Genesis

I’ve been a gamer for decades now and I must say that few games really get me interested anymore. It’s because of a variety of things, but I somehow feel that primarily what is missing from games is the sort of childish soul that many games have lost in the new move towards what I like to call “nitty gritty” realism and has since been replaced with something that feels objectively shallow. It’s like somehow game creators have lost sight of what makes games interesting, which essentially comes along with the next point, challenge and perspective. I think for any game to really be good as a game it has to be challenging and there has to be a point where it gives you perspective about your challenge. Even when playing an old shooter, the more you played it the more you tended to think in this sort of whir of bullets (and it gave you perspective about your reactions and judgment). The problem to me then is that the whir that games once had has been replaced by a sort of silent roar, where problems tend to simply leap upon you and there’s much less build-up in games than there has really ever been (assuming a discussion of progressive rather than emergent gameplay). I would say games like Fallout 3 or the recent Final Fantasies are fairly indicative of this. One might argue that these games are purely build-up and that the ultimate goal is a culmination of all your actions in these games, but it’s not that you don’t establish a link with that character or with that story or even with that strategy (if it’s a top-down shooter or an RTS maybe), it’s that the link doesn’t seem as real because the obstacles feel paper thin. I think games need to be challenging in order to be enjoyable.

This is more of a personal thought, but this applies to old as well as new games. The entire good and evil divide has become a bit of a tired idea (or rather, was a tired idea from the start), yet it seems to be the idea that games are enthralled with almost preeminently. Essentially the entire idea of good and evil tends to create what I would term a non-solution, in that winning involves the failure of someone else. Yet we know that there are many games that can easily make this process or idea fuzzy. Victory in general is a fuzzy idea, as MMOs so generously show us with their “neverending” war scenarios. If stories are to progress further than they have in the past, starting someplace other than a battlefield might be a good way to go. At least, establishing motivation might be more understandable if we could get a character that actually responds to their past in some sense, instead of seemingly coming out of their situation with no real physical or emotional reaction at all.

The problem with games is that there are just too many voices all shouting in different directions. People mention games off the cuff as if it’s “just known” that these are great games. The reality is that there’s never been a vocabulary developed or set of principles laid down that determines what is good in games versus what’s not. Games remain mysterious simply because of the fact that no one in the gaming public will take on these challenges. No one wants to look at design decisions, or the mechanics of a game, or even what evolved the industry in a hardware versus software sense. There are many games that exist out there that are no better than the games that were being developed on the SNES or any other machine that could create a basic abstraction layer that was cogent to the person on the other side of the screen. Most people already know this. What they don’t know, or rather understand, is why. The general quality of games has improved in terms of what games look like, but the general quality of what games feel like? That’s probably degenerated and it’s because we haven’t found a game or games that almost everyone can agree upon as having the right set of principles and related ideas required to make a “good” game.

Some questions to ask: How should the camera be used? Is first person or third person important? Should the person ever be allowed to not interact? How many decisions should the player be allowed to have? What kind of interaction is appropriate in given circumstances? How should the game flow from interaction to interaction? What makes a character likable, what makes a character unlikable? Should the game feel more like a game or more like something else?

And these are just a few questions, not even entering into the message the designer or developer may want to convey.

Mechanics are a game’s internal guts responding mathematically to whatever is you’re doing. Pushing forward on the control stick results in some mathematical change. It doesn’t necessarily move a person to tears though (I suppose it might if the force feedback could physically harm you though). For example, clicking on a person and having them respond with a poem, the interaction itself, clicking on that person and the mathematical response that results (bringing up the text box) is significant, but what’s more significant is the poem, not the bringing up of the text box. Alternatively, the context in which that text box is brought up could be significant (Earthbound’s coffee break).

Since the text box can be mathematically described, I’d say it’s more related to mechanics. Since the poem cannot be mathematically described (in any significant manner), I’d say it’s more related to aesthetics.

Moving and shooting is a result of something. You don’t move and shoot if no one is shooting at you first. Well, sometimes you do, but the point of doing so is rather invalid. In other words, there’s context to your action, and at that point it’s significant beyond a simple mechanic. It’s, perhaps, something likened to a “nuanced mechanic” if you will. One that is not shooting or moving but an amalgamation of those two as a result of the action-reaction loop.

I really don’t agree that games should be games first. In fact I believe that there are probably some very significant games that really aren’t very game-y at all, but have moments in them that are significant and should be talked about (Grim Fandango probably being my favorite example–though this assumes I suppose that my definition of mechanics is being taken into account).

To sum up, I suppose I might say:
1) Games have mechanics in them. They are extraordinarily basic and tend to make up the guts of a game. They don’t tend to be all that exciting.
Examples of mechanics:
Moving
Jumping
Shooting
Interacting (in some form)

2) Most games (not all) have nuanced mechanics, a mechanical form that takes the contextual significance of a mechanic and adds to it to make it more significant to the person interfacing with the game.
Examples of nuanced mechanics:
Moving and jumping
Moving and shooting
Potential reasons or motivations for doing any of the above (including basic mechanics such as moving or jumping)

3) Games don’t need to be games first, in whatever sense we’re talking about, though most likely assuming a basic move away from mechanics as being what games “are,” since they are, in essence, mostly an amalgamation of nuanced mechanics now.

If there’s a reason why most people think RPGs are god-awful, it’s probably because of one very simple reason. Most of the mechanics are extant. There are a relatively small number of nuanced mechanics and most of them involve interaction with the game’s inhabitants.

Yuusha 30 Gameplay

Now, if I’m navigating at hyper speed, I would rather just play an RTS. I suppose what I don’t like about this game thus far is the rather poor nomenclature for all these types of games which fall into a grey zone. So far I’ve seen dozens of different descriptions for what this game is or isn’t. None of which, apparently, seem to accurately describe it or even attempt to place it. Arcade game and RPG might as well be poles on a magnet. Forcing them together doesn’t tend to result in good things happening.

Finishing up, games aren’t just about mechanics, after recently reading an article by Eric-Jon I’m also fairly convinced that good games are largely not mechanics. They’re imagery, they’re music, they’re probably mostly anything but what you would expect. More to say, I don’t hear too many people talk about how awesome the (insert game mechanic) is. I don’t remember Chrono Trigger’s battle system nearly as much as the music, nor do I remember the battle system of Earthbound as much as the commentary. Nor do I remember the mechanics of 1942 when I played it as a kid, or Progear or even Contra or Ninja Gaiden. I remember their snarky aesthetics more than anything else (even as a kid I was always amused at Ninja Gaiden’s rather random… well everything). In thinking back, there’s not really a single game that I remember exclusively for its mechanics. Even a game like World of Goo or Portal, which are presumably damn near nothing but mechanics, I tend to remember the commentary more than the neat things you could do with a Portal gun or goo balls.

But I suppose there’s also the other side. Masturbating your brain is great for awhile, but after you’re done you’ve mostly got a mess. I prefer games that massage and whisper in my ear.

I’m saying that you don’t remember running around precisely because it’s something you expect to be able to do. You don’t expect a game to be something static you watch unfold. It’s why I have a problem with Yuusha as a “game” in that it isn’t much of a game at all. Moving around is a basic mechanic of any game, but that’s the only mechanic in Yuusha. Yes there are the towns, but it’s already been made clear that you’re spending the majority of your time, literally, running around.

If the mechanics of an RPG were simply interfacing with menus, then The Sims is probably the most successful RPG out there. I would argue that an RPG is something more likened to an amalgamation of genres, where many things are potentially taken into account. There are even some RPGs that have shooters placed inside them (or card games, etc.) in which case it makes them even harder to place. Are these just mini-games, or are they also part of the whole? Ultimately, I feel what is memorable about games is, you’re correct, something experiential. But that experience rarely involves how great the mechanics are. It’s the mechanics in context of imagery, sound, commentary, etc. Remembering the sword slashing, or what it’s like when a character casts a spell, is much more relative to what a human interaction is like, that is, action and reaction, cause and effect, means and ends. The reason people dislike RPGs so much is because they take this idea and then put it in the context of an often overwrought idea. Combine that with anything even mildly sub-par, and eventually you get games parodying the poor concepts that are mimicked due to their popularity in the “olden days” of gaming (which are to some extent mimicked now because it’s easier to make what you know than what you don’t).

I think that only appreciating the tactile part of a game or whittling a game away to nothing but its tactile points removes much of what makes good games… well, good. If you took away the color and sound and everything else about Katamari Damacy and just had stick figures rolling around a ball, much of what made it good would be lost. Don’t get me wrong, it would still probably be fun, but I don’t think it would be good. Or art (artful) if you want to extend it in that direction. It can’t just be mechanics, because if it is, then why not Jenga? Why not Pong? The imagery and sound and even the feeling that imagery and sound evokes is part of the game–they’re not separable.

I would say that BoF and BoF II got it the most right, but the problem was that they were great because of the time in which they were created. By BoF III, the formula was stale and even 5’s formula was no better than any other decent RPG for its time. The basic reality is that you always have roughly 5-10 games that are truly great for every generation (by this I mean console generation), the rest being assuredly skippable. However, that means you have a LOT of time before there’s going to be something interesting. So we take the mediocre and it’s really no surprise that idiots prop it up unnecessarily to make the industry look like it’s doing something.

I mean, Blizzard hasn’t done one innovative thing. They’ve created the most structured veneer you will ever see though. It’s almost blinding to view, it’s been polished so much. In a similar vein, Capcom really hasn’t innovated all that much. They’ve polished. That’s what companies do, because most companies consist of rather average people creating rather average things. You can really look at most any game company or even game series and see this trend. Konami, Squaresort (MGS and Final Fantasy), etc. The list goes on. The real “innovators” are basically mostly indie creators (such as Cave Story) which then revolutionize everything else afterwards (i.e., being lesser and sometimes greater copies of the source material).

It’s a great big circle of life, love the games, hate the games, the dance goes on.

SAY IT
Fucking coward,
no right, no wrong
shout it from the rooftops
stop shutting your goddamn mouth.
SAY IT
Charge blindly forward
smash like an avalanche,
hurl like a hulk, cut like blades
honed to death.
SAY IT
You don’t have any right
how dare you think you’re
worthy to even call yourself worthy–
I said to say it. Now say it goddammit!
SAY IT!

Well, mostly just posting this to show that the blog isn’t dead. It’s 4 AM and I’m basically running on no sleep. The joys of college. Stay tuned for more posts that are just as interesting as this one! They might even be and I know it’s difficult to imagine, but stay with me, better than this post. That’s right. Better. I’m not sure what that means yet, but you’ll find out soon. I will too. I think.

I’ve never played this game, but from reading assessments, I’d have to say that you’re probably just a masochist if you enjoy this. Because I think for most people, the point of a game is progression, not dying a dozen times because of arbitrarily difficult walls being placed in front of you at random points in the game for no other reason than that they arbitrarily should be there. Mirror’s Edge is a great concept that probably could be a great game but I seem to understand that the problem is the pacing. Said pacing is god-awful and in a game where your primary tactics are run-jump-climb, pacing is about all you have. Sonic is the obvious example of how to do run-jump-climb right. Mirror’s Edge is actually experimental in the regard that I can think of no other game where you’re in first person and running around at breakneck pace. The reason for this is mostly because of… well pits, among other things. Third person works for the speed demon idea (or I suppose “worked” when Sonic was still doing what he was good at instead of morphing into a werewolf).

Balls to the pavement difficulty can be great, but that assumes that the mechanics are enjoyable to begin with. There’s nothing really enjoyable about randomly falling into pits. Again with Sonic, but you’ll notice fewer and fewer pits as the game progressed (and then promptly died in the 3D age). This is likely another pratfall of Mirror’s Edge, since run-jump-climb doesn’t work very well in three dimensions. Even in games like Zelda, moving around in 3D seems really wonky (same with Shadow of the Colossus and pretty much every other 3D action/adventure game I’ve played). Ironically I’ll say that the only time I’ve felt comfortable moving in 3D space is while in a first person perspective, but moving quickly in that perspective is extremely jarring (and if your computer isn’t up to snuff, laggy). I’ve never been comfortable with 3D videogames totally and have always enjoyed games more that either compromise or play with the idea. I can’t remember the game at the moment, but I remember playing a game where you could switch between a 2D and 3D environment. I think it was a Mario game, but I’m not sure. Anyway, now that I’ve been thoroughly tangential, I’ll say this–Mirror’s Edge is an interesting experiment, and while it’s great that companies are still experimenting, sort of, this is a failed experiment to exude the enjoyability of running around.

http://bns.plaync.co.kr/
Wikipedia Page

MMORPG obviously, supposed to be released in 2009. It’s a Korean game only at the moment, but I suspect that, like most MMOs, it will probably have an international and maybe even a U.S. release not long after it’s released in South Korea (I’m sure there’s already a Chinese version in the works, probably a Japanese version too). Anyway, I just wanted to show it because I think it looks really cool, especially since all of it’s actual in-game footage. Have no idea how it plays obviously, but it looks neat. Seems like there’s a combo system as well as the ability to “fly” by running along walls. The artwork is by Hyung-Tae Kim, my favorite Korean artist. Tried to get an interview with him but heard he was working on this game. Such is life I suppose. Maybe I’ll get an email with answers to my questions at least. Would be nice. In any case, I guess I’m curious about what people think.

Piracy is not something new as everyone knows and the internet is perhaps the largest center of its proliferation. But the reason that piracy is so rampant is not because of poor protection, but rather that the psychology of those who pirate is one of unbridled justification. That is to say, there are a variety of reasons they create to justify their reason for pirating and those who have no such reasons are highly unlikely to pirate software or realistically, most other forms of consumable media, assuming they feel that pirating it would be more of a problem than not doing so.
Read the rest of this entry »