Blips: Family Synthesis

Source: Making Fract as a family
Author: Charlie Hall
Site: Polygon

We all know making video games is hard work, but how about making video games, building a company, and starting a family all at the same time? That's exactly what Richard Flanagan and Quynh Nguyen did, founding Phosfiend Systems to create the virtual synthesizer game Fract OSC, all while raising their infant daughter. In a lovingly captured profile over at Polygon, writer Charlie Hall tells the story of Fract from this trio of perspectives, and how Flanagan and Nguyen managed the chaos. At times heartbreaking, and uplifting at others; give it a look.

Having recently played and reviewed Fract OSC, I think all of that effort was worth the final result. As someone who loves electronic music, that there would be a game centered around synthesized audio production, wrapped up in a Myst-like world of music-inspired puzzles sounds like my perfect game. Ultimately Fract isn't perfect, but it does so many unique, stylish things that I'd still consider it a must-play. The game seems squarely aimed at someone like me, but it seems like plenty of folks who are less invested in electronic music have been digging it too. The one thing I'll recommend is that if you're coming from more a music interest than a games one, you might want to keep a guide handy or occasionally ask someone else who's played the game where to go, since many of the exploration systems can be indecipherable to players not in the know.

Blips: Feature Complete

Source: Early Access exposes the lie that the best games should, or even can, be finished
Author: Rowan Kaiser
Site: Polygon

Another week, another opinion piece with some interesting gray areas to discuss. Over at Polygon, Rowan Kaiser picks up the discussion of Steam's Early Access games and what it means for a game to be "finished." Many players and critics have voiced complaints about Early Access games for a variety of reasons ranging from their pricing structure, to the clarity of their current status (i.e. what's broken), to their prominence and quantity in the Steam marketplace. Kaiser posits that we've been playing "unfinished" games for years, and in fact that unfinished-ness is by design. He states that in addition to what we understand as unfinished games that have not seen a complete development cycle and final retail release, there are also games that the player can't complete.

Unfinishable games include sports games, endless runners or puzzlers (Tetris), MMOs, and pretty much anything resembling a multiplayer mode. We can think of every version of Street Fighter as the same game, just with various updates, each sold separately of course. Kasier's essay draws a parallel between Early Access games and unfinishable games in that they both see tweaks and additions to gameplay months and years after "official release."

There are two points I'd like to voice in response. First, while it's great that there are seemingly "mandatory" status notices on the store pages for Early Access games, they're not all super helpful, including Rust, which is cited in the article. The description for Rust currently reads: "We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't. We haven't totally decided where the game is headed - so things will change. Things will change a lot. We might even make changes that you think are wrong. But we have a plan. It's in our interest to make the game awesome - so please trust us." While this is enough information to tell me that now is not the time to spend money on Rust, I also don't think this is evocative of the transparent development process that consumers are supposedly buying "access" to, unless Steam starts allowing players to return games for refunds.

Point 2: Players can also "be finished" with games, unfinishable or no. Being finished with a game can occur at anytime for a player and even after the credits roll in "finishable" games, many players still aren't done playing them, be it a New Game+, some other bonus mode, or investigating speed run possibilities. And the rub with Early Access games is that players can "be finished" with them before they're even feature-complete or at their least broken. I prefer to think of game sequels as continuations of one game instead of disparate entities, which applies to unfinishable games like the ones Kaiser cites, but "finishable" games as well. This is why sequels to games like Gears of War are met with sentiments like, "well, it's more Gears" because that's exactly what it is. That the nature of Early Access games would be inherently tied to a conventionally unfinishable status just seems like a leap of logic to me.

Blips: Toys For Boys

Source: No Girls Allowed
Author: Tracey Lien
Site: Polygon

Why does everyone think video games are for boys? That's the question Tracey Lien tackles in her latest article for Polygon. Whether or not games are for boys or girls is largely a perception issue, with marketing controlling the messages in a very calculated way. Lien dives into the history of gaming audiences, back in the pre-crash days. At that time, game companies weren't doing market research, and developers were just interested in making games that were fun to play in the locations where they knew people were playing them: bars and living rooms. Both of these locations have their fair share of girls and boys, men and women, and most games seemed to reflect this "general audience" targeting.

Post-crash, game companies like Nintendo were trying to be smarter about the way they did business and were looking to minimize risk, especially with a lapsed public trust in the quality of video games. First this involved marketing video games as toys, and later as for boys. Market research told game publishers that people were still willing to spend money on toys and than the majority of video game players were male. It became a matter of putting two and two together that lead to the image of video games as "toys for boys," because that's largely what was being produced and near exclusively the way games were being marketed.

However, it seems that tide turned with the success of the family-oriented Wii and the popularity of social and casual games on gender-agnostic platforms like smartphones and Facebook. Now the male-dominated public perception and publicity campaigns ring false and even defensive at times. Yet, here we sit with the continued understanding that games are for boys when near half of people who play video games are female. Somehow social and casual games always need those qualifiers to set them apart from the "real" games, a stance which itself is macho posturing. There's nothing wrong with making video games targeted at a male audience, but video games as a medium, are for everyone.

:image by David Saracino:

Blips: 4 Amazing GTA V Mods You Just Have To See

Source: How to remove all misogyny and violence from Grand Theft Auto 5
Author: Jon Bois
Site: Polygon

I got a kick out of these analog mods for Grand Theft Auto V that Jon Bois came up with for Polygon. I'm particularly a fan of "You, Steve Forbes and the Endless Void," but they all have their merits. Open world PC games are certainly known for their robust modding scenes, but with GTA V only appearing on consoles (so far), there's not much of a "scene" to speak of due to closed hardware. However, Bois proves that with some posterboard, tape, and markers, you can still mod GTA V to your heart's content. And you don't even have to know anything about code!

In "Grand Theft Auto: Indianapolis," a piece of paper covers the whole TV screen except for a rectangle in the middle for the in-game car. Strip malls and chain restaurants are painted on the sides of the road, giving Indianapolis its distinct character. Although Bois chose Indianapolis (perhaps because it's easy to draw), you could draw just about any place there instead. I'm inclined to make the road recede more sharply into the horizon, and perhaps recreate the Grand Canyon level from Rad Racer instead, but you can take the whole thing off-road if you want. Find out what it's like to drive a car at the bottom of the ocean or on the moon! The world is your oyster.

Alternatively, you could just play vanilla GTA V and complete hour after hour of droll mission objectives, but where's the fun in that?

Blips: From Field to Screen

Source: Killer Queen: Half Joust, Half Starcraft and One Giant Snail
Author: Eric Blattberg
Site: Polygon

I've reached a point in my life where getting a local multiplayer game together with more than one friend is something that just doesn't happen anymore. The infrastructure of school is no longer there to act as a gathering force; the reason I enjoyed those games of 4-player Smash Bros Melee and split-screen Timesplitters in my freshmen dorm had everything to do with the human dynamics in the room. That's why a game like Killer Queen makes so much sense to me. The duo behind Killer Queen, Josh DeBonis and Nikita Mikros, originally made the RTS Joust game as a physical field game –like where you go outside and swing foam swords around. In fact, they even playtest the video game version in physical form to make sure it works. Starting from the angle of balancing not only mechanical attributes, but also physical group dynamics in a 10-person game is a strategy that seems perfectly apt.

I was introduced to Killer Queen by way of a profile by Eric Blattberg for Polygon, but will definitely be checking out next time I go to an NYU Game Center event, where the currently one-of-a-kind arcade cabinet is being housed. As is mentioned in the article, a college campus is an ideal environment for this kind of game, and I hope Josh and Nikita do end up pitching the cabinets to universities for placement in student unions, which would be ripe for school versus school network play, and, of course, local tournaments. It's something I feel like I would have been way into if there had been a machine on campus at my undergrad. I wish those guys the best of luck.

Oh, and since I've done a poor job of explaining what makes the actual game so special besides the uniqueness of it all, check out the article above or at least this video of competitive, yet fun and party-friendly play. And yes, root for the snail.

Blips: Death From Above

Source: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, David Theurer
Author: Alex Rubens
Site: Polygon

We talk about "expressive games" like they're a new thing, evolved from the simple time-wasting past of the early years of video games. In a recent profile of Missile Command creator, David Theurer by Alex Rubens for Polygon, this perception is given a counter argument. Missile Command is not a complicated game to understand: bombs rain from the sky, intent on destroying the cities and military bases at the bottom of the screen, and players must launch their own missiles to destroy the bombs in mid-air before they hit the ground. As Rubens points out, this is a game about defense, where most games, even today, are about taking the offensive. Also, ultimately the game ends when players fail to protect their cities and everything blows up. The destruction is inevitable, which was meant to reflect the prescient notion that once nuclear war had been initiated, there were no real winners.

Missile Command was produced in the 80s during the Cold War, and, as a sidebar in the article mentions, was originally titled Armageddon. While Missile Command was built to be a fun game, Theurer also speaks of its "message" –a cautionary tale about the then-constant doomsday threat. Theurer's nightmares about nuclear war actually inspired the game. Fear, then, was a driving emotion in its creation. For Missile Command, Theurer even substituted the typical "game over" message for "the end," as a means of drawing more parallels to the real world conflict and the finality of nuclear destruction.

I love hearing new perspective on older games like this, since I can better appreciate where they're coming from. It's amazing how much some of the earliest video games have in common with more recent titles, with similarly small teams.

Blips: Everybody Calm Down

Source: Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups
Author: Brian Crecente
Site: Polygon

Brian Crecente has written up a great piece on the recent rise in game industry departures spurred in part by online harassment from fans, often including death threats. The article is flat-out depressing in its mini-profiles of several figures in the development community, and comes out at the end with a none-too-hopeful message. Will this problem become less of an issue over time or will it continue to get worse? Can anything really be done?

Pointing out the actions being taken by sites like Kotaku and IGN to moderate their comments and forums is a good start. Even if these are private websites, they're some of the largest game enthusiast communities, so if hate speech can be tamped down there, it sends a message about the image the gaming community is trying to project as positive.

Still, the one thing I found missing from the Polygon article was hearing from harassers. Maybe that would require a separate piece so as to not detract from the stories of the victims of this abuse, but I think getting insight into the minds of these knee-jerk hotheads would prove a helpful perspective to have. I can't fathom uttering threats like this at all, much less in the context of rebalancing a video games multiplayer mode. What triggers it? Top-down solutions are only going to get us so far. We have to sit down and speak to these *shudder* gamers. Otherwise we're just moving the class to another room and hoping the "problem kids" don't find us.

Why are the "problem kids" problematic to begin with? It might have something to do with games and the Internet, but tons of people, especially young people, engage in new media without these kinds of issues. How much of this outlandish behavior can be attributed to the nature of the medium, and how much is the result of outside factors like socioeconomic status, family/household environments, and mental health? How much is that young people have defined their own rules for online behavior because parents and other responsible adult parties don't have the experience of growing up with social media to teach proper behavior? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that it's a factor.

Blips: Antagonist Gamer

Source: Fez II Cancelled, Phil Fish Confirms
Author: Megan Farokhmanesh
Site: Polygon

I'm not going to recap the whole Phil Fish / Marcus Beer debacle; it's an ugly mess that ultimately ended in the cancellation of Fish's recently-announced game, Fez II on his way to leaving the gaming industry entirely. People have been playing the blame game all day, but what are some easy things that could be changed to reduce the chances to such scathing social media brawls occurring again? I'd like to cite a previous Blips post, highlighting an article by Michael Abbott about positive communication. In short, always begin a conversation assuming positive intent, and avoid unnecessary antagonisms.

Marcus Beer goes by the moniker "Annoyed Gamer," and I can't think of a more repellant term to call oneself. I have enough problems using the word "gamer" to describe myself or anyone else I think well of, due to the label's negative connotations as a signifier of social and cultural ineptitude. Tacking the word "annoyed" on the front is almost redundant, since the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a "gamer" is a upper-middle class, white teenage boy gritting his teeth in impotent anger, inches away from a TV screen. Gamers are perpetually annoyed, no? I can think of no group of people more suited to the word "petulant" this side of fussy infants. Yet, Beer takes on this label and slings mud, going so far as to derisively label Fish under the catch-all term "hipster." Get it? He's annoyed.

I'm aware that Phil Fish has said his fair share of inflammatory remarks, but at least they feel like they're coming from Phil Fish, the opinionated individual who makes indie games, not someone who's job it is to talk about how things bother him, who happily embraces the antagonist role in a play that never calls for one. Phil Fish on the other hand, went off on a rant not too long ago because he didn't like that he had been labeled an "asshole" by Ben Kuchera on Penny Arcade Report. Mislabeled or not, that Fish did not want to be perceived as a trouble-starter shows a desire to be part of a non-combative atmosphere (though the way he ended up presenting his viewpoint may have overshadowed those intentions). Judgement is a matter of degrees here, but I'll take the creative loudmouth over the destructive one any day of the week. Unfortunately, in this case we're left with the opposite.

Blips: A Gran ol' Time

Source: Report: Gran Turismo Movie in Development
Author: Mike McWhertor
Site: Polygon

If you haven't heard, there's a film in the works based on Polyphony Digital's Playstation-exclusive racing simulation franchise, Gran Turismo. Many folks were puzzled by this, seeing as Gran Turismo is full of real world cars, a bunch of real world racing courses, is not affiliated with any official racing leagues, and, perhaps most damningly, features no characters. The movie rights were sold based on a recognizable car-centric brand, and pretty much nothing else. It reminds me of when that Asteroids movie was in the works. Who would you have cast as the triangle?

I actually find the prospect of a blank page for the story somewhat exciting, though it's easy to envision the lowest-common-denominator plot that's likely to form for Gran Turismo, should the project ever get off the ground (few of these game-to-film adaptations do). I think it would be cool to have a movie about professional racecar driving without having to throw in street racing or science fiction tropes. Still, I can't help but picture a bland product at the end of this, so I thought of a few ideas to spice up this would-be movie, while staying true to Gran Turismo's roots.

- Jazz: You can't have Gran Turismo without jazz. Maybe the lead character's mentor could prescribe sage advice while laying down some hot pop organ melodies. There has to at least be jazzy drum breaks during pit-stop montages. Or how about a sultry downtempo number when characters are weighing the benefits of different shock absorbers in the parts shop?

- License Tests: Getting acceptable medals in license tests is kind of the worst part of Gran Turismo, but it's also a definitive section of the game. They wouldn't need to be shown in full, but maybe the protagonist has to practice cornering in a Mini Cooper or something.

- A-Spec: At least once, instead of a character referring to someone's racing performance as "cool," they should call it "totally A-Spec." GT3 fans will get the reference, and it sounds better than "that's so HD Concept."

- Engine Sounds: Polyphony is famous for their attention to detail, recording engine sounds for every car in the game based on their real-world models. This accuracy should be carried over, but as an Easter egg, swap the engine rumbles of two of the cars and see if anyone cares.

- Mazda Miata: At some point, our hero has to buy a Miata because for some reason it's the only accepted car in the Roadster race. He/she sells the car immediately after.

Blips: Teaching With Games

Source: ChicagoQuest: Teaching with games in Chicago's Cabrini-Green
Author: Charlie Hall
Site: Polygon

Can games be a useful learning tool in formal education environments? Schools like ChicagoQuest certainly think so. In Charlie Hall's piece or Polygon (with accompanying video above), he shows how ChicagoQuest integrates games into their curriculum in ways that still make good on common core standards and don't abandon more traditional tools for learning either. It's all in the service of educating kids in systems thinking, so they can be critical observers of the world around them and potentially come up with feasible improvements or solutions.

It's great that ChicagoQuest was able to build so much of their institution from relative scratch because often it seems like digital media-integrated pedagogical models are tough sells in long-standing, set-in-their-ways schools. Sometimes it's a matter of funding, sometimes it's a matter of tech-savviness, and sometimes it's a matter of acceptance, but an of those factors can lead to dismissal or aversion to games integration. I'm not here to sell you on games in schools, but I would suggest giving this piece on ChicagoQuest a read and seeing what you think.

Blips: The Original Pro Gamer

Source: Bob Glouberman: The Million Dollar Gamer Dad
Author: Chris Plante
Site: Polygon

Have you watched the new season of Arrested Development? You know the short David Axelrod-y adviser for bombastic politician Herbert Love? That's Bob Glouberman, and he's not just a small-time character actor, he's also a game fanatic.

Chris Plante's Polygon feature on Glouberman is a story of a man with a passion for games that has ended up taking his life in some unexpected directions. For instance, Glouberman has been a career game show contestant, appearing on shows such as Last Man Standing, and Classic Concentration, taking home tens of thousands of dollars on successful appearances. He also created a hybrid scavenger hunt/obstacle course/city exploration game in San Francisco called Bay Area Race Fantastique in 1988. This was way before Survivor and The Amazing Race, a show which debuted suspiciously after Glouberman had pitched them his game as a reality show.

And the tale continues. Glouberman moves in and out of LA, brushing up against movie types that eventually spark a minor acting career (he even had 2/3 of the spoken lines in The Artist). He's trained as a lawyer of all things, but law doesn't inspire him anywhere near the level than games do. Check out the full story which really paints a picture of Glouberman's personality and leads you through his years of game-loving discovery.

Blips: One Fish, Two Fish

Source: Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing
Author: Russ Pitts
Site: Polygon

Game cloning is a serious problem. In Polygon's recent Human Angle story, they speak with the developers at Vlambeer, the team behind mobile sensation Ridiculous Fishing about the experience of having their game cloned.

Members of the team recount feelings that echo some other sentiments voiced last week about "imposter syndrome." The fact that your original idea could be taken and executed upon by another team before you have a chance to formally release yours can lead to negative feelings directly inward.

Luckily, the game community was abuzz when Ridiculous Fishing finally saw the light of day, and seems like it has sold rather well. The unfortunate matter is that Vlambeer claims their next game, Luftrausers, has already been cloned as well.