The Truth about games, apparently

Let's face it, television never lies. That is just one of those facts. And television, as well as other media, teaches us a lot about video games and video game development.

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Video games are played almost exclusively by young boys who sit upright on pouffes a few inches away from a CRT television and hold their controllers up in front of them. All games can be played while mashing buttons and simultaneously holding conversations with the person standing behind you.

Though graphics have progressed, video game sound has hit its peak in the mid-80s. Even today sophisticated FPS games use bleeps and bloops for audio, incessantly.

The only genres in video games are sports and shooting.

A lot of games require text input, which must be delivered in perfect English grammar and must be sounded out by the player as he is typing.

Video game development studios are always housed in lush, modern buildings with a lot of space and cool, trendy lighting and technology. There are never any security measures for visiting friends, family, delivery boys or crime scene investigators who can waltz through the premises with impunity.

The boss's star employee in every company is the programming genius, with an I.Q. in the high 300s with matching sociopath tendencies. Or indeed homicidal tendencies. He always has his own office which is spacious and has many, many monitors and awards.

The best job in video game development is that of Quality Assurance, or "tester", but competition is hard. Only the most super-elite video game playing masters need apply, but they get compensated extremely well and everybody looks up to them.

Triple-A, next-gen, big name productions require a team of around 7 people with job titles as "gore designer" and "bullet programmer". It may look like they live in a frat-house like, spacious office, but this tiny band of heroes actually makes your games for you. Except those times when the rogue tester creates an entire game on his own to wow the boss with, at home, doing code, art and design, while being stoned most of the time.

Nobody in game development is older than 23. Producers and bosses may be older, but only if they are metrosexual and take care of themselves, like ex-surfer dudes with money. Developers themselves are pretty and handsome in bland GAP-model ways, but all female developers geek themselves up by wearing glasses.

The role of the producer is to come up with game ideas.

Video games that inspire murders can faithfully recreate the circumstances of the real-life murder and lead to revelations on the identity of the murderer.

Massively-multiplayer on-line worlds are run and kept up by one guy.

Browser games look identical in style and quality to the best console games and load up in seconds.

You can always tell if an artificial intelligence wants to kill you because it will ask you, using a bad speech synthesizer, if you want to play a game. Never play games with a computer that asks you to play with it out of the blue.

Game development is fun!

Episodic done right

I’ve dipped my toe in the episodic gaming world once or twice. The results were usually pleasant enough, if never overwhelming. The Sam & Max series, for example, were mostly fun but as games paled in comparison to the original and the art re-use was always a little too obvious. American McGee too is currently toying around with the concept with his Grimm series and Telltale are further building on the idea with Strongbad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. It’s all go, apparently. However, I was most pleasantly surprised by Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty, released this week over the Playstation Network.

I have just spent a very fun few hours of a hang-over blighted Saturday playing through R&C:QFB and it was tremendous fun. Coming as it does on the heels of the full-priced Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, it continues the story and play mechanics. Needless to say you’ll have to have enjoyed the latter before contemplating purchasing the former, but as it was undoubtedly a superb gaming experience it took me a mere 2 seconds to opt for the download.

I fully expect to see more of such “plus alpha” games appearing on PSN, it makes perfect sense. You reuse the tools, tech and assets that so many people have sweated over for so long and build a quicker, new game out of it of such high visual quality and presentational sheen it already stands head and shoulders over the competition in the download market. Development is quick and cheap, compared to the full game, and it keeps the fans warm for when the next instalment arrives, which, as by the unspoken rules of video game markets, must somehow require all new art and tech. It only took a few hours to complete, which is cheap at even half the price, but I was rewarded with a promise of more of the same this autumn, which I’ll lap up like a thirsty kitten when the time comes.

Insomniac really did deliver, in so many ways, even beyond the excellent craftsmanship of the game itself. We had a simultaneous release in Japan and the West, a very cheap price point pushing it nicely into the impulse buy sector, a fully localised game that sets its language to your system’s preferred choice as opposed to your IP, even in Japan, and, a commitment from the developers to deliver more, soon. Nothing is quite as good as feeling a little delicate one weekend, deciding there and then to buy a game, install it within minutes, play and finish it before the day is done.

I fully expect more companies to follow suit. Why spend years on creating a pipeline and assets only to never use them again? And indeed, many games could follow suit. There is of course the much touted extra content for Grand Theft Auto 4, though not owning the Xbox version nor a functioning Xbox, that will pass me by. Though not a full-priced game itself, PixelJunk Eden could easily add extra gardens to prolong the wonderful gameplay. Why not add an extra few hours of storyline to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, using all the art assets and tech of the game but simply create some new areas and extra story?

If you want your fans to keep giving you money it’s extra games like Quest for Booty that give you the most bang for your buck, especially as a consumer, as opposed to paying for a few extra multiplayer maps or extra costumes, God forbid. Previously boxed games had a very short timeframe to sell, as sales would usually drop off significantly after the initial months. Using extra episodic content can keep money coming in on the back of that first initial development cycle. And even better, because such episodic extras are cheap and quick to produce, you’ll face less internet fury over “leeching the consumers dry” or “cynically reusing stuff from the previous game”. This is exactly what Quest for Booty does, and I feel in no way cheated!

As if the glass wasn’t half-full enough, I have to say that slowly PSN is shaping up to be what we all hoped it would be. Though I may have spent more money on full, boxed PS3 games, I have actually spent most time playing PSN titles, and that will certainly have an influence on my future purchases.

Oh boy, obon!

It's that time of year again where, amid the sweltering heat and numerous spectacular thunder storms Japan collectively goes on holiday. Though there are no national holidays this month most companies will graciously allow employees to cash in their holiday days, some even going so far as to actually give a few away, mandatory, though strangely almost never a full week's worth. I, too, have the pleasure of bumming off for a few days.

Obon has some history in Buddhism, so I am little interested in the theory behind it. It has something to do with dead people, I think. There will probably be some bon odori, fun little festivals where people dance in a large circle around a tent where some local will be banging the drums. These are nice events to hang out at, especially as they only come by once a year. Then we will have our local fireworks too where we'll be sitting on the grass getting drunk and hoping our bladder will hold out so as not to have to queue for the few public toilets before we all try to get back on the train home amongst the several thousand other attendees. The fireworks are good fun, though the trip home afterwards is always somewhat of a chore.

Mostly I am looking forward to the arse-end of the season, as I will be working a few days that week and, hopefully, most of Tokyo won't. That way I might be able to enjoy a commute without having the life squeezed out of me or being drenched in salaryman sweat. As with Golden Week in spring, Obon has the annoyance of being a regular holiday, so prices shoot up and holiday destinations are booked full weeks, months in advance. Very often developers elect to work through such holidays to accrue days off in lieu to spend a little after the season when prices are back to normal and availability won't be an issue. As I am saving my holiday days for a later, better use, I'll just take off the days I'm given and work the rest.

As my XBox's internal calendar is set to "Japanese" the console has, in anticipation of my approaching spare time, again refused to operate, sitting there with a green eye blinking, not doing much more and not even having the common decency to flash red. Especially this time I am annoyed as I was looking forward to some Braid and Castle Crashers, but Microsoft has willed it not to be. I am toying with the idea of having the machine fixed a third time, but I am a little afraid of the inevitable verbal aggression I'll need to display to the useless prongs at the help center. With this heat I don't know if I can muster the energy to shout them down to size, as they so richly deserve. Luckily Sony is there to pick up the pieces and I shouldn't wonder I will be spending my entire holiday playing PixelJunk Eden, which is a fine, fine game.

I had some plans to go out too, but this weather is still beating me down. Given the choice between a headachy day indoors underneath the air-conditioner or venturing outside in the blazing, stifling heat, the choice should be simple. I look forward too to my occasional excursions out on the balcony for a cigarette and listening to the noisy cicadas whirring up to deafening decibels, as well as having a good go at my drinks cabinet and trying out some new cocktail recipes. Which reminds me, I need to buy more vodka.

Piracy

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
- Carl Jung

Software piracy is one of those perennial problems that just refuses to go away, no matter what we throw at it. On one extreme of the debate we have the lollards who proclaim "Piracy is EVIL! Pirates are SCUM!" and say it'll be the death of the industry, despite strong evidence to the contrary (i.e. the industry isn't dead). On the other extreme we find those pirates that seem to warp space and time itself, not to mention logic, to justify their behaviour with ludicrous claims, such as "games are too expensive, so I am right to pirate them" or "I wasn't going to buy it anyway". Obviously such dogmatic approaches are useless and, as with most things, truth and solutions can usually be found somewhere in between.

The way I see it, piracy is just another example of the economic and philosophical problem of free riding. On an individual level it is extremely hard to condemn piracy because if you can get something for free with ease and pretty much no fear of repercussions there is no way somebody could be convinced to part with his money anyway. Of course it is in the interest of the consumer to pay for the product, as that translate into profit for the publishers and developers who can use that money to create more of the products you enjoy, but the free rider problem recognises that short-term individual gains outweigh the long-term effects of the masses. If enough other people pay for the game anyway, it'll make up for you not doing so yourself. It's a little like paying taxes. For the individual there is plenty of reason not to pay your taxes, especially as so little money can't have much effect, positive or negative, on the whole nation, but people must nevertheless be made to pay taxes for the greater good. With games, we must find ways to compel people to pay for them, not just expect it.

Part of this problem I think lies in the perceived monetary value of digital data, i.e. none. Because video games have for so long relied on tangible media carriers, from cartridges to cassette tapes to discs, they have taken their place in society as a commodity, a tangible product. However, what makes the game is, to put it stupidly, a series of 0s and 1s that can be transferred easily on a media carrier of your choice and propagated without loss of quality.

I remember reading "Being Digital" and being struck by an anecdote wherein the author had to give the police an estimated value of the laptop that had been stolen. It has been years since reading the book, so apologies if I don't hit all the finer details. His conundrum was that beside the value of the laptop itself there should be an assigned value to the data on it, namely all his material, all the things he had written. But somehow this is difficult to do. As a society we still see digital data as intrinsically without value. It's just there, you can't touch it, you can't see it, it is worthless.

So when anti-piracy preachers shout out nonsensicals as "you wouldn't go to a shop and steal a DVD" they miss the fact that data isn't tangible. Software piracy isn't at all like going to a shop to shoplift a material item. It would be more like going to the shop with audio recording equipment and recording the music they are playing through the store's PA system to be enjoyed at home at a later date. This lack of a sense of value is not the reason people pirate software but it's the facilitator that makes it easy to justify to themselves. And as society becomes more and more plugged in, even if that is wireless, this is an issue that will need to be addressed. Data has a monetary value. People need to change their thinking to incorporate this philosophy.

So as software creators we need to find other ways to compel customers to purchase our goods, as opposed to simply copying them. How do we go about this?

DON'T try to appeal to or blame pirates
It simply doesn't work. It's a classic free rider symptom that it's difficult to compel someone to pay for something for the greater, long-term good if the alternative appeals so much more. Why pay for a game when it's "freely available"? Of course attacking the problem at the source doesn’t work either; every group of hackers or torrent website that closes down spawns several new ones to take its place. Stopping piracy this way is like nailing a jelly to the ceiling and bombarding all users, including the legitimate ones, with patronising adverts and tedious copy protections simply doesn’t work, as time has told us.

DO entice customers
One of the reasons I have more Gamecube, Wii, GBA and DS games on my shelf than anything else, apart from being a horrendous Nintendo fanboy of course, is because of the wonderful Club Nintendo. Even today I am much more likely to make an impulse buy of a Nintendo game simply because I know I will receive a code which turns into points with which I can get free, tangible gifts. Hell, I've even bought games I've only played once or twice just for such codes! In the old days I would much prefer to own a copy of Ultima than pirate it just so I could have the tea-towel map and excellent bestiaries.
If you can give extra value to your game by adding something only legitimate customers can receive you will still encounter piracy, of course, but at least you're giving something to your customers rather than punishing them with copy protections.

DON'T muck around with annoying copy protection
Copy protection will be hacked. No matter how clever your limited pool of programmers, there are a large number of highly talented hackers out there up to the challenge. The strategy is, of course, to at least try and prevent hacked copies of your game being available in the short period just after the game's release when boxed titles traditionally sell most. If you can have a copy protection system that will at least hold up for the first few weeks you'll have made the bulk of your sales. This is, however, harking back to an increasingly outdated economic model and we have only to look at the record industry to see what happens to businesses clasping to old models, refusing to embrace the new.
On top of that, you are punishing your legitimate customers with all manner of annoyances, from having to have the disc in the drive at all times, having to keep track of numerous codes and keys or even installing malignant software.

DO think of new business models
The brick and mortar, boxed copy version of the game is on its way out, we all hope. But it is exactly these lingering older models that require these Draconian copy protection systems. Downloading games is easy and convenient and, so far, not that expensive. They could in fact be sold cheaper as you are dealing with a different kind of distribution that requires fewer overheads. Korea has seen some success with free-to-play games that rely on advertising and micropayments for additional features for income. Q Entertainment was sadly lambasted for its innovative segregation of Lumines on XBLA, where aside from a basic game players could but the additional parts they wanted for a lower price and ignore those they weren’t interested in. Valve are seemingly building their own download network with Steam, as Sony has PSN and Microsoft has XBL, and Nintendo…well, Nintendo.
Many of these newer models seem at this moment in time more secure and, though not entirely piracy-proof, are a step in the right direction. Though I possibly have the know-how, or could at least acquire the know-how, to hack my systems and play pirated copies of downloadable games, the prices are so low as to be in the impulse-buy category and with the added convenience of instant access I have seen no reason to go through the bother of mucking up my system, especially as automatic system updates could easily negate all this hard work.
Just as iTunes set up a new business for digital music distribution while record companies were clasping at straws to keep the status quo, so are we seeing the gaming world change. With IP addresses, system serial numbers, credit card information and user accounts hopefully the annoying and costly problem of copy protection and piracy can be alleviated if not entirely circumvented.

DON'T keep harping on about the Evils of piracy
We know it's bad. We know studios have closed down ostensibly because of it, though how true that is remains questionable. We know some people like to bandy about words as "scum" and "thieves". Piracy is a fact of software development. Screaming about it won't change it. Changing our business models and the way we look at our customers just might help at least somewhat.

As far as I can tell piracy in Japan would seem to be similar to that in the West. I remember my very first visit to Japan and seeing small stalls on the streets of Akihabara selling “multi-game Gameboy carts”, but these days such blatant illegalities seem to have been replaced with more shady, backstreet affairs. The R4 was being openly sold in shops and has been netting increasing prices due to Nintendo’s legal threats.

All being said and done, there will always be people who refuse to pay for software. There are laws in place to punish these but the effort usually outweighs the rewards, and they know it. In the end all we can do is entice, not pressure, as many people as possible to pay for games legitimately in new ways and accept some people will just never remove that padlock from their wallets. Preaching the Evils of piracy is as constructive as a Japanese progress meeting and vastly oversimplifies the situation to the point of being actually damaging to the debate.

(250th post, hurray for me!)

Thank you for playing

Nintendo, along with several dozen other companies, have filed a suit at the Tokyo District Court, according to Kotaku, in their continued effort to halt the sales of the R4, a device which slots into a Nintendo DS cart slot and houses a microSD card onto which users can copy videos, photos, text files, homebrew software and, well, pirated DS games.

Nintendo's motives are entirely obvious and understandable. The R4 makes DS piracy easy and available, which is bad for business, and they control the platform. I presume that they have a strong legal case to make and that they'll probably win. However, I am personally quite sad about these developments.

Mostly it's down to the homebrew. Talented amateurs out there are elevating the DS from a gaming platform to a full-blown PDA with excellent scheduling and diary software, text readers and video players. These are all things Nintendo could have and should have released to further push the DS to the forefront of handheld devices. Nintendo has, quite rightly in some aspects, chosen to be a "simply games" company, focusing on fun and input schemes to bring gaming to a wider audience. Since the Gamecube have they stated that they are not interested in the number of triangles on screen or raw processing power and, considering the wild hotcake in a blaze success of the Wii and DS they certainly weren't wrong about that strategy.

Yet I feel the full potential of the DS remains locked. Very few eBook carts have been released (in Japan) and no good diary software has been made available for purchase. With the touch screen input and WiFi capabilities the DS is screaming to be more than "just a gaming console" and by and large, that is exactly what it has remained. Talking cookbooks and TV tuners aside, it could have been so much more.

So homebrew is not just picking up Nintendo's slack, it is also providing other excellent uses. A lot of amateurs and hobbyists have been creating their own titles, with varying degrees of success, giving them valuable experience in console game development. Others have ported with great love and care those older titles from other platforms for which the market is too small to make publishers care about. For all the crying and begging for DS ports of classic LucasArts adventures, for example, it has been left to the homebrew scene to create an amazing port of the SCUMMVM engine. Homebrew is a truly wonderful thing. But it is, of course, sadly diametrically opposed to Nintendo's licensing business.

But however much annoyed Nintendo might be with the hobbyists it's obviously the pirates that have them fuming. It's undeniable that the R4 facilitates piracy. A simple Google search will result in a long list of sites that offer roms for download and putting them on an R4 to play is extremely easy, even though some clever anti-piracy measures have been experimented with. Nintendo could find ways to force working anti-piracy measures into their games, at some cost no doubt, so inevitably the R4 must die.

This is a shame. I hope sincerely Nintendo will at least consider incorporating the better aspects that homebrew has brought us so far into whatever is next for the DS. While the R4 lasted it brought us some great things. It's a shame that that inevitably brought with it the piracy that will eventually get it suppressed.

Mad dogs and Englishmen

Regular readers may have noticed a dip in output and quality on this blog, and I am acutely aware of this. But this summer is hitting me harder than previous ones. When I first moved to Japan, as a podgy, pasty European, the first summer I experienced here was Hell. It's not just the heat but mostly the humidity. You have a cold shower and by the time you've dried off you're dripping with sweat again. I remember, either my first or second summer here, running for cover from shop to shop, enjoying the cold breeze of the air conditioners in between the hot blasts from the sun outside. I also remember visiting recruiters and going for interviews in my recruit suit with, stupidly, a light blue shirt which would be dark with sweat.

As I lost the inevitable weight so many seem to in Japan, and acclimatised somewhat, the summers became a little more bearable. The key was never to hurry and take things extremely slowly. Plus, of course, as a developer you need not worry about dress codes, so on extremely hot days shorts and sandals would ease the commute.

But for some reason this year I am having a hard time coping. I don't think it's particularly warmer or more humid than previous years, but possibly work related stresses and general malaise contribute to this overwhelming feeling of tiredness, a zombification of the mind and body. Though it is pleasant to sit in the coolness of an air conditioned room, it somehow makes my head heavy and my lungs raspier than usual. Sleeping with the thing on, an absolute necessity, causes restless sleep, for me at least.

It doesn't help that due to some genetic mishap, I think from my mother's side of the family, I have easily excitable sweat glands, though luckily not so much the odour issues that usually come with these. Or rather, the sudden availability of decent deodorants in Japan has helped me combat fishy funk. It all adds up to make the average daytime a dreary, sweaty, heavy headed chore, which makes my evenings lazy and without energy, in front of a fan or underneath the air conditioner. Dog days indeed.

There isn't much going on in Japan, at least not in my monkeysphere. Apparently, in politics, communism seems to enjoy a little resurgence, though I doubt very much your average Japanese cares too much about socialist issues to turn the whole country red, even if the West were to allow it to happen. Personally I am increasingly annoyed by that one bald politician who seems too busy appearing on television shows and generally behaving like a talento than busying himself with whatever it is politicians are supposed to do. I have also been discussing the injustices of Japan's latest scandal, where a professional baseball player had a torrid affair with a mixed race television presenter; the single woman has had all her contracts canceled while the married man with one child is back playing baseball. I wonder if it's because she's a woman or because shes half not-Japanese that the fault seems to have been placed firmly at her feet for some reason. Maybe it's the fact this is the second time she's burnt herself on the same iron. Either way, it's a little silly, not to mention hypocritical of Japan's populace at large; infidelity is next to godliness in the Japanese dictionary, but that may be down to stroke-orders and other obtuse kanji-related issues.

My current choice of summer drink is the Moscow Mule, especially when, as the bartender and customer, I can make them with ever so slightly increasing ratios in favour of the vodka. I do yearn for Pimms though, but this is of course not available in Japan, at least not in the shops I've been searching. I suppose I could make it myself, though, but the ease of the Mule is too much of a draw.

In other news I watched merrily one day as a woman drove her car straight into and up onto the little wall that divides our office building from the parking spaces in front of it. It was quite a wallop and a nasty scrape as she backed up off the wall. She got out, seemingly unharmed and had a perfunctory yet panicky look at the front of the car before doing that half-run jog trot into the building. This further cemented by over-generalised and undeniably racist view that the Japanese aren't very good at driving. I've seen plenty of examples of this before, like the guy who couldn't park his car properly despite the fact he had a good 200 yards of empty sidewalk to play with or the many times I've been almost run over by cars storming out of driveways and side streets.

I literally can't wait for this summer to end, to make way for the much cooler and therefore much more enjoyable autumn, followed by the usual crisp and bright winter, my favourite season. An as usual I am not alone in this. Your average Japanese doesn't seem to fare much better than I, which is some consolation.

Well, this was a long, rambling and self-pitying, not to mention useless post, but that, I'm afraid is what life is like these days. Regular readers can rejoice in the promise I will be posting some things of more substance some time in the near future. I have a few posts in mind, but am as yet unable to bring these to fruition for a variety of reasons, lack of energy being the main culprit, all things considered.

Domestics Spotting

If there is one obvious flaw to the Japanese character it’s their refusal to lose their rags in public situations. Aside from the occasional commute-based freak-out and a fair amount of muttering to oneself, your average Japanese will avoid making a scene in public, so when it does happen, which it does occasionally, it’s worth rubbernecking.

As a “firefly”, a smoker banished by a non-smoking spouse to the balcony where he makes little fiery lights dance around with the tip of a burning stick of slow suicide, I am privy to a lot of gossip-worthy eavesdropping on my neighbours. There is one activity me and the wife like sharing out there, though, which is listening in on domestics. For some reason the apartment building opposite ours is rife with marital difficulties and on more than one occasion have we stood outside, enjoying the cool evening air and the many shouts and threats that drifted on it.

Two instances spring readily to mind. The first was a domestic quarrel, which we pinpointed to an apartment at our height, to the west, in the opposite building. In it, we gathered, a male was paying heavily for some dalliance, presumably, as a woman was screaming at the top of her lungs at him for a good hour orso. In a relentless tirade she screamed and cussed and swore at the guy in a high pitched, piercing shriek. Congreve was almost correct if only his line read “Nor Hell a Fury, like a Japanese woman scorn’d”, though, granted, that wouldn’t have scanned as well. If you want to experience pure, cold, naked terror it lies in the face of a Japanese woman in a rage. Japanese, as a language, has never sounded scarier and hormonal fury never looked as much like bleak obliteration as the time one peers into the eyes of a Japanese woman with a bone to pick. And in this instance too, though we neither of us doubted the guy had it coming to him, whatever it was he had done, we actually felt sorry for the poor sap as he sat there silent in this turbulent whirlwind of abuse. We tried to pick up words in the tirade, but it’s difficult when it’s screamed at such a high pitch. It involved money, uselessness, idiocy and the like. My guess was infidelity, though the wife suggested some theories revolving money and the possibility the man had been profligate in times of need. Once the storm had died down, we listened as we heard windows slide shut from various points between our two apartment buildings. We needed a sit down after that one.

More recently was an instance of mutual domestic squabbling. In an apartment in the opposite building, slightly higher, diagonally opposite of ours, a couple were fighting tooth and nail at extreme volumes. I was, in fact, in a back room when the wife informed me of the spectacle, and we both went to the balcony, drinks in hand, to listen. Again, it was hard to pick up words, but in instances like these “baka”, which is your catch-all word meaning anything from “you rotter” to “die in Hell”, was bandied about liberally. This time, however, the male side was represented in force. The man was equally vocal at his screaming wife indicating that there was probably more at stake here than a little marital slip. “Wakatte iru yo!” too was heard many times, which in polite conversation means something like “yeah, I know”, but in the context of arguments could mean “I’m not a gosh-darn idiot, you know!” This is priceless stuff most Japanese language schools sadly don’t teach. This exchange burnt out quicker due to its intensity. We heard a slam of a window and a continued but muffled shouting match which eventually died down as I had run out of vodka and the wife’s favourite television show was about to start.

As for your average Japanese male marriage is one long primrose path I am surprised we don’t hear these kinds of exchanges more often, but when we do, we always make a point of enjoying them together. Like the grunts of gorillas in the mist we share a nice moment together as these rare pieces of vocal evidence of Japan’s disintegrating peaceful society are borne aloft the barmy summer breezes.

Good Art Director! Have a Creme Egg!

Most visually creative people know this, a lot of consumers probably subconsciously understand this, but for most manager-types it is still a mystery: good art direction will always triumph over raw processing power. Good art direction is what made Mario Galaxy achieve a lot more on less horsepower than most games do on more powerful consoles. A strong visual design is key to most successful, visually speaking, games, and yet it is still in its infancy in our industry. All too often a style guide is a series of grunge textures and some RGB values for different shades of brown and gray and, if there was a pre-production period, a series of photos of real-life locations. But of course there are some games out there that get it right, in my humble opinion, and Japanmanship, I, hereby award the art directors responsible for the following visual feasts with a Creme Egg*!

Mirror's Edge
DICE's latest offering, only available as a gameplay trailer right now, slapped me in the face hard with its stark, simple yet nicely designed visuals. The heroine, a game designer's version of an ideal Asian girlfriend, runs around a clean, white city with nice blue shadows and aims at brightly coloured visual cues to perform her free-running tricks. The effect is beautiful. Any artist who hasn't secretly enjoyed a MentalRay rendering of an untextured scene with the "physical sky" option turned on is no real artist at heart. Blue shadows on a white environment just simply looks nice, and the bright reds and oranges really stand out. DICE must be congratulated for such a bold visual style in a genre that would seemingly have demanded, from the publisher's side, a gritty, real "urban" sprawl, with dirt and graffiti and rusty iron fences. Similarly, EA, so often and unfairly painted as the industry's S.P.E.C.T.R.E. super villain, should be patted on the back by going along with this vision. The game will have a lot to prove in the gameplay department, but I for one am interested simply for it daring to look different.

Diablo 3
Richer than Midas, Blizzard can afford good artists and art directors and the recent footage of the highly anticipated (by me included) Diablo 3 shows, yet again, that they are masters of a simple yet arresting visual style that doesn't rely on a billion polygons. The footage shows a very strong sense of colour and form, yet if you zoom in on the screenshots you'll find there isn't much there. The overall effect is a pleasant, coherent and readable environment that is very pleasing to the eye.
Of course, a vocal minority of idiots decided the art direction is pap, citing anything coloured more brightly than gray is simply unacceptable. I have the utmost confidence that Blizzard will ignore these dolts, as they should, and stick with this wonderful, fantastical and vibrant style that will help make Diablo 3 even more bleedin’ addictive than the time-sink predecessors I have wasted so much of my life on.

Castle Crashers
Real cartoon-style games often look, well, rubbish. They end up a hotchpotch of clunky 3D characters with exaggerated proportions that contrast badly with the webcomic-quality cutscenes; it’s all a bit sad. And then there is Castle Crashers.
I suppose this game shouldn’t be included on the list, as the art was created by a single person, so directing doesn’t come into it, strictly speaking. But the overall visual style of this game, apparently polished beyond Alien Hominid standards, is awesome. There is more life in those creatures than most normalmapped, high-poly characters we see and ignore so often in your average triple-A blockbuster.

Dyson
And on the complete opposite side of the spectrum I enjoy this little strategy game’s subdued simplicity. It shows that simple visuals can be beautiful, but more importantly, that they are functional. This is something we often forget, where visuals are overcomplicated and obstruct the actual experience of the game. Not so Dyson, which conjures up an entire universe, or asteroid belt at least, with the simplest of graphics. As artists with immense processing power at our behest, we often forget that less is, more often than not, more, much much more. This title proves that beyond any doubt.

I, for one, am growing weary of the supposed photo-realism or the high-contrast shadowing that make so many video games not only unplayable but, if we’re honest, ugly as sin. Good art direction isn’t easy, that is a fact, and it’s not always what the customer seems to want, sadly, but whenever there is real talent laying down a style, backed up by skilled artists to bring that vision to reality the effect is an amazing visual feast. It’s worth investing time and effort into. The titles mentioned above are just a few of the games I, as an artist, am excited about. So far only the last one is available to play, but I am highly anticipating the other titles and have already penciled them in on my “immediate impulse purchase” list.

* Creme Eggs not included!

Hey, teacher!

As our industry grows, which is does relentlessly, and matures, which it does grudgingly, obviously the workforce will grow in terms of needs, numbers and skills, and so it is not surprising that institutions will offer dedicated courses and degrees which, in turn, get to be scrutinised by the press in a recent bit of hooplah over the state of such affairs in Britain. This leads me to pondering the value of game-related degrees and a lot of chin-stroking on what I believe the industry needs. And I've come to the conclusion that the industry does not need game-related degrees.

As can be said for any industry, arguably, the skills you will rely on most in your career will be learned on the job, with a previous education only offering you a solid base to start your training from. The game industry is no different. Looking back at my own career I find that all the skills I possess and use nowadays I have learned while doing the job and my skill set when I joined the industry was laughably inept to deal with the issues I face in my day to day activities. Ask a banker, labourer or teacher and you'll probably find this to be a common thread. Experience is a far better teacher than any humanoid, but that doesn't of course mean education is useless - far from it. I studied in a vaguely related field, though still far removed from video games, and one of my most hated courses I find taught me things I, I reluctantly accept, still use today, in the form of colour theory and composition. What my education did well was to teach me the basics of the visual arts and the disciplines of production, scheduling, pre-production and the like. But with my degree in hand a young JC would in no way be ready to start a job as a games artist from the get-go. No, I was lucky enough to find a company who saw my potential and hired me. From that point on I've relied of colleagues, training, self-study and a bit of real-life working pressure to make me what I am today: a dried up husk of a shell of my former self. All joking aside, I am what I am in terms of competency in my job thanks to the job, with my education serving to add a sense of depth and grounding.

And this is an important issue, I think. Video games are still so immature, as an industry, with so much to learn and improve on that any study that bases its syllabus on the current state of the business is basically teaching "broken knowledge" or immaturity. If you teach a student how things are done now, they might be able to wrangle a job in the short term, but as an employee they'll form part of the problem, not the solution. What we need is versatile, well-grounded graduates who can think fast on their feet and, as much as I detest the phrase, "think outside of the box". With vastly exploding budgets, higher risks, shorter development times, growing impoverishment of the imagination and the difficulties of nurturing new IPs, how can a graduate help solve difficult issues like these if all they know is how to do their jobs in these circumstances? A game degree course as a supplement to a regular degree could be helpful in getting that first job, but as a substitute for a more general degree I'd say it's specialising too soon. There is a very good reason why the better environment artists I've worked with usually have an educational background in architecture.

From an art perspective, these are my thoughts on education:

- Communication
One skill that is often overlooked is the ability to communicate ideas effectively, not only between client and artist but also between artists within a team. Video game development is, by and large, a team-based endeavour and communication is paramount.
- Basic art sensibilities
I am shocked how little people understand about basic colour theory or composition, to the extent where it is applied correctly it jumps out at you as fantastic game art. We must learn from established arts when it comes to the emotive power of colours, the space they need to be read properly, the effect light and shadow have on directing the eye and much much more. These skills can all be learned during your average basic art degree without even thinking about video games.
- Working to tight budgets and deadlines
Having studied a subject that required expensive equipment I learned early on to schedule in time for the use of these often over-burdened devices. We got away with a lot by doing prep work on home computers before sending the data to the larger equipment at college to do the rendering, or we would sneakily hide in cupboards to be locked in overnight, illegally, so we could have an entire digital editing suite to ourselves for 10 glorious but tiring hours. Knowing the time limitations taught us to think things out ahead of time to make the actual process as quick and easy as possible. This seems to be a skill in short supply in our industry.
- How the software works
All you need to know is where the buttons are. Anybody, and I mean anybody, can learn to use Photoshop or Maya. To use them well requires a talent and skill you'll pick up over time, but you need to know what buttons do what, totally outside of the context of video game graphics. Maybe nowadays we are stuck with polygon modeling, but who knows what the future may bring? Teaching only polygonal modeling will short-change the students who will be unprepared for future developments in video game technology.
- Don’t focus on current-gen
As mentioned above, by the time you graduate and get your job video game technology will have advanced - no question. You may be able to model and texture one mean Unreal 3 character model but you'll be at a loss as to the latest developments. It's best to have a general grounding in the software and techniques than anything too specific. On top of that, each company has their own techniques, limitations and toolsets and everyone (everyone!) will have to learn new approaches when changing companies anyway.
- Don’t focus on game art
As a personal opinion, a lot of the video game art out there is ugly. They may be technically accomplished and display excellent craftsmanship, but still, a lot of it lacks visual gusto. Being able to rely on acquired art sensibilities from other media can only help give you and your project that unique visual flavour that will set it apart from the other Space Marines of Hell FPS clones out there.

Video game education is in its infancy. I'm sure it'll evolve into something quite useful but all reports state that that might not be quite the case yet. If my experience seeing game school graduates' work is anything to go by, I'd say it has a long way to go yet. Your more cynical observer may think these schools are merely profiting from the growing trend in youngsters wanting to work in video games, promising increased chances of employment, despite the evidence to the contrary, and offering a very naive syllabus by people with absolutely no actual development experience or clue. At this moment in time I would highly recommend people with an interest to find a general education in the rough field of their future expertise, rather than a specialised education for video game development.

This GameSetWatch article mentions Andrea Rubsenstein's continued adventures at the HAL game academy in Japan. And, of course, how could it not be, Japan is a slightly different beast in these matters. As a commenter pointed out, in most cases in Japan the prestige of the name of your alma mater is much more important than your actual skills. Video game development is slightly different in this, as actual skill is a requirement, or at least the potential for it, and as such, having "Tokyo University" on your resume might pique the interests of the potential employer, it is in no way a guarantee to employment, as it might be in, say, politics or banking.

In Ms. Rubenstein's situation I have actually little doubt it will increase her chances of employment. She is, afterall, a foreigner and a woman, which in Japan will raise many (irritating) concerns over suitability. Having been through a Japanese school not only will show Japanese language ability but also a slightly better understanding of the Japanese working system than we, as foreigners, are usually given credit for, so even though I have my question marks over the transferability of the skills taught, it would count as a proof of aptitude which would make her a more enticing prospect to employers - at least, it would assuage many of the usual concerns.

So in closing, the above is all personal opinion and video game specific degrees could, potentially, augment a regular degree but not, as of yet, replace them. But don’t quote me on that.

License to smoke

As of today us beleaguered smokers face yet another humiliating obstacle in our drives for self-destruction: the Taspo, a photo ID necessary to purchase cigarettes from vending machines, instigated to stop the underaged, which in Japan is anyone under 20 in the case of smoking, from buying their fix from any of the millions of conveniently available, inviting and mostly unguarded machines. The Taspo can be acquired via a laborious process of sending off for forms, to be filled in and sent back with verifiable ID and a photograph. although there are ways around it. It's all slightly barmy, of course.

Despite some half-hearted efforts from various fronts, Japan is still very much a smoker's country. Maybe I don't observe well enough but I wasn't under the impression underage smoking was a huge issue over here, but it might be. The biggest crime still goes unexamined, however, which is, the one thing I, as a smoker, detest, young families taking their children, sometimes even babies, into the smoking areas of coffeeshops and restaurants. Nothing ruins a good cigarette more than feeling self-conscious about the 2 year old at the next table, even though his idiotic mother or father is happily blowing his own smoke towards his progeny. It disgusts me. My solution: to put the same age limit buying cigarettes has on smoking areas, nobody under 20 is allowed in one. My colleagues and other lost souls I happen to preach at occasionally all seem to agree this is a spiffing idea, yet I hold no hopes of it ever being passed into law. More likely is that Japan will blindly follow in the Western whiners' footsteps of banning all public smoking one way or another, though that, thanks to my own smoking habits and the speed at which change occurs in Japan, probably won't happen in my foreshortened lifetime.

I think I'll end up getting one of these Taspos anyway, as it is such a typically Japanese idea, even though I purchase all my cigarettes from the local kiosk from an ancient woman who knows me and my habits so well I need not even ask her, because she dives behind the counter as I approach and gets out my usual with a smile. But it'd be fun to wave a Taspo around when abroad so we can all have a good look and a giggle at my "license to smoke".

Now we wait for the next Card-o. After the Passmo, the chargeable public transport card, and the aforementioned Taspo I predict a Nomimo or Pissflo, an ID to allow salarymen to not only to purchase alcohol, but have it used as a pre-paid taxi fare payment card with the drinker's address encoded. It's a winner, I think you'll agree!

So much for Freeloader

Well, this very short era of international enjoyment of Wii titles comes to an abrupt close. After having enjoyed the Gamecube version of this region-freeing boot-disc I took the plunge and bought the Wii version, which, at first, seemed to work fine and dandy on the single US game I tried to play on my JP Wii.

Emboldened by this success I purchased two more titles. These, however, failed to load properly, so a quick email to the CodeJunkies support email address was in order. Here begins a tale of futility. The email bounced back an auto-reply instantly, telling me all problems were discussed on their support website and that that would be the end of this email conversation. After finding the site through a link in the email, rather than from their website, I lodged a ticket and started my wait.

They are keen to point out their helpdesk system is not an instant message service, but neither is it, I daresay, a service of handwritten parchment, encoded by the Enigma machine and hand-delivered by the royal tortoise. It took an astounding two weeks before I received a reply, which included the reminder it was not an instant messaging service. The reply was of course, useless, stating they couldn’t guarantee all games would run using the Freeloader and that this was stated in the manual too. Which it was. Still, maybe I’m spoiled in this digital age, but I’d expect a helpdesk to respond a little more punctually and be, well, helpful.

However, by that time Nintendo continue to tighten its grip on the Wii by releasing a new firmware to ostensibly deal with the infamous Zelda save game data hack, but which also rendered the Freeloader 100% useless. So now I have a product which doesn’t work as advertised. “We can’t guarantee the Freeloader will work with every game” can now be replaced with the line “We can guarantee the Freeloader won’t work with any game”.

Of course, part of my beef is with Nintendo, who, inexplicably, require me to purchase a full US console if I am to enjoy US Wii games in Japan. Well, I say inexplicably, but it could just be a clever ploy to make geeks buy the console twice, though it is probably more the usual kind of paranoia rather than a business strategy. But considering CodeJunkies’ helpdesk system is slow and utterly unhelpful and even had the temerity to very subtly suggest I might not be running an "original game disc", I have no qualms hereby recommending any readers of this blog not to bother with their product. It doesn’t work and they don’t care.

What with the PSN pre-paid cards not out yet in the US and no online store selling the XBLA point cards (that I know of), the life of a global gamer and importer remains a painful and disappointing one. On top of that the PC now seems to have its own form of region locking, with the demo version of Spore’s excellent Creature Creator being sold to specific regions only. I was not allowed to buy the English version from Japan but had to make do with the localized Japanese version, which doesn’t even come with the English components provided. Personally, I am thoroughly sick and tired of too many people trying to control my purchasing habits for no reasonably explicable motive.

And one of the reasons people pirate software, it is said, is due to the convenience of it. That is a sentiment I can totally understand. If people continue to want my money, maybe they should consider allowing me to actually purchase items I want.

Futurama

Contemplating the future of videogames is never an easy task. Short term trends are obvious to even the most casual observer, but who would have predicted the Wii and its immense success just a few short years ago? I distinctly remember attending the E3 at which the DS was unveiled and listening to supposed industry professionals snort with derision and predicting its inevitable failure. Still, it's sometimes cool to imagine what gaming would be like in the future. Here is one possible vision.

Digital distribution will become so all-encompassing that boxed product is reserved for retro gaming with all new products being delivered through some digital channel. All major manufacturers will continue to put their entire back catalogue up for download services. This makes the home console a repository for your entire games library and other media. Handheld gaming will plug directly into this media hub. Instead of carrying its own media your handheld device will, with the aid of pervasive, superfast wifi that makes every spot in any major city connected at all times, run its software on the home console hub. Only control input will be sent from the device to the console, where the game is run, which sends back the visuals to the device. This means the handheld device is light and cheap. It can also access all your music and video from the home console. The device itself will be small and foldable, with a digital paper screen. Its input is both tactile and motion sensitive to a socially acceptable extent.

Some company will revive "Virtual Reality" but, despite the massively improved tech, the public still resists. Peripherals that detect motion and position will replace the idea of a VR helmet and as the console is basically a media hub, gaming will stay married to a television screen for many years to come as a result.

There will be a 2nd Great Game Industry crash. With the continued availability of cheap or free tools which become easier and easier to use, every hobbyist can create and release a game. There will be a tsunami of games created by these amateurs, as well as independent developers and larger publishers trying to cash in, that the public has too much choice of too many substandard titles, which become cheaper and cheaper until it becomes a totally unviable prospect. In one day seventeen different versions of a match-three title will be released, on average. After the crash the industry will rebuild itself, keeping some of the major players and introducing the big new names of tomorrow from amongst the survivors. Luckily, due to the digital nature of game distribution, there will be no landfills to allegedly cover with cement this time round.

Somebody will release a single, open platform console which will fail utterly in the market place, leaving just the usual number of large manufacturers who keep a tight and lucrative control over their hardware. The failure eventually boils down to the console acting too much like a PC with too much open source and modifiable elements making easy control of it outside the comprehension of the largest part of its intended market.

None of today's major IPs will survive. Nintendo will be the first to find the maximum age of a recyclable IP when their latest Mario title, though critically acclaimed, fails the sell. Children of the future will have no idea who Link, Mario, Lara Croft and Niko Bellic are.

A significant proportion of the film industry will make its money from film-games. These are not films made of video game IPs, nor games made from film IPs but films and games created entirely for the tandem development of both film and video games simultaneously. Eventually, though, the video game part of this marriage will be most profitable, leaving the film industry crippled. The most successful players in this new field will actually come from the game business side, who will employ film directors to its staff.

India and China will be huge players in the global video game business, not just as "cheap outsourcers to be arrogantly scorned" but as major businesses, designers and developers in their own right, providing, at first, their own cultures, but soon enough migrating to make significant sales across the world. Some of tomorrow's major changes, in hardware and game design will come from the East, excluding Japan.

None of this will happen.

Around the ashtray

One of the new hires finally gathers up enough courage to chat with the company gaijin.
“Are you fluent in Japanese?”
“God no,” I reply, in the usual mock embarrassment and humility. Making jokes about how shit my Japanese is in, presumably, decent Japanese breaks the ice and the guy feels more relaxed.
“So, is this your first game development job,” I ask him.
“Yeah.”
“How are you liking it?”
“Well….” he says, “well….”
I motion to him that he need say no more.
“What is it you do, JC?”
“Art. But I’ve been doing a lot of debugging recently.”
“Do you program too?”
“Um, no.”
“Oh, it’s just that I see you typing often.”
“Ah, yes, those are the circular emails I send when I update assets,” I say, and think: and my Google chats and emails and forum trawling and blog post writing…
“Are you enjoying it?” he asks.
“Strange weather we’ve been having of late, don’t you think?”

* * *

My GTA-loving colleague tells me “I bought GTA 4 for PS3.”
“Really,” I reply, “isn’t it difficult? The English I mean? You should have waited. Capcom said they’d release the Japanese version this year.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to play it. And besides, I don’t want some censored version. Also, a lot of the story can be found translated on-line.”
“But still,” I say, “you’re missing out on some choice dialogues, man. There is a lot of subtle humour in little throwaway lines.”
“Yeah, well….”
“I quite like the game. Maybe not as much as Vice City, though. I’m glad they added the mission restart option.”
“The what?”

* * *

Another recently acquired colleague turns to me.
“Where is it you’re from, again? France?”
“You should be very careful accusing an Englishman of being French!” I reply.
“Oh, haha. How old are you?”
I loathe this question so I usually tell them to guess. He guesses several years in excess. I tell him my age.
“Oh, really! Me too!” he says.
“You are? I would have guessed you were much younger than that!”
“Haha, thanks!” he says.
“Yeah, and thanks a lot for guessing my age so high,” I reply, hurt.
“I always find it impossible to guess the age of Japanese people,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that can be a problem. Your wife is Japanese, though, right?”
“Yeah.”
I still don’t quite know what he meant by that.

Time to evolve!

Games have been around for a while now, you don't need me to tell you that. However, we still see some artifacts of yesteryear in current-gen games that often leave me wondering if they're there just because, well, they've always been there. Can't we have a clean sweep and get rid of some of the old gaming staples? And yes, I said "yesteryear", even though I hate that word.

Title Screens
Obviously every game needs a title, but a title screen where I have to "press start" to continue? What is this, a mid 1980s arcade? Sometimes it isn't even start but any button press, but worse still, sometimes it is required to stretch out your hand and reach for that badly placed start button just to get to the menu. Often the title screen is a disguised loading screen, which is fine, but I am then still asked to press "start" to continue when loading is done. When am I ever likely to think "nah, I think I'll just look at the title for a tad longer"? It's double-wrapping nobody needs anymore. Why can't your main menu and the title screen be combined? Sure, it isn't a big issue, but it is a stupid one.

Continue? 9...8...7...6...
Yes, please. Why ask? Why give me a set of lives...and then another few sets of lives? Why not give me all those lives at once? Or better still, allow me to choose how many lives I want to take with me when I start, if that is the kind of game you're making. The idea of a "continue" screen made a lot of sense in the arcades, where the player needed time to rifle through his pockets for another 100 Yen coin, but on a home console? What's the use in that?

Attract Modes
Worse even than the title screen is the game that after a period of inactivity jumps to an "attract mode". In the old arcades this usually happened to be a demo of the game in action so a passerby would be "attracted" and lured to the machine. These days the same could be said for demos in kiosks and stores but in the final home product? Granted, they are quite rare these days but you still occasionally come across them. Usually they end up being some kind of edited collage, quite separate from the actual game's introductory sequence, but just something you might see as a commercial for the game. And it serves no purpose whatsoever. Considering the impatience with which I rap on the ”start” button at the sight of any title screen it is unlikely in the extreme I'll be sitting there staring at it for a few minutes for any attract mode to kick in.

Manuals
Are these really necessary these days? I can hardly remember the last one I actually read. Usually, after a brief battle with the plastic wrapping I insert the disc and while the game boots up I cast a glance over the manual, flipping the pages for a few seconds, before putting it back in the box. In the "old days" when space was at a premium and graphics were blocky, a manual could help you understand the gameplay mechanics and illustrate the enemies and protagonists a little better than 4 by 4 pixels could. Part of my addiction to the early Ultima games came from the excellent manuals and bestiary which really helped make the on-screen blobs seem like real characters and monsters in my mind's eye. These days, with the multi-buttoned controllers, a tutorial stage is pretty much the standard, which leaves the manual for...what, exactly? Manuals only serve to give the game case a pleasingly expensive weight, fooling you into thinking you're getting your money's worth.

Paradoxically, for an industry so dynamic, some things take a long time to change. The issues above are mostly left-overs from a time they were actually needed; they have since been accepted into the general game design lexicon, for no other reason than the fact we're used to them. Occasionally one daring developer will try something different, but it's usually not enough to break the clichés. And to be fair, none of the above is really crippling in any way, but it sometimes just strikes me how much of a game is simply there because we expect it to be there, rather than it being truly necessary anymore.

Call to Arms 2008

Steve Gaynor of the Daruma-headed Fullbright blog recently spammed me about his "Call to Arms 2008", a community game design challenge to eke out the creative in all of us and hopefully come up with some novel game ideas. Though I usually shy away from giving away game ideas to the public for gratis, the first thoughts that came up when pondering this challenge were obviously not commercially viable, so I will hereby give away my intellectual property to any idiot who wishes to make it into a product. May God have mercy on your soul.

The basic idea behind the challenge is to find new ways of expressing conflict, or to find new game design ideas to express this. "Tradition vs. Progress" was an obvious hook for me, living in Japan, as was "Indulgence vs. Prudence", as a tobacco, caffeine and alcohol abuser, something quite close to my heart. Of the proposed emotions, again, a few seem tailored to my situation. As the Brit the "anxiety of uncertainty" struck home with me, as did the obvious "alienation of being in a foreign land".

But after some soul searching I have decided to think of a new game idea revolving the most ancient of conflicts, "life vs. death" in an environment which is close to my heart, my life. The emotion I want to convey is the "will to live", or loss thereof. I considered calling the "the Fall and Rise of JC", but such arrogance is off-putting and, considering the basic mechanics of the game I propose, a more appropriate title would be

FAMILY COMMUTE

Using the Wii balance board as a control mechanism the player must, simply, survive a commute on Tokyo's busy rail system. There will be a set of difficulty levels of increasing commute length, all played out in real time, from the "easy mode", a roughly 10 minute ride, right down to "salaryman mode", a full hour and a half of commuter Hell.
The player stands on the Wii Balance Board and must keep his balance in the face of the train's swaying and the crowd of other commuters who will try their best to pick fights with you or shove you around simply for being foreign. Special boss characters will be "broadsheet guy", the idiot who will try to read a newspaper, and "roidrage", the racist knuckledragger who will shout at you to die or go back to "your country".
On-screen a delicate balance must be held by shifting your body weight to match instructions. Sudden jolts from the train's movement or idiots will give you a very brief chance to correct your pose before you fall over and are penalised. Holding the Wiimote and nunchuck you can control your on-screen commuter's hands to slap away newspapers, though if a woman happens to be standing in front of you, the player must adjust his pose so his hands are at all times visible for fear of being accused a groper, "chikan!", at which point you'll be arrested and the game will end. Push-fights take the form of a series of balance challenges and hand motions wherein the player must fight for space with another commuter who won't grant you the room to breathe in favour of his own comfort.

Along the top of the screen is a "health bar", titled "the will to live", which constantly, slowly, depletes. The only way to top up this bar is to unbalance aggressive fellow commuters or to find a spot next to an attractive female (boy, for the female players, who can only ever play on "extreme difficulty" and must use the nunchuck to constantly elbow perverts in the groin). Once the bar is completely depleted, the player's avatar will exit the train and jump in front of it.

Special periodic challenges include covering your face when old men cough and sneeze all over you and jostling for a seat when the previous occupant disembarks. If successful the commute time will be depleted by several minutes of comfort.

If enough commercial interest can be found, a special peripheral could be created; a velcro band to be tied around your chest which, much like a blood pressure meter, would slowly fill up with air to restrict your lung capacity and, literally, crush you to death.

Successful completion of a level will unlock the "bonus mode", which is the return commute on the same ride, but with a machete, controlled by the Wiimote, and a taser, controlled with the nunchuck.

The game will not only teach you vital survival skills, but strengthen up your calves and resolve but mostly, it’s an exhausting, depressing experience, constantly jostling, readjusting your balance and gradually losing all hope in humanity and any will to live. Playing the game is living the game and if you don’t want to kill yourself after playing it, you haven’t played it correctly. The bonus mode is pure, classic fantasy fulfillment gaming at its best.

Fun for all the family!

Available on WiiWare, Q1 of HellFreezingOver. Price: TBA

Bar to Entry

If you listen, which I cannot much advise, to game related podcasts or read your average gaming website or blog, you’ll find a lot of talk about “casual” versus “hardcore”, as if amongst the googolplex games released every year there is a quantifiable number of more “deserving” games. This whole attitude stinks of snobbery, but what is often overlooked is the rather heartening fact that more and more people are looking at gaming as a hobby or time sink. Personally, I don’t think it was so much the social stigma of geekery that stopped so many “normal people” from playing games so much as the increasingly disastrously designed control inputs, which is exactly why the DS and moreso the Wii has been instrumental in bringing new players to the medium and why the PC has been doing so for a while now.

In the old days, controls were simple but as the games grew in complexity extra buttons and triggers were slapped onto it to the point where usability and mapping were slaves to the accepted standard. Most controllers look fairly similar now, with dual joypads, a whole host of buttons, your start and select keys, et cetera and et cetera, and, to be frank, it is ridiculous. Even I, having played games for a fair number of years now, still have trouble with my PS3 or Xbox360 controller, am unable to remember all the combinations for whichever situation, or get confused about which direction to push the right stick to control the camera which way, and even end up crouching/hooting/whatever in the heat of the excitement by accidentally pushing down on a joystick. Show any such controller to a layperson or explain what is required and I’m not surprised so many of them think “sod this for a game of larks”.

If you read Donald Norman’s excellent book “The Design of Everyday Things”, which comes highly recommended, you’ll learn about mapping and how many objects in our lives seem to muck this up, from how four gas pips on a cooker are laid out in a square but their buttons in a row to how mopeds and motorcycles arbitrarily use twisting a handle forward or backward equates to left and right indicators or braking. Your average game controller has similar problems. How does pressing down on a joystick equal honking your car horn? Why is the SQUARE button reload in one game and jump in another? Why is the left trigger the fire button, but the little button above it a zoom button? Why is up on the controller forward in the game, but up on the right joystick is up for the camera, or down if you’re one of those inverted axis weirdos? Why do we even need a start and select button? It is outrageously arbitrary and totally counter intuitive.

What makes things worse is that none of these inputs are standardized either. Each game requires its own learning curve just for controlling it, let alone playing it. Some games don’t even allow you to customize the controls to suit your personal “standard”. On top of that there are slight variations per region too, most famously the CIRCLE button meaning OK in Japan, but the X button taking over that task everywhere else. Then the naming of the buttons is obtuse too. Why A and B, followed by X and Y? Why are the buttons underneath the joysticks L3 and R3, and why did it take me months to realize these were buttons in the first place? To muddy the waters even more are the game designers themselves who often like to add feature upon feature, clouding the control scheme with badly thought out button actions or totally unimportant ones.

The simplicity of the Wii’s control inputs are a true breath of fresh air. You want to select something? Just point at it and click the friendly round button. Reviewers like to snort with derision at what they call “waggle controls”, seemingly pointless waggling of the Wiimote to perform an action. But I ask you, would it have been better if the action was tied to an arbitrary button? The DS makes things even simpler, with just tapping the required area for your input. It’s so simple, anyone can understand it. Which brings me to the PC, which seems to be the King of casual gaming. And why? Because a lot of games require only a mouse and a single mouse button. Most people know how to use a PC, which means most know how to control a mouse. And with a single button to control a game, you can ignore the learning process and jump directly into the challenge the game itself offers.

Which is exactly why it annoys me that somehow, along the line, developers and publishers have started equating “casual” with “bright, friendly” or “shitty simple”. You do not have to make main characters pink with huge eyes, involve horses or kittens or make boring mini-game collections to make a casual game. Just make it easy to play. As films, books and television show a wide range of popular styles and stories, so, I would hazard a guess, do games. There are a lot of “casual” gamers out there who would like a zombie survival horror game or a gritty World War 2 shooting game, but would not be able to learn or enjoy the 150 button combinations needed to control it. This doesn’t mean those games would have to be made so simple a 5 year old could play them, but it would mean having a good hard think about how these players control the game, adding more contextually automatic actions and using a controller that doesn’t look like a robot with acne.

Just like last year’s cliché warcry of “we need more women playing our games” gave us a slew of pink-coloured horse-riding simulators and fashion Barbie titles, so the current paradigm of “casual” seems to be bringing us overly simplistic gameplay and cutesy graphics. I’d say if we focus on accessibility more than anything else we will have won half the battle. And the Wii seems the idea for this, but it may not necessarily be the only option.

I don’t want it to be nostalgia

I’ve seen genres come and go, which is only natural in a young, dynamic and constantly growing industry. The most egregious casualty was the point and click adventure game, a genre I was addicted to as a young lad but which until recently was not so much dead as coughing up blood and ignored in the gutter. It always annoyed me when pundits and journalists went on a rant about how game storytelling needed to be more betterer, yet everybody seemed to have forgotten that we’ve had magnificently scripted games for a long time. Luckily this particular genre seems to have made a bit of a comeback, surged back from the pits of amateur freeware, where, to be frank, some hobbyists made some excellent adventures, to the mainstream, more or less, with titles like Sam & Max, hurray!

But there is one beleaguered genre I, personally, am aching to play again: the 2D platformer. Now obviously the genre is still around, specifically on the handheld consoles where more often than not they are licensed IP shovelware, and occasionally in the realms of homebrew. But ever since home consoles have become powerful enough to carry amazing, visually eye-popping platformers, nobody has really been making them anymore.

Xbox Live Arcade has had a few attempts, mostly in the lower end of the quality bell-curve, and a few more are on the horizon, like the much anticipated, by me, remake of Bionic Commando which by all accounts looks to be much better than the actual new title in the series. But that’s about it.

The death of this genre can be pinpointed to the time where consoles went all 3D on us and platform holders made it an unspoken requirement that all titles make the best use of their hardware, i.e. being in 3D. Of course the much lauded Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a last hurrah for the genre, but since then, not a sausage. More optimistic readers may point to the better 3D platformers, like Mario 64, of course, the Banjo Kazooies and whatnot, but if I’m brutally honest, these never really grabbed me. Half of the game was always battling the camera and learning new controls, whereas the simplicity of the mapping of the 2D platformers always meant they were easy to play and difficult to master rather than the reverse which seems to be true with most 3D games.

On top of that, 3D graphics age badly. Check out any Playstation 1 game and see how horrific the textures, how limited the polycount. Yet open up one of the later Super Nintendo games and bask in the glory of their beautiful 2D graphics, even today. Though today’s better 3D titles are indeed gorgeous, I am the first to admit, I have no doubt this time next year there will be several titles that look even better and come the next generation we’ll look back on Uncharted and laugh at the quaintness of its visuals. And now I have a big telly and some powerful consoles, I want to sit on my sofa and play 2D games!

What I’m selfishly aiming at is for people like Konami to just damn well bite the bullet and give us another home 2D Castlevania. With 3D graphics, possibly, and classic 2D gameplay how could this do anything but rock hard? Better yet, give the current masters of gorgeous 2D visuals, Vanillaware, makers of Odin Sphere, free use of the Castlevania IP and you’ll have a title on your hands that will sell forever and ever. Or Nintendo should put a full-stop after this recent and excellent Metroid Prime series and make another 2D adventure for Samus to plough through. Make it WiiWare if you must, I’ll buy it!

In the commercial sphere Sam & Max have proven there is life in an old genre yet. Who will do the same for the 2D platformer?

Go to touristing: Parasitological Museum

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts, but this one is worth a visit. When taking someone out on a date in, say, Meguro, a nice area full of restaurants and bars, afterwards why not take her to see a museum devoted to the many horrific things the tiniest of creatures can visit upon the human body at the Meguro Parasitological Museum, the world’s only, as the website claims.

Hidden away in an unassuming apartment building, and thus easy to miss unless you’re looking for it, the museum claims, via the website, “try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear” and then goes on to show you all manner of horrific and disgusting photographs, schematics and overgrown parasites in formaldehyde, which is enough to make even the most manly of men shudder. But despite the horror show it is indeed fascinating, and as the world’s only, apparently, worth visiting just to be able to say you’ve been there.

The museum isn’t that huge, so you could see most things within an hour, probably, and spend some time at the small museum shop, where you can purchase books and cute parasite-themed key chains and T-shirts. And due to the nature of the exhibits, you can end the day with yet another dinner date, as it’s extremely likely you’ll be tempted to void your bowels from either end, though whether you will still have an appetite is debatable.

Location: Meguro is centrally located along the JR Yamanote line, a short ride from Shibuya and Shinjuku. The museum is a short, straight walk from the station.
Website: here (in English)
Map: here