Electron Dance Highlights
The Rings
In May 2004, Mrs. HM and I went on a whistle-stop tour of Kyushu, the big southwestern chunk of Japan, home to Nagasaki, the steamy onsen town of Beppu and the slightly surreal Dutch theme park Huis Ten Bosch. It was one part honeymoon, two parts sayonara as we were soon to depart Japan for a new life in the UK. The final destination of this tour was the island of Yakushima, a verdant fist of volcanic rock punching out of the water around 70km off the southern coast of Kyushu. It's reputed to be the inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
We had two days on Yakushima. On the first day we did a circuit of the island by car, leaving us with memories of lazy monkeys pottering about on the road and magnificent waterfalls at every turn. On the second day, we went to see a tree.
Resistance Is Futile III
In 2010, Resistance Is Futile commented on the birth of the backlog, the side-effect of mean-spirited internet penny sales.
In 2011, Resistance Is Futile II bemoaned peer pressure, specifically the fear of spoilers (aarghnophobia) and the internet's inability to keep it's digital mouth shut.
In 2012, it's time for the climax. Who will win? The selling Sith or the jaded Jedi?
Dear Emperor Palpa-
Screw it. I see your pet Vader, weaving about in the mirror. You are wondering why I shipjacked this Tie Fighter and why, right now, I'm hurtling down this trench looking for a dinky exhaust port. It's over.
The Don of Cutscenes
I'm just going to come out and say it: Mafia is not a great game.
If I'd run through it in 2002, I probably would've had fun. But this is 2012. Mafia is another title that shows how fast games are ageing - or rather, how fast game design and audience expectations are surging ahead, throwing a harsh spotlight on the crude, medieval designs of our gaming past. In 2022, will the next generation of kids claim Minecraft is a bit rubbish?
But It’s The Truth
I cited Mafia in last year’s essay Those Honeymoon Hours, describing how an early mission in Mafia was exciting because I was oblivious of the game's constraints and hadn’t yet learnt how to master – or perhaps game – its mechanics.
Pretty soon, though, the frustrations break through and its wonderful façade crumples like a mobster taking a baseball bat to the head. I'm not going to whine about the Mafia "sandbox" not being interesting enough as I recognise it is neither a sandbox nor an open world - it is merely an enormous set upon which a gangster-themed third-person shooter plays out.
The Xmaspiration: Survivorship Bias
"I’m also exhausted, really exhausted. It’s so stressful, I think because of the amount of time Neptune plays out over it feels like a total investment into the game. I remember I was out all day at a meeting and I was fretting because I just entered my war with Poseidon. I was on a motorway and worrying about Neptune's Pride."
Craig Lager, Neptune's Pride - The GD War - Part 4 (Gaming Daily)
Last year, Neptune’s Pride developer Jay Kyburz asked me: “Do you think because the game has basically no story, no flavor and no graphics it allows players to pour themselves into it more?”
Although the minimalism of Neptune’s Pride plays a large part in bringing the crowds through the door, I doubt that’s why players get so invested in the game. It’s probably more to do with the action of cultivating an empire of coloured dots over days or weeks and having to defend that digital sandcastle on a beach full of bullies.
The long-term investment of time and energy engenders a strong emotional attachment to the player's empire and losing an equivalent short-form game wouldn’t sting as much.
But there’s another implicit assumption in the question that bothers me. And this is the point where I should talk about mutual funds.
The Xmaspiration: In Paranoia We Trust
If you're not familiar with The Aspiration, check out the supershort summary of this most epic of Neptune's Pride diaries - The Aspiration Retold In Nine Pictures.
-6BAA6CODE6- Virtue is Bond. HM will continue to speak for Me/Us. Today he exposes the only law that the galactic empires agreed on: In Paranoia We Trust.
For the public record, I confirm the real villain of our Neptune’s Pride game was Kent Sutherland.
As the game’s sponsor, he had a bright gold star beside his empire’s name, Starspackle, like he’d won a prize for being the nicest person in the galaxy. We all knew Kent was Starspackle and Starspackle was Kent. Although we applied a respectful level of distrust – this was Neptune’s Pride after all – we tended to be fairly accepting of his “facts” because Kent is a nice guy. Yes, not just facts but “facts”. If Kent said my cat was worshipping Satan, I’d have expected there to be some truth to the tale of the Satanic tail. Even though I didn’t have a cat.
So the grand Machiavellian strategy that Kent employed was “being Kent”. His rare advantage, then, was to be given a pass on player paranoia. This allowed him to employ the paranoia of noob players as his tools of war.
He told The Aspiration many things.
The Consequences Of Consequences
This is Gwaul, a woman I abandoned two years ago.
![[image of Gwaul]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/con_gwaul.png "Gwaul")
She was my avatar in Mount & Blade, TaleWorlds' open world RPG set in the medieval land of Calradia that has never heard of dragons, beholders, dwarves or even a Ring of Protection +2. It is also a game where you are encouraged to live out the consequences of your decisions and failures.
If you fail at a task, Mount & Blade expects you to grin and bear it because leaving the game is only possible through an option called Save & Exit. Unless you feel comfortable with ALT+F4 or yanking out the power with your bare hands.
Seeing Games
![[canary wharf]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/canary-wharf.jpg "canary wharf")
No one is ever going to write a passionate ode to Canary Wharf, a corporate zone that celebrates the impact of grey lines and characterless office blocks. It's a difficult place to make a connection with, the poster child for skyline autism. I have never worked in Canary Wharf and have never wanted to. Yet still a rebellious glimmer of emotion shines through as I glance at the cluster of skyscrapers through the window, across the water. The fog has lifted today.
It’s the second day of Code-Ken 2011, a conference for software developers. Typically, developer conferences are about learning something new to help with the day job, but that kind of model is akin to personalised Google search: you're never confronted with ideas outside of your immediate interest. But Code-Ken 2011 is the reincarnation of a failed conference, StackOverflow DevDays 2011, whose aim was to broaden its audience's horizons and not give them more of the same.
We don't need coffee this morning, because the first presentation of the day is fascinating. Tom Wright, from the Human-Centred Technology (HCT) Group at the University of Sussex, is talking about his research into sensory substitution. This is the science of replacing a lost sense with another, related to - although distinct from - sensory augmentation. We’re not quite discussing Deus Ex: Human Revolution here.
Those Honeymoon Hours
![[tommy angelo with baseball bat, multiple poses]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/mafia-parallel-universe.jpg "mafia parallel universes")
It's Tommy Angelo's first job. Don Salieri is testing his new footsoldier in the field with a simple errand: smash up and torch some cars of a rival mob. But this is Illusion Softworks' Mafia and Tommy's success is down to me. The game has little interest in an alternate future where Tommy dies, gets arrested or simply does badly.
Paulie, Tommy's minder, sits this one out in the car. As I stop the car near Morello's Lounge Bar, he suggests Tommy enters the parking lot via an off-road alleyway.
On the first attempt, I miss the entry point I'm supposed to use and walk around the entire block. Sweeping past the window of the bar, I can see the rival family's henchman downing beers inside. I then flirt recklessly with the main entrance to the car lot – and the stooge out front immediately clocks Tommy as the wrong guy in the wrong place. It does not play out well. Fade to black.
Next time around, I probe the edge of the car lot properly and find the correct ingress. I let rip with the baseball bat and start smacking some cars about, but the guard out front turns around, raises the alarm and...
Fade to black. Try again. I go right up behind the guard and knock him out with the bat before taking on the cars. This seems an incredibly risky move because he's standing on the edge of the road. Surely someone would notice if I knocked a guy out in broad daylight? The game doesn't seem to mind. Smooth wood connects with skull and he goes down. The Thief-phile within me is desperate to drag the body out of sight but it's not a verb the game offers. The guard lies there on the roadside, a message to the world that Tommy's life of crime has begun.
IGDA Writers Panel: Players Versus Characters, 2
This is the second half of an article on the IGDA Writers Panel held at BAFTA, London, on October 26. The first half was published last week.
Last year’s panel was held in a lecture theatre at South Bank University which was spacious and desk-enabled. At BAFTA, the audience were not as lucky. Dinky chairs jammed us into snuggling distances with our neighbours and I had to be careful not to poke out someone's eye with the careless flick of a pen. The panellists got to wave their arms about and express themselves with gusto, but I didn’t have enough room to swing a gnat.
But every crowd has a silver lining – at least I got a free drink.
Just The Player?
The third act of the discussion addressed whether it was just the player alone that defined character. Could genre come into it? Or even the controllers?
IGDA Writers Panel: Players Versus Characters, 1
October 26, 2011. It was time to attend another IGDA writers panel. Last year's panel write-up on Environmental Narrative had been well-received, so I was encouraged to do a repeat performance this year.
The panel's theme this time around was “Players Vs Characters” - the games writer's pocket incarnation of “What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object?” The four writers, convening at BAFTA, were almost the same as last year's line-up:
- Ed Stern (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Brink)
- Rhianna Pratchett (Overlord, Heavenly Sword, Mirror's Edge)
- James Swallow (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Killzone 2)
- Andrew S. Walsh (Harry Potter, Prince of Persia. Medieval II: Total War)
The panel was run differently too. Last year, each of the big names delivered a short presentation, followed by questions. This time it was a freeform discussion with Walsh chairing.
In another departure from last year's panel, I'm going to pepper the write-up with my own commentary.
What Is Character?
With a picture of David Caruso looking down on us, because that is what Caruso does, Walsh opened with the first question: what is character? This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer, Walsh said, because character has been around for a long time in other media.
Stern got first dibs and tackled Walsh's implication that there should be much in common with other media, saying he saw games “as more dissimilar than similar”. Things which look like character aren’t because of the issue of interactivity. The cinema-goer is expected to be passive when watching a film, he said, but the gamer gets to play with perspective and pacing all the time.