Theory Fighter - home of the video game discourse

Building a Friendlier Competitive Game

2008-04-09T10:31:00.001-04:00

Have you ever felt intimidated by a multi-player game? I certainly have on many occasions. I rarely buy games at launch so I enter competitive scenes weeks after they've developed and matured. Upon entering a multi-player session in Gears of War, Halo 3, or more recently, Team Fortress 2, I just get killed repeatedly. Everyone is on a level much higher than I am to the point that I'm unable to compete. It certainly isn't fun playing the role of the punching bag, so I lose interest in the multi-player and eventually stop playing the game.

While I used to play Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress Classic on a competitive level, I simply don't have the time anymore to invest and practice these new shooters. It's also incredibly difficult to learn the game when you're getting killed every thirty seconds. The only reasonable way to learn is to play private games with friends, but what if your friends aren't too interested in the game or you can't schedule ample time to play together? It's increasingly hard to enter competitive scenes, especially if you start late in their life cycles, but it doesn't have to be that way. There are a number of solutions to avoid this problem, to provide newcomers with a safe environment to learn (isn't that what games are supposed to be?) and give them a fighting chance against the expert players.

1) Better matchmaking system
The most obvious solution is a matchmaking system. Game designers can't expect players to match themselves. Ever tried creating a game called "Noobs only" and two minutes into the game, finding out that you're the only beginner there? There's a lot of advanced players who just love preying on the weak. A good matchmaking system should keep rankings and match players with similar skill levels.

2) Bots
One of the reasons why I was able to get into UT and CS was because I had bots. I played against easy bots to learn the controls, the weapons, and the maps. When I got that down, I ramped up the difficulty to learn the nuances of each and pick up tactics to use in certain situations. When I was able to dominate against the bots on the hardest difficulty, I was confident enough to play online against real players and I was actually able to hold my own against high level players. Of course, I still get killed since real people play a lot different than the computer, but it wasn't embarrassingly bad to the point of turning me off and causing me to quit the game. Bots gave me a safe environment to learn the game, to experiment without the pressure of winning or having someone kill me immediately.

Some may argue that you can learn the game by playing the single player campaign, but that only gives you a partial understanding of the multi-player. You may get the controls and weapons down, but the maps and tactics are a completely different beast. In campaign mode, your enemies often play more defensively, controlling a point and preventing you from reaching the end of the stage. In multi-player, however, your enemies are out to kill you, rampaging on an offensive frenzy or camping in esoteric locations. The gameplay and strategies are a lot different, so at least bots can give you a much better understanding of the competitive game than the single player mode.

3) Slight advantages
Complete domination isn't really fun. The most exciting matches are the close matches, so why not give the losing players or the lower ranked players a slight advantage, sort of like rubberband A.I. in racing games? Give them more health, or more ammunition, or a better starting weapon. Since beginners are unfamiliar with the maps and therefore, unfamiliar with the locations of weapon spawn points, allowing them to start with better weapons seems like a great compromise.

I'm surprised that Call of Duty 4 took the opposite route, implementing a leveling-up system where the advantages are given to the advanced players. This only widens the gap between the experts and the newcomers, and makes it that much more intimidating to enter the game. But it still manages to be the most played game on X-Box Live, so what do I know?

4) Tutorials and Feedback
One great way to learn the game is to have your expert friend teach you how to play and critique you as you're playing, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a friend like that. It would be great if the game developers served this role. Developers should release free tutorial videos, whether on their website or through the console's online service (XBL or PSN), that present useful strategies on different levels of play. David Sirlin did this for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo that shipped with Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2, and they were well-done and appreciated.

The game itself can also give you advice or feedback on your gameplay, preferably after you get killed and you're waiting to respawn. Something to the effect of "Your aim was slightly off to the left" or "Try shooting in short bursts rather than spraying" would really help a beginner improve. This is similar to the feedback that Wii Baseball gives you about your batting, telling you if you're swinging too early or too late.

I'm sure implementing these features are going to be tough. It going to take time and money, but in the end, it's worth it. By making your game less intimating, it's more accessible to newcomers, which means more people would give it a chance and more people would buy the game. I personally haven't gotten Call of Duty 4 yet because of its intimidation factor, though I'd eventually pick it up to play its supposedly awesome campaign. The multi-player still scares me.

Beyond the Television Screen

2008-04-06T10:09:00.001-04:00

I just wanted to share a story of a neat game I played a year and a half ago.

On September 23, 2006, my friends and I attended a gaming event called the Manhattan Story Mashup held by Nokia, the mobile phone company. Over 250 participants showed up, each given a Nokia N80 cellphone a few days in advance. The cellphones came with a pre-installed game that was to be used at the event. The setup of the game is quite complicated so let me try to explain.

People would write short stories and submit them to the website. The nouns from the stories were selected to be "target words" for the players at the event. Each player would receive a random target word on their cellphone at regular intervals. They would then need to run around New York City, using the same cellphone to take pictures that would accurately convey the target word to another person. The pictures in turn are sent to two other random players and the two players must race against each other to guess the word that the picture represented in multiple choice fashion. Guessing the correct word would earn the player points, and likewise, the player who took the picture would receive points for being a good photographer. Were you able to catch all that? No? Well, I made a diagram to help you better understand.
At the very start of the game, my friend Gary and I headed downtown from Columbus Circle to Times Square. We both knew that Times Square would be the perfect place for picture taking, since the area is littered with commercial images and hundreds of people in motion. Our strategy paid off since we found a nice spot in front of the police station, where we took thirty to forty pictures that other people were able to match with the correct target words. By the end of the game, we finished with 412 points (which coincidentally, is my favorite 3-digit number), placing us in first place in the competition.

Many of the participants, including Gary and me, were really doubtful of the game before it began. It sounded like a cheap marketing gimmick and required too much investment. But we grew to love it as we played and coming out as the champions wasn't too bad either. The Story Mashup was a fun experiment to turn a video game into a social event, to take it beyond the television screen. With the Nintendo DS having Wifi and iPhones becoming a viable gaming platform, I would love to see a game of this caliber developed for those systems. This is all just wishful thinking...

For Fans of Détournement

2008-04-01T01:24:00.005-04:00

"Détournement" is short for "Deadly Tournament." The letter 'e' also replaces the letter 'a' for a reason which nobody can explain.

Détournements occur frequently and many video games have been made concerning this subject.

Often in these deadly tournaments, fighters will engage in a battle in which THERE CAN BE NO WINNERS!

WHO WILL WIN?!

In "A User's Guide to Détournement," Guy Debord writes, "détournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply."

What he means is that these tournaments are always more KICKASS when it involves irrational, brainless killing. Hence, "Unreal Détournement" is a very popular example.

Finding a Voice: Part 2

2008-03-31T23:09:00.004-04:00

Moments after posting the previous entry, I went over to Michael Abbott's Brainy Gamer to listen to the latest podcast, where he interviews fellow blogger Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland. It's a great interview so go check it out. What's interesting is that she too found herself in the same predicament as I am in, unable to find a voice. She eventually found a niche topic, that of hentai games, that gave her her distinctive sound.

This was a completely different solution than my proposal, which was to expand to a different form of communication altogether. She was concerned about her content, I was concerned about my medium. I guess I am too much into the Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" school of thought that I never taken my content into consideration. Hmm... trying to find a niche topic to talk about? That's going to happen with time. I'll just continue whacking away at all these thoughts in my head until I find it.

Finding a Voice

2008-03-29T18:37:00.008-04:00

It's amazing how only a couple of months ago, we were complaining about the lack of video game criticism. Now, many have stepped up to the challenge of providing intellectual discourses or more subjective, and often crass, reviews. With so many entering the gaming blogosphere and many prominent figures already existing, I admit I find it hard for myself to forge a distinctive voice. So far, my medium of communication has been text, but I find myself getting lost among wordsmiths like N'Gai Croal, Stephen Totilo, Leigh Alexander, Mitch Krpata, Michael Abbott, and Jerry Holkins (all of whom are in my blogroll, by the way).

I think a good path for me to take is to expand to a new medium. After all, unlike most of the above mentioned names, I'm not a professional writer and thusly, text is not my greatest strength. Currently, I'm trying to set up a podcast with three other gaming personalities, which I think would compliment this blog nicely. Having four people with differing opinions brings an interesting dynamic to gaming discourse that you won't find in the blog, which is basically one man's soliloquy. Besides that, I'll continue to find new ways to make Theory Fighter more interesting.

While we're on the subject of game criticism using alternative media, why don't I point out other successes? Here are four that I really love and that you've probably already heard of. Nevertheless, they discuss games using non-textual media and all of them are very humorous.

1) 1UP Yours (Podcast) - I subscribe to Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine and visit the 1UP website every so often, but I don't particularly find anything special about them that I can't find with other enthusiast presses. The exception, however, is the 1UP Yours podcast. There must be over a hundred gaming podcasts on the internet and I've tried out a quarter of them, but 1UP Yours is definitely the best one. It's updated weekly, the cast is funny and informed, and they get game developers for guest spots every once in a while. Given their nature as a gaming magazine, they have the opportunity to cover a large range of games and to preview upcoming games. If you look past the immature jokes, you'll find that the cast has a lot of intelligent things to say about the games they play.

2) Penny Arcade (Webcomic) - There are a dozen or so gaming webcomics, but Penny Arcade is the first and still the best. Other webcomics put video game characters in funny situations and although it may bring out a chuckle or two, I find that they don't have much to say. Whereas Penny Arcade strips take a more critical approach, summing up everything they like or don't like about a game and presenting it in three panels. There is often a better game review in those three panels than many reviews you'll find in the enthusiast press.

3) Zero Punctuation (Video Reviews) - Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's reviews are hilarious and overly critical. His rapid-fire speech and his minimalistic cartoon style are so distinctive, he obviously had no problem distinguishing himself from the myriad of mediocre video reviews you'll find on Youtube.

4) Mushroom Singdom (Music Videos) - I'm not really sure what this is, but it's absolutely genius! GameJew summarizes and reviews new Virtual Console releases in the form of music. The music is great and the lyrics are hilarious. Go watch the reviews for Kirby and the Crystal Shards and Super Turrican if you don't believe me.

Jack Thompson's Allegations

2008-03-26T20:39:00.005-04:00

Whenever Jack Thompson makes a claim that Counter-Strike is a murder simulator, the gaming community just calls him crazy. Well, he has to be crazy, right? There has been no evidence proving the correlation between violent games and violent acts, so he's just spouting gibberish to the uninformed media. But is there a little basis to his allegations?

In 1983, Paladin Press published "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors." What started out as a fictional crime novel, turned into a how-to manual about starting a career as a professional hitman, receiving contracts, and pulling off hits. Ten years later, a triple murder was committed by a man named James Perry, who claimed to have used the book as a guide in his murder. Naturally, the families of the victims sued Paladin Press and the U.S. appeals court unanimously ruled that "Hit Man" was not protected by the free speech cause of the First Amendment.

Two years after this decision, Paladin Press settled the case, giving the families of the victims several million dollars, destroying the remaining copies of the book in their possession, and surrendering all rights to publish and reproduce the work. That's right, "Hit Man" was a work of literature that was deemed to be an exception to free speech and free press. Now, you can argue that "Hit Man" is a technical manual, which is distinct from a creative, fictional work, and therefore, the court's decision was justified. I'll give you that.

In the world of video games, we have games designed specifically for military training, ranging from flight simulators to Mission Rehearsal Exercise's combat training to Full Spectrum Command's tactics training. These war simulators train soldiers to make decisions in combat situations and respond to threats. In some ways, these games train soldiers to fight and kill. These games aren't exactly creative, fictional works; they are how-to technical software comparable to "Hit Man."

One of those games I mentioned was turned into a retail version called Full Spectrum Warrior. According to the FSW website, Full Spectrum Command involves more high-level command akin to moving symbols on a map, whereas in Full Spectrum Warrior, the player is on the ground engaging in combat. In other words, Full Spectrum Warrior is a more visceral experience, showing realistic 3D models shooting at each other rather than abstract symbols on a map. With its more accurate representation of war, it's also a more accurate and persuasive simulation of it. The military got the tactics simulator, but the public got more than that; we see our avatars kill and we see our enemies die.

The distinction between "Hit Man" and any regular crime novel can be clearly seen, but can you tell the difference between a military flight simulator and Ace Combat? How far removed is a military combat simulator to Tom Clancy games or Counter-Strike? And what's to say about Full Spectrum Warrior, a tactical game that's more realistic than its military counterpart? Does Jack Thompson's allegations, as far-fetched as they are, have some basis to them?

Whether you like it or not, games teach. There's an entire field of serious game developers who are making games with a positive educational purpose. And some games, without intending, teach useful skills that can save lives. But if it's possible to teach positive lessons, then surely negative ones go through every once in a while. I personally think the ratio of negative lessons to positive is very low, like one in every million, because we are trained to block out negative influences and to differentiate between right and wrong. But there's always the possibility for an unstable mind to pick up one of these games and use it for malicious means. So, in the end, is making a violent game worth this risk?

Bad Game Design: The Slowly Regenerating Health Bar

2008-03-22T22:04:00.018-04:00

One thing I can thank Halo for is popularizing the trend of the quickly rechargeable health bar, even if it isn't the first game to do it. With Gears of War, Rainbow Six Las Vegas, Call of Duty 4, and a myriad of other first person shooters following suit, no longer am I subjected to the agonizing wait of the slowly regenerating health. Other genres should incorporate the quick health recharge, if they're not already using a health potion system.

What brings me to talk about this subject is the first X-Men Legends, which I was playing the other day. Wolverine, whose mutant ability is regeneration, can slowly regain his health, while other characters can equip items that allow them to do the same. Although useful, it ends up being an annoying and ultimately boring feature. Simply stated, it's bad game design and I wish to never see it again. I hope developers take the following two rules in mind when they design their health systems for future games.

1) If it can be abused, it will be abused.

With the right equipment and powers, every character in the party can recharge their health bars like Wolverine. Sure, there are health potions in X-Men Legends, but if my characters can regain their health for free, then I would always go with the free option. The levels are designed with a number of set battles and some quiet pauses in between each group of enemies. Thus, the game affords plenty of opportunities in between battles to use the health and mana regeneration feature. Just stand in one place for a full five minutes as you watch your bars fill up pixel-by-pixel. Since the battles themselves aren't very long, standing around waiting to heal ends up being a large percentage of the playtime. This inevitably makes the game boring and ruins the pacing, which bring me to my second point.

2) It's not the players' responsibility to pace themselves.

If I completely ignore the health regeneration and use health potions regularly, then the pacing of the game would be as intended by the developers. But I shouldn't have to put artificial rules or barriers on my style of play to make the game more fun. I would prefer if the game forces me into contrived scenarios that doesn't let me straddle for too long. For example, if the game detects me trying to abuse regeneration, it can spawn some enemies to keep me in motion. Better yet, replace the regeneration with something else entirely. Two sequels later in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, the developers came up with a pretty good solution. Although health regeneration still exists in the game for some characters, you generally regain health and mana by defeating enemies, giving players the incentive to move forward and stay on the offensive. The game ends up being much better paced than its predecessors as a result.

The Product Review

2008-03-17T23:40:00.006-04:00

Every time I watch a great movie, or even a terrible one, the experience sticks with me upon finishing it. I always feel the urge to talk about the movie with whomever I watched it with and when I get home, I immediately bring up online reviews to see what other people thought of it. Yeah, I use reviews the wrong way. I don't read them to make an informed decision on what movie to watch. I make my movie decisions based off previews and word of mouth. Rather, I read reviews after watching the movie because it's fun to find others who share my opinions and it's interesting to understand the opinions of those who don't agree with me.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for game reviews. They're incredibly boring to read. There's already a lot of criticism written about game reviews -- whether or not they're influenced by advertisement pressure, how they differ and are inferior to game critiques, and how broken the number rating system is. Nevertheless, I'll share my personal gripes about game reviews.

1) The long descriptions of fact and features

Q: "Wait, reviews are just opinions. Right?"
A: Actually, we don't think so. We make no excuses for our verdicts about games and believe our reviews stand for themselves. While our reviews, of course, do contain an element of subjectivity to them, we see the process of reviewing games as one that primarily involves the reporting of facts. -- Gamespot, in the FAQ section of their review philosophy.

What facts are there to report? The game runs at 60 fps, it has 16 player online matches, it includes 20 different game types, and it takes 20 hours to complete. These aren't very interesting to read at all, especially for someone like me who reads reviews the "wrong" way. At the top of every review, they should include a bullet list of all the features and get it out of the way early, or just post links to previews that already covered the different modes and characters. I frankly don't want to read three paragraphs of facts before I get to a sentence telling me the story is good.

2) The pullback comment

The pullback comment happens when the reviewer makes a negative criticism, then immediately relents it with a positive note that is of a different category. Below are three examples of the pullback comment selected at complete random.

"If you're a Ninja Gaiden fan, it's a bit disappointing to realize that on standard difficulty level, you'll be able to take the majority down in one try. Even some of the attack patterns are practically the same among bosses, which is disappointing. That doesn't mean, however, that Dragon Sword isn't a lot of fun, regardless of how you feel about its level of challenge." -- Gamespot's review of Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

"While there's a huge selection, very few [maps] stood out as iconic in actual layout – the bigger maps were a little bland, while the smaller maps were incredibly pretty, but without much personality beyond looks. Don't get me wrong, UT's gameplay is more than strong enough to carry maps that aren't wildly interesting" -- IGN's review of Unreal Tournament III

"That’s right, the framerate is a major problem in this game and it does get bad during multiplayer and sometimes in the single-player game when you’re in a massive battle. The game does feature online functions using the Wi-FI connection but it is reserved to trading Moogles with others. It’s hardly a worthy substitute for going on quests with other gamers. Still, with a game with solid controls and good use of the touch screen, you can’t complain too much." -- GameZone's review of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

3) The cliché fan recommendation

"It's a blast to play with friends, but not alone. It's certainly worth a look if you're a fan of this series." -- PCMag's review of Mario Party 8

"Check it out if you're a fan of the series or want to go questing with local friends." -- Game Daily's review of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

"If you're a fan of the genre, you pretty much owe it to yourself to pick this game up." -- IGN's review of Virtual Fighter 4 Evolution

It's a given that fans of the series or genre will check it out. Instead, inform fans when they should stay away. Not surprisingly, most of these boring reviews are from the big enthusiast press outlets. Thank goodness for the Tom Chicks and Mitch Krpatas, or else I'd think game journalism is doomed.

Death of the Movie Theater

2008-03-15T02:19:00.005-04:00

We always talk about how the game industry imitates the movie industry, from cutscenes to product placement to its maturation, but I think the converse is true when it comes to the future of the movie theater. Earlier today, I went to see 10,000 BC, which is #1 at the box office, and I was surprised to see how empty the movie theater was. Where was everyone? Were they at home playing Smash Bros.? That was a reasonable prediction seeing as how games were replacing movies as people's favorite past time. The release of Halo 3 led to the worse month in box office sales since 1999 and Hollywood is already afraid that Iron Man would lose ticket sales to Grand Theft Auto 4.

Sitting in a half empty theater for a big budget movie made me think that the movie theater is going to go the way of the arcades. By that, I mean movie theaters will start to die out until they adopt gimmicks that cater to a niche audience and leave them barely alive. Back when Street Fighter 2 came out, arcades were booming. Everyone was at the arcades... it was the cool place to be. But over the years, arcades lost their audience and many started closing. I remember frequenting five different arcades in my city and now there's only one left. But what made the arcades die out and why are movie theaters following the same path?

There are three main reasons. The first is because the home experience became much more competent and eventually exceeded that of the arcades. In the beginning, arcade cabinets provided superior hardware and the console ports often had less features or were downright terrible. But when console ports became equal to their arcade counterparts and eventually started including more features, the arcades lost their appeal. Likewise, in the movie industry, high-definition television and surround sound systems have been infiltrating homes, providing a very high quality experience that rivals the movie theater.

When arcades realized that they were losing to consoles, they started introducing gimmick-based hardware to differentiate themselves. Thus came the age of Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, and all those other games that make you work up a sweat to have any fun. Now that the Wii, Playstation Eye, and Rock Band are paving the way for gestural gameplay at home, I don't see any point for arcades to still exist unless they come up with another big innovation. With the movie industry, my prediction is that they'll need to rely on gimmicks as well to stay alive. Expect to see more movies coming out on IMAX 3D and new stuff like interactive, vibrating seats that we normally see as amusement park rides.

The second reason why arcades died is that people grew out of them. Arcades were a great place to play against strangers and meet other gamers, but now we have the Internet and online gaming for that. Not to mention that meeting people at the comfort of your own home is a better experience than being surrounded by lots of smelly, sweaty nerds in a dim-lit room. Likewise, watching a movie on your big screen HDTV from your couch is a more comfortable experience than having the guy behind you constantly kick your chair while someone up front is talking on his cellphone. By the way, despite how empty the 10,000 BC theater was, I still managed to get a group of commentators, a crying infant, and a jerk with a laser pointer.

Finally, the third reason is because the consoles were getting media as quickly as the arcades were. At one point, you had to wait forever for your favorite arcade game to get a console port and most of the time, you weren't even sure if there was a console port coming. But then console ports became only a few weeks wait and eventually, consoles became the premiere launch platform for every game. We're seeing the exact same thing in the movie industry. Lots of movies are direct-to-DVD while movies that are released in theaters get a home port much sooner than before. In fact, Atonement just came out on DVD and Blu-ray, while the theater next to where I work is still showing it. Something like that never happened two years ago. It further proves my point that the movie theaters are going to diminish like our beloved arcades.

Addicted to Game Culture

2008-03-14T01:17:00.002-04:00

When fellow blogger, Leigh Alexander, tried to abstain from playing video games for an entire week and found it nearly impossible, I said to myself that that wasn't me. I'm not addicted to video games. In fact, I've gone weeks without touching a single game. I'm usually far too busy with school or work to make games my priority. And I have a healthy dose of secondary interests to satisfy my itch for entertainment.

A couple of days later, the unthinkable happened. The Verizon DSL service in my area went down. My first reaction was, of course, confusion and panic. Was there something wrong with my modem? Was my computer attacked with malware? I called Verizon and literally went through an hour of waiting and providing information before customer service tried to help me reset my PPP connection. It worked. My computer was finally online again and I could continue my daily Internet routine.

Twenty minutes later, it went down again. And thus, I called customer service and this time, they told me my modem was broken and offered to sell me a new modem for $65. I declined and called my friend, who is much more technically savvy than I am, and he told me that the network was probably down. The only solution was to wait it out. But how long would I have to wait? A couple of days? The entire month?

The prospect of being disconnected from the Internet almost gave me an anxiety attack. I felt depressed. I tried to play some video games to get my mind off the problem, but I couldn't get myself to play them. I picked up a book that's been on my reading queue for a while and I only got through four pages before my depression compelled me to stop. I did manage to marginally forget about the situation when my technically savvy friend invited me over to his house for the weekend. We watched the entire fourth season of Alias in one sitting, but the moment we finished the season finale, I was reminded that I had nothing to do when I returned home.

Fortunately for me, my Internet was back up the following day. I was ecstatic. Feelings of anxiety, depression, and isolation were all instantly gone in one moment. It was then when I knew I had a problem and I started investigating its origins. In my discovery, I realized that I didn't particularly have an Internet addiction; I had a video game addiction. I have over 100 RSS subscriptions, all but two are related to games. The guys I chat with the most online are fellow enthusiast gamers and the girls I chat with the most often play against me in casual web games like Boggle and Scrabble.

I was addicted to games, but not in the same way that Ms. Alexander was. I could go weeks without feeling a game controller in my hands. But going a few days without reading the latest gaming news and previews, without chatting with friends or posting in forums about games, without checking gamers' blogs for their insights on the medium, was just too much for me to handle. When I made my triumphant return to the Internet after a five day hiatus, the gaming community had moved so quickly ahead of me that I felt like I had been living under a rock for a year. There was so much backlog of news in my RSS feeds, it took me two days to catch up to the world.

Now at work, whilst everyone else has their headphones on to listen to music, I'm listening to three game-related podcasts a day. In my browser, I'm constantly running my RSS reader and checking it every hour or two. Next to my bed are a stack of game magazines and a pile of game theory books. On my desk are some philosophy and cognitive science textbooks and a copy of my unfinished dissertation about games. It's funny how I spend much more time reading, writing, watching, and talking about video games than I actually spend playing them. Is that abnormal?

Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Things Thereof

2008-03-13T05:00:00.004-04:00

I love crossovers. I love the character interactions found in Godzilla vs. King Kong, Robocop vs. Terminator, Freddy vs. Jason, and Aliens vs. Predator. I love the bigger company crossovers like Marvel vs. DC, Capcom vs. SNK, and Kingdom Hearts. And I love the random franchise mash-ups like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Harvey Birdman, and Super Smash Bros. It's so interesting and rewarding to see these characters, who you've invested so much time in, come into contact with other characters that you love. You'll see your favorite characters put into funny situations -- a former-superhero-turned-lawyer defends Secret Squirrel for allegedly flashing a woman, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny play a prank on a human detective whilst he's falling to his death, a team of street fighters challenges the super-powered X-Men to a match, and a pink marshmallow sucks in Solid Snake to grow a manly beard.

Yes, I've been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl recently and it prompted me to write this post. The game is such a great homage to the Nintendo brand. You'll see obscure references like Mr. Game & Watch, R.O.B. the useless NES peripheral, and Dr. Wright from the SNES version of SimCity to newer characters like Captain Olimar from Pikmin, Lucario the fourth generation Pokémon mascot, and Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing. The game is so entirely self-referential, from its playable characters and stages to its trophies and stickers, that it'll sure bring a nostalgic smile to any gamer's face.

There's a lot of great things to be said about the Smash Bros. series. It's very easy to get into, simplifying special moves to a directional tilt of the joystick coupled with a button press. Its gameplay plays off the familiar design of the platforming genre and has enough random elements to give an unskilled players a fighting chance. But I think the most important aspect of why the series is so fun is the variety that each character brings in. Nintendo's rich history and diverse franchises make me think that they are one of the few companies who can pull off a game of such magnitude. You see, it was common for games of yore to rely on a gameplay gimmick to differentiate itself in its oversaturated genre. Bionic Commando had his grappling hook, Mega Man stole powers from defeated bosses, Rainbow Islands had the rainbow arcs, Lode Runner had terrain deformation, and Castlevania had the whip. Nintendo franchises, many of which originated from that era, each had their own gimmicks and I'm glad to see these characters appear in SSBB with their gimmicks intact.

Princess Peach, whose incarnation is based off of Super Mario Bros. 2, has her floating skill and the ability to pick up turnips and items from the ground. Kirby has his multiple jumps and the ability to suck up characters to steal their powers. Pokémon Trainer controls three different pokémon and can switch between them at anytime. Captain Olimar has to pick up pikmin from the ground and command them to do the fighting for him. Yoshi has his unique second jump he received in the Yoshi Island games and all his egg-related glory. Sonic's gameplay is about constantly moving and staying on the offensive, much like how his games are about speed and forward motion. It's also great to see characters who didn't originate in gimmick-based games appear in the Smash series with original movesets like Captain Falcon, Fox McCloud, and the Ice Climbers. I'm personally a little disappointed to see Diddy Kong, who originated from a series that revolved around tagging and piggybacking, not show up with Dixie Kong as a partner. Instead, he's based around his later incarnations in Donkey Kong 64 and Mario Power Tennis, which is a bit less interesting.

Nevertheless, since each character came from a gimmicky background, they brought their gimmicks with them into Smash. Smash is a mish-mash of dozens of platforming ideas, which gives the game its variety. Not very often do we see a fighting game where every character is based on a different gameplay concept. I can only think of the Guilty Gear games and to an extent, Mortal Kombat II. And I'm not talking about Mortal Kombat's fatalities, which are completely useless aesthetic gimmicks. I'm talking about how some of the characters introduced ideas to the fighting game genre that did not exist back then like Shang Tsung's morphing and Reptile's invisibility. Square Enix is making their own crossover fighting game called Dissidia: Final Fantasy, but I'm not convinced that it'll be as good as the Smash series as their characters originated from a rather gimmick-less series.

Far too many games today try to do everything from your Halos to your Grand Theft Autos. What we're ending up with is a homogenization of ideas and design. Everything is starting to look the same to me to the point where I usually can't tell what open-world game or first-person shooter I'm looking at. I think we need to roll back the clock and start relying on gimmicks again to differentiate our games. We're seeing this in the independent scene with games based on space or time manipulation, perspective changing, obfuscation, shifting characters, and lots of other neat ideas. The only commercial game with the same design philosophy was last year's Portal, whose entire gameplay revolved around shooting portals and teleporting oneself from point A to point B.

Going back to Brawl, there are lots of gimmicky stages as well. My favorites are WarioWare, Pictochat, Flat Zone 2, Mario Bros., 75m, and Elektroplankton, in which it seems like you're fighting on an exact replica of the respective games. Other creative stages include the Mushroomy Kingdom where you play desolate versions of the first two stages from Super Mario Bros., Smashville whose time of day and various events are based on the Wii's internal clock, and The Summit where you fight on a large melting iceberg. These stages further epitomizes the brilliance of this fictional world that Nintendo created. Being able to stand on a line drawn in Pictochat is completely ludicrous, but in the context of this game with all its zaniness, it's actually somewhat believable.

That's because from the start, these characters are treated as figurines, as toys for the player to play with. In the original Smash Bros. game, the opening movie shows a child's room where the figurines come into life and start their fighting. In the Subspace Emissary mode in Brawl, when these characters die, they don't actually get killed but revert back to trophy form. The entire narrative is placed under the prospect of a child's imagination. The Master Hand is representative of our own hands playing with these toys and this is a common theme used throughout the entire game. In the character select screen, for example, players control a glove as a cursor that points at characters and can drag icons around, unlike other fighting games where players merely highlight characters on the screen. With this notion, Nintendo has perfected the art of creating a unified world from their various character mythos. Even with weird juxtapositions like a deformed Mario vs. a realistically proportioned Captain Falcon vs. a flat Mr. Game & Watch vs. a cel-shaded-inspired Toon Link, I accept it as a believable universe.

I wasn't really sure where I was going with this post. I just wanted to talk about some random thoughts I've had while playing Brawl. To summarize, I love crossovers, I love gameplay gimmicks, and as ridiculous as the Smash universe is, I love its fiction.

The Brainy Gamer

2008-03-07T14:22:00.005-05:00

The Brainy Gamer is a wonderful gaming blog written by Michael Abbott. He is a member of academia and his writings are much more intellectual than my own. So please head over to http://www.brainygamer.com/ for some interesting reading.

In his latest podcast, episode 10, he plugged this blog and attempted to respond to an earlier post I made about video game violence and art. You can listen to the entire podcast here, it's only a little over an hour long. Or you can skip to the last ten minutes where I'm mentioned. Saving the best for last. :o)

To visitors from the Brainy Gamer blog, welcome to Theory Fighter! I've only gotten started, so I hope you enjoy reading the few essays I've posted. Please bookmark this site and expect to see more updates and hopefully, learn something new in the process. I will be starting my own podcast soon with a fun group of brainiacs and interviews with new media artists. So I hope you'll come back for more!

From the Movie Model to the Television Model

2008-03-06T13:35:00.006-05:00

I'm probably the only person in the world who doesn't download music. I don't own an mp3 player, as I still have a bulky CD player in the side pocket of my winter jacket. But every single person I know downloads music and none of them does it through legal channels. I try to convince them otherwise, but to no avail. "Look at those stars," they tell me. "They're rich despite all the piracy that's going on."

Sure, the rock stars are rich because they still make a lot of money selling concert tickets. But the production houses, the ones who spend the money doing the promotions and making the artists look good, lose millions of dollars each year due to piracy. As with any big production house, they would stop taking risks and start cutting the not-yet-famous, upcoming bands -- the bands that a lot of my friends listen to. Despite my efforts to convince them to the light side, piracy is here to stay. Evidently, it's incredibly hard to compete against free. But the music industry isn't going to die. The music industry is going to change. Perhaps it would react the same way the Korean music industry reacted to piracy and saturate music videos with advertisements. Perhaps we'll see a lot more licensed soundtracks in other media. Or maybe they'll use video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band as platforms to sell music.

The video game industry is dealing with a similar situation. Developers are wary of the rampant amount of piracy on the PC platform, as evidenced by recent reports of piracy on Call of Duty 4 and Crysis. As such, many companies are moving development towards consoles as they generally have much less piracy; that is until all the modders and pirates move onto the console platforms. But like my predictions of the music industry, I think that video games have to take a similar approach to respond to this problem in any successful manner. They will need an increase use of advertisements.

I see that a few companies are already taking this path. EA's Battlefield Heroes will employ their new "Play 4 Free" model, in which the game will be available free for download with revenue generated from advertising and micropayments. Since in-game advertisements would look out of place in Battlefield's World War II setting, the advertisements will be used in the menu screens before matches. Likewise, Id Software is releasing their web-based Quake Live under their "freemium" category, which will use in-game advertisements for revenue. Finally, Blizzard's Starcraft II, while not free, will also be using advertisements to maximize revenues.

Advertisements have always been detested by players, but if they're playing a high production game for no cost, I don't think they would mind adverts at all. Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that a couple of ads in-game or in the menus are enough to cover the cost of making these big games. The fact of the matter is this approach is too similar to the film model, in which advertisements are shown before the movie starts and in-film adverts are subtle enough to be completely ignored. Films do not make much revenue from their ads, so why would we expect games to do so while using the same model? Advertisements need to be more blatant for them to work.

The web is a good example of this. Every standard website you go to has banner ads, usually an image or some interactive flash that is displayed at the top of the page and on the side. We've become so familiar and accustomed with this that we've learned to completely ignore it. This was the subtle approach. Nowadays, most websites employ more blatant techniques such as pop-up ads, hover ads, or interstitial ads where you sometimes randomly load a web page displaying nothing but a large advertisement.

Interstitial ads are very much like television commercials, as they obtrusively interrupt your experience. But people can still enjoy a website with interstitial ads and people can still become immersed in a television show with commercials. Can video games adopt a television model and still provide an immersive experience? What if we put one-minute commercials during loading screens or better yet, at cliffhanger moments during the storyline much like what television does? The advertisement would certainly be more effective, but would it remove the player from the virtual world so far as to ruin the entire game? I don't have answers to these questions, but I'd like to think that in-game commercials could work.

Drawing more from the television parallel, I think it would be interesting if consoles adopted a cable channel model. Even though the PC gaming industry is in disarray, so much that a PC Gaming Alliance was formed to remedy the situation, there is one massive exception to the rule known as Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Blizzard is making a fortune from this game not because of the number of copies it's selling, but the number of subscribers it has, which at last count was 10 million. This is a crazy idea, but what if players can subscribe to a game channel of their favorite company? For example, I can subscribe to a Capcom channel, where I pay a monthly fee to receive all their new games at no additional cost at an episodic magnitude and frequency. I'm not proposing this as a replacement to our current model, but as an alternative. Analogously, the television industry both airs their series and releases their shows on DVD.

Removing Genre Awards

2008-03-04T12:59:00.009-05:00

With the near release of the U.S. version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I'd like to comment on the petty arguments over whether or not the game is a fighting game. On one side, since the game involves characters fighting against each other, it's a fighting game by its most elementary definition. On the other side, people argue it isn't a fighting game since it has too many random elements, it lacks several standard fighting game elements such as health bars and command inputs, and half the game has to be turned off in order to make it competitive.

After a while, most people just stopped caring, as did I. So what if SSBM is accepted as a fighting game? It doesn't make the game any better or worse. Genres are simply marketing terms after all; they're there to help consumers find something that matches their interests. I'd like that to be the common sentiment, but unfortunately, the video game industry is stuck in a state in which genres do matter.

At the end of the year, every media outlet and publication gives out their "best of year" awards. These awards tend to fall under three categories. The first one is achievement awards, which include best graphics, music, writing, and artistic direction. The second is platform awards, which include best PC game, PS3, PSP, XB360, Wii, DS, or whatever platform is on the market. Finally, the third category is genre awards. Out of these three categories, the achievement awards are the only ones that are stable and ubiquitous. For example, "best graphics" is a stable category since all games of past, present, and future have some form of graphical display.

Platform awards, on the other hand, such as "best PS3 game" is not a stable category because 50 years into the future, someone would look back at these lists and have no idea what a Playstation 3 is. Platform awards also sometimes create ambiguous or paradoxical situations. For example, more than one publication of 2007 gave Call of Duty 4 the "best XB360 game" award over Bioshock, but Bioshock won "game of the year" award over Call of Duty 4. Isn't a platform award just a subcategory of the "game of the year" award? If we already establish that Bioshock is the better game overall, then shouldn't Bioshock still be the better game on the console? Personally, I think we should get rid of platform awards altogether and add a new achievement award called "best handheld game." It's the equivalent of "best animated movie" at the Academy Awards.

Genres are even less stable and more ambiguous than platforms. Genres fade away and new genres are formed every year. Beat-em-ups and shoot-em-ups are a rare breed, while rhythm/music games are relatively new. In addition, most games nowadays are a combination of multiple genres and it's difficult to place them into one specific category. Mass Effect is a role-playing / third-person-shooter, Halo 3 is a vehicular-combat / first-person-shooter, Kingdom Under Fire is a hack-and-slash / real-time-strategy, and Smash Bros. is a fighting / platformer. Who really is to say which one encompassing genre these hybrids fall into? It's okay if we attach arbitrary keywords to these games that would help other people find something to their interests, but to define exactly which genre they fall under is quite pretentious and irresponsible.

The way we think about classification is very different now than it was back then. I attribute this change to the advent of the Internet, specifically Web 2.0. We don't necessarily have this notion of a hierarchical taxonomy anymore, but more of a folksonomic classification system. Things aren't broken down into a tree-like structure where every node only has one parent. Instead, they resemble a giant spider-web, where nodes have multiple neighbors, therefore multiple precedents and derivatives. I made a mock-up of the two types of genre classifications for your viewing pleasure.

Game publications should leave genre awards out of their annual award ceremonies because it's irresponsible for them to define which genre a game belongs to. We don't define a game by its genre; we define genres by the games. Let's stop putting so much emphasis on genres and perhaps, the forum posters would stop their petty arguments over whether or not Smash Bros. is a fighting game, or if Zelda is a role-playing game.

Now, I certainly know why game publications have genre awards -- it's to give mention to games of niche genres that generally have no chance of winning game of the year. When was the last time a puzzle game, a sports game, or a fighting game won best game? These genres are the equivalent of comedies and horror movies at the Oscars. Removing genre awards would be removing any appraisal these niche games would get. My solution to this is a simple change to the nomenclature. Instead of giving out the "best puzzle game" award, we give out the "best puzzle mechanics" award, which makes it more of an achievement award than a genre award. As explained before, genres are not very stable and most games are cross-genre nowadays, so placing a hybrid game into one genre is an opinionated decision. However, the different mechanics that the game employs can be clearly defined. Attacking enemies with ranged attacks is a shooting mechanic. Getting from location A to location B before the opponents do or under a specific time is a racing mechanic. Gaining a form of experience points and upgrading character statistics, skill set, and equipment is a role-playing mechanic.

I find that this is quite an elegant solution that solves a number of problems. First off, hybrid games can be nominated in several mechanic categories, instead of being arbitrarily thrown into a specific genre. Secondly, the merits of its mechanics will be judged, not the overall package. So if a game like Puzzle Quest wins best puzzle game because of its RPG mechanics and not its derivative puzzle elements, then it's not exactly fair to other more innovative puzzle games. There's always the "game of the year" award for the overall package.

Violence is an Art

2008-03-02T00:54:00.008-05:00

Being the social outcast in the entertainment media family, games are generally looked down upon by outsiders. It's not hard to see why gamers make a stand for their passion -- seemingly more so than comic book fans and action figure fans -- and fight back against claims that games turn us into immature child-men and man-teens, obese children, sodomizing rapists, and violent adults. To be fair, video games were only mentioned in passing in the articles about immaturity and obesity. The issue of violent video games, however, has been repeatedly debated upon with new "scientific studies" appearing every two months, contradicting data and questionable testing methods intact.

Who truly knows if there's a direct link between video games and violent behavior? Certainly not I as I'm not a psychologist or a scientist. I haven't done any scientific studies, but even from anecdotal sources, I hear conflicting reports. Most of the gamers I know claim that video games make them less violent since games provide a framework in which they could relinquish external pressures and act out innate anger issues. However, they also admit that they drive more aggressively after playing a racing game, in which they receive minor time penalties for crashing and wrecking cars, or that they felt an urge to go paintballing after playing a first-person shooter. Not to mention those who easily get frustrated with difficult games and throw their controllers at walls, but act considerably more civil when confronted with difficult problems at work.

I'm not going to attempt to prove or disprove a link between virtual violence and aggressive behavior. However, I like to think that games can influence players to be violent. I find it hypocritical for gamers to so quickly dispel the notion of violent games influencing violent behaviors, then simultaneously be on the forefront of the "games are art" movement. Art is a creative work that influences, whether that influence is positive or negative. Art engages its audience and instigates emotions and behaviors -- excitement, dread, enjoyment, depression, courage, anxiety, loneliness, compassion, and yes, even aggression. If we are fighting so hard to get games recognized as art, then we must also accept the notion that games can influence violence.

I think coming to this realization can lead to improvements in our industry. For one, game retailers and more specifically, the staff who work at game retail stores, should get their act straight and stop selling Mature-rated games to kids. Similarly, the ESRB should promote higher awareness of the ratings to parents. If parents decide to let their children play mature games, then that's their decision, but stores should never be the decision makers.

Secondly, admitting that violent games can be negatively influential can lead to designers and developers to start moving away from the violent model. With the exception of a few standout games, the mainstream game industry is littered with two extremes -- the violent adult games and the non-violent children's games. The non-violent adult games can be found in the independent industry, which I'm absolutely grateful for, but wouldn't it be great if these games had bigger budgets and bigger marketing campaigns?

Different Types of Gaming Skills and Their Competitive Values

2008-02-29T00:53:00.020-05:00

Games teach. We learn from games and we obtain new skills from games; some skills being more useful than others in our everyday lives. Games can have educational value that ameliorates one's mind, teach social skills through interaction with online players or smart A.I. characters, and be artistically and philosophically engaging to alter one's view of the world. These types of skills, however, are discussion for another time. Here, I will try to categorize the different types of competitive skills that can be gained from playing video games and list them in order of value, defined as how useful the skill is in competitive games and how much of it is intrinsically carried into another game.

1) Strategy
Strategic skills involve overcoming mental challenges, making decisions based on situations on hand, and outsmarting the opponent with mind-games. This is the most important and useful gaming skill. It is a mental skill that you can take with you into other games and stays with you until a very old age when you lose control of your cognitive abilities. Games built entirely around strategy, with no need for the other types of skills, happen to be the best games and longest surviving.

One such example is Chess, which takes about five minutes to understand how the game works and learn how the different pieces move, but takes a lifetime to master its strategic depth. Chess is a game of perfect information, stripping away luck from the equation, and is a turn-based board game, removing the need for physical mastery. Being a game of pure thinking and strategic planning, we find that it caters to players of all ages, from elementary school kids to old men sitting at parks. Other similar games are Chinese Chess, Go, Checkers, and Othello. There are also some great strategy games with imperfect information such as Mahjong, Poker, Bridge, Spades, Hearts, Big Two, Scrabble, and Stratego. Without perfect information, there is an element of luck thrown into the mix, but as long as players have complete control over their actions (actions during a turn are not based on a dice roll or a random card draw) and there is a fixed pool of resources (144 tiles in Mahjong, 52 cards in a deck, 100 tiles in Scrabble), then strategy is not compromised by random luck.

What does this have to do with video games? Competitive games that put primary focus on strategic skills tend to have longer lifespans. One such example is the Street Fighter 2 series, whose simplicity is its strongest asset. Being a fighting game by nature, it is played in real-time and involves a lot of twitch-based combat, but with its relatively simple system and tight controls, its barrier of entry is far smaller than more recent fighting games. As much as I love them, games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core are too execution heavy, thus the best player is the one who practices their combos the most, not the one who has the better mind-games. In the Street Fighter 2 series, however, the game is not too fast-paced, has little effects clutter, and has a simple universal system, therefore putting emphasis on spacing and zoning, reading the opponent's moves, and tricking the opponent into a defenseless position. The newest iteration of the game, entitled Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix, will put further emphasis on the strategic elements of the game by making execution easier, and I absolutely cannot wait for it.

Another popular game with focus on strategy is Counter-Strike. Of course, it's a first-person shooter and it involves twitch-based gameplay, but it's not as important as what weapons you take into combat and tactical teamwork. And a more recent example of a great strategy game is Defense of the Ancients, which removes all the things that made real-time strategy games too convoluted and twitchy (e.g. resource gathering, structure building, and micromanagement) and focuses on the core mechanics such as teamwork, flanking, and character match-ups.

Strategic skills are the most important skill to master. Most gaming tournaments center around strategy-based games and you can expect these games to have a long lifespan, so all your time invested in them is not immediately wasted. As most games are based on the same elementary concepts, an understanding of controlling space and pressuring the opponent will help you win many games.

2) Twitch
Whereas strategy represents the mental elements of a game, twitch represents the physical elements. Twitch skill is based on execution of complicated controller commands and quick reactions to circumstances. Although the aforementioned games are primarily focused on strategy, all three contain twitch elements such as Street Fighter 2's execution of combos and complicated moves (e.g. Zangief's Final Atomic Buster, Guile's Double Somersault), Counter-Strike's shootouts and bunny-hopping, and Defense of the Ancient's click-combat and operation of its user-interface. In fact, there are genres based entirely around twitch gameplay such as shoot-em-ups, music and rhythm games, and most block-dropping puzzle games. These are the games that test your reflexes and improve your hand-eye coordination.

You can improve your strategic skill by watching others play and talking to expert gamers, but twitch is a skill that can only be improved through your own practice. Having an expert Guitar Hero player tell you how to effectively perform hammer-ons or play the fifth button does not help; you have to actually try it for yourself over and over again until you get the hang of it. Practicing your twitch skills does help you when you make the jump to other games. Since all first-person shooters involve pointing an aiming reticule over an enemy model, learning how to do it in one game will give you an automatic advantage when you play another shooter. Likewise, learning how to perform quarter-circles and charges in one 2D fighting game will help you jump into another 2D fighter with a low barrier of entry.

Ultimately, strategy has more overall value than twitch skills. You lose your physical capabilities much sooner than your mental capabilities, and since twitch is a physical skill, you find it quite difficult to master twitch games before the age of 10 and past the age of 30. You'll see strategy-focused games played by people of all ages, but twitch games are mainly played by the young adult crowd who not only has the physical proficiency to master the game, but also has the time to invest in practicing the game.

3) Knowledge
Knowledge is another mental skill, but it is different than strategy. Strategy is based on the how, knowledge is based on the what. Strategy involves making informed decisions and outsmarting the opponent, but knowledge simply involves knowing more than the opponent. For example, knowing the map in a first-person shooter definitely gives the player the advantage over someone who's playing the map for the very first time. Knowledge can be gained simply by playing the game for a while and obtaining observations from other players; it does not require as much analyzing as it does to obtain strategy or as much practicing as it does to obtain twitch skills. Whereas strategy and twitch have essentially no limit, your knowledge of a game caps out when you find out everything the game as to offer.

Knowledge is an undeniably significant skill to have, but unfortunately, it is game-specific. Knowledge of the Valhalla map in Halo 3 is only useful in the context of Halo 3; it is no longer a useful skill when you're playing Call of Duty 4. Generally, knowledge is reset with every new game you play. The only time when that is not true is when you play another game of the same series and familiar characters, weapons, maps, or system make it into the sequel. However, with every new character, weapon, or map that is added to the new game, you must rethink and alter your knowledge.

4) Willpower/Time
Willpower is a bit of a mental skill and a bit of a physical skill, but mostly, it is a time-based skill. This skill applies mostly to role-playing games. Willpower is the skill to drudge through long amounts of simple and unsophisticated gameplay to level up your character or find a new item. It is the skill to endure, or maybe even enjoy, a grindfest or a collectathon. And it is arguably not a skill at all as heard through the phrase, "It's a test of will, not a test of skill."

Role-playing games give the least competitive value for amount of time put in. The time spent in willpower-based games do not reflect the skill level of the player, but the skill level of the virtual character. The character will grow in statistics and learn new moves, but the player's skill level remains stagnant throughout, growing not much further than what he started out with when first picking up the game. Though there is some strategy and some twitch skills to be gained in role-playing games, the emphasis is mostly on willpower, time, and knowledge of the game. Unfortunately, when jumping to a completely new game, all that is reset and lost in the process. Willpower and time are skills that are not carried over to new games and thus, has the least value.

Despite being a useless skill, games based around willpower manage to be incredibly popular. Perhaps, fans of RPGs don't like exercising their minds and their bodies when playing games or they just don't care about competitive gameplay. RPGs are designed for a different type of gamer, someone who enjoys aesthetics and narrative over competition, someone who plays games for relaxation or social endeavors, someone who likes exploring or the simple act of achieving.

User-Generated Content

2008-02-27T10:45:00.015-05:00

If 2007 was the year of the peripheral (Wiimote and its various add-ons, Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments, Scene It? and Buzz! The Mega Quiz's game show buzzer controllers, and The Eye of Judgment's PlayStation Eye and trading cards), then 2008 is the year of the user-generated content. More and more do we see video game companies adopting a Wikipedia or Youtube model, buiding the tools that allow users to create content for the game.

There are three main levels of entry in these user-creation tools. At high levels, the users must have advanced programming skills, understanding of game design, knowledge of computer languages, and a means to get media (sprites, models, graphics, sounds, music). High-level user-creation is just one step below actual game-making; the difference being that high level user-creators don't have to build their games from scratch. They are given a basis to start with, that being a middleware engine, modding tools, or a very competent programming environment. For example, GarageGame's Torque Engine is a powerful and free middleware engine that has built-in 3D graphics, physics, terrain, and collision detection engines, freeing the creator from many technical complications and allowing them to focus more on the game design. In the modding world, we have Valve's Half-Life 2 and Epic Game's Unreal Tournament 3, which is not unlike using a middleware engine. Finally, you may argue that a multimedia environment like Adobe's Flash is a high level user-creation tool with its easy to use animation and tweening tools.

These tools have existed for a while, so what will make them gain popularity this year? The answer is free support and professional distribution channels from the big game companies. Valve announced that they're releasing Steamworks for free and Havok is releasing their popular physics engine for free to PC game developers. Meanwhile, Microsoft has the X-Box Live Arcade, which is a great distribution channel for small game developers, and now they have the XNA Community Club, which is an even better channel for independent developers. Finally, Sony has the PlayStation Network and Nintendo has WiiWare.

Despite better support and better distribution, those high level tools have huge learning curves, requiring advanced technical and artistic ability in order to successfully build a game. Thankfully, we are also seeing a higher support for mid-level user-creation, which doesn't require any knowledge of programming or any artistic skills. Mid-level user-creation uses in-game media such as graphics and sounds, and employs a user-friendly, what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface. Examples include map-making and scenario designing in real-time strategy games or games designed specifically for this such as RPG Maker and Fighter Maker. We're seeing a lot more of this in games such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and LittleBigPlanet's stage builder, Blast Works's game builder, Second Life's item creation, and of course, Spore's creature creation. All these tools give players a place for their creative output and at the same time, extends the life of the game since it remains interesting and fresh as long as new content is being created. Users want creative outlets, whether it to be make a name for themselves in the community or to create situations that they would enjoy playing in, and they will happily do what is normally the developers' jobs. Meanwhile, the developers can go on and work on their next game and the whole ordeal is a win-win situation.

Last but not least is low level user-creation, which unlike mid-level, does not require a separate mode in order to create. The creation is wholy integrated into the game itself and users can create by simply playing the game. One such example of this is the previously-blogged-about Google Image Labeler. Every time players match a word for a specific image, that keyword becomes an off-limit word that the next team cannot use for the same image. Thus, the more an image is played, the more off-limit words it obtains, and the harder and more interesting the game becomes. What we have here is a very easy and simple game at start, but a difficult and exciting game in its later life.

Mid-level and low level user-generated content undoubtedly extends a game's life, but mid-level is somewhat of a niche market. Most players would give it a try, but only some would be dedicated in creating content and only a few of those would be creating good content. How much more powerful would it be if more games took a low-level approach?

How about a MMORPG where players can shape the world? The world becomes more beautiful and has more trees if the players perform good deeds, or it can become engulfed in darkness and riddled with monsters if players are evil. Maps and obstacles can change, enemies and enemy placements can change, behavior of non-playable characters can change, and so on. What if you can kill a ruler of a kingdom, only to have him replaced by a Draconian dictator, thus changing the game's story? What if monsters evolved over time based on their survival statistics?

Of course, all these suggestions are difficult to program, but it'll be interesting to see more games where we can play the creator and the audience at the same time, where we can design by gameplay.

Google Image Labeler: Letting the Community Do the Work For You

2008-02-24T20:24:00.011-05:00

I did my Master's Thesis on ludological design -- the incorporation and application of video game elements into other media -- so it pleases me whenever I find similarly inspired work. I'm about a year and half late to this, but I recently discovered Google Image Labeler. The concept is deceptively simple and ingeniously effective.

When you sign in to play the game, you're automatically paired up with an anonymous partner. Over the span of two minutes, random images appear on screen and each player types in associating keywords. The object of the game is to come up with a matching word with your partner, thereby rewarding points to both players and bringing up another image. Meanwhile, on the side of the screen is a list of off-limit words that players cannot use, similar to the idea of Taboo. If you haven't figured it out yet, the game wasn't designed for pure entertainment; there is an ulterior motive...

You're doing work for Google.

The images are tagged with every keyword you match. And common matches end up being the off-limit words, thus preventing narrow results and permitting a wider range of tags. The Image Labeler is a great example of emergent design, creating a system for which the community produces the results that were once monotonously and unreliably inputted by users. And most importantly... it is fun.

You earn points for every matching word and your points are accumulated over time. At the end of each game, your score is compared to the all-time individual high scores, immediately giving you the incentive to try to reach the top. Constant display of high scores enforces the competitive nature of gamers and the short length of each game makes it so addicting. I frequently found myself saying, "I'll just do another one. It's only two more minutes." Before I knew it, I had played five more games. Google thrives on our competitiveness; the more games we play and the better we get at it, the better their image search becomes.

As gamers have learned from X-Box Live achievement points, a simple number representing their virtual accomplishments is something of value and is held in high regard by other members of the gaming community. It's amazing how something as arbitrary as an accumulative number, that originally didn't have any impact on the real world, can be so significant. Perhaps, gamers are so conditioned to equate worth to numerical figures as is common practice in role-playing games. Perhaps, it was always the hope that these virtual points would be transferable to utilitarian rewards. Whatever the reason is, the big companies didn't want to disappoint the ladder audience. Microsoft eventually turned that false hope into a reality, putting up items that players can spend their points on, and it's not a stretch to think that Google will go the same route with their Image Enabler points.

Increasing that self-representative number is fun, but the simple act of matching words is also incredibly engaging. Although the meta-game of getting the highest score is entirely competitive, the game itself relies solely on teamwork. In order to win, you have to think like your teammate. Since your teammate is randomly chosen and remains anonymous, this can be quite hard for the first image you both receive. But overcoming that first obstacle, you learn a little bit about your partner... he notices shapes first, she is very color-oriented, he associates abstract images of people to specific famous personalities, she prefers to point out verbs before nouns, he makes variations on the off-limit words, and so on. It's satisfying to get into your teammate's head, to form an ESP-like bond to someone you've never communicated with, to interact in a synergistic relationship... all within two-minutes.

By combining image tagging with a ludological structure, Google's created a system that produces intuitive and more reliable results. Individual tagging, on the other hand, is ultimately biased on the part of the user and can be easily abused. Not to mention that the Image Labeler is designed to encourage users to come back for more, iteratively improving the process along the way. Everyone else, catch up! I'm looking at you Flickr.

Here comes a new challenger!

2008-02-23T01:12:00.007-05:00

Hello and welcome to Theory Fighter, a blog dedicated to intellectual thoughts about the video game medium and the industry. Here, I will discuss the potential of the medium as an art form, how games change the way we think about the world, what other media can learn from video games, and some of my personal thoughts on good game design. Games are a young medium, ripe for academic and philosophical discourse, and I intend to contribute my two cents for what it's worth (hint: a whole two cents).

Now, a little background about myself. I've studied in the ways of the computer programmer, so I tend to have more of a technical bias in my observations and preferences. But it doesn't mean I value technology over artistry. I am also a part-time digital media artist, so I have a certain understanding and respect for aesthetic design, storytelling, and experimentation. I immerse myself in entertainment media every day -- video games, comics, toys, books, movies, television, music, the web -- I often find myself overwhelmed by my thoughts and I started this blog as an outlet for my maniacal theories. So thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more.