New Games Journalism and Old Games Journalism

Few weeks back, in fact it must have been two weeks ago before Eddie left for some reason, we did a bit about new games journalism which was very enjoyable. During the lecture he made us read an article called “Bow Nigger” which was written by Ian Shanahan and it was about his experience in a Star Wars MMORPG.

The article was a very good example of new games journalism and gave me a better idea of what the whole new games journalism thing was about. Before, I had no idea that there even existed “new games journalism”, I just bunched all journalism together rather than trying to distinguish them from one and another, and I was quite happy with that to be honest. But it’s still an interesting read this new games journalism thing.

New Games Journalism is all about talking about a game, but not talking about the game but rather talking about the writers experience in the game, his feelings in the game and his thoughts of the game itself; is what I basically got from “Bow Nigger” about new games journalism. The writer uses his experience in a game to provoke contrasting opinions about games and subjects in games using NGJ, and tries to do it in a very novel like way, in other words; using a lot of words.

But still, these NGJ writers write some interesting things to be fair, if you just want to read it as a story and forget that it’s actually a piece of journalism then it’s probably better that way, otherwise then you’ll just confuse yourself into thinking too much about nothing. This is why some people of OGJ(old games journalism) have a problem with NGJ writers, the fact that they are just writing a story about what happened to them in a game  and not writing about the actual game and their opinions of it, like what the readers would probably be looking for in an article about games.

Old games journalism articles, on the other hand talk a lot more about the actual game and it’s technical aspects, mechanics and other things and they almost exclude the personal feelings of the writer.

OGJ is all about describing the game, noting the goods and the bad of the game as well as explaining why you would want to buy the game for yourself or someone else of Christmas, or at least that’s the idea I got from reading the article “Project: Snowblind” which was posted up on IGN in 2005 and is essentially a review of the game that the writer is talking about. “Project: Snowblind” is a fantastic example of OGJ because of its review like format which excludes the writer completely and instead talks about exactly why the game is a good or a bad game plus without all that useless thought provoking walls of text which you would find in a NGJ article. While the writer is excluded and it’s less like a story it’s a lot more informative than NGJ which makes OGJ a much better format for reviews and such things, or at least that’s the feeling that I got from reading this article.

Then later I went off to read another OGJ article just to see that this wasn’t my imagination, or if it wasn’t just the same for one article and it was just that particular writers style of writing that seemed to contrast well with NGJ (or I did it because Eddie said we should talk about two OGJ articles and two NGJ articles).

“World of Warcraft Review” was the second OGJ article that I read and it can be found on the Gamespot website. This, like the other OGJ article that I read dwelled into a lot of detail about the game itself, rather than the writers experiences in the game, the feelings that the writer had while playing the game and the feelings he or she had when interacting with other people in the game.

This article was a very lengthy behemoth of a review, it goes into a lot more detail about the game as opposed to the Snowblind article I read before, it might be because of the difference in genre between the two and in WoW there might be just a lot more things to do while in Snowblind there may be fewer things to do. But in any case, both these articles are similar in the sense that they are both just as informative as each other. They talk about the good and the bad of the game and are in a very review-ish format which excludes the writer from the article, that is unless you count the score that the writer gave the game out of ten

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At this point I read two OGJ articles and one NGJ article and realised that I needed to create a slightly better contrast for myself to stop my biased nature from coming through and me ending up saying “Old Games Journalism is better because I read more articles”.

I went off to read the other article by Ian Shanahan called “Possessing Barbie” and in this article Ian Shanahan shares his feelings about an encounter he had with a player in a game he was playing and about how feelings in real life can carry through to feelings in the game for some people such as himself.

Ian Shanahan is presented with the moral issue of marvelling at a scantily clad female avatar which had appeared to be coming on to him and not feeling guilty in the process. But he was feeling guilty and this had raised many questions in his head about the morality of the situation and about how it’s just a game and he shouldn’t be feeling flustered as he was feeling.

This is a good example of NGJ as it talks about how the writer was feeling in the game and it showed his thoughts of what had been happening to him in that situation, his thoughts and it provoked the some thoughts in the reader. It certainly made me think a little bit, after he explained how his experience made him feel I thought something along the lines of “I’d hide my screen if a collection of pixels in the form of a human was assuming a sexier form” but then I thought “But I’d also do that if I was watching some un-tasteful cinema.” It’s not because I’d be applying what I was feeling in a game to real life, but rather because it’d be embarrassing as watching some girl in a video get undressed.

But I guess Ian was trying to emphasise the fact that it was a real person behind the other side of the screen controlling a virtual character who was undressing before him, and he was able to feel guilt because he had a girlfriend and he felt as if he was cheating on her or something. I can’t feel this because I have a lack of girlfriend and social life.

Moving on, the other bit of NGJ I read was “Zangband – Confessions of a Dungeon Hack” written by Kieron Gillen, and out of the two Ian Shanahan articles I read and this one, I’d have to say that I enjoyed reading this one the most.

Kieron begins by describing the stupid death of a character he had made on a game called ZangbandTK and the follows on by describing the stupid deaths of several of his other characters and how the game itself was incredibly hard and required a lot of wit to complete.

This piece of NGJ, I find, better because it sort of includes some OGJ aspects, he goes into some details when describing the game and talks a bit about the games past, when he isn’t talking about his characters (these bits are italicised). However he doesn’t go into as much detail about the games mechanics as an OGJ article might, but instead he talks a lot about the items you can find in the game, a couple of the enemies  and the goal you have in the game.

If I had to choose between OGJ and NGJ I’d be stuck thinking forever, to be honest. If it was up to me to choose and do one of these types of articles then I’d choose to do a NGJ. I prefer a creative type of writing rather than descriptive like OGJ, NGJ is like reading a story while OGJ is like reading an actual article on a game, and some of those I find pretty boring.

OGJ articles

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/review.html - World of Warcraft Review

http://uk.xbox.ign.com/articles/589/589077p1.html - Project: Snowblind

NGJ articles

http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/possessingbarbie.html - Possessing Barbie

http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackout/zangband.html - ZangbandTK - Confessions of a Dungeon Hack

Tetris; a "Formally Written" review.

I've finally done up a small review of Tetris for my blog, read on, enjoy(maybe) and my references will be at the bottom of the page as soon as I figure out how to put the weekly readings into Zotero so I don't have to type them all out. It's a lengthy thing, scratching the 1500 word limit so grab a cup of tea and read on.

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I’m going to review Tetris, which was developed by a Russian lad named Alexey Pajitov and released on virtually every platform possible, and is known best for its 1989 Game Boy variation. However the game was first made and released in the USSR in 1984 before it came to the states and the rest of the world.

First; Tetris is a very simple game where blocks fall down from the sky in no specific pattern and you are left to the whim of the almighty Tetris God as he decides whether or not you’re worthy of scoring points, losing or not. It’s an epic struggle in other words. You’re supposed to utilise these “Tetrominoes” to create a row at the bottom of the screen, and if you’re successful then the row will vanish and you’ll be rewarded with points. It’s possible to use this strategically and maybe create imperfect rows and then eliminate them all at once for a combo to score some massive points. To do this you have seven different tetrominoes, a 2x2 square, an L shape and an upside-down L shape, a squiggly line and a reversed squiggly both resembling an S and a Z, a T shape and a four square line piece (which is infamous for falling when you don’t need it). You are playing the almighty tetromino manipulator and as such you are given the ability to rotate the tetrominoes into any position which is beneficial to you or the opposite if you make a mistake or miscalculation.

As you complete rows and score points while listening to a jolly and easily recognisable USSR tune, you move forward in terms of difficulty levels but this transition between levels doesn’t break the flow of the game up, instead it’s not really noticeable until it’s already happened. When a player is on a higher level, then the Tetris blocks fall down faster and faster still on higher levels, this creates a panicky atmosphere where the player often loses control of his tetrominoes and ends up placing them incorrectly.

As you can see from my little summary (if you don’t see it then I’m doing it wrong), this game utilises elements of chance as well as a form of struggle.

I’ve previously mentioned how the blocks fall from the air above in a completely random order, this is where the chance element comes in to the game. No one knows what block will come down, all you know is that it’s not going to be a line piece and that you have to plan ahead for any circumstances. The player must be prepared for anything that falls down from the sky, in his rows he must leave openings for any situation.

But because of this chance element in the game, the game becomes significantly more lasting. It is because every time you play the game, you’ll never run into the same combination of blocks falling down from the sky at once. Of course, a squiggly might be followed by a square tetromino every now and then, however in all the blocks are completely random, so your strategy for placing blocks must change every time. This makes the game more engaging and active; the player is forced to think quickly as the blocks begin to fall down faster than the speed of sound and pressure the player into making snap decisions a lot of the time. However as I said before, you’ll be expecting to see a lot of line pieces when you don’t want them, however this is nothing more than a myth amongst Tetris players.

Struggle in Tetris is presented to the players in the form of spacial segmentation. As the player advances through the game, he advances through the levels of the game and in higher levels the blocks fall faster, which presents a struggle for the player to respond to these fast falling tetrominoes.

Other than that the other part of the struggle lies in the strategic placing of the tetrominoes, or rather it’s not the placing but however it’s because of the element of chance in this game, which presents the struggle. It’s the struggle of not knowing what to expect from the next two few tetrominoes, which adds pressure for the player to adapt through his struggle and create faster reflexes for himself so he can survive the Tetris-apocalypse.

To overcome the struggle, perceivable consequences could be used to create tactics against the random elements of the game. For example; I mentioned a tactic previously that some players might use. A player might build rows without closing in a row of gaps until a line piece comes along to fill the large gap for the player to get a lot of points. This can score the player a large amount of points at once to help him venture into higher levels. This can, of course, be used more strategically; spaces can be left open for other shapes that you don’t expect, or spaces can be left open for shapes that appear to be more frequent. By using perceivable consequences that you gained from playing the game before you are able to develop tactics against the random nature of the game.

While there is no story in the game, there is a lot of player driven narrative, that is, the story of the players past experience in the game. “A player secured some points after eliminating a row of tetrominoes.” It’s as good as that. However to make up for the lack of actual story in the original game, players can always use their imagination. I’ve certainly been doing so all the way though this review, I find it more enjoyable to create your own story and reason for playing the game. But, of course, without a sort of story narrative in the game, you’ve no goal to accomplish. While you yourself are playing while knowing that you’re supposed to build rows of blocks and the collapse them, you don’t know why you’re doing it.

Yes, the absence of a goal in the game is certainly a downfall and definitely something that will put off a lot of players, I mean, a lot of other retro games like Jumpman had a goal. You had to climb the ladders to beat Donkey Kong and rescue your woman, simple as. In Tetris you get nothing other than “If you win you should start again” that is if there is indeed a “Win” in the original game. In it’s various other incarnations such as the NES version of Tetris, there was a “Win” state and you could see all the different Nintendo characters dancing around with what appears to be a Russian castle in the background blowing up to some cheerful music, but that was it. You didn’t even know it was there until you completed the game. Was the goal of that incarnation of Tetris to destroy a Russian palace in a very gunpowder-plotty-sort of way?

 In the end the player will create his own narrative and Goal, like myself for example; when I was a child and I played Tetris I always imagined that I was actually the worst builder ever, and my goal was to build a perfect row of bricks and then destroy them just to spite my boss. It’s this kind of sick imagination that could make the game fun without a clear goal or narrative.

However when it comes down to it, when there is no goal in the game there is no need for the players struggle because if the player struggles through the game and receives no reward, he’ll be pretty peeved at the game.

However the game does not cease to be fun, the player plays the game because he finds it mentally stimulating and engaging without adding anything extra onto it that might not be needed, like characters or villains or something that you’d find in a JRPG. To create the fun in the game, it presents Sensation, Challenge, Submission, Discovery and Fellowship to the player and as the player plays the game he will surely discover other things that make a game fun. Changing his tactics, getting advice from other players, challenging other players to a contest to see who can get the most points or get to the highest level. This is all part of the fun of Tetris, and undisputable fun it is.

When all of these elements of Tetris come together they make for a really fun game that everyone speaks highly of, and the words are not just words, however they are the collected opinions of the people of the gaming world. If everyone thinks that Tetris is a fun game, then perhaps it’s true? Well it certainly makes it popular however, if it’s a good game or not is not for one individual to decide.

Inspiration and Reference (Rant not work)

Just another rant I wrote at 11:30 PM, inspired by some of the weekly readings I've done. Prompted by reading the epilogue to 8-Bit Theatre (Which was fantastic).This might be a good read for you or maybe not, I just tend to rant a lot at around this time of night when I'm really tired.

 

Link to 8-Bit Theatre is at the bottom of the page.

 

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Being quite the fan of comics, not only comic books, I’ve read a lot of web comics. One that is still outstanding to me is one by the name of 8-bit theatre. This is a comic that uses the sprites from various 8-bit final fantasy games and follows a story line that very loosely based off of the original final fantasy. My affection towards this comic has nothing to do with the fact that it’s basically just a whacky version of Final Fantasy, well, that’s sort of it actually. But the writing of the comic itself is fantastic. The author of the comic, Brian Clevinger, is a fantastic writer. But he’s obviously not an artist which is why he decided to recycle the 8-bit Final Fantasy sprites, that and the fact that in the end his comic is all about 8-Bit sprites, hence the name. But regardless, his style of writing serves as a great inspiration for my sprite comic, and is the main inspiration for me making a sprite comic in the first place.

I first started my sprite comic back sometime during late 2009 and since then I’ve been trying to keep up with my sprite comic but lately I’ve been lacking inspiration, why? 8-bit theatre ended. As I’ve said just now, 8-bit theatre was my huge inspiration to make a sprite comic, because I’ve enjoyed 8-bit theatre so much I was determined to make a sprite comic that I will personally equally enjoy, as well as other people if they happen to stumble upon my comic. Naturally, because 8-bit theatre ended all my will to continue with my comic suddenly vanished, but not completely, of course, I still want to make the best comic ever made, or at least something I find satisfactory. But it’s kind of hard when my main source of inspiration is now dead.

I’d like to say a thing or two about Brian Clevinger and 8-bit theatre for a little bit more. The peculiar thing about Clevingers writing style is that it’s very unique and it implements a lot of anti-climactic moments that are suited more for comedy, for example; at the end of 8-bit theatre, when the Light Warriors are confronting Chaos and are at a loss as to what they should do and are discussing what to do in a vain attempt to prolong their lives, a group of never before seen characters and White Mage quickly swoop in and destroy Chaos, and then while the Light Warriors are still oblivions to what’s happening, the Dark Warriors take the credit for saving the world. There are plenty of moments such as this, some villains get tricked into losing against the dim-witted Light Warriors, and others may be the cause of their own demise. But it’s this kind of thing that made this comic so enjoyable and an inspiration for me.

While some writers try to build up a tense situation and then create an epic climax, Clevinger does the exact opposite and releases the tension by making something extraordinarily stupid happen to the characters or the villain that will in the end make the main characters triumphant. I love this, it’s so fantastically annoying and it’s something I want to create, it’s a very silly thing but it’s fantastic in the sense of how enjoyable and “Right” it makes it feel.

Trying to adapt to what you think is good is all part of my imaginary inspiration cycle, and in effect of this cycle I feel that my personal projects have a lot of different things to offer usually and thus making them interesting, personal and unique. After all, it’s not just Clevingers 8-bit Theatre that inspires me to do my sprite comic, it’s just what inspired me the most I think. And it’s that mix of different kinds of inspirations that make things unique. No one person likes the exact same things, we might have the same interests however inspiration might come differently, and with each person’s different inspirations, something unique might spawn every time someone thinks of something. But just because it’s unique it doesn’t mean that it’s good (this bit is a tease and doesn't lead in to anything).

Inspiration for writing comes almost mostly from 8-Bit Theatre, however the sprite art inspiration comes heavily from the Disgaea franchise of games developed by NI software, not just from Disgaea however, but from Pokemon, the old 8-Bit Final Fantasy games, Zelda Franchise (which I have not actually played, but I love the sprites), Dungeon Fighter Online, heck, just sprite art in general, not only sprite art from games. Although there is a direct link with my comic and my love of sprites in games, I recall buying Street Fighter Alpha 3 for my PSP just because I was sick of Street Fighter 4 and its lack of sprites.

Personal interests and influences make for a unique product; I’ve said that a paragraph ago, but I felt like re-iterating that idea to whoever may be reading this.

Inspiration is different from a reference, a reference is like a reference to anatomy; someone’s anatomy can’t be inspiration to someone! Unless they’re drawing some sort of messed up nudie picture on a big boat or whatever. But a reference is still a reference and not inspiration, I mean, they’re both similar; if you’re drawing from a reference then you’re not necessarily drawing the reference picture in question, but you’re drawing something based off it (like the sports wheel for the design methods module I'm doing at Uni). It’s sort of similar with inspiration; however with a reference the end product will be a lot less unique, with inspiration it will be a lot more personal and unique.

It’s like a class of students all writing about e-commerce and they’re all using Wikipedia for reference. It’ll be the same thing basically just with different skins, however if they were made to find some inspiration for writing about e-commerce, then they would each come up with something different, personal and interesting to read.

In our group project we throw around the word “Inspiration” a lot, and as an artist I am being told what my inspiration is; and I don’t particularly like it. I understand that the group means “reference” and this isn’t a formal complaint because it’s just me, but I don’t like being told what is inspiring me to draw for the game. I know what is inspiring me and influencing my drawing style for the game, and likewise I know what my references are. My references are there for me to go to so I can find out what my drawings should look like to be more friendly to KS1 children (and are constantly found for me as well, I have a fantastic team. Just saying.), and my inspiration and influence already comes from my years of experience of reading comic books, web-comics, watching obscure Japanese anime cartoons, watching American cartoons and all that.

But I take criticism like a man, as Garry mentioned a week back - or something, my drawings needs to be a bit more appealing to children, and I can manage to do that, but I can’t change what I like and what makes me draw like myself and not the man who did the graphics for Discworld or KS1 Shapes Lab on the BBC website.

Rant Over.

8-Bit Theatre at nuklearpower.com 

Bibliography Challenge (to be continued)

 The other week, well now about two weeks ago, Eddie gave us an exhilarating talk on bibliographies (preceded by an equally amazing talk given by our librarian about using the online library resources) and using Zotero and set us a challenge to make a couple of complete and accurate references, well I've sort of done it now.

The challenge was to create six references in total, two for books, two for journal entries, and two for book contributions, and we had to list these references in the Harvard style of referencing. I actually found this task to be quite easy, now that I've done it, but I've got only four things in total because I've had difficulty finding the book contributions, so I guess for now I'll leave this post as a "To be Continued", but rest assured that I'll find those contributions in but a matter of time.

Books;

            Busby, J., 2008. Mastering Unreal 3 technology : a beginner's guide to level design in Unreal Engine 3, Indianapolis Ind. ;London: Sams ;;Pearson Education [distributor].   

Fullerton, T., 2008. Game design workshop : a playcentric approach to creating innovative games 2nd ed., Amsterdam ;;Boston: Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann. 

These are the books that I have added into my bibliography using Zotero, and I have put them in here using the Harvard referencing style.

Journal Articles;

            Dickey, M.D., 2006. Game Design Narrative for Learning: Appropriating Adventure Game Design Narrative Devices and Techniques for the Design of Interactive Learning Environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 54(3), 245-263.   

Dickey, M.D., 2006. Game design and learning: a conjectural analysis of how massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPGs) foster intrinsic motivation. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(3), 253-273.

I hope that the fact that both these journal entries are by the same author doesn't matter.

Book Contributions;

Boyd, H, 6/2008. Studies in Higher Education. BOOK REVIEWS, Vol. 33, Issue 3, pg. 345-354

Bouissou, J.M, 4/2010. Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. Manga: A historical Overview, pg. 17-34

Game Segmentation, yo!

It was last week that I mistakenly read the “Rounds, Levels and Waves” article thinking that I needed to read it for Tuesday, but instead it had to be read for Thursday. I felt really silly about it because on the day Rob told us that he was giving a lecture and providing notes for us as well! Fancy that, I wouldn’t have had to do any work because it would have been done for me, oh well. But I think that for reading the article I did take some things away from it with me, in my mind.

The article itself was mainly about game segmentation in retro games, and as it went on it mentioned three types of game segmentation, each type is fairly different from the other and affect the game in a different way, and perhaps could turn a game into a completely different game if different kinds of segmentation are used in it, or if all of them are used at once.

Temporal Segmentation

The first type of segmentation the article talked about was Temporal segmentation, this is the kind of segmentation that involves time within the game.  Mostly this is the type of segmentation that is all about time limits or turns between players.

“Temporal Coordination” was the name given to the little subsection of Temporal Segmentation, and temporal coordination is the part that is all about the rounds and turn taking.  Chess is a fantastic example of Temporal Coordination being used in games as it involves rounds and turns, both of the players have a turn during a round and once the round has been resolved with both players taking a turn, another round begins. The players aren’t limited in the time that they have to take their turns, and their actions have consequences which they have to resolve.

Then there is the enigmatic interleaved-games, which is a part of Temporal Coordination that you don’t see very often nowadays, or too much in retro games in the first place. I don’t really understand the point of it, but interleaved games are ones where the player plays with his friends and they alternate between players after the previous player who just played the game dies. Now, I can probably think of a couple of games that have this, however the best example of this I can give is when in childhood at the arcade, you and your friend had money for only two lives at a game, and you made a deal to play for one life each. Obviously this sort of coordination is now obsolete because you’d get players that are too good at the game and the rest of the players wouldn’t get to play the game.

The other part of Temporal Segmentation is “Temporal Resource”, and it’s the time limits in games. A game might only be played for half an hour, however that doesn’t mean that the half hour can pass in one sitting. The half hour could be divided into three-ten minute checkpoints. This is what Temporal Resource is all about. Similarly to interleaved-games, there can be a deal between kids to play at certain time checkpoints in the game; this would make the game a lot more fair for the children as well.

Spatial Segmentation

The second form of segmentation that is mentioned in the article is called “Spatial Segmentation” and basically spatial segmentation segments the game areas into levels or relevant but unique screens.

An early example of this could be an early Atari RPG where you’d explore one screen for clues for something, and then you’d move off the side of the screen to a different, unique, area that is still relevant to the previous area because they are connected by the game software, and it can be revisited again by walking off the screen in the right direction again.

This kind of segmentation can still be seen in current day JRPGs where you would walk through a door and enter a completely different but relevant area.

There are also the continuous types of spatial segmentation where you scroll across the screen and the background scrolls with you, giving you the illusion of you getting somewhere. Like in an old cartoon the background wouldn’t change, however something in the foreground might change, like the enemies that are attacking you, the obstacles. This can be found in most side scrolling shooters like GRADIUS, or a plat-former like Super Mario Bros.

Challenge Segmentation

The last kind of segmentation that is discussed is the “Challenge Segmentation” and basically it’s all about how the challenge in the game is segmented.

First off the article talks about the waves in a game, waves are; as I understand them, a large amount of harmful entities which you have to dispose of before a certain limit of time has passed, or before you are over-whelmed by the enemies and are eventually destroyed. The best example of a wave in a retro game is in Space Invaders, Space Invaders is one of the earliest, if not the earliest; game to incorporate a wave of enemies that you have to destroy.

And then the article goes on to talk about puzzles, puzzles are a very neglected form of challenge segmentation in retro games, maybe they aren’t neglected however they were scares. Going back to the old Atari RPGs that you might have seen, those are the ones that you would have the most puzzle elements in it. Mostly the puzzle would be “Bring the right thing here” but of course there are some puzzles that broke free from that formula to become actual puzzle games.

Then there are the Boss Challenges which are also a part of the Challenge segmentation. These unique challenges called Bosses are usually found on the highest “Level” of the game, they are the strongest, hardest and require the most skill or intelligence to beat, hence the name; Boss. Because it’s usually hard to get to a boss in a retro game, the bosses would only be visited by the best of players that can pass every level in the game. There, however, could be an end-level boss – like in Sonic the Hedgehog, you would have to fight Dr. Robotnik at the end of every three stages before you could move on to a different area.

That’s about all that I got for Segmentation in games from that article. In all I thought that it was a pretty good read, still I am a little disappointed that I mistakenly read this article instead of the one that I was supposed to read (especially since I spent a night reading it) but I feel that I’ll be taking these kinds of segmentations into consideration when designing my own games in the future, and the near future (introduction to scripting module).