Category Archives: Blog

Feedback Loop: Many choices, or none, make a game.

Written by Aram Zucker-Scharff on May 9, 2012 at 1:03 pm

Is just one choice all it takes to turn a novel into a video game? Before you say yes, consider when a game is created out of many choices and when we are left with none.

Richard Eisenbeis looks at Katawa Shoujo in an April 24 Kotaku article. Eisenbeis holds up the dating sim/visual novel as proof that one choice is all it takes to turn a novel into a game. It is a shallow analysis and the implication that one can stick a choice in a novel and have a game is just false.

If we step away from the screen with only Eisenbeis’s assertion, we lose out on understanding what developers have to do to take a story and turn it interactive.

Creating a good game means understanding the times when a million choices create an interactive work and the instances where no choices are required.

Feedback Loop: Getting beyond marriage

Written by Ethan Gach on April 25, 2012 at 10:40 pm

Cara Ellison is fed up with games that remind her of how single she is. And in a brilliant personal essay over at Unwinnable she uses the interactive novel, Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story, to explain why.

I don’t want games to tell me that a relationship or marriage is one of the ultimate goals in life; and yet the frameworks for compulsory monogamy pop up often in games. Placing an emphasis on ‘achieving’ a relationship in games puts undue pressure on players who are already acutely aware of tropes such as the ‘virgin nerd’ stereotype. Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins even acknowledge this particular stereotype by having the super-hunky-sexy-paladin-man Alistair confess his virginity in a nice move to smash the idea that male sexual experience is desirable. (As a side note, I failed to seduce Alistair, though I tried SO hard. I think I gave him pretty much every gift I had.) (Single.) Where DTIPB differs from games such as Dragon Age is that the relationships are happening around you anyway. In this way, Love’s game is a positive step forward –as Mattie puts it, “Don’t Take it Personally, Babe provides an alternative …

Do we need Metacritic?

Written by Tom Auxier on March 15, 2012 at 11:58 am

No. No we don’t.

It’s more complicated that that, of course. Before today, Metacritic was a good concept gone insane, a website for vengeful gamers to post zero out of ten reviews on games they haven’t played as much as it was an aggregate service for professional reviews. That it carried weight with publishers made us laugh: seriously, publishers, you care a whit about an aggregate of critical acclaim? This makes sense in the world of film, where “prestige” is a major factor: you want to release films that make your studio look good, like its taking chances. There are no prestige games: there are indie games, which court artistic merit, and there are million sellers that make you billions of dollars. Games are too expensive, too difficult to move for a publisher to blow twenty million dollars for “prestige”.

Opening the IGF’s doors

Written by Tom Auxier on March 8, 2012 at 11:05 am

In an alternate world, I have the power to fix the IGF. Why this alternate universe exists instead of a fun one where we can all fly I cannot tell you.

I don’t, of course, and I don’t even think I would have changed it this year. When Fez, a game that had already been entered in the competition years previously, whose development team were jurors last year, won the grand prize and a cool $30,000 prize this year, outrage spread across the internet. For those who looked it was already there, with great pieces like this one from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Fez is a still-uncompleted wunderkind, made by people who have a contract with Microsoft for the game’s release. Certainly they be in debt from making the game, but this is consistent with a four year development cycle. The trouble people have is that it was up against four other extremely deserving titles—Dear Esther, Spelunky, Frozen Synapse, and Johann Sebastian Joust—which are all playable titles in their own regard. Or maybe they object to Fez taking a spot from an unheralded title like Antichamber or FTL or Proteus, titles that received honorable mentions.

Read More from Opening the IGF’s doors

My tinfoil hat and I can prove it: The end is NIGH

Written by Jon Chan on March 8, 2012 at 8:57 am

House Bill 85 was struck down in the Wyoming State legislature by a vote of 30-27. It was nicknamed the Doomsday Bill, and for good reason. The bill called for a community task force to be assembled in the event that the Federal government collapses. The bill was a bit of a joke created by Rep. David Miller, who put in a provision that included the purchase of an aircraft carrier to defend landlocked Wyoming. It got me thinking though, 30-27 means the nays won only by a five percent margin. Maybe the yays know something we don’t. Perhaps the end is…NIGH! Okay, that’s a joke. To my knowledge the end isn’t at hand or even on tap. What are always close are reasons and predictions as to why this is the age in which the world will end. For example, Levi having visions of Judgment day or this guy. I thought it would be fun to make up some reasons of our own why next Wednesday will be the end of days and maybe uncover why we have this obsession with our own demise .

And the seventh angel sounded

Clearly, this being here and me being me, any reasons I …

The Rise of Stoic And The Independent Studio

Written by Chris "Tiewaz" Booker on March 5, 2012 at 11:37 am

Innovation is considered a risky commodity amongst most of the larger developers. It’s a much safer bet to stick with ideas that have already proven to be profitable. It’s understandable; titling a game with something gamers are familiar with virtually guarantee’s wide-spread publicity and sales. The unfortunate side-effect of this is we see less new things in games, causing the medium to became stale and predictable, which results in things like multiple re-skins sequels for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series.

There is hope though, in the form of independent (indie) studios, who in recent times have shown there is an undeniable demand, and profit to be made, for games that take creative risks. A recent example was Dear Esther, which provides players with such a unique experience some would say it’s not a “game” in the traditional sense. It was able to return it’s investment from the wonderful initiative The Indie Fund in under six hours, which is quite a success from any business perspective.

Devil Survivor 2 is a commodity

Written by Tom Auxier on March 2, 2012 at 12:42 pm

The original Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor for the Nintendo DS was one of my favorite games ever. Its cousin, SMT: Persona 3, sits beside it on any “Favorite Game Ever” list I’ll never be commissioned to make. Both of these games had highly hyped sequels, Persona 4 and the recently released Devil Survivor 2. Four hours into Devil Survivor 2, I can’t help but draw a parallel.

Persona 3 was one of the most authentic games I’ve ever played. It was rough at times, a little unpolished, but it put us in a world we were dying to explore, with characters who had that certain something that made them more than stereotypes. Persona 4 fixed nearly all of its problems, but this comes with a caveat: the game didn’t have as much soul. It felt more like a commodity than a piece of art. Persona 3′s edges had been whittled down to perfect, but you could tell that Persona 4 had been coolly designed to appeal to an audience, while Persona 3 felt like a labor of love.

Rabid Speculation: Genetics in Pokemon Black and White 2?

Written by Jordan Hedges on March 1, 2012 at 8:43 pm

We’ve got another one of those entries in a popular franchise whose announcement can be solely, “It exists, get hype!” and get away with it. At least with this one we have some images of combined Pokemon to go with our speculation apetizer. Are these direct sequels? The full titles for both games are Pokemon Black Version 2 and Pokemon White Version 2, so these could very well just be expanded variations on the games. Naturally our most interesting speculation comes from the only content we’ve now seen of the games; the images of Zekrom and Reshiram that appear to have fused with the disaster-causing Kyurem.

Let the speculation begin!

Run, Jump, Scavenge: The Next Generation of Apps

Written by Jon Chan on February 24, 2012 at 9:23 am

Good news everyone! I have seen the future of app games and it is good. Today I bring you, Zombies, RUN! and SCVNGR. They may not be video games in the strictest sense, but they are an interactive medium. Both of them bridge the gap between the virtual and real world in a way that their PC and console brethren just can’t do. That is the absolute advantage that mobile gaming has to offer.

Why do you want to get in shape? To out run the zombie horde.

That’s the question and answer that inspired author Naomi Alderman to create Zombies (Out on February 27th). The game takes you through 13 audio missions that tell you about a world in which the dead walk the earth and you, Runner 5, must collect supplies and find survivors. How do you accomplish this? You guessed it, by running! You need to keep up a steady pace and sometimes sprint because the zombies are relentless. If you get caught too many times, you need to restart the mission and that means more running.

Zombies, RUN! offers somethings that Wii Sports and Wii Fitness just can’t: biofeedback and consequence. Playing bowling on the Wii doesn’t feel right. …

Why some game developers shouldn’t like games

Written by Tom Auxier on February 23, 2012 at 7:02 pm

Why can’t we gamers accept that someone who doesn’t love games with the fervent passion we do can make them?

I’m proud to say one of my favorite games of all time—Katamari Damacy—comes from the mind of someone who doesn’t like games very much at all, Keita Takahashi. He seems happier designing playgrounds than he did video games. And yet, this is the man who made a game I could play forever.

Or look at Rockstar, a company founded by two gentlemen, Sam and Dan Houser, who wanted to go into the music business, whose inspirations have been more the classic films of Americana, the Spaghetti Westerns and crime films that formed the basis of their groundbreaking work on Grand Theft Auto. In the beginning, though, they didn’t want to make games. They began to make games out of pure necessity, a desire to find more creative freedom.

So, I ask again: should these people not make games?

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