Archive for June, 2007

26
Jun

Pac-ing it in

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Video Games

Although I’m fully of it happening I’ve let Microsoft siphon money out of my bank account and turn it into “points” that can only be used to buy things sold at the company store in the company town that is the Xbox 360.

We’ll talk more about this intentionally baffling funny money in a future post, but today’s topic is “Pac Man CE”, a ten dollar game (800 points) that I have been describing to anyone who bothers to listen as “as close to the platonic ideal of a video game I have ever seen.”

From what I understand the game is the design swan song of Toru Iwatani, the man who created the original game back in the eighties. But with this title it’s clear that the success of the original was no fluke. Considering how many titles from that period were just accidental successes it’s impressive to realize just how crafted experience the original was.

Even so, I’ve never been all that big a fan of the original game since I discovered that the true way to victory was through uncovering “patterns” that let you consistently min/max the game until it becomes nothing more than a test of the limits of human endurance, which isn’t my cup of tea.

In that sense CE is a totally different beast, even though it uses the basic elements of the original title; a maze, dots, power pills, four ghosts, and fruit. And it’s it is definitely Pac man on some level, although it’s tempting to say that it isn’t the same game at all. It’s about as close as Puzzle Quest is to Bejeweled; built on the same skeleton, but no the same monster.

For those of you who can’t (or won’t) pony up the $410 that it would cost to buy the platform and the game here’s a YouTube Video of someone getting a really good score. Watching it should be most of what you need to know to understand the game and what I’m yammering on about.

Seen it? Good. Now doesn’t that seem cool?

There are still a few things that don’t come through in what you just watched: First the longer you survive the more the individual pellets are worth. Starting at 10 they quickly go up to 50 as you munch along, and the drop back again when you get eaten, so there’s a cost to getting gnarfled by a ghost that goes beyond losing a life (which are fairly easy to come by). Second the game ramps up to such a high speed that you’ll probably find yourself preferring to use the analog controller. It just gives you the feel you need to cut the corners fast enough as you start ripping around. Lastly the ghosts move so fast that you end up using the power pellets defensively as much as offensively. Once the ghosts are “edible” they move much more slowly, but they’re also the highest scoring element of the game. Eat them up though and they’ll quickly reconstitute back in their deadly high-speed form.

There’s a touch of genius about it, and the truly wonderful thing about this design is just how simple the rules are, and yet there’s so much in your head while you’re playing it. Driving home that point is the “help” screen. It just shows a bracket around the analog stick and control pad with the words “Control Pac Man” next to them.

19
Jun

The Guilded Cage

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Consoles

I just plugged in my new Xbox 360 elite. As a child of the X Generation I’m still idiot enough to think that having something in black makes it ever so slightly cooler. But then again, they must have chosen the 24th letter of the alphabet as their titular letter for a reason. But it wasn’t the color that made me decide to go with the newer (and slightly more expensive) system. Instead it was the fact that I’m of the opinion that no modern hard drive should be less than 100 gigs.

But having played with my new toy for all of 24 hours now I thought it might be beneficial to write down my first impressions before my absorption into the Microsoft behemoth is complete and I am unable to report honestly from behind the lines, so here’s a few notes:

I’d be tempted to say that the machine is a metaphor for something, but that isn’t true. It is the thing. A perfect corporate prison combining advertising, DRM, and specialized technology to create an artifact of the modern age that gives a glimpse into the world that our benevolent masters (of business) would lock us into permanently if only we would give up our pretentious “computers” and let them swallow us up entirely.

That’s not to say that the box doesn’t deliver as a game system. You can certainly play games on it, and they look fantastic. The skin textures and eye movements are amazing if a little wooden. It provides what amounts to the most amazing display of Supermarionation that the world has ever seen.

But even in these games the relentless grip of the machines true power is never far away. Rather than being contextualized into the game, the awards and save game structures are set entirely out of the game world. Instead these elements are part of the ever-so-strict “operating system”. So when the game asks you which device you want to save to it does so by slicing into the screen with a “blade” that has a look and feel that matches the Xbox dashboard and not the world of the game you’re playing. You also get little bits of the master interface peeking through at odd moments. For instance when it hands you an achievement (one of the unlockable badges that are given to you when you jump through the right hoop while playing a game) it does so using a graphical “bug” that has nothing to do with the game you’re playing. It also uses the same font and styling to tell you that it’s connected your profile to the internet.

And boy does this thing love the internet. Especially since that seems to be such an efficient way to start parting you from your money. And in the world of a benevolent corporate master there’s no doubt that the machine is second only to a slot machine in its desperation to try and get you to pony up cash at every turn.

One thing that brought home this mix of commerce and entertainment is a good old dose of crass commercialism in the form of a McDonald’s ad that appears on one of the dashboard’s blades. There’s no way to turn off the advertising banner in the middle of the machine’s interface. Hell, you just paid for the privilege.

17
Jun

From Scratching

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

For the last few weeks I’ve been heavily in creation mode; thinking up new concepts for both games and comics at the same time.

There’s no doubt that the “making stuff up” phase is always the most fun part of being professionally creative. Everything is possible, everyone can be involved, and the brain is happily pumping out novel thoughts. (Well mine is, at least.)

Of course at some point it ticks over from play to work. It isn’t a clean transition, but if an idea is going to be appreciated by more than just yourself it needs to be crafted. But for most people the point where the rubber meets the road is also the moment when it stops being something fun, and procrastination sets in.

It’s pretty easy to tell the kind of people who never manage to get past the point of concept. They’re usually very worried about people “stealing their ideas”, and spend all their effort imagining the wealth and fame that it’s going to bring them once the rest of the world discovers the thing that they’re never going to actually do.

It’s never nice to have a novel thought taken and used by someone else, just like it’s no fun to have a girl you like swept off of her feet by another guy. And as for that feeling of fame and fortune, you can get that same rush (and possibly better odds) by buying a lottery ticket.

Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. – Thomas Alva Edison

While this hoary old quote gets thrown out a lot, it’s a useful one to remember when you’re in that first flush of love with your new idea. You need to ask yourself if this idea is not only good, but is it good enough that you want to spend the next few weeks, months, or even years of your life putting in the effort that its going to take to get it out into the world.

05
Jun

Party Platform.

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Consoles

Forbes just put up a great article about the rise of the Wii and the rebirth of Nintendo.

As happy as I’ve been about the platform I’ve watched the Wii become a smash hit success over the last eight months with a sense of disbelief.

Over the last few generations I’ve always been a fan of the underdog, giving my love to the Saturn, the Dreamcast, and then the GameCube.  In every case the market turned their back on these plucky go-getters and instead went with the flashy systems with the reputation for “putting out”.

With this generation I thought I had learned my lesson, and I tried not to get to excited about the casual friendly upstart with the visionary control system. But the sense of anticipation was palpable, and something just seemed off about Sony’s bravado.

Even as the numbers roll in folks on the gaming forums are very wary on calling this one for Nintendo, but I think they’re just afraid that the future may no longer be driven by technology and sci-fi and fantasy themes.

The truth is that when something goes mainstream it can be very scary for the previous generation as they watch “their” hobby get taken over by the masses, and it may take a while to get over the denial phase, and into some good old fashioned bargaining and anger.  I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough.

04
Jun

Reductio Ad Absurdum in Ludology and Stuff and Junk

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Think Like a Designer

When I was in college the cutting edge thinking about artificial intelligence was what they called “scripting”. Although it seems kind of silly now, the idea was if you could map out everything a computer would ever have to do in any social situation, and give it a corresponding set of actions and reactions based on the structure of the event the machine could essentially be indistinguishable from a living being.

But as archaic as that may seem, I’m finding it disturbingly similar to a lot of the writing and discussion that’s currently going on around game design.

Much like the search for the smallest particle of reality ultimately leads you to a quantum reality where energy and matter are indistinguishable, I think we’re quickly coming to the end point of the usefulness of continued reductionism in game design. While it may be very useful for filling up text books and giving teachers in college courses something to hang their hats on, I’m not sure that it’s really going to help us create more talented interactive designers.

Certainly there are useful techniques we can learn from understanding the hows and whys of player interaction. And if you do have some talent then it’s likely that they’ll be able to use that information in a way that will simplify the process and possibly (but not definitely) increase the chance of the game connecting with an audience.

At the same time I think there’s a huge gap between the basic skills needed to design games and the point at which this kind of theory is useful. The gap is wider than the average player’s ability to jump across it, so they end up falling into the abyss. Reload, retry…

Ultimately the trick to being a great designer is thinking like a great designer. Is it possible to learn that kind of skill? Not for everyone. Which is a good thing, since a world full of game designers would be a scary place to be. But for the motivated student of design it means developing the kinds of instincts and thought processes that are going to give you the ability to quickly and effectively parse games and gameplay ideas.