(*) blog post to follow soon

Our invitation to judge in the Independent Games Festival was withdrawn when we said we were submitting an entry ourselves. As it turns out, that was probably a smart move. Because when I had a look at each of the 301 entries in the festival, I couldn’t resist the urge to compare them with our own. And, frankly, FATALE beats them all, in every category. :) This is why I have only selected 4 games for each prize in the festival. The fifth game -and clear winner- of each category is our own FATALE. I’m sorry, I just can’t be objective about this. :)

I have based my selection on the information available on the IGF website, the game developers’ own websites, videos and screenshots. I have played demos and games when they were publicly available. But I must admit that some of my choices were based on very little data. So I reserve a margin of error. I could have missed a really great project. And I could have included a rather lousy one. Apologies ahead of time.

Apart from simply choosing the most interesting projects in each category, I have tried to limit the amount of overlap between the different categories. Which wasn’t always easy because interesting entries tend to be good in several categories simultaneously. such as our own wonderful FATALE, for instance

Despite of the high quality of some, I have rejected games created by DigiPen students because I don’t consider them serious contenders. The IGF has a separate competition for student work. I hope they use this category in the future.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Windosill	Fig. 8	Amnesia: The dark descent	TRAUMA
I make no secret about the fact that the thing I like most about the games industry is its girlfriend its potential. There are many videogames that are fine games as such, even on the independent scene. If you want to play a game, there’s an enormous amount on offer. But I know this computer of ours can do a lot more. I even believe that it can bring us a new medium, a medium as relevant and important to our times as cinema was to the previous century and printing to the centuries before. But the developers who strive for such greatness are few and far between. Even on the independent scene, where one would expect them in larger numbers than in the so-called mainstream industry. If I had to make an absolute judgment, I’d probably send each and every game in the IGF back to the drawing board (including our own amazing FATALE). Luckily I can suffice with a relative selection. So I have chosen games that give me hope for the future of the medium. Games that are ambitious, that try to explore interesting terrain and/or allow us to do so while playing. Windosill brings back fond memories of computer-based entertainment’s early days, when an interactive piece could just be called a “CD Rom” instead of getting labeled “GAME”. I think we could do much worse than reconnect with that time and pick up what was so rudely interrupted: playful interaction without the need to compete or achieve. Fig. 8 is equally whimsical but more challenging. But its challenge reminds of the real-world challenge of trying to ride a bicycle as a child, so it feels a lot more natural than in most games. It’s also a wonderful illustration of how a videogame can simply be a journey. Amnesia: The dark descent is probably the most ambitious game in the festival. Its scope and aesthetic rival -and exceed- many of the productions in the commercial industry, even. This is the kind of game I would like to see more of on the independent scene: uncompromising exploration of the narrative potential of high tech. Trauma re-invents the idea of an interactive movie in a spectacular and exciting way. It combines an intuitive and beautiful control system with an intimate engaging story (expressed by means of superb voice acting).
Excellence In Visual Art
LIMBO	A New Zero	Saturated Dreamers	DOPPELSCOPE
I was pleasantly surprised by the care that independent developers are starting to put in the aesthetic presentation of their games. The “faux amateur” style seems to no longer be a badge of honour. Good riddance, too. Because there’s a lot of work to be done. I was also glad to see that, next to some excellent examples of traditional 3D aesthetics, several developers are starting to explore real-time 3D aesthetics in an experimental way. In A New Zero all shapes are reduced to their bare minimum covered with a seductive colour palette, that can almost make you forget you’re playing a relatively banal war game. Doppelscope adds to its simplification of shapes a new kind of sensory experience that affects the entire environment and doesn’t shy away from a bit of glossy spectacle here and there. Many entries in this year’s festival feature silhouettes as their main graphical element. But aesthetically, Limbo, is the superior game of the entire lot. Saturated Dreamers surprised me. The characters that seem to carry the story are naive art at best, and actual typography has been carefully avoided, but the playing reveals an interesting generative canvas of unlikely combinations of shapes and colours. I like the aesthetic connection it suggests between computer-based geometry and walllpaper and textile patterns.
Excellence In Audio
Broken Brothers	Demonica	DOPPELSCOPE	microsia – molecular tunes
I was not very impressed with the sound in most entries this year. Sound still seems to be very much an afterthought for most independent developers. Which is a real shame, considering how powerful its effect can be on the player. There’s a lot of music games out there. Many use the music to structure simple gameplay (last year’s audio category winner Audio Surf seems to have influenced a lot of designers) and others allow you to create some kind of music-like soundscape through interaction. Microsia stands out by successfully combining amusing interaction with actual composition. Broken Brothers didn’t fall into the tired trap of adding soft piano music to a war game but opted for a menacing oppressive soundtrack through minimal and almost humoristic means on top of melancholic music that actually helps you concentrate on your strategies of destruction rather than making you feel oh so bad about killing the enemy. Demonica’s musical wall of sound is probably the most atmospheric entry in the festival. Doppelscope confronts electronic sounds with human interaction in analogy with how it expresses its theme of nature preservation through a very synthetic stylized look. Makes playing with computers feel hip again, without the need to resort to retro aesthetics.
Excellence in Design
Windosill	Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!	Constellation	Galcon Fusion
I don’t think videogames need to be games as such. But for this category, I selected videogames that I find well designed as games in the strict sense of the word. The fact that two of them are dressed up as space conquest games only illustrates how irrelevant story and meaning are when it comes to pure game design. Both Galcon and Constellation are wonderfully simple-yet-complex systems that are fascinating to interact with. Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! does have a story. Quite an extensive one, even. But it feels so much like a board game that I couldn’t resist putting it in this category. Windosill is probably the only game I selected for this category that is undisputedly at home on the computer. And in an irresistibly charming way at that. Games this playful are too rare.
Nuovo Award
Lose/Lose	hell is other people	Wait	A Slow Year
I’m considering this category as the place for art works. Not necessarily “art games” but simply artistic pieces that use game concepts or technology. Lose/Lose reminds me a lot of the some of the net.art of the 90s we used to be involved in, especially the work of Jodi. I may not be the world’s greatest fan of modern art, but I like seeing it become part of independent game development. If only because game distribution would offer media artists an alternative venue for showing their work. A venue that is more appropriate for the digital medium, in my opinion. The other games are more interesting as experiences, rather than simple conceptual statements. There’s something very melancholic about playing with people who have been playing before you but are not at the moment (hell is other people). Wait may be ugly but it has a very inspiring game mechanic (which is rare in indie games). And A Slow Year simply appeals to me because of its references to traditional painting and the link that it makes between nature and machines.
Technical Excellence
Heroes of Newerth	Amnesia: The dark descent	HurricaneX2	7 Nights
All videogames are small miracles. Contrary to popular belief, computer hardware is still incredibly slow, unwieldy and inaccessible. But of all software that one can make with a computer, real-time 3D games must be the most complicated and technically impressive. There’s a tendency on the independent developers scene to look down on 3D games. But I think that’s just a self defense reflex that should not impair our judgment. With the exception of Amnesia: The dark descent, none of the games I selected in this category are games that I would play myself. But I want to pay tribute to the effort that the developers are doing to, independently, create such technically ambitious projects. Hopefully their work encourages other indie developers and artists not to shy away in their comfortable flat platformer and shooter zones.

We still need to go through all 306 (!) entries but some immediately stood out, like A Slow Year, Lose/Lose, TRAUMA and Wait but there seems to be a lot more where that came from. The overall polish of the games this year seems much higher. And 2D platformers (still) reign supreme. Though I also noticed a much higher amount of 3D games than in previous years. And less (pseudo) self mocking games.

More later.

And Yet It Moves is a platform game that looks like this:

Looks like that Wii version is going to be BIG ;) The game is currently available for Mac and PC.
See more details of their contest here!
They seem to be making it a special challenge for the occasion, you can only win by not walking but rotating to navigate! o.0 sounds difficult!

Anyway, I got it day before yesterday and have now spent some time figuring it out. And downloading some apps. And games, of course!
Here’s what I’m starting out with:

Top of my list was ZenBound. A good friend of mine, I stayed with in San Francisco during the last GDC, was OBSESSED with this game. She kept showing it to me and even made me get autographs from the team that made it when she found out I was going to be at the conference with them! With such a glowing reccomendation I knew it had to be the first game on my iPod.

ZenBound is indeed a very beautiful thing to look at and interact with. I’m finding it quite inspiring so far.

I guess i like the idea of slow contemplative games (go figure ;)) because I also picked up Ian Bogost’s Guru Meditation. A good deal at €0.79 and while I have not spent enough time with it to see what “happens”… I am willing to bet, based on its theme, that *nothing* happens and that is just exactly the point.

I wouldn’t dream of not having a paint program on the iPod touch. I chose Colors! from Jens Andersson because I had become addicted to his homebrew version on Nintendo DS. I am only too happy to finally be able to give him some money for this. It is a step up for sure from the DS version with the online gallery integrated into the app and several new options for the brush behaviour. Most interesting of which is the use of tilt controls to change the width and opacity in lieu of pressure sensitivity on the screen (which unlike the DS the iPod lacks). Brushes and PaintBook also look interesting. But I like how in Colors! you can calibrate an offset of the brush from your finger so you’re not right on top of where you’re painting. Still, it is going to take some getting used to.

MYST. I am playing MYST. I played it last in 1994, or something. I am surprised to say that I still really really enjoy playing MYST. I think this touch adaptation is very well done. I had forgotten how much of an open world the game is. Somehow even the “slideshow” presentation of it still feels immersive. Is that because of the small screen? I like how perplexing it is to be walking about in this world alone… not knowing exactly what I should do, and then figuring it out; No tutorial necessary, no intro movie. Maybe this game was more of an influence on me as a game designer than I imagined.

PhiLia is an artwork for iphone/ipod touch by lia, who rules. See here for a better description than I can write.

Lastly, finally Eliss. I love its graphical representation and its sound. I am a bit annoyed at its traditional GAME OVER type gameplay but I enjoy it while it lasts. I would recommend at least trying it (there is a free demo version available.) Because its fun to interact with and very well done of indie developer Stef Thirion.

ADDENDUM: Maybe the next version of the iPod touch, coming in September according to some sources, will have the camera and digital compass feature from the iPhone. Sure, I’ll upgrade for that.

Top of the list is Bayonetta, of all things.

Yeah, I know, I’m as surprised as you are. Why?
Well… back in the day I had a thing for Devil May Cry 1. Just the first one. I thought the sequels didn’t really take advantage of what a cool character Dante was so with each new DMC game I was bitterly dissapointed. Platinum Games seems to have carried the vision of that game into Bayonetta. SO I am *hoping* it will be finally an action game I can enjoy again. They recently created blog and the character designer and modeler come forth with some of their process. I love it when character artists do that! :)

Mari Shimazaki – The Design of Bayonetta

Bayonetta’s long hair is the source of her power, and she normally wears it around her body as a means of adornment and protection. However, once she enters battle, she can use her hair to summon incredibly powerful demons from hell. When she summons these Infernal Demons, she is using all of her power, so she has no time to control the hair wrapped around her body and thus she ends up in more “comfortable” attire. The exciting way she looks in this state is one of the parts of Bayonetta that I love.

!

Kenichiro Yoshimura – Modeling Bayonetta

I think the game is looking beautiful… in that next-gen shiny kind of way.

Next stop, Blueberry Garden!

Winner of the grand prize during the IGF. An indie game by Erik Svedäng of the amazing hair and an all around sweet guy.
Cruising through Steam channels this morning I noticed Blueberry Garden will soon be for sale. I had a chance to play the game during the IGF and it’s quite a charming platform game… though not exactly a platformer as it seemed the goal was more whimsy than winning. I love the drawn style and how while playing I was always kept curious to figure out what was going on. I think anyone who reads this blog will really enjoy Blueberry Garden, so once it’s out you should all give it a try!

One game I forgot to mention in my first ‘looking forward’ post is actually a game I’ve been waiting on for years. And that’s Heavy Rain.

When is this game gonna be finished? And why won’t the developers, Quantic Dream, answer our repeated emails requesting an interview with them? hah? We’d love to talk to them about their design philosophy more in depth! I think this game could end up being a big budget example of new ways to tell stories through interaction. Not sure… but maybe… I like that they are at least trying to get out of old forms of gameplay and put the emphasis on the narrative content. Of course, until theres more released about the game, we don’t really know what its gonna be, do we…? :/ Still, given the version of it I make up in my mind, based on what has been released so far, this game is one to look forward to!

I am very excited about Noby Noby Boy multiplayer and getting Girl to Mars!!!

Lastly, there is our own The Path for the Mac… because we’ve been working hard to get the game released on this platform! It’s been received wonderfully on the PC but as a Mac user I think it is going to be a great fit for the game loving Mac audience! Trust me, you guys have never played anything like this! :)

What’s wrong with this picture?

Answer after the cut.

This is what’s wrong:

This is a frame from an advertising campaign for the new Assassin’s Creed game by Ubisoft, a game I’m personally looking forward to a lot because I really like the first one. But what’s wrong with the people who made this campaign?

So this is the state of maturity in the games industry? You insist on rating even your “viral” advertising 18+ (the highest age rating that I know of) and then you still feel the need to deface a classic work of art to make sure that your “mature” audience is not confronted with seeing a penis? I’m shocked!

Here’s the missing piece:

It’s beautiful!
Thank you.

(ToT) Independent Rant Slides from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.

Text of our rant after the cut.

M: When talking about independent games, we often wonder “independent of WHAT?”
A: independent of… game publishers?
M: independent of game developers?
A: independent of quality time spent with your family?
M: independent of quality time spent with your girlfriend?
A: or mistress!
M: independent of quality time with your dog?
A: independent of parents!
M: independent of your girlfriend’s financial situation?
A: independent of your girlfriend’s sexual situation?
M: independent of pleasure?
A: independent of play?
M: independent of addiction?
A: independent of art!
M: independent of conventional game design!
A: independent of rules?
M: goals?
A: challenges?
M: fire arms!
A: independent of Pac Man?
M: independent of Shigeru Miyamoto!
A: independent of Final Fantasy!
M: of journalists!
A: reviewers?
M: and critics?
A: independent of curators?
M: galleries and museums?
A: independent of internet solution providers!
M: independent of web 2.0!
A: independent of C++!
M: independent of clothing?
A: independent of sleep?
M: independent of food?
A: independent of razor blades?
M: independent of internet memes?
A: independent of political ideologies?
M: of morality?
A: of money?
M: independent of success?
A: independent of air?
M: independent of Edge magazine!
A: independent of Steam!
M: independent of XBox Live Arcade!
A: independent of language?
M: independent of feminists?
A: independent of cinema?
M: independent of Tolkien?
A: independent of Tron?
M: George Lucas?
A: Gene Roddenberry?
M: Shakespeare?
A: independent of the economic system!
M: independent of capitalism!
A: independent of drugs!
M: independent of the tigsource forums?
A: independent of deviant art?
M: independent of holes in trousers?
A: independent of street credibility!
M: friendship!
A: independent of love?
M: of pets!
A: of bugs!
M: independent of machines!
A: independent of cybernetics?
M: independent of ludology?
A: independent of Simon Carless?
M: independent of Africa!
A: independent of SKUs!
M: independent of revenue shares!
A: independent of intelligence!
M: independent of stupidity!
A: independent of mortality?
M: independent of Jesus?
A: independent of God?
M: independent of the president of the United States!
A: of America!
M: independent of the Hezbollah!
A: independent of the Stockholm Syndrome!
M: independent of psychoanalysts!
A: independent of the subconscious?
M: independent of the übermensch!
A: independent of operating system?
M: processor speeds?
A: the exact number of buttons on a mouse?
M: independent of ones own prejudices!
A: independent of ones own limitations!
M: independent of the body!
A: of the soul!
M: of gravity!!
A: independent of Google images?
M: independent of Google earth?
A: Google groups?
M: Google adwords
A: Google language tools?
M: independent of currency fluctuations…
A: independent of project management…
M: independent of debugging…
A: …
M: independent of object oriented programming!
A: independent of discussions about whether or not games are art!
M: independent of intellectuals!!
A: independent of: morons.
picture of the earth

We’re playing a bit with the concept in the design of The Path, and, depending on how we end up publishing the game, we might add more. Achievements are a very simple mechanic. They require hardly any design, are easy to implement and instantly provide the player with motivation and goals. These two, of course, being the Big Problem that needs to be solved in order to allow videogames to evolve from the toy-like things that they are today into the full-blown mature medium that we all know they can become.

Assassin’s Creed, at least the way I play it, seems to be largely structured around the concept of Achievements. It offers you a fully explorable living world which is a joy to simply walk around in. But, typically, as such, it runs the risk of becoming too ambient to keep the player motivated. Setting your own goals and having the discipline and patience to explore is not an easy thing to continue doing for the many hours that games like these take. But just before you get in trouble, you almost accidentally collect a flag. And the game tells you that it’s flag number 1 out of a hundred. Or you climb a large tower to enjoy the view and the game tells you there’s nine of these. Instant motivation. Simple.
There’s more to Assassin’s Creed than this. It includes the traditional missions and combat and narrative progress. But I find these far less interesting.

Achievements can turn everything into a game. At least everything that is interactive.
I’ve tried to imagine a way to add achievements to reading a novel or listening to music but I couldn’t get there. Which doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Suggestions are welcome in the comments!
The absolutely wonderful thing about Achievements to me is that they don’t interfere with the narrative experience much. They are extremely lightweight in terms of meaning. So now we can concentrate on making our interaction design express the story rather than forcing the rigid challenge-effort-reward game structure to do so, or -possibly worse- forcing the narrative to comply with the demands of such a structure. Achievements offer designers an opportunity to finally start exploring the non-linear nature of the medium without losing the players.

For instance: would it hurt The Graveyard to add Achievements to it? Hardly. Achievement: you have walked to the bench without limping! Achievement: you have sat on the bench without getting up before the song ends! Achievement: you have turned around three times before sitting down! Achievement: 10 birds have greeted you while sitting on the bench. Etcetera. You would still get the atmosphere. You would still feel the protagonist’s melancholy. You’d still feel the weak Belgian sun on your shriveled skin. You wouldn’t be distracted from the narrative content at all. And your protagonist doesn’t need to become a hero who defeats the monster or solves the mystery. Achievements can open the door for games about all sorts of content.

I have played American McGee’s Grimm Episode 2 (Little Red Ridinghood -research, you know). And finished it in one go! This may not be big news to you but it’s a remarkable mile stone event for me. It’s been years since I have played a game all the way through. In fact, in most games I tend to not make it past the first puzzle. Because of a combination of lack of skill and lack of patience or tolerance. Call me weird, but I play games for amusement, for relaxation, for making my brain play around with ideas. I don’t play games to become frustrated or caught in the intricate spreadsheet that some clever game designer came up with.

American McGee gets the prize for having made a game that I can actually play. It’s not the greatest game in the world, but it is filled with smart design ideas to help not-so-skilled and not-so-patient players -like me- move on with the fun. It was an exhilarating experience to just be able to play all the way to the end of a game without being interrupted by some O B S T A C L E. I’m too old for that. And frankly, I think videogames as a medium are too old for that.

Take Little Big Planet: a wonderfully amusing experience. Especially when you play with multiple people. Very forgiving and fun. Losing isn’t all that sad and doesn’t happen often. You just play in and with the game. Until you hit the h a r d c o r e levels. Suddenly the game designer forgets about this whole idea of the player finally being able to have some whimsical fun in a videogame and the entire thing turns into a typical try-fail-repeat hardcore fiero trip. Totally misplaced in such a droll environment. What a disappointment!

I read a critical article about Braid this morning that mentions the same problem in a completely different context.

[Initially] I didn’t feel like I was trying to figure out what Blow “meant” by the storyline. The written exposition ahead of each world, while overwrought and ponderous, acted as a tone-poem, setting a contemplative stage for the mechanics.

But I was forced to turn my attention from the game itself because of its difficulty.
[...]
When I hit the inevitable wall in Braid, I discovered that, despite being allowed to run roughshod through the game in order to experience and appreciate the narrative, such gameplay would keep me from reaching the story’s end. I was furious. Unlike most video games, Braid requires literal perfection. Every last jump must be made. Every single obstacle overcome.

What’s wrong with these people?

So far:
Flower (Playstation Network, thatgamecompany): We’ve played with an early version of this game some months back and it can give one a feeling of absolute euphoria. Floating along on a breeze, the controls felt just right even back then. It looks like some game-like elements have been added but I bet it won’t dull the primary effect putting you in a dream-like state and giving you a moment’s release from care.

Noby Noby Boy (Playstation Network, keita takahashi, Namco): something that looks this exquisitely insane has GOT to be good. I am also pleased that the designer doesn’t consider it to be a game. The aesthetic is fresh, the play looks open, I can’t wait.

Gyakuten Kenji/Miles Edgeworth Perfect Prosecutor (DS, Konami): Confession, I have played ALL the Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney games. I find the writing to be on par with any television series. The stories are funny and tragic and sometimes a bit strange. Great character design throughout. A spinoff featuring Miles Edgeworth is a fabulous idea.

Calling (Wii, Hudson/Konami?): I’ve only seen (apparently leaked) videos on the net but this spooky game looks awesome! I hope to no end that it gets released outside of Japan. The interaction reminds me of a design we’d come up with for an unfinished game called “The Apartment.”

F.E.A.R. 2 (PC, Monolith): not because i will actually play the game (I cannot play FPS games) but because i think Alma (all grown up now) is the sexiest, most compelling, female character in action game history. What I do with games I can’t, or don’t want to, play is I look at clips on YouTube so I can skip the shooting and get to the good parts (which are the parts in-between the shooting usually.) The first F.E.A.R had some priceless moments. I’m hoping this one will be just as striking.

what can i say, i’ve got strange taste in women.

Tension/The Void (PC, Ice-Pick Lodge): Speaking of mysterious women, this game by our friends at Ice-Pick Lodge is intruiging. It’s getting a release outside of Russia courtesy of Atari. Good on them. While I’m not sure I’ll love the gameplay (but it could happen) I think it may have some interesting narrative resonance. I definitely am looking forward to fully exploring this world. I admire the character and environment design to no end.

Pikmin (WiiWare, Nintendo): i played this on gamecube and it remains one of my favorites. I think the addition of Wii controls will totally add. I’m looking forward to throwing the little guys around. Not so much to having them eaten, set on fire, blown away and rolled over by the garden’s creatures. But hey…

#1 game I’m looking forward to is: The Path (PC, Tale of Tales), of course. Because we’ve been making it for 2 years and having it done is the only thing I can really think of right now. Gaming comes *after*. So many hopes…

So, What games are YOU looking forward to playing?

We’ve had our fair share of discussions around the term “game” on this blog. Often inspired by the fact that it was problematic to categorize our work as games. Up until now, our answer has always been that we are trying to expand the meaning of the word “game”. But perhaps something else is (also) going on.

Before videogames, the word game could be used for many things. And it still is used like that by people outside of the gamer elite. Basically anything whimsical, childish or silly was a candidate to be called a game. Game was even used as a term to denounce certain practices, as in “that politician is playing a dirty game” or “she was playing games with my feelings”.

Videogames, possibly because they are made with computers, have formalized games into something that is perhaps a lot stricter than what a game used to be. As games continue to become an economically important industry, this formalization only gets more extreme. I clearly remember as a turning point somebody from Activision saying, in 2004, that they “make games for gamers”. Up until then, there was still some doubt about what videogames could be. And ambitions about reaching new audiences. But since then, videogames overall seem to have become increasingly “gamey”.

The success of Nintendo has of course altered this course somewhat. But not to the point where the word “game” is being redefined -or given back its former meaning. Nowadays, we’re simply getting more and more comfortable with the idea of playing “non-games”.

Like watching non-movies and reading non-books. It seems rather silly.

We have entered The Graveyard this year. Hope we have as much luck as last year.

So whatever happened to our imperfect, psychologically damaged heroes, our creepy little doll rooms, our feeble switchblades, our crawling dread? And why have they been replaced by gun-toting professionals and space marine types – as if gaming needed any more space marines?

Leigh Alexander answers this question in a very rational yet disappointing manner.

Perhaps the Silent Hill series might have attained still more widespread appeal if it had, to be blunt, made just a little more sense

Because contemporary games cost more to make, the size of the audience needs to grow and thus the content needs to be adapted to the tastes of a larger audience. And of course you choose the hardcore gun-toting-space-marine-loving crowd as your larger target audience, because they present the lowest risk factor.

There is another solution however: find a way to make these games cheaper. And stop compromising your vision. And don’t hide your lack of vision behind economic arguments.

So we used to use a metaphor: a barrel which holds water, a wooden barrel has all these pieces, and you use a frame to put them together. Each piece is for a different aspect of the game — one is for the graphics, one is for the sound, one is for design — and if any one of those is short, the water that you can hold is only up to the shortest part. And the water is the satisfaction of the player.

If you have terrible graphics, and everything else is great, the player will probably just keep saying, “Oh, the graphics suck!” But, meanwhile, if you have really wonderful graphics — like real graphics — but the gameplay sucks, they will still think the game is mediocre, because the gameplay sets the cap.

So, as a small team, there is no way that we can create a cap, a taller piece than a commercial game, but our goal is to keep every piece at the same height; so it could be even higher than some of the commercial games.

Wise words from Jenova Chen in a nice interview with Brandon Sheffield conducted at the Game Developers Conference where we met Mr. Chen for the first time. A very enlightening way of illustrating what we were trying to say in point 3 of our Realtime Art Manifesto, and a nice thing to keep in mind when working on a small budget and staring at those immense blockbusters in utter disbelief.

Talking about trying to get his non-gamer friends to play Braid, he says:

The tragic thing is they want to play. The music, the visuals, the opening text – all hook them and pique their curiosities. They didn’t know games aspire to explore the human psyche. They didn’t know games can look like paintings. They didn’t know game music can feature a cello. Braid invites them in, and they willingly enter. Then, just as quickly, Braid boots them out and slams the door in their faces. They discover that the game is as inaccessible to them as an unknown foreign language.

From “Is this what we want?” on The Brainy Gamer.

It’s so nice to see some designers being really creative and inventive. And not just applying the standard cookie cutter approach to whatever content comes their way. Let’s contrast the glory above with the absolute “horror” below.

It’s common knowledge that the Silent Hill series has been in decline since version 3. So why continue down the same path of “improving the combat” and adding more “cool features” when you know that the fans don’t appreciate this much at all? Lack of inspiration? Lack of love? (not lack of budget, that’s for sure…)

Crosshairs in Silent Hill? What is this a first person shooter? And that stupid blinking-on-screen-quick-hit-that-button-VCR-controls-in-disguise-whoever-invented-that-and-thought-it-was-a-good-idea interaction that nobody likes? Chasing enemies?? (Whatever happened to “RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!”?) And no, I will not mention the character design. What character design?

Let’s just forget that ever happened.
Wash it all away with more Flower.

Really love those windmills. It grounds the game firmly in our contemporary world rather than offering a simple escape. More of that, please!

Part of the problem with game reviews, I think, is that game journalists often try to offer objective analysis of the games that they review. It’s easier to be objective about something if you just stick to the obvious facts, which is maybe why games get treated like products rather than works of art.

I don’t think journalists are entirely to blame for this situation, though. Developers and publishers often think in terms of features and numbers of levels and hours of gameplay as well. Mostly, I think, because it is what their marketing departments know how to deal with. And I have seen several reviews of our own games that exclusively discuss content. So perhaps, it’s also a matter of developers taking the content they create a bit more seriously. A simple trick would be to remove all “features” so that there is nothing to talk about but content.

But then there’s of course the gaming audience. I’ve seen many remarks on forums and in blog comments from people who did not find the extra feature in the full version of The Graveyard (the added possibility that the protagonist can die) worth the money (5 USD). Someone even made a list of features that would be required for him to spend that money. The fact that the element of death drastically changes the emotional experience did not seem to be valuable to most players.

Players too seem to think of games as products. So journalists are just giving them the information they apparently need. The question remains: why? Why are games being judged as products, while books, films and music are not?

Hush is a game set in Rwanda during the massacres between Hutus and Tutsis. You play a woman who is trying to silence her crying baby so that the invading soldiers don’t find them.
I have a lot of ethical issues with this game (and “news gaming” in general). And I completely disapprove of the confusion it generates between the emotions caused by the gameplay and those by the narrative. But that’s not the point here.

The soundscape of the game is incredibly effective. It’s frightening, it’s shocking. But because it is real, or pertains to a real event, I can’t seem to get the same enjoyment out of it as I might from a similar scene in an actual horror movie or game. In horror fiction, it’s fun to experience the threat of death and pain, to be overpowered by a massive and mysterious force, to be faced with a bleak and hopeless situation. But only, it would appear, within the context of fiction. Experiencing a life threatening situation in real life is not fun at all. Even imagining experiencing a horrific situation that happened for somebody else, is by no means amusing.

And yet we love horror!

Horror is not really about being frightened, is it? Experiencing real fear is not fun. What we experience in horror fiction is not real fear.
Maybe the emotion triggers the release of some chemicals in our brain that, when confronted with a real threat, help our body to respond appropriately. But when in a comfortable situation, these chemicals act like an amusing drug. Maybe all the things we do for entertainment manipulate the chemical reactions that used to be of vital importance to survival and turn them into a source of fun.

But it’s only fun if it’s fake.

We’ve been wanting to talk about the Russian studio Ice-Pick Lodge for a while now. Their 2005 game Pathologic is truly fascinating, even if it is “broken”, as John Walker put it.
Thanks to Rock Paper Shotgun we can now enjoy the game by proxy, through a grandiose triptych of a review, divided in Body, Mind and Soul.

A good read, especially with the new game, Tension, on the way.

Ice-Pick Lodge is one of those very few studios that make games from a deep artistic motivation. They don’t mess around with clever control schemes or gathering points. They have a story to tell and they use the interactive medium to tell it. Even if that means sacrificing the overrated “fun factor”. If games are ever going to become a mature artistic medium, this is where it’s going to happen.

How I wish Pathologic wouldn’t crash on my PC…

The wickedly named HYENA is created to usher onto the DS the genre of Interactive Fiction, but with a twist. Using the unique qualities of the hardware he has created a system for the playing of “Audio Games” which can be played only with sound (a reading of the text via voice synthesis) and one button for interaction. Though if you keep the screen up you can also read the text and view graphics.

In addition he’s put up documentation for the scripting language so that anyone can make their own Audio Games. A pretty wonderful idea! This already has me thinking of ways the system could be used to create some interesting, and simple, audio/visual games. And I hope many people do come up with games for this.

The first game released for HYENA is Lone Wolf – Flight From The Dark… I’m in!

Eurogamer’s review of Endless Ocean once again shows how inadequate games journalists are in reviewing games that are different. Within the context of a hardcore games publication, it probably makes sense to almost exclusively talk about the gameplay. And I think that anybody who judges Endless Ocean on its gameplay would arrive at the same low score (6). But is gameplay really the only thing that matters in a contemporary game? Have we come this far, developed all this technology, spent all these millions, just for some mechanic?

Perhaps Eurogamer’s audience consists exclusively of hardcore gamers. And Eurogamer may feel an obligation to view everything through the eyes of a hardcore gamer. Even if the majority of people who end up buying and playing the games they review do not fit in this category. But this is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you only talk about games from a hardcore perspective, other players will simply not be interested in what you’re saying. Or they would have to be as cynical as yours truly and scan for the word “boring” as an indication of a game that they might like.

Meanwhile the majority of gamers have no place to go. Mainstream magazines don’t have the space. And specialist magazines cater to the small hard core exclusively. With the ever-expanding reach of the games medium, the need for a non-hardcore games press becomes more and more urgent. The audience is ready. The publishers are ready. The developers are ready. But the press is lagging behind. This is holding back the industry because we all still care about what the press says. Even if we think that they only half-know what they are talking about. And even if we know that game reviews and game sales are two entirely different things. We still care. For one thing, press has an enormous effect on a publisher’s greenlighting process.

It’s amusing to hear Eurogamer express the exact same sentiment about Endless Ocean as I have felt when playing Bioshock or Portal or Zelda or Mario or World of Warcraft:

After sitting for minutes at a time, gently shaking the Wii remote to and fro over a digital rendition of a Red Gurnard or Bigeye Trevally, you do have to ask what you are doing with your life. As a hobby, brass-rubbing makes more sense.

Brass-rubbing. Or pretending to run around as a space marine in a science station on an alien planet? Or hitting endless series of excessively large insects on the head so that a number in the corner of your screen would increase? Or making a little dwarf jump from one platform to another so that he can jump on another and sometimes on another character’s head?

When a game makes you feel that you are wasting your time, is when you stop playing. But the point where this happens, is very different for different people.

It seems to me that hardcore gamers are well aware of the futility of the games that they play. But they want the game’s design to continuously distract them from this fact. It is the purest form of escapism: a game that absorbs you completely and doesn’t allow your brain any time to reflect on what you’re doing. Eurogamer literally complains about the fact that the designers of Endless Ocean are too gentle in this respect.

But what if you like being treated gently? What if you don’t hate your life and you don’t want to be knocked unconscious by your entertainment? What if you just want to relax in front of the television set, doing not much of anything, spending some time with your family, experiencing a story or looking at pretty moving pictures?

Eurogamer talks about a games’ pull, about it being compelling, about goals and gathering and collecting, incentives and rewards, and mini-games. But is this really why people play Endless Ocean? Why they like playing it? Reviews of games like this need to go a bit deeper. Or somewhere else. Just saying that the hardcore gamer will not like Endless Ocean -which is essentially what the Eurogamer review does- is not very informative or helpful.

And it’s not like they don’t realize this:

It’s an honest relief to play something that doesn’t shout in your ear, set any time limits, or feature a single explosion; a game whose raison d’être is just beauty and peace. Playing this game is almost like taking a holiday from gaming.

It’s that they don’t appreciate it. And apparently don’t care that other people do.

As it turns out, the games I selected can be divided in three categories. I call them pinball games, simulators and games with content. The first are the most likely to be noticed by the IGF jury, in my opinion, and the last make the least chance. As it happens, my personal favourites are in the last category. I hope I’m being too pessimistic because there’s some very remarkable titles there.

Pinball games

“Eduardo The Samurai Toaster” by Semnat Studios
I didn’t find any video footage of this game but I’m quite impressed with the still graphics. It’s a pretty combination of handdrawn elements that are collaged together to simulate an environment. I especially like that, despite it being a 2D platformer, they try to make the environment feel natural and not completely stylized as in most games in this genre.

“Fez” by Kokoromi
An instant indie classic: stylish graphics, old school pixel art and a clever gimmick to add some dimension to the 2D platform genre (their own slogan is “Let’s get awesome!” so don’t blame me). It’s hard to resist the seduction of the game’s blue sky and puffy clouds. An it’s nice to see a genuinely cute game for a change (as opposed to all the commercial anime-inspired trash these days).


“The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 1″ by Borne Games
Another typical well-made indie game: standard platform game with original graphics and physics effects. A lot of fun indeed.

“World of Goo” by 2D Boy
One of several “blob” game entries (Gish 2 and Gumboy Tournament two others that I removed from my list because they are sequels to games that are already popular). Again: looks like a whole lot of fun to me…

“ThreadSpace: Hyperbol” by iocaine studios
This game is so glossy and professional that it doesn’t seem indie at first sight. But when you start playing and realize that every key of the keyboard is required to operate this apparatus, you know that this is hardcore. My 11 year old son would love this. It’s glow in the dark little space ships skating over a play field that quite literally resembles a pinball machine surface.
(The game was already a finalist in 2005, apparently. Don’t know how that works.)

“Undertow” by Chair Entertainment Group
Another very slick looking product. And also a LAN-based multiplayer shooter game. And also predominantly blue. This one because it plays under the water. It looks like it would feel like a 2D shooter game (popular with the indie audience) while being rendered in 3D (perhaps attractive to the game maninstream). And it’s got girls in metal bikinis!

Simulators

“Get a Life Show” by Artisticsoft
It would be hard not to at least notice this game. If only out of wonder why anyone bothered to make such an elaborate production out of a simulation of “ordinary life”. Chris Crawford famously paraphrased Hitchcock when decribing The Sims as “life without the drama”. Missing the point to some extent that Will Wright’s product is not about people’s lives but about playing with dolls. Enter the Get a Life Show, in which you can finally be a Sim. Now you can get an education, find a job, eat food, earn money, do all the mundane things of life in a game!
The premise of a reality tv show is clever. But I am still baffled by the question as to why people would want to play a life that is even more tedious than real life? Because it’s more controllable, perhaps? Not sure.

“Venture Arctic” by Pocketwatch Games
Venture Arctic’s subject matter is more ambitious as it deals with an entire ecosystem. Luckily it does this in an accessible and friendly way without being excessively realistic or punitive. It even has some room for spiritual concepts. It’s still very much a carrot-and-stick kind of game of earning points to unlock items. But it’s a pleasant place to be in.

“Plant Tycoon” by Last Day of Work
Now I know I’m not the only person with strange game ideas. I want to make an MMORPG where you play a plant. So I’m happy to see that someone had the courage to make a plant breeding simulation game. This is great: all the fun of gardening without getting dirty fingers or smelling stinky things. I know it’s silly. And in an ideal world, I probably would ignore this title completely. But in the current context, Plant Tycoon is a breath of fresh air!

“Virtual Villagers – The Lost Children” by Last Day of Work
Now we’re getting to the meat of things: a game that my 10-year old daughter likes! Made by the same couple that made Plant Tycoon (for obvious reasons, I have a soft spot for couples creating games together). Virtual Villagers is a simulation of a small primitive village. Granted, this has been done much better in Black & White, but isolating just this aspect as a game onto its own has its merits. It’s as much a challenge of balancing resources as the next game, but the peaceful atmosphere and gentle humour are all the reward that somebody like me really needs.

Games with content

“Fatal Hearts” by Hanako Games
Fatal Hearts is like an illustrated book. You click through text boxes to learn about the story. Once in a while you make a choice or solve a puzzle. Most puzzles are fairly easy. In terms of interaction design, Fatal Hearts is trivial. But sometimes that feels just right. In terms of graphics, it’s mixed at best: the characters are well done though standard anime fare, the backgrounds feel a bit unfinished. There are no animations. It’s all about the story. And I can’t help but respect a designer who is brave enough to talk about girls wondering if their lack of make up might be the reason why they don’t have a boyfriend. Chapeau!

“Masq” by AlterAction
Masq is another game on the more light-hearted side of the narrative spectrum. In fact, this is as close to a soap opera as any game I’ve seen. The American comic style suits the content perfectly, though the graphic design feels a bit clunky. This is most certainly a game with content, even if that content is not very intellectually or emotionally challenging. It’s a soap opera. The concept of a short but infinitely replayable game is very interesting, however.

“Global Conflicts: Palestine” by Serious Games Interactive
Serious doesn’t get a lot more serious than the Israeli/Palestine conflict. Not in any medium. This is a “serious game” about a serious problem. The confrontation of the game interface with actual photographs when composing your newspaper article’s layout is simply chilling. Global Conflicts is a courageous attempt to deal with real subject matter in a game. I’m still left wondering if this doesn’t trivialize the real-world issue too much? Are games ready to be a medium for such seriousness?

“Penumbra: Overture” by Frictional Games
Penumbra may be an exception in this category. I think it has a good chance of being selected as a finalist. It features top-notch technology and realistic physics. What more do you want?
Well, there is the story. And even though there is not an ounce of emotion in the telling itself (though that may be for effect), there is most certainly story here, and it’s very compelling. For a 3D physics based game, the interaction feels very nice. I like that it is presented as a first episode of a trilogy. And I love the perversion/appropriation of the FPS interface to make an adventure game.

“The Path” by Tale of Tales
This is our own entry. For us, The Path constitutes a very important step in the development of a form of play that is driven by its content. There’s no puzzles in The Path, no challenges, nothing. No game-like things. We ripped them all out. We’re extremely happy with the result. But the demo may not be strong enough to convince the jury.

“The Night Journey” by USC Game Innovation Lab
The Night Journey is the crown on this year’s IGF, perhaps even on its entire history so far. I’m almost proud of IGF for having become a competition in which a game like The Night Journey would be entered. Made in collaboration with Bill Viola, certainly one of the most interesting video artists and perhaps even one of the most important artists of our time tout court. As to be expected from such a source, The Night Journey leaves all other games far behind. It doesn’t even pretend to be a game anymore. It just goes there. Creating an experience that will probably turn most gamers into pillars of salt.
A recently discovered telltale sign of great works of interaction is that the gameplay video footage is boring to look at. This should be taken as a sign that says that you need to play the piece to truly know what it is about. There’s no way that The Night Journey is even going to get through the first round of selections. But the fact that it was entered will remain a historical occasion in my book. And perhaps a first step in the medium’s “journey towards enlightenment”.

Protein DScratch
More ways to play with music (yes!) for all the DS Homebrew fans, found via Create Digital Music

Here’s ours. We’re in good company, right under Bill Viola’s game. :)

the most convincing and elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived

the most staggeringly beautiful environments you’ve ever lain eyes on in a videogame

it’s got to the stage where you don’t even care about the tech so much as the creativity eked out of it all

I love this one:

But here’s BioShock in August 2007, looking for all the world like a game that’s landed fully formed from a couple of years in the future. It’s a game that’s going to make a lot of rival developers either very excited or very depressed indeed over the coming months as they come to terms with how far ahead this game is – not just in technical terms, but in practically every other angle as well.

And the conclusions:

this is the kind of game that people want

Seriously – if you don’t find something to love about BioShock, we’d recommend a trip to the nearest doctor to check if your heart’s still beating.

Luckily offset by the more sober comment by DjFlex52:

All I have to say is that if you don’t enjoy Bioshock ALOT then you’re not a true gamer.

Never mistake “people” with “gamers”, Eurogamer.
Thank you for clearing that up, DjFlex52.

possibly the most thrilling combat in any FPS you’ve ever experienced

Yawn…

And there is a thriving community of developers out there making games and other fun things. Drunken Coders and Dev-Scene are but two of the indispensable gateways where one can keep up to date with various DS projects in the works and more importantly find all the info and tools you need to make programs for the DS.

I do love World of Sand (which was first a popular java based browser game) and I’m pleased to see that Cave Story is getting a DS port too. (The project is at an interesting beta moment right now, you can run through the levels without getting hurt. It’s high quality pixel art, nice to get a chance to enjoy it.) There are some very good original game projects out there too. But I am more interested in the “other fun things to do with a DS” category. The DS is all about coming up with genre defying applications, no surprise then that people have taken advantage of the touch screen to make it a multipurpose device!

So, here is a short list of hand made, home grown, DS apps that I’ve found worthwhile thus far.

DSOrganize gives your DS PDA functions like an address book, to do lists, notepad, audio recording, mp3 playing, a very low tech web browser, IRC chat, and more. It’s the kind of thing you wish Nintendo had just built in. The functionality is all there so my only gripe is that the GUI could use a bit of polish. Not so much the look of it, because it is skinnable so one can easily change the look of it, it’s more in the choices made in which buttons to push and when to use the stylus. Menus hiding behind “more” buttons make the ergonomics of the applications suffer. Still, I find it to be the most useful application built for the NDS so far.

Colors! DS is by far my favorite project in progress. I actually can’t praise it enough. It is a very simple, elegantly designed, paint program made by Jens Andersson. He is a true believer in the principle of less is more, usually I wouldn’t be so into that, but the other paint apps I’ve tried for the DS usually go a bit too far into trying to emulate Photoshop. Colors! lets you just get on with it and paint. Pressure sensitivity controls opacity, the shoulder buttons bring up the color palette and brush size, start button brings up options and calibration. Other than the rather special animated playback of your paint strokes that’s about all there is to it. And since you’re painting on a very small screen, this is a very good thing. You’re not going to paint the Mona Lisa on the DS but it’s very good for hanging out in the park and drawing flowers, or making a quick portrait of someone on the train, or a thumbnail of an idea you want to expand upon later when you get to your computer. At this point it will be nice to have the wifi functionality which he’s promised for a future release.

ConstellationsDS available in an Alpha version right now. It’s a star chart! :) I find that to be a really great thing to make for the DS. I hope development continues.

ComicBookDS serves the purpose of letting you read a sequence of image based files, most commonly one would use it to read comic books i guess, but any image sequence will work. Using the provided conversion utility you take a zip, rar or cbr/cbz archive of images and convert and compress them to be used with ComicBookDS. Actually, 4colorrebellion has done a great write up of this software, it’s where I originally read of it. Ergonomics of reading lots of text on the DS screen aside, it’s got a well functioning if not especially pretty GUI plus a plethora of options which I find more than adequate for reading and showing things on screen. It’s also a very polished and active project.

Last but not least there’s the fascinating DSMidiWifi and NDSVisuals projects. Neither of which I’ve been able to try yet but both of which show ingenious ways to use the DS as a controller for other host applications. NDSVisuals is an initiative to get the DS working in tandem with realtime 3d programming environment vvvv. DSMidiWifi works with a server application that runs on your computer and a client application on your DS card.

There have been several interfaces made, since it’s midi mostly these are music based. But I found the other day that someone has an initiative (ah, here it is, Chris McCormick’s KnobsNSlidersDS.) to make it work with Max/Msp and Pd. This opens things up to just too many creative uses to name. And just imagine, controlling the lights in your house through your DS! yep, you could do that. (There is also a Wii Remote external for Max/Msp but that’s beyond the scope of this article, though I’m very eager to try it out.)

So, I find this whole homebrew world is worth getting into. I think we will see a ton of great software coming from this scene. Both games and not games. As new peripherals are made for the DS developers are taking advantage. For example, the DSMotion card has enabled yet another form of DS interaction in games like SensitiveDS. And you can bet with the upcoming DS Camera peripheral devs will be inspired to do what larger developers can’t or won’t do. Let’s just wait, and see.

Sure, it looks rather nasty (the graphics and animations could use a woman’s hand! ;) ) and the music is cheesy. But their hearts and minds are in the right place!

Capucine is based on four fundamental principles:

• Give life rather than take it.
• A unique gameplay element: the beam of light.
• Build your own path.
• The player creates his own enemies.

Sounds like a game you know? ;)

I like the simple game mechanic of an all powerful beam of light coming from the protagonist’s hand. The creators realize that it is more fun to do things in a game than to not do them, which is what most game designers seem to think these days with their “challenging obstacles” leading to having to do the same stupid thing over and over again. Don’t get me started…

It strikes me that what this industry needs is a combination of fresh minds and experience. But the people with experience are stuck in the 8-bit era and the fresh ideas come from newcomers. How many more decades to go until we have a 80-year old game designer who started gaming on Playstation 2?…