Category: Videogames

Here’s a thirty-five minute long video of Will Wright’s presentation of Spore at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference. Whoever wrote the description is right; it does look like it’s going to be the best videogame ever made. (If you don’t want to or can’t watch the video, GameSpy did a write-up of it). And here’s another longer video of the entire presentation.

Pretty much every time I’ve seen a demo of the game, I’ve been hugely impressed. But what impresses me the most about this demo, even more than how amazing the game looks, is the philosophy behind it. Not just the stated premise — you can have a game that allows infinite content without an infinite budget — but the philosophy of pushing the limits of what games can do and what games are about. From what I’ve seen, the game delivers on what it promises, and each component of it (for example, making an arbitrarily-designed creature learn how to walk) is impressive on its own. And that could end up as either a shallow tech demo with a slick front end, or a traditional RTS or Sims type game with some new features tacked on.

Instead, you get the impression that the philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make the core idea (a simulation of life from the cellular level to the galactic level) work, instead of cutting corners and doing traditional stuff and taking the easy way out.

And even more impressive, doing all that without being so damn arrogant. Wright acknowledges influences wherever they come from, and every time I’ve seen him talk, I never get the impression that he sets his games off as superior to other games. They just end up, more often than not, being that way. It’s really nice to see a guy and his team and his project getting attention based on merit instead of hype.

Now I just really, really want to play the thing. I’m not so arrogant to assume that I could’ve gotten a spot on the project if I’d tried — at Maxis, especially after the move to Redwood Shores, people talked about Spore like the people in Logan’s Run talked about Sanctuary. But I did have a few people ask if I were interested, and my take was that I didn’t have anything useful to contribute to the project, so I shouldn’t even attempt to get on it. After seeing the video, I have to say I’m glad I’m not working on it, so I can just enjoy it when it comes out.

But maybe, after this Disney job ends, I can try to weasel my way onto the expansion packs or the sequel… Anybody got any contacts for me?

I finally broke down and spent my gift certificate on a copy of Guitar Hero. What got me was Matt’s reminding me on here that it contains “More Than a Feeling” (as made famous by Boston), and this video of a guy playing on expert.

It really does deserve the hype it’s been getting; it’s awesome. Best things about the game, in order of awesomeness:

1. They didn’t make it as much a guitar simulator as an air guitar simulator. It’s not about really learning to play guitar, it’s about the rock.
2. It’s got a tilt sensor, so to enter star power mode you turn the guitar up on end. Rock.
3. The difficulty progression is really well thought out. I went through the tutorial, played a few of the songs on easy level, and I was getting over 90% on each one. So I figured I could advance up to medium difficulty and all of a sudden it was throwing weird colors and solos and chords at me. I went back to easy and worked my way back up, and it’s a lot more rewarding than failing repeatedly.
4. They didn’t have to put in a whammy bar, but they did anyway. Rock.
5. All the covers are really well done; many of them I can’t distinguish from the originals.
6. Supposedly, they really have hammer-down and pull-off moves, although I have yet to be able to pull one off. Rock?

So far the best I’ve done is 99% accuracy and a 332-note streak on “More Than a Feeling” at medium difficulty. And the thing is: just playing a cover version of it, pressing colored versions on a little plastic guitar, standing in front of a TV in my living room, naked, with little pixelated people clapping along, is so freakin’ awesome, that I can’t imagine how the real guy from Boston, playing the real song on stage in front of hundreds of real people, didn’t just explode from the sheer 70s Rock Majesty of it all.

Speaking of exploding, I saw on iTunes that N Sync did a mostly a cappella Boyz II Men style cover of “More Than a Feeling” on their first “album.” It’s almost Lovecraftian — you know in your rational mind that it’s horrible, but you can’t really understand how horrible it truly is until you experience it for yourself.

At the moment, my most hated song is “Crossroads” by Cream. It’s not just that I can’t play it; it’s that I can’t understand how anyone can play it. And this is on easy difficulty. I’m guessing Clapton had a little bit more practice than I have, or else the big colored buttons make it more difficult. Or the makers of the game have a cruel streak, which is why they didn’t use “Sunshine of Your Love” or “White Room” instead. Also, including “Killer Queen” is a little sadistic, because it’s such a goofy and cheesy song and that just adds to the humiliation as you’re reminded you’re no Brian May.

The Gamespot review was right in that the game needs some Van Halen. Some Led Zeppelin would’ve been cool as well. I’m hoping there’s going to be a sequel that uses the same controller.

Also, I don’t really play the game naked, I’m just wondering if people really read these things when I start talking about videogames.

Another mark in the “Blizzard is evil” column: their “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” handling of a guild in World of Warcraft that advertised itself as “GLBT-friendly.” In brief, when a player sent a message over general chat recruiting people into her “GLBT-friendly but not GLBT-only” guild, she was given a citation for violating the game’s policy on sexual harassment.

The policy, at least its online version, is on this page and only disallows language that “insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation.” But apparently (in case there is another policy/agreement document somewhere less accessible), the policy is that you can’t mention it at all.

The responses from Blizzard game managers in that article are worded about as poorly as they possibly could’ve been — if they’d been outright offensive, then at least it would’ve been taking a stand one way or the other. What they did instead was try to make it sound as if they were looking out for the members of the guild and pre-emptively preventing harassment. Which is self-serving, chicken-shit behavior that in a lot of ways is even more offensive.

Advertising a guild as gay-friendly would invite its members to harassment? I hate to break it to you, Blizzard, but it’s an online role-playing game. Heavily populated by adolescents and shut-ins who never developed past adolescence. You’ve already got harassment. It’s built-in. Some of these people must have “omg ur so GAY!” and “Alliance fags!” on macro.

Now, you’d have to pathetically thin-skinned to get upset by that, but that’s not the point. The point is that for Blizzard to claim that the real world and game world are completely separate, and that it’s not mentioned at all, isn’t even disingenuous — it’s outright denial.

And it’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to want to reinforce an environment where you can just be comfortable knowing that if you mention your gayness or lack thereof, you won’t get dogpiled for it. The examples usually brought up are just saying stuff like, “I have to go AFK to pick up my boyfriend” when you have to leave in the middle of something. Hell, I’ve run into that when I’ve been playing and there’s downtime, and other people mention their relation to each other. I’ve seen female players say, “so-and-so is my husband” and a conversation starts about how it’s nice to see couples playing together.

I’ve been in situations where I started to type that I was playing with my boyfriend, but just didn’t bother because it would be too much of a hassle to explain. That’s not flaunting your deviant lifestyle to anyone, it’s just being able to talk without having to be constantly paranoid about saying The Wrong Thing.

So it would seem a pretty clear-cut case to me, but then the article goes on to mention two guilds called “Stonewall Champions” and “The Spreading Taint.” Great job, guys. Nothing like playing a MMORPG to make you feel that you’re constantly surrounded by morons, the shallowest dregs of humanity.

Blizzard and its supporters can back-pedal as much as they like, claiming that it’s for the player’s own good and it’s part of the stated policy and that whether a player’s gay or straight doesn’t make any difference at all. It’s just a game, right? Yeah, of course it’s just a game, but their response is nothing more than doing what people have been doing for way too long about this stupid issue — shutting their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and just hoping it would go away. And now, no matter how it plays out, it’s going to be portrayed as a bunch of whiners asking for special treatment so they can “flaunt their sexuality” in front of everyone.

It’s enough to make me want to quit the game entirely, except I just got these boots that give +10 to my agility and they’re simply fabulous.

According to USA Today, the scarcity of Xbox 360s will likely continue through Spring, just in time for the release of the Playstation 3.

Fine, then, Microsoft! I don’t want your damn computer box anyhow! I’d pretty much resigned myself to getting one, since I’ve got more discretionary income than common sense or time. I end up buying videogames I never actually play and feel a void in my soul if I don’t have The Latest Thing. It’s not so much I wanted an Xbox, I just didn’t want to not have one.

So I’d been saying that it’s inevitable I’d get one, and as soon as it’s possible to just walk into a Best Buy and pick one up without pre-ordering or tackling some overprivileged child to the ground, I’d do it. But every week of super-exclusivity is another week for me to ask myself whether I really want to get one.

The only game I’m interested in is Oblivion, and that’s coming out for the PC as well. The only other reason to get one would’ve been to replace the 10-year-old DVD player I’m using now, but it still works like a champ, and the PS3 is going to be better anyway.

So it seems to me that the analysis in that article is actually correct — having an Xbox 360 shortage was good for the initial launch, because it drummed up demand. But how many of us are going to be patient enough to keep up the demand once they get the supply in place? I’m thinking I’m better off not having another time-waster in the house.

I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that SimCity game, don’t you, Chuck? This one has samurai; who doesn’t like samurai? This one has “an RPG-like campaign mode.” You like RPGs! Buy it now!

Sometimes when I’m weak all they’ve got to do is advertise elves and dwarves and shit. I don’t even like elves or dwarves as a rule. Who would?

The most insidious way to trick me into liking an RTS, though, is to put a bunch of AT-ATs and AT-STs and speeder bikes and rebel transports into it. Star Wars: Empire at War does that, which is why it’s evil. The game demoes very, very well. After watching the tutorial, I was already hooked. Hooked and disturbed, because I don’t like the thought of living in a world where LucasArts is making good games again.

Once I got past the tutorial and into the game part of the demo, the universe settled back into its recognizable form. Bad-ass spaceships aside (and none of that Naboo shit, either — this is a real Star Wars game), it’s still an RTS and I still don’t get the appeal.

It could be just because I suck at them; I’m not exactly Sun Tzu when it comes to strategy. Hell, I’m not even Sonny Bono when it comes to strategy. I’m not even Chastity Bono when it comes to strategy. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. What’s happening? Since when did I start writing a weblog? Are you there, internets? It’s me, Margaret.

So yeah, anyway. I get easily distracted and don’t do good with the strategy games. Put a whole bunch of soldiers and tanks and a selection rectangle in front of me and all of a sudden I’m like the eople who say, “You work in videogames? I played Tetris!”

So Empire at War looks bad-ass and is tempting and all, but seeing as how I can’t win the demo, it’s probably not the game for me. I just hope I can keep that in mind the next time I’m in the game-buying place and I see the spaceships on the box and my eyes glaze over and my hand goes to my wallet. Every time I think of the unused copies of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and Warcraft 2 and Rise of Nations it just bears out my secret shame. I don’t like real-time strategy games.

Warning: This post is about World of Warcraft.

Like the other 200 million people who play the game, I’ve got ideas on how to make it better. Since reading the official forums just makes me sad, and since there are at least a couple of people who read this blog who are interested in videogames, I’m posting my Genius Plan here.

My biggest problems with the game are:

• Permanence: Nothing you do has any permanent effect. Enemies respawn, zones stay the same as they were before. The best you can hope for is to give a one-hour boost to people on your side, or inconvenience the players on the other side. The solution is to make your actions as a player have some lasting effect that isn’t instantly negated but also doesn’t ruin the game for other players.
• Fiction: The game’s good on gameplay, lousy on story. Even if you take the time to read the quest descriptions, there’s not much point because they all pretty much devolve into “Kill ten murlocs and come back here.” Instances and dungeons make a better attempt to tell a story, but you never get the chance to really be involved in it because the people you’re playing with have already done this dungeon (or battleground) dozens of times before and want to get right to it. The solution is to involve players in the story instead of just the mechanics, but without just adding a dozen long text descriptions of the Amulet of Riz’Fal’Ptah that don’t really matter to anyone except the guy who wrote it and imagined it was going to be so wicked awesome.
• Differentiation: No matter what the whiners say, the classes and races are all pretty well balanced. This means that you end up doing basically the same thing with every character, just in slightly different ways. There is some strategy involved when you’re in a big party in a dungeon, but for the most part you’re just killing monsters and grinding. The solution is to have things that only certain classes can do, while keeping the game balanced.

Plus, it just seems like the game should be more like Warcraft and less like Diablo. Just because that’s its name and all.

So here’s my Grand Vision, presented for free on the internets: emphasize resources and control points. They do this in the Alterac Valley battleground, but that’s a cordoned-off area that doesn’t have any relevance to the rest of the game. I’d like to see that concept carried throughout the whole game world.
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Another SFist post from me is up, where I go off on a tangent about Roger Ebert’s claim that videogames are inherently inferior to real art like literature and film.

It surprised me that his comments bugged me as much as they did, considering that I don’t technically work in games anymore. And I’m as dismissive of videogames as anyone else. But I’ve always thought that I’m dismissive of them partly because of all the wasted potential. It’s not just the usual complaint that 90% of any medium is crap, although that’s definitely the case with games (probably more like 98%).

It’s that even people who would normally be the strongest advocates of the potential of games — the fans and game developers themselves — are giving up on that potential. People defend games because they’re either defending their hobby or defending their profession, but nobody can seem to agree what a game is supposed to be, exactly. Other than profitable.

People just seem to have this implicit understanding that although Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer movies get the biggest audiences, movies are capable of more than just explosions and car chases; they’ve finally been accepted by most as legitimate art. Even television and comic books, which have an even higher crap-to-quality ratio than movies, get the acknowledgement that they put out something great every once in a while. But more and more, people are saying that either games are nothing more than escapist entertainment, and that that’s all they should try to be. I’m fine with escapist entertainment; I don’t think you necessarily have to have meaning to have merit. And I think that good solid game design is an accomplishment in and of itself. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that I’ve played enough games to see what can happen when you get just the right combination of game and narrative, or as Ebert’s complaint put it: player choice and authorial control. It’s the point when you realize, “ah, I use the barrels to float the ramp up into position” in Half-Life 2, or “ah, I have to put a bucket of mud over the door” in Monkey Island 2. Day of the Tentacle was full of them. They’re points where you are actually working with the authors to finish telling the story. The realization hits you like a ton of bricks; it’s “ah, Rosebud represents Kane’s loss of innocence” and “Moby Dick is Ahab’s battle with mortality and fear of the unknown,” times 100. That’s the tool that gives videogames an artistic potential that nothing else has.

And the problem with that, is that very few games are actually using that tool to make something of real resonance beyond “just” entertainment. I’ve said that Half-Life 2 is the best videogame ever made, and I still think so. But I think it works on the same level as Aliens — easily one of my top 10 favorite movies, but not exactly a profound statement on the human condition. There shouldn’t be any question that it’s art. If Fantasia qualifies as art, then so does Rez. And if The City of Lost Children is art, so is Grim Fandango.

The real question is whether games will be allowed to take that extra step to make something profound. I honestly think The Sims takes a step in that direction — it’s not just a dollhouse or even a social simulator, but it has something to say as a parody of consumerism and an abstraction of social behavior and mundane life. And somebody on a message board hit on what I couldn’t figure out about Shadows of the Colossus that made it noteworthy — it’s not just the act of solving the boss fights that’s cool, but the sense of moral ambiguity throughout the game. You have to go through all the tasks you’re given just to complete the game, but just through the atmosphere of the game and the simple set-up, you spend the entire time wondering whether you’re doing the right thing.

People keep insisting that games are still in their infancy and that’s why there hasn’t been a real stand-out that’s universally acknowledged as a masterpiece instead of just “good for a game.” Technical improvements in rendering and AI will keep coming, and they’ll go a long way towards making games better, but what really needs to happen is for more developers to realize their potential as capital-A Art, and make something that’s not just a fun diversion but actually has some relevance.

There’s another post up at SFist, which I mention only because that’s the only way they show up in the sidebar down below to your right.

Speaking of belated responses to basically inconsequential news: A couple of weeks ago there was a big stink all over the videogame section of the internets about this “lawyer” named Jack Thompson and his run-in with the guys from the webcomic “Penny Arcade.” In brief: he wrote something claiming that he’d donate $10,000 to charity if any videogame company would make a game based on his premise, which was a ridiculous story about a father whose child was killed as a result of game-inspired violence and went on a killing spree murdering game developers, publishers, and retailers. The Penny Arcade guys, to their credit, handled it reasonably well: they pointed out to the guy that they ran a charity which raises money and supplies games for sick kids, and they made a $10,000 donation to that charity in Thompson’s name. He responded with legal threats and various letters to the FBI, several webcomics and hundreds of blog articles resulted. (And when somebody did actually make the game, he responded by saying that his claim had all been “satire,” and then with a couple more threats of legal action.)

In short, everybody got what they wanted. The sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer got the attention he wanted and kept his name in the press. The Penny Arcade guys drew more attention to their charity, which could be seen as self-serving, but was basically a potent way of getting their message across, that most of the people who play videogames are not hyper-violent, semi-autistic selfish children.

I don’t even like mentioning Thompson, because it just adds one more internet reference to him, however insignificant, to make it seem like the guy’s having more impact than he really is. He’s laughably incompetent, and his agenda is completely transparent, even if you’re not aware (as I wasn’t) of his history of grandstanding and dementia. One of the Penny Arcade guys had an unexpectedly mature take on it: he said that they were aware they should just ignore the guy instead of giving him more attention, but that it was essentially a good thing he was at the forefront of the debate. Because if they ever had anyone competent taking all the credit as leader of the anti-videogame crusade, game fans and companies would be screwed.

(Senator Joe Lieberman and SF Assemblyman Leland Yee also make occasional headlines in videogame censorship news, but usually only when it’s around election time. And when they do, it becomes apparent they have no real expertise in the issue other than knowing enough to mention Grand Theft Auto and Postal).

The problem is that there’s nobody particularly competent on the pro-videogame side of the issue, either. All we’ve got is the insistence that there’s no evidence linking game-playing to violent behavior, and the First Amendment. Which means that as soon as someone releases a study showing that there is a correlation between GTA and Columbine, then all you’ve got left is the ACLU and “I know my rights” and an argument that has parents responding, “Well yeah, but…”
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