This post is going to be about an over-generalization, but one that I think is interesting: a couple differences in popular representations of heroes in Japan and America.
Firstly, order of operations. I've noticed that one stereotypical anime/video game hero story in Japan goes something like this: There is a group of powerful/supernatural beings X, which threaten civilians/humans; one special member of X, who happens to also be unusually powerful, stands up against his group in order to protect the civilians/humans.
This "special" member of X is often half-human, or has a relationship with a human/civilian that is the foundation of their dissent from group X. The key part here is that group X exists prior to the dissent of its special member. Consider some examples (warning, some of the examples may contain mild spoilers, key word being mild):
Shikabane Hime - The recent anime that brought this to mind. In it undead creatures called shikabane terrorize humans, but one such shikabane (the title character) stands up against them in order to protect humanity.
Devil May Cry - Devils once freely traveled between their world and the human world, terrorizing humans, until the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda stood against his devil kin and sealed the gate between the worlds. Now his half-human son Dante has to maintain his father's legacy by killing devils that make it across to the human world and preventing cultists from re-opening the gate.
Vampire Hunter D - Vampires once freely traveled the world terrorizing humans. One half-vampires, however, stands up against them and protects common humans.
Vampire Princess Miyu - Shinma are supernatural creatueres that feed on humans. At any time one shinma (currently Miyu) is allowed to live in the human world as a "guardian", on the condition that they protect humans from any other shinma that try to pass into the human world. Awesome aside in this case: as long as Miyu protects humans from OTHER shinma, she's allowed to feed on their blood.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Dracula's castle appears once every hundred years, but when it mysteriously appears only 5 years after its last disappearance, Dracula's own half-vampire son rises from a 300 year sleep to enter the castle and protect humanity from the threat it represents.
Rurouni Kenshin - In a time when swordsmen of skill are regularly deployed as a weapon of oppression, the hiten mitsurugi school was created with the following principles: owe allegiance to no one and protect the defenseless from those with power. Kenshin wanders around protecting civilians from other swordsmen that try to use their martial prowess unjustly.
Gundam - The Earth federation is threatened by the Principality of Zeon, which has at its disposal a "newtype" named Char. The Earth forces start to gain momentum once Amuro, who happens to also be a newtype, happens to pilot the experimental mobile suit Gundam and show a startling affinity for it.
Evangelion - Mysterious alien entities called angels descend upon the Earth and threaten humanity. Humans study them and create an angel-like being in their own image to protect themselves (note, though, that the "hero" status and Eva Unit 1 and its pilot become extremly ambiguous here).
Final Fantasy IV - The Baron's Army has begun aggressively attacking other cities in order to seize magical crystals. The Dark Knight Cecil, captain of the Red Wings, is overcome by guilt and turns against his king and the evil he has come to represent.
Kung-Fu Hustle - Not an anime, but the rule applies. The protagonist is a wannabe gang member trying to break into the famous Axe Gang. As the over-the-top martial arts being used to vie fro control of a tiny town continue getting more ridiculous, he must eventually face his destiny and become "the one" to save the town.
Ninja Gaiden, Trigun - These are two examples where the explanation might qualify as too much of a spoiler.
The point is that this a very prevalent structure. The hero arises as a response to some imminent or ever-present threat, especially if their own empowerment has a direct relationship to the threat.
Now the contrast: in many American hero stories, the hero arises first, and then a threat emerges as an implicit or explicit response to the presence of the hero. This structure is used largely for the nice narrative rhythm it creates (small conflicts are resolved by the pseudo-climax of the hero's rise, and then a true threat creates a greater conflict with a greater climax). Villains are supernatural or otherwise powerful, but are often represented as being poor derivatives or corrupt versions of the hero(es). Some examples that come to mind:
Spiderman - A guy is bitten by a radioactive (movie version: genetically modified) spider and gains spider-related powers. He starts cleaning up crime in his city until unnaturally powerful super-villains start emerging to threaten his crime-fighting work. In one comic, I believe written by JMS, attention is specifically drawn to the fact that so many of his opponents have also had a totemic relationship with an animal (such as Doctor Octopus, Lizard Man, etc.), but suggests they are all poor imitations.
Iron Man - In the movie version, Tony Stark creates a basic armor suit early on, and later creates a much more advanced model capable of flight. A villain gets their hands on the original suit's design and manages to create their own, evil version of it. They fight.
X-Men - As part of the natural evolution of humanity, some people are born with super powers (hey, evolution, stop slacking off and give us super powers already!). A backlash based on the fear of mundane humans causes some of the mutants to become bitter and cynical, and follow Magneto in aggressively and violently overthrowing the non-mutant controlled system.
The Power Puff Girls - Sugar, spice, everything nice, and Chemical X create super-powered kindergarteners. Otherwise mediocre villains become highly annoyed and start accumulating power in order to thwart the super-powered kids. Their ultimate rival, Mojo-Jojo, was also created by Chemical X. As a super-hero parody, this show reflects the creator's perceptions of super-hero stereotypes.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Four turtles and a rat living in the sewers encounter a chemical called "the ooze" and become pizza-eating ninjas that fight crime. Eventually Shredder, a discontent student of the rat's former master, has been finding street kids and training them to become his ninja army of the foot! (also a super-hero parody, as well as a martial-arts parody)
Harry Potter - A young boy discovers that he is a wizard, and spends half a book delighting in the joys of magic and broom-riding. He slowly comes to discover, however, that there is a lurking threat from the Dark Lord Voldemort, who repeatedly tries to use his mysterious connection to Harry to return to life (this one's British, not American, but who cares).
Ghostbusters - A group of paranormal investigating pseudo-scientists develop techniques that somehow actually work and allow them to capture ghosts. They start acquiring fame and fortune, but an alarming increase in the amount of paranormal activity in the area suggests the emergence of a powerful new ghostly threat.
There are obviously counter-examples, as well, but I'm not trying to demonstrate a law, just a trend. It seems much more likely to be the case in an American/western hero story for the heroes to be a boon to civilization, and for the evil forces they fight to have "eliminate the heroes" as a principal goal. In Japanese stories it's more common for the threat to exist and for the heroes to arise in an effort to return things to a state of normalcy.
Other trends in the Japanese stories include an increased likelihood that the hero is a subset of the threatening group, and an increased likelihood that the hero will retire or give up their power at the end of the story. The Japanese hero is more likely to be operating in secret (I don't mean with a hidden identity, I mean without normal people even being aware that a hero exists). Finally, the Japanese hero is more likely than the American hero to NOT be the protagonist of the story. If the protagonist is a hero in the Japanese story, they are often surrounded by much more supernatural/powerful allies. I'm not going to give a lot of examples for all the claims here, because this post is already way too long, but this last point is pretty prevalent, and I'll give a few examples of it in list form:
Tenchi Muyo - One normal guy surrounded by a half-dozen extraordinary alien women...who all want him.
Fushigi Yugi - One normal girl surrounded by a half-dozen extraordinary men from mythical China...who all want her.
Escaflowne - Hitomi is an average high school girl who can read tarot cards. Her two love interests both pilot giant semi-magical armored suits, one of which turns into a dragon.
Chrono Trigger - Chrono is so uninteresting that he literally never speaks. His allies include a spunky princess, a frog-knight, and a robot from the future.
Final Fantasy V, VII, IX, X, XII - Butz, Cloud, Tidus, etc. are fairly mundane guys with swords who have much more interesting people team up with them, including a cross-dressed pirate, a talking flame-tailed tiger, and a bunny-girl in a thong. (FFVI is notable for having the protagonist being the strange and powerful character, not to mention being female, and FFVIII is notable for having no interesting characters at all).
Metal Gears Solid IV - Seriously, why is Raiden like 800 times cooler than Snake?
Half the examples I gave before - In the following examples from the beginning, the story, at least at the very beginning, is focused on a mundane person who observes the hero, rather than on the hero directly: Shikabane Hime, Vampire Princess Miyu (in the OVA, at least), Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin (in the series). In Evangelion Shinji seems weaker than everyone else, but ultimately that's just because we see his vulnerabilities up front, while every other character takes a while to reveal their weakness.
Again, there are plenty of counter-examples, too, but there's a strong tendency in Japanese stories to have an everyman stand in and observe interesting and unusual heroes who, in the case of video games, have predetermined personalities you don't have much control over. In the American/Western game, this is highly unusual - the fan is obviously intended to fantasize about BEING the hero who's interestnig and unusual. In video games the American game tends to give the player more control not only over themselves, but over NPCs, as well, and how they evolve (at least in the case of RPGs).
I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about what this means about the respective cultures, since I'm already over-generalizing just in identifying these trends, but they're interesting trends to notice either way.
-Silent Ellipsis
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Content and Context
My friend has a brief post up about html, and the very concept of hypertext is no longer central to the way we use the web.
I think this has been part of the democratization of the web. Back when everything was hand-made html pages, there weren't that many sites (relative to today, I mean, which I suppose is an absurd comparison, but there it is).
But it's not so much that there are fewer html pages as that the rate at which other kinds of web content has grown has been explosive - content creation tools have been the real cornerstone of Web 2.0, and as the barrier to entry for content creation has dropped, the amount being created has skyrocketed.
Now the obvious part is over and it's time for me to start firing off into the dark. In my opinion, twitter represents the climax of the push toward content creation. The content itself is so simple that users are able to constantly post more of it, and no one can possibly keep up with the flood of information. The reason I call it a climax is because it's hard to imagine the content getting much weaker. The internet has been trending toward more, weaker content for a long time now, but it's not a sustainable trend.
I don't think that web technology will continue trending towards "more content" for long. Once the network is inundated with information, which it is, the push for context is going to become stronger and stronger. People will increasingly want rules - something against which to define themselves and their information. This is where virtual worlds can potentially be very powerful, but right now they're too removed from the rest of our internet activities to be really big.
So the list of contextual elements that I think are becoming increasingly important include:
Identity - This is probably something that would greatly surprise people 5-10 years ago, and which members of certain chan-related websites would like to deny, but the idea of being anonymous on the internet is rapidly going out of fashion. This is primarily the result of the internet becoming an increasingly relevant part of our society and our daily lives.
Space/Location - It looks like the main candidate to tackle this right now is augmented reality (AR). The basic idea behind AR is to associate virtual content or information with real-world locations and objects, instead of keeping them in a completely artificial space.
Legitimacy by association - This is something that happens to a large extent already, but I don't hear discussed much. The flexibility of html has also been a huge weakness - since one can create literally anything, you have no idea what to expect from a webpage. Contrast that with, say, a page on Wikipedia - sure, the content changes from one page to the next, but there is an inherent structure to the wiki page and it has built in controls (other people editing the page). When I search for something I'm suddenly curious about on google, and a Wikipedia page pops up, I'm more likely to click on it than another page, not because I believe it has the most informed or unbiased writers behind it, but because I know what the expect from the page. This is a direction that the web has been headed in for a while and will continue in.
That's about it for now. You have my official prediction that Web 3.0, whatever it is, won't be about yet even more content than we can produce now.
-Silent Ellipsis
I think this has been part of the democratization of the web. Back when everything was hand-made html pages, there weren't that many sites (relative to today, I mean, which I suppose is an absurd comparison, but there it is).
But it's not so much that there are fewer html pages as that the rate at which other kinds of web content has grown has been explosive - content creation tools have been the real cornerstone of Web 2.0, and as the barrier to entry for content creation has dropped, the amount being created has skyrocketed.
Now the obvious part is over and it's time for me to start firing off into the dark. In my opinion, twitter represents the climax of the push toward content creation. The content itself is so simple that users are able to constantly post more of it, and no one can possibly keep up with the flood of information. The reason I call it a climax is because it's hard to imagine the content getting much weaker. The internet has been trending toward more, weaker content for a long time now, but it's not a sustainable trend.
I don't think that web technology will continue trending towards "more content" for long. Once the network is inundated with information, which it is, the push for context is going to become stronger and stronger. People will increasingly want rules - something against which to define themselves and their information. This is where virtual worlds can potentially be very powerful, but right now they're too removed from the rest of our internet activities to be really big.
So the list of contextual elements that I think are becoming increasingly important include:
Identity - This is probably something that would greatly surprise people 5-10 years ago, and which members of certain chan-related websites would like to deny, but the idea of being anonymous on the internet is rapidly going out of fashion. This is primarily the result of the internet becoming an increasingly relevant part of our society and our daily lives.
Space/Location - It looks like the main candidate to tackle this right now is augmented reality (AR). The basic idea behind AR is to associate virtual content or information with real-world locations and objects, instead of keeping them in a completely artificial space.
Legitimacy by association - This is something that happens to a large extent already, but I don't hear discussed much. The flexibility of html has also been a huge weakness - since one can create literally anything, you have no idea what to expect from a webpage. Contrast that with, say, a page on Wikipedia - sure, the content changes from one page to the next, but there is an inherent structure to the wiki page and it has built in controls (other people editing the page). When I search for something I'm suddenly curious about on google, and a Wikipedia page pops up, I'm more likely to click on it than another page, not because I believe it has the most informed or unbiased writers behind it, but because I know what the expect from the page. This is a direction that the web has been headed in for a while and will continue in.
That's about it for now. You have my official prediction that Web 3.0, whatever it is, won't be about yet even more content than we can produce now.
-Silent Ellipsis
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Rise of Magus: Big in France
Apparently French people respond well to my game. I noticed today a visit to the site that came from a search on google.fr, and I checked it out to find that someone had created and uploaded a 10 minute gameplay video on Dailymotion.
It also included a link to a forum discussion going on about it (in French), which included a request for a translation. Now, I'm confident enough in my French to post on there and say hi, but not to try translating dialogue myself. What's more, I don't think Game Maker supports accents or most foreign characters.
That said, if someone wants to translate the game into French or any other language, I'll try to plug the translation into the game and release an alternate language version.
It also included a link to a forum discussion going on about it (in French), which included a request for a translation. Now, I'm confident enough in my French to post on there and say hi, but not to try translating dialogue myself. What's more, I don't think Game Maker supports accents or most foreign characters.
That said, if someone wants to translate the game into French or any other language, I'll try to plug the translation into the game and release an alternate language version.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Rise of Magus Site Down
*Update June 25: The site is back up now at http://silentellipsis.com
Due to an issue with the server I'm using, silentellipsis.com and the main page for The Rise of Magus are temporarily down. The issue should be resolved soon, but in the meantime, the domain will redirect to my blog here. You can still play the game on YoYo Games here:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/81474
You can also download the game from any of these locations:
CNET
Softpedia
ZDNet
-Silent Ellipsis
Due to an issue with the server I'm using, silentellipsis.com and the main page for The Rise of Magus are temporarily down. The issue should be resolved soon, but in the meantime, the domain will redirect to my blog here. You can still play the game on YoYo Games here:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/81474
You can also download the game from any of these locations:
CNET
Softpedia
ZDNet
-Silent Ellipsis
Friday, June 19, 2009
Music Videos
I assume anyone who actually reads this blog realizes by now the kind of nerd I am, so I doubt my image will be tarnished much further by sharing these.
Last night I ran across a music video (an anime music video, no less) I made some years ago, and it occured to me that not everyone has seen them. If you have, you're free to stop reading, or to roll your eyes at me for making a post about this.
The first, which I made 2 or 3 years ago, is a fairly straightforward video of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children to Nightwish. This is not the most original combination of source material, but the editing and timing is exceptional, if I do say so myself. This was actually a collaborative project with UntoldForce, who came up with the combination, the outline for the video, and a couple key moments. Unfortunately, the original draft also included full minute-long clips of footage without any original cuts, which I found heretical. I gutted the video, left most of the outline in place, and recreated it.
Of course, it lacks anything resembling a plot, meaning, or purpose beyond "that was cool." In other words, I was very faithful to the source material.
My single favorite moment of the video is at 3:43, when the motorcycle bounces. There were plenty of well-timed shots, but that one was truly perfect. I crack up every time I see it.
Alright, second video. This one is a little...um...less faithful to the source material. It's also one of my greatest high school accomplishments. This video was created in an editing frenzy not unlike the Vulcan Pon Farr - a ritual in which I could only expel the demons that possessed me through a primal act of creation, by completing the project in 48 hours.
Unfortunately, the concept will not be immediately clear to most viewers. Basically, I took the audio from a legendary scene in Transformers: the Movie (not the Michael Bay movie, the animated one) and edited it together with footage from the Escaflowne movie so that, I hoped, they would look like they were meant to go together. There's a bit of story behind its creation, but I'll save it for after the video.
Reactions to this video vary from "huh?" to "that was the greatest video I have ever seen." Your reaction was likely between the two, and may have tended on the "huh?" side.
Now the story. In my second year of video production in high school, we were all expected to complete an "independent project" in one quarter. I was making a highly pretentious video set to Philip Glass music, and had collected all the footage I needed, so I asked my teacher if I could borrow one of the editing machines (a G4 Mac) over the weekend so I could edit the project. He said ok, but unfortunately (or fortunately for those who liked the video above) I forgot to bring my footage home with me, and the video lab was locked.
Not wanting to show up empty handed on Monday, I decided to take advantage of having an editing machine for another, more dubious purpose. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a video that used the audio from Transformers, but I wasn't sure what to edit it to. I went through a list of candidate series and movies, considering what each had to offer, until I just stumbled upon the Escaflowne movie and discovered that if had everything I needed. I did sleep and eat food that weekend, but I'm not sure that I did much else.
Now, there's another piece of background I skipped. In my first year of video production, discussions about anime had derailed the class often enough that my teacher had declared all anime forbidden in his classroom. Additionally, my friend, UntoldForce, had dropped the class a week after school started, in a move that thoroughly disturbed my teacher. Knowing this, you can probably imagine his reaction when he came into class on Monday and saw my friend sitting in the classroom viewing my final product, which at first glanced didn't even appear as an edited project but simply a scene from an anime series.
I escaped punishment by convincing my teacher that it was impressive that he hadn't been able to tell it was something I'd edited together from two sources. He rejected my attempt to turn this in as my indepent project however, so I ended up finishing Pretention in 3 Parts (I don't remember what the original title was, but that works just as well).
I've made other music videos, but they do not appear here either because they're not in digital form (they're on VHS tapes in my closet - I really should digitize them), or because they are unspeakable horrors that were created in order to please other beings and not myself.
-Silent Ellipsis
Last night I ran across a music video (an anime music video, no less) I made some years ago, and it occured to me that not everyone has seen them. If you have, you're free to stop reading, or to roll your eyes at me for making a post about this.
The first, which I made 2 or 3 years ago, is a fairly straightforward video of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children to Nightwish. This is not the most original combination of source material, but the editing and timing is exceptional, if I do say so myself. This was actually a collaborative project with UntoldForce, who came up with the combination, the outline for the video, and a couple key moments. Unfortunately, the original draft also included full minute-long clips of footage without any original cuts, which I found heretical. I gutted the video, left most of the outline in place, and recreated it.
Of course, it lacks anything resembling a plot, meaning, or purpose beyond "that was cool." In other words, I was very faithful to the source material.
My single favorite moment of the video is at 3:43, when the motorcycle bounces. There were plenty of well-timed shots, but that one was truly perfect. I crack up every time I see it.
Alright, second video. This one is a little...um...less faithful to the source material. It's also one of my greatest high school accomplishments. This video was created in an editing frenzy not unlike the Vulcan Pon Farr - a ritual in which I could only expel the demons that possessed me through a primal act of creation, by completing the project in 48 hours.
Unfortunately, the concept will not be immediately clear to most viewers. Basically, I took the audio from a legendary scene in Transformers: the Movie (not the Michael Bay movie, the animated one) and edited it together with footage from the Escaflowne movie so that, I hoped, they would look like they were meant to go together. There's a bit of story behind its creation, but I'll save it for after the video.
Reactions to this video vary from "huh?" to "that was the greatest video I have ever seen." Your reaction was likely between the two, and may have tended on the "huh?" side.
Now the story. In my second year of video production in high school, we were all expected to complete an "independent project" in one quarter. I was making a highly pretentious video set to Philip Glass music, and had collected all the footage I needed, so I asked my teacher if I could borrow one of the editing machines (a G4 Mac) over the weekend so I could edit the project. He said ok, but unfortunately (or fortunately for those who liked the video above) I forgot to bring my footage home with me, and the video lab was locked.
Not wanting to show up empty handed on Monday, I decided to take advantage of having an editing machine for another, more dubious purpose. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a video that used the audio from Transformers, but I wasn't sure what to edit it to. I went through a list of candidate series and movies, considering what each had to offer, until I just stumbled upon the Escaflowne movie and discovered that if had everything I needed. I did sleep and eat food that weekend, but I'm not sure that I did much else.
Now, there's another piece of background I skipped. In my first year of video production, discussions about anime had derailed the class often enough that my teacher had declared all anime forbidden in his classroom. Additionally, my friend, UntoldForce, had dropped the class a week after school started, in a move that thoroughly disturbed my teacher. Knowing this, you can probably imagine his reaction when he came into class on Monday and saw my friend sitting in the classroom viewing my final product, which at first glanced didn't even appear as an edited project but simply a scene from an anime series.
I escaped punishment by convincing my teacher that it was impressive that he hadn't been able to tell it was something I'd edited together from two sources. He rejected my attempt to turn this in as my indepent project however, so I ended up finishing Pretention in 3 Parts (I don't remember what the original title was, but that works just as well).
I've made other music videos, but they do not appear here either because they're not in digital form (they're on VHS tapes in my closet - I really should digitize them), or because they are unspeakable horrors that were created in order to please other beings and not myself.
-Silent Ellipsis
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Chrono Compendium Post (also: Jason Rohrer)
Today, when I went to check on traffic to silentellipsis.com, I noticed a sudden spike in the numbers, and subsequently that many of these new users were coming from chronocompendium.com. Sure enough, my game, The Rise of Magus, had been mentioned on the front page of the site.
As I mentioned before (and as has been reported across the internet at this point), the main project for the site got shut down by a cease and desist order from SquareEnix about a month ago (in fact, it was posted on the very same day I intended to submit The Rise of Magus to be posted on their site), so I'd expected that in the immediate aftermath my game probably wasn't going to get much mention. I appreciate the fact that my game was eventually brought up (and in a positive light). Maybe now I'll get more feedback from people on it and feel compelled to add a couple bonus features that I didn't get around to.
---
In other news, I've been playing Jason Rohrer's games lately. He's essentially a crazy independent programmer making an earnest attempt at using games as an artistic medium of expression, and for what they are, they're very good.
Primrose is a very good puzzle game, though it lacks any implicit narrative that would give it the same impact as some of his other games. The game that struck me most was Passage, and Gravitation was also a fascinating game. Between didn't impress me as much, and I'll describe why below - these games largely depend for their effect on the player not knowing what it is they're supposed to expect, so I'm going to avoid describing them as much as possible prior to my spoiler warning tag:
SPOILER WARNING (for the remainder of the post)
Ok, so now that we're past the spoiler warning, I'll spoil your ability to properly experience the games I mentioned above.
Passage is a game that presents itself as being about perception and time. The game has a set time limit, and as it progresses, your apparent position on the screen shifts (while the room moves under you as you walk around), and you are only able to clearly see that portions of the screen closest to your current appear position. This is interesting, and it's kind of touching just to see your character grow old (possibly with a partner, possibly not), but I say that this is how it "presents itself" because I think what's really interesting is the implicit subject matter: games.
Passage includes a number in the upper right that grows as you move right and as you find stars hidden in treasure chests. It also allows you to explore freely, has maze-like sections, and presents new environments as you move right. Gamers will naturally take the number in the upper-right to be your score, but it's immediately unclear that getting a high score is actually your objective. It might instead be to make as much progress right as possible, attempting to reach an unknown "destination", or it might simply be to explore the maze-like areas in the hopes of finding something interesting.
Since you only have a few minutes to play the game before your character grows old and die, you cannot do everything in one playthrough, and each time you play the game you might play it very differently. This, it seems to me, is the real point - when presented with a set of rules and a virtual environment, our nature is to find a goal and strive for it, and Passage leaves your own psychology bare as you play it.
Gravitation is very similar, this time in platformer format. You begin in a room which you can only see a small portion of, and when you "warm up" you can leap straight out of the room and up to untold heights. Eventually, however, you will start to feel "cold" again and feel your power drain out of you (and sight limit itself) - you can gain boosts of warmth by collecting stars, but you'll soon find that you get cold faster and faster afterwards until you cannot progress. At this point, you can wait forself to slowly heat up, or head back down to the beginning to stand by the fire. If you go down, you will find blocks of ice that have appeared, and you can score "points" and warm up faster by pushing them into the fire. Once you're warm, you can continue exploring above yourself.
Here's the interesting part. I started realizing as I played that collecting stars wasn't actually increasing my score, and at some point I realized that the stars, which fell after being collected, were actually becoming the blocks of ice at the bottom of the level. That is, these items that we are used to associating with bonus points (or temporary invincibility) are being subverted, and now both help and hinder my progress. For that matter, it's not clear that I am making progress, because nothing ever indicated to me that I'm supposed to be climbing up - it just seems like the correct course of action.
The experience of having your own assumptions about what it means to be playing a game brought into question was really quite exceptional. So I decided to ask my friend to play the next game in the list, Between, with me (it's mandatory multiplayer). This game presents you with the ability to spawn blocks of three colors, and the ability to travel to different "worlds" by either going to sleep (the S key) or waking up (the W key), which circle around. There's a tower that can apparently be constructed out of your blocks in each world, but after minor progress you will see that the tower requires colors you cannot make. Then, when waking one day, you find these blocks you could not have made yourself, that allow you to continue building, and they are signs of another, who you cannot see.
This is the intended concept of the game, clearly, but it simply didn't work for me. The reasons for this are fairly simple. Firstly, it didn't work because I knew that thre was another person involved...the game is multiplayer by fiat! As such the "revelation" that there was someone else affecting my game was instead a sense of "is there any other way we can interact?" followed by a resounding "no." Secondly, the objective is too clear. Now, this is possibly the only game that I will ever accuse of having an objective that's "too clear", but it's true in this case. As I mentioned, what was interesting about the last two games was the fact that the objective was obscured, and you were never sure what counted as progress. Now, I have a very clear objective before me, but the consequence is the sheer amount of work needed to complete it is also clear, and I spent most of that time recognizing that I probably would get nothing for the effort in the end - and I was right. I completed the tower and nothing happened.
I'm not sure what exactly could have been done to make Between work better. I think it is an interesting idea, but ultimately one that probably cannot be properly made into a game. If nothing else, in a game this simple it's impossible to convince me that blocks appearing is proof of "another" because the game could simply be producing the blocks for me - in a world whose rules I don't already fully know, I cannot possibly know that those rules are being broken.
In any case, that's enough for now, I recommend trying the games out if you don't already feel spoiled (and you should, there was a reason I put that warning up there!).
-Silent Ellipsis
As I mentioned before (and as has been reported across the internet at this point), the main project for the site got shut down by a cease and desist order from SquareEnix about a month ago (in fact, it was posted on the very same day I intended to submit The Rise of Magus to be posted on their site), so I'd expected that in the immediate aftermath my game probably wasn't going to get much mention. I appreciate the fact that my game was eventually brought up (and in a positive light). Maybe now I'll get more feedback from people on it and feel compelled to add a couple bonus features that I didn't get around to.
---
In other news, I've been playing Jason Rohrer's games lately. He's essentially a crazy independent programmer making an earnest attempt at using games as an artistic medium of expression, and for what they are, they're very good.
Primrose is a very good puzzle game, though it lacks any implicit narrative that would give it the same impact as some of his other games. The game that struck me most was Passage, and Gravitation was also a fascinating game. Between didn't impress me as much, and I'll describe why below - these games largely depend for their effect on the player not knowing what it is they're supposed to expect, so I'm going to avoid describing them as much as possible prior to my spoiler warning tag:
SPOILER WARNING (for the remainder of the post)
Ok, so now that we're past the spoiler warning, I'll spoil your ability to properly experience the games I mentioned above.
Passage is a game that presents itself as being about perception and time. The game has a set time limit, and as it progresses, your apparent position on the screen shifts (while the room moves under you as you walk around), and you are only able to clearly see that portions of the screen closest to your current appear position. This is interesting, and it's kind of touching just to see your character grow old (possibly with a partner, possibly not), but I say that this is how it "presents itself" because I think what's really interesting is the implicit subject matter: games.
Passage includes a number in the upper right that grows as you move right and as you find stars hidden in treasure chests. It also allows you to explore freely, has maze-like sections, and presents new environments as you move right. Gamers will naturally take the number in the upper-right to be your score, but it's immediately unclear that getting a high score is actually your objective. It might instead be to make as much progress right as possible, attempting to reach an unknown "destination", or it might simply be to explore the maze-like areas in the hopes of finding something interesting.
Since you only have a few minutes to play the game before your character grows old and die, you cannot do everything in one playthrough, and each time you play the game you might play it very differently. This, it seems to me, is the real point - when presented with a set of rules and a virtual environment, our nature is to find a goal and strive for it, and Passage leaves your own psychology bare as you play it.
Gravitation is very similar, this time in platformer format. You begin in a room which you can only see a small portion of, and when you "warm up" you can leap straight out of the room and up to untold heights. Eventually, however, you will start to feel "cold" again and feel your power drain out of you (and sight limit itself) - you can gain boosts of warmth by collecting stars, but you'll soon find that you get cold faster and faster afterwards until you cannot progress. At this point, you can wait forself to slowly heat up, or head back down to the beginning to stand by the fire. If you go down, you will find blocks of ice that have appeared, and you can score "points" and warm up faster by pushing them into the fire. Once you're warm, you can continue exploring above yourself.
Here's the interesting part. I started realizing as I played that collecting stars wasn't actually increasing my score, and at some point I realized that the stars, which fell after being collected, were actually becoming the blocks of ice at the bottom of the level. That is, these items that we are used to associating with bonus points (or temporary invincibility) are being subverted, and now both help and hinder my progress. For that matter, it's not clear that I am making progress, because nothing ever indicated to me that I'm supposed to be climbing up - it just seems like the correct course of action.
The experience of having your own assumptions about what it means to be playing a game brought into question was really quite exceptional. So I decided to ask my friend to play the next game in the list, Between, with me (it's mandatory multiplayer). This game presents you with the ability to spawn blocks of three colors, and the ability to travel to different "worlds" by either going to sleep (the S key) or waking up (the W key), which circle around. There's a tower that can apparently be constructed out of your blocks in each world, but after minor progress you will see that the tower requires colors you cannot make. Then, when waking one day, you find these blocks you could not have made yourself, that allow you to continue building, and they are signs of another, who you cannot see.
This is the intended concept of the game, clearly, but it simply didn't work for me. The reasons for this are fairly simple. Firstly, it didn't work because I knew that thre was another person involved...the game is multiplayer by fiat! As such the "revelation" that there was someone else affecting my game was instead a sense of "is there any other way we can interact?" followed by a resounding "no." Secondly, the objective is too clear. Now, this is possibly the only game that I will ever accuse of having an objective that's "too clear", but it's true in this case. As I mentioned, what was interesting about the last two games was the fact that the objective was obscured, and you were never sure what counted as progress. Now, I have a very clear objective before me, but the consequence is the sheer amount of work needed to complete it is also clear, and I spent most of that time recognizing that I probably would get nothing for the effort in the end - and I was right. I completed the tower and nothing happened.
I'm not sure what exactly could have been done to make Between work better. I think it is an interesting idea, but ultimately one that probably cannot be properly made into a game. If nothing else, in a game this simple it's impossible to convince me that blocks appearing is proof of "another" because the game could simply be producing the blocks for me - in a world whose rules I don't already fully know, I cannot possibly know that those rules are being broken.
In any case, that's enough for now, I recommend trying the games out if you don't already feel spoiled (and you should, there was a reason I put that warning up there!).
-Silent Ellipsis
Monday, June 1, 2009
Offline Browsers
My game, The Rise of Magus, is now available on cnet (aka download.com), and has subsequently appeared on every other site that duplicates its content.
That aside, something has occurred to me as seeming obsolete, even though I use it every day – MS Office, and in particular, MS Word. Now I’m actually using the 2003 edition of this stuff right now, so it’s possible I’m naming a few things that are anachronistic, but from my experience with Word 2007, it’s not significantly different – they’ve just made the words “File, Edit, etc.” at the top of the app into icons instead (wow).
What I’m talking about is the fact that Office applications are little standalone apps on your computer that aren’t connected to the web. It seems archaic that when I see a hyperlink in a word document, I not only have to ctrl+click, but that it opens another application to display the content for me. It seems that given just how online our computer experience is overall, I should default, when I want to write text, to a tab in my browser.
Now Google docs theoretically could serve the function I’m talking about, but for some reason I’m just not a consistent user of the service. I guess it’s because I really do need to have documents available offline, and because Google docs emphasizes collaboration so much (so that’s what I use it for).
No, I’m imagining something a little different. When I hit ctrl+t to open a new tab in my browser, I want the url bar to be there for me to use, sure, but what about the page itself? Google’s Chrome uses this to display a list of your favorite sites, but that seems kind of redundant to me, because as soon as I start typing in a url, Firefox will tell me what I’m likely looking for about 3 characters in. What I would really like is to hit ctrl+t and in addition to the ability to type in a url, have a couple of options right there, like a word processor, a file explorer, maybe even games. By and large, I feel like my browser is the center of my computer experience anyway, so why can’t some of my offline content live there, too?
I suppose what I’m really suggesting is that we get more OS-like browsers (or maybe a browser-like OS), because it feels like the distinctions between my online and offline content are relics of a bygone era when going online was something special, not the default state. I don’t know if anyone’s already working on something like this, but I’d like to see it.
That aside, something has occurred to me as seeming obsolete, even though I use it every day – MS Office, and in particular, MS Word. Now I’m actually using the 2003 edition of this stuff right now, so it’s possible I’m naming a few things that are anachronistic, but from my experience with Word 2007, it’s not significantly different – they’ve just made the words “File, Edit, etc.” at the top of the app into icons instead (wow).
What I’m talking about is the fact that Office applications are little standalone apps on your computer that aren’t connected to the web. It seems archaic that when I see a hyperlink in a word document, I not only have to ctrl+click, but that it opens another application to display the content for me. It seems that given just how online our computer experience is overall, I should default, when I want to write text, to a tab in my browser.
Now Google docs theoretically could serve the function I’m talking about, but for some reason I’m just not a consistent user of the service. I guess it’s because I really do need to have documents available offline, and because Google docs emphasizes collaboration so much (so that’s what I use it for).
No, I’m imagining something a little different. When I hit ctrl+t to open a new tab in my browser, I want the url bar to be there for me to use, sure, but what about the page itself? Google’s Chrome uses this to display a list of your favorite sites, but that seems kind of redundant to me, because as soon as I start typing in a url, Firefox will tell me what I’m likely looking for about 3 characters in. What I would really like is to hit ctrl+t and in addition to the ability to type in a url, have a couple of options right there, like a word processor, a file explorer, maybe even games. By and large, I feel like my browser is the center of my computer experience anyway, so why can’t some of my offline content live there, too?
I suppose what I’m really suggesting is that we get more OS-like browsers (or maybe a browser-like OS), because it feels like the distinctions between my online and offline content are relics of a bygone era when going online was something special, not the default state. I don’t know if anyone’s already working on something like this, but I’d like to see it.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
RTS Devolution
A very interesting thing happened in the last week - I picked up a copy of Starcraft, and with it a realization about the progression of RTS as a genre. Firstly, though, I feel obligated to defend myself for the terrible oversight of not having played Starcraft earlier. The reason I didn't pick up Starcraft when it came out was simple - it looked like Warcraft in space, and I'd played Warcraft, so Starcraft seemed redundant. In retrospect that was a very silly thing to think, but that's my excuse.
Anyway, I have since played just about every other RTS game I could get my hands on, so the experience of playing Starcraft has effectively been a way to return to what you might call the "core" of RTS games and understand the overall trajectory they've taken. What struck me immediately about Starcraft as someone who hadn't played it before is that it actually felt "fresh", moreso than some more recent RTS games, even though it's over a decade old. The races are more differentiated and well defined than in most other RTS games, and yet it's clear that every unit has been meticulously balanced. The gameplay is aggressive, chaotic, and micro-management intensive, and yet immediately more comprehensible than in many games that are less chaotic.
That's enough gushing about a game that's already got plenty of acclaim. The point is that I was expecting to enjoy Starcraft when I bought it, but I wasn't expecting to think that it was still better than most games in its genre made in the last decade.
So what's the difference? It's actual quite simple: what Starcraft has is fluidity. The game isn't about building up a huge base and teching up - it makes you branch out, build forward bases, and constantly skirmish with your opponents. There are a lot of small design decisions that work together to make this work, but there are a few that stand out as missing from more recent games (yes, it's time for a numbered list!):
1) Base defenses are weak. That's not to say that they're not useful, but they're ultimately there for support - you can't just build a couple photon cannons and then consider an area safe. This is even more true for the Terrans and Zerg, who lack a single anti-ground/anti-air defensive structure. All defensive structures are available very early on, and useful for repelling rushes, but by the end of the game they aren't really turning the tide of battle anymore.
Compare that to more recent games: AoE2 and AoE3 both have upgradeable towers AND castles (forts in AoE3) that can only be overcome by full armies. In Command & Conquer Generals, one general can build EMP missile defenses that disable any vehicle they hit, making a direct assault suicidal. Perhaps the most egregious case is Supreme Commander, in which you can cover your defensive turrets with energy shields to make an impregnable fortress.
Building powerful defensive structures is so popular that it's become its own genre of game (Tower Defense). While there's certainly a place for games that are about building towers that shoot things, effective base defenses have become an assumed in RTS games and I'm not sure most designers recognize the kind of effect it has on gameplay (hint: it's called turtling).
2) Resources are not infinitely reproducible. As far as I'm aware, it was Age of Empires that introduced farms and the idea of renewable resource gathering. Like effective base defenses, it has come to be an assumed part of many modern RTS games. This, more than anything else, enables turtling, because expanding your territory is always risky, if only because you have more ground to defend, whereas building more resource-producing buildings comes with no risk at all.
Getting past turtling economics in RTS games doesn't strictly require that resources in your base run out, however. It can also be effective to simply limit the rate at which resources can be gathered from a single base. In other words, the important thing is that you can't endlessly grow your economy without opening yourself up to risks.
3) Maps are full of chokepoints. This feature has more to do with level design than systems design, but it's clearly part of the overall gameplay concept. In most RTS games, you're building on open plains with occasional geographical features of interest, or else on islands connected by water. In virtually every map in Starcraft, your base is in a fairly small, defined area with 1-3 points of entry.
The significance of this is that it's what makes turret-less defense of your base possible. If you know that your opponent is going to come from one direction, you can concentrate your forces there and stand a good chance at repelling attacks. On open plains, no matter where you place your units, the enemy, if they scout ahead, will be able to go in a small circle around them and enter your base. To avoid this, you need walls or other defensive structures you can place around your perimeter to buy you time to respond to attacks...which leads us back to point 1.
So overall, it seems that in the last decade RTS games have become more about building (and thus about defense) than about fighting. That's not necessarily a bad thing (building is fun!), but the fact that I found Starcraft to feel "fresh" reinforces my belief that there are very few more recent representatives of the Starcraft model of tactical-skirmish-centric gameplay. I believe that Dawn of War II sees itself as being such a representative, but I find it kind of hard to get into the game for several reasons (forced Windows Live registration plus a CD-key even when you buy off Steam, it's laggy on a computer that meets "recommended specs", there's no real tutorial, etc.).
I'd like to see more RTS games taking some of these points into account.
Anyway, I have since played just about every other RTS game I could get my hands on, so the experience of playing Starcraft has effectively been a way to return to what you might call the "core" of RTS games and understand the overall trajectory they've taken. What struck me immediately about Starcraft as someone who hadn't played it before is that it actually felt "fresh", moreso than some more recent RTS games, even though it's over a decade old. The races are more differentiated and well defined than in most other RTS games, and yet it's clear that every unit has been meticulously balanced. The gameplay is aggressive, chaotic, and micro-management intensive, and yet immediately more comprehensible than in many games that are less chaotic.
That's enough gushing about a game that's already got plenty of acclaim. The point is that I was expecting to enjoy Starcraft when I bought it, but I wasn't expecting to think that it was still better than most games in its genre made in the last decade.
So what's the difference? It's actual quite simple: what Starcraft has is fluidity. The game isn't about building up a huge base and teching up - it makes you branch out, build forward bases, and constantly skirmish with your opponents. There are a lot of small design decisions that work together to make this work, but there are a few that stand out as missing from more recent games (yes, it's time for a numbered list!):
1) Base defenses are weak. That's not to say that they're not useful, but they're ultimately there for support - you can't just build a couple photon cannons and then consider an area safe. This is even more true for the Terrans and Zerg, who lack a single anti-ground/anti-air defensive structure. All defensive structures are available very early on, and useful for repelling rushes, but by the end of the game they aren't really turning the tide of battle anymore.
Compare that to more recent games: AoE2 and AoE3 both have upgradeable towers AND castles (forts in AoE3) that can only be overcome by full armies. In Command & Conquer Generals, one general can build EMP missile defenses that disable any vehicle they hit, making a direct assault suicidal. Perhaps the most egregious case is Supreme Commander, in which you can cover your defensive turrets with energy shields to make an impregnable fortress.
Building powerful defensive structures is so popular that it's become its own genre of game (Tower Defense). While there's certainly a place for games that are about building towers that shoot things, effective base defenses have become an assumed in RTS games and I'm not sure most designers recognize the kind of effect it has on gameplay (hint: it's called turtling).
2) Resources are not infinitely reproducible. As far as I'm aware, it was Age of Empires that introduced farms and the idea of renewable resource gathering. Like effective base defenses, it has come to be an assumed part of many modern RTS games. This, more than anything else, enables turtling, because expanding your territory is always risky, if only because you have more ground to defend, whereas building more resource-producing buildings comes with no risk at all.
Getting past turtling economics in RTS games doesn't strictly require that resources in your base run out, however. It can also be effective to simply limit the rate at which resources can be gathered from a single base. In other words, the important thing is that you can't endlessly grow your economy without opening yourself up to risks.
3) Maps are full of chokepoints. This feature has more to do with level design than systems design, but it's clearly part of the overall gameplay concept. In most RTS games, you're building on open plains with occasional geographical features of interest, or else on islands connected by water. In virtually every map in Starcraft, your base is in a fairly small, defined area with 1-3 points of entry.
The significance of this is that it's what makes turret-less defense of your base possible. If you know that your opponent is going to come from one direction, you can concentrate your forces there and stand a good chance at repelling attacks. On open plains, no matter where you place your units, the enemy, if they scout ahead, will be able to go in a small circle around them and enter your base. To avoid this, you need walls or other defensive structures you can place around your perimeter to buy you time to respond to attacks...which leads us back to point 1.
So overall, it seems that in the last decade RTS games have become more about building (and thus about defense) than about fighting. That's not necessarily a bad thing (building is fun!), but the fact that I found Starcraft to feel "fresh" reinforces my belief that there are very few more recent representatives of the Starcraft model of tactical-skirmish-centric gameplay. I believe that Dawn of War II sees itself as being such a representative, but I find it kind of hard to get into the game for several reasons (forced Windows Live registration plus a CD-key even when you buy off Steam, it's laggy on a computer that meets "recommended specs", there's no real tutorial, etc.).
I'd like to see more RTS games taking some of these points into account.
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