Pac-....*blam blam blam*....-ing

It seems to be all the rage right now for AAA developers to try and ape the style of Hollywood blockbusters. Games like the Uncharted series are doing so a little more openly, but increasingly almost every big budget title seems to be taking lessons from Hollywood schlock, from the flashy setpieces to the cliché characters and dialogue.

Putting aside the question of whether videogames really ought to be aspiring to be more like Hollywood, for the most part I don't have a problem with this cross-pollination. Peter Jackson's King Kong game was a breath of fresh air, and I had a blast with Uncharted 2. I think there are many elements of blockbusters that work well in a videogame medium. Story structure is one of the things which does not.

Most good action movies follow a basic structure along these lines: You start with a big action scene to get everyone's attention and stifle their ADD; you throw in some scenes to establish the setting and characters, some action to show the heroes in their element, until things start spiraling out of control; put in a couple of quiet scenes to make the characters less one-dimensional; something goes wrong and everything seems hopeless, the heroes get mad at one another; then, when all seems lost, the protagonist gathers everyone and everything together for a final desperate stand and wins the day at the last possible second, using a nugget of wisdom he learned along the way.

Works great for a 90-120 minute move. Now try stretching that formula over an 8-12 hour game. The most ubiquitous method is to pad out the action sequences to ludicrous proportions. Most games make me feel like I'm watching a cut of Die Hard where every time McClain encounters the terrorists, he has to kill hordes of them for 45 minutes before the plot can resume. This can cause a weird disconnect where the Nathan Drake of the cutscenes is a plucky adventurer whereas the Nathan Drake of the fighting sections is a serial murderer. Another common method for addressing the problem is to make the plot so ridiculously convoluted that it takes a whole 12 hours to play out, but most games that go this route don't seem to stir sufficiently and you get lengthy clumps of repetitive action floating in a large bowl of nonsense and exposition.

Weird pacing in videogames is definitely not a new problem, but the more we've tried to mimic film conventions, the more it's begun to stand out as something that isn't working. Through their interactive nature (and sketchy Skinnerian techniques) videogame worlds can draw us in better than films can, allowing them to waste our time with hour-long fetch quests, and room after room of identical goons.

And it's our fault. Not just because we put up with it, but because we constantly criticize games for being too short, and commend them for being lengthy. When's the last time someone complained that Casablanca was too short? Do people love The Godfather because it's 3 hours long? I understand wanting to get value for your money, but I'm more concerned with getting value for my time.

Despite the success of Portal and Braid, I don't expect shorter game-length to be embraced anytime soon, so what are some ways of keeping an 8-12 hour experience from dragging? Well, the issue isn't the length itself, but the pacing. So how should a videogame be paced?

Most RPGs, particularly hefty 30+ hour RPGs, are liberally sprinkled with "sidequests," optional missions that distract from the main plot. The fact that these quests have only tangential connection to the main quest is important, because they help break up the action and flesh out the gameworld without having to increase the complexity of the main story. (In JRPGs, sidequest-like sections are often mandatory, but this isn't that important to the issue of pacing, assuming the sidequests are compelling enough that you'll do them regardless.) For the record, I find the pacing in most RPGs even worse than in action games, but the method by which a game like Persona 3 can keep you interested for 100 hours(!) is by providing an overarching plot, with lots of smaller plots strategically sprinkled throughout, similar to the way TV shows generally have an overarching plot with smaller story arcs occupying individual episodes and seasons.

In fact I would argue that TV shows could provide a much better template for videogames than films, at least in terms of pacing and storytelling. The average season of a TV show is comparable in length to the average action game, and both are written with natural stopping points in mind (episodes/levels, though in videogames there is more flexibility). Characters in action/adventure movies have to be drawn in broad strokes, because there isn't time to develop a cast of fully-realized human beings. TV and videogames don't have this restriction. Benjamin Linus (Lost) and Lex Luthor (Smallville) are well-developed and interesting villains who would both come across as completely milquetoast in a summer blockbuster.

The other suggestion I will make is to mix up gameplay better. Most games have two to four different types of activities, be they shooting, platforming, exploring, driving, macrame, etc. I nearly gave up on Mass Effect (one of my all-time favorites) when, right after the first mission, it had me wandering around talking to random NPCs on a space station for literally hours, and my housemate did give up at this point despite my assurances that it got better. It's not that wandering around talking to random NPCs is inherently a boring activity (which it is), but rather that any type of activity has a tendency to become boring after that length of time.

It's also important to recognize that "quiet bits" in action films are not automatically analogous to "quiet bits" in videogames. Having a conversation scene sandwiched between two action sequences is not the same as having a section of backtracking sandwiched in between two action sequences; In the one case, I'm getting to know the characters, in the other, I'm watching a guy walk down a series of hallways. Please embrace the jump-cut, or at least lay dialogue over the backtracking.

I recently purchased the much lauded Deus Ex: Human Revolution, as well as the much reviled Apha Protocol (which was on sale for a single dollar). Alpha Protocol has no shortage of problems: technical glitches, a broken upgrade system, an almost incomprehensible plot, dodgy AI. And yet I've currently put three times as many hours into it as I have into HuRev. Why? Because when I put a couple of hours into Alpha Protocol, I complete a few spy missions, uncover some secrets, make some friends and enemies, and buy some cool spy gear. Most of the time I've put into HuRev so far has involved wandering around talking to random NPCs.

Seperating the Goal from the Faff

I noticed the other day, whilst twirling something in one hand and dropping something in the other, that it is our natural tendency to be playful. We have an inherent drive to make things unnecessarily challenge for our own enjoyment, whether it be a child trying to avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, or an office worker trying to bank a crumpled receipt into a trash receptacle rather than walking the three feet. I term this behavior "seeking out unnecessary challenges to amplify our engagement with and enjoyment of otherwise mundane tasks," or "faffing about" for short.

Most of us faff about a lot in games too. Grand Theft Auto allegedly has missions you can go on, but pretty much all I've ever seen anyone do is aimlessly cruise around listening to the radio, mow down some pedestrians, get in high speed chases, and struggle with the awkward shooting controls while getting gunned down by police. Lather, rinse, repeat. There's nothing wrong with this sort of gameplay any more than there's a problem with strictly goal-oriented gameplay (though I'm hard-pressed to think of a game that doesn't usually involve at least some faffing about). The act of pursuing goals can also be fun and engaging in and of itself. The problems arise when the goals of the game discourage the most entertaining faff.

Imagine a hypothetical fighter. We'll call it Street Kombat. In SK's practice mode, one can try out all sorts of elaborate combos and specials. If this were the only game mode, it would still be moderately entertaining to try out the countless crazy maneuvers that the developers put in. But there's a problem. The developers put so much time into the various special moves that they neglected to properly balance the game. As it turns out, the safest and most effective way to knock out the opponent in SK is to crouch in a corner and repeatedly trip them. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that the goal of the game happens to be to knock out the opponent. SK's goals have actually made the game less fun.

This is an edge case, and the best solution would presumably be to tweak the game's balance rather than trying to find goals that would make SK's broken fighting system enjoyable. But this issue crops up all the time in (usually) less noticeable ways. Have you ever wanted to explore a level more but couldn't because of a time limit, or horded the ammo for the guns that are most fun to use because you knew you might need it for a boss fight later? When a game's goals discourage players from doing the things they find most enjoyable, there is potentially a problem. (I say "potentially" because sometimes being hamstrung in certain ways can be extremely enjoyable, such as when you have to sneak past some guard or defeat an enemy without using your weapons. Just make sure that whenever you are preventing or discouraging a player from doing something they want to do, you are doing so intentionally and with purpose.)

So if this problem of imposed goals ruining players' fun can crop up in carefully designed systems like games, what happens when we recklessly impose goals and incentives in real-world environments like jobs or schools? There is research that shows that external incentives can erode and supersede our internal motivation (this is known as the Overjustification Effect), but external incentives can also directly discourage us from having fun.

While cooking a meal, have you ever twirled the spatula, juggled an egg, or perhaps stirred along to the song on the radio? What about when you were in a hurry? Would you still cook 'playfully' if you were a high-paid chef in a high-end/high-pressure restaurant?

Goals, particularly challenging ones, can make an activity more engaging and fun, but all too often they can merely prevent us from having fun. Often we faff because the activity is too easy and monotonous. Maybe rather than trying to stop a student from doodling through class, or disallowing humorous emails in the workplace, we could simply let people have fun, or even encourage it, and trust that motivation and productivity will follow. Google recognized this, and they are currently worth about 200 billion dollars. Just saying.

Great Game Ideas #1

Skinner Boxing

-A standard boxing game except that your punches only occasionally connect, on a random basis.

-You also have to block at least once every 30 seconds or your coach electrocutes you.

Drop the SOPA

I don't like to get political on a blog purportedly about games, but this bill seems important, and it's allegedly set to pass before Christmas. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), also known as E-Parasite (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation... way cooler name btw) is a bill intended to help US corporations shut down websites that host copyright-infringing material.

I'll agree that piracy can be damaging, but if you look into some of the wording, SOPA is the equivalent of spraying for termites using napalm. All websites will have to start carefully monitoring everything since they could theoretically get blocked or have their revenue yanked because a user posted some song lyrics or something, and all the added litigation (which will carry no risk for the prosecuting companies, mind you) will likely cost the government tens of millions of dollars. On top of this, downloaders will still be able to easily access pirated material simply by finding the site's IP address, so the affect that SOPA will have on actual piracy will be minimal at best.

If you support any notion of net-neutrality, please contact your local representatives immediately (or if you aren't a U.S. citizen pass this on to people who are) and explain why this bill is important, and why we can't allow it to be rushed through like this.

If you want intelligent, well-reasoned arguments against copyright in general, check out some stuff by Cory Doctorow (who is an advisor in my program at UW, meaning that my degree is cooler than yours).

4 Things That Suck About Zelda Games

The Legend of Zelda is probably my favorite series of all time, in any medium. With that out of the way, I'd like to point out some lazy design choices that have plagued the franchise since its inception, and will undoubtedly plague Skyward Sword as well.

4) Combat is way too easy - This is something that has slowly crept in over the years. The original's combat was challenging and intense, and The Adventure of Link had sections that were harder than Goron turds. But as time wore on, the battles became increasingly less challenging. This wouldn't be so bad except that the puzzles have remained fairly devious, causing an odd disconnect. For me the worst was in Wind Waker, which had a couple of puzzles that stumped me for hours, yet common enemies and even most boss fights provided little challenge.

If you disagree, that's fine, but the optimal solution would be to finally institute a difficulty system of some sort. But as previously mentioned, Zelda designers are lazy. Besides, if the combat were too hard, it could completely halt a player's progress and ruin their experience, whereas if it's too easy, the worst that can happen is that they'll futily rant about it on the internet.

3) Heart pieces don't matter - One great thing about Zelda games is that there are tons of secrets hidden everywhere. In Majora's Mask, many of these secrets were masks, some of which actually granted you new abilities (like the "bomb mask" that let you explode your face). However most of these secrets are "heart pieces." Collect four of these, and get an extra heart added to your life bar. Which is all well and good except that every time you complete a dungeon you are granted a "heart container" which immediately increases your life total by a heart, rendering the number of heart pieces you've collected pretty insignificant.

Let's say after 4 dungeons you've found 10 heart pieces. Sounds pretty impressive, except that when you add the 4 heart containers you got automatically to the 3 you started the game with, the extra 2 you got from all that secret hunting aren't exactly game-changing. Of course if you rewarded skilled player's too much, the combat would become more of a breeze to them than it already is. And the easy combat is another reason why heart pieces don't really matter.

2) Rupees really don't matter - With rare exceptions, you will generally have a full purse. This is because rupees fall out of every enemy, pot and shrub. But it doesn't matter because there is nothing to buy with them, aside from bombs and arrows which fall out of every enemy, pot and shrub. On the rare occasion that you actually need rupees for something quest-specific, it usually costs more than you can hold, meaning that you need to obtain the "bigger purse" mcguffin in order to proceed, rather than actually being faced with a decision about whether you can afford the item, or at least how to go about raising money. Not taking the time to balance an actual money economy is ***drumroll*** lazy.

1) It's Ganon! ...again - Spoiler: the big-bad is nearly always Ganon. This wouldn't be a big deal in and of itself, except that the games always try to spring it on us as a surprise. At this point I would be much more surprised if the twist in Skyward Sword is that it's not Ganon. o.0

But despite these niggling flaws, if you say anything bad about Zelda games in my presence, you will be Gannon-Banned.

The Unspeakable Thinks You Can Think

Many who know me are aware that I am a fairly avid longtime fan of H.P. Lovecraft and all things Cthulhu Mythos related (Eternal Darkness is one of my favorite games of all time). It dawned on me a while back that his stories of eldritch terror scratch a similar itch for me as another author whom I was wildly into many long years ago named Theodore Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss.

Both authors deal with strange and fantastical worlds, and both authors like to make up lots of silly words to accentuate the strangeness and fantasticalness.

 Both revel in the bizarre and the unnatural. And both were a little racist.

Granted Lovecraft usually goes for more of a horror angle, but Dr. Seuss can get somewhat creepy too.

"What would I do?" Probably soil myself.

In honor of these literary giants, I've compiled a list of words they made up and turned it into a quiz. Can you tell the difference between Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss?

Unspeakable Thinks » funny quizzes

And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks these two greats should go together. (You won't regret clicking that link. Unless of course you value your sanity.)

The Musician as Athlete

Two decades ago, my mom wrote and self-published an extensive book on Musicians' health from the perspective of someone who both plays the Cello and gets injured. If you too are a musician made of delicate human flesh, you're in luck. I recently converted The Musician as Athlete into an ebook which can be purchased through Amazon. If you are instead some sort of inorganic music synthesizer program, you may not find too much of value here, but I personally suggest uploading yourself to the cloud in order to achieve nominal immortality. If you are a non-musical spambot, I would like to discuss a few things with you.

GameStop can go die in a fire...

Not content with destroying the industry through used game sales, and trying their best to prevent me from rightfully returning products, GameStop decided to cut open every copy of the recently released Deus Ex: Human Revolution and physically remove the coupon for OnLive, then seal them back up and sell them as new.

For those unfamiliar with OnLive, the service allows people to play games over an internet connection without having to own an Xbox 360, a PS3, or a PC that required selling their firstborn. The service sounds pretty swell, and I would try it myself if I didn't live in Canada where we get our internet through strings and plastic cups.

So why did GameStop do this? Because OnLive is a "competing service." It not only competes with their physical stores, but also with the recently purchased, popup laden, Impulse, a digital download service that also has not much to do with OnLive. It also competes with a service similar to OnLive that they plan to launch some time in 2012, which may or may not actually feature Human Revolution.

After customers became rightfully pissed off, GameStop decided to make it up to them by taking their ball and going home, sending all copies of HuRev back to publisher Square Enix. To GameStop's credit, you will supposedly be allowed to return your pre-opened copy if you kept the receipt, but if you attempt to do this I recommend leaving the rest of the day open and bringing along some manner of torture device.

Why DKC 2 is better than DKC Returns

In my personal opinion, the SNES Donkey Kong Country trilogy offered some of the best platforming gameplay ever designed. My opinion is undoubtedly clouded somewhat by nostalgia seeing as Donkey Kong Country was the first videogame I ever owned (except for a weird handheld Sonic game in which the titular hedgehog could occupy about three positions on the screen, the music to which I have spend the better part of two decades trying to erase from my memory).

I have, however, replayed the 2nd and 3rd installments within the last year or so, and they hold up. I also recently had the pleasure of playing Donkey Kong Country Returns, a lovingly crafted throwback to the original series by newcomer Retro Studios. Returns is a great game, with some truly stellar level design, but I'd like to lay out a few reasons why for me it doesn't quite dethrone Donkey Kong Country 2, which is probably my favorite platformer of all time.

Reason 1: The Roll
I've been a minor Wii defender for the past few years. Sure it has as bad a case of shovelware-itis as the iPhone app store, and when a game is ported over, the motion controls are usually implemented horribly (gestures are not buttons!), but most of the first-party stuff has been top notch, and the Virtual Console is like a candy store for a retro gamer.

And yet, in a title that obviously had a great deal of care and effort put into it, made specifically for crotchety oldschool fans such as myself, we have one of the two central actions assigned to the "shake" motion, with no other control options. There's no reason it had to be like this; the game only needs two action buttons which the Wiimote, conveniently enough, has. Maybe they thought no one would want to use the "shake" command if the player could change it to a button. I can't say I'd dispute that.

Aside from the issues that come with the waggle, such as the roll not always registering when you want it to (which doesn't happen too often, but one in a hundred times is still enough to be a little infuriating), the move itself just isn't as interesting as it used to be. In the SNES games, the roll speed/distance was heavily influenced by your prior momentum, and you could easily jump and change direction mid-roll. This made it much easier to incorporate rolling into your gameplay since it would hardly break your stride. The roll in DKC Returns sends you forwards much farther, always, making it eminently possible to overshoot a ledge. It may be partly due to my comfort with them, but in the originals I utilize the roll constantly and unconsciously, whereas in the new one I found myself thinking "doesn't look like I can make this just by jumping, better break out the roll." It becomes a key to open figurative locked doors strewn about the levels which, combined with the physical invocation, breaks flow somewhat.

Reason 2: The Economy
I'll just come out and say it: the economy and lives system in this game is essentially broken. Extra lives were always rare in this series (heh, "rare"),and this entry is no exception. However, they've added a store wherein you can spend coins to purchase, among other things, extra lives. You accumulate coins like Pigpen accumulates dirt, and lives are roughly two coins apiece (15 for 7), so before you complete the first world you'll be able to buy enough lives to open a balloon conglomerate.

Thankfully the game doesn't actually need a lives system, so this isn't a huge problem, but it feels like the developers were afraid to implement such a system, but also wanted to be oldschool, and compromised by implementing one that should have no effect on the game's difficulty whatsoever as long as the player is awake (although they may start to run down if you're playing coop, which is a weird disincentive).

I have mixed feelings about harsh failure penalties, but I will say that some of the most exciting parts of replaying DKC2 were when I was running low on lives and trying desperately to reach the next save point. That's the kind of gameplay you don't get much anymore. It's not like playing a modern game with badly placed checkpoints, you're fighting for your life so that the previous 40 minutes of gameplay weren't for naught. There are valid reasons why you don't see this kind of punishing gameplay anymore, even in hardcore indy titles like Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy, but all the same something has been lost.

It's not that the difficulty has been dialed back much. Some of the unlockable temple levels are quite challenging, and the secret fruit-float level is about as challenging as anything in the originals. The game is clearly aimed at those looking for a challenge, so it just irks me that the lives system is generous to the point of being completely irrelevant.

Reason 3: The Bosses
Not sure exactly why, I think the reasons varied from boss to boss, but I didn't particularly enjoy most of the boss fights in the new game, whereas I generally have in the previous entries. Here they were presented less ominously, and rather than epic struggles, they mostly just felt like "complete this pattern several times without screwing up." Not a huge deal, but slightly disappointing. I would like to do a more in-depth analysis, but apparently they were also pretty forgettable as well.

Backpedaling
This isn't to say that everything in the new game is a step back. The level design is some of best and most varied I've ever seen in a platformer, the ability to grab onto moss is interesting and well implemented, and simultaneous coop is a lot of fun. Also they didn't include Kiddy Kong.

Overall I'm really happy with the job Retro Studios did, and I hope they consider continuing the franchise. Now if you'll allow me to put my nostalgia goggles back on, I need to go watch the rest of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Battleship Trailer

It's really happening. A trailer for the new Battleship move has just surfaced. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed the video, so I'll have to describe it for you:

So Alexander Skarsgård is dating Liam "I Will Find You" Neeson's daughter, and Liam Neeson doesn't like this one bit because Liam Neeson is the Admiral and stuff. But then, during a routine drill, the fleet discovers a big metal thing. And one guy goes to touch the big metal thing but he gets an electric shock because maybe he rubbed his feet on the carpet. Then they all get attacked by Decepticons and Liam Neeson yells "Prepare to fire!" and his naval assistant asks "Sir, which weapons?" and Liam Neeson looks serious and says "All of them."

I don't know, this whole project seems a bit ridiculous from the start. I mean, it has Rihanna in it, and everyone knows women can't play Battleship:

Regardless, if it doesn't have Tim Curry revealing that communism was just a red herring, I'm not interested.