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THERE’S NO NICE way to say this, but it needs to be said: video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb. And they’re not just dumb in the gleeful, winking way that a big Hollywood movie is dumb; they’re dumb in the puerile, excruciatingly serious way that a grown man in latex elf ears reciting an epic poem about Gandalf is dumb. … In games, nuance and character development simply do not exist. In games, any predicament or line of dialogue that would make the average ADHD-afflicted high-school sophomore scratch his head gets expunged and then, ideally, replaced with a cinematic clip of something large exploding.
Even the industry’s staunchest defenders acknowledge the chronic dumbness of contemporary video games, usually with a helpless shrug—because, hey, the most ridiculous games can also be the most fun. (After all, the fact that the Super Mario games are about a pudgy plumber with a thick Italian accent who jumps on sinister bipedal mushrooms doesn’t make them less enjoyable to play.) But this situation puts video-game advocates in a bind. It’s tough to demand respect for a creative medium when you have to struggle to name anything it has produced in the past 30 years that could be called artistic or intellectually sophisticated.
” — Taylor Clark, from his profile of indie developer Jonathan Blow in The Atlantic titled “The Most Dangerous Gamer”“
The elements of what I think is great, inclusive design is [the ability to] reveal to the player what the type of experience could be, and then allow the player to make their own choice…These notions of complex identities just resonate better with a broad audience. They allow for a more fun, ephemeral taking-on of other identities, and add a variety to the play…and often a levity to the experience.
It’s sad to me to think that we’re the entertainment industry, and we’re the most technologically advanced of all the entertainment industries, and yet we seem to be lacking in a social progressivism that matches our technological progressivism. I want to turn that around.
” — Matt Boch, project director of Dance Central at Harmonix, in an interview at Gamasutra by Leigh Alexander“Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding … the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun … I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.” — Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress, from Jonah Weiner’s feature article “Where do Dwarf-Eating Carp Come From?” from The New York Times Magazine
“In a world like this, if you see another player, you will feel like you want to get close to him. In a big city, you’re walking [a] downtown street, you don’t care about [people], because they’re everywhere. You care about your cell phone or whatever. But if you go to the mountain, go to the wild, hiking, you’re so small, you don’t feel you know a lot about the world. You’re insecure. Whenever you run into another person, you naturally want to go and say hi to them. Very simple psychology. I wanted to see an online game where we delivered the mountain.” —
Jenova Chen, designer at thatgamecompany, on his latest game, Journey.
(Source: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/climbing-mountains-of-beautiful-sand-in-journey/3316/)
Jeremy Parish on the legacy of Super Mario Bros. 3 -
Parish’s Gamespite should be required reading for anyone interesting in learning to appreciate the 8-bit generation from a modern standpoint. His latest article — one so good that he even felt comfortable endorsing it — examines Super Mario Bros. 3 in detail. It’s no coincidence that he chose to run this piece on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the NES.
One choice quote that I think deserves recognition:
“Here, too, does Mario 3 demonstrate a fundamental component of modern Nintendo design: The canonization of the unique. Nintendo has always been distinct from other developers in its tendency to take a simple core mechanic and explore countless different permutations of that idea: outward-looking game design. Other developers tend to grab a scattershot array of ideas and force them into a cohesive whole, working from the outside in. Such games usually feature a handful of brilliantly original ideas used to the point that they become utterly rote.”
A podcast for aspiring game developers. I’ll be spending the afternoon catching up on the first two episodes.
(Via Kevin Fanning’s Twitter)
This was tucked away in the big ruling this morning that made it legal for phone owners to jailbreak their phones. I have to wonder just how broad the interpretations of “investigate” and “correct” are, and just what constitutes a “security flaw.” Given how problematic, if not outright Machiavellian, copy protection software has become on many computer games, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ruling leads to a new attitude in the games industry about circumventing harmful or obtrusive digital rights management (DRM) software.
This is what $50/yr for Xbox Live gets me: skeezy, depressing YouTube clips on my game console. Thanks, Microsoft.
Found while digging through boxes of youth-related detritus. Pokémon Snap: still my favorite rail shooter.