The “Games as Art” Meta-argument
Roger Ebert has written another piece in the “Games as Art” - debate, admitting he might have been wrong to enter the debate in the first place. The first paragraph sums it up quite well;
”I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.“
Reading the entire thing provokes some thought about why the “games as art” - argument is in the state that it is. Ebert was criticized for saying that games can never be art without defining what art actually was, he then admits to failing in trying to find a definition for art that would both satisfy him and include all of what is generally considered art.
Ebert also says that he is not interested in playing games to find out if there is indeed something there to fit his definition of art, and is thus prepared to agree that there might be and it is not for him to deny it. In a sense, returning to his former conclusions the concept of “art” seems more personal than what he might have originally thought, and as such one who actually enjoys games to a great degree might with them have a similar experience to what Ebert has when he enjoys what he calls art. Maybe art has so much to do with your own emotions that you are unfit to judge the artistic value of a medium you do not like.
Sure, what essentially boils down to “everyone has their own opinions” is not really a groundbreaking conclusion, but reaching that conclusion in an uncommonly rational way is a refreshingly clear contribution to a muddy debate.
Pixel - A Pixel Art Documentary
Animation student Simon Cottee presents a short overview of the pixel art style, talking about it’s digital roots and comparing it with other abstract art forms as well as interviewing a few artists on their take on the subject. A very nice way to spend 10 minutes.
Indie Game: The Movie off to a good start
Interviewer Lisanne Pajot and independent filmmaker James Swirsky very recently teamed up and announced the project Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary about the games and the people behind them. News spread and in less than 24 hours on KickStarter, the project has pulled together 40% of the funds needed for completion. Seeing what comes out of this is going to be really great.
Hero Core Released
Daniel Remar of Iji fame has released the sequel to his lo-fi space action/exploration adventure Hero, titled Hero Core. A very nice little game that lasts for a couple of hours and feels thought-through in all areas.
I met Daniel at No More Sweden last year so I actually played Hero Core (or at least what would become Hero Core) shortly before playing the prequel, at the time Daniel told me he had tried to make Hero Core easier - both in terms of it being more forgiving and less frustrating since it does not force the player to redo as much work should he fail. He has certainly succeeded with this, and it is a testament to Daniel’s skill as a game designer that the game is a lot less frustrating but offers the same amount of action. In addition, unlike the first game Hero Core is a nonlinear experience and the player can choose to defeat the final boss at any time - again, this works very well and while different paths are always differing in difficulty, you always have a choice in where to go next.
Like Iji, the greatness of Hero Core lies in the balanced design and is something you cannot really appreciate until you play the game. It is obvious Daniel has an eye for gameplay details and has been testing this notoriously in order to weed out all problems, and even though it is not the most profound of experiences Hero Core is a very fun game without noticable flaws.
Edmund on Difficulty
Edmund McMillen has a short piece on Gamasutra about the evolution of difficulty in games, a fairly lightweight piece and nothing really new if you’ve been keeping up the last few years, but an amusing read at least. Also, the 2009 Game Developer Salary survey results for independent developers have been posted, the first time GDM includes this category. Considering the very low average I’m guessing that there are a lot of different people being analyzed together; people working full-time, people working for free, on the side, gaining funds from alternative sources etc, so the average is not in itself that interesting. Nevertheless, a good idea that hopefully becomes a bit more structured in the future.
Chris Hecker on gamejams
Reaching a similar (although more thought-through and well put) conclusion about game jams as I ranted about after GGJ a few weeks back, industry veteran Chris Hecker ranted on GDC about the importance of following through on good ideas and how the gamejam mindset might be dangerous to that. Jonathan Blow among others comments on this as well. Although the rant itself is a bit more nuanced than “don’t do games quickly”, I wonder if we will see a community backlash against the concept of rapid prototyping. That would indeed be interesting.
Rapid prototyping evolved as a way of trying out concepts quickly before committing a lot of time to them, with the idea that once a solid concept was found you were supposed to put more time into it. The same “throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks” idea common in other creative industries. I do not think Hecker has any issues with this, rather the culture that has evolved around it where the prototypes are the goal and not a step on the way… And I do agree that this is becoming a problem, though I mentioned that in my own rant so I will not go over it again. There are a lot of talks and presentations on how to go about rapid prototyping and making the most of your time, maybe there should be more about recognizing good concepts, where to go when you have them and something about the dangers of losing yourself in endless small projects. On the other hand, making games quickly is becoming sort of a hobby in itself, a sport to occupy yourself with, and maybe it should just be separated from “normal” games development and treated for what it is.
On a final note, I do not worry too much about the fixation on sticking to schedule being a problem in the mainstream games industry, important people have assured me that a willingness to recognize opportunities and make the most out of a project even when it means changing the plans is much more desirable in a developer than a willingness to stick to the schedule. In other words, projects that are poor would usually have been poor even with a few more months development time -had they been scrapped and recreated from the bottom up a difference might have been made, but it is questionable if such a rewrite could really be called the same game. For small to medium-sized productions this might be an issue but for larger projects the marketing budget will easily rival and more often than not exceed the production budget, so it is often cheaper to cancel or delay a poor game than to release it prematurely to poor sales.
Magicka Trailer
Arrowhead Game Studios‘ Magicka, the game that won the Swedish Game Awards grand prize in 2008, announced they had partnered with Paradox Interactive for publishing and released an impressive trailer a week back;
The writing in the trailer is a bit too campy for me, but the game itself is a real gem and it has received a lot of visual polish since it won SGA. Last I played it they had removed some of the more complex combinations available to make the game more accessible, a bit sad since there were a lot less emergent gameplay in that version. It was still a truly great co-op brawler that allowed for seamless switching of playing styles, though, and I am willing to bet Arrowhead will make the best of it in the end.
A deeper Final Fantasy VIII
Back in the day, Final Fantasy VIII was criticized for having somewhat disjoint and sappy storyline with characters that were not really likeable, a setting that strayed too far from it’s fantasy roots and one too many outrageous elements. Fans Diedra Rater and Rahul Choudhury have assembled a theory about why this was and presented an interpretation to what the story is really about.
Now, when it comes to games there is a huge volume of poor fanfiction masquerading as literary analysis so it is always refreshing to see something that feels insightful and challenges your way of seeing things. Now, the stories in Final Fantasy games have always seemed very shallow to me but there has always been a depth to the presentation, a history leading from mythological events to the events in the game - seeing someones theories about depth in the meaning of the story as well really makes the game richer.
Well worth a read if you played the game.
Blast from the Past
Logan Westbrook wrote some nice things about the Darkness on the Escapist, it’s been almost three years since it was released so it is nice to see other people still thinking about it. I personally liked the game but the story parts got kind of ruined for me since the important scenes in question were horribly broken the first time I saw them, but we worked a lot on the game over a long period of time so I am somewhat relieved to hear the hard work paid off.
Also, the results for Assemblee have been revealed! Congratulations Ivan! Our own project Backworld ended up sharing a 6th place (with Tiny Crawl, one of my personal favorites), which is not half bad considering there were 73 entries in the competition.
Global Game Jam
The Global Game Jam was this weekend, and after failing to set up a local event me and a few friends decided to go to the Nordic Game Jam, reportedly the largest GGJ site. Besides hanging out with friends, acquaintances from the indie scene and making a few new connections, we (Juha, Martin, Tobias and I) created a short game called “Fake“.
We were in development up until the final minutes so there is no proper tutorial; consider this an introduction. Your role is that of an art forger working for the mysterious mafioso “Don Key”. Funds being sparse, you are limited to cut and paste existing images in order to reproduce the paintings.
Start out by selecting a painting, then selecting a theme for your photos on the right. You can re-select the theme later by clicking the button on the top-right but it will reset your work. Click any of the images on the right to select a source, then use the left mouse button to cut out a pattern and use it on the forgery. The left menu bar can be used to select or move the active layer, you can also use the right mouse button to delete a layer. When not cutting a picture, you can move the active layer with the left mouse button, rotate it with the right or press both mouse buttons to scale it. The button on the top left will swap the preview mode of the real painting, how it is shown will have no bearing on the final result, though. When you are done, press the button second from the right at the top to submit the painting for approval by Don Key.
I was really out of my element when hacking this together and too much time went into hacking GUI elements that a proper tool would’ve provided for me. This being the case, the final version does not only miss a proper tutorial but also some basic UI elements and it comes with a lot of bugs. That being said, the game was fairly fun for what it was, the idea feels solid and we managed to make a game out of the development itself by taking pictures of jam attendees and using them in the final version - always fun to do at events like this. All in all, we had a great time at least.
Sadly, we had to leave halfway through the finals and I have not seen very many of the other games from NGJ yet. I would like to give a shout out to Shoot Stop Lollipop and Shadow Ninja… Monkey though, as they both had genuinely interesting gameplay mechanics.