Category: Audio&Games

Here, then, we come to the fatal flaw that undermines almost all applications of this argument. Its proponents would seemingly have you believe that the games of which they speak are rhetorically neutral sandboxes, exact mirror images of some tangible objective reality. But this they are not. Even if they purport to “simulate” real events to one degree or another, they can hope to capture only a tiny sliver of their lived experience, shot through with the conscious and subconscious interests and biases of the people who make them. These last are often most clearly revealed through a game’s victory conditions, as they are in the case of Colonization. To play Colonization the “right” way — to play it as the designers intended it to be played — requires you to exploit and subjugate the people who were already in the New World millennia before your country arrived to claim it. Again, then, we’re forced to confront the fact that every example of a creative expression is a statement about its creators’ worldview, whether those creators consciously wish it to be such a thing or not. Labeling it a simulation does nothing to change this.

The handling — or rather non-handling — of slavery by Colonization is an even more telling case in point. By excising slavery entirely, Colonization loses all claim to being a simulation of real history to any recognizable degree whatsoever, given how deeply intertwined the Peculiar Institution was with everything the game does deign to depict.

Jimmy Maher, at it again, being such a treat to read.

“A creative expression is a statement about its creators’ worldview”. Very powerful and very true. It is the reason why creators have to expand their knowledge, to go broad rather than deep but I digress.

Game developers still don’t do a great job at grasping consequences and outcomes. It’s not a surprise that we talk so much more about tools and new tech or production than morality, gameplay and what kind of fictional reality game developers create for their players.

Spending all kinds of energy to avoid accountability doesn’t scream maturity.

Guile looking like he spittin spittin.

Dhalsim about to DROP it.

Chun li playing fat bass lines on her Moog.

Zangief definitely on some Chicago House mix.

Hip Hop was created by creative, poor young black men in America in the 70s.

Video games were created by creative, wealthy young white men in America in the 70s.

Hip Hop immediately became a cultural behemoth and was already HUGE at the start of the 80s.

Video games immediately became a cultural behemoth and were already HUGE at the start of the 80s.

Hip Hop became a massive, international, multi-billion dollar market by the end of the 90s.

Video games became a massive, international, multi-billion dollar market by the end of the 90s.

Very few white men made a career as Hip Hop artists.

Very few black men made a career as Video games artists.

Hip Hop has always mostly dismissed women working in it.

Video games have always mostly dismissed women working in it.

Both added to and shaped our cultural worlds for the past four decades. It’s interesting how they couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed from the start, yet followed *exactly* the same successful path while they both culturally convey the same exclusive club thing that is so part of their identities. Dude’s stuff I guess?

I’ve always wanted more.

If there’s something extremely consistent with online worlds and communities, is that they get big and always end up being unmanageable.

Even with the best people, the best intentions, the best dev team, the most experience, the less friction.

It *always* happens. And then it’s a mess of decisions and counter-decisions to attempt to fix “the problem”. And it never gets fixed, really.

It’s more than a hard problem. I believe that large scale gathering is just not possible for humans to behave decently in. Especially in virtual worlds where consequences exist but are still virtual.

Filfre has been at it again.

Shareware. Just that word triggers many memories.

It also gives us a light on what computing meant way back in the days. Andrew Fluegelman, one of the pioneer of this business model:

“Like Brand and so many others of a similar bent, Fluegelman saw great potential in the personal computer as a force for social liberation.”

It’s hilarious to read in 2020, isn’t it? There was a sense that software and computers could be leveraged to help any individual. The IBM PC did just that to millions. My mom started her accounting business thanks to an accounting software and two big, beige boxes. A woman in a world of men. Social liberation.

Anyway shareware, aka free work with donations which is so widely used now, was not computing for kid-me: the idea felt right, but it ultimately didn’t seem to be working because being dependent on people’s good will seemed extremely unstable? I remember being excited by shareware yet, not getting how you could possibly run a business afloat with it. It was totally going against the obvious.

“My wife said I was “a foolish old man” if I thought even one person would voluntarily send me money for the program. I was more optimistic. I suspected that enough voluntary payments would come to help pay for expansions to my personal-computer hobby – perhaps several hundred dollars. Maybe even a thousand dollars (in my wildest dreams!).”

Jim Button, another shareware pioneer was getting $1000 worth of checks in the mail every day by 1984. His business peaked at $4.5M and 35 employees. Not too shabby for a donation-based business.

Those pioneers were pressured to release their work in big boxes sold for hundreds of dollars yet they didn’t cave. They were doing fine and simply didn’t see any benefit about making more money. I love to see this.

Of course, parasites appeared and destroyed many things about shareware including trust, which is so central to it. By the mid 90s, shareware was quite dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing.

I’m going through those stories (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5) and reflecting on them and the digital world we have today. It’s fascinating.

Jonathan Blow had a talk this week on the subject, which was very interesting. And Hacker News had a thread recently as well, spawned from this blog post. Excellent points being made.

This is very important to me. I started my career working on educational games. Now it’s 2020, kids are at home and school will probably never, ever be the same.

It’s the perfect time.

I don’t want to go through all the obvious –games are all educational, it’s hard to make interesting education games- but I’d like to point out to one thing that games teach better than anything else: management, aka navigating systems.

Management is about so many things. Secondary goals, short-term, long-term actions, timing. All those things that we do to maintain, sustain and run systems. Management is something a bit impalpable that’s being taught in every single game you play (these days games want you to manage the same things for hundreds of hours, which is problematic because it’s so unnecessary). The first thing management teaches you is to observe what is going on. Isn’t it something you need, whatever you do in life? Yes. Games are the best management playgrounds ever.

Get burn, do badly it’s okay, do wonderful and it doesn’t really matter, it’s a game. But those moments taught you. Those moments will stay with you and later on you’ll intuitively know that if you don’t pay attention to a certain little thing, this might end up into a big problem. You’ve learned so much through navigating those systems and that will be useful in life. You just don’t know how, but it will (I know I’ve become better than average at navigating crowded space thanks to playing shoot ’em ups and Counter-Strike for years).

The big question would be: what kind of games do we want to create so that people can use more directly their newly acquired knowledge and management skills? I have one.

Take The Sims building houses part. Add actual numbers about insulation, material used, costs etc. This way, people can actually play to make a home –that can be build in the real world- as they want, costing as less as possible or having the best temperature inside without running AC. Or just trying things out.

I would love to see people obsess over insulation R-value, optimizing and understanding house shape and material, understanding that hemp is fabulous or how small homes are far more efficient and just fine. And then people could visit their creation in VR. Now that’s a really useful, down to earth, global thing!

It makes me think that games, tools and toys are all intertwined and useful to learn and teach yourself a million things. We game developers and designers need to cater to this need though.

This is the direction I hope and wish a branch of computer games culture will follow. We need it.

I think this game illustrates perfectly the paradox of games, technology and cutting edge technology.

HL:A is a single-player, first-person shooter.

HL:A apparently redefines the VR experience.

HL:A demands technical knowledge. I’ve heard of people fighting to get the game to run. I’m talking hours before being ready.

HL:A demands a $3K hardware investment or the experience will be poor.

HL:A was in production for at the very least five or six years. It will not break even (I imagine Valve doesn’t care so much about that but other developers would).

Despite all that, the reviews and what I gather is that the experience is phenomenal. That HL:A is one of the best game experience ever made.

And that this experience involves shooting at people, having a dedicated room, a powerful computer, being very tech savvy and that this game cannot be shared with anyone else.

Simply put, that is very 1999.

That’s like the opposite of the zeitgeist right now. On the other hand, A single-player VR game in a quarantine and self-isolation era sounds great. Except that we all long for socialization and going outside.

Humans! Games! Stuff!

Noita is chemistry. Noita is Life.

It’s a dungeon crawler game and it’s pretty unique. The more I play the more I see the work they put in and man, it’s something.

It’s a game designed from a bottom up perspective and Nolla Games did an amazing job. It doesn’t feel like early access.

Runs on 2012 laptop and “old” Surface Pro 3, check.

Sound and music are on point and once again, quite unique: when you start being in trouble, there’s this open ended mid 70s psychedelic prog rock soundtrack fading in and out (never quite the same), with distorted guitars, flutes and tambourine, phaser and chorus effects etc. It just works with the little wizard world, check. (not only it just works, but it’s REFRESHING OH MY GOD THANK YOU)

Controls are perfect, both on keyboard and mouse and gamepad, check.

The randomization is extremely good. I haven’t gotten stuck somewhere because of procedurally generated levels. It feels fair most of the time but sometimes it isn’t. When it isn’t, it’s hilarious. Like you land somewhere with 3 enemies shooting at you at the same time but one falls in a fire pit and starts burning the entire room by himself while you’re trying to escape, jumping in the water and shooting arrows at acidic flying thingy from under the surface.

I got stuck under my own pile of dirt once, created from a spell and I didn’t have enough air and almost died and then I couldn’t move at all so I had to use a bomb and it, of course, killed me. Chaos as a Service, check.

It’s a really hard game though. I can’t get past the Snowy Depths (level 4) because enemies become more aggressive than the US government on migrants. It does say a lot. The loot is too rare and it’s difficult to deal with electricity without getting murdered in one second (water and electricity, you know). I did angered the Gods –I don’t know how and it didn’t go well.

Noita has this incredible feel of being alive, thanks to its technical achievements. Playing other 2D games feels like some fake theater things after playing this one. They feel so very static.

Tiny pieces of glass on my bike commute looked like pixels today. Pixels. Chemistry. NOITA

Overland is a strategy, turn-based game in which you take care of a bunch of travelers on a road trip in a post-apocalyptic world.

The core loop doesn’t allow for much. You’re immediately overrun by monsters, whatever your plan is. So you die a lot, constantly anxious. Reaching the next level is less a victory and more of a “fuck it” moment, knowing that the next level will be next to impossible.

Overland has been hard and getting harder ever since its inception. I think that is a tragic mistake.

Overland, from its aesthetic to its theme SCREAMS that this is a “doable” game and not a hardcore fest. I know, Cuphead does it but that’s the thing, it goes all the way: ultra-ultra cute and ultra-ultra hardcore. The dissonance works because it’s unapologetic. It’s part of the game’s identity. Overland with its road trip theme suggests a way more laid back vibe. That it has. And that it doesn’t want to follow.

This game should be able to be completed in 2 hours by a not so good player. And then, because it’s procedurally generated in many ways, it would offer very good replayability. You should be able to make a run in one evening session, go to sleep, dream about your little crew, especially the dog you named yourself, and want the next day to have another run.

Instead Overland, like far too many games, owes its development to fans, people who want the most hardcore shit all the time because they are –and it’s a little bit unhealthy- obsessed with said game.

I understand that that fanbase is very important when selling games. But if it’s basically closing the door to the rest of the audience, that’s a failure to me. Games take too long to be made and can’t be dependent on a small subset of an audience. That’s an incredibly fragile position to be in.

Game developers need to craft their experiences around time spent, respecting players. I’m sorry but the reality is that there’s tons of entertainment out there. You want to attract people, not deter them from having a good time.