We get to the top of the stairs and start walking down the hall. Silence echoes as we pass an open door where lights are on but no one is home. Stopping at an open window Jason climbs up and out as Marie and I keep a look out. A moment later Jason steps out through a nearby door and we are in. Up the ladder we go and out into the fresh summer air.

We are on top of the Human Ecology Building on Michigan State’s Campus. The roof sits six stores above the ground, is only flat in the one section, where we are at, but that section has battlements around the edges. Which, needless to say, makes for an excellent roof to take in the view.

I have always enjoyed being on roofs. Any time my dad had the ladder out around the house I wanted to shimmy up to our roof. It must be the height, but perhaps it is having the sky above me. That’s a key differences in what makes a roof a roof. Taking in the view from inside a skyscraper verses atop its roof is very different, like standing on a mountain instead of gazing at a picture. Roofs are terrain in this respect, land open to the sky. Windows are just glorified holes in the side of a hill.

However, roofs are not open terrain. Jason, Marie and I had to sneak onto the roof of the Human Ecology building. There were two locked doors barring access and the shear fact that those doors could be opened easily if one was on the roof (which is why Jason had to climb out the window) says that the building’s architect did not wish anyone to be trapped on the roof. Human occupancy on a roof should be limited and fleeting. Large machinery, communication equipment, ugly cements, rocks, tars and shingles are placed on flat top roofs, only a repairman should see such things. Vaulted roofs on personal dwellings are dangerous to walk on and typically used to accent the property. All these features point to the fact that roof terrain should be controlled, hidden or serve merely as aesthetic. But not so in games.

Perhaps you have noticed, open world games are thriving on rooftops. Assassin’s Creed, Infamous, Mirror’s Edge and Prototype have each utilized rooftops as terrain. That is unrestricted terrain, roofs are appropriated as playgrounds. Players move freely and experience the game’s action atop the skyline. Certainly there is a street level down below the cityscape, most of the games have indoor areas as well, but the roofs are where players are drawn.

One would have to assume that the reason for this love affair with roofs is due to the taboo nature the roof has within our culture. General access roofs are rare. In de Certeau terms, those with strategic authority wish to keep us everyday citizens from tactically using roof space. No wonder our media are filled with rooftop chase, fight or love scenes. Those are so rare in real life that we must imagine what they would be like in our entertainment escapes.

So how are roofs imagined in open world games? While attempting to find literature that specifically talked about rooftops, or heights in general, I came across a quote in an unlikely, but welcomed, text that may help answer that question. One avenue I took in my search was the notion of having the high ground in combat situations. Descending while fighting is preferred to ascending while fighting, starting at a greater height compared to one’s opponent increases the chances of victory. Additionally, each open world game relies on combat in some respect so a combat relation to terrain is fitting. This led me to my shelf looking for The Art of War and while there are quotes stating the “High Ground” concept it was another quote about terrain that caught my eye:

“By terrain I mean distances, whether the ground is traversed with ease or difficulty, whether it is open or constricted, and the chances of life and death.” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel Griffith, 1963)

Traversability, openness, and endangerment, as to describe terrain, are three ways of describing how roofs are used in games.

Traversability

Each of the four open worlds I mentioned rely on speed and freedom of movement. Mirror’s edge is the most obvious example given that it is described as a “First-person Running” game. Racing to the end of the level, jumping over obstacles with ease and taking alternate routes all add to the traversability of the rooftop environment in Mirror’s Edge. Prototype is the other obvious example, Alex (the protagonist) has the ability to run up buildings, jump long distances and glide from skyscraper to skyscraper. In both Prototype and Mirror’s Edge the purpose of the roof is to provide an avenue, a corridor, for players to move.

Infamous and Assassin’s Creed take a different approach to roofs, one that is more strategic. Both games employ a parkour system which players use to climb up structures. While this makes it easy for players to climb up buildings in order to access any roof, getting to the roof quickly is another matter. For example, in both games the player can be knocked off a building by projectile fire if an enemy is in pursuit. Yet, in some cases there are quick access points to the roof, such as ladders in Assassin’s Creed. Once atop a roof the games turn into something similar to Mirror’s Edge or Prototype, though the speed is toned down. True, a player can gain upgrades in Infamous which allow them to glide through the air for short bursts or glide across telephone wires but before that time, as in Assassin’s Creed too, it is less about pure speed and more about maneuverability. Nonetheless, whether the focus is on speed or maneuverability, the rooftops are extremely traversable.

Openness

Three of the games, excluding Assassin’s Creed, have in-door levels. In these spaces I personally felt confined; the spaces are big enough to maneuver but still limiting. At these times the gameplay mimicked the feeling of being in an arena instead of upon an expansive terrain. Prototype players have to enter military bases from time to time where they are restricted to a, roughly, two store room. With the intense combat that can occur in Prototype it wasn’t hard to become surrounded by enemies in these areas, especially in the early parts of the game. Infamous and Mirror’s Edge interior areas instead felt like linear paths; where as on the roofs you felt free, in doors the player is told “you must go this way.”

On the roofs though, freedom reigns supreme. Along with speed and maneuverability, roofs gave a greater sense of having more choice in how to approach gameplay. Determining how to get from A to B, which missions to take, and the means to accomplish those missions all give a sense of agency to the player. Though the roofs are still contained at times. Mirror’s Edge, while I have been lumping it with open world games it normally would not be considered as such, is still a linear game, the finish line is always given to the player. Assassin’s Creed and Infamous restrict access to certain portions of the cityscape and only become truly open about mid-way through the game. But otherwise, the game space atop the city feels open and free, one that can be entered and exited at any time and in any way.

Endangerment

Of course danger exists among the rooftops. Whether it be archer’s in Assassin’s Creed, snipers in Infamous or Mirror’s Edge, or Helicopters in Prototype, the player needs to watch their back on the roof. Combat is supposed to start on the roof and descend to the ground. Infamous and Prototype give players abilities that rely on getting above a target in order to launch surprise attacks. Players in Assassin’s Creed are pushed to take out the archer’s that line the roofs before they move to the street level. Mirror’s Edge does not even have a street level, falling off the roof equals death, so combat starts there and stays there.

In contrast, on the street combat becomes close quarters. Players can be swarmed when fighting at ground level, having to fight their way out. In Assassin’s Creed this is dangerous, being an assassin the player is suppose to hit and run, not stand and fight. Infamous and Prototype turn into a brawler when not fighting on the roofs. Melee and “Area of Effect” attacks are extremely effective, and a little button mashing is required. But combat always returns to the rooftops.

There are defiant distinctions between the rooftop and street level combat but roofs always represent the high ground. As the rule says, fight from the high ground, and when on the street guess what the player does not have, a strategic position. Basically, this means that while fighting in the streets the player has to deal with the enemies around them and the enemies on the roof. This is why combat returns to the roof because eventually the player must always deal with the enemies that have the higher ground. Thus shifting between the roof and street level is of extreme importance but a shift that adds dimension to these games.

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Roofs are terrain in these respects, or at least they are in games. In an age when it is exciting and risqué to have a party on the roof or install a rooftop eco-friendly garden to combat global warming, games are giving players the experience of traversing roofs in the same way one would explore urban streets or even the wild hinterlands beyond. Certainly the increased popularity of other concepts like the open world game genre and parkour has exacerbated rooftop gameplay too. Combining all of these factors allow us as players to take part in a taboo adventure of running across rooftops while we have probably never even been on the roof of the building we are sitting in at this moment. Perhaps if we were rich men we would build a home with an open roof for us to play or even fiddle upon (I had to reference the play somewhere), but for now we will have to stick with the virtual ones.

FIFA 10 came out on Oct 20th and it has already stolen my heart. Not because of the game, I haven’t played, nor is it soccer (or football), which I do not follow in any capacity. The reason I’ve fallen for this game is because of this website: FIFA Earth.

In the growing world of social networks and system integration, game companies have been jumping on the band-wagon. Uncharted 2 has Twitter integration (though they seem to have problems with it), Xbox Live with have Facebook/Twitter capabilities, and Giant Bomb links player’s achievements together. Integrate and aggregation is the talk of the town.

Now what? What do we do now that we have achieved this integration. Well, visualization and analytics of course. Sure Uncharted 2 can tweet when you finish a game chapter but how many other players have completed that chapter too. When do those players play, did they finish the chapter in the same amount of time as you? While integrating achievement systems, Facebook and Twitter makes communication easier it does not make the information presented easier to understand. Now that we have these swiss-army knife systems let’s do something with them.

Enter FIFA Earth. There are other visualization/analytic game systems available; Valve shows Steam statistics on their website for example. However, it is rare to find one that is informative, interactive and aesthetically pleasing. FIFA Earth is just such a system. It does not have an extensive list of information to sift through but what it has is style.

FIFA Earth aggregates every match that is played in FIFA 10 from around the world, while any player is connected to the PlayStation Network. From what I have been told soccer is a very important sport worldwide so it only makes sense that a video game simulating real world soccer is just as popular; which means a lot of recorded games. 39 million to be exact. Each day’s total games played is available and is similar to other visualizations like Steam or Noby Noby Stats.

Each time a player completes a game in FIFA 10 it is uploaded online and goes into two different categories. One is for that player’s country and another is for the player’s chosen club. Categories based on country and club are ranked against each other by their ‘win percentage,’ which is calculated by their wins, losses, and draws from all the matches in that category (across all players). There is also an option to view their rank changes across time. I see that players from Ecuador have a winning percentage of 53 today and have been above 40% since October 7th.

All of this information is displayed using a three dimensional image of earth as viewed from space. Which makes sense given the data presented is all geo-located. This feature is also combined with FIFA Earth’s own Twitter feed, which displays tweets about FIFA 10. Each tweet is marked on the globe and they stretch across the screen in a list next to the Earth’s image, it’s quite elegant.

When it comes down to it FIFA Earth has three things: relevant Twitter feed, records the total games played and records the winning conditions of each game (separated by categories). Said like that it doesn’t seem like a lot of information but the presentation is excellent. I hope we will see more websites and game features like this in the future.

Like others, I have found the recent “social” game explosion to be rudimentary and lacking. When I log into Mafia Wars or 140Blood I do not see a game, I see a vending machine. Push a series of buttons and a tasty treat comes out. You are hanging out with your friends so why not have something sweet on the side, maybe you can coax a friend to have one too.

Don’t get me wrong, these type of social games are games (there are goals, actions, rules) and they can be seen as more of a critique on MMORPG gameplay as much as the Flash game “This is the Only Level” is for redundant level design.

However, I don’t see what is so social about Mafia Wars. I see my friends, I can place them in my mafia family and the game says they “help” me complete jobs, but this is all asynchronous gameplay; I am never actually helping my friends or playing with them. There’s a big difference here compared to other “social” games like Scrabble online which allow players to play each other right then and there.

The difference between these two types of social games is actually the age old division between communities and society (nature vs. modernity or tribal vs. systematic). This fight weighs the benefits/drawbacks of a small, local, egalitarian community verses the large, systematic, democratic society.

Many writers and theorists have written on the subject: which organizational structure is the natural human state, what properties of each should be cultivated, which is considered good or bad, etc.

Ferdinand Toennies is one sociologist that I believe does a wonderful job of separating the two distinctions in his published work “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” (meaning “community and society”) back in 1887.

Community

Toennies emphasizes the fact that humans in a community relate to one another based on their blood, neighborhood or common habits. Communities are often family oriented, in the same general location and everyone is friendly with each other, participating in common rituals and have similar likes/dislikes. In a community, members adjust to each other, understand and organize together, provide common support and promote ownership amongst all.

Society

A society is the artificial construction of community, according to Toennies, where individuality takes over and “everybody is by himself and isolated, and there exists a condition of tension against all others.” Everyone must rely on artificial means of currency and exchange in a society because there is no sense of shared worth, like in a community. Individuals are separated from the process of exchange and force (legal and governmental bodies) must be created in order to manage human interactions.

Not Social, Community and Society

There is a striking resemblance between the two types of social games I mentioned and Toennies’ distinction between communities and societies. Mafia Wars is defiantly an example of a “society game,” as players are isolated from one another and are always at ends with other players, trying to get more power or money. Scrabble online, on the other hand, is a “community game” where players have a chance to catch up and enjoy each other’s company.

I think this distinction is key in understanding where social gaming is going. It seems like the only community games that exist are re-hashed old boardgames that are digitally transformed. While the society games look more like the vending machine games, trying to get into everyone’s pocket book while appearing to connect the player to all their friends.

My worry is that these trends will continue unperturbed. We will not progress past the boardgame motif for community games and micro-transaction gameplay will plague the society games for years to come.

Perhaps some combination of the two may be reached and these two types of games do not need to stay separated. It is essentialist to think that only the properties of either communities or societies show up in a specific human organization, while in almost all cases a mixture of properties appear. The problem is that games are abstractions and have the ability to be essentialist, casting out the properties of one organizational structure or the other, and focusing on only a subset of properties.

My plea is thus not for Mafia War or 140Blood to disappear but for game developers to continue to push for community games too, besides the typical boardgames, and attempt to mix the two game styles together. There is a lot that can be done with Mafia Wars such as offering more real-time gameplay when friends are online, richer strategy/skill-based elements in the game, and communication between rival players other than just “attack me.”

We must foster what it means to actually be a part of a community online because we often get lost in the properties that make it more like a society.

I was pointed to the wonderful game William and Sly yesterday. A typical platform game, the player takes on the role as Sly the fox. William, Sly’s master I take it, and Sly are out to collect mushrooms in the forest. Unfortunately, William says he is unable to get to his mushroom storage cave on the other side of the forest because the runestones that he uses for transporting across the forest have gone out. Sly is thus given the quest to find the runestones and recharge them with magical fairyflies he can collect in the forest.

At the same time, Sly collects any mushrooms he comes across, some of which are in hidden caves, hidden behind the game’s scenery. This makes the game much more about exploring the terrain because the hidden areas have no visual distinction. Sly must also worry about Darklings, which are evil creatures that do not harm Sly himself but eat any fairyflies that Sly has collected. Luckily, Sly can gain some power-ups, one of which allows him to glide while the other allows him to dispell Darklings.

Reading that description, the similarities between William and Sly and say another platform like Super Mario Bros are blatantly obvious. Sly runs and jumps, gains power-ups, and is on a hunt for mushrooms (no pipes though). There is even a sense of hidden wonder in both games where pipes allow access to hidden areas in Super Mario and in William and Sly there are hidden caves that have no differentiation from their surrounding landscape.

But when playing as Sly you do not feel the same way as when playing Mario. The level design in William and Sly is based on recreating a forest; while the graphics are not photorealist they are defiantly more realistic than say the hills or trees in Super Mario games. The bounding and running animations of Sly are superb, I found myself just examining Sly’s motions because they are so smooth. Couple those with the excellent somber music and the thunderstorm effects, the game does much more to place the player into a world that is less based on cartoony action and more about experiencing the surroundings.

Collecting items works differently too. When an item is collected the player is given a brief acknowledgement that they found the item but nothing else is shown. No running total is in the upper right hand corner, no score, not even a timer. In fact, the game has no UI in its main play mode at all. Hitting SHIFT will bring up a single page that lists all of the items the player has gathered but I for one barely used it, since I didn’t care how many mushrooms I was collecting.

The power-ups Sly receives are few but interesting in how they are presented. For dispelling Darklings Sly has to gain a “white magic” power. Sly is given this power after he unlocks a runestone but only for a short time. A Darkling can be anywhere in orientation to any given runestone so it adds another element of exploration if the player wishes to find and dispell as many Darklings as possible.

*Spoiler* The second power-up is the gift of flight, or the ability to glide if the player holds the up button. This is gained by patience. When Sly comes upon an alter in the middle of the forest a sign gives a hint that if he waits on the alter he will learn to fly. After about 15 seconds of waiting a message appears telling the player that Sly can now use his wings. Waiting there struck me as something different, platformers are typically about speed and progression. Having to wait, albeit for not a long time, was an excellent way to add in this power-up, especially in regards to the explorative nature of the game.

I immediately thought of Blueberry Garden while playing William and Sly. Both have large maps that players explore and items to collect throughout. Yet, each add something different to a platformer game rather than fighting or speed. The player can still focus on those aspects as both games allow them, one can dispell every Darkling in William and Sly or may try to kill the animals in Blueberry Garden, but the player is not forced to do those kinds of actions. Each game takes the same-old platformer mechanics but frames them in a way that is serene while still keeping with the spirit of the platforming genre.

The other game William and Sly reminded me of was Tale of Tales’ game The Endless Forest. Dubbed a “multiplayer online game and social screensaver,” The Endless Forest takes place in, well, a forest too. Both games nudge the player to explore the game’s environment but at the same time are almost too whimsical to play, where the player would rather just let the game run because it creates a soothing atmosphere. At the moment I am writing this I have William and Sly running in my browser and I’m just listening to the music/sound effects from the game, it’s quite nice.

If I had to make a complaint about William and Sly it would be that the points should have been removed from the game. The player technically receives a score if they finish the game, where every mushroom collected is worth 100 points and every Darkling dispelled is 1000. There even seems to be points awarded if the player finishes the game in a certain amount of time, though no time is shown anywhere while playing the game. I never felt like I was working towards a score, nor was I trying to beat the game fast. Adding points may motivate some people to play the game, maybe even push people to play the game differently, but for me the gameplay was intrinsic enough that I wanted to play just to play.

There was a game design conversation yesterday on Twitter that discussed such things as how gameplay centers too heavily on Power Fantasies and Discreet Choices, or that games are just Movement and Collision Detection. I feel these arguments are always too reductionist in nature, boiling down to a discussion of why “game X doesn’t have Y.” While this is a great thought experiment, people tend to focus on very popular games in these arguments, your WoWs, your GTAs, Rohrer’s games (which for the “elite” gamer is popular). I rarely see people discussing Flash-based, as William and Sly is, or Social games in their arguments of how we can bring gaming to the next level as a medium, art, or whatever.

Is William and Sly a Power Fantasy? Maybe, you can certainly play it as one. I personally liked bouncing around. Does it have Discreet Choices? Sure it is basically a linear level with an ending but you don’t need to enjoy it in that way. What about Movement and Collision Detection? Well of course, it is a spatial representation of a forest and a platformer. Did I feel that all I was doing was moving and colliding, no more so than I could argue that life is based around movement and collision (might throw good old Virilio out for that argument).

When these types of discussions come up we need to be more open minded about the breadth of games that exist. There are game designers who are trying new things and I think more of us should be putting our own ideas of how to further the medium into practice. The EAs and Activisions of the world will not be producing the same games forever, especially if we all try to sneak in new ideas and frame our games differently so more gaming audiences take notice. We just need to be sly about it.

inFAMOUS epitomizes what I love and hate about open-world, parkour games. Fitting, considering the game is a moral dichotomy game.

For those who may have not played Infamous, it has a laundry list of genre/mechanic titles. It’s an open-world, shooter, morality, parkour, rpg game. The setting is three city filled islands, similar to other open-world game landscapes (Assasin’s Creed, GTA). Players traverse these cityscapes by climbing, gliding or skating on the city’s architecture. The premise of the game is that Cole, the main character that players control, is infused, no pun intended, with electricity, allowing the player to use the electricity stored in their body in a number of ways. Shooting electricity like a gun is the basic ability but other powers can be unlock or upgraded, such as electric grenades or arc lightning. Topping it all off, the game places the player in a number of morality situations, making the player choose to act good or evil.

Each of the five titles that describe Infamous offer something in the game, though not necessarily something good.

Open-world

The open-world landscape is very well designed. The islands are smaller than in GTA, which makes sense considering the player must rely on their own powers for travel. Eventually players get the power to glide across power lines and grind on train tracks, making getting around much quicker. It was not as fast as say quick travel in Fallout 3 or using cars in GTA but in Infamous I felt like I actually experienced the city. Open-world games often have contradictory concepts, developers build huge worlds for players to play in and yet players are given extraordinary means to travel quickly though the world. Infamous had a good balance between having a quick way to travel and having to know your way around the city.

Water was another story. Since the world consisted of islands there was lots of water to be seen. Since Cole is electric, the rational in Infamous is that water hurts Cole. It doesn’t make much sense considering Cole will grab live power lines and be fine but steps into a water puddle and loses health. Water was generally used as a separator. It separated the islands and it separated the platforms players had to traverse in the sewers (Cole had to go underground to turn each island’s power back on). Basically, if the player was in water they most likely screwed up. Either they missed a jump or they were fighting on a bridge and fell. In the former case water added difficulty, in the latter water was a mercy kill so the player could get back into the fight quickly. While death by water didn’t make sense I can see why the developers added it. Thank god, it never rained in the game.

Parkour

Parkour gameplay is certainly being stream-lined and Infamous is one of the latest examples. I found climbing on buildings was much easier and quicker than in Assassin’s Creed. The design of Infamous required this; the buildings are too high and varied for the parkour mechanics to work otherwise. But this brings up an interesting problem, if you make it easy to climb why can’t I climb on everything?

I’ve seen other reviewers laugh and criticize the game for not allowing Cole to climb on chain-linked fences but that made the most sense to me. At no point was Cole able to climb that type of fence. As with water, chain-linked fences are not allowed, ever. I figured that out right away and was fine with it. What frustrated me was when objects that I had climbed on before were suddenly made un-climbable. Stacked shipping crates, certain rubble patches and specific “story important” buildings with special textures were un-climbable, even though most of them looked as though they would be very easy to climb or, in the shipping crates case, would only allow climbing if the player could grab the very top of the structure. This is the problem of “if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.” I was taught that I could climb on everything, and yet it was taken away from me.

Shooter / RPG

I’m still not very good at console shooters, I can’t control the analog stick very well. Infamous was easier for me than other shooters because different powers allowed for splash damage, making accuracy not as required as with a typical gun. The diversity of the powers added a lot to the game but the option to upgrade powers seemed tacked on. The game would have benefited from a “use and level up” mechanic instead, where the more a power was used the higher that power’s level increased. Plus, each type of power had a good and evil side where players could only upgrade the powers on their chosen morality side. No neutrality in this game, and at this point the only reason to replay the game would be to use the powers I was not allowed to use the first time, which is not sounding that appealing.

Morality

I played as an evil character, because I am pure evil. Actually, I always decide in a morality game whether to be a good or evil character during the first few major moral decision. Then I usually go all out for that side. I believe I chose the good option during the first moral decision but decided I didn’t like the love interest in the game so gave my soul to the utter darkness, never looking back.

To me it didn’t seem to matter. The cut-scenes and dialog with the story characters rarely mentioned the fact that I was on a killing spree. At one point I drained the energy out of a helpless person, which charges Cole’s powers, right next to a story character. They didn’t mind, just went on talking like nothing happened. It’s one thing when players perform evil acts in games and only “evil” enemies are around as witnesses but when the main character is interacting with other story characters as frequently as in Infamous the morality tale fails miserably because everyone has amnesia. Or is blind. Or both.

Now I may be wrong but the way I feel now, after finishing the game as an evil character, I do not think the story would play out any differently. Pursuing the opposite moral choices is not an appealing prospect to me because the story would be the same. Whether that is true or not I don’t know, but the fact that I feel this way means that the story was not good enough to warrant a replay. That means the only other reason to play again would be to use the opposite morality powers but, having seen the opposite powers, I don’t think using different powers would offer enough change in the gameplay.

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I finished Infamous, so that says something. It is a great open-world game where you can jump on buildings and grind on train tracks. The quests, combat elements and powers were varied enough not to get boring either. Some parts of the game were frustrating: the climbing properties changing on certain objects, having to arbitrarily level up powers and the moral choices not affecting the story. Did I like this game better than Assassin’s Creed or GTA? Hmm, that is hard to say. GTA games defiantly have more content and usually not as heavy handed with the story. Assassin’s Creed benefited from ancient cityscapes, which automatically bracketed what was possible in the game making for a tighter experience. So no, I don’t think Infamous is better than AC or GTA but I did, and continuously wanted to, play the game all the way through. It may not be the best open-world, shooter, morality, parkour, rpg game but it’s still pretty good.