On the Blackout
… I have little to add to this, really. There are people more articulate, more affected and more informed on the subject than me that have written about it, but since I made a statement about it already I will ramble on a little more. Again, like any other posts in this blog these are my personal opinions and should not be attributed to any previous or former employers of mine.
I happened to catch a newscast this morning where the reporter mentioned the protests in a pejorative manner. They did add a disclaimer at the end saying that the broadcasting company had already thrown in their support with the bills - all fair, Wikipedia raised the same issue with objective reporting in their blackout. The interesting part was that at the end they said that the proponents of SOPA and PIPA was not heard as much since they “did not have as easy a time reaching their audience”. Coming from a TV-broadcasted news show I found this very amusing.
There is a big disconnect between media were people are just the recipients of the product and where they are an active part in the process, which may be why swapping civil liberties for a chance to maybe, possibly help curb piracy seems like a good idea to some but atrocious to others. If the end user is good for nothing but pay for the final product, I can sort of see why you would expect them to trust you and not the other way around. Trust that the power given to the media organisations (let’s stop pretending that this is about all IP holders) will not be misused, but without trusting the majority of the audience to have good intentions. I can see the kind of reasoning behind it, but if you consider that we are talking about actual people and you are trying to sell something to them, it becomes ridiculous.
There are many reasons to dislike these bills originating from it-security, economic, entrepeneurial or simply moral standpoints. I have multiple personal reasons to dislike them but this establishment where the end user is supposed to have faith in the content providers without receiving anything in return is probably my biggest reason for it. I wrote about the chilling effect nonspecific IP legislation already has a while back, should they pass I expect SOPA and PIPA to make it much worse.
Backworlds
So, the game Juha and I made for Assemblee a couple of years back felt like a good idea - we both wanted to continue working on it to really explore the depth we could bring it to. We have been working on it since, but until recently the work was mostly exploratory. We did not have any clear goals in mind, at most a vague direction.
We have now reached a point where we have a good idea of what we want to do and how we want to achieve it - to that end, we launched the backworlds.com website and the indiegogo campaign to fund development. I am guessing if it all goes well I will have more opportunity to discuss what has happened during the last two years and - more importantly - what the game is about and how it comes to be.
I can reveal one thing though - we changed the name to Backworlds. The ’s’ is new.
Expatriate
I made some big decisions in 2010, but it was not until this year that I had to come to terms with what they meant. It has certainly been an experience so far and I am still adapting, I have hardly played any big releases for the last 8 months and I do not know if that is a cause or an effect. Originally, this made me reluctant to write this, but since year-end “best-of” lists tend to have more games released in Q4 it might be for the best that I got most of my playing done in Q1.
In direct opposition to how the development world is moving, I have actually played *less* smaller games this year. It is something that shall be remedied for 2012, but for now these are my 2011 favorites;
Bulletstorm, a lot of people whose opinions I respect have dismissed it as juvenile crap based solely on narrative and presentation. While I agree these are important parts in a videogame, I think they serve a purpose in providing a unified whole that allows for radio-controlled dinosaurs, giant monsters and killing by cactus. There is a skillfully designed shooter there, and I am not sure a more serious presentation would have allowed it to deliver such joy.
Dragon Age 2, I actually liked it better than the first game in all aspects. Sure, it lacked the gravitas of a plot essentially about saving the world but it was different. The story does not revolve around a person, group or quest but rather focuses on how different factions forced to live in the same town tries to coexist. It is more about Kirkwall itself than anything else, and I found this immensely refreshing.
Deus Ex - Human Evolution, no-one I know have argued that it is a bad game. It certainly could be - it is graphically inferior many other games, the design is uneven both in terms of core functionality and levels and even the lauded story has some contrived parts. But it also has a intricate and well-built setting as well as the backdrop for a deep and meaningful story.
… An honorable mention goes to Radiant Historia, but I am not done with it yet and some JRPGs really turn sour towards the end so I’m playing it safe.
the Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword
Near the start of Skyward Sword, Link is told rather bluntly that him being born under a lucky star will likely be enough for him to beat his more hard-working classmates, and rightly so. The skewed morality gave me pause - did someone actually think this was a good theme, or did they simply do the best they could with a mythos that was set in stone? I got the same feeling for a lot of things with the game - be it the design, interface, art… The craftsmanship was great, but the origin of the ideas were dated and coarse.
At this point I should probably mention that I had to run through it in three days instead of taking the time to explore, which is certainly not how you get enjoyment out of any Zelda game. I did like it (and I wish I could spend another three days or so just exploring the game) but I had hoped for more and this is to be considered an exploration as to why.
Perhaps because of the series’ 25th anniversary, Skyward Sword feels like a combination of the earlier, overworld-style Zelda games and the grand ocean of Wind Waker. There are some nods to earlier games and the variation in gameplay is astounding even for a Zelda title. The broad focus might have contributed to what I feel are some core elements not being quite there though. The mechanics of certain enemies can put you in situations where you will die far too quickly to figure out what to do. Some parts of the quest feel like they’re just there to waste my time rather than being fun to play. The camera is good overall, but too ambitiously intelligent and more often than not ends up behind something. The controls are incoherent both with earlier games and within this one - and that is not even mentioning the wiimote controls.
One thing that is interesting with Skyward Sword is how the comparison to Twilight Princess says something about gimmicks in gameplay. Twilight Princess was developed for the Gamecube and was a relatively “pure” game whereas Skyward Sword is developed around the wii controls - most enemies and virtually every boss requires you to slash in different directions. While this works okay most of the time, it is not as quick or precise as pressing a button by far. The gimmick is fun for awhile, sure, but we get a game that is slower, less exact and more constrained in several ways - the funky controls take up so much place that it is less of a “Zelda” game.
I would like to say that a return to form would be a better strategy for Nintendo, but drawing the line between doing too little and too much in terms of innovation is a hard thing. And it might be that people like me, the people who played the original Zelda before it had sequels on other platforms, are just not the right people to appease for a game that expects you to sink in 50+ hours exploring for exploration’s sake.
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
The graphics in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet really are fantastic - the animations are vivid and pulsating, the style is creepy and coherent - silhouette graphics have been the easy way out for a lot of games without high production values, but Michel Gagné really shows what you can do with it if you really try. This being said, it might be the root of my problem with it; it sort of feels like a cheap flash game at times.
I do like the game, for what it is. The sort of Metroidvania without the actual platforming that Aquaria did so well is pulled off with finesse, and it is very easy to pick up and play. It feels a lot more linear than other games in the genre though, with the exception of the starting area there is little reason to go back and search areas after having acquired new abilities. The design in general feels fairly toned-down and the pace of the game is near-constant throughout - the simplistic graphics and lack of spoken story are nice touches but they call attention to the game’s less interesting points.
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet most certainly is nowhere near a cheap flash game, it is beautiful every step of the way, controls very well and has some rather innovative takes on the formula. It feels a bit shallow at times, not more so than most other games but unlike most other games it does nothing to hide it.
Bastion
In my first year back when I was studying, I had an argument with a teacher about making low-tech games. Basically, my point was that there was still a lot to gain from making traditional (in this case, 2D) action games whereas he argued that we need to strive for future gaming forms rather than re-hash existing ones. Today we have all kinds of games so this argument makes little sense, but this was back in the early 2000s - there were no proper online portals for distributing games, no commercial game engines available to the hobbyist and the indie market was small and mostly invisible. While change was certainly brewing, at the time making games meant making console games - or at least something that would be in a box, in a store and sell in excess of half a million copies.
While I will not deny that I probably would not have bothered were it not for nostalgia, the point remains valid - the development of gameplay was (and in some cases, still is) driven by a development in technology. Close to the end of the millennium almost every well-known developer tried to rehash their existing games into 3D action/adventure games - in many cases with really poor results - simply because we had the technology to do it and not because it offered a new and exiting venue to try out design ideas. A similar trend appeared at the birth of the Wii and now most recently with 3D glasses, though thankfully these concepts do not require a complete abandonment of existing mechanics.
In any case, I argued that the swap to 3D meant a significant change in how games are controlled and paced which meant games had to be designed differently and by abandoning 2D games we were just limiting what we could do. Again, an obvious argument today but times were different. My biggest point was that technology used for 3D games allowed us to do things in 2D that simply were not possible back in the days of 16-bit consoles.
So, Bastion. I like it a lot - probably because of nostalgia but also because it does use modern technology to make a game that could have been made in the 90s, except for some important points like the amount of stuff happening at once and the mood set by the manipulation of color. It is also very polished, it has some really clever ways of letting the player manage difficulty and a varied selection of attack options that make the action feel different without affecting the fluidity of it.
In the last 10 years we have gotten to a point where instead of no decent 2D action games we have too many to try, luckily Bastion stands out.
Modern Warfare 3
It was honestly never my intention to play any of the Modern Warfare games but for the third time circumstances have intervened. I suppose them being cheap, accessible and - more importantly - short enough to complete in an evening have something to do with it. If there was ever a videogame equivalent of a blockbuster movie this is it - six hours of spectacles in a linear story that requires little emotional investment and does not require anything past those six hours to show you everything it has to offer. Disregarding my other feelings for the game, I can really appreciate the straightforward simplicity of it.
… Speaking about the campaign, of course. I have not played the multiplayer.
Anyhow, I guess Modern Warfare 3 is a slight improvement over the second iteration in most areas. The graphics are a little better, the areas a little more varied, the events a little more spectacular and the gameplay a little less random. That being said, it is still mostly about getting lucky enough not to be shot long enough to make it to the next checkpoint. Like many other games there seems to be a discrepancy between the narrative and the gameplay - the game tells you that you are constantly out of time and need to hurry along, but keeping back and using cover in the areas you have already cleared is a much safer way to play. In fact, more often than not friendly NPCs will do the job for you if you do not hurry about it.
… Which I guess sums up the Modern Warfare 3 campaign really well - it is streamlined to get you through it quickly. The mechanics are smooth, there are very few areas to explore outside of the main track and the game will more or less play itself if you do not take an active part in the action. It all adds to the simple blockbuster appeal, and even though it doesn’t really feel revolutionary or meaningful (considering all the rage about the “no russian” mission in MW2 this is a bit ironic) I really can’t fault it for going for accessibility.
El Shaddai
El Shaddai is one of those games that make me feel like I missed an important point somewhere and after that very few things in the game make any sense anymore.
From the looks of it, it is some sort of Devil May Cry/God of War-style brawler with platform elements and really trippy graphics. The platform elements mesh really poorly with said trippy graphics and the times you die it is because of wobbly jumping controls and really odd perspectives. The brawling fares somewhat better and is pretty fun in the beginning, but there are really few enemies, even fewer attacks and all arenas are circular and empty so it doesn’t really give the sense of it being a core feature.
The graphics are very odd, change every so often and use more than a few techniques I have never seen in the context of games before - this was actually the only reason I got the game in the first place. Some of it is pretty cool, but the effects that feel really innovative create such weird results that it is hard to see it begin used for something other than surreal landscapes.
I am honestly not sure what to think about the game - it found it to be a decent diversion, but considering the staggering amount of good games released lately “decent diversion” doesn’t really cut it. There is that lingering feeling that I don’t really get what it’s about though, and I am hesitant to talk down a game that just wasn’t meant for me to begin with. I never did have the patience to do deep analysis of fighting games, but the system in El Shaddai seems to be too simple and easy to beat to offer any depth. The psychedelic and fluid art style and bizarre story elements are certainly welcome experimentation, but they are more weird than impressive.
Still, I don’t know. Maybe the point was to provide an abstract game with a familiar base - if so, I can think of no better examples.
Deus Ex - Human Revolution
Certain games, maybe notably so the Final Fantasy series, tend to put a lot of effort into an impressive and explosive opening in order to hook the player from the beginning - with this in mind it struck me as a bit odd that Deus Ex, published by Square Enix, has such an unassuming first few hours. It looks pretty uninteresting - even poor, in some cases - for the first couple of hours, before coming alive when you leave the first city. On the other hand, Deus Ex is a mystery plot with action elements rather than a grand battle-filled quest, so it suits the game a lot better in the end. Still, takes a while to get into.
In fact, Deus Ex has the issue of not being very attractive in a lot of areas. Graphics are occasionally good due to fantastic set design, but mostly look rather dull. Animations are poor, but few games seem to solve that these days. Gameplay features are by themselves mostly interesting but have poor synergy overall, as if someone did not bother going through the game a couple of times killing their darlings. The story is fairly strong and solemn, but a couple of times it is stunted by ill-conceived jokes and misplaced characters. It bears the familiar ring of a project that has somehow grown too large without a clear will directing all of the components, maybe the extensive credits list explains it. In short, Deus Ex does well in many areas but it is not really impressive in any of them.
It does not do anything so poorly it becomes annoying though, and even though the intrigue is sometimes a bit blatant there is enough of it to keep you going. Also, the game goes a bit heavier on the ‘RPG’ side of the action-RPG scale and it is easy to get immersed in the world when reading the woeful email communication of cubicle slaves or doing impromptu urban exploration. The augmentations are powerful enough that you feel capable of tackling any situation, but not so powerful that it becomes too easy. Maybe asking for the game to be more in other areas would diminish the quality of that.
The Mojäng - Zenimax thing
Apparently the first step of Zenimax’ lawsuit is concluded. The trial remains and appeals do not seem unlikely, so it may be a while still.
Now, I am going to draw upon some experiences of my professional life in this post so maybe it is best to make it clear that this post, like all others on this blog, are my opinions alone and are not to be attributed to any of my employers, past or present.
In “the Darkness”, a little less than halfway through the game, Jackie runs into a WW2 era cannon. It is a rail-mounted monstrosity, somewhere between a train and a building - but more importantly, at one point the train had the number “999″ stamped somewhere. This was a subtle reference to the anime “Galaxy Express 999″, but you will not find it anymore as it was removed due to copyright concerns. There is also a lot of graffitti in the game - we actually hired artists to paint this for us as just grabbing it from concrete walls around town put us in a sticky ownership position. The cool part about this is that the entire development team got to have their handles recreated as tags - though you will not find mine there as I requested that my tag have a stick figure with a halo. You know, “Saint” and all… I have some more understanding for the cutting of this (even though the figure in the tag looked nothing like the icon popularized by Simon Templar), but still. And those things are just the beginning.
Now, I do not blame the studio heads for wanting to play it safe - Intellectual Property law is apparently a minefield in entertainment in general and videogames in particular, for several reasons.
First, as a small independent studio making a global product we were at the mercy of our publishers. As far as I understand it, most similar contracts make it the developer’s sole responsibility to make sure that there is no IP infringement in the game, even if the publisher has signed off on the game and it sits on shelves around the world. A small independent studio could not handle the cost of a lawsuit concerning a game selling millions of copies.
Second, there is a general notion that since everything in a videogame more or less has to be explicitly created for the game, there is never a lack of intent. I have not been able to get this verified or denied by anyone - again, this is a subject no-one wants to touch. But unlike movies, where other trademarks might happen to be in the background, you better be sure all your designs are original in a game. This creates a warped responsibility where our artists had to design everyday objects and model fictional characters only to spend hours searching online to make sure they had not accidentally made it similar to an existing design or celebrity. It hurts narrative too, Max Barry wrote about the alienation of fiction when we are not allowed to use brands that have forced themselves into our everyday lives - this is the biggest reason why so few AAA games are set in contemporary settings.
Third, this is an issue that very few people talk about. No-one wants to be publicly involved in IP lawsuits, so nobody talks about it. All of the things we had to do for the Darkness (and later games) were not because of warnings from outside but from self-policing in fear of a reportedly massive number of copyright and patent trolls looming around every new release. Stories from publisher representatives and rumors from conventions where all we had to go by - but it was enough. We could scarcely afford to finish the game, a lawsuit would leave everyone without a job.
It is mainly because of this third reason that I appreciate that Mojäng are fighting this and they are being public about it - there needs to be a lot more light shining on these issues so we can get some real, official examples of what we can actually do. That is not to say I think either them or Zenimax are obviously in the right, but maybe if a case like this is settled in public we can be on the way to a functional industry where IP decisions are made based on facts and reason instead of fear and rumors. I think that would make the entire entertainment industry a nicer place to work in.