I'll Stop After This, I Promise.

Imagine that its 201X and God of War IV has come out for the Playstation 3.5. You gleefully pup it into the Hiper Definition RedRay drive on the PS 3.5 and then go to sleep. In the morning you do your usual routine and then check on the system, amazingly it's already at 35% installed. When it finishes you await patiently for the chorus to signal the beginning of Bloodsplatterfest 201X.

However, the chorus does not come. Instead a violin begins playing a tune of intrigue. In the first scene Kratos, wearing a toga and without his melon sized biceps, wakes up agitated in a shabby straw bed. He then proceeds to tell his uninterested wife about his dream where in he was the son of Zeus in a vicious quest for revenge. Afterwards he walks joyfully through the streets of Athens to his job as a Horse Theft Investigator, where he must quickly put together all the clues to save the stolen equestrians.

Naturally disappointed, nay furious, you continue to play the game only because it cost you $125 used and you didn't keep the receipt or the Digital Notarized Letter of Receipt Acceptance (or DNLoRA). However, once you begin playing through the game, you realize that it's actually really good. No it's beyond anything you have experienced before. You have never been so totally intellectually or emotionally engrossed with anything before.

The game changes you life. You begin to exercise and eat right. You call your mother just for the hell of it, every other day. And in between all the good you do, you take some time to continue replaying the game for the seven-hundredth time.

Now here is the question: Is this game worthy of the title, God of War? or to put it another way is this a good God of War game?

Well, no. It's a great game on its own, but it's not really a good GoW game. This is because a GoW game has certain elements that make up what its experience entails in the same way that soccer can never be mistaken for football. Sure they are both sports and a fan may experience similar excitement, but no one will tell you that an American football match was a great soccer game.

My point: re-imagining a series works best when you understand and keep the core of a game, whether that be a combat style, a particular experience, or a particularly interconnected story element. Otherwise don't keep anything and start a new franchise like Lucius: Athenian Horse Theft Investigator.

Random Musings: RPG Edition

It's becoming harder and harder to get excited about stories in RPG's. It seems like every western RPG is about wizards and knights fighting some evil force and every JRPG is about an amnesiac orphan boy with serious hairstyle issues who must discover that friends=good and that all empires are evil.

Games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 are great examples of what new RPG's can be, but for every one of these there are five that share similar story elements. RPG's have this reputation for being more story focused, but their stories are becoming a bit stale. The same "you are the only one who can save us" hero style stories or the "evil empire must be stopped" and their small variations are way too commonplace.

But there are simple ways to shake things up:

1. Don't sSet it in a Fantasy Realm.

I know it seems unnatural since RPG is usually synonymous with magic, but it's also why the stories seem to be the same. We got knights and wizards and angst ridden teens saving the world, now lets go somewhere else. Try new times and places. The Wild West, ancient Egypt, etc.

2. Try Different Modes of Fighting.

Swords and magic are seriously overdone. Guns are starting to make a bump, but nothing is quite as cliche as swords and magic and it carries over to the story. Not having swords and magic allows the story to take place not in fake medieval times or in made up fantasy world x. It also means that combat can be done completely different.

3. Do the Real World.

Setting an RPG in the reality helps expedite our understanding of the game world. We don't need to read an encyclopedia's worth of backstory to know what the deal is with the new cultures. Also very few (I can't think of any) RPG's are set anywhere near reality, meaning that there is huge room for originality.

4. Think Smaller, Think Smarter

Like I said, EPIC is overdone. Stop having the hero save the world, or the kingdom, or the empire. Smaller victories can be just as satisfying and they allow for more varied plots elements. Also stop saying "you are the only one" or having "chosen ones." Or if you do, actually explain why that is the case in a more convincing way than "we are the only ones who know" or because you are the fabled one.

5. Read a Book, Don't Watch Movies

Relationships in RPG's are very similar to those Hollywood movie. Most of the time there is a well-to-do hero and a female lead who everyone knows will eventually get involved with said hero. There are also stock characters that are used, you know the ones. This needs to change. Stories need to have more complex and original characters with other motives than righteousness, revenge, or self-defense (against some evil force/empire).

Overall my point would be, don't be afraid to leave the RPG comfort zone. Things that have always worked means that they have been done quite a bit. An RPG does not entail a particular type of story, but it seems most developers think it does.

Return of the Game Lit. Cat

I know, it's a shameless plug for cats everywhere, but my other picture ideas revolved around people reading books or the book covers. The first was not interesting and since I know everyone will click on the links I so painstakingly copy pasted, there was no need to include pictures you will see already.

Anyways here are three more video game books for your enjoyment:

Game addiction by Neils Clark and P. Shavaun Scott.
Horror video games edited by Bernard Perron ; foreword by Clive Barker
My avatar, my self by Zach Waggoner

Here it Comes

A new Silent Hill is in the works if Hamza Aziz is correct over at Dtoid. Not much was said about it, but more will likely follow.

Also of interest I found two commentators who represent the two sides on the Silent Hill is dead debate, or new Silent Hill=Suck.

Here is what seventhevening had to say:

"No, No, No....Konami needs to let the series die. Silent Hill 4 was alright, but as soon as Team Silent left, things went to hell. Origins was awful, Homecoming was playable, yet totally ignored the mythology and butchered the plot, and Shattered Memories was an abomination that butchered the original classic.

The only positive thing I can say about those three games was "At least Akira Yamaoka did the music". But Akira Yamaoka left Konami after Shattered Memories. With no team silent and no Akira Yamaoka, and with Konami's disregard for the mythology of the game, there is no way it could possibly be good.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hope it's a new horror IP. I don't know if my heart can stand watching Silent Hill suffer anymore."

That pretty much sums up the feeling of the old guard of SH fans.

Here is what EdgyDude had to say to that:

"@seventhevening: As long as the games perse are good and follow/keep at least part of the roots of the franchise it's ok to keep making new games, look at Mario, Zelda and Metroid games if they had numbers they'd be at least in #10 each, but does anyone complain about them...no, because they keep the core formula intact but take different approaches to it and of course gameplay is polished ad nauseum.

Look at RE4, you think it would have been better if Capcom had stuck to the old system instead of the more action filled, fast paced one? hell no, the IP would have gone the Sonic route and eventually died. SH is no different, the games themselves have remained great, they just have taken different approaches to the IP:

- Like i said SH:H took a more streamlined combat approach to the franchise, sure, story wise could have been better but it certainly wasn't bad, hell the 3 editors that made the review are all SH fans...and they even gave it an Editor's Choice Award.

- SH:SM was different, only the initial premise was the same to SH1 and that was more of a marketing mistake than a problem in the game itself, also if you reached the ending you'd understand why therapy sessions where so crucial plot wise and if you played multiple times and made different choices you'll understand how cleverly they were used game wise to alter the experience.

I still stand by my point, SH fans are so fixated with the past glories of SH2 that they just can't move on and accept the new chapters and that's very sad IMO cuz they miss out on different but still great experiences based on a memories of times long passed."

I would tend to disagree with EdgyDude (I guess you know what side of the debate I'm on) mostly because the changes that helped RE4 were game mechanics not canon or mythology and Nintendo's franchises have always had a certain freedom with regards to story. Unlike series which build canon with each entry most of Nintendo's series reinvent themselves with each new game, sort of like Final Fantasy, but to a lesser extent.

Though I do agreed that you shouldn't yearn for SH2 so much that it stops you from enjoying all SH games. It may have seem like I hate SH SM, but I really enjoyed it, despite the crippling blow it delivers to the canon. As a stand alone game it delivers some good experiences. I just don't like it as part of the SH family or canon.

Miracle: New Castlevania 3D might not Suck

Reading the new Castlevania preview at destructoid.com makes me a bit hopeful for a series that has never been able to find success in 3D. The 2D Castlevania games have always been successful especially since Symphony of the Night, but every venture into a 3D environment has spelled failure. So yea, that Castlevania Lord of Shadows might break that spell is a legit news item, and a small miracle. It is also further proof that Hideo Kojima and his production team have the golden touch, since they are co-producing the game with MercuryStream.

For Your Consideration

If you have $1 and you like rhythm games check out TREBL3 at kickstarter.com or play TREBL2 at newgrounds.com. At first its challenging to hit letters rather than arrows, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

Not into rhythm games? Maybe MMO is more your style. Check out Aftermath, a new post-apocalyptic sandbox game.

Top Charts iPad

Let's look at the Ipad Top Charts:

Paid:

1. Pages (productivity)
2. GoodReader (productivity)
3. Numbers (productivity)
4. Keynote (productivity)
5. Real Racing HD (game)
6. Sketchbook Pro (entertainment)
7. Star Walks (education)
8. SCABBLE (game)
9. Words with Friends HD (game)
10. ArtStudio (Photography)

Free:

1. IBooks (books)
2. Pro Key (music)
3. ABC Player (entertainment)
4. Netflix (entertainment)
5. The Weather Channel Max (weather)
6. Adobe Ideas 1.0 (entertainment)
7. USA Today (news)
8. Weatherbug Elite (weather)
9. NYT Editor's Choice (news)
10. NPR (news)

Top Grossing:

1. Pages (productivity)
2. Numbers (productivity)
3. Keynote (productivity)
4. Real Racing HD (game)
5. SCRABBLE (game)
6. The Elements (books)
7. Sketchbook Pro (entertainment)
8. Things (productivity)
9. Plants vs. Zombies HD (game)
10. MLB At Bat 2010 (sports)

A lot more varied and focused on "productivity." Games are not as prevalent as with the iPhone and news makes a small splash in there.

Top Charts iPhone

What are people buying on the iPhone? Well lots of games. Here are the top charts for the iPhone app store:

Paid:

1. The Simpsons Arcade (game)
2. Doodle Jump (game)
3. Phone Tracker (Utilities)
4. MLB.com at Bat 2010 (Sports)
5. Big Button Box Pro (entertainment)
6. Monopoly (game)
7. Star wars: Lightsaber Duel (entertainment)
8. RedLaser (Utilities)
9. Wordswith Friends (game)
10. Diner Dash (game)

Free:

1. The Impossible Test (game)
2. The Masters Golf Tournament (game)
3. Hit tennis 2 (game)
4. Commodore 64 (game)
5. Rayman 2 (game)
6. On This Day (reference)
7. i2i Chat (Social Network)
8. James Cameron's Avatar LITE (game)
9. Solitairet (game)
10. Ninjas Live (game)

Top Grossing:

1. MLB.com at Bat 2010 (sports)
2. The Sims 3 (game)
3. Monopoly (game)
4. iRa Pro (business)
5. Call of Duty (game)
6. The Simpsons Arcade (game)
7. We Rule (game)
8. Press Your Luck (game)
9. RedLaser (utilities)
10. Bejeweled 2 (game)

Not a lot of Business or Journalism on those charts.

$4 Investments Welcomed

I recently stumbled onto kickstarter.com by way of, as others probably have, the destructoid article on Sequence. I am beyond impressed and particularly hopeful for video game as well as other creative projects. I can imagine this working really well for new ventures and it will allow for gamers and the general public to contribute or become investors, however small, of projects that they think will be successful or just plain fun. The rewards were really great incentives for people to become backers and the small amount made it very accessible.

Looking at some of the other gaming projects, the site is doing very well. There are a lot of games that have been fully funded or funded beyond the requested amount. Sequence still has 19 days to go for backing and its already $1000 above the requested amount. Others like e20:System Evolved was able to gather $14,605.50 in backing. Projects in different fields are also doing well. Land of Opportunity a documentary film has $19,612 in backing.

This is a great resource for anyone looking to produce a new project, but lacks the funding or needs a little bit more to polish the end product. If you are into writing or image making I would also take a look at blurb.com, an online company that will publish your books. They also have competitions and an impressive set of judges from the book and photo world.

iPad does games?

There is an interesting article with some pretty neat graphs on the make out of the apps on the iPad. Apparently games are big, making up one third of the available apps and they are equally popular. It also helps that games are cheap compared to other apps, such as those in the medical category. Check out the article at TechCrunch.

Something Something: Shattered Memories

When I finished Silent Hill Shattered Memories for the first time, I wasn't sure what to make of it. It was over all a good experience, if a short one, but something kept bothering me. It wasn't until I played through the game a second time that I realized why I could never bring myself to say that it was a good Silent Hill game: because this is not a Silent Hill game.

Read on to find out why.

Top Ten For Reals

Here are the top ten Playstation Store game downloads as of today:

1. MLB 10 The Show (PSP)
2. Dante's Inferno (PSP)
3. Final Fantasy VII (PS1 Classic)
4. Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (PS1 Classic)
5. Final Fantasy VIII (PS1 Classic)
6. God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
7. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP)
8. Grandia (PS1 Classic)
9. Tetris (PSP Minis)
10. SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3 (PSP)

Final Fantasy VII is still up in the charts. It's hard to imagine Square Enix doing a remake of the game when the old one is still selling so well. Final Fantasy IX will soon be available for download and chances are it will make it into the top ten with ease.

Top ten...well not really

I was going to check what the top ten most downloaded ps1 classics were, but I decided to use Media Go, the Playstation application used to access their store from a computer, and because of that I don't have that information.

Every time I tried to connect to the store an error occurred. Others have had the same problem if the forums are any indication. The solution? Well its simple. Here is what I found works from a post on the Playstation forums by WA7JK:

"FIX: Go into control panel, click add/remove programs, and remove MediaGo. Reboot and reinstall MediaGo. If this doesn't fix it, then you'll have to go back and do it again except this time you must remove the Playstation files. Reboot and reinstall both and MediaGo should allow you to connect to PSN.

WARNING !!! Before you delete any files make sure your downloads are backed up. You wouldn't want to erase them accidently. Make another folder on your computer named "Stuff", place it on your Desktop, and move all of your saved files to it. You can easily move them back once you get things going again."

See very simple and user friendly. All sarcasm aside, the guys at Playstation need to improve this application or find an easier way for consumers to purchase their online content.

The Rapelay Controversy Controversy Contr...

So, Rapelay is a video game in which you play as the not-so-friendly neighborhood rapist as you have your way with a mother and her two daughters. The game ends when you don't' force a girl to get an abortion and she throws you into a train or when a girl stabs you to death if you do...Naturally when this came to light there was controversy.

That was in 2009, three years after the game was published. In that year the creator Illusion discontinued support and Amazon stopped selling it after the controversy in the U.S. was followed by protest and negative press.

Now its 2010 and Rapelay is back in the news. Not because it has gained or lost support, but because CNN has a new video on the subject, warning parents that kids could download it and then...they will become rapist themselves?

Actually it was nice to hear the speaker, Creryl Olson, talk sensibly about video games, despite the hardcore content of Rapelay. She rightly pointed out that the media coverage was making the game more visible for children who would otherwise not know it exist. In the video below the two interviewees only got the game because they saw all the controversy on the news.

I'm not sure what the news was in the story. That Rapelay is available to download is not really news since I found an online copy dated back to the beginning of 2009. CNN is basically covering its own controversy, which I guess is legit, except that they could be fanning the flames.

Also, they briefly mention it in the video, but no one has really fully expanded on the matter: Why is a game where you rape someone worst than one in which you commit murder? I'm not saying that this should or should not be the case and I don't really have an answer, but I suspect that this is influenced heavily by culture. Though it's an interesting matter since in U.S. criminal law murder is a worse offense than rape, even of a child.

It's also of note that games like Rapelay are more porn than games. Hentai-games come from a line of text choice+ picture experiences that have always been more about story or sexual fantasies than about providing any sort of game mechanics. To that extent I've always considered H-games porn not video games and their purpose sexual stimulation and that alone. Games like Rapelay are more about fulfilling sexual fantasies than anything else, like any fetish porn video.

The IpAd? Never Heard of it.

Every other story in the news is about this..."thing." The subject isn't completely unrelated to video games since Apple has been doing very well in the portable games market, bringing in more cash than the PSP. There is a good article on the subject at Flurry.com.

I have no doubt that the iPad will make money or that people will play games on it, but is anyone getting this for that purpose, or are games just a nice add-on?

wow

Well there is not much to say about this, other than their wrong beyond salvation. This is not to say that Metroid is not a great game, but it's nowhere near the elevated status that Michael Thomsen, or the reporters in general, gave it in the video.

For starters in video games the story of a space/normal marine trapped alone in a dangerous planet/place is about as standard as a shooter having guns. From Halo to Dead Space to Lost Planet, It's space soldiers all around.

The larger focus on exploration over shooting, a statement I find suspect, is also found in these titles and Metroid was hardly the first. And if exploration over action is the name of the game then Shadow of the Colossus would be a much bigger contender than Metroid.

The idea of looking at past societies is also well established in most games that even in the remotest way contain exploration and some do it much better than Metroid. Bioshock comes to mind. In fact, two of Bioshock's main themes are nostalgia and the death of society and it carries them quite well.

Looking at the big picture, the search for a video game equivalent of Citizen Kain might be a futile effort. Mostly because video games are not film, they are their own medium. Sometimes this gets overlooked, but you wouldn't try to find the Citizen Kain equivalent in say music or theater. However, I'll leave the unfair comparison of video games to film as a topic for another time.

Fun with Comics

If you don't know the guys at Penny Arcade, they are perhaps the most successful video game three-panel-comic creators out there. Consequently they produce some pretty funny stuff. Check out the comics on their site. Penny Arcade.

Game Lit. 2

Here is a list of books on video games:

Changing the game by David Edery and Ethan Mollick.

Writing for Video Game Genres edited by Wendy Despain

The ecology of games edited by Katie Salen.

Psycho-Study

In one of my earlier post I mentioned the story on Science Daily about Craig Anderson's study. Since then I have taken a look at his work, or meta-study--a study that uses other studies as its data.

It was difficult to assess how definitive his findings are especially since the paper is written for an audience that is well-versed in the study of psychology. It also made it difficult that he talks vaguely about how the negative effects manifest themselves:

"Fourth, and perhaps most important, the newly available longitudinal studies provide further confirmation that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for long-term harmful outcomes. This is especially clear for aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and empathy/desensitization" pg 19.

He leaves the specifics to the other studies, such as what "harmful outcomes" and what their severity is. After reading the study I was not sure whether he meant that long term exposure to violent video games causes people to be mildly less amicable and more easily irritated or if they are more likely to start vicious fights and leave accident victims to die.

He clarifies this a little bit in the story for Science Daily:

"These are not huge effects -- not on the order of joining a gang vs. not joining a gang...But these effects are also not trivial in size. It is one risk factor for future aggression and other sort of negative outcomes"

At one point he compares the risk factor of playing violent video games to that of substance use, abusive parents, and poverty, which seemed to me a bit hard to accept. However, in a footnote he explains that the studies for video games also include "less severe forms of physical aggression," whereas the studies for the other factors included mostly "violent behavior," making the comparison less applicable. (pg 20)

He says that the public policy debate should shift focus to address this risk factor. His suggestion about a better informed public sounds like a good idea. There already exists a system whereby the consumer can check what questionable content a game has: the ESRB rating system. This is a similar system to the one the film indsutry has for rating movies. The problem is that parents are not very informed about what the ratings mean and may not be attentive to what content their children are being exposed to when they purchase a game.

Other solutions might begin to creep into the realm of more creative restrictions on video game content, something that will not be welcomed by any developer.

Game Lit.

If you are interesting in more than the discussions that occur online, try checking out some of these book on the subject of video games:

A casual revolution by Jesper Juul
Joystick soldiers edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne
The art of videogames by Grant Tavinor

Games, Art?

I had a brief conversation with P. Adams Sitney, professor of Visual Arts at Princeton, about the history of film and photography. In particular I was intersting in how both film and photography went through a period when they were not considered art forms.

P. Adams mentioned that Chaplin popularized film to the general public and considers that film began to be discussed as art around the 1910's. This was done by scholars, philosophers, and interestingly enough, poets.

He explained that in both cases there was resistance to placing the mediums in such high regard. People thought that the camera was a toy and that film was low brow. In fact films were first shown as precursors to events, such as the circus, and were never the main event.

I pointed out to him that video games are having a similar problem, being considered toys and a low brow medium, and that perhaps they would see a similar rise in status. He was not particularly confident that that would be the case. "Radio never became an art form, even though music is universally considered an art, and TV took a long time before anyone considered it anything other than a means of transmitting films," he said.

He also posed some interesting questions about games as art: "Is pool art? What about monopoly, the boardgame? Who is the artist, the player or the developer?" He questioned whether interaction ever really played a role in art, since with most forms the artist creates something that acts upon the audience rather than the audience upon it, even with art that claims to be interative in some manner.

More Violence, More Violent

Here is a story about some benefits and and risks of playing video games at Science Daily. While there, check out some of the related stories. They're all very interesting studies on the sociological and psychological effects of playing video games.

Also Craig Anderson's study adds to the long discussed topic of violent video games. It sounds very definitive. It would be interesting to find out in what ways people exhibited violent behavior and whether exposure to violent video games in any way breaks down a person's ability to determine right from wrong and reality from fantasy. I'll comment more after reading a full copy of his study.

Introduction

Game Crossing is a project aimed at providing video game news, commentary, and other material that might interest someone continuing to explore the video game universe.