Monthly Archives: December 2008

The Home trainwreck

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Last week Sony’s Playstation Home finally emerged from its cave into an open beta for all Sony PS3 owners. Over 1.5 years after its initial unveiling at GDC 2007 and in development supposedly from 2005, Sony Home is still highly unfinished. It’s still under development. There are features that will be added in the upcoming weeks and month that will surely improve its current state. Someday even it may move from beta into a glorious 1.0 (or equivalent) state.

But even then, I’m sure Home would be terrible. Just like how Home is terrible right now. True, it may be less terrible than its current state of complete and utter pointlessness. With the addition of promised features like trophy rooms, a variety of minigames (as opposed to the single digits right now), and additional accessories to personalize your avatar and virtual spaces Home may even approach being something vaguely useful when one is bored and only has access to a PS3 with an internet connection.

And it’s not just me who has been turned off Playstation Home. Tycho at Penny-Arcade has posted his own scathing review of Home. The editors at IGN PS3 have found Home underwhelming. And the general response over the internet on forums like NeoGAF have been less than wonderful.

The execution of Home has been abysmal. Ignoring the current server problems that are expected anytime a new persistent online world scales up radically, there’s a dearth of features and content originally promised by Sony for Home. The ability to customize your avatar to fit your own style means nothing when there are so few clothing choices. The ability to pimp your apartment/villa/condo means nothing when the number of furniture pieces to decorate your home reside in the single digits. And Home simply isn’t fun right now to hang out in since there’s nothing to do. The few games that are available are primitive and simplistic. And its hurt by the addition of virtual scarcity (as bemoaned in the Penny-Arcade post) where the number of bowling lanes and pool tables and arcade machines are limited. Waiting in a real line in the real world is never fun and certainly waiting in a virtual line in a virtual world is even less.

But Home isn’t bad just because of poor execution. If that was merely the case then Home could possibly be something fun and useful in the far future. Home is a terrible piece of software because it fails conceptually. At the design level Sony’s development team completely bungled the job.

Games and software products need to have one or two compelling features to drive the purpose of the product. Having a clear purpose gives people a reason to try it and developers are benchmark to achieve. Home is an example of a product that has no single defining purpose. Is it a social network app? It fails to match the quality of anything like Facebook or even a MySpace. There’s no ability to clearly define and discuss your interests and share them in a simple manner. Is it a virtual chat tool? Well, conversations are awkward with text and voice chat suffers from having too many people and griefers privy to conversations. Is it a place to help push games? Game rooms are nice enough, but so far the incentives to make them interesting are low and they don’t sell the features games in any interesting manner. Is it a place to show off your gaming achievements? Well, when trophies are not even uniformly supported and the trophy room is completely missing in action in the current build of Home says otherwise.

Home does none of these things competently. So instead it tries to do all of them at the same time while mixing in an utterly crass attempt to monetize the entire world and slather everything in marketing. The end result is as jumbled and confused as one might expect. All of these features in their current state are half-implemented afterthoughts that aren’t worth the time and effort to utilize. Home from the get go is neutered.

Home is still incomplete. The absence of basic promised features is baffling. Yet even with those features patched in over time, the kinks worked out, and the entire experience improved Home would still be a boring product. Every facet of the game feels devoid of soul and meaning right down to the glassy-eyed avatars. Until Sony and Home itself can justify its own existence in a compelling way then I see little reason why gamers and consumers need to waste their time with this terrible experience.

Cartoon Friday: Modern kids have it so lucky

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(Because I can’t talk about games every weekday, Friday is now where I can talk about one of my other interests: cartoons and animation)

Welcome to the first Cartoon Friday blog entry. Every Friday I hope to throw out some random thoughts on cartoons, animation, and the animation industry. Note that unlike with games, I approach the industry largely as a fan. I’m not an artist or an animator and while I know some people I can’t confess to some deep profound knowledge other than familiarity with the industry. I just love cartoons, comics, and animated films.

So let me come out and say, if you’re a kid right now there has never been so many worthwhile cartoons to watch then right now. There are worthwhile animated shows on all three major kids networks. Cartoon Network has Chowder and Flapjack (and Adventure Time! soon). Nick has recently had El Tigre and Avatar. Even Disney can still surprise even though long standbys like Kim Possible have been retired. Even the misses more often than not can flex a little bit of ingenuity.

I think a large part of this can be attributed to how animation more than ever is a large and growing industry. Back when I was a kid, there was only one place and time to air cartoons: Saturday mornings. Even with 3 major networks in on the act there was a small chunk of time that had to be split between animation, live-action, and educational shows. Ignoring that many of these shows in the 80s were more interested in being toy advertisements, there were just simply less shows for something good to emerge.

This started to change with the rise of cable networks in the 80s and 90s. Nickelodeon followed by Disney Channel followed by Cartoon Network eventually created large programming slates that needed to be filled with original content (eventually, once all 3 had used up all their archives). Now instead of a small 3-hour block a week, you may have near 24 hours of TV space across 3 networks everyday that needs a show. More shows, more chances for a good show to emerge from the muck.

But even then, that doesn’t adequately explain the sheer quality of many animated shows right now. The best shows like Flapjack or El Tigre combine hilarious writing for both kids and adults with a vibrant, unique art style that can wow and amaze. You have shows that endear themselves to all sorts of people, shows that are willing to be quirky or different or dark.

This change I attribute to young enthusiastic artists and animators who are excited to be working in the animation industry. And I think only changes that have occurred in the past 15 years, with the advances in technology like the internet and the rise of better animation have led to this outpouring of creativity. Technology internet in particular I believe has been vital in revitalizing animation and cartoons. Now fledging animators no longer need to use crude tools or work alone. Anyone can easily get access to much of the same equipment and software as the pros now. And the ability to share art and animations easily online to gather feedback, communicate with like-minded people, and improve one’s craft has lead to better artists and animators.

And what’s most exciting is how today’s cartoons will affect future generations of animators. Kids watching Avatar or Chowder now have more reason than ever to fall in love with animation. I can’t imagine anything but cartoons just getting better and better from now.

15 years of cyberdemon killing

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Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the seminal PC title, Doom. If you don’t know Doom then you probably don’t play games at all. Doom was one of the most significant and influential games ever released (and probably the most influential PC game ever). Doom influenced games in profound ways, from cementing the FPS as a major genre to introducing the vast public to deathmatch to popularizing modding of games through WADs.

The history of Doom is a pretty fascinating one and I highly recommend the book Masters of Doom to anyone who’s interested in the history of the game and id software. Doom pretty much cemented the reputation for the top two people at id, John Romero as the design genius (who would use that fame and rep to bankroll most of Ion Storm) and John Carmack as the programming genius (who still remains highly regarded). It made id one of the premiere game dev studios in the industry also with their game and engine, leading the way for companies like Epic who would adopt the engine-game model pioneered by id software.

Doom’s popularity is still enormous in this day and age of modern FPS games and 3D graphics. Doom has been ported to pretty much every viable platform that exists. The extensive list can be read on Wikipedia, but everything from every modern flavor of Windows, just about every console minus the retro ones, even mobile phones have all gotten a little taste of Doom. Aided by the GPL release of the source code, Doom has been and in all likelihood will continue its legacy far into the future.

The legacy of Doom is enormous. Even things we take for granted now, like playing as the silent space marine were first done in Doom. So on its 15th anniversary its worthwhile to step back and give our gratitude to Doom. Still imminently playable, still a fun twitch-action shooter, still important to this day.

Return of the Giana Sisters

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In news that brings a smile to my face, the cult Amiga classic The Great Giana Sisters is now being reborn on the Nintendo DS. Now just called Giana Sisters DS, it looks pretty close to a full re-imagining of the original than a simple remake.

It looks like a competent platformer with nice little touches in the animation and the nicely remixed music. And for those who know the history of the Giana Sisters, their return to a Nintendo platform neatly wraps up the two decades inbetween releases. Originally created in 1987 for the Amiga, the Great Giana Sisters became well-known as one of the better Super Mario Bros. clones. Smooth side-scrolling games were a rarity back in those days, especially outside of the NES and gamers on the Amiga, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum were clamoring for a game that would rival the Nintendo’s Mario in quality and polish.

Enter the Giana Sisters, who not only attempted to match up to Mario, but decided to pretty much copy Mario in just about every facet. You only need to briefly glance at videos from the original to see just how similar the two games were. Sprite graphics, gameplay, animations, even level design were “lovingly” ripped straight from Mario and inserted into the Giana Sisters.

Naturally any videogame company might not find the similarities all that endearing. And Nintendo with their notorious legal team wasted no time getting the Giana Sisters pulled off the shelves with threats and complaints. But the Giana Sisters lived on through fans of the game and copies of the game became sought after collector items. Even today you can still find fans of the girls and their offbeat game. Now, 20 years later, it’s good to see the sisters again in a brand new game.

Indie dev tales: Platypus

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Platypus was released today on the iPhone. I’m not going to link to the app though, not until I at least know that the creator is getting something out of this. If you don’t know the story, check out the making of here where the creator Anthony Flack describes the mistakes, trials, and tribulations behind the game. It’s a short, but entertaining read full of cautionary tales for young designers.

About halfway through making the game, things got a bit more difficult when my house suddely burned down. No, really. Apparently a fire had started somewhere in the apartment downstairs – by the time I got there the whole place was a giant bonfire. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but the house completely burned down, there was literally nothing left of it in the end except for a few twisted bits of metal sitting in an enormous pile of ash. My computers were identifiable, but strangely empty – there was nothing inside the boxes. I guess the circuitry just melted away.

Just having a Global Game Jam

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Someone once said that videogames might be the most complicated piece of software for any programmer. Games combine just about every facet of software design and engineering plus require a deft touch in design and implementation to not only get a properly working game, but an enjoyable one. It’s no wonder the hardest part about making games is finishing. Once someone gets started on a game the list of tasks to complete can become overwhelming.

Making a game takes a lot of work and completing a game can seem impossible. It’s why keeping projects (especially independent or garage games) small and manageable is so routinely stressed by members of the development community. Throwing yourself headfirst into building a MMO is just asking for bad things. Projects which are collaborations also tend to succeed more than solo affairs. Working together even with one or two other people can enormously increase motivation and productivity. All these things work together towards one important goal: finishing that damn game!

Game jams are such an event where both of these aspects come together. Game jams by their nature force you to build small games in small teams in a compressed timeframe. And even if people don’t end up making classics, they leave the experience with the knowledge and experience working on a complete game from start to finish, experience that can prove invaluable even on projects with larger scopes than a game jam game.

There’s been countless iterations and variations of game jams held around the world. And now there’s the Global Game Jam, a 3-day event to be held in next year where people and groups around the world will get their game development hats on all at once (or approximately at once) to celebrate games and game development.

Game jams are typically a wonderful experience. You meet all sorts of people interested in development with their own unique skills and experience levels. The games tend to be quirky and interesting and sometimes even fun. So check out the Global Game Jam and see if there’s a location near you (and a Triangle area North Carolina one coming soon!) and join in on the wonderful magical journey we call game development.

You know, before you become disenchanted and sick of the whole thing.

Dying is easy, good design is hard

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In the post from yesterday I went over a few of my complaints about the new Prince of Persia and the general trend towards less and less difficulty in games. One of the chief complaints with Prince of Persia 2008 is the conspicuous lack of dying by the prince. Rather than falling to your doom when you miss a jump or biting the dust if you lose in combat your partner Elika will save you from failure.

Quite a few players and critics are miffed by the removal of death from the game. Death has long been the de facto negative outcome in videogames. You miss a jump, you die. You lose all your health, you die. You touch a spike, you die. And so on and so forth death in most games is a constant. And usually death is a significant punishment. In most cases you return to the start of an level. In many cases you lose something of value due to death. And in the most extreme cases death ends your current game with a game over. Player death is nothing new to games.

But recently dying in games has become less, well, painful. Forget Prince of Persia which has decided to eschew with death almost entirely. Games like Bioshock where death means a quick teleport back to the vita chambers, Call of Duty where death returns you to a nearby checkpoint with your mission intact, and countless other titles where death is but a temporary nuisance. Dying in these games is still punishment in a sense, but not a particularly meaningful one.

Death has been neutered in large part because — again — it doesn’t pay to unnecessarily frustrate your audience with consequences that may prevent them from viewing the rest of the game. Additionally, the design of many games makes death almost unnecessary. Many games now have sequences and events where dying may be initially unavoidable. Players don’t want to replay section after section just to die and retry all the way from the beginning now. Old PC games used to have the quicksave/quickload mechanic where every few steps you’d save your game so in case you died immediately you could restart from a nearby position. Today’s death mechanics largely imitate this concept without the hassle on the player’s part.

So when people bemoan Prince of Persia’s attempt to remove death entirely as a mechanic, is it really a sign of removal of challenge or skill (I’d argue the linear, Dragon Lair-esque gameplay is more responsible) or rather a method of streamlining the almost antiquated way we use death now in many of these games? I believe its the later and complaints about Prince of Persia (2008) lack of dying are a little unfounded compared to other potential complaints with the game. Death can be a more meaningful mechanic, but its up to designers to figure out how to do it instead of making death a mere nuisance. If that’s all death is, then I welcome what the Prince is doing.

No challenge, no problem

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Prince of Persia is one of the seminal classics in videogame history. Designed by Jordan Mechner and released in 1989, this beautiful platformer became instantly known for its unforgiving difficulty. Death was swift and constant during the entire game and nearly everything was lethal to our prince. It was undoubtedly one of the most frustrating games I played as a kid along with Faxanadu. Yet despite this frustration, Prince of Persia remained a compelling game to play. And there were few joys greater in the gaming world when you finally did succeed in jumping over that trap floor, making the leap of faith to the other side, defeating the enemy swordsman, and rescuing the princess.

Now nearly two decades later, Ubi Soft has returned with Prince of Persia, the 2008 edition. The second rebirth of the franchise (the first being the lauded Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and the less–lauded two sequels), this new edition of Prince of Persia is envisioned as a return to the roots of the franchise. An emphasis on platforming, limited combat, and beautiful environments were suppose to herald the return of the franchise to greatness again. And at an initial glance, they seemed to have succeeded admirably at this. Certainly the beautiful painterly cel–shading creates these wonderful environments. The presentation is nearly perfect for Prince of Persia.

Too bad it seems like forgot to include the challenge in the game. By various accounts, Prince of Persia 2008 is designed to be frustration–free. There’s nearly no punishment for death in the game, the titular prince is he missteps and falls in combat is saved by his new traveling companion Elika. Even more concerning is how Prince of Persia, which once prided itself on its exploration of environments, has now seemingly become a linear game. There only seems to be one correct way to traverse levels and as the GameTrailers review noted at times it feels less like a game and more like an extended quicktime event.

Challenge is becoming a rare beast in games. Not in all games mind you, you can name a dozen recently released games that have a fair bit of difficulty. Challenge has become rare in mainstream games. The big blockbuster titles that cost millions and are expected to earn millions for the publishers. It wasn’t very long ago that these games had no problem punishing players for failure, forcing them to retry sections until that player could navigate with a high amount of precision and skill.

But now its too risky to challenge players. Games (as noted repeatedly) are more and more expensive for publishers to make. And these expensive games can’t risk frustrating less skilled players that might not be capable or willing to fight through difficulty to get to the end of the game. Far better to err on the side of being too easy rather than being too hard. So in games like Prince of Persia getting through the game is unlikely to be a problem.

But the removal of challenge as Chris Kohler in his review noted also removed many of the highs associated with games. Games — if they’re good at anything — are at their best when they deliver the adrenaline and satisfaction of an obstacle overcome in a meaningful way. Yes, by reducing difficulty and removing conquences we reduce the frustration and repetition that might deter some players. But at the same time we remove a lot of the joy from a job well done (or a game well played). How can you feel good at being an awesome player if the game is designed to make everyone awesome?

This is not an easy question to answer. But I do know that reducing risk and challenge can’t be the right one. To me, that’s like being a chef afraid that someone might dislike the food you’re cooking. If you remove the flavor you don’t end up offending anyone. But in the end, all you have is a bland meal.

Wii Music and the future of music games

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A few weeks ago Nintendo released Wii Music for its Wii game console. The latest in the line of “Wii” games, Wii Music has been received to mixed reactions to say the least. Reviewers have had a hard time coming to grips with the intentionally perpendicular direction Nintendo has chosen to take the “music game” genre. And these different qualities have created a lot of negative feedback from both gaming press and gaming masses as Wii Music defies conventional wisdom on what a music game should be.

Music games are no newcomer to the videogame scene. You can stretch all the way back to the Nintendo Famicom Disk System with Otocky released in 1987. Games like Dance Dance Revolution and ParRappa the Rapper and their sequels also briefly brought music games back into the forefront. But it wasn’t until Harmonix came out with Guitar Hero (and later Rock Band) did music games really hit the mainstream. This form of music game, sometimes lovingly referred to as fake plastic rock, has been some of the best–selling titles of the past few years and have ingrained in the minds of many the concept of the music game.

Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band aren’t just music games like their predecessors. In their gameplay they follow many of the conventions now seemingly standard amongst all music games. The gameplay tends to be based off written songs that must be mimicked in some “Simon Says” gameplay fashion. The key difference that Guitar Hero (and later Rock Band) made however wasn’t that they were content to let players copy the music through button presses. Instead they attempted to have you copy the entire experience of playing an instrument. It’s remarkably effective that even though you’re using a controller that often only vaguely resembles the instrument and even more vaguely resembles playing the actual thing, it transforms the experience entirely. You’re no longer just mashing buttons on some funny game controller, you’re acting like a musician.

So now music games almost certainly must have you interfacing in some non–standard method to mimic an instrument (or even better, have a peripheral that simulates the instrument). Wii Music does this to an extent, although not as literally as Guitar Hero. Here the Wii remote and nunchuk act as various instruments although they break down into four basic groups of horn, percussion, strings, and keyboard. The player mimics the motions using the Wii controllers to create sounds. It’s a little crude and simple, but it does the job well enough here and outside of complaints about oversimplification, this isn’t the reason why Wii Music is so polarizing.

The main reason why Wii Music has inspired so much distaste among traditional game critics and game fans is its unorthodox idea on what a music game should be period. Wii Music eschews the conventional wisdom on music games. You can play the game like a Guitar Hero and slavishly follow the rhythm and the beat of the song, but it’s an admittedly terrible experience. Wii Music has neither the song selection or the audio fidelity to stand up to its competitors in that arena. Approached in a traditional manner makes Wii Music look like an utter disaster.

But Wii Music wasn’t designed to just play back songs as they were originally created and getting a high score at the end. In fact, Wii Music discards itself of typical game conventions like score. Wii Music, more than most major music games made today, was designed to be about making music and not about playing music. The entire game is designed around jam sessions that allow you to stretch and skew very simple songs in all sorts of ways. By being able to mix and match musical styles, instruments (and non–instruments) and play the game out of beat and out of rhythm songs can be pushed to the edge of recognition.

It’s this limited freedom which hugely separates Wii Music from other music games. Wii Music transforms the typical game music experience, you move from being the rock star to being the composer. Its an important step to make as by now the Guitar Hero–method has been refined and perfected and the only thing missing is musical content in the form of more licensed songs. Wii Music isn’t about playing content as much as its about making your own musical content. It’s less a game and more of a toy or tool.

Wii Music isn’t flawless though. Wii Music doesn’t help you make music sound good. At points, it feels like its actively working against that goal actually as the game outside of interpreting motions and adjusting the sound of the note to fit the moment in the song doesn’t give you much help in composing these different songs. And it takes a lot of time, effort, and trial–and–error to get good results in the game. Its these missteps that weigh down the package and prevent Wii Music from reaching its lofty goals.

Masaya Matsuura is a musician and game creator most known for the PaRappa the Rapper series of games. In a recent interview with Game Developer, he discusses this paradox of music in games and music games, where the trend has gone towards orchestrated or licensed songs that don’t use any of the advantages of the gaming medium. And he says, “I have come to feel that the music game genre is starting to outgrow itself and is now challenging us to expand its possibilities.” Wii Music may go down as an unsuccessful experiment. But one must note that despite its failure it was a worthwhile experiment. And moving forward if we hope to go beyond the confines of Guitar Hero and Rock Band we need to look for ways — like in Wii Music — where gamers can play the music and not just playback.