Blips: Redefining Fantasy

Source: "What is Final Fantasy?"
Author: Ethan Gach
Site: Gaming Vulture

Final Fantasy is in crisis, but is it the sort of crisis that precedes the coming of a chosen team of upstart dreamers who set the world right? It seems like the developers at Square-Enix are in desperate need of such heroes for their own company. As someone who got into Final Fantasy at VII, then went on to play and adore VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII and went back and played VI too, I would love to see the Final Fantasy series continue to thrive. However, the nostalgia mining, the cold reception to XIII, and subsequent doubling and tripling down on it have put me in a position where I haven't played a Final Fantasy game in over 5 years. So, what would a "modern," "successful," Final Fantasy game be?

Ethan Gach asked that very question, and broke down the necessary components in a blog post. He posits that story is king in Final Fantasy games, and that the series has struggled most with adapting to a contemporary mode of storytelling, long reliant on extensive text dialogue, and later with visually impressive, wordless cutscenes. From what I've read about XIII, it sounded like an attempt to bridge the gap, but one that ended up cutting off the expansive, explorable overworld that is another hallmark of the series. The argument was not that games can't be linear or narrowly focused, but that such a design decision runs counter to what Final Fantasy is supposed to be. So, while I agree across the board with Gach here, I'd like to add the overworld/airship component as an essential Final Fantasy characteristic as well.

As Gach notes, Final Fantasy has been a rather amazing game series in the degree to which it reinvents itself with every entry. The battle systems in all of the Final Fantasy games that I've played have been entirely different, so much so that the constant evolution has also become a series staple. Returning to the well with direct sequels comes off as an indulgent commercial cash-in because it goes against the tradition Square-Enix created for themselves. With game development costs soaring higher than ever for flashy, state-of-the-art games, not to mention ones that are expected to last 50+ hours (more than 5 times the average game length these days), the question remains of whether or not it's possible to keep pushing this formula forward.

Though it contains the increasingly stale character designs of Tetsuya Nomura, Final Fantasy XV could have an answer here. The action-RPG combat certainly looks impressive, and here's hoping there's an interesting depth to it as well. That said, people seemed to think XIII's combat was a pretty great system too, once the game finally let you take the reigns for yourself. I foresee linearity continuing to be an issue here, but in fairness, not enough of the game has been showed to offer a substantive judgement. So, I suppose "What is Final Fantasy?" remains a question without a simple answer, but as for "What can Final Fantasy be?," well, that's up to Square-Enix to prove with XV.

Blips: Your All-In-One Entertainment Hub Again

Source: The PlayStation 4: A Review in Four Parts
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

I wanted to sneak this plug in before the Xbox One launch. I was lucky enough to get to review the PS4 for Kill Screen, which I had no idea would be the case when I volunteered to go to a PlayStation event last week. At the review event, I sat through some hardware and UI demos before making my way to a dozen or so game rooms. I played The Witness, Octodad, Tiny Brains, Child of Light, Need for Speed Rivals, Infamous: Second Son, and Hohokum, among others. It was great to talk to developers and meet some folks in person that I'd only spoken to through other channels. It was a wonderful opportunity for me because I was there "reviewing" the PS4 from a more aesthetic angle, as if it was an art object. At the end of the event, I picked up a PS4 on behalf of Kill Screen and was able to spend a few more days with it before returning the unit to the office.

Soon, it became clear that I could actually write a real review of the machine, and that was the approach that made the most sense. However, I'd read some other hardware and OS reviews, and most of them are total slogs to read. Even despite Polygon's pretty layout, the text reads cold, as if written by committee. I wanted to write a hardware review that wasn't about covering every aspect of the machine, but got to the essence of what it does and how it fits into my own lifestyle. That I ended up dividing my PS4 review into 4 parts was total coincidence, but worked out pretty nicely. Anyway, I like the PS4; it's a better console than the PS3, but there's nothing I'm dying to play on it yet. Someday I'll probably want one for myself though.

Blips: Chess Storm: Reckoning

Source: Chess 2: The Sequel - How a street fightin' man fixed the world's most famous game
Author: Christian Donlan
Site: Eurogamer

I am by no means a "chess player," but some of the changes in Zac Burns' and David Sirlin's Chess 2, a ruleset and upcoming video game, do seem pretty exciting. The reasoning behind their variant is meant to solve what they see as problems in play at the grandmaster level: most matches end in draws and play relies too heavily on memorization. Basically, the highest level players don't seem to be having much fun with the game anymore, and Chess 2 is trying to tactfully shake things up to specifically address those issues. There's a concept of "dueling," which I'm not entirely clear on when it occurs, but it involves a Risk-like battle system where each player reveals a certain number of stones in their hand in a rock-paper-scissors draw, and that highest number wins the duel. The catch is that you only have a certain amount of stones per game, and they're single use, so once you're out, you'll continue to lose duels until your opponent also runs out of stones. This modifier is intended to add an psychological action element to the game that gets you to engage with your actual human opponent, not just their board strategy. It's sort of poker-like in that way.

For me, the most interesting and accessible modifier is the "midline invasion," which is a win condition wherein a player moves their king across the midpoint of the board, ala scoring a touchdown. This rule sounds like it could be a really fun addition since the king's position becomes something you always have to keep in mind, even as you're trying to play the rest of the pieces normally. It reminds me of the snail win condition in Killer Queen too. It's no surprise then that the minds behind Chess 2 have experience balancing rosters in the competitive video game scene. I'm sure there are a billion other ways of modifying chess, but this one caught my eye and seems to make a lot of sense. It's no use getting upset about it either; Chess 2 won't be replacing regular old chess after all, but it could make for a fun alternative.

Blips: Wargames

Source: The Video Game Invasion of Iraq
Author: Simon Parkin
Site: The New Yorker

Simon Parkin's latest article for The New Yorker is a real eye-opener: an account of one Iraqi boy who's a top tier Battlefield player. It's the sort of story that seems like it would be at odds with itself, but perhaps speaks to how little I actually know about life in Iraq. As one would expect, there's not much of a gaming scene in Iraq; there aren't many places to acquire games, much less buy them legally. It sounds like more parents are warming up to games though because it keeps their kids indoors where it's safer. Yousif Mohammed, the teen from the article, speaks of how a game like Battlefield, which has settings in Iraq, is actually more popular because of it.

I'd have assumed Iraqis would despise the American jingoistic fantasies of Battlefield and Call of Duty, but it's interesting to see how someone like Yousif approaches the game: mostly as a well-made mechanical system, but also as a cathartic opportunity to kill virtual terrorists. After all, the point of focusing on Yousif is not that he's an Iraqi who plays video games, it's that he's an Iraqi who's in the top 2% of Battlefield players, and his story is shows great resilience amongst incredible darkness.

On a side note, why is it that every game-focused article Parkin writes for The New Yorker is met with suspicious or indignant comments about the very notion of writing about games? Someone on this post actually accuses Parkin of publishing near the PS4's launch as a promotional stunt, as if Sony was paying him for an article that never even uses the word "Playstation." I mean, at least it's a different kind of trolling than we're used to with games, but it's ridiculous all the same, and disappointing considering it's The New Yorker and what one assumes is an educated and open-minded readership.

Blips: Little Launch

Source: Inside Tiny Brains, the tiniest PS4 game so far
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

OK, let's kick off a new week with a bit of self-promotion, shall we? As part of the PS4 hoopla, I got a hold of the devs over at Spearhead Games who're working on the launch game Tiny Brains. I wrote a mini-profile (no pun intended) of the indie studio as a small team with a big opportunity. Tiny Brains was a Day 1 launch game when I first started talking to them, but got pushed back into the "launch window" soon after my interview. The game itself seems like a blast; I got to play it for a bit at the PS4 review event in NYC last week. It's a four-player local or online multiplayer game where you take on the roles of four lab animals with superpowers, running through bizarre testing chambers. It's an action puzzle game where everyone needs to work together to succeed. Check out the full piece to read more about what it's like to be an indie studio developing a next-gen console launch game.

Blips: It's PS4 Week

Hey, I know I just got back from a break little more than a week ago, but I'm going to have to apologize for an absence this week once again. With PS4 out this week, I've been attending events and diving headfirst into the console to see what it has to offer. Look for a piece forthcoming on Kill Screen that will act as a kind of "review" of the system, but it will be a bit more focused on the aesthetics of the console's UI options, controller and first-party games. I'm also playing a third-party game for review, so, busy, yes. To tide you over on the reading material side of things, here are a few links to articles worth checking out. Check y'all later (probably next week).

Ian Bogost on "Hyperemployment"
A deep dive into Tale of Tales' Luxuria Superbia
Art, authorship, and The Unfinished Swan
Crashtxt and the inclusive art practice of Twitter glitching

Blips: Looking Back

Source: Lilly Looking Through is a flight of fancy that keeps you wondering
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

I reviewed the cute point-and-click adventure game Lilly Looking Through today for Kill Screen. It's a game that was born out of a Kickstarter campaign and has really smooth, lovingly crafted character animation. As I detail in the review, Lilly Looking Through is the video game equivalent of a short storybook. It doesn't take a long time to play through, and focuses on some brief instances between characters in fantastical settings without developing a conventional arc. I ended up liking it, but it also doesn't seem like a game that will stick with me. I didn't grow up playing a lot of these kinds of adventure games, so the genre has never really had its hooks in me, which is funny because first-person adventure games have been my bread and butter lately; can't get enough of them.

I think if you're in the mood for an interactive storybook, there's definitely some appeal in Lilly Looking Through though. I must admit that the underwater/colored tubes puzzle had me a bit stumped, and I solved it by just clicking things at random. I don't know if that's because the puzzle design is confusing or if that one's on me, but it was an instance where the game's animation priority kind of got in the way. I did think some of the steampunk machine design was neat looking though. Anyway, feel free to check out the review to see more. Thanks for reading!

Blips: Labor Intensive

Source: 'You Can Sleep Here All Night': Video Games and Labor
Author: Ian Williams
Site: Jacobin

I'm so pleased to share this wonderfully insightful piece by Ian Williams for Jacobin about labor practices in the video game industry. Well, the report isn't exactly exciting in a "good news" sort of way; it's a sobering reality check about an industry that flies under the radar when it comes to how it treats its workers. In summation it's a cycle of extended crunch time hours that inspires high burn-out and layoff rates, ensuring that there are entry-level openings for the most "passionate" of young developers, willing to subject themselves to menial, low-paying labor with equally low job security for a chance at the big time that has been promised them: the dream job of working in the video game industry. There are no unions and there is very little diversity in the workforce. Much of the data on the video game labor force is either obfuscated or not tracked seriously. I highly recommend reading through the entire piece for all the details and citations.

Indie development, which was only brought up briefly in Williams' piece, is often seen as an alternative to these corporate practices, but from what I've heard and seen from small development teams, this isn't a solution, just a different way of doing business with its own set of problems. For starters indie devs aren't known for getting a whole lot of sleep either. Small teams may work from home and subject themselves to the very same kinds of crunch time hours that big corporations do. A solo developer who self-publishes does not receive a salary, and is wholly dependent on the performance of their finished game at market to provide enough money to live off, not to mention fund their next project. According to Williams' research, the average indie worker income is only $23,000. It's the "starving artist" mentality all over again. I'm not saying indie development needs to be regulated, just that it's not free of the problems that plague the rest of the industry and makes for a poor (literally) alternative. The real solution is to actually fix the problems at the corporate level, not to point to another corner of the market that you hope will overtake the establishment and go on to not become the same structure that it once replaced.

Blips: Give 'em a Chance

Source: How an artist turned Shadow of the Colossus into a rumination on chance
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

I'm elated that my piece on artist Oliver Payne's exhibition at Herald St in London has finally been published. Payne's show opened way back in February of this year and features a video of an installation with Shadow of the Colossus being played on two monitors simultaneously. Using video games in artwork is not an easy thing to do without the result coming out as pandering or nerdily out of touch, but this piece was much better than that. I contacted Oliver in April and we slowly exchanged emails throughout the summer (luckily I didn't have a deadline!). Finally I had enough to go on to complete my article, which was submitted in August, but seeing as it was about an art show that closed 6 months ago, featuring an already-thoroughly analyzed PS2 game, it was justifiably not top priority.

But hey, now it's here, and you can read all about the artwork's John Cage influence and how video games take on chance aesthetics, for yourself. Thanks for reading!

Blips: Share this article with your friends?

Source: With the luster of social games gone, what now?
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: Gamasutra

I've never played a Facebook game, and I'm kind of proud of that considering the general reputation of the platform. Granted, I stopped using Facebook before there were even games to play, some 6-7 years ago, so it was as much an aversion to Facebook in general as it was the trashy games being developed for it. Leigh Alexander has written up a great recap of the social games industries rise and, well, not necessarily a fall, but a sort of leveling. The perspective on the Facebook games platform and the games made for it is pretty damning, all told. A gold rush mentality set in place standards for doing business that then hamstrung progressive design ideas in favor of innovative revenue streams. A stereotyped stay-at-home mom target demographic that pushed developers to make games that they didn't enjoy making. A constantly shifting development platform that is near impossible for a small studio to keep up with resulting in unoptimized or broken games. The result of all this is a horribly tarnished reputation for "social games," a term that, taken literally, has a whole lot of appeal.

Alexander's article is titled with a question, "what now?" which isn't so much answered as it is exemplified in the text that follows. The designers that were interviewed range from apathetic, to disappointed, to downright hateful toward the Facebook platform and flailing social games giant Zynga. It's not that people don't seem to have interesting ideas for using a social network like Facebook as the grounds for game systems, but the waters also seem so toxic these days, that it's difficult to convince small upstarts to do so. I can't even tell Facebook games apart from one another, which seems to be equal parts copycat design and purposeful market confusion (one of the worst traits to be passed on to the mobile sector). So, we return to the question, "what now?" Well, the resounding answer from developers in the article seems to be "just leave it to rot."

Blips: Peeling Back the Layers

Source: The Psychosis of Braid
Author: Leda Clark
Site: I am a Very Awkward Girl in Nerdy Activities

As someone who only played Braid for the first time some 6 months ago, I'm still eager to hear new opinions on the game. So I was more than pleased to see Leda Clark's analysis of the final level of the game, pointing out the parallels between recurring creatures in the game and objects present in the princess' home. It never occurred to me to literally look so closely at the details there, but the reuse of those objects as enemies and obstacles throughout the game is a somewhat profound realization. The meowing rabbit enemies aren't the totally random element that they seem, but they appear as dangling objects in a mobile in the princess' room. The consistent use of this imagery throughout the game speaks to the protagonist Tim's obsession with the princess and how his hurt at being unable to attain her affection has distorted his understanding of the situation and turned everything around the princess into monsters that would deny him his perfect maiden.

I've written before about how much I admire Braid's density, and now, once again, this has been proven further. It seems like any small aspect of the game could be extrapolated in its own full-fledged analysis without feeling like you're reaching for meaning. I'd love to read an essay on the paintings that are composed when all of the puzzle pieces in a level have been fit together. Since they present themselves as painterly compositions, I feel like they're begging to be put under the interpretive microscope. Why does the male figure not seem to be the same in every image? Who is the figure in the pictures and how does each one tie into the special power of the level with which it's associated? What is the significance of the paintings being comprised of jigsaw pieces? So many questions. Maybe I'll go back and examine this aspect of the game someday, but until then, I await The Witness with baited breath.

:image via Leda Clark's blog:

Blips: Video Games: Legacy: Origins

Source: How Long Can Video Games Matter?
Author: Mitch Dyer
Site: IGN

In a recent column on IGN, Mitch Dyer stacks up the historical importance of individual video games versus some of the time-tested, canonical books and films that have so much more staying power in the public consciousness. Dyer definitely has a strong point in that the video game industry consumes its own historical significance, leaving only crumbs in its wake for die-hard collectors to deal with. Only recently are we starting to get to the point where some games could have digital cross-generational longevity. That said, backward compatibility has been all but phased out of consoles (unless PS4 still plays PS1 games, which would be pretty great), and the essence of these games has become tied to their respective, soon-to-be-obsolete platforms.

Dyer's statements about gaming franchises being more recognizable than the actual games is also true. I've never played a Mega Man game, but I'm interested in trying some out. Now, I don't have a desire to play all of the Mega Man games since they're mostly the same, but some do certain things better than others and are more enlightening to their original historical context. Where then is the value of a game like Mega Man 5, which is overshadowed in every way by other games in the series? No one expects future generations to go back and play every Mega Man game to understand what they're all about. Those sequels were made for people who already loved Mega Man and want to play more of it in some slight variation, and the miniscule intellectual payoff of soldiering through all of them is undoubtedly not worth the time and energy.

I'd like to propose another way of looking at video games in historical context though: as part of the lineage of games in general. The value of one Mega Man game has its limits, but the side-scrolling action game has certainly had a profound impact on digital interactivity spaces. I'm convinced that World of Warcraft will be talked about well into the future as well in the context of its massively multiplayer online interactive systems. People might not play WoW 20 years from now, but perhaps they will play a game that follows that lineage (not necessarily the brand). Is it more important that we remember the Dallas Cowboys or football in general?

Lastly, I think Dyer is giving those famous books and movies he speaks of too much credit. How many Best Picture Oscar winning films have you actually seen? How many of those do you have vivid memories of beyond vaguely recalling the plot and some cinematic themes? Probably not near all of them, yet at the time they were released and evaluated they were highly praised in a way that said, "These are movies that future generations should know about." Yes, it's great that some masterworks of various mediums have be lauded and institutionalized to stand the test of time, but games like chess, go, and various sporting competitions have arguably had as much, if not more cultural impact (an immeasurable value, I'm aware). There's nothing to make me doubt that certain video games will eventually be added to that list someday too, and it wouldn't hurt if the industry kicked in a little effort to help while we're at it. The next generation is going to be faced with an even larger pile of media that adults think they should know about, and certain things will invariably be pushed to the side, but I believe the best games will stick around in some form.

Blips: Talking It Out

Source: Talking to the Player: How Cultural Currents Shape and Level Design
Author: Matthias Worch
Site: You Got Red On You

The influence of film on games has been a recurring discussion point for years, so I really appreciate designer Matthias Worch's 2013 GDC talk that steps back and looks through a wider lens at game design as it relates to oral tradition and print culture. There is a lot of nuance to Worch's presentation, so if this topic seems interesting, I highly recommend watching the whole thing above, but I'll do my best to break down some of the ideas I found most intriguing.

Principally, Worch describes video game playing as a conversation between the player and the game (the code). He describes what he sees as certain flaws in commercial (for entertainment) game design by drawing parallels to conversations between people. Imagine you're talking with someone, having an engaging exchange of ideas over a certain amount of time, and then after you make a great point, the other person totally ignores what you said and begins speaking about a different topic altogether. You try to interrupt and put the conversation back on track, but it's like talking to a wall, and no matter how hard you try, you've lost all agency in the dialogue. Worch says that this is like when a video game unexpectedly takes certain expected player inputs away, more or less breaking the social contract that you felt had been established. I know I've definitely played games where a non-interactive cutscene was triggered when I would have loved to play that part of the game instead. Whether or not these moments "work" or not is all in the transitions: how the conversation shifts from one topic to the next. No one likes to be interrupted.

Worch also boils down certain game design traits as rooted in oral tradition, and others in print culture, with his two primary examples being Skyrim and Final Fantasy XIII respectively. The points of comparison have to do with how much a game elicits stories unique to a player's experience with the game or if it elicits stories about how the game was written and sequences that all players got to see. These categories should be used as guideposts, not exclusive labels though, since every game has elements derived from both oral tradition and print culture. In fact, the ensuing dialogue between when a game is more open and when it is more prescribed is what gives a game's gameplay it's unique feel. Increasingly, the genre categorizations of print culture seem to loose relevance in favor of classifying games by "type of play." This is something I'm going to try and keep in mind as I write more and more reviews.