The Future is Still Tomorrow, Actually

Posted on July 11, 2007 7:36 AM No Comments

Now that there’s actually a product to buy, and the hype has started to die down, it’s worth spending a moment unwinding what the real revolution is that’s occurred with the release of the Jesus Phone .

It only takes a moment with an iPhone in your hand to realize that something has changed: In a world of sealed digital experiences, and “cutting edge” interfaces that treat the customer like an intruder, Apple has managed to create something that is seamless rather than offensive, and useful rather than limiting. “This is your perfect experience” it tells you; simple, clean, and intuitive. As you run your hands over the almost seamless edges, and begin to tap your fingers on the screen, it becomes clear that we’ve entered an age where the blister packaging has become the product. And, like a toy collector who never pulls their action figures out of the box, Steve Jobs wants to charge you big bucks while only letting you look at the surface. The metaphorical action figure is never allowed out of the box, but somehow it still manages to be fun to play with.

It’s definitely a hands on experience. Once you start tapping on the glass it’s clear that this is really a tiny computer. The iPhone is a $600 micro-laptop with a beautiful screen, a phone attached, and a very nice interface. We finally have the world’s first true consumer touch screen device.

That, more than anything else, is going to be the legacy of this machine. The cell phone stuff is nice, but why pay $600 for a cheap, almost disposable devices, when there are so many other ways to get email. As for the “improved” management of your messages, it’s possible to effectively replicate their functionality using a standard IM client and a cheap pair of headphones.

Yes, it’s more than the sum of the parts, but deconstruct the iPhone, even a little bit, and it becomes obvious that it’s the tiny computer with the true touch-screen interface that’s the really cool part. And thinking about it that way, you have to wonder if perhaps the iPhone isn’t a bit too tiny. Bump it up a little bit, let’s say to the size of Moleskine notebook and you begin to appreciate that having a touch window with a magic display based keyboard would do a lot more to revolutionize the world of laptop computing than it does the phone.

Once you’ve broken the spell of perfection the next step would be to break the perfect seal around the edge of the product and add a few ports and you can slip in a high speed modem. With a real computer under your fingertips you can use any of the dozens of phone like applications anywhere and any way you want to.

The good news is that Apple hasn’t patented the touch screen, so we should start to see some more open and innovative products coming out over the next few years. It’s just as likely that most of them are going to suck, and that it will be Apple that ends up getting there first.

Murder Machine

Posted on July 02, 2007 10:19 PM No Comments

Ever since I first played the demo for Crackdown earlier this year I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on the game. It’s as fun as I remember it, mixing a “free” GTA style environment with over the top environmental gymnastics that make the player feel like a superhero.

There’s also no doubt the game is violent as hell, and as you’re driving around accidentally mowing down civilians the game is telling you “no no no”, but what it really means is “yes yes yes”. Even if you do go over the limit and kill enough civilians that the security forces get mad at you they don’t stay mad for long. After all who can stay mad at an armored killing machine who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?

Ultimately it’s hard not feel like a nihilist when you’re ignoring the copious amounts of killing that you’re responsible for while trying to “free the city from the criminal gangs”, which is this game’s particularly thin layer of metaphorical good that covers an almost infinite number of sins committed while trying to reach your goal.

But death itself is almost comical in the world of this game, and the instant the anima leaves the body, so too does the animator. Rag doll physics take over and the dead flops around ridiculously. In the end they looking like nothing so much as a puppet with its strings cut.

It definitely lightens up the proceedings, revealing that whole thing is just a joke, as does the semi flat-shaded art style. And you have to wonder if making the dead more realistic wouldn’t have made this game much harder to take. Either way it’s a good thing.

On thing it does show clearly is that with the current generation of software we have two competing dynamics: One is making characters more realistic and dynamic. They’re starting to respond in interesting and engaging ways. On the other hand is the ability to render these realistic characters by the dozen and mow them down with abandon. It’s a dichotomy that smart people are using well, and Dead Rising takes full advantage of it. After all, what’s the problem with killing zombies by the hundreds? In fact, they give you a meter and keep track of the body count.

Like the victims of far-away wars we can understand the death of the characters in these games in the abstract, but also recognize that the act has little or no bearing on our own lives. We can easily separate the entertainment from the consequences because their aren’t any.

One of the ironies of the recent dust-up around Manhunt 2 is that it’s the visceral nature of the Wii controller and not the sheen of the graphics, that have gotten it into trouble. People can argue all day long whether or not Nintendo’s success story is truly next gen, but it’s obvious that for some people the fact that you’re the one making the stabbing motion is a huge leap forward from execution by button press. One that may force us to begin to reconsider that wanton disregard for human life that has been a hallmark of games ever since Death Race touched off the first round of hand-wringing over thirty years ago.

Pac-ing it in

Posted on June 26, 2007 8:14 PM No Comments

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.

The Guilded Cage

Posted on June 19, 2007 11:54 PM No Comments

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.

From Scratching

Posted on June 17, 2007 8:00 AM No Comments

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.

Party Platform.

Posted on June 05, 2007 10:21 PM No Comments

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.

Reductio Ad Absurdum in Ludology and Stuff and Junk

Posted on June 04, 2007 11:18 PM No Comments

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.