Main Entry: welt·schmerz
Pronunciation: \ˈvelt-ˌshmerts\
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: German, from Welt world + Schmerz pain
Date: 1864

1 : mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
2 : a mood of sentimental sadness

Weltschmerz (from the German, meaning world-pain or world-weariness) is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind.

The modern meaning of Weltschmerz in the German language is the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances. Weltschmerz in this meaning can cause depression, resignation and escapism,

the prevailing mood of melancholy and pessimism associated with the poets of the Romantic era that arose from their refusal or inability to adjust to those realities of the world that they saw as destructive of their right to subjectivity and personal freedom—a phenomenon thought to typify Romanticism

Weltschmerz was characterized by a nihilistic loathing for the world and a view that was skeptically blasé.

Main Entry: bla·sé
Pronunciation: \blä-ˈzā\
Variant(s): also bla·se
Function: adjective
Etymology: French
Date: 1819

1 : apathetic to pleasure or excitement as a result of excessive indulgence or enjoyment : world-weary
2 : sophisticated, worldly-wise
3 : unconcerned
synonyms see sophisticated

Maybe we can think of rock and roll as a kind of “hyper” version of traditional folk music that was made possible through technology (electronically amplified instruments and vinyl records). Much like videogames could be seen as a “hyper” version of traditional games enabled by the technology of computers (both as creative tool and distribution platform). Like videogames, rock and roll added a certain vitality and emotional depth to an ancient tradition that totally absorbed a new generation. *

This analogy gets really interesting for me when we start thinking of more extreme or experimental forms of rock music. In the beginning, rock and roll, like videogames, was relatively straightforward and all about fun. But then some people started experimenting and things like The Doors and Velvet Underground happened, followed soon by Sex Pistols, Crass and Dead Kennedys. **

One could argue that the music of Sonic Youth, Psychic TV or Einstürzende Neubauten is as much removed from the “fun” of rock and roll as the games by Jason Rohrer, Daniel Benmergui and yours truly are from the “fun” of videogames. Interestingly, it seems that it is exactly in the deviation that this type of rock (or videogames) starts claiming artistic value. Not only by virtue of not being fun, but also by introducing “alien” elements to the form like noise, unusual structures or narrative content previously deemed unsuitable.

The hairline may be only one of many things that Jason Rohrer shares more with Johny Rotten than with Jackson Pollock.

So rather than thinking of people who experiment with videogames as new Jackon Pollocks or Kiki Smiths, maybe we should think of them as new Nick Caves or Siouxsie Siouxs. They are taking a new technological incarnation of an old analog form and are introducing elements to it that seem to contradict the form’s original merits. And by doing so, they get closer to what is commonly perceived of as artistic.

Next to the more rock-oriented deviations, we may soon be seeing the videogames equivalents of Philip Glass and Michael Nyman and perhaps even Stockhausen or Górecki, as some developers may reject not only the “hyper” version of the form (rock and roll/videogame) but also its non-electronic predecessor (folk music/game).

All this time, of course, rock and roll, as videogames, continues to exist. Once in a while it is influenced by the more artistic experiments. But often it is not. And the two co-exist, appealing often to different audiences, but equally often not without significant overlaps. Sometimes we like playing Mario. Sometimes we immerse ourselves in The Void. Much like sometimes we dance to Abba while other times we need a dose of Cocteau Twins.

* Oddly, there’s a similarity between the two on a social level too. Both traditional games and folk music are often group activities that are mostly about interacting with other humans and having a fun time together. Rock and roll and videogames add a much more explicit notion of authorship to the form and introduce a more severe separation between author and audience, up to the point where enjoying the music or the game could become a solitary activity, thanks to reproduction and distribution technologies.

** Punk is an interesting case because it started as anti-rock and roll but was quickly reintroduced into the mainstream via bands like The Ramones and The Clash who made it fun again.

Videogames are stuck. Despite of the ongoing technical evolution and the continuous calls for a new medium, videogames have stopped evolving. They have found their comfort zone. Videogames are happy. Happy being exactly what they are. Fun activities that nurture our inner child.

While our inner grown-up is starving!

We need a new medium that can help us cope with the complexity of our post-historic universe. The interactive, non-linear and generative capacity of computer technology offers such a medium. There is no need however to limit what we create with this technology to the format of games. The possibilities are endless.

There’s a lot of work to do.

Videogames have taken computer technology hostage. It is time to liberate the medium and start feeding our starving hearts and minds. We need to stop making games and look further, go farther, step into a new world. Create interactive entertainment for all instead of squeezing people into oppressive sets of rules and goals. We have the technology. We have the desire. So let’s get to work!

Enjoy!

Frictional Games is one of the most ambitious and at the same time under-appreciated independent developers. They are one of very few forward looking companies in the independent scene and don’t nearly get enough credit for it (this year’s IGF proved no exception with its jury ignorantly rejecting Frictional’s new project “Amnesia“).

Anyway, Frictional’s Thomas Grip has written a very clear analysis of how the “focus on narrative and gameplay is holding back interactive media’s potential”. The little essay echoes our own thoughts on the subject but Mr Grip suggests a certain terminology that is very helpful (if not entirely intuitive), opposing meaning to narrative and interaction to gameplay. With us, he is “quite convinced (…) that there is a vast new world to explore if the interaction is in focus, instead of gameplay and narrative”.

While gameplay at the core of game making, it comes with a lot of baggage and makes certain meanings harder to realize in the medium. The most striking issue is the entire failure mechanism that is used in just about any game. You try a certain task, you fail and then have to repeat it. As described in other posts, this can be especially damaging in horror games, where repeating scenes seriously lessens the experience. This mechanism also imposes limits on the player’s rate of progress and effectively tells the player: “Either you complete this or you will not proceed!”. Other baggage include the notion that gameplay must be fun and the need to constantly pose challenges. What I mean with the last point is that players assume that a game will always keep them occupied with some kind of obstacle to overcome. This leads to very little interactive content that is added for its intrinsic sake alone. Instead a game’s interactive content almost always have some connection to the goals of the gameplay.

Read the entire post here.

The start of a new decade feels like an appropriate time to get ambitious. Out with the old, in with the new! Not that there’s going to be any extreme changes around here. My resolutions mostly concern a change in attitude, in philosophy. But, with any luck, they will take us further. And in the right direction.

While these resolutions have been bubbling up for a while, two things were direct triggers: Auriea’s realisation that her favourite games of the decade are all over 5 years old and our recent visit to the Belgian incarnation of the historical Game On exhibition where it became very clear how much more fun the old arcade games are than the new pseudo-narrative shiny next gen titles upon which I had based a lot of my hopes.

Independence!

We don’t want to make obscure art. This is a big part of the reason why we choose to work with digital media. We don’t even want to make art per se. We just want to share beautiful moments and elegant thoughts with people who are open to them. And perhaps, in our most audacious daydreams, we’d hope to make a small contribution to a more harmonious world.

Accessibility is one of the reasons why we don’t shy away from commerce. Commerce is an efficient way to distribute things in a capitalist system. And thanks to the abundance of the digital, we can sell our work very cheaply. But commerce also has a way of confusing an artist, of holding you back. Commerce forces you to think about seduction -even when it’s not appropriate- and to favour projects with commercial potential over others that might be more relevant artistically. We like our work to be accessible. But we want that to be an artistic choice and not an economic requirement.

We’re not very good at commerce anyway. We don’t have clever business minds. And our work is just a bit too far away from the ordinary to appeal to people who do. But above all, thinking about commerce -however exciting it may sometimes be- always ends in bogging us down, to slowing us down, to depressing us.

I want us to become less dependent. Less dependent on money, less dependent on success, less dependent on quantity. And focus exclusively on quality. This includes improving the accessibility of our work! While commercial pressure may motivate one to lower the threshold of their productions, it only does so towards a specific target audience, effectively locking everyone else out. It would be possible to optimize our work to be very accessible for hardcore gamers. But at the expensive of other people we might also want to communicate with. We want our work to be more widely accessible. We don’t want to depend on any specific niche.

None of this leads to any radical decisions. This is just a resolution that can guide us when making future decisions. As of now, I want to focus on self-sufficiency. And favour non-profit or break-even operations over commercial ones. Or even figure out ways to make losing money bearable. It’s ok if that means working on smaller projects. As long as they are “big on the inside”.

Games over

This year, I’m going to care less about games. And as a result, I will probably enjoy them more.

I give up.
I give up on my hopes for videogames to become a valid cultural medium.
I’ve been fighting very hard. I’ve been putting my money where my mouth is. For several years already. Almost a decade.

But the games industry is merrily traveling in the opposite direction. Videogames are not changing anymore. They seem to have lost that capacity. Sure, the technology still evolves, so everything gets more shiny. But this is not leading to any sort of evolution, let alone the required revolution. The desire is simply not there.

Because videogames are happy just as they are. The videogame culture is extremely pleased with itself. A few years ago, people were still complaining about “sequelitis”. No everybody merrily plays Hip Shootgame #13 and Cool Jumpgame #26, with no objections. On the contrary! Everybody gets very solemn and deep when yet another war simulator hits the shelves. Only to forget it within the first week of release.

Gamers, publishers, journalists are all very happy! Who am I to spoil their fun? If they feel comfortable in a juvenile ghetto that is irrelevant to culture, good for them. I’m out of here.

Maybe this is another incarnation of my desire for independence: I want to be independent from the games industry. And from the games format.

Games are fun. Let them be fun. And let’s do something else, when we want to be serious. Let’s focus on interactive entertainment that is not games (let’s call them “notgames” for now :) ). With a technology that is so versatile and powerful, why should we limit our productions and enjoyment to the single format of games, a format that has been around for centuries and doesn’t even need computers to exist?

I realize that it has always been our mission at Tale of Tales to explore the potential of the interactive medium. But so far, this has happened in some form of conflict with videogames, based on our misguided belief that videogames had potential to grow, to grow into a medium (which, believe it our not, still seemed possible only 5 years ago). Simply letting go of the connection, will make our job a lot easier as it will help us explore with far less constraints. Leaving behind the idea that we’re making a game, opens up a world of creative possibilities!

Notgames

But more than that, I want to stimulate research and development of notgames. Instead of continuously having senseless arguments with game fans, developers and theorists, I want to gather together the brightest ideas concerning non-game interactive entertainment. Without the noise and the distractions. Maybe we’ll start a blog about the subject, with news, essays, opinion pieces, debates. A place where ideas can be explored and shared and discussed. I would also like to commission designers and artists to make new non-game interactive projects. Maybe there can be a competition like those ubiquitous game making competitions, but about making interactive entertainment that is not games -far more exciting and certainly a much larger area to explore. And finally, I’m looking into the possibility of starting a sort of label -like a record label- to publish and distribute notgames.

If you would like to contribute to any of this, please post a comment or send email.

Happy New Year! :)

10. Neverwinter Nights (played 2002-2004)
The only RPG in 10 years that I’ve played all the way through, multiple times, obsessively. (And all the official expansion packs, plus many adventures that were created in the player community.) I got very involved with this game. I became fascinated by how it was made, the character design, how the authoring tools worked, how its multiplayer worked. I guess this was the first game-with-an-editor I really looked to for insight of how big games are put together. The minimal GUI, that right click radial menu, sweet design decisions. NWN and A Tale in The Desert were big for me in imagining how navigation could work for The Endless Forest.

9. Shadow of Memories (played 2001)
A “choose your own adventure” type story with the character going backwards and forwards through time to figure out his own murder. One of the more complex plots of any game I played the last 10 years, actually. One of the only games I’ve ever played multiple times just to find out what all the alternate endings were. I wish there were more games like THIS… now, today, with contemporary graphics and less cut scenes. sigh.

8. Kessen II (played 2002)
At the time I was totally blown away by the aesthetics of this one. Kind of a cheesy plot (even if it is _based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms) but still, very engaging. I remember that I loved the over the top character design and the magic effects when spellcasting. I wanted to think up a game that needed such elaborate stuff as that! And while it is an RTS, it wasn’t so very much of an RTS to turn me off. I enjoyed winning the game and then starting it over playing from the “bad guy” point of view. But yeah, for me it was all about the particle effects!

7. there is no number 7. I WOULD put The Path here… but that would just be weird ;) … Gotta admit though, I love it best and the game changed my life more than any other…

6. Silent Hill 3 (played 2003)
SH3 was one of those games I anticipated for months, scouring game sites for screenshots and shaky conference videos. Every time I found something new, it showed me how beautiful game graphics could be. Amazing character design and even the plot worked… maybe a bit too much. The main character of Heather was truly unique. A teenage girl. The soundtrack was absolutely perfect blend of mall pop and creepy Yamaoka standards. I credit this game with, what is for me, the scariest and eeriest put-down-the-controller-and-back-away moment in gaming. (I’m not gonna spoil it for you… have a “Making of” video instead.)

5. Black & White (played 2001-2002)
Peter Molyneux is an idiot for having listened to critics of this game. It is the most amazing game he has ever made. He had such an awe-inspiring team of programers and the freedom to execute some unique ideas! For all the flaws, it’s a work of genius. I lost entire days! Lost in being a god over those little worlds. The zooming in to see the tiny details and then backing out and being the master of all I surveyed! Training my animal to mimic me. Miracles! No other game swept me away like that. And you bet it influenced us a wee bit when making the ABIOGENESIS feature in The Endless Forest. Biggest disappointment of the decade was when Black & White 2 turned out to be completely different and more of an RTS than a god game.

4. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (played 2004)
ah man… I just love love lovelove love this game <3 <3 <3

3. Animal Crossing (played 2004-ongoing)
The whole family played this game for a solid year on Gamecube. It was the must-have reason I bought a Nintendo DS. We got it for the Wii and it is STILL the only game we play with any regularity. Relaxing, bonding, creative. I admire it for actually trying to trigger nostalgia, and succeeding! Memories of my AC town on a sunny fall afternoon with the cicadas chirping and I, at the waterfall, fishing for Coelacanth… If we ever make a simulation game, this will be the reason why.

2. Silent Hill 2 (played 2001)
I can credit this game as the reason why when Michael suggested we should try our hand at making video games, I said YES absolutely. Before playing SH2 I had no idea a game could get to me like that. SH2 didn’t seem to make any concessions; confusing, ruthless, imperfect. I wanted to make something like that. YES.
This, is my #1 favorite cutscene in any game, ever.

1. Ico (played 2002)
We were working on the scenario of 8 and making the first demos. Michael found a news item on some game site about Ico. We were astounded at the description, in that it had a lot in common with our designs for 8. We kept the game on our radar and bought it the day it came out. Like no other game played this decade, with Ico I was moved, I was inspired to tears of joy and sorrow. If you ask me, THIS is Fumito Ueda’s masterpiece. When seeing a character’s idle motion carries with it so much meaning. When I long to go back to the sundrenched grassy knoll just to chase the birds. To hold Yorda’s hand, listen to the waterfall and stare at the view. When I cannot wait to meet the “boss” because I know it is the coolest moment in the game. It has to be my favorite game of the decade.

Now look at this list.
Isn’t it odd that the games I loved most were all in the years 2001-2004. And nothing after 2004.
I guess the “Next Gen” has been a total disaster for the gamer in me. There has not been one game that’s really done it for me since 2004! A few have tried to worm their way under my skin. I could list the short stint I did in Guild Wars or the myriad DS games I played (like the Phoenix Wright series or Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!) that I thoroughly enjoyed. I regret that I couldn’t play Portal… I bet I would have liked that one. I’ve played some great indie games lately too. And on PS3 there’s been smaller games like flOw and Flower, and my Game of The Year is Noby Noby Boy. That one, yes, I found it refreshing!

Perhaps I’ve gotten harder to please as I get more analytical about what goes on in the industry or maybe it’s, as Michael believes, that creativity has lost ground to technology and pandering for cash. I have gotten older, my interests have changed, I am busier maybe. Loads of reasons why I have not found the joy in many games lately…. still its too bad. I miss the good old days.

Six of these years we’ve been making games, hardly a surprise that I had more fun with games before it became my “job” so to speak. I guess because I could take things more for granted, and everything seemed so much more like magic. I’m of course hoping that in this shiny new decade I will find games that have that certain something, and I can game, once again, like its 2002.

Source: VGChartz

People like playing games

Nintendo didn’t do much. But they were smart about it. Rather than trying to start a revolution with a brand new medium, they had a good look at the way people play today and made digital versions of those activities. They basically made it possible for people to play the kinds of games they were already enjoying, on their television sets.

Some may celebrate this as the breakthrough of videogames into the mainstream. I don’t. I hope this is just a temporary setback in the evolution of the medium. I’m not a big fan of huge corporations, but I do share, to some extent, the dreams that Sony and Microsoft have about the interactive medium. With them, I see videogames as the great new art form of the new century. Videogames as the cinema, television and pop music of the young millennium.

It’s not about getting as many people as possible to play games (they were already playing games, have been doing that since the dawn of time, there’s nothing new here). It’s about giving our times, our cultures a medium that we can find ourselves in, that we can express ourselves in. A medium that can help us understand our world, and that can help define it. Just as literature and cinema have done in the past.

Nintendo does not share this dream. They never have. Mario and Zelda and Pokemon are nothing like Scarlett O’Hara, Jean-Luc Picard or Romeo and Juliet. Nintendo makes games. It’s what they do. And they’re successful at it.

But the dream of Sony and Microsoft reaches a lot further. They want to be part of your life style, part of your culture, embedded in your society. They want the experiences you have on their systems to be meaningful and dramatic. They’re not selling fun. They’re selling mystery and wonder, spectacle and discovery, experiences you have never had before.

And they failed. Massively. So much so that they are hurrying to try and pick some crumbs left behind by Nintendo by quickly introducing some motion sensing hardware to their systems. The irony of the cats following the mouse would be amusing if it weren’t so sad.

The failure of the nerds

Nintendo got one thing right. It’s an extremely obvious thing. But Sony and Microsoft continuously fail at recognizing it. Nintendo realized that the mainstream audience does not consist of nerds -in fact, one could argue that that is the very definition of a mainstream audience. As soon as they did, they were instantly successful.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. The “hardcore industry” has always insisted that games were great just as they were, that it was just a matter of time before the masses would start playing them. They were basically expecting that everyone would become a nerd. Obviously this did not happen. And it never will. If only because language doesn’t allow it. Nerd and mainstream are polar opposites.

The games themselves were not the problem. Any expert will point out that there is not a lot of difference between Tic Tac Toe and Gears of War, or between Super Mario and Devil May Cry. But Nintendo -finally- realized that people don’t play games for the pretty characters or the great stories but for the systems of interaction that they allow us to engage in. And those systems are far better served by simple graphics and sounds than by elaborate theatrical displays.

The games that Sony and Microsoft have been promoting were basically the digital equivalent of chess sets with pieces made to look like characters from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Only 1337 H4×0rz would actually believe they were attacking the Death Star while playing a match with such a set. Most people simply prefer to play a straight-up game with traditional pieces.

Games and… something else?

So now we’re at a crossroads. Do we give up the dream of a new medium for a new century and follow Nintendo’s example of simply giving people what they expect? Or do we strive for greatness and realize the potential of this marvellous new technology?

Nintendo has made one thing clear: people want to play games. But only if the games are simple and straightforward. They don’t want pretty pictures on their games or sweeping stories. They just want to have fun. However, the same people who are having fun with the Wii, also enjoy a visit to the cinema. They also love reading books. Their eyes fill with tears when listening to their favourite pop tune. And they’re hooked on several television shows. These people are not insensitive to narrative, emotion or meaning. They just don’t want to mix those experiences with playing games.

So the solution seems clear. If we want to realize the dream, if we want to give the new century the medium it deserves, the medium it needs, the medium it is sorely lacking, we need to stop wasting this technology on games!

It’s a difficult step to take. Because we love our games. We love battling our giant demons and riding our fire breathing dragons. We love planning our global wars and feeling the rush of victory against improbable odds. But let’s face it: we’re nerds. And only nerds like this kind of stuff. In the clear light of day, a sober eye quickly recognizes these videogames as the superb kitsch they are. Such videogames appeal exclusively to an educated elite and/or marginal ghetto.

This doesn’t mean that it is impossible to create interactive entertainment for people outside of the core niche. People still love their stories, and they still need fiction to help them deal with reality. And people also love to interact with their machines. That has ceased to be a geek exclusive a long time ago -if it ever was one. We just need to work a bit harder.

Instead of simply skinning ancient game routines with high tech spectacle, we need to sit down and have a good look at our medium-to-be and understand what is so uniquely interesting about it. Instead of trying to use new technology to do old tricks, we need to figure out what it is exactly that we find so fascinating about playing on a computer. And translate this to new audiences. This is not an easy thing to do, and it will take a lot of trial and error. But the rewards are great and the accomplishment will completely overshadow any of Nintendo’s current successes.

Down or up?

Will Sony and Microsoft realize this any time soon? I doubt it. The fight seems to have moved from the living room to the play room, from the media store to the toy store. And they will battle it out right there, on the brightly coloured carpet, in between the Barbie dolls and plastic machine guns, while the rest of the world is aching for a new medium, a medium that can deal with the complexities of today’s society, a fiction that can help us cope with our confusing realities.

I feel we have a responsibility here. A duty, even. We have a choice. We can continue to make geek kitsch for the niche audience of hardcore gamers. We can follow Nintendo and make simple games with pixels and code instead of cardboard and plastic. Or we can do something important, something meaningful, something that actually makes a difference.

Let’s end with a long picture:

Sources: VGChartz, Worldmapper, Wikipedia

As a designer for interactive media, I was also never attracted to mobile devices. Mostly because of their small screens. One of the most important things about interactive experiences for me is immersion, immersion in a virtual world. And, partly because of their size, computer monitors and televisions screens seem to dissolve when I’m playing a game. They become invisible frames of the windows through which I experience virtual worlds.

But small devices are always there. You’re holding them in your hands, you constantly feel their material, their weight, and worst of all, you have to focus your vision to a very small physical area, the area of the small screen. As a result, I think, the best experiences I’ve had on my iPod Touch have been simple puzzle games, games that don’t necessarily look like representations of something large but that “fit” in the small format. Oddly, this seems to apply to both size and content. Superficial and abstract games thrive on small devices.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting more.
Now that we’re trying to make a game for the iPhone ourselves, I’m trying to play the ones that are out there. I’m naturally inclined to look for things that have a bit of “meat around their bones”, experiences that can draw me in, make me believe in their fiction, make me want to spend time in their worlds.

But I haven’t found a lot that even comes close to this on the App Store.
Maybe the device is just not suitable for this kind of thing. Or maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. So this is a call for tips: can anyone recommend any immersive experiences on the iPhone? They don’t need to be games, they don’t need to be big. Just something that makes me feel something. That I can step into.

While there were not many independent developers presenting at the conference, the few that were there quickly found each other. It’s nice to know that there is a little underground group of people who all resist the big games machine. Together we can look down on the suits with a big grin while they are desperately trying to keep their multi-million Dollar enterprises afloat.

We had a little booth at the GDC, thanks to the efforts of Elfya van Muylem at IBBT, where we were showing The Path (on the iMac, by the way, that also stored all of the production files of our upcoming project Fatale -but nobody saw it). Lots of people came up to us. Players of the game, people who had read about it, students, journalists, game developers, business people. It was fun to talk to them. Made us feel our work really means something to some. So thanks to all of you, in case you’re reading this (leave a comment here! :) ).

As a result, we didn’t see a lot of lectures. But of the few we saw, David Cage’s sermon about the future of videogames probably made the biggest impression. If only because he was almost saying word for word, the kind of things we have been talking about on this blog for years. But in a “for dummies” kind of style, which wasn’t to the liking of all attendees, but still managed to irritate a few sufficiently to make them leave the room.

Basically, Mr Cage was pointing out that the games industry is on a crossroads. Depending on the choices we make now, it will continue to be a successful children’s toy production industry or it could become a mature medium on the level and with the diversity of cinema. His references to cinema were perhaps a bit excessive (personally, I think, we can surpass cinema with a medium that is much more adequate to talk about complex contemporary issues). But in the light of his own work, this is understandable. And his continuous praise of thatgamecompany’s Flower made it clear that he is broad-minded enough to recognize applications of the theory that are very different of his own.

Speaking of Flower, we also attended Kellee Santiago’s post-mortem presentation of the PSN game, which had drawn quite a decent crowd. She showed several prototypes of the game, made in Processing, Flash, XNA and on the Playstation 3 itself. And she finally explained why Flower changes so drastically half way through -something that had always mystified me.

We had a hell of time hanging out with her in a typical German brewery/restaurant with fellow indies (where the Koelsch beer eternally flows) and on the roof of Microsoft’s fancy new building (witnessing the joint attempts of suits and nerds to combine coolness with opportunism) where we met Steven -Slow Gaming- Poole too. That was nice! :)

The next day, Miss Santiago reappeared in a panel awkwardly called “Designing Women”, also featuring Tracy Fullerton and Sheri Graner Ray. It’s quite sad that women in games (both as players and as creators) continues to be an issue, even if most of the women on the panel do see it in a broader context of lack of diversity, both in development teams as in the games being produced. Which connects the issue quite neatly with David Cage’s plea for greater variety as a requirement for maturity. Ergo: more femininity in games equals more maturity.

It remain a question if anyone in the games industry even listens to these voices. We have heard the same comments and ideas for years now, and if there has been any evolution, it seems to be an evolution further away from diversification, and deeper into the niche of games for 16 year old boys (or grown men pretending to be). The few exceptions that exist (Wii & DS, independent games, casual games, iPhone games) always clearly manifest themselves as different, as a break with the industry to some extent, as an alternative, while the “mainstream” continues to dig a deeper and deeper hole. Perhaps GDC-founder Chris Crawford will finally be proven right. He has always maintained that the realisation of the potential of the interactive medium will happen outside of the games industry.

The last session we attended was Peter Molyneux’s presentation about choice in (Lionhead’s) games. The thing that bothered me about his otherwise amusing presentation, was that he focussed so much on the formal aspects of game design. Which was confirmed by him calling choice a mechanic. He doesn’t seem to be interested in the meaning and content of the particular choices presented in his games, but only in their emotional effect. Seeing choice as a mechanic does nothing to change one of the major flaws of videogames (and one of the major elements that reduces the target audience to teenage boys): the fact that games are power fantasies where apparently insecure humans can get the illusion of control. I can’t help but find that a sad situation.

Which reminds me of the pathetic display that is grown-ups pretending to play music to the antique tunes of the Beatles on plastic toy guitars. Instead of learning an actual instrument and experiencing the pure joy of interpretation, we can now happily be reduced to sacks of skin and bones that can pretend to be a star with no need to learn any useful skill whatsoever.

This is what the games industry seems to have become: a pacifier for the powerless. No inspiration is required, no imagination is desired. You don’t need to be able to do anything, be anyone. Just connect to the machine and it will make you feel like you are a hero, in control of an empire, on top of the world. You and the legions of pathetic nerds, too lazy or timid to actually do something with their lives, content to just sit there and pretend it all away, proud of the billions upon billions that the industry spends on keeping them sedated.

read the summary of this talk on GameSetWatch.

This, of course, made me immediately think about alternatives. The indie scene is too valuable to be spoiled by banal commercial considerations. There must be another way! But perhaps not within the games industry…

The games industry is -still- largely a manufacturing industry, not a creative industry. What I mean by that is that its focus is on the production of goods that can be consumed, rather than on invention and communication, or even entertainment. One of the oddities about the games industry is that the highest selling games and the games that get the highest critical praise are -by and large- the same. Whereas in other creative fields, the opposite is true: mass market products are looked down upon by the connoisseurs and marginal experimental products often get praised.

Within the games industry, the only criticism on this situation comes from academic circles and small groups of dissident gamers and journalists. Most people in the industry (publishers, developers and audience) are perfectly comfortable with reducing a game’s merit to its commercial success. There is no strong desire to invent new things or expand horizons. In fact, every new idea that comes along is heavily criticised, not for its intrinsic value, but for its potential lack of commercial viability. Even on the indie scene, where most developers are primarily driven by passion and not greed, success is still measured in commercial terms. Up to the point where indie developers congratulate their colleagues when they are bought by a bigger company or funded by a publisher (which, in essence, means they cease to be independent).

Commercial gain trumps everything in the games industry. You can make games that hardcore hobbyists despise, but if you sell well, you’ll be respected (Nintendo’s recent success, for example). But what’s much much worse is the opposite! If you make a game that does not sell well, it is simply ignored, shoved aside and dropped into a bin labelled “irrelevant”. If a game doesn’t make money, it’s considered to be irrelevant!

Even the few exceptions that exist, always carry this mark of shame with them. Any article that celebrates the greatness of underselling but highly praised games such as Ico, Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil, will invariably mention that the game did not sell well. As some kind of warning to anyone who would dare to do the same. While, seriously, after all this time, does the lack of sales still matter? In any other medium, first of all, commercial success is all but ignored when discussing a masterpiece. And second, a masterpiece that might have been commercially unsuccessful when it was released, makes up for that over time, after being praised on and on by the critics (Van Gogh being the most ludicrous example of this phenomena).

When it comes to games, it almost feels like commercial considerations are an integral part of the form. And I wonder if this is because of the kinds of people that are attracted to games. Games are competitive activities. And striving to win is a big part of the experience, especially in the prominent single player action game category. Gamers can be quite ruthless. In fact, it is expected of you to be ruthless. Your enemies must be defeated, if not destroyed. That’s the main winning condition of most videogames.

These goals happen to be shared by business culture, particularly its capitalist variety. Morals are set aside, friendship is set aside, care for the community or the environment all have to make way for the desire to win, to beat the competition. Business seems to be in a continuous state of war, where things are permitted that would not be accepted in normal society. When all factors in any issue are considered, profitability is the one that leads the decision. A decision that does not support growth of the company, growth of the market share, increased profits, etc, is considered foolish. Is considered playing badly. And will lead to losing the game.

If the people who are running the industry work from the mindset of gamers, it should come as no surprise that the games industry is not a creative one. In a field where financial gain defines success, there is no room for experimentation, exploration, expansion, maturation. And there certainly is no room for considering the quality of people’s lives, care for the environment, art (only when these concerns coincide with financial gain can they pop up on the radar). Maybe this is why the games industry never seems to grow beyond its confines as a manufacturing industry. An industry that is doomed to cater to the whims of the market, instead of leading the community by example, information and discussion. As a result, games are doomed to be forever shelved in the toy store, between to the board games and the superhero comic strips, never living up to their potential to challenge the crown of fine art, cinema and literature.

Have a read and let me know what you think. Am I crazy? Do you feel the same? Is there still hope? Or should we just move on to something else? Or are the other writers right? Are their reasons for playing games more pertinent than mine not to? Oddly, it seems that several of them feel the same about the scarcity of really good games and the lack of evolution, but this does not lead them to stop playing as it does me.

Someone mentioned to me last week, as an example of an artist made game, this work by Mel Chin called KNOWMAD in which one must navigate roads contrived from patterns found in Turkish carpets. I believe the ultimate prize is to find a promegranate.

He says in an interview with ART 21

ART:21: How did “KNOWMAD” evolve?

CHIN: I was interested in the maps that are not written down but created in the mind. And where do they occur? In contemporary culture, they occur with eleven year-olds, ten year-olds, playing video games and winning or getting the prizes or whatever they do, slashing or slaying the beast. And they memorize their path because that’s the one way—it’s the start of memory—and that intrigued me. How can we create this kind of mapping? I’ve been interested in arcade games and in all these things, not necessarily as a player, and not necessarily as one who participates in that, but as it has a profound effect on culture. How do ideas survive in culture? Not necessarily my ideas or anybody’s ideas, but how do ideas stay around long enough to have a conversation? From a conceptual standpoint, I’m interested in that. And knowing that video games probably equal or better Hollywood in their volume of intake of money shows you how much influence it have in the world. And then where is the art? Where is the cultural aspect involved with it?

Interactive video installation with Playstation, vintage carpets and fabric tent, dimensions variable

Last week, when we were asked in a room full of people if there were any progenitors to what we are doing, we didn’t have an answer. I believe we simply shook our heads and said sheepishly “No, there is no one doing what we are doing… There has never been anyone doing what we are doing.” Well, not in the way we are doing it. Put over-simply, some sort of art and video game hybrid with more emphasis on the art than the game.
Again, not _exactly right. Difficult being put on the spot on a subject like that.

We were taken aside after the talk by a performance artist/gamer who told us we need to know about Kenji Eno and his WARP development studio. Apparently we also needed to have a look at D, Enemy Zero, and D2. Sega Saturn and Dreamcast games… youtube will have to do.

A little search yields this fascinating interview

Kenji Eno: I want to go back a little bit and explain a little. Originally, I was an observer more than a game creator, like someone who was looking at the game industry from the outside. That’s why I had all of these different, crazy ideas — like creating a game without visuals. I had all of these kinds of ideas because I was seeing the game industry from the outside. But around the time of D2, I felt like I was getting too close to the inside; I felt like I was turning into a normal game creator. Before, I was more like a producer, trying to look at everything from the outside, you know, like, “This might be fun, this might be interesting, and it might make an impact on people.” And I didn’t like going to any game-related gatherings or anything like that because I was trying to distance myself from it. D2 was a fun game, and the story was crazy and all that, but I still think that it’s a normal game, and I was noticing that it was a normal game. So I wanted to distance myself again so I could be the person outside of game industry so I would be able to create fresh games again. So the reason I stopped creating games was because I wanted to create games again from the outside.

and this history lesson from GameSetWatch. Hard to tell from video, of course, but in every case, cutscenes seem to dominate them. Maybe it was just how things were done then. Enemy Zero looks particularly promising, a game wher eyou must fight/avaoid an en enemy you cannot see, only hear. Aside from all the unfortunate first-person shooteriness there is a soundtrack by Michael Nyman(!) and animations by *gasp* Fumito Ueda.

To recap some things which need to be kept clear (as possible)
* “Doesn’t matter if it is a game or not so long as you enjoy it.” Tattoo it on your inner eyelids kids.
* Interactive art and games have plenty of overlapping concerns.
* Video games differentiate themselves from traditional games (chess, go, hide & seek etc.) by virtue of what they can offer that traditional games cannot. immersion, interaction with a virtual system, networks, realtime/alt-time/non-time (non-linearity etc.), multimedia.

Unfortunately, I’ve found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the [Hollywood] studios. I was disappointed with the first Hellboy game. I’m very impressed with the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto. You can get lost in that world. But we’re using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.

Guillermo del Toro in an interview with Wired

The rest of the article refers to games in the typical broad strokes of an executive -as opposed to somebody who has actually created software- but I was happy to read that some film directors share the dream of the potential of this medium (and don’t fall into the trap that Spielberg and Cameron are falling into: embracing videogames as if the current fare is all there is to them).

We all know what del Toro is talking about. I’ll be interested to see if somebody with such economic (and cultural) power will be able to pull it off. It’s doubtful, since he seems to be thinking BIG, but at least he is trying. Which is more than can be said about most people within the games industry.

And I wish more film directors would stand up and speak out against the game adaptations of their work. So many great opportunities have been lost in the process of making cheap commercial games out of movies. It really shows the embarrassing contrast between an industry manufacturing product and a creative industry which at least pretends to respect creative vision and artistic expression. We shouldn’t let Hollywood out-art us!

Thank you, Alice, for pointing this out. Though I wouldn’t have called del Toro “extremely arty”…

I’m considering to officially join the legions who are sick of the games-as-art debate. Because I am sick of it too. But not for the same reason. I’m sick of games. I’m sick of the endless debates on how we’re supposed to achieve something deeply meaningful by making people play with puzzles or achieving fake goals by adhering to arbitrary rules. Let games be games. Let them be fun. Let them be playful. Don’t weigh them down with all sorts of demands of meaning. Let them be frivolous, meaningless, brainless fun. Please.

This is about much more than games! We have this wonderful technology, the computer. It is capable of doing so many things. And one thing it does amazingly well is serve as a medium for entirely new experiences. Interactive experiences, non-linear adventures with creatures that seem to be alive, strange lands to explore and things to discover. Making you feel like you are somebody else in another place, another time. The Holy Grail of any art form that has come before. The thing that all paintings, all poems, all architecture, all opera, all literature and all films have wanted to be for centuries!

And what do we do with this medium? We make games!
In fact, we obsess about making ever more intricate little puzzles, with ever more clever little mechanics to make people feel ever so smart when all they did was follow rules and obey commands. It’s decadent! It’s wasteful! It’s negligent! It’s a shame!

Imagine that caveman down in Lascaux finding pigment and a wall and drawing a grid on it to play tic-tac-toe! Imagine the farao’s in Egypt deciding to make Tetris instead of pyramids! Imagine Botticelli putting his canvas down on a table and move some pawns over it instead of painting The Birth of Venus! The shame! The horror!! Yet, it’s exactly what we’re doing with the interactive medium. We have this incredible technology -almost like magic-, this wonderful medium! And all we do is sit there and throw dice with it.

Let games be games. And let’s move on.

Knytt, Gravitation, Braid, Everyday Shooter and Zeno Clash. Five independent games. Five times the same experience for me. I launch the game, get to grips with the controls and start playing. Then suddenly, the game stops me. In some cases it makes my avatar die. In all cases, the only thing to do is to retry. And fail again. And retry. And fail again. In some cases I do this two or three times before I close the application (sometimes I uninstall it on the spot). In other cases perhaps 4 or 5 times. But I never made it beyond the first challenge in any of them.

So I ask myself if these games were perhaps badly designed. Some videogames allow you to enter them smoothly and easily. It often takes hours for me to reach the point where the game blocks itself off, closes up like an oyster refusing to give up its pearl. But at least I got a few good hours out of it. Portal was like that for me. So was that remake of Tomb Raider 1. Hm. Does it take money to design a game well?

When I related my confusion to Auriea, she said “You just don’t like games.” That was enlightening! For a moment. I don’t particularly like games. That’s true. I won’t go out of my way to play a game of chess or hide and seek. And I’m not exactly thrilled when my daughter wants me to join her game of Legos or Playmobil.

But.

Those games never end in such a cruel way. When I play chess, I often lose. I’m not very good at it. But I still like playing. When I lose in chess, my opponent wins. And that’s kind of nice. It’s nice to see how my opponent is happy with the victory. And I’m happy for them. But with videogames, when you lose, nobody really wins. And it feels more like the game is designed to make you lose. As if you deserve to be punished for something. When all you did was try to play a game.

If you can call it that!

Outside of the electronic realm, the majority of games require multiple players. As a result, no matter who loses, a human always wins. Electronic games are mostly single player games (even many so-called multiplayer games are expansions on a single player idea). Maybe games weren’t meant to be single player? When I play a non-computer game by myself, the rules are always loose. And when I stop playing, it feels more like the game has lost me than I it.

Computer-based games are like tests. They ask you questions and require the right answer. They make it hard for you, on purpose. They’re not meant to be easy. It’s a format that lends itself to quizzes as well as school exams. Only one of which is a game. Though formally they are the same. What makes a quiz a game and an exam not a game? Purpose! Not its rules, goals or challenges. But its purpose! A quiz is a game (and not an exam) because it is done for fun, because it is not serious (like an exam).

Or is a quiz an exam simulator and considered a game because it’s a simulation, because it’s not real?

The fact that Braid isn’t fun for me does not disqualify it from being a game. It’s perfectly valid to say “This is not a fun game.” What makes Braid a game? Its rules, goals and challenges? No. Because the same format can apply to something that is not a game (an exam, e.g.). On some level, Braid is serious. Like an exam. Does that disqualify it from being a game? Or is the level on which Braid is serious not part of the game? Is Braid an “augmented game”? But what if the level on which Braid is a game is not fun for me? Does it then stop being a game for me?? That’s ridiculous. The nature of something should not change just because of my feelings about it.

Maybe it is sufficient for a game to be fun for someone. Then you can call it a game. Maybe for some people taking an exam is fun. Maybe they would consider it a game too. Maybe it is indeed enough to simply consider something a game. Maybe everything can be a game! You could turn riding on the highway into a game by pretending it’s a race! You could sit in the park and look at the ducks and count their quacks and see if the black ducks win or the white ones. Sounds like a game to me.

So maybe Braid can be a game too?…

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! :)

Short article by Tynan Sylvester followed by a heated discussion.

Things haven’t changed much, have they? Except that Mr Sylvester may be wrong. Maybe Hungry Hungry Hippos and Fallout 3 are still too much alike to make his point.

I know what he means, though, by saying that the term “game” does not fit videogames anymore. Except that it does. Even Fallout 3 is still a game underneath. He’s just playing it wrong. But his wrong style of playing is infectious. And at some point, there will be more developers than just us -with bigger budgets- who design explicitly for this play style. It may take another generation, though. A generation of designers who were born after Pac Man and Space Invaders. Looking forward to it!

I seem to have made my own equations before:

I agree in funny ways.

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.

2 panel discussions in a row where i could do none of the speakers justice with my pens.

and finally this is my really bad drawing of Keita Takahashi. I made video of his talk too as he put on the Noby Noby scarf and demo’d a new multiplayer mode where each palyer is a different ‘end’ of the Boy (okay, that makes no sense whatever if you’ve never played the game ;P)
I loved his talk. He discussed his wanting to feel more free within game design. And Noby being his attempt. I just wish he could have sent out Noby scarves to players like he’d originally wanted to!

(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

In the first GDCs we attended, this made us hopeful. Because we felt we had a solution to these problems. But as we continued to fail to find a connection with the commercial games industry, we lost that hope. We learned that, although the industry complains about these issues continuously, it had zero intention to change anything.

Last year’s GDC was the year when independent games suddenly seemed to be the new thing, the most exciting area in the industry, where at the very least, people were making games for the love of it. This year, the excitement was still there. And the complaints were still there. But they were expressed in the most vehement and passionate manner ever. Heather Chaplin’s raging rant about how game developers are stunted and sexist juveniles brought a tear to my eye. But the main point of her talk was that we should stop making excuses about the medium’s young age, and start working on solutions for the problems.

And this is where independent games come in. As opposed to the desperation that accompanied the complaints over the previous years, this year everybody’s hopes were directed towards independent games. So much so that Clint Hocking even warned AAA game developers that if they didn’t change their ways, they would be rendered irrelevant by indie games. And I guess the AAA took note. We have entertained both Hideo Kojima and Fumito Ueda at our little booth in the Independent Games Festival this year. Warren Spector came by several times but we sadly missed the opportunity to talk to him. I have spotted Will Wright circling the indie floor. And who knows who that guy was with the funny name on his badge but looking so much like Cliffy B…

Anyway. Andy Schatz was pleading for unity between indie games and AAA games during the IGF awards ceremony. But it seems like AAA games will benefit more from this relationship than we will. Last year’s plaything has turned into this year’s hope for the future of the medium. Now I’m really curious about what will happen next year!

Because it’s not just that indie games have always been around and suddenly became fashionable. It is also important to note that the quality and diversity of independent games has increased tremendously over the past few years. So rather than sitting on our mini-laurels, I hope we continue on this path and make games that push the medium into territories that it always hoped to reach (or falsely claimed it had).

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.

The reason for this, as he points out, is that Nintendo is adding two values to their games that are simply not being evaluated by the games press, illustrated by the reviewer’s recurring apology/warning that “this is not a game!” Traditional game reviews look at a combination of aesthetics, design and length. But Nintendo adds to these accessability and peripheral benefit (i.e. the value of the product beyond its entertainment value). And it is exactly these two values that attract new customers to Nintendo’s products, which, as we know, has been the key to success.

This is something that has been a concern of ours ever since we’re on the path (pun intended) towards publishing a commercial game. While our games are nothing like Nintendo’s, we also lean heavily towards exactly the same values that their games add to the mix. We also want our work to be accessible: there is no competition in our games, no stress, no hard rules and the controls are easy. And we want to add “peripheral benefit” in the form of a meaningful artistic experience that we hope enriches the player’s life.

We already know that The Path is going to get low review scores. Simply because its main benefits fall outside of the range of things that game reviewers pay attention to, or can express in a score. We’ve been toying with the idea of asking the reviewers to simply give the game a score of zero. But I don’t know. It seems so arrogant. And I’m still hoping that some day, the games press will open up, or soften up. Perhaps Nintendo will come to the rescue.

What exactly does it mean to beat a game? You can’t have a meaningful contest against an inert digital artefact. From the game’s point of view, you did not beat it. On the contrary, you did exactly what the game wanted you to do, every step of the way. You didn’t play the game, you performed the operations it demanded of you, like an obedient employee.
Steven Poole, “Working for the Man: Against the Employment Paradigm in Videogames”

Steven Poole made some very interesting observations about how deeply playing videogames resembles work in his keynote presentation at the F.R.O.G. conference in Vienna, last October. Observations that brough to mind my own “Of cogs and machines” post, where I approach a similar subject from my perspective as designer and use some eerily similar metaphors.

[...] obediently following a game’s narrative or challenge-reward structure is nothing but work. Only when the player does something that isn’t mandated by the system can she be said to be playing.

He goes on to quote Horkheimer and Adorno as visionary prophets of our dystopian industrialized present and makes an interesting analogy with the Slow Food movement that states:

The culture of our times rests on a false interpretation of industrial civilisation; in the name of dynamism and acceleration, man invents machines to find relief from work but at the same time adopts the machine as a model of how to live his life.

Inspired by this challenge, Mr. Poole imagines a “new videogaming manifesto”:

It would speak of games where you really could choose your own adventure, but also where, if you preferred, you could just take time to smell the coffee, with no shadowy boss figure watching your clock and tapping his foot. It would be called Slow Gaming. Gamers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your boring virtual jobs.

Read the full article here!

The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form.
John Lanchester, “Is it Art?” in The London Review of Books

Since we partially make it our business to create “videogames for non-gamers” here at Tale of Tales, we have a keen interest in any messages we receive about games from the world outside. The few times when this happens, the author is either uninformed or simply a hardcore games enthusiast doing a little job on the side. A pity, because what better way to learn about ourselves as through the eyes of others?

So our interest was immediately peaked when we noticed a long article about videogames in a publication called “The London Review of Books”. Through thoughtful observations, John Lanchester combines a broad knowledge of the games industry with the advantage of both distance and erudition to place gaming within a larger cultural context.

And while his article is critical, Mr. Lanchester also does a good job at explaining the appeal of games to people not familiar with the medium (i.e., as he points out, everyone who does not actively play videogames). He points out the strong points and achievements of the medium as well as its flaws and shortcomings.

He compares games to novels:

You are in the game in a way that is curiously similar to the way you are in a novel you are reading – a way that is subtly unlike the sense of absorption in a spectacle which overtakes the viewer in cinema. The interiority of the novel isn’t there, but the sense of having passed into an imagined world is.

And to cinema.

Games are not, in general, better than films. But they are often better than huge-budget Hollywood films.
[...]
Not all games are cynically, affectlessly violent, but a lot of them are, and this trend is holding video games back. It’s keeping them at the level of Hollywood blockbusters, when they could go on to be something else and something more.
[...]
Games do a good job of competing with blockbusters, but it would be a pity if that was the summit of their artistic development.

And then, of course, speculates on how video games might become art.

The other way in which games might converge on art is through the beauty and detail of their imagined worlds, combined with the freedom they give the player to wander around in them.

He also makes a reference to a keynote presentation by Steven Poole (of “Trigger Happy” fame), which deserves a post of its own.

A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough.
[...]
Most video games aren’t nearly irresponsible enough.

Read the full article here!

I do allow for an exception where it concerns comments to posts in our own publications, where I feel it is my obligation to act as a polite host. But this should by no means be interpreted as an invitation. 2009 Shall be known as the year when trolls returned to their caves.

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.