Entertainment
If you follow my Twitter account, then you should already know that I regularly post stuff from Muddy Colors.
This is no exception, even more so because it will be relevant to my current work. Two posts by Dan dos Santos about basic image composition, the first one about value structure, the second one about temperature structure.
Those two posts struck a chord with me, since they clearly explain what I already plan to do in the therapy game I'm working on.
When it comes to games, adding depth to the composition is seemingly less of a problem, since the movement already provides you with that information. However, discerning objects you can interact with from the ones that act purely as set pieces is another question.1 The higher the player's velocity within the 3D space, the faster he has to parse the environment for clues – especially when the players are not able to influence their own velocity, which is the case in rail shooters. As it happens, I'm exactly making one of those, thus the need for an environment that can be parsed instantly.
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As well known by the red barrel problem. ↩
Given the fact that I've produced a game that is all about bullying as my bachelor's thesis, I'm now more aware of the topic. Even more so given the fact that the game in its current form is still more a proof of concept rather than a proper game. Since I plan to finish and release the game at some point, I keep an eye open for any developments and insights on the field.
It is therefore extremely interesting to stumble on a recent study by Alice E. Marwick and Danah Boyd called The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics. The authors argue that teenagers are wary to call bullying what it is. Instead, they opt to call it "drama".
Using drama, the teenagers are able not to get pushed into the role of the victim, instead staying above the situation:
Dismissing a conflict that’s really hurting their feelings as drama lets teenagers demonstrate that they don’t care about such petty concerns. They can save face while feeling superior to those tormenting them by dismissing them as desperate for attention. Or, if they’re the instigators, the word drama lets teenagers feel that they’re participating in something innocuous or even funny, rather than having to admit that they’ve hurt someone’s feelings. Drama allows them to distance themselves from painful situations.
Obviously, this does not solve the underlying problem. Bullying still happens, just by another name. Feelings still get hurt, and this needs to be addressed. Yet, it is something that I will have to keep in mind when developing the story further.
If it weren't for developers like [Defiant Development][2], you'd easily believe that creativity in the games industry is nearly extinct.
But those guys actually manage to take a really old and tired concept – i.e. a first person shooter – and spin it in order to make something else entirely:
A first person shooter.
Seriously. Hear me out.
Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane, Australia-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.
The game itself — the title of which is actually short for “war correspondent” — follows the story of journalist Jesse DeMarco. Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story. The scenarios range from intense bursts of action to quieter moments as you discuss the events of the day with fellow journalists in a hotel. Though the main mechanic will be filming the action, Warco is also very much about choice.
Well, this is how [WIRED][1] puts it, anyway. The developers obviously make it [sound a bit more dramatic][3]:
WARCO lets players shoot and record what they see ‘through the lens’ – framing shots, panning and zooming, grabbing powerful images of combatants and civilians caught up in war. They’ve got AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades – you’ve got a flak jacket, a video camera, and a burning desire to get the story.
The praise that Bioshock has received from other critics is – after having played through the game – definitely well earned. Even though I'm usually not exactly a very good FPS player, I managed to get through the whole game. And it definitely was worth it. The world building in Bioshock is excellent, be its embedment into the historical background, or the rich story that shines through at every corner, or finally the beautifully captured art deco architecture, which simply is a joy to explore and walk through.
Gameplay itself is reasonably varied as well. While some parts leave the player wondering whether they were just added to draw out game length1, the "magic" abilities one receives over time offer enough variation and allow the player to change his tactics over time.
Later in the game, some near-failure states are added: at one point, one continually looses maximum health, forcing the player to react faster. At another, the player isn't able to choose his currently activated plasmid. Not only is the game randomly cycling between the equipped plasmids, but between others as well, allowing the player to test out previously unavailable plasmids – and requiring him to change his tactics to deal with splicers every minute or so.
With Bioshock having distinct horror elements as well, sound plays an important element as well.
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Even though they might leave this impression, all parts are able to tell some part of the background story, allowing the player to dive deeper into the world. ↩
Robert Yang kindly asked me to translate the article about my level design considerations for my bachelor's thesis game. I'm slightly afraid that he is going to be disappointed, since this is not so much a theoretical approach to architecture and level design in general, but rather my thoughts and motivations for creating the specific level architecture for my own game.
When starting to design the level, I considered the following points to be the main guiding lines:
Isolation
With the game being a serious game and a bachelor's project, I have neither the time (now) nor the money (in the future, when, hopefully, I'll be able to finish and publish the game) to create a large, open world.
One of the reasons why getting into game design right now is so interesting is the fact that part of the business, of the creative process and of the production is still forming – and in a constant state of flux.
While on one hand, game production teams have grown larger in order to produce even more content (after all, many AAA titles boast to have 50+ hours playtime – which is 25 times as much as a normal action film), other people reduced their teams and are producing awesome games with teams of three or four people.
Jason Schreier over at Wired's Game|Life argues as well that games need auteurs: a single person with a vision for a game, as opposed to "design by committee":
Most games, like most movies, are a massive undertaking involving the work of hundreds of people. But many films — the best, some would argue — are driven by the central creative direction of a single auteur. No matter how many other people work on a project, auteur theory holds that it is possible for a single, strong creative vision to shine through. Bringing such a dynamic to videogames could result in stronger stories, more compelling gameplay — and fewer artistic and commercial failures that result from that well-established enemy of the creative process, design by committee.
And, which is even better, the industry is slowly adapting that as well.
Just a short note on the ubiquity of New York by Jim Rossignol over at the (always great) BLDGBLOG:
The parallels and disparities between videogames and movies are endlessly debated, but there's one certainty: they both return, routinely, to the architecture of New York City. The most frequently filmed city in the world is also the most frequently modeled.
The canyons of New York are as useful for game designers as they are for film directors. If the decision is arbitrary, then New York represents a kind of go-to alpha city: the logical choice if you need a city at all. For film directors it's a grand and familiar backdrop, and the same bold geometry is relatively straightforward for game technologies to render. The grid-like topology, an added bonus, is easy for gamers to understand and navigate, too.
It seems New York is not just the alpha city, but some sort of blueprint for any western city, both for films and games.
I wonder whether Tokyo or Hong Kong serves a similar purpose in the east – any research on that out there?
Benjamin Burger has watched the episode titled Addicted to Games? of the BBC series Panorama, and is not exactly happy about it (as have been other people, as I could watch on Twitter):
Unfortunately the report was not satisfying at all. It was like looking for an intelligent crime story and ending up with CSI Miami. The whole show was just a show. [...] Panorama simplifies the Game-Scene to problem-kids and how they corrupting their family or social life.
Of course, the journalism is bad, the conclusions hackneyed – but it shows mostly one thing: games do make their way into (mainstream) culture, and just as with any new medium (like radio or TV or films or pop music, to name just a few), they are met with resistance and fear from the current generation that has not been socialised with that new medium. Even more so with games. After all,
[it's] a tremendous difference between watching games or playing them,
and that makes it even more scary.
No one denies that games can be addictive, and no one denies that games may be built upon such mechanics – but then again, even most board games use those mechanics, and no one complains.
The same goes with alcoholic beverages: obviously, it can be addictive; yet the times when politicians demanded a complete crackdown are long gone.
I have a new-found respect for farmers (that I’m somehow failing to apply here) after attempting to complete either mission. After four lengths of the cornfield I decided to see if tractors can swim. Tractors cannot swim.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun reviews (the demo) of the Farming Simulator 2010 and is pretty snarky about it. I am the last one to defend the Farming Simulator, but somehow, I could not be happy with the malicious glee that hides behind the article either.
In the end, it is not just about being snarky. The real reason why this review is so snarky is not because the game itself is bad. The reviewer never even considered that. For him, it was enough to know that this game did not conform to his – perversely – elitist sense of what a game should be and what not. Farming Simulator does not comply, so here comes the ridicule.
In terms of sales, he could not be wronger. The original version of the Farming Simulator dominated the sales charts of amazon.de for months. Apparently, people see it as a game, and they are willing to pay for it.
Can a game reviewer just disregard that? Obviously, and he even gets cheered on by the comments left on the page.
Imagine a literary critic reviewing a children's book, and mocking its many pictures, its simplistic language and its morally charged and black-and-white story. Clearly, he would be scolded for his utter disregard of the intended audience of the book, and his arrogance for assuming that only books targeted at him are "real" books.
What seems appalling in one case is courant normal in an other. If there is not something to shoot on the screen, it is not a real game.
Another script that is the result of the ProXedural project at the ZHdK. It produces a somewhat randomly generated level of the size of a collider that is placed over a terrain in Unity 3D.
By using a somewhat mixed approach of completely random raycast placing and placing objects using an array, the script can ensure that the different kinds of objects are distributed all over the terrain.
Again, the script may be oddly specific at times, so you might have to adapt it to your needs if you intend to reuse it.
using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; /// <summary> /// Right now, this class does not do a whole lot. The principle, however, /// could be applied and extended for other purposes. The approach ensures /// that the objects are distributed all over the place. /// </summary> public class RandomPopuliser : MonoBehaviour { public GameObject[] stuffToPlace; private int[,] grid = new int[6, 6]; public int maxNumberOfObjectsToPlace = 30; // Use this for initialization void Start () { for (int i = 0; i < grid.GetLength (0); i++) { for (int j = 0; j < grid.GetLength (1); j++) { // Define some data we will need later on. float cellWidth = this.collider.bounds.size.x / grid.GetLength (1); float cellDepth = this.collider.bounds.size.z / grid.GetLength (0); float minX = cellWidth * j; float maxX = cellWidth * j + cellWidth; float minZ = cellDepth * i; float maxZ = cellDepth * i + cellDepth; // Let's define a counter that looks on which placeable we // are working on.
A simple walker script for Unity 3D in C# that tries to avoid obstacles. It has been used in the ProXedural project at art school, and it made the cows walk towards one of the players. To be honest, it does not really deserve the I in AI. But then again, no one expects cows to be very clever.
Maybe someone can use it as a base to produce something better (oh well, who am I kidding, this has already been done).
using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; /// <summary> /// A simple AI walking script. Follows a target. /// </summary> public class AIWalker : MonoBehaviour { internal Vector3 target; private CharacterController controller; private int counter = 0; private Vector3 avoidNormal; private Vector3 semiStaticDirection; private RaycastHit hit; /// <summary> /// The delegate that will execute the current state of the FSM. /// </summary> private delegate void FState (); private FState stateMethod; /// <summary> /// Returns the vector of the current forward motion of the controller. /// </summary> /// <value> /// Returns a vector. /// </value> private Vector3 forward { get { return transform.TransformDirection (Vector3.forward); } } /// <summary> /// Helper function to get a right or left vector. /// </summary> /// <value> /// Returns left of right (Vector3). /// </value> private Vector3 randomLeftOrRight { get { return UnityEngine.Random.value > 0.5 ? Vector3.right : Vector3.left; } } /// <summary> /// Calculates the direction to the target object.
I have not watched those yet, but they might be wort a look:
Kurt Reinhard from the Institut für Theorie, Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts, recently posted on Vimeo a fascinating series of short videos on the future of storytelling. The videos juxtapose the perspectives of some key thinkers in this space, including Clay Shirkey (NYU), Joshua Green (UCSB), Ian Condry and Nick Montfort (MIT), Dean Jansen from the Participatory Culture Foundation, Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling, and, hmm, Henry Jenkins (USC), among others. Each video is between five and ten minutes long and tackles some of the ways that shifts in the media environment are changing the nature of stories and storytelling.
The complete series can be found on the blog of Henry Jenkins.
The bldgblog remains a source for inspiration and ideas.This time, Geoff Manaugh reviews the book The Meadowlands by Robert Sullivan. The Meadowlands are basically New York's dump, a forgotten and abused patch of land. But just because of all this trash, a curious landscape began to emerge.
Lutz's book describes the region as a "32-square-mile stretch of sweeping wilderness that evokes morbid fantasies of Mafia hits and buried remains." As Lutz explained in a 2008 interview with Photoshelter, "When I first saw the Meadowlands I was completely blown away at this vast open space with the Manhattan skyline in the distance. It was this space that existed between spaces, somewhere between urban and suburban all the while made up of swamps, towns and intersecting highways. None of it made any sense to me, still doesn't."
In many places, the so-called ground is, in fact, trash—so much so that "underground fires are still common today... you can see little black holes where the hills have recently burped hot gases or fire... huge underground plumes of carbon dioxide and of warm moist methane, giant stillborn tropical winds that seep through the ground to feed the Meadowlands' fires, or creep up into the atmosphere," forming a particularly Dantean local climatology of reeking crosswinds. One of these fires "burned for fifteen years."
The Meadowlands are, after all, a massive dump, more landfill than landscape.
In a beautiful piece over at BLDGBLOG, Jim Rossignol writes about how "science fiction exists to cast a shadow over the present".
He connects three places: the alien zones in Roadside Picnic, the decaying landscape in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker and the very real exclusion zone around Chernobyl, which has been, itself, turned into a decaying, alienating zone in the video game STALKER (which I have yet to play).
The production team at GSC Gameworld, a games studio based in nearby Kiev, intended to use the derelict zone as the basis for environments in their action shooter, STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl. The team went into the zone and photographed urban dereliction: a snapshot of an abandoned Soviet Union. They would go on to fill their game world with the zone's rusting fences and collapsing grain silos, but that was not all that came with the material: the landscape and its decaying architecture was already charged with mythology—with narrative.
The game references both Chernobyl as well as Stalker (the film); a film that, as I only realised through this article, was made way before the actual Chernobyl disaster. Yet, strangely enough, foreshadowed it in a rather scary way.
Tarkovsky's film manages to imbue derelict industrial landscapes with a terrible sense of threat.
There is a new book by Cory Doctorow, and it's about games.
In the virtual future, you must organize to survive
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system.
