Category: Audio&Games

Just some thoughts:

– Offering backward compatibility is a great “we respect you” sign. We change hardware rapidly but we play our games forever. MS obviously has some idea about how backward compatibility makes you stick somewhere.

– Same games over and over and that’s fine. Even outside AAA game development, developers make things they know how to make, they’ll just make it slightly different. Once again yes, games are hard to make so let’s make what we know we can do well! The polish level is high and all over the place. Tons of games look solid. This is good.

– All About Fans. It’s been a couple years like that and I’m not sure how to feel about it. Fans scare me a bit. Their devotion creeps me out a bit. Talking about communities around Hitman or Tom Clancy’s stuff freaks me out a bit. Who are you to obsess so hard over a fictional assassin game that you are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for or spend hundreds of hours on? Doesn’t seem healthy. But yeah, they’re needed (ask Prince about fans sustaining his ass for decades).

– All games land on Windows and all “Personal Computers” at some point. So much that there’s a conference about it. Going back to that backward compatibility, I think it’s huge: I can play any game I have ever played on my current laptop, that’s just awesome. People are starting to notice that. You can play/emulate/use probably 90% of any app ever made on any platform, on Windows. The back catalog is infinite and as nostalgia grows while we age, having one platform to do it all is fantastic.

– EA went from being considered the worst US company to being the one listening and paying attention, in a couple years. Bravo.

– European and Japanese game developers once again demonstrate a stronger aesthetic game than their US friends. Always the same reason: a wider variety of culture available growing up. It’s changing though: US millennials grew up with a wider culture, incorporating international influences.

TL;DR: same old stuff but some signs that things are getting more interesting. And more stable.

Game audio has become stale like a piece of bread in the back of a grocery store.

The game industry today has separated game audio into three things that should be almost only one: music, sound effects, implementation. So many games sound clean but feel soulless, I blame the absence of blending in the sound department. I mean, watch this series about Japanese “video game music” and its impact.

80s Japan was booming, game companies were rich and could innovate and take risks. But they were also hiring people who were capable of doing everything from music to SFX to implementation. Those games feel consistent for that very reason. It gave them life.

When they thought mixing rock beats and baroque melodies for Castlevania was a good idea and maybe add some cost to the cartridge by adding a sound chip (imagine the conversations about sound chip prices and benefit of a bigger sound)? So cool. Thanks to positive capitalism feedback loop, Japanese companies were willing to go for it. It was a race and they needed to stand out. It was a game.

We can all remember how cool that Castlevania/Konami music was for the rest of our lives though. There’s something timeless and definitive about sound.

Recognizing a game just hearing it blast through an arcade and being like “oh that’s definitely a Capcom game”, that’s just fantastic.

Successes keep showing the same trend: sound FXs need to be good enough, music needs to stand out. Bloodborne has really basic footstep sound FXs, no one cares. Hotline Miami has no 5.1 adaptive music system but great music is great music and will stay in people’s minds forever.

It’s not about accuracy and realism, guys. We’re making games. It’s fun. It’s wonky. It’s about intention. It’s about standing out. It’s about identity. Thousands of games ship every year now, they all need to stand out and audio is amazing for that.

What we should spend way more time on in game audio is DESIGN talks, not TECHNICAL talks. We have the tools, we’re fine. Implementation is trivial. It’s in the processes and intentions that I wish we had more “game audio grammar” used to determine what works, what doesn’t etc. So much to explore.

It’s amazing that we have full on technical flexibility but design wise we are very stiff: I see games with beautiful 2D cartoon style, chiptune music and realistic sound FXs and that’s just a weird aesthetic sandwich. Epic Orchestra is regardless of the type of gameplay something you will hear in any game these days. Programmers and game designers just love that shit. But there are over 200 different kinds of music out there. Strive for more uniqueness.

Games more than ever need soul. Audio is here for that.

I’m the player who smiles at your story and attempt to make it serious-like-movie-serious. I’m the player who presses whatever key to skip anything that is not gameplay. I’m the player who doesn’t read/listen to any existential shout outs between characters.

I so do not want to run that errand for that generic, lifeless NPC who’s talking and who I don’t listen  to. Having said that, there’s someone who makes me want to follow the story and read everything:

Ron Gilbert.

I mean, I’m not the only one and Ron got me when I was a kid so I guess he’s like that uncle who tells stories better than anyone in the family and I’m looking forward to the time when he’ll tell a new one. I think there’s a formula:

Mysterious agency and unexpectedness

I think Ron is like the Coen brothers: the basic plot is always simple but the way it will be treated will be good. You know it’s going to feel different. You know Ron treats you like an adult. Thimbleweed Park, his last game: Thimbleweed Park is the curious story of two washed up detectives called in to investigate a dead body found in the river just outside of town. […] Meanwhile, on the 13th floor of the Edmund hotel, Franklin wakes up with no idea how he got there. But that’s not the weird part. The weird part is that he’s dead. Spoiler: He’s not the body found just outside of Thimbleweed Park. Wow! That’s confusing. Don’t panic, we’re just as confused as you are. All about the journey and not the destination kind of design. I’m sold already.

Humor

Probably the hardest part. Ron uses that “90s Simpsons” style that always has been extremely efficient, regardless of where you’re from: The Simpsons probably aired there and you probably liked it. You know, the stupid puns and funny little phrases and regular pop culture jabs. The English non-sense, satire all the way… Very efficient stuff and I insist on the international traction at least for my generation. And what is great and that most people miss with humor and story based games is that it functions as a mechanic/reward: you explore dialogue and it’s going to end with a something funny, you smile next time you’ll try another branch.

In serious games with serious scenarios, you just go for the obvious and move on. It’s anti-exploratory. Humor solves that in a very elegant way. It is however really hard not to have a patchwork of different humor that works more or less like in most games.

I think those two marks are also parts of why Kentucky Route Zero is fantastic or how Oxenfree sounds pretty awesome though both are darker in tone.

This is the puzzle dependency/story chart for Thimbleweed, still in development. Ron says it’s the most complex he’s ever done. The development blog shows once again how making games is hard, even with a “simple”, old school adventure game. $0.6M is not much to build everything around that chart and make it come true.

Adventure games have a lot more to share with us. We need more awesome authors like Ron.

Just read that article on Why the Comic Book Store Just Won’t Die. I kind of extrapolated to computer games stores. Both thrive on niches and fandom. Computer games culture is 90% online now and there are many reasons to make that culture more of a local, real life thing.

So we had arcades back in the day. They were cool but dirty and exclusive, the business model doesn’t work with today’s world.

Bros and sticks

There has been a resurrection of arcades as barcades, which are pretty fun. I went a couple times to the one downtown LA and it’s great but in a way it doesn’t cover all computer game activities. It’s not centered around game culture, it’s using it.

What’s so great with comic book stores it’s their diversity in content. Anything for anyone, curated by unique humans. I think we need to make computer games something we can discuss and try outside our devices in our living rooms, browsing the internet while machines stupidly try to understand what game we would like to play.

Computer games shouldn’t be only played drinking beers in the evening. We play anytime. We should have computer game stores where we can chill and try out games with headphones on, really enjoying the process of trying something new, sharing impressions with other players directly and not through a text box and threads.

It shouldn’t be about finishing games so much than it is about enjoying playing games and ultimately buying them. Tons of comics and books are read and not finished by people all the time. Some games are way better once you’re invincible. What I’m saying is, to get a “better” computer game culture we need to focus on play more than win, hardcore punishment, twitch reflexes, etc.

If I could have a computer game store here in LA… The main floor would be dedicated to discuss and play games casually in bean chairs and classic desktop settings. Downstairs would be the action room: a 10 seat LAN setup (CS:GO), a big console setup for AAAs and a couple of MAME arcade machines meant to be brutalized like in the good old days (standing up and mashing those buttons is part of computer games DNA to me), maybe a couple pinballs because those are the shit.

This way I could talk Minecraft mods with a son, install that Contraption Maker game on a mom’s laptop, recommend Snakebirds or Gunpoint to a daughter, talk LAN games strategy with teenagers or what it takes to make that AAA game look like that or how the demoscene in Europe influenced tons of developers in the 1990s hey come back, I’m not done!

Now that’s culture. We need real, non-digital stores like this.

I wonder if I keep coming back to wanting to play Counter-Strike and old school shoot ‘em ups because those games taught me to be a much, much better navigator in crowded spaces.

I’m not in the mood of playing Bloodborne because oppressing atmosphere+dying every 90 seconds is not what I want when in real life it’s open season on black people. I can’t be in the mood.

Going from there, I feel like escapism is… Ambiguous. Games are so good at that though. We just “try” and then it’s three, four hours later. And then we’re just kind of confused and weirdly satisfied?

The Indie Soapbox this year had Jenova Chen wonder about what’s going on with games and if he is asking too much, wanting them to be more than what they are now.

You know something with a big, positive impact culturally and socially? Really memorable, across generations games? Are we doing this with or without competitiveness? How? Very difficult questions to answer.

Yes, computer generated landscape.

Raph Koster has been writing about Star Wars Galaxies development circa 2000-2003 and it’s a fantastic read (more).

First impression, the amount of challenges and design issues to deal with and solve is staggering. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about polishing 2D “me-too” games on mobile the past few years and I had forgotten how complex and utterly insane -giving the technology available at that time- it was to develop a massively multiplayer game in 3D, for what is probably the biggest IP in the world. It’s mindboggling.

One of the best post mortem I have ever read. I now understand why he stayed silent on the subject for over a decade.

I started to work in games in 2000. MMOs were still fairly new but extremely promising in terms of game development in that they were demanding and that would be good career-wise: shit ton of work for years to come. I think that’s when the term game industry made sense. Video games had been a juicy business for decades but now they needed hundred people teams, which was quite a new thing.

For better or for worse, it didn’t happen this way. You can read in the post mortem how a couple decisions –tied to constraints- can destroy years of work real quick. I think Raph’s Jedi ideas were right (NPC only or “secret unlock”). I wanted to play SWG. But once Jedi masters were everywhere and based on grind, I didn’t even bother try the game.

Those blog posts show the intrinsic relationship between design, code/tech and intent and why you should stop reading game news websites and grab RSS feeds from developer blogs. Real shit is going on on those (Cliffsky about launching a game these days for example).

OK so I stopped watching a dude playing CS:GO on Twitch. Instead, I’m watching the best teams in the world going at it.

For those who don’t know the game, the yellow dots have to plant the bomb either at yellow A or yellow B. The blue dots need to stop them.

It’s within the first minute and you can see that the yellow dots are all together while blue dots are spreading. One is alone to get the information on whether the opponent is coming for yellow A or not. Looks like it’s going to be yellow B. Good read from the blue dots!

[THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL TO CREATE THAT GIF FROM A YOUTUBE VIDEO FUCK YOU 2015]

Counter Strike is so good. It’s kind of the perfect mix of Go and soccer. Everything can change at any time and it’s all about terrain control. I think soccer because US teams are playing like the US soccer team: very aggressive, very willing but totally lacking finesse which results in them getting their asses handed over. But it’s probably closer to basketball because well, five players and a coach. Five players to defend two zones means a 2/3 split which means one zone is weaker than the other. It’s all about that little advantage you can take over your opponent even though it’s not a guarantee at all. It’s brilliant.

Like in sports, all teams and players know each other inside out so they try different techniques, changes of pace to overcome their opponents at different venues and matches. Emergent stories popping out from a system of rules that’s the juice, narrative-driven folks.

It’s really good to watch, a map is about 45mn to an hour long. I definitely applauded the last action in the last round of the ESL final and last map between the two Swedish teams NiP and Fnatic. Insanely tense!

Two things that suck: I don’t like the fact that we use terms like kill and death. Too strong. And of course, the total lack of diversity in the scene. I can’t forget that I stopped playing that game online early 2000s because of all the inappropriate niggers thrown at the team chat and my headphones.

Too bad.

Two articles particularly interesting to me:

Toe Jam & Earl game designer Greg Johnson speaking at GDC about lack of diversity in games.

Ian Bogost writing about how games are better without characters.

I have always felt that games are better as system toy machines. I’m a designer I know people are scared of systems and think of them as not fun and cold. But to me as Ian puts it perfectly:

A game, it turns out, is a lens onto the sublime in the ordinary.

It’s the essence of what is so unique to computer games. But let’s go back to escapism.

For the lack of diversity with characters, let’s just have game engines give you the option to morph your avatar as you like.

It’s something funny: in any story in games, how the character looks like doesn’t matter at all, never did matter because the story is lived by one person, the player. The notion that you need character consistency across players experiences is weird as hell, if not totally stupid. What a brake on what can be possible, it’s a shame.

The only limit is technical: allowing players to shape their avatars means that some stuff can’t be done in some games (memory print). That is quite vague and the Saint Row series showed to the world that you still can do a lot with a custom avatar creation tool.

So technically it’s doable –if you take that into account from the start-. Also characters are such a small part of culture diversity. Black culture is way more than just having black characters.

What is bad with how we handle diversity is the notion that it’s not worth it. Now that’s ridiculous because it couldn’t be further from the truth.

White dudes don’t care so much about avatars, so used to have them mold to them for decades. Everybody else likes having avatars looking like them. It’s not just in games.

On TV Empire just exploded and demonstrated that a massive black and brown crowd exists. And that this crowd leads interest:

I would imagine that an Empire mobile game or adventure game would be widely successful. And yet I don’t see that happen anytime soon. So frustrating. In the meantime as again Ian puts it perfectly:

What if replacing militarized male brutes with everyone’s favorite alternative identity just results in Balkanization rather than inclusion?

I don’t know what to think!

It’s a little sour article on turning 50 and making games. I’d like to point some things out that I think we all take for being normal or the default setting and shouldn’t at all.

Game development has always had an uncomfortable relationship with age and experience.

Let’s just ask ourselves this: where in the world a really complex field is overlooking experience? Age shouldn’t even be an issue, experience means you’re going to be older because that’s how it works.

Game development, a really hard and complex field, has a culture that almost bullies experience (I remember people making fun of Chris Crawford, have some respect young, pantless padawans).

This shouldn’t be OK at all. This is so fucking weird and needs to stop. In other “passion-driven” industries, people seek experience and people respect experienced people. That’s how the craft progresses but whatever.

So when I read the conclusion that  “hey, I still love what I do” as the pinnacle of 22 years of game development, it kind of breaks my heart. Laralyn, you know you could be feeling way better than that. You should receive Lifetime Achievement Awards and have younger game developers come to see you at GDC to take selfies with you and buying your games and design books.

instead we have a panel at the GDC this year talking about ageism. At 35 I’m entering the “old age” which is some serious bullshit but yeah, that’s the market. I hope this will shift as quickly as possible.

I also really hope for broader games. I talked in the past (back in ‘08) about games for seniors. Tons of room for innovation and steady, sustainable game development. I would be thrilled to work on that. We’re just getting started.

This.

Game journalists analysis skills

This article bothers me so much for two reasons I think:

1/ You game journalists are so, so bad at connecting the dots. When you hear stories about crunch time for decades now, you should fucking investigate the why and how and see that behind that crunch is insane complexity. Developers haven’t been that shy about it. I remember hearing about how it took a couple months to create 3D models for Gran Turismo cars. Months for one car made by a highly skilled artist, guys. And that’s the easiest fucking part of making a racing game.

If you keep destroying game developers in reviews while being well aware of those facts, you’re a mean idiot and a liar to your readers. You participate into creating a culture that thinks that things are simple and easy on computers. You enable and vouch for stupidity.

Worse, with this article some game developers are saying thank you, I shit you not! Yes thank you game journalist for being a dumb ass dick for years, it really helped all of us. Fuck me.

2/ You game journalists are passionate enough about the medium to totally forget how it operates. Which makes subtlety impossible in your critics: if it’s technically perfect it’s fine for you while you don’t really connect to what extent it is, it’s fine. How can you have recognition of a medium when its media are unaware of why shooters are cool programmatically speaking because we can debug that gameplay easily (has the target gone down? No? Debug) compared to heavy simulation a la Sims where you don’t know what the hell the computer or the player are going to do and there are dozens of variables at play. Tons of shit happening in games are happening for a technical reason. We’re dependent, we’re working around tech to create gameplay.

With your ignorance you foster a profound lack of knowledge within your audience. The amount of horseshit or entitlement I read from gamers, it’s mind blowing. As if people were like “I saw the boom in this movie shot, 2/10 will not watch again”. You game journalists nurtured that bullshit. You participated into creating a world where 2D games are inherently not as good as 3D games. It’s sad.

Passion isn’t about clearing 100% of all Nintendo games or playing the most obscure and obtuse shit around, it’s about understanding processes, the craft, the tools so that you can judge accordingly the collaborative work of developers and teach your readers about the most complicated medium in the world, enjoying it more and more importantly, make it progress.

This article should have come up in 2000 if not 1995. In 2015, it’s a disgrace.