Dada Duck

I guess I should post something to prove to the Internet that I am not quite dead yet. Perhaps you have noticed the recent flood of art-games, as they are sometimes called. Most of these games are made in a very retro, pixelated way, in the style of old 8-bit consoles. Most famous of these pixelated Picassoes is Jason Rohrer, and I will thus mention Passage as well as Gravitation, two of his great games. Now enter Duck Sim 2008, which can be played here.

Quack.

Okay, so bear with me for a moment: I have realised, in a rare burst of insanity/brilliance, that Duck Sim 2008 is in fact Dadaism. It is a form of anti-art, a sort of parody of art that highlights the pointless act of producing art in the first place. Duck Sim 2008 mimics the style of other art-games, yet the interaction that would create the artisitic message is non-existent. The only feedback for user interaction Duck Sim 2008 provides is purely cosmetic. As such, it is hardly a game, yet what are most games other than a screen that updates an image in response to some user input? Is its artistic value much different from that of most brain-dead shooters? However when all is said and done, it is just an innocent joke, but a mildly significant one for me.

The Princess, the Plastic Guitar, and the Hook Shot

Game require us to learn pretty curious things: how to time a jump precisely, whether to watch TV or study a book on cleaning, how to navigate a three-dimensional space by using teleportation, and so on. We would not learn these skills if we did not have a good reason to, or at least a perceived reason to. Some games do teach us valuable skills we can use in real life, but most games will be regarded by non-gamers and grumpy seniors as a “waste of time”. When playing however, it suddenly becomes vital information that some tubes are inhabited by fire-breathing plants, and then learning how to avoid these plants. Since many skills taught by games are too abstract or removed from reality to appear applicable in daily life, each time a player learns something, he needs some kind of motivation that gives the skills value, or the learning will not be regarded as fun.

A post about narratives in games.

Over the last week, I have read (too) many blog posts, studies, opinion pieces et cetera about narratives in video games. I figured that it would be nice if I actually wrote down my thoughts on the matter before a couple of days pass and I forget everything.

Risk Analysis: Conclusion, sort of

The series of atrociously boring posts is finally over. While I can’t say the analysis was very in depth or interesting, it got me thinking and writing on quite a few different topics. Hopefully this arduous analysis will yield some interesting topics to discuss in future posts. In addition, it got me used to a regular (well, almost) blogging schedule. I can only hope I have not scared away a potential reader with my apparent obsession with Risk.

Less Interface, More Immersion?

Sometime 7 years ago, Lionhead Studios released Black and White. Black and White was an ambitious god game created by ambitious game creator Peter Molyneux. It was one of the first prominent games to tout a lack of user interface. The amount of “interface-less” games increased over the years, and two recent examples of this trend are Far Cry 2 and Dead Space. Far Cry 2 is a first person shooter released by Ubisoft set in a nameless war-torn African country, while Dead Space is a third person horror/sci-fi shooter developed by EA Redwood Shores. Both these games lack some or most parts of what could be called a traditional user interface.

A Dead Space screenshot without gore.

Risk Analysis: Theme/Setting

There is little to no connection to the historical setting of the game.”

(First, I thought I would make it clear that I sometimes try to make a distinction between theme and setting. The setting of “Crime and Punishment” is 19th century St Petersburg, the theme, as the title suggests, is crime and punishment. Thank you, English class book reports!)

I guess all I wanted to ask was why the little plastic men I move around the map are Napoleonic Era soldiers. It is of course completely understandable why the creators of Risk chose that time period. When the game was introduced in the 1950’s, choosing any of the World Wars to be represented in an apolitical family game was unthinkable. Going further back in time than the Enlightenment would also create problems with the credibility of the size of the warring empires.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that the setting of the game would be ridiculously easy to replace. Throw out the cannons and horses and insert lasers, tanks, Roman legions, or whatever you see fit. Perhaps this can be seen as a successful design, as it opens for numerous Risk clones/variants who change the setting to Lord of the Rings or Science Fiction. The thing with these variants are that each one adds new elements to the game that make sense in the setting. This is quite unlike Monopoly, where buying and selling properties feels natural with the classic setting, while it feels very awkward when you bring in Star Wars or Pokémon (The list goes on…). This is usually because there are almost no attempts to change the rules to fit the setting, like the many Risk variants have. The question is of course why none of these variants had one rule that did not fit without a Napoleonic setting removed. The reason is quite simple: Risk has no such rule or element. Its simulated warfare is purposefully simplistic. There is really no faults in this per se, so I will use this post to come up with additions that could be added to any Napoleonic war game.

Focus on famous generals: Some editions of Risk incorporate generals in the rules, which is natural as many of the commanders of the time (Napoleon, Wellington, Nelson) are quite well known even to this day, even romanticized.

When mentioning Nelson, the inclusion of naval warfare becomes almost vital: The British did extraordinarily well in the war thanks to their naval superiority.

Colonial Disputes: The Napoleonic War was preceded by and a result of many colonial disputes and revolts in the colonial Empires of Europe. Perhaps adding a colonial system would capture the spirit of the era.

Birth of Democracies: The French and American revolutions had already happened, and many monarchies feared their people more than ever. “Deomcratic” nations often found themselves hindered or attacked by those who kept their kings and queens.

Nationalism: For the first time, regular people identified themselves as French or English. An abstracted version of nationalism could add benefits to nations who strive to nurture it.

Women running

I’m being naïve and disorganized, but at least I posted something this week.

Call me slow, but recently I realised how similar DICE’s Mirror’s Edge is to the 1998 German film “Lola Rennt” (”Run Lola Run” for English folks). Not only do they both feature running female leads, but the way the narrative is handled in Lola Rennt is somewhat similar to how gameplay is handled (or supposed to be handled) in Mirror’s Edge.

Risk Analysis: Rolling and Downtime

This week I will be super efficient and cover two topics (although I have already touched on dice rolling):

“The game is full of dice rolling.”

AND

“There is not that much to do while other players take their turns.”

http://www.hlcomic.com

Sitting around waiting hardly qualifies as fun, yet in many board games (and to a certain extent, some video games) it is absolutely required. If the game has a turn-based structure, like Risk, every player but one is left idle with usually nothing to do. In board games the term for the time spent waiting is “downtime”, while multiplayer video gamers might use the term “spawn time” or “round time”. There are two simple solution to reducing downtime: Reducing time spent “out” of the game, or giving the player something to do during downtime, in effect removing it. Extensive dice rolling is somewhat related to having long turn times, since a long battle takes a lot of time, while players not involved are only interested in the results.

Necessitiation of Demonstration?

There will be NO Risk this week, dear (non-existent) readers. Instead, I heard about something esteemed “Gears Of War” designer CliffyB said about the lack of a demo for his hit sequel “Gears of War 2″:

“A beta is like hooking up with a girl just to say, ‘Yeah, I f*cked her’,” Gears of War 2 Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski told GamePro “I know that sounds crude, but it’s the honest-to-God truth. Once you play a beta, you can check it off your list – you can say, ‘Yeah, I played it.’ Then you might not feel motivated to get that initial cherry popping from the proper, final game.”‘

Standing exposed in the open is a viable tactic.

Risk Analysis: Diplomacy

“Diplomatic negotiations are few and very basic.”

Risk is a game of war, not peace, but there is some room for the fine art of diplomacy in the game. But since the purpose of the game is armed conflict, you can’t expect that any agreement made will last very long. A long term alliance between two players will provoke other players, and will nullify any benefits of the alliance. But what opportunities do exist for sly manipulation in Risk, and can we change the rules to encourage a little (temporary) teamwork?