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Private Notes
A video game takes up more of our time than movies, TV, or books, but they have far less to say. Literally: while TV scripts have about 120 words per minute of dialogue, we timed several narrative heavy games at about 16 words per minute. Many of those words are aimed at giving the player game information, not plot exposition, but even so, games like Destiny waste the time they do have on instructional text or throwaway lines. Characters simply restate what's going on around them or make meaningless comments to cover the gap in boring sections of gameplay. Contrast that with the Witcher 3, which dispenses instructions in five words and then proceeds to tell a story. Good dialogue should meet at least one of four basic criteria: 1) Tells us about the world 2) Tells us about the speaker 3) Tells us about other characters, or 4) Moves the plot forward. When games have so few words to build their story, it's a shame to see those opportunities wasted on filler.
The television show "Mr. Robot" provides a very good example of how to get the most of a scene. SPOILER ALERT in this episode and this description! In episode 9, the show reveals that the antagonist is actually a facet of the hero's split personality. In the scene where it's revealed, they use music that not only reflects the protagonist's state of mind, it also references Fight Club, a movie with a similar story reveal that used the same music. With this simple choice, they have created both an internal reference - the mindset of the character - and an external reference - the similarity to Fight Club - which come together to form a richer interpretation for the viewer of the show. Let us know in the comments about games you've played that also manage to pack multiple messages into a few simple references!
VR is extremely impressive and super cool, but even when it hits the consumer market, it still faces a lot of challenges keeping it from full mass-market adoption--not just among players, but among game devs too.
The European Union (EU) has passed laws regulating free-to-play games, but their focus has been on limiting the way Free-to-Play games target children. It's not a bad start, but since children only make up a small sliver of the F2P market, it still leaves the major targets of predatory F2P companies unprotected. People with depression, compulsive personalities, or people who form close bonds with the internet community are deliberately exploited by companies that expect to pump thousands of dollars of revenue out of a single one of these users by preying upon human psychology. We're leary of the form that F2P regulatory laws could take, especially seeing as the versions in the EU triggered both Apple and Google to overcompensate by punishing innocent developers, but as long as companies continue to build game economies on the assumption that they can exploit these "whales" then we are running a dangerous risk of requiring government intervention to protect the players.
It's a brand new year, and there a few interesting trends we're keeping an eye on as 2016 shapes up. For starters, the Portable Steam Machine may create a unique space for itself in the market. Since Apple devices like the iPad took over the mobile scene, there haven't really been any portable games designed around a controller input other than Nintendo 3DS - and its control scheme is unique enough to make porting to other systems difficult. The Portable Steam Machine, on the other hand, is built to play on both a handheld and a computer and it has a built in controller that unlocks diffferent avenues for game designers wishing to be successful in multiple sections of the market. We're also keeping an eye on the rapid acquisitions of non-Chinese game developers by Chinese corporations like Tencent and Snail Games.
Why are there no good movies about video games? We asked our friend Movie Bob to weigh in, since this topic is his specialty. And there's no single answer to it. True, video games have a different storytelling style because of their interactive nature, but books and plays and even song also have different approaches that have been adapted successfully. The bigger concern is that the people with money and the power to make decisions in the film industry didn't grow up with our classic games. Looking back to Tim Burton's Batman, that movie was a hit that spawned multiple comic book movies - but they were all based off old franchises (Dick Tracy) or new fads (Spawn) instead of the most popular and enduring characters (Spiderman). They picked the wrong properties. Another challenge is that in games, caring about the story isn't necessarily part of caring about the game. Street Fighter has a narrative that most players don't even know about.
If the goal of science fiction is - as John W. Campbell once said - to "make the marvelous seem mundane, and then the mundane will seem marvelous" then many games let us down by forcing us to experience the same overblown things repeatedly until we get tired of them. But good mundanity gets us to imagine what technology would look like (and do for us) in our regular lives. That's called mechanical transference, and it's something hard sci-fi is really good at creating.
For our long-running Games You Might Not Have Tried series, Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar.
Even though the odds of winning are worse, the appeal of the giant jackpot makes it so there's an exponential increase in the number of people who want to try their luck. We have to wonder, is there a point where the odds become so low it actually discourages players, or will the size of the reward become irresistible no matter how unlikely we know we are to win?
More and more children are encountering games at a young age, but it's still far from all of them, and a student who doesn't understand how to use a controller or the concept of XP won't get much out of educational game systems. So the question becomes, should we teach games literacy in schools in the same way we teach written literacy?
The way we envision life in the future says a lot about our lives today. From ray guns to cyberpunk, our vision of the future has evolved over time, but lately there hasn't been a broadly articulated vision that's unique to the 21st century. We've simply mashed together elements of familiar futuristic worlds instead of imagining our own. Why not, and what does that say about us?
Tucked away in a secret theater inside the Witness is a film clip from the indie movie Nostalghia, where we watch a man agonizingly - and for no rational reason - try to carry a flickering candle flame across a watery courtyard. This little clip brilliantly captures the feeling of playing The Witness and presents a metaphor for the player's struggle to solve its difficult puzzles.
What does it take to become an animator? Where should you start, what should you study, and how can you get better? Dan answers these questions from the perspective of a professional animator who's worked in games and movies!
Most AAA games don't include local multiplayer, and our community is missing out on the opportunity to share games with each other by playing side-by-side. This social aspect teaches us how to behave civilly even when a game gets heated or goes poorly.
Tom Clancy's The Division uses the present day United States as a setting, but it runs roughshod over the real and troubling issues facing American society. It glorifies totalitarianism and the use of force against citizens whose rights are ignored and whose humanity is stripped away by mechanics that directly equate racial and class stereotypes with villainy.
When students complain that their school didn't prepare them and designers report they give no special weight to job applicants with a design degree, something has gone wrong. A rigorous liberal arts education combined with ongoing project courses may give students the social and intellectual skills that systems and design courses alone cannot.
The arbitrary division between casual and core game design falls short when predicting the needs of today's players. Old assumptions that core players will want to invest the most time to play the game fully fall apart when we realize both that many traditional "core" players now have busy lives and a lot of games to choose from, so they often just play for a short time.
Put a person in a lab coat, and they start to think like a scientist. Does the same symbolic meaning apply to the outfits characters wear in games? Though often considered simply aesthetic choices, the clothes that characters wear may actually impact how players perceive them and their intended playstyle in the game.
Games can be only two or three hours long and still be worth every dollar charged for them. Stretching out playtime to meet an arbitrary goal doesn't make the game any better, but it would force developers to go over budget. Kneejerk reactions too often cause short games to get bad reviews even when they deliver on an excellent experience.
Academics generate research that often benefits the commercial industry long-term. Unfortunately, game academics are poorly supported by institutions which have not adapted to game studies as a hands-on, creative field.
Blizzard recently took down a fan server running a vanilla version of World of Warcraft. They were well within their rights to do so, but it raises interesting questions about the rights players have to keep playing games they buy in the format they bought them. Is there a middle ground between a developer's needs and a player's wishes?
Trademark and copyright play important roles in the gaming industry. The need to defend trademarks has spurred many companies to undertake unpopular lawsuits. On the other hand, attempts to copyright or patent game designs have been rejected, which allows developers to incorporate new ideas into their own work but leaves them unprotected from clone games.
Games Workshop has done a complete about face on its approach to video game licensing. They used to focus on one key partner (SSI Mindscape or THQ) producing high quality, big budget games. But recently, they started licensing multiple video game developers, many with no proven record of success. Why the sudden change?
Forcing a player to backtrack through an empty level after they've defeated everything inside it is bad level design. Level designers have several tools to address this problem, which can be easily avoided if the game design team plans for it.
Games are uniquely suited as a medium to teach us about how our world works. By emulating incentive systems and allowing the player to explore and make their own mistakes, games can change people's minds - in some cases, better than a sermon or lecture on the subject could. As a medium, games can both comment on our society and help us recognize faulty systems all around us.
Revolution 1979 cracks the code of how to make games function as documentaries, showing how we can educate players about a real world topic and let them experience it without locking them into a passive role. By casting the player as a minor participant, rather than a traditional game hero, this game makes the events personal and retains their agency without asking them to change the course of history.
We believe games can be a great teaching tool, but we need data to study that assumption in an actual classroom setting. The team at Filament Games partnered with a Sun Prairie School District teacher named Mary Headington to analyze exactly that.
For our long-running Games You Might Not Have Tried series, Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar.
If you want to try games that feel different, that always feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried:
Working with remote teams can be a huge help, and is often a necessity for independent developers, but many teams don't know how to provide the resources and organization required for their remote team members to be effective. By setting reasonable expectations and providing clear lines of communication, however, companies and team leads can achieve great results with a distributed team.
To honor our 300th episode, James wanted to share a message for his young nephews, to help them see the value of their passion for games by talking about the lessons he's learned from them. The first, most important lesson? Don't give up. Practice determination constantly, because giving up is never more likely to get you the results you want.
The most important skill for a game designer is understanding the fantasy or player experience their game wants to deliver. Dig deep into the genre of the game, study both the best and worst examples from all media to understand why people love that genre, and then design visuals, story, and mechanics that make the most of that understanding.
Pokemon Go demonstrated the potential of a well-themed augmented reality game to capture people's imagination, but as far as game design, it doesn't offer much. We take a look at how a hypothetical D&D competitor could use the same type of location and resource structure to make a more engaging and accessible game.
Free-to-Play mechanics bring persistence and progress to simple game systems, only to slam players into a frustrating paywall. But replace real money with in-game money that every player earns by enjoying the main single player game, and suddenly the same mechanics that make free-to-play so maddening become the foundation for a memorable and even beloved mini-game like Gwent or Blitzball.
Pokemon Go has taught us a lot about how to make real world games. Unfortunately some of it is what we really, really have to do better. Find out all the places where Pokemon Go stumbles.
When games and the real world meet, we have the chance to do some real good. Join us as we explore how we can use gaming in the real world to make the world a better place.
Dave and Max: Games can teach us about ourselves and games can teach us about the world. Sometimes it's important to see not only how games can help us understand ourselves but how our play prepares us to take on the challenges we'll we know we'll be forced to face. I hope this episode helps you step into these challenges without fear and helps arm you with the knowledge of how well prepared you really are.
Sony's announcement of the PS4 Pro is the next step in their gamble on PlayStation VR, but it also seems poised to end the console "generation gap" and make upgrades in the console market more like those in the PC gaming world. But is this a good thing?
Overwatch has the most wildly asymmetric levels we've seen in a multiplayer FPS. And yet, each level is meant to funnel players through a perfectly crafted interest curve. Does it work?
Overwatch's character diversity is its best feature, but it also makes each new map and new character much more challenging to create. How do the designers adapt each release to keep the game's variety of playstyles relevant and fun?
Ever wonder why characters in horror stories take so long to realize that the danger they're facing is real - and deadly? True horror turns our strengths against us, turning our rationality into a weapon that makes us doubt our own perception before we dare to question the reality we always trusted.
If you want to try games that feel different, that always feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried. We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games on a variety of genres and platforms for you to discover and enjoy.
Video games let us be heroes who accomplish the impossible. They teach us to take control of difficult situations and find our way through. When we apply those lessons to our real lives, how much can we accomplish?
When players can generate their own money in infinite supply by killing monsters for in-game gold, MMO economies quickly get overrun by inflation. In the past we've talked about how designers can create gold sinks to solve this problem. Today we'll talk about other ways game designers approach it: by adapting the same tools used by economists in the real world.
Accretion happens when, instead of fixing broken mechanics, developers just build new ones and let the old ones become obsolete. It allows longterm projects like MMOs and yearly sequels to keep going as the new teams pick up where the old ones left off, but it can also bog the game down and make it completely inaccessible to new players.
Sara Winters, born with ocular albinism, was legally blind for most of her early life. Game therapy helped her brain learn to make sense of the images processed by her eyes: it helped her to read, to find friends and community, and to build a life helping others. She shares her story with us Because Games Matter.
Daniel Starkey had been through a difficult break-up that left him feeling alone in the world. He started playing Dark Souls, a difficult game that stranded him in another lonely world - but it helped him discover the patience and focus he needed to get himself back on track.
Zhenghua Yang (Z) woke up one night, choking on his own blood. His platelet count had dropped below fatal levels and doctors gave him only two hours to live. But Z survived. He spent two full years hospitalized, feeling lost and hopeless until video games brought him to a new sense of purpose and a community of friends. Now he develops his own video games to explore their potential to teach, inspire, and yes: save lives.
