Also? Spoilers abounds!

The GTA3 series was about gangsters. The first one had “thugs” and “mafioso.” Vice City was more the latter, with San Andreas more the former. But GTA4 was more daunting. It wasn’t about style, it was about SOMETHING. It was about the pursuit of the American dream, freedom, and Niko’s quest for freedom from his past. But it failed for me. The culprit was the mis-marriage of narrative elements and gameplay. I think Rockstar bungled it by trying to make the narrative highpoint something it shouldn’t have been. To me, it was pretty evident where the emotional highpoint was in terms of gameplay. And that’s what they should’ve went with for the narrative as well.

First, the “point” of GTA4. In one of the earlier missions in the game you’re given the freedom to kill, or to not kill, someone you’ve chased down. The freedom of choice is a recurring theme in GTA4. Niko talks about choosing a new life, after he cleans up a few loose ends. His cousin Roman constantly chooses to get in over his head in attempt to get ahead. In the game you’re given choices in multiple missions. In at least three distinct places during the main narrative you’re given a choice between killing one of two strong supporting characters. (Francis McReary/Derrik McReary, Dwayne Forge/Playboy X, and Pegorino/Dimitri.) And then there’s what is, to me, the biggest choice in the game, foreshadowed from the very beginning of the game.

Note: The player CHOOSES to shoot Darko Brevic here. You don’t have to. Purely optional. But for me, this is undeniably the highpoint of the game emotionally and for gameplay, given that it’s a choice the player makes. That was the moment that you, the player, decides who Niko is going to be from that moment forward. You decide what kind of man he will be. (Sure it’s odd thinking “I let the man who killed my friends live and I’m mowing down dozens of passersby while driving down the street.” but that’s acceptable in GTA, and not indicative of the narrative. Those people are pellets in Pac-Man. This man, is just that. A man.) What I have a problem with is that this is not the end of the game.

The narrative continues, picking back up a completely unconnected plot that was interspersed in a lopsided fashion throughout the game. And then Niko is offered another choice, his final. You have to take a side in a mob dispute.

Wait, what? A mob dispute? I go through some deep emotional issues, dredge up the deaths of my entire fucking village back in Eastern Europe, and my childhood friends who died in a war? And deal with the fact that it was made possible by the only other surviving friend from that time, who is completely unrecognizable to me? And then… A mob dispute? What the fuck? It’s like your mother dies in a car wreck and your boss says “So, uh, the funeral’s Thursday? You’re uh, going to be able to come in this Saturday to fill in for Bob, right?”

After this monumental moment for Niko, which has no bearing on the rest of the game, you choose between helping Pegorino or Dimitri. Depending on which you kill, either your cousin or your girlfriend is killed, and you are forced to kill the remaining mobster. Forced to kill. Even after you just (potentially) let the man who got your entire army squad killed for a thousand dollars, live. The killing of your goddamned annoying cousin, or the girlfriend who was as interesting as a (blank brown) cardboard box, is the straw that broke the camel’s back? And for that you end on the down note of your decision to not have really mattered after all.

Allow me to offer a different suggestion. Something that should have happened before Darko Brevic was delivered. FIRST you do your requisite mafioso bit. Go ahead, make me choose. Kill one of the people I somewhat remotely feel something that could almost be considered an obligation to. Piss me off. Get me angry. This fucker, this Godfather-wannabe thinks he can kill the woman-I-(am-forced-to)-love/my-cousin-(that-annoys-me-but-fuck-it-he’s-family-you-know-what-I-mean-you-have-a-cousin-like-that-too)?! Fuck that noise, let’s jack a car and go kill some goddamn virtual bad guys!

Bam. Cut to the end. Done. I’ll miss my cousin/girl. They meant a lot to me. Well, to Niko/me. THEN… *ring* “What, what’s that? My phone? Hello? What? You found Darko Brevic? Where is he?”

Because goddamn it, that’s an ending. If you’re going to bother giving me a choice? Let it mean something.

That said, I did write a goodbye that the slack bastard (I kid, I kid; I love the guy, he knows that,) never got around to recording, so I thought I’d post it here. (Seriously, it’s not like there was a huge following, so it’s no big deal.) I wrote the majority of them “as him,” so to speak, so here it is:

Welcome to the Game Industry Newscast for this Friday, August fifth, I’m Justin, and it’s last call.

We’ve had fifty-nine weekday micropodcasts cataloging the day’s game industry news over three months time. The most-listened-to episode has one hundred and thirty five listens as of this recording. The lowest, four. New episodes would get about a dozen listens that day, and a few times that after about a week.

It seems odd to think about it, but many episodes will continue to get a few more listens until this domain expires or they’re taken down. So in a way the podcast isn’t dying, just hibernating. It was a new idea that was never entirely pulled off. A weekday micropodcast that was intended to be syndicated as a weekly news update for other podcasts. Crazy? Maybe. But it was fun, and it was aided wonderfully by friends who chimed in and some talented musicians who let us use their music free of charge. Maybe one day it’ll return, and it’ll work as imagined. But not today.

It’s an idea we may revisit in the far future. But it’s not one that we’re up for doing right now. Last week my producer Jeff decided that he didn’t have the time available to make GIN what he wanted it to be, and in turn decided would rather turn his attention elsewhere. With that, I don’t have the time to do it by myself.

This has been your Game Industry Newscast, I’m Justin, and on behalf of our producer Jeff, here, or elsewhere, we’ll see you in the future.

Everyone scratched their heads when the game Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was announced. Everyone thought it was pretty dumb. The question I’m asking, and hopefully answering, is ‘why’? Why did we all, myself included, look at this idea, and just turn away? When you think to ask the question, I think it’s pretty obvious, and I don’t mean “the notion of these properties crossing over is dumb,” we’ve all overlooked far stupider things in games and loved them beyond belief.

What I’m talking about is two places where the Mortal Kombat series fell apart for me. Fighting(MK5) and story(MK4.) “Worried about the story in a fighting game?! That’s insane!” Yeah, I know. I’m not trying to say that it was Dostoevsky or anything, I’m just saying that it ‘worked’. But let me tackle the fighting first.

MK5 (Deadly Alliance) was the first to give each fighter a completely different movelist. Prior to this, everyone’s punches was the same, everyone’s kicks were the same, and everyone’s movement speeds and jumping were exactly. the. same. This was wonderful.

In a typical fighting game some characters are drastically overpowered, some are inherently flawed when used against other certain characters, and some are perfectly balanced. Imagine a chess game where each player has a completely random set-up, some have rooks on the front row, some have their king there, sometimes your king is directly across from an opponent’s rook/queen and it’s almost impossible for you to win, and sometimes? Sometimes you start with three queens. It all depends on both who you choose, and wh you’re fighting. That’s a normal fighting game.

Mortal Kombat 1-4 took a far different approach that was much closer to traditional chess. All of the characters had a first row of pawns, for one. That’s to say that all of the non-special moves were exactly the same. On the back row, however, you start with (roughly) similar layouts, but with changes in location. Sure, the ocassional character is a little stronger or weaker than the rest, but it’s not so insanely disproportionate as the previous system, and it’s usually far more obvious due to lack of complexity.

So, yeah, it was limited, but it was, to me, far more fun.

The story? Well, it just seemed to grow more and more disparate and whimsical.

Typically in fighting games ‘stories’ are only a combination of context and character biographies/endings. (I’m not saying that they can’t be better, but this is all gamers require to consider a fighter to ‘have a story,’ is all I mean.) Imagine a series of threads, a few overlapping in places, but conjoining into a common weave for the game’s duration, and then fraying out again with each thread being each character’s ending. That’s how the minimum writing in fighting games usually works.

For sequels the developer traditionally picks one of the ending threads, decides it’s the ‘correct’ one and fashions a new story. This means they have to bridge the initial threads of returning characters (often including elements of those characters ending threads, chosen one or not,) AND tie in new threads introduced in new characters. Then of course they also have to create new ending threads for all of the characters. The fact that each character has his own thread that weaves throughout the game series opens the possibility for mind-numbing over-complexity, and bet your ass that Midway took this chance to wreak havoc with the MK world.

I’m used to reading comics, so when a character that’s existed for forty years says that he got his powers ten years ago, despite the fact that I’ve read his book for ten years, it doesn’t bother me a bit. I ‘get it’. But why the fuck is Noob Saibot really Sub-Zero I? Why bother killing him off and creating Sub-Zero II at all if he’s going to effectively be the same guy? Why go from a kumite in MK1 to an inter-dimensional war in MK3 if all the gods that held the kumite were in on it to begin with? Just declare war from the get-go.

I understand that the large array of characters was, hell, IS a draw, but seriously, wtf. It’s not like DC comics started out with the intent to become so convoluted as to require Infinite Crisis (much less Final Crises.) But MK seems hellbent on taking minimal requirements for storytelling and making me shake my head and just walk away in disgust. In ending, they really just need to reboot the series.

*In Brett’s Footnotes fashion let me note that I fully plan to give more thought to a class-based chess game now. Also, sorry, I lied, this wasn’t about MMOs, but I do have a notion swirling around in el cabesa, it’s just not coming out yet.

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.

Stylistically speaking, clothes in WoW are completely unimportant. Now sure, they have to fit in with the rest of the game (though, that’s a pretty low bar) and you’ll always have people talking about how kickass Set A looks on Race 2, or how Set B’s helmet looks better than Set A’s does… But given the choice, nearly all players choose the same gear; that with higher stats. Players make logical choices based on what they’ll need and simple numbers dictate the outcome. If a MMO’s world is ever going to be important, then player involvement in world status matters, and a large part of that is the visual style. I think one way to encourage players to get a sense of style, and self, is to handle gear closer to how Oblivion does it, than WoW.

In Oblivion the amount of damage a weapon does or defense armor provides is given a rating, from one to ~twenty. That’s it. I think encouraging players to go after gear that goes closer to their personal taste makes the players care about their avatars because of their representation of self rather than the amount of time put into creation (though that could certainly still apply.) Oblivion has enchantments and weapons can be made stronger with them, but that’s largely negligible (or should be toned down in a shared world.)

Essentially, I’d like to shift the onus on gear-fixation from statistical to personal preference. Why? Why not? If you’re a player, you get to exhibit personal taste and stay competitive. If you’re a developer, you get to see what your users prefer.

Bonus points: Allow players to create their own gear and submit it for anonymous peer review before passing it on to developers for the final thumbs up.

Next up? Why this isn’t such a bad idea.

FYI, this is part of a series of posts. You’ll be able to read more lame opinions on MMOs here.

I think my major problem with any MMO comes from the size of the population, and how that serves to reduce the flexibility of online worlds. With thousands playing on a server, one can’t reasonably expect unique quests or items, available only to one person. The other thousands of players would feel cheated because the odds are horribly against _them_ getting the item or triggering a rare event. Maybe Neverwinter Rights modders have it right, and it’s not reasonable to run small-server MMOs and make a profit. Maybe that will forever remain the realm of hobbyists… But damn it, there’s only one Excalibur, and that should be the rule on every server. And getting that sword should be something special for the player, and the server. A player getting an item like that isn’t a problem if I know him, or one of his friends (I’m jealous, but happy for him.) It becomes a problem when I, the player, begins to believe I’ll never be able to achieve something on a world-scale. In most MMOs there are just too many people for anyone to have an influence, so, we need a massive multiplayer massacre. I’m no psychoanalyst, but I’m going to toss the number “less than three hundred” out there as the number of players I want on a server. I had a few additional paragraphs explaining why (crazy talk, including the Monkey Sphere and Kevin Bacon,) and how it would cost more (hence the Visa joke at the top,) but it’s best summed up as “because this is my blog and I say so.”

But I want fewer players, because I want a more flexible world. A world can’t be all things to all people, so I want it to be ‘more’ to ‘fewer’. When playing WoW I can’t get the feeling that I’m special because I’m always just one of dozens of heroes running around trying to kill the same dungeon boss. And I have no interest in the rat race of getting the latest and greatest gear; but I want gear that “I” have, and not everyone else. I need to be able to do something that only “I” did. If I kill an ogre, then he should be dead. But if you have thousands of players, then the ogre dies and most people never even _hear_ about it. So what’s needed is a larger variety of weapon appearances, that have the same effect, and fewer players to have repeat weapons/armor.

Obviously even with smaller populations you’ll have some players that become ‘dungeon runners’/'treasure hunters’ that grab all the same stuff and try to bleed the resources dry, so you’ll need a way to account for those guys. That’s fine, we can fit in some mechanic to cripple grinding like other MMOs have. Make higher players have a smaller chance of getting amazing gear if they plunder every day. If they wait a few days, then their chances rise. Besides, most caves have nothing but nests of bad guys that slowly repopulate in reasonable numbers only if left undisturbed… None of that instant repop stuff. The point is to encourage the player to focus on other things. In fact, here’s a good time to point out MMOs need other things. Not to diminish the importance of raiding, but to refocus the onus so that it’s not squarely on all raiding all the time. Build other games systems with worthy rewards. Aside from encouraging PVP and revenge (a later post,) there’s player pit fighting, player races, gambling, gambling on fighting/races/other-games, resource gathering, running businesses, fishing, smithing, farming/planting, building, and even the arts, that can all be built into pivotal roles of a fantasy MMO easily (contextually speaking.) Hell, smithing, fishing, farming and the likes can all be done into simple mini-games that can determine the outcome. Players don’t need skill levels when the game requires an actual skill. (I tried to find a post Jeff Freeman made about sex in MMOs, but couldn’t find it. You out there, Not-Me Freeman?)

What’s needed is a world that can fuction interestingly without players at all. (When playing Oblivion, despite the conversation trees not being deep, I easily saw NPCs as ‘the world’ and myself as ‘something outside of it, affecting it’.) In WoW, there is no affecting the world. No matter how big you are, players are the only worthwhile fish (no matter how big/little) in an ocean. Sure, a lot of that was poor writing, but there’s also the fact that even NPCs don’t function in the gameworld. They only exist to cater to players. I need a world where, after killing an NPC (enemy or comrade,) they die (players too, but that’s also another post.) Point being that dead people should stay dead (unless a player is able to revive them.)

Through player action (the killing (or not,) of major NPCs/players, item capture/retrieval/use, and other such single-player RPG mainstays,) the MMO-world’s character-driven narrative should progress to an eventual end of the given story arc within a matter of months, no longer than a year. The idea of regularly running through instances to kill an enemy every week bores me to no end. Playing WoW, if you charge the enemy and kill their king, he should die. The next in line should ascend. Players who are bad guys wipe out a town of NPCs? Tough. There should be no instant-repopulation an hour later. Maybe have a boat of immigrants arriving on the continent once a week and have those people replace the dead NPCs (or every time a new player signs up, they get off the boat and bring NPCs with them.) If a player kills a giant and drags its helmet into the town square and tosses it on a statue, it should stay there until someone destroys it or knocks it down. I want enterprising players to be able to buy printing presses, and make in-game newspapers, using them to slander other guilds and competing businesses. I want them to buy stores, existing homes, and on rare occassion, build where they want. Hell, have public offices where the player-elected mayor decides if players can legally draw weapons in city-limits. If a player wants to open a bakery, and occasionally toss a poison pie in amongst the rest, detectable to only the well-trained nose, because they think everyone should have such skills? Rock on, you kooky CSI addict. And if a group of players wants to help bring an end to the world, doing the bidding of the bad guy in the game… It’s up to everyone else to stop them.

That’s all I want. A smaller world, a smaller population, with narrative events that are affected by players. Is that too much to ask? Eh, probably.

FYI, this is part of a series of posts. You’ll be able to read more lame opinions on MMOs here.