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A Life Worth Living

by Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne

Some of the typical themes to indie games, and art games, and deconstructionist games in general, include violence, death, and loss. I find it interesting that the deeper problems of game design, toward which the more thoughtful game authors are drawn, so closely mirror a boilerplate list of human concerns. At least, metaphorically speaking.

Of the three, death and loss, and the association between the two, are the bigger concerns — perhaps because in the short term, with such a narrow communication bottleneck, it’s more worthwhile to hand out monosyllabic verbs for the player to sling around: shoot, run, jump, grab. Let players use the grammar they know, while you precisely sculpt a context to lend the discussion an illusion of eloquence.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 12th, 2010 @ 12:36pm)



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The Nephew Set

If I were to give someone a Famiclone or one of those NES handhelds, and… let’s say ten, fifteen, twenty games, which games should I choose? Here’s my current list:

  1. Zelda 1,
  2. Super Mario Bros. 2,
  3. Simon’s Quest,
  4. River City Ransom,
  5. Life Force,
  6. Tetris,
  7. Dragon Warrior,
  8. Mega Man 2, and
  9. Blaster Master all need to be on there.

Runners-up include:

  1. Balloon Fight,
  2. Jackal,
  3. Goonies II,
  4. Bionic Commando,
  5. DuckTales,
  6. Ninja Gaiden II,
  7. Solomon’s Key,
  8. Rygar,
  9. Sky Kid,
  10. Wizards & Warriors,
  11. Marble Madness, and
  12. Lode Runner.

Maybe something like Rolling Thunder or Dr Chaos, if I want to be strange.

There are so many factors to consider. I’ve discussed them with Amandeep, somewhat. I don’t want to repeat myself here, if just for impatience on my part. But yeah, it’s kind of like constructing a mix tape. You want all of the elements in harmony. Not too much of this or that, be it the developer or the perspective or mechanics or tone. You want to cover all the bases without bowing too much to convention. It’s more about giving a broad range of ideas than about checking all the boxes of a typical curriculum, if you will. If that means leaving out some obvious choices and including some seriously weird shit, all the better. Though I’m not sure I’ve done an excellent job of either, in this case. Maybe I need to think about this a little more. If by “need” we mean “am liable to”.

(January 30th, 2010 @ 2:58am)



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R9

There’s a bonkersly thoroughly contemplated recombobulation of R-Type on Xbox Live. It’s two-player co-op; it’s got an instant-respawn option, and a million redone graphics options. Hitting the “Y” button flicks between original 2D and remade 3D (with various graphics filters) at will. It’s an instant fade. Crazy!

This game seriously has some of the best music ever. Hearing that theme reappear and develop as the game progresses is weirdly poignant — I get a chill in the back of my neck, as I do whenever some permutation of “Esaka Forever” pops up. It’s just one of those soundtracks.

And the game is now more playable than ever! You can do the proper survival horror experience, or you can just have fun with it in full Life Force mode.

(February 6th, 2009 @ 7:27pm)



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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.

( Continue reading )

(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”.

( Continue reading )

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



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