Mass media

Source: Flickr

If it weren't for developers like [Defiant Development][2], you'd easily believe that creativity in the games industry is nearly extinct.

But those guys actually manage to take a really old and tired concept – i.e. a first person shooter – and spin it in order to make something else entirely:

A first person shooter.

Seriously. Hear me out.

Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane, Australia-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.

The game itself — the title of which is actually short for “war correspondent” — follows the story of journalist Jesse DeMarco. Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story. The scenarios range from intense bursts of action to quieter moments as you discuss the events of the day with fellow journalists in a hotel. Though the main mechanic will be filming the action, Warco is also very much about choice.

Well, this is how [WIRED][1] puts it, anyway. The developers obviously make it [sound a bit more dramatic][3]:

WARCO lets players shoot and record what they see ‘through the lens’ – framing shots, panning and zooming, grabbing powerful images of combatants and civilians caught up in war. They’ve got AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades – you’ve got a flak jacket, a video camera, and a burning desire to get the story.

Source: Flickr

The praise that Bioshock has received from other critics is – after having played through the game – definitely well earned. Even though I'm usually not exactly a very good FPS player, I managed to get through the whole game. And it definitely was worth it. The world building in Bioshock is excellent, be its embedment into the historical background, or the rich story that shines through at every corner, or finally the beautifully captured art deco architecture, which simply is a joy to explore and walk through.

Gameplay itself is reasonably varied as well. While some parts leave the player wondering whether they were just added to draw out game length¹, the "magic" abilities one receives over time offer enough variation and allow the player to change his tactics over time.

Later in the game, some near-failure states are added: at one point, one continually looses maximum health, forcing the player to react faster. At another, the player isn't able to choose his currently activated plasmid. Not only is the game randomly cycling between the equipped plasmids, but between others as well, allowing the player to test out previously unavailable plasmids – and requiring him to change his tactics to deal with splicers every minute or so.

With Bioshock having distinct horror elements as well, sound plays an important element as well.

Source: Flickr

There are cases when iconic buildings are somewhat created by accident. One of them is the winding tower of the former Shime coal mine near the city of Fukuoka in Japan. Having been abandoned a long time ago, it has been built during the second world war, and features a rather peculiar design, as an article on the WebUrbanist notes:

The 47.65 meter (156.3 ft) tall tower is of an odd design, having offices and control rooms located above the actual, long gone winding mechanism – huge reels of cable which raised loads of coal from the mine and lowered empty containers and workers back into the depths of the mine up to 430 meters (1,411 ft) below.

Towering over the city of Shime, it does rather seem like a paleo-futuristic fortress. No wonder, as WebUrbanist explains, it got discovered as the ultimate anti-zombie fortress:

For decades the Shime winding tower quietly mouldered away in obscurity until suddenly – Teh Intarnets! It seems some imaginative wag with a liking for zombie flicks stumbled upon (possibly via StumbleUpon) an image of the tower, and immediately deduced it would make the Best. Anti-Zombie Fortress. EVAR.

And so it began: one thread at Reddit begat another, and yet another, and soon Photoshop contests ensued along with much hilarity. The Anti-Zombie Fortess Meme soon took on a life of its own, and it takes no braiiiins to figure the Shime winding tower is destined to be cast as a prime location for some upcoming zombie flick.

Of course, as a game designer, this design offers other possibilities and ideas.

Source: Flickr

So first Kim referred to it, then Karin and finally Janina, so yes, I should definitely read that article, right?

So you know what I say? I say screw Strong Female Characters. What we need now are some Weak Female Characters. My arguments below the fold…

The arguments are solid, indeed. So-called "strong female characters" are usually¹ perfect human beings: physically strong, clever, intelligent, incredibly good looking – but in the end, they need to be rescued by the dorky everyman, and then we are back at the damsel in distress.

It is incidentally also where Metroid: Other M went – unfortunately.

What the author of the article calls for are believable characters.

Good characters, male or female, have goals, and they have flaws. Any character without flaws will be a cardboard cutout. [...] They don’t have to be physically strong, although they can be (The Bride, the women from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Ripley, Sarah Connor, and even the half-naked Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop are strong Strong female characters).

One of the reasons why getting into game design right now is so interesting is the fact that part of the business, of the creative process and of the production is still forming – and in a constant state of flux.

While on one hand, game production teams have grown larger in order to produce even more content (after all, many AAA titles boast to have 50+ hours playtime – which is 25 times as much as a normal action film), other people reduced their teams and are producing awesome games with teams of three or four people.

Jason Schreier over at Wired's Game|Life argues as well that games need auteurs: a single person with a vision for a game, as opposed to "design by committee":

Most games, like most movies, are a massive undertaking involving the work of hundreds of people. But many films — the best, some would argue — are driven by the central creative direction of a single auteur. No matter how many other people work on a project, auteur theory holds that it is possible for a single, strong creative vision to shine through. Bringing such a dynamic to videogames could result in stronger stories, more compelling gameplay — and fewer artistic and commercial failures that result from that well-established enemy of the creative process, design by committee.

And, which is even better, the industry is slowly adapting that as well.

Source: Flickr

Keith Stuart on The Guardian misses real, scary horror in games – even though this medium should be ideally suited for it.

Horror should be a key facet in the video game armoury – the unique element of interaction is seemingly purpose-built to drag us into nightmarish experiences. But, mostly, horror games are merely blood-soaked adventures or shooters, which borrow the clothes of successful horror movies without ever occupying the body of terror within.

The problem, according to him? Convincing horror is done by auteurs – a vision of a single person, perfectly honed to tap into people's fears.

In video game development, it is very rare for this sort of singular creative input to make it through the rigorously structured and often painstakingly democratic production process. Within the average 150-person dev team there will be various strata of producers, creative directors, designers and marketers each jostling to impose their own conceptual foibles, while ironing out idiosyncratic design quirks. [...]

Within these production constraints it's hardly surprising that horror games are mostly about cheap shocks and even cheaper gore: these are the systematic elements of horror most easily producible in a largely egalitarian, highly technical team environment. The ingredients required to make a gamer jump are fairly easily reproducible – you just need sudden unexpected movement and a loud noise.

Of course, that is selling the horror genre terribly short.

Source: Flickr

I love watching game designers at work.

(For the uninitiated: This is World of Warcraft, Patch 4.0.3.)

Some games that crept up last week during our seminar on collaborative virtual worlds as well as on the local game designers meeting.

Savage is an interesting sounding blend of RTS with a commander that has the overview over the game, while warriors have the first person view and might follow the commander's orders.

With the creation of a new game play genre, RTSS (Real Time Strategy Shooter), Savage expertly redefines the first-person shooter and real-time strategy genres by combining elements of both into one cohesive experience. As the commander in RTS mode, you will tackle resource management, develop a robust tech tree, plan your assault and lead real human players into battle. As a warrior in action mode, you will master many unique weapons, powerful units, and siege vehicles to fight a fast paced battle.

Cantr II is a text-based MMORPG intended to simulate a society, while still having some roleplaying aspects. Apparently, it is currently down, though.

Super Meat Boy – is supposed to have tight level design that continually adds new elements, just like World of Goo did.

Clonk Rage – after Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft another game about digging. Some people seem to dig that.¹

Speedball for Amiga by the Bitmap Brothers was famous for its graphics and its violence (you could push your opponent!). It will be re-released for the iPhone (apparently? Maybe I misheard).

Source: Flickr

While working on an assignement for our current module on collaborative virtual worlds, I think I started to understand what bugs me in both MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and sandbox games like Second Life. There are (as for now) two points:

A Feeling of Agency

Nothing is more frustrating in World of Warcraft than successfully finishing a quest by bringing the needed herbs to an NPC, being thanked by him and reassured that his sick daughter will now get well, and as soon as you turn your back, you hear him complain to the next player that his daughter is sick and is in dire need of certain herbs ...

What is missing here is the feeling of agency – the feeling that your actions as a player have an effect on the world and change it, for the better or the worse. After all, any of these games give you the feeling that you are a hero and part of something big, and not just another name- and faceless warrior in a confusing war (even though that picture would often be more accurate).

To be fair, it has to be said that World of Warcraft has its moments there – like when the players had to gather ressources in order to open up a portal. But those moments are few.

An Agent Beyond Your Control

Second Life has quite another problem. Yes, you can change the world – a bit, by building something on a tiny speck of land, but then again, why should you? Nothing is forcing you, there is no actual need, there is nothing out of your control.

Today when working on my Unity3D game for Fantoche, I noticed it again: a short little squeak at the start of a triggered sound clip.

This has happened before in my prototype, but I chalked it off to my inferior post production skills when doing the first sound clips. The new sound clips, however, were pristine, I was sure of it.

So the problem had to be somewhere else. Changing a suspect in my trigger script did not change a thing.

Yet turning off 3D Sound in the Audio Importer Inspector did the trick: no more weird squeaks.¹

Of course, there are situations where you would need the 3D Sound property set. I have yet to test this out. Maybe the squeak only occurred because my Audio Listener was so close to the Audio Source.

In a beautiful piece over at BLDGBLOG, Jim Rossignol writes about how "science fiction exists to cast a shadow over the present".

He connects three places: the alien zones in Roadside Picnic, the decaying landscape in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker and the very real exclusion zone around Chernobyl, which has been, itself, turned into a decaying, alienating zone in the video game STALKER (which I have yet to play).

The production team at GSC Gameworld, a games studio based in nearby Kiev, intended to use the derelict zone as the basis for environments in their action shooter, STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl. The team went into the zone and photographed urban dereliction: a snapshot of an abandoned Soviet Union. They would go on to fill their game world with the zone's rusting fences and collapsing grain silos, but that was not all that came with the material: the landscape and its decaying architecture was already charged with mythology—with narrative.

The game references both Chernobyl as well as Stalker (the film); a film that, as I only realised through this article, was made way before the actual Chernobyl disaster. Yet, strangely enough, foreshadowed it in a rather scary way.

Tarkovsky's film manages to imbue derelict industrial landscapes with a terrible sense of threat.