Industry — 6 comments
14
Aug 10
By Adrian Forest
When Ian Bogost launched Cow Clicker, he intended it to be a satire of social games like Farmville, a demonstration of what’s wrong with them in the form of a working model. Cow Clicker may be taking off, by hooking critics of social gaming into clicking their cows daily, even if (as many protest) only ironically, but I’d argue that Cow Clicker is somewhat flawed. As a critique of social games, Cow Clicker has some huge, gaping holes in its working model. Why? Because it’s not exploiting its players enough.
Now, to explain what I mean, I’m going to make an argument about social games, and the way they work. But it’s important to note that I’m talking here about one particular type of social gaming. Games that fit this mould are reasonably identifiable (free to play, minimal free content, paid content gives game advantages, etc.) and if you’re not doing social games this way, this argument probably doesn’t apply to you. It doesn’t apply to games like Neptune’s Pride, or to Words With Friends. It does apply to many of the games made by companies like Zynga, and it does apply to the prominent of these games: Farmville. Continue reading →
Game Design — 7 comments
23
Jul 10
By Fraser Allison
I love violent games.
I love shooting. I heart punching. I make “brrrm!” noises when I move tanks around, and cackle gleefully when I make those tanks demolish other tanks or buildings. Who cheers for war? I cheer for war.
If it’s done well.
Luckily, violence is one of the easiest things to simulate in a videogame. People both inside and outside the culture of games wonder whether the popularity of realistic warfare simulators is a sign that today’s youth are becoming brutalised (as though people haven’t always been fascinated by war), but sit Jack Thompson, Michael Atkinson, Hillary Clinton and Joseph Liberman down in a Basic Game Programming 101 class and I guarantee you they will all start by making a 2D shooter (if they think nobody is watching). Continue reading →
Academic / Game Design — 18 comments
12
Jul 10
By Fraser Allison
There doesn’t seem to be a lot going on in the game scene right now (at least for people not interested in motion controls, ever-more-unsettling modern war shooters and misjudged forum policies), so I’m taking advantage of the quiet time to go back some of the basic structures in games. Today I’m taking a first-principles look at the kinds of stories videogames tell.
It’s generally agreed that there are two types of game stories: what the script says and what the player does. Or as Valve writer Erik Wolpaw put it in a presentation at the Game Developers Conference in 2008:
Games tell two stories: the story story – the narrative story that’s the sum total of a game’s cutscenes and dialogue; and the gameplay story – the story described by the actions the player takes in the game world.
Game designer Marc LeBlanc proposed the names “embedded narrative”, for the story set into the game by the designers, and “emergent narrative”, for the story that emerges from the process of playing.
There’s a third type of story in videogames, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Continue reading →
Industry / News — 6 comments
17
Jun 10
By Fraser Allison
“By taking the controller out of the equation, Microsoft has solved a problem that didn’t exist.”
Tom Chick, Fidgit
One question nags at me about the-technology-formerly-known-as-Natal: what’s it for?
Have people really been hanging out for a breakthrough in motion-controlled gameplay? I don’t think so. I think core gamers and the wider market alike are politely disinterested – in the legal sense, of “not having the mind or feelings engaged”. They may yet be convinced, but they’re not clamouring for this.
So what, right? Nobody knew they wanted a Wii until Nintendo told them. And this is, pretty clearly, an attempt to improve on the Wii. Microsoft is doing what Microsoft has always done best: take someone else’s successful idea and build on it. Continue reading →
Culture / Industry — 2 comments
15
Jun 10
By Daniel Golding
As we write, millions of ornithologists around the world prepare to observe the culmination of the world’s largest seasonal migration of birds at the Los Angeles Convention Centre. The event has become a cultural touch-stone for bird-fanciers everywhere, and its importance in the ornithological calendar cannot be understated. The sheer variety of our winged friends on display can be overwhelming to even the most seasoned avian ecologist, let alone the enthusiastic amateur. So, this year, we’ve put together a brief guide to some of our more exciting plumed playmates that you’ll be likely to encounter at E3 2010. Continue reading →
Culture / Industry — 12 comments
01
Jun 10
By Fraser Allison
We at RedKingsDream are cursed with double lives. If there were twice as many hours in a day, we might devote half of them to playing and talking about games. But other duties call; with the demands of jobs, education and family, it can sometimes be hard to make time for games.
Lately my days have been divided unevenly between sleep, study, two jobs, meals and occasionally cleaning the house; the spaces between these are spent in monotonous and repetitive train journeys. It leaves little time for games, but I have one way to stay in touch with the culture: podcasts. Continue reading →
