Calling your shot – Let players tag their target. Just, let them point, hit a button, and have that target marked in some fashion. From there, the possibilities expand exponentially.

1. Skill: If they hit it, dependent upon size, speed, view, power of shot, maybe even weather and penalty of missing given other nearby targets? Give them some kind of recognition or bonus. Hell, give players skill points for using that skill.

I never really used a bow in Oblivion, instead preferring to cleave enemies with an axe. But there was one time I did… When I saw deer. It was natural. It was primal. When I saw a deer, I pulled out my bow, snuck as close as possible, and shot. Invariably my sucky skill meant the deer lived, which meant I had to chase the deg through the first, completely forgetting whatever I was in the middle of. It was like they were purposely meddling with my fun with their… Fun!

2. Challenge: It was just like taking to a rooftop in GTA, pulling out your sniper rifle, and plugging interesting looking civilians. It was a shooting gallery, and I had tools to shoot with. How could you NOT save your game and occasionally do it?

Of course eventually police would come, increasing in number and strength, and eventually take you out. (Usually.) But man what fun it was, plugging a citizen going about their way, and seeing the chaos that ensued.

3. Self-defined Narrative: The key to emergent gameplay is that the player brings it with them. And that’s never more evident than when done with intent. But if you pick out the target, and tell the player why it needs to be done, then there’s no wiggle room. Instead, Let players mark people/places things, and let them tag them as important for themselves, for whatever reason.

Emergent gameplay gave us “zombie” in Halo 3, when it emerged from Halo 2 players consciously creating the rules from thin air. Oblivion gave extra damage if you shot a target while unseen, making initiative on a target worthwhile. GTA had instant kills with headshots.

These are just a few evident ideas that come with letting the player point at things. That’s all I’m suggesting, really. And anyone, AAA or indie, can do it.

Lines edited out of this post:
-Fact: I would’ve been trying to balance apples on the heads of Cyrodiil’s guards.
-Many games check for regional shots/damage. A game could even go so far as to let players highlight not only targets, but regions of targets.
-Imagine an action game that lets you press select/back, pauses the gameplay, and gives you a freeform camera to zoom around and pick your own target, then you get to try for it.
-Maybe a game with one player as the spotter, and the other as the shooter/sniper. Or a game where both players “mark” the other’s target, and they have to chase it down. (Instead of killing each other.)

Games are their gameplay mechanics, the choices and actions of the player. For all the crap we give them, licensed games actually often have a rare opportunity: unique mechanics. Any other game that mimics webswinging is going to be seen as a knock-off, or at least compared to Spider-Man.

To be fair, Justin notes that they try to do something with his “Spider Sense”, but that’s certainly not what I think of first when I think “Spider-Man”. What he rates a 2.5/5 game sounds like a thoroughly mediocre beat’em-up, which is a disappointment, given my love of older Spider-Man games.

Spider-Man 2 (Xbox, PS2) is actually one of my favorite games. I was one of the people blown away by the webswinging. It was a perfect example of both “appropriate difficulty” (being slightly difficult, but very fulfilling to pull off well) and the “ludic displacement” that occurs when a game makes you feel like you really are doing what’s happening in the game.

Despite Spider-Man 2 being third person, and despite how bad the blur looks in this pixelated video, you really got that feeling you imagined as a kid, of being Spider-Man, dipping from the rooftops into the streets of New York city, swinging back up, flying forward as fast as a normal person would fall. (Ultimate Spider-Man was still great, less so Spider-Man 3… Both the victim of over-refinement, imo, but still.)

Super heroes are typically defined by having unique abilities. In that very nature, they’re begging to be put into games, giving players unique actions and choices. Older Spidey games got him right. The Hulk: Ultimate Destruction game did a decent job of making you feel like you were wrecking shit, though it could’ve been better aside from that. From what I hear both Wolverine and Batman games had great combat, making you feel like the characters were “right”. Marvel Ultimate Alliance was a fun beat’em-up, not because it was particularly deep, but because it rallied together almost 30 loved characters. Why do a game featuring a singular beloved character, or even two, without trying to do well what that character is known for?

Here’s a few free suggestions for Activision’s next Spider-Man game.

• New York City – I’m serious. Forget corridor fighters. Don’t be silly.
• Make swinging a matter of skill – Anyone player should be able to do it, but being good at the mechanics should pay off well.
• Spider-Man has a history – Not saying you shouldn’t do “origin stories” or work them in, but, Spidey has a very deep gallery of well-known, well-defined, fun, friends and enemies. Utilize them.
• Peter Parker exists – Spider-Man has a personal life. Don’t be afraid to use that in more than a reference.
• Peter Parker is a photographer – Some games did it, but then cameras have only become popular in society, as well as other games. Some even do it well. You could, too.
• A random encounter should blow my mind – Sure, Spidey fights generic thugs all the time. That happens. But sometimes? Sometimes? Sometimes that bank robbery you stumble across should be Rhino.
• Subscriptions – Learn from comics. Everyone who owns the game gets a free few missions each week. They culminate each month in an arc. Do this for a month, free. Then charge a fee, $1 a week, $3 for a month, or sell subscriptions $10 for three months.

C’mon. Activision can’t say no to that last one. And face it, you’d buy them. I would, and I don’t even have a job.

Also, hi Activision. So, maybe you need someone to help with your next Spider-Man game? I mean, I don’t know if you heard, but I’m on the market. I’ve even got five years experience in producing. (Another medium…)

Over the five years I’d worked there, producing a weekday morning TV show. (About six years before that working in the studio.) I’ve visited a website called 4chan. You may know it, it’s the site that the “hacker group Anonymous” (who shut down Visa’s and MasterCard’s sites in late 2010 over the Wikileaks thing, and hacked Sony earlier in 2011) is often associated with.

Now, porn? Sure, I looked at nude women on the site. It has lots of that, too. LOTS. I actually befriended some of the people who post it. They’re good people. (And at least one has a pretty good eye for photography!) A few others have a good eye for porn, and that’s fine too.

My point in all this? It’s not like I was jerking off at work.

4chan is also the site that, back in 2006 when I first started producing, was (wrongly) targeted for a(n unfounded) bomb threat on NFL stadiums. Though I knew of it before, that was the first time I visited the site; to find info about the bomb threats because of my job. The scary part? Over the years? It’s clued me in on lots of things.

I ran a story on Visa and Mastercard’s websites being shut down the morning it happened. I wrote the story before it even happened, because I knew it was coming. I got the story from 4chan, when they were planning it. Hell, it’s where I heard about Wikileaks years ago before they got that cache of US communications. Back then they disrupting Kenyan elections! (Also soon after I got the producing job in 2006!) It was where I first read about Wikileaks’ initial release of the “Collateral Murder” video and the “Cablegate” releases. The place is an info-feed on steroids. And like much of the Internet, lots of it happens to be sexual, and/or horrible, dark things.

In the UK, I could’ve claimed I was doing research for Page 3. In south Georgia, visiting a site that’s the cultural engine of the Internet, and thus much of Western society (seriously, let that sink in. It really is.) is a firing offense.

And not just being fired, but being told I could not procure (myself, or have provided) material to use for my resume for future jobs. I effectively have to start over in this industry, I’m finding out. I recently had an interviewer tell me that they’d like to give me a second chance, but without resume material, I had no chance. (In my industry, most people require a copy of a show you’ve produced as example of your work ability.)

I hope this doesn’t come off as whining and bitching, at least not too much. I actually liked the people I worked with. And actually? I get that this is a big issue. But being fired for visiting a site that, despite having a horrible “worthwhile:waste” ratio, can be worthwhile depending on the context? Man. That sucks.

I wrote most of the above (minus the last two paragraphs) that day, but never got around to posting it. The same day, my mother was found on the floor of her apartment. She’d been there 20 hours, and was very dehydrated. (She’d been sick, and hadn’t been taking care of herself well.) We almost lost her. She’s better now, thankfully. Got out of the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Oddly, I think that took some of the edge off of focusing on the job thing. First, for having a larger worry, and after the first week, when we realized she was going to be okay.

So, yeah. Busy times. But, I forgot I had this as a draft until today, so, I added and published it.

Anyone out there know know of anyone hiring in TV news? Or writing/editing? Or project management? (Essentially the two parts of TV producing.)

All you need is an online database, users to populate it, and API for developers to use it.

The database notes each user’s library (just taking the track titles, paths, and metadata, not actually uploading the music,) and asking users to tag the tracks by context, for use in interactive media when the appropriate context arises. Bam. Free million dollar soundtracks for anyone who wants to implement the system. The only cost being the user buying the music. It’s like playing music over games on consoles, only smarter.

(Sidenote: I don’t think any cloud services offer APIs for other developers, but it may be possible in the future to ask users for that data too, if you feel like streaming their music.)

Of course, users won’t be required to tag ALL of their data, but some should be required to lighten the load (and better personalize things.)

So after users’ data is pinged, the tags are of the veins “fast-paced, thrilling, scary, romantic, sexy, slow, energetic, sad, etc” to fit mood. But also consider an extra layer of “8bit, by instrument, etc.,”. To make it pitch perfect, ask users to rate each tag’s value. Especially if you want to do this after a game. (For instance, play the music, and ask “Do you feel this music was appropriate suspenseful during the standoff with ?” Let users pick if they want to use yes/no, a five point, or a ten point scale.)

It will take time for an entire library to populate. New users should be required to tag at least ten tracks, but power users (anyone logging in and investing the time) can categorize to their heart’s content. Maybe a deal could be struck with Pandora to import their categorization metadata? Power users should also be able to specify portions of songs instead of the entire track. (“Start this track :10 in, bypassing spoken words.”)

The idea is to give any game that wants to use the system a soundtrack custom-built by context needed in the game, with music already knowingly enjoyed by the user, at zero dollar cost to the developer at point of purchase. The only investment needed is the time investment required to learn the API to use it in your game.

Now, am I over- thinking the problem? Probably. But I’m okay with that. This is a blog post, not a plan to actually do this. Now, how does this get done? Get Microsoft to do it. Or Valve. Someone with a large interest in PC gaming. (Of course, Microsoft doesn’t REALLY have that, but, they like to claim they do with “Games for Windows Live.”)

But, it has to include a large, open music selection as well, like http://www.freesound.org/ populated by tracks available for public use and distribution, so developers can pack that music in, giving the install base something to begin with, to make sure bases are covered.

Okay. Done. Just had to get that out of my brain. It was bugging me. Thanks.

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.

Ask me anything

Brad: Diablo 3 needs to come out. I’ve been in the mood for a good mindless hack n slash for quite sometime.

Jeffool: I just could never get into’em. The Diablo games.

Brad: That’s not surprising. You don’t have the choice to NOT kill the minions and just join up with Diablo… Or saying fuck it, running off with the barmaid and moving out into the woods where you could decide or not decide to have children, which depending on how you raise them of course, might rise up and defeat Diablo for you, or just sponge off of you their entire lives… THEN you’d get into it. However, being force to just go hack some shit up to progress through the game… I totally see you saying “meh”

Jeffool: I’m going to quote that somewhere.

Now the director behind that short, Kevin Tancharoen, says his pitch has been turned down. But he’s not letting that stop him! He’s going pirate, doing ten web-episodes on the riff, including Michael Jai White returning as Jax. Of course it remains to be seen if Warner Bros. will attempt to stop him from using their IP… (Update: misunderstanding… Ignore that.)

Released online June 7th, 2010, the general consensus on the short was overwhelmingly positive. People are comfortable enough with remix culture that we don’t mind seeing a completely new take on an idea (and characters) that are well established. The short reintroduces us to characters, redefining them in a unique, albeit grimdark, way. Instantly plenty of other sites and forums had their own ideas. Here are some of mine, and some others I found online.

Liu Kang: Liu Kang’s parents agreed to be smuggled into the US by Shang Tsung, hoping for a better life, with promises that they could work off the debt. Unknowingly, they were selling themselves into slave labor. After he was born, he was smuggled back to his family in China. Furious at what he saw as their “theft”of his property, Shang Tsung kills the parents as an example to others. Now an adult, Liu Kang returns to Deacon City for revenge.

Kitana / Mileena: Twin sisters, Kitana goodhearted stripper, Mileena… Not so much. More a skanky prostitute. Mileena, driven by her constant envy of her more-loved sister, has multiple plastic surgeries in an attempt to constantly improve her looks, eventually runs afoul of Baraka’s roach motel fronts, and becomes horribly disfigured. (You all know the “mad doctor disfigures someone and sees it as beauty” bit.) As she walks away from her most recent facial surgery, there’s an attempted rape, until the rapist yanks away the bandages and sees what’s beneath… Mileena fights back against her attacker. After seeing her horrible face, the attacker freaks out, and in the struggle, she accidentally kills him. She eventually runs home and sees herself… And slowly falls off the deep end by what’s happened. Far from rational given the circumstances, she focuses her rage on her sister, jealous of the attention always given to her, and blames Kitana for driving her to doing these crazy things, including taking the man’s life, a line she decides was easy to cross. For fun and extra grimdark, she can attempt to hit on one of the other fighters, attempt to seduce him, and slaughter them as well! (Too much?)

Stryker / Kabal / Nightwolf: Stryker is a cop with a history of being “overzealous,” including a raid in a casino that went bad, and left the Native American family that ran it dead. Nightwolf’s family. Reprimanded for his actions, Stryker is “let go” from the police force, and instead takes a job as a private prison guard. Already being known as a vicious dirty cop, he begins living up to the role, beating on inmates for his shits and giggles. He’s fired when he lobs a few smoke grenades into the solitary confinement cell of a gang member. The gas completely destroys his eyes, throat, eyes, and esophagus. The only thing that keeps him alive is an artificial respirator. He wears a gas mask to make the breathing even easier. Yes, that gang member was Kabal. Now, without hope for a return to his glory, Stryker enters the tournament to clean up the streets by murdering what he considers unwanted elements.

Smoke / Cyrax / Sektor: Smoke, a member of the Lin Kuei like Sub-Zero, and friend of Cyrax and Sektor, two DJs who are friends of his who like to sample the screams, bones breaking, and flesh-ripping sounds of his victims in techno gorecore mixes. Think Daft Punk meets Eli Roth’s nightmares,) they’re not fighters, just personalities, and likely easy victims for someone. Potentially, they could also be the insane tech gurus behind some of the more insane fighting facilities, hence the crazy things like spikes and acid traps everywhere. It’d be nice if they turned on Smoke, saying it was only business.

Quan Chi: The true tournament organizer, an albino madman who runs the tournament as both a competition for killers, a terror device to destabilize the area, and snuff film market.

Kano: Quan Chi’s promising new experiment, lightweight durable headgear (not a replacement eye, maybe a contact lens or fucked-up looking implant?) that allows for the recording of the first person murders of the wearer. Kano is the first to test it by removing a man’s still-beating heart from his chest.

To be honest, I’m much happier with this as a webseries than a film. Each episode can revealing part of the world through the set/style, and the larger picture of the tournament/war and what it means, with each episode containing a fight.

Plenty of websites and forums have great ideas, those are some of my favorites, with some of my own thrown in! (Of course, not every character would be a martial artist, and each would not play an equal role. Some just serial killers and crazies to ratchet up the insanity.) Many are cliches, but really, isn’t Mortal Kombat in itself rife with them, only turned up to 11? That’s what it did right.

But before that?
… It’s been a while. I’ll give you a short lists of games I truly love, and have shrugged off other things in favor of (in no particular order): Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind (Oh God,) Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico.

And close? Saint’s Row 2, and GTA: San Andreas, and sometimes, rarely but sometimes, GTA4.

I’m sure there are tons more, but… That’s off the top of my head.

Ask me anything

If you do buy a used game, you (increasingly?) have to pay an additional charge to play online, something that was included with the initial purchase price. Recently the Creative Director of THQ (the publisher of the game,) Cory Ledesma tells CVG:

“I don’t think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don’t get the online feature set I don’t really have much sympathy for them. … That’s a little blunt but we hope it doesn’t disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game’s bought used we get cheated.”

Today Tycho of Penny Arcade chimed in, (PA being a huge webcomic often seen as “the voice of gamers,” they they’ve often shrugged off the label,) and Tycho is vehemently against the purchasing of games from the secondary market. This has raised the ire of many gamers.

Personally, I haven’t bought many games second-hand in the years past. Then again, I haven’t bought many games at all in years past. I’ve raised my standards in gaming, largely to Shadow of the Colossus and a few other games that carry both their story and an interesting subtext well. That said, I’m bored, and thought I’d make some comments.

o If trade-ins are really the problem, why not look toward those who are running the trade-in market? The Games Industry has turned a blind eye to their business partners (GameStop, Target (as of today), etc.) who, if this truly a grievous crime, are the perpetrators. To use a possibly-reaching comparison, publishers are like fathers beating on their children for doing what their mother says is okay. And the father refuses to address the mother’s implicit guilt in rearing her child. It’s not the child’s fault. The marriage is bad.

o Imagine you made songs for an iTunes and the songs sold for a dollar each. Then imagine iTunes introduced a service that lets people sell songs back to the store for a quarter each, and sold the “used strips” for fifty cents and keep all the profit for themselves. This would eat into your potential profits. Would that be the fault of the fans, who truly enjoyed your song but wanted to get it for the cheapest price possible from those who didn’t? The fault of iTunes who agreed to sell your music, but is screwed you? Or your own fault for supporting the site that not only with your music, but pre-order bonuses, and tons of give-aways in your deal with them, as game publishers do with game stores?

o Quite simply, it’s double charging for a portion of the game included in the original price.

o IANAL, but I imagine there would be no legal problem with cracking the second-charge scheme. As that portion of the game was included for the price of purchase, after that it’s up to the person who bought it to decide what to do with it. So long as no one tries to use the service after they sell it, or duplicate the service, I really doubt they’d have a case.

Bonus points:
o If people felt a developer’s games were worth keeping, this wouldn’t even be an issue, but they’re largely not — hence the all too common scenario of developers constantly pumping out annual updates for full price. Note that the “fighting words” were over a game that’s had a yearly iteration since 2000. What impetus do they have to make a game that players will even WANT to play years later when they’ll be forced to make a new one next year anyway? You think too many people are looking to sell their copies of Civilization or games from Team Ico?

o I own an Xbox 360. Thanks Microsoft, for giving me the chance to pay publishers extra to play a game online that I’m already paying you once to play online on an Internet connection that I’m already paying someone else for. Dicks.