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Dear Game Developers,

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.

Everything that can be copied freely, will. And for some of the better stuff, it’s even legal. For instance: Five free albums you should download:

–AmpLive‘s album “Rainydayz”
Freely at: http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/
I apparently missed the fan outcry that surrounded this album (you can read about it on the link,) but whatever process it took to get it hosted freely on the net, then I’m glad it happened. The remix of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, with four of the seven songs featuring hip-hop vocals, could have been horrendously bad, but AmpLive never approaches that territory, and instead keeps is surprisingly fresh all throughout. There are a few effects such as ‘stuttering drums’ that you just really don’t associate with Radiohead, but you can only smirk at them, given how great the album is as a whole. Normally when a rock album is remixed by a DJ, it becomes “a rap album with rock samples and the original singer is nowhere to be found.” And to that we all typically roll our eyes, right? Right. Well, of the seven tracks on the album, four have other artists’ vocals, three don’t. Of those seven albums, Thom Yorke is noticeably sampled on six of them. Of those six, he’s the sole voice on three, and heavily featured on another. If rock albums are to ever be remixed with rappers over then, then AmpLive has just written the blueprint on how to do it. The rappers, singers, and music aren’t card board cut-outs to be glued where he sees fit, but instruments in themselves to be guided by his turntable, mixing board, and creativity, to create on cohesive song.
Best tracks: 2, 4, 7, 8

–NIN‘s album “The Slip”
Freely here: http://theslip.nin.com/
The Slip is Trent Reznor’s first full album since he told his record label ‘fuck off’, and decided he wanted to do things ‘his way’. As such, he gives the exemplary NIN experience: a story within an album that reeks of personal complication and near-futile struggle, only, this is different. If The Downward Spiral was the story of a person coming apart and failing, and The Fragile was an attempted rebuilding that ended in failure and realization at the fragility of the attempt, then The Slip is the realization that it’s not strength and overpowering that gains freedom, but simply agility and speed to keep other’s hands off of you; slipping away. And that’s exactly what Reznor did when he finally got out of his contract, and with that new found freedom, this album slips into a more comfortable pair of shoes as he realizes that the opposite of the pain previously felt isn’t happiness, but absence of feeling. And it (seems to) show that he’s come to realize his role in all of this, ending strongly on Demon Seed. And it’s a comfortable one too, as it plays almost like a greatest hits album that you’ve never heard before.
Best songs: 2 (though the vocal echo is a tad annoying,) 3 (noisecore, but it grew on me,) 5, 7 (Ahhh Clara, forever with us, forever not.)

–100 dBs‘s album “Aphex Twin Mashups”
Freely at: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/aphex/
DJ 100dBs (one hundred decibels,) mixes a work of techno-rap genius. Discontent that his every-day average hip-hop-head friends can’t appreciate finer techno works of Aphex Twin, he takes to task of mixing Richard James with lyrics that we all know well (assuming you’re into hiphop.) The result isn’t a molesting of Aphex, as some may imagine, but instead hip-hop that belongs on the soundtrack for The Fifth Element, or an equally hip futuristic film. Also, he has tons of other mixes for free here: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/
Best songs: 2, 6, 8, 10

–Harvey Danger‘s album Little by Little…
Freely at: http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/
Before it was cool to do so, Harvey Danger knew that giving away their album for free would not ‘make them worthless,’ but in actually ‘get them more fans’. Seems kinda obvious now, huh? But after a few years of hiatus they were back at it in 2005 and in September they gave away Little by Little (even though a physical copy was on the shelf.) The result? According to the Wiki: “Within two months of release, the album had been downloaded 100,000 times, while the first pressing of physical copies (packaged with a disc of bonus material) had nearly sold out.”

And amazingly, if you’re the kind of person who actually read blogs, like this, I think you’ll agree that it’s really stood the test of time.
Best songs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

–DJ Z-Trip & Radar‘s album Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session Vol. 2
Freely (DIRECTLY) at: http://djztrip.unknownvariable.com/audio/ztrip_fpv2.zip
From the first time I heard DJ Z-Trip I’ve been unable to pick my jaw up– No, wait, that’s not true. Not unable. UNWILLING. If history says nothing else about Z-Trip, it should be “He is the man with the golden ear.” Given any two sounds, I’ve no doubt he could figure out the way to optimally fit them together like an audial jigsaw puzzle that when completes shows a sonic picture of pure kickass. Now, this isn’t to slight Radar. DJ Radar is the turntablist who created sheet music for turntables. Yes, sheet music. He has since produced “Concerto for Turntable,” which he performed (along with an orchestra) at Carnegie Hall.

But this recording was done live, and as the liner notes say (something to the effect of (mine’s in a closet):) “Two men, five turn tables, and forty years of music.”

This is the album you want to own. Well, this and DJ Z-Trip and DJ P’s Uneasy Listening, which can also be found on DJ Z-Trip’s download page here: http://www.djztrip.com/downloads.html
Along with a remix of Mamma Said Knock You Out, Prince’s Kiss (with Murs,) Murs’ Beginning of the End Remix/Sampler, and tons more. Seriously. They’re good. They’re god damn good. They’re that good, and they’re free. And you should download them all.

I intend to get a ‘to do’ list widget, but until then, I’ll post here that I’m firmly aiming to do a Nintendo DS game. In fact, I’ve already ordered the R4 card. But until that gets here, I intend to dedicate this weekend completely to Dwarf Fortress.

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.