All Aboard

Brenda Brathwaite’s Train is receiving more publicity than I could have imagined while I was watching its development down at SCAD. Many people have now seen the game, played the game, and talked about the game. Talking about it is something I have put off for a while, and now that it is in the public eye, I think it’s time to do so.

The first time I saw the game in its full form was during a class of Design Patterns. The class was cut short as Train was being photographed (which is where the picture to the left comes from) and the class was going to go see it. As we watched it being photographed, Brenda told us some stories about its development and about the symbolism, specifically the broken glass, which had been blessed by a rabbi beforehand. I had realized long before that the kind of power a game could have on a person because of its interactive properties, but this was the most powerful game I had ever seen because of the abstracted forms of the symbolism – like how you stuff the pawns into the trains just as the Jews were in the holocaust – and the surprise ending which, to the uninitiated in this game, causes a great deal of shock and disgust.

After the photo shoot was over, the glass shards on the table were swept up and put into a box, which Brenda then handed to me. I took the box and was immediately unable to think about anything other than what I had in my hands. These shards were blessed under my religion. I don’t consider myself much of a religious man, but Train actually had me thinking twice about that. Nothing has ever made me question whether I want to take my religion more seriously. Train did.

This game put me in a very strange mood, one that I’m not sure anyone else in the class could fully appreciate. All I could say at the time was, “I’ll talk to you about it later,” to which the response from Brenda was, and I’ll never forget this, “Dan never has nothing to say!”

A couple months later, I was sitting in the cafeteria at Montgomery Hall with my friend Thomas, when he received a text from Brenda to come upstairs alone as she had something to show him. I figured, “Okay this must be a thing for grads only.” As it turns out, she wanted to show him the Nazi S.S. typewriter which the ruleset for Train had been written on. I really wish I’d gotten to see it just so I’d have more to say here. Sure I’ve seen photos of it, but just as with Train itself, sometimes photos don’t do a thing justice.

As much as people are praising this game, no amount of praise I could give would do it justice. Not just because it is a great game – it is. I give this game praise because I got to see it in development, and I love seeing games come together, be them my own or anybody else’s. I’ll never forget how speechless I was at seeing the end product.

I want people from all over the nation to take a pilgrimage to see this game, even if they don’t get to play it. You must see it in person to fully understand it. Photographs and videos are no substitute for what this game proves: that games themselves are art, not just through their artwork but through being played, and though this is a concept new to a species trained to just look at art instead of interacting with and experiencing it (not to mention a species that thinks all games are for children), Train is more than a step in the right direction. She may not have realized this when she named it Train, but Brenda Brathwaite has started taking us on a ride down a whole new track of game design.

All aboard!

Nintendo Needs DLC

One thing I truly love about this generation of games is downloadable content. Creating DLC for your game means that you not only care about it but you care that the fans keep playing it. However, DLC on the Wii is nonexistant. There are a few reasons behind this, as I see it. One is that the Wii lacks a harddrive and currently any USB external harddrive capability. DLC can end up being pretty hefty in terms of gigs, and the Wii just doesn’t have any gigs to spare. What makes this an even bigger issue is that the Wii Shop Channel more than has the capability to supply extra content for games like Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but effectively can’t because of the lack of storage space.

Super Smash Brothers has the advantage of having so much content stuffed in that it doesn’t really need DLC. At most they could introduce new characters and some official levels instead of the ones made in the limited-capability level editor. Considering how many levels and characters there are, though, the lack of DLC can be excused. I can’t honestly say the same for Mario Kart Wii though, which is interesting because it too has a plethora of characters and levels. The difference is that while Brawl is a game of skill, Kart is entirely a game based on luck. Each item box is a die roll, and most of the items are useless in the context of the levels. For example, the Golden Mushroom, which allows you to boost infinitely within a short span of time, will flat out get you killed in levels with no straight-aways and no walls. Meanwhile, a blue shell will almost always cause the first place player to fall to sixth or seventh. The game is not about how skilled you are at driving your kart, it’s about getting the best items, and each item you get is completely random.

The items in Brawl, however, do not determine the difference between winning and losing. Even if you get a home-run bat, a skilled player can still dodge you and land a death-blow. When a homing item is coming after you in Mario Kart, you have to let it hit. Maybe if that jump button let you do more than a pathetic, useless hop – i.e. let you jump over incoming items – there would be some skill involved. Or maybe some more defensive items for players in first place. Like an actual shield that goes up for only 2 or 3 seconds but allows you to survive shells and explosions.

My biggest issue with Mario Kart is that too many items in the game are useless or detrimental. For example, the POW block can be completely negated, and the thunder cloud, unless you can pass it on, punishes you for having it. Why are you punishing the player for having an item you randomly gave them, and why even have this item when there is a lightning bolt that hurts ever player except the one who got it? The thunder cloud is nothing but a badly designed variant of the lightning bolt.

I have a few other complaints about items too, like that the timing and distance on the Babomb makes it a bad idea to throw it forward, or how boosts don’t tighten your steering, making them suicidal in levels like Grumble Volcano. However, this post is about DLC. If Nintendo did decide to release some downloadable content with Mario Kart Wii, they could first of all fix the problems I’ve mentioned here and then some. Then, on top of that, they could give us new and more rehashed tracks. Who here wouldn’t love to see a Rainbow Road Track Pack, with all past Rainbow Roads included? Or what about packs based on specific games? So one pack would be the Double Dash Circuit and include 5 levels from Double Dash, one would be the 64 Circuit and include 5 levels from Mario Kart 64, etc. Mario Kart has a ton of history and as much as Mario Kart Wii is a conglomeration of old Mario Kart and new, it barely scratches the surface.

As great a console as the Wii is, it is a shame Nintendo decided to put it in such a different category from the PS3 and 360. It has USB ports, but they are currently useless. It has online connectivity, but only via Wi-Fi. It’s more than Gamecube 2.0, but I feel like there are too many issues holding it back. The biggest one being that no game on the Wii has any DLC, which means that any game that is released on the Wii is effectively abandoned to the masses. No fixes, no updates, no new content. That is a last generation mentality. These days games live and grow well beyond their release date. Nintendo games? Not so much.

I Give Up

I recently uploaded a Youtube video about my thoughts on Sprint’s distribution of the Palm Pre. In the video, I said Sprint was not handling the inventory well, and as much as I understood only releasing 375,000 units in order to build up interest, it made acquiring the phone very difficult for anyone who actually knew about it and wanted it, considering each store only got about 10-20 phones, and the one near me did not get any at all.

From this, the Youtube user base “figured out” the following “facts”:

1. I am an iPhone owner who thinks the Pre is an inferior device.
2. I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to distribution.

The comments were getting so stupid to the point that I couldn’t even laugh at them anymore, and it became obvious nobody actually watched the video. Just because the title was “Palm Pre Disappointments” they assumed it was a disappointing review, when in reality I haven’t gotten my hands on the phone yet. All I was disappointed about was not being able to find one.

The part I love, though, is that because I couldn’t find a Pre I am apparently an iPhone owner. Oh man, totally. Steve Jobs is my god I can’t wait to trade in my crappy 3G so I can get a 3GS with Copy/Paste functionality!

Especially since my “iPhone” looks like this:

That, my readers, is a Sanyo SCP 3100. NOT an iPhone. If that was an iPhone, Apple would have gone out of business a long time ago. My phone is three years old and has 4 minutes of talk time before the battery dies. Now THAT’S an impressive piece of technology! (For all you retards out there, that was sarcasm.)

Remember back in 2006 when the Wii was released and nobody could get their hands on one because of the distribution problems? It’s the same with the Pre. Not enough product to satisfy the demand. And what with Apple’s 3GS iPhone launching in just a few days, the Pre will have some serious competition. It would have been smart for Sprint/Palm to get a leg up on the competition, that’s all I’m saying.

Now let me be clear: I want a Pre. Anything to upgrade from the phone you see up there. Am I going to rabidly defend it against the iPhone? No. Does that mean I am an iPhone fanboy? No! Where in the hell do these insinuations come from anyway? Is the average internet user THAT stupid? I used to think of myself as a pretty average guy. I wake up, I eat, I check my e-mail, I play some games, I go back to sleep. But seeing these comments on my Youtube and the general etiquette of internet users has had the opposite effect on me. It’s given me a ridiculous ego boost!

I don’t start shit in real life or on the internet. Especially not on the internet. It’s just not worth arguing with somebody who has the intelligence of a packing peanut. The saddest part is that a lot of people say that these people are better in real life. I don’t think so. You know that douchebag you met at the party that you would never be friends with? That’s the same guy who just impugned your integrity for saying you liked Killzone 2 on the X-Play forums.

Wanting your website to have a community is a noble cause. The problem with online communities is the anonymity factor.

When you go onto a website’s forums, or leave a comment on a blog or Youtube video, your “right” to post is nothing more than a privelege, one that administrators need to start taking away when the community gets too out of control and lacks the intelligence to uphold well-thought-out conversations. I say fuck the banhammer. It’s time to get rid of forums altogether when the user base starts mistreating it.

I’m hearing all this talk about Web 3.0. People say it’s all about social networking, but they don’t know why. I think I do. You look at sites like Twitter and Facebook, and what do you see? Intelligence. People talking to people they know, no anonymity factor, and the true possibility of personal embarrassment. When you post a link on Facebook or Tweet what you are doing, you are doing so as yourself, not as a screen name or as a completely anonymous poster. More than that, though, you have security. You can choose to let anyone reply or only people you know. Either way, you can see exactly who is posting their thoughts on your thoughts. Tweetworks, as I stated in my interview with Mike Langford, is a website that combines the openness of forums with the “post as yourself” factor of social networking websites. You are responsible for what you say, just as you are in real life. Why is this a good thing? Because it makes sure that, at least sometimes, the stupid people shut up.

I for one would love to see an end to anonymity on the internet. Everyone will disagree with me on the argument that then they can’t post to websites without giving away their personal information. My response? Then don’t! The less you say anonymously the better. What I don’t say is that nobody was interested in what they had to say in the first place because nothing they said brought anything of substance to the conversation. Sometimes it’s just better to keep your mouth shut.

Education in Games

Can games be used to educate? I’m not just talking about educational games here. This aspect spans to all games. Games require mastery, and mastery of a game requires learning about its game world. Therefore, anything we learn about a game is only limited by what is included in that game world.

Let’s take a game like Bookworm Adventures. Your attack power is based on the complexity and length of the words you are able to spell. So within Bookworm Adventures’ game world, we are learning not only proper spelling but we are also expanding our vocabulary. When we play historically accurate strategy games, we are learning about historical civilizations and battles. America’s Army teaches us what it is like to be an American Soldier through its punishment systems and tight focus on disciplined play. Bioshock exposes us to 1930’s art deco and architecture. The Game of Life gives us an exaggerated look at what’s in store for us, but even exaggeration is based on truth.

How, then, do we adjust game design to be educational but remain fun? Most adults don’t enjoy educational games (unless they’re nostalgic like Number Munchers) and the core gaming audience is aged 18-35. If you are designing a game for kids, why make it so it’s not fun for adults too? Obviously the kids are going to be playing with their parents or guardians, so a well designed game (especially a board game) should theoretically be fun for all ages, much like how a lot of kid’s comedy has jokes that kids wouldn’t understand but would make parents laugh hysterically (naughty jokes in Animaniacs, for example).

The key is to focus on gameplay first, educational factors second. If a game is played, it is educating the players in the ways of its game world. If the game world has educational aspects, the gamer will pick up on them. Focus your game around a specific lesson, and make that lesson your core statement. For example, “The purpose of this game is to  reenact the water cycle.” The core says that the water cycle is reenacted, or simulated, not taught. If you flat out say “When clouds form and humidity reaches 100%, it rains!” everyone gets turned off. Nobody likes school, especially in their games. Make the game strictly water cycle based, make the player interact with the different states of water, show the differences between drizzles and thunderstorms, etc. There are other ways to teach than just by saying what you want to. Games are, by their very nature, interactive. Use that interaction to your advantage.

Games are a hands-on experience. Therefore, whatever they choose to teach has to be a hands-on experience. If the lessons the game teaches are not through immersion in the game, the immersion is broken and the game has not been a successful teacher. Games are great at showing causality, so show us the actions and reactions, don’t tell us about them.

Graduated

I am now back home in Boston and have successfully graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design. It’s been a very long four years and I’m happy to just be able to sit down, make some games, and have some fun with what I’ve learned.

Thinking of exploring new platforms to develop for has got my programming hands shaking. On top of being a year or so away from the announcement of next-gen consoles, the Palm Pre is coming out on Saturday and, yes, I am getting one, mainly because my current phone gets 5 minutes of battery life while talking, and also because it’s a touch-based mobile platform I can develop for without buying a Mac and purchasing a yearly SDK license. Whatever I make for it I will most likely port to the iPhone, sure, but I’ll have to be able to afford a Mac first. In the meantime I’ll be able to make games for a less congested app store, and that’s an exciting notion.

Also tempted to make a new board game, something cheaper to develop but just as fun as, if not more fun than Stalin’s Stash. Don’t ask me what I’ve got in mind because, honestly, I don’t have anything in mind. It’s just something I’d like to do.

Now that I am home I will be updating here more regularly. Going to try to get back to my “one post per week” deal. Daily is too much work. That’s what Twitter is for.

Me On Tweetworks TV

Early this afternoon I got the chance to do an interview on Tweetworks TV, talking with Tweetworks founder Mike Langford about game development, schooling down here in Savannah, as well as current and possible future uses of Twitter. My webcam phased out a bit near the end there, but otherwise it came out pretty good. It’s long though, like 22 minutes, so make sure you have nothing to do and a beer in hand. Enjoy!

Also, if you are on Twitter, make sure to check out Tweetworks. If you ever took part in an old school message board, you’ll feel right at home.

Now Available

The Longest Night is now available. Download it today at www.deviatesoft.com.

Announcements about tomorrow… as presented by ME!

Leaving The Realm of the Third Dimension

3D Realms was an industry innovator. THE industry innovator I should say. Without them, the idea of episodic gaming and downloadable content wouldn’t even exist. There would be no Wolfenstein, no Duke Nukem… no Dopefish. The games that Apogee/3D Realms published in the early-mid 1990’s is responsible for a period I refer to as the “gaming renaissance.” Some may disagree with me on the term, but this was a period after the PC started to become more than a viable option for gaming; it became a gaming POWERHOUSE. This was the period when graphics, sound and gameplay all started blending together to create the truly immersive experiences that today allow us to classify videogames as a legitimate artform. The PC had sidescrollers, RPGs, First Person Shooters (DOOM clones in those days), adventure games… you name it, the PC had it, and thanks to the technology it looked and sounded better than anything the SNES or Genesis could ever offer. So while the two sides feuded over who had a better console, I went with the only console that still remains a powerhouse of gaming capabilities to this day. I’ve always been and always will be a PC gamer and developer.

And so was 3D Realms. They hung in there as a PC publisher in their later days, giving us games like Max Payne and Prey, not to mention a handful of Duke titles for consoles and PC. However, when you think of 3D Realms, you think of the most ironic title ever given to a game.

Duke Nukem Forever.

It’s a shame, really, because if they had made the game using Quake I or II like was the original plan, it’d probably be out. Would it be great? Who knows, but we certainly still wouldn’t be talking about it. We would have moved on to bigger and better games instead of being stuck on this for 12, nearly 13 years, all culminating in the end of one of the greatest game studios ever known to mankind.

Luckily, the Apogee name was renewed a few months ago and it is unaffected by the closure. Unfortunately, they are working on the Duke Nukem Trilogy, once again a project that is destined to end in failure. Three games based on a gaming icon of old that everybody sees as a joke. If Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard had done what it was supposed to do and parodied Duke directly, it could have ended the misery and we’d see some awesome, original IPs or revival of other, old IPs coming out of Apogee. Games like Raptor/Stargunner, Hocus Pocus, Rise of the Triad, and Commander Keen. Or hell, stop beating around the bush and give the Dopefish his own damn game. In these rough economic times, I wouldn’t doubt that the guys at id would love to get in on some small, cheap games to help keep cash flowing around the office.

We’re losing great studios on a near daily basis. Big Huge, Black Isle, NCSoft, 3D Realms, etc. Yet, each of these studios has spun off multiple, smaller indie studios. That’s what Apogee was in the first place. Now that it has spun back off from 3D Realms, let’s see them do what they do best.

In closing, it’s time to kick ass and chew gum. And guess what? I’m all out of ass.

You Really Need to Shut Up

Angry gamer language is like listening to someone with tourette’s syndrome screaming at a losing horse. It’s unfortunate. The anonymity factor allows gamers to get away with saying anything they want. However, that does not stop the fact that gay isn’t actually a derogatory word, and if we were in England, that other word you just called me would only mean cigarette.

The biggest issue is that when people use these words – in games, on forums – in a derogatory way, the people who run the game and or forum are then held responsible when somebody takes major offense and contacts a legal organization. So steps are taken to prevent such language from happening so that they don’t have to deal with the hubub, but this prevents any serious conversation about the topics from arising, such as homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe or announcing a Gay/Lesbian Guild in World of Warcraft. Thus, the company that was trying to protect these demographics from harrassment is in trouble for trying to do the right thing.

The issue is that companies do not want the individuals responsible for this kind of harrassment to get in trouble. They may not be able to afford the lawsuits, or they may not have the constitution to apologize for their actions. If they ban the users from their forums, they get attacked for not allowing freedom of speech. If they censor the words, they get attacked for not allowing discussion about homosexuality. Basically, if a company has gone through the trouble of developing a community for their game, they’re going to get in trouble.

It’s the black ice conundrum. If I slip and fall on black ice on the sidewalk outside your house, the government says it’s your fault. In reality, it’s my own damn fault for not going into the street and walking around it, saving everybody the hassle. What am I suggesting then? I am suggesting an adjustment to user agreements, be it for games, communities, screen names, everything, that basically states that it is the individual’s responsibility to treat others with respect, and if they choose to use ignorant or hateful language that they themselves must suffer the burden of responsibility for their actions and not the company in charge or anyone affiliated with said company.

I don’t believe in censorship.

I do, however, believe that sometimes people really need to shut up.