...as long as it doesn't matter and I can keep going.
I realize that people sometimes get the wrong idea about me because I can get in a mode where I have to do something my way. It's not because I think that there's only one way to do it. Usually I get to a point where I come up with a solution that I know will work even if something were to go wrong while I'm trying to do it, and I can adjust and keep going. This is probably more important in real life than in any sort of game space - in a game situation I'm OK with trying something a bunch of different ways because the consequences are usually pretty minimal. I only get locked into a specific method later after I have had time to refine a technique.
If there are any consequences, I get spooked - especially if I've never had to face the specific consequences in question. My best example of this in real life is the express lane at the store. If the express cashier tells me to come to their lane having seen the contents of my cart, I will. But if the person behind me in line suggests that I should go over to express and I know I have more than the requisite number of items, I won't.
"You could go to express... You don't look like you have that much."
They're all small items, and I know I have at least 16 items. I don't even turn to look at my antagonist - all I know from her voice is that she is female and older than me. My younger child is crying on the store floor because I won't let him tackle his older brother while we're in line.
"I'm not going over there. The last thing I want is some blue-hair complaining to me that I have more than ten items. You can break the rules if you want to, but I'm not going to."
Clearly, my motivation is to not be hassled by strangers (yet ironically, it has happened anyway).
So the other part besides the consequences, is the ability to keep going. I was typing a response to a youtube comment that the studious among you can find yourselves, but when I hit the 'enter' key, it said "Error - please try again." Since there's no accounting for dropped packets and network topology I restarted my browser and went directly to youtube instead of replying from the notification. Since I had remembered to hit Control-C before I restarted the browser, I didn't have to retype my comment. "Error" again. No helpful message, like
"Don't use a special character in a filename, knucklehead"
or a blue screen with
"Windows is totally sick of your crap and will be restarting in 5 seconds if it can close all of the spyware processes you started by clicking on that Megan Fox link."
As it turns out, my well-researched comment was failed by youtube because I included a web address in it. Would it have been so hard for it to tell me why it didn't want my comment? The error was so generic so as to make me wonder if my internet connection was even working, so it resulted in me doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something different to happen.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I am willing to be wrong...
Saturday, May 8, 2010
I don't know what art is...
So I finally played the 2005 PlayStation 2 game "Shadow of the Colossus", Fumito Ueda's second game as director. I completed the main game on the normal difficulty setting, so I have seen all of the story elements. There is still a harder difficulty level available, and extra challenges I could do to gain some extra weapons if I wanted them, but I am not compelled to do more at the moment. It is one of the most satisfying game experiences that I have ever had - I would put it up there with "Devil May Cry 3", "Katamari Damacy", "No More Heroes", or any of the Mario games. "Shadow of the Colossus" is much better at emotionally involving you in the game than most of those other games. The only other game that has ever gotten me that emotionally involved was Fumito Ueda's first game "Ico".
I played "Ico" over the course of two weekends in 2002. I didn't own it, I played a friend's copy because he was insistent that we play it. For something that I played years ago, the game's visuals and design stick in my head. "Ico" has no on-screen status indicators of any kind and very simple controls. Parts of the game that are in bright sunlight get washed-out for a moment, especially when you are moving from a dark area to a light area. The visuals are similar to things that happen when shooting movies on film and other things similar to the human eye's reaction to light, but also have some of their own touches that make it unique. The only thing that takes you out of the game environment at all is that there are stone benches strewn about the game that if you sit on, take you to a 'Save Game' screen. Most of the game is very simple. You have a guy with a stick, and you have to lead someone to safety that can't jump, climb, or wield a stick. You have to ward off enemies, pull your companion onto ledges that they can't climb but you can, and solve environmental puzzles that allow you to proceed forward. Other than the occasional groups of enemies, the landscape is otherwise empty. There are old, crumbling buildings, trees, grass in a few places, but no animals to speak of. There is very little dialogue between the characters, and nearly all of the storytelling in the game is done visually. What dialogue you do hear is done in a language made up just for the game which results in you hearing the emotional tone of the dialogue mixed with the body language without really needing to know exactly what is said.
"Shadow of the Colossus" has some of the same elements as "Ico" - similar landscape although populated with a small number of animals, dialogue in the same made-up language, film-inspired visuals, one companion with you most of the time (but this time it's a horse), a standard visual landmark as a save point, and a simple goal. You must defeat 16 gigantic opponents with a sword and a bow. Where "Ico" is a deconstruction of a platform game into simple elements, "Shadow of the Colossus" is a deconstruction of an action game into simple elements. Instead of giving you hordes of intermediate enemies and new weapons to collect that allow you to proceed to the next area like "Metroid" or "God of War" might do, "Shadow" is only about the boss characters. What is so masterful about these games is that they are short, intense experiences that deliver most of what we like about gaming. By stripping away a lot of the ancillary elements, it gives the game designers comfortable room to insert a story worth telling. Amazingly enough, most of the elements of the stories are pared down to a minimum and improve it as well. Since not everything is explicitly told to you as the player, it gets you to interpret the experiences based on your own ability to interpret the characters presented, and you tend to see the story how you want to. This is key to these games' ability to tap into the emotional response of the player.
On a technical note, the visuals of "Shadow of the Colossus" hold up well by current standards, if only for a PS2 game. It has support for both progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen. Playing the game in progressive scan seemed to reduce the amount of noticeable texture pop-in. The game increases the level of detail of textures as you approach them, and it seems more overstated in the standard-def presentation.
I finished "Shadow" two weekends ago, and dove straight into the 2004 Capcom samurai-vs-demons-plus-time-travel-and-Paris action game "Onimusha 3". "Onimusha 3" feels like a popcorn flick by comparison to "Shadow" feeling like an art film. Sure, "Onimusha 3" has Jean Reno in it (who only does his own French dialogue but not his own English dialogue...disappointing) and lots of dialogue, and brighter colors, but it feels canned and corny. (A can of corn?) The action is good, the puzzles are interesting, but after playing "Shadow" it's both good and bad because it's exactly what we expect from games, instead of trying to be more. The only thing that made me laugh so far is a gag involving a panda costume (not that that sort of game is supposed to be funny).
So, as far as that stodgy film critic that says that games can't be art goes, I would say that most games are not art. As long as he's willing to admit that the film version of say, "Wild, Wild, West" is not art, and we can agree that "Marvel vs
Capcom 2" is not art, maybe he should consider the possibility that Fumito Ueda does, in fact, create art. MvC2 isn't really art in the way checkers isn't really art. It is a game, in the strictest sense, built for competition with a concrete set of rules, and only really meaningful with two human opponents. That's not to say that watching experts play it won't yield some transcendent moments where their mastery of the game evokes some emotional response, but that has more to do with the player than the game. "Wild, Wild, West" conveys a story, but its execution is so distracting from the progress of the story that the only thing that the movie seems to do is to try and make you keep watching it until it's over. If there was any moral or issue embedded in the plot, or any emotional response that occurred, it would be more likely an artifact of the viewer than an intended feature placed there by the director. But in "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus", the game has a narrative, and in completing the game the narrative is revealed. Neither game is so much of an open sandbox situation that multiple paths to victory are possible - the story goes exactly as the game director intends, and the games are simple enough that achieving this goal isn't daunting or too frustrating. They're just difficult enough to make you feel like you accomplished something.
I played "Ico" over the course of two weekends in 2002. I didn't own it, I played a friend's copy because he was insistent that we play it. For something that I played years ago, the game's visuals and design stick in my head. "Ico" has no on-screen status indicators of any kind and very simple controls. Parts of the game that are in bright sunlight get washed-out for a moment, especially when you are moving from a dark area to a light area. The visuals are similar to things that happen when shooting movies on film and other things similar to the human eye's reaction to light, but also have some of their own touches that make it unique. The only thing that takes you out of the game environment at all is that there are stone benches strewn about the game that if you sit on, take you to a 'Save Game' screen. Most of the game is very simple. You have a guy with a stick, and you have to lead someone to safety that can't jump, climb, or wield a stick. You have to ward off enemies, pull your companion onto ledges that they can't climb but you can, and solve environmental puzzles that allow you to proceed forward. Other than the occasional groups of enemies, the landscape is otherwise empty. There are old, crumbling buildings, trees, grass in a few places, but no animals to speak of. There is very little dialogue between the characters, and nearly all of the storytelling in the game is done visually. What dialogue you do hear is done in a language made up just for the game which results in you hearing the emotional tone of the dialogue mixed with the body language without really needing to know exactly what is said.
"Shadow of the Colossus" has some of the same elements as "Ico" - similar landscape although populated with a small number of animals, dialogue in the same made-up language, film-inspired visuals, one companion with you most of the time (but this time it's a horse), a standard visual landmark as a save point, and a simple goal. You must defeat 16 gigantic opponents with a sword and a bow. Where "Ico" is a deconstruction of a platform game into simple elements, "Shadow of the Colossus" is a deconstruction of an action game into simple elements. Instead of giving you hordes of intermediate enemies and new weapons to collect that allow you to proceed to the next area like "Metroid" or "God of War" might do, "Shadow" is only about the boss characters. What is so masterful about these games is that they are short, intense experiences that deliver most of what we like about gaming. By stripping away a lot of the ancillary elements, it gives the game designers comfortable room to insert a story worth telling. Amazingly enough, most of the elements of the stories are pared down to a minimum and improve it as well. Since not everything is explicitly told to you as the player, it gets you to interpret the experiences based on your own ability to interpret the characters presented, and you tend to see the story how you want to. This is key to these games' ability to tap into the emotional response of the player.
On a technical note, the visuals of "Shadow of the Colossus" hold up well by current standards, if only for a PS2 game. It has support for both progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen. Playing the game in progressive scan seemed to reduce the amount of noticeable texture pop-in. The game increases the level of detail of textures as you approach them, and it seems more overstated in the standard-def presentation.
I finished "Shadow" two weekends ago, and dove straight into the 2004 Capcom samurai-vs-demons-plus-time-travel-and-Paris action game "Onimusha 3". "Onimusha 3" feels like a popcorn flick by comparison to "Shadow" feeling like an art film. Sure, "Onimusha 3" has Jean Reno in it (who only does his own French dialogue but not his own English dialogue...disappointing) and lots of dialogue, and brighter colors, but it feels canned and corny. (A can of corn?) The action is good, the puzzles are interesting, but after playing "Shadow" it's both good and bad because it's exactly what we expect from games, instead of trying to be more. The only thing that made me laugh so far is a gag involving a panda costume (not that that sort of game is supposed to be funny).
So, as far as that stodgy film critic that says that games can't be art goes, I would say that most games are not art. As long as he's willing to admit that the film version of say, "Wild, Wild, West" is not art, and we can agree that "Marvel vs
Capcom 2" is not art, maybe he should consider the possibility that Fumito Ueda does, in fact, create art. MvC2 isn't really art in the way checkers isn't really art. It is a game, in the strictest sense, built for competition with a concrete set of rules, and only really meaningful with two human opponents. That's not to say that watching experts play it won't yield some transcendent moments where their mastery of the game evokes some emotional response, but that has more to do with the player than the game. "Wild, Wild, West" conveys a story, but its execution is so distracting from the progress of the story that the only thing that the movie seems to do is to try and make you keep watching it until it's over. If there was any moral or issue embedded in the plot, or any emotional response that occurred, it would be more likely an artifact of the viewer than an intended feature placed there by the director. But in "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus", the game has a narrative, and in completing the game the narrative is revealed. Neither game is so much of an open sandbox situation that multiple paths to victory are possible - the story goes exactly as the game director intends, and the games are simple enough that achieving this goal isn't daunting or too frustrating. They're just difficult enough to make you feel like you accomplished something.
Friday, April 16, 2010
#2 son pushes the buttons
Although he doesn't game, #2 son had a bit of a meltdown in the R-Zone this morning. I had already driven all over without purpose to his mind, because I headed south a little early and the two places I wanted to go weren't open yet. Once the Asian grocery store I go to opened up, the way was clear to get some sushi supplies and some Pocky-like confection that Meiji makes. We got Strawberry and Cappuccino Creme. Next order of business, seeing if we could find a DC Friends Superman at Toys 'R' Us. No dice on that, so we sifted through the R-Zone. All the cheap games were buy one, get one half off. I was looking at "The Force Unleashed", "Sonic Unleashed", Capcom's "Spyborgs", and a couple of other things. They had several copies of "Mushroom Men", so perhaps I'll have to encourage more people to pick that up. No "Ghost Squad" or the House of the Dead game for Wii with more swearing in it than anything except that David Mamet film about real estate.
#2 son saw "Namco Museum Remix" and "The Force Unleashed" and brought them to me. I tried to put them down when he was looking at something else but I was denied. He's only three, but he knows what Pac-Man is.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
#2 son saw "Namco Museum Remix" and "The Force Unleashed" and brought them to me. I tried to put them down when he was looking at something else but I was denied. He's only three, but he knows what Pac-Man is.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Really? They haven't done this yet?
I was somewhat amused by this assertion when I read it the other day:
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38108/No-Twilight-game-has-lost-millions
If you don't follow the link, it's a tirade about how some industry analyst thinks that the video game industry is missing out on millions of dollars because there isn't a 'Twilight' video game.
This theory is either brilliant, or know to be untrue by the author and just put forth to drive comments to his website. I'm probably making it worse by using his link here.
His logic: It's a movie, it's making a ton of money right now, there needs to be a game of it so those people plus part of the video game industry can make more money.
My logic: If Avatar, the #4 most expensive move of all time (as of this writing) can't even get a game with 70 out of 100 on Metacritic what hope does Twilight have? Wouldn't a mediocre - to - crappy game do what it always does, dilute the brand and create the feeling that it's a quick and dirty cash-in instead of lovingly crafted fan service?
Looking back at the more successful movie-to-game conversions, it would seem that the movie has to have some sort of plot line that works well with an established game genre. Goldeneye (The Nintendo 64 one, Metacritic score of 96) lent itself easily to the first person shooter genre, and Peter Jackson's King Kong (Metacritic score of 77-82 on consoles, worse on handhelds) was easily crafted into an action/adventure game. It would be great to create a new game genre that works with the film's plot, but it's difficult enough to make a game that draws outside the lines of convention without the additional pressure of trying to release it at the same time as the film.
So now it comes down to - what sort of movies are the 'Twilight' films and where does that place a game to go with it? Twilight is essentially a teenage romance with supernatural content. Romance games don't seem to sell here - Japanese developers do make 'dating sims' but for some reason or another they're not in the American market. The "Twilight" audience skews heavily female, but the only games with market-tested sell through to girls and young women in America that I'm aware of are "The Sims" games. Also, many good games have a substantial number of female players. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, Nintendo's "Zelda" and "Mario" games, the better role-playing games including "World of Warcraft" and "Everquest", and even some first person shooters have substantial contingents of female players. On the flip side, most games marketed specifically to girls are not much better than the crop of shovelware movie license games - made just because someone feels the have a niche to fill, and not so concerned with just making a good game that people want to play. The pessimistic side of me thinks that what would really end up being made out of "Twilight" would be some sort of plot-driven fetch quest game like the game they made for Spiderwick (Metacritic scores of 59-64).
If someone does make a Twilight game, I hope they have the courage to make something that gives people the same sense of place that the books and the movies do. I hope that they have enough sense to build to a budget, but not to a deadline. What I really hope is that they not do it unless they have an actual, workable idea at the core of it.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38108/No-Twilight-game-has-lost-millions
If you don't follow the link, it's a tirade about how some industry analyst thinks that the video game industry is missing out on millions of dollars because there isn't a 'Twilight' video game.
This theory is either brilliant, or know to be untrue by the author and just put forth to drive comments to his website. I'm probably making it worse by using his link here.
His logic: It's a movie, it's making a ton of money right now, there needs to be a game of it so those people plus part of the video game industry can make more money.
My logic: If Avatar, the #4 most expensive move of all time (as of this writing) can't even get a game with 70 out of 100 on Metacritic what hope does Twilight have? Wouldn't a mediocre - to - crappy game do what it always does, dilute the brand and create the feeling that it's a quick and dirty cash-in instead of lovingly crafted fan service?
Looking back at the more successful movie-to-game conversions, it would seem that the movie has to have some sort of plot line that works well with an established game genre. Goldeneye (The Nintendo 64 one, Metacritic score of 96) lent itself easily to the first person shooter genre, and Peter Jackson's King Kong (Metacritic score of 77-82 on consoles, worse on handhelds) was easily crafted into an action/adventure game. It would be great to create a new game genre that works with the film's plot, but it's difficult enough to make a game that draws outside the lines of convention without the additional pressure of trying to release it at the same time as the film.
So now it comes down to - what sort of movies are the 'Twilight' films and where does that place a game to go with it? Twilight is essentially a teenage romance with supernatural content. Romance games don't seem to sell here - Japanese developers do make 'dating sims' but for some reason or another they're not in the American market. The "Twilight" audience skews heavily female, but the only games with market-tested sell through to girls and young women in America that I'm aware of are "The Sims" games. Also, many good games have a substantial number of female players. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, Nintendo's "Zelda" and "Mario" games, the better role-playing games including "World of Warcraft" and "Everquest", and even some first person shooters have substantial contingents of female players. On the flip side, most games marketed specifically to girls are not much better than the crop of shovelware movie license games - made just because someone feels the have a niche to fill, and not so concerned with just making a good game that people want to play. The pessimistic side of me thinks that what would really end up being made out of "Twilight" would be some sort of plot-driven fetch quest game like the game they made for Spiderwick (Metacritic scores of 59-64).
If someone does make a Twilight game, I hope they have the courage to make something that gives people the same sense of place that the books and the movies do. I hope that they have enough sense to build to a budget, but not to a deadline. What I really hope is that they not do it unless they have an actual, workable idea at the core of it.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Food, Food, and... almost food.
I have three things to report in the food arena. Two of them are undoubtedly, unquestionably, food. The third thing, I'm feeling like it's not really food, even though it's something I write on the grocery list on a regular basis.
On the way home from work the other night, I asked my youngest child what he wanted for dinner. Typically, there are only two answers. On weekends, he seems to ask for macaroni & cheese with SPAM in it. The other answer is "Hangurgers". Yes, that is how my three-year old pronounces it. I am going to have to call Steve Martin about that and see if that gag in the sub-mediocre "Pink Panther" remake was his or the other writer's gag.
In an effort to appease both the adults and the children, I did the unthinkable in this economy, I applied the "separate but equal" treatment. It was not my original intention, but I didn't really think that I wanted plain old greasy french fries, and I spotted something in the freezer section that made me think that doing a separate dinner for the adults would work.
Alexia spicy sweet potato fries.
They were good by themselves, as long as they were just crispy enough (don't kill them in the oven, though). They were also good with mayo. The chipotle flavor doesn't make sense with ketchup, though. The kids had tater tots instead - sweet potato fries are 'weird' and chipotle is too spicy for them anyway. These fries I will definitely get again.
The second thing I would like to report in the food arena is Taco Bell Shrimp Tacos. Six shrimp, lettuce, mayo, and pico de gallo. Overall, the flavor was very balanced - the shrimp worked very well with the pico sauce. There was nothing spectacular about the shrimp, but they also were not as small as I had heard from initial reports from elsewhere on the web. In this particular instance, it make the steak soft taco that I had with it not seem as good. The person I was eating with commented that he had steak soft tacos from that same location a few days before and they were better, so maybe we just got a bum part of the cow, making for an unfair comparison. I don't know if the shrimp tacos are going to be a limited time item or not, but it may limit my ability to go to Taco Bell with my steak-loving wife, as there are lots of allergy warnings about shellfish and my wife is one of the afflicted in this case. Most of the time we don't have cross-contamination problems unless it's someplace like Long John Silver's where everything ends up in the fryer. OK, enough with the allergy talk. To sum up - not bad, not good enough to make up for the potential inconvenience to my spouse.
The third thing, and arguably not a food thing although I consider it so, is -
Metal Gear Solid Mountain Dew Game Fuel.
You will probably notice that most of the writing on the carton in the article I linked to is in Japanese - who knows if this promotion is coming to the states? Maybe everyone here will still be too busy with the God of War III promotion. The number of people that I know that have played the Metal Gear games is few, and the number that own a PSP is even fewer. I can only presume that this is an attempt to bring stealth action to a new generation. Since there are several collectible cans, and I only see one color, I assume it's only one flavor. Judging from the can, it's the one I wasn't as fond of from the World of Warcraft promotion. I guess we will find out sometime in June?
On the way home from work the other night, I asked my youngest child what he wanted for dinner. Typically, there are only two answers. On weekends, he seems to ask for macaroni & cheese with SPAM in it. The other answer is "Hangurgers". Yes, that is how my three-year old pronounces it. I am going to have to call Steve Martin about that and see if that gag in the sub-mediocre "Pink Panther" remake was his or the other writer's gag.
In an effort to appease both the adults and the children, I did the unthinkable in this economy, I applied the "separate but equal" treatment. It was not my original intention, but I didn't really think that I wanted plain old greasy french fries, and I spotted something in the freezer section that made me think that doing a separate dinner for the adults would work.
Alexia spicy sweet potato fries.
They were good by themselves, as long as they were just crispy enough (don't kill them in the oven, though). They were also good with mayo. The chipotle flavor doesn't make sense with ketchup, though. The kids had tater tots instead - sweet potato fries are 'weird' and chipotle is too spicy for them anyway. These fries I will definitely get again.
The second thing I would like to report in the food arena is Taco Bell Shrimp Tacos. Six shrimp, lettuce, mayo, and pico de gallo. Overall, the flavor was very balanced - the shrimp worked very well with the pico sauce. There was nothing spectacular about the shrimp, but they also were not as small as I had heard from initial reports from elsewhere on the web. In this particular instance, it make the steak soft taco that I had with it not seem as good. The person I was eating with commented that he had steak soft tacos from that same location a few days before and they were better, so maybe we just got a bum part of the cow, making for an unfair comparison. I don't know if the shrimp tacos are going to be a limited time item or not, but it may limit my ability to go to Taco Bell with my steak-loving wife, as there are lots of allergy warnings about shellfish and my wife is one of the afflicted in this case. Most of the time we don't have cross-contamination problems unless it's someplace like Long John Silver's where everything ends up in the fryer. OK, enough with the allergy talk. To sum up - not bad, not good enough to make up for the potential inconvenience to my spouse.
The third thing, and arguably not a food thing although I consider it so, is -
Metal Gear Solid Mountain Dew Game Fuel.
You will probably notice that most of the writing on the carton in the article I linked to is in Japanese - who knows if this promotion is coming to the states? Maybe everyone here will still be too busy with the God of War III promotion. The number of people that I know that have played the Metal Gear games is few, and the number that own a PSP is even fewer. I can only presume that this is an attempt to bring stealth action to a new generation. Since there are several collectible cans, and I only see one color, I assume it's only one flavor. Judging from the can, it's the one I wasn't as fond of from the World of Warcraft promotion. I guess we will find out sometime in June?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Social Gaming for the Antisocial gamer
Welcome to SuperMonkeyCube's magical circus of broad generalizations.
"FarmVille is a giant waste of time and seems like work. "
See how easy that was? I will admit that that generalization is only true for some groups of people.
For my next trick, I will now lump everyone that reads these words into three categories. Watch carefully, as my fingers do not leave my hands. The first category is people who are reading this on my blog page, and with whom I do not interact with on Facebook. These people probably don't play FarmVille. They may not even know about it, or have only gotten sketchy information. The second category is people who are reading this on Facebook and may or may not know that they could read this somewhere else, but they are very aware of FarmVille because every third update on their Facebook home page is "'#FriendName' has just '#event' in FarmVille!". The third category are the people who are generating all those FarmVille updates on everyone else's pages and only stopped to read this because I put 'FarmVille' in the title.
At the Game Developer's Conference this past weekend in San Francisco, the two Facebook games that were mentioned the most were FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz. Both games are doing something similar to a game model that is practically the standard in South Korea. The game is free to play. If you want cooler stuff for the game, you can either play the game a lot and get in-game rewards, or you can spend real money to reap the benefits right away. Typically, the numbers quoted for this sort of game is that 10 percent of the players actually fund the game for the other 90 percent that just play for free. (I'm sure it's another broad generalization.) Most of the reason that they were mentioned is that they are standout success stories, especially in light of the fact that they're free to play, and developers are talking about what it takes to make games in this space that are successful.
Bejeweled Blitz is a one-minute version of Popcap's game Bejeweled, a puzzle game where you swap two adjacent pieces in a large grid to get 3, 4, or 5 or the same kind of piece in a row. Unlike the regular Bejeweled, there is no fear of not having an available move. One is always available, so the trick is just to rack up score as fast as possible in the allotted time. In addition to your score, some pieces when cleared off the board yield coins that can then be used for power-ups in subsequent games. It is also possible to purchase coins with real money to get the same power-ups. This game, I like. Each game is self-contained. If I don't play it for a week, nothing bad happens in-game. I have noticed that among my friends, a surprising number of women are playing it, and they tend to be better than the men. I'm sure that has a lot to do with a self-selecting population - women who might only be mediocre at it may not tend to play as much or at all and would rather play something like Farmville where there isn't a score or a ranking ladder. Alternately, it might have something to do with the part of the brain that does pattern recognition being different in women, but I'm in no position to start funding a clinical trial.
FarmVille, on the other hand is structured around planting, raising, and harvesting crops, animal husbandry, and real estate improvement. If you neglect crops, they go bad. If you don't work on your field, it doesn't do anything for you. It does have the advantage of letting your virtual neighbors help you out, and a great deal of bartering and cooperation happens between people. The only console video games that this reminds me of are the Harvest Moon games, with a touch of Animal Crossing thrown in. After seeing what this was about, I opted not to play it. I didn't play it long enough to find out what you can do with real money. I can attest to the fact that easily 10 percent of my Facebook friends have played it at some point, and most of those people are not people that I would consider traditional gamers. Clearly it's more popular than something like Street Fighter - even though it's a flagship Capcom fighting game that just released a new version, I think I have a better chance at walking up to a random person under 40 that has played FarmVille than I do finding a person that's played Street Fighter IV.
This is not to say that people really want farming games. I don't think that's the driving force here. FarmVille is simple to operate, inherently networked, and easy to understand the concepts of. The last thing I want to see is the XBox and Playstation teams feeling like they need to get a farming simulator by fourth quarter this year, because that's wrong on so many levels. Nintendo has tried to make this work, since they have a fairly recent release of Animal Crossing for the Wii which includes a "Wii Speak" accessory - but Nintendo's online system is cumbersome for most. Connecting on most Nintendo games online involves having to obtain a "Friend Code" from your friends so you can connect to them, except that this code is different for every single game. Only the most dedicated Animal Crossing players will involve themselves. The "Wii Speak" allows people playing Animal Crossing online together to talk to each other over the Nintendo WFC connection. I don't think that this will help foster the same sense of cooperation that Facebook lends itself so easily to.
As usual, what I think that people that don't normally play games look for in games is a new experience. People that involve themselves in 'gaming culture' already have their preferences, and gravitate towards genres that they're already familiar with. Amongst those people, it takes a really standout game to get them out of their comfort zone. On the other hand, the novice gamer has fewer expectations, and has less reservation about throwing themselves in a new experience. Framed that way, it makes perfect sense that I would play Bejeweled Blitz over FarmVille - if I had wanted a farming game, I would have already played Harvest Moon and might even have thought FarmVille was inferior and not bothered with it. On the other hand, having played Tetris, Bust-A-Move, Chainz, and Collapse!, Bejeweled Blitz makes perfect sense and meshes well with my existing genre preferences.
So after writing this, I've decided to go easy on my Facebook friends that are playing FarmVille. While I've seen a bunch of people joining groups that sound like "I don't care about your farm, your mafia, or your cafe", I'm going to give that a pass. Besides, what's happening is that they're becoming social gamers.
(Is that like social consumption of adult beverages?)
"FarmVille is a giant waste of time and seems like work. "
See how easy that was? I will admit that that generalization is only true for some groups of people.
For my next trick, I will now lump everyone that reads these words into three categories. Watch carefully, as my fingers do not leave my hands. The first category is people who are reading this on my blog page, and with whom I do not interact with on Facebook. These people probably don't play FarmVille. They may not even know about it, or have only gotten sketchy information. The second category is people who are reading this on Facebook and may or may not know that they could read this somewhere else, but they are very aware of FarmVille because every third update on their Facebook home page is "'#FriendName' has just '#event' in FarmVille!". The third category are the people who are generating all those FarmVille updates on everyone else's pages and only stopped to read this because I put 'FarmVille' in the title.
At the Game Developer's Conference this past weekend in San Francisco, the two Facebook games that were mentioned the most were FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz. Both games are doing something similar to a game model that is practically the standard in South Korea. The game is free to play. If you want cooler stuff for the game, you can either play the game a lot and get in-game rewards, or you can spend real money to reap the benefits right away. Typically, the numbers quoted for this sort of game is that 10 percent of the players actually fund the game for the other 90 percent that just play for free. (I'm sure it's another broad generalization.) Most of the reason that they were mentioned is that they are standout success stories, especially in light of the fact that they're free to play, and developers are talking about what it takes to make games in this space that are successful.
Bejeweled Blitz is a one-minute version of Popcap's game Bejeweled, a puzzle game where you swap two adjacent pieces in a large grid to get 3, 4, or 5 or the same kind of piece in a row. Unlike the regular Bejeweled, there is no fear of not having an available move. One is always available, so the trick is just to rack up score as fast as possible in the allotted time. In addition to your score, some pieces when cleared off the board yield coins that can then be used for power-ups in subsequent games. It is also possible to purchase coins with real money to get the same power-ups. This game, I like. Each game is self-contained. If I don't play it for a week, nothing bad happens in-game. I have noticed that among my friends, a surprising number of women are playing it, and they tend to be better than the men. I'm sure that has a lot to do with a self-selecting population - women who might only be mediocre at it may not tend to play as much or at all and would rather play something like Farmville where there isn't a score or a ranking ladder. Alternately, it might have something to do with the part of the brain that does pattern recognition being different in women, but I'm in no position to start funding a clinical trial.
FarmVille, on the other hand is structured around planting, raising, and harvesting crops, animal husbandry, and real estate improvement. If you neglect crops, they go bad. If you don't work on your field, it doesn't do anything for you. It does have the advantage of letting your virtual neighbors help you out, and a great deal of bartering and cooperation happens between people. The only console video games that this reminds me of are the Harvest Moon games, with a touch of Animal Crossing thrown in. After seeing what this was about, I opted not to play it. I didn't play it long enough to find out what you can do with real money. I can attest to the fact that easily 10 percent of my Facebook friends have played it at some point, and most of those people are not people that I would consider traditional gamers. Clearly it's more popular than something like Street Fighter - even though it's a flagship Capcom fighting game that just released a new version, I think I have a better chance at walking up to a random person under 40 that has played FarmVille than I do finding a person that's played Street Fighter IV.
This is not to say that people really want farming games. I don't think that's the driving force here. FarmVille is simple to operate, inherently networked, and easy to understand the concepts of. The last thing I want to see is the XBox and Playstation teams feeling like they need to get a farming simulator by fourth quarter this year, because that's wrong on so many levels. Nintendo has tried to make this work, since they have a fairly recent release of Animal Crossing for the Wii which includes a "Wii Speak" accessory - but Nintendo's online system is cumbersome for most. Connecting on most Nintendo games online involves having to obtain a "Friend Code" from your friends so you can connect to them, except that this code is different for every single game. Only the most dedicated Animal Crossing players will involve themselves. The "Wii Speak" allows people playing Animal Crossing online together to talk to each other over the Nintendo WFC connection. I don't think that this will help foster the same sense of cooperation that Facebook lends itself so easily to.
As usual, what I think that people that don't normally play games look for in games is a new experience. People that involve themselves in 'gaming culture' already have their preferences, and gravitate towards genres that they're already familiar with. Amongst those people, it takes a really standout game to get them out of their comfort zone. On the other hand, the novice gamer has fewer expectations, and has less reservation about throwing themselves in a new experience. Framed that way, it makes perfect sense that I would play Bejeweled Blitz over FarmVille - if I had wanted a farming game, I would have already played Harvest Moon and might even have thought FarmVille was inferior and not bothered with it. On the other hand, having played Tetris, Bust-A-Move, Chainz, and Collapse!, Bejeweled Blitz makes perfect sense and meshes well with my existing genre preferences.
So after writing this, I've decided to go easy on my Facebook friends that are playing FarmVille. While I've seen a bunch of people joining groups that sound like "I don't care about your farm, your mafia, or your cafe", I'm going to give that a pass. Besides, what's happening is that they're becoming social gamers.
(Is that like social consumption of adult beverages?)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Motion Sickness, or, Controlling Interest
I had the most horrible dream Saturday night.
It is years in the future. I am in the upstairs press room in an old movie theater, typing up a movie review on a thin black laptop. It used to be the projection booth, but digital movie projection has gotten so small that the new projection booth is a closet in the press room with a rack full of servers . There are a few folding chairs and tables, a low ceiling, a great wireless internet connection, and a projectionist who is babysitting the press, the data rack, and a couple of security monitors. The projectionist answers a knock on the door, and greets someone presumably familiar to him and tells him to go to theater seven. After he shuts the door again, he tells me that it was the EA sales rep and the newest Madden football game has been released for press events. I'm supposed to go down to theater seven and play against one of the sports writers from my media group's website. Not only are we going to have the game projected onto the screen, but the new game comes with a new controller. When I get down to theater seven, I am relieved that no one is wearing 3-D glasses. The EA rep greets me and hands me a pair of clear polycarbonate glasses, and I get worried again.
"Don't worry. They're just safety glasses."
Why the crap do I need safety glasses to get my butt handed to me on a football video game?
"In case you're wondering, here's why you need safety glasses. Legal said if there are flying objects, you gotta wear 'em." He tosses me a foam football, which feels like it's got a controller embedded inside the foam.
The game isn't too bad, but I end up sticking to a running game after a few plays because pass plays require me to be able to throw the controller at the correct speed and direction. If I don't throw a perfect spiral, I get a wobbly football on the screen. Lucky for me, the sportswriter is having just as hard a time.
This is not the part where I tell you that the future is now, although most of the things in my dream were possible technologically. This is only a possible outcome in a world where game design sometimes gets driven by the marketing department.
This is what I fear - when virtual reality is embedded into video games so far that they become too much actual work. Don't get me wrong - the right kind of feedback is helpful. A force feedback steering wheel is a lot more helpful to drive with than the plastic Wii wheel, where you're just driving with the tilt sensor. I just don't want to get knocked out of my chair if I have to nudge the car next to me. I don't want my ability to make free throws in real life to impair my ability to make free throws in the next NBA Jam, NBA Street, or whatever it is that they might call it in the future.
I guess the thing that set me off on this rant is that there is a new Sony motion controller available for the PS3 called the Move. Since it uses the PlayStation Eye camera, it does a better job of locating the controller in space than the Wii does. It has a big lighted sphere on the end of the controller that alters its color to maintain contrast from its surroundings. It also has the advantage of recharging the same way that the PS3 controllers do, via a USB cable. But, I don't know if this was something that Sony needed to do, and it's not like that this has replaced the standard controller in any way. I fear that the Move has a real risk of becoming another marginalized product along with the DJ Hero turntable controller and the Tony Hawk Ride virtual skateboard. Not only is it an optional accessory, but it itself has its own optional accessory called the sub-controller that looks surprisingly like the Nunchuck for the Wiimote and serves a similar, if not identical, purpose. And, unlike the DJ Hero controller or the Ride skateboard, $100 bucks only gets you an Eye, a controller and a demo disk. (Sub-controller is extra.) At least DJ Hero and Ride are supposed to be full-game experiences at that price point.
Microsoft has gone one more step past Sony - with their Natal system, they're allowing an infrared camera to watch the player's movements and forgo a traditional controller entirely. If you are at the correct distance from the camera, it is able to determine independent position of each of your fingers. You could be typing in the air like Officer John Anderton of the Precrime division before you know it. (Philip K. Dick? "Minority Report"? Some crazy-pants couch-jumper played him in the movie version?)
I appreciate that Sony and Microsoft are trying to capture some of what has made the Wii a big success, but this will be an uphill battle for them. Right now, they are both presumably getting software lined up that will take advantage of the new controllers. Neither of them has been able to make much of a dent in the casual gaming demographic so far, even with the XBox 360 being as cheap as the Wii. Even if one of their software titles turns out to be better than sliced bread or hotcakes or whatever it is that will announce the second wave of new casual gaming that's not on Facebook, it still isn't going to gain ground against the Wii this generation. Once you add all the costs of the new motion controllers to a console bundle, it's not at the Wii's price point any more. I also don't think that too many families that have a XBox360 or a PS3 already are using it as their main, family friendly, game night console. I'd hazard a guess that the Wii leads in that regard, followed with the PS2!
So, in case I haven't said it enough - Move and Natal are capable tech, but run a very real risk of being another overpriced peripheral with little software to take advantage of it. If you want waggle, that's what your Wii is for.
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