Category Archives: The Android’s Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Distracted Boss (Casual/Flash), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

Brutal vivisection: Spore.

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If we’re going to improve videogames, then we need to do something which might seem a bit counterintuitive – we need to look at games which got it wrong. Que? Don’t we need to look at what went right and emulate it? Well sure, but we also need to look at what went wrong, and why. Sometimes this is very obvious, of course, and needs very little investigation. A game with a bad control scheme is always going to suffer, for example, regardless of the rest of its merits. More interesting, perhaps, is to look at games which fall into that very broad, but very overlooked, category of “Yeah it’s not bad I guess”. Mediocre, average, adequate, the games which don’t get many people excited, don’t do anything too amazing, and you probably won’t want to buy new but when you find it cheap a couple months later, won’t necessarily be a bad purchase.

For me, Spore is a first-class example of a second-class game. It had all the ingredients for being a classic; a legendary designer, a man who has literally invented a genre; his development studio, Maxis, responsible for some all-time greats, as we have discussed on this very blog; and that video from 2005, the video, the one which got us all so ridiculously excited.

This. Looked. Awesome.

And Spore, in the end? Spore was a much less interesting game. It looked like it was going to revolve around evolution and development in a really meaningful, enjoyable sense – you would experiment to figure out what worked, you would have different things that were beneficial depending on what kind of critter you were building, all sorts of things like that. Vehicles would have utility depending on how you shaped them, and buildings might to some extent as well. None of this was true, at least not beyond the cellular stage, where placement of parts did make a difference, and gave us a taste of what we were hoping for.

Then it all came crashing down. Your creature’s strengths and weaknesses weren’t determined by the design at all, just by the stats of the body parts you acquired. Which wouldn’t have been a bad compliment to the designing by itself, but replacing it wholesale? Nope. Oh, and the huge, cohesive world which it seemed like we would have to roam and explore and hunt over, with a dynamic ecosphere? In actuality other creatures just hang out near their nests, in groups of 10-15, and do nothing beyond that. The tribal stage was much the same. Rather than the Populous-esque experience which we were hoping for, it was a very simplistic, very easy affair. Not high crimes in itself, again, but contrasted against the potential, thoroughly disappointing. This is after all Will Wright we are talking about. And how we awaited the City/Empire stage! Oh my, this was going to rock. A cross between SimCity and Civilization! Who among us hasn’t dreamed of such a thing? But alas, t’was not to be. The design by this point had become completely aesthetic. Even the cursory customization of the previous stages was essentially gone now. There were no items to add to increase your buildings’ durability, for example, or to make them produce more money, or anything like that. The city building aspect was merely a simple puzzle game, revolving around where to place buildings in the grid. The empire was hardly more developed, though at least they made the concession of having different ways to take over other cities. Did I mention that once you reach a certain point you can just hit a magic button and win the stage?

L-R: EA; Our Dreams

Then you go to space. Space, space, space. It was always billed as the top dog of the Spore stages, the thing which everything else was building up towards. So maybe it was okay. We can take it, the other stages aren’t really bad, they’re just not great, not what we were hoping for. Well clearly they spent all their time on the Space stage, making it the best it could be, right? … right? Guys?

Who is responsible for subjecting our eyes to these... horrors?

Well, it is big, at least. The space stage in Spore is massive, that can’t be denied. If only there was much to do in it. If only terraforming was an interesting and involved process that was at least somewhat different according to each world’s unique situation. If only you could go and do stuff without being called back to deal with a crisis every ten minutes. If only the design of your spaceship mattered. If only you could make choices between speed, fuel, armaments, armor, etc. If only, if only, if only. And that’s really the story of Spore – taken by itself it’s not a bad game. What is there is fun enough to play a bit of, and the designing is at least visually engaging and somewhat enjoyable, even if not consequential. But even without Maxis, without Will Wright, without that video presentation, the potential is so clear, and it falls so far short. The end result is an extraordinarily shallow experience, which has very very little replay value, in a setting which feels exactly the opposite of what was hoped for – it’s not a big dangerous world you must struggle to adapt to and overcome, it’s a world designed specifically for you to play around in. Which would be fine if there was a lot for you to DO, except the sandbox is so lacking in sand, or a bucket and spade, and I think the cat peed in the corner of it. Now I accept that hype is playing a part here, it can’t not, but that only raises the question of why they thought moving so radically away from the GDC ’05 model was a good idea. Before Spore came out everyone was going berserk over that video.

So yeah, Spore: There’s a reason I list it as my most disappointing game ever. Which again, is not to mean worst – it’s worth picking up if you come across it for a few bucks, and it’ll keep you entertained for a few hours quite happily, maybe more depending on how you take to the designing stuff. But for me, for what I was hoping for? It falls so far short I don’t even know quite how to express it. It really breaks my heart to see something with so much potential fall so far short.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Raging Misanthropy or, How I Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Multiplayer

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I’ll cut right to the chase: I really don’t care for multiplayer most of the time. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I’ve sworn a vow against it or anything, I enjoy a good game of Team Fortress or Halo as much as the next person. But it’s just an aside, something that I do now and then for fun, just as every now and then I play some co-op with my good friend Barry Manilow (long story). But there’s a whole segment of gaming that seems to be almost exclusively or exclusively caught up in the multiplayer side of things. And I mean, I can grok that. Nothing better than a real human opponent (Not yet, anyway, and this doesn’t count in chess) for matching wits against – and yet I don’t care to. Which, if you’ll let me indulge my ego, isn’t to say I can’t. Back when I played Red Alert 2 I was horrendously good at it. It just doesn’t really appeal to me, and I’m not entirely sure why, but I have an inkling.

See, I'm just too cool for school (and for sayings that were in date at any point after LBJ was in office)

Here’s the thing: I like to play games my way. I like to derp around, to explore here and there, to try stupid things with weapons, to experiment with different strategies and whatnot. This is all well and good with friends, but in any game where other people are expecting me to do something productive, it just doesn’t seem to work out so well for me. I feel rather constrained by it all, and I don’t particularly like other people being dependent on me when I’m just wanting to mess around with some ridiculous glitch I’ve discovered or something. Interestingly I still like MMOs a great deal; I’ve played my share of WoW over the years, and a fair bit of EVE Online and City of Heroes too, as well as dabbling in quite a few besides. But I’m always solo in these things; I don’t want to have to worry about keeping others alive or what have you, because when I screw it up I feel really bad! Contrary to the title of this post, I don’t actually mind if others mess up unless it’s making the same mistakes repeatedly or something.

I was wondering how others feel about all this sort of thing. Do you prefer single player or multiplayer? Do you care at all? Do you worry about letting the side down to a point of excess?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

It’s Like I’m Actually Playing Jeopardy Against Watson

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So the other day I was playing Civ IV, because apparently I’m still desperately addicted to it, and I was playing a single player game and I decided to bump up the difficulty by a notch. You know, jump up from “Noble” to whatever is just above Noble. Prince, I think?

It seemed like a sensible thing to do. I’d played up through the ranks– Settler, Chieftain, Warlord– and each had been a reasonable ramp up in difficulty level and finally I’d landed on Noble, which is the game’s default “average” difficulty level. And I could beat the game on Noble with few issues, so why not tune it up a notch? It makes sense, right?

So, fairly confident in my own abilities, I started up a game on Prince.

…within about ten minutes I knew I was going to have some problems when all of the other AIs were mysteriously doubling my score, and then by about twenty minutes in I was cheating via the World Builder because all of the other AIs were mysteriously tripling my score.

Needless to say I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the outcome!

My reactions before the game started and shortly after the game started.

I think the reason why this happened is because the Civ IV AI is built to pretty much act the same regardless of difficulty level. The easier difficulty levels are “easier” because they give you bonuses in terms of your population’s happiness or health (and, on Settler at least, the civs seem slightly less likely to declare war on you), and the higher difficulty levels… well I don’t know, they give the AIs crack or something. It feels somewhat “false”, regardless, and reminds me of ten years ago when I’d play Starcraft for hours on end and you were always reasonably certain of what the computer was going to do so it was easy to exploit it (You knew there was always going to be an initial attack of zealots or marines about ten minutes into the game, and then another group of the next tier of units at about twenty, and etc.)

I’d like to play a difficult Civ game against an AI that isn’t just “the regular AI but CHEATING”. I think there are mods that improve the AI; I’ll have to look into those.

Anyways! Your stories about ridiculously hard AIs or difficulty levels?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

Do You Remember the First Time You Played SimCity?

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Monsieur Adequate and myself have both been playing a lot of SimCity 4 lately. And the other day when we were playing it, the topic of just how long this game series has been around came up. Here, have a timeline:

  • SimCity – 1989 – 22 years ago
  • SimCity 2000 – 1994 – 17 years ago
  • SimCity 3000 – 1999 – 12 years ago
  • SimCity 4 – 2003 – 8 years ago

This thought– that this game has been around for 22 years, and we’re still just as engrossed by it– really hit me for some reason. The weird thing is that there are other game series that have been around just as long, if not longer, but they don’t seem to strike me that same way. For example, I’ve theoretically been playing Mario games since Donkey Kong in… whatever year that was that I first played Donkey Kong. Certainly before 1989. But Mario has evolved. Look at Donkey Kong– or even Super Mario Bros.– and then take a look at, say, Super Mario Galaxy. Beyond the titular main character, there is little to no similarity. Other series that have been around for just as long are similar. The characters, locations, and baddies may be the same, but the games and gameplay themselves are usually different.

I honestly didn't realize that this was the same character as "Mario" until much later.

SimCity, however, has essentially stayed the same. If you were a first time player and played SimCity 2000 for a while and then jumped to SimCity 4, you would have very little trouble adjusting. Everything is still there. The zoning is there. The roads are there. The water pipes are there. The power lines are there. Your schools and hospitals and fire departments are there. You still have your top-down, isometric view of the world. Your Sims still follow the same basic rules now that they did in 1994.

And it is this thought– this fact that an idea Will Wright had in the eighties is so very stable as to still be a thoroughly addicting and entertaining game today– that is a wonderful thing, I think. And I’m reminded of this whenever I play yet another incarnation of the series, geek out about something ridiculous like road signs, and realize that I’ve been in love with this game for twenty years.

One of the all-time greats? Yup. One of the all-time greats. And I love the fact that I grew up with it.

Any games or series you guys feel this way about?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Power Overwhelming

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Cheating!

Or “using your resources”. Pick your term.

We’ve all done it. Hooked a Game Shark up to your Game Boy to give yourself a Mew and a few hundred Master Balls and Rare Candies. Used Power Overwhelming, Operation CWAL and Show Me the Money in StarCraft. Typed “imacheat” a dozen times into SimCity 2000 to give yourself millions of dollars.

…well, I’ve done all of those, at least.

You KNOW you wanted him too.

I just finished a rather fun game of Civilization IV wherein I used the World Builder to give myself a massively unfair advantage. I gave myself several dozen Great People right from the start, resulting in a huge leg up on tech, building, and money. Once I had done so, I proceeded to play a mostly “normal” game, except that I had nukes and the Apollo Program by the mid-1700s, a full two centuries before I can usually snag them if I’m playing at my best. (Well, I also wasn’t afraid to drop a Globe Theatre on the heads of a city that showed any sign of unhappiness. Nor was I afraid to give myself a bunch of Factories early or rifle through other civilizations’ pockets for their unique buildings. BUT. OTHERWISE. NORMAL GAME. *shifty eyes*)

It was a lot of fun! However, a great deal of that fun came from the fact that I was already very familiar with the game and knew I could win normally, and it was amusing to speed up that process.

Which brings me to my next point: I don’t tend to use cheats when I can’t win. Rather, I use them when I can win but want to add some spice to the game. Once I beat Pokemon, it was fun to do it again but with that legendary Mew. Once I was already decent at Starcraft, but couldn’t be bothered to finish a particular game the “normal” way, it was fun to wreak some havoc. And as for SimCity 2000…

…

…okay, I used to have SERIOUS money problems with that game. So, maybe that’s my exception to the rule– I’d cheat just to make that one playable. I’ve learned a lot since then, though! I actually make money in SimCity 4! Legally! No, really!

It's true, but I really can't blame Twilight for being somewhat dubious.

So how about you guys? Do you cheat often? Did you have a Game-Sharked-Mew just like I did? (Because really, how many times did we try to use Strength on the truck behind the S.S. Anne? And how much Lemonade did we give to the thirsty girl on the Celadon Department Store roof? ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL SAID WE WOULD GET A MEW AND WE DIDN’T. You can’t blame us for branching out, now, can you?)

The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Mirror’s Edge

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I mentioned it before once or twice, but I’m going to take a whole post now to talk about Mirror’s Edge.

“Once this city used to pulse with energy. Dirty and dangerous, but alive and wonderful.”

Mirror’s Edge was, in my eyes, something with a lot of potential from the start. It was the first first-person platformer I can remember since Jumping Flash, and the first trailers spoke of something even more impressive, which was the unique and interesting aesthetic.

I don’t recall ever seeing a game world with such vibrancy. I don’t normally mind the “brown ‘n’ bloom” that seems to have taken hold terribly, but to get a breath of fresh air like this was rather delightful. This game is so bright and colorful it should be garish, but because it was apparently designed by Rarity, it works perfectly and harmoniously to create a sharply gorgeous world.

The Android's Closet is apparently filled with MLP toys.

And what do you know, the game is great. Not flawless by any means, the combat especially is a rather questionable addition (Though it can usually be avoided in whole or in part), but it has a flow to it, a sense of speed and movement, that you don’t really get outside of racing games like WipeOut or Rollcage, but unlike those each step and jump and juke is something you have directly done. Fundamentally Mirror’s Edge has a lot going for it, but the real reason I think it’s great is because it gives you such a sense of satisfaction when you do something right; when you get a new personal best on a level (And the game is best viewed as having strong puzzle elements), when you master a particularly tricky section, or when you find some shortcut that cuts your time down hugely.

The DLC cuts everything down to the barest components, and it still has to look this weird and colorful.

Ultimately, and I’m sorry to use somewhat nebulous terms, the thing about Mirror’s Edge is that it feels refreshing and kinetic, it feels fast, it feels rewarding when you do it right. It isn’t perfect at all, but it is glorious, it tried to do something that was genuinely new, not just aesthetically but in gameplay as well, and it largely succeeded in this. Despite Faith’s quote up at the top there, the City feels alive and wonderful, pulsing with energy, even if that energy is Faith’s alone. It’s also supremely cheap now to pick up used, so I would wholly encourage anyone with a few bucks and hours to spare to pick it up.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Video Games are Art. Yours Truly, the U.S. Government.

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The debate about whether or not video games count as art is one that has been raging for quite some time among not just players themselves, but in certain academic and professional circles as well. Well, I’m pleased to announce that the Games-as-Art folk have now got a pretty big trump card in the way of a new change in the guidelines of the National Endowment of the Arts. Namely, the NEA now considers video games and other interactive games to be artistic projects eligible to receive federal funding.

In other words, the U.S. Government just said that video games can be art.

Pretty awesome if you ask me. I’ve always been in the art camp of this particular debate– maybe it’s because I consider myself to be a creative person and tend to see “art” in pretty much anything, but I honestly can’t quite grok how a medium that combines storytelling, visual art, architecture/graphic design, music, animation, and frequently scriptwriting and cinematography (in the form of cutscenes) to be anything but art of the highest order. But then, I suppose it’s all subjective, isn’t it? That’s how art works. It’s why you have people mounting broken toilet seats on a canvas and selling the result for millions of dollars (true story).

Perhaps, then, all the proof we needed about video games being art is the fact that people have been debating it for years.

Regardless, it does feel good to say “suck it Ebert” right about now.

Thoughts?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Why is blowing things up so much fun?

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So I’ve been playing a fair bit of Minecraft recently, it seems it has ‘clicked’ for me and whatever makes it work for others is working for me too. However, after spending a few days building my little settlement, an underwater tunnel, and a big lighthouse, I spawned a ton of TNT and blew it all to kingdom come.

All my screenshots have disappeared. I don't know where to or why. Have a Pony instead.

And it got me to thinking. I love management and builder games. I’ve put more hours into Sim City than you can imagine. When I was a kid I played so much Theme Park that I saw sprites from the game every time I closed my eyes. When I play an RTS, I am the turtler par excellence, I consolidate, husband, prepare carefully, build an impressive defense, and only then do I launch attacks (Which isn’t really the best way to fight a war but what are you going to do).

Yet at the same time I am delighted by destroying it all. I giggled gleefully as I watched my Minecraft stuff get destroyed; I click the natural disasters like a monomaniacal Bond villain in SimCity; I have been known to use superweapons on my OWN BASES if I’m not impressed by the size of the enemy’s and don’t feel nuking them would cause enough destruction. I don’t really understand where this comes from, but I have a suspicion it’s a major reason I love strategy games so much, as they tend to encompass both building and destroying. I am deeply satisfied by a construction job well done, a base laid out just so, a city which looks both believable and functional. And I’m equally satisfied by watching it all get blown to pieces. Even better, watching it get put back together afterwards! I love how countries can collapse and rebuild over decades in games like Europa Universalis III.

It does lead me to believe that the best game I could ever play would let you build a city like SimCity, then go down to street level like GTA and level the place with Red Faction: Guerrilla’s GeoMod 2.0 whilst calling in superweapons from the C&C series.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The Art of the Ragequit

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Before I launch into this post, let’s define “ragequit”. How about: quitting something in the heat of the moment, without putting much thought into it, because you are thoroughly and completely frustrated. Does that work?

Your anger fuels Pinkie Pie's giggles.

I don’t ragequit games very often. I mean, I quit mid-game a lot, sure. I’ll quit because I’ve been playing for a while and my mind is wandering; and sometimes I’ll quit because the game isn’t going my way and I can’t be bothered to spend a bunch of time changing it so it IS going my way– especially if I know I’m already proven and capable of doing this.

Quitting out of rage, though, is not a typical aspect of my gaming modus operandi.

…until recently.

X-Com. This game is hard. There is no mercy. There is no handholding. There is just your troops being shot in the head by an unseen alien the second they exit their ship.

I ragequit this game pretty much every time I play it. Then I go play something easier for a while. Like, you know, Hearts of Iron II.

You know your game is hard when a World War II era grand strategy game made by Paradox is easier.

…but then I go back and play X-Com again, because there’s something deliciously addictive about it and I just can’t help but wonder if maybe this time I’ll figure it out. I mean, if I keep trying, then eventually I might live for more than five minutes. Right?

What about you guys? Do you ragequit often?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Realism vs. Immersion

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There is a lot of talk in gaming, and has been for many years now, about realism. Realism is a holy grail, or at least a magical totem, something which developers are expected to strive for and gamers expected to appreciate.

But this reflexive attitude needs examination, because we actually don’t want realism at all. Or to be more precise, realism is only one path the getting what we really want, which is immersion. Realism has a couple of benefits compared to unrealism (Or perhaps more properly, non-realism), and I will come to those in a moment, but in my experience ‘realism’ is not in and of itself a recipe for a good game, and it may indeed be harmful to pursue it too far.

Let’s start with the benefits of realism though:

A) We have an unarguable, universal blueprint, in the form of… well, of reality. Realism, if pursued, is easier in at least the conceptual sense because we only have to look at the real world to see how things work. As an author I can confidently say that using reality as the basis for a novel is a lot easier than keeping track of all the unique rules you have invented for your universe! And moreover, because it is universal, everyone can see that something is realistic and doesn’t need to learn any new rules. (I know that Reality is Unrealistic but that’s not the point right now!)

B) Closely linked with the above, realism (If we assume it’s executed well) is very consistent and coherent. Cause and effect, relationships between objects and actions, all that stuff – reality is ultimately immersive.

That is what we’re really after – immersion.

This is the most immersive game ever. Fact.

But we don’t need realism for immersion, not by any stretch of the imagination. That’s why we have the term ‘suspension of disbelief’. We need coherence and consistency to be immersed – we need it to be realistic with reference to itself, not to our reality. To a large extent we are also talking about atmosphere, which is something occasionally ineffable. It’s a combination of mechanics, art (as opposed to graphics), sounds, music or its absence, and so forth. It does not require any particular degree of technical fidelity; Pike is plenty immersed in X-Com despite it being 20 years old and having pixels you can individually count. Immersion is not limited to games based in history, or to first-person shooters or any other given genre. Some of my most immersive games are sci-fi, like Deus Ex and X-Com, and tactical or strategy games, like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

Now, there are times when realism is desired. If you’re making a game about the Roman Empire, you should probably do some research, and I will simply refer you back to my post about why mods are great rather than go on a long rant about Rome: Total War, fantastic as it is. The more knowledgeable someone is about a topic the harder it is to suspend their disbelief – so the concessions made to playability over realism and accuracy can end up harming a game. Realistic games have their place – ArmA II is a great example of a game which takes a fairly realistic approach; in that video he scrambles around in the dark for five minutes before getting shot and killed by an enemy he hasn’t even seen. Fun? Absolutely! But I sure as hell wouldn’t want TimeSplitters to play like that! Plenty of immersive games aren’t realistic, but remain hugely engaging to the player.

Then again, that's a strikingly realistic rendition of excellent fashion.

And then again, immersion isn’t always what people want. Earth Defense Force 2017 is a shockingly lacking game in almost every sense – except for raw fun, which it is almost unmatched in. It is the quintessential B-game; bad graphics, voice acting that would make Barry Burton blush, questionable physics, and absolutely rollicking great fun from start to finish. Though I propound the capacity for games to be art, and encourage things in such a direction, not every game needs to be art. Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane. Sometimes, Transformers is just more fun.

So in short, we have put the idea of realism up on a pedestal, when what we really want is immersion, which is a factor of coherence and consistency. Realism has a couple of benefits in that sense but any break from it will be easily noticed by the knowledgeable, making their disbelief even harder to suspend!

So, to turn this over to you, what games have you found most immersive and why? To what extent do you care about realism, if at all?