Experience

Culture / Experience — 1 Comment
3
Apr 10

RKD on… The name of the games

Earlier I wrote about how “Xbox” has come to be used as a generic term for videogames. After I noticed the phenomenon once, I started to see it everywhere, like in this news article from earlier in the week:

The glamorisation of crime has been condemned by Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who cited everything from Xbox games to television crime dramas and Hollywood movies as “abhorrent”.

Xbox is not the first brand to rise to this position of prominence; it only dethroned PlayStation sometime within the current console generation, and in the 1990s Nintendo was king. The dominant brand changes over time, but digging into the history is difficult, as the phenomenon is rarely remarked upon and examples are hard to find with a web search. I asked the other writers at RKD what they could remember about the names people came up with for videogames in their younger years. Continue reading →

Culture / Experience / Game Design / Industry — 1 Comment
14
Mar 10

Gorillaz in our midst

Welcome to the world of the Plastic Beach, a collaboration between musicians and mediums alike.

My plane arrives at its eerily uncharted destination by the sea. Fortunately, there isn’t an abrupt crash landing, or an Ayn Rand-inspired dystopian society to welcome me. Unfortunately, my first contact is with the insufferable likes of a dopey pelican and a suicidal seagull voiced by the lead singer of Blur.

I must be in Gorillaz territory. Continue reading →

Experience — 6 Comments
2
Mar 10

Court in suspense

If the premise of Ace Attorney Investigations doesn’t thrill you, the music will.

Miles Edgeworth’s starring adventure had me concerned for the decaying crispness of Capcom’s legal not-quite-sim series; at least before my shamefully gluttonous yet entirely satisfying playthrough over the weekend.

As much as I adore the Ace Attorney games, I admit they don’t offer much leeway in converting newcomers to the franchise. The presumptuously juvenile anime aesthetics, coupled with the seemingly endless amounts of reading required, can cloud the series’ value to the uninitiated.

Certainly, Capcom’s ability to meld endearing writing and silly situations with otherwise gruesome murder scenarios is an admirable achievement in any medium. And yet Wright and Co. reside contentedly in their niche, making few attempts to engage those who are unfamiliar with the admittedly now convoluted narrative elements of the series. Playing through each Ace Attorney title released thus far first (in order) is an understandably daunting requirement. Continue reading →

Culture / Experience — 4 Comments
23
Feb 10

Learning from history

Just how important is it?

I’m an unabashed old fart; young to some, but increasingly decrepit in a gaming culture dominated by the sub-35 demographic. In my day, we argued about the relative benefits of Apple’s sixteen dithered colours over CGA’s four-colour palette. Well, not really – anyone with any brains knew that the Apple was better, even if it was frequently fuzzy as hell. Still, it was a simpler time. Games were normally built around a single mechanic; sometimes they even did it well! You could fit anywhere up to thirty games on a single 140KB floppy disk (back when they were still tangibly floppy!), and 640×480 was considered “hi-res”. Continue reading →

Experience / Game Design — 1 Comment
18
Feb 10

Gaming Pedigree: Five genre-defining adventure games

“Basic vocabulary” edition.

Adventure games are the bastard stepchild genre of the medium. Sure, once upon a time they were cute, but somewhere in-between all those irritating deaths and those irrational mindgames, they somehow became as welcome as a fart at a funeral.

And yet, like Lazarus, they live on. To anyone interested in building a greater appreciation of gaming as a medium generally, they’re important; for many years, adventure games were the staple. Forget about your FPSs and forget about your RTSs – back in the day, most of what was available were magnificently mindbending masochistic experiences, and we liked it that way, damnit!

This week, we’re taking a look at five games that, if played, should help build a basic appreciation of some of the high points of the genre; unlike many other examples, these still hold up today. It’s not an exhaustive list and nor are they the best of the genre. However, they’ve had enough of an impact that as far as staples and meme creation go, they’re among the strongest. Continue reading →

Experience / Game Design — 1 Comment
13
Feb 10

The significance of choice

Games still struggle to offer players meaningful choices that enrich the story, rather than distract from it.

Hands up who has spent at least five minutes agonising over a decision in a game. Fifteen minutes? An hour?

It’s strange, isn’t it?  Even when a choice has little or no impact on the rest of the game, it can still have plenty of emotional pull. We don’t want to get it wrong, especially if it affects other people – determining the fate of an NPC can drive a certain kind of gamer to insomnia and put a game on hold for days. Continue reading →

Experience / Game Design — No Comments
11
Feb 10

Narrative Excellence: Ultima VI

All ye who enter be warned; here be spoilers.

Most game-based storytelling is facile at best.  Be honest - we all know it’s true. But, not all – games do exist that stand on their own as examples of what the medium is capable of. Often, they’re no better than an average book or movie. Sometimes, thanks to their level of interaction, they’re incomparable. Irrespective, recognising them and learning from their strengths is important, as it’s the only way we’ll learn how to tell better stories.

Up until the half-baked (and too quickly shipped) Ultima VIII and Ultima IX, the Ultima series was arguably the RPG series by which all others were judged.  Even Final Fantasy, for all its mechanical variability, doesn’t come close – where Final Fantasy has fundamentally become three different games developed by three different teams released under the same banner and linked by chocobos, Ultima was one of the few series that managed to maintain plot, playstyle, and character continuity while still completely revamping and extending the engine between releases. Continue reading →

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