I was looking for a persistent browser-based game (PBBG) I could play for a few minutes per day, something involved but that wouldn’t require much in the way of a time commitment.
The week before I was talking to some coworkers at the Day Job about World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. I was talking about the movie, and we got to discussing zombies in games.
I remembered a game I had looked into some time ago called Urban Dead. It’s a text-based zombie MMO. You can choose between being a survivor or a zombie, and the setting is the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Every character in the game is controlled by a real player. There are NO non-player characters in the game! Thousands of people are actively playing it, and the world seems fairly expansive. The wiki seems to be as much a part of the game as anything else, and it seems that the players have really put a lot of effort into mapping out the suburbs, detailing items and weapons, and helping new players get acclimated to the game.
I chose to be a survivor, and there are various classes I could choose as well. Instead of being a soldier or a scientist or a police officer, any of which have some useful skills, I chose to be a plain ol’ Consumer. My only skill in the game at the start: when I loot a mall, I can pick the store instead of letting it be random chance.
So why be a Consumer? I thought it was more realistic. I’ll play the role of an everyday civilian who finds himself in the middle of a nightmare world in which zombies walk the earth. And it seems I’m not alone, since a large number of people also pick that class, even though the Urban Dead wiki indicates that it is a “broken” class. Essentially, I’ve just made it very hard for myself to gain experience and level up.
But I’m already having fun, even with my limited abilities. In fact, even more fun is that I’ve decided to document my adventure. I created a new blog, GBGames’ Urban Dead Blog, and it’s been enjoyable telling my character’s story from his point of view. I hope it entertains you as well.
Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid video game franchise has been a huge success, and so of course there was going to be a movie adaptation. The movie’s IMDB entry states that it will be released later this year, but test audiences have already had a chance to see the film in select cities.
David Hayter, the voice actor who plays Solid Snake in the English version of the games and whose script for the movie was rejected, said that the movie should remind viewers of the feel of the games. “MGS is a very rich world to draw from, and to pick a single story to focus on for a movie was probably a difficult process for Hideo. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it myself, but what I have seen is amazing!”
Hayter declined to comment on his role in the film, although Internet message boards are populated with fans who speculate that he will at least have a cameo.
Some fans were disappointed by the movie’s extensive use of interaction.
“I thought the movie was full of action, and I loved it and all, but I was a bit turned off by all the game-y parts”, says one test audience member. “Sometimes you just want to sit down and watch a movie, you know? I don’t want to have to press buttons for 20 minutes just to see one minute of movie followed by another 20 minutes of button mashing. Just show me the movie!”
“Seriously, the pacing of the movie would have been much better if I didn’t have to direct Snake myself so often,” agreed another member. “The point of movies is to let me watch it. I didn’t pay $10 to sit in a theater and play a video game.”
Still, even with all of the complaints, many more people seemed to love it. One fan said, “Dude, my friends and I loved this movie! It was all action-packed, you know? And it felt like you were there, you know? Like you were involved!”
The Metal Gear Solid film will be available for wide release in the summer of 2009.
While many of you read the blog, you may be unaware of my main site at www.GBGames.com. If you go there now, you’ll see a new link to my recently released Walls!
It’s a very simple yet fun game that lets you practice your mouse-fu! To play, move the mouse cursor towards the goal while avoiding the increasing and expanding walls.
The game is available for Windows and GNU/Linux. I don’t have a Mac, but the source is available and highly portable, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble to get it running on OS X if someone would be willing to try.
It’s good to see Jason Rohrer’s name among the finalists, and it is appropriate that his entry is nominated for the Innovation Award. Rohrer was the developer of Gravitation, an artistic game.
But there are other innovative games in the running, and it looks like another great year for indies in general. Good luck to all the finalists!
Young talks about how the game industry evolved without leaving a way for new gamers to easily join in the fun. While there is no inherent problem with having complex games, the learning curve got very steep for new people. If you’ve been playing games forever, you’re used to punitive game mechanics and adapted to difficult control schemes. If you haven’t, then an Xbox 360 controller might as well be the controls of a 747.
Young claims that the latest Prince of Persia (which I haven’t played) is exactly what new gamers need: a game that’s forgiving. Corvus Elrod wrote about the forgiving nature of casual games, and since I believe that any game can be made casual by making it more accessible, it seems we’re all in agreement.
But Young asks a question: does making a game more punitive make victory more fun? That is, if a game is too forgiving, does it detract from the fun? Could Prince of Persia have been more fun if it forced you to replay entire levels whenever you failed, the way most games do? Is there more satisfaction gained from success because you know you avoided punishment?
I’ve been playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike a lot recently. Completing missions has been pretty easy, in the sense that I rarely failed to do so. I was still having fun, but part of me wondered if I was going to get bored before I finished the game. Then I came across a mission that was fought on two fronts, and not only did you have to defeat all of the enemy’s forces, but now you had to do so in 18 game days. I played that mission multiple times, trying different strategies, until I finally won, and barely. There was something much more satisfying about overcoming a tough challenge in this mission than in bumbling through the previous missions.
I suppose part of the satisfaction came from a sense of improvement. In the previous missions, I might have thought I was doing poorly, but then I somehow pulled off a victory. When I lost a mission, however, I had to replay it, and I could see how playing differently changed the outcome. I learned what did and didn’t work, and learning is fun. In this sense, the fact that failure required replaying a mission seems to have enhanced the feeling of fun when I succeeded.
On the other hand, what if Dual Strike forced me to replay the entire game after losing a mission? It would be analogous to games like Super Mario Bros, in which you had a limited number of lives or continues. I know I tolerated such games when I had plenty of time to play (and replay!), but did I have more fun with those games than I did with games that had unlimited continues? It’s definitely not fun to come so close to completing a game only to have the final boss defeat me, losing all progress, and requiring a restart. Still, does knowing that such a punishment awaits me make victory all the more sweet?
Intuitively, I want to argue that it shouldn’t. I can point to plenty of casual games that are enjoyable and fun, games in which the most a failure can do is set you back a few minutes of your time. At the same time, however, there is only so much Tetris and Bejeweled I can stand before I find myself wanting something more involving. Maybe there is something to this idea that punitive game play is more fun?
I have Etrian Odyssey 2, a Nintendo DS game in the same category as Wizardry. It’s hardcore and incredibly hard, and I find it immensely satisfying. No, it is not a game to recommend for beginners and newbies, and it’s not meant to be. If your party is killed while exploring the maze, you revert back to your last save. If you didn’t manually save often enough, you’ll find yourself repeating entire segments of the game. Prince of Persia would simply put you right back where you failed so you could immediately try again, but does it lose anything in the process? Is Prince of Persia simply Grimm Fandango, an enjoyable story interspersed with puzzles that you just want to get through to get to the next part of the story?
If failure didn’t result in negative consequences, or if the negative consequences aren’t horrible, then there isn’t much incentive for the player to avoid failure. Why learn how to play better when I can just fumble my way through to victory? I feel that a game without negative consequences for failures on the player’s part is going to be pretty mindless or tedious. I’ve only seen game play videos of Prince of Persia, but it looks to me like the Annoying Jumping Puzzle simply got more elaborate with faster iterations between attempts. Am I wrong?
I think Young is right, though. The video game industry needs forgiving games to introduce itself to new gamers. I wonder if such games will be stepping stones to more complex games, or if they will be seen as valuable and fun on their own. Will there always be a barrier between rich, involving games and casual game players? Do the players need to be slowly introduced to the games, or do the games need to reach out to the players?
Wolfire, indie creators of dynamic and bloody fighting game Lugaru (which involves ninja rabbits and wolves), have announced weekly alphas of the sequel called Overgrowth.
To help celebrate and generate awareness for Overgrowth, they are giving away free copies of Lugaru.
All you have to do to have your free copy emailed to you on Christmas Eve is join this Facebook event and join the Overgrowth Facebook Page. Don’t open it until Christmas Day! Make sure you’re a fan of the Overgrowth Facebook Page, and be sure to invite your friends to this event!
If you’re not familiar with Lugaru, here’s a video created to explain the giveaway and show some footage:
Lugaru is available for Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux. Overgrowth will also be cross-platform. I enjoyed playing through the first game. It reminded me of a much faster paced One Must Fall: Battlegrounds, and I enjoyed the dynamic fighting system. There’s something satisfying about sweeping your opponent’s leg and then kicking them before they can land, especially when you can kick them into another opponent or two. I think my personal favorite move is the knife throw, especially when it stops your opponent from running off to tell the others that you’re around. As for Overgrowth, I hope to get a chance to look at the alpha releases soon.
In the meantime, if you’re as interested in behind-the-scenes game development as I am, then you’ll find the Wolfire Blog fascinating. The developers have been working on improving the graphic capabilities of the sequel’s engine, and I imagine the tool support for modders is going to be top-notch.
A few days ago I attended Chicago for Child’s Play, sponsored by Dawdle.com and Midway Games. If you’re not familiar with Child’s Play, it describes itself as a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in their network of over 40 hospitals worldwide.
There was an MK vs DC tournament, and if you were eliminated, you could buy back in for a donation amount that doubled each round. It started with only 18 people and doubled in size before Round 1 finished. Considering I haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game in years, I think I put in a respectable showing as Batman, even though I was eliminated three different times and only won once. The ultimate winner of the tournament received a PSP.
Besides the tournament, there was an auction for games. I won three DS games, and there were more than a number of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles that went home with some healthy bidders. The mantra that night was “For the kids!”
Game-loving Chicagoans had fun and raised money for a good cause. For the kids, FTW!
Last night I got back from over a week-long vacation. I visited friends in Des Moines, and it was very relaxing, aside from hurting my back and seeing the chiropractor four times. I walked around downtown Des Moines, visited the historic Capitol Building, went to a dueling pianos show, watched a couple of movies, danced at a nightclub, and otherwise had a great time.
Oh, and I learned how to play checkers.
I was in the library and passed the game section. There was a book on playing checkers. I thought, “Ok, I haven’t played that game since I was a kid, and I think I heard someone saying that it is as cerebral as chess. Let’s see why.” Did you know that the official rules of checkers REQUIRES you to jump your opponent’s piece if you can do so? I didn’t know this rule, and when I asked, it seems that most of my friends didn’t either! This one simple rule suddenly makes this otherwise child-friendly game really, really complicated.
Besides trying to figure out ways to make simple games more strategic by forcing moves the way checkers does, I spent a good amount of time figuring out my next move in life. I read a couple of books and articles on life purpose and business and wrote a bunch of notes. I took advantage of my time away from work obligations to think about what I want out of my life. I’ll have more to write about my decisions later, but suffice it to say that I don’t want life to force my hand because it might put me in a suboptimal situation.
It’s my move.
[tags] checkers, life purpose, business, game development [/tags]
It’s Halloween, and that means things that go bump in the night and candy and scary costumes. Or these days, sexy costumes. No complaints, though. B-)
Anyway, what’s your favorite scary video game?
I have to include Alien vs Predator 2 at the top of my list. The first few marine levels were really tense, and there were no enemies! It was just like being in one of the movies.
Resident Evil 4 was pretty scary as well, but I seem to have misplaced the first disc so I can’t play it.
And who can forget playing Eternal Darkness? Insanity is creepy!
ZombieGames.net has a collection of quality indie horror games. I enjoyed playing The Last Stand 2 and a few of the Boxhead series of games. The latest one is Boxhead Halloween, in which you need to save civilians from the zombies.
[tags] halloween, scary video games, indie [/tags]
Gregg Seelhoff announced that he attended Meaningful Play 2008, an academic conference ” that explores the potential of games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways”, and he posted his notes.
Day 1: Want some good data on casual gamers and Flash game business models?
Day 2: Want some good data on 60+ year-old gamers as well as serious games?
Day 3: The wrap up, with some information about a panel on board games.
I’ve been thinking about the kind of games I wanted to make, and rather than create short-term sales product that will be thrown away within a week, I’d like to make games that matter. Games that stick around long after you’ve played them, like a good book or a good movie. I really liked the idea of an entire conference dedicated to meaningful play, and I hope I can attend the next one. There were some good nuggets of information that Gregg managed to report, such as who plays games at Pogo.com and for how long, but I especially liked reading the following on what kinds of serious games received good reviews:
An acceptable game (threshold 1) succeeded in the areas of technical capacity and game design. A good game (threshold 2) passed threshold 1 and, additionally, succeeded with aesthetics, visual and acoustic. For a game to be great (threshold 3), it had to pass both previous thresholds and also succeed in the final two areas of social experience and storyline (“narrativity and character development” is too long). Few games reached the final threshold.
Look at that! A prioritized list of what makes up a good game!
It’s unfortunate when you can’t play games because they are made for specific platforms, especially when there is always this emphasis on the ubiquity of Flash. Many of the games Gregg links to were Windows-specific, and they wouldn’t run in Wine. When so many of these games aren’t even meant to be commercially viable, is it still a valid argument that providing a port to other platforms such as Mac and Gnu/Linux would be pointless since having access to a few hundred thousand more players wouldn’t be worth it?
I would have liked to know more about Ian Bogost’s keynote, but Gregg provided some good notes for most of the rest of the conference. I have more than a few PDFs to download and read through.
[tags] meaningful play, game design, game development, serious games, casual games, conference [/tags]
