Hey Baby Redux

Since I made that Hey Baby post a while back, I keep running into things that make me think about it and feminism in games more.  So here's a roundup of a bunch of little thoughts I've had.

Furthur Festival

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I traveled a few hours across California to attend a several-days-long music festival in the mountains called Furthur Festival.  Here's the thing you should understand about this, the idea that will make this clear (maybe) or at least make you feel like you know what's going on: Furthur is basically the current incarnation of the Grateful Dead. So this was a Dead concert, a Dead festival, in fact.

Lynchian Games

Have you ever seen Twin Peaks? Are you a fan of David Lynch in general? (If you're not sure, read this essay by David Foster Wallace. Maybe it will intrigue you.) Or maybe you like The Prisoner, or even maybe Lost?

All of these things, to differing degrees, are weird. But weird in a very specific way. They start out normal - sometimes very, very normal.  There's a murder in a small town, or there's a beautiful 50s suburb, or a charming village on an island, or a plane crash. All of these things are fairly mundane. But then something starts going a little off: a woman talking to a log. A severed ear on the lawn. From there, they slowly, slowly, descend into madness, until we're in a parallel dimension with velvet curtains listening to a dwarf talk backwards about the nature of reality, or something.

Hey Baby

It's been two and a half years since my last post. But sometimes 140 characters aren't enough.

Yesterday, Twitter (at least my corner of it) caught fire with discussion about a new game. The game is called Hey, Baby.

Along with the game came an article by Leigh Alexander, titled "You Look Nice, Miss".

The Twitter discussion went poorly for me - one of my personal heroes was quite angry at me, there were followers being blocked, comments erased - the normally enjoyable discussion around games turned into a real source of unhappiness. So today I want to lay out my thoughts, hopefully with a clearer head, and see if I can really concretely get across my stance.

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.

Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus is one of the saddest games I have ever played. It has a gigantic world, entirely empty but for you, the colossi, and some small animals. The landscape is breathtaking, but devastatingly empty. There are signs of big, beautiful buildings everywhere, but they are nothing but ancient ruins.

You're not battling the colossi so much as slaughtering them. They are the most alive and also the most beautiful things in the world, despite being big and clunky. The fights are not hard - in fact, most of the time, all you have to do is cling on while the giant beast tries in vain to shake you free, and cries out in pain and distress every time you strike.

There are save points, but they are pointless - there are no other enemies but the colossi, and when you're fighting them you're not thinking of leaving and finding a place to save. It feels as though this giant, cliched fantasy realm were emptied - the elves and orcs slowly dying off, leaving nothing behind but the Tolkein-esque vistas and the massive, shambling colossi. There are tiny animals scurrying about, and you can even kill some of them, and regain health from eating them - but again, it serves no real gameplay purpose.

The feelings of sadness and of fear are enhanced each time you kill a colossus. You at first try to move away from the corpse, only to (seemingly) be killed yourself by black tendrils of energy reaching out of the corpse. After you awake back at the shrine, shades of all the colossi you have murdered are standing ominously around your body, looking down on you. It is poignant, and at the same time frightening.

Some games are like movies - you are introduced to the characters one by one, the plot is set up, and then the rise of tension followed by climax and denoument. This game is like a painting - a slice of life, a view into a scene are given to you, without background, without introductions, and you make what you will of that slice, without expecting eventual revelations. You are content without exposition, without anything other than the piece in front of you.

In fact, sometimes I enjoyed the moment so much that I hesitated to end the encounter so soon. Besides the sense of loss that comes with killing the gigantic living beings, there is also the regret that the scene must end. While I was flying around clinging to the back of a giant raptor, I regretted having to end the moment.

The raptor mirrors the one pseudo-companion you have in the game, aside from your loyal steed. From time to time, as you gallop over the land looking for the next shambling creature, a hawk will swoop down and skim alongside your mount, seeming to accompany you on your quest.

I haven't finished Shadow yet, but I think it's a piece of art to hold up in pride as an industry.

All The World's A Game...

..and all the men and women merely players.

I created this blog in order to share my thoughts as an insider in the gaming industry. I find I have a lot of things to say about games and their place in society, and too few people to say them to. I feel the gaming industry is at a crossroads - games are beginning to gain serious ground as a part of our culture, and also asn entertainment business. However, I'm not sure where games are as an art form. Movies rose from being a pure moneymaking industry to being a widely-accepted art for intelligent adults, while comic books have somehow managed to remain almost solely a juvenile pastime, at least in the eyes of society.

We have a chance, as an industry, to aim for one of these paths. We can continue to make games that sell well, and are bland enough to get into Wal-Mart or action-packed enough to get the 18-25 male market, or we can make games that challenge people's conceptions, make them think, and ideally reveal new truths about the human condition.

Of course, we're already doing both. And many games have at least something to say, even if they're mostly about blowing stuff up. But most people don't see both sides, and don't consider the artistic merits when thinking about games as a medium. If we have the right attitude, we can maintain the entertainment value of games (and the "blockbuster" hits) while making clever, poignant, and thoughtful contributions to humanity's cultural history at the same time.

The movie industry has the Summer Blockbuster and the Oscars, the Disney hit and Cannes. Literature has Dostoevsky, Joyce, and Shakespeare, but there's also romance novels, picture books, and Tom Clancy. They all have a place. The gaming industry, so far, has focused on the action movies and the epics - with a few exceptions, we haven't found our Kubricks, Lynches, or Fellinis. Or when we do, most people don't realize it.

So, there we go. This is my soapbox to rant (cf. above) about the industry and games in society. I also might talk about technology in general, the Internet, and anything else that catches my eye.