Category: Audio&Games

The analogy with food and cooking always works well: making a game looks like making food, everything is possible, there are some loose rules and an infinity of flavors possible. Like food it’s about chemistry. Like a good salad dressing, it all depends on ingredients and how to mix them. Cooking and making great food is about all that.

The game industry has always been obsessed with hardware. If cooking was treated the way we make games, it would be like:

Or

It would be terrible and not make a lot of sense. And yet, this is exactly how the game industry reacts all the time.

And yet, the market is showing how generic computers –yes, Windows PCs- are all you need, ask Notch, ask Valve and Steam, ask gazillions of developers who ship their games on everything they can. Generic tools as long as they do a correct job are enough to make absolutely divine things or consume those divine things. Gordon Ramsay’s food is still probably amazing in a paper plate.

Chefs don’t obsess over how many burners they have, what brand or how they wouldn’t use that brand. They just cook.

The game industry hardware obsession is connected to machismo, who’s having the biggest one, which in turns correlates the super lack of diversity (dudes dudes dudes). It’s less and less the case but damn, it’s been for so long it’s still a backbone of game culture.

Somehow it’s worse now because young dudes have no idea of what they’re talking about when comparing and “fighting” over which machine is the most powerful, when those machines never have been more equal or barely different. More pointless than ever.

There’s this inextricable conservatism in game culture that really brings us down.

Platforms, tools are just  game utensils. Stop obsessing about them, it’s mostly irrelevant today.

One of the most amazing aspect of Minecraft to me is to have become so big with a first-person view.

Early 2000s speaking of a first-person view game without a focus on shooting people was really crazy talk.

Game developers underestimated people’s ability to move inside a 3D space for some reason because if you think about it, we do that all the time.

Game developers forgot something bigger: first-person view is the perfect camera that people own. This way, movies, clips, funny stuff are made and create the meta culture needed to forge an IP into timelessness. It is clear to me that games are not about narrative but narrative is the most powerful culture engine, still.

Third person “movies” make it look like you’re playing with dolls or Lego characters. There always will be something anchored in childhood with third-person view.

Diversity in games. How to think about how a game can reach a diverse crowd? By having characters that represent you. I would most of the time take Adam and my white friend would take Axel and that just made fucking sense and felt good.

“Why is it important to have different characters?” likes to wonder the industry today. It’s because it is important. We’re telling you, you don’t need to and shouldn’t question us for telling you. Do the work.

90s Japanese developers didn’t ask, they just did. It made sense to have a diverse representation when making and marketing a game for the West. Note how it wasn’t a feature to have a black guy and a woman in the cast, it was just normal iteration from anonymous dudebros in previous beat ‘em all. Realism and broadening audience worked in pair at that time. Shit made sense.

Music is the most powerful medium for thought, mood and movement control.

Heard that somewhere on the internet, totally true.

Which is why music and sfxs are important in games because they are ART. They emotionally connect you way more than pixels ever will, it’s deep son. There isn’t a game forum out there without a “favorite music?” thread going on for pages and pages. You can hear Sonic’s ring sound and you’re immediately excited.

Yuzo Koshiro demanded to have his name on the main title screen. As a kid I was like, “sweet, that’s what I want to do too!”. I learned two decades later that he had to fight Sega very hard (and pretty much killed his career) for this because they didn’t want artists to become famous, but that single line on that start screen made me think music in games was a beautiful thing to craft and super important. Funny how things go sometimes.

Game designers and programmers are usually pretty happy to show you how they don’t know anything about music and sound, it’s a little disheartening. I “know” how shaders work or what inverse kinematic is even though they don’t add much to a game except sucking up all the budget. So a game developer should definitely know about the most powerful medium for interactivity and feel, me think.

That Streets of Rage game set up my expectations and dreams for game development and nothing went right. It’s so weird, it looked so promising.

To me, the very first thing that made me smile playing Monument Valley was that I touched something and it played some sound effect/music. It’s a very raw connection. It’s not to annoy parents that we have toys with sound effects, it’s just that they create that smile, they validate the feedback loop: I touch/pull/scratch this, I get audio feedback. It’s a very real life mechanism, it makes things alive. It is not weird science or an obsession from my part, it is key in the process of enjoying a tactile experience.

It is sad that even the developers don’t really see this as part of their game’s experience. I wouldn’t say as a first point “beautiful, intuitive visuals” but more like “playful, intriguing audiovisuals”.

For da love of da game

High skill level is great to watch, whatever it is. It’s showing us what can be done, it kind of expands our knowledge of an activity by adding those incredible moments in our heads.

It’s always funny to hear US people’s frustration about football because nothing happens for 120 minutes. The ones who like it, know how hard it is to control a ball with your feet on a field wider than US football ones for 30 minutes more.

You just need to try for 5 minutes to extrapolate at what level the world’s best players are playing at.

It’s what I’m going through with EVO. I don’t understand everything at all but I have played some fighting games and I can see how high level those matches are.

So it’s weird to see game designers think football is lame or football fans think video games tournament are ridiculous.

But also people get mad when two players or two teams are so close. That’s what is good and intense, people.

You don’t know who’s going to win. There’s friction. Competitors both analyze, try to read the other, trying to find a way through them, it’s the meta game that is so interesting not so much the outcome and which country/team or player wins. It’s the story inside their heads at the time they play that is so beautiful, from having the advantage to having doubt about it, from redemption to revenge, from “controlled randomness” to perfect ace, from despair to perfect execution. Invisible narrative, that’s classy as fuck.

I love to see how games are such a big thing, worldwide. Now I really wish there was more women because I want to see more meta game shit going on like an old woman playing with a pad and fucking the shit out of a dude using a big ass arcade stick. I want to see what a super tight mixed team can do too. Mind games.

Because it is insanely hard. In terms of logistics, I admire them all (and yes MS a bit more because they entered that space when competition was fierce compared to Sony who entered the console market at a time when Sega was shooting themselves in the knees, NEC was dead and Nintendo was asleep).

‘member 1994 y’all. 20 years ago. fffffuuuuu

OK, think about it this way: you’re building a device that needs to be powerful, that will be pushed and stressed out to the max for 12 hours or more, that needs an original input (gamepad), that will be sold widely and needs to be 100% stable with super simple software to use on the surface while doing super complex things under.

It was pretty easy in the 80s, 90s and early 00s.

A console is billions of transistors today, these are very complex machines that need to behave perfectly, all the time.

No desktop computer or laptop really does that, they all idle a lot. A console is meant to run games, one if not the most horsepower-hungry software developed. A console is either off or burning.

Have you seen the mess that is to make a gamepad? How many patents you need to avoid? How hard it is to find a manufacturer that will be able to make them perfect all the time, millions of them without breaking in customers’ hands and without costing you a fortune?

Making a console aka computer game box is a crazy challenge with unlimited variables, it makes me sweaty just thinking about it.

This is why Steam boxes are not here. This is why Ouya is kind of gone and why so many Android consoles are pretty much vaporware at this time. This is why Apple is not doing any of this (no profit? bye), and why it cost Microsoft billions and fifteen years to get somewhere after living hell with the 360 red ring of death (but they had to rush and take the lead in the race). This is why they advertise their work on their gamepad or Kinect because yeah, they worked super hard.

This is why Nintendo is so cheap on tech and always makes everything possible to not ruin their profit margin because all that R&D shit is super expensive.

That’s why all manufacturers are super cool with developers going 2D or light 3D, or are more than happy to show you the features like watching Netflix or tweeting. That’s so much less trouble hardware-wise than the GTAs and the like which are definitely hitting those machines hard while not coming out fast enough (GTA is basically a generation late, first time ever). I don’t think it’s just to show that they’re cool, it’s a way to use that box for less intensive tasks while making consumers think that it replaces other boxes, that consoles are a deal.

The problem is that people got those machines to have them hit hard, they want some jaw dropping “graphics”. At the same time, they’re happy not to have to spend $60 minimum to have fun while they don’t understand why PS4 games are more beautiful but feel and play the same as the PS3 ones. Look around, people are kind of over it and this is why I see so many people arguing that PCs are the best deal ever on every site I go to. Because, it’s true.

That’s why we only have three manufacturers and that’s why they fight so hard to get exclusives. Good luck, guys.

Growth, in an extremely fast-paced market doesn’t mean squat because it also means that you can shrink very fast. “You’ve been Zynga’d”.

Rovio or Mojang don’t have sluggish growth rates, King and Supercell have mutant-like growth rates. Getting 4,450 times bigger in three years for Supercell is not the norm, nor will it become the norm. In the case of King everything is tied up to one, simple game. Context is everything.

Meanwhile Mojang is making over a quarter of billion dollars a year, is independent and doesn’t have to answer anyone, has a game that has more impact on culture and society than all of the Candy Bird Saga combined. God it’s beautiful.

Nordic game studios have been trouncing Europe gamedev scene for almost a decade now. Highly skilled people in design and programming, no sun 8 months a year and you have everything to make great games.

Sluggish growth rates. Your mom is sluggish you insane greedy Wall Street bastards.

So that was the big story yesterday: Inside the disintegration of a game jam reality show. It’s always great to see integrity.

But to me there’s still a notion that game jams are something you want to show to the world. Zoe Quinn gives us her wishes:

Capture the inspiration, the hard work, the 3am delirium and the dumb jokes that come with it. Show people how we all band together and support each other through the deadline. That’s what I want to show the world about game jams.

I think we have to face the fact that this is not sexy or interesting to most people. It’s awesome when you’re doing it, not watching it. Game development like most building processes is not something you want to show people THAT much: it’s messy, it smells like sweat and pizza more often than not, it’s hard, it’s tedious, it’s slow, it’s nerve wrecking. Did I mention that it was hard? You are a pile of useless shit after a game jam. Really useless.

I mean even with elegant and “artsy” medium like music or movies we don’t care so much about behind the scenes. Culturally, people know that it’s messy and thus are not very interested in the making of, which is why behind the scenes stuff are usually hidden promotional tools. People want to play guitar not because they know Jimi played that part 23 times before having the good one, but because listening to that song make people want to learn guitar.

Documenting how gamedev works is great but that will not trigger a wave of thirsty young folks to join in. Nerds are already toying with code and games and others will be like, ew.

What I would love to see is an app store like distribution of those jam games. If I could install/uninstall in one click and run all the games, share them easily regardless of your platform of course, that would be amazing. I’m sure there are some unheard of gems from the hundreds of games made during jams on top of which people could expand.

I want edgy, unethical, indecent –indie-scent, yes I’m sorry- games in game jams, that’s what I wish we were focusing on more than the community aspect. I want individuals more than tribes. I want games more than jams.

Because ultimately, people and their games will make other people make games.