Idle Weekend June 4, 2016: Get You a Game That Can Do Both

[Chris]

Idle Weekend June 4, 2016:

Get You a Game That Can Do Both

This episode, the Weekenders discuss a favorite topic: the push and pull between tight, well-constructed scenarios and wide-open rulesets. How open is an open-world game, after all, and how open should it be? Elsewhere, we discuss sexy characters, comedy that takes on mental illness with sensitivity, and the very strange sci-fi/action/romance of The Adjustment Bureau.

Discussed: Hearts of Iron IV, The Witcher 3, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 4, The Adjustment Bureau, Justified, Super Hyper Cube, Lady Dynamite, The Maria Bamford Show

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[Wilds]

Really enjoyed the conversation about the impact of cultural messages and themes and how entertainment can impact views. For a study on this (albeit one on the extreme end of messages and effects which might make people who don't want to think about this stuff and be introspective balk), here's a video and article on Nazi propaganda: 

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/43758/study-1930s-nazi-youth-propaganda-long-term-impact-jewish-world/#1ztChtTT4VhTp0Og.97

The short of it is that the generation of Germans born in the 1930s, thus those who came of age in Nazi Germany, had significantly more racist views than any other generation: INCLUDING the previous generation, the people who actually indoctrinated them. These effects lasted throughout the people's lives, as the study that found these views was conducted 1996-2006, over half a century after the fact.

 

Now, video games aren't teaching kids today to be Nazis (probably). But when I see huge numbers of teens online balk at representing women/POC/etc as whole people, calling it "pandering", or dismiss any discussion of violence with "It's just fun" or "they're just games", I think back to how the industry and press around nerd culture stuff have handled and handwaved issues like these throughout the 90s and 00's, and how these kids, many of whom probably were too young to even be reading online discussions and games press in the 90s, reflect those views. I'm sure most people who write about video games or comic books consider their work completely irrelevant to larger cultural attitudes and politics. But this stuff has snowballed into some pretty vicious territories.

[juv3nal]

lol the yaoi episode

[Turrican]

Really enjoyed the conversation about the impact of cultural messages and themes and how entertainment can impact views. For a study on this (albeit one on the extreme end of messages and effects which might make people who don't want to think about this stuff and be introspective balk), here's a video and article on Nazi propaganda

 

I didn't really hear any conversation about that tbh.  I did hear one around whether pandering to nerd culture had made people feel self-entitled. The first questioner seemed to be asking (prompted bizarrely by outrage regarding some low Stellaris scores) whether an increase in nerd culture was leading to power fantasies where the consumer of the media is the centre of the world. Danielle said that nerds are being catered to by being sold power fantasies and it is making people act in a shitty entitled way. Rob opined that the space 4x genre was somehow different to other strategy games in that it feeds a power fantasy and so there is a lot of "aggro" surrounding this type of game and the player is all-powerful and aggrandised and if the player becomes super-invested in this in an uncritical way then they open a door to poison. This is why conversation around game reviews has become so nasty.  

 

I thought both hosts were way off the mark. Nerds are not the first people in society to be catered to. Think about housewives or sports fans for example. It's simply another huge market that is being tapped into and fed (via comics, games, movies, etc) and to make generalisations about such a huge demographic makes about as much sense as creating stereotypes based upon race.

 

As I understand the conversation regarding Stellaris, the outcry from some quarters was due to the fact that the game (although not perfect) was clearly an ambitious, deep and strident entry into the strategy game market, yet some respected and experienced reviewers appeared to rate it as one of the worst strategy games made in recent memory. So, how exactly are the people who objected to this acting in a shitty or entitled way?  Surely, this would only be the case if the playerbase refused to accept any criticism of their beloved Stellaris and demanded it be awarded a 10/10. But this was not the case, they were simply asking for some more even-handed judgment to be exercised so that the game would not be misrepresented to the wider public. Rob's comments in particular were hard to comprehend; a 4x space game apparently fosters a sense of aggrandisement and power fantasy, but other strategy games, you know, like the ones where you single-handedly win a world war or take over the entire globe, do not!

 

The second question followed on from the first in asking whether the backlash around Rowan's review was due to expectations of the site he was writing for.  Here the hosts contradict their answers to the first question and admit that the backlash, rather than being due to shitty, self-entitled, power fantasists, was mainly due to the discrepancy between Rowan's score and IGN's previous scoring history.  I have to admit, that I was horrified by Rowan's score myself when I saw it and thought he should have been more aware of the other games reviewed on the site but after glancing at the scoring criteria that IGN employs it became clear that whereas Rowan's score was in keeping with his opinion of the game, practically all other scores awarded by IGN reviewers were completely skewed with fairly average games being regularly awarded 8s or 9s.  This surely speaks to IGN's overeagerness to keep in the good graces of developers whose cooperation the site relies upon for its exclusives and much of its content.  I think Rob eluded to this when he admitted that the major releases were often handled by permanent staff rather than roguish freelancers.  

 

However, I have to disagree with Rob when he says that it is not practicable for a large site to employ some quality control and consistency when it comes to its scoring.  The bigger the site, the more resources it has.  I don't believe that each review is not copychecked by an editor before it goes to print.  These editors must act as custodians of the scoring system on the site and ensure that scores at least reflect what the review actually says.  I think the truth is probably that the inflated scores are granted with the consent of the powers that be at IGN for the reasons given above.  

[Gamebeast23456]

It doesn't really seem like 'nerds' as they stand are necessarily the most catered-to audience. The Marvel films do not do well because they cater exclusively to males. It's quite the opposite, these films are made to appeal to 'everyone' as much as possible within the confines of these semi-pre-defined stories. The Ghost In The Shell film, as an upcoming example, is not a film being developed for nerdy fans of the original film- if it were, Scarlett Johansson wouldn't be the lead. It's meant to target men who think Scarlett Johansson is hot, women who admire or are interested in her as a prominent actress, etc. The fact that these 'nerdier' things are being designed to be more popular is the exact opposite of pandering to the men who grew up with these properties and made up most of their fan-base. 

 

Moving on, my personal metric for how I feel about how women are portrayed in media, as a male who has an interest and pull towards femininity, is that I want to read into the characters. There are plenty of female characters that I see myself in, that I would want to "be" in the classic, escapist fiction sense. For a recent example, I look at a lot of the women in Overwatch. Tracer, Zarya and Widowmaker are all badass and distinct, when I play as them, I also want to read myself into them. Granted, there's very little to these characters in the game proper, but the strength of their designs and portrayals is enough. This test, obviously, is hugely flawed and can only be used as a personal metric.

[kickinthehead]

Hahaha, I was thinking about boy's love and yaoi when the discussion about sexualization of men started. I'm so glad that Danielle brought it up! I think that any article about sexualizing women would do well to show BL and yaoi examples to accompany the inevitable "men are sexualized too" comments. The other great example being that one time a male Final Fantasy character's design was changed because men were uncomfortable with how skimpy his outfit was.

 

I used to work at a company that released hentai and yaoi anime and manga so I've seen the broad spectrum of what they have to offer. I had never seen gay porn written by women FOR women, and it gave me a lot of perspective. It makes perfect sense since obviously there are a lot of dudes that like to see women with other women.

 

Don't know what the point of this post is other than that it's good for people to seek out more perspectives and open up their world view whenever possible... via porn made by a variety of people

[Gormongous]

As I understand the conversation regarding Stellaris, the outcry from some quarters was due to the fact that the game (although not perfect) was clearly an ambitious, deep and strident entry into the strategy game market, yet some respected and experienced reviewers appeared to rate it as one of the worst strategy games made in recent memory. So, how exactly are the people who objected to this acting in a shitty or entitled way?  Surely, this would only be the case if the playerbase refused to accept any criticism of their beloved Stellaris and demanded it be awarded a 10/10. But this was not the case, they were simply asking for some more even-handed judgment to be exercised so that the game would not be misrepresented to the wider public. Rob's comments in particular were hard to comprehend; a 4x space game apparently fosters a sense of aggrandisement and power fantasy, but other strategy games, you know, like the ones where you single-handedly win a world war or take over the entire globe, do not!

 

Honestly, the more I think about it, I think that history is going to vindicate the scores on the lower end. Can you name any other strategy game (or any video game) in recent memory that launched with its "boss battles" nonfunctional because of bugs? The Prethoryn Scourge was actually triply bugged (AI empires don't respond to its appearance, capturing the queen doesn't end the event chain, and planets can't be reclaimed). Ethics drift didn't work because of bugs, sector management didn't work because of bugs, combat was bugged and broken because of corvette evasion, there are only two victory conditions and they are infeasible (unacceptable for a space 4X), there are no ledger or mapmodes (unacceptable for a grand strategy game), federations are just a handicapped version of alliances, it was impossible to negotiate basic treaties with most AI empires, a huge number of basic UX features are absent... And that's not touching on how little there is to do between settling the surrounding planets and facing the (bugged) endgame threats, so little that Paradox's first six months of patches are basically being devoted to building content for the midgame.

 

All the truly glowing reviews (PCGamesN, Destructoid, eXplorminate, etc) focus on how different all of the game's mechanics are (the extensive customization options like the species builder, especially, seem to occupy a quarter to a third of those reviews) and how grand the resulting spectacle is. Most of them don't even mention the mid- or endgame (or, in the case of eXplorminate, talk about them in starry-eyed hypotheticals), but you don't really hear much conversation about how those reviews are "misrepresenting the game." Interesting to note is that Stellaris has settled into a 79 on Metacritic, with an 8.2 for user reviews. Considering the tendency for Paradox fans to rate things on potential and goodwill (Hearts of Iron III has a 77, with a 7.0 in user reviews, which strains the word "generous" close to breaking), I don't think that a 6.3 from IGN is the puzzling outlier that some decry it to be.

[Wilds]

I didn't really hear any conversation about that tbh.  I did hear one around whether pandering to nerd culture had made people feel self-entitled. The first questioner seemed to be asking (prompted bizarrely by outrage regarding some low Stellaris scores) whether an increase in nerd culture was leading to power fantasies where the consumer of the media is the centre of the world. Danielle said that nerds are being catered to by being sold power fantasies and it is making people act in a shitty entitled way. Rob opined that the space 4x genre was somehow different to other strategy games in that it feeds a power fantasy and so there is a lot of "aggro" surrounding this type of game and the player is all-powerful and aggrandised and if the player becomes super-invested in this in an uncritical way then they open a door to poison. This is why conversation around game reviews has become so nasty.  

Nah, it wasn't about pandering specifically, but the way in which it's executed as a power fantasy and wish fulfillment. The example of The Office was good, I thought: UK Office was about how work is draining and stealing your time, US Office is about how enriching work is and how you get all these wacky new friends and find love. In games, you're never the guy who dies in Normandy as soon as the boat reaches the beach, you're the guy beyond all odds kills thousands of Nazis and saves the world. 

It instills in people a belief in the "rightness" of existing systems, regardless of their reality. War can work, a military invasion can work, a white collar office job can be fulfilling and worthwhile even if you aren't actually doing anything productive at all. Bad things will get stopped by good people with conviction. Unfair systems will be beaten by strong men with willpower. 

 

A way I've seen this reflected in current events is the way people reacted to the anti-Trump violence in San Antonio, with people saying violence is never appropriate, throwing eggs at fascists is fascism, that Trump can definitely be beat just through the system and to go outside the system is inherently letting him win. But our system fucking sucks. If it didn't, he wouldn't be where he is in the first place. The system has put two of the least popular, least qualified people in the history of US elections at the forefront of a supposedly popular election. Trump has gotten hundreds of hours of free press time in front of the nation to advocate racial apartheid in America, explicitly calling for the exclusion of Muslim Americans and Latino Americans. When people react strongly in resistance to that though, they're in the wrong if they're not working in the system? 

Some nerdy pundits like Chris Hayes have even tried to claim that historical physical resistance to nazis and rightwing uprisings have been failures that have only helped the cause they opposed. Here's a good history lesson on that, in this context:

https://thesouthlawn.org/2016/06/04/burying-you-with-a-good-shovel-in-the-good-earth/

[ilitarist]

Emptiness of big sandboxes is what bothering me a lot. It's a classic case of giving public what it wants. People ask for bigger maps, more guns, more enemies. The common solution is smart randomization pushed into a core of the game. Like DIablo having infinite number of weapons and monsters due to random modifiers. Or maybe Stellaris having infinite number of races once they put their shit together and make the game great.

 

I remember warmly all those strategy games and RPGs that dropped the idea of being eternal. XCOM is clearly meant to be played once and only be replayed for difficulty, it's closer to classec RTS like WarCraft 3 in this regard. Shadowrun RPGs feel almost unique because of their linearity which was default playstyle way back. But those game manage to make every minute meaningful. There's a certain thrill in sandbox games that you can miss content so choices are more important. But in games like Skyrim you very rarely get cut off from any content, the only choice is to not visit places to get quests. In, say, Shadowrun Dragonfall I remember things that I've probably missed and pretty sure that few choices I made were meaningful. It never had magical feeling of living world that sandbox RPGs had but it also never had disenchantment of seeing how hollow and non-reactive the world is.

 

Remember Gothic/Risen games? I think those have got the balance right. You had a dense - not big, dense - world to explore. You had a story and interconnected web of quests. You had hard choices between factions. Witcher is actually pretty similar to those games, only bigger, more bombastic and limited in gameplay - seriously, I'm tired of everyone ignoring the fact that actual fights in Witcher 3 are more repetitive and nonimaginative than freaking Assassins Creed, while Gothic/Risen had different weapon styles and magic schools for you to master.

[Henke]

BIG UPS for mentioning the old Maria Bamford Show. I'm a big fan of hers but I gotta say I'm a bit so-so on the new show. Not to be a total hipster or anything but her old show which had zero production values and Maria playing all the parts herself was waaaayyy better! All due respect to Mary Kay Place and Eddie Beggz but noone can play Maria's parents like Maria can!

 

 

[rharwick]

The Witcher 3 does something positively brilliant with its quest structure. Part of its brilliance is that it's so obvious, and it could literally be copied by every major RPG-maker and it would still work, and yet no one in recent years has done anything like it.

You don't have to finish the Bloody Baron's story to continue the main story. You don't need the levels, you don't need the loot. You don't need anything else from the Baron. This is just one example. The game does it a lot: you can involve yourself in things only to the extent that you need to to do your job, or you can see these side adventures through to the very end. This is an amazing choice, as it plays out, because at some point, those loose ends will get resolved, even if you don't do it. The Baron will make his choices whether Geralt helps or not. As Geralt advances the main story, other characters advance their own stories, and if you go back to these places, you will see what's changed as a result. 

This isn't a fancy AI system. This is solid, thoughtful quest design that asks "Okay, but what if Geralt decides not to continue being involved? How do we make that a valid choice?" Suddenly instead of a world full of NPCs waiting for the PC to act, you have a game full of people who will eventually act on their own, for better or worse.

[feelthedarkness]

I just wanted to add that on a the subject of all the Witcher games, and relative jankiness of #1 (which i love) I think it's worth mentioning (though as game professionals i assume you know) that it's basically a total conversion of Neverwinter Nights 2, as they licensed the engine, and ran into certain limitations, like that the people were designed click-to-move rather than action WASD. 

[Gormongous]

I just wanted to add that on a the subject of all the Witcher games, and relative jankiness of #1 (which i love) I think it's worth mentioning (though as game professionals i assume you know) that it's basically a total conversion of Neverwinter Nights 2, as they licensed the engine, and ran into certain limitations, like that the people were designed click-to-move rather than action WASD. 

 

It was actually the Aurora Engine from the first Neverwinter Nights back in 2002, not the updated version of the Aurora Engine called the Electron Engine for Neverwinter Nights 2 in 2006. The first Witcher game was over four years in development, although some of that was trying to find a third-party developer to write them their own proprietary engine.

[Salacious Snake]

I think a lot about the bland emptiness of open worlds. Rob was right on the money when he called the Ubisoft model a facade. For all the pedestrians milling around, nothing about Assassin's Creed's locales feels alive.

 

A couple of games popped into my mind that have interesting takes on openish worldy structures:

 

Deadly Premonition: They really went out of their way to make the other inhabitants of Greenvale seem like they got shit to do other than clog up the streets. I've never made any significant progress in the story, but I've enjoyed looking in people's windows and watching their mundane lives. Of course, it's all pretty shallowly scripted, and the stilted text dialog is far from a convincing simulation of life. Cool stuff, though.

 

Metal Gear Solid V: This is sort of a hybrid. When you're just tooling around, it can feel lifeless. The NPCs (humans and animals alike) are directionless without input from the player. But once you do start poking at things, holy shit. The whole Metal Gear series is like a parallel evolution of the immersive sim genre, and it works well in the larger, more open environment. The world design helps, in that the actual mission locations are highly designed gameplay spaces; they just happen to be connected by roads and plains and canyons instead of load screens.

 

Cool games

[feelthedarkness]

It was actually the Aurora Engine from the first Neverwinter Nights back in 2002, not the updated version of the Aurora Engine called the Electron Engine for Neverwinter Nights 2 in 2006. The first Witcher game was over four years in development, although some of that was trying to find a third-party developer to write them their own proprietary engine.

 

haha, wow, i stand corrected! even weirder! 

[Valorian Endymion]

What happen to some "open world" games sometimes, is that while today is rather easy to build a large word in term of space, the trick part is the needed design of space and places and simulation systems to make it feel alive.

The lack or the difference that good design of space and places make is when you look the difference between Morrowind/Skyrim vs Oblivion.

Now the simulation systems is bit more complicated, because they can get very resource heavy, more that the graphics itself (just look at Dwarven Fortress), early rpgs could get around to begin rather simple and feature things like npcs with day/night cycles (games early as Ultima IV had it). But I imagine that modern graphics heavy rpgs getting this kind of systems is more trick. Also there is the problem of scale.... in fantasy or sci-fi settings you don´t need to represent large urban spaces, so you can get away with the capital of the kingdom begin just 10 buildings, however, this small scale means that you can afford to create a simulation system for this limited numbers of npcs (and other stuff such as dialogues). Now in more modern settings (GTA/Just Cause, Ubisoft games) you have this huge worlds, but you can´t interact with almost nothing, nor enter in buildings (at least in most), simple because the sheer scale would make almost impossible. The result is the sense of emptiness.

 

 

[demicanadian]

That small game Danielle was about to put it's name in a description (she speaks about it around 20 minutes in), what was it? I know she finally says it, but I was unable to catch how you spell it.