GDC 2011: Unexpected Adventures in Classism

PART 1: The City of San Francisco

I am what my boyfriend likes to refer to as a “Country Mouse.” (From the Aesop fable. Look it up.) I’m not comfortable in cities at the best of times; I’m nervous around strangers on the street, particularly if I’m walking by myself, even if it’s in broad daylight. Part of it is because I grew up in rural Middle-of-Nowhere and attended undergraduate school at Slightly-North-of-Nowhere, and part of it is undoubtedly the numerous warnings I received before I came out to LA: don’t walk by yourself at night, make sure you’re always aware of your surroundings, cross the street if you see someone who makes you uncomfortable, etc. It certainly doesn’t help that I’m all of five feet tall and barely over a hundred pounds, not to mention the fact that I’m a young woman.

So when I came to LA for the first time to attend graduate school, I was nervous. My feelings were slightly mollified by the numerous enormous old trees on and around the USC campus – trees never fail to cheer me up and make me feel at ease – and the laid-back air of the city. Gradually I got used to life out here, and though I’m still far more nervous just walking the streets than I want to be, I’ve begun to feel more comfortable here than I ever expected.

This was my first year at GDC, and my first time ever visiting San Francisco. My very first impression of the city was that it felt far more like a city than LA did. It reminded me much more of being in Manhattan – tall buildings, people in a hurry to get somewhere, and a general air of tension and busyness. LA feels like someone took a city and placed it in Southern California, where everything from the city’s geography and the attitudes of the people within it melted in the heat, spreading out and slowing down and dripping across the map. San Francisco feels like a place where hip things are happening, where you have to keep on your toes and stay alert and grab hold of life as it swings and twirls around you. It’s got the beat and rhythm of a city, rather than the strange desert patience of LA. (Which is not to say that nothing happens in LA; very important things happen all the time – they just happen in air-conditioned office rooms. And they usually involve lawyers, which means they take at least three times as long as usual.)

After spending a little more time in San Francisco, my impression extended to include, most notably, the homeless. The homeless in San Francisco are not like the homeless in LA. For one thing, I’ve never seen a homeless person in LA with a sign saying “Need Money to Buy Weed.” The idea of giving someone change for having a sign that’s clever or something you want to read somewhat baffles me, but the signs – and the assumption that they would work – was everywhere we looked. Furthermore, it was the first time I’ve been approached by an obvious pan-handler trying to sell me a story. My own experience involved a woman who claimed to be diabetic, but I have a friend who experienced a full-on con – someone tried to get him to help pay for parking for a car that was about to be impounded with his family inside. Aside from these more notable eccentricities, the homeless were also just more aggressive and far more numerous than I’ve seen in LA. In the ten blocks that my friend and I walked home one evening, we were approached by perhaps five different people asking us for change – and saw several others that were asleep or didn’t come up to us.

I don’t want to preach or turn this into some kind of moralistic diatribe. This is obviously a problem in San Francisco, and the bizarrely entitled attitude that we seemed to get from some of the pan-handlers is probably a part of it. I just know that it brought to the forefront my urban paranoia – only in feeling it fresh again did I realize how much it had faded over my time in LA. This isn’t a reason to not go to San Francisco by any means – but it’s something I was acutely aware of while I was there. I wonder if the residents are aware of how large the problem is, or if they’ve simply become used to it.

PART 2: The Problem of Passes

As most people know, GDC is incredibly expensive. I was able to go only because I received a free Expo Pass as part of a raffle. The value of my pass – even if you pre-ordered it early – was roughly $200. This is basically out of my price range barring exceptional circumstances, and it’s actually the second-cheapest pass at the convention. The cheapest is the student pass for $75, which gives you access to almost nothing, and in order to receive the full, heaping-platter, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink pass, you’d need to pay $1500. The next price bracket above mine – the summits and tutorials pass – was $600, a significant price jump.

The Expo Pass gives you access to the main awards ceremonies and to the show floor. I figured that would be enough – especially since I’d only be there for two and a half days or so – and that the floor would keep me occupied with interesting content. I came to GDC looking forward to learning interesting new things about game design and being inspired to create something new.

The reality I soon discovered was that my pass essentially ranked me as a second-class citizen. I was astounded by how ostracized I felt at the conference. It began on Wednesday morning, when I traveled to the conference at 8 AM in order to accompany my friends (with summit passes) who were planning to attend the Keynote at 9 AM. Now, my pass did not entitle me to attend the Keynote, which I knew, but I figured that I could at least take advantage of having a mere Expo Pass to check out the floor early, when all the higher-level attendees were busy elsewhere.

However, upon reaching the expo hall, I discovered that the doors didn’t open until 10 AM, when the Keynote let out. I was barred from entering, and had to sit twiddling my thumbs in the lobby, waiting for the important people to get out of their meeting so we could start the show. A few other Expo Pass holders waited nearby, while exhibitors hurried into the hall to complete their last-minute preparations.

When I finally did step onto the floor, I was indeed wowed by the display of technology that I saw. Everything new and cutting-edge in the industry was on parade, although with notably fewer flashing lights and booth babes than E3, for which I was thankful. I had a great time just strolling around the floor, checking things out.

The thing is, the GDC floor does not match E3 for size, and touring the floor doesn’t take more than a few hours. Additionally, most of the vendors are (understandably) there for business; if you’re not handing out resumes, attending a pre-scheduled business meeting, or purchasing several dozen Maya licenses for your school, then the vendors are generally polite to you but ultimately disinterested. The only exception was the IGF corner, where all the IGF games were available for demo. This was certainly the highlight of the floor for me, and I spent a great deal of my time there playing the games and at the IGDA booth playing ninja.

When I met my friends at mealtime, I was subjected to the frankly tortuous experience of listening to them talk about how amazing the summits and lectures they’d attended had been. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t resent them for it, and I wanted to hear what I was missing as much as possible. But the knowledge that I had wandered around mostly bored after the third or fourth hour while they’d been hearing from some of the most fascinating people in the industry on topics I really cared about was crushing. I went to GDC as an academic, but I only had access to the sales pitches.

The evening of the first day was the awards ceremony, and finally I felt like part of the community once more – despite the roped-off section of VIP tables in the center of the awards hall with guards at every entrance. But given the caliber of some of the people in that area who were nominated for the awards, that felt almost reasonable. The awards ceremony even made me feel strangely elitist – being familiar with so many of the games nominated for the IGF awards made me feel like someone who’s seen all the short films nominated at the Oscars; it’s not exactly general knowledge for the general public.

The next day I spent almost exclusively at the IGF games booth, having nothing really better to do. I went to one of the IGDA Special Interest Groups, but was unimpressed (although the second such that I went to was a bit better). The games were fun and interesting, and it was great to get a chance to play them. I saw a lot of stuff I doubt I would have seen otherwise. It was a great mini-vacation from my classwork, if nothing else.

On Friday I had brunch with my friends and then headed for home. Overall I have to say that I’m glad I went – I would encourage people to go if they can, and particularly if they want to network or hand around resumes or similar. I did have a free pass, which was excellent, although travel and living expenses were still significant. But if I go next year, it will only be if I can get a higher-level pass – even if it’s free. (And it will probably have to be – if $200 was out of my price range this year, I doubt $600 will be in my budget for next year.) The Expo Pass experience was fine to do once, but if I attend again, I’m going to some of those lectures. I don’t think I could stand going again if I didn’t.

E3 Impressions

Before it gets far away enough to be irrelevant, I thought I'd write out my impressions of everything I played while at E3. I played a little over a dozen demos, and had a blast. ^_^ Here's what I thought of each, in no particular order.

LittleBigPlanet2
Unfortunately, the demo for this was (understandably) only of the gameplay elements, and it seems most of the innovation on this game between versions 1 and 2 was on the content creation side. Still, I liked what I saw - it looks like there are a huge number of new tools, both for use in levels and in creating levels, and you can apparently make mini-games now, to play inside the standard levels! I'm really excited about that; making things is always at least half the fun of games like that.

As to the gameplay itself, I have to say I was rather disappointed with the multi-player they provided as a demo. It controls the same as a standard LBP game from the first one, with the added twist of a grapnel-gun in the level that was available for demo, but the camera following for multiple players was really weird. The moment one player got even slightly ahead of the others, the other players would find themselves off-screen, with nothing to do but wait until player 1 hit the next save point, causing them to re-spawn. So as co-operative play, it seems like it would involve a lot of waiting around for other players to catch up, and as competitive play, it seems like an initial lead would completely determine the game's outcome.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Here's another multiplayer game, but this was one that's way different from what I'm used to. This game was surprisingly similar to real-life games like assassins, red-light green-light, and so on - and it was definitely a good twist on your standard shooter death-match, which have been pretty much done to death (no pun intended) at this point.

The whole idea with this game is subtlety. You're one of six characters in a crowded city made up of clones of the six characters. One of each character is the real assassin, controlled by one of your opponents, while the rest are all mindless NPCs that wander around the map. You are assigned one of the other assassins as a target, but you can't be certain which member of the crowd is your specific target unless you see them move in an unusual way - running, climbing walls, shanking someone, etc.: all things that the NPCs can't do.

Behaving like an NPC isn't necessarily a failsafe; everyone has a sort of radar that allows them to home in on their target gradually. But you're also warned when an assassin targeting you is approaching, so you can break into a run and then hide in order to save yourself. So it's a balance between stealthily stalking your target, and making sure someone doesn't sneak up behind you and shank you while you're ambling along.

I have to say, I was pretty bad at this game. (I came in second-to-last in the first round, and dead last in the second round.) But I still really enjoyed playing it, which I think is a sign of a really good game. I also felt like I could perhaps become good at it with time - another good sign. I had never played any assassin's creed games before this, but this demo really made me want to start.

Super Scribblenauts
When the first Scribblenauts game came out, I played a friend's copy and was rather enamored with it. I'm sure the novelty wears off after a while, but there's something really great about being able to summon Cthulu at will if you get frustrated with a level.

What Super Scribblenauts has going for it is adjectives. And with that simple addition, the playful, childish novelty increases exponentially. If you're trying to have fun being silly in the game, you're probably not going to summon a paintbrush or guitar unless you really have to for a level; they're not really particularly fun or clever objects. But a ludicrous paintbrush? An eclectic guitar? Suddenly any object can be made interesting via simple juxtaposition.

I have to say, probably my absolute favorite item that came out of my demo play was the "suspicious envelope," which ended up being an envelope that was, itself, suspicious of things. When it popped into existence, it had a little purple suspicion mood bubble, and immediately tried to make for the corner of the game screen. I also got quite a kick out of our "lively sentient chair," which immediately picked up the "happy angry sad cat" that we'd left around earlier, and then proceeded to bounce up and down. This worked out fairly well, until the happy angry sad cat decided that it was in an angry mood at the moment and injured one of the innocent bystanders, which unfortunately lost us the level.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
This was an 8-bit Castlevania game in hi-def. I know what you're thinking: WHY? Turns out, not a completely useless combination. The fine detail means that the player can zoom out far enough that they can see the entire castle - every single room - on one screen, before zooming back in to themselves so they can navigate. This allows you to plan out your route from a distance, and then execute it.

Supposedly this game is multiplayer, although I demoed it playing by myself. The castle seemed to have a lot of elements that interacted with other rooms far away from your location, so I can easily see how it could be a lot of fun to zoom out, note where your friends are going, and then take the quickest path to help or hinder them. As a single-player venture, I wasn't particularly moved, however. An adequate 2-D 8-bit platformer, with a little bit of oddball-ness thrown in. I suppose you can't ask for more, given the nature of the game.

This is, of course, not to be confused with the full 3-D Castlevania by Hideo Kojima that was also there. I didn't play that one myself, although my friend Mike did and said it was about what you'd imagine of a Castlevania game from the creator of Metal Gear Solid.

Invizimals
Invizimals is an AR (Augmented Reality) game for the PSP, using the PSP camera. I say game, but from what we saw, it really seemed more like a tech demo for AR. (Or else, something that might be whipped up in one of the advanced game classes here at USC.) Basically it's an AR Pokemon. (Man, did the demo guy get offended when I said that.) You use the camera to focus in on brightly-colored objects, and find the creatures hiding there. Once you find them, you use a little AR trap to isolate them (put the little piece of paper down in physical space over the creature within view on the camera), and then you have to play a mini-game to capture them. Once captured, monsters can be evolved and battled, thus completing the Pokemon/Digimon/Monster Rancher/etc. parallel.

It was cute, and apparently has a story mode as well, but the controls were not exactly seamless, and overall it didn't seem particularly deep to me. There's an argument that it doesn't have to be, if the new technology is interesting enough, but we'll see if that argument pans out for the Kinect, and then re-evaluate from there.

Epic Mickey
If you'd told me a decade back that someone would make a dark, scary game featuring Mickey Mouse, I would've laughed. But since then we've had Kingdom Hearts, where Mickey is a badass, black-cloaked, keyblade-wielding king of a planet, and so times have changed. My actual reaction to the demo was that it wasn't dark enough.

The game was marketed as super edgy and unexpected, particularly in the amazing concept art. But I'm guessing the dark and edgy images didn't get past certain family-friendly higher-ups at the smile-like-you-mean-it monolith that is Disney. Instead the game looks like a fairly generic adventure game, complete with fetch-quests and collectible items hidden in bushes. The game's central mechanic - drawing things in with paint versus erasing them with thinner - flirts dangerously close with being your standard black-and-white moral choice system where angelic good and satanic evil are your only two options.

There's been some nod to the idea that, as designer Warren Spector put it, "play style matters," in that there are multiple ways to solve various quests and/or puzzles, and which choice you make effects the game characters and game world. Okay, fine. I appreciate the effort, I guess. But I would've gladly sacrificed that element of choice if the game had instead delivered on the darker aesthetic that was promised in these amazing pictures.

Fable 3
Speaking of black and white moral choice systems, I also played the Fable 3 demo at E3. I ended up playing side-by-side with a friend who was at the neighboring console, where he got a mission that involved beating up giant mechanical vulture statues and shadow monsters from dripping pillars of darkness, and I got a mission that involved dressing up in a giant chicken suit to round up some missing hens.

Sigh.

I don't really know what to say about Fable. I never played the second one, so my only point of comparison is the first game, which isn't really a comparison at all. I can't tell you if this game is trying to be a Sims-like life simulator in a fantasy setting with more direct control, or a gritty fantasy action game a la God of War, or something else entirely. The two demos were so disparate, it felt like they came from different games. Nevertheless, I'm not sure I'd say I didn't like it, per se. I guess I was too confused to really get a full impression. Mostly it seemed kind of funny and interesting, but I'm not sure it'd be enough to hold my interest for the full game length.

Lost in Shadow
This was one of the few games I played at E3 that I had never heard of before, as I imagine most others haven't either. The idea was that you play as a shadow of a person, navigating across the shadows of a physical world. The environments reminded me strongly of Ico, which endeared me to it immediately, and the puzzles were just bordering between intuitively easy and clever (but then, I only played the very beginning; I'd imagine they get harder). As a shadow person, you run across the shadow platforms created by railings, walls, and so forth, while avoiding sunlit drops and the spiky shadows cast by the tops of gates and things. You have some limited control over what happens in the physical world, which allows you to change the way shadows are cast, and therefore how you can move. As a mechanic it has a lot of potential, although I didn't really get to play enough to see if the makers capitalized on that potential.

What this game really reminded me of was a more polished version of many indie games, which tend towards side-scrolling action-platformers; essentially what this game is. It reminded me of something like Closure, say, or Shift (both games that I loved and highly recommend - they're free online flash games, and the latter has a number of equally interesting sequels) where you have one central mechanic that's exploited in a variety of interesting ways. The relative interesting-ness of Lost in Shadow's puzzles and mechanical exploits remains to be seen. I'm considering picking this one up when it comes out largely from pure curiosity, and a desire to encourage the game industry to try more interesting things.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
I went into E3 HUGELY looking forward to this game, so it's almost not even fair for me to comment on it. I played a little bit of Deep Space, which is apparently Stitch's level, as well as an unknown generic Disney area, and all I can really say is that I saw nothing that would make me hesitate to buy the game.

What I saw of the (slightly) new combat mechanics (rechargeable special moves) seems interesting, and I've heard bizarrely fascinating things about the leveling up system (a board-game based mini-game?!), but the bottom line is that I'm in this for the story and the world-building, and for that you need to play the full game to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I trust Squeenix, and I trust the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Every time I've been skeptical so far (a card-based battle system? A third girl who looks EXACTLY like Kairi and Namine?) they've managed to allay my fears and provide me with a solid, fun gaming experience, and so I'm willing to just take their word on this one and get it. The real question is, can I justify getting another PSP enough to buy the super special bundle pack when it comes out?

Okami-den
It's Okami but with baby animals on the DS. Enough said. I'm sold.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
This is a tough one for me, as I'm a huge fan of the animated series, and am feeling some serious trepidation about seeing the movie. Even if you're not a fan, though, I have a hard time seeing how this game could excite you. Looked at independent from its IP, the demo seemed like a fairly generic Wii game, where you press A repeatedly to attack, and then give a directional swing of the wiimote when the pop-up command indicates that you should do so. It might as well be God of War with exercise for your wrist instead of your thumb.

As an example of the Airbender IP, I really couldn't tell you. The character you play in the demo is the Blue Spirit, a character who doesn't use any form of bending - only physical combat. Which makes me wonder why they made that decision for the demo, since bending is the central mechanic of the series, and the action that the players will be most eager to perform in the game. It should be the most interesting part of the game, and the one that would be best suited to the Wii motion controls. So why didn't they demo that? Are they ashamed of how generic it is? If it's the same as the combat that was in the demo, then they should be. The A:tLA brand presents amazing opportunities for a motion control system, and unfortunately, I think this game is going to be just another lame movie-tie-in brand extension. I'd love to be proved wrong on this one, but somehow I doubt it.

Ghost Trick
Apparently this game is from the same developers as the Phoenix Wright series, and it shows. In this DS title, you play as a ghost that can posses items in the world and cause them to perform actions, or "tricks." You've lost your memory, and so the game is about trying to figure out who you were and why you died. The mechanic is simple, and I can't imagine all that much you could do with it past a certain point, but the demo was adorable and really quite funny (and broke the fourth wall in some very refreshing ways), and so I may have to pick this one up just for the sheer novelty. I think it's worth playing a game just for the sake of silliness every now and again.

Kirby: Epic Yarn
What you can say for this game, aside from "it's a Kirby game," is that it has quite the interesting aesthetic. I'm not sure I've ever seen "yarn-punk" before, but this would probably fit that description, if anything would. (Or, perhaps, "yarn-core"?) The game takes place in a fabric world, where you and everyone else are made of yarn. That's right, yarn. You're a little yarn outline, fighting other yarn outlines. You jump on stitches, hide between layers of fabric, and swing from buttons. Altogether, the aesthetic is fairly seamless (no pun intended), and affords some interesting mechanics and visuals.

The game is co-op for the Wii, and I played with a friend of mine that I was touring around with. The co-op reminded me a little bit of playing Four Swords, and also of the LittleBigPlanet 2 demo, in that there was a lot of, "Hey! Put me down!" and "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to grab you!" and "Throw me over the ledge! Throw me over the ledge!" But I'm of the opinion that we should have more games like that, so count it as a positive aspect coming from me.

Other than that, not much to say about this game. Playful, adorable adventures. Kirby. From those key words, I think you should know what you need to know about whether you'll like it or not. Oh, and the two playable characters combined to form a giant tank made of yarn at one point. I guess that bears mentioning.

Overall Impressions
E3 was loud, it was glittery, it was full of shine far past the point of substance, but I think there was still enough meat buried under there that I feel confident about what's coming up in the industry and in the market. I could care less about generic shooters 1, 2, and 3, but there was a surprisingly high amount of content at the convention that wasn't generic, and even many of the sequels seemed like they were trying to push themselves and do something new. Overall, I think we're going to be okay. (And also, I'm seriously looking forward to more news on 'El Shaddai.' That trailer has some really darn pretty sequences. And also also, OMFG Portal 2 trailer. Seriously.)

Games That Don't Think You're Stupid (OR, Why I Like Final Fantasy Games)

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of starting a completely new Final Fantasy game, and FFXIII is making me remember why that sensation is so special. There's something about Final Fantasy games that's kind of amazing, even when it's the exact same formula. It starts with a fly-over of the game world, stunning graphics and amazing, unique details for the player to gorge their eyeballs and curiosity on. Then - something's happening! Then suddenly there you are, in the middle of gameplay, with little to no explanation and, if you're lucky, a bare tutorial. (In FFX there was no tutorial at all for the first combat, mimicking the confusion and unpreparedness of the main character.)

Maybe it's the early hinted depth of the world, maybe it's the continuously unique atmosphere, maybe it's the ease of slipping into the menu-based combat, even though it can change drastically from game to game, or maybe it's just the trust I have in Final Fantasy, but there's something about this state that makes me go, "Alright! Yeah! I have NO IDEA what's going on, but let's do this, Bitches!" And from there on, it's straight into adventure.

One of the things I like the most about the Final Fantasy series is the way it doesn't hold your hand narratively. Characters bandy about unfamiliar terms as though you're supposed to know what they mean (in FFXII we already have Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cocoon, and Pulse, to name a few, and I'm only a few hours in...), and the game just lets you soak it in and try to keep up. And yet inevitably, by the time I'm fully immersed in an FF game, I feel in total control of the game world, narrative and all. I bandy the terminology about myself, as though I've been using it all my life. Zanarkand and the Aeons? Of course. What would that highly religious land be without its slumbering guardian spirits? Now, who's up for a game of blitzball?

FFXIII is new in that it has a file of reference sheets about the world. I've been reading them, but honestly, I don't think I need to. It's nice to have the extra reference, but I got immediately that the "Focus" was the task that the Fal'Cie order their L'Cie to do. It makes total sense. Or else they turn into those crazy zombie monsters (Cie'eth, I believe, although I haven't been playing that long yet, and it's possible I got that wrong). I get it. Cool. Awesome. I'm totally with you on this one. Let's rock this, FFXIII.

This kind of reminds me of one thing that I really like about the Kingdom Hearts series. Invariably, whenever I saw an ad for a Kingdom Hearts game, I would have two reactions: the first would be a general, overall impression of "That looks AWESOME. I must try it." The second would be a more detail-oriented look at the hints about what they were doing with the thought, "How the hell are they going to make that work? That doesn't make any sense at all. That's gonna be so stupid." And ALWAYS I have been proven wrong. Examples:

Game 1, Kingdom Hearts
Initial Thoughts: A Square game with Disney characters? This is going to be so lame. They're all completely separate universes. You can't just throw Donald Duck into a party and hope it works.
But: It did. They explained the separate universes, they justified the Disney characters as RPG material, and they connected it all in a well-thought out and internally consistent plot.

Game 2, Chain of Memories
Initial Thoughts: A card-based battle system? Are you kidding me?
But: They actually bothered to justify it narratively. And it was a real-time combat system, despite the cards, that actually worked quite well and was incredibly fun to play.

Game 3, Kingdom Hearts II
Initial Thoughts: Really. Two characters that look just like Sora and Kairi? How does that work? And are they really going to try and justify a whole new enemy type just to have some combat variety? And the guy in the hood is obviously Riku. Why are you even bothering to hide his face?
But: The Nobodies were not there for variety, but for the expansion of the world's internal logic. The two characters that looked like Sora and Kairi were integral to the plot and its unfolding. And beneath the hood was Riku, but- OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING?

Game 4, 358/2 Days
Initial Thoughts: Oh. Great. ANOTHER girl who looks like Kairi. How original. They're just doing that to complete the aesthetic set of three. There's no way they're going to be able to justify that.
But: In fact her presence made total internal sense with the game logic so far, and culminated in an actually quite creepy and heart-rending ending.

I haven't played "Birth By Sleep" yet, but I'm already wondering how they're going to justify a character that's identical to Roxas (who never really existed in the first place anyway), but some 10 years in the past. It doesn't seem possible, but they've proved me wrong every other time, so I'm heartily looking forward to them doing it again when the game comes out in English this summer.

I like these games because they don't think the audience is dumb. They don't think we have to be coddled or talked down to, and they acknowledge that we'll notice if they don't have internal consistency. They tell the stories they want to tell, no-holds-barred, and I respect that. Even when using familiar tropes, even bound as Final Fantasy is to Chocobos and Moogles and Cactuars and Cids, they never stop re-imagining themselves, never let the player rest and get so familiar as to become complacent. Every game is an adventure into a new world, even if it's one where, the moment I get there, I already feel at home.

Some Products of this Weekend

This weekend saw the both the Global Game Jam and the deadline for the Gamma 4 1-Button Game competition. As a participant in both, I'd like to share the fruits of our labor.

"Uniscorn" is a game about social anxiety and a donkey pretending to be a unicorn. Match the unicorns' outfits to sneak by them without getting "uniscorned," and find the truth behind their secret schemes. This game was made for the Global Game Jam over the course of 48 hours by myself (Kyla Gorman), Mike Sennott, Greg Nishikawa, Samantha Vick, Dai Yun, Juli Griffo, and Aurora Wang.
Uniscorn can be found here: http://globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2010/4291/Uniscorn_0.swf
(Here is the official GGJ site for it: http://globalgamejam.org/2010/uniscorn)

"Dear Moon" is a one-button game where you play as the moon. A young tree, eagerly growing in the daylight, has come under attack from evil herbivorous gremlins. Luckily, moonlight summons the tree's guardians, little tree sprites, who will use the night time to collect stars and make cannons to hold off the gremlins. You win by surviving to the full moon with at least 4 star cannons. Hold down your button (clicking, in this case) to bring out the moon. The game is meant to be peaceful and relaxing, and was made by myself (Kyla Gorman), Mike Sennott, Teddy Diefenbach, and Joe Osborn.
Dear Moon can be found here: http://god-bear.com/DearMoon.html

Agency - To Be Desired?

It's a legitimate question, and one that seems to be coming up a lot in one of my classes: how much agency do we really want in a media experience? Certainly we want some if we're expecting a game; without any at all, then we might as well just be watching a movie. But is more agency necessarily better? How much is too much? Is there even such a thing?

The games that give us the most agency, games like ''The Sims'', where there are no rules holding us down and we can do anything we want, are often the least "game-like" experiences. This is because games are defined by rules. The confines of the system are what give us a solid structure in which to work, to problem-solve, and to explore. It is the reduction of our agency in certain areas that highlights our agency in others.

Rules allow the game's creator to structure an experience. It allows him to provide atmosphere, to dictate events in such a way that our feelings are manipulated (the final goal of all art forms) in the way the designer desires. Such a guided experience can be very pleasurable. But if a guided experience is what we're looking for, then what separates interactive media from movies? Should we not dispense with the interactivity altogether and simply go back to our static films? This, after all, would allow for maximum structure on the part of the creator.

The fact that we do not must mean that there is something inherently pleasurable about interacting. Under this assumption then, how do we compromise? How do we maintain the pleasure of interactivity, while not losing the pleasure of a structured experience, the way we do in ''The Sims''? Game designers are still struggling with this problem, and will likely continue to do so for some time. Rather than trying to define a single answer, perhaps an impossible task, perhaps we should look at what interactivity gives us that is pleasurable. What is it about interactivity that we WANT to keep?

Perhaps foremost (arguably; I would be more than happy to debate this point with anyone who so chooses), interactivity is a powerful tool for empathy. Compared to a passive movie-going audience, players are incredibly invested in the life and well-being of the main character, because they are directly responsible for it. It is the decisions and skill of the player that determine what happens to the main character and whether that character lives or dies. By the same token, anything that happens to the character reflects back on the player. If the character is injured, it is not just the character: it is YOU who is injured. If the character murders someone close to him, it wasn't just the character's action: it was YOUR action. When a player is in control of a character, he effectively becomes that character. His own fate, his own success or failure, is innately tied to that of the character. The emotional resonance that occurs therein is therefore necessarily stronger than with other forms of art, simply by virtue of the fact that the player is participating in it.

So then, in order to make use of this powerful empathy, a player must feel like he has control over the character. If too much of the character's actions, or the effects on the character, are out of the player's control, then he no longer feels that these actions/effects are his responsibility. The feeling of empathy is broken. This can happen once the player falls below the threshold of "enough" agency, at which point he feels as though he has no control over the character, or his control makes no difference. At this point, the character becomes just as sympathetic as a character in a book or movie; we might feel something for them, but in a detached sort of way that allows us to distance ourselves from them.

So then, let us return to the question of what is "enough" agency. How much is too much? I would argue that a highly-structured media experience is preferable to an unstructured one. After all, if no creative mind is shaping our experience, then what is the point of being an artist of the medium? However, it is vital that these experiences allow enough agency to make the player feel not only that he has a vested interest in the fate of the main character, but that he has a palpable ''effect'' on the fate of the main character. When he feels this, he becomes engaged with the material, and video games (and other interactive experiences) can do some of their most powerful work.

Emotional Experiences in Gaming

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS," "PORTAL," AND "CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE."

So I've been thinking recently about emotional experiences I've had playing games, and what causes them. Games, especially good games, have given me quite a few to consider. In "Portal," for instance, I've had moments of genuine laughter, and of genuine panic and fear. Games have given me and others moments of real sadness, and a very real feeling of achieving victory. So what is it about these games that can make me feel so much? Emotional experiences in gaming, I've found, tend to break down into two categories, according to cause: those caused by narrative elements, and those caused by game elements.

Emotional experiences caused by narrative elements are similar to those in other fiction media. When Aggro hurled me over the edge of the crumbling bridge in "Shadow of the Colossus," and subsequently fell to his own (presumed) death, I felt real anguish. Aggro was a character I had grown attached to. He was my sole companion throughout the game, my vital aid in many previous missions, and though I was occasionally annoyed when he had a slower reaction time than I wished, I had really come to think of him with fondness. In fact, I didn't realize just how attached I had become to that horse until I watched him plummet into the canyon.

Most of us are familiar with this sort of experience. Many of us remember crying when we first read "Bridge to Terabithia" or "Where the Red Fern Grows." We become absorbed in fictional worlds, attached to their characters, and invested in their plots. The process of storytelling gives us mental models in our minds of people and events that are as real as those models we create to represent people, places, and things that actually exist in the real world. The things that happen to fictional characters are as real to us as the things that happen to, say, celebrities, sometimes more so - since we often know more about a fictional character's life and motivation than we ever know about the mysterious lives of the rich and famous. So it's not strange when emotion is evoked by a story. We're sort of used to that.

The other way games evoke emotion are through the experience of gaming - the feeling of "yes, success!" when we accomplish a difficult goal, for instance. Puzzle games can be particularly pleasurable for the feeling of cleverness and self-appreciation we get when deciphering a particularly complex brain teaser. We feel a sense of triumph - over the machine, over other players, even over the rules of the game itself. Likewise we can feel defeat, frustration, determination, unease, and even fear, concerning the goals of the game and our progress towards them. Just yesterday I felt such successes and failures when playing a fighting game with a group of friends.

This second type of experience doesn't require story - it comes straight from our real-world experience with the act of playing the game. I can be argued therefore that this type of emotion is therefore more "real," although that term seems to belittle the story-based emotional experiences, which can often be incredibly powerful - sometimes even more than these so-called "real" emotions. (In my opinion, both sets of emotions are real, whether the source they stem from is fictional or not. After all, both emotional experiences take place in the same centers of our brain.)

These two methods of evoking emotion have historically been very segregated in their study. The practice of evoking emotion with fiction has long been the study of the creative fields - creative writing, film-making, literary study, theater, and so on. Whereas the evocative powers of games, when studied at all, tend to fall more into the psychology or sociology category - how do humans deal with success and failure? With stress? With competition? It is perhaps because of the vast separation of these two fields that it becomes somewhat difficult to think about the unifying of the two types of emotional experiences.

Some of the most moving emotional experiences I've ever had in games, however, come not from either of these categories, but from clever hybrids of the two. Video games are in the unique position of being able to provide a game experience and a story experience at the same time. Here are a few examples:

When I first played "Portal," and completed the last of the official missions, I was feeling very satisfied with myself. I'd been doing very well, thinking around obstacles and proving myself to be smarter than the machine. GLaDOS was just congratulating me on finishing the test.

Then the platform I was riding turned a corner, towards a bank of fire, and I panicked. An eerie, tense techno theme rose in the background as thoughts flashed through my mind: 'Oh no, GLaDOS betrayed us' - 'I'm going to die, what should I do?' - 'Where can I put a portal?' - 'So that's why the lab is empty, this is what happened to everyone else' - 'Ohshitohshit! I'm gonna die! I have to jump!'

This series of thoughts illustrates the combination of emotional occurrences. On the one hand, my panic was engendered by fear for my game success. I had only seconds to make a difficult decision, solve a puzzle, or else the result would be failure. Actions I had been performing more or less at leisure the rest of the game were suddenly put under extreme time pressure, which caused an equally extreme anxiety.

But on the other hand, part of my panic was entirely story-related. I realized that my character had been betrayed. That all along, the AI had been planning to get rid of my character after she analyzed my abilities. I realized that this must have happened before - that all the test subjects who came before me must have been hurled towards this same fire, that maybe they'd found a way out, but maybe they'd burned to death in the flames. I panicked wondering how I - how my character - was going to get out of this situation.

Another such powerful experience comes from the game "Call of Duty 4," and is one I've written and talked about often before. In the game there is a sequence where one of the characters - a character which the player has been controlling for about half the game thus far - is caught in a nuclear explosion while trying to escape by helicopter. The helicopter goes down, and the player assumes that the character has died.

But wait - he's alive! The GPS locator in the game's loading screen focuses on the character, finding him amidst the wreckage, and the game drops you down into the man's body once more. You awaken to find yourself in the midst of the helicopter wreckage, so injured you can barely move except for a slow crawl. As you stumble out of the twisted hulk of metal, you find yourself in the midst of the nightmarish aftermath of the explosion. An enormous mushroom cloud towers over you on one side, while the wind blows pale-colored dust and debris in a fierce storm all around you.

It quickly becomes horribly obvious: this situation cannot end well. There is no reasonable hope of escape. Everything around you is dead, dying, or destroyed. The faint hope you felt at finding your character alive quickly dwindles into a shocked acceptance of the truth: you are going to die.

The emotional impact here is once again two-fold. On the one hand is the obvious impact of the story elements, the horror of nuclear war, the desolation of the environment, the doomed fate of a well-liked character. But on the other hand, the despair is also game-based: there is no way to win. All the previous missions (with the exception of the "mission" over the opening credits, which is almost more of a cinematic sequence, and should probably be considered differently for a variety of reasons which I won't get into here) have always had a win state, a goal to accomplish, a way to survive. Now, the player must gradually come to terms with the fact that there is nothing he can do. There is no way to win, no way to save the situation, or keep this character around for later use. This is it. You lose.

By combining these two emotional impacts, the game delivers an exceedingly strong message about the danger and destructive force of nuclear war. Neither emotional resonance on its own would do the trick - just forcing you to lose a mission without the story context would be meaningless and frustrating, while having you watch a static story-based cutscene about the character's death would seem preachy and cliche. But together, the combination of the two delivers a startlingly effective experience, reaching out to the heart and soul of the player.

Because of the strength of this impact, I think it's very important in the study and creation of games for us to think about the nature of such emotional experiences - after all, the ability to evoke emotion is one of the strongest powers of Art, no matter what its format. We must learn to appreciate the nature of games in both their capacities to evoke emotion, and think long and hard about the best ways to combine them.

Indirect Storytelling in Facebook's Packrat

I've been playing the facebook app game "Packrat" (copyright Alamofire Digital Collectibles) for over a year now. It's an addicting little sucker - a collectible card game wherein you use in-game credits to purchase cards from stores, or use cards you already have to steal new ones from other people. The cards belong to various themed sets, and each card has a point value. Low-level cards from the same set can be combined to form higher-level cards from that set (which, most of the time, cannot be gotten in any other way), and the object is to collect all the cards from a given set and "vault" them so that they can no longer be stolen from you. It can be played with or without active friends playing the game, although as with most facebook apps, there is a bonus for getting friends to join.

I didn't start thinking about Packrat as a form of narrative until recently - perhaps because they've only just started using it as such in a more blatant fashion. It's not direct, obvious narrative like you'd find in a novel or a movie, but much more subtle. It arises from the nature of the card sets, and how they're designed. Allow me to explain via example. The following is one of the current sets of cards, "The Razor's Plunder," and the cards required to make each card:

Base Cards:
Pickaxe
Shovel
Treasure Map Fragment
Metal Detector
Trail of Treasure
Iron Heart (a sort of steampunk engine)
Stone of Fortune
Marked Palm Tree
Unfortunate Treasure Hunter (a skeleton)

Built Cards:
Captain's Gig: Iron Heart x3
Treasure Cave: Metal Detector, Marked Palm, Unfortunate Treasure Hunter
Captain Auger Confrontation (a fearsome-looking pirate with a sword): Treasure Map Fragment, Trail of Treasure, Stone of Fortune
Converted Cutlass Arm: Pickaxe, Shovel, Iron Heart
Swashbuckling!: Treasure Cave, Captain Augur Confrontation, Converted Cutlass Arm
The Razor Triumphant (the Captain with a handful of gold): Swashbuckling! x2, Captain's Gig

Consider the direction in which these card combinations leads the mind. Like a connect-the-dot drawing, the makers of Packrat lay out a few key points along the way to allow the player to construct a narrative of swashbuckling pirates, hastily assembled mechanical limbs, and a struggle over hidden treasure. The details of the narrative may differ from player to player as they construct it in their minds, but the essential plotted course is there.

"The Razor's Plunder" is not the only Packrat set with an implicit narrative. Recently released sets include an "Independence Day" set wherein you make Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock, and combine them to form the Declaration of Independence. "Ink Wars" told the story of two rival tattoo parlors, one upscale and one rundown and sketchy, and the tattoos produced by each. Currently in progress is an "Ants & Grasshoppers" set, which seems to be a slightly revised version of the classic tale about work and procrastination. (The high card in that set is called "Bug Summit," and seems to be a meeting between the emperor of the grasshoppers and the queen of the ants.)

Packrat is an interesting example of a non-traditional narrative - but one nonetheless clearly intended by the game's creators. The combinations within each set are clearly intended to evoke some very specific images and causal relations. But the narrative itself - including its timeline - must be literally constructed by the player from these building blocks. It's a good reminder that our current models of narrative are not all-inclusive, and that it is still possible to think of storytelling in new, and entirely radical ways.