DevBlog Matsuri

Bruce Everiss, industry Mark Williams lookalike, over at BruceOnGames saw fit to post an article listing some of his favourite game developer blogs, being kindly / uninformed enough to single mine out for special comment. He makes a good point in saying that if one wants to learn more about the game developer's life of the mind, game review sites and magazines are simply inadequate in the face of the rising tide of actual game developer blogs that are cropping up with increasing regularity.

It's true in my case that the blogs I frequent most often are those written by industry people, usually developers, the occasional indie developer with only one or two actual "journalism" sites. For news there is no better place than the industry-only Chaos Engine forum, and for press releases there is the Magic Box. The good thing about developer blogs is that even if they don't actually write about the development of their own titles, which is often protected under Non-Disclosure Agreements, their insights on games is usually of a much higher standard than even the professional game journalists'.

Here is the list as found on BruceOnGames, spellchecked and with my addendums at the bottom:

• Mainly About Games. Informative and well written it has a nice personal feel to it.
• Dopass.com. Short entries not just about gaming. Funny at times.
• A path through possibility. Irregular updating but well worth a read for some incisive commentary.
• Magical Wasteland. Refreshingly irreverent.
• Survival Horror. Does what it says on the tin.
• Gamedev.net. A big and serious site with a lot of good content.
• Seven Degrees of Freedom. Very nice diary style blog.
• Random Encounters in Imaginary Realms. Just cherry picks the good stuff.
• Cheeky. Sparse and interesting development diary.
• Peter Mackay’s projects and development diary. Quake on Gamecube.
• Life In The Rain. Often long interesting personal articles.
• T=Machine. Wide ranging blog with much that is happening at the sharp end online.
• Black Company Studios. Semi diary semi event driven articles. Nice.
• .mischief.mayhem.soap. A serious game developer’s blog.
• JakeWorld Blog. The life of a game developer.
• Gamefeil. Games, comics, diary.
• Scientific Ninja. Technical stuff here.
• Devbump. Aggregation of gaming articles.
• Nimblebit. Game development diary. Lots of technical stuff.
• It’s Bezness time. Bedroom developer diary.
• I love it, I feel like Sisyphus. On start-ups, game development and programming.

Personal favourites not yet listed are:

• The Grumpy Gamer – legend Ron Gilbert's on－line scrapbook and thought diary.
• Make it big in games - Jeff Tunnell and Josh Dallman aiming for the “most insightful and useful blog on the internet” award
• Reality Panic – IGDA head honcho Jason Della Rocca tells up what he’s up to.
• The Pickford Bros. blog – Old-skool development heroes doing new-skool cool stuff.
• Warren Spector’s blog – I’ve never heard of this guy but he has some nice ideas. He should be working in the games industry, if you ask me.

There are many more blogs and sites out there written by actual game developers from all different fields of our industry. I apologise if I’ve left anyone specific off the list, but the average internet user can easily find more of them with a little patience without having to resort to getting all their gaming information from a handful of major game journalist sites.

If you’re a developer with his own spiffy blog but you’re not listed on my blogroll, don’t be shy and drop me a line at japanmanship@gmail.com to inform me of my heinous remiss.

Shackles – part 1

It is that most curious of times where the planets align and things fall in place. It’s now less than a year to the end of my current visa, I’ve been in Japan and wedlock long enough to try for that most ultimate of goals for the lifer: the permanent residency. Here then is part 1 of the post detailing the effort, the follow-up to come at some point in the future when the final verdict is delivered, some 8 or more months hence.

The process is relatively painless, and when I say painless I mean a pain in the backside. At its roots it is merely a formality of filling in some forms and handing over some papers, but getting those papers was quite a quest in itself, including family registers, tax forms, residency papers or proof, proof of employment, for all parties involved. The forms themselves contained the usual information I have handed over a dozen times already, plus more detailed family and work histories and whatnot and finally a postcard with my address which they can send me when they finally decide to accept me or boot me out. Either way I should know just in time before I need to apply for a new visa, or not, as the hope is.

Another lifer I know over here, whom shall remain nameless though he knows who he is, just recently received the okay. He had decided not to wait for the end of his visa but apply the very second he passed the required number of years of residency and marital coupling, which I believe has been reduced from 5 to 3 years (though don’t quote me on that). Considering he hasn’t been here quite as long as I, though not by much, and comes from a much lesser country of origin I doubt I’ll have many problems getting accepted. Touch wood, though. Maybe one of my forms has a spelling error or the secretary making the final decision has had a bad day and isn’t feeling magnanimous, anything can happen. Fingers crossed!

The benefits of permanent residency status are numerous and include the possibility of major bank loans, less hassle getting a credit card and, most of all, less time at the immigration office as you’ll never have to apply for visa extensions again. It’s not all piss and cakes, though, as I will still be required to purchase re-entry permits for leaving and returning to Japan for holidays and even the “unlimited” permit has an expiry time of three years. But purchasing those is quite easy, if onerous. And, not being Japanese or a diplomat I will, no matter what my status, have to hand over my fingerprints and mughsot when rentering the country like a common criminal.

The big joke is, of course, discussing this possibility with colleagues, to stress with extreme prejudice how the next step up, becoming nationalized Japanese, is unacceptable and a fate worse than death. They’ll laugh, but eventually realize you’re saying you would under no circumstances want to be one of them. Besides anything else, this is of course impossible anyway as you’ll never look like one of them and having a Japanese passport isn’t going to suddenly going to make you an accepted insider. Japan also requires you to denounce your original nationality, something, I have been told, the United Kingdom finds so hilarious as to ignore it. “Just tell them you did it and don’t tell us, we don’t care,” an embassy employee once told me. I think the requirement of changing your name to kanji was also recently scrapped, but even still, I have no interest in changing nationalities now. It means little enough as it is, being a fairly global citizen from a fairly globally spread family, but I’ll hang on to my Britishness for a while yet, I think.
(NOTE: Microsoft Word wants to correct “Britishness” to “Brutishness”. Ambrose Bierce would be proud!)

So, the long and short of it is: the application is in, the wait has started and the fingers are crossed. Should I fail, which is not so much unlikely as always a creeping possibility, I’ll just reapply again immediately until they relent. Look out for part 2 of this post at the end of the year, if you can be bothered.

Mediocrity War

This year's Dominance War, a sort of pan-forum community competition for concept and game art, has just started and, as is made abundantly clear yet again, we have a problem. We are stuck in an infinite loop of mediocrity, where an impoverishment of imagination feeds into impoverished talents, grooming new talent to be as lackluster as the current norm. What am I bitching about? Doesn't Dominance War prove there is some amazing skill out there? It sure does. Every year I am pleasantly shocked at how high the standards are in terms of craft and technical skill. There are a lot of people out there that can model and map a mean character, it's a truly impressive display.

My problem is with the concepts. Every year the theme for the competition is set, I presume, in collaboration with all the sponsors, which includes some game companies. This year the story starts:

Machines victory did not last... In a final desperate effort, the remnants of the opposing forces united against the machines and created an ultimate weapon that would temporarily disrupt all electrical functions within the galaxy. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong...
It has been 1000 years since the disappearance of machines. All electrical and mechanical systems ...

Sorry, I had to cut it off there for fear of boring my readers into a comatose state of despair. So the back story of the theme is the most uninspired, generic, fantasy sci-fi rubbish you could imagine. The competition rules then:

Topic: Create a Powerful Artifact User!

Here we have an opportunity to foster, nurture the blooming imagination of a massive group of hopefuls, all eying a position in the game industry, and basically we're asking them to make the same kind of uninspired shite we are currently already making in an industry increasingly under fire, rightfully, for being derivative. An artifact user? Pardon my French, but Heavens forefend!

Sadly, the entrants are all swept up in the excitement and with their eyes on the prize, be it a Wacom Cintiq or a job offer, all are going at it hammer and tongs and with gusto and are creating, yet again, a splendid line-up of technically awesome, amazing game art of the most boring, traditional characters. Reapers, meta-knights, phantoms, zombie reptoid warriors....it just makes me weep.

Within the industry we are already chained, pretty much by necessity, by budgets, time constrains and big business. The reasons we have become derivative are actually quite understandable, even though it is eventually bad for business. While you are outside of the industry you must make every use of your creative freedom. Unfettered by leads, producers and publishers, you could let your imagination run riot. So why waste your time creating 3D versions of, basically, the kind of Heavy Metal, comic book bi-curious doodles schoolboys draw in their notebooks to pass the time?

What I'd like to see for Dominance Wars IV, next year, is an original theme that leads to a wider variety of possibilities for entrants, more inspired characters and set-ups, something we don't see every day. Maybe make it a requirement each entrant must at least use two primary colours, no metal, whatever. It's obvious there is some excellent, inspiring technical skill out there; let them use it to be creative for a change. My suggestions for the next competition:
"The treasurer of the peace envoy to toyland"
"Cute genetic mutations"
"Realistic females"

Artifact user my arse.

In the meantime I highly recommend checking out the work-in-progress screenshots entrants are posting on the many forums participating. If you look beyond the basic idiocy of the subject matters you’ll find there are a lot of people with some amazing talent out there, enough to make you paranoid of your own future job prospects. I wish them all luck, but I still have an axe to grind with the people responsible for the themes.

The unbearable seeing of likeness

What do you do, back in the old country, when you are introduced to someone you are in awe of, especially physically? Say you meet the young Elvis or are introduced to a woman of such Aphrodisian beauty she invades the very fibre of your being? Obviously, the correct answer is that you do nothing. You stay silent, hide your feelings and stay away. Possibly, using the "was sich liebt, das neckt sich" tactic you make some horribly badly judged jokes at their expense. Then you go home, alone and full of self loathing and cry yourself to sleep. I think we can all agree this is the accepted form of social intercourse in these kinds of situations. True feelings and emotional reactions have no place in polite society.

Not so in Japan. For a country that puts great stock in avoiding embarrassment they seem awfully keen on jumping on every opportunity to tell the foreigner in their life how cool they are. "What was your name again? JC? Wow, that is so cool!" or "Wow, you really are handsome!" are phrases I have heard, ad nauseam and exclusively in Japan. It stems from "gaijin envy", the feeling a lot of Japanese have towards their clichéd and misguided view that foreigners are somehow superior to themselves. And it's not just the women looking for a rich husband to get them a greencard either, men too sometimes feel compelled to praise your every action as somehow excellent and praiseworthy. "You have a katakana name-stamp? That is so cool!" "JC, I wish I had such cool long legs as you!" My face has even been described as "noble" and, less excitedly, "royal".

It's balderdash, of course. Even in my most narcissistic moments I am well aware the Japanese view of me and actuality are vastly different. My first instinct is to say "What? Are you mad? What the Hell is wrong with you people?" but by then my British sense of self-loathing and embarrassment are already too keen. You can't very well say "Yeah, thanks. I am actually pretty cool, aren't I?" So you just end up smiling politely, waving your hand and saying "No, no, really, no", which more often than not leads to reiterations and strong confirmations of their mistakenly held opinions.

My biggest bugbear is the inevitable comparison to well-known cultural references, i.e. film stars, whom they believe you resemble. I myself have been on the receiving end of comparisons to the following people, none of whom, I can safely say, I resemble in the slightest.
Left to right, top to bottom: Actor Edward Norton, big-faced Tom Hanks, professional twat Leonardo Cappuccino, raging loon Robert DeNiro, manic street preacher James Dean Bradfield, never-was Robbie Williams, HRH the Prince of Wales, crusty TV teenager Luke Perry

Between the few readers whom have had the misfortune to meet me in person and those still left in the dark one must admit the only thing any of the above have in common, including myself, is the small fact that none of us are Japanese. And most surprisingly, all of these comparisons were offered entirely without sarcasm as compliments.

The very first time I encountered such blatant racial blindness was in fact during my very first trip to Japan. I was seated at a small table in a downtown okonomiyaki restaurant, eyes agog and mouth agape at the wonders of Tokyo, when an elder woman at the next time leaned to my dinner guest. The woman was dressed up in a kimono while her husband wore a faded gray suit; it was obviously a special occasion for them. With a shy grin on her face she said something in Japanese which was translated to me as “noble face”. “Nobu fe-su” the woman echoed, giggling and pointing her hand, palm upwards, in my direction. I lost a lot of respect for the Japanese that day.

One can imagine a lesser person may fall hook, line and sinker for this constant pedestal putting uponing, but I am fortunate in having a local circle of friends, a wife, a family and family-in-law who see me as a constant source of ridicule and derision, so my feet shall remain firmly on terra firma. Also, there is the occasional racist to remind me I am subhuman scum so not all Japanese think I look like whom they think I look alike. And if they persist, I shall compare them all to Jackie Chan, including the women, because this has proven to be a successful tactic in this embarrassing social situation.

More Mobile Games

Last month’s train adventure, leaving me stranded in between town and home for over four hours, taught me one important lesson: I needed a new mobile phone as the battery of this one wasn’t up to the task anymore. So recently I went out and purchased a rather expensive, top-of-the-line, ultra-slim yet strangely plasticy, new mobile phone. It has all the bell and whistles I’ll never use, like TV reception and a VGA screen capable of actual internet browsing as opposed to slimmed-down i-mode internet, a rather snazzy camera, and all manner of applications I either don’t need or don’t understand. Having to part with my old games and, sigh, high scores I thought it was a good time to have another look at the state of mobile gaming by purchasing a few new titles in the name of research.

Tetris Crystal
Priority number uno after getting a new phone is to make sure you have a decent Tetris on there. The problem is that G-Mode has roughly a billion slightly differing versions and like the fool I am I opted for the more expensive one, rather than the cheaper version I had been playing over the last 2 years. That isn’t to say it’s bad, because it isn’t, but amongst the Tetris line-up I cannot fathom why this one is three times as expensive as my previous version. I suspect the EA branding on the title screen may have something to do with it. Japanese mobile gamers should stick with the 100 Yen Tetris Red or Blue versions which are not only the cheapest but, strangely, the best ones out there. That said, it’s Tetris and I’m sure, thanks to my lovely commute, I’ll be getting my money’s worth.

Mojipittan
This title was pre-installed on the phone, which is a good thing too as I’d never have the arrogance to buy it for myself. The Mojipitan series has been around for a while now and is a cute mix between Scrabble and a different kind of Scrabble. You are presented with a grid, often shaped to limit expansion space, and a few tiles pre-placed on the board forming a word. You then need to place a set number of tiles from a cache on the board, always making sure new and valid words are formed. The game ends when no options are available and the level ends when all tiles have been successfully placed. Come to think of it, it is very much like Scrabble, except, of course, it’s all in hiragana and only involves Japanese words, which is why I wouldn’t have bought it on my own accord. . But as far as mobile ports of GBA and PS games go, this one is pretty good. Readability is somewhat of an issue, even on a lovely screen like that of my new mobile, but all in all it’s not too bad. And it’s probably good practice. The first few levels certainly weren’t a problem for me, which is somewhat different to a few years back when I tried my hand at the GBA version.

Slitherlink
Another port, running on the EZ-appli software, this game runs brilliantly, as if it was made for the mobile platform. It is identical to the DS game Hudson released a while back where the player must draw a single continuous line on a grid following an decreasing set of numerical hints as to where to draw. The game itself is massively addictive and great fun for any puzzle fanatic. The mobile version suffers slightly from controls, making selecting certain parts of a square a little hit and miss, but that really is splitting hairs. The real main problem is the art direction, showing white numbers on a light green background, which can play havoc on my tired eyes after a day of work while I’m suffering from “monitor weep”. Also slightly annoying is the sales tactic of selling four sets of 25 puzzles separately. It’s great for those who just want to try out a game and maybe not commit to it much, but it’s annoying for people like me who end up having to micro-transact their way to a significant sum as we blaze through the puzzles.

Response times and graphics are slowly making headway on the mobile platforms but there remains the problem of a decent control input, hence all good mobile games are simple mobile games. There is no way I am spending money on 3D racers or action-platformers because I well know my thumb won’t be able to cope. But for simple puzzle titles it’s faultless. I find it amusing to see how simple DS games are migrating to the mobile platform, like the Hudson Puzzle Series, which actually have a better home on the phone, but I’m not complaining.

As I am still too embarrassed to whip out my DS in public, I am, after all, trying to pretend to be an adult, mobile phone gaming still takes up a lot of my time, or rather, I am filling a lot of my wasted time playing mobile games. The technology has progressed far enough for hardware manufacturers to start thinking about working on controls and inputs, especially with iPod and iPhone games gaining ground, soon to overtake the standard handsets. Some kind of nub, PSP-style, or dedicated, well-placed buttons would go a very long way in raising the quality and possibilities of mobile phone gaming.

For all the ladies of the world

Valentine's Day is not for you, according to Japan, but for us, the men. You must give us chocolate and dinners, especially chocolate. If we work in the same office and I've bullied you to tears on many occasions, sexually harassed you and you had rather stick a knife in my janglies than even look at me, you are required to give me chocolate on Valentine's Day, "giri choco", obligation chocolate. I'm just mentally counting the number of women who work at my company and, including the ones I've bullied and sexually harassed, I am pretty much guaranteed to be able to eat myself sick this Thursday.

That's the tradition, anyway. The video game industry has its own set of rules, and giri choco is not that important. I think of all my years in Japan I've been given it once, and that was just the usual cheap, crumbly wax that is sold at bargain basement prices in big plastic bags to those women unfortunate enough to work in larger businesses. Go to the foodshows and you'll see a lot of lovely gourmet chocolate and cakes especially for the day, but also nasty-looking chocolate offal for the office ladies.

There is no real greeting card culture here, which at least saves me the crushing disappointment of never receiving any on this special commercial day. Plus I like to tell myself Japanese girls are just too shy to declare their love and devotion to a handsome young turk like myself. It's an excuse that doesn't really sit well with the reality of the usual whipping I get from my female colleagues, whipping in a bad way obviously, but I can suspend my own disbelief just about long enough provided I get at least a small handful of sales-damaged chocolate.

I must wait again until next month for White Day, the fantastically opportunistic male-version of Valentine's Day. One day a year of forced consumerism was obviously not enough for Japan, and I'll be made to queue up in the local foodshow to buy some white chocolate or otherwise sweet, white foodstuffs. Luckily, being a male, we have no real obligations to buy chocolate for the girls in the office. Of course, if they buy me some on Thursday I am socially obliged to give them a present back, but then I can play the gaijin card and claim ignorance of such obtuse cultural etiquette.

Other than that the day has very little effect on Tokyo as a whole. The bright pink heart banners hardly stand out against the usual bright pink advertising posters and billboards, though my passage through several train stations is hampered by long, snaking queues of women waiting to buy their gifts. In just over 24 hours Japan can go back to its usual routine of ignoring that special someone in your house and trying to pick up hostesses,, for a month at least.

WiiWare Wishlist

If there is a word to describe this generation of consoles it's possibly "copycat". All three manufacturers have been liberally hommaging their competitors, some more than others, like for example Sony's SIXAXIS controller, an obvious last-minute, gaffer-tape rip-off of the Wiimote and hence ineffectual and rubbish. But even Nintendo, arguably the most innovative this generation, isn't immune and is going to be offering its own WiiBox Live Arcade...erhm, WiiWare, the original games download service later this year.

The potential problems of WiiWare are obvious to even the most unenlightened observer. Though the clunky but functional online infrastructure can be polished up with firmware updates, the one major crippling factor for the new service will be hard disk space. This is obviously a sign of the hindsight nature of this service and can only mean one thing: WiiWare titles will be more akin to on-line Flash games as opposed to full-blown XBox Live Arcade titles in terms of contents and quality; imagine WiiCade plus alpha, if you will. Either that or Nintendo are planning a HDD add-on (unlikely), a new Wii iteration with a bigger HDD (unlikely) or allowing executables from SD cards (extremely unlikely).

That said, there are some titles I'd love to see on the Wii that aren't possibly fit for full-blown, boxed releases but would fit perfectly on the WiiWare service had hard disk space not been such a potentially crippling issue. Here is my shortlist of games I'd like to play on my sofa whilst gently cradling my slender white pointsttick.

Mystery Case Files
Big Fish Games' excellent PC casual series of MCF games would make an almost perfect fit for the Wii, both in game design and target markets. If you don't know the titles you owe it to yourself to check them out. As an investigator of sorts you must find a dozen listed objects in a static scene of many cunningly concealed items. They are already referred to as "hide & seek games”, and they are strangely compelling and fun - a true innovation in the casual development spheres and shining example of the possible originality of ideas that is possible under such business models. I love them!
Imagine sitting with your family on the sofa as you sweep your cursor over the screen while everybody is desperately looking for that last hidden object as the timer is ticking down. It is a great game to play together and with children and using the Wiimote as a natural cursor would fit perfectly. As soon as you find the item you just point to it and click.
Apart from the size of the download one possible obstacle for this game on the Wii could be resolution, plain old pixels-on-screen issues. The game cries out for super-HD, massive screen sharpness so the items can be even more cunningly hidden but at a pinch it could do on a Wii.

Bookworm Adventures or Bookworm Deluxe
Another casual PC hit game, the Bookworm series, has already seen a handheld rerelease but could easily be ported to the WiiWare system. It’s a simple game where you create words on a board of letters for points or progression. Again, with the Wiimote this could be controlled quite easily and the games are both a lot of fun too. Neither would have too many issues with screen resolution and could possibly even be fit within the possible WiiWare specs, whatever they end up being. Not only that but it’s one of those all-round family fun titles that seems to be perfectly wed to Nintendo’s cleaner than Caesar’s wife attitude.

Crayon Physics
Originally a cool little freeware title, still available for download, this cute little game allows players to draw with crayon on the screen to move a ball to a certain area of the screen using, as the title suggests, physics. Again, image-wise it fits beautifully with the Nintendo brand but on top of that it’s good fun too. Using the Wiimote to draw on-screen could work very nicely, though some motion-smoothing would be required. A full-fledged Crayon Physics title would be a perfect addition to the WiiWare line-up, which as far as I know it isn’t.

SCUMM adventures
You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the old LucasArts adventures of the glory days. Monkey Island, Zak McKracken, Sam & Max, Maniac Mansion and its sequel Day of the Tentacle. Point & click adventures....a system with a natural cursor control scheme...come on, who hasn't imagined this? Of course you have, everyone has, we all want to see this happen, if not on the DS then at least the Wii. All that needs to happen is for those fine folk who created the SCUMMVM engine, which reads the original data files made using the original Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion engine and plays them on any modern PC, to create a WiiWare version and start selling original data packs of the games. They're small enough for the Wii's hard disk to handle, they don't require high resolution graphic power, they don't have any reason NOT to come to WiiWare....I wish. Though I've played and finished all of the LucasArts adventures many times over and could replay them with my eyes closed, just for the privilege of sitting on the sofa and enjoying them on my television I'd gladly pay real cashmoney.
Seriously, if you need convincing at all of SCUMM games' natural home on the Wii you really have no business playing games or calling yourself "human".

Though it is unlikely these titles will appear any time soon, if at all, it's nice to dream. I think the WiiWare service is probably going to be fairly underwhelming, though possibly still profitable for Nintendo, and will never catch up to the mad success of the Virtual Console channel. I will, however be keeping an eye cocking towards it with curiosity and excitement because every new delivery system is an opportunity for developers to not only shovel out the same old crap but also to experiment with new ideas cheaply.

Tractatus Lascivio-Philosophicus

They rode upon a rocking horse / And called it Pegasus.
- Keats

If I’m brutally honest I am no big fan of academic research into the finer points of video gaming because, mostly, there aren’t any. It’s all fine and dandy to ascribe philosophical or sociological thinking to games but that ignores the one basic fact that what we make is product, toys, entertainment for a market, directed by business. It's funny to read theses and essays claiming a certain game designer is following, say, McLuhan's principles when in all fairness, unless he was a character in Final Fantasy 7, few game designers know who McLuhan is. Actually, no, be fair, most game developers are actually quite smart and well-educated, but that doesn't detract from the fact that most decisions are ultimately made by people with money, regardless of their insights or skills or lack thereof. One might as well contemplate the philosophical reasoning behind Disney World. But all that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to investigate these games with a philosophical eye, mostly because it is fairly inappropriate.

Tetris vs. Camus
In Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus he proposes the absurd and futile struggle is what gives meaning to life. This we see mirrored in Tetris, a task of organizing without meaning or reward. The moment a line is complete it disappears leaving us to rebuild ad infinitum. The only things that remain are the incomplete and the mistakes. And Tetris of course has no end, no goal. The winner is the person who can postpone losing the longest. As Camus writes "what counts is not the best living but the most living.”

Portal vs. Nietzsche
In Die fröhliche Wissenschaft Nietzsche writes his most famous quote “God is dead” and contrasts religion’s promise of a good afterlife with the naturalistic and life-affirming idea that one’s own existence should be the sole consideration when contemplating action and morals. It is scary how well Portal follows this concept, witness:
You start off in servitude while a disembodied voice commands you and promises rewards that are unlikely to ever materialize. Your actions are guided and decided, forcing you through dangers and avoidable harm. When your life is in peril the only option is to revolt, which leads you on a path of discovery and enlightenment. Your God is a man-made construct designed to keep you under control and subservient, and to truly be free you must destroy it. It’s only when you’ve killed your God that you see the true daylight.

Quake vs. Hobbes
In Leviathan Hobbes examines the nature of man outside a society as being brutish and full of undirected aggression and ponders the question whether directed warfare is a necessary part of organized society. Quake mirrors this in the murderous rampages of a single person devoid of a society to call his own, letting his egocentric self-preservation rule his aggression. Had the nameless soldier not been alone but part of an organized society under a strict sovereignty the Quake series may have ended up as a Civilization clone.

Habbo Hotel vs. Nystrom
In the absence of forceful views to take over from the religion and philosophy many people have abandoned in the industrial age a “philosophy of futility” governs our aimless lives where we have narrow interests manifest in fashionable consumption. The main focus of games like Habbo Hotel is to revel in superficial adornments, a perfect example of futile fashionable life, especially in the absence of a more meaningful goal. Buy posters! Buy sofas! Buy wallpaper! Kill yourself!

Super Mario Bros. vs. Marx
The communistic overtones of the adventures of Mario, a working-class plumber, being exploited by the bourgeoisie, a bone-idle princess, who is under constant attack from the lumpenproletariat, need little explanation. The fact Nintendo visualized the metaphorical specter haunting Europe in the shape of a Boo is merely the icing on the decadent cake.

If this post proves anything, other than my tenuous grasp on the finer details of philosophy, it is that our products are so flimsy and open-ended that any academic interpretation can find ground, if one really tries. Academic research into the birthing of video games seems, at this point in time, more an exercise in sophistry than anything else, though the social effects of the product after its release is definitely worth examining. But don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see more thoughtful video games out there, games that stretch beyond the “here’s a gun, go kick some alien arse” themes. And to be fair, there are a few titles out there that are trying to be different, but those are, to date, few and far between.

Super Smash Brothers X (Wii)

Hype is a strange beast as it is mostly one-sided. Magazines, blogs and websites have been masturbating themselves silly for weeks, months now in anticipation of this game and even a rather tentative chin-rubbing post of my own regarding the subject was reproduced at various other sites and caused a flood of outrage and misinterpretation. If I wanted tens of thousands of unique hits to my blog today I’d say something inflammatory, like Smash Brothers X sucks! But I won’t because it doesn’t.

Kotaku screamed scarcity and reported lines in Akihabara, so it was with a little shock of recalling some sleepy memory that it was today the game was released as I walked past a central Tokyo electronics store totally devoid of people. Okay, I am one of those freaks who gets up and goes to work at a normal time in the morning so the stores weren’t open yet, but neither were there any eagerly anticipating otaku queuing up.
At lunch I contemplated walking down to the shops to get my copy but opted for a sit down, coffee and chain-smoking session instead. Colleagues had gone out to buy it and told me there were plenty of copies available.

So in the evening, tired of life and work, I walk past the store and think to myself why not check it out? To my dismay there were few people on the shop floor and fewer still in the queue. The display said to ask at the cash register for Smash Bros. rather than to pick up an empty box and take it there yourself. This didn’t bode well. But after a short wait I asked the clerk if they had any, to which she turned around and picked up a pre-bagged copy from several boxes stuffed with similar plastic bags. Apparently they had expected a flood of customers and to keep lines moving they had tried to avoid wasting time bagging the games when sold.

Now you may think they might just have had a new shipment in or something but no. The great DS drought of early to mid 07 Saw queues hours long before new shipments actually arrived.

There was no clamoring. There was no queuing. There were plenty of copies available in a major, busy central Tokyo electronics store. This would indicate that the game may not actually be such a hotcake as people might have thought and for a moment I felt very smug about my post of the game being too hardcore for Wii. But then I noticed that all other customers buying the game on either side of me were schoolgirls and young women. The men in the queue all had PSP games or DVDs to buy. A lesser person would have been mortified but my masculinity remains intact – as a foreigner in Japan I think there is an automatic presumption of otakuism. That said, it’s women that form the base, non-hardcore market in Japan, I thought, but that may have been utterly wrong.

So what of the game? Oh it’s wonderful – exactly what you’d expect. Tons of characters, tons of mad stages, tons of play modes and unlockables. Graphically it sits very nicely on the evidence shelf of the case of Common Sense vs. Wii Naysayers. The game deserves a medal for having an operatic opening sequence, which was utterly wonderful. We don’t need orchestral or techno, but a tenor here and there does the trick.

The reason it’ll appeal to the Wii core is the multiplayer aspect, of course, which has such an emphasis it’s the first option of the menu. Within it you’ll find an absolute smorgasm of play options to set up and tweak, hot-seat party modes and whatnot. The on-line section is easy as pie, though it was rather empty when I tried it. Single player has the usual CPU matches, mini-games and, by the look of things, a vast single player adventure mode. After two long-ish levels I cleared it 4%, so that bodes well.

The reason it won’t appeal to the Wii core is that, well, it’s hardcore. Like its predecessors things get hectic on screen and it’s all too easy to get lost. It’s still fun but a little overwhelming, even for an old seadog like myself. The characters are cute but some are a little obscure, if you just imagine yourself a middle-aged newcomer to the medium. Everybody knows Pokémon and Mario, but Pit and, Hell, even Olimar? Of course I know them but I am a sad geek with no life, but what of your average “non-gamer”?

Even though I don’t think this title has automatic appeal, it is the kind of game people could get into once you have a group of them all playing together. The moment a Nintendog jumps up on the screen and blocks all the action everybody will shout “Get down! Get down!” When the piece of ice that is the arena breaks off a glacier and slides into the sea it’s not only a poignant comment on the state of global warming, it’s also a mad rush that makes everybody holler. It is a great party game, and I’m sure some Wii-core players will pick up their own copy after playing it at their hardcore nerdy friend’s house.

I doubt this is the game to break the Wii Fit and Wii Sport stranglehold, if even a title like Super Mario Galaxy couldn’t, but to date it’s probably the best, most enjoyable hard-core multiplayer title available for the Wii. If you’re hard-core you must get this. If you’re not, you must try this.

Let's be positive, for a change

A recent post by Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer cut a little too close to the bone for me. In it he riles against the cynicism, or "snarkiness", he feels is so prevalent in video game websites and blogs. And honestly, he has a point. There does seem to be a prevailing sense of snarkiness on a lot of game related websites, which is why I usually and subconsciously limit myself to games news reporting sites, as opposed to editorials, like the Magic Box where I can find what I need reported as dull fact without the stench of some person's opinion which more often than not is clouded by personal opinion and cynicism. It's also why I really enjoy the Brainy Gamer as his obvious enjoyment of the games he is playing and talking about shines through, reminding us developers that despite what we think of the games we create there are people out there who really like playing our stuff. We should be grateful for that and remind ourselves we are not in this business to satisfy our own muses so much as to satisfy our customers, oh, and to make a profit but those latter two should go hand in hand.

So, for a radical change, I'll have a look at some positives about working as a foreigner in Japan because, despite my many grumblings, there are some. I know it's more fun to bitch and moan about my commute and natto and whatnot, but I know there is a real danger some excited pipe dreamers are put off the idea of working in Japan because cynical old sinners like myself keep harping on about how dreadful it all is. I've made fairly similar posts before and may be repeating myself on certain items, but this post is more for me than it is for you.

What is good about being a foreign game developer in Japan?

1. As a multilingual, assuming you will bite the bullet, as you should, and learn Japanese, you have access to a much wider pool of information and data than most of your colleagues. During my morning trawl through my usual sites and blogs I usually end up the main informer to the rest of my colleagues. They see me as a source of news and information, which helps me gain a certain standing which, though a little unwarranted, does help my ego.

2. You're the Devil on the inside looking in. Japanese culture has many, widely reported negatives for those that are part of it, but seeing as you'll never be one of those you have a real opportunity to not only protect yourself but try to improve the situation for others. By setting the example of coming in early and leaving early, as well as getting all my work done by actually working during office hours, I have, on more than one occasion, inspired Japanese colleagues to do likewise. As I have the license to break the rules it's much easier for others to follow, the onus taken away from them and put on my head. At a previous company almost a dozen colleagues ended up coming in earlier and leaving earlier and meetings were scheduled, eventually, to reflect this.

3. You've done something quite difficult that a lot of people dream of but few have the drive to actually accomplish. Though I always keep saying how working in Japan isn't really half as difficult as most people like to think, it is quite a lot of work. For every one of us who made the move, and there are quite a few, dozens haven't though sort of wished they had. You haven't taken the easy route of staying at home and being comfortable, you've moved across countries or continents, leaned a new language, a new culture and are, whether you like it or not, a richer person for it. That doesn't mean you're in any way better than those who haven't made the move, of course, but it is something you can feel proud of, if you're so inclined.

4. Your name, being foreign, sticks out in the staff roll (credits list) like a sore but elegant thumb. Your name actually gets noticed by those who view the list just because it isn't in kanji.

5. Even if the train lines are not, life generally is pretty darn good in Japan. Sure, people are selfish and annoying, like everywhere, and Tokyo can be quite dirty and overwhelming, but the immense choice of things to do is just fantastic. You could eat a pretty good meal for a reasonable price in a different restaurant every day, if you want, or be stuck in the middle of town with no idea what to do and be within a stone's throw distance from a couple of dozen venues to occupy your time at. There is crime, but the overall sense of security is still present. If you lose your wallet there is a real chance it'll be returned to you somehow. And though in everyday life your role as a part of Japanese society is marginalised, you'd never know this on an average night out, where you'll bump into friendly, drunk people everywhere.

6. With Japan as a base you can travel to many interesting places on a tight budget. Not only Japan itself has a lot of interesting places to visit, but for fairly low air fares you can travel to most parts of Asia and Hawaii and see the world without having to be a backpacker.

7. Your work environment will be a lot more varied than back in the West when it comes to the mix of genders and personalities. In many studios in Europe and America it's still a bit of an old boys Star Trek clubhouse, with the overwhelming majority of employees being male and of a certain age and type. In Japan the mix is far more generous and though there are problems here too, the overall impression is that it's far more mixed.

8. Though there will be the occasional arse who'll resent you for being foreign, earning more or being able to sidestep the rules, generally people you'll work with are friendly, open and, most importantly in light of the subject of this post, not so damn cynical. I've never had a drive-by in my time in Japan, the hateful tradition especially prevalent in the UK, where random colleagues would walk past a monitor and say "that's shit". When checking out new titles there is more of an open interest rather than an exercise is slamming the product. And just because you're not Japanese some colleagues will be very excited to work with you, chat with you and get you out at night to get you drunk.

9. Being in Japan makes you just about different enough to write a blog, whether your life deserves one or not.

10. At long last Japan now finally has good deodorant in the shops. Sure, it's only Lynx/Axe which makes you smell like a horny teenager, but at least it works better than the powdery shite that was the norm previously.

With every employment decision you must weigh the pros and cons against each other and obviously Japan has its fair share of cons, like working conditions and pay for example, but don't let's forget there are pros too and I especially need reminding of that sometimes but so do you, the reader, who may at times feel mired in this blog of putrid cynicism. I apologise for that, but I'm only doing what, as a Brit, comes natural.

The Odyssey

Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Tokyo.

Tokyo is big and full of people, a lot of people. This is hardly a staggering revelation and probably won't win me a Nobel Prize, though it'd be nice to be nominated, but it is a fact of life any Tokyoite, whether native or imported, must sooner rather than later come to terms with. Like London the city has bands with populations ranging from "a writhing mass" in inner Tokyo to "a fuckload" if you include greater Tokyo. Apparently, if you count the whole metropolitan area Tokyo is the most populous city in the world, with 35.2 million people living in 13,500 square kilometers*. Footage of famous Hachiko square's crowded zebra crossing and trains being crammed full by station attendants are staple fare for exploitative and often sensationalist programs on life in Japan, but they are true, this kind of malarkey does actually happen, daily.

Luckily, yet strangely, Japan's infrastructure is a well-oiled machine. Investigating the intricate network of delivery, consumption, garbage hauling, water supply, electricity and public transport would probably be not unlike a short stint in the Total Perspective Vortex. If you thought mankind's place in the Universe is insignificantly tiny in the face of infinite space, try looking at Tokyo. But the system is not infallible, and when even tiny things go wrong the whole tower block of cards comes tumbling down.

Forgive me for yet another train post, but you have to appreciate that when I spend a good two hours a day on one, the experiences make up a large proportion of my day to day life and following the “write what you know” rule it’s only natural the subject will crop up regularly. The train line I am forced to take daily happens to be one of Tokyo’s busiest and, it would seem, most fallible. It’s bad enough when you walk to your station in the morning and are greeted with a milling crowd of people, some in groups surrounding station attendants who give out free tickets and alternate route information. When the train ends up working again they will be slow and stuffed so full of people they are in danger of imploding. The platform is usually overcrowded and you may have to wait as several trains chug by, letting on a small handful of people. My hour-long commute can easily stretch to two or more on these occasions making me late for work and forcing me to do overtime to make up for the delays. This happens at least a couple of times a month.

What’s worse is when it happens in the evening. Just the other day I managed to leave work right on time only to be confronted by the aforementioned crowds though, it being central Tokyo, worse by a multiple of tens, hundreds. My only alternative was a massive detour, taking me well past my station in a different direction and then using a combination of busses and local trains and, eventually, a taxi I would manage to get home. The problem, they said, was a “human accident”. This may have been a suicide, as they never come right out and say that, but seeing as the station in question wasn’t an express stop it may well have been a poor soul dragged to death in the slipstream of a fast train running through the station. In these situations it’s of course callous to get angry, so I thought I’d do a little shopping and see if the situation developed.

After informing several colleagues and friends who use the same line, a mere half hour later things appeared to be up and running again. I made my way onto the crowded platform and luckily managed to squeeze onto a carriage quickly. However, a few stops down the line, in an already slow moving journey, we had stopped for a good forty minutes inside a tunnel. A new problem had occurred, a broken cable, which allowed me to get upset and angry without any moral implications. After a good while we were asked to walk through the train to the front carriages which had reached the platform already and get off. Now I was stranded at a local station with no alternate routes available to me.

The evening was cold and harsh winds chilled you to the bone. There was some talk of busses but the chaos outside the station didn’t bode well, so I made my way to a local family restaurant to have a quick dinner and see what happened. Of course I was not the only one with this great idea and queues had formed everywhere. Luckily, as a smoker, my seat became available early, so I wasted some time with a beer, coffee and shitty meat platter with rice. Every other customer there was in the same boat and the staff looked surprised and overworked. Everybody was checking their mobile phones for further information, but it took a good hour and a half before there was any change. At least I was warm here.

When the news came the trains were back up and running I wasn’t convinced. The possibility of further problems and longer delays seemed real, as I had been burnt by that earlier in the evening, but begrudgingly I made my way outside. On the way back to the station however I noticed a man getting out of a taxi, so I jumped the bushes and got in before anyone else in the crowd could. This was, in retrospect, a mistake. The roads were crowded and progress was slow. Eventually, despite some quiet detours, the taxi ride took about twice as long as the train would have, which I heard later ran smoothly for the rest of the evening, even if they were somewhat crowded.

In the end, all said and done, my usual one hour trip back home took four and a half.

Whenever small problems like the above crop up it’s a little scary to see how much chaos is created. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of people are stranded and need to use facilities unable to cope with the strain. Busses are stuffed beyond capacity, taxis are making a mint, roads are gridlocked, family restaurants run out of steak and yours truly has a wasted evening. It’s almost as bad as the company running out of coffee the next day, forcing me to survive on a mere two mugs until lunchtime. In a microcosm like Tokyo I’s a little scary to realize how fragile things can be and though a single train line conking out is bad enough one shudders to think what a real earthquake would do or a massive power outage.

* Source: “QI: The Book of General Ignorance” by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

Everybody always generalises

The perpetrator this time was an episode of Radio 4's Excess Baggage revolving around Japan in which several foreign residents discussed life here in the usual ways. The usual ways being a kind of academically removed, observatory role casting a clinical eye on a culture without really inhabiting it. Being a professor in Osaka and eating sushi every Wednesday is hardly a basis for a pan-cultural hypothesis. Yet people still gladly do so, throwing up rubbish like "the law-abiding Japanese" or "the respectful society". Once you are swept along in the culture, as one can never really penetrate it, and live your every day in this supposedly polite country your view is somewhat different. Now I'm not claiming my point of view is the correct one, but I'd like to think it's more pragmatic than the usual wishy-washy adoration so many Westerners give to Japan.

The worst insult I can give Japan as a whole is to say it really is no better or worse, or different, than pretty much any other country in the world. What it has going against it though is sheer numbers. Say if five percent, no, let's be a little more realistic, if ninety-five percent* of any given population is a selfish, insufferable oik, it means Japan's population of 120 million has at least 114 million bastards, as opposed to Britain’s 57 million. Personal experience makes me believe the vast majority of these live in Tokyo, and the largest part of those seem to use the same train line as I every day.

This week's perpetrator was a woman, which is quite rare. Whether she was generally annoyed, outright racist or really claustrophobic I do not know but for some reason this short trip it was I whom she had decided to wage train war against. The train was full, space there was none. I found myself standing behind her with a crowd of people pushing me in every direction. At the slightest pressure she put her arm against the metal bar underneath the luggage racks and put up resistance. Now this is quite common. Usually the people standing in front of the seats have less room than you'd think and to stop themselves from keeling forward onto the laps of the lucky seated they have to hold the bar and push back somewhat.

However, this specimen glanced back with a nasty look, pushed back further and started pushing well beyond her personal space, turning her free shoulder my direction for extra pushing power. The woman was short and aged somewhere between 12 and 40. I usually have a hard time telling the age of Japanese people, but it was made more difficult because her genetic mudpool was obviously not encumbered much by beauty. With hair like a scouring pad and a face like a slapped haddock she scowled and took personal offence at the outright temerity I showed at daring to even occupy the same planet as her, let alone the same train carriage. She pushed and pushed, shoved her elbow back and into my ribs, rotated her shoulder over and over and saw every failure of mine to give her space as a personal insult.

Obviously there was no place for me to go, as the train was packed and I wasn't pushing her at all. My physical body was merely offering resistance to increasing pressure on her part pushed against an impenetrable wall of bodies behind me. I just stood there as this little harpie was waging war against my person.

These days I am just too exhausted to even care anymore. In my younger days I would have fought back, maybe tell her to "grow the F up, you incontinent old bat", but nowadays even throwing a marked look someone's way is just too much for me. I just stand there. I avoid gazes and let the laws of physics dictate. You push me but I can't go anywhere, that's the end of it. I'll let you exhaust yourself while I just take it like the dirty foreigner you already think I am.

At a further stop more and more people piled on, which invariably pushed me more into her space. To this she didn't take kindly and started pushing so hard she was losing her original position. In these circumstances I usually step sideways or, if there is no space, turn sideways, let them push past me and occupy the space they were inhabiting. This happened beautifully. She almost fell backwards, saw me slide into place and tried to regain her position. This was of course impossible and she started kicking my foot and saying, quite loudly, "yamete kudasai", "please stop" which, though using the polite form, wasn't very polite and a little irritating as I wasn't doing anything. More shoves and kicks followed. More impassive standing sill resulted.

A nearby man witnessed all this, gave the back of her head a dirty look and, instead of showing me sympathy, just made sure he was well clear of her, as much as was possible at least. When the time came to disembark the inevitable rush ensued. I was swept forward by the crowd, as was she, but she was kicking, pushing me all the way out the door. She even saw the opportunity to shove an elbow roughly into my chest on the way out, which was so feeble and pathetic that only a few hours later it barely hurt anymore.

The only way you could interpret Japan as a polite country is if you observe the passive acceptance of the wider public of such idiots. In Britain I would have been legally justified in punching her in the back of the head and a lesser, more aggressive person would probably have stabbed her in the ribs. People ought not to behave like this and it is generally unacceptable behaviour. Except in Japan where people live and let live, or bully and let be bullied. Sadly, of course, I can't act as the moral police in Japan as I don't even have the right to exist here. I could be arrested and made to pay the cleaning bills for bleeding onto the decent, law-abiding Japanese citizen who stabs me in the face.

I am still unsure of her motives though. I thought she started pushing before she had seen me, so maybe it wasn't a racist incident, though she wasn't pushing the people either side of her. But she might have spotted me from the corner of her reptilian eye when I got on and marked me as a, well, mark. Or maybe this woman was just genuinely pissed off at the world. In a country that glorifies and idolizes the cute it must be hard living as a reprehensibly horrific genetic mishap. This woman was ugly as sin and had probably spent a lifetime of disappointment and rejection. An astoundingly handsome man like myself would be an easy target for her wrath and frustrations. She hates the world, but that's okay, the world hates her too. I certainly do. But I don't hate her as much as those observers who keep claiming Japan is a more polite, respectful country than any other because that is so far from the truth it's laughable, if it wasn't so sad.

* I'm not a glass is half empty kind of person. There is a glass but the only thing in it is probably backwash.

Japanmanship Co. Ltd.

I'm just waiting for a business deal I've entered into with a fine Nigerian gentleman to come to fruition. He's been out of touch for a while, but he has my bank details and I've advanced the transfer fees, so any day now I expect to be enjoying a rather nice windfall. I plan to use this money to start up a combined Gravure Idol casting agency and game development studio, so I've spent some time thinking up how I'd run it. Having experienced several different work situations I've come up with the following list of rules by which Japanmanship Co. Ltd. will be run, hopefully to great success vastly growing my newly found yet strangely delayed fortune.

Working hours will NOT be flexible. Everyone is expected to start at 9 o'clock in the morning, though delays for personal reasons will be allowed they will be the exception. Similarly lunch is set at midday and will last an hour. The upside is that people will be kicked out of the office by 6 in the evening. Nobody is allowed to work late unless a very good reason can be provided to allow this, at which point some kind of overtime payment scheme will be initiated. This will force the leads to make realistic schedules and dissuade the company from feature creep and the crunch mentality.

During those fixed hours I expect people to actually work. Short eye-rubbing or cigarette breaks are encouraged but general flapping about isn't. Because hours are strict, meetings can be planned accordingly but will never overrun into either lunch break or leaving time. Should this threaten to happen, the meeting will be suspended and a follow-up meeting planned during business hours. If nothing has been decided after one and a half hours of discussion the meeting will be stopped and all attending parties forced to take a breather to think about things and clear their minds.

Whenever I assign responsibility to a lead I will have to trust them enough to professionally pick up the baton. There is no point in me then hovering over their shoulders and letting my personal tastes interfere with the leadership of their team section. I won’t demand stupid changes just for the sake of it. I’ll let them get on with it. Besides, I will, quite literally, have my hands full with the Gravure Idol casting section.

The working environment will see each project's team separated into their own open-plan office. Inter-team communication can thus be achieved easily without interference from irrelevant personnel working on something completely different, though employees are encouraged to mingle, from time to time, with the other teams to exchange ideas, tech, etc. The Gravure Idol casting part of the business will be located in a separate, sound-proof room with a sofa to which I shall possess the only key.

There will be no dress-code or rules for desk adornments other than the proviso that it must not be mortally embarrassing to show clients around the work floor. That means presentable clothing and good standards of personal hygiene, and a ban on lolicon figurines and stacks of empty pizza boxes. We're professionals, not children.

In a similar vein I will not pimp out the office like a Blade Runner brothel or kiddie playground wonderland. Focus should be on comfortable and practical working environments for the staff, not showing off to visiting clients and delivery boys what a gosh darn tootin’ coolio hip-daddy finger-popping company we are (or, as is usually the case, pretend to be).

I will never, ever publically complain about the low sales or bad reception of any of our games, especially not on-line. If I need to address such an issue anyway I will never ever tell my audience they are wrong about their opinions, as that is the most arrogant and blindly idiotic hubris that one can imagine. Instead I will listen and try to learn from the experience so it won’t be repeated in the future. We are creating a product, not a vanity exercise or Art.

The company will focus mainly on hiring experienced personnel but we won’t fob them off with the usual carrots. We don’t pay “competitive salaries” but “good salaries”. We don’t demand a “passion for games”, though being informed about games is a requirement. We won’t tease you with bonuses and stock options that never arrive but negotiate a salary and benefits package you are happy with as is. If you get paid a bonus, it will be exactly that, a bonus, not a salary supplement. For Gravure Idols employment will be considered on personal merit. Candidates for this part of the business will be judged on assets, moral flexibility and endurance.

The development of games will not focus on breaking any new technical ground. Other companies can continue spending millions of dollars and man-months pushing technology forward, we'll just follow along in the slipstream. Technically the focus will be on re-usable code and proper, workable tools. The system will be data-driven, so game designers and artists can "create" the game themselves without needing a coder to implement every tiny change in assets. Tools will be neatly integrated into the main creation software, like Maya.

No title will go into full production until an extensive prototyping and pre-production process has been completed by a small core team, after which point the rest of the development should, if things go well, be simply a matter of filling in the empty slots with assets. Of course, if later on in development some design mistakes become apparent, at least we’ll be data driven to an extent things can be adjusted without causing massive delays and crunch. If change during development is going to be inevitable, as most developers seem to claim, we will anticipate, schedule and cushion ourselves for these eventualities.

Soap and paper towels will be provided at all times and failure to wash one's hands after toilet use, using both, not just water, is a sackable offence.

Japanmanship Co. Ltd. will have a bright future ahead of itself. If only that guy would call me back about that international temporary money transfer.

The Sumabura Proof Pie

"I wasn't expecting that Wii would be a console targeted only for non-gamers", says Goichi "Suda51" Suda of Grasshopper Manufacture, the man behind Killer 7 and the recent No More Heroes in the wake of massively disappointing sales of the latter. In a recent interview he claims, like so many others, that only Nintendo can sell games for the Wii, which may be because only Nintendo is targeting this "non-gamer" market properly.

The Wii's audience is vastly different from the other consoles' and previous generations, that much should be obvious by now. The undisputed major titles are Wii Sports and Wii Fit aimed squarely at, what we mistakenly and slightly patronizingly call "non-gamers". I guess the term should be "previously non-gamers" or “differently interested gamers” but ideally the real terminologies should be "gamers", people who enjoy games of any shape and size, and "hard-core gamers", those of us who spend too much money on games, own more than one console and have vastly inflated opinions and feelings of entitlement when it comes to our favourite titles. Just because the new main target market is less interested in killing generic alien invaders or level grinding doesn’t mean they are “non-gamers”, if you ask me. The reality is that the regular gamer market has outgrown the hard-core one, in terms of numbers at least, and that the hard-core is becoming increasingly niche. All this is widely known, or at least quietly realised, and has been written about before.

No More Heroes, even though it is fun and a game I'd recommend to any Killer 7 fan, is niche even for a hard-core game and sales have proven this. But next week will be an interesting event. Next week sees the Japanese release of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, or "Sumabura" as the cool kids call it. This game is the ultimate in fan service, a fanboy's wet dream of IP crossover and a deliciously retro 2.5D beat'em up. It is hardcore, but it is popular hard-core. But is it a fit for the Wii audience? My guess is: not so much.

The media hype machine is in overdrive. Famitsu gave it a perfect score and bundled this week's issue with a separate, quite thick informative booklet on the game's characters. To be played best, allegedly, you will need to purchase a classic controller or dust off your old Gamecube controllers. It possibly requires a lot of time to unlock all the events if it's anything like its Gamecube prequel. The fans are rabidly excited (as am I) and it's out on Thursday.

As a spurious prediction I’d say we may see a promising start with the usual drop-off over the next few months and sales figures that would make anyone proud but that are still lower than expected, a bit like Super Mario Galaxy. If Sumabura doesn’t sell that well it would be proof positive that the Wii isn’t a hard-core friendly platform. I suspect already that it isn’t, but a title like this could prove it once and for all.

And that’d be a shame. With lower development budgets for Wii titles it offers a good platform for niche or truly original hard-core titles, as opposed to the mega-projects that make Xbox and Playstation development so risky these days. But if nobody buys them, what is the point? The Wii will have painted itself into the casual corner once and for all, but seeing the sales figures that is not a bad corner to be in at all.

This also means the Wii is out of the “console war”. It has its own market distinctly different from its competitors, whom must fight amongst themselves for their own top spot. Both Microsoft and Sony are making wooing noises to the casual market but they’ll have a hard time stealing customers from the big N.

So any publisher looking to make money on the Wii must squarely look at casual and avoid hard-core at all costs. Also, they must make sure they have a title which is easily shortened for the Japanese fans, like “Kinhar” (Kingdom Hearts), “Grantsu” (Gran Turismo) or “Durakuwe” (Dragon Quest).

I will, of course, be buying Sumabura next week and though I haven’t really done much game review type posts may report on my findings after a weekend of hard-core Peach on Pikachu action.

It’s a trap!

There is an old anecdote, which could be apocryphal, of an old British actor, possibly Sir John Gielgud, publically joining in the debate against the decision to remove kippers from the breakfast menu on the trains’ buffet carts, in a bygone era when the British Rail system wasn’t an embarrassing puss filled boil on the United Kingdom’s escutcheon. After much public outrage lead by Sir Gielgud, the train companies backed down and kept the kipper breakfast. On a subsequent occasion Sir Gielgud was travelling by train when the porter came to offer him his breakfast. “Ah, it’s kippers I presume, Sir Gielgud”, although I have no clue whether he was knighted yet at this point. “Dear boy no,” came the alleged reply, “I can’t stand the things.” “But I thought you fought for kippers on the breakfast menu,” the porter replied. “No, no, I merely wanted the choice.”

However much I think Microsoft and Sony’s seemingly endless supply of hardware iterations is a bad idea, flooding the market with many ever so slightly different and confusing versions of their hardware, I told myself if I was ever to get a Playstation 3 I’d need the full product, not the diet version Sony created to lower the price. Though I don’t intent to play Playstation 2 games, I want the choice to be able to do so. Though I probably don’t need four USB ports, I’d like them there just in case. So with this in mind and the as yet undecided new format wars between HD-DVD and the silly named Blu-Ray, I decided to sit it out and wait for a better opportunity to arise in the future.

Then, in a week where more film studios pledged allegiance to the Blu-Ray Sony Japan announced it would be discontinuing the 60GB version of its hardware over here too. Here I saw my choice of hardware SKUs suddenly evaporate. Soon the version with backwards compatibility would be gone forever. Sweating nervously, like the idiot I am, I thought I had better bite the bullet, get it over quickly like pulling the wax off in one fast pull through gritted teeth, to lie back and think of England.

The purchasing of my Playstation 3 is yet another example of what medical professionals now call F.I.G.S. (Fucking Idiot Gaijin Syndrome). After work I went to our local BicCamera to search for the remaining 60GBs. Usually, with large items, there will be a display model and a small stack of cards, of which you are supposed to take one to the cash register where they’ll supply you with the real thing, boxed and ready. On this occasion though there were no PS3s to be found anywhere. So I start to panic. Had there been a mad rush to get them now they’re discontinued? Am I too late? I went to the register to ask, “Do you have any 60GB PS3s left?”

At this point the reader should imagine a camera slowly riding backwards revealing the background, a wall, literally a wall full of PS3s in every shape and size Sony saw fit to produce to date. “Um,” the clerk replied and “yes.” If I had had any shame left my ears should have been burning, yet the feeling of embarrassment has all but dwindled due to overuse. Nevertheless I could see that behind her rictus service-smile a little bit of her soul had died. In her mind Americans are apparently not so cool and faultless as she was made to believe anymore. Of course, during these moments I always pretend to be American; I find it helps soothe the stab of shame.

It is almost, but not quite, interesting to note that in the time it took for the clerk to double-bag and process my PS3 on registers next to mine two Wiis and about three copies of Wii Fit were sold to respective customers.

Coming home and enduring the predicted salvo of ridicule and browbeating of She Who Must Be Obeyed I set to installing my new monstrosity. Of course, for an HD machine with HD capabilities and HD gaming it had escaped my attention that an HDMI cable was not included, so I jogged dutifully to the local Tsutaya. After a brief search I was forced to ask the staff if they had an HDMI cable. “A what?” “HDMI cable.” “H?” “Heh-Dee-Memu-Aye Ke-bu-ru” “HM?” “HDMI Cable, dammit. HDMI, I don’t know how else I can say it.” “Ah, HDMI!” But they were out of stock. So I continued my quest to the local electronics shop, which by that time had closed, though a nearby Donki was finally able to provide. Home, sweaty and tired I made the space needed and set it all up.

The very next morning I was awoken early, too early, by the return of my beleaguered Xbox 360, fixed, again. I set to the arduous task of connecting both to my WiFi router. After a headache-ridden morning and four hours of what can only be described as fruitless fucking around, neither my brand-new PS3 nor my much maligned 360 are on-line. I hate this state of affairs as it makes me feel both consoles are running on less than full capacity. The one thing that drove me away from PC gaming and into the arms of consoles was the ease of use and plug-and-play nature of video gaming. Those days are sadly gone. One can’t fully set up a console these days without a degree in Obtuse Acronyms, a masters in numerology and the patience of a Saint. The Wii, in stark contrast, took all of three minutes to be set up and connected to the ether. It purrs gently, its blue light suggestively blinking at me, while the two most powerful gaming consoles on Earth sit next to it, castrated and impotent.

So here I am, the slightly nauseous owner of all three current-gen gaming consoles. I can’t walk into my living room these days without the sick feeling in my stomach that I’ve been too profligate. Between the consoles, games and massive television I can’t help but feel, in a Fight Club kind of way, that I’m too deep into consumerism. I know these things can’t bring me happiness，as my continuing frustration to hook them all up to WiFi proves, and all the money spent could have gone towards much worthier causes like my savings account, pension plan or Absinth. I also know I’m such a sucker that the mere mention of a possibility of a chance that an item may not be available in the near future is enough for me to break out in a sweat and rush out to get one. I’m a sap, a sucker, a schlemmel.