It’s been a while since I’ve done this, because my day-to-day writings on the big picture aspects of gaming don’t allow for it. But Windosill, Vectorpark’s dreamy indie Flash puzzler, begs for it.

If you haven’t, try the free version, then splurge on the $3 full edition, if only because its a cause worth supporting. Here’s your SPOILER warning, because I’m going to talk about the game in its entirety.

When I first reached the climax of the adventure, I mistakenly took it for the ending. Having successfully navigated every level — pulling, shaking and clicking on abstract creatures and fluid objects to coax out a small white cube, which acts as a key of sorts — the rolling cart that I’d pushed through each environment begins its journey up a spiraling coliseum. Eventually, the track runs out, and the cart stalls at the end of the path, yearning to drive further towards the night sky.

I took this to be a statement. Frustrated relationship, perhaps? Minutes ago, I was opening doors and enabling elaborate Rube Goldberg devices. Before that, I was manipulating the orbit of planets, and earlier still, fooling giant creatures into letting my cart pass by. Now, the path ends, and there are no more objects to manipulate. I tried to do handstands for you, so to speak, for nothing.

But that was incorrect. Faintly, a cluster of stars brighten in the sky. Click them, and the path extends on traces of white. Keep going, and the cart disappears into the background. A minute later, after clicking on a series of beautiful constellations, the cart reappears, but not as it was. Like the other shapes in the sky, this once grounded cart rolls freely in place, memorialized.

Ah yes, it’s the human life cycle. Let’s backtrack.

Windosill begins in a dark room, a faintly lit bulb the only hint of progress. Click on it, and the room lights up, revealing all the game’s major players. The cart is there, and so is the cube that’s needed to pass through to the next area. Objects of varying shapes and sizes also appear in this room, but in separate compartments. The player’s cart can’t interact with them because they’re walled off.

This changes over the course of the game. The objects witnessed in that first room reappear, but they also evolve. Their appearances change, but so do their interactions with the player. The goal of passing a cube through a slot in a door becomes more complicated, and requires the interactions of these supporting characters.

In other words, you’re growing up, and the world as you see it is not as simple as it once was.

The conclusion, of course, is death. The cart disappears into the unknown, but there’s an upshot: In the sky, you can still catch a glimpse of it. Memory lives on. The End.

To be frank, I liked the first reading better, and I wouldn’t have minded if Windosill ended in that perpetual state of trying to climb higher. But the opportunity for reflection is welcome. $3 well spent.

Theory, Indies | No Comments »

Tom Endo is the guy who says whether your story pitches to The Escapist live or die. gulp. But last week he moonlit as a feature writer for the “high brow” gaming e-mag, turning out a thought-tingling article on video games’ treatment of guns.

Endo argues that games have failed to capture the iconic myth of the gun in the way that movies have. It’s tough to nutshell the whole thing with block quotes, but here goes:

A single gun can provide all the power and tragedy that an arsenal of dozens ostensibly brings. The movie Dirty Harry, a love letter to the .44 Magnum, shows the fruition of this idea. As much as the movie is about a vigilante cop, it’s also about the iconic tool that allows him to wreak his idea of justice upon San Francisco. Harry Callahan and the .44 Magnum become one in the same. An AK-47 might offer a higher body count, but to imagine Harry wielding it is blasphemous, an affront to the Magnum’s status as the modern-day descendant of the Peacemaker.

…

Guns in videogames lack this focus. And if they have effectively acknowledged any larger cultural axioms, it is the dogma that bigger is better. The Doom favorite, the BFG, is the embodiment of this ideal.

The argument continues to say that foes in shooting games are the other part of the problem, functioning more as ducks in a virtual shooting gallery than opportunities for emotional impact.

The constant repetition of the skills a game demands lie at odds with the gun’s mechanical simplicity, put on full display in the showdown. In this situation, the gun’s power to end life is absolute. Emotional tension ends the moment you pull the trigger. Guns can change everything with one bullet and videogames’ refusal to address this reality weighs heavy on their ability to provide the deeper examinations of violence the medium demands.

That’s the meat of it, and I’ll be damned if this doesn’t resemble my argument against death-as-punishment in the same magazine’s pages, though Tom’s is better-reasoned and coming from the other side of the barrel. Not only are our protagonists dying too often, they’re killing too many people.

Not surprisingly, there’s the same backlash in the article’s forums. You’re hard pressed to find people agreeing with Endo outright, and plenty of commenters challenging his opinion. Fenixius writes:

Honestly, I don’t want to kill something. Otherwise I’d be a murderer instead of a gamer. I want to play with my friends, have fun, and kick their ass in a nonliteral fashion. That I achieve these joyous feelings by defeating my enemies isn’t a crime on behalf of game designers, in my opinion, since not only would any other weapon than a gun do just as well, but I never think even for a second that I’ve killed my opponent. I’ve merely defeated them in a contest. And that’s all I set out to do.

Let’s step back and say not all games should take up arms (pun!) the way Endo suggests — certainly not all movies do that either, Hard Boiled coming to mind in particular — but there’s certainly room to treat the firearm, and their victims, with a little more maturity.

Theory, Violence | No Comments »

Corvus Elrod has one of those “Oh yeah, makes sense, I agree,” kind of posts, under the notably unflashy title “Verb Restriction vs. Immersion.” But because the underlying ideas unlocked a lot of heavy pondering on my part, I’m compelled to turn this into one of those long-winded thinkposts.

Game developers, he explains, tend to turn off certain actions at key points in the plot. For example, in Half-Life your weapon automatically lowers when you look at an ally. Other games toss the player into a cutscene, ensuring a steady dialog stream and preventing the character from lunging prematurely at the supporting actors.

But the meat of Elrod’s essay is the suggestion that developers should give the player incentive to behave without restricting their actions. He concludes:

If the storyteller provides violent verbs and the audience chooses to kill key characters, then the plot cannot continue. That doesn’t mean the story cannot continue. The storyworld continues to exist, only the protagonist motivation is gone. It won’t be long before the audience realizes that playing within the unstated rules of the storytelling experience will reward them with a compelling story. And then it’s up to the storyteller to make good on that promise.

Two commenters pointed to Morrowind as a good example. I have not played the game, but apparently you can kill plot-essential characters and continue playing with the main quest unavailable (a text box first asks you if you still want to go on).

This reminds me of my last essay for The Escapist on player death, in which I argue that the die-and-respawn model of failure is an outdated convention. If you believe there’s any room for compelling narrative in games, these magic reset buttons, like the invincible supporting casts that Corvus laments, have got to go.

That’s not to say they’ll go quietly. Oddbob ripped me a new one for criticizing death-as-failure without adequately addressing the consequences. He writes:

Me, I prefer to learn from games when designing them. To delve into what worked for me, what didn’t work for me, what worked for other people no matter how dyed in the wool a mechanic it may be rather than frot myself senseless within a fantasy world that condemns entire genres to death because of my own personal inability to understand the medium of games.

It’s a fair counterargument; I didn’t bother to analyze all the scenarios where the removal of life and death obstacles would change the nature of games as we know them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering in practice. The same could be said for Elrod’s argument. Being able to kill your supporting character, or run away from him during conversation, or cast magic to turn him into a woman would open new narrative avenues that are simply blocked off now because of the status quo. Unfortunately, Oddbob is working from within the existing framework, unable to see the forest from the trees.

A mere tinkering of the rules is never going to get video games to a point where player behavior has lasting consequences.

Theory, Player Choice | No Comments »

An article of mine that I wrote for The Escapist few months back finally dropped today.

It basically takes on Ian Bogost’s argument that “anti-advergames,” defined as games that protest a product or service, can change the way consumers think. This was my first opinion piece of any considerable length, and it was a little unnerving to challenge one of the industry’s most respected academics, but the editors seemed to like it so hopefully I’ll get to do this more in the future.

A note for the record: I was dismayed to see that Chris Dahlen, a fine video game journalist, used a similar “look we love you Ian, but…” cushion when reviewing “Fatworld” in January, somewhat stealing the thunder of my own lede, which was penned last year but did not come out ’till today. Whatever, I guess it can’t be said enough.

Newman, Theory, Academics | No Comments »

So as I’m careening through the Internet, looking for video game mp3s with which to load up my new iPod(!), I also re-stumbled upon a favorite site of mine that I’d like to share with you.

It’s called “Hardcore Gaming 101,” and it is at once mysterious and gratifying. In plain white and yellow letters against a black backdrop, the site offers historical information and reviews on a random and often obscure collection of games, many from generations past. You won’t find Metroid here, but you’ll read about Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. There’s no Zelda, but there is Xevious. The most mainstream game on the site is probably Metal Slug.

Each page is littered with comparison screenshots between the arcade and console versions of the games, as well as their sequels and evolutions. If you’re lucky, you might even get to download a midi or mp3 file from the original soundtracks (OSTs, as they say).

But my favorite nook of the site, tucked away in a corner called “Cranky Gamers,” has always been the review of Animal Crossing. I’ve read it probably a half dozen times and it never gets old. Snip:

Animal Crossing is a philosophy. It’s preaching that life is nothing but a bunch of work for pointless trinkets, just so you can survive and interact with other people, all of whom are frauds anyway who don’t give a damn about what you say. And it doesn’t end until you decide to stop playing. Sticking it on the shelf is putting yourself in a coma - deleting your memory card with all of your saved village data is analogous to slitting your wrists. And Nintendo has the balls to gloss this depressing little world in smiling faces and happy little penguins and porcupines, all blissfully unaware of their empty lives.

Presumably the motivation behind Hardcore Gaming 101 is to school you on just that topic, but I’m fascinated how the site manages to say off the radar. Sure various sites link to it from time to time, but I’ve never heard of it getting any real props, which in my opinion are well-deserved.

Theory, Humour, Media | No Comments »

Sometimes I don’t know what to make of Kieron Gillen. But the rest of the time he’s spot on, particularly with this essay on The Sims.

The whole thing is intriguing, but there’s one idea he flicked at that is particularly of interest to me:

While gaining power brings a different sort of pleasure – that of control – it also generally detracts from emotional impact. It becomes less of an immersive event, and more of a traditional game. In short, videogames are most enthralling emotionally when you’re least in control. As you gain in one area of enjoyment as you lose in another.

There’s a segment in The Darkness where you creep through a recently destroyed orphanage in New York City. The gunfight you’re expecting never comes. Instead, you reach the top floor outside a room where your girlfriend is held captive by a mafioso and a corrupt police officer. Instead of dashing in to save her, the demon possessing your body binds you by the wrists and makes you watch. The officer kneels the girl on the ground and shoots her in the back of the head. Anguished, your character frees himself, sticks a pistol in his mouth and pulls the trigger as the demon insists you are making a terrible mistake.

You awake in a trench. The sky above is red and laced with lightning bolts. In front of you, a Nazi guard executes three British soldiers who are sobbing and pleading for mercy. You take up arms and begin to fight. As you emerge from the trench, you see the battlefield is littered with what looks like undead Nazis with gas masks fixed to their mouths. The pace is unrelenting as you scramble towards an undefined objective.

Even the most immersive games settle into a routine. The same is true in Bioshock, when the set pieces recede, your enemies become more generic and your focus turns to managing ammunition and upgrading special abilities. But the most powerful moments are dominated by uncertainty and powerlessness. It’s less of a game when the rules aren’t so clear.

Theory, Media | No Comments »

I’m just going to come out and say it. Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Wii is a next-gen Casual Game of the truest kind.

In fact, it’s not that different from Diner Dash, the seminal casual game from GameLab. The game starts off slow, with computer assistance that basically makes it impossible to lose. And like Diner Dash, you have a fairly straightforward set of goals that become complicated by the need to multitask in a finite amount of time. In one game, you’re a waitress who has to seat customers, take orders, deliver food and clean up. In the other, you’re a surgeon who has to suture wounds, attack harmful bugs and pump the patient with antibiotics.

Neither game strays far from this formula. They get harder because there are more tasks to perform in less time. On a level by level basis, they follow the same arc. In Trauma Center, you start by cleaning an area and making an incisiion — simple enough — but things get hectic as the patient’s health falls and more cutting and suturing demands the player’s attention. When it’s all over, there’s a cool off period for finishing up the routine parts of the surgery. A level of Diner Dash also starts simply, with empty tables and waiting customers. As more people show up the action intensifies, building until the customers stop showing. The rest is a matter of sastisfying the last few people before closing up shop.

Trauma Center has been both criticized and hailed for being difficult, but Diner Dash is no picnic in its later levels either. Both games eventually require the player to enter a zen-like state of pointing and clicking. When the mission is done, both games serve the player with an evaluation sheet with a score and ranking of their performance.

Certainly, Trauma Center departs a bit from the mold. The mere fact that there are more tools to master than simple pointing and clicking adds a layer of complexity. That’s why I personally enjoy the game so much; I do enough mouseplay when I’m browsing the Internet, but this is entirely different. It’s funny how the Wii is subjecting all gamers to an unfamiliar control scheme — I can imagine the typical 45 year old housewife casual audience having the same experience playing games with a mouse.

Ultimately, this is not the hardcore immersive Wii game that people have been waiting for. But it is the kind of casual single-player experience for which the Wii was designed. It even appeals to the non-gamers that Nintendo really wants to reach. As proof, I brought the game to my parents’ house, and they love it.

Theory, Wii | No Comments »

Sam Fisher is getting old.

Sure, he’s been trying some new things lately. Like posing as a terrorist and juggling “trust” between his government and the enemy. Like sneaking around without his famous ninja suit. Like venturing into co-operative multiplayer with a partner. Those are nice additions in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but the problem is he kind of forgot what he was doing in the first place.

Sam’s not as sharp as he used to be. He used to be able to walk up to an object and spell out all the things he could do with it, with a compact, easy to read list. Now he has to scroll through a bunch of indecipherable pictures. He also has trouble with lighting; a meter once told him exactly how much a shadow was concealing his figure, now he just has to guess. I suppose it’s more realistic, but it comes at the cost of trial and error — something the game always relied on too much to begin with.

Sam’s also lost his moves, like the one where he straddled a narrow wall, clinging near the ceiling before crashing down on an unsuspecting foe. I guess the maneuver always seemed contrived or forced, so Sam no longer remembers how to do it at all. And while other games like Gears of War have made it easy to cling to walls and bounce between cover, Sam feels clumsy around every corner he touches. For a government ninja, he can feel pretty awkward. It’s sad.

All the window dressings applied over the years (multiplayer! co-op multiplayer! he’s playing as a _bad guy_!) can’t hide the fact that Sam Fisher’s mind and body are in decay. Sometimes his objectives aren’t clear. Sometimes the way to the objective is too obscure, too specific. You wander around each level wondering what to do, bumping into enemies and clicking the retry button. It feels too much like a game, not enough like snooping.

For these reasons, I’ve sent Sam packing (recall: GameFly subscription). And I do so with the disclaimer that I only played through 2.5 missions of Double Agent. It may not be enough to fully evaluate a game, but it’s enough to know I wasn’t having fun. I don’t think Sam was enjoying it either.

Theory, Gamefly, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

I’ve placed Phantom Dust back in the rotation, after hearing Microsoft finally made it backwards compatible with the 360 (thank you!).

Phantom Dust has often been called the video game equivalent of Magic: The Gathering. Players bring an “arsenal,” or deck of skills, into battle with one opponent. Some of these skills can attack, while some are defensive. There are also trickier skills that erase the opponent’s deck or affect a player’s speed and stamina. Basically, the player wants to arrange his deck in a way that focuses on a certain battle plan. Each player gets a spot in the arena where their skill capsules are held, where they can bind a skill to one of four buttons.

Example: I thought it would be neat to make an arsenal where I could walk over to someone’s capsules and erase them. I arranged the arsenal to have basic defensive capabilities, and put the rest of my resources toward skills that pop capsules and absorb whatever skill the other player is using.

It didn’t work. One player was able to wear me out by freezing my skills and kicking my ass with a sword. Another opponent completely screwed me over by casting a spell that prevented any erase skills from being used.

I rarely won any online battles, and as soon as I considered copping some of the arsenals that were used against me, I stopped playing. It seemed you could only be crafty to a certain point, after which you’re just stealing someone else’s ideas. I guess this is why, even after learning to play chess, I never got into it. Part of me — and I hate to admit this — just didn’t want to do the leg work of memorization. As in Phantom Dust, there’s a certain amount of quick thinking and thorough planning involved, but in the end you just need to study all the possibilities. Those who do their homework have the upper hand. But homework is homework.

After all that, why am I dusting off (pun!) this title? Probably because, like Chess, it’s still a damn good game.

Theory, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

This is about a month old, but I found slides from GDC’s Top Ten Game Studies 2007, at Avant Game blog.

These are brief snapshots of studies done this year. Most interesting in my opinion is this sentence:

“Players are a little likely to want to enact their personalities, but very likely to want to enact their race or gender.”

The PDF file can be viewed directly here.

Theory, Academics | No Comments »