentally sitting on himself’ as a game mechanic.
/.../
6. Males are a notoriously diverse bunch – it’s highly unlikely that any one male character will sit perfectly well with every male player. Since someone probably won’t like him, this places developers in a lose/lose situation avoidable only by abstaining entirely. That’s why every videogame cast consists solely of inoffensive abstracted geometry.
/.../
10. Males are typically busy at being politicians and talking about snooker, so they generally do not fall within the contexts of most videogame settings. Such fun-hating character traits seldom lend themselves well to home entertainment. Most games, meanwhile, center around flighty adventures that ultimately save the world, for which female protagonists are far more realistic and believable, given their innate romanticism.
/.../
19. The gender of the main character of a videogame is trivial - it may as well be one as the other. To place so much value on it is to overstate the whole subject.
20. On the importance of the main character’s gender, it is simply unforgivable to compromise the artistic vision of a team of 300 designers, programmers, artists and so on, working in conjunction with publishers, investors, shareholders, testers, researchers and so on, who all coincidentally have the same vision from the get-go and never have to compromise with one another or pursue such bourgeois trifles as commercial success.
http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/14954/article/why-we-can-t-have-male-leads-in-videogames/
§
There have been plenty of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes reviews, some of which have been greatly revered and lauded as brilliant pieces of writing but, barring the Telegraph’s review, they have all failed to do so much as acknowledge the existence of tape number 4 which depicts rape and child rape.
/.../
The whole of Ground Zeroes is simply a catalyst, a back story for the upcoming Phantom Pain. Paz and Chico’s rapes function only to further Snake’s story, to give him a reason for revenge and to have been in a coma. They are victims for the sake of the progression of another character; the scenes are careless, clumsy and childish. In his desperation to achieve “what movies and novels have achieved” Kojima has created a piece of work that shows complete disdain for the only female character in the game, a fetishisation of Paz’s pain and has failed to create any meaningful portrayal of sexual violence.
http://introskeptive.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/chicos-tape-4/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
