11.07.2006
10.22.2006
Lately
Lately, I've been playing a few games:
Replaying Resident Evil 4, to check out the extra PS2 content I've never tried. It's a very good game, but it's starting to drag after leaving Regenerator country.
Replaying Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which is better than I'd remembered. But after reaching the North Korean missile installation, I remembered that the ending to the game is really lame, and probably not worth playing all the way through.
Playing God Hand, Clover's last released game. An amazing, pointless romp at a budget price. I don't think a game could take itself less seriously. It's a complete blast.
Just finished Bully, which I threw myself into for a week solid. It was an amazing experience. The town of Bullworth and everything you can do in it are superbly realized. The atmosphere is wonderful. I can't praise the game highly enough. I really feel that this is Rockstar's most engaging game yet. They've sent off their PS2 era with a bang. Everyone should play this game.
10.01.2006
Everyday
One of the central questions about playing video games, I think, is what motivates us to play. Figuring out why people play the games they do is at the core of both development-- if you know why people enjoy the games they do, you have a good idea of how to draw them into your project-- and to the player experience: Why do I like the games I do? Beyond simple introspection, if I know that, then I'll have a better idea of what other games I might enjoy.
I think the concept at the core of a game's enjoyability is player identification with the experience. I don't believe this is necessarily limited to the player's identification with the game's protagonist or side characters; that assumes too much. Many players identify most strongly with games that have no discrete "main character" or personified characters at all.
So I'm going to talk about identification, but not in generalizations. I'll talk about an aspect of games that I, and probably gamers like myself, identify with.
I think that part of my engagement with playing video games is an extension of 'playing' as a child-- imaginary scenarios made up with friends, running around backyards, pretending to fight 'bad guys;' generally imagining the mundane world as something entirely else. These childhood games placed myself as the main actor in whatever fictional setting, story, or conflict we thought up, but usually "as" some other character outside of myself, be it an established persona from a children's TV show, or an avatar of our own creation. They took place in our own homes and yards, but morphed these settings into some other place.
I believe that the connection between these imaginary experiences and what I expect out of a video game is subconsciously very strong. I am drawn to games that provide a human-scale conflict, one where the individual clashes with a similarly-sized group of antagonists. The focus on the individual-- "me" in the game-- is central. Broad conflicts-- battles, wars, the rise and fall of civilizations (RTS games, 4X titles, or Civilization) are of little interest to me. Similarly, being depersonalized as one small implement of a faction in games like Battlefield 2, Team Fortress, or Dystopia is of no particular draw. A personalized experience, one that revolves around the player and provides a gameworld that hinges on his actions, as did my imaginary worlds as a child, is always the dynamic that draws me in. I identify personally with the individual, the person, and the individual's conflicts with other individuals; I identify with being the focal point of a miniature world.
This link to childhood fantasy also spawns what I've begun thinking of as "the appeal of the everyday." Make-believe as a child turns your family's house into a different place, or sets new and strange experiences in that familiar setting. Your attic becomes a secret lab; monsters, ghosts, aliens, or simply other imaginary people might suddenly be found in your basement, or need to be driven from your backyard. I think some semblance of this experience persists at the fringe of adult life. Maybe your mind wanders as you walk through the city, or drive down the highway, and you briefly picture something fantastical occuring in this ordinary setting; a car chase, zoo animals running free. Free reign to wreak havoc in the supermarket with your friends. I think games that set extraordinary events in ordinary settings benefit by way of the appeal of the everyday, and the ability to subvert it-- the desire to transform familiar settings into something new and exciting, to let you do something you can't normally do, somewhere that you normally go. Games like Dead Rising, which lets the player run amok in a shopping mall, smashing windows and grabbing any product that's not nailed down, or Grand Theft Auto 3, where you can jump into any car you see and ramp it off the side of a building in an otherwise calm city street, appeal to this desire. The Hitman games cast the player as a powerful wildcard in otherwise civilian locations, and the most successful levels in Blood Money-- a suburban neighborhood, a crowded city street-- take place in the most familiar settings. From fighting colorfully-named gangs in the towns, schools and city parks of River City Ransom to doing the same in the grimy streets and apartment courtyards of The Warriors, it's always been the games that twist excitement into the otherwise mundane, "normal" world that grab me.
Am I rationalizing the way that video games appeal to my "inner child?" Maybe. Probably so. That games can help return some players to the childlike mindset of make-believe is, I think, incredibly compelling, and valuable to adults who might otherwise be consumed entirely by the banality of work, home life and running errands. I hate to think of games as simple escapism, but the psychological implications of this phenomenon are far from simple, and the results most likely beneficial to the player. It's a unique bond to childhood, through a medium that is complex and intriguing in so many other ways as well.
9.14.2006
My Fair Lady
The other night I watched My Fair Lady, the classic musical/romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn. I'm not a fan of musicals at all, but it's a classic and Rachel is fond of it from childhood.
I'd never realized why I disliked musicals so much. My Fair Lady helped me understand. It's not the acting or the story, the songs themselves or even the spontaneous song outbreak phenomenon that musicals are most often lambasted for. I ended up being frustrated by the heavyhanded delivery and stuttering pacing of the plot.
Musicals were developed for the stage, and film musicals were adapted from these stage productions. Early musicals played to the limitations of the stage, especially the lack of amplification. Subtelty was not an option, which dictated the plot points and their delivery. Everyone in the audience needed to understand what was going on, which meant every line had to be shouted, and the really important plot points and characterization needed to be repeated a dozen times in a catchy song, so people would remember what was going on. As the life of film went on, directors learned to exploit the elements unique to film; Brando's mumbling naturalism could be captured with well-tuned booms; the camera itself and the editing of the film could be used to convey two characters' feelings towards one another with the shift of an eyebrow and turn of the head, as opposed to a 5-minute song. My Fair Lady is fixed solidly in the 19th century mode of the stageplay, and all that entails.
What this translates to is a very long and hammy production, which plays to none of the strengths of the medium. This is where I started to think about video games.
For one thing, the bipolar nature of My Fair Lady reminded me very much of the schizm today between gameplay and story in video games; that they are two completely separate types of entertainment that are expressed in opposing ways (passive versus interactive, watching versus directing, etc.) yet attempt to coexist in the same production, though most often 'take turns' as opposed to really sharing the same space at the same time. Just the same with this classic musical; a coreographed song and dance number is something completely apart from a human drama expressed through dialogue and character interaction; one interrupts the other; the entire mode of the production changes gears briefly, then reverts. You don't need to sing a song to tell a story. You don't need to play a video game to tell one either. Music is to film a valid but wholly separate form of entertainment, as film is to video games.
The logical analogue here then is that as a film musical is to the modern video game, the music is to gameplay as the story in one is to the story in the other. But that's not the gut feeling I got from the experience of watching My Fair Lady. While watching the movie, whenever a song came up, I wanted the film to get back to what it was good at-- characterization, dialogue, human interaction, not this broad song and dance. The songs got more tedious as the film went along and I just wished I could skip to the next segment where the film got to be a film instead of a stage production. And in a game, you want to skip the cutscenes, not the gameplay.
In other words, I don't think the analogy here is about the type of enjoyment derived from each element of the production (I'd say the "pure" enjoyment derived from the mechanics of well-designed gameplay riffs off a lot of the same input that makes a song with an enjoyable melody and catchy lyrics pleasurable.) I think the analogy between film musicals and narrative video games lies in both forms trying to be something they're not. My Fair Lady is emulating the stage, in a medium totally unfit for it; when video games try to be movies, they suffer for the same reasons. Gamers want to play, not watch; games aren't as good at being movies as movies are. These are games' growing pains; they will find a way to be more expressive through the gameplay itself than any static cutscene could be. I'd never realized so clearly that film went through much the same stage in the age of the gilded musical.
9.07.2006
Cop Stars
After hearing some positive buzz, I downloaded the Saints Row demo from Xbox Live Marketplace. I played it for an hour or two last night. It's just what I expected-- a fairly ugly (graphically) next-gen (there's ragdolls!) clone of Grand Theft Auto 3. It copies every feature of the game, but tweaks some of the already unrealistic mechanics to make them even less convincing. For instance, where in GTA3 there was the Pay 'n' Spray, which erased your notoriety by repainting your car, Saints Row features a drivethrough "confessional," which instantly erases your notoriety without touching your car or providing any kind of rationale for why the cops no longer care that you killed a dozen of their fellow officers. Likewise, in GTA, when you are busted or sent to hospital, you lose all your weapons since, logically, they would be confiscated (though it's a big jump to believe you'd be out on the streets after your 20th consecutive arrest for mass homicide.) The mechanic is the same in Saints Row, but you get to keep your weapons. Sure it makes the game easier and more fun for players who don't like the annoyance of losing their AK when they die, but from a plausibility standpoint it just further breaks a gameworld that's already pretty far-fetched. The graphical style is completely style-less; everything looks like a bad CG render from 1998. As much of the story as I played is completely boilerplate and forgettable. "Grand Theft Auto: Worse" was the least witty but most appropriate phrase that went through my head while I was playing.
What it really made me think about was the disposability of notoriety in this type of game. You kill a few dozen people in broad daylight, you hide in an alley for 5 minutes, and it's like a global memory wipe. You get arrested, and you're back in Ammunation that afternoon buying a fresh sniper rifle. Nothing you do in the game, aside from pre-scripted missions, "matters" as far as the gameworld is concerned.
I would love to play a more low-key version of GTA. One where role-playing, as it were, impacts the experience, and matters to the gameworld. You are a criminal, maybe a hitman, but drawing attention to your crimes has a serious impact on your notoriety and the penalties you face when caught. Your goal would be to kill and steal, but to do so with cunning, so you're either not witnessed or cover up your deeds. Being arrested would be a serious penalty, and there would be separate notoriety for the police and criminal organizations; being "known" in one way could be a boon, while the other just meant you'd been sloppy.
I'd just like to play one of these games that hugged the earth a little more; blowing up a car in the middle of the financial district with a rocket launcher would make you infamous across the city, and you'd be hunted relentlessly by the police.. unless you had incredibly strong protection from the criminal underworld. I want to feel like I'm in this world, interacting with its populace, as opposed to an invincible little god of destruction who never sees any long-term repercussions to his actions. Being able to do whatever I want with no penalty acts to remove any kind of weight the gameplay itself could have. I want to have to be careful when I'm an unknown street thug, no mafia kingpins backing me up; I want to have to plan a hit and plant a bomb under my target's car, the satisfaction of getting away scot free, instead of simply lobbing grenades into a crowded street for kicks, then running for the cop star pickup to wipe my slate clean. I'm looking for Grand Theft Auto with gravity.
8.30.2006
Publication
Germany-- a great and beautiful country, or so I've heard. The glorious architecture of Berlin, the frost-tipped peaks of the majestic Alps*, the warm and friendly leiderhosen-clad country folk. And BENEATH.
That's right, at the end of September, you will be able to find all of these things in Germany.** BENEATH is scheduled to appear on the coverdisc of September's issue of PC ACTION magazine, probably Germany's leading PC gaming publication!
I'm psyched to have my map show up on newsstands and in subscribers' mailboxes across the great country of Germany. This will be the first official publication of one of my maps in a legit print enterprise, which is exciting in and of itself. But for BENEATH to glide into the hands of millions of genuinely wonderful German citizens, courtesy of that fine nation's leading PC gaming publication PC ACTION magazine? I just couldn't be happier.
Confidential to Germans: sorry in advance for the green blood or whatever. I swear when I made the map those guys weren't robots.
*possibly not in Germany
**possibly
8.27.2006
ModDB
Welcome, visitors from ModDB!
You know, it took me a while to think of putting BENEATH on ModDB. I'd never really thought of the level as a 'mod' per se. But, I guess that a single-player map, that has its own story, and stands apart from the original single player game, is a sort of mini-mod. Not a total conversion, or really any sort of conversion, but a modification nonetheless. If Minerva is a mod, then BENEATH is, too.
To the ModDBers, thanks for stopping by. This blog probably won't be of any huge interest, though there's a little of the process and behind-the-scenes info here and there. Download mirrors are below if you missed them, and I hope you enjoy BENEATH.
As far as the rest of the below post goes, let's hope I spoke too soon :-)
8.21.2006
Release
The final version of BENEATH has been uploaded to the following download mirrors:
FEARMaps
FileCloud
FileFront
FilePlanet
3DDownloads
I made the opening more user-friendly and tweaked a few things. Everything, I believe, is just how I want it.
This morning, I announced the release of this map on a few message boards I visit, including the official VUG modding board, and the SA Games forum. I'm surprised that there really hasn't been any response in the threads at all. Are people just not interested in single-player maps? Am I aiming at the wrong audience? I haven't been able to find a solid general mapping community site. There are sites based on specific engines, such as Unreal sites or Source sites, but no "mappers' haven" that I've come across to just generally talk about mapping and level design and share your work regardless of engine. The only place I've gotten any response-- which was positive, granted-- was on www.fearmaps.com. I appreciated the feedback from the forumgoers there, but I just wonder... how does a mapper get the word out about their work, and get involved with a community? Especially when they're working with an engine that doesn't have a huge amount of fan support behind it?
It's not that I made the map for the attention it would give me. My work with WorldEdit started out as a self-driven desire to make my own single-player scenario for one of my favorite new games. Then it turned into a desire to do well in that FilePlanet contest, once that was announced. But after the contest, turning Residential Evil into BENEATH has been nothing but a labor of love, as it were. I just loved the gameplay of FEAR, and couldn't think of another game I'd rather make a single-player adventure for... and there it was, an SDK with the capability of making single-player content, right there, for free! I've enjoyed working with WorldEdit immensely, and I'm personally satisfied with the results I've come up with... but now that it's finished, it would be nice for more people to see and enjoy the actual product.
I feel like this is the way every one of my personal projects has gone. All the comics I did in high school and college had distribution that you could count on one hand. The webcomic I put 9 months of work into managed to garner about 15 fans. The Journal, while again another project I was personally very satisfied with, managed to move about 10 copies per issue. It served its purpose-- I got to write about something I really cared for, got paid freelance work out of it, and got to contact a number of my game industry heroes in the process-- but still, personal drive can only get you so far. Wouldn't it be nice for someone else to appreciate the work? I don't know. I just can't seem to get the word out.
I think I'm bad at publicity.
8.18.2006
Candidate
Okay, so!
I have what I'd call a release candidate of BENEATH prepared and ready to install! If you are somehow reading this, but haven't already been contacted by me to test the map, download it...
HERE
It's an auto-installer that provides a shortcut to run FEAR with the BENEATH module enabled. Just start a new game after launching the BENEATH shortcut.
If you play this, give me feedback: steve.gaynor@gmail.com
I'll throw in a couple of screenshots while I'm at it, to remind you what this is all about:
"This level is not considered a prequel, sequel, or continuation of the original game's story, but a "what if?" What if F.E.A.R. were a tiny, inexperienced agency, whose existence was based entirely on the whim of an eccentric Army general who'd begun to take wartime ghost stories a little too seriously? What if F.E.A.R. primarily investigated "anomalous" incidents-- flukes, rumors-- that no other agency cared to waste their time on? What if the F.E.A.R. crew never expected to stumble across any significant threats while chasing shadows... and then suddenly, they did?
Coincidentally, recruit, it's your first night on the job. And you think you're in for a walk in the park."
I am fairly confident this will be the final version, but we'll see. Let me know what you think :-)
8.07.2006
System sellers
Since I started buying my own game consoles, I've always waited to pick up any given hardware until a game comes out, specific to that system, that I can't resist playing.
My parents bought me my NES and SNES when I was young, and I think I just wanted them for games in general. But I bought my own Playstation, and if I remember correctly, I, like so many people my age at the time, bought the PS1 "for" Final Fantasy 7. With the Dreamcast, I didn't buy one until ridiculously late in its lifespan, and for some reason it was for Phantasy Star Online. I think I really liked the character designs, and might have been attracted to it being online. But the game didn't end up being fun or engaging. On the upside, I did finally buy a nice backlog of Dreamcast games, but that was probably one system I wouldn't have missed if I'd skipped it. Again, I picked up the PS2 for a popular choice: Grand Theft Auto 3. This one was worth it for the game itself, and well as all the PS2 games that followed it; the Metal Gear Solids, the Katamaris, the Shadows of the Colossi and the rest.
Now I've been sold an Xbox 360, and the game that sold it was Dead Rising. Like other system sellers, it will only appear on its native system for the forseeable future, the gameplay it offers can't be found anywhere else, and it has a bunch of elements I'm hugely interested in. I love beat'em ups, I love games set in the 'real world,' I love games that give you free reign over the environment, I love games where you can pick up just about anything and toss it around, and I find games that are inherently short and encourage multiple playthroughs to "re-see" the narrative a really interesting approach to pacing and exploration. I've been playing the Dead Rising demo on my new 360 for a couple days now, and it looks amazing, and is huge fun to play. I'm looking forward to digging into the story and character elements of the game when it's released this week. As far as system sellers, I think this one's already made itself worthwhile.
Now that I think of it, the Wii won't need a system selling game for me. The hardware sells itself. And no game is going to sell me a PS3; that thing is a million dollars and the 360 seems like it has stolen most of their exclusives. But for now, Dead Rising has earned the 360 its place on my shelf.
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