Category: Audio&Games

It’s frustrating to see something in your mind without being able to express it properly.

I tweeted that melodies are like the QTEs of music and now I’m in trouble, trying to explain how or from what point of view.

I thought about this analogy because melodies are traditionally what people listening to music, play with. By playing with the music while listening to it I mean letting your mind decipher and enjoy it. Usually, melody is the first thing we get our brains on. People need to be able to connect to a song and for non musicians, non rhythmic people it happens with the melody (and yes, it’s totally a social construct from Great Westernia; melody isn’t that big in Africa for instance).

So, playing with the melody. You just have to follow a series of tones (hence the QTE reference). It’s the easiest way to make that music playing your own. It’s like you are creating a path at the same time that the engine -the body of the music, chords, rhythm, texture- creates this space for you.

If you can harmonize over music instead of following the lead, it means that you virtualize and play in a wider space than when singing a melody. Same way, if you can improvise notes in between a soft melody, it’s more interesting and playful than exclusively follow even a complex series of notes. Same with rhythm that you have to feel and keep, a slightly more complex task than following a melody.

So I thought about melody as a series of QTE, kind of a cool thing to do on top of all the rest of the music’s mechanics. I heard that it’s a game in bars and it’s called karaoke.

With music like jazz though, where there’s virtually no melody, creating one is no QTE anymore.

I’m interested in expression, freedom and creating a space for them. God I’m a sucker for those.

Speaking of racism,

that’s what i find so fucking offensive about bioshock infinite, is that it makes black people props in a storyline in which white people get to revise white history through all kinds of fanciful sci fi wizardry in order to make themselves feel better while STILL excluding and marginalizing black people, and we’re supposed to be happy about it.

Fuck no, we’re not. Great article, you can feel the anger at the end.

To see people like Cliff Bleszinski claim it to be “true art” really goes to show how much the violent, racist oppression of other people sidelined for the sake of white-centric science fiction is nothing but entertainment to the white-dominated games subculture.

(via Jeff Kunzler)

It’s so embarrassing. Maybe it’s anecdotal but making music for games, I’m never saying the letters “R&B” because culturally I’ve seen white people go nuts and angry just by saying those words, like saying “rock” would make you think that this entire genre fucking sucks to oblivion and that really, you’re right. Meanwhile J-pop -popular in the games subculture- is Asian R&B but then, it’s different.

A shame.

Regardless of racism, Bioshock has flaws even in its core mechanics as Jonathan describes it perfectly:

You need to read the next one from bottom to top, though sorry.

How do you call a situation where a game is full of flaws but is widely acclaimed as what the game industry can really do? Shit.

Jaw-dropping graphics don’t fucking cut it and never will. And you game journalists I don’t even, ugh.

Speaking of players,

Well, they don’t disappoint.

Everything kind of started with Raph’s letter to Leigh, but it’s a debate that’s been on for a while. What games are. Robert Yang answered some stuff and then Tadhg Kelly wrote some stuff and by stuff I mean high intellectual shit with strong arguments in favor of “both parties”. And then it blew up on Twitter, I can’t find the storify, whatever.

My first feeling is that it’s funny how we can’t be satisfy with loose notions. It’s OK if we just have a vague definition of what games are, let’s just make them. Or like Ian Bogost said ask ourselves what they can do, what they’re good at, what hasn’t been done with them.

But I’m avoiding the debate this way though.

I don’t care about labels but I certainly enjoyed Raph’s work dissecting in a very accessible way “some” of the things that matter with games. Eye-opening, like having a microscope and see atoms of fun.

I personally love systems and simulations and feel that people need more of that, that is what I kind of want to bring to the table, and it’s totally connected to the kind of life I had. It’s pretty simple, at the end.

Little story: I played Anna’s Triad game. The theme is fresh. The sound is great, it’s original whimsical and cute. I’m playing, failing over and over. But it’s a game, it’s a system with rules.

To win, I stripped the game off its graphics and mentally brute force positions while in the shower. Somehow the story I could imagine about these three characters when I was moving them around was blocking me from pure puzzle solving. Anyway, I had already enjoyed the game before winning.

What does it say? I don’t know that was my take on it, some people will hate it some will find it challenging. Sometimes the challenge itself will not matter.

Players will always enjoy any kind of (nicely done) games, don’t worry.

Once again, I wasn’t there. I don’t know when it will happen but I hope it will one day.

Of course, it’s becoming very predictable now. I haven’t even covered it last year. I feel like we’re avoiding the same issues, making the same mistakes and pushing the same “realistic” goal over and over. It was the last game design challenge and I hope it will reborn somewhere else, it was very inspiring. /sad face

It looks like the industry is now paying attention to more personal and small projects -thanks Minecraft- which is good but obvious as this is where the most exciting things are coming from since 1845. Indie doesn’t mean anything now, that’s good too. Names, people, faces, regardless of your contract or platform where you release on, that’s much better.

A lot of discussion about free to play but nothing changed: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I think developers shouldn’t focus so much on it. If they can afford to make a free to play game fine but to me it looks like you need to eat too. I want to educate people on how the small-transaction-between-you-and-me thing is the fairest business, make them learn that it’s worth it to help me out making this awesome shit. Really on the Chris Hecker wagon on this one.

I’m concerned about the total lack of noise around the app store problem and censorship. It’s amazing how “brand loyalty” can block people from opening their mouths. Imagine Microsoft leading the store paradigm, censoring games. OMFG the GDC would have been all about leaving the platform. It is once again the kind of stuff where I see how immature we are.

The problem at the end is that we’re barely starting to benefit from digital distribution and we’re already giving all its power to middle men. It’s not that distribution is everything but yes, it kind of is business-wise. We have this window to keep things in control and this window is closing up.

Layoffs en masse were not in the conversation either like it’s not connected to what’s going on, like if there was a barrier between big publishers and developers (which doesn’t exist, it’s the same people going in and out and now more out than in). People are still amazed at how the AAA business doesn’t work anymore, when it’s not news. Gotta connect the dots, yo.

Oh game development frustration, you are a bitch.

I had demos.

As a result, I learned to play games a bit differently. Being limited so severely meant that I began thinking of games as smaller, bite-sized experiences—miniature worlds to poke and prod until I’d seen everything they had to offer. As I played, over and over and over yet again, I got better. Satisfaction came from mastery over a situation—from becoming so good with the tools at my disposal that any situation became a cakewalk—rather than constant newness or endless repetition. Discovery and exploration were all-important, but instead of discovering new abilities while exploring new maps, I discovered new ways to tackle old challenges. I’d try to do things in ways the designers had never intended.

This is me, pretty much. I played hundreds of demos in the 90s and it definitely helped me get a sense of taste that I think, you don’t really get as well by playing much less games for a much longer time. Testing new things, new gameplay, all the time.

I don’t much like difficulty. I don’t really see the point. If I fail repeatedly, I get bored. Sure, I might beat a section one time after a dozen attempts, but it’s not as if I want to go back, and it’s rare that the difficulty actually helped me become a better player.

I could almost write a full post called “Dark Souls, you guys” with people LOVING its difficulty. To me spending dozens of hours of painful enjoyment is like doing crack all night and being like “that shit ain’t so bad after all”. Of course everything you spend time on is going to feel valuable, but like the author I get bored if I fail repeatedly because the designer made it this way. I have always questioned their decisions.

So the fact that we design games this way -remember, that was to make money through arcades- always has been a problem to me. The sweet spot for the perfectly balanced challenge is so rare and so personal. The technology that allows following of your play style, raising the challenges you want is going to become huge, critical tech.

This is where games are so close to music and that between what you want from it, the difficulty of entering it and what it actually does to you is different for everyone. Fascinating. Hard.

Your PC is an amazing peace of kit, it’s amazing because no other computing platform is as versatile and no other platform is so open for innovation. You can buy hardware for it from thousands of vendors, you can hook it up to just about any display or input device and you can make it do just about anything. While maybe no longer being the latest buzzword, the combination of screen, mouse and keyboard, is still the best way to be productive, get a headshot or to create the next software wonder. Whatever cool mobile app or console game you think is the hot stuff, it was conceived on a PC. If we could only choose one computing platform it would have be the PC, for the simple fact that no other platform could exist without the PC. 

Eskil.

What pisses me off is how bad PC manufacturers are at creating what people want these days: the perfect blend of HTPC/Gaming PC in the living room. Go around, people are really waiting on that machine to show up. No manufacturer did it. All could (Apple still hasn’t because they hate gaming, you can tell). Lenovo Dell Asus Samsung still see the market as very distinct between desktop, laptop and non-general-uses devices. Fools (but yes I know, money)! It’s only computers now. We hook them up everywhere. We do everything on them. Phones have 2 Gb of RAM. The size, form factor are nearly irrelevant.

It’s the real Personal Computer Era beyond the beige box. It’s the tech stabilization that we were waiting for. But we’re still missing one really core element. Let’s build that home device that will once and for all blend the old PC and the old console paradigms together.

You probably didn’t notice but we can do everything fanless now.

These are fanless machines that can be today more powerful than any current console, easily. It’s an important step because game developers financially, humanly can barely max out this generation. They can now focus on making games instead of needing more tech.

No more maintenance or planned obsolescence like we’re so used to with laptops and towers full of failing fans. Think 90s TV set or fridges. You buy one, it lasts up to the point where you want another one, not because it’s underpowered or broke but because the old one goes to the bedroom and the new one is for the living room.

These fanless machines, PCs yes there I said it, will provide peace of mind and choice for consumers and will fund a more homogenous ecosystem that will help game developers to stabilize their shit and stay away from too much vertical silo-ification of the business.

I’m out.

*drops the mic*

Talking business here. Looking at skateboarding history and how their creators started their own stuff, own brand, developed them to great success.

Young adults, culture supposedly stupid and useless, born around the same time, same problems of “how to make a living out of this weird passion?” computer games and skateboard share some stuff. Also, they’re so hard to master.

But skateboarders thrive man. Creating their brands and selling them.

So why game developers are such crying babies (I include myself, chill) who cannot envision a world where they are having a hand on their shit and their future? It boggles my mind to see guys fight to be the bitches of whoever is going to tell them how it works (Sony, XBLA, Steam whatever) and complain about it at the same time, despite knowing how it works with middle men. WTF.

In late-1989, Mark Gonzales approached Rocco with the desire to be involved in his own company. Gonzales was riding for Vision at the time, which, at the time, was the largest skateboard company. Gonzales and Rocco decided to name the company Blind, in contrast to Gonzales’ former sponsor.

I think it’s genius. Skateboarders use to ride for big companies (usually divisions from even bigger sportswear companies). Then they started their own because you might want to have a bit more of a plan in your life than just riding a skateboard, right? Between one or three riders together would start their company. Create a brand. New riders coming in? Let’s create another company/brand! Repeat. One dies? Another gets a bit bigger or another one pop out. It’s fluid.

Independent, 35 year old sub-company From the Santa Cruz Skateboard mothership. Biggest brand in the game.

Now game developers. They used to work  for big companies. Then they start their own because they want control and not just being chimps in a giant mechanism. But they do so, reluctantly. It’s almost not a choice, it’s by default if you want to keep your mind sane. It’s the first problem IMO. Then names! Hey how about we choose the weirdest, nerdiest name we can possibly come up with? Studio Pixel, Metanet, Mojang, Nifflas, Number None Giant Squid of course no one can remember that shit. Element, Real, Independent. Plan B. Now these stick, send some kind of message from seriousness to total goofy (Girl and Chocolate skateboard??? Apple anyone?) but you remember it. You associate. The brand. I never can’t remember Jon Blow’s Number None studio thing. I think it’s the second problem which follows the first one: no seduction, no “vibe”, weak concept you know? Just dead cold and almost auto-generated words that make no sense. The game studio name is so important, it seems like only Japan understood that a long time ago.

Skateboarders running businesses, they have to build shit! I mean, real shit with machines, wood, plastic, steel. Distribution issues, so many things to deal with. Game developers can just set up a website, use the awesome Humble Store and spread the word. That is all.

But for a very large part, we still fucking don’t do that. All the discussions these days are about how app stores are awful with curation problem etc. So let’s state the obvious: don’t go on them! At some point they’ll reconsider how they treat developers see Sony’s case these days. And maybe we can even not give a fuck because there are hundreds of millions of computers sold every year and we have the damn internet. Game developers, do you measure the luck we have compare to other businesses???  It’s mind-blowing. Minecraft should have started a massive shift in the game industry, it didn’t.

If skateboarders are eternal teenagers, sometimes I feel game developers are eternal 9 year olds. It’s a bit too young.

Documentaries to watch and analyze branding through: Bones Brigade, The Man Who Souled The World.

The first time I was probably thirteen or fourteen. After a day at school watching The Name of the Rose which features torture, I was at my friend’s and we watched Robocop 2, and then I was home playing Doom. Killing monsters. More blood. More guns. At some point I’m in berserk mode with blood all over my monitor, sound FXs something just kicks in in my head: I don’t want this anymore. Just stop. What the fuck is wrong with you. Hours and hours of violence, just for fun? I stopped. Put some cool music and grabbed my comics. I had found out that there’s a threshold.

The second time was pretty obvious: 9/11. We’re at work and it’s been months that my office is “terrorists only” on Counter-Strike everyday at lunch. We joke all the time about it. How many suicides to make our team win? I don’t know but that day it didn’t work. I think we stopped playing CS for at least two weeks.

The third time was last year with SpyParty. I was starting to dig the spy action and be amazed at the amount of information the sniper has to deal with. Extremely stressful and fascinating. But then, the Colorado shooting happened. Snipping in SpyParty triggers avatars screaming and searching for cover in a room. I haven’t been able to launch the game since then. I failed at making myself a mental “sandbox where it’s all right to shoot people because it’s just a game”. Since then more shootings. Last one I read about.

It’s frustrating because first person view is great. Immersion-wise, it’s hard to beat. Instantly send a player  to game over with a headshot is very satisfying too. Beat the shit out of a punk in a third person view game works all right too.

I’m kind of glad I don’t have kids. The threshold for them is probably way up now.

Steven Soderbergh.

A comment I see more and more on the internet.

May I introduce you to Chocobeam, game audio company with a distinct sound. And soul. A lot of soul.