The Paragon of Interaction and Narrative

Again I fall into the habit of mistakenly reading one weeks reading for another this academic year. I say habit but it never usually happens that often, so yeah. For this weeks reading I did the next weeks reading of Gregory Trefry's book regarding casual games design and the topic was managing!It was excellent, and since we're not going to discuss it at class until next week I'll talk about it a bit here, but not specifically the Trefry chapter, but the other reading that I did which was quite interesting.

Emily Short writes a really interesting article about management games and how they can be used to create good stories in an article called “Opinion: Why Time-Management Games Ought To Be Great At Story-telling (And Why They Mostly Aren't)” In this article she talks a lot about how Miss management is a PARAGON of narrative and interaction in games, however before that she describes what a good narrative would include.

She puts a lot of emphasis at the start on how relationships between characters shouldn't explode into drama from the very beginning, and however, should evolve over time – causing you to create a deeper emotional bond with the characters, almost as if they are your friends, or co-workers, as they would be in Miss management.

She then goes on to re-enforce that what she said, talking about various issues regarding managing life, friends, work and time, and how there is never time for everything at once. Then she asks the question I want to talk about in this blog; “How to present this in games, though?” well... I think we already have, well actually... The Japanese have.

Emily Short said that Miss Management is a PARAGON of narrative and interaction in games, and management games are perfect for this sort of narration, and I agree with that. But I feel that there has been a completely different genre of games that has been around for a long while now, from about the mid 90's, the Visual Novels, and I'm going to go out on a limp here and say that Visual Novels are management games that blend narrative and interaction almost perfectly.

A Visual Novel isn't a conventional game... it's more like a visual... novel, a novel with pictures, an interactive book, an interactive fiction book, as wikipedia would describe it. But really Visual Novels come with all sorts of styles, but typically a Visual Novel is an interactive book. Most of the time the interaction involves the player making choices all throughout the game, typically these choices are made to help the main character get some girl or something like that. Some Visual Novels might incorporate a skill training mechanic to make your character perhaps more appealing to one character or something like that. But basically in a visual novel, all the things you do count.

So let's get our facts straight here, Emily Short praises Miss Management for the fact that characters are pleased or displeased depending on what treats you decide to give the other employees of the office, well, in generic Visual Novel A, all the decisions you make please certain characters while others they might piss off, Miss Managmement is praised for having interesting characters with whom you feel you have a relationship, as well as offering a casual experience. Visual Novels, depending on the quality, provide vivid characters that you get to know over time as well as the extremely casual experience of reading a novel.

Okay okay, so things might have gotten a bit too nutty. I'll take it down a notch for now and refer to some things Trefry said regarding management games; in Chapter 7 of Casual Games Design; Designing the Play for the Gamers in all of us, Trefry refers to Diner Dash and how that is a great example of a management game, combining complexity with simplicity.

Trefry says that Diner Dash involves a lot of time management, and it's true, he says that the fact that Flo takes her own time to get between the table to take orders means that she has her own time you must be aware of, as do the customers, and all the other things and you must take that all into consideration. He makes a clever metaphor to this, regarding it as spinning plates. Well when you think about it trying to balance all the relationships in a visual novel is much like spinning plates isn't it? In a visual novel it's impossible to please everyone, or get everyone's ending at once. But it is essential to please certain people.

Emily Short also says that the shape of a relationship develops slowly and you can't do everything at once. In Visual Novels this is especially true, and it seems like the spinning plates metaphor could be attributed to these games.

Trefry then goes on to talk about Cake Mania and how there is a thin layer of matching over the time management. I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that in Visual Novels there is a matching mechanic, of course, you match your answers to the characters to what the characters will want/won't want to hear. But Miss Management also features a thin layer of matching, and the decisions of the management and choices have consequences. In Cake Mania there are also consequences for giving the wrong customer the wrong cake, and you can't serve all the customers at once. Much like you can't please all the characters in a Visual Novel.

Let's hop back onto the Emily Short article again for a quick second; she says that the routine is important so you grow attached to the characters. Visual Novels provide a routine activity along side all the wonderfully cheesy dialogue. That activity might be whatever the main character chooses, be it going to school every day or going on a date with the girl you pursued, or whatever. The best example of this I can give, from my limited experience with Visual Novels, is in an indie VN called Brass Restoration where the characters morning is always mundane and the same on every iteration. He meets up with his friend and goes to school.

By all means, and the descriptions that Emily Short had given, Visual Novels should be the ideal management games with stories, excluding of course the time mechanic, but who said that time management was necessary? No one.

I feel like I've said enough on this for now so I'm going to wrap it up.

I think Visual Novels are management games that are great at story telling, but the key thorn in my rant is that Emily Short is talking about time management(despite the fact that she never mentioned the time management mechanic of Miss Management in her article), while Visual Novels mostly don't involve time management. Well I guess they could, depending on the game, but yeah. No time management, but there is a boat load of other features that describe a management game, albeit one lacking interaction(again, depending on which one). Trefry is also talking about time management, in all the examples I've given from him. But whatever, I could rationalise everything but that should be saved for another rant.

Bibliography

Short, E. (2008). Opinion: Why Time-Management Games Ought To Be Great At Story-telling (And Why They Mostly Aren't). Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/18769/Opinion_Why_TimeManagement_Games_Ought_To_Be_Great_At_Storytelling_And_Why_They_Mostly_Arent.php

Trefry, G (2010). Casual Games Design; Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us. Burlington: Elsevier. p139-154.

Remediation in Films and other media

Remediation is not a hard concept to grasp. Essentially it means that you would be taking elements from one form of media and then using those elements in another, for example; taking elements from games and putting them into films.

This is why Rob had us watch Run Lola Run in our last session with him, although I did not enjoy the film itself I found it easier to understand the concept of remediation.

The film borrowed many aspects from video games, such as when Lola dies and then is reborn at the start of the film, it’s as if she had spare lives, the fact that she does some things differently and so changes the outcome of some peoples’ lives shows that there are RPG elements of decision making that might influence the ending of something. Stuff like that.

A little bit after the session, and me complaining about how I didn’t think the film was good I started thinking about the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music video for Californication. That music video has some very blatant inspirations from Video games. Mostly free-roam, sandbox games such as Grand Theft Auto and one particular scene reminded me of the game Crazy Taxi and another of a snowboarding game SSX Tricky.

But for some reason I was a little bit confused, did it count as remediation if it was so blatant? I mean, they weren’t actually running through, it was as though they were scenes from the game. Maybe it was inspired by games but not quite remediation yet.

Then I was confused further because I started thinking if Machinima would count as Remediation of a whole different nature, applying film elements to video games? I don’t even know. But I feel like I have grasped the concept to a certain extent.

Californication 

London Trip

Back in February we went on a field trip to London and payed a visit to it's British Museum. Me and my peers were walking around the Museum for quite a while before we caught up with Rob and the lot at the actual thing we were actually supposed to look at. And the things we were supposed to look at looked quite good.

Now, for me what was more interesting rather than the game was the craftsmanship of the pieces, they all looked really good! I am somewhat of an artist but it's still not often that I start getting worked up about some little statues, but still this is my sort of thing. Screw all the massive sculptures that are obviously a little impressive. It's the small things that matter, the hand must be crazy steady to add a lot of detail to something that small.

Working on a big canvas with small tools is always easier but working with small tools on a small canvas is so much harder, this is what art should look like. Not like that weird modern “Art” where it's just a picture of the loo and it's labelled something stupid like “Impressionistic everyday items.”, I refuse to believe that a toilet is a piece of art. Well, at one point it might have been artistic, but now it's just somewhere you defecate.

Anyway... I gone of track a little bit. The point of that was that I was really impressed with the little sculptures.

Later we encountered something that we thought could have been game pieces for something like an old version of drafts.

Well... They weren't pieces for a game but they were a part of a cremation ceremony. But they could have been game pieces? You never know, maybe it was some famous guy getting burned with his favourite game stuff? Either way discovering these things was an exciting experience for me.

Unfortunately once we've finished pretending to have sword fights next to the exhibit of swords like really responsible students we got bored and moved on to the museum of Science which was quite fun as well.

Johnny Ingram and Machinima

A few months back Johnny Ingram from moviestorm came in for a lecture about Machinima. He talked to us a little bit about the history of Machinima, what Machinima, Moviestorm and himself.

Johnny Ingram is a man who made his way up to the top of Moviestorm however he is of humble beginnings, which is what he told us. He started off like any average Joe and then somehow by a twist of fate he bounced into the Machinima world with Moviestorm.

The evening started off by him defining what Machinima is. He defined Machinima as a movie created in a digital world. Later he went on to tell us about the history of machinima. He showed us the first machinima made in Quake called “Diary of a Camper”, that is the video that started the whole machinima scene. Unfortunately it was in such a video file format that was very hard to share  and so it was hard to kickstart the machinima scene off on it's own.

Later he went on to show us some Machinima, one of those was a World of Warcraft Machinima describing the dream of the journey of a Tauran warriors quest to save a lady Shaman. The other one was a noir half life film made in Gary's Mod in Half Life 2. Either way the two films showed greater quality and displayed how far Machinima has come along since the first video ever. It was a good display of what current Machinima is capable with the right software and the right director.

Later a demonstration of Moviestorm came on where Johnny gave us a brief tutorial, to be honest I was quite surprised with how easy the interface was and what sort of extents the software could take your Machinima, while it is still hard to control the actions of the character on the stage it is much easier to make the character move and speak than I would have first anticipated.

I found Moviestorm to be a great piece of software for storyboarding rather than creating movies in, although that is still very much possible. It is much easier to manipulate every element inside the stage to make it into a storyboard.

The BBFC came to town a few months ago

A few months back John Wagaland from the BBFC came in for a lecture.

Firstly it was pointed out that the BBFC is required to adhere to a large amount of legislation, but that’s understandable, the man said that the BBFC has to take great care when reviewing a film and it’s suitability for the cinema and without the legislation that would be harder to do. The sorts of legislations he presented provided a sort of guideline of how they should rate the films.

Later he actually went on to talk about the examining process for films.

Examiners have a number of duties, one of them is obviously viewing the film, it is also an examiners duty to go to a meeting regarding the film they viewed and there they would talk about how they should rate it. There a few more duties that each examiner has, and every examiner has to do them.

The actual examination of the films is a simple process, first the film is viewed in pairs. Though apparently there are some occasions where the film will be viewed alone or with more than two people. This is to make sure that it isn’t just your subjective opinion on what’s appropriate and not. Usually the viewing lasts over five hours a day. Later the viewers sit down and review each other’s notes of the film and compile it into an examiners log.

A nice, clean, simple process for viewing the films.

After John got all the duties and stuff out of the way we started watching clips of video and he asked us how we would rate these if we were working for the BBFC. 

The first clip he showed us was a Disney short film where a young man was tumbling around inside a washing machine. John made a comment about how the film that they were assessing did not get a U rating because of the short film at the start of it. He made a comment about how this stunt could be imitate able by young children and how the parents in the clip saw this all as a joke, therefore encouraging kids to do it.

I can understand that.

Later on he showed us a clip of a British film where a woman was savagely beaten into her car where a man was shouting an offensive word starting with the letter C. He told us that he’d rate that film an 18. This was because he said that any film with visible violence and vile language that was used as an attack could only be rated 18 or be inappropriate to begin with.

When we watched a clip of The Dark Knight John said they rated the film 12A and then got a lot of bother for it, however then he pointed out that there is no actual violence shown on screen, it was all implied and there was not even any blood when people got shot. So that was appropriate. 

When put in contrast to the other clip that was rated 18, which made a lot of sense. Although I think that The Dark Knight should have been a 15 because of other violent moments in the film, such as two-faces’ second face which is literally just muscle tissue, and a hospital being blown up. But that’s just me.

Later John started talking about how they would rate games.

He began by saying that they played the games with all the cheats, they had access to all the levels and content so they could give the game a fair rating, while taking everything the game has into consideration.

The exam process for the game is largely similar except there are other things that the board has to take into consideration.

During a game examination they have to take into consideration the appropriateness of the weapons in the game, if there are weapons. Take notice of all the nudity in the game, what kind of criminal activities there might be, whether there are drugs in it or not, the violence and vile language. All those sorts of things, however since it’s a game they have to take a look at how all those things are used to either enhance the experience of the game or if they’re just there to be disturbing.

Manhunt was a game that was deemed too violent for release into the public because of the various and inappropriate ways to kill people.

The other things that they take into consideration while assessing games is the art style that the game uses, the moral values of the game whatever they could be and a wide range of other things.

In all I enjoyed sitting in on this lecture, it was good fun watching all the videos and I had a moment where I ducked my head in shame when I could recognise the Japanese anime cartoon the man started showing.

What every game developer needs to know about story.

John Sutherland talks about stories in games in one of his Articles which we had to read a few months back. He starts off by noting some of the common misconceptions in the story of games.

At the very start of the article he makes a very clear statement that most games designers treat story as dialogue and as something that does not matter. He mentions that Story is actually a large part of games nowadays and the dialogue is important.

The other thing that he makes very clear from the start of his article is that story is conflict; and that is something that I can completely agree with. It makes perfect sense to me; since some of my spare time is dedicated to writing I have formed some sort of understanding of what is at the core of each good story. That is conflict.

But when you think about it, conflict is at the centre of anything or at least most things, comedy is the product of conflict and so is drama. Almost every genre requires conflict, and so every story will have conflict in it, in video games conflict is especially important because most of the interface with the player and the video game is in the form of the players’ endless conflict against the waves of enemies that fly towards him or her.

He mentions that conflict in some way should throw the players world out of balance.

Sutherland later goes on about how a classic story would move in a game, mostly outlining the basic bones of the story of the heroes’ journey, talks about some other important aspects such as the reversals.

The reversals are the sort of new information that is crucial for the story, it gives a character a reason to go on with his journey when things are looking hopeless, or it hinders the hero by showing new information about how the villain is still alive. Either way, it’s something that will drive the hero through his journey and expand the story universe.

Sutherland said that reversals happen each act and while I believe that to a certain extent I sometimes feel that once act thee rolls around reversals stop happening. It is time for the resolution of the story and there is no time for another reversal. During act three the heroes are ready, the villains are ready and there they have their massive showdown. Unless a reversal happens in the middle of a losing fight, like the hero gets an epiphany of some sort then I don’t welcome them in the final act.

When Sutherland starts talking about Empathy and protagonist flips, right before that he talks about the three types of conflict.

I feel that conflict helps the players build empathy for the character. For example; using internal struggle the character is more empathetic because the player gets in on his personal demons, the things he is worried about, and that makes the character more interesting. When the protagonist is in the middle of interpersonal conflict you empathise with him or her. External conflict is to provide some sort of adrenaline pump as it appears in the form of manly gun fights or fisticuffs. Either way, conflict, specifically internal and interpersonal help build the players’ empathy for the protagonist.

Sutherland mentions how it’s harder for the storyteller to control what happens in the world if the protagonist is out of his control and in the hands of the player, while this concern would apply only to RPG’s where the player get’s to make multiple choices, it’s still a valid point. Keeping the story engaging would be hard without the control of the protagonist.

There is little for me to say about the rest of the article, Sutherland goes on to talk about the three act structure and some other minor things that I really already was aware of.

In any case, the things I did learn I learned and while there was little I could take away that I didn’t know, I took it and I’ll be using my new knowledge in the future. I also need to learn some humility but that’s beside the point. 

1. John Sutherland, “Gamasutra - Features - What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story”, July 27, 2005, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2359/what_every_game_developer_needs_to_.php.

Vidiot

A few months ago we had to read another article by Costikyan entitled “Don’t be a Vidiot”. Though there was a question that we had to answer during the session, I didn’t quite remember what that question was, however I did pick up on quite a few interesting things that Costikyan had said in the article and recently I have been thinking a little bit about them

In the article itself he talks a lot about the different kinds of games that are out there, ranging from board games to live action role-plays (do not want) and he says that games designers should be well versed in the art of games design, and not get all their knowledge only from video games, rather a game designer will try out a whole lot of different games and not just digital.

Well this got me thinking, for a little bit... Am I what he called a vidiot? I guess in some respects I am a vidiot, I mean I mostly play video games, I don’t play board games that often. But somehow I don’t know, the games I play I play for fun rather than to learn the design behind it (however I’ve been doing that less and less as I went through the course) and to be fair I’ve played a lot of board games in the past. Specifically trading card games and dice rolling board games that involved decision making.

Of the different game types that Costikyan talks of I must say that I have played at least one of each genre he mentions save for live action role-plays.

To answer my own question, no, I don’t think I am a Vidiot, especially of late. I have been playing a lot more board games and taking their particular mechanics into mind when thinking of games, same with digital games. I have been a lot more open minded with games recently, not that I have not always been, but now I am more so.

  1. Greg Costikyan, “Don’t Be a Vidiot”, 1998, http://www.costik.com/vidiot.html.

Hears, Clubs, diamonds, Spades: Players who suit MUDS

Wow, blogger really messed up this post, please bear with it.

A few months back we were discussing an article which held my interest very strongly, this article was about MUDs, otherwise known as multi-user domains, and as an experienced participant in these domains and a recurring player in many MMO’s.

These are basically MMORPGs and the article is written by Richard A. Bartle and called “HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS” and this is all about the different play styles that players might adapt in an MUD.

First of all Bartle goes on to split players up into four interest groups, Socialisers, Achievers, Killers and Explorers and explains each group in some detail separately.

He talks about Achievers first. Bartle says that Achievers are people who like to achieve well in the game in terms of points, this can include getting the best gear, being the highest level, having the most gold or whatever. Basically people that like to achieve things in a game, no matter how insignificant that achievement can be to real life.

He then speaks a little about Explorers. Explorers are people who are most interested in exploring the vast world created in the MUD, as according to Bartle, they only see socialising and killing as a sort of thing to help them get from one place to another.

Moving on to socialisers, he says that they are the kind of people who would rather meet people over a game and form relationships like friendship in the actual game, because it’s quite an easy thing to do in an MUD as there are millions of other players playing at the same time as you.

Lastly he talks about the killing oriented players. These players like to kill other players to prove how much stronger they are, or just for the thrill of it. They might be graduated Achievers who are not bored and just want to kill other players.

After reading this bit I sat there and thought for a second, eventually I nodded to myself and said “Explorer” in these MUDs that I play I’m usually more interested in exploring new places, no matter how hazardous my journeys might take me. Only I do it in a more nerdy way and start taking the whole exploring a new world thing too seriously (as I do with many things that aren’t really important) and make up a little story for my avatar and why he or she is exploring this new world.

Later Bartle shows a little graph that shows what kind of interest each type of player has in the game, this is simply split up into four other categories, it’d be easier to just show it, actually.

                                 ACTING

                  Killers            |                  Achievers

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

          PLAYERS -------------------+------------------- WORLD

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

                                     |

                  Socialisers        |                  Explorers

                                INTERACTING

This is the little chart that shows the interests that each type of player has in the game as according to Bartle. While looking at it I reflected on myself a little bit and how unsociable I am in MUDs, despite always wanting help with a dungeon I can’t clear or something. Whatever, I found that I’d fit in the world interest column as I am also part achiever in MUDs.

Basically what this chart does show is how some interests for each different type of player can be shared between each other, for example; a killer and a socialiser may both take interest in the players of the MUD however a socialiser and an explorer may enjoy interacting with the players to get things done in the game. Simple.

Since MUD’s were still young, or less popular at the time this article was made it was hard to judge how players may behave towards other types of players. Some of the points Bartle has made, however, are very good and still apply to the current age of MUD players.

He later goes on to talk about how each of these player types interact with each other and their thoughts on one and another. In my opinion I think Bartle did a very good job assigning these behaviours to the player types and the way the players act now still reflect in Bartles’ observation regarding the subject.

1. Richard Bartle, “Richard A. Bartle: Players Who Suit MUDs”, 1996, http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm.