Cursors! Foiled Again.

From Gamers With Jobs, an amazing Flash game that has single-player co-op. How, you ask? Play the game!


It's great how many simple, experimental gameplay concepts are coming out of Flash games. It's a fantastic platform for experimentation. I need to break my reliance on tech-heavy development and just whip out some things in Flash... Perhaps the Deconstruction Project?

The Deconstruction Project

Over the holidays I came up with an interesting idea for a project. What I'd like to do is take the existing game genres, and reduce them to their simplest expression. I'd like to create a game that is a shoot-'em-up, for example, that is just the most basic features of shoot-'em-ups - the minimum necessary elements in order to be considered part of the genre. Then do the same for RPGs, FPSes, RTS games, and so on.

What would this accomplish? Well, the games probably wouldn't be much fun to play. However, the discussion that arose out of creating them would help us to really define what the integral parts of a genre are. More excitingly, they would provide us openings to add to the genres, create new genres, and subvert the conventions that we discover. A shooter must have a player, targets, shots, and points. What happens if we make a shooter without targets? Without shooting? Or if we add a key component of another genre (say, stats from an RPG) to the game?

Many of the results would be things we already know about gaming, affirmed. But I think the journey could be an exciting one.

Music has charms to soothe the savage breast

You've already seen the stories all over the Internet, but I think Rock Band is our greatest hope for world peace.

I took it with me over the holidays, and I've never seen so many different sorts of people try playing. Even the Wii wasn't this popular last year (and actually, the Wii came along this year, only to be totally ignored in favor of the ROCK!)

There were countless instances of non-gamers stepping out of their shells to play a song ("Oh, it's just like Karaoke!"). There were lots of socially-awkward moments smoothed over by a guitar solo. There were even two exes, with their current spouses, who formed a band and rocked the house. It was great.

Everyone likes playing music, in a group, especially if it doesn't take much skill. And the fact that one player is essentially doing Karaoke makes it totally socially acceptable, unlike any other video game.

So there you have it. Lock up Mahmud Abbas and Ehud Olmert in a room with the whole setup, and watch them bond over their (no doubt) shared love of Aerosmith.

The Economist - Sony Fanboys?

I was struck by a short blurb I read in The Economist. They claim (or rather, the analysts they are quoting claim) that each console will have its day in the sun, and that the PS3 is on track to surpass the Wii in 2011.

Now, I think the PS3 is a fantastic console. It's got a ton of power, it's got features that blow everything else away. But let's be realistic here - people aren't stalking UPS drivers to find one.

I think sales of the PS3 are going to continue to improve, especially as cost-cutting and feature improvements come into play, but I think it'll be doing well to catch up to the 360 at this point, never mind the Wii.

Of course, I'm not an analyst, so what do I know?

Colossal Daddies

So I still haven't finished Bioshock. My motivation ran out somewhere around Arcadia, where I got sick of the gameplay repetition. But I recently had cause to revisit it, and I found some things to appreciate.

First, easy mode. Maybe it makes me a wimp, since the game was quite easy anyway. But maybe it just means that the game comes down more on the story side of things than the gameplay.

The second was the philosophical underpinnings. Philosophical underpinnings generally just turn me on (oooh, baby), even when a game tries and fails to get a point across. But in my first playthrough of Bioshock, I was fixating too much on the (disappointing) mechanic of saving/harvesting the Little Sisters to really analyze the game's take on Objectivism and some of the other things it does well. In short, I approve of the great job they did setting up the world and the characters to expose the triumph and eventual failure of Galt's Gulch... I mean, Rapture.

But the other thing that struck me, philosophically, is that I felt bad for killing characters. Not the Little Sisters, I frankly just viewed them as creepy. But the Big Daddies. At one point, I had cleared a level of Little Sisters without realizing it. The next time I saw a Big Daddy, I attacked and killed it. When I failed to find the girl he guarded, I realized that there was no reason to have done so. And I felt guilty!

Another time, I rescued the sole Little Sister available, then found another Big Daddy wandering the level. He would go into a room, walk over to the vent, and knock on the wall, summoning his partner - who never came, and would never come again. He kept wandering, making mournful, whale-like calls, totally without purpose. And unlike a Little Sister, who has hope of redemption, the Big Daddies can't be saved. They can only be killed, or left in their purgatory.

It reminded me, most of all, of the Colossi from Shadow of the Colossus. That game did it better (which is to be expected, since that was the entire focus of the title), but they both had this idea of frequent boss battles, against large foes who are no threat to you, but must be hunted for your quest to continue. Both the Colossi and the Big Daddies are tragic figures, behemoths brought down for little reason, and whose death ends up making the player feel complicit in something like genocide. Of course, the Big Daddies must be killed to save the Little Sisters, but on the other hand, they are the Sisters' guardians, seemingly wanting nothing more in life than to see them safely about their business.

Perhaps there's something there, too. A theme about the girls remaining safe, but trapped. A theme about needing to give up their guardian in order to truly evolve and grow. Perhaps it says something specific about parenting, and letting go of your children in order to see them reach their true potential. Perhaps it's more general, along the lines of "if you love something, set it free."

But either way, the game has something to say, and I'm sorry that I didn't take the time to appreciate it before. I feel better about all the awards it's garnering now.

John Gabriel and the Ring of Gyges

Well, it's been two years since I had something worthwhile to say. Not really, but two years since I was last motivated enough to post on a blog. Luckily I've recently been re-motivated.

So without further ado:

This article on Destructoid got me thinking. It's an interesting question, no doubt. Are people on Xbox Live jerks because gamers are jerks, or because people are jerks? The conclusion the article comes to is that any people, given anonymity, will act like jerks. Of course, I already knew that from Professor John Gabriel.

But the conclusion reminded me of Plato. Specifically, the allegory of the Ring of Gyges. Basically, a shepherd finds a magical ring that makes him invisible, much like Frodo. He uses it to get himself sex and power. Plato thinks this means that most people, given the opportunity to avoid social sanction, would act like jerks.

It's interesting that we can put Plato's theory (or at least, the theory he sticks into the mouths of his characters) into test in such an immediately applicable way. It turns out that not everyone is a jerk. But plenty of people are, when there's no social sanction for their actions.

So, the solution (to my mind) is obvious. Make the social sanctions more stringent. The reputation feature is a great idea - why isn't that working? Make it really easy to find the person who last spoke and sanction them, and give it a reason.

In more general terms, maybe the solution to Internet anonymity is a universal reputation system - something like Doctorow's Wuffie?

Microsoft, the Console Financial Model, and Independent Games

Microsoft usually isn't seen as a harbinger of innovation, a generous company, or a company that would shake up the status quo.

However, lately Microsoft has been talking about the uses for the Xbox Live Marketplace, and one of those uses includes a distribution system for independent game content. It's yet to be seen what that means, and what sort of licensing restrictions independent studios have to conform to, but it's a very interesting and very promising idea.

Promotion and distribution have historically been one of the areas in which independent games have been weak. A channel where dedicated gamers can easily see offerings, purchase them, and have them "delivered" almost-instantly obviously does a great deal to alleviate those issues. And development should be easy, too: independent games are usually developed for PC, because of the ease of programming, availability of libraries, and easy access to development hardware. While studios probably won't find it any easier to get Xbox dev kits, thanks to Microsoft's XNA initiative, the DirectX API should be substantially similar on both the PC and the Xbox.

So why is Microsoft interested in helping indy developers? Well, it's not necessarily a question of helping as it is "not hindering". Most console game companies, past and present, have not been thrilled about unlicensed development for their console. There's talk about upholding the "quality level" of the platform, and giving users a consistent experience, but the main reason is money. Console makers make money by licensing the right to develop games for their hardware, and every game that isn't made with a license agreement, no matter how spectacular, is not doing the console maker any good. If you buy a current-generation Xbox, and then buy no games, Microsoft is actually worse off than if you hadn't spent any money at all. Even Nintendo, which makes money on each console sold, still makes the lion's share of their income through licensing.

So why is Microsoft (possibly) letting unlicensed developers make games for their system? Because they're not necessarily trying to make money selling game licenses, like everyone else. They've said from the beginning that Xbox is a trojan horse, aimed at getting Microsoft stuff into the living room. They're willing to sacrifice some potential profit in order to make their platform more appealing to people. Plus, even if they're not getting dev kit license fees from these developers, they're certainly getting a cut of every sale via Live Marketplace, and they're getting Live subscription fees as well. The only risk they're running is that independent games might cannibalize sales of 3rd-party games, and that's not very likely.

Microsoft's entire OS business rests on making a platform that's open to anyone to develop on. They'll happily collect developer fees if you want to join MSDN, but they'll just as happily let you run a homebrew program compiled with GCC. They don't make money by restricting the platform, in fact the opposite is true. The more apps that run on Windows, the more people want to run Windows. They'll even give you free DirectX SDKs, developer tools, and almost everything you need to write a Windows game, because that's not how they make their money.

I think they're taking a similar approach to the console world, and if it helps to make a market for independent games, I'm very glad.