I have always been especially sympathetic to parody, satire, and general irreverence. I’m skeptical of authority and find tradition and convention extremely dubious. And when topics are off-limits or taboo, the benefits to silencing discourse rarely makeup for what’s lost as a result of doing so.

But sometimes the tradeoff isn’t so one-sided.

Earlier this week, Brandon Sheffield uneasily called out a new Kickstarter project for being in poor taste, and urged readers to contact the crowd-funding website and voice their disapproval. They must have done so, because Kickstarter canceled the project later the following day.

The project in question is a fully funded card game wherein the goal is to rape as many school girls as possible in a fixed number of turns. It’s called Tentacle Bento. It’s disgusting. But does it cross the line?

Writing at Insert Credit Sheffield said,

“Tentacle Bento’s Kickstarter success is the product of a society that doesn’t take sexual assault against women seriously enough. It shows that enough people think it’s “not a big deal.” The argument comparing a game about rape to games about violence is limited by the fact that murder is almost universally penalized in our culture, meaning there is a clear line between fantasy and reality ...]]>

I have always been especially sympathetic to parody, satire, and general irreverence. I’m skeptical of authority and find tradition and convention extremely dubious. And when topics are off-limits or taboo, the benefits to silencing discourse rarely makeup for what’s lost as a result of doing so.

But sometimes the tradeoff isn’t so one-sided.

Earlier this week, Brandon Sheffield uneasily called out a new Kickstarter project for being in poor taste, and urged readers to contact the crowd-funding website and voice their disapproval. They must have done so, because Kickstarter canceled the project later the following day.

The project in question is a fully funded card game wherein the goal is to rape as many school girls as possible in a fixed number of turns. It’s called Tentacle Bento. It’s disgusting. But does it cross the line?

Writing at Insert Credit Sheffield said,

“Tentacle Bento’s Kickstarter success is the product of a society that doesn’t take sexual assault against women seriously enough. It shows that enough people think it’s “not a big deal.” The argument comparing a game about rape to games about violence is limited by the fact that murder is almost universally penalized in our culture, meaning there is a clear line between fantasy and reality there. With rape and molestation, that line is not so clearly drawn, and it results in “cute” games like Tentacle Bento.”

The problem with Tentacle Bento for Sheffield is that it trivializes an atrocity. In a context where, as Sheffield points out, rape is already not taken seriously enough this is especially problematic (see: the Catholic Church, almost any college or university campus with a vibrant Greek life, and how women who speak up are treated by the media).

This is why sexism in videogames remains an issue as well.  What makes Cammy damaging isn’t just that she’s purely a sex object: it’s that she exists as one in a world still plagued with rampant sexism and gender inequality. There are more women in the United States than men, but female members still only constitute a fraction of Congress. Women’s pay is slowly catching up to men’s, but not nearly fast enough given how much more qualified on average the former is than the latter. In other words, when women still aren’t taken as seriously or treated as fairly as their male counterparts: hyper-sexualized, half-naked caricatures matter.

Even if video games like Street Fighter don’t breed these kinds of abusive attitudes they still contribute to the idea that those attitudes aren’t a big deal. Which makes addressing issues of female subjugation and adolescent misogyny in the real world all the more difficult.

And yet if most of us are willing to tolerate Cammy and each of her reincarnations across the medium, why not tolerate a “cute,” “Cheeky,” and “satirical” game about tentacle rape? It’s not even a videogame, so the perversity is never even rendered on a screen. Instead, all of the violence in Tentacle Bento is confined to the imaginations of its players.  Are we to become thought police and tell people what kinds of fantasies they can and can’t have?

While I hesitate to say yes, I’m certainly not comfortable saying no, at least not in this instance. But why?

Part of what really disturbs me is that hundreds of people would feel comfortable openly funding a project like this. We can’t morally judge someone for sexual desires and fetishes that are largely out of his control. We can, however, judge and criticize someone for voluntarily embracing them in the form of a mass produced and publically advertised card game.

For another perspective on the issue though I contacted indie video game designer, Michael O’Reilly. He didn’t think the game was inoffensive, or even well put together, but he was surprised by the community outcry brought on by posts like Sheffield’s, or Luke Plunkett’s over at Kotaku.

“I can’t help but to think the problem is that we’re looking at Bento Tentacle as something it isn’t,” O’Reilly told me. “It’s pornography and I am of the opinion that people should not be shamed for the pornography they enjoy as long as no one was hurt in making it and they can keep their feelings under control.

“Sexism in general media or the attitude about rape in open culture is a lot more subversive and should be fought whenever it can. We should hold our ‘public’ media to a higher standard…But hands off the porn. Porn is indulgent and self aware and very much a part of our culture.”

Both Sheffield and O’Reilly are calling for lines to be drawn in the sand, but with different demarcations in mind. Sheffield maintains that any unserious portrayal of sexual abuse, fictional or not, is damaging and has no place in our society. O’Reilly on the other hand wants to distinguish between “public” discourse and private play.

And here I find myself conflicted. The premise of Tentacle Bento repulses me. Yet I find Sheffield’s stance somewhat hypocritical. Just because “public opinion” agrees that killing is wrong doesn’t somehow magically absolve other media of their responsibility for trivializing violence. The fact is that people do trivialize violence in real life. This doesn’t mean Tentacle Bento is kosher; it means that we should apply the same level of scrutiny to more “mainstream” porn like Grand Theft Auto’s rampaging butchery and Modern Warfare’s disaster carnage.

The problem then isn’t that Tentacle Bento is uniquely perverse. It isn’t. The real issue is that we’ve rushed to judge certain fetishes and declare them immoral without applying the same standard to the rest of the gaming culture. We’ve decided that gamifying rape is immoral, and yet millions more people gamify brutal slaughter every year when the new Call of Duty is released, myself included. When the best selling games feature sociopathic endurance tests where killing not only solves every problem, but delivers the most pleasure it’s safe to say that each of is a bit of a sicko.

(Waiting to Respawn is Nightmare Mode’s weekly column in which we crawl out from our secluded fortresses to discuss multiplayer and the social aspects of gaming.)

At 12:01 a.m. this morning, Blizzard tightened their grip over our virtual lives (for those able to actually log on) by finally flipping on the servers for the much-anticipated Diablo 3. Evil has returned to the world of Sanctuary and threatens to crush out everything wholesome and pure in the land. Unfortunately, I’m not referring to the demons.

Every game has its share of irritating players that flaunt social graces. These are the guys parking the tank on Blood Gulch’s only rocket launcher in Halo or exclusively using knives in Call of Duty. Sure, they technically don’t break any rules, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be called out on their against-the-grain style.

So what do they look like in Diablo? Take a look at a few of our least favorite below. And try not to feel bad if you recognize yourself among the riff-raff. We all sin.

“The Villager”

The best drops usually come from bosses, so wouldn’t it make sense to try and only fight bosses? The Villager uses precisely that logic to leech off ...]]>

(Waiting to Respawn is Nightmare Mode’s weekly column in which we crawl out from our secluded fortresses to discuss multiplayer and the social aspects of gaming.)

At 12:01 a.m. this morning, Blizzard tightened their grip over our virtual lives (for those able to actually log on) by finally flipping on the servers for the much-anticipated Diablo 3. Evil has returned to the world of Sanctuary and threatens to crush out everything wholesome and pure in the land. Unfortunately, I’m not referring to the demons.

Every game has its share of irritating players that flaunt social graces. These are the guys parking the tank on Blood Gulch’s only rocket launcher in Halo or exclusively using knives in Call of Duty. Sure, they technically don’t break any rules, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be called out on their against-the-grain style.

So what do they look like in Diablo? Take a look at a few of our least favorite below. And try not to feel bad if you recognize yourself among the riff-raff. We all sin.

“The Villager”

The best drops usually come from bosses, so wouldn’t it make sense to try and only fight bosses? The Villager uses precisely that logic to leech off the efforts of a team, waiting until right before a boss to join their “companions.” While everyone else slings spells and arrows at demonic forces, Villagers loiter in towns hiding behind vague excuses and trips to the bathroom.

Not content to be left out of the best fights, and therefore the best loot, these players jump into the action once the path has been cleared. Only then do they finally pull their weight. Once just an annoyance in Diablo 2, Villagers stand as a much greater threat due to Diablo 3’s relatively small four person parties.

“The Banker”

Everyone knows someone who just has to explore every corner, kill every monster, snag every bit of worthless junk, and cram it in their bank. Of course, in a game that’s all about the loot, it makes sense to take every chance to find a new axe or wand which might deal an extra point of damage, but hell if it doesn’t use up everyone’s time.

When you just want to get through an area and slaughter a boss or reach the next act, The Banker can drag your efforts into the mud. Their insistence on exploration slows progression down to a trickle, and when the rest of the group finally gets fed up and moves on without them, you’re down an adventurer!

“The Explorer”

The ultimate result of an “it’s my game, I’ll do what I want” mentality, these players forget cooperation as soon as they enter another player’s version of Sanctuary and run off to do…whatever. Alone. Who knows what they’re up to when the rest of the party dives deep into the nearest crypt: listening to Deckard Cain prattle on for ages, agonizing between two functionally identical but graphically different items, clicking 666 times on every farm animal looking for a hidden level, etc.

Similar to the Banker and Villager, these people have a very specific way that they play, and it doesn’t involve you. They still want to be in a group, just not to play with anyone, which continues to confound heroes to this day. Top scientists have worked on this problem for years but finally gave up after realizing that they could just recruit someone else into their game.

“The Solo Artist”

The Solo Artist is similar to the Villager or Explorer, except that their goal actually matches up with yours pretty well. They want to press through the demon hordes, gathering treasure and throat-punching bosses. Excellent! Unfortunately, they really don’t give a crap whether you’re there or not. You aren’t a partner, you’re a minion.

Your band of heroes is just a tool for personal gain in the eyes of a Solo Artist, and just like the jerkface musicians their name derives from they are completely willing to break up the band when they don’t get their way. Any number of things could go wrong – you’re going too slowly, you’re not using the right ability to back them up, and of course, it’s your fault when they die.

“The Social Worker”

At some point after annihilating the final boss and reaching maximum level, many players get bored, walk away, or maybe start a new character. Yet others use their hard-earned power to help others, guiding them through early content like some sort of blood soaked Moses.

The Social Worker literally has nothing to do. A strong character with no tombs left to plunder, they help weaker heroes fight monsters well above their level in order to gather quick experience or push past particularly difficult battles. Beware, for their graces only continue until they grow tired of helping or that season of Community finishes downloading, whichever comes first. Try not to be stuck at the bottom of a dungeon when that happens.

“The Judas”

These heartless betrayers are truly to be pitied. Their cowardice and inability to recognize their destructive nature makes them extremely dangerous.. Always cautious and never quite eager to jump into the fray, they like to hang out around the back edges of fights and prefer ranged classes to take safe, cheap shots at monsters. You won’t even realize your team contains a Judas until it’s already too late, for they only reveal themselves once things look grim for the party.

You see, the Judas fears death and sees it in every difficult fight, despite the lack of real consequences when not playing on hardcore mode (where death is permanent). Once death seems at hand, a Judas will reveal themselves and flee into the distance to save their own life. The sudden loss of damage output swings the battle in evil’s favor, completing the self-fulfilling prophecy and bringing the team to ruin.

“The Sasquatch”

Grainy photos and 1980s quality video footage float around the internet of these strange beasts. Among the rarest of players, Sasquatches are talkative, helpful followers eager to advance the interests of the entire party.

You want to go back to an early area and farm equipment for an alt? Cool, bro. The team isn’t quite sure how to beat this boss? Let’s take a few minutes to research and discuss our options. Out of potions? Here, take mine. Because these majestic creatures break the first rule of the internet, which clearly states that everyone is an ass, no one will ever believe that you saw one.

Adventurers rarely enter battle alone. Like any good multiplayer game, Diablo 3 has a way of redefining people according to its rules, remaking us in its image like some inescapable god in our computers. Of course, we couldn’t possibly define all the different players in a game like Diablo 3. Think we missed something obvious? Wanna share a story about “that time when some weird guy” joined your group? Tell us about it in the comments.

The best indie games do one thing well. They have one mechanic, and they build everything around this central idea. Braid’s mechanical core—time traveling platforming—informed every element of its presentation, and it didn’t try to do anything else; it never gave you a gun, or the ability to fly, or anything to dilute its gameplay. Bastion did it another way, focusing on the story it was telling and then building a game mechanic around it. Both of these are viable answers, but as a rule a small team can only hit one or, at most, two things out of the park; history is littered with forgotten games that tried to do too much and failed.

Dark Scavenger breaks this rule about as hard as you possibly can. It’s a game made by three people (plus one marketer) that tries to do not one, not two, but three things, one being the whole “fully featured RPG” yarn. It doesn’t quite do any of these things well. Dark Scavenger carries itself, however, with an endearing sense of strangeness, one which make the game fascinating if not particularly good. At its heart Dark Scavenger resembles one of its titular characters: it has traveled the galaxy, ...]]>

The best indie games do one thing well. They have one mechanic, and they build everything around this central idea. Braid’s mechanical core—time traveling platforming—informed every element of its presentation, and it didn’t try to do anything else; it never gave you a gun, or the ability to fly, or anything to dilute its gameplay. Bastion did it another way, focusing on the story it was telling and then building a game mechanic around it. Both of these are viable answers, but as a rule a small team can only hit one or, at most, two things out of the park; history is littered with forgotten games that tried to do too much and failed.

Dark Scavenger breaks this rule about as hard as you possibly can. It’s a game made by three people (plus one marketer) that tries to do not one, not two, but three things, one being the whole “fully featured RPG” yarn. It doesn’t quite do any of these things well. Dark Scavenger carries itself, however, with an endearing sense of strangeness, one which make the game fascinating if not particularly good.

At its heart Dark Scavenger resembles one of its titular characters: it has traveled the galaxy, collected discarded scraps of gameplay, and fashioned them together into a functional, if a little ambiguous, title. It takes the adventure game’s hidden object credo, Mass Effect’s faux choices, and the JRPGs turn-based combat system and taped them together with a crafting mechanic. You, as an unnamed protagonist, explore static screens filled with hidden objects. Click on one, and you’ll be given a choice that’s not really a choice: do something stupid, or make one of your allies do it. Do you want to drink this strange, bleachy substance, or do you make Zeus the Thunder God do it?

Either way nets you an item—a weapon, item, or ally—which can be refined and used in Dark Scavenger’s JRPG combat. The crafting, unlike the Choose Your Own Adventure choices, offers the exact opposite of the Mass Effect choice: you choose which of your three companions to give an item to (say, a warm blanket) and they make something of it. What the item becomes bears little direct relation to logic: the blanket could become, say, a flamethrower, a stun gun, or an expert in chemical warfare. You’re told what the flamethrower is (without seeing its crunchy statistical bits), but are given little idea of what the other two things will be or do. In short, you have two types of choices: one where there’s an obvious good or bad choice, and one where there’s three options to be picked from without any information.

None of this sounds exciting, but this is a game that begins with you floating in space, fighting a Galactus-class all consuming blob with just an old sword and a pocketful of dreams. And you win! This is the tutorial!

Whatever Dark Scavenger lacks in compelling mechanics, it makes up for it by being batshit. The mechanics rarely work particularly well on their own, but they are a serviceable vehicle for extreme silliness. This is a game where you can turn a bottle of alcohol into a pirate, a sharp sword into remote control bomb, a lightning rod into a god of thunder.

This, in fact, gets us to the root of the problem. When you craft those items, you’re offered your choice by your three bonkers crew members. The weaponsmith is a genial skeleton who will explain what he’s going to make very clearly. The item-crafter, a green geezer named Falsen whose picture graces much of the promotional material, speaks like a drug-addled, half dead flim-flam man. The ally summoner, Gazer, is a mute alien “puppy” who mimes what his creations will do.

Is it surprising that I opted for the clearly defined item more often? Not really. This is a video game, and it becomes difficult fairly quickly. This isn’t toothless JRPG combat where enemies do no damage and you can heal whenever you want: you have a very limited amount of healing abilities (tied to your ability to stun enemies), and if you make bad items you’ll end up dying a lot quite quickly. My first attempt at the game I tended to make the silliest, most appealing things, and this led me to a very difficult wall in chapter 2. On restart, I made weapons. I made weapons because I knew what they would do. I skipped the humorous ones because I didn’t have guarantees of usefulness, and I didn’t want the game’s sundry monstrosities turning my head into paste.

No one could accuse Dark Scavenger of not being funny, but its attempts at humor step on it being a good game. If its crafting mechanic wasn’t hidden under the brunt of the humor, it would be pretty gratifying: when I actually managed to suss out some fantastic items I began to enjoy the game much more. When the crafting worked, Dark Scavenger became a fun video game.

It shows the central difficulty of trying to make a funny video game. Nothing is more distracting than humor, and while random things happening is amusing it does not provide for a particularly satisfying experience. It’s better when we’re given freedom to do ridiculous things within the framework of a game: when Nico Bellic jumps out of a helicopter at five thousand feet, that’s comedy. You’re doing a ridiculous, crazy thing. When the jokes obfuscate a potentially interesting video game, they’re less fitting. It’s a dangerous area. In effect, Dark Scavenger is inviting us to laugh at it, to not pay attention to its virtues and just go to town on it.

Which makes Dark Scavenger a bit like an awkward, pimple-faced high school student of a game. It’s serious about making us laugh that it makes us laugh at it, not with it. The trouble with being funny is that you have to be good, too: your delivery has to work. A game’s mechanics are its delivery: if the jokes aren’t told well, then the awkward comedy is just going to compound the problem. At its heart Dark Scavenger isn’t balanced: it swung too far in the direction of comedy.

That’s not to say Dark Scavenger is utterly unworthwhile. Its random comedy works, sometimes. That aforementioned tutorial fighting a world-eating god in space with an old sword? Hilarious. I still crack up thinking about it. When the game’s characters are talking, when you aren’t feeling the agony of making uniformed choices, they’re legitimately funny. The mechanics are close, too: while the not-choices are uniformly terrible, the battle system becomes legitimately tactical once you’ve guessed which items work best.

In short, Dark Scavenger is the carrion crow of video games. It’s collected a motley collection of parts, some of which almost work while others step on their toes. It’s a funny little title, but even Falsen’s green magnificence cannot save this one from being a bit of a mess.

To start with I should clarify that the term MOBA is used in its lightest form when referring to Awesomenauts. Whilst it contains aspects of the genre, I wouldn’t compare it to Dota, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth – Or even Super Monday Night Combat. No, Awesomenauts represents the MOBA at its most innocent and entertaining; baby’s first “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” If you will. This is actually the game’s key selling point, allowing both veterans to the genre to feel at least partially at home, whilst letting the newer players foreign to the concept get their bearings in an idiot friendly environment.

The game takes place in a distant future where corporations fight on a regular ...]]> Back in late 2011 I found myself spending a weekend in London to preview some of the biggest titles hitting our shelves; Skyrim, Dark Souls, Mass Effect 3 – but amongst these mainstream gems I stumbled upon a small time indie dev stand looking somewhat lonely but brilliantly colourful, and truth be told I spent more time at this stand than I did previewing anything else that day.  It belonged to Ronimo Games’ MOBA: Awesomenauts which was recently released on both PSN and XBLA.

To start with I should clarify that the term MOBA is used in its lightest form when referring to Awesomenauts. Whilst it contains aspects of the genre, I wouldn’t compare it to Dota, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth – Or even Super Monday Night Combat. No, Awesomenauts represents the MOBA at its most innocent and entertaining; baby’s first “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” If you will. This is actually the game’s key selling point, allowing both veterans to the genre to feel at least partially at home, whilst letting the newer players foreign to the concept get their bearings in an idiot friendly environment.

The game takes place in a distant future where corporations fight on a regular basis for energy. Cue the Awesomenauts: six mercenaries set out to viciously destroy their opponents in a three on three battleground, making sure they not only protect their own base, but demolish the enemy’s. To do so they must break through the enemy defense with the help of computer controlled droids providing cover and offense. This is where the MOBA aspect comes in, but rather than being reliant on strategy like other genre entries, the game also relies on your level of skill in 2D side scrolling shoot ‘em ups. Whilst MOBAs have begun to differentiate themselves from the classic gameplay, it’s quite refreshing to have something that’s so easy to get the hang of, the stigma attached to the more complicated games such as DotA or LoL isn’t here, with 2D side scrollers it’s a matter of “Can you jump and/or shoot? good. can you do it without getting shot?” – and with that you’re off to a good start.

Radical!

However whilst the game avoids strategy, it does have certain features that may allow you to get the upper hand on opponents. The available cast of characters characters each have their own variety of powers, allowing you to play either up close as a Lizard with one arm who specialises in stealth or as a Yosemite Sam knock-off with talents intended for a defensive play style.

Awesomenauts also allows you to take up the reins as a German healing robot, a Hiphop frog, a Russian space money with a jetpack or a suicidal tank robot with a taste for flesh; interestingly each character has their own way of helping the team out but with a three man team, tactics generally get shot to hell as everyone just plays as their favourite instead. The cast of characters reflect quite well upon the entire game, resembling something extracted from Bucky O’Hare (There’s a reference that six people will get)

Sadly the game’s biggest and only real downfall is its lack of variety. It’s a very barebones set up with only three maps, one game type and six characters; meaning that after a minimum of six games you’ve practically explored everything the game has to offer. Obviously as a multiplayer title you could potentially play until everyone else stops playing, but in general most games will end up becoming the same stretch of the same action – however, Awesomenauts manages to capture you, forcing you to return every day or two for “just a session or two”.

Yuri in action

Outside of gameplay this title must be praised for its determination to not only mock itself, but to do it extremely well, with an intro akin to something directly from Saturday morning circa 1985 and aesthetics that look like The Lost Vikings got a hip cartoon upgrade.

The game’s strengths come from its addictive but simple gameplay, but with its biggest downfall being its lack of variety. With only three maps currently available and six characters in total the game seems somewhat lackluster in comparison to its bigger brother MOBAs which feature nearly one hundred Champions/Heroes to choose from (even Super Monday Night Combat offers over double the amount that Awesomenauts currently has), but with more DLC planned for future release who knows what is in the cards for Awesomenauts.

Awesomenauts Character selection screen

The game has me confused; my feelings on it are all but negative, yet I find myself bored of the premise within a match or two, but craving that same boring premise 15 minutes later. All in all it’s a tidy little PvP shooter that might keep you entertained for an hour or two a week, worth the price tag for a great downloadable title. It’s hard to find fault with the game in general, it fills a very simple slot in terms of gaming and that’s most likely the area that most people will love.

It was a cool name with no meaning: Art Game Thunderdome. I had thought the fact that my short-lived video series dealt with hypothetical art games in a rough and tumble manner might justify the title…but ultimately the name was just a hollow ideal. There was no sense of competition, I think—no game to the “art game.” It wasn’t even sound and fury signifying nothing. It was just sound.

Thus we come to the new format of Art Game Thunderdome: Playable Criticism. That’s what I call it, at least. And in terms of our first entry, The Great Gatsby, I can’t help but think that “playable criticism” is somehow more appropriate than “videogame adaptation.” We had one of those last year—the very charming Great Gatsby NES-like. But the game had little sense of procedural purpose, I felt…Aside from loosely adapting the epigraph, last summer’s Gatsby was more or less all setting and superficial context. You got a sense of the time period, but not of the characters. I think we can do more. I believe expression to be infinitely adaptable, no matter the medium. And not just the expression of setting…but the deep structure of the characters themselves. We ...]]>

It was a cool name with no meaning: Art Game Thunderdome. I had thought the fact that my short-lived video series dealt with hypothetical art games in a rough and tumble manner might justify the title…but ultimately the name was just a hollow ideal. There was no sense of competition, I think—no game to the “art game.” It wasn’t even sound and fury signifying nothing. It was just sound.

Thus we come to the new format of Art Game Thunderdome: Playable Criticism. That’s what I call it, at least. And in terms of our first entry, The Great Gatsby, I can’t help but think that “playable criticism” is somehow more appropriate than “videogame adaptation.” We had one of those last year—the very charming Great Gatsby NES-like. But the game had little sense of procedural purpose, I felt…Aside from loosely adapting the epigraph, last summer’s Gatsby was more or less all setting and superficial context. You got a sense of the time period, but not of the characters. I think we can do more. I believe expression to be infinitely adaptable, no matter the medium. And not just the expression of setting…but the deep structure of the characters themselves. We have only to find the way to make such things resonate. And this resonate quality, if it is to be had, must be generated by interpretation…not loose interpretation that only seeks to render settings and time periods, but sharply focused interpretation that wedges its fingernails beneath each stratum…Sometimes the text comes up clean; sometimes in clumps. Regardless of the outcome, this process, for me, is what “playable criticism” means.

And with that idea I began crafting my first game. I had written about them…about how they should be…what developers should be thinking when they make them; but aside from notes and ideas I’d never made one myself. Well, now I have, and you’ll find it below,  an “adaptation” of The Great Gatsby. And I don’t give a shit if you’ve read the novel before; nor do I care if you recognize the setting; or that you notice that the title track, “Summertime,” didn’t exist until nearly two decades after the novel takes place. What I give a shit about is proceduralizing characters, in any way I can; to make them meaningful not through name and sprite, but through the raw physicality that occurs when we our fingernails touch down upon the keys. There will be glitches; there will be poor level construction and animation; some of it on purpose, some of it just honest-to-God mistake. The hope is that somewhere in the scrape of its parts…the functioning and barely-functioning at odds with one another…something good is generated.

And I am totally willing to be wrong. To that end, you’ll find the space below perfectly adequate.

—DOWNLOAD—

THE GREAT GATSBY – PART ONE

+”A” RESTARTS LEVELS

+EACH LEVEL BEGINS WITH AN UNSKIPPABLE WALK ANIMATION. IT AIN’T BROKE, JUST POORLY CONCEIVED

Clark’s claims might have been polemic, but they also got people talking about an interesting and important issue: can video games be smart? And what does that even mean in the first place?

Michael Abbott responded at the Brainy Gamer by accepting the challenge. Working with his readers, Abbott established a “Smart Game Catalogue” to prove Clark wrong. Darshana Jayemanne at Kill Screen responded by arguing for a broader, less constrained notion of art, and one that doesn’t judge videogames by inappropriate narrative conventions.

Weeks later, Clark responded to his critics in a post at Kotaku, eliciting another round of thoughtful rejoinders, including one from critic Cameron Kunzelman in which he argued that Clark confuses subjective preferences with objective criticism. I couldn’t have disagreed more, and so invited Kunzelman to debate the issue with me further here at Nightmare Mode. Directly below is my argument for what makes certain ...]]> In recent weeks the argument was put forth that most games are dumb. Writing for the Atlantic, gamer and author Taylor Clark provided an in-depth profile on indie video game creator Jonathan Blow. In so many words, both Clark and Blow agreed that too much of what is produced in the medium is intellectually lazy.

Clark’s claims might have been polemic, but they also got people talking about an interesting and important issue: can video games be smart? And what does that even mean in the first place?

Michael Abbott responded at the Brainy Gamer by accepting the challenge. Working with his readers, Abbott established a “Smart Game Catalogue” to prove Clark wrong. Darshana Jayemanne at Kill Screen responded by arguing for a broader, less constrained notion of art, and one that doesn’t judge videogames by inappropriate narrative conventions.

Weeks later, Clark responded to his critics in a post at Kotaku, eliciting another round of thoughtful rejoinders, including one from critic Cameron Kunzelman in which he argued that Clark confuses subjective preferences with objective criticism. I couldn’t have disagreed more, and so invited Kunzelman to debate the issue with me further here at Nightmare Mode. Directly below is my argument for what makes certain video games smarter than others, followed by Kunzelman’s case for why objective judgments like these are nonsensical and uninformative.

When I was a Child, I Played as a Child
by Ethan Gach

Picasso said “Art is the lie that helps us see the truth.” It might be better to say “a” truth, but the point is clear. As a form of art, video games are lies that engage us, and in doing so, also reveal something more about ourselves or the world. How much “more” and the skill with which it achieves this is what we mean when we say a game is “smart.”

Trying to clarify some earlier remarks, Taylor Clark wrote at Kotaku, “It should go without saying that there are countless smart things going on in even the most outwardly silly games, or else they’d have no reason to succeed. To me, the gameplay of the cartoonish gorefest known as Gears of War 3 is as tightly calibrated as a Maserati’s suspension system…”

However, Clark argues, games like Gears of War 3, Vanquish, and even Skyrim lack what his fellow writer Tom Bissell calls comprehensive intelligence. Gears of War 3 might be “tightly calibrated” but only with regard to things like gunplay, cover mechanics, and level design. When it comes to other elements like its story, characters, and writing, the game is “dumb.”

At the end of the day, no matter how central players might be to the overall experience games are still designed. And these designs can themselves be more or less intelligent, while at the same time inspiring more or less intelligence in the person holding the controller. As a result, a title like Gears of War 3 might have a masterfully crafted map where enemy entry points and objectives are placed in a way that poses an intelligent problem for the player. This problem then in turn requires an intelligent solution. When the game shifts to narrative set pieces or character monologues though, it doesn’t do either of these things. When it comes to most of its story, Gears of War 3 neither poses deep, complex, or compellingly ambiguous questions, nor does it encourage the player to grapple with or critically reflect the events that are unfolding.

By all accounts the game wants us to feel something. To be emotionally attached to Marcus, Dom, and the rest of its characters. But so do soap operas. And while our individual subjective experiences of games aren’t necessarily “smart” or “dumb” the sophistication with which they go about creating these experiences can be. Sure, both Modern Warfare 3 and Heavy Rain try to elicit strong emotional reactions, but the former does so by crass exploitation while the latter achieves this through thoughtful nuance.

Storytelling in games is a craft like any other part of development. And if video games are going to utilize it they should be held to the same essential standards as other story telling mediums. Even if we disagree as to which games really are “smart,” we can all accept that some aim higher, and encourage us to think more seriously, and feel more deeply. Engaging players more completely, and on issues that matter, doesn’t necessarily make a game “better”, but it does maker it smarter.

I Don’t Know What “Smart” Means
by Cameron Kunzelman

What is smart? I have read the word hundreds of times since the (in)famous Atlantic article came out, and I still haven’t come upon a sufficient definition. Generally, I get the feeling that “smart” is connected to cultural relevance. “Smart” games tell us something about ourselves and the world. “Smart” games make us better people. “Smart” games possess Bissell’s “comprehensive intelligence.”

I think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is smart. Spoilers for some of you, but Soap McTavish dies. He bleeds out on a dining room table. The other characters mourn for a moment, then continue the mission–there is a villain to stop. But that moment stuck with me. It opened some doors–why was the conflict being fought? Was it worth Soap’s life to kill the adversary? It also put all of the real lives lost in similar conflicts in perspective– I imagined the repercussions of Call of Duty politics in the real world.

So forget all of the other things about what makes games “smart.” Smartness is arbitrary. Phenomenal stories, beautiful mechanics, or compelling characters don’t have any kind of equivalence to smartness–what is brilliant to me to me could be absolutely moronic to you, and that is fine. Instead of trying to think through “smart” or “dumb” qualities, why don’t we focus our attention on the way that games invite intelligent analysis?

Boris Groys, in his essay “Equal Aesthetic Rights,” claims that contemporary art is “organized around the lack or, rather, the rejection of any aesthetic judgment.” There will always be as many people who like the total art object that is the Gears of War franchise as there are people who are critical of it. We aren’t able to make aesthetic judgments because the aesthetic field has exploded–there is such a massive plurality of cultural biases and expectations that there is no way we could ever reach a consensus on what is aesthetically “good.”

Groys suggests that we instead champion art that helps establish the equality of the aesthetic field. Rather than loving art that attempts to subsume or overcode all other art objects, we should praise art that opens itself, and other art objects, up for criticism. Groys writes that through “criticizing the socially, culturally, politically, or economically imposed hierarchies of values,” art is able to create an equal aesthetic space open for anything to enter into it.

That is how we should see games. Instead of constantly fighting over what is smart and what is stupid, we should value the games that both reward us as players and open up the field of games for more experimentation and difference. Under this paradigm, Anna Anthropy’s contributions to the gaming scene and Skullgirls have equal aesthetic right to exist.

This saves us from “smart” and “dumb.” It saves us from video game journalists and tastemakers telling us how to feel about a game. Play a game; if you think it is smart, it is smart, and don’t let anyone tell you any differently. Celebrate art that makes the world of gaming bigger, more robust, more strange, most hackneyed, more archaic.

Love the games you want to. Don’t ever feel bad about it.

I’ve always been fascinated with horror games, but haven’t played many real ones. I haven’t because they don’t exist. At the least, they no longer exist in the mainstream spotlight as they once did. The tense atmosphere of the Dead Space series has always kept me on my toes, but they aren’t horror games. Dead Space is an action horror series. It falls in a genre that focuses on the action element in a horror-like environment. Rather than leaning towards one side, Dead Space lies between horror and action. The series tries to frighten the player with cheap jump scares, but does little beyond that. Dead Space wants to be scary, but cares too much about the action. There’s never any downtime to take things in because something pops out at what seems like every two minutes. Silent Hill, on the other hand, devotes itself to that fear. It does so right from the beginning and dedicates itself to expressing that fear in every facet of its being.

Silent Hill starts with Harry Mason awaking from a car crash to notice that his daughter, Cheryl, has mysteriously vanished. You are immediately given the chance to wander the resort town ...]]>

I’ve always been fascinated with horror games, but haven’t played many real ones. I haven’t because they don’t exist. At the least, they no longer exist in the mainstream spotlight as they once did. The tense atmosphere of the Dead Space series has always kept me on my toes, but they aren’t horror games. Dead Space is an action horror series. It falls in a genre that focuses on the action element in a horror-like environment. Rather than leaning towards one side, Dead Space lies between horror and action. The series tries to frighten the player with cheap jump scares, but does little beyond that. Dead Space wants to be scary, but cares too much about the action. There’s never any downtime to take things in because something pops out at what seems like every two minutes. Silent Hill, on the other hand, devotes itself to that fear. It does so right from the beginning and dedicates itself to expressing that fear in every facet of its being.

Silent Hill starts with Harry Mason awaking from a car crash to notice that his daughter, Cheryl, has mysteriously vanished. You are immediately given the chance to wander the resort town of Silent Hill, but you notice that it’s abandoned. Silent Hill is a ghost town shrouded in fog and mystery. You’re given no indication of where to go, but you go headfirst into the fog regardless because what else can you do? It’s the only way that the game offers. This presents a sense of isolation, both literally and figuratively. Literally because you’re alone in Silent Hill and figuratively because the game doesn’t bother to guide you. All you can do is rely on your sense of exploration and go headfirst into the fog.

Another thing you notice is the sound playing in the background. It’s distorted static of some sort, like the kind you hear from a radio that’s off the fritz. It’s this broken, unsettling sound that you’d rather not listen to.

Eventually Harry sees Cheryl, but she darts into the fog, and the camera zooms in on an alley. You’re unsure of where else to go, so down the alley it is. Down the alley you find and go through a fence with the sign “BEWARE OF DOG”.  The first thing you see is a dog, splattered on the ground to the point that there is barely any dog left. Something went on here, but Harry doesn’t react to it. He’s too occupied with looking for his daughter. We aren’t like that though, we realize something isn’t right here. Regardless, we push forward out of some twisted sense of exploration and curiosity.

As you go forward you run through some corridors and the camera changes with each turn. The camera angles are somewhat cinematic in nature, trying to give you a certain perspective on things. These corridors also present the difficulty of turning around tight spaces with the controls, which is a sign of things to come soon after. Then Harry finds another fence. Once through it, everything suddenly goes dark. A siren wails in the distance, but soon disappear in favor of something more sinister and intense. It’s as if Harry stepped into some sort of nightmare. Then you find a bloody body, tied to a wired fence.

Unlike the dog, Harry notices it and starts to wonder what the hell is going on here. You’re attacked by some monsters, but you’re unarmed and outnumbered. Silent Hill’s tank controls rear their ugly head here and make it difficult to run away in a cramped space. Regardless of what you try and do, Harry is scripted to die here no matter what. At this point in the game, when you’re given no way to defend yourself in this mysterious town, you feel powerless. You start to wonder how you’ll deal with enemies in the future. Not just offensively, but defensively. This is the first time that you’re forced into a tight space with nothing but darkness all around you. Even without a means of attack you try to run away, but you can’t. Harry is supposed to die here, but you don’t know when you’re in the moment. You don’t know that when you’re panicking in the face of certain death.

Harry wakes up in a cafe, as if that horrific death by knife wielding, naked children never happened. Was it all just a nightmare? Did any of that really happen? It really did seem like some bad dream.  That’s how Silent Hill is shaped. The isolation, the static, the tank controls. Oh the tank controls! Ever noticed how in a nightmare you often have trouble running away from a monster of some sort? How it’s always harrowing to escape? You’re running in slow motion, stumbling around obstacles. Maybe you trip and fall. Silent Hill is sort of like that, but not exactly. Silent Hill is like a messed up nightmare. The controls are a representation of a nightmare you are unable to wake from. The faceless monsters, the unrecognizable corpse of a dog, the fact that Silent Hill is a ghost town. They’re all traits that make it look like Harry is living some kind of nightmare. Stay in the nightmare long enough and moving around will feel like second nature though. What was once a nightmare will become reality.

When Harry wakes up he’s greeted by his first inhabitant of this town, Cybil, a police officer who patrols the area. See? Silent Hill isn’t so lonely after all. After having a talk about the state of the town she lends you a handgun, but leaves. So, once again, you’re alone. Cybil’s meeting creates a sense of normalcy, making it seem like your death really was a nightmare, one that’s over now. That idea is crushed as a winged monster breaks in through the window. After shooting it down and seeing it bleed out on the floor, that nightmarish feeling comes back. Harry realizes this isn’t a dream. It feels all too real to him.

In less than 10 minutes after pressing start, Silent Hill makes it well known that it wants to be like a nightmare. It isolates the player in a mysterious place filled with unfamiliar sounds and such. Silent Hill sets itself up to have what it takes to be a horror game without wasting very much of the player’s time.

After Pressing Start is a series running on Nightmare Mode every Friday by resident narrative guru Tom Auxier. It focuses on beginning, on the stories that happen directly after pressing start, and how those introductory stories influence the arcs of video games. This guest entry of After Pressing Start was written by Daryl Heard. Check out some of the other APS articles: After Pressing Start

 Very rarely does one consider the power of failure. 

The prospect of failure is used to great effect in video games. Cast your mind to the constant threat of Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission, or the encroaching moon in Majora’s Mask as it creeps closer and closer to Termina. Both examples offer the player a feeling of urgency; they heighten the tension. Take away that constant threat of failure and the deep sense of atmosphere offered by Mass Effect 2 and Majora’s Mask would have suffered for the loss. Without the possibility of losing a teammate we knew intimately, it would have been harder to identify with Mass Effect 2’s conclusion. Without the ticking meter ...]]>

 Very rarely does one consider the power of failure. 

Whatever the symbolic aspirations may be, one thing remains true; by themselves, zombies are the antithesis of interesting. As shambling creatures, they can’t lie, cheat, or verbally threaten like humans can and we do it masterfully.  That’s why zombie films spend their time showing us the breakdown of society rather than what’s fun about hitting a skull with a hammer. It’s the fear, mistrust, and rage boiling to the surface amongst the living that holds the spotlight. True to form, Telltale’s Walking Dead: A New Day isn’t about enduring the undead: the warfare happens in the words.

Like it’s predecessors in the Telltale catalog, Walking Dead is a playground birthed from a pop culture phenomenon. In this case, it’s the award-winning comic book franchise and adapted television series. But, unlike the other past Telltale point ...]]>
If you’ve ever spoken to an opinionated man in a vintage Night of the Living Dead shirt at a college party, you’ve likely had the concept that zombie movies aren’t really about the zombies firmly drilled into your head. For one creator, the undead represent the shambling masses of commercialism. For another, it’s to embody human nature in a form that’s entertaining to hit in the head.

Whatever the symbolic aspirations may be, one thing remains true; by themselves, zombies are the antithesis of interesting. As shambling creatures, they can’t lie, cheat, or verbally threaten like humans can and we do it masterfully.  That’s why zombie films spend their time showing us the breakdown of society rather than what’s fun about hitting a skull with a hammer. It’s the fear, mistrust, and rage boiling to the surface amongst the living that holds the spotlight. True to form, Telltale’s Walking Dead: A New Day isn’t about enduring the undead: the warfare happens in the words.

Like it’s predecessors in the Telltale catalog, Walking Dead is a playground birthed from a pop culture phenomenon. In this case, it’s the award-winning comic book franchise and adapted television series. But, unlike the other past Telltale point and click adventures, this tale avoids the sin of duplication. You won’t play as the iconic Rick Grimes, argue with Lori’s poor childcare techniques, or even see a crossbow. A New Day isn’t a recreation; it’s a parallel story that harkens to its source without mimicking it.

Rather than the commonplace beginning of an unconscious hero waking up to a world already fallen apart, A New Day’s protagonist Lee Everett witnesses it all happen first-hand. Through quicktime events, you’ll encounter your first zombie during a frantic effort to grab hold of a shotgun, load a shell, click it again after you’ve fumbled it, and finally execute the creature with the click of a button. All this while a half-mutilated corpse drags himself towards you.

As a point-and-click adventure, you won’t have complete control over every scene. I played the PC version, which leaves some basic movement within set scenes via the arrow keys. You can’t go off on your own or and action within each section is selective, as the game looks for your input only during crescendo moments or when there is puzzle solving to be done.

The game retains most of the control over the visuals, giving you a guided experience. The invisible cameraman is a fine cinematographer, even if the star of the scene sometimes forgets his place and wanders away from his mark without knowing it. The camera angles have a Resident Evil-like forced perspective that keeps you on edge, frequently not knowing what is lurking past the screen’s edges until you move to it. During conversations, the view is close and personal, as characters go wide-eyed, grimace, or blink like war veterans.

To interact with other survivors, you’re given a brief, time-sensitive list of responses. These options are frequently nuanced and an improvement from the usual up-is-good, down-is-bad karma mechanic. Without careful consideration, a stranger’s interpretation of you will come down to a matter of simple wording. Address them too aggressively and they’ll get defensive. Opt to say nothing and suspicion will creep across their face. The reactions are believable, but it’s often hard to tell if you’ve made an impact with persistent game-wide consequences or simply influenced what they will say next.

Even if the change upon the game wold is minimal, it’s hard not to enjoy the emotional impact of your input. During one scene, as you help a myriad of mismatched survivors build a slipshod fence, a young man asks you if you were forced to kill before you were rescued. He recounts seeing a child die and, visibly unsettled, Lee looks to his feet. Your options for response range from confidently boasting about your own run-ins with the undead, deflecting the inquiry with broad-stroked sentimentality, or remaining mournfully silent. Your choice won’t decide the fate of an alien race, but its impact on the pregnant silence that follows feels somehow more meaningful.

This is where The Walking Dead stands out from the mold. Instead of pummeling corpses for points, you navigate mistrust with words and secrets. Your ambiguous origins in the back of a police cruiser will haunt your responses, even though you don’t know to what degree you should feel guilty. The incessant gory festivals of murder common in the zombie genre are replaced with genuinely tough choices about survival and basic human communication. Like a rabid fan, the game demonstrates that this genre is not about zombies: it’s about people.

Of course, The Walking Dead is not devoid of brain-splitting violence. Negotiating the dangerous world of covnersation is important, but there’s no validity to the bottled emotional powderkeg if the zombies aren’t appropriately terrifying. There are plenty of tense moments of intensity with the undead. During one intense sequence, you must peer around corners without being spotted and determine a means of quietly killing a whole parking lot full of zombies. Even though your partner holds a pistol, you must find a much more complicated, silent path.

When Walking Dead asks for your input, it does so with great depth, but it doesn’t come to you often enough. Too often, the game’s various settings feel like wooden set dressings with a severe limitation of clickable items. Even during your time spent in a drug store, packed with rows of shelves brimming with items, you can click on only four of them. All the posessions you do gather seem relevant only because the game allowed them into the exclusive club that is your inventory.

In once scene, I faced the consequences of a failing to hide the secrets of my character’s ambiguous crimes. Plied for a response, I toiled for a contextually appropriate answer. Later, as I picked up TV remote to solve a puzzle involving the only TV in sight, I could scarcely hold back an eye roll. When the Walking Dead asks for words, it wants you to answer with everything you have. The rest of the time, it can’t seem to decide what you are: clever human, or braindead corpse.

Such change, of course, couples with looming clouds of doubt in a genre resistant to change since Yu Suzuki boldly took fighters into the three dimensional realm. Fight games have long since struggled to define emotion through gameplay in an interesting way, but Castillo’s audio system just might change that by handing the emotional keys of the soundtrack to the player.

Well aware of the challenges he and his team face, Castillo explains in this interview why his reactive audio system will make gamers care about each punch and why you absolutely shouldn’t call it a rhythm fighting game.  

Nightmare Mode: So tell me a little about this secret project you’re working on.

Ed Del Castillo:  It’s a one-on-one combat fighting game where you move through spaces fighting opponents. And in those scenarios the hero has music that supports ...]]> Edward Del Castillo likes to play things close to the chest. When his PR rep read my query about implementing reactive audio in fighting games Castillo’s first thought was “did this guy get a leak?” Without revealing the title, the man behind the Command & Conquer series spoke with me on the sound design processes that went into creating what he hopes will be the next evolution in the fighting genre – reactive audio.

Such change, of course, couples with looming clouds of doubt in a genre resistant to change since Yu Suzuki boldly took fighters into the three dimensional realm. Fight games have long since struggled to define emotion through gameplay in an interesting way, but Castillo’s audio system just might change that by handing the emotional keys of the soundtrack to the player.

Well aware of the challenges he and his team face, Castillo explains in this interview why his reactive audio system will make gamers care about each punch and why you absolutely shouldn’t call it a rhythm fighting game.  

Nightmare Mode: So tell me a little about this secret project you’re working on.

Ed Del Castillo:  It’s a one-on-one combat fighting game where you move through spaces fighting opponents. And in those scenarios the hero has music that supports him, the enemy has music that supports them, and in addition to that we have figured out an entire vocabulary of musical instruments, and um, musical – well, yeah, I guess musical rhythms and musical instruments – and kind of short verse the music in the form of links or riffs, whatever you wanna call ‘em.

And we’ve made it so that – focusing on that from the very beginning – we made it so that those pieces, those component parts –  if you want, think of it as Legos – all kind of go together. And so there’s this kind of very long flat green piece, y’know that baseboard Lego that sits underneath it all that’s always playing, but then we have Lego bits of different lengths, but they’re all uniformly fitting into the integers that form the Lego bits.

And what happens is a very dynamic – I mean – if you were to close your eyes while someone is playing and just listen, you would hear a unique piece of music that would never ever ever be heard again in your, or anybody else’s, lifetime. The interesting thing there is that we’ve also figured out how to, in addition to that, do sound effects in a way that many of the sound effects also fall into this as well.

So, you end up with this awesome scenario where, in my opinion, a game for the first time is appreciable on multiple separate categories. Whereas when we usually play these games we talk about how great the music is, or we talk about how great the design was, or we talk about…but like a movie soundtrack, y’know, we kind of acknowledge them separately, and we don’t acknowledge them as each one of them contributing to the other, and this is absolutely the case with this game.

I mean, the music is being built by you and by us together in unison, and that result is not only unique every single time you play, but it’s something that flavors…Just like you can no longer hear the soundtrack and give it accolades on its own, and you also can’t do that for the fighting.

NM: So would you categorize this as a music fighting game, or is it more of an evolution of the fighting genre?

Ed: Umm, yeah, I’m gonna say it’s an evolution because… [rhythm fighting game] implies there is a rhythm like Dance Dance Revolution or Parappa the Rapper, and hitting on the rhythm makes you better or worse…because what it does is it immediately puts – it tells people – “well, I’m just following the music,” and that’s not the case; you’re actually collaboratively making the music together with the existing music track. And so, I see it as an evolution, I see it – or maybe a better way of saying it is – it’s an exploration.

Y’know, a little while ago, a couple of years ago, we had this social and mobile boom, and I don’t think it’s gonna go bust, I think it’s here to stay. But, y’know, I looked at that and said games have always been social – we had leaderboards in Space Invaders, we just didn’t call them leaderboards, we called them high-score boards. And I see this entire social phenomenon of Facebook and everything else as a very natural exploration of alternative avenues to express our art. And I’m kind of happy that it happened, because to be quite honest, in the last ten years we’ve just been pounding on the better graphics drum. And, I hate to say it, y’know, we need a change.

It got to a point where all the AAA console titles were just starting to very much look the same to me. And I know that the pundits will tell me “how can you compare Gears of War with Assassin’s Creed with God of War?” But I’m like, well, think about what you’re fundamentally doing in all of those – it isn’t very different. What new things am I learning out of those? And I think what you’ll see is the biggest draw of those [games] is graphics – the biggest draw is unique eye candy that I can’t get anywhere else.

And I think that when we had the social boom and we had the mobile boom it did two things: One, it encouraged us to go back into our libraries and pull out great game mechanics that had been forgotten because of high budgets, but it also allowed us to explore another side of our humanity. Y’know, as I’ve said a thousand times here in the building, humans are social and mobile, why are we surprised that our technology has become the same?

And I think that this is yet another exploration in that music affects our emotions, music affects our chemistry, music affects our biorhythms, and the sounds also do the same thing. So why are we, y’know, why shouldn’t we explore this deep impact on our psyche, and how that can be married and created dynamically into a game? Y’know, and how that can be brought out in this kind of game.

And it’s funny because, for us, a fight game is the perfect place for that, or a dedicated music game like “DJ Mix-a-Lot” or something. But a fight game is a perfect place for that because a fight game’s tempo lends itself to music’s tempo. And so I’m just surprised no one’s done it earlier to be honest.

NM: Would you say that this type of reactive audio system builds a narrative through the emotional context of music? Instead of just like a storyline, does the music help push the narrative forward in a more ludic fashion?

Ed: Okay, well, so a couple of things I need to lay the groundwork for: One of things the game doesn’t do is a lot of talking, it actually lets the experience speak for itself. And what ends up happening is we have a lot of very kind of, y’know, Kurosawa-like scenes with very, y’know, stoic poses and things like that.

And what happens when you do that, is what sound is present becomes even more important.  And, what I feel is I’ve always been emotionally attached to music – I listen to some music and it makes me cry, I listen to some other music and it makes me laugh, or it makes me feel very patriotic.

And what happens is – what I find is – it feeds your character’s narrative in the fact of “who is my character?” Like, the sounds for blocking are very different from the sounds for attacking. And so, depending on the mix that you’re using, you form a soundtrack for your character that, in my opinion, starts to influence your thinking.

It’s like, well I’m attacking a lot so that gives me these kind of high tempo drum hits in some cases, or, I’m kicking a lot, y’know, that gives me some very sharp bass tones and things like that. So you end up with a completive fight.

If your style is similar, you end up with this reoccurring – although never the same because your timing is never exactly the same as it was in the previous fight – you end up with this kind of album that you’re forming. Y’know, where the music might vary from fight to fight or track to track, but the “album” has reoccurring themes, or the level has reoccurring themes, because you’re fighting the same way. And conversely, if you take a completely different approach to the next opponent that you took to the previous opponent, well, your soundtrack changes.

I think what it does is – if you’re a big music guy, if you’re a big sound guy – it backfills your feelings around this character. I don’t know this will ever tell you a story, because we have some very cliché and western thoughts about how you tell a story as a console industry, but I think it absolutely alters the tempo of your heart, and alters the emotions you might or might not be feeling. And if shown, for example, that the deeper, the harder, the beat, the more it has a likelihood of changing the tempo of your heart; your heart actually tries to match the beats that are around it.

So if you’re doing some kind of fast-paced, constant attacking, well, you’re going to shoot some adrenaline into you. You’re actually gonna biochemically alter your body to be more amped. And if you’re, y’know, choosing a very passive style, you’re going to have a slower body tambour – you’re going to have a slower bio rhythm. And I think that’s a interesting thing that people aren’t fully exploring yet, but we are, and that’s a key place to be with this game.

NM: Did you use specific instruments and sounds pertaining to individual characters? Or is it a just one cohesive sound all around the board?

Ed: No, I think it’s, again, thinking of – I don’t want to belabor that Lego metaphor so let me try a different one: So, you have music, and music can be presented in many different parcels. So you have, for example, “I’m listening to an entire opera,” or “I’m listening to an entire album.” Then you have “I’m listening to a track in that album.” Then you have, well, “I’m listening to a particular piece of a track” – y’know, whether it’s the drum solo or the bridge or whatever. And then, one step further, “I’m listening to the individual instruments in that riff, or in that segment,” and then “I’m listening to the individual notes of an instrument.”

And so, we really kind of parsed all those out and considered all those separately. And what we do is…okay, let me just take an example, I’ll pick something outrageous: So, the background music is country music, right? And, not that it is in the game, I’m just picking something noticeably different; so, y’know, it’s country music, some line dancing tempo in the back, well, the instruments we choose for the player and for the enemies are all country. We’re gonna have steel guitar, and we’re gonna have banjo, and we’re gonna have harmonica, and we’re gonna have, y’know, the things that you would expect to hear in that style of music.

And then what happens is the individual inputs that you are inputting – the blocks, the attacks, the movements – all are key to hitting on rhythms that are congruous with the background music and with instruments that make sense with that background music.

Now, we take a little bit of liberty in that we might increase the falloff of some of the notes, we might increase the pitch of some of the notes and things like that. But you get to a point – and this is the really cool part – it’s a fighting game and, I mean, who hasn’t had that dream of, like, that whole movie dream of “I close my eyes and I’m a ninja,” y’know? “I close my eyes and I can hear where the enemy is…” Well, that’s one of the really cool things about this – you get really good at our game and you can actually play it with your eyes closed. And that’s really cool.

Like, you can close your eyes and you can just listen to the music and the sound, and you can actually play an entire fight game with your eyes closed. And for us that was the proof in the pudding. That was the “wow, we’re on to something really cool here,” y’know? Maybe one percent of the people who play it will get that good, but there are already people in this building who are that good already. And that’s really cool for us.

NM: How much of the music would you say was composed on the granular level? Like, individual notes that come together or are triggered by certain actions?

Ed: A lot of it. I mean, I have to say that was the focus. I mean, we’re using a famous composer for some of the cut scenes and we certainly enlisted him in some of the underlying tracks of the music, but, absolutely, a fundamental understanding of how beats and how tempo works, and creating instruments that could cohesively work together and create a tapestry of usable inputs was the core of this thing.

So, y’know, we – think of it this way – we didn’t start with “it’s a piece of music and now we’re gonna break it apart,” we started with “what happens if every time I punch it’s a drum?” “What happens if every time I kick it’s a flute, kind of?” And “what does that sound like when I start fighting?” Okay, “what does it sound like if blocking is a harp?” “What does it sound like if moving is a guitar riff?” Y’know, and how does that all…we started from there – we started from the very basic block, which is a single note, and created other congruent instruments, but also figuring out what the right fall-offs were, what the right introduction of the note is, what the right decay of the note was, to make it feel like they weren’t stepping over each other. To make it feel like they weren’t…like they felt like they were supposed to be together.

And there’s so much good hardware out there…along with graphics, all these consoles have also improved their sound hardware, and thus far that only gets used for, like, “okay, one of these tracks is gonna be music, okay, one of these tracks is gonna be hero sound effects, okay, one of these tracks is gonna be enemy sound effects,” y’know? And “one of these tracks is gonna be environmental sound effects.” And so, we’re using those tracks as – as in traditional console gaming – independent autonomous stimuli that’s all happening in a cacophony together. And what we did is we said, “Okay, what if each one of those tracks is a line in the stanza?” “What if each one of those tracks was, y’know, a much more granular approach to sound making?” And we blend all these together.

NM: How do you think this approach affects the fluidity of the gameplay? What I mean by that is does the system influence the player to live up the expectations of the music cues or are the music cues more player influenced?  

Ed: Yeah, it’s a give and take. I would say that at a micro-second level there is some fudging that we do. I mean, at a micro second level there is a, y’know, music does have a tempo, and even if the tempo is “babababababababababa” there’s still a tempo to that. And so if a player is hitting even faster than the tempo for example that I just exemplified we might fudge it into that tempo.

And what we found is if you look at combat games across the world, especially fight games, but not just fight games but action games as well, there is a certain maximum speed at which an animation driven move ceases to look good. And across the board most fighting games avoid that. Y’know, most fighting games avoid allowing you to go beyond the animation’s fluid limits, because they understand that the break-up of the animation makes the game fall apart, because if you literally have to pop from one thing to another it starts tearing apart the fabric of the fight game.

So what you end up having is, y’know, even if I’m button mashing – let’s say in a Street Fighter game – even if I’m mashing that button faster than the animation can draw, the animation is going to draw at its rate, and it’s gonna drop the inputs that are out of sync with the possibility with its range, right? So let’s imagine that the fastest attack from Guile in Street Fighter II is a fifth of a second, so you can do five of these in a second. If someone’s hitting that button faster than five times a second, you’ll still only get five punches within that second. You’ll never go faster.

And this is a very typical anomaly – not anomaly – but this is a very typical characteristic of all action games and fight games. There are parameterized constraints. All we’ve decided to do is [make] the parameters of our constraints fall on traditional music beat lines. So, what happens is we have a sixteenth note, a very fast play note – y’know, “dadadadada” –  if you can hit buttons that fast we can shoot attacks out that fast, but if you go faster, that’s as fast as you’re gonna get to go.

But most people will never be able to punch that fast or kick that fast, much less be able to go beyond that, so we haven’t really found a problem with it only because we’re thinking of it at that micro level. If we were thinking about it like a PaRappa The Rapper or a Dance Dance Revolution where it’s like, “okay, hit the punch, punch, block, kick, punch, punch, block, kick” well, that’s a rhythm fighting game and that’s not we’re not doing. We’re saying how fast is the fastest music? Let’s allow that to be our input windows. And we found that was more than fast enough.

NM: When you recorded the sound, did you mic the actually thud of a punch and mix it to be more musical or did you use drum kits to map over the punches and kicks, or use music instruments in place of true sound effects?

Ed: The answer is yes to all of them. So yeah, in some cases the musical version was the best and in some cases – in many cases – we found that having some kind of punch sound mixed in with music was better just so a player could be grounded in the reality of the game, y’know, because if it was just music what you end up with is “am I hitting or am I not?”

Y’know, unfortunately, because it’s an exploration we’re bridging the gap between what people expect and the music, so we couldn’t just take the leap to completely the new thing. And we found that it just worked better when we mixed in a sound effect with the musical stuff too. But in some cases the music was enough, or the instrument or the note was enough, and so we went with that.

NM: What possibilities do you see coming from this type of reactive audio system as it evolves throughout the fighting genre?

Ed: Well, let me be pragmatic for a moment. I think to start; it has a lot to do with adoption. I mean, if people really come to value that then others will do more of it. If the Japanese fight game companies like Capcom and all these other guys look at that and go, “eh, it’s a gimmick,” well then, y’know, on our own I don’t know that we will change the world of fight games.

But I do think that what this does is it gives a whole new flavor to fighting and I would hope that people will explore how music can intensify the fight feeling. Because really at the end of the day that’s the issue, right? The issue of all games, and the frontier – the permeable membrane – that we are all pushing up against is how do we get people to feel as much for our games as people do when they are part of a movie or when they are part of a more emotional experience in their life? 

And so we’re all exploring the art of how we get people to care, how we get people to feel while playing our games. And, y’know, fight games have traditionally just relied on adrenaline to get you to feel something. And I think it would be an interesting thing to have a sad character, and that character’s music is always sad no matter how they play. Or have an exciting character, or a happy go lucky, happy puppy character, y’know? I think the background-fill of the emotion for a character is where music’s power is, and where music can pull narrative to a new level. Cause it’s one thing to hear a story, or see a guy do something, it’s another thing to feel it.