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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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.

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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Does anyone want to contribute their Flash game for some player research?

Beginning this Summer I will be conducting user tests with Flash games and will be gathering gameplay data with the metric system I have been building. The purpose of this study is to understand what it takes to gather extensive metrics in online Flash games and how the gameplay data collected can be used in novel ways for design, visualization and artistic purposes.

If anyone is willing to provide me with any Flash games (both AS2 and AS3 coded games will work), ones that I can hook my metric software into, this would help my research greatly. I will need access to the actual code in the game and can offer NDAs for any person/company that wishes to keep their code secret. I will hopefully be able to share most of my findings with the developers that send me there Flash games and to the public at large. If anyone needs more details about how the provided games will be used I would be happy to speak with you. My email address is on the side link page, About.

And just to give you a glimpse as to how fantastic it would be to visualize and explore metric data in games, check out JoAnn Kuchera-Morin TED video below. She presents the Allosphere, a 3D immersive visualization room. She only discusses the visualization of scientific data but what if this was used with game data? How incredible would it be to explore game metric data gathered from 3D MMOs and display the data inside the 3D game world as you zoom around learning what players are up to.