PC vs. Tabletop Gaming for Characters

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I'm a big fan of tabletop rpgs and board games as well as video games. Now this leads to one of the interesting little tensions I have with discussing video games; recreationally, I don't really play them to explore character or story, but basically just for gameplay. Thats not to say story or character aren't important, or I don't appreciate them. A better story and characters were a big part of the improvements between Borderlands 1 and 2, though both great.

Also 2 had a villain you could really love to hate.

But if I actually want to explore a character, I do it in tabletop. Its just not even a comparison (If you have a good group and Game Master). With a tabletop game, you can literally do anything you and the GM can come up with, possibly on the fly if they're good at ad-libbing. When Yahtzee talked about Fable 2 he made a joke about "Why can't I marry my dog?" and even if you still can't in Fable 2: the TTRPG, you could roleplay out your character meeting with officials and clergy trying to set it up, if that was something you really wanted to explore and the Gm and other players were ok with.

"This is not how the campaign was pitched to me. . ."

As opposed to just not having the affordance, not even having an option. To be clear, I'm not saying Fable 2 should've allowed you to marry your dog; its an example of a GM being able to adapt the game to player interests, rather than letting them explore within more concretely defined boundaries, aka the things programmed in.

Now, within those rules, video games can be absolutely amazing. If I want to hack n' slash, build a base and lead an army, shoot things in the face, pilot a spacefighter, or even explore a world while doing those things, video games can be great.

And ye gods the atmosphere and immersion,
when done right.

Thats the thing though; I'll play those games to do those specific things, because they're great at them. But the characters in those games can only do the things that the designers thought of them doing. Video games are interactive and do let you affect the story and how things happen, but its just on a different scale from a tabletop game, where you can end up going in completely different direction than was originally intended, for better or worse.

This does make it interesting talking about video games as a storytelling medium, though. They still tell great stories, and let you create great characters and affect the world. They have the potential to create really dynamic worlds the shift with your actions. I love watching the medium develop...but right now it just can't compare to a skilled human being pulling on notes and making up stuff on the fly for me.

"Thats right, as the king goes to shake my hand I fireball him. What now?"

What about you?

Photo credit: dogcentral.info, tweakguides.com, ohiobusinesscollege.edu

How the collapse of AAA games would be good for women and marriages (and games)

Ok, that may be overstating it, but if you think about trends in the games industry and their consequences (both in the industry and for consumers) I think there could be some real opportunities ahead. Full disclosure: my background isn’t in business and I’m not really in the industry, but I follow industry news and commentators like other people follow sports and the things they’re saying are very interesting when taken together.

"Well Bob, considering the player stats and design
history, this MMO looks like a big win for Bartle's model

of player behavior"

"...who are you and how did you get in here?"

Games makers big and small
So starting with the triple A games, theres been allot of buzz lately about the “failures” of some AAA games according to their makers that would’ve been great success for anyone else. This was the story for Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 and was covered nicely by the Jimquisition. To summarize, 1) companies try to make more impressive game to get higher sales, 2) so they invest more in games and create huge teams, 3) and with those huge production costs, the games need more sales to break even, and 4) to hit those sales goals the games have to appeal to the broadest audience. So companies making the biggest, shiniest games also make the least risky games they can, and need those big sales numbers to break even. Meaning they produce very pretty, but increasingly tired (cause new things are risky) games, and can be a loss even with millions of sales. And this can become a cycle where when they don't "flop" they reinvest in a bigger team for the next game, which has to be more broadly appealing and safe, until the "flop" is catastrophic.

"So according to these numbers, as long as everyone in the country
not working for this company buys a copy of
Generica: War of Battle this quarter, we'll be ok."

Now, thats the worst case when this cycle gets out of control. Its not what all big games are looking like, but it is pattern people are seeing, are worried about. Theres talk about  "unsustainable models" and other gloomy terminology. Some big companies are trying to avoid these issues there with additional revenue like microtransactions or making only franchises, but this story isn’t just about the big companies; at the other end of the budget spectrum, allot of exciting things are happening in the indie or smaller studio spaces at the same time. 

There’s been a building narrative about the rise of smaller game makers, from having more access to consumers with Steam (and other digital distribution) to being able to get funding from Kickstarter. Its been helped by indie hits like Minecraft, where a small group (or one person) makes something that’s way too risky for big companies but finds a huge audience and provides a massive return to its producers.

So there’s a stew of articles floating around about the flawed model of larger studios and the increasing relevance of “the indie scene” and smaller studios. This is great news for getting more interesting games, but I think the really interesting opportunity for smaller studios isn’t just in creative or technical risks, but cultural and institutional “risks”.

What does that even...oh right, I forgot the title of the post.

Current problems
The huge investments aren’t the only factor homogenizing games; at a more basic level the same kinds of people ("childless 31 year old white men") tend to be making games targeting the same audience (boys; see below) no matter what kind of game you’re trying to make. Now, that’s not good creatively, since diverse perspectives and approaches should produce more diverse and richer games, but its actually worse than it seems for two reasons: 1) In the linked article (which I highly recommend you read and will be riffing off of for the rest of this post) one thing you'll notice is that the issue isn’t just the exclusion of women, but the turnover rate. With few notable exceptions, if you want a stable life or family, you get out of the game industry rather than actually staying, so it lacks the benefits of having more experienced veterans. 2) The kinds of people being excluded from production and market targeting ARE MOST OF THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES.

What is wrong with you!?

 Sorry for the caps, but this boggles my mind every time I think about it. According to the ESA, the average age of a gamer is 30 and  45% of video gamers are women. Why why why is everyone still marketing to adolescent boys?

 

Don't give me that look; you are and you know it.
This horse is beaten enough.

I’m not saying that the non-inclusive culture in production isn’t at least as big an issue, and I’ll come back to that, but the aggressiveness of this particular stupidity gets me every time. It isn't doing something bad (both in terms of development of the medium and perceptions of it as juvenile) in order to make more money. I wouldn't like that but I'd understand it. This irritates me because it seems to be hurting everyone involved for no reason. (Yes, technically there may be historical reasons and inertia, but its persistence seems dumb). 

You even get stories about how standard focus tests don't include women though we just said they're 45% of the audience of video games in general. Setting aside larger moral issues, I don't understand this financially. Why discount that much of your potential audience, your potential paying customers? From soulless economics perspective its bad, and with a soul that cares about alienating others and stunting the medium, its even worse.

The generous interpretation is that its simple incompetence rather than maliciousness outdated prejudices.

Ok, we get it, its bad, moving on.

The bigger issue is the culture behind those kind of marketing and design decisions, though. A culture where 5% of the programmers and 10% of the designers are female . Where theres no time for family, and the average person leaves after 5 years for another industries (not job, but a different industry). And reportedly the workers' industry advocates don't actually advocate to actually help.
Maybe culture isn't the right word, but something like mindset or institutional expectations. Theres even stories from QA professionals who note the massive shift in environment between games companies and other software (spoiler: other software is a more stable gig).

Thats not a healthy work environment, and its not a good creative environment. 

Its especially bad when it even trickles down to the high school level, and crushes the dreams of female enthusiasts. That story breaks my heart. (After seeing bad cases of burnout in grad school, anytime someone's passion gets crushed out of them it tugs the heartstrings)

Sorry, its about to get more optimistic, I promise.

Ok, so as the links attest, all that badness has been covered other places (and I'm a fan of PAR). 

Putting it together

But how does this relate to the original trend for smaller developers? 

Because again, smaller projects can take more risks, and its important to make sure we're not just talking about creative risks here (though those are important too).

Because challenging these short-sighted, biased practices is seen as a risk. Part of the reason you see the difficulty in focus testing and stories like this (about how games with female protagonists get less marketing money and don't do as well commercially, but those two variables are confounded, confound it!) is because big companies and their investors see changes to those practices as risky. 

Women? I don't know about this.

Changing things at smaller companies or studios is easier (because theres less invested money at stake) and if they're successful, its more likely other small companies will change too. This is the opportunity I think is getting left out of the conversation about big companies and indies right now; its not just that indies have the freedom to take risks creatively, but have  the freedom to take risks organizationally.
The freedom to try to make things there better as well as to make better things. 

Its...so...beautiful....

Ok, maybe it wouldn't be that good, but it wouldn't take much to be better than it is currently.

And you can even see it in some places now: Indies with more diverse protagonists and perspectives. Those encouraging stories are coming out: like the people at Hawken being open and supportive about discussing gender, and places like Nine Dots trying to have a new model of making games without burnout, and allowing its people to have lives outside of work.

So in short, if there is a shift toward smaller budgets and smaller teams making games, it could set the stage for big improvements in how games are made, as well as the games themselves. There will always be a market for some AAA games, but hopefully if the current model for making them does start crashing, some great things could grow out of the wreckage.

Preferably great things that aren't poisonous.

Let me know what you make of all this in the comments.

photocredit: DarkangelX, buttercup festival, advancedaquarist

Prototype 2 and Serious Silliness

As I said when talking about SR3, I enjoyed Prototype 2. It feels enormously free and empowering the way you can run and glide across the city, shapeshift and get the drop on people, and even knock tanks around. You really feel superhuman compared to most people in the game (though there are still enough challenges you don't completely overpower to keep it interesting). Its a blast.

Ok, thats not what I meant, but also like that.

Exploring the freedom and possibilities of that powerset was interesting enough, it even formed the inspiration for my character in a tabletop RPG campaign.

Now, I stopped playing Prototype 2 and can't right now for technical reasons, but thinking on it I was struck by the disconnect between the fun it is to run around and tear up the world, and gruff, angriness of Heller, your avatar doing these things. No, this isn't about "ludo-narrative dissonance" or at least not entirely; its about a more specific issue that applies to other media that the disconnect highlights here. Its about the way Prototype 2 suggests that its makers thought that to tell a "serious" story with "real drama" things have to be dark and negative all the time. Or perhaps its better to say that the story they wanted to tell involved a character who's angry all the time.

"This is my happy face": if you google "happy james heller", even the fan art is always angry.

The flaw in that thinking is especially apparent here because they knew how to make a fun open, game: the game knows players sometimes want to be serious and sneaky and objective focused and sometimes want to screw around and do things just because they can (like rampage or jump as far as they can off buildings) and allows them to do it. However, the story says the character is serious business all the time, and thats why you get this dissonance.

I'm actually less interested in the dissonance between play and story here than I am in the larger ideas that produced that story, namely that to be serious drama, you can't have fun or be funny. Which we can agree is wrong...

...right?

Right??

Silliness and fun are not mutually exclusive with deep, resonant emotional drama. At minimum it can break tension and add variety so the punches hit harder due to contrast. At best it makes everything more real and affecting. Things can be both fun and deeply moving. There are all kinds of examples from film and literature (not the least of which being Up! with its balloon house and talking dogs), but since I got here thinking about Prototype 2, the examples to bring up seem to be Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. After all, I've  hit comics, video games, and TTRPGs previously, so anime rounds out the nerdity nicely.

Anyone who's seen those and compares Heller to Spike or Vash should know exactly where I'm going with this. For those not familiar, Vash is the central character of Trigun, one of the  best gunfighters on a planet of  wild west, and can level city by himself. When not arguing about the value of life with specific villains, he spends much of the series acting like a complete goof.

Well, maybe not complete; Who doesn't like donuts?

Spike is a similarly super-capable bounty hunter in Bebop, but unless in mortal peril or dealing with his past, treats almost everything as a joke. I bring them up as a possible way a game could reconcile the type of grim revenge story Prototype 2 apparently wants to tell with a main character going on easter eggs hunts between missions; characters that present a fun, interesting face and set of behaviors to the world while still being dramatic when appropriate.

"This is my serious face"

Actually its easier for Heller, even if he does start as a revenge obsessed Angry Black Man; this is a guy whose body just got transformed, and is ingesting a jillion other people's memories over the course of the game, so it would make sense to deal with it by behaving oddly. Playing off Heller doing whatever (in non-specific terms, of course) between missions as part of dealing with the massive changes hes dealing with would both be a more believable character than taking it in stride, more in line with how he is being played (by most people, I suspect), and because of those it would have more impact when he does put his game face on for a mission that means something to him.

As it is, all of Heller's lines kind of blur together; his main characterization is "I am angry", sometimes ranging to "I am confused about who to be angry at", so he becomes very predictable and uninteresting, particularly compared to Mercer and Blackwatch's maneuvering. With a little more variety of tone, the dramatic moments would hit harder since there was more contrast and we identified with him more.

I mean c'mon, even Batman knows you have to have a little fun sometimes.

So do you think that kind of characterization would've made the game more of less enjoyable? Let me know in comments.

PS, when it comes to seriousness, I've always liked the quote:
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. -CS Lewis


photo credit: prototype.wikia.com, ~ahmedshadow.deviantart.com, imgur.com, lidafilmmaker.wordpress.com

Considering Transmet and Planetary, not paid for by Mr. Ellis

A while ago I thought about it and realized I would say Warren Ellis is my current favorite author. At the time this was replacing Heinlein, who I grew up reading and still enjoy, but I either grew out of it or my tastes changed, as happens. I really enjoyed Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Global Frequency, the start of "The Authority", Stormwatch's "Change or Die" series, Freakangels, and later Supergod and Black Summer.

Also Nextwave. Definitely enjoyed Nextwave.

Now, when considering which of those is my favorite, something interesting happens: my gut response is to say "Transmet is the best, but Planetary is my personal favorite". I'm saying it, so clearly I agree, but it sounds weird even to me. So I'm going to try to put it in a way that makes sense. (If you haven't read them, here are some summaries.)

I think the reason I make that distinction is that it feels like Transmet is richer and the story and themes have more impact, but I enjoy Planetary more. I like the feel of it, the way it reimagines and appreciates old stories, and all the way it is and is not a superhero story. And the motto resonates with me.

Anyone on the internet should know how true this is,
but people pretends its not all the time.

That seems to be the core of it; I evaluate Transmet as being higher quality in many ways, but I still enjoy Planetary more. Its that disconnect of a movie critic that can tell you the best made film they've seen, and the B-movie they always love to watch. Not that Planetary is bad, of course. Planetary's characters are great and compared to comics where "Reed Richards is useless" the impacts on the world here are so refreshing. But the way Transmet builds the world, develops the characters, and while it explores how truth, power,  society, and government relate is so well done.

I think you get what I'm saying.

So Transmet feels more significant, but I enjoy the rollercoaster of tones and subversions in Planetary. What about you? Any "favorites" where you're comparing apples and oranges  and don't have one answer?

photo credit: agilityfusion.com

Saints Row driving and series change

The last post also made me consider the changes in Saints Row across the series, because the fact the driving was the least fun part to me made me feel like it was only there because of previous games. Not that it was only included for tradition or something like that, but because that's where the series started and while it was going new places and doing new things, it hadn't quite moved beyond that yet. It was like an increasingly vestigial organ, that had some purpose for now, but was mostly there because the organism it was part of is still in transition from what it was into something else.

Something else that I haven't played, but considering I thought Prototype 2
and Crackdown were fun but too serious, something that looks pretty sweet.

Which can lead to those uncomfortable issues that pop up as a series or creator grows and develops into something different from what they started as. Allot of times this works fine: In the Harry Potter series say, it started as light fantasy, but then became darker and more moody and serious towards the end. This made sense in so many ways, as the fans and characters were growing up and dealing with harder issues. The changing tone seemed to serve the story: the contrast with how it started really gave a sense of the stakes and how the villains affected the world. At the other end of the spectrum we might put the farcical edition wars of D&D, the poster child IP for having fans that are not on board for the new iteration.



And discussing the many and varied ways
those are hilarious and terrible would take a while.

Some would say those are silly comparisons;  Harry Potter fans wanted to see how the story went, while D&D fans had a functional game (arguably) and didn't see the need for a new one. But those are the extremes with plenty of things in the middle of a spectrum linking them by degrees of success. Theres plenty of webcomics that changed massively as the author(s) developed a style or tried new things, to varying degrees of success. Theres tv shows that got more or less interesting across seasons. Theres tabletop games that avoided editions wars and gained new audiences and ones that fractioned their audience repeatedly.

Then there's movies series that introduced aliens
so people like to pretend the last film never happened.

Among the various forms of media, video games are kind of in between the difficulty of "complete" tabletop games and the narrative commitment of less interactive stories. I mean, you can have that hook in the audience that they want to find out what happened next (that was the blessing and curse of Mass Effect 3 after all; the audience was really invested in that story). At the same time, you can have a full game that you enjoy and can keep playing regardless of new releases, particularly multi-player games. Theres also the technical angle, where newer games can have better graphics or more complex...whatever, but any critic can tell you that doesn't mean a better or more successful game in any way.

Man, wasn't this great? 

So, reflecting on the various successes and failures (in terms of audience size, finance, and quality), what can we take away? Narratively, changes need to come naturally for the story and characters. Big news, I know, and even then you can get some fan backlash, but it shouldn't be on Mass Effect 3 levels (if this analysis is accurate).

For a game though, if you want to make sure previous fans get on board you need to make sure they can do the things that they already liked doing in the current version, while adding new things to make it worth getting the new version. To oversimplify, this was one of the (many) issues that split fans of 3rd and 4th edition DnD; there were things you could do in 3e or 3.5 that you could not do in 4e, so fans that wanted to do those things didn't update. Being more accurate and general, if fans want to keep the things that were only in the old iteration more than they want things introduced in the new iteration, they won't update. Which of course brings me back to driving in Saints Row.

Hey, remember me?

I'm fairly certain they haven't removed driving from Saints Row 4. I haven't played it, but I think it would've been mentioned as weird somewhere online. However, if there's another way to get around the city (like being a freerunning superhuman) and driving is still an option, my experience will still be improved so I won't have the same complaints as I did about SR3.

After all of this, its interesting to think about the impact if they did take out driving, though. The question would be how central driving is to why people were playing Saints Row 3 and if the new stuff makes up for cutting it? Or if the new stuff will attract enough new audience that the company can afford losing the fans that are that invested in the driving?
And if driving isn't that central to the series anymore, then what is?

Not the zombie voice option, apparently.

photo credit: media.pcgamer.com, looneydm.blogspot.com, saintsrow.wikia.com

Saints Row 3 driving makes me sad

I've been working on my Steam backlog of games lately; first Dishonored, then Prototype 2, I just finished Saints Row 3 (in honor of the spectacular looking 4) and I'm about to start Darksiders. Now, I ended up stopping Prototype 2 before I finished due to technical issues, but I was having allot of fun with it. Going from that to Saints Row 3 highlighted something for me though; the driving is the least fun part of Saints Row 3.

That may just be relative to the rest of the game, and the thing that stood out to me was the specific bounds of this feeling; driving tanks and helicopters and hoverbikes was good, but having to drive a car between objectives was a chore. And there are some obvious factors: this is partly a personal thing because I'm not big on non-mario cart racing games either, and the PC driving controls were not the best (compared to say Borderlands 1 or 2). At least SR3 didn't take a mod to be drivable, like SR2

The default sensitivity range was a bit high for actually staying on a road.

It goes deeper than that though. Conceptually and viscerally, these sections just feel less fulfilling than the rest of SR3, and which is a shame because you have to use driving to get around so much. For example, driving a car and dealing with traffic just seems less cool than flying a jetbike or running up walls and leaping over rooftops. Yet you have to drive to get around the whole game. In theory, later in the game you have the jetbike and could use it to get everywhere....but you only pick it up it at certain places, and you can't fast travel between cribs anymore so you guessed it, you have to drive to those cribs to get the jetbike.

So to do this...

...you have to do this. Try not to hit that truck, too.

However, the bigger issue isn't just the surface appeal, but the actual way behavior is incentivized while driving i.e. it encourages careful driving (or at least not hitting people or cars) and that seems out of place after running around beating pedestrians with a floppy purple dong because you can. Now, there are rewards for doing big jumps, or running over people and other vehicular shenanigans in the game, that's true. While you're screwing around between missions, driving can be fun and the town can be your personal demolition derby or grand prix.

Its when you have to drive to objectives that it becomes arduous, because then the mindset is different; you want to get to the start or objective and all these other cars are in your way. If you hit them or run over a cop or gangmember there's an alert that can create a literal roadblock between you and where you're trying to go (or you could take too much damage and blowup). All the other cars on the road are now hazards rather than targets. So when you're on your way somewhere and just want to get there to do that fun thing, the distance forces you to drive, and to get there without getting bogged you have to actually be careful about your driving.

As opposed to running over rooftops and gliding across the city.

Whee!

The comparison is what really made it stand out as the least enjoyable part of the game for me. Driving was something I had to do to get between places I wanted to be in SR3, while freerunning around the city was enjoyable itself in Prototype 2. You were less constrained about where you could go, there was still some thought to navigating the skyline, and gliding around was cool. I liked running around searching for collectibles. In SR3, I didn't bother cause getting to them was irritating.

To be fair, allot of the stuff around driving is good; vehicle delivery helps, and the fast hijacking does look and feel cool. I think one time I ended up shooting a gang member, then when his backup arrived, jumped through their windshield and sped off in their car, and that's cool to allow. But once I had the car it was less fun and that was sad. Yahtzee Croshaw has pointed out that open worlds are only as good as the way to get around them, and going between these two games, I can definitely see why.  Fortunately, it looks like Saints Row 4 has learned its lesson.

"Whee" you say? Oh you're right, Whee!

photo credits: avideolife.com, g4tv.com, guides.gamepressure.com, co-optimus.com

The Return!...with Minecraft! ...and Mod-splosions!

Well its been a little over year, so it seems time for a triumphant return.  To see if the time off has done us any good, lets dive right back in with:

Minecraft! Recently I setup a Minecraft server for some friends and  we were trying to choose what mods we wanted (so we wouldn't have to restart the world later).

Looking over the list of options out there, it got me thinking about the core of Minecraft gameplay, what we/I wanted out of it, and what the variety says other people out there want out of it, cause if you don't already know, there are TONS of mods out there. My take on it is that Minecraft is about building things, which is no big revelation; sure there are mechanics for combat, but the gameplay is pretty centered around crafting and the entirety of the world is destructable/resources/constructable.

Now you too can have the looming monster fountain next to your windmill, just like you always wanted.

Looking at all these options got me thinking about what this reflected about the people playing/making them though. Broadly, I categorize the mods as into three groups:
1) Expand an aspect of the game. (ie  more recipes, monster types, block types, etc.)
2) Make the game more like another game. (ie "adds rpg elements" "racingcraft" etc.)
3) Explicitly change the rules of the game. (ie its always noon, X blocks drop Y instead of X, etc.)

These get blended together, of course. There is simple combat in the game, but if you add enough guns, it starts to look more like counterstrike than original minecraft (and thats more about the emphasis of play than that the guns are available). Likewise, adding blocks and devices that do new things, even if magic flavored, might feel more like adding more content onto minecraft; but if the player gains the ability to level up and cast spells, the feel of the game and emphasis starts to change. (Theres another discussion to be had about minecraft being an oddly implemented rpg, with your capabiliies advancing with what you build while you personally remain the same but I'll stay on point)

That shift in the emphasis of play isn't a bad thing, to clarify. Its just interesting to me, cause initially I didn't understand it: If you want to play an rpg...why not go play an rpg? Why try to make minecraft into it? This was especially true of the combat mods. There are so many shooters with better graphics and more suited controls why oh why would you try to make minecraft more about combat?

Hmm, which forest to kill sheep in...

The more I thought about it though, the more it made sense to me. Not just the basic motivations of a) people may be trying to make their 'perfect game' and b) trying to do things because they can. I understand that some people are going to go "this is great, but I also like X; if i put them together it'll be more awesome" for a) or go  "this is neat...I wonder if I can get it to X" for b). No I started to wonder if the openness to modding of a "simple" indie game combined with the gameplay thats emphasizes building what you want is part of this mod-splosion.

Is it that a game about building what you want, about making whatever you want out of time, work, and whatever resources were available, is going to attract people who want to not just impress their will upon the game world, but to impress their will upon the rules of the game itself? That it might even predispose people that normally wouldn't put in the effort to think that if theres something they want out of the game, they can make it do that? That if they really want to, they can shape the rules of the world to something more to their liking...or something more useful and impressive to other people when they share it.

"There I am done. I will leave this for others to enjoy and go create a new world...perhaps one with out gravity..."

I think its interesting to consider that the feel and emphasis of the gameplay itself may be combining with the simple graphics and openness to modding to produce this plethora of options. That the gameplay and glut of player created content within the game may be tied to the glut of player created content that alters the game.

...and if you think so to (or think I'm off my rocker) let me know in the comments!

PS: If people are curious, our server settled on using Industrialcraft, since its adds more crafting options and the advanced tools and bots can make things faster/reduce monotony without feeling like cheating.