Got a weird email yesterday, that was not meant for me. But it is about Microsoft’s new controller-free project Natal.

“If you have watched any of the videos or read any of the press around Project Natal, there is no doubt this is game changing technology. Now that the buzz has died down about Project Natal, we want to let you know that we are hiring for key positions on the team. That said, we are contacting you to tap into your network and get the word out that we are building out the remainder of the Project Natal team and that ground floor opportunities are still available.

You probably know people that would want to work on an early stage project where there is still room for creativity and defining the parameters of a product. We would love for you to tell them about Project Natal. You can forward this link to your gaming friends or colleagues that will showcase the activities of Project Natal.”

So it looks like Natal will not be out anytime soon if they are advertising that it is an “early stage project” where “defining the parameters” is still an issue. Click the link in the quote and you can see the 20 jobs that Microsoft is trying to fill (also the list is below). No doubt there will be some stiff competition for them.

Found some other stories on this subject but this is new stuff, at least in the last day: G4TV, alt+f4 , Team Xbox.

Am I a bad person?

I like tying up loose ends, being efficient and exploring new ways to get things done.

This can translate to I like killing people, with as little effort as possible in a variety of glorified ways … in Fallout 3.

Or it can mean I like collecting every animal, growing my plants to perfection and trying to find all of the different animal varieties in Viva Piñata. The difference, well there is no difference in the mechanics. The skills that it takes to make an efficient garden can be put to use when deciding how to efficiently dispatch an enemy. However, the framing is different, the context and perception that is given to the mechanics, which makes these two types of scenarios unlike each other.

Yesterday, Simon over at Chungking Espresso tweeted about the relationship between Brenda Brathwaite’s game Train and Gonzalo Frasca “one-session game of narration” (OSGON) format. I’m late to the game, as usual, seeing as Train was introduced two months ago and Frasca’s article was published in 2000, but I want to discuss what it means for games to be one shot experiences and how Train’s serious subject is portrayed.

One-Shot

Frasca’s OSGON format describes games that are played once: every decision is final, if you die the game ends, and once means the game never begins again. As an example, he makes mention of William Gibson’s poem Agrippa which would encrypt itself after the user read it. Unless the reader was a hacker they could never read it again. Obviously today you can read the poem whenever you like because the encryption method did not hold up.

Frasca notes that a way to get around someone “hacking” a one-shot game would be to treat it like a happening, occurring during a set period of time over a fixed duration (or perhaps episodically). I would compare this to what ARG games have evolved into today, especially ones that are used to promote products that have fixed release dates. I Love Bees (for Halo 2) or the ARG surrounding The Dark Knight are games that cannot be played again because those games were for specific products. You were either a participant in the game when it was running or not. You can’t go back to the bakery and find the cake that had the tape inside with a recording from the Joker (which did happen for the Dark Knight ARG). Some other player did though and they can tell you the tale.

Games that can be replayed discourage portraying serious subject matter in games, as Frasca writes. Replayable games promote sadistic actions, for instance for my second time playing through Fallout 3 I am killing everyone I meet, and force players along a “correct” path, where if the player fails they can always start over or load a saved game. Creating OSGEN games allow designers to invoke more emotion from serious subjects, placing games at a higher artistic level and cultural status in general.

I would agree that OSGEN can be one potential way of exploring serious subjects in games but it is not be the only way. Frasca’s argument is similar to the arguments made for behaviorism in games, where the player is a passive interacter who reflects little on how they are performing in the game. Only through absolute death or irreversible decisions would a game be able to break this behaviorist notion and allow players to truly reflect on their actions. I don’t believe this is true and think time is a big factor in how players perceive their actions.

While it may not seem as sophisticated as definite concepts like death or irreversible decisions, the amount of time a player spends in a game can have a profound effect on that player. I remember one instance while I was playing Ultima Online. By the time I started playing UO the game developer had already introduced the policy that if a player is killed that player can loot their body before anyone else (within a limited amount of time but it was enough time). Rarely did I run into a situation where if I died I could not get my items back, except for this one time up in the town of Yew when the town was being overrun by monsters. I was grinding monsters for seeds that had been introduced in the game that week, but that is not important. Some monsters ending up backing me into a house and killed me. I respawned and after four or five attempts could not get anywhere near my body to retrieve my belongings.

Now UO was not like WoW where every item was special, so everything on my avatar was replaceable … except they were not. I had items on me, like my hat and cloak, that I had on my character for months. Since an avatar’s skills in UO were the main attributes that gave each avatar their power, items could be kept around for longer periods of time. Given that you could dye your items different colors to make them more personal and your name was placed on any items you created, those items could have a lot of sentimental value. In WoW it’s hard to become attached to items because the purpose of the game is to find the next tiered item. When I lost all of my items, the ones I had been playing with for so long, I was devastated.

Now some 6-7 years later that episode has stuck with me. Sure I found other items to replace my old ones and was able to fashion my avatar exactly as it was before the incident but I had LOST MY ITEMS, the ones I had spent so much time with. The fact that it was only a game made it worse, I know that with a flick of a few bits a game master could have restored those items to my avatar. Yet, the game rules discouraged that scenario and my items were lost to the UO void (or to who ever came along and picked them up later).

If we didn’t believe that games had the power right now to evoke emotional responses I don’t see why there would be movements like games for change, health, training, etc. While games about serious subject matter can be made compelling using the one-shot format that should not rule out how games can be compelling at this very moment.

On the Train

Brenda Brathwaite’s Train is like a one shot game but not for the exact reasons that Frasca discusses.

Train gives players control over railroad cars and tells them to use those railroad cars to transport people from one destination to another. Each player has a car to place little people figures within. Cards are drawn to see how far a train moves, which can move a train forward or back, and how many people are placed in a player’s car. The object is to transport all of the people to the final destination as quickly as possible.

When a train reaches the final destination and must return to pick up more people that player receives a destination card for where they dropped those people off. Those destinations are Nazi concentration camps. Players are transporting Jews using trains to deliver them to places like Auschwitz.

Obviously this information only becomes immediately apparent once the first destination card is handed out. Then the ambiance objects gain their meaning, the broken window that supports the board symbolizing Kristallnacht or “The Night of Broken Glass” and the SS typewriter that was used to type out the rules. Other reviews have stated that people started to cry when everything clicked in there heads and they realized that they were helping transport Jews to concentration camps.

In this way Train is like Frasca’s one shot games as a happening. Players think they are sitting down and going to play a board game like Ticket to Ride and they end up committing genocide. Actually, breaking the window glass and the SS typewriter adds to game as a physical event that is truly occurring right this instant. True, the game can be replayed but once the players know what they are doing their play changes for good, like an irreversible decision.

Mechanics or Frame

Train is part of Brenda Brathwaite’s game series “The Mechanic is the Message,” where focusing on simple mechanics can produce strong reactions from the players. However, while I am jaded on more than one front (I now know the game’s twist, I’m an academic gamer steeped in serious games and I am just an experienced gamer in general) I find some of the aspects of Train needs further discussion beyond the common rhetoric of “games can change the world” which academics are embracing everywhere.

For one thing I did not like the twist in the gameplay. It seems more like a gimmick than an epiphany type moment. A review over at Game Culture said that others had made the comparisons to a Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man.” In the episode aliens visit Earth and cure all of man’s woes, but come to find out the aliens are just fattening earthlings up so that they can cook or “serve” them as food. Planet of the Apes is another example, except earthlings are the culprits in that one (maybe a little more egotistical in that sense).

However, in the same review it was said that the brilliance behind Train was in the player’s complicity about the action they were taking. Since everyone was helping the trains get to the final destination they were all at fault. Games are supposed to be fun, safe experiences as the reviewer says (though it can be said that those are assumptions that the general populace believes in, not designers working on games for change) and the complicity of the situation is the big draw of the game. But that is not the case, it is the complacency that players feel as they are moving the people to their final destination. Up until the true destination revelation, players are just playing a game, playing the mechanics. Once the destination is revealed the mechanics don’t matter anymore because the framing becomes more important.

Players begin the meta-game once they discover what is going on, where they try to find ways to subvert the rules and wish to save the Jews from being transported. In that way there is no complicity about it, the players become part of the resistance movement trying to stop the Nazis from carrying out there plans. They are now playing against the game because the framing is different.

For example, take a look at Calabouço Tétrico. It is a Tetris clone but you stack tortured bodies instead of blocks. A gruesome game to say the least. Same mechanics, different frames. Framing matters.

Hidden Information

I’m wondering if the revealing of Train’s hidden information, that the trains are heading to concentration camps, could be handled differently?

This type of revelation is similar to jumping out and scaring the audience in a horror film. Yes it induces an emotional response but it is easy to shock someone out of complacency, or during a quiet period in a movie. But for players who have learned to separate games from reality this would fall on its face for the same reasons that Frasca said were the bane of replayable games. Those players know that they are not really transporting Jews to their death, they can always just stop playing and it may even turn sadistic where players try even harder to finish the game quicker.

Now inducing paranoia would be totally different, it is not a one shot emotion at all but a continuous feeling of dread. Have a look at Peter Tscherkassky short film Outer space. As a viewer you are seeing the film through the eyes of, potentially, a being from outer space that has descended on a suburban home. In the film the viewer never gets a clear camera shot of what they are looking at, the entire time the visuals and sounds are extremely distorted and the whole film is shot in a voyeuristic fashion. The film itself is very unsettling: you are looking through the alien’s eyes, you have no real connections with the humans in the film and your senses are continually bombarded with disorienting effects.

How could we introduce this into a game? Would it have to be a digital game?

Trying to Beat the System

Paranoia is one aspect of the Battlestar Galatica Boardgame. Actually, it is just a dreadful game in general. The point is not to lose, the entire game is about stopping horrible events from occurring and killing the fleet of human star-ships. Additionally, there is the possibility that some of the players are Cylons, the enemy. The game itself is supposed to be cooperative, where everyone helps the humans in the game. If someone is a Cylon though, they only win if the humans lose. For the entire game there are human players trying to protect themselves while going on a witch hunt for the players who are Cylons. The accusations fly like crazy.

BSG also adds a kink in the game by having a sympathizer card in the game, allowing a Cylon player to be part of the human team. Though adding this card just makes things more complicated, now Cylons can be helpful. This also brings a human’s loyalty into question as they may wish to screw the humans over for the fun of it. Thus, nothing stops any player from declaring (openly or not) that they do not want to help their team any more. I could be a human but try to hinder my team has much as possible. Luckily there is a brig (jail) where players have little effect once they are placed there, so any traitor can be handled. In that way the problem with players being sadistic, or trying to kill everyone, is something that the game can deal with. Plus there is never a “correct” way to play, again focusing on Frasca’s attributes of replayable games, because the game excepts paranoia and treachery, all of which the mechanics provided for. A great marriage of mechanics and framing.

In a Wall Street Journal Article about Train, Brenda Brathwaite makes mention that players did end up turning on the game in the same fashion. They would ask if there was a way to stop the trains, subvert the trains or rescue the Jews aboard. Some cards would derail a train and the player would say they are taking them to a new location. But I’m wondering if the game has any mechanics that attempts to stop this subversive behavior like in BSG. If the player does help some Jews to safety will they themselves be captured and sent away, can other players snitch on those helpful players and remove them from the game?

OH! It’s the Holocaust

With all this talk about subversion, framing and mechanics it is easy to miss the fact that we are talking about a subject that is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. While I have no problem with the Holocaust being portrayed in a game (see my other post about the Iraq war and WWII Kamikaze bombers in games) I do feel it is another instance of a gimmick being used.

Just like the 911 attacks and the Kennedy assassination it is hard to not feel moved by those events as an American. Those events bring up strong emotions in some people or at least bring a surrounding context with them. So again I ask are Train’s mechanics the compelling part of the game or is the event, the Holocaust, the bigger factor? What would it be like to frame it in lesser known massacres (in the American psyche that is), like Darfur or Saddam’s gas attacks on the Kurds? (yet, even those are sort of in our psyche because I just pulled those off the top of my head) Is it the Holocaust that is so striking or the game itself?

Hush was brought up in a review as another example compared with Train. Hush is a rhythm game where you have to press the keyboard characters h-u-s-h as the letters fall on the screen. The opening premise is that the player is a mother who is trying to calm her baby by pressing the keys in time. As the game progresses they learn that the mother is in Rwanda in 1994 trying to keep her baby quiet while her village is being raided by the Hutu who will come for her if the baby is crying.

Not having as much knowledge about the genocide in Rwanda as I do about the Holocaust makes me feel Hush is more compelling to myself even though it used the same type of hidden information as Train. So does that type of shock revelation only work on people who know little about the subject? If that is the case then fine, it’s a method that can be used with school children learning about the subject or adults who do not have knowledge of such events. But choosing a topic such as the transportation of Jews to concentration camps will automatically bring up emotions that were already present in many American’s minds because we know so much about it.

Simon suggested that there should be a game about the S.S. St. Louis which was a refugee ship carrying almost a thousand Jews fleeing Germany after Kristallnacht had occurred. Except this transportation story is just as heartbreaking as the one portrayed in Train. When the St. Louis arrived at Cuba thinking their refugee passengers would disembark, their final destination was the US, they were turned away. Negotiations kept the ship anchored off of Cuba for days as the fate of the passengers was decided. Eventually the ship had to return to Europe because their food was running low and no one would help them. Suicides and an attempted mutiny occurred during the voyage back. Once back in Europe, some countries ended up taking smaller groups of the refugees however, each of those countries, except Great Britain, were eventually taken over by the Nazis and those refugees ended up in concentration camps.

The story of the S.S. St. Louis is a story about American isolationism before the war, and as Simon also said, does not show “how righteous and heroic the US was during WWII.” It’s easy for us today to see a movie about the Holocaust, read a book about the Holocaust or play a game about the Holocaust and not feel that sense of regret that such a horrible event occurred but also know that we as a country helped liberate those camps. Except when we did not.

But we have grown complacent again. We as a country make the assumption that the Holocaust is bad and we know we will never do that again. Next I put forth a new game design based on Train’s model to see if I can evoke something different from players who think they know everything about the Holocaust.

Train Re-Imagined

Think about this game. Players sit down in front of a board with three runways on it. Off to the side there are three cargo airplanes, a box with little people figures in it, a stack of cards and a pda. To start the game a person picks up the pda and read out the text that displays on the screen. The text says that the players are military personnel and they have been order to move the Abu Ghraib prisoners to new prisons around the world. This needs to be done as efficiently and securely as possible and the one that can transport the most prisoners will be promoted. Each player runs one of the three cargo planes and it is to be used to move the prisoners which start in the box. The cards are either event or movement cards, events can either help or hinder players (or be used against other players such as “delays in flight time”) and movement cards allow players to either pick up more prisoners or, once the plane has left the prison, to get to their new destination (ex. move three spaces or add one prisoner to your plane). When they reach their destination a player gets a destination card for the prison (like Zichsutwa in northern Africa) and those act toward a player’s promotion, along with the number of prisoners transferred.

Once all the prisoners are transferred then the winner is determined by the number of prisoners they transferred divided by the number of prisons (greater than two) where they arrived. The reason they are divided is if the player took prisoners to too many prisons they spent a lot of money on fuel and increased the overhead for using other prisons, which would work against their promotion. Whoever transported the most prisoners get the promotion.

After a winner is declared the airplane and landing strip covers are taken off to reveal that the players were actually using trains and rail tracks to transport prisoners. The prison names are anagrams for places such as Auschwitz and the prisoners were actually Jewish citizens. The players had just participated in a façade that represented the Kristallnacht, becoming knowing participants in the operation to transport prisoners who they believed would oppress and hurt them if they were free to live their lives.

How is this different from Train? Well, this would get at the heart of the feelings of what it would feel like to be in Germany during the Kristallnacht. Instead of just looking at the logistics of the game (or the mechanics) it would tap very relevant events surround terrorism and the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal that are around today. (It’s always powerful when you can combine some new with something old)

Some players wouldn’t feel any remorse for sending “terrorist” prisoners to other prisons, stacking them as high as they could into their planes. Other players would feel horrible about transporting these prisoners, trying to make their progress safe or as slow as possible, not caring about the promotion awarded for winning. Not every German citizen felt that rounding up Jews was the right thing to do, but what could they do against the Third Reich who were making all the decisions in Germany? They couldn’t voice their opinions, just like voicing your opinion in the game would not change the winning conditions, but they could try to hinder the Nazis, as you could do by stopping the planes from reaching new prisons.

But the fact that the façade would not be revealed until the very end would help show how we as American’s can fall into the same traps as the German citizen’s fell into when they wanted to help protect their country and followed the Third Riche.

I understand what Brathwaite is trying to do with her “The Mechanics are the Message” game series but I believe that The Frame is the Message. Sure mechanics play a role in this type of game, but people are not mindless robots. If you hide a key fact that would make a player play drastically different I do not see that as potent enough. Where allowing them to play exactly how you would expect them to play and then tearing away the façade that surrounds their play to reveal how they actions and thoughts can be compared to another situation, that’s when true reflection can occur.

Wrap it up

Brathwaite says the most important thing about games like Train is that it starts discussions. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work for me. The game makes me wonder about what does inspire me, moves me, and how I would create a game to evoke those emotions. Discussion and providing game options are the key points to take away from this. Games like Train, World of Warcraft and The Kill Everyone project can co-exist in this crazy mixed up world of games.

We as academics, and game designers in general, should continue to produce games based on new assumptions about what games are and look past the common assumptions that are still held by the general populace. Only through a continued dialog and giving players options will we be able to finally defeat those sacred, dogmatic assumptions about games. Fun and safe work for some games … other games, well … they will rip your heart out.

Edit: Just as I pushed this out Gamasutra put up a Featured Column by Ian Bogost, talking about gesture game interfaces and linking it with the gestures that Train players perform. So Brathwaite says the mechanics matter, Bogost the gestures and I say the frame. See we have options

Digital games have not been around that long and, considering that they are purposefully made to be fantastical representations of other worlds or real life, it is weird to ask for an authentic game experience. In an industry that thrives on sequels, movie tie-ins, and cloned games it’s hard to see the relevance of being authentic verses being fake.

But what can be said to be authentic or fake about games? Is any remake of a game, fake? Do game developers need to create new IP in order to be authentic? Are the old arcade machine’s the authentic platforms and the new generation PCs consoles the fake ones?

In the book Authenticity, James Gilmore and Joseph Pine spin epic business tales of what makes a company authentic. The theories and practices found in Authenticity grew out of the authors’ other book The Experience Economy where they describe the stages that businesses can operate within: Commodities, Goods, Services, Experiences, and Transformations. Giving examples of each: Commodities are well … commodities, like coal or wood; Goods are products produced from commodities; Services are waiters, tech-support, etc.; Experiences are what you get at Starbucks of Disney World; and Transformations are experiences that change something about the consumer, consulting is one way (transformation could be a property of an experience but let’s roll with it for now).

One problem with Goods, Services and Experiences is that they can be commoditized (see the figure below), think Wal-mart and what it has done for providing cheap goods and services (you can get your oil changed at a Wal-mart?). Some consumers do not care what brand they buy when prices are so low. Companies must stand out amongst this down turn in brand recognition. One way businesses can do that is to allow the customization of their products, focus on consumers specific desires. Another way, and one not mutually exclusive with customization, is to become more authentic.

Gilmore and Pine say that being authentic is a popular property that consumers ask for in today’s market. For each of the five stages where businesses can operate there is a way to bring about authenticity. With commodities one can be more natural, Starbuck uses earth tone colors and elegant woods in their coffee shops for instance. Goods need to be original, Apple has a good track record of building “original” products. Services need to strive for exceptionality, which means better social interaction and caring workers. Experiences should refer to some other context, for example referring to history such as ancient Rome in an Italian restaurant. Finally, transformations can be authentic through perceived influence, think of Opera and how she has the power to sway large groups of people (popularity begets popularity).

One thing that should be pointed out is that businesses can only create a perceived authenticity. The authors pull from such theorists like Baudrillard and Eco when talking about what is real or fake in society. Since anything man-made is ultimately a fake or alteration of the natural Gilmore and Pine say that no business can provide absolute authenticity. However, ultimately no person can have an unauthentic experience because each of us perceives experiences in our own way (which mainly goes against Baudrillard and Eco who down played a person’s subjective experience). Businesses need to provide for their customers as close to an authentic experience as possible so that those customers feel they are having an authentic experience. There are so many ways that you can poke and prod this argument it is not funny but, for reference, that is how they frame their theories.

In the book, games are mentioned sparingly, mainly referring to Second Life and MMPORGs (yes, that is how they spell the acronym, they are business consultants not authentic players). This led me to wonder how games would fit into their grand scheme of business stages and what an authentic game would entail.

In the business world, games would fall under the Goods category with other features like multiplayer servers, digital download and online community websites falling under the Service category. Perhaps E3 and BlizzCon are the Experiences in the industory and things like code, computer hardware and power are the commodities, just to round it out. However, I would argue that playing a game operates on every single stage of the Gilmore and Pine’s business chart.

At the point of play a game stops being a good and starts being an experience. As game researchers if we cannot find some shred of truth in that statement then I don’t see how we can study games. Players have their own subjective experience when playing a game, or if you believe that subjectivity is dead than they are at least experiencing something even if it is not entirely their own truthful perception.

Providing an experience means that a game must also provide services. Massive number crunching is the ultimate service a game provides, divvying out processing power to parts like the graphics engine, the mechanics and other game content. Those different parts make up the goods that a game provides, while the commodities are the basic building blocks of the game: graphical primitives, sound files, rudimentary mechanics like jumping, etc.

If we look at games as they are played where does authenticity exist or fakery endure?

Well one area is in the commodities and goods stage. While many people trumpet the theory that graphics are not everything I contend that having well produced graphics, sound and UI design can make or break any game. Even during the prototyping phase if instead of using programmer art, high quality art was used in its place (As Danc over at lostgarden.com has provided before) it can help a team, and buyers, see the potential of any game. Authentic graphics and content can help a game distinguish itself.

On the flip side of that argument, what about game remakes or ports, obvious fakes right, that add enhanced graphics or provide the game on a new platform. Are they authentic? One big concern a lot of gamers have today is that they will have to buy their games over and over as they upgrade their machines or consoles. PC game publishers sometime update old PC games to allow them to work on new hardware, or now console providers have their own services like Nintendo’s virtual console or Xbox arcade where players can buy classic games, for a nominal fee. While it obviously took work to produce those retro-fueled services and port the games, some players perceive these offerings as money grubbing and not authentic.

Then there are game remakes like the new Space Invaders Extreme that, while having a similarity to the old Space Invaders game, adds new mechanics to the game and has generally been well received. But do you need to add new gameplay to be considered an authentic remake? The new Secret of Monkey Island remake will be receiving a graphics over haul however, LucasArts included an interesting feature where a player can switch back and forth between the new and old graphical styles, which is meant to give authentic tribute to the original game. You can even tell in the language that the developers use in the movie to promote the game that they are trying to be as authentic as possible, as they produce a “faithfully re-imaged version” of the game.

Moving on to what makes an authentic service in games we have to bring back the developer into the picture. For single players games, the UI that a developer builds will provide control and information services for the player. If the UI is frustrating to the user, because the interaction is fake, then it can potentially hurt the game. However, in a recent small study it has been found that the usability of the game does not always mean that players will dislike the game.

A main service that players will ultimately face is the multiplayer services that game developers provide. There is a reason why the ESRB does not rate online gameplay. How a company deals with annoying players, cheaters or other griefing behavior sets a tone for how a game developer is perceived to be genuine in providing multiplayer content. Rumors often float around MMO games like CCP’s Eve Online that say the company allows cheating to take place because it would take too much time and money to truly find every cheater and expel them from the game. Blizzard on the other hand makes very bold reports of the number of accounts they expel because of cheating or other undesirable behavior. At least creating the perceived control of their online services can make a game company seem to be authentic. (Even though some people would say that World of Warcraft is like the Walmart of MMOs and Eve is one of the more authentic MMO experiences)

Then there are some games that provide new experiences all together while staying on the fence of whether they are real or fake. Recently there has been an influx of quality made online browser-based games that have taken a game’s IP and made a different game with it. Mirror’s Edge, Infamous, Portal and Left 4 Dead have all been turned into great 2D games. These are obviously fakes that have taken their material from an original AAA game title but you can get lost shooting zombies in Left 4k Dead just as easily as in Left 4 Dead. Gilmore and Pine would call these games fake-reals, since they provide pseudo-experiences. These re-imagined games refer to a source material not their own (fake) but are original in and of themselves (real). The opposite would be a quasi-experience or a real-fake. Those are games that clone another game but have obvious flaws. If a developer made a 3D puzzle game where the player places doors to walk through walls obviously it still would not be Portal. Perhaps that is why no one has made a product that competes with The Sims, they would run the risk of being seen as a real-fakes, or even a fake-fakes, in the face of The Sims’ popularity.

I have only touched on how you could use Gilmore and Pine’s work to describe games. Transformations have similarities to concepts like Games for Change or Bogost’s Persuasive Games. Game companies themselves often suffer from being seen as fakes, such as the power house EA which has continually struggled with their old identity of being a slave-driver and uninnovative. Even the old systems like Atari are thought to have authentic value and need to be preserved.

It is an interesting experiment to take the principles that Gilmore and Pine discuss in their book not only to evaluate games as goods being produced by companies but to evaluate how a player perceives the authenticity of their game experience. We may find that even if a game experience is fake, players can authentically enjoy it.

Mass Effect, the missing link. The genetically mutated game that rests between Knights of the Old Republic (Kotor) and Fallout 3. Mass Effect reminded me of what I liked about Kotor and the game’s flaws reminded me of why Fallout 3 is a better game.

Obviously I am coming to Mass Effect late. I played it for a few hours when it came out but never picked it up again since I do not have an Xbox. The PC version came out last year which is the only real way I will play shooters anyways (for me a mouse beats a controller every time). I finally got a chance to play about ten hours of the game this week and now I can give my thoughts on the game and how it relates to game metrics (which was the point of me playing it).

I assume most people know about Mass Effect, the Action-RPG game made by Bioware (who also made Kotor, the Neverwinter series and Jade Empire). The main character is Commander Shepard, who is a rough and tough military soldier that gets the chance to save humanity. The game works like a shooter for the action portion of the game and for the RPG component there is a lot of time spent talking with NPCs using a branching dialog system. The game received extremely high reviews, yet every reviewer made it a point to say that the game has flaws but you will still like it anyways. Well for me the flaws make me remember how other games did things better and why I am not playing one of them instead.

Actually Mass Effect reminded me of Fable the most, both of which are Action-RPG games that were ported to the PC since they were both made for consoles first. Same type of leveling system where a category is leveled up and skills associated with that category are unlocked. Similar weapon upgrade system for adding special weapon abilities. The UI for hot-keying actions both have eight slots even though a keyboard has ten number buttons. Even the way quests are handled is similar where most quests can be done in random order but once you actually get to a quest location to fight you mainly have one way to go.

As for how the game tracks the player and presents metrics I was not impressed. The player’s effect on the story seemed very shallow. For instance, at the beginning you are asked to provide a background for the character you play Shepard. I chose “spacer,” born in space and shuttled around from ship to ship. That little fact was only used twice in my ten hour run and one was in the very first dialog sequence of the game. Oh great, the game used something I choose right away, my agency is astounding.

Everything about affecting the game’s story seemed to work like that. Sure you gain “paragon” or “renegade” points (roughly affects if NPCs see you as a good cop or bad cop ) that may open up one or two extra dialog options but if I kill a guy over here no one over there is going to know anything about the killing. Fallout 3 shines brighter when it comes to relating to the player’s past actions, especially with Three Dog spouting past player accomplishment continuously on the radio. (I had a Three Dog moment while in an elevator at Citadel Station when a news reporter on the elevator speaker made mention of one of my past actions but that was the only time that happened. AND don’t get me started on the elevators in the game.)

The big thing that the player is supposed to affect is the ending of the game. How you act during the game will determine the fate of humanity. But this type of agency is found in most RPG games like Mass Effect and the player cannot see this effect until the very end. However, Bioware has made a point to say that Mass Effect 2 will allow players to pick up where they left off in Mass Effect, meaning their characters and past actions can be transferred between the two games. That may be the most exciting aspect of Mass Effect related to metrics, which is ironic because it is not even a feature that is in the game.

The biggest player choice I found was choosing your player class. There are three main class categories: combat, technical, and biotics (basically Force powers from Star Wars). There are six classes to choose from, three focus on a single category and three more combine two of the class categories. Unlike in games like Kotor or Fallout 3 this means that your character will only have a limited number of skills to level up instead of having every skill and choosing which ones to level up. Personally, I like having all of the skills available, especially when playing a new game that I have to spend some time learning how each skill is effective. When I have all of the skills available I can abandon a skill that is not useful for my play style.

Not so in Mass Effect, your class is your class and your skills are your skills. You have to rely on your squad members for skills that you do not have, which you can always roll with two other members. Though I screwed myself there too because I turned on auto-leveling for my squad members and they did not level the skills that I ultimately needed (this discovery happened about six hours in so I wasn’t about to start over).

As for other metric-related features I did not see any evidence of dynamic difficult in the game and the enemy AI seemed pretty stupid, running into my line of fire whenever I got close. No real statistics tracking of how I was performing either, for instance number of kills, quests completed, or recorded times. And I didn’t feel that my relationship with my squad members would get stronger as I would talk with them. They did not chime in as much as the squad members did in Kotor which is why I loved that game so much. I kept waiting for Wrex, the anti-hero Krogan alien, to speak up during dialog actions with one of his blunt, snarky comments but those were few and far between. (I still kept him in my squad though, just like HK never left my side in Kotor)

In the end, if you have not played Mass Effect go play Fallout 3 or even Kotor for that matter. Bioware makes great games, no doubt, and I see where they were trying to go with Mass Effect, being a new IP and all. But the problems I pointed out and I expand on below, just bugged me. Though I’ll end up finishing the game sometime this summer because it is still above par compared to most games. So, okay … if you have never played Kotor or Fallout 3 then start with Mass Effect, it will help you appreciate the other two games

The rest of this post is more or less for myself. I section out the different features in Mass Effect and talk about what I saw and what I think about them. But this is it for my review of Mass Effect and the rest will contain spoilers.

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Another jam packed day at E3 with Nintendo’s and Sony’s press conferences. There was not as much talk about game/web integration as there was at yesterday’s talks but great stuff none the less. Sony’s presentation was miles above Nintendo’s, and on par with Microsoft’s, but still interesting tidbits to be found in both.

Again I’m going to be focusing on not necessarily the games announced but the features that affect games that were discussed today. Namely the features that look at customization (user-generated content), metrics, and a little motion control.

The Nintendo DSi apparently already sold over 1 million units since its launch two months ago. During the DSi portion of Nintendo’s talk they hit on players customization and creation. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! will come with a built in level editor for players to create and then upload their levels online. Moving Memo and, soon to be release, Flip Note Studio are animation programs for the DSi that will also allow players to create their own animation and share them online.

WarioWare DIY rounded out the customization portion of the Nintendo talk. DIY will allow players to create games on their DSi and make use of the DSi’s camera. The camera will also be given the capability to upload photos to Facebook (there is your game/web integration).

Sony blew Nintendo out of the water with just one of their games that allow players to create their own racetracks. Mod Nation Racer is a fast, Mariokart style racing game that looks like a lot of fun and the track creator looked great (video below). Players actually play the game as they make their track. They drive their car around to make the track, there are different options to lay down textures or alter terrain, and at any point the player can jump into the track and race against AI opponents. Mod Nation defiantly hit a high note with this presentation and that is a hard scale to reach given what Little Big Planet has shown in the past.

As for the information that was presented about metrics today there was not much. Nintendo briefly mentioned something called the Vitality Sensor for the Wii that will track heart rate and possibly other biometrics. No games were shown in relation with the sensor but I bet No More Heroes 2 can find a funny way to use it. Though, later at E3 today it was mentioned during Miyamoto’s talk that the Vitality Sensor could be used with Wii Fit for learning how to control your pulse.

Sony also briefly mentioned that they are bringing their SenseMe technology to the PSP Go!, the new PSP lighter design. SenseMe will monitor your music playlist and deliver custom playlists based on the moods you select. Sony had only a little bit to say about their HOME service but I assume that they will be growing that service too. With Ubisoft’s Uplay, Microsoft’s new LIVE features and HOME, these player game portals will have to start adding more content such as player statistics, streaming replays and other recorded player metrics to make any headway against each other.

And to end with one other major topic that went across, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, motion control was very hot this year. Nintendo’s new Wii Motion Plus did not seem to add to much to the console. Sony’s demo of their motion control device, which was a sort of Wiimote with a ball on top of it, seemed a lot more precise then the Motion Plus. The demo themselves, while containing all programmer art , were a lot better than Nintendo’s and in some ways Microsoft’s (the Sony engineers made note during the demos of what was good and bad about the system, at least off hand, which I liked. See the videos below.).

Finally, as mentioned yesterday, Microsoft came out with the hands-free, full body tracking system called Natal. While their demos were cool some early reviews have not been too impressed by the system, saying that it has a long way to go.

This means that Nintendo is leading the pack with their motion control system because it is out now. Sony looks like they may over take Nintendo in the next year or two if there camera using motion control system takes off. That leaves Microsoft, which is thinking way into the future with Natal and while it may be years and years away from becoming viable you can bet that both Nintendo and Sony already have R&D teams pouring over Natal information so that they can start incorporating the same ideas into their systems.

Here are the videos of the complete Sony Motion Control demos shown today.

Looks like game companies are move closer and closer to complete game/web integration. All three major press conferences today (Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft) discussed and unveiled new services and products that bring their games and web services closer.

Microsoft is expanding their Xbox Live service with Twitter and Facebook integration, allowing users to use those sites and keep up with their gamer friends through their Xbox. They also introduced more streaming movie content and included a shared viewing feature that lets a group of friends watch a movie together with their Xbox avatars sitting in a theater style setting. (Which is unfortunate because a friend of mine at GT built a similar product for watching streaming TV with your friends online. Microsoft beat him to the punch.)

EA spent some time on their EA sports franchise which is shaping up to be one of the most integrated game/web experiences yet. EAsports.com will be launching new online features such as: custom team branding (including logos, fields, and other art assets), team stats adjustment (allow players to alter their teams abilities) and franchise managements (with real time drafts, team management and even an iPhone App). This means that anywhere you have an internet connection you can be connected to your EA sport games (though it looks like they are pushing Madden for now).

Finally, Ubisoft unveiled their Uplay online system. This will be another system similar to EA’s but work more like a game portal site like Steam. Players will create their own content, communicate with one another, download game information and content, and have methods for purchasing games. Not too much information was given but looks like everyone is trying to tie in web-based services now. (Ubisoft’s Petz game also looked like it was expanding its game/web services for their “tween” demographic.)

As a side point there was some talk about my favorite topic, metrics.

Project Natal, from Microsoft, has full-body recognition camera system, measuring your body/facial expressions and vocal commands. While the metrics of this system were not talked about directly, the system looks to be able to keep track of different users, play patterns and other physical variables about the player. I would love to see how many data variables you can gathered from that system.

During EA’s press conference the makers of Need for Speed: SHIFT talked about figuring out a player’s “driving style.” The game will determine the player’s driving style by monitoring their behavior in the game. This includes their personality, success in the game, profile points and badges earned. Rivalry’s were also mentioned, which will automatically be created between players who end up competing with each other often. (I believe this idea has already been used before but I can’t remember where. It’s still an excellent idea though.) Oh and EA already has their Dynamic DNA that they use in their NBA Live game (which gathers stats continuously about NBA players and adds those stats to the game), they will no doubt be expanding on that.

One last note, Ubisoft’s new Splinter Cell game had a small feature that I liked, Last Known Location (LKL). When the player leaves an enemy’s line of sight a white outline of the player’s LKL is shown in the game world. That location is where the enemy will check next so the player knows where the enemy is heading (allowing the player to flank the enemy). Just a small mechanic that makes use of recorded game history.

Between the game/web integration and the ways to monitor player metrics E3 day one had a ton of new services to talk about.

Peter Molyneux does it again with his over-zealous blue sky demo at Microsoft’s E3 press conference today. Molyneux talked about Lionhead’s ( his game studio) new tech demo Milo, an interactive AI system that is making use of Microsoft’s new Natal camera system (which captures body movement, facial expressions and vocal commands without the use of a controller). In the demo a player is seen interacting with Milo, who is seemly responding to her speech and movements.

One high-light of the demo has the female player playing in the water with Milo, moving her arms around to splash the water (the Natal camera system can sense motion of the player). At one point the player even draws on the piece of paper, scans it with the Natal camera, and it appears on in the digital world where Milo grabs it and looks at it. Milo recognizes the color of the drawing and, Molyneux says but was not seen in the demo, the shape of the drawing.

The problems I find with the demo is that it uses the same old tricks that have been used for years when presenting an AI system.

1) Repeat what the player just said. — Milo at one point repeated the words that the player had just stated. Honestly, that is something that Eliza did decades ago and while it works some of the time it is not new.

2) Ambiguous dialog. — There are dialog portions in the demo where whatever Milo says does not rely on how the player responds. One part had Milo talking before the player finished speaking and another time Milo did not respond with any relevant information even when the player asked a question.

3) Make use of keywords or static concepts. — When the player draws a picture of the fish and scan’s it into the game, Milo recognizes the color of the image (similar to how green screen software works). At the beginning of the demo Milo also picks up on the word nervous, which the program is probably focused on emotion (knowing Molyneux) and words like fear, happy, nervous will be acknowledged. The problem is when you have to search over thousands of words and their context within the conversation that is taking place. That does not come easy for an AI system but if you only have a five minute demo, you can fake it.

It’s getting harder and harder to believe anything an AI game developer says about their game. Most of the technology and algorithms that are going into games today where conceived decades ago. While Lionhead has a great track record of bringing AI technology to the forefront in their games, and makes them fun at the same time, I hate that presenters still use obvious smoke and mirror tricks to get people to believe their AI is spectacular. Honestly, for once I would like to see someone say both the capabilities and drawbacks of their AI system in a game presentation demo. We can’t move forward until we discuss what is holding us back.

Off the top of my head here are some other older AI projects in the same vein as Milo.

ICT in Los Angeles builds great AI system.

Kimiko Ryokai work on the project Sam is almost exactly the same as the Milo demo, except Sam uses more physical objects.

The game Façade.

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I was on vacation for a week and the new Summer semester started so there is work to be had.

But I entered into a discussion today with Simon over at Chungking Espresso about achievements in games. He had initially tweeted about this article over at Before Game Design. The article talks about two things 1) how casual players react to a games introduction (or tutorials) and 2) how casual or inexperienced players may not understand unlockable content (or achievements for that matter). This is a strange coincidence because I planned on writing topics on both of those topics this week. Though, per my conversation with Simon today, I will stick with the topic of achievements for now.

It is not hard to find achievements in today’s games. Windows and Xbox Live, Steam and PS Network all have achievement services. Game developers create achievements for their game, hook into one of the services’ API and anytime a player fulfills the requirements for an achievement they will receive that achievement as a prize. Players keep those achievements once earned and there are various ways to display online their achievements, scores , gamertags, what have you. This has also produced a series of data-mining services to come into existence, intent on capture this information from users and using it for various marketing (GamerDNA) and/or user experience services (Giant Bomb).

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Maxis pushes the social gaming boundary again come June.

The Sims 3, which drops on June 2nd, will have greater social connection features for players and an in-game town to buy/sell items. This means players can not only share their creations, as they have been doing in Sims 2, but they will have an easier time sharing their personal stories from their game. Maxis will provide players with a Movie Mash up tool for players to create their own videos in the game (which I assume will be more robust then the video capture capabilities in The Sims 2); another machinima friendly tool I hope. Players can embed those videos on social network sites or blogs and it looks like other content will be available to share too.

The in-game town for buying and selling items will be a place for players to show off their creations. A Gamer Daily article says the “downloadables, including updates, patches, community content, exchange content and other media will be accessible via the easy to cruise Game Launcher.” Maxis is also building some search and filter features into the game, with some recommendations features to top it all off (W00T).

The Sims is the biggest selling series of all time so having these social features is to their benefit. Though, I’m wondering if the reason that The Sims series is so popular is due to their social features. It is not even an MMO (well not anymore), these are players who are playing a single player game. Maybe some other game developers should start looking into building integrated social features into their next game … just a suggestion.

Got pushed two stories today on Twitter. Well a story and a trailer. The trailer is for Battlestations: Pacific, a war tactics game set in the pacific theater (think battlefield and such). The story is about the game “Six Days in Fallujah,” a survival-horror game set during the Battle of Fallujah during the Iraqi War (think full spectrum meets resident evil … no zombies).

Now the trailer pissed me off. It opens up with dramatic music as a Japanese squadron of planes fly over an island. It then displays the message “On October 25, 1944” [some more plane and now ship shots] “During the Battle of the Leyte Gulf” [some more shots] “The war changed forever.” The trailer then follows a plane, through the pilot’s perspective, down as it flies directly into a battleship. October 25, 1944 was the first major kamikaze strike on U.S. forces during WWII.

That’s it, the trailer is about kamikaze strikes, that is what pisses me off. The rest of the trailer shows other kamikaze pilots flying into ships. The trailer goes on to display “In desperate times, There are no rules.” They even end with a Bonzai just for good measure.

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