Player Expectations.

Courtesy of Critical Distance last Sunday, I was directed to these two articles analyzing Modern Warfare 3.  The first, written by John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun, is fairly critical of MW3's design and lack of choice. The second is a rebuttal by Brendan Keogh (a writer for Edge and Kill Screen) defending the game a bit more.

When we play games, we tacitly agree to a contract.  We agree to be bound by the rules of the game as long as the game will give us the experience we're looking for.  In soccer, that means that only 11 players can be on the field at a time.  If we didn't follow this contract, some teams would rush the field with 25 vs. 5.  The experience of competition and teamwork that most players play soccer for would be ruined by the unfair odds.  In Hide and Seek, opening your eyes while people hide ruins the exploratory and deductive fun to be had by actually following the rules.  Likewise, by obeying the rules of video games, we gain the entertainment, challenge, competition, etc., that its gameplay has to offer.

For example, no one complains about Zelda's linearity.  I've never read a review that complains that a Zelda game doesn't allow you to join Gannondorf or asks for the ability to kill random townspeople.  No, in Hyrule, we are on our best behavior.  We put the cuccos back in their cages, we go on fetch quest after fetch quest, we save the children, rescue the horse, and, at the end of the day, prevent the end of freedom and goodness at the hands of Ganon.  In so doing, we feel like a hero.  We are challenged.  We participate in a story of courage and sacrifice.  These choices are part of what we expect from the game and we submit to the limitations of "goodness" gladly.

I think this is the central point that Keogh makes in his follow-up article.  Modern Warfare 3 makes no attempt to be a free-flowing, open world game where choice is a central theme (and mechanic).  This in no way makes it less of a game (After all, choices are still being made on a moment-by-moment, objective-by-objective level), it just makes it a different kind of game than Walker wanted to play or expected to play.

The core difference between Keogh and Walker's playthroughs also comes down to their beliefs of what a player should be.  Increasingly, I think this is what will divide games more than anything else in the coming few years.  Must players, necessarily, be the sole decision maker for how the game progresses (e.g. Minecraft)?  Or can players take a slight back-seat position to the designer's decisions (e.g. Final Fantasy)?

I wholeheartedly support Keogh's final conclusion and I think he says it more elegantly than I could.  So here it is:

So this is what I ask of you [Walker], and of all videogame critics and players alike: stop using “freedom” as a metric for a game’s quality or, even worse, for a game’s gameness. Every game is a dance between player and code, but that doesn’t mean the player always gets to lead. A game that leads the player can be just as meaningful, significant, intelligent, stimulating or exhilarating as a game that lets the player do whatever they wish (within the games confines). The player is not the centre of the equation, and neither is the game. It’s the interrelationship between the player and the game that matters most.

The Minecraft Chronicles, pt 1.

I've been playing more Minecraft lately.  Maybe you've noticed.

So I'm combining a couple of blog-tested ideas for a few posts.  Since gamers should be artists and I love telling stories and stories have characters, my Minecraft Chronicles shall center on my desire to find a village.  And you're going to hear about it!

The more I work hard to find that village, the more interesting things will be, right? 

Here's hoping.  For you guys' sake.

Maslow and Minecraft.

Vicodin is still running through my system, so forgive me if this is less interesting than normal. 

Minecraft 1.0 came out this weekend.  I guess that’s a pretty big deal.  I’ve been playing it off and on for a few months now.  I bought it with the big Adventure update a few versions back, anxious to find a town.  There, I would build a castle and I, as the benevolent king, would protect the town from the nasties that would seek to destroy it in the darkness of night. 

My first few in-game days were not so hot.  I couldn’t find coal for about five in-game days, so I was stuck digging in the dark.  When I finally got my feet under me and found a cavern to base my explorations out of, I ended up having to start from scratch when I died by lava a few times.  (I finally figured out to leave a couple of basic necessities in my home base…)  After that, I couldn’t seem to find any iron deposits for the life of me.  It seemed like most of my shafts ended up finding either a) redstone or b) absolutely nothing.  It was mildly frustrating. 

And yet, I’ve been able to eek out a living on this strange world.  In my early explorations, it seemed as though I was on an island in the middle of a vast ocean.  I told myself that couldn’t be.  Maybe I just hadn’t found the right corner that connected me to another big hunk of land.  Surely, there was a town just over that ridge where I could set up a more permanent base.  Eventually, I discovered that you can build maps, and so my explorations began in earnest.  Guess what?  I was on an island in the middle of a vast ocean.  Only the furthest edges of my map bore anything other than blue. 

Since that terrible discovery, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do.  My whole point in playing this game was to find a town.  What now?  I guess I should go find one, right?

It’s more difficult than it sounds, though.  The nearest continent is about a game-day away – and that’s with a shortcut created by some powered minecarts.  It takes an enormous amount of resources for me to get off my island, let alone set up shop at a new location. 

My whole situation has reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Almost the entire game so far, I’ve been stuck on the physiological and safety needs.  I barely have enough food to keep my health up.  If I’m not careful, nighttime is still a very scary time for me.  My little hovel has been nearly blown to smithereens by creepers four of five times now.  How can I expect to be able to explore and create if I’m still trying to survive? 

Hopefully someday I’ll find that rich source of iron that will allow me to experiment with minecart tricks.  Maybe I’ll find a huge trove of diamond or a magical, flying pony or something.  But until then, I’ll just keep working, trying to find that village out there.

The spirit of the law.

As I continued to reflect on the letter of the law/spirit of the law distinction that I talked about the other day, my thoughts slowly became a little more personal.

As an oldest sibling and follower of Jesus, I fall definitively into the spirit of the law camp.  When I play poker, I avoid looking at other peoples' hands, even if they're open in plain sight.  When I played Super Smash Bros: Melee in high school, I would purposely avoid using fighting tactics deemed "cheap" by my friends in favor of having a good fight. I do this because I apply the behavior I choose in life (follow the law of God) to my behavior in games.  I feel like, in some way, my integrity takes a hit if I behave in a way that is clearly against the intent of the rules. 

This seems to be some confusion on my part, though.  Maybe I'm just really bad at moving into the magic circle.  The contract that we adhere to as players of a game is completely different than my contract with God (though I still believe there should be clear boundaries regarding behavior for the Christian, even within the magic circle).  Perhaps a little bit of rebellion is exactly what I need.  Rebellion is too strong of a word.  Perhaps, in the world of the game, our job is to find new expressions of the game's goals within the constraints of the rules.

In that way, maybe games are a lot more similar to life.  There are rules, but our job as humans is to find creative ways of bending them toward a certain purpose.  In life, there are some immutable truths.  Gravity, for example.  We can't just fly anytime we want.  Within that constraint, though, we made airplanes!  If the designer's intent in creating the law of gravity was to prevent humans from flying, we have broken the spirit of the law but maintained the letter of the law.  So, too, in games, perhaps the designer of Mafia (if there was one...) wanted us to experiment with different behaviors.  There are few behaviors explicitly outlawed by the rules because we are meant to play.  Find out what works and doesn't work.

So maybe I need to be more of a letter of the law gamer.  Maybe I need to push the envelope of what's acceptable within a game system rather than just passively accepting my role as hero of the world or solver of puzzles.  I think it's ideas like this that caused Jane McGonigal to suggest that playing video games will make the world a better place.  She's hooked on the idea that, by entering a safe place to push boundaries, we will learn to push boundaries in real life. 

Maybe she's right.

Gamers as Artists.

Read this.  Right now:

http://kotaku.com/5857873/games-are-art-only-when-youre-playing-them

A couple of brief observations tonight:

1. A quote from the article: "...is a symphony meant to be played or listened to?"  
2. I notice that the author of this article seems to be a believer.  Well, he's working on a Masters in Systematic Theology, so that's something.  This is one of the more original posts I've seen on Kotaku in a while and a believer wrote it.
3. His last thought is wondering how gamers would respond to a call to artistry.  How can gamers be artists?  And guess what?  All the comments have nothing to do with the article.  They're all about trolling.  That's telling.

 As you play games, how can you consider yourself a co-creator in the art of the game?  Does it require research?  Playing along with the story instead of seeking to break the game and stretch the rules (a la last night's post)?  What do you think?

Pokemon: White.

One of my best friends got married back in June and I was honored to be his best man.  I'd never done that before.  It was neat.  Anyway, I guess it's traditional to buy your party gifts.  So my friend decided to buy me Pokemon: White. 

Kind of an unusual choice for a 24 year old man, huh? 

You know what makes it worse?  It was my idea.

It's been a very long time since I've played a Pokemon game.  I think I bought Gold, but by that time, I was sort of over the whole system.  Let's be honest: the mechanics of a Pokemon game have never really changed.  After playing the heck out of the Blue version, I guess I just didn't see the point of playing the same game, but with unfamiliar creatures.

That's completely opposite from why I wanted the latest installment in the series.  In fact, I actually wanted to play this because it was the same, but different.  (I hate being such a typical consumer...)  I wanted to re-experience what I felt as an 11 year old first introducing Pokemon to my friends. 

The more I think about it - because the more I play it, the more I think about it - I realize that it really is just the nostalgia.  I mean, don't get me wrong, the central mechanic of the Pokemon games is fun.  It's like distilling RPGs down to an abundance of options when building out a party.

But that's it.  They're terribly grind-heavy.  The story is awful.  (Especially in White.  It's truly, terribly awful.)  The music is repetitive and, outside of maybe the classic battle theme and gym theme, is utterly uninspiring.  The characters are... non existent.  So what brings me back?

Ultimately, at my core, I'm an explorer.  In the original games, the thing that kept me playing was, "I wonder what pokemon are in the next area?  I wonder when my party will evolve?  I wonder what the next gym leader will be like?"  It's the desire to figure out what's next that kept me playing.  As a matter of fact, when I beat the Elite Four (or whatever they were called), I pretty much stopped playing.  I had discovered everything I was going to discover and had no desire to "catch em all," despite the log line.

And now, as I'm playing a new Pokemon game, I find that the same thing pulls me forward.  A childlike desire to see what's next.  To be a part of discovering how things work.  I've anxiously trained up my Roggenrola into a Boldore (suspiciously like my Blue-version rocky friends, Geodude and Graveller...) just to see what comes next.  It was a delight when, all of a sudden, my Tepig evolved into a Pignite.  I have no idea what the next city on my journey is called, but I'm sure it will be filled with cheesy character lessons and, most importantly, new pokemon to discover and figure out.

Pokemon: White really is the same, just different.  Same formula.  Same battles (mostly).  Same gameplay.  And that's what I love about it. 

Off Book.

 It's a shame this month of blogging begins on a Wednesday.  I don't have a whole lot of time on Wednesdays to read, play, and come up with neat things to talk about on a blog...

Kotaku posted this lovely video today:



It obviously strikes one of my central passion areas: the discovery that games can be so much more than just Halo or Modern Warfare.

One of the reasons that I wanted to do a blog a day for the next month was so that I had to push myself to think about games more intentionally again.  I subscribe to numerous blogs and, on the average day, see at least one freeware game come across my Google Reader feed.  As the month goes on, I'd like to start diving back into those games.  Maybe I'll even dig out some of the older ones still on my hard drive and do some basic analysis of what's going on ludologically, artistically, and narratively. 

World of Warcraft.

So I've been playing World of Warcraft lately. Apparently, it's a big deal. Who knew?

Now, I'm not a big MMO fan. I tried Asheron's Call out back in 2000, was disillusioned by how many rabbits I had to kill to level up, gave up, and haven't looked back since. But ever since the beginning, World of Warcraft has intrigued me. (I played a lot of Warcraft 2 in my day...) I was excited by the prospect of exploring Azeroth, but never got into it because of the cost and the fact that, at the end of the day, I'm a fairly anti-social gamer...

But then I got a free year subscription and DavidCinner, Blood Elf warlock, was born.

My experience so far has been fairly positive. I get bored a lot, but I'm told that's because I'm questing in five year old zones... Today, though, was really interesting.

I've been spending quite a lot of time in what's called the Ghostlands, trying to reclaim once-beautiful elven territory from the Undead Scourge. Naturally, this forest was once beautiful. Now, it's never bright, even at midday. There are creepy glowing goopy things all over the place. Everywhere you go, there's some ruined building that's now filled with zombies or something evil and mean. In fact, there's even a giant scar dividing the zone in half where the Scourge first invaded. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that the elves have allied themselves with the sorta-kinda-good undead people - the Forsaken. I mean, I know we need their help, but still. Gross.

In fact, I had zipped over to another zone for a while to a Forsaken war front. I was so disgusted by their tactics, their attitude, their city (The Undercity is terribly difficult to navigate...), and their, you know, smelly, gross, falling-off flesh, that I gave up. I turned back and stopped helping them. I was not going to contribute to the genocide of largely innocent people. In general, I do not like the Forsaken.

But back in the Ghostlands, we needed their help. So I accepted their quests. I did what they wanted me to. And slowly, my resolve to not do some things in the game lessened. My attitude toward the Forsaken slowly changed. I was just doing what needed to be done, right?

Eventually, my quests led me back to the elven capital city:

Big difference, right? I was almost sad to return to Silvermoon, oddly enough. The compromises I had made, the person I had become... I had forgotten the reason I was fighting this war in the first place - to protect this city and these people.

I don't want to sound crazy. The measurement of these feelings was rather small compared to the real life version of those thoughts. But still. I thought it was poignant. While I was in the Ghostlands, I was willing to do anything for my cause, but it was just a self-perpetuating war machine kind of cause. When I returned to civilization after what I had done, I felt a little guilty.

It's like in so many stories before: in trying to protect humanity, I chose to act inhumanely. Or in-elf-ly. Or something.

The Story of Mirror's Edge.

Finally, here's Part 3 of the little series I did on Mirror's Edge. You can find Part 1 - Flow, Part 2 - Combat, and Part 2 - Addendum... in those links.

Today, we talk about the Story of Mirror's Edge. I finally finished the game a day or two ago and have had a little bit of time to think about its story. This may end up a little stream-of-consciousness, but here goes. Also, SPOILERS MAY LIE IN WAIT LIKE CREEPY LITTLE EELS OF KNOWLEDGE-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO-HAVE.

I think I heard somewhere (maybe it was at GDC?) that the writer of Mirror's Edge was brought on quite late in the process. This isn't altogether uncommon in the game industry. Quite frequently, writers will be brought onto a project that has six months until launch. They are given a bunch of levels and are asked to come up with a story to suit it. So you can easily see why some games are incredibly lacking in the story department.

Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of renowned author Terry Pratchett, was selected to be the writer for Mirror's Edge and, I think, the one responsible for the world design and overall story of the game. I really hand it to her. If someone handed me a bunch of levels for a first person parkour game, I wouldn't know where to start. But she took that and asked the question, "Why would someone be doing this? In what society would this need to happen?" She created this whole dystopian society out of those questions. Runners are needed to make sure information is not seen by anyone but the intended recipient. It's a simple, elegant solution that did not require the designers to create a whole bunch of new assets to fit the story. In fact, it even helps explain why the landscape is so devoid of color. The story helps put the game mechanics into a semblance of logic (which is what game stories should be doing!).

In fact, it was partly because of Pratchett's solution to the problem of being brought on late that I was excited about the story of Mirror's Edge. I thought, "Surely an author who can come up with such elegant solutions to the gameplay/narrative problem would tell a great story."

Well, I've been wrong before.

Before I go on, I want to say that very little of this is probably Pratchett's fault. I can guarantee that the same forces that thought it wise to bring on a writer six months before release prevented Pratchett from doing anything really revolutionary. However...

The first question on my mind when I heard the concept was, "What are they carrying?" What can't the government see? And, since I believe in surprising storytelling, I thought, "What, besides rebellion, would Runners be carrying?" What if there was a government conspiracy even outside the government conspiracy? Etc., etc., etc... So when they decide to go the "someone framed my sister for murder route," I was unpleasantly surprised.

If it were me, I would have put the focus on the Running. What are they carrying? For whom? What does it mean if cops show up and start shooting? I would have propelled the story on the mystery of the packages, not on the interpersonal relationships of the characters. This would accomplish many, many things at once.

First, it would give the players an entire game to understand the world and understand the stakes of being a Runner. If this was only the first of a trilogy, then it makes sense to spend most of the first game in what will be perceived as Act 1.

Second, it skips the cut and paste characterization. The characters would mostly be defined by actions, not by cutscenes and mission requirements. Faith goes to Kate because she gets in over her head with some private security firm that keeps hiring her to carry something that gets her shot. Now we know their relationship before anything terrible happens to either character. We are not told to go rescue our sister on the basis that she's our sister. (I mean, that satisfies the audience's need to understand why the character does it, but we don't see the connection. It's another case of needing to be shown, not told.)

Third, it opens up new gameplay possibilities. In a world where there are these Runners that take important documents around the eyes of the law, wouldn't there be a whole lot more teamwork? More false bags? I would have built the story around a partnership between Celeste and Faith - swapping bags, acting as decoys, and, ultimately, betrayal by the person you trust most. When the betrayal came in this story (both by Celeste and the other Runner guy...), there was no kick. I couldn't care less about these characters. But if I had spent the game working with Celeste, watching her risk her life for me as I do the same for her, I would have felt much differently when she sold out to Project Icarus.

At its core, Mirror's Edge is a kind of vengeance story in the vein of Taken or Shooter. Both of those stories feature very active protagonists who have a particular assortment of skills that make them good at taking revenge. Faith is a RUNNER! She runs away! The act of running - even running toward something - is not the skillset needed to take vengeance. I keep coming back to the idea of Flow in this game. A vengeance story necessitates combat. This game is not about combat (In fact, it does it terribly!). Therefore, it should not have been a vengeance story. Period.

That being said, in the grand scheme of the trilogy, a second game could be about vengeance. Maybe at the end of the first story, she upsets a corporation by revealing their secrets and they frame Faith's sister to show her who's boss. The second game can be about rescuing her, proving her innocence, and rising above petty, personal vengeance into a more aware, society-wide sense of justice. That's what future dystopias are for, right?


Like I said in the beginning, I don't think Pratchett had direct control over a lot of this. I think her premise is powerful, the dialog carried voice and subtext where necessary, and the voice acting was pretty good. However, the choice to have a character driven vengeance story in a first person game with Flash animation cut scenes? Not that great.

The Combat of Mirror's Edge - Addendum.

Just a quick addendum to the post on Mirror's Edge's Combat.

I already talked about how it seemed silly to put such an emphasis on combat (especially late game). My argument was that this game is about the Flow. To stop the Flow is to stop the core gameplay mechanic.

As another argument, I'll go ahead and invoke the ludonarrative dissonance of asking the player to fight.

(Side note: I was going to link to a definition of ludonarrative dissonance and found the internet lacking in quick answers. Essentially, it means that the meaning conveyed by the system of the game - the mechanics, reward structures, and verbs of gameplay - is different - and sometimes counter to - the meaning conveyed by the story. As near as I can tell, it originated with Clint Hocking here.)

Why is combat necessary in Mirror's Edge when Faith is a Runner? Her very title defines what she typically does. Either run away or run toward, but always running. Not kicking butt.

As a hopefully-some-day-designer of console games, I want to put players in the shoes of the characters. If I were Faith, the last thing I would be doing is killing guards. I know I'm a small woman. I know that I'm not super well trained in combat arts. In fact, given the options of 1) Fight, 2) Run, 3) Sneak Past, or 4) Wait for it to cool off, I would always choose options 2, 3, or 4.

My problem is that the game designers did not allow Faith to choose her most rational choice (even emotionally rational, if you want to argue that...).

Numerous times, I tried these strategies. In my previous post, I mentioned the door that took a while to open and the four guards. At first, I tried waiting. I waited a few minutes, just in case the guards would think I've moved on and vacate the garage. Nope. Next, I tried to sneak. I ducked behind cars, around corners, and monitored the guards' movements carefully. But the buggers had supernaturally acute vision and hearing. I was caught every time and riddled with holes faster than I could find a hiding spot. At the last, I tried over and over again to run through the guards in some kind of clever way, thinking, "There's no way the designers want me to fight! This is a game about subtlety and creativity, not just killing guards..." Guess who was wrong.

Rather than building a crappy combat system, I think I would have rather the designers built a decent sneaking system. Truly let combat be emergency only. Faith would not initiate combat without a good reason for it. She's not out to destroy the government. She's not out to draw attention to herself. She just wants her sister. Instead, the actions forced by the designers ended in the death of a few characters and more trouble than what a Runner could conceivably get into.

The Combat of Mirror's Edge.

This is Part 2 of a little 3 part ditty on the game Mirror's Edge. Check out Part 1 - The Flow of Mirror's Edge.


I really like Mirror's Edge. I think that it is kind of like an updated version of the platformer. Everything is about precision jumping and the proper execution of simple button commands. I'm more stressed playing this game than just about any other game I've played in the past few years. So it does lots of things right.

Combat, however, is wrong.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Mirror's Edge is about the flow - that feeling of a continual hurdling over obstacles. The feeling that nothing can slow you down and you adapt to your surroundings to make sure that's true. Merc, the in-your-ear, tell-you-what-to-do guy, even tells you to run away from any "Blues" (cops) you run into.

So that's what I did. I knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. The game designers knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. And yet, I came to a room in the seventh chapter where the only exit was a door that takes about five seconds to open guarded by four soldiers with machine guns (and uncanny accuracy...). I think I tried thirty times to do it without killing anyone - just be confusion and misleading - but every time, I got shot dead at the door (if I made it...).

Combat is a real problem in this game. In some ways, it suffers the same problem as certain parts of the parkour system do: a zero margin of error. When I run and jump-kick a guard, I had better have lined up that kick just right and he better not be swinging his arm to hit me. If that's true, I'll sometimes land a hit. Forgive me for having this opinion, but I think first person melee combat should have at least a little bit of a margin for error.

The combat verbs are remarkably limited, too. My "attack" button triggers a right punch, a left, and then some kind of shove. It's very difficult to interrupt any of these commands should your opponent have moved or fallen quickly.

The Disarm action is especially infuriating. If you can hit the button at the exact moment the weapon flashes red, Faith will do some cool flippy moves to both knock out and disarm the opponent. If you miss, she flails forward with her arms both getting hit by the opponent and taking forever. If you're particularly slow learning (like I tend to be in games like this), you often end up hitting the button in the same moment of the opponent's attack cycle, thus opening yourself up for attack again. (Side note: Can someone explain to me why I can get hit by three bullets before dying, but I can only take two hits from a rifle butt? What sense does that make?) It's all very frustrating.

How it could be better: I think a little leniency could go a long way in how frustrating it is to damage the enemies in this game, but what Mirror's Edge really needs is some kind of target lock system. If we are supposed to take out enemies one at a time, then a single-enemy target lock system, combined with more contextualized actions, would be very effective in reducing player frustration with combat.

The real problem with the combat, though, is its very existence! This game is not about an awesome secret agent infiltrating the government and taking out an army of soldiers. It's about the Flow! Why on earth did DICE ask the players to stop the Flow to experience crappy combat?

I really can't think of a reason why the designers seemed to put so much emphasis on it in later levels. In fact, at the end of one of the final levels, there's what amounts to a boss fight against a ninja assassin! This brings me to my Game Design Maxim of the Day: Focus on your core gameplay experience. Anything else is tangential and should not detract from that core experience. Clearly, the combat detracted from the parkour. But boy. That Flow.... It's a good time.

"Kate should hold the gun."

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

-----

In Episode 3 of Lost, the audience and a few of the characters are aware that Kate has some kind of criminal background. Her escorting officer keeps telling Jack over and over again that she's dangerous and can't be trusted. But at that moment, she is in the mountains searching for signal.

Sawyer has a gun. Sayid has the clip. No one is happy. Tension is high. Eventually, someone says, "Kate should hold the gun."

An interesting thing was going on at this point in the scene. To the characters in the scene, the conflict was over. There was some tension in actually giving it to her, but, overall, it was a good solution. She seemed, to them, to be the most level-headed and unlikely to use it against the wishes of the group. Scene over, right?

This is one of the moments where the writers are using the knowledge the audience has to make a moment more tense than it is to the characters. For the characters, the tension arises from the interpersonal conflict and clash over what to do with the gun. But in the minds of the audience, we have a much higher conflict: we have now given a gun to a person with a criminal past who is probably very dangerous. Whereas the characters' tension is resolved, ours is just beginning.

Luckily, the scene still ends there. If it had gone on, I doubt the tension would last. Instead, it pushes another wedge of distrust into our minds and another variable that could change at any second in the character of Kate.

Again, this storytelling device may not work as well when it comes to game stories.

Most games are told from a single perspective: the player-character's. Sometimes they are a true character, sometimes only an avatar, but it is rare for the player's perspective to shift between multiple points of view in the same story-line. This means that usually, the player has the same information (sometimes less!) as the character.

Maybe that should change. Maybe let the player - at any point - shift between characters. I dunno. Just an idea.

The Flow of Mirror's Edge.

I've been playing a lot of Mirror's Edge since getting back on vacation. I'm a pretty big fan, but there are some troubling problems.

For a game that's about "the flow" (as the lead character, Faith, says in the intro), there could be more... flow. The designers do their best. I mean, it's a first person game about parkour. I'm amazed they could pull off a first person game that requires so much awareness of body, distance, and momentum. They use a very bright red to indicate an object that can be used for one of the parkour moves that they introduce. For the most part, this red stands in stark contrast to the rest of the set and is very helpful. In large, open, outdoor levels, it's great. The white of the buildings highlight the boards and bricks that give Faith the ability to do crazy things. The problem is in the indoor levels.

The indoor levels are almost the opposite of the outdoor levels. The outdoor levels usually have a plethora of paths that Faith can take to get from point A to point B. Very few of them are interesting or optimal, but if something goes horribly awry, you can always try something else. Indoors, there is exactly one path to take. Not a problem. Usually, it is obvious which way to go and what to do. There are plenty of unopenable doors and dead ends that are fairly clear before you head towards them. On occasion, though, the one path comes to a large room (or two. or three.). This is where the headaches begin.

The designers forsaw that players would have trouble knowing where to go. The B button fixes Faith's gaze on the next goal or door. But some frustrating times, they turn this off. I don't know if they think it's obvious enough that they don't need it or they are trying to get a player to explore, but it doesn't work. Usually because people are shooting at you. With machine guns.

Last night, I spent about 45 minutes trying to explore a mall filled with cops to find the exit. I would run in, get their attention, delay getting shot by a few minutes, sometimes steal a gun and shoot them back, not find an exit, and die. Over and over and over and over again. My B button direction was turned off and I almost threw the controller in frustration. I cursed the designers over and over again before finally consulting a walk through. (Turns out there was a bar [colored slightly red] that blended in with a low hanging wall that I was supposed to swing to...)

Here's a game design maxim that all this has taught me: Difficulty should not come from not knowing what to do. It should be the task itself that is difficult.

This frustration comes back to the desired experience of "flow." Letting the player guess their route means that they won't stay there very long. The players do not know the rooftops of the city like Faith does. I found myself many times thinking, "Wow. I want to play this level again until I know the route well enough to really run through here." That would be a fun experience. To know where you are going and to use the parkour moves to get there.

Maybe the designers meant for me to think that. Maybe that's the "replay value" in this game. (I put quotes because I won't actually do it...) I think a better solution would be to put some kind of red path in Faith's vision. At least on the rooftops that she is familiar with. That way, we as players, are privy to her knowledge and are more able to sync up with the experience that we paid money to have. Flow is a lot easier when you know which way to go.

Even despite my frustrations about the Flow of Mirror's Edge, I'm still enjoying it. The rare moments when I can confidently wall run, jump, dive, and slide are well worth the money I paid to play this game. I just wish the designers had made it easier to feel that more often.

Megaman: the Fan-Made Movie.

I was reading Kotaku the other day and found a link to a fan-made Mega Man movie. I was, naturally, dubious. Fan-made things, while filled with passion, are not well funded. (Grayson, a fan-made Batman movie trailer (yeah, just a trailer) is probably the highest quality fan-made product I've seen.) But still. Mega Man is a property ripe for the picking when it comes to film adaptations and I wanted to see how well the filmmakers did with its potential.

There were some things that this film did right. Some good cinematography, for example. Some darned decent CG stuff for a film with (probably) a shoe-string budget. And really, the production design was pretty impressive (again, with the caveat of the shoe-string budget). All of these things were good enough.

What wasn't good enough was the script.

Many things could have fixed this script.

1. The story needed to start in media res. As I recall, the original Mega Man story begins after Wily has already done damage to the city. Mega Man runs through levels that are populated with Wily's robots, eventually ending up at the work-sites of the robot masters. I think these writers confused the idea of a first act with exposition. The action - and, therefore, the story - doesn't begin until 30 minutes into the film. So for 30 minutes, the audience is treated to every boring detail and meaningless conversation that makes up character motives. Starting in media res would have been a much more conflict-driven way to see those motives played out, not have them explained in a monologue.

2. Dr. Light should have died at the end of Act 1. Or, at the very least, taken away from the Hero. This would propel his actions, leave him without a mentor, and would give a lot more credence to Wily's insanity and threat. As it was, Light stayed on and didn't do much besides equipping Mega Man to fight the Act 3 battles.

3. Wily, while goofy in the original games, should not have been so ridiculous... His faux accent, poorly dyed hair, and constantly sweating face did not leave any sense of threat or depth to his character. Now, a goofy looking guy actually being threatening - actually being cruel - that I can get behind. For example, his lines after kidnapping Roll are a small sample of how crazy, cruel, and evil he should have been. Mocking. Sneering. A little immature, but also willing and able to do evil, evil things. I think Kefka from Final Fantasy VI would have been a good model for this kind of villain.

4. The dialogue was painful. I didn't know people could even try to play some of these cliched lines as seriously as these actors did. Do I remember specific examples right now? No. But just imagine. Every "I'll get you next time!" and "Thank God you're alright. I didn't think you'd make it" played out over and over again in different contexts. The only way to fix this is to take a harder look at each character, their flaws, and to actually speak the lines before the actors getting in front of the camera...


Don't get me wrong. I am really impressed by the director, Eddie Lebron. He clearly has some chops in pulling together a technical team to pull a 96 minute fan adaptation of a popular video game franchise. They really did accomplish a lot. It just pains me to see the script in such shambles. Without a solid story, all of the resources go to waste.

My question is this: how do I find these filmmakers? I honestly think that Mr. Lebron's resources could have been much better used had he a better story and screenplay. I also honestly believe that I could have helped make that story and screenplay better. How can I get to these directors early enough to help them tell the story they want to tell?

Moral of the story: let Kemp read your screenplays! Please? I like doing it. I think it'll be better afterward....

Statement of Purpose.

Apparently when you apply for graduate schools, they want to hear your purposes for yourself. This is something I wrote when I didn't know what else to write. So it got a little silly... Enjoy.

When I was in third grade, I covered the backs of my notepads with drawings of Mario levels. I was fascinated by the world of Mario thanks, in no small part, to the machinations of Squaresoft’s Super Mario RPG. I have viewed all of my life as a journey toward the illustrious goal of creating and writing for video games.

I’m qualified because nobody else is qualified. Name one game that exists that I could not have made on my own with a team of monkeys. You can’t. Not a one. Because everyone in the game industry are talentless hacks. That’s right. I said it. You can only remake the shooter so many times, American games industry. (And the same goes for you, Japan. RPGs are cool, but let’s grow up, shall we?)

After a grad school education, I plan on rocking the world of games. I will design so many creative titles that you’ll think Shigeru Miyamoto himself was only a toddler doodling on his parents’ walls with permanent marker. Will Wright will look like the nerd that he is and David Jaffe will shut his big fat trap. Instead, I will be lauded as the man who saved video games.

I can make better art games. I can make better simulations. I can make better story-centric-forever-long-JRPGs. I can make better open world games. I can make genres that you haven’t even heard about because I am a creative.

Unlike the rest of this stupid industry dominated by morons who would rather stare at a computer screen than gaze into the beauty of the nature around them. Jason Rohrer’s got it right. We all need to live in little huts on the edge of the country, making games about how much we wish we could play with our daughters. Or more like Jonathon Blow. Make something that can provoke thought out of this Neanderthal pea-sized brain in my head.

Update.

The 500 words a day has been going alright.... I let myself off yesterday, but I think I still only managed 800ish this week so far. Shame on me.

I started a trial subscription to Gamefly.... That's been my undoing. But I have been able to play some games I couldn't afford this year. Mass Effect is pretty much amazing. Bioshock is also, but I probably won't play as much of it...

Also, this is not a feeble attempt to boost word count. I already did that here, with my review-thus-far of Bioshock. I need to get that blog up and moving faster if I'm going to have a chance of getting an article published. (Bwa ha ha!)

Why I'm not all about player agency.

I have a problem.

I want to be a video game designer, but I don't always agree with how the industry and culture is moving, behaving, and expecting, especially when it comes to story and narrative design.

You see, 0ne of the fancy shmancy terms tossed around by game designers from time to time is "player agency." It is the idea that the player is in control of the story. Games like Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto put quite a lot of agency into the hands of the player - their stories are mostly optional, discovered through what missions the player chooses and how they complete them. These games take pride in the agency of the player - the ability for the player to determine the course of the story. These games stand in stark contrast to many role playing games like the Final Fantasy series, where the story unfolds in a linear fashion and the player makes limited decisions that don't really affect the outcome of the characters' actions.

Popular opinion in the video game industry is to put more and more power in the hands of the players - let them make their own stories. In this camp, the role of the designer is to create an interesting world and starting conditions for the player's own creative expression. The player is free to participate in the telling of the story by telling it how they want it told. They determine protagonist, antagonist, conflict, desire, obstacle - everything. Through this, players can compare notes (stories) revolving around the question, "What did you do?" or "How did you get past that boss?"

But are players ever going to really interact with the game in a meaningful way? Will they be changed by the stories they tell in the same way that an audience is changed in other media?

I don't think so. I tend to think that players, when left to their own devices, are highly unlikely to tell a story of nuance, meaning, and thematic significance, no matter the tools they are given.

So why the obsession with player agency? Why do we buck so much the hand of a good designer/storyteller?

More personally, why am I so comfortable with it? My favorite games are ones in which I am a participant in a larger story - games where I assume the role of a character, rather than creating one myself. These games, through their gameplay (to a small extent) and their story, create meaning, thought, and, ultimately, change in how I view the world. (Drop everything you're doing and play Final Fantasy Tactics all the way through - you'll understand what I mean.)

Perhaps it all comes down to theology.

I think a large part of my struggle is that I have little problem trusting someone else to tell my story. I submit myself daily to the story that God is telling, to following his son with my life, and to the wonderful power of his themes and signficance. I have no problem believing that someone behind the scenes knows more than I do and has something to teach me.

Maybe running to player agency is really just a small part of the rebellion coming out in a new way - people trying to control their own lives and tell their own stories, and meaning nothing in the process.

Now before anyone reads this and gets all upitty about some judgmental Christian banter and blah-blah-blah, I'm not writing this to condemn the idea of player agency or to suggest that those who hold to that narrative theory are rebels, sinners, and godless fools. Rather, I write it to defend my own instinct toward authorial control.

If video games can be (and are) a powerful and somewhat accurate metaphor for life, then just as I believe there is a Designer of the world who arranges things for meaning and purpose for our good, so too I believe a human designer can inject some of that meaning and purpose for the good of his characters and players. Just as we as humans find life most fulfilling while following Jesus, I think it can be apt that players will find a well designed game most fulfilling when they follow the plan (or story or whatever) of the designer.

As with so many of my ideas, I'm not sure if everything came through effectively, so I'll summarize as simply as I can: If life has a designer who has a plan that we should follow, why shouldn't video games?

(Inspiration for this post brought to you by The Brainy Gamer. Read the comments and follow links. There's good times in there.)

URGH!

Half-Life 2 does not - repeat - does not have a good story.

There is no motivation. No character. A plot that in the first 4 hours is totally absent. I have no idea why I'm running through a city full of alien zombies.

The most frustrating thing is that my progress is blocked by a chain link fence. Not just a chain link fence, either. A partially knocked down chain link fence. A chain link fence that I could crawl up. A broken chain link fence is stopping me, Messiah and war hero Gordon Freeman, from escaping the psycho alien zombie creatures from eating my flesh.

Come on, level designers, could it at least have been a locked wooden door? Even a chain link fence with barbed wire would make more sense.


That felt good. I needed to rant a bit against popular opinion there for a bit. A more intelligent engagement with Half-Life 2 and Gordon Freeman will show up on my game blog within a few days (theoretically).

Hello World.

I've been trying to kick my butt in gear for a while now to launch a blog dedicated to video game design, story, and other random media related thoughts, so I finally did it.

Check out all its majesty at thekemp.wordpress.com.

(Theoretically,) This still means that I'll be updating this blog as well, but I will be trying to put more thoughts more frequently over there. I hope no one is too terribly insulted.

Passage

Whoever you are, download this game now. (It's less than 1MB.)

Then unpack the .exe.

Then open the folder.

Then play the game.

It's like poetry for video games.