July 2012

July 3, 2012

Do or Die or Do and Die

GAMES GROWING UP

The games industry majoris (AAA/high-cap studios) has been maturing at about half the rate of your average adult human male1.

If we say that this male was born in 1975, then it’s almost 19 years old now.

In human terms it’s an adult, and I believe this is what we’re starting to see in the games. To highlight this I’ll be offering my thoughts on two different videogames, Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead (up to the end of Episode 2: Starved for Help) and Yager Development‘s Spec Ops: The Line (single player).

DEAD GAMER WALKING

© 2012 Telltale, Inc. THE WALKING DEAD is © 2012 Robert Kirkman, LLC.

The Walking Dead videogame is an adventure game. Much of the play is tightly-restricted, meaning it’s not your Monkey Island trial and error gameplay where you’re using verbs and nouns on pixels in the scenes. Most of the action is context-based with time-sensitive activities broken out into “quick time events” where you need to press buttons before something eats your face. It’s on the “moderately casual” end of the gaming spectrum in terms of playability. I think this is great, as it makes it accessible to many audiences.

Where the game differs from others in the genre is the way the narrative unfolds. Throughout the game you’re presented with choices, and all of them are designed to be meaningful. The conversations that you have with the other characters and the decisions you make along the way all impact the outcome of the game. Even seemingly innocuous little actions that could be dismissed as red herrings end up playing important roles the the plot development.

The thing that The Walking Dead does very well, and true to the comic book story that it’s based on, is play up the human drama. Piss someone off and they’ll stay angry with you. Play nice with them and you could make an ally who’ll help you out in a time of need. There’s (so far) no throwaways, which really helps make the story of this game the player’s own. I think that’s one major development as the industry majoris ages. In the beginning we had to be led by the hand and kept safe from making decisions that would otherwise break a game experience. Now that we’re getting more confident, more adult-like, we’re being given far more responsibility for our own in-game actions.

This is not to say that games that have come before The Walking Dead haven’t done this2. There have been many attempts over the years and they’ve been handled with as much finesse as the hardware, programmer’s abilities, and writer’s strengths have allowed. It just feels to me like The Walking Dead, despite still having its fair share of blemishes and stumbles, is finally starting to show us that player-directed videogame narratives can emerge from that awkward, ham-fisted stage and into more elegant and “real” experiences.

On an anecdotal note, I honestly think that this is the only videogame that’s really asked me to make extremely hard, morally-grey choices, ones that I’ve had to “live with” as I continue to play. There were moments during my playthroughs that I’ve actually shouted “don’t make me make this decision!” If that’s something you’re looking for in a videogame, I can’t recommend this one enough.

WALKING THE LINE

©2011 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

There’s an interesting comparison to be made between The Walking Dead and Spec Ops: The Line, as both represent a maturing in the delivery of videogame narrative. They both tackle the breakdown of humanity in the face of a crisis. Spec Ops just happens to be presented from the point of view of a Delta Force soldier, and therefore is drenched in a healthy dose of militarism.

Where The Walking Dead is a cerebral crawl through post-apocalyptic environments and the relationships with the other survivors, Spec Ops is the opposite. It’s a third-person shooter first, and an exploration of the brutality of war and man’s inhumanity to man second.

The shooting part is competent, providing some of the best examples of current design philosophy in the genre. It’s arguable that the game tries to do too much, or puts too much emphasis on the cover-based, set-piece nature of each gameplay stage, but it does what it does very well. There are no great innovations here, though, and perhaps the biggest failing is that there’s a major disconnect between the player’s actions while mowing down hordes of opposing forces and the way the narrative unfolds.

There is a fascinating story under all of the bullets, bodies, and sand, and one that in the beginning of the game the player might feel some measure of control over. Yet as the chapters unfold it becomes more of closed-ended railroad than player-driven outcome.

While both The Walking Dead and Spec Ops have plot points that force the player’s hand, the major one in Spec Ops is poorly set up to the point of being character-breaking. Halfway through it I tried restarting and seeing if I could make a different choice, because the one that was unfolding was not one that I felt the main character would have chosen at that point. Unfortunately the whole rest of the narrative depends on that one forced decision, and that’s when things break down. The game tries to compensate for this by offering other minor ethical choices along the way, but the inability to alter the major one makes those smaller ones seem pointless and crude.

Despite this, the story is very intense and poses a lot of serious questions about the nature of war and violence. It’s self-referential, and while there’s a serious undertone it doesn’t take itself to the point of pretentiousness. I didn’t feel insulted by the way the game concluded, it was what it was. But I felt that it could have been much more, yet I think that in order to accomplish that it would have required doubling or tripling the content.

On a side note the environments in Spec Ops are absolutely breath-taking. The care and attention to detail is mind-blowing, and I found my mouth drying out and I could almost feel the grit in my teeth as I battled my way across sand-blasted Dubai. A must-play for that experience alone, but if violent and militaristic man-shooting isn’t your thing you can give this one a pass.

BETTER WITH AGE

What I like most about these videogames is that they challenge me not only from a gameplay perspective, but from a moral and intellectual one as well. A contradiction for a game like Spec Ops? Maybe, though it would be fair to call it “Modern Warfare with brains”3. They are both clear signs that the industry majoris is winning the struggle to more comprehensively weave story and game into a cohesive experience, and this renews my hope for the future of videogames.

Thanks for reading.

[1] Depending on which side of the fence you’re on regarding the current outrage over sex, sexism, and violence in videogames, comparing the industry majoris to a post-pubescent male teen is highly accurate.

[2] Caveat: I have not played every videogame ever made. Shocking, but the truth.

[3] Nothing against CoD, it’s one of my favorite shooter series (particularly Infinity Ward’s entries) just it’s not one I play to question man’s inhumanity to man, it’s one I play to pop enemies heads like ripe zits and shout “ooh-rah!”

July 5, 2012

Policy

THE WORK-WEAK

[Lost content: an image of the Dark Acre corporate seal]

Corporate communique issued June 21, 2012:

Dark Acre official hours of operation have changed as follows:

This is a change from the previous Monday through Friday schedule, which was a change from the initial Thursday through Tuesday schedule, with the addition of holiday policies.

As before, all outside contributors are free to set their own production hours and are in no way expected to follow the corporate time schedule.

Effective Thursday, June 21.

This schedule subject to change without notice.

Thank you for your attention.

(Reading this in 2025, I see it’s not only cringe, but also illegal. Incorporating remains one of the worst decisions I made as an indie game developer. –Ed.)

The wording is definitely not casual, but I’ve been slack in the policy-setting department, which is something every corporation that wants to be taken seriously needs to take seriously.

At any rate past three weeks have been 4-day work-weeks, with stellar results! Where progress had nearly stalled on Project Prevengeance, a ton of production tasks have been completed and as many bugs squashed. While the 3-day rest periods have had a lot to do with it, two additional changes have provided some surprise benefits.

UNSOCIAL NETWORKING

It’s no secret that I’ve been heavily involved in social networking, and my opinion on and about them (much like the missives that travel those particular vents in the Internet) have swung wildly polar.

After much discussion and analysis I’ve made the decision to switch into broadcast-only mode. (Oh! This was the moment I finally wised up. –Ed.)

It seemed that no matter how careful I was with the filters, no matter how well I curated the various lists of supposedly influential people, and no matter how selective I was with the RSS feeds, a surprising volume of warped dreck still leaked through.

From my personal journal, April 7, 2000:

I’ve been in Japan for less than a year but already it’s becoming clear how influential a hold the media has on the minds of the people. As a fortunate side-effect of being isolated in a country where the only readily-available news comes from the Internet, and having no time to read it, I’ve been nearly news-free for the entirety of time here so far.

I’ve honestly never felt better.

What I’ve observed is this: I work in downtown Tokyo, a stone’s throw from some of the biggest players in the local financial game. Every day I meet a dozen new people, sitting down for 40 to 80 minutes at a time to discuss their lives, dreams, and perceptions of the world.

What I’m greeted with most often when discussing their fears is the belief that their economy is on the verge of collapse. The country is at the end of what economists call a “bubble”, or artificially-inflated growth period. Everything’s supposedly crashing down with the adjustment to “normal” levels. The streets are no longer paved with gold, and companies now have to tighten their belts by shedding tons of excess weight gained over the years of fake prosperity.

The brokers, traders, bankers, and other money-movers I meet tell me the newspaper headlines are nothing but doom and gloom. As part of their jobs they’re more or less forced to consume this content on a daily basis so as to keep their nervously-twitching fingers on the dying pulse of their nation.

I get an earful of this every morning, five days a week. Here’s the ironic part: every noonhour I take a stroll not five blocks down the street to the Ginza shopping district and can barely make any headway on a sidewalk thronging with consumers. Ginza is a high-street locale, all the major brands are there, and there are countless people buying the stuff up. I sit down to a curry or a sushi roll and typically pay no less than ¥2000 (more than $20) for a meal in a restaurant I’ve had to wait 20 to 30 minutes to get into, it’s so packed.

The economy is collapsing, eh?

The point of the above is that we’re heavily influenced by the media we consume, often to the point of distorting our perception of reality. Every piece of information we let in informs us, forms in our minds opinions that, if we’re not careful, become beliefs that we then evangelize to others. And it’s becoming ever-easier to fall into this cycle as the Internet becomes a greater part of our daily lives.

I’m certain they mean well, but even the nicest-seeming, well-meaning, and most innocuous people I follow in my social networks have, at times, posted the most horrible, cynical, shitty mis-information to ever come down the pipes.

It’s just no longer for me.

[Lost content: a graphic suggesting a change to social media validation mechanisms from the Like/Dislike dichotomy to a For Me/Not For Me one.]

In regards to the question of “aren’t you turning your back on the grassroots indie marketing channels?”: It’s extremely important to remember that people have been selling shit into the market for far longer than social networking has been around. It’s fair to say that social networking still has a lot of unproven worth, and as someone who’s been actively searching for value from places like Twitter and Facebook for well over two years I can honestly say that the practical benefit from using the systems is nil.

As entertainment, though? If you can stomach it, knock yourself out! And that’s how seriously it should be taken too.

I can offer one more observation: in the 21 days since I stopped interacting with the soc-nets I’ve read three books (first time in years!), redesigned this website, produced a new Darkade entry, and run more than 30 kilometers (again, first time since going independent!). Coincidence? Perhaps. But more importantly, I’ve felt psychically ennobled. I’m pretty certain the constant direct and indirect vitriol and rhetoric I was absorbing was hobbling me spiritually.

And whatever, if I’ve got to come back to it I always can. I’m sure the numbers people will still be there.

Learn to write one singular, coherent, informative, insightful, spectacular sentence to replace your illiterate, off-the-cuff twittering! George Lois, from Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!)

THE #GAMEPLAN

When I arrived in Japan in the summer of ’99 I weighed roughly 95 kilograms (210 lbs). I’d been half-heartedly lifting weights for a few years prior, and was strong, but I was obese. You could see it my face, and I couldn’t run a block without gassing myself.

Over the next 10 years I would spend a lot of my free time studying physiology, physical training programs, and the work of men like Bruce Lee.

I learned how to run, and was eventually doing 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) runs 3 times a week.

I built my own gym in the basement of our home and worked out there almost every day.

I learned capoeira.

I studied nutrition and built a staple diet that balanced my caloric intake and kept me energized through 14-16 hour work days, often 7 days a week (including the physical training).

I started practicing ashtanga yoga.

By the time I left Japan I was a lean, mean 80 kilograms (176 pounds). I could easily run a half-marathon, dance the capoeira jogo, or do an hour’s worth of stretching without really breaking much of a sweat.

I’d even chronicled it in a blog called The Healthy Gamer.

[Lost content, a rendering of the Healthy Gamer logo, based on an original design by Steve Parker]

I came back to Canada and spent two years in school. The first year wasn’t bad, the foundation design program had a lot of physicality to it and the homework was manageable. I couldn’t really go to the gym but I could keep up with the ashtanga practice. I remained healthy, though I could feel the decline.

Then game development schooling started. I suddenly found myself sitting on my ass in front of computer terminals for hours on end, eating shitty food and gathering unwanted stress just to meet the deadlines of an academic situation that was supposedly “simulating the conditions in an actual AAA game studio”.

The yoga and running all but stopped.

When I graduated and started Dark Acre, I made time for the running and yoga, at least at first. For the first few months I was able to run, stretch, write, and make games.

Then something happened. I’m not exactly certain what, but some psychological trigger flipped and I stopped running, stretching, and eating well. I just focused on making the games. I got swept up in imaginary self-imposed pressure to produce and any concern for my health fell by the wayside.

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with mild depression and started really looking at myself in the mirror that I realized how far I’d slipped.

8 weeks ago I stepped onto a scale and found out I was 100 kilograms (220 pounds), the heaviest I’d ever been in my life. Fortunately I’m a reasonably tall dude, at 185 centimeters (6 foot 1 inch), but I could no longer pretend that I was the svelte creature that had returned from the East. My jeans didn’t close, and my belly was (and still mostly is) pretty disgusting. So along with the medication, the counseling, and restructuring of the workload I looked back at my old notes on how I got healthy. I resurrected the #GAMEPLAN.

The #GAMEPLAN is a very simple diet and exercise regimen that requires very little investment and offers substantial return for the diligent participant. I’d always planned to publish it in some form, but it was never a priority as I’d always wondered if it really worked or not. There were a lot of factors contributing to my health levels in Japan, not least among them my youthful vigor and constant commute, plus the horrible work hours.

But the principles were solid. I restarted the program. I calculated my diet out again, taking into consideration my now-advanced age (it had been 14 years since I first started the program). I got a membership at the local community center gym, and a new pair of running shoes.

I happy to report that the program is working. It’s a long-term kind of commitment, one that doesn’t yield amazing overnight results. But there’s no doubt that in the time that I’ve been back on it I’ve lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and my strength is returning. I’m back up to running 6 kilometers in about 40 minutes without feeling like I want to die. And I’m enjoying a staple diet that costs almost nothing and is far more nutritious and tasty than the random crap I was buying from the supermarket.

It’s still early days, though. A full test of the strength program takes 12 weeks, an entire season. I won’t know for sure if the running program is completely working for another 3 weeks, though I’m confident it is.

I’ll be publishing the system here, and then looking at options for creating an app that helps out with the various calculations and tracking.

So that’s the #GAMEPLAN, just in case you were wondering.

Thanks for reading.

July 11, 2012

Pocket Pain

Warning: This post contains meta-spoilers & personal strategy ideas.

This is a #GAMEVIEW of Nimblebit‘s new free iOS diversion, Pocket Planes.

[Lost content, likely a promotional image for Pocket Planes.]

Pocket Planes is an abstract airline simulator that lets you buy Airports & Airplanes, and then use that infrastructure to transport people & goods for in-game currency.

You get a bonus to all goods/people transported if everything loaded in a single Airplane is going to the same Airport.

You level up based on successful transports, and with each level you can build a new Airport. You can increase your Airplane fleet capacity by purchasing more slots.

The Airplanes have three upgradable attributes: Range, Speed, and Weight. Weight decreases the cost of the flight, improving the profit margin.

The available Airplanes get better as you level up, gaining inherent R/S/W as well as carrying capacity. There are a handful of unique Airplanes that can only be gotten by trading or participating in Flight Crew Events.

Flight Crew Events are global events that allow players to work together to accomplish in-game goals, like make deliveries to a designated Airport. You need to be connected to the Airport and make at least 1 delivery within the timeframe to qualify for a reward. If you have assigned the same Flight Crew name as another player, your contributions are cumulative.

There’s two kinds of currency, coins & Bux. Pocket Planes, like Tiny Tower before it, is free, and you can support the developers by buying Bux.

When I first started playing, I enjoyed it more than Tiny Tower as it let me put my fleets in motion and then leave the game alone for a time. I adopted a strategy of trying to build the longest chain of Airports to get the longest routes, as the payoffs for delivery increase with range (but are limited by the weight cost of the given Airplane).

This was fun. I’d get a long enough chain of Airports to set flights in motion that I wouldn’t have to check for an hour, making it ideal during game development sessions as the game wouldn’t be constantly nagging me to take actions.

Around level 10 I found I had built a network of Airports that turned the linear “long-range flight” system in a spaghetti’d mess. This was purely my fault, based on my choices, and it felt like I’d painted myself into a tedious corner. I lost interest in the game for a few days because of this.

I picked it up again and reorganized my Airport network to support the highest level of Airplane that I could build, then simply waiting for bonus loads to fill. This seems to be one of the “winning” strategies, as I jumped to top of the Gamecenter Leaderboards in every category except Total Flights. So I’d found an efficient method of play.

[Lost content: an image of Pocket Planes’s Gamecenter Leaderboard.]

There are only a few “problems” with Pocket Planes, and they’re not really major issues:

Not joining the top crew would net you a prize that wasn’t the best one, and I can’t see that as being a winning strategy. Not everyone plays to win, though, so your airmileage may vary.

As of this writing some player is Level 294,923,924 while another has an Airline Value of 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 coins. Leaderboard hacking seems to endemic to most games that have them, so you just kinda deal with it and scroll down to the first seemingly legitimate values and adjust your position.

Tapping the big Cancel button in the Airplane Loading screen sometimes hits the Load/Unload buttons beneath it. A simple solution would be placing a “No Touch” button under those three in the bottom corner.

[Lost content: likely an image of a mock-up showing where the “no-touch” area should go.]

All in all, Pocket Planes is a solid release from Nimblebit. I don’t find it as engaging as Tiny Tower, but then again perhaps this is a good thing. I think with Tiny Tower the fact that I could name my floors and build a more personalized structure meant more to me than the ability to name and paint some airplanes, but Pocket Planes seems to respect my time a lot more.

I’d read at one point that Tiny Tower was making millions for Nimblebit. If they’re repeating that same success with Pocket Planes I have a feeling we can expect a lot of future Bitizen-themed diversions from these brothers in the future.

Feel free to add me on Gamecenter, “Dark Acre Jack”

(All defunct now, and I’m ashamed today of how much time I gave to what was a primordial “idle game”. –Ed.)

Pocket Planes is © 2012 NimbleBit LLC

 

July 12, 2012

OU-NAH

Apologia: I think everyone is free to spend their money on whatever they want.

[Lost content: image of an Ouya controller, alt-text: “OUYA Sticks it to Ya”.]

The OUYA is a console-in-development currently making big waves with its Kickstarter.

Wrote this up so I could stop repeating myself, pardon my laziness but there’s games that need to be made.

SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS & QUESTIONS:

[Lost content, image: alt-text: “Jack is a poopy “Unity Head””.]

PERSONAL POINTS:

Do I think the OUYA a losing horse? Kind of a moot point since it’s met its (what I think is far too conservative) funding goal. I guess we’ll see. If I were to pick up a do-it-yourself kit to better help me understand console gaming I’d spend money on the XGameStation.

(I nailed the OUYA predictions. Not so much about the XGameStation. –Ed.)

July 29, 2012

Singularly Unique

This is a #GAMEVIEW of Raven’s 2010 videogame, Singularity4

Singularity is © 2010 Activision

tl;dr – Singularity is a solid FPS/survival horror/sci-fi adventure game, marred only by the usual Unreal Engine texture glitches & poorly-scripted NPC AI.

WASN’T FOR ME

I prefer either the ability to save and restore my game at any point, or a YOUR PROGRESS HAS NOW BEEN SAVED system. Singularity has neither. I’d see the little loading/saving icon and think my game had been saved, only to quit and come back later to find the actual checkpoint had been 15-30 minutes prior. 2010, Raven. Really?

Another minor gripe was once I’d triggered scripted interludes the non-player characters would wander off talking into space regardless of whether I was in front of them or not. It was nice to have the freedom to wander around the environment during those moments, but having an NPC deliver narrative-critical dialog out of earshot was not.

As with some of the older Unreal games there would be times when I’d step into a room and all of the textures would be low resolution. I’d wait for them to pop into high-res but they wouldn’t. While it’s possible this was because of my hardware, other Unreal-based games like Bulletstorm never seem to struggle like that. It wasn’t really a deal-breaker, but it did tend to pop the immersion bubble.

(I’ve since learned that texture loading is hallmark of optimization and has only become a louder indicator of an Unreal Engine developer’s dedication to quality. –Ed.)

WAS FOR ME

It’s clear that Raven went to great pains to build the world of Singularity. Through the environment, notes, audio diaries and short films we’re given a ton of information. It’s all optional, aside from the NPC interludes and very rare cutscene, but I found myself collecting every scrap.

There’s a lot of polish on minor details, like screen effects and particles, and the time manipulation animations are a joy to watch again and again.

The most interesting moments in the game came when I found that the developers had taken the time to litter the levels with explorable nooks and crannies that held lore or upgrade resources. You know how in many games you’ll go down a dead-end alley and find nothing hidden there? Well Singularity has almost none of that. Nearly every side passage and diversion offers something to make the trip worthwhile.

[Lost content: likely a promotional image for Singluarity.]

The visual upgrades to the main weapon are outstanding, as well as the mechanism that delivers them. While the combination of time manipulation device and weapon borrows a lot from Irrational’s Bioshock, this is a good thing. If you want to play as a stealthy sniper, using slow-motion steerable bullets to pick off the enemies from a distance, you can. I went with the heavier weapons, and they all felt really good and were different enough to warrant carrying and upgrading more than one.

The developers left the ending up to the player, and it was intriguing enough for me to replay the final sequence through all 3. The little post-credits epilogue was a nice touch as well.

All in all, if you’re looking for a polished melange of some of the most popular first-person shooter/adventure games with a strong dash of horror and science fiction, you could do far worse than Singularity.

[4] I wrote a #GAMEVIEW of Rocksteady’s 2009 Batman: Arkham Asylum but couldn’t find much else to say other than “best superhero videogame I’ve ever played”. Caveat: as of this writing I haven’t played Arkham City, which I assume is a fantastic iteration on an already near-perfect foundation. If you like Batman, videogames, and haven’t played Asylum yet, it comes up for 5 dollars from time to time on Steam.

2012.07.01 – 2012.07.31

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