Do you have what it takes …

… to complete DragonForce’s Through the Fire and Flames in Rock Band 3 on expert pro guitar mode?

Find out now.

Info Dumps and The Fresh Prince

There was one thing in particular that I loved about Metro 2033.  And that was the lack of info dumps: protracted scenes that the writer/director/android feels that the audience has to know before continuing the game.  Metro presents a world that could have spawned hours and hours of non-interactive cut sequences that provide answers to questions like…

A) How has the world ended?
B) What was Artyom’s life like growing up underground, surrounded by monsters?
C) How have the mutants and “dark ones” come into being?
D) Why can Artyom communicate with the “Dark Ones” through his mind?
E) Who are the rangers?
F) So on.
G) And so forth.

Few of these questions are answered directly.  Metro 2033 leaves you to either speculate on the answers to these questions through short pre-level narratives or through environmental dialogue, such as in the example below:

The story of Metro’s world emerges naturally.  In the previous scene, it just happened that you come across someone who was retelling their own story of how the world came crashing down around him.  You might miss a scene like that entirely, but that moment of discovery is something special in a game, where the player can feel that they’ve uncovered something important for themselves rather than having it thrust upon them.  Finding details like that becomes a game in and of itself.  But yet, sometimes, the answers are simply left to the audience’s imagination, which has the ability to be far more vivid than any number of polygons can hope to be.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that the entire story should be emergent in a game, but when info dumps reach the scale of Metal Gear Solid 4′s, or Final Fantasy XIII’s, playing the game feels more like having a having a mediocre bed time story read to you by an android (who also happened to write it.)   Nothing is left for the player to think over that’s immediately relevant to the plot at hand; only abstract subjects like fate and war.  It’s exhausting, disengaging, and leaves little more for the player to look for outside what is thrown in their way.

When so much content is fed directly to the audience then it stands to reason that perhaps the writer doesn’t trust the audience to collect that information on their own.  Undoubtedly because there is just too much information the consume and digest, or it’s too confusing to arrange the details in a meaningful way.  So it is pre-packaged and dumped on regular intervals.  It ought to be an indication that the scope of content being presented should be narrowed or revised.  Or it’s a warning sign that the underlying plot is floundering.

So I’d like to propose a rule of thumb when considering if an info dump is just going to be too much: if it takes longer to convey the required information than it does to play the intro for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, then you’re probably doing it wrong.  If the idea you want to present using an info dump takes that much time then either break it apart, boil it down, or leave it in the environment for the player to find on their own. Otherwise, you’re making a movie, and it needs to be written and edited like one (which generally isn’t the case.)  And that still won’t make the game intrinsically any better.  Consider the following comparisons; which one keeps your attention?

Example #1: Final Fantasy XIII

Example #2: Metal Gear Solid 4

The rule isn’t meant to suggest that players have a limited attention span, but info dumps conflict with the natural appeal of games.  The intro to Fresh Prince conveys to the audience all the critical details that they need to know to enjoy the show, which is exactly what info dumps should accomplish in games: telling you what you need to know to enjoy the game (not its story.)  You can substitute The Fresh Prince intro with anything else that’s brief and to the point, but I think it does a good job of putting things into perspective.  It cuts down overwrought scenes in games that believe that their epic posturing gives them license to overwhelm the audience with nonsense.  It doesn’t.  The Fresh Prince has a better story and all it’s about is a 90′s goof ball going to live with rich people.  Either narrow the focus of the content being presented, or cut it out.  Too much time and effort gets wasted in trying to make games into movies.

Bonus Track

Merry Christmas

Just think of how many cultures and sub-cultures that have been duct-taped or smashed together before the idea for this video came to be: seasonal themes imprinted upon a Christian holiday that spawned a story of a reverse-thief who breaks and enters into your home to GIVE you things, crossed with a fictional beast of burden from a Japanese video game that usually involve people coming from space to mess around with human souls.  Considering what it’s based on, I’m glad the concept comes out this pleasant, as opposed to a wide-awake nightmare.

Donkey Kong

Kotaku recently asked gamers: Is Donkey Kong a good guy, or a bad guy? Come on Kotaku, I thought you guys liked video games.  (I guess they have more serious things to talk about now.)  How can you possibly hope to reduce this complex and nuanced character to a simple question of good and bad?  The world is full of black and white cardboard cutout video game characters: heroes and villains; good guys and bad guys; Cloud and Sephiroth. Then there is Donkey Kong: a one-time villain, now cast as an anti-hero.  He had given up a life of kidnapping women and terrorizing construction sites to settle down as a single parent.  He no longer menaces the innocent, though his inner-demons have not yet been conquered.  While his bananas may have been unjustly stolen, Kong revels in the opportunity to pound face when he goes to retrieve them.  He leaves these banana stock piles in plain sight for the sole purpose of attracting wrong doers who he will then brutalize to satisfy his need for violence.  It is the only way for him to avoid having to expose his son to the darkness of his soul.  Donkey Kong desperately wants to live a clean and honest life.  He hides behind a tie that conveys professionalism, but he can never change who he really is.

Update: Oops. Looks like Destructoid already beat me to the punch.

I am never going to be done with zombie games

Killers. They’re all killers.

Halloween is long over now, but I can’t pull myself away from the zombie games.  Zombie Estate, Minecraft, Undead Nightmare, Resident Evil, Plants vs. Zombies, and now Left for Dead 2 which I’ve been playing with Raisins.  I’ve stopped even thinking about it.  In my mind they are just a cultural fixture in video games, neither a selling point nor a detriment.  The underlying game play varies substantially with the undead serving mostly as window dressing.  Terrible, terrible window dressing.  Left 4 Dead 2 has definitely been the most intense of them all though.  And by the time my nerves have been thoroughly rattled I can fall back on Kirby’s Epic Yarn, which is quite possibly the most unbearably cute (but incredibly chill) game I have ever played.  I can go from being accosted by a thousand zombies to cruising around as a fire truck made of yarn.  As much as a feel like a seven-year-old playing Epic Yarn, it is actually pretty fun, and a welcome break from the constant panic of L4D2 (which is also a lot of fun.)  I recommend both if you get the chance to play either of them.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have beads to collect before I go back to dismembering undead clowns.

COME BACK LATER

Busy playing Minecraft

Don’t stop watching.

One of these got into my house somehow. That was one of the more terrifying game experiences I’ve had in a while.  At least until Undead Nightmare comes out and I have to fight zombie bears.

Ambivalent Gaming

When thinking about interactivity, it is easy to think of verbs: things that are done. And when thinking about games, interactivity is the next concept to come to mind, as well as things you actively do in the game. Rarely does inactivity factor into the conception of interactivity. Halo, of course, isn’t remembered for the times where you’re not shooting guns.  And Super Mario Bros. isn’t remembered for that time you didn’t decide to smash a block. But are these moments being overlooked in favor of the yay button? Aren’t activity and inactivity two sides of the same coin? The oscillation between the two states is part of the idea of game pacing: when is enough action enough? When is it too boring? And when is it overwhelming? For relatively low-cost decisions (shoot, don’t shoot) determining when enough is enough is a straight forward task.

As more variables are introduced into game play though, the appropriate balance will be based more and more on personal preferences. The tendency of console games is to introduce novel twists on familiar game play, or to layer multiple game play concepts on top of one another. For instance, Mass Effect layers action with role-playing game mechanics.  It sells itself on the fact that the game play is complex in a way that requires you to imprint your preferences on it. But as game play becomes more complex, player preferences are not clear, even to the player. The result can be ambivalence. Should the player invest in one long term strategy, or another? How does he or she know when they are ready to complete a task? Most importantly: how does the designer know when the player knows these things? They can’t.

Ambivalence is something that a game needs to take into account, in addition to all of the things that can happen once a decision is reached. If the player is prodded into making a decision before they are ready, then they are less likely to invest in that decision, and the game becomes that much less meaningful to them. Discussion of interactivity is predominantly about the breadth of choice, and whether or not the player can create something that is uniquely their own. But if the player is forced to decide amongst 16 choices in the span of several minutes, those choices aren’t going to mean much, even if they are unique.

One example of ambivalence being considered well in a game is Chrono Trigger. Specifically the decision when to engage the game’s final boss, Lavos.  It can be confronted anytime after the mid-way point of the game. There’s no question about whether or not to fight Lavos in the first place. It is clearly established as the arch-enemy of the game. The question is, when does the player feel ready to engage an enemy with a seemingly infinite amount of power. There is no single prompt for the player to go and defeat it. The player fights Lavos when he or she feels genuinely ready. And for that, I feel that Chrono Trigger makes that fight more memorable to the player by leaving room for ambivalence.

For an example of where ambivalence is not taken into account, look at Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The sequences with the Dr. border on being comedic. With little warning, the player must answer intimate questions. While I believe it was designed such that the questions are directed to the player, the game presents itself as being from Harry Mason’s perspective. In effect, these deeply personal questions are actually about Harry, and your role is to interpret what you perceive to be Harry’s answers. Without knowing Harry all that well, these questions are meaningless. And without an option to defer on questions and then answer them later, there is no weight to any decisions that are made. The psychology warning at the beginning of the game is entirely unwarranted. I was more afraid of the fact that Chrono Trigger knew I stole an old man’s lunch than Shattered Memories trying to pry at subconscious fears.

It may also be fair to say that part of success of sandbox games lies in player determined pacing, and deferment of significant decisions in favor of other types of game play. Games like Minecraft or Red Dead Redemption are rewarding in how freely you can explore the worlds being presented. You’re not being rushed into making a game changing decision or some sort of moral choice. And even if deciding to hunt buffalo or harvest wheat are less significant questions, they are more meaningful to the player than being forced to make a binary choice between good and evil.

Further reading: Why So Many People Can’t Make Decisions

One Ticket to Bro Town, Please

I’ve never played Halo before with the sole exception of a couple rounds of Halo 2 local multiplayer. With my interest in first person shooters renewed by Modern Warfare 2, I wanted to give Halo: Reach a spin. I knew my friends would be playing it, so I queued it up on Gamefly and magically got it the day after release.

I’m making my way through the single player campaign right now, and I’m really not sure if I’ll follow it through to completion.  Reach doesn’t really offer the Halo outsider anything to chew (not that it owes me anything.)  As a result though, it’s been kind of boring.  Where Modern Warfare 2 shot for sheer spectacle in the present day, Reach part of a larger space opera I just don’t anything about.  I imagine this is what it would be like to play a Star Wars game, but never having seen any of the movies before.  Magicians dressed as clowns and homeless people dance around with light sticks and throw things with their minds.    I just don’t get why I’m driving around in a jeep shooting at midget mutants and dinosaurs wearing armor. But the music tells me something important is happening.  It’s lost on me.

I’m using the opportunity mostly to get ready for online multiplayer, which I’m sure is Reach’s main attraction.  Regardless of the single player campaign, I’m looking forward to blasting dinosaurs with friends.

Hat tip to Raisins for bro town tweet.

Play it

Required Viewing: The Room

A young Andrew Ryan

What is a man!? ... Wait. That's not right either.

I imagine Andrew Ryan having the same experience as this girl did when he was just a boy:

Portland lemonade stand runs into health inspectors, needs $120 license to operate

… So when Multnomah County shut down an enterprise last week for operating without a license, you might just sigh and say, there they go again.  Except this entrepreneur was a 7-year-old named Julie Murphy. Her business was a lemonade stand at the monthly art fair in Northeast Portland. The government regulation she violated? Failing to get a $120 temporary restaurant license.  Turns out that kids’ lemonade stands — those constants of summertime — are supposed to get a permit in Oregon, particularly at big events that happen to be patrolled regularly by county health inspectors.

To which he would respond:

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow from selling lemonade when it is really hot outside?  I’ll show them! Let’s see those parasites come and shut me down at the bottom of the ocean.

The result:

And he was sore about it ever since.