It’s-a Heem! Again!

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So far, New Super Mario Bros. isn’t as annoying as I expected. Kind of flavorless, yes. Well-made, though. Some nice ideas in here.

I like how they’ve stripped down everything except the mushrooms, fire flowers, and turtle shell — and then refocused the game so it’s basically all forward momentum. There’s plenty of stuff to dink around and find; that’s kind of peripheral, though. The overworld map pretty much drives the point home: it’s a straight line from the first level to the final castle, with only the occasional tangent to access an alternate route or a special item. The levels themselves are much the same. And the way the secret routes and items are hidden is nice and old-fashioned; reminds me of Mario 1 and Sonic 1.

Likewise, the focus on Mario’s size-changing is interesting. In past games (except Mario Land), there’s never been much point in being small. Here, not only is being small occasionally of value; you can also be smaller than small. And to trade it off, you can be bigger than big. Conceptually, it’s definitely got its stuff together; this is kind of like how Gradius V focuses on the Options. In execution — well.

The problem, as Toups pointed out earlier, feels like a lack of confidence. That seems to be an issue with a lot of Nintendo games these days. A shame. I mean. With more confidence in its own ideas, Wind Waker could have been really amazing. And again, whoever conceived of this game was a really clever person. You want to revive an imporant series, you break down what defines it and you build upon that. In this case, you focus on Mario’s growing/shrinking ability and on forward momentum; ditch all the suits and playground design and as much clutter as you can get away with, then slowly build back up with an eye toward the central themes.

Even the level design is often quite snazzy. Same with the very limited treasure hunt aspect, and how that ties into the world map: spend the coins however you like, whenever you like; go back and dink around to find the other coins whenever you feel like it. No pressure to complete everything; to the contrary, the game’s constantly pushing you forward. Yet it allows leeway if you want to explore. Again, sorta reminds me of early Sonic. Heck, Mario even runs like Sonic now.

Partly because of all that, I really wish this thing felt less generic. Less… cardboard. Whereas Gradius V and OutRun2 almost supplant Life Force and OutRun, this comes off more like a tribute game than something important in its own right.

EDIT: Actually, I want to say it reminds me a lot of a milquetoast follow-up to Super Mario Land. You’ve got some of the same ideas in it: better use of Mario’s size and working it into level logistics; more thematic enemies, and levels with memorable one-time quirks. I keep expecting the fireball to work like the Power Ball, and bounce all over, allowing me to collect coins. Instead, it just creates coins. (Not sure of the in-game logistics there. I think the Mario Land model would have fit better.) What Mario Land has that this doesn’t is a bizarre and quirky personality of its own, allowing it to stand as a response to Super Mario Bros. rather than just a new take on it.

The Nintendo Syndrome

  • Reading time:12 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part two of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation.

So Nintendo’s at the top of its game again – or near enough to clap, anyway. The DS is one of the bigger success stories in recent hardware history. People are starting to buy into the Wii hype; even Sony and Microsoft’s chiefs have gone on record with how the system impresses them. Japan is mincing no words; 73% of Famitsu readers polled expect the Wii to “win” the next “console war”, whatever that means. And these people aren’t even Nintendo’s target audience.

Satoru Iwata has done a swell job, the last couple of years, taking a company that was coasting on past success, whose reputation had devolved to schoolyard snickers – that even posted a loss for the first time in its century-plus history – and making it both vital and trendy again.

So what happened to Nintendo, anyway? How is it that gaming’s superstar was such a dud, for so many years? What’s the white elephant in the room, that everyone has taken such pains to rationalize? It is, of course, the same man credited for most of Nintendo’s success: Shigeru Miyamoto.

The Method

  • Reading time:5 mins read

So.

* Zelda 1 and 2.
* Dragon Quest in general.
* Riven.
* Shadow of the Colossus.
* Metroid II.
* Half-Life 2.
* Phantasy Star II.
* Metal Gear Solid 3, in particular.
* Lost in Blue.
* OutRun.

There is a common thread to all of these. It has to do with the gameworld, and the player’s method of interaction with it.

Stacking boxes to make your own path or eating the parrot in Half-Life and Metal Gear are the same as the magic wand in Zelda 1 or the structures in Wanda that serve no apparent purpose except to look at them, climb on them, stand on them, ponder about them. Building a spear in Lost in Blue is the same as gaining that level or buying that copper sword in Dragon Warrior, as finding a heart container or a boomerang in Zelda, as making that leap of logic in Riven, about that device halfway across the island.

The technique names in Phantasy Star are the same as the number system in Riven, as the clues in Zelda, as the Erdrick lore is in Dragon Warrior, as the artifacts are in Lost in Blue. And these are the same as the boxes and the parrot and the spear and the boomerang.

These are all different approaches toward the same, or similar, ideals. Player progression relies on personal growth and curiosity. Within its own laws, the gameworld is responsive to nearly all actions allowed the player. There is a strong focus on trial and error. On exploration on both the micro and macro levels. On pushing the limits of the gameworld to see what happens, and maybe being punished half the time. On intuitive leaps of reasoning, within the given laws. On patience. On innate appreciation of the intangible within a greater scheme.

The laws and structure of the gameworld are a framework filled with an open question. Rote progression is never a problem, and yet the purpose never particularly lies in the plot. Or in completion. Any story, any imposed goals are simply excuses. MacGuffins. They’re there to get you out the door. To give you an anchor, a point of reference. Maybe a path to walk down. The real joy, the really important material, comes in the unimportant treasures of providence provided by the player’s presence in the gameworld, by interfering as an outsider in a self-contained system.

The player, as Link in the first Zelda in particular, is not particularly meant to traverse Hyrule. He has no weapon. He has no defense. He has no health. There is no path specifically laid out for him, and yet there is a certain logic to be exploited — inconsistently, though consistently enough. At no point does the game call for the boomerang, or the wand. The game can probably be beaten without the sword, if the player is so inclined. Yet the tools are there to be made use of.

The world of Riven is alien to the player, and presents a barrier at every turn — and yet there is a logic behind it all; a reason why everything is where and as it is. As an outsider this lack of familiarity is an initial barrier. Later that same outside perspective and status puts the player in a rarified position. The simple joys of Riven come again from a whimsical turn of that same relationship with the gameworld — from sitting on a sun-baked stone stairwell, listening to the birds and the insects and the surf below. Imagining the coolness of the shadows and the moss on the stones. Appreciating what would go unappreciated were the player to belong here. Finding one’s own treasure in a broader system.

And yet none of these games are wholly open. Unlike Morrowind or Fallout or Baldur’s Gate, there is a clear and immediate structure. There is a limit to the options available to the player. The rules and the logic of the worlds are all simple and compact. There are only so many actions. There are only so many items. There are only so wide a world, so many levels, so many set pieces, so much of a variance in direction. There is a specific ultimate task before the player, a specific direction to move in. Save the princess. Learn about these Biomonsters. Figure out what’s going on in this world. Defeat the Metroids. Survive and maybe escape. Defeat the Colossi.

The secret to success in all cases is in understanding the reasoning of the gameworld, and the method of understanding — as in life — is experimentation. It is in the quirks, the exceptions, the trivialities — that with no clear explanation — that the searching mind finds the most wonder and curiosity. And it is in these quirks that such a mind imbues the most meaning, specifically for their lack of meaning, their lack of purpose. Their lack of structure, and all it implies about the gameworld and the player’s presence within it.

It is in these imperfections that we find beauty and we find reality. In which humanity and therefore something we identify as truth shows itself. In which we see hints of a structure or a randomness beyond our comprehension, that is greater than us, that is greater than our mission and yet that leads us to our fate. It is here that we find significance, that we find meaning, that we find verification for our continued efforts.

It is this which drives us on.

Touch Survival Kids

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Lost in Blue feels a lot like Zelda 1. Same sense of constant danger, being stranded somewhere to fend for yourself. In Zelda the danger is mostly from monsters and things. Can’t explore too far or they’ll kill you. Have to work your way up. In Lost in Blue, the dangers are hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. I’m just gradually building myself up to explore further and further inland. I keep finding miraculous things like an empty glass bottle, washed up on shore, that lets me carry water with me. And long sticks, that I can fashion into spears. And logs, that I might be able to build something with eventually.

It’s a lot like the treasures in Zelda, which you just sort of find, and which mostly seem special because they’re something you found, that might help you, rather than because they’re the key that unlocks the next door that lets you go forward (as in the later games). Though they might have that effect, It’s not that direct.

I’m surprised the game doesn’t make more use of the touchscreen — even in the menus. Strange to have to actually press the start button when it says “PRESS START”. And it’s weird that you can’t just dump stuff on the floor of your cave. It’s not like the twigs would go anywhere. I can see a certain limit, like after a certain point the girl complaining that, what with her unable to see (you step on her glasses near the beginning), she’s liable to trip if you clutter the place any more.

I found raspberries!

Castlevania is… there. It is what it is. It’s another Castlevania. A pretty good one. I think my save file getting corrupted just soured me on everything. It was my own fault. I think I turned the system off while it was saving.

The first part of the game is wonderful. Then it gets boring. Then more boring. Then more boring. Then it gets better, then better, then more boring, then a little better. You actually aren’t ever in The Castle, as such. Though when you’re on the fringes of this mess of a hideout, things are much more well-defined. The level design is just really good in the first two sections of the game. And it looks interesting and has great music. The two towers are great. The best clocktower ever. And there are some great touches. In between, though…

The whole middle section is just monsters on shelves, that you cut through to get to the next room. It’s weird, because there are such good parts on either end. It’s like the level designers fell asleep for half the game. Maybe they just left the whole middle section open, figuring “we’ve got the outlines; we’ll fill the rest in later.” Then deadline approached, and they just went and scribbled in every middle square as quickly as they could. That the map is so well-conceived overall seems to support this impression.

I got disenchanted somewhere around the ballroom, and I don’t think I ever quite recovered. A shame, considering how much good there is here.

Important Glossary of Terms

  • Reading time:13 mins read

by [name redacted]

This is another unpublished article — ostensibly a glossary for the end of a “New Games Journalism” anthology edited by Kieron Gillen, friend to all woodland creatures. It was to have been published by O’Reilly Media; as tends to happen, there was a management change and the new guy was no longer interested in the book. At least I got paid… in a check composed in pounds sterling, that my bank refused to cash. Hm. Well, here it is.

As few of our readers are likely familiar with the intricate jargon involved in videogame writing, I have been asked to compile a list of common words and phrases found throughout this volume. Although some of these words may look and may even sound familiar, a wise traveler takes caution when straying into unknown land; even an innocent gesture may find you on the wrong end of a dagger or the wrong side of a jail cell. Before acting on any of the advice contained prior, and certainly before laying judgment on the claims put forth in this text, please study the following index and integrate its contents into your daily routine.

NOTE: It may help to copy these terms out on a sheet of paper, and to repeat them daily. For those culturally blessed with right-handedness, try writing the terms with your left hand for added practice and agreement between both of your mental hemispheres. For those accursed to live in a world not designed for their grasp, wield your pen alternately to those before you.

ART

A subjective form of communication that uses metaphor to suggest a vast yet implicit web of common understanding between two parties, often on a subconscious or an unconscious level.

Anathema to the Gamer.

AVATAR

In a videogame context, the in-game character or object that represents the player. In the cases where the avatar is anthropomorphic, it usually takes the form of a hyper-masculine adult male or a woman wearing three square inches of clothing. More recently, Japanese games have replaced the former archetype with an androgynous (or even hyper-feminine) male lead. This is all more comprehensible when you understand the intimate bond between a player and her on-screen persona. The player’s avatar becomes, in a sense, her closest companion on her lengthy journey through the gameworld. Especially in a modern 3D adventure, it is important to find an avatar whose ass the typical player will enjoy watching for hours at a time.

CAUSE-AND-EFFECT

Every medium is a study of specific properties of the human experience. Sculpture is a study of form; music, a study of tone. Videogames are a study of the relationship between cause and effect. That is to say: where videogames exist, experientially, is in the feedback loop between the player and the gameworld. The player acts upon the gameworld, and is given a response (or lack of one). This response then becomes the basis for further reaction. It is this ping-pong communication with one’s environment that defines the medium.

CONFLICT

The goals set before the player mean relatively little unless the player has opposition to overcome in order to fulfill those goals; any screenwriter or novelist could tell you that. This opposition might take the form of a snarling man with a mustache, a lack of communication between brothers, or a lingering sense of guilt over a past deed. Conflict is the manner in which opposition is addressed. In a videogame, the solutions to the above problems would be to stab the man with the mustache, to stab your brother, then to fire a laser-guided missile at your guilt. Metaphorically, perhaps.

ENEMY

In most videogames, violence is the major or sole source of conflict. As every videogame must sustain player interest for fifty hours or more, each requires an parade of weak and generically evil characters to kill. These are known as your enemies. An enemy can be easily discerned from a non-combative NPC in that any evil entity will hurt, kill, or infect the player’s avatar on contact.

This design philosophy has its roots in early drafts of the Christian Bible, in which Jesus preached social paranoia and an ethical code based in Darwinism. (These sections were later revised in part, from fear of alienating Southern Baptist ministers.) These teachings were later adopted as a social code during the Reagan administration, during which videogames initially flourished.

EXPERIENCE

In life, experience is accumulated through keen observation, trial and error, and persistence. A person’s accumulated experience is the context from which she can derive meaning from the events that make up her life, and from which artistic communication is made possible. Although these events will call on a limited number of templates, it is the way the elements are balanced that gives us each our unique perspective.

In videogames, experience is accumulated by exiting your town borders and stabbing bunny rabbits. You can tell how much experience you have gained by the numerical tally in your sub-menu. With enough experience, you will advance to the next level (of advancement) and possibly learn fire magic.

FREEDOM

Doesn’t exist. See Liberty.

GAMEPLAY

An objective term for the liberty allowed within a given gameworld; the things that a game lets you do, and therefore the elements that make up the player’s potential. Often misapplied to mean how a game feels to play – whether the jumping seems solid, whether attacking is satisfying. Those are mechanical issues. This is just about potential: what you can, hypothetically, do.

On an even keel with graphics, and far more important than sound or replay value.

GAMER

Creatures whose personal identity is rooted in a lifestyle built around videogames. Typically conservative, defensive, and isolationist in attitude – especially when it comes to videogames, especially the particular videogames in which they are most deeply invested.

Notable subspecies: Hardcore Gamers, Retro Gamers, Obscure Gamers, PC Gamers, Console Gamers, Fighter Fans, RPG Fans, Shooter Fans, Technophiles, Wilson’s Golden Band-Rumped Gamer.

GAMEWORLD

The artificial space given to the player to navigate, including all of its rules, logistics, background, and inhabitants – the way all of these elements cohere to form a tangible place – that’s the gameworld. Pac-Man’s gameworld is limited to an endlessly-repeating blue maze filled with ghosts who re-spawn in their central nest, corridors lined with cookies, and the occasional bouncing piece of fruit. Shenmue’s gameworld is a limited recreation of a mid-’80s Japanese suburb where you never have to eat, where the kids all want to wrestle, and where people actually know whether or not they saw a black car on the day that the snow turned to rain.

A gameworld is largely defined by the liberty allowed the player; its verisimilitude, however unrepresentative it might seem of the “real world”, relies mostly on not suggesting any more possibilities than it actually allows. Once the player starts to question why a reasonable option is unavailable to him – say, stepping over a line of police tape or walking down a corridor blocked off by an invisible wall – the illusion is shattered. In its abstraction, Pac-Man has a highly believable gameworld; few would question, for instance, why the player can’t merely jump over the maze walls.

GRAPHICS

A term used by gamers and game journalists to refer to the visual presentation of a gameworld. The implication is that boiling down a game’s appearance to an objective-sounding term will allow an easy (perhaps even numerical!) assessment of worth. Old games, like the original Legend of Zelda, have bad graphics. New games, like the newest car racing or Madden game, have good graphics. Unless they don’t map enough mips or buffer enough Zs, that is.

Alongside gameplay, one of the two most important review criteria.

INTERFACE

The means through which a player may interact with the gameworld. Interfaces have both a physical and a design component: physically, you have the means through which commands are entered (a control pad, joystick, power glove); by design, the player is given feedback through a display device. For example, the game tells you to hit “A” to open a menu. You press the “A” button on your controller. This brings up the menu, which gives you further information to inform future actions. An interface is the objective aspect of the cause-and-effect relationship between player and game. The subjective aspect is known as mindspace.

LIBERTY

Liberty is freedom within bounds. Or, perhaps, the illusion of freedom. According to most codes of ethics, a person has liberty to do much as he choose so long as he not negatively interfere with the liberty of another. As conscious creatures, we have the liberty to do whatever our psychology, our circumstances, our physical laws allow – which in the end is not very much. You can pick the 2% or the skim milk, but in a sense the decision is already determined by your nature, by every event of your life to that point however inconsequential it might seem, and by factors completely outside of your control (mostly relating to the liberty of others). Even your standing at the cooler door, making up your mind, is the inevitable outcome of prior events.

Though you may have no true freedom, you have full liberty to do what you will within the means and situation provided you. Though your decisions may objectively be preordained, you subjectively have the option to choose whatever path you wish. The same is true of every gameworld. Although Liberty City may allow you a broader scope of options than Pac-Land, both offer the same liberty within the narrow box handed you. If a game has strong verisimilitude, the bounds of your liberty will never occur to you and you will simply accept the world as it is given.

MECHANIC

In real life we have laws – physical laws, social laws, ethical laws. Instead, videogames have mechanics. In theory, mechanics exist to define the boundaries and establish the potential of a gameworld. In reality, ninety percent of all game mechanics exist to make one genre piece distinguishable from another.

MINDSPACE

On its own, a videogame is just a collection of code burned into an optical disc or some other storage medium. Videogames are, in a sense, pure ideas. There is no physical element to them. Further, a tremendous background of technology and service is required to experience a videogame. All of this investment exists to create an absorbing mindspace for the end player. The mindspace between player and game is where a videogame actually takes place; where a player serves as protagonist to his own gameworld experience, according to the liberties alloted him by the game mechanics. The greater the verisimilitude of the gameworld, the more easily a player’s mindspace is retained. Mindspace is the purely subjective component of the cause-and-effect relationship between player and game; the objective component is known as the game interface.

NARRATIVE

The manner in which a story is told. In film, narrative is a facet of editing and framing. In a videogame, narrative comes from playing. Asteroids does have a story, as far as it has a narrative. It happens to be a story of a lone space ship and its ultimately doomed goal to clear the space around it of dangerous space rocks. The particulars come in the telling – that is, in the playing. How long the ship lasts, how well it does, what close calls it has, are all up to the player.

The greater the scope of liberty allowed a player, the more undefined the narrative.

NPC

A non-player character is an actor on the stage who is strictly controlled by the script, rather than by a human mind. In effect, an automaton placed within the gameworld to give it the appearance of population outside the player. Sort of creepy. Generally considered distinct from an enemy, in that NPCs are given the illusion of personalities and lives of their own, whereas enemies only exist to be evil. NPCs are typically a barrier to verisimilitude, in that both by nature (as living props) and by technological limitation, they will never behave in a completely believable manner.

PLAYER

Life is but a stage, and we are all players.

POTENTIAL

latent possibility. The greatest achievement of verisimilitude is the suggestion of endless potential within a given world – the sense that anything could be out there, that you can do anything you want, that a miracle is just around the corner.

VERISIMILITUDE

The illusion of reality, which in most cases is achieved through not giving the audience cause to question the reality at hand. Postmodernism gets some of its kicks though turning verisimilitude on its head and bringing conscious attention to the seams of a given work. On its own terms, though, this is just another level of reality, with its own layer of verisimilitude. For a work to succeed, we need to believe in it somehow, even if that belief is a belief that we shouldn’t believe in it at all.

Different from suspension of disbelief, as with enough verisimilitude disbelief won’t even enter the picture.

VIOLENCE

The only important form of videogame conflict, violence involves the malicious harm of, or the intent to harm, another being. Violence can be overt and physical; some figures like Mohandas Gandhi more broadly interpret it as any negative effect, however inadvertent, one person might suffer at another’s hands. Jean-Paul Sartre sees human communication itself as a form of violence; merely by interacting with another, we cause damage on some level, for both parties. Given that the entire nature of videogames is a study of communication, perhaps this says something.

Videogame violence is of a literal variety: one character brandishes a blade, and attacks the next. Oddly, although violence both forms and resolves nearly every videogame conflict, it is rare that videogames explore the repercussions of violence. Ethically, it is perfectly fine for the player to shoot ten thousand soldiers in order to save a single comrade, because the enemy soldiers are not real. They have no lives, no personalities, no bearing on the gameworld. They are simply evil incarnate, much like the “Communists” and “Terrorists” of American history. Perhaps intrinsically, the only force that matters in a gameworld is that of the player, and if the player is to continue feeding quarters, or is to feel generically satisfied with his fifty-dollar purchase, a videogame must encourage the player to feel not only justified but victorious in his actions. This is the state of videogames today.

Special thanks to Tim Rogers, Brandon Sheffield, Shepard Saltzman, Andrew Toups, Amandeep Jutla, Thom Moyles, James Freeman Rinehart, and Christian Culbertson.

This Week’s Releases (Sep 26-30, 2005)

  • Reading time:15 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week twelve of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Catching up from a strong PSP showing at TGS, the DS has begun its cavalcade of fall delights. Also, some decent compilations and a creative D&D game. Check it out!

Today (Monday, September 26th)

Trace Memory (DS)
Jinx/Nintendo

In Japan, this is called “Another Code”. Neither name is that memorable, I’m afraid. The game itself is (as with Lost in Blue, below) one of the new slate of adventure games that serves to demonstrate how the DS hardware might be used. Trace Memory is in essence a Myst-style adventure game – nothing special on its own right, except that point-and-click games have generally been alien to the console and handheld side of the industry, due in part to interface issues, in part to the different mindspace projected by a PC and a TV environment.

In their intimacy, handheld games are a little closer to PCs than are console games – so in theory, the only real hurdle should be the interface. With its stylus and touch screen, the DS is perhaps even more ideal than a PC-and-mouse setup; simply tap where you wish to look. Beyond this, Trace Memory blurs a few edges between PC adventure games and console-style adventures by displaying an overhead view on the top screen and leaving the bottom screen for your character’s first-person perspective. Use the control pad to precisely navigate, or use the touch screen to point your way around. You can think of the bottom screen as a heads-up display or the top screen as a mere map, if you like.

The game is short, from what I gather. That seems just as well, for what the game is. There was a little buzz around Another Code a few months ago, even before people stopped dismissing the DS out-of-hand – so it should gain a small and reasonably loyal following on release. Even if it doesn’t sell through the roof, it still should be valuable to study.

Worlds

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Occurs to me that the thing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly has definitely in common with Fellowship of the Ring (more than the other two Rings movies), and indeed with things like Lang’s Metropolis and The Third Man and Nosferatu — basically every movie I find magical and involving — is that the movie’s world is in a sense the main character. There are other characers in the movie, with their own agendas that we follow. The main conflict or relationship, though, is between those characters and the world they’re in — which in most cases is their own world; they just don’t see all of the aspects of it that we do, because they live there. The characters exist to bounce off the scenery, to ignore it, to walk us through it, to give us contrast with it..

This also describes The Legend of Zelda. And Silent Hill. And Phantasy Star II. And Dragon Warrior. And just about every videogame I find magical and involving. Hell, Riven is nothing but environment.

In a certain meta way, it also decribes more postmodern fare like Charlie Kaufman and Treasure. In MGS3, Kojima does both at the same time! Resident Evil 4 tries to as well, though it’s a little more clunky in execution.

A thread here.

Perspective

  • Reading time:3 mins read

LttP focused things. everything became more well defined, limpid. for people who thought the important parts of the original had to do with the “gameplay,” the structure of the game itself, LttP was a masterpiece. for people who valued the original for its “ideas,” the way it made the player feel as if there really were limitless possibilities (even though this feeling was the product of haphazard design, more often than not), LttP feels neutered, and misses the point, sacrificing the idea of free adventure for well-crafted but unimportant gameplay.

That’s about it. Or even more simply, it’s a matter of the game for its own sake versus the game as inspiration for things outside the game. Objective versus subjective value. Definition versus ambiguity. A dead end and a mere strand in the larger endless net of life.

Since, you know. The games themselves are just things. They don’t really matter.

There’s a word for the worship of objects rather than appreciating what they suggest and stand for within the context of human experience. It’s not a terribly flattering one. Actually, there are several, and none of them are all that positive. It seems to say something about the relationship between human tendencies and ideals. We like the idea of hope, but usually don’t have the energy or will to entertain it for long.

Even just growing up is the same struggle. The same awkward balance. Generally in this culture people wind up feeling defeated by life by the time they’re middle-aged. Thus the stronger tendency toward conservatism in the elderly. This is kind of sad, from my perspective. A last desperate attempt to reclaim what’s come and gone, to make sense of a life that one never took the time to understand the first time around and now it’s getting on to too late. It’s a sign of despair.

I’ve gone through adolescence, a less than ideal first twenty or so years of my life. I’m past it now and I’m done despairing what there was to despair, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t really all that much. Time is too short and too interesting to wallow.

It’s a shame other people can’t get over their own problems the same way. Then, I guess that’s why I write the things I do. Try to offer some glimpse of how else things might be. Videogames are, I guess, as good a tool as any.

R&D1 does what Ninten… D’OH!!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I think I figured it out.

I just read that Nintendo R&D#1 is no more. It’s been absorbed and folded into Miyamoto’s boring old EAD studios. This dismays me, as R&D#1 has always been the one Nintendo studio that actually interested me. (Well, I like R&D#3 also — I’ve no problem with Ice Hockey or Punch-Out.) This was Yokoi’s studio. It’s where Metroid and Kid Icarus came from. The Game Boy. The Wars series. Fire Emblem. Wario Ware, as flawed as it is (mostly for EAD-ish reasons), is one of Nintendo’s few breakthrough game concepts in years.

Now, though, it’s all EAD from here on out.

Shit.

Anyway. The SNES was where EAD, through force of sheer star power, first began to shove R&D#1 to the gutter. Mario and Zelda were Nintendo’s most popular series, so Miyamoto got priority. The SNES was his system. R&D#1 was reassigned to support the Gameboy. Note that the one real game the team made for the SNES, Super Metroid, is often cited as the one real reason to own it. Although I think it’s the most boring in the series, it’s sure head and heels above fucking Mario World or Starfox.

Again, the SNES was Miyamoto’s system. Suddenly there was no more competition. He just got his way. So this is where it all began to devolve. Nintendo just went with what was popular instead of challenging itself, internally (as had been the case previously). Refine what had been proven effective. And this philosophy bleeds out of every pore of the system. It’s like a whole system devoted to a more-competent Sonic Team.

In contrast, the Game Boy was Yokoi’s system. The DS is basically the successor to the Game Boy, and to the whole R&D#1 approach to design. This is the progressive direction, because it has to compete with the popularity of white bread.

And that’s just what the SNES is and always was: the Wonderbread console. The start of Nintendo’s entrenchment.

On Licensed Fare

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Occurs to me, the best way to structure a Lord of the Rings videogame is to make it from Frodo’s persective, and Frodo’s perspective alone. Everything else is spiralling around somewhere in the background, out of his control, adding to the atmosphere. Assuming this game were based on the movies rather than the books, it would begin, with no particular prologue, outside the Green Dragon. The player, as Frodo, would amble, slightly drunk, back to Bag End; Sam would be around to help show the way. If the player were to go too far off-track, Sam could say, in a comforting voice, “‘ere, Mister Frodo, you’ve had a bit too much. Best follow me.” And Frodo would stumble around and take a step back toward Sam, with a bit of an acquiescent shrug. Sam would leave the player at the gate to Bag End, maybe pushing a bit, allowing the player to trot up through the door and walk around a little before Gandalf jumps out of nowhere, scaring the player half to death, asking about the Ring.

Within the context of the game, the player of course has no idea what’s happening. Frodo mumbles to Gandalf something about how he thinks he left it in the chest over there; the camera moves to frame it, the player is left free to wander Bag End; Gandalf will start to grow irritated if the player doesn’t go straight to the chest and open it, though. Once open, Frodo automatically fumbles around and draws out the envelope; Gandalf snatches it away, the whole sequence plays. Eventually the player is left free to scramble around for a few moments (there’s an invisible timer of sorts — long enough to be sane, short enough that the player can’t take however long he wants; Gandalf starts to get impatient if the player takes too long) and take whatever in Bag End seems of use. If the player seems confused, Gandalf will bark out suggestions. “Take some food! And try that walking stick over there!” When the player is done, he goes to Gandalf. (If the player just dallies forever, Gandalf interrupts and says they’ve delayed long enough. He might shove a generic pile of stuff into Frodo’s hands.) There’s another short bit of discussion, before Sam gets yanked through the window. Then the game cuts to Gandalf and Frodo walking along the road, toward the edge of Hobbiton, Sam scampering behind, Gandalf berating him. Gandalf offers his advice, and the player is left alone.

From then on, it’s forward. The player isn’t allowed back into Hobbiton. (“No… no, I can’t go back now. I’m afraid it’s no longer safe.”) Otherwise, it’s mostly free reign all through the Shire. Not much will happen aside from exploration. The hobbits become visibly exhausted and will begin to stagger if they don’t rest and eat from time to time. The general idea is to keep off the road, although it’s a good idea to keep the road in sight, lest the player become lost. Stray too far and you might have some strange run-ins; with wood elves or dwarves or even orcs. Sort of a Zelda or Dragon Quest idea of borders: although you can go anywhere, it’s on your own head if you act like a fool and stray far. Likewise, the farther from the path, the darker and more menacing the woods get; the greater the ambient noise. The game will send psychological signals, telling the player he shouldn’t be there (especially given the lack of any real means of self-defense except, perhaps, the occasional stone). Maybe if the player strays really, really far, Sam will be there to freak out and plead with Frodo to get back to the road.

The player probably won’t get actually killed or injured. He might be visibly (if subtly) stalked by wolves for a while. Just to give the player the hint. Perhaps if the player does get attacked, and injured a little, a ranger or a wood elf will pop out to slay the wolf and advise the player back to safety. Of course, if the player runs into someone on the road, that person will probably recognize Frodo and start making a big deal about it: “Why, FRODO BAGGINS, fancy seein’ you ‘ere! Why, wait until I tell the blokes at the pub who I ran across out in the middle of nowhere, why won’t they have a scream!” Frodo will automatically respond “Y…yes, nice to see you again. We’d really best be moving on.” “Oy, now that’s friendly! Well, have it as you will… (mutter mutter)” And the passerby would continue walking down the path. The idea is to give the player the idea that maybe he should avoid being recognized.

It will take a long while to walk from one place to the next; that’s a big part of the point. It’s all about the journey, about the sense of place along the way. Sense of distance. Sense of foreboding, as well. The idea that maybe the player is being watched. That the farther you get from home, the more treacherous the world feels, to a point. (This is before the wonder of travelling starts to really kick in, and when turning back still seems like a viable option, even if you know you can’t.)

Likewise, the game will somewhat funnel the player along the “right” path just by virtue of level design, carrots, and the above psychology. Farmer Maggot’s fields, say, will be the most obvious route to go, just because going any other route will be so unpleasant and slow, and Sam will whine so much, that it will in effect be the only viable option. If the player happens to miss Merry and Pippin one place, they will continue to wander around such that the player will meet them eventually, somehow, in some incidental manner. The level design will also ensure this. How the meeting transpires depends on the circumstances. If the player is being chased by black riders already, the dynamics will be different from if they bump into each other in a corn field or along the road.

As for the black riders: it should be immediately obvious to the player when they are coming — from visual, aural, and tactile cues. The idea is to make the player realize he really, really shouldn’t be where he is, and that he should get away and hide somewhere. It’ll be an ongoing menace for a while, keeping the player from standing around too long. If the player gets caught, maybe Merry and Pippin show up and pelt the rider with rocks, causing it to drop Frodo, and tell the player to follow them. Maybe the game is simply over right then and there. The rider rides off with Frodo, leaving Sam behind, weeping. And after a few moments, the screen fades to black, the player hears the sound of Frodo screaming, and the text “This is not the end…” appears.

The player should have the option to put on the ring at any time. Should be tempted. Perhaps when the Riders are near, the game interface does something to sugest to the player to use the item.

The game continues in this manner throughout the entire quest; things that are out of Frodo’s control are out of the player’s. The player is tempted and guided and manipulated just as Frodo is, all for the psychological effect. The idea is to make the player really feel like Frodo. To eventually confuse the hell out of him, and to make him want to take the easy way out of things.

I don’t see this game getting made. It wouldn’t be all that hard, of course. Not really. It’s certainly feasible. It’s just… not where we are, yet. Not how we think about videogames, yet. A shame, as I want to play it.

Psychology

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So. Videogames tend to be built like videogames. People tend to play videogames like videogames — even if playing them that way hurts the experience. People go to great lengths to do stupid things in videogames just because they must collect every item, do everything that can be done, before they finish. And videogames know this.

Why is that treasure chest placed in that out-of-the-way room that no one has reason to go to? To reward someone who goes down there. Why do most people go down there, even if it’s clearly not the right direction? Not out of curiosity, but because they expect a reward. It’s become a task, almost. (Again, look at how RPGs tend to be made.) Some second-guessing is fun, if it’s clever and unobvious. Much of it is just tiresome. Everyone’s nodding, saying, “Yeah, we get it. We’ve been here before.” And yet there’s this unwritten code, that everyone’s afraid to break. It leads to leaps of logic like the player being expected to wander around and level up for two hours to beat a boss. That’s just plain fucking bizarre. Grotesque. Picture it, for a moment. What FUCKING reason do you have to do that?

Same for the perfectionist impulse, where you must collect everything — just because it’s there to collect. And the games now take way too much advantage of this, as a result of people reacting in that dysfunctional way to start with. It’s a natural compulsion, so the games treat it as if people actually gain joy from it. When it’s really more of a feeling of obligation. A quirk of mental chemistry, because the game presents it as a viable option. And now we’ve come to expect it so much that we become pissed off when we can’t finish a game with a perfect save file. Same with speed runs and sequence breaking for the sake of sequence breaking and all of this inanity that comes out of that stew of boredom, idle greed, and the natural human response to a lack of consequence.

Doukutsu Monogatari makes me wonder. It’s weak here, but. Perhaps a way to discourage, say, hoarding in a game is to make it so you can’t get a good ending unless you play it in a sane, non-videogamey way.

Silent Hill 2 also comes into this a little, as does the discussion about hardware — although you don’t really need advanced hardware for this. Not in a basic sense. I mean. Some version of this goes as far back as Ultima. Further, probably.

I don’t mean imposing arbitrary (or strict story-based) limits, of the kind we’re all so used to and annoyed with. Damn, I can’t get through this door because I have the Zippomat instead of the Gizmodrome. Or I haven’t given this item to this other character, triggering this plot event. So I can’t progress until I do it. What I mean is, sure — let the player do whatever he wants within the boundaries of the game world. Yet if the player is obviously behaving in a manner inappropriate to the situation, just because he CAN, or because he’s used to second-guessing what videogames are asking of him, it will result in — well. Not punishment, so much as consequences.

Someone else can come up with specific examples, I’m sure. As well as too many examples of when a game’s charm comes from exactly that freedom to put your trinkets in a row. Or from subverting the system (though that’s not what I’m talking about here, exactly; I’m all about subversion within the established rules — which is why I can appreciate Nippon Ichi’s SRPGs even as I am unwilling to play them). I’m just working in vague generalities. And I don’t know where they’re going.

What are the possible ramifications here? Is a lack of consequene for the player’s acting like a yo-yo, or like (simply) a gamer, part of why videogames are still so fucking adolescent? Clearly, a good portion of their existing audience — probably the most vocal and obvious segment — would do as well to grow up as the games they’re playing. How much are the two sides encouraging the current situation? What are the dynamics?

It basically is a question of motivation. In Shenmue, there’s such potential to get absorbed in the gamey nonsense — and some people do, and become lost and annoyed. For the most part, though, I just feel compelled to drink in the situation. Play it as if I’m living a life, rather than play it as a game. It’s actually rather boring if you try to second-guess it and to treat it as a typical videogame. I think maybe its fault is that there is little aside from boredom to dissuade the player from going all OCD and missing the point. If you linger too long, I hear that Long Di eventually comes and kills Ryo. That’s a long way out, though. I’ve never had to worry about it, even at my slowest poke of a pace. It’s likely boredom will drive anyone on by then; the only reason to remain, in fact, is to find out what happens if you don’t do what you’re expected to.

What might be an organic solution? I don’t know. You probably don’t want to wall the player in. As much as we like to make fun of it, the “But thou must!” mechanism is pretty omnipresent. It seems to me that it’s best to allow the player to make those bad decisions (sorry, Nintendo!), and to naturally wind up in an undesirable circumstance as a result. That’s the way we learn, y’know? On the one hand, don’t encourage acting like you have a mental problem — so if the player goes there, it’s his own doing. On the other, make him feel like a genuine idiot for behaving so erratically.

I think the latter would be most effective as an end effect, rather than a snap response to walking outside certain boundaries: the game cuts short, or the player gets a bad ending that shoves in his face all of the junk he’s done, or what-have-you. This would allow some leeway for the player to stray. No one’s perfect, after all.

Would a more immediate response help as an additional deterrent? I don’t know. Something in me says that this might just encourage a person, out of curiosity to see what else the game has to say about him. Any attention is a reward of some sort. And a lust for trivial reward is the main motivation for behavior lke this.

Perhaps the issue of motivation isn’t something that can be explained in a rational, mechanical way — since it relies so much on the ephemerals of emotion and tone. And because we all interpret our signals in different ways. The Zelda discussion seems to show that. What motivates me to explore Hyrule is much what would motivate me, were I put in Link’s position. What motivates some others is less experiential; more… baubly. It has to do with the gameplay mechanisms for their own sake, rather than to the end they were implemented to start with. With, in effect, how the game plays as a game. And that mentality has determined where the series has evolved as it has been refined, as it has with RPGs and so many other games.

I want to say that something’s lost here. It’s hard to define to people who aren’t tuned to it to start with, though. Or to explain why it’s so important. Hell, it’s a big part of the reason why I play videogames. And so, I expect, it is with many others before they become distracted or mis-trained because of the mental level that videogames so like to tap into. The feeder-bar level of gratification.

It’s seriously unhealthy, I think, where videogames are now. I think, in a manner, they promote and hone OCD and ADD-oriented levels of behavior and thinking. And although it might sound a stretch, I think that might be one factor in why so many gamers are such… insufferable fucks, to be blunt. And the sad thing is, this is gaming’s audience, so there’s a feedback loop. Games are developed for people who already exhibit these signs, and those games just promote them all the more.

Yet. Videogames can operate on a more human level. How much needs to come from the player, seems to depend on the game. For its time, Zelda promoted a much richer mindset. Myst and Riven piss off the core gamer demographic, which tries to approach them like puzzle games, even as they reward people who come at them looking for something more involving. And even Treasure’s games — say, Ikaruga and Gradius V — have a transcendent emotional quality to them, born out of their self-conscious design. They depend on the player’s familiarity with videogames, to make a grander set of statements about the medium itself, and the way we interact with it.

I guess the situation can be summed as follows:

Q: How do we get players to behave like human beings?
A: We motivate them on a human level.
Q: How do we do that?
A: That’s the key, isn’t it.

I was about to go on, and say something about discouraging unhealthy lines of thought — then it struck me how vague that is. More like discourage OCD and ADD-oriented thought strains. I would love videogames to mature enough to allow, or even encourage, the player to explore unhealthy modes of thought. Silent Hill 2 has a passive reaction to the player’s way of thinking; if the player behaves in a suicidal way, for example, the game decides that the main character went to Silent Hill to kill himself. A more tangible set of reactions might be interesting. Not sure how that might be achieved, though.

A while ago, I explored the idea of an emotional change in the player’s avatar, depending on the player’s actions. For instance, in an RPG, you, the player have the option to wander around and kill things, to grow stronger and more experienced and whatnot — yet you lose a bit of yourself every time you kill. A little bit of civility. Of humanity. And that will affect the way the avatar will interpret and interact with the game world. The more you kill, the more unpleasant the game becomes. The more hardened the character becomes, until he becomes something of a psychotic monster. The type who would just wander around and kill anything he came across, for no good reason. He will be treated as such, in-game. Most important, this can’t be seen from a clinical distance. It has to be done in a way that the player will grow uncomfortable with the way things are progressing.

I think Fable experimented with a bit of this line of reasoning, though it couldn’t take it far — so in the end it became something of a cartoon illustration of ideas someone else might want to reinterpret and implement more seriously in another five years or so.

That quality of discomfort seems the most important one, for barrier-building. As long as we’re dealing in emotions, anyway. Whether that discomfort be moral, ethical, fear-based, or just plain boredom and disappointment must, I guess, depend on circumstance.

Again, I would love to get to the point where it would be possible to make an effective Clockwork Orange of sorts; a truly transgressive experience. I’m afraid that’s not really feasible until we’ve established some barriers, though. Made them standardized. The most transgressive a game you can get at present is something like a Kojima game, which rebels against the assumed contract between game and player on a mechanical, on a conceptual level. That’s all nice. I don’t know if we’re really there until it will actually mean something to do that on an emotional level. And until gamers are accustomed to behaving like human beings, that’s not going to happen.

EDIT: Discussion continued here.

Move-Blocking

  • Reading time:9 mins read

In the original Zelda, the closest thing to a block puzzle consisted of pushing a single block one space. In effect, it’s just a hidden switch; not a puzzle-as-such. A secret trigger. The same as the book or andiron you move to open the staircase behind the bookshelf in the old mansion. Whoa, you think. Who knew that was there.

This is how Zelda works: obfuscation. Any object might hold any amount of potential. You’re never told you can bomb walls in the dungeons — and usually you don’t need to. Yet if you do, you can often make shortcuts or find secret areas. No one tells you you can push against the walls, in the second quest, to phase through. It’s just another hidden quality.

No one tells you you can burn bushes, or bomb rocks. No one tells you you can move blocks. No one tells you about those warp staircases. Or that the statues come alive when you touch them. Hell, is there a reason those stones look like turtles?

This all gives the game environment a sense of mystery and vitality. You have the surface: walls, trees, cliff faces. And then you have another level, where you’re never quite sure what’s possible and what isn’t. Anything could, hypothetically, mean anything. Anything could be anywhere.

That’s where the awe and wonder come from: this sense of endless possibility, once you start making discoveries. Once you get a taste of the world’s hidden logic. It all feels magical. You feel like maybe, just maybe if you’re clever enough, you’ll find something, some secret no one else has ever seen before. I had dreams about this stuff. About a whole other world I’d find, by burning just the right bush.

And the reason this all works, again, is that the world doesn’t feel set out for the player. Beyond the forbidding nature of the overworld — where the game sets barriers just out of difficulty; you don’t want to stray too far, lest you find yourself in real trouble — there’s this whole second layer. It’s totally hidden. If you find it, it’s your own doing. It’s up to you to make of it what you will.

The dungeons don’t exist for the player to go through. They don’t have special puzzles set out in a special order, so that the player can solve them and take all of the dungeon’s treasure and kill all of the monsters. They’re not tests. They’re just there. Because they’ve always been there. Relics of some earlier time, that we can’t know about. They’re meant to be dangerous. Dank, abandoned holes in the ground where monsters have come to lurk. Maybe if you survive you can pull something neat out of there — just because no one else has been stupid enough to enter in centuries. That’s up to you, though.

And so on. This is the quality that I associate with Zelda. It’s what attracts me to the game, from the gold cartride to the music at the title screen, to that cave in the first screen where you pick up your first item — your sword — to Spectacle Rock, to the bizarre hints the old men give, to that place on the upper-right, where you have to climb up through the rocks, to “IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY”, to the way the Power Bracelet is just sitting there, under that suit of armor, right in the open.

You just never know.

It’s what makes it more than just a series of gameplay mechanisms and items and characters. Which is what the series has been since the third game, to one extent or another.

The whole lock-and-key exploration thing, in particular, is a problem. If not inherently, then at least in the approach that we’ve come to accept.

You must acquire tools to expand your range!

um.

That’s not what I get out of Zelda. I mean. Technically, yeah, it is a mechanism in the original structure. To say it’s a focus of the game, though, and inherently enjoyable, is kind of like saying… oh, I don’t know.

You’re tarnishing something, with that attitude. Mistaking a process for a purpose. Ritual for meaning.

Maybe it’ll help to break down the tools in the original game, and how they relate to the game’s progression. Offhand, the ladder and the raft are the only two items I can recall which are immediately… practical, in this sense. In that they inherently open new territory. And compared to the way these mechanisms are used in other games, they’re relatively tame.

There are only a couple of docks in the game where the raft may be used. And you don’t really know what the docks are for. You don’t see any destination. You don’t think “Gee, I wish I had a raft so I could get over there…” You don’t even know what’s over there. Or realize you could get there over the water. It doesn’t occur to you. Later you find a raft, and you start to wonder what to do with the thing. You go to the dock, and you’re magically carried away to a place you have never seen before. It all works on a similar hidden level to what I was talking about before. The raft kind of unlocks a hidden purpose — much as the flute does, especially in the second quest.

And the ladder — well. It’s automatic, in a similar way though on a smaller scale. It isn’t dramatic at all; it’s just practical. Hell, a ladder isn’t even perhaps an ideal item for its use in the game: for bridging gaps. It’s just, it works. The game doesn’t make a big deal of it. It’s just — “oh, you know, you can use this to cross gaps now.”

I don’t know that there are too many places where the player just can’t progress without a ladder. Most of the map, most of the dungeons are open either way. Sometimes, though, there are gaps. The player is used to it. He isn’t waiting for a way to bridge them. He just accepts that he isn’t able to cross them. The game makes the barriers clear enough.

And after he gets the ladder, he still can’t — not unless the gaps are very narrow.

The tools, when they come about, present themselves as useful or wondrous rather than as neccessary. (In truth, you do need them; that isn’t the immediate concern, though.) In future games, you don’t have that. You just expect the items. You never really appreciate them, for how handy they can be, for the extra levels they bring to the experience, because you NEED them to progress.

It sounds paradoxical in a way; you never really value them, because they’re too precious. Precious to the point where they’re obstacles because you don’t have them. And when you find them, you don’t think “hey, neat!”: you think “Oh god, finally.” Or, worse: “Oh, there it is. Now I can do x.”

Ugh.

How logical. How… insensitive.

The deal is — gameplay mechanics aren’t interesting or fun just because they exist. They exist to solve some kind of problem. That problem should usually have some emotional component, or consideration — since, ultimately, the goal of a videogame is to engage, to affect the player.

The player is not engaged, not affected, implicitly because he has a task and is told to complete it: there’s a barrier; now find a way across! Keep expanding! Affecting the player is a more subtle, more indirect process. The more mechanical, the more mathematical your design, the more artificial it feels. The more the player feels like he’s just being taken for a ride (in one sense or another), rather than having a human experience of some sort.

I think maybe the most interesting items in Zelda are the ones that don’t need to be there. The magic wand — there’s no reason for it, except that it’s special. It serves no purpose in the quest, lending that much more reality to the items which do serve a purpose. It’s more plausible that they’re not just there because the player will need them. It feels more like luck that the player can find a use for them.

And hell, there’s even a magic book — even more useless than the wand, as it serves no purpose but to add a second, unneeded function to the original, unneded function. Yet it’s in another dungeon, as another treasure linked to a previous treasure. These were treasures to someone, and now they’re treasures to Link, and the player.

The boomerang and magical boomerang are helpful, but never needed. The magical one, especially; it’s just another upgrade. And heck, they’re not even treasures in an official sense; you just pick them up from felled opponents. You MAKE them treasures.

Would the game not be as interesting if I actually needed all of this crap? I think that is so. I feel it is so. It’s special because it’s special to ME; not because I need it. I need my latch keys and my state ID, but they’re not special to me. What I consider treasures are the things which help me, which make my life more full — yet which I could, technically, function without.

I could survive without good food. That makes it all the easier to appreciate. I could survive without what people I care about (and they might not always be there for me); that makes me care about them. When you’re young, you don’t give a huge damn about your parents because you need them to survive. When you’re a teenager, they even become an obstacle for that same reason. When you’re older, and you don’t depend on them anymore, you can learn to appreciate them as people instead of as parents.

You see what I’m saying?

Texas Gunfire

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Doom is very different in philosophy and design from modern FP shooters.

Doom is built like a console game. Heck, Romero idolizes Miyamoto. Commander Keen came out of a demo that he and Carmack whipped up for Nintendo, showing how to implement the scrolling from Super Mario Bros. on a PC (which, I guess, was a feat at the time). Howard Lincoln yawned. The Texans made their own game.

Quake is, indeed, more the prototype for the modern shooter. It’s also kind of boring in comparison — at least, for me. Here they paid less attention to actual design; more to just getting a 3D engine up. That, and getting Trent Reznor involved. I mean, they already had a template with Wolf3D and Doom. Quake was just technology. They filled in the blanks with gray textures and asinine Lovecraft references. It feels like they were bored, doing it — as well they should have been, I guess, since that’s not what they cared about anymore. And this was about where Romero started to flake out, too. Whether the rise of Superprogrammer was the cause or result of this, I don’t know.

Doom isn’t concerned with being a first-person shooter as-such, since the genre didn’t exist at the time. Instead, it is an attempt to rework the rather barren Wolf3D into as vibrant a design as possible. To do something substantial with the concept, if you will. It’s kind of the same leap as from Quake to Half-Life, because it’s the same mentality at work.

Doom’s console sensibility extends from its controls (as with Wolf3D, it’s made to be played without a mouse; the mouse only really enters when you have a Z axis to worry about) to its level design and (as someone noted) pacing, to its monster designs, to its set pieces and its idea of secret areas and items.

For one, the game just drools charisma. We all can rattle off most of the monsters in Super Mario Bros. and Zelda. We know Brinstar like the backs of our hands. There is a certain iconography even to the level design: even if on a cursory glance it might not stand out as anything special, it bores into the consciousness just as well as a cheep-cheep or a zoomer. Everything is placed preciously, exactly because there is no template to fall back on.

And, as we know, there is a certain subconscious pacing built in, for how the game introduces concepts. You run to the right, jump up and hit the flashing object overhead. It makes a chime sound and a coin pops out. You’ve clearly done something well. You hit another block and a mushroom appears. It must not be harmful, unlike the enemy you either ran into, jumped on, or jumped over a moment before, as it comes out of a block like the one which rewarded you with a chime a moment before. When you touch it, you grow. Since you’re bigger, you can more easily reach the platforms above you. You try jumping and can break the bricks. Keep going right and you hit a pipe. Then two enemies. Eventually a pit. Then a fire flower. Then a koopa troopa.

And. So on. It all sounds simple, yet so few people get it right. And since it’s supposed to be invisible, so few people notice on a conscious level when it’s missing.

Doom does this, yes, on a mechanical level. Yet it does something else, too. It paces the atmosphere. I maintain that the best part of Doom is episode one (the Shareware episode) of Doom 1. After you leave the manmade environments, where something has gone really awfully wrong, and enter the abstract flesh-tents of Hell, the game has pretty much blown its wad (pun very much intended). Then the game just becomes about shooting, and I don’t much care for it. Episode one has a certain stress to it, however. You wander the station, looking for something to restore your ailing health. The lights go out. You hear snarls in the distance. You know something’s out there — but where?

And then there are just so many hidden passages. You never know what wall might open, and how. Or what you might find (like the Chainsaw). It’s kind of like Zelda, again. Often you can see things in the distance, or through windows, that you just plain can’t access through normal means. This gets you exploring.

The whole mindset that the game creates, with all of this — the mindset that it asks for — is different. It’s more introverted. More careful. The game is as much about exploration and generally owning the gameworld as it is about blowing shit up.

There’s a certain balance here, from level to level. Just study how things are laid out. It’s no mistake that the shareware episode is the best; after all, it’s the one that id needed to be good, if anyone was going to register.

>How would you say the modern FPS has deviated from this Doom mindset? And starting where, exactly? Doom II? Duke Nukem 3D? Quake?

I don’t know. I became disgusted with the whole degenre around the time of Q3 and UT. I like what I’ve seen about HL2, from this distance. It reminds me of, uh, Myst.

Quake’s probably a good place to start. Or maybe you could begin with all of the knockoffs of Wolf3D and Doom, which used the same engine yet didn’t do anything interesting with it. They helped to pollute the mindspace a bit, I bet, and distract from the reasons why Doom was as excellent as it was.

Quake’s the landmark, though, for all the obvious reasons. I mean, it led the way, from Quake to Quake II to Quake III, to a technology-oriented philosophy. It doesn’t matter what you do with the engine; it just matters what the engine does. Throw in a few rules and some network code, and you have a game.

I’m oversimplifying to an insulting degree, I realize. On the one hand, the whole multiplayer thing, although it appeals to me in NEGATIVE INCREMENTS, meaning a piece of me dies every time the subject comes up, has attained something of the same distinction that a versus fighter has in comparison to a sidescrolling brawler. It’s a place to show skill and piss on other people (even more so than with a fighter, for various reasons), and if that’s your kind of thing, there are a lot of excellent games to help you vent that testosterone.

On the other, you have the Half-Life-inspired movement toward using the form for a more holistic experience — expanding on exactly the part of Doom that the Quake thread gave up on. Halo sits on this end, mostly — though a little more to the right, toward Quake, than HL. If you were to count Metroid Prime as a FPS, it would be about as far to the left as possible.

>Masters of Doom says that Quake’s formative years were sort of the epitome of development hell. […] Carmack was going off into his abstract, workaholic computer world and Romero was becoming increasingly arrogant and was slacking off more than usual. The end result, then, was a Doom clone where the engine was designed independently of the levels, which were designed independently of each other, which is why they’re so goddamned bizzare and incongruous.

Yeah! I remember that, now. I guess that’s whence came Daikatana.

For my part, I did enjoy Quake at the time. It’s not half-bad. It’s just — it leaves me empty.

I can feel the walls closing in on me

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was

I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.

Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.

Metroid Prime is a nice exception.

Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.

I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.

Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.

I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.

As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.

Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.

Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects

If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.

I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.

“‘Chicken-chaser’? Does that mean you… chase chickens?”

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just got Fable.

Why the fuck is there a top-level menu item to watch commercials for other, unrelated games published by Microsoft? I mean. Could they not have used that disc space for something more constructive?

I feel slightly dirty for having witnessed this.

EDIT:

I actually am enjoying the hell out of this, even if it’s not what I expected. It’s not even close. I was waiting for a cross between Shenmue and Morrowind. That sounded like the original concept for the game, anyway. Now it’s more like the offspring of Zelda and The Sims.

It sure ain’t the revolutionary leap it was touted as. It has a lot of charm, though. Even if the save system is bothersome, and I CAN’T GET THE DAMNED GOD-VOICE TO SHUT UP.

If the game were to just leave me alone and let me do my own thing without badgering me like, uh, any recent version of Zelda, I would have little problem with it. From what I’ve seen. Even its dumb videogamey qualities (the chests littered around the game world) seem on some level deliberate. If the game were to take itself seriously, I might not feel the same way. The tone is just what’s needed, though, to make it work in the form it is.

This evening, as I was pouring virtual beer into a virtual barmaid, in real life a terror-soaked voice echoed from down the street: “HELP! OH GOD, HELP! CALL THE POLICE! SOMEBODY! HELP ME PLEASE! SAVE ME! OH GOD! POLICE!” And. So on.

This was followed by another voice: “What the FUCK‘s your problem, huh?” And a smacking sound.

Then. Nothing.

Several minutes later, we heard a series of loud noises. Noises I have trouble finding words for. They sounded like the midway between a buzz-saw and someone sucking ice cream through a straw.

I don’t know what connection, if any, exists between the above events.

EDIT 2:

I just realized why the music so made me think of Danny Elfman — to the point where I was constantly tempted to mutter “something’s up with Jack/something’s up with Jack…”.

It’s because the music is written by Danny Elfman.

I, uh, had forgotten that.