Jake

Idle Thumbs 94: Readers Like You

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I'm sure the inevitable singularity will solve this problem. In the mean time, I will continue to spew nonsense on twitter.

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I just did a quick google search for a 'big bird voice changer', alas it doesn't exist, shame as it would have solved everything!

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Although I didn't write in stating this, since it is a topic out in the open now I will also cop to having a difficult time distinguishing between Jake and Sean's voices.The conversation about preserving games makes me think about my theory that future civilizations (say, 500+ years) will know more about the Romans, for example, than they will about our current era. That's because digital media is easy to transfer around, but it is total shit in terms of preservation. I have a number of CDs from when they were first released as a medium that just don't play anymore. Plus, CD players will eventually be as obsolete as cassette decks. Hard drives fail. The sub-optimal solution that we rely on is to just keep copying everything, which is what digital media is good at. Who knows what happens when human beings invent new mediums that we rely on though. Maybe we preserve all this digital junk, but maybe we don't... either way there are probably some enormous chunks of social knowledge that get lost in the process.I realize this is all way beyond the scope of games that require you to be logged into a server, but that topic did spark up that bigger topic in my mind, and it is something I think about a lot.

As a matter of fact, the reason the Roman era is not as well understood as even the Middle Ages, with its monasteries full of charters, is because the vast majority of everyday transactions were done on wax tablets, carved upon with a stylus and heated back to smoothness once the business was finished. Only stuff that was considered Important with a capital letter was committed to papyrus, which is why there are less total written sources for all of Roman history than for a single year in the 1970s. All cultures, throughout history, have an odd obsession with only preserving what they find significant, when the insignificant stuff is just as significant.

Somewhat related, did anyone see that article about how a hairstylist showed that historians have been mistranslating a word for centuries because of a fundamental misunderstanding about how Roman women wore their hair? Who knows how people in the year 2512 will interpret all our tweeting.

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That reminds me of an interesting talk I went to back in school where an archaeologist was comparing the written history of Judaism in Rome against the archaeological evidence. His point was basically that the class of Jews who were writing letters and documents that were preserved to this day were ideological prudes engaging in petty debates about how "real" Jews attempt to separate themselves from the gentile population, while in reality the artifacts and graves we find show Jews living in Roman neighborhoods, taking Roman names, and being buried alongside Romans. Much more often than not, too.

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I haven't been reading it. There wasn't anything about any of the story stuff that made me want to pay any attention to it. I'm actively put off by the style of the huge characters that fly into the screen and shout stuff at each other, and the sheer volume of dialogue (even when just mashing through it) seems completely bizarre to me. I'm sure there are some interesting things in there but it simply being dark with a lot of characters dying does't really mean much to me. There's a lot of bad film and television that's super dark with a lot of people dying and it doesn't mean I'd find it interesting. That sounds really harsh, it's just that I'm already spending hours with the actual game part of this game and given all the other things I could be reading with the additional hours it would take me to read every word in this game, I just can't bring myself to do it.

 

I didn't mean to say that you should pay attention to the story or subjectively like it for any reason, I personally didn't much like that stuff either but I'm just not in the habit of skipping things in games. My point was simply that if you consider the younger audience they are designing for then they make some unusual choices that one wouldn't expect. I agree that I would not be impressed by the same kinds of choices in media intended for a mature audience. 

 

Also I personally don't mind the JRPG/visual novel presentation style of the game and think it could be used well. Ghost Trick comes to mind.

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I didn't mean to say that you should pay attention to the story or subjectively like it for any reason, I personally didn't much like that stuff either but I'm just not in the habit of skipping things in games. My point was simply that if you consider the younger audience they are designing for then they make some unusual choices that one wouldn't expect. I agree that I would not be impressed by the same kinds of choices in media intended for a mature audience. 

 

Also I personally don't mind the JRPG/visual novel presentation style of the game and think it could be used well. Ghost Trick comes to mind.

I didn't realize the game was targeted at a younger audience. That's a thing that I still struggle with in games--most gameplay systems seem relatively age-agnostic (outside of maybe certain very complex gametypes), so a game tends to target a particular demographic group simply by way of the coat of thematic and narrative paint it puts on top, which in the case of most games has almost nothing intrinsically to do with the gameplay system. In other words, what I mean is, you can say, "They're targeting a younger age group, so this is why they made these narrative choices"--but the actual thing that is appealing to me about the game actually has nothing to do with any of those considerations at all. Whereas if you were to take something like a Dreamworks animated film (or whatever), the very CORE of the film itself is already obviously intended for a particular age group. Adults certainly may also find plenty of things enjoyable about it, or they might enjoy every single aspect of it, but there's almost no risk of a weird demographic disconnect between different fundamental parts of the film's construction. And if such a disconnect is present, it's likely just the result of inexpert craftsmanship rather than anything intrinsic. But most gameplay systems are for the most part blank slates from an authored narrative context, and the kind of super-duper-gamey gameplay system you see in Clash of Heroes is almost always going to weigh more heavily than the narrative content when evaluating a game. They could have made this game with totally different subject matter, characters, setting, etc., and if the gameplay and art direction remained roughly the same, I don't think it would have affected my experience in any meaningful way.

 

This isn't a criticism of Capy in particular, it's just an oddity of the way most games are made that I've been butting up against very frequently lately.

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That's an interesting observation, because with cartoons, even when they're ostensibly for kids, there's usually layers of themes and humor for different audiences. Sometimes it's more broad and symbolic, like Adventure Time famously deals with issues like suicide, pregnancy (and pregnancy complications), dementia, &c. Sometimes it's just subversive you'll-understand-when-you're-older jokes:

 

 

I think the case with games is interesting because nothing in the thematic context of a game needs to specifically appeal to one audience or another if the gameplay itself is really good.

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Whoever said that Chris' Danny Glover run-in was like a Voight-Kampff test was totally right.

 

"You're in a Best Buy in the Bay area. You're looking for an HDMI adaptor. You see Danny Glover sitting nearby. You think he's getting his iPad fixed. Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover, Chris?"

"I don't... I don't know him. I can't say... I don't..."

"Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover?"

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Whoever said that Chris' Danny Glover run-in was like a Voight-Kampff test was totally right.

 

"You're in a Best Buy in the Bay area. You're looking for an HDMI adaptor. You see Danny Glover sitting nearby. You think he's getting his iPad fixed. Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover, Chris?"

"I don't... I don't know him. I can't say... I don't..."

"Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover?"

 

SO GOOD.

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Kid logic:

My childhood home has a lane running behind it, giving access to the garages. Generally we would use the main street but would very occasionally use the little lane. This was something I found very difficult to comprehend as a child. I interpreted the two routes as disparate realities, one leading to family a, the other to family b. Two almost identical families. I would stage experiments, walking one way or the other then trying to perceive subtle differences in my families' character and appearance. I even convinced myself that a much preferred one over the other.

It is hard to comprehend now but I really believed this up until the age of 5 or 6.

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Planescape:torment was a game where you played as a character who had a past you discovered throughout the game but he did have amnesia and didn't know his own past.

I was going to mention Torment as well. It comes close to Chris's idea for a game story where it is gradually revealed that your character isn't a good person, except in Torment, the player character only knows as much as the player because of his amnesia.

I do think amnesia is handled in Torment better than usual, your past is revealed only in pieces through conversation and the occasional vestigal memory, and many of these can be missed, seeking out your past feels like part of the gameplay, instead of some plot that has no bearing on what you're actually doing. There's no big infodump cutscene where your memory is magically restored in full, so you never have a complete picture, and furthermore, there's no "twist" where you turn out to be some great legendary hero or villain of worldly importance, Torment focuses on having a personal story.

TWD reminded me of Torment a little bit, in having to make choices for a character with a pre-defined past you don't fully know, except in Torment, the PC is more of a blank slate due to his memory loss, and thus, you have more freedom to shape his personality as the player.

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Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution both had a bit of "reveal who your character is through stuff that happens" in the game along with a bit of "you choose who you are from this point forward, to a certain degree."

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Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution both had a bit of "reveal who your character is through stuff that happens" in the game along with a bit of "you choose who you are from this point forward, to a certain degree."

KOTOR had a good mid game character reveal, I remember my head exploding, I didn't see it coming at al and it completely floored me. Maybe in those days I just didn't expect anything from a video game story.

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Ok ok ok I've got one. Heavy rain. Massive spoiler if you ever intend to play the game, and you really should. This will ruin the game you have been warned

the nice guy detective you play as for a quarter of the game turns out to be a serial killer

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Ok ok ok I've got one. Heavy rain. Massive spoiler if you ever intend to play the game, and you really should. This will ruin the game you have been warned

the nice guy detective you play as for a quarter of the game turns out to be a serial killer

 

Aj4TZG5.gif

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Z ) This episode was funnier than average!

 

A ) I'm glad this podcast referenced so very much High School Baby. You've no idea how many times I have imagined making a High School Baby browsergame (it would just be Jagged Alliance with an arcade machine border, with a voice in the background saying "No, this baby is cool!"?)
 
B ) Why is it sad to see Danny Glover specifically needing to get his computer fixed in Best Buy? Is it just because it's _always_ sad to see anyone needing to resort to the Geek Squad (true)? Or is it because Danny Glover has a particularly pronounced patina of pathos (ALSO TRUE)?
 
C ) Clash of Heroes! I played the demo months ago! It was super fun, and then my game locked up before I could save it (most of the way through the demo) and the prospect of sitting through all those Elf Heads again was just unacceptable (I don't even think the conversations were ESC-able, but am not sure) was just more than I could stomach. Also, for some reason it ran really really badly on my laptop (which is capable of playing Fallout 3 with low-end graffix). Weird. o_O But the game systems were very fun, yes! I felt like they might even get strategically interesting.
 
D ) It occurs to me that Miasmata is another game that might be ruined for me slightly by the theme. Because I was trying to avoid spoilers, I didn't realize until after I'd bought it that there is an element of (spoilers)survival horror / psychological thriller(/spoilers) in addition to the cartography and falling down cliffs (I knew about the main thing in the game, but not any of the implications). Now I could go play it some more and still enjoy the exploring, but every time I actually find a journal entry or something I just feel silly by association.

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Whoever said that Chris' Danny Glover run-in was like a Voight-Kampff test was totally right.

 

"You're in a Best Buy in the Bay area. You're looking for an HDMI adaptor. You see Danny Glover sitting nearby. You think he's getting his iPad fixed. Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover, Chris?"

"I don't... I don't know him. I can't say... I don't..."

"Why don't you say hello to Danny Glover?"

 

Is this testing whether I'm a Replicant or a homosexual, Mr. Deckard?

 

sorry

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Great episode. A couple of topics you guys were discussing actually reminded me of things I've been writing about over the last few months on my blog.

First, your discussion on how game designers get bogged down in explaining worlds and how sometimes this is notably worse than the alternatives reminded me of this thing I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how not justifying everything in a game can actually make the experience richer and more mysterious.

Second, the letter about exploring a design space as distinct from exploring a world space reminded me very much of something I wrote quite a bit back, actually, about how a game can be conceived as the sum of three spaces: Design, Narrative, and World, and how most games emphasize exploring one or two of these, and how these can interact with each other. (Rereading this after writing it 6 months ago, I find I no longer agree with some of my assertions, but I think the premise is worthwhile)

I also liked the Danny Glover anecdote, though I have to disagree with Chris about his primary response being one of recognition being a creepy commentary on our world. I think it's actually charming that we categorize celebrities in our brains as tribe members, acquaintances to be worried about or proud of. I think it's definitely preferable to thinking of them as inhuman movie-constructs or like royalty. In fact, I think that this is part of why we like celebrities, the social aspect of seeing a familiar face, almost like a friend. I guess one could think of it as sad that we'd need such a thing, but I prefer to think of it as sweet that we'd want such a thing.

 

Regarding your second point, I also thought this was a very interesting subject in the podcast. When Portal was used as an example, my ears unwaxed. I may be projecting my own philosophizing onto theirs, but I'm really interested in how a theme or aesthetic can interact with the dynamics of the game; specifically in examples where their relation seems complimentary and somewhat representational of each other. I think you may be talking more about the relationship between game space to explore and game mechanics to explore in your essay, but I focused more on their interest between mechanics and theme. If you are interested in this type of thing I think you may really enjoy this GDC talk Clint Hocking gave about where the meaning in games may lie. No pressure, it's over an hour long. If you are both curious and impatient, skip to the 14 minute mark.

About to get really far out here:

So when I take naps, I often notice that as I am half asleep, whatever procedure I have recently been concentrating on is being applied to somewhat random details of my life. An example would be that if I just spent an hour washing dishes and then I took a nap, my mind might begin thinking of ways to take the cats to the vet for their rabies shots by picking up the untreated cat, scrubbing it into a carrier, driving like hot running water to the vet and then parking at the vet the way I might place a dish to dry. I know  that is confusing, I'm in the process of learning how to explain it to myself.

This tendency of my naps to mix procedure (game dynamics) with details of my life (game aesthetics ) seems similar to the happenstance way that many games dynamics have aesthetic themes placed upon them. What I would consider more successful (and what I believe the Idle Thumbs cast was referencing during that reader mail) are when this marriage is between a dynamic which represents a seemingly valid perspective on the aesthetic theme or vice-versa. Portal is often the example that comes to mind. The  player is solving a series of puzzles with prescripted solutions in order to slowly test their skill. This is also an accurate description of the theme. So I have begun thinking of game dynamics and game aesthetics in a ratio type of relationship. When they match, I get super excited. I want a word that refers to this quality.

Another example which is far more ambiguous is Zoe Mode's Chime. Though there isn't a realistic association between influencing loops of music by fitting squares together and covering an area with solid blocks, the game suggests that relationship may be complimentary through it's confident execution. Its as if they are presenting me with an experience that I could believe a synthesete composer might have. I am really interested in this type of relationship, but haven't gotten to the point where I can describe it well.

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I will definitely check that out next time I am procrastinating. I end up watching a lot of random videos at such times, it may as well be something educational. Bukmarkt.

 

The particular reference to a 'ratio' kind of confuses me in this context. I can understand the idea of the motions meshing well with the theme, but I'm not sure how the ratio comes in. Slightly related to your antidote, though, when I first started playing Super Hexagon a lot it would mess with my head in such a way that, whenever I read text, I would actually imagine a little triangle where the focus of my eyes was dodging between the letters and they rolled in on it. It was super weird.

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Slightly related to your antidote, though, when I first started playing Super Hexagon a lot it would mess with my head in such a way that, whenever I read text, I would actually imagine a little triangle where the focus of my eyes was dodging between the letters and they rolled in on it. It was super weird.

That is a great example of what I am talking about.

I'm also confused by my use of "ratio". I like thinking about them, so I must have just thrown that in out of habit.

What I was trying to communicate was that I've begun to think of games with these question in mind "To what degree do the dynamics of the game seem similar to the aesthetic and vice versa? Are the dynamics making me operate with similar thought processes to that of the player-character?"

An example of this would be Niko in Grand Theft Auto IV. As I walk around the world in that game, I see people everywhere, but the only way I know how to interact with them is to be violent. In this way, as a player, the dynamics of the game make me feel the way a former soldier from a foreign country may feel if he has been socialized in war and doesn't speak English very well. I would consider this specific relationship between dynamic and aesthetic to have a comparably high degree of similarity.

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That is a great example of what I am talking about.

I'm also confused by my use of "ratio". I like thinking about them, so I must have just thrown that in out of habit.

What I was trying to communicate was that I've begun to think of games with these question in mind "To what degree do the dynamics of the game seem similar to the aesthetic and vice versa? Are the dynamics making me operate with similar thought processes to that of the player-character?"

An example of this would be Niko in Grand Theft Auto IV. As I walk around the world in that game, I see people everywhere, but the only way I know how to interact with them is to be violent. In this way, as a player, the dynamics of the game make me feel the way a former soldier from a foreign country may feel if he has been socialized in war and doesn't speak English very well. I would consider this specific relationship between dynamic and aesthetic to have a comparably high degree of similarity.

Sadly cutscene Nico exists, and expresses infinite other wants and needs divorced from the mechanics available to the player.

Hotline Miami's ambiguity or Cart Life's consistent specificity do better jobs of what you describe on both ends of the spectrum for me.

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Yeah unfortunately games, particularly AAA games, tend to be really good at undermining themselves in this respect. This is I think because they're developed in the mindset of 'best practices', IE what works well for whatever genre they are developing in, rather than a mindset of 'what are we trying to achieve with this game?' TBH this thesis is what like half of my blog posts end up boiling down to.

 

Also, to be fair Jake, the way Hotline Miami and Cart Life handle this is super super smart, so it's probably a bit unfair to make that comparison. AAA developers just don't have the same resources as indies-- when it comes to self-consistency, since they don't have a self to be consistent to.

 

Also also, since I'm sleepy and rambling and have used the term 'AAA' twice in this post already, Chris's rant a few months ago has made me super self-conscious about using terms such as 'AAA', 'IP', and 'title'. I tend to avoid using them now in my writing in favor of other descriptors if I can think of anything that fits, but it's still that really conscious self-editing process. You know, the kind that seems excessively laborious for a forum post?

 

... Anyhoo.

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Sadly cutscene Nico exists, and expresses infinite other wants and needs divorced from the mechanics available to the player.

Hotline Miami's ambiguity or Cart Life's consistent specificity do better jobs of what you describe on both ends of the spectrum for me.

I'll have to play those games with this concept in mind.

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