Running Out of Wars to set games in?
Finding a war to set your game in is a bit of a problem. The wars that are considered by conventional wisdom to be ‘known’ by the game-buying public and thus OK to set games in are (of course) World War II and a couple of modern day wars; the 1990 Gulf War, The War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq etc.) and Vietnam. Then we start to get into slightly lesser known ones – World War I, the American Civil War and Korea (as in; ‘known’ by the US market, which is a huge slice of the games market).
This is a bit of a loss to a wide and interesting history globally that could be drawn upon, but the market tends to go for what it already knows, so I suspect that we’ll continue to see the bigger games that need a war narrative set in the same places – except the sci-fi ones, where you can make your own wars. (A notable mention to Iron Storm, set in an alternative universe where WWI never ended…)
But there is also a serious point here. For many people games are one of their primary media sources, so it is where they learn about the world. History has lessons that we could all do with learning, so it would be good to see more experimental development looking elsewhere for settings.
For example; one war that gets almost zero coverage – and needs the eyes of the world to be upon it – is the Congo:
Since the mid-1990s, a complex web of political rebellions, resource wars and apocalyptic religious crusades has killed at least 700,000 people and displaced millions in this impoverished Central African nation.
I’m not in any way trying to make light of the conflict, nor would I like to see a game that did, but unless it is in the public conciousness and thus political pressure to end it, and if a game can play a role in this, then why not..
PS – Amazing to see that war reporter David Axe has managed to crowd-source the money to send him out to the Congo to report on the ongoing conflict...
The Idea of a Sacred Game Idea
Following on from the post about people who tell me their game ideas… by contrast there are people who don’t – without wanting a contract in place. So here’s the story so far; When I tell people that I work as a games designer, I get a variety of replies but one of the most common is people then telling me that they have a great idea for a game. Fine… Some will then try to negotiate they if they tell me how we split the billions profit from the idea. I know this well because I did it myself to somebody who worked in the industry before I did. I thought (doh!) that I could write a few paragraphs of ideas out and they would be taken up by a developer and fame and fortune beckoned. Reality, sadly, was different.
The reality is that ideas are cheap – it’s the making of it that really counts…
I have heard that a friend of Frank Herbert (author of Dune) asked Herbert to author the friend’s idea and split the profits 50/50. Herbert refused, even though the guy was a good friend — Herbert’s reply was basically that ideas are easy; the writing is the hard part. Think about it for a minute — would YOU want to have a friend come up to you, tell you a few sentences, then have you spend months hunched over a keyboard turning his few sentences into the Great American Novel? I doubt it. If you did spend months writing that book, would you want to give half of the money to that guy? I don’t think so.
This is totally accurate. Even the initial concept idea will morph from it’s inception into something else during the development process. That is not to say the idea does not count – but it’s the seed – and lots of tending and time are needed to make it grow – assuming it ever will. The key thing is that if you’ve had one good idea – to make sure you train your brain to have more…. ideas are cheap and during the friction of development you’ll need to oil the wheels of the process of lots and lots of them…
The “I have a great ideas for a game…” Statement
When I tell people that I work as a games designer, I get a variety of replies but one of the most common is people then telling me that they have a great idea for a game. Fine… perhaps games are like novels and we all have a good one inside us? However then they will, more often than not, proceed to tell me their idea. Herein lies the tricky bit – 99% of the time it’s not a game idea they tell me at all, it’s a narrative world in which they’d like to set a game.
I’m not splitting hairs here – it’s a major point: A game idea is an interaction; it’s about how the player interacts with the game world, what they do, what they see as a result of what they do (or don’t) and so on. It’s all about interaction. By contrast, describing who the character the player controls is, and what they world the game is set in, is often just the narrative setting in which the interaction happens. While one bleeds into the other – without the interaction, it’s not a game idea. (Whereas without the narrative world it is still a game idea).
I have written more about this… but consider this in the light of an example… Tetris – you can’t describe it without describing the interaction – because there is no narrative to it. Why are we stacking blocks? Who is discarding the blocks that need to be stacked? We’re never told; and we don’t care. By contrast the interaction is easy to describe – stack the blocks to fill complete lines. That’s a game idea…
French Government Looks to Mass Spyware to Control Copyright
A while ago I wrote about the technical difficulties of implementing any reasonable solution to stopping people from using p2p to download copyrighted material (post 1 and 2) – I notice that the French government is adopting methods very similar to that of China in an attempt to control p2p use;
French Internet users could soon be asked to install spyware on their PCs that tracks their surfing habits and analyzes the applications installed on their machines in order to prevent file sharing piracy. Plans for this type of surveillance surfaced this week when a paper authored by the French Hadopi agency, which was put in place to police the French Internet and prevent copyright infringement as part of the country’s three strikes legislation, leaked online.
You may remember early 2009 a policy emerged in China that would require all new PC to come pre-installed with government spyware with the appropriate name of ‘Green Dam’ – under the guise of protecting the youth from dubious morality. However, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, of Harvard’s Berkman Center said:
“Once you’ve got government-mandated software installed on each machine, the software has the keys to the kingdom… While the justification may be pitched as protecting children and mostly concerning pornography, once the architecture is set up it can be used for broader purposes, such as the filtering of political ideas.”
Indeed. What is interesting is that it appears that there is no easy technical solution to the laws that politicians have passed – and I can’t see how their will be, unless you can impose some very draconian system, but even then there will be ways round it. I suggest this is doomed to expensive failure – consider the $84 million the Australian government spent developing a filter system, also to protect youth from dodgy material – only to have a 16 year old hack it in 30 minutes.
Paying Attention Event
The Digital Culture Research Centre (DCRC) – in a top digital media lab here in Bristol and also the place where my PhD is based. They’ve got a big event going on in Sweeden at the moment, which sadly I can’t be at, but sounds amazing:
Hello Everyone,
A brief update from the frontline…
Morning – Session 5: New Forms and Meanings of Mediation blogged: http://bit.ly/cD3nfp
Our first session on Wednesday is concerned with empirical engagements with various ways in which different actors attempt to appropriate, curate, control, direct or facilitate attention. These range from artistic practices with cell/mobile phones to educational practices through Virtual Learning Environments and their relation to ‘community’.
Bernard Stiegler’s fantastic talk: ‘Pharmacology of Attention’, blogged here: http://bit.ly/caSGSV
Afternoon – Session 7: Theories of Attention and Economy (2) blogged: http://bit.ly/95Et5R
Our seventh session continues the theme of (new) theories of attention and economy…..
Scoping and Review conversation (2): http://bit.ly/c74mV5
The second scoping and review session continued with the encouragement of delegates to engage with the themes that have arisen during the second day of sessions of the conference. Another exciting discussion arose with contributions from speakers and from other participants, raising some interesting points for further consideration.Session 8: Aphra Kerr & Simon Poulter blogged: http://bit.ly/aYo5dG
In the final session of papers of day 2, sociologist Aphra Kerr explicates and critiques the various ways in which ‘trust’ is articulated in the design of communications technologies and artist and curator Simon Poulter presents a critical intervention themed on Google’s algorithms as an articulation of ‘freedom’.Back tomorrow with all the action from Day 3.
Thanks for Paying Attention…
Eat Them! on Gamespot
There is a nice article and video about Eat Them! on Gamespot (my bold highlight);
Eat Them! documents what happens when monsters go on a destructive tear in a city. At the moment that doesn’t involve anything too surprising for anyone who’s watched a Godzilla movie. Buildings are smashed, ant-sized people go running around screaming, the military tries to put a stop to things- you know, the usual. You’ll play as one of several monsters, each with their own unique attributes, who have to level everything around them within a time limit. Your arsenal of moves is almost exactly what you’d expect. You’ll be able to run, kick, and smash into the buildings around you to satisfying results. If the basics aren’t good enough for you, you can improvise by grabbing most anything and using it as a makeshift club. Your grab move can also be used to pick up the hysterical masses running at your feet which serve as tasty snacks that restore your health. Your arsenal of moves gets a technological boost courtesy of weapons bolted to your massive frame. While that all sounds well and good, Eat Them! offers the cool twist of a monster lab you can use to create your own unique critter of destruction. While the selection of monsters in the version of the game we played were fine, we have to say the option to create your very own freak of nature has a very special appeal- you can just never cram enough eyeballs on a misshapen head as far as we’re concerned. …
Based on what we played, Eat Them! is funky little arcade-style title that looks very promising. There’s just something satisfying about running around destroying cities as a monster. The addition of custom monster creation, and online play to the classic “smash everything” formula makes Eat Them! a game that’s worth keeping a look out for when it releases on PlayStation Network this holiday. Look for more on Eat Them! in the coming months.
PS. I should say if you watch the video it says that the game has online multiplayer – that’s not accurate – it does have multiplayer, but it is split screen local 2-4 player.
‘Golden Age’ of Social Gaming is Over
Awww boo. Looks like you can cancel the next few round of drinks, ‘cos the social gaming party may be coming to an end – according to Popcap’s CCO:
“You’re definitely in the stage right now in social games where there’s a lot of bandwagon jumping, where everyone sees moneymoneymoney and suddenly all these new companies appear…
“It happened before in mobile, it happened before in casual – in the past it’s tended to signal the beginning of the end. Not necessarily of the genre, but of the sort of golden era, where everything was a fresh blue ocean.
I have no reason to doubt his view – Popcap are a solid development studio who seem to know what they are doing. What’s more they have a good handle on user data activity.
Design by Committee – Making it Work
It’s an oft repeated assertion that you can’t do good creative projects by Committee – that the needs of appeasing a large group of people leads to over-complexity and lack of a coherent vision:
Design by committee is a coined phrase to describe a collaborative approach to designing and, as I experience way to much, is bound to produce suboptimal results. Best described by the maxim “A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee”, I firmly believe this approach is severly handicapped.
I have to say that I think the whole idea that a ‘camel is a horse planned by committee’ is a bit simplistic – a camel is an animal adapted by nature to live in desert conditions. It has loads of cool adaptations such as nostrils you can close that horses don’t. Let’s not hate on the camels?
That is not to say there is no truth here: I’ve been on a fair few projects were mass opinions were forced into the project and ruined the end result. A better analogy than the camel thing is; when you mix too many colours, you always end up with grey. That is to say, when you adopt too many people’s opinions, you always end up with a messy compromise. This can be a good thing in politics as it means you can get consensus on something and move on to action. It’s often a bad thing in creative processes as you chop out the interesting bits during the consensus portion of the process.
That aside another author took a shot at the idea – and used Open Source software as an example of something designed by committee;
It comes down to the deep paradox at the heart of design (whether for interface, architecture, product, etc.). We are trying to create a subjective experience that scales—a single personal scenario that can be multiplied repeatedly to fit a wide array of changing needs by a vast majority of users. The thing is, subjectivity cannot be scaled—that’s what makes it subjective—therefore, the attempts to create a one-size-fits-all solution are bound to fail, along with the attempts to customize the solution to each individual user in each individual use case.
Which is a fair point and something that I think all designers feel. But then I think that the Open Source is no different from other projects as on the front-line of the wor at any one time I suspect there is only one or two people doing design…. and even then I bet they are doing other things too. (There is also a good rebuttal of this article here.)
But I also need to point out that even in closed-source processes, design is still a part committee activity. In games for example you will need to negotiate with the people who will implement that vision (code, art, audio departments) and they will do a much better job if they feel you are listening to their concerns and ideas that just ploughing ahead regardless. Then there is the publisher – via your producer – who can be delivering opinion from a personal view to the massed feedback of a huge cross-territory planning meeting. So how do you make this work? A few ideas might be…
- Before anything else, be certain that you know who is the final arbitrator in the decision making process. .. and be certain all in the process know. Find out where your own authority extends too.
- During any committee process, make sure you take the time to separate out ‘opinion’ from ‘demands’ – not every bit of feedback has a requirement to be implemented!
- Use committees as a means of gathering ideas, be honest in making sure they know that, while you will consider suggestions, they may not get added.
- Measure each proposed change against the vision of the project as a whole – does it add too or distract from that vision. Those that don’t add, bin.
- Then take those that do add to the vision and consider against the development resources you have. Rank into easy, medium and hard to implement.
- Then take the same list and rank according to your own feelings as to if they are a good/important ideas to add – good, medium and poor ideas.
- Now you can start working on adding the proposed changes from the committee starting at the cross over between easy to implement and good for the project ideas and work from there…
In essence any group can be a resource of diverse opinions that help improve a project by giving creative friction to the design – or it can be a swamp that kills creativity. Being part of the committee and using good communication skills is the best route to the former and away from the latter.
Vanquish Demo – Slide’n’shoot!
The playable demo for the up-coming Sega third-person sci-fi gun-fest, Vanquish is now out on PSN. I downloaded it on Thursday night and have been playing it since. The game sees you controlling a high-tech super-solider in some futuristic war set-upon a ringworld (where the world is painted on the inside of a huge floating tube, there is a novel of the same name plus other sci-fi has used the concepts such as Halo or Iain M Bank’s Culture novels.)
Vanquish - action screenshot
The controls are well implemented and cover is key to the game. If you try and run around shooting, you don’t last long. Whereas if you use cover – you take the fight to them (the future baddies). When in cover (which you just press a button when next to cover) you can then use the direction controls and the cover button to leap out over the cover object and run onwards. Running is slow, but to assist you can do a kind of power-slide to move rapidly into the next spot of cover. From cover, shooting is easy and the animations are very well done, so it feels very conversant to be popping out of cover to empty a clip into the enemy. There also some great slow-mo action when you get seriously hit – which reminds me a bit of the death-sequence in Crysis 2, the difference here being that you get to react in bullet time while the rest of the world is encased in jam – and it’s great fun.
The other cool thing is your transforming weapon – using the d-pad you can change (literally) your weapon type. it has a great transformer-like animation as this happens. It’s is just a fancy way of equipping a different gun, but looks cool, so I like it! The only odd bit so far is the FMV sequences – at one point a huge killing machine is tunnelling up from the floor and the camera cuts to show us your guide back at base explaining what it is and how you might kill it – when the camera cuts back to your character, he’s having a crafty cigarette break! Yes, he opens his helmet while a hundred-tonne killing machine emerges into the level, for a swift puff. (You can also make him have a crafty cig during gameplay.) That said, it’s a minor point ‘cos the gameplay is ace. So far –instabuy!
The Daily You!
This is very cool – a website that uses your social media feed (Twitter/Facebook) to create a newspaper of your world – in effect, the Daily You… I first saw this via the Bristol Festival of Ideas’s newspaper – and it’s easy to create your own:
- This is the Daily Arclightfire (plus 90+ followers’ news)
- The Daily Doctor John Dee (He was a noted mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist,[4] and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I.
- The THQ Wireless Express (publisher of Star Wars: Battle for Hoth)
A Great Becoming... 