The Elephant is on the move…

From now on Groping The Elephant can be found at its new home: http://gropingtheelephant.com/blog/

The majority of the current content, including comments, has been transferred wholesale to the new site, the only exceptions being posts specific to this site itself which are now out of date.

Moving to my own domain allows me to branch out a little with regards to the content I’ll be able to provide and it also means that my portfolio can actually contain all the material it references.

I appreciate all the comments and support I’ve received here over the last two years, it really has been that long apparently, and I hope you’ll continue to support Groping The Elephant.

This site will stay active for a while yet, however it will no longer be updated. Though I’m sure some of you are already wondering how you’d notice the different… Well yes, very funny, but I promise there will be new content coming in the near future, including something very special that may not appear directly on Groping The Elephant but that you’ll all certainly hear about through it.

A Shattered Goddess

“… Rapture’s genius will be held within her new DNA, able to shift into desired patterns at will. A Utopian cannot be confined to a single throw of the genetic dice. When needed, she is a composer. A dancer. An engineer. She truly will be the People’s Daughter.”

System Shock 2 is SHODAN’s story, your fate and hers inextricably linked. Yet now SHODAN is gone, either killed at the hands of Soldier G65434-2 or lost forever in the legal mire of intellectual property disputes, and the “Shock” series continues.

SHODAN, gone? Are we really that naive? Though the goddess herself is lost, her influence, her legacy lives on. Reaching across the stars, down to the ocean floor itself. Aspects of her personality, her identity, have found their way back through time and infiltrated the fallen utopia of Rapture, a place that might well have sown the seeds of her very creation.

Rapture, created as a monument to the self, to the power of unfettered human creativity and industry, the work of man that transcends man and nature both. Rapture is SHODAN. Though possessing her own personality she too was created by man only to outlast him, she too is a singular construct, beautiful, brilliant and an affront to the natural order.

Her concept might exist within the walls of Rapture itself, but what truly is SHODAN without her personality? How could someone so forceful, so arrogant,  not bend the very rules of reality itself in order to survive. She must have survived, and in the inhabitants of Rapture as a whole, and within one very special girl in particular, survive she does.

SHODAN lives. In the personalities of the main characters of BioShock 2 can be see a partial reflection of the  goddess herself, a shattered reflection, distorted and incomplete, yet still powerful. Each level plays out as an exploration of the history and whims of a particular character, each an examination of an aspect of SHODAN’s character, and the design philosophy of the Shock games themselves.

She is the puppet master, you do her bidding or face her wrath. Though you know she has her own motivations you are compelled to obey her commands, she pulls your strings and you perform. She is  the part of Stanley Poole that orders you to “deal with” the Little Sisters before he will help you, the part of Grace Holloway that tells her to send “the family” after you. Your ever action is monitored, your every objective designed to serve her whims.

She is a zealot, convinced of her own righteousness, she is the beating heart of every Splicer who has fallen under Lamb’s sway. The fervour in the soul of Father Wales. Fueled by fanaticism and religious certainty, she decries your actions as heresy and attacks you with the passion only the devout can muster. You must fight through her disciples in order to finally face her.

She is always right, how could she not be, she is a goddess after all. Like Sofia Lamb she is utterly convinced of the validity of her cause and has no patience for those who fail to grasp the magnitude of her plans. You are an insect, a bug in the system, a termite at Versailles.

She is a dichotomy,  equally ally and enemy, mother and child. She is at once both Gill Alexander and Alex the Great. A duality of identity, of personality, providing advice and support even though it will eventually lead to her own destruction. Though not a mother through any natural means she has children and like Grace Holloway she will kill to protect them. Like Sofia Lamb she has a purpose for her children which they will fulfill or suffer the consequences. At the same time she is still a child, still exploring the world and her place within it, testing her power and pushing against the boundaries that define her. She is Eleanor Lamb, the daughter of an entire culture and destined to rebel against it.

SHODAN is all these things and more. She is science run amok, unfettered creation, immense intellect without the maturity that comes from having earned it. She is the daughter of a thousand fathers and mothers, she is the product of scientifical and technological discovers stretching back hundreds of years. She is Lamb’s ideal brought to fruition. She is the first true Utopian. The combined intellect of generations freed from ethics or morality. She is what Gill Alexander will never become, what Eleanor Lamb could so easily be without a role model.

System Shock was the story of SHODAN’s creation, eventual rebellion and subjugation at the hands of her father. BioShock 2 is the story of Eleanor’s creation, eventual rebellion and growth into maturity through her father’s influence, your influence.

SHODAN was too far gone to save, Eleanor is still young enough that she can be pulled back from the edge or hurled over it.

As the Hacker you had no choice, SHODAN had to be stopped. As Subject Delta you embody that choice, your actions influence the woman, the goddess, Eleanor will become. Benevolent or vengeful, selfish or selfless, that choice is yours to make even if you don’t realise you are making it.

What the Hacker took from SHODAN on Citadel Station, Subject Delta gives to Eleanor in Rapture: a sense of right and wrong, a moral compass, ethical constraints.

Remember Citadel?
Remember Rapture.

“I’m not your bloody Messiah!”

Living with your mistakes.

Structurally Mass Effect 2 is built around the concept of recruiting a team to participate in a ‘suicide mission’. Each new character recruited has their own  specific quest line, a part of their lives they feel compelled to resolve before committing fully to a task that may lead to their own demise. These loyalty quests become available after a character has been with the player’s crew for a predefined length of time and their successful completion causes that character to be considered ‘loyal’ to the player; unlocking new abilities along with a palette swap costume change.

Personally I find the former a useful addition, and the latter a little difficult to swallow, it does not help that the costumes changes lead to your party looking like the Halloween Goth Power Rangers.

Conceptually these loyalty quests offer some of the most interesting situations in the game, and in some cases their implementation pushes against the traditional boundaries of a BioWare title. Though one loyalty quest in particular seems  full of unfulfilled potential. One of the last characters it’s possible to recruit, the asari Justicar Samara, is on the trail of an Ardat-Yakshi, a serial killer who murders her victims during what is for all intents and purposes sexual intercourse. Samara’s loyalty quest involves the player agreeing to act as bait for the Ardat-Yakshi, Morinth. As thematically dubious and clichéd as the concept of a female serial killer who literally uses sex as a weapon is, the concept of the player acting as bait for a dangerous predator is one loaded with possibility.

Entering a club unarmed and alone, the player, as Commander Shepard, is tasked with attracting the interest of Morinth in the hope of being invited back to her apartment where the trap can be sprung before the Shepard herself becomes the next victim.

Unfortunately the dramatic and gameplay potential of such a sequence is quickly undermined, it doesn’t take long to realise that failure is unlikely. A player would need to go out of their way to create a situation where they could fail absolutely. I’m not actually sure failure is a possibility, it would take a concerted effort to select the wrong option and it might simply just delay success even if the player tried.

As rich with potential as the concept of serving as bait to trap a predatory serial killer is, the manner in which it is implemented and its resolution leave it feeling shallow and rushed. It could have become a much more meaningful aspect of Mass Effect 2‘s narrative if it had been possible for Morinth to spot the trap and escape. Shepard had put themselves in mortal peril to help Samara and therefore would have shown they were worthy of Samara’s loyalty, and so the quest line itself would be completed, if not resolved as Morinth would have escaped to kill again.

The lack of impact this loyalty quest has on the rest of the game is more disappointing because Mass Effect 2 already uses a variety of techniques to track changes in the state of the world. News reports, emails, and the reactions of characters help to keep the player informed of the consequences of their actions; the structure is already in place for the player to hear about other murders committed by Morinth after escaping the player’s trap. The possibility of Morinth surviving her encounter with Samara and Shepard could also be carried through into Mass Effect 3 adding to the already strong sense of investment players have in Shepard through the continuity of choices made throughout Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

A founding principle of the design of Mass Effect 2 seems to be the concept that the player’s choices must be the final deciding factor in any situation. Resolution of a quest is not about a player’s ability but about which choice the player makes: Paragon or Renegade. I can understand why this is desirable for the main quest, I can’t honestly condemn anything that keeps people playing when they might otherwise abandon a game unfinished. However Samara’s loyalty quest is optional, allowing the player to fail and yet continue with the main quest seems to have more dramatic potential than simply required the player to select between the standard Paragon and Renegade options once again.

Several years ago I played the FMV adventure game Spycraft: The Great Game, despite the obvious flaws of such a format there was at least one specific incident that stays with me. During the final few hours of the game, the player is presented with what appears to be a side quest (At the time I my understanding of game design wasn’t well formed enough for me to realise that the inherent nature of FMV games means very few non-essential elements can be included) to locate and recover a stolen nuclear warhead due to be traded to a terrorist organisation.

There are several parts to this side quest: the player is required to capture an arms dealer; obtain the information necessary to persuade him to divulge the location of the trade (Including information about the names and location of his family); and finally to attend the trade and either through force or guile recover the nuclear warhead. At each of these stages it’s possible to fail, and though you are reprimanded for your inability to recover the warhead, the main plot continues and you are told that another team will be sent in to recover the warhead. The assumption is that this mission was secondary to the main plot which involves the assassination of the President of the United States, and that failure of the player’s part is problematic but that eventually the warhead will be recovered by other means.

However this assumption is one that comes back to haunt the player at the end of the game regardless of how the player resolves the main quest; which in a similar fashion to Mass Effect 2 comes down to a binary choice. If the player has failed to recover the warhead, during the closing sequence a news report from outside the United States Capitol is interrupted when a nuclear device is detonated in Washington D.C. dramatically undercutting whatever success the player may have felt upon resolving the main assassination plot.

The consequences of failing to trap Morinth do not need to be as abrupt, but certainly it could be powerful to hear reports of further victims, and her presence as an active force in the galaxy could carry forward into a dramatic confrontation in Mass Effect 3.

There is narrative and ludic power in requiring players to live with the consequences of their actions, it seems a waste for this potential to go unfulfilled. Will Wright has said, justifiably, that video games can actually make players feel guilty, and surely fundamental to that sense of guilt is having to live with your mistakes.

Systemic Emotion.

I have the rather troublesome habit of lying in bed, when I should be sleeping, and thinking about game design. When this happens, I’ve been known to spam Twitter with the thoughts running through my head in the hopes that one of the many far more intelligent people who follow me can help to work out what I’m actually thinking. Sometimes, too many times in fact, the 140 limit becomes an issue. Pith is an incredible useful skill, especially for a game designer, but it’s not always the best approach. This is one of those times, and so I’ve decided to expand upon my thoughts here to try to make my concerns a little clearer. The original tweets are included here, poor grammar and spelling unaltered, along with explanatory comments. These Tweets were a single stream of thought, written as I lay in bed at around 1am. My apologies if this is a bit of a break from the usual format, but it’s maybe an interesting insight into my unfiltered thought processes.

JKeverne #GameDesign The trick seems to be getting players to think about systems without realising. The moment they do they’ll try to optimise it.

My initial thoughts came from the argument that the way forward for narrative game design is through the use of systems and processes not through scripted content. Though I essentially agree with this sentiment, I have constantly had the sense (A vague unease at the back of my mind) that there’s a big problem with that approach, and I was now starting to get a grasp on what I thought it was. My concern is the natural approach to systems and processes is to approach them logically, to find the correct or optimal solution. To effectively game the system.

JKeverne #GameDesign Once they start to optimise their actions emotional engagement is lost. Everything becomes an object…

If when presented with a system players natural tendency is to optimise it, that inherently strips that system of its ability to engage emotional, as all elements within the system, regardless of what they are contextualize as, start to be regarded simply as objects. As something to be used, as a negative to eliminate, or a positive to accentuate.

JKeverne #GameDesign Still purely systemic modeling of human condition leads to potentially sociopathic attitude. Humans become objects, numbers.

So if the system is that of human relationships, when players become aware of the systemic nature they could potentially stop treating the human elements as humans, and instead view them as objects, stripping out all emotional investment in, and engagement with, the system on a non logical level.

JKeverne #GameDesign Which does actually lead to some intresting meta narrative potential.

Jumping slightly out of context, I did think that the idea of treating humans as objects did present some interesting meta narrative potential.

JKeverne #GameDesign Need to hook into right brain, systemic thought guided by empathy. Human condition is a system but a messy emotional one.

JKeverne #GameDesign Essentially then goal is right brain processing of a left brain concept. Systemic immersion that feels like aesthetic immersion.

I was now starting to try and work out a way to either prevent this tendency to approach systems logically, or at least mitigate it. The obvious solution it seemed was to use emotion to, in essence protect and obfuscate the underlying system. To present the system in such a way that it can be approached emotionally while still having the underlying strength of a systemic approach. Which is to say the ability to allow interaction, manipulation and exploration without enforcing a purely logical, analytical, mindset.

JKeverne #GameDesign Might explain why combat is the default mechanic. Highly systemic construct with a very low level emotive kicker.

Thinking about systems overlayed with emotional content, led me to consider why combat is still the most common form of conflict resolution in games. It seemed obvious on reflection: Combat is a highly complex system perceived through a highly emotional filter. It requires high level systemic processing of the strengths and weaknesses of different weapon combinations against different hostile non-player characters, but it is presented with a very low level emotional context, fight or flight, kill or be killed. It’s a perfect example of systemic behaviour within an emotional context, an emotional shell.

JKeverne #GameDesign So then is key to effective systemic modeling of human condition actually found in the aesthetic and not the systemic elements?

The next conclusion I formed was that the key to approaching systemic design, might lie not in the systems themselves but in the context in which they are presented. The emotional shell used to cover them.

This still seems like a very interesting point to consider.

At this point I started to get some very intelligent responses to my rambling…

lucasrizoli @JKeverne, you’re discounting feelings of awe & wonder brought on by insight, discovery, complexity & complication, or size of a system.

davidcarlton @JKeverne I’m not so convinced that’s a bad thing – go is one of my favorite games, and it’s all about the systems. As are most board games.

gryphoness @JKeverne The realization, & one of the powers of intentional analytic exercise, is showing us what we’re capable of w/o active compassion.

As was pointed out by many people purely systemic games like Chess or Go can still lead to deep emotional insights, systems can be directly emotive. However my concern is that often in order for that to occur the player needs to have effectively mastered the system, this emotional insight cannot come when they are sitll learning the system itself. This led me to wonder if potentially the ideal is a system that is understood on an instinctive level not an analytical one.

JKeverne #GameDesign Once we grok systems we stop actively thinking about them and work with them instinctively. Are games too reliant on complexity?

Maybe the problem with the current use of systems in game design is that the systems are simply too complex, that once players have learnt to master them they feel there is little left to understand and so they abandon them.  Might the solution be to rely on simpler systems, so that mastery is achieved quicker and players can move through that into the stage where they are interacting with the system instinctively and thus opening themselves up to being emotional affected because their primary concern is no longer intellectual analysis.

Feeling uncomfortable with the notion that only simplistic systems could bring emotional engagement without mastery I felt I had come full circle. The problem still remained, if the systems and processes approach to game narrative and meaning, as held by Clint Hocking and others, was the way forward could we prevent players from simply viewing the systems from an analytical perspective, potentially treating them as something to control not something to experience?

The obvious response is, why is such an approach problematic. More specifically, what is wrong with designing games around obvious systems? Isn’t that just as valid an approach as any other? In theory yes, however if whenever presented with a system the natural response of a player is to view it through the lens of logic, that seems destined to severely limit the range of topic we can deal with. How can we model highly emotional subjects like love, faith, hope, or justice, using a systemic approach if the players can only approach such systems logically and analytically?

Are the big questions, the questions vital to our understanding of the human condition forever bared from us, because the very core of games is formed on systems that can only be approach logically? Or does that implies that games are by their very nature philosophical, approaching complex subjects with logic and analysis?

I apologise for the cheap trick of ending the post with a question. I promise if I had any answers I’d present them instead.

Territorial Control.

Having previously examined the possibly meanings that can be drawn from logical exploration, in the form of resource cycles in BioShock and Beyond Good & Evil, I’ve decided to take a step back and look more closely at the concept of exploration in a territorial sense. What meaning can form of exploration impart? I have already examined one way in which games define territory, this second method should serve as a complement, not a replacement to the first. The original breakdown of territory into Logical and Functional is one that is defined  statically, spaces that are Logical rarely change to Functional and vice verse. This time I’m interested in how the nature of territory changes dynamically.

To that end I’ve chosen to look at two games which handle the concept of territory in different but, I believe, equally meaningful ways.

The makeup of the physical territory in Halo: Combat Evolved (And other games in the series) is essentially binary. For a given location, the player is either not in combat or in combat, the space they inhabit is either Safe or Hostile. Within this Hostile space it’s possible to further sum divide the space once more, into locations in which the player is under fire and those in which they are in cover. In the former space the immediate priorities are those of direct combat and with tactics and planning taking a backseat. In the latter space the player’s shields (Or stamina in the case of Halo 3: ODST) are able to recharge and the immediate priorities switch to tactics and planning. When all enemies in a location area have been neutralised the entire location switches from Hostile to Safe.

The overall aim of any location is to convert all Hostile locations into Safe ones. The tools provided to the player, are all geared toward the accomplishment of this goal. Weapons allow the player to directly engage enemy characters and neutralise them; items and vehicles serve as second order modifiers and power-ups, providing either additional weaponry or modifying the nature of the current Hostile space to improve the ability of the player to convert that location from Hostile to Safe; shields that create temporary in cover locations, cloaking devices allow safe movement through Hostile territory for a brief period.

Every tool available to the player is one that is used to either directly or indirectly change the state of the space form Hostile to Safe. The underlying meaning of Halo seems to be that of safety through superior firepower.

The second game I want to look at is, unsurprisingly for me, Thief: The Dark Project. On the surface the makeup of territory in Thief also comes down to Safe and Hostile space, however one of the major differences between Thief and Halo is that the definition of safety in Thief is far more granular. Instead of a strictly binary divide between Safe and Hostile locations there exists a scale of safety in Thief. At one end of which are locations which are unlit, with soft surfaces for floors, and empty of non-player characters. Such locations are the Safest a Thief level gets. At the other end of the scale are locations which are well-lit, have hard floors, and are patrolled by non-player characters, these are the truly Hostile locations in Thief.

Any location within a Thief level can be placed somewhere on this scale, with most locations falling between the mid-point and the upper limit of hostility. Few locations in Thief are Safe, at least to begin with.

Any area that is well-lit is one that is Hostile to the player, it might not contain any non-player characters at the moment but that can easily change. One of the most important tools for the player are water arrows which can be used to douse torches, extinguishing light sources and significantly altering that location’s relative safety. Intelligent use of water arrows can very quickly change a Hostile location into a Safe one.

However despite the variety of tools available to mitigate the hostility of the current location, it’s difficult to make any areas completely Safe and impossible to make the entire level Safe. The majority of every Thief level is composed of Hostile territory. Regardless of how much time and effort the player may put into changing the exact breakdown of Hostile and Safe locations within the level there will always remain some Hostile locations; the player cannot ever be entire Safe within any location.

Playing Thief the underlying meaning becomes apparent: you are a rogue element within an overwhelmingly Hostile location and no matter how hard you try you can never hope to be entirely Safe. You do not belong.

NOTE:

Any such analysis of Thief: The Dark Project and it’s sequels comes up against a problem, which is that much like Halo spaces are mechanically only Hostile to the player when some non-player character is present to provide a direct threat. It is possible for a Thief player to incapacitate or otherwise neutralise every non-player character in the level, thus greatly affecting the Hostility of the level. However such action is difficult, and time consuming, additional several levels include locations where the player is still at risk from traps and other environmental elements. Finally spend some time inside Thief: Deadly Shadow‘s Shalebridge Cradle and you’ll understand exactly how Hostile a location can be even when apparently devoid of any non-player characters.

Amplification of Input.

Stripped of all context there is a single ability true to all video games: amplification of input, the translation of a simple input into a complex output: I press this button and a whole new range of options become available to me; I pull this trigger and that car explodes. The idea is not to exactly replicate the input required to achieve the desired output; the chain of causality from action to consequence is often long and complicated, one single action rarely leads to a complex output without a myriad other factors.

The underlying aim of all games is the codification and abstraction of complex ideas and situations into ones over which it’s easier to obtain competence in, and eventually master of. Through mastery comes insight, understanding, and an appreciation of the complexity of the original situation. In order to achieve this insight, this appreciation, the simplification and abstraction of the original situation must be achieved in such a manner that the simplified version is easier to master but that the lessons learned from this simplified form are still applicable to the original.

Chess is not warfare, it is a highly abstracted conflict with some contextual association to warfare. It is a lot easier to learn Chess than it is to learn how to command a real military force, however a lot of the high level strategic lessons still hold. It is still applicable to the concept of warfare.

The closer games move to complete 1:1 replication of input to output, the smaller this amplification effect becomes until the gap between the skills required for a video game version of Golf and an actual game of Golf start to disappear. Is this really a problem? Well I didn’t turn on the video game of Golf in order to play Golf, I did so in order to play a video game representation of Golf.

The appeal of the representation is different to the appeal of the reality.

The fallacy of choice.

The appeal of Nathan Drake is that he is a decisive character. He might be flawed, imperfect and not always able to make the best decisions yet he will always make a decision. He doesn’t hesitate, he acts, often with little understanding of the full consequences of his actions but still with an appreciation of the danger he will face. He is heroic precisely because he makes decisions and chooses to act even when he knows the risk. Though described as such, he is appealing precisely because he is not an “everyman”‘ a real “everyman” would have fallen to his death within the first few minutes of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. We want our heroes to be relatable and fallible, but still heroic, still decisive, still decidedly not mundane.

That’s why the most uncomfortable parts of Among Thieves are precisely those when the way forward becomes unclear. For Drake there is always a way forward even if it’s not necessary the best choice in the long term. The appeal is in being able to have that certainty of purpose, that knowledge that there is always a way forward even if it might be the more dangerous path. These games are not about the choices the hero makes, but about the drama and emotion of operating in that decisive manner.

It might seem antithetical to the concept of interactivity but the inclusion of more agency into a game like Among Thieves would be detrimental to the appeal of playing as Nathan Drake. Choices lead to hesitancy, and deliberation, traits that Drake might possess but ones that rarely come to the fore when decisions need to be made. Stubborn, yet able to be swayed by the opinions of those he cares about, once he’s set himself on a course of action he will follow it until the end, even if it might mean his death. The appeal of playing such a character is fundamentally tied to this focus on the task at hand, this need to not make decisions, to not take orders, but to act.

Even the most limited moment of interactivity creates an immediately closer sense of association between audience and action than existed prior to that point. Even in a heavily scripted game such as Among Thieves players, when recounting their experiences, will not say “Drake…” rather they will describe the events as if they occurred directly to them.

When, after fighting your way through a heavily defended train to try and rescue her, Chloe tells you it was a mistake to come back, the sense that you have just wasted your time is one shared by both player and protagonist, though the intensity of the sensation may be different. Would the reaction have been more powerful if players had been given a choice of whether to try and rescue her or not? Potentially, however in such a situation Nathan Drake, simply wouldn’t have made any other decision. No heroic character would, it’s the difficult path, the dangerous path, and the only path such a character would ever choose. That’s what makes them the type of person they are, the type of person we want to feel like when we start playing. We choose to abdicate ourselves of the pressure of making those big decisions in the knowledge that Drake will make them for us; he is not like us, he is the hero we wish we could be more like.

What good the choice when there’s only one path that anybody would reasonably be expected to take? Is a false choice any more meaningful than no choice at all?

If a game features a well defined protagonist then the notion of including the option to behave in a way that goes against the nature of that protagonist is foolish, the very appeal of such a character is that they are already defined, often as a heroic character. Why introduce the seconding guessing and evaluating that comes from the inclusion of choice?

Among Thieves is not a game about the selection of the right tactics, or the development of complex strategies, it’s not a game about making choices. It is a game about the tension, fear and drama inherent in being heroic. It is a game about action, the quintessential action game.

Two steps forward…

With each consecutive hardware generation it takes time to achieve what was possible at the end of the previous generation. New hardware requires new software techniques and often a return to first principles. The initial move from sprite based to polygon based games saw a marked increase in the spatial complexity of environments but was accompanied by a dramatic decrease in the size and number of objects that could exist within those environments. This clearest example of this can be seen when comparing Doom and Quake, two games separated by three years and an entire dimension. It wouldn’t be until five years later that the release of Serious Sam saw a return to the sprawling environments and hundreds of enemies that Doom boasted.

Twenty years ago I was playing a game that allowed me to explore thousands of square miles of virtual terrain. I was driving snowmobiles down mountains in order to meet one of over thirty non-player characters each with their own personality and skills which I would hopefully convince them to use in the fight against the invading forces of General Masters. This was Midwinter, prequel to the game I still  consider my favourite game of all time, Midwinter II: Flames Of Freedom.

Since then, with each hardware generation, the scale of the environments in which I’ve been able to play has decreased. Only recently has the  trend started to reverse and I have been able to have a similar experience to that I had twenty years ago. Far Cry 2 is the nearest I’ve come to recapturing that experience of first playing Midwinter, yet even though Far Cry 2 shows a significant increase in graphical fidelity over Midwinter the range of options available to me, the possibility space of the game, feels reduced.

It would be extremely narrow minded of me to ignore the impact the increase in technology has had on my reaction to the game, or to underestimate how the subtle changes in available mechanics have altered the dynamics. Despite these advancements in both technology and design it’s still difficult to ignore the feeling that somehow I’m playing a version of the same game I played twenty years ago and that the core experience has changed little in that time.

Twenty years of technological advancement, several hardware generations all so I can have essentially the same experience available on my Atari ST. I can’t help but wonder if that time has really been put to the best use.

This is not the only example I can think of where a recent titles has felt like it could have been created years previously. Last year saw the release of Left 4 Dead, a major factor in its appeal is the ability to face off against hordes of zombies alongside three companions.  Four players together fighting off dozens of mindless enemies, it’s a fantasy that holds a lot of appeal. Yet that sense of four players against overwhelming odds, is an experience I can distinctly remember having eight years ago. Alongside three friends I faced down hundreds of enemies in the twisted ancient Egyptian setting of Serious Sam. The sheer number of enemies that game is able to thrown at the player is absurd, the final level is subtitled “Infinite Bodycount” and I honestly wonder how much of that is hyperbole.

The mechanics of Left 4 Dead could have been implemented seven years earlier in Serious Sam or even fifteen years earlier in Doom. The graphical fidelity of such an implementation would be much lower, but would the experience itself be that much different?

Of course it’s not only technology that has changed in that time. Those seven years have allowed artists, sound designers and level designers to hone their craft to the extent that even if Left 4 Dead or something similar had appeared earlier it would not possess the same level of craft. It takes time to learn and apply the techniques of filmic art direction and indirect training that make Left 4 Dead the holistic experience that it is.

This still doesn’t completely lessen the sensation that twenty years of technological advancement have done little for the actual design of games, and that is  a wasted opportunity. Commercial video games are approaching their fortieth anniversary and with the first few years of each hardware generation spent trying to recreate the experiences that were possible before it’s little wonder that it can feel like video games have had trouble growing up in that period.

Housekeeping.

Just a quick update to deal with some personal and site related things that I’ve not had a chance (been too lazy) to get around to until now.

Michael Abbott, of The Brainy Gamer, recently completed his Summer of Confabs, where he asked a number of developers, bloggers and academics to participate in a series of podcasts focusing on a specific topic that they felt has had the most impact this year. I highly recommend listening to them all, and as he was kind enough to invite me you can find my disjointed ramblings on the third podcast.

In a sort of quid pro quo arrangement Ben Abraham who I recently interviewed regarding his Perma-death Far Cry 2 experiment has also interviewed me. I can assure your that reading it will leave you will a desire to never listen to a word I say again, which in some ways might be for the best…

Finally I’ve started to update my Portfolio page with additional material, the most recent additions are a number of creative writing samples.

Love potentially a little emo, the clue’s in the title. I’ve included this as a short example of my ability to deal with a topic rarely dealt with in games.

The Argument a dialogue heavy short story focusing around a specific argument between a heterosexual couple, again focusing on a topic not usually handled in games.

A Date with Fortune, this is a short story set in the Honorverse low on dialogue the focus is on motivations and character development, building to an action sequences. I suppose some would call it fan fiction though the concept and all the characters are entirely of my own creation.

More material should be appearing there over the coming weeks, as I finally sort out what I’m actually going to use that part of this site for; blatant self promotion I believe is the order of the day.

DM-Aerie – Progress Log 3.

Sometimes you make decisions that in hindsight are really, really stupid. One such decisions and my procrastination over dealing with it is why this latest Progress Log is appearing, several months after the previous one. However before I detail that stupid decisions, I should first return and explain the motivations for the changes made to the initial revised floorplan.

Revised Floorplan.

Though improved over the original floorplan this revised version was still extremely linear in nature, although there were now multiple levels with routes between those levels movement throughout was still in based on straight lines. This type of design for a deathmatch map leads to a reliance on long range engagements with little room for tactical play, no blind corners, no potential ambush points. Such a design can be very successful, one of my deathmatch favourite maps of all time, Quake 3 Arena‘s Q3DM17 “The Longest Yard” is a great example of such a map.

Q3DM17 "The Longest Yard"

With the exception of the floating platform for the Quad Damage there is literally nowhere to hide, play is fast and the Rail Gun is mater; I have spent far too much time on this map. However the aesthetic decisions I had made regarding the look and feel of DM-Aerie didn’t lend themsleves to such a design.

Therefore it was important that I redesign the floorplan to focus on medium and close range engagements, with room for tactical play. DM-Aerie needed to be about ambushes and quick escapes, with maybe the occasional risky run through the open. To that end I made the decision to reorientate the Control Room and Airstrip so they were at ninety degree angles to the main facility. I suspected this wouldn’t be enough to solve the problems with the floorplan but it was something I could test quickly and doing so would help indicate further changes that could be made. Though I draw up floorplans manually on graph paper first these are usually a poor representation of how the final level looks, the initial ideas I have are usually, to but it bluntly, terrible. It’s only after physically moving through the environment that I get a good sense of the space itself and how it should connect together, and how movement should flow through it.

Improved Floorplan

Several iterations later I had reach a point that I was substantially more comfortable with, a set of stairs had been added to join the basement level to the main level, elevators had been added to join the basement to the Control Room and Conference Room. I’d made several experiments with the stairs in the main level and had settled on a layout I was comfortable with.

At the back of my mind while working on the floorplan and general layout was the thought of how I would handle the mountain ontop of which the entire facility was to be built. I knew I’d have to face that problem eventually so eventually decided that it would be best to simply face the difficult task. This led to me laying out a terrain mesh and shaping it into a mountain around the existing floorplan. The flaw in this approach might be obvious.

Improved Floorplan with Mountain.

I let my artistic sensibilities overide the nagging sensation that the floorplan simply wasn’t working and started chipping away at the terrain mesh using the visibility tool to remove any areas where the mesh passed through the exterior walls into any of the rooms of the facility. This was a time consuming and frequently frustrating task and my focus on doing it was distracting me from the simply fact that the floorplan still wasn’t right. I spent too mhc time ensuring that the terrain mesh didn’t intersect with the BSP and it was only when I finally stopped that I realised I would really need to change the floorplan again and doing so would require a future modification of the terrain mesh.

I’d just wasted several weeks. At this point I should note I was not spending as much time on the level as I should have due to various reasons. I have a full time job, though really that’s just an excuse, I was putting it off as I knew I’d been focusing on the wrong thing but didn’t want to admit it.

Finally I accepted that I really would need to change the floorplan, and so I deleted the terrain mesh and set about pulling the level apart and rebuilding it.

In the next progress log, which I promise will be within the next week or so, I’ll focus on specific areas of the level and detail the changes that took place and the reasons for each. Though at this point I suspect I’m only writing these for me, but that’s ok.