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The New Generation – Part Two: Masterminds

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Originally published by Next Generation.

Something is happening to game design. It’s been creeping up for a decade, yet only now is it striding into the mainstream, riding on the coattails of new infrastructure, emboldened by the rhetoric of the trendy. A new generation of design has begun to emerge – a generation raised on the language of videogames, eager to use that fluency to describe what previously could not be described.

First, though, it must build up its vocabulary. To build it, this generation looks to the past – to the fundamental ideas that make up the current architecture of videogames – and deconstructs it for its raw theoretical materials, such that it may be recontextualized: rebuilt better, stronger, more elegantly, more deliberately.

In the earlier part of this series, we discussed several games that exemplify this approach; we then tossed around a few more that give it a healthy nod. Some boil down and refocus a well-known design (Pac-Man CE, New Super Mario Bros.); some put a new perspective on genre (Ikaruga, Braid); some just want to break down game design itself (Rez, Dead Rising). In this chapter, we will highlight a few of the key voices guiding the change. Some are more persuasive than others. Some have been been making their point for longer. All are on the cusp of redefining what a videogame can be.

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(November 21st, 2007 @ 2:12pm)



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The New Generation – Part One: Design

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Originally published by Next Generation.

An idea is healthy only so long as people question it. All too often, what an idea seems to communicate – especially years and iterations down the line – was not its original intention. Context shifts; nuance is lost. To hear adherents espouse an idea, measureless years and Spackle later, is to understand less about the idea itself than about the people who profess it, and the cultural context in which they do so.

In 1985, an obscure Japanese illustrator slotted together a bunch of ideas that made sense to him that morning, and inadvertently steered the whole videogame industry out of the darkest pit in its history. Since that man’s ideas also seemed to solve everyone else’s problems, they became lasting, universal truths that it was eventually ridiculous – even heresy – to question.

So for twenty years, skilled artisans kept building on this foundation, not really curious what it meant; that it worked was enough. They were simply exercising their proven craft, in a successful industry. Result: even as technology allowed those designers to express more and more complex ideas, those ideas became no more eloquent. The resulting videogames became more and more entrenched in their gestures, and eventually spoke to few aside from the faithful – and not even them so well. Nobody new was playing, and the existing audience was finding better uses for its time. A term was coined: “gamer drift”.

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(November 20th, 2007 @ 1:55pm)



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HERE I YAM

The other day I was lounging around, half-expecting a call from someone. It kept getting later, and no call. I started to get tired. Finally the phone rang. Throwing caution to the wind, I picked it up and exclaimed, with a certain enthusiasm, “Yah!” In response I heard a very thick and silly accent blurt “IS YOU?!” “IS ME!” I replied. “IS YOUUU?” “ISS MEEE! HERE I YAM!”

Then there was a beat. And more quietly, with a twinge of frustration, still in the same accent: “Sorry. Wrong number.”

(November 20th, 2007 @ 4:49am)



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Ghost Town Branding

The thing about living close to downtown is that after five and on Sundays, the whole town shuts down. I had some errands today, so I braved the desolation. As I rounded the first corner, I stepped into a local cafe for a chai. I had some new checks in my pocket, so I afforded myself the extravagance. It was large enough a cup to carry me to the bank and halfway back.

Having deposited the checks, I began the return cycle; it was then that I noticed the branding on the cup. The cafe is superb, yet tiny. It barely has a logo. What passes for a logo, however, was rubber stamped on the side of an otherwise naked beige coffee cup.

I puzzled over the label. The guy who owns the place is indefatigably earnest, and I keep smiling at his attempts at promotion. He seems motivated to convince the neighborhood that his cafe is a real place, that he’s not just pretending. I don’t know if it’s necessary, as he does a great job anyway. The rubber stamp felt typical. Why did they need a label on their cups? Was it just because the big chains all have them? Did it even count as advertising? Who, besides the person who presumably bought the coffee, would ever see the label?

A flurry of motion wrenched me back into the real world. I was passing by a large corporate building; the ground floor seemed to be constructed entirely of glass. Within that glass box, a security guard stared and wildly gesticulated to me. She was saying something. I furrowed my brow. I couldn’t hear her. She pressed up against the glass and pointed at my coffee cup, as if asking for a sip. She wanted to know where I got it. I paused for a moment, and pondered how to explain through sound-proof glass. Then I looked at the cup.

I turned the cup one half-cycle, so the imprint was toward her. Her eyes lit up, she backed off, and she barked into a walkie talkie on her shoulder.

Well, what do I know.

(November 11th, 2007 @ 12:39pm)



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The Wii that Wasn’t

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Originally published by Next Generation.

Market analysts call the Wii a return to form after the relative flop of the GameCube. Design analysts call it a potential return to form after the relative rut of the previous fifteen years. Whatever the spin, when people look at Nintendo’s recent misadventures, generally the Gamecube sits right on top, doe-eyed and chirping. Its failure to do more than turn a profit has made its dissection an industry-wide pastime. Everything comes under the microscope, from its dainty size and handle to its purpleness to the storage capacity of its mini-DVDs. The controller, though, has perplexed all from the start.

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(November 6th, 2007 @ 9:05am)



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