The concept is that most podcasts (particularly gaming podcasts) are very long, site/personality-dependent, and about how the hosts feel about the news and games they’re playing, all in an attempt to entertain. We go in the absolute opposite direction. Short (less than 3 minutes,) factual (no grandstanding, that’s why I have a blog,) and serious, with intent to inform.

Want to be informed and still have an extra hour to spare? Listen to the Game Industry Newscast. Have some GIN.

Having written a somewhat lengthy comment on his blog, I figured “Hey, why not put it here, too, as to simply get something on the blog?”

The crux of his argument, I feel, can be summed up in his included quote. What follows is my reply.

I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.

While I sadly agree that games generally aren’t art, I find it not a fault of the medium, but the fault of the people involved.

It’s particularly in your accusation of “lack of authorial control” that I find myself annoyed. Yes, to give choice is to not dictate what the player does, but the authorial direction lies in how the system (the game) responds to the player’s input. It’s a conversation between the player and author that, in the end, the author has all control over. I’d like to cite an unusual example: “Sim City.”

You’ve likely heard of “The Sims,” the virtual doll house created by Will Wright. Long before that, he made his name on Sim City, a game in which players are tasked with building a city for virtual denizens by issuing zoning permits (Residential, Industrial, Commercial,) building roads, libraries, public transit, and the likes. How is this example valid? Because if you build a city with no public transit, people will eventually rage. If you build a city with no roads, people are only discontent. Ideally, public transit permeates your city, and roads simply “exist,” inverse to how many major cities are today. Choices like this and the judgment of if the placement of zoning is “correct” or not is not one made arbitrarily, it’s one of artistic intent, and to ignore than is to ignore how games function.

These things aren’t the result of some study of urbania meant to make a realistic simulation, this is purely the definitive example of a perfect city as described by the creator, Will Wright. This is his artistic vision put forth, largely (and obviously, given the game’s visuals,) influenced by his Californian upbringing. It’s by the player choosing different avenues of development, and seeing them marked as “incorrect,” that Wright makes his case to the player.

It’s with this view on games that you should consider a “win state” of a game as merely “an end” that agrees with what the creator puts forth as “correct.” Films end, novels end, poems end, and games end. Games just have multiple endings due to their interactive nature, but this doesn’t preclude them from all narratively driving to a singular thesis (not that such a thing should be required to meet any definition of “art,” but it does make the understand simpler in modern games. An alternate ending can simply be another viewing of the same point the game strains to make.)

Now, my definition of art (“a product of human creativity”) is likely vastly different from yours, but I would certainly love to hear a better justification for not considering games art than “lack of authorial control,” which games absolutely have. The issue of why you don’t see this more often is a much better question, and has partially to do with the old Hollywood studio system that permeates the Game Industry today, chopping potential artists off at the knees. More than that, it’s the fault of fans.

I agree that the vast majority of games are worth nothing artistically speaking, and I say this not with derision, but sadness. I see such potential and I see it wasted on Michael Bay levels of emotional exploration solely because it’s easier for developers to make with interactive explosions than it is with interactive emotion. This is the fault of gamers for preferring cheap and instant gratification to emotional and heartfelt. These are the same people who make death threats at you for having a different opinion and sharing it. But I certainly do believe games can drag themselves out of the era of cave paintings, but it will be dragging the majority of its fanbase behind it, kicking and screaming.

I think it certain that games will reach levels of artistry as complex as any other medium. I just really hope that I’m alive to see it. Though, like you said, I expect I won’t be, simple due to the complete lack of regard for subtext in interactivity.

Gaming is an artistic medium, despite the people involved.

Anyway, keep up the good review work, sir.

In a 1994 interview in the magazine Fami-Tsushin, Shigeru Miyamoto talked about what he felt RPGs should be like.

Miyamoto: Let’s say you tie someone completely up – even their individual fingers – and then wait a while. Then, if you start to untie the ropes one by one, they’ll of course be happy. Anyone would. The method of sticking someone in an incredibly tight situation then untightening it little by little and then saying, “There! Aren’t you happy now?” becomes very boring as soon as it becomes evident. So, instead of that, my personal theme when making RPG-like games is, “What can I do?” I don’t think creating happiness comes from starting from a negative and returning to zero. It’s starting from zero and ending at one hundred, and I try to think of ways to allow that.

Stopping a meteor from crashing into the planet in Final Fantasy 7 is a return to the balance of “world-destroying meteors don’t crash into the planet all the time, and one crazy fuck doesn’t rule the Lifestream.” GTA4 is about a return to the normality of “gangsters aren’t trying to kill you and your friends all the time.” Heavy Rain and Alan Wake are about “putting an end to a fucked up killer/evil-force, and thus making the world safe and normal again.” But then again, that’s almost every game. Just look at Oblivion and it’s dreaded portals to other worlds.

Sure, Oblivion was fun, but it was silly. Those Oblivion Gates stayed open FOREVER on my game, and it had no adverse affect on the world! Some threat they turned out to be. Why? Because I was having far too much fun reuniting long-lost families and journeying into paintings. Sure it’s easy to say that “Well, that’s why the side missions are there, but the Oblivion Gates are the main thrust of the game!” Maybe in YOUR game, but absolutely not in mine.

My game was not the story of a nameless, faceless, world savior. I was a budding thief imprisoned and then turned loose under bizarre circumstances he didn’t give a shit about! What did I do with this new-found freedom? Why, I set out to fulfill my career as a world-class thief, of course! (And let me tell you; I did it. I was no common thief.)

No, my story was not one of a world savior who was a thief, but a thief who eventually got so bored he decided to save the world. Of course, the game never knew this, and that’s the problem with most games today. They’re not REALLY interactive. Not where it counts, anyway. Not the story.

If you want your game to be cinematic in presentation, that’s fine. In fact, it’s commendable. I’m perfectly fine with “making the game experience cinematic,” as obviously the visual cues of video can be grandfathered into games. But be aware that cinematic refers to camera technique, and how it can influence/inform the viewer. Being cinematic does not necessitate that the story be linear, that’s just the inability of developers to do new things. One new thing. The one thing that really matters any more.

Imagine, instead, that Oblivion’s main plot was removed. Imagine it kept count of each of those times I pick-pocketed, picked a lot, or stole. Or the amount of time I spent doing those things. Imagine it compared that count to my time spent on the main quest. Imagine I agree to a mission of stealing some grand jewel for a princess, so that a prince can’t use it for dowry to marry her, but before accomplishing this, I have to save and quit the game.

The next time I started the game, the game could recognize that I’m a sly thief, not a quick-tempered barbarian, and we could see cut-scenes of my previous exploits with, “The notorious thief again returns to the prowl, preparing for his biggest score yet, the (grand jewel name here)! Can he outsmart Prince X? Will he save Princess Y by stopping her wedding? Will he get caught, and be banned from the city Z?” (Whereas someone who’s spent more time killing, a warrior, may instead approach the problem with a sword, prompting the game to ask “Will he kill Prince X?”)

And it shouldn’t just be a bunch of linear missions for the player to complete, but a gameworld with interesting characters that conflict. A gameworld where the death of a prince matters to everyone. A gameworld where, if I marry that princess, I become King, and people plot against me. Or if I let the Prince marry her, they plot against him. Most games narrowly define the player, as framed by the story. I imagine a game that narrowly frames the story as defined by the player’s actions. That’s the game I want to play.

And the rest of the games? The ones that set up a rat maze for me to run through, that have a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end? One that promises variance, but really just has a few branching plot elements and a little flavor text? I’m tired of you. Really, I am. I’m tired of it, and if you’re not careful, I’m just going to stop playing. Please, I’m begging you. This is getting old. And you pussy-footing around and dipping your toes in it won’t get the job done here. I need a sign that you get it.

Related thoughts that didn’t fit coherently into my final post:
-Rockstar, let Tarn “ToadyOne” Adams give tips on your next sandbox game. In fact, give him final say. You can create the content, and just let him give you lessons on worthwhile world building. You don’t get it. He does. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It’ll be okay; I still love you and am interested in LA Noire.

-I’m tired of fighting Bad Guy X. If I’m to be Don Quixote in this pointless exercise, at least let me pick which windmills are important to me. Mass Effect 2, I don’t care about disappearing human colonies so much as I do my friends, despite the fact that I play a “good guy.”

-Bethesda, I’m all for your upcoming Elder Scrolls MMO… Just don’t make it about time spent grinding. Levels shouldn’t factor that heavily into things, nor should weaponry. I know that’s very counter-intuitive, but, you know I’m right. Good/creative players should win out, not the one who’s been around longer.

-Fuck Citizen Kane, give me Seinfeld. Wait. Let me back up. I loved Citizen Kane. I think it still stands tall today, unburdened by all the merit lauded onto it. And for the record, I’ve seen less than five episodes of Seinfeld. I’m sure it’s awesome, but it just never grabbed me like it did so many others. That said, I think at this point games could probably learn more from serialized TV than film. That “previously, on Lost,” sets up EVERYTHING. (Actually, this thought will probably be recycled… But I’m keeping the title, as “a game about nothing, necessarily,” is pretty much what I want.)

EA, of all people, has absolutely no excuse for not having their own digital delivery system up and running. Shit, that medium-sized developers aren’t doing this themselves is a fucking travesty as far as I’m concerned. Valve’s given everyone the ability to make their own Steam, if you’ll recall. It’d just take an extra guy to get it up and running, I’d imagine.

Often retailers (and even renters,) will break street dates. When this happens, retailers who haven’t broken the date contact the publisher, and say “So and so broke the date. Check it, because we’re going to as well. We can’t afford to lose all of our sales to them, because their math says they’ll come out ahead by breaking the rules.” The distributer/publisher then checks to confirm the story, and if this is true, they give the okay for everyone else to break the date as well (and often punish the initial violator.)

I just can’t be convinced that EA can’t publish games online. They’re a publisher. It’s what they’re supposed to do. What am I missing here? Hell, Microsoft and Sony should be doing this. The moment the ‘download date’ was proven broken, EA should have had Spore online on their EA Shop for everyone everywhere to download. That headline would’ve dwarfed the news about the cracked version available online. “Why bother pirating it,” gamers would ask “when I’ll probably end up buying it anyway? Go ahead and save the re-download time by buying it the first time, and have my friends already in my gamer list for auto-downloadig of their creatures.” Besides, I’m betting Valve games have a much lower rate of piracy than most PC games, and gamers are (by far and large) okay with Steam, now that the kinks have been worked out for a few years. And I’ve heared nothing but good things about Direct2Drive. Though, honestly, developers should be doing this for themselves.

I just can’t feel overly sorry for a developer getting hurt by a publisher forcing them to put anti-piracy tools in their game. It’s the bed of their own making, really. Last post I mentioned gamers downloading shareware off of BBS’; the original digital distribution. Well, it’s 2008 and developer distribution has never been easier (now bedroom coders don’t even have to physically mail disks to users.) Refusal to make self-publishing a priority, or even demanding the power in the developer-publisher relationship, gets developers treated like the lesser in the relationship, and that’s just a lessong they need to learn. I mean, Valve? They get it. If another developer can’t prioritize their publishing deals, then let them falter, and let them fail.

Though, the first person to use Steamworks to create an online publisher? That person will make some serious money.

Okay, done with that topic for the foreseeable future, enough armchair-CEOing over Riccitelo. Next up? MMO payment plans! Yay!

To continue to harp on a previous point of mine, the Games Industry needs to figure out how to better commodify their art (that being ‘interaction’.) Gamers, moreso than any other group of media consumers, are technologically savvy. TV, film, music… Every other group’s lower savvy presents, relatively, a higher collective barrier for its consumers to partake in piracy and the likes. Gamers? We STARTED this shit by downloading shareware off of BBS’. Torrents are as easy as a TV remote, p2p is laughable, and even newsgroups are child’s play, to be honest. If you want to stop gamers from pirating your product, then you have to figure out a way to make games impiratable, (yes, I just created a word (at least in the English language.)) Good luck with that.

On the other hand, consider how many gamers have heard about Spore’s DRM and will now say “Eh, I’ll just pirate it.” I mean, the online component of downloading animals can be ‘gotten around’ by just downloading the thumbnails of pals’ creations anyway. It’s silly, how developers insist on shooting themselves in the foot like this.

After reading that 7 of 10 games lose money, I have to let you guys in on a little secret, you really don’t understand what I really Icare about in a game, and you’re wasting lots of time/money. In fact, you could even cut development costs by focusing less of things like world building. First, let me make a comparison:

A large portion of movies and shows I watch are based in either NYC or LA, and you know what? I’m okay with that. Both of these cities have been imaginarily destroyed more times than anyone wants to count. And you know what? When we’re sitting in darkened theaters, waiting for a blow-up-a-city-movie to start, and we see a trailer for another blow-up-a-city-movie? We lean to our friends and whisper “We gotta come see that!” (Remember the Cloverfield trailer before Transformers?)

Cut to video games, where more and more people are fixated on rebuilding NYC (Spidey 2+, True Crime 2, GTA:(3, LC:S, 4,) Driver, Crazy fucking Taxi, and probably more ‘open’-NYC games I can’t recall,) more times than can possibly be healthy. You’re long past the point of diminishing returns, and you larger publishers in particular need to make one NYC, and work from it. “Oh, but gamers would hate to play the same city in Spidey that they would in Crazy Taxi! They’d call us lazy!” Some will, but the rest of us, who actually play games to [i]play games[/i]? We’ll be okay. Hell, I’d call you smart because I just don’t give a shit about the city you place your game in, really. The city (the buildings and roads,) are just a location, and not characters. The ‘character’ often attributed to cities are actually NPCs, sounds, lighting, and textures that work in tandem to bring the locale to life, and changing those things changes the locale so much, that if you take out people and moving cars, and add crashed ones and zombies, then it’s a different world.

For the life of me I can not fathom why EA, Activision, or Rockstar, haven’t created high detail models of a city (or worked together on one,) to generate lower-rez iterations from as needed. For that matter, why haven’t larger cities created their own virtual models and licensed them to game developers? (Well, government’s lack of metaphorical artistic testicles/ovaries, coupled with the low artistic aim of most games actually explains that, now that I type it…)

But my main point here is that, as a gamer, I’m okay with learning the streets of NYC like a veteran cabbie. Hell, when you think about it, it almost makes sense for characters who’ve lived in NYC for any extended period of time. But even beyond that, creating large worlds is just pointless if they’re devoid of context, and so often the race to create large environments leaves those same environments empty of vibrancy that would make them memorable. Of course, this could easily work to ones advantage by taking the opportunity to fill in the blanks…

“Here is our “Lives of Liberty City” line. A new series of games centered around Liberty City, allowing you four full length video game experiences in one persistent world as you play between the games.” Sounds good, right? While playing a GTA4, imagine being able to pick up any of three other games, each focused on a single island. As you took over neighborhoods in a Mafia-esque crime/RTS, the burroughs in which Italian families come after you in GTA 4 change. As you redevelop South Bohan in a city building sim, the neighborhood becomes gentrified in GTA 4, with some of your friends being displaced. And then in the middle island, a game using the exact same geometry but with much more film noir-ish lighting, music, and music, is an action love story as you play a detective trying to save a young girl caught up in the vile world of blackmail at the hands of the United Liberty Paper Co., only to become a pawn in their twisted game yourself.

So, in closing, don’t be afraid to reuse assets and save money. Just do it well. It’s so easy… In theory, anyway.

I love that insane game with all of my ACII-art lovin’ heart, but I’ll be damned if the tiny window it uses doesn’t make my eyes well screaming for relief from deciphering one tiny mark from the next. The creator has said in an interview in which he talks about ‘losing’ his own project, saying: “I’m leery about third party interfaces. If a third party interface becomes popular, I think I might lose control of the project. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to accommodate and work with other people.” That’s a pretty scary notion, and one worth worrying about.

But at the same time, when my eyes hurt trying to play the game, it’s pretty hard to say that everything’s okay. I mean, I’m not saying I want 3d, or even a tileset, I just want it larger, so that I can see the stuff, y’know? Ahhh well.

But DF has something special. That thing; that “special something.” It does exactly what I want to see games do, tackle data complexity over graphical complexity. I want to be able to chop a bed up into its components, and breed war dogs, and when enemies (be they goblins or attacking wildlife,) enter your fortress, close the gates and flood the entrance with water through a system of levers that leaves your foe lying dead on the soggy ground.

Like Crysis goes to graphical extremes, and Grand Theft Auto goes to physics-interactive world exploration extremes, Dwarf Fortress juggles data like no other game out there, and it’s a shame that no one’s decided to back this guy, and hire him an additional coder to work with him (or some type of help that he’d have, anyway.) I mean, I could only imagine if a few other programmers were put under him and he was still given creative control.

I feel the need to preface this post by saying: I only have a 360 from this generation of hardware (well, a DS too,) and I eventually aim to get a PS3 and a Wii, as both either have games I want, or soon will. But I think myself a fan of games, more so than consoles. That said…

Don Reisinger put a great reality check up on Cnet today which I’ll choose to not quote, but instead paraphrase in my own words:

“Hey Sony, Microsoft, quit your bitching. Just because Nintendo cleaned your clock doesn’t mean you have to cry in the corner and whine ‘they don’t count anyway!’ They do. Now cowboy up and fight back. You”re trying to turn Nintendo into the elephant in the room no one is talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because everyone’s still giving the elephant their money, and not you.”

… Okay, so he was more nuanced, but I think I captured the sentiment well. It seemed particularly spurred forth by a comment from Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer: “I’ve played a Nintendo Wii. I don’t see it as a competitor. It’s more of an expensive niche gaming device.”

That’s hilarious; calling a cheaper competitor that’s kicked your ass in sales “expensive” and “niche.” Don’t worry Howie, I’m sure Nintendo doesn’t view you as ‘competition’ either. I mean, for that to be the case you’d have to double your hardware sales for both your console AND your handheld. Of course, you’d still be behind in both counts.

Of course, Nintendo capitalizing on their success is another thing entirely. I think they waited far too long to start believing their own hype. I really hope they’ve got some good things up their sleeve.

For the record, my major annoyance is a shift toward developers providing games in a piecemeal fashion, with a total cost higher to consumers than it would’ve been under traditional circumstances.

But that thread in particular on EvAv was about new planes for Ace Combat 6. “New planes? Surely that’s worthwhile content, Jeff!” you object. “Indeed,” I retort, “The issue here is price.” They charge $2.50+ for skins to cover old models and tiny files (not even text files,) that just contain the few parameters that the planes require. That’s not even a meg if you’re doing it right. It’s Horse Armor all over again, but at least we had the common sense to be angry about it the first time. They’ve released 35+ planes, with nine (at the previous article’s date,) costing $5, and twenty-one costing at least $2.50. (About five were free.) This, for the record, is a travesty in my eyes.

People say “Then don’t buy them.” Don’t worry, I’m not being a hypocrite; I canceled my Xbox Live subscription months ago. And I don’t buy those things. I never bought a theme or gamerpic (or any other advertisement. That would be like buying a film trailer, or a print ad. It’s stupid.)

Man, remember all the great head-in-the-clouds things we heard about digital distribution? Developers could go without publishers, (or at least their efforts would be scaled back, netting developers more money with consumers paying less.) No shipping costs would also mean a reduction in product costs. With no shelves, shelf space would not be a factor, and games could be offered forever.

Back in ‘99, when Napster came out, I said “Y’know, I’d buy these songs for a dollar, if the opportunity was offered.” After almost a decade of lawsuits against music listeners, I’d be hard pressed to pay a dime (literally, I mean it, ten cents,) for a track of music. Today, I refuse to pay $50 a year for Xbox Live.

/edit: Oh! Since I canceled my account, every time I log my profile on my Xbox, it attempts to sign into Xbox Live. After a twenty minute phone call asking how to stop this automatic check, I was told I couldn’t. I’d have to delete my profile and create a new one. This wouldn’t be a big deal, if I didn’t need that profile to play my XBLA games after my console red-ringed… (They won’t play except in my account, post-refurbishing.) So, it’s not painful in and of itself, but it gets annoying, having to do it. Every. Single. Time. It’s a game console. It’s not supposed to have these problems! Gah.

What’s so micro about three dollars for a TV show? I mean, come on. Considering I already pay for the privilege of being on Xbox Live, a non-server system, this is bad enough:

Blah.