Playing Games with a Trained Eye

I got an Xbox 360 today, the newer version, which hopefully won’t periodically break.

I haven’t had an Xbox for about 2 years now, and haven’t really been a gamer in that time at all, but with my recent foray into the world of interactive design, and looking at game design, it was inevitable (or maybe even imperative) that I got one. I was quite excited to unbox it (second hand from eBay) and stick one of the games on. I decided to play Bionic Commando, a remake of an old arcade classic into a 3D adventure/shooter:

It didn’t look like the best game in the world but looked fun. Turns out it’s a complete pain in the arse. I couldn’t help but critique it as I played; the user interface; the interactive elements; the narrative and how I as a user navigated the game. Here are a list of things that pissed me off about Bionic Commando:

• An opening cinematic with poor animation, voice acting and writing — I just want to play.
• A tutorial section separate to the gameplay and the story – ruins the flow and makes the story confusing.
• A loading screen every 5 minutes.
• A luscious world that I am punished for exploring (‘Game Over’).
• Awkward controls and physics.

I lasted about half an hour with the game and it made me feel even guiltier for buying an Xbox when I have plenty of work to do any way. Hopefully other games won’t disappoint; now I’m scared to put on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Bioshock and Halo Reach – games I know I would have loved a few years ago, but now I won’t be able to stop myself assessing. But that’s probably a good thing.

Josh

Depicting Other Worlds

Bill Bailey, Cosmic Jam — ‘2 Men and a Transvestite’

Finding an interesting way to illustrate complex models of other worlds is a difficult thing to do, but makes all the difference between the user/viewer/reader/etc. understanding the complex model, and the user not. Or rather, the user being engaged and enjoying the learning process, and the user getting bored and having to struggle through the learning process. But once the user understands your new model, you can then take them to new places within that model and immerse them in something bigger and perhaps more exciting – so getting the initial learning phase right is important.

And Bill Bailey uses the format of a pub joke to illustrate a new world pretty well. And it’s funny.

Josh

User Immersion in a Given Model

Going on what I said here about how the power of games is in their ability to immerse the user in a given model, this video of the new Glassbox engine powering the next SimCity game illustrates that perfectly.

Amazing — an almost fully functional version of the real world. This surely calls upon similar techniques that are used to model real world environments to predict fuel usage and people flow etc. That’s a pretty powerful ‘game’.

Via — BERG

Doing Everything

When I approach a new project, whatever it may be, I approach it with the assumption that I will be doing it alone and therefore doing everything. But recently, I’ve been thinking about projects which will ultimately require another person who is particularly skilled in an area of practice different to mine, to do the stuff I can’t do. Normally, I would slave away learning a new skill-set to get to the point where I can do everything, but I am finally starting to learn that that is a bad work ethic. One such skill-set is programming.

It’s quickly becoming apparent that to make really interesting and exciting new interactive applications that are computer driven programmed pieces of software, you have to really know how to code — by that I mean studied computer science and devoted a large amount of time to just learning how to program, often in more that one language. This talk by Jonathan Blow points out all the things that make up a video game and just how much code there is. Braid had over 90,000 lines of code in it. That’s crazy considering it is just a 2D platformer.

I also recently found out that Marc ten Bosch, the creator of a game that looks very interesting and experimental, has a undergraduate degree in Computer Science and further two Masters in the subject. That is why he can make games like Miegakure which is a platformer that has a fourth dimension:

(But is probably also why he gives his games Japanese names when he is definitely not which is really gay – but still the game looks good)

So what do I do now? I’m gonna carry on learning some code, but I think I may go back to the non-programmer way of coding and stop kidding myself into thinking “Maybe will learn at least one programming language, it can’t be that hard and surely it’ll help me.” Well maybe it isn’t helping me — maybe I am wasting my time. That said though I am nearly done with all the exercises on Code Academy which is a great site that teaches you JavaScript in a series of exercises. And funnily enough it employs techniques used by game developers such as a points based system and achievements which you gain upon each exercise completion — but, you know, there’s no foolin’ me any more. Any way, I’ll do that, go back to using Processing and make crappy programmes. But, in good time I intend to contact a programmer, maybe someone still at university in a similar position to me. Someone who can make programmes but they’re really boring and look crap. That’s the dream any way.

Doing it for the dreamers.

Josh

Ian Bogost — On Serious Games

I just watched this quite interesting lecture by Ian Bogost talking about ‘Serious Games’. I don’t think the term is completely appropriate, and neither does he. But essentially he talks about games which have the intention of teaching the user something by immersing them in a constructed model — a model which may be representative of the world we live in, or of a world we perhaps do not.

That concept in itself is what intrigues me. Through watching a number of lectures on game design, I think I am coming to the conclusion that I’m not interested in making games as such, but more so in the idea that games provide an experience for the user whereby they make decisions in a separate world on behalf of a character or avatar which they control.

The first example he provides of Animal Crossing is perhaps the most interesting in the whole talk. The fact that Bogost’s five-year-old son, left to his own devices and playing the game unsupervised has got to a point where he is having to make real-world decisions about real-world problems which are really quite mature – such as debt and how to budget to lead a well rounded life (albeit a virtual one). I find this astounding.

At first I thought this may only be prevalent in the mind of a naive five-year-old who is more susceptible to immersion into another world and would genuinely worry about their virtual counterpart. But this is not the case when you just look at examples which do exactly the same thing to an older audience; game’s like World of Warcraft, The Sims and even games like Farmville. All these games set you up with a virtual avatar, under your control, who lives in a world of their own and can live and die just like you can, but the avatar relies on you to make their decisions – which leads to the same mindset of Bogost’s son.

In the talk below, Jonathan Blow talks about games like Farmville and the effect they have on the users. How such a simple mundane game which requires absolutely no skill or tactical thinking and evokes no level of thinking in any sense, can become so addicting to even a mature user.

This is not one of Blow’s best talks and it seems quite messy – he tends to stray from a topic with the intention of returning, but never does. Never-the-less, some interesting points made.

Josh

Games as a Medium

I’ve re-entered the world of programming as of late (I’ve tried a number of times in the past, but didn’t get very far) and it has led me quite naturally to the world of video games. For one thing, I’ve always wanted to make some kind of video game. I don’t really know why. But I do know I want to control it at every level though, from design, to programming, to animating and so on (this is what I’ve tried in the past, but it hasn’t worked out) – at least for one, small game any way.

I don’t want to enter the video game industry as, perhaps, I would have quite liked to when I was younger, but I have come across some interesting ideas in the video game world. There are some designers who are seeking to progress video games as a medium, just as film, music, literature and so on have progressed from mere entertainment, to something which has an intrinsic ability to carry meaning which has the power to affect the ‘user’ in some way. One such game designer is Jonathan Blow.

Jonathan Blow has a number of lectures on YouTube in which he repeatedly puts forward his ideas that current video games are shit – he touches of a few of the things he’s interested in, in the short interview above. AAA Games (blockbuster games) of today are games which rely on very simple interactive premises and hand-holding progression techniques which guide the user very easily through the game rewarding the user along the way. This, according to Blow, is bad because it does not progress video games as a medium. For that to happen the games that need to be produced need to let the user think for themselves and interact with the game in such a way that they can discover and learn at their own pace — like an interactive piece of fine art, in a way.

Personally I find this interesting, I’m not quite sold on the idea and I’m definitely not convinced that video games are or will be in the arena as film, music and literature, but I do agree that games can become something else. But that, in my mind, inherits new problems. To what extent can a game “become something else” but still be considered a game. Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe the umbrella title of video game detracts from it’s viability to become something deeper and meaningful and so needs a new title? A meaningful video game, could easily become an interactive piece of art in a gallery setting? Does it only become a video game in a teenagers bedroom setting?

I’ll come back to this.

Josh

Illustration in a Gallery Context

I recently made a visit to Pick Me Up at Somerset House – an annual event which calls itself “the UK’s first annual contemporary graphic art fair”. It was my first visit and I left with mixed opinions.

Firstly, I’m yet to really make my mind up on the contemporary illustration style as of recent years, but I do believe there is one. The style I am referring to is that akin to illustrators of the Peepshow Collective, Puck Collective, SOMA Gallery and the sort of work Nobrow publish – namely illustrators such as McBess and others I forget. This style emergent of the last few years is worthy of a lot of discussion, but, for another time.

Pick Me Up offers illustration, as the exhibition itself calls it (more-so that ‘graphic art’ which is in the exhibition’s tagline), in a gallery like environment in which the works up illustrators in displayed, stand-alone, on walls for viewing. A gallery spae provides a viewer with an opportunity to ponder the works being displayed to them, uninterrupted and with freedom to interpret the works however they wish — with works displayed generally have a meaning attached to them, but it down to the viewer to discover this for himself. Illustration however, has it’s meaning in one of two ways:

1. In the content that the illustration was originally commissioned to accompany.
2. Clearly on display so that there is no discrepancy in what the image is trying to say.

This is true because illustration as a practice is a means of communication, so if it ticks neither of those two boxes, then it is a failed illustration — it should not be open to interpretation.

So putting these illustrations in a gallery context, one which allows the viewer to interpret works in a context-less environment, is quite contradictory. Contradictory on one of two levels (again):

1. It contradicts the idea of a gallery in that it provides work that is not open to interpretation.
2. The works contradict themselves in that they are now saying that they are open to interpretation thus rendering it a failed illustration.

Perhaps the notion of a gallery only displaying Fine Art which must be interpreted and pondered is wrong. A gallery, technically, can also be a pin-board for any visual media for viewing. The consequence of this can either be positive or negative: it can either broaden the audience to those who are not interested in interpretation and wouldn’t normally go to a fine art exhibition and so would go just purely to enjoy the imagery; or it can narrow the audience in that it puts off those who do go to gallery exhibitions to ponder new and unseen works for their own enjoyment. As there is an entrance fee to the exhibition, I’m inclined towards the latter.

This means the audience that it attracts are going to appreciate the work, but purely on an aesthetic level. Personally, I see this as a bad thing. It goes against what makes a good illustration, and that is good content. An illustration that is style and image led is poor. It feels almost like Pick Me Up is a gallery of failed works, which look nice. This is not exclusively true as not all the works on display were conceived for a commercial setting and can be interpreted, but you had to pick them out in the crowd.

So any way, in closing, I am starting to think that exhibitions such as Pick Me Up are actually detrimental to the illustration practice. Pick Me Up has growing influence as it attracts more attention every year, but I feel it is a red herring for aspiring illustrators who will inevitably succumb to style led work.

This is turning into a ramble which I intend to avoid doing as much as possible as this blog progresses. Practice, so I’ve learned, makes perfect.

Josh