Thursday, October 20, 2011
A return
I haven't posted anything here in a while, but I may attempt to re-use the site. A little less whining about game design, a field I am thoroughly under qualified to write for properly, a lot more about design. Period. As I am a graphic and web designer by training, and a 3D modeler by choice, and hopefully a future career in it.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Hello World
Hi, I'm KurenaiXIII. Riot Gear invited me to contribute to the blog, and it sounded like an interesting idea. I'm not a game designer, except in my head--I don't have any practical experience with the creation of games, only the playing of them. (I estimate this puts me in with 95% of the video game-playing public.)
I play a small amount of RPGs (to completion anyways), but I play a whole hell of a lot of World of Warcraft (Yes, I'm one of those) and a whole lot of fighting games--both 2d and 3d--special emphasis, lately, on Street Fighter 4, BlazBlue, Melty Blood Actress Again, and various doujin fighting games.
I also play a lot of rhythm games--I don't play Dance Dance Revolution (too old and creaky) anymore, but I do play Beatmania IIDX, Pop 'n Music, Guitar Hero (and Rock Band), and all those. So what I'm saying is, expect my posts to come in along those gaming lines, although I do play at least a little of everything from fighting game to racing game to puzzle and visual novel.
In the coming weeks, I'll post more--current topics I'm considering addressing are the concept of the 'unlock' and DLC, as well as control complexity and immersion, and even maybe discussion on controllers.
I play a small amount of RPGs (to completion anyways), but I play a whole hell of a lot of World of Warcraft (Yes, I'm one of those) and a whole lot of fighting games--both 2d and 3d--special emphasis, lately, on Street Fighter 4, BlazBlue, Melty Blood Actress Again, and various doujin fighting games.
I also play a lot of rhythm games--I don't play Dance Dance Revolution (too old and creaky) anymore, but I do play Beatmania IIDX, Pop 'n Music, Guitar Hero (and Rock Band), and all those. So what I'm saying is, expect my posts to come in along those gaming lines, although I do play at least a little of everything from fighting game to racing game to puzzle and visual novel.
In the coming weeks, I'll post more--current topics I'm considering addressing are the concept of the 'unlock' and DLC, as well as control complexity and immersion, and even maybe discussion on controllers.
What we're all here for
So you've met Psyber and his hatred of Dead Space: Extraction. Although honestly from the way he was talking, I thought his post was going to be full of a lot more loathing and spite.
Anyways, I created this blog for the specific discussion of some pretty theoretical things about game design. One of the reasons I invited Psyber to guest speak was to get some people talking about the practical parts of game design, more may follow in his wake.
But really, the theory is why I'm here. Playing great games is good too, but I have a desire to dissect games as much as play them. So I'm going to start off with the first of what I'm probably going to come back to a lot. I think about the interactions between player and game, a lot.
I like to call this, the feedback loop.
When a player sits down with any game they're immediately presented with an array of choices to make. Start game, load game, etc. Obvious menu choices are familiar to us all. The choices however don't stop there.
Every moment a player is playing a game, they're making choices, these choices are based on the stimulus provided by the game. The most obvious of these stimuli is the graphical one. Put a user in front of a screen and put some moving pictures on it and more often then not, they will get whats going on.
The player-to-game part of the loop almost always has to go through something all gamers know: The controller. The controller though, is almost always extraordinarily limited in the scope of information ti carries back to the game, but these are the two main components of the main feed back loop. Video game-to-player and controller player-to-game.
This is just sort the strained cabbage boiled down to nothing explanation to get started. You can carry this almost as far as you want to go.
Now, when the game receives control inputs from the user, the situation portrayed in the game. The player character moves or some other modifier like a moving cursor or a new unit in an RTS is selected. This changes the image, producing a new stimulus for the player to make a decision on.Thus begins the never ending cycle of interactivity. Maybe this is why gamers are always saying 'just one more minute'.
But like I said, you can take this further. There is also an auditory feedback look, with environmental and action game cues related by sounds, voices, and music. Unseen gunfire tells a player he's under attack, voices relate story and provide clues and a change in the tone of music can prepare the player for the right kind of emotional response.
The player responds, and the loop continues.
This feeds me into what I will probably talk about next time, player choices.
For now, I smell heathen northerner turkey day turkey.
Anyways, I created this blog for the specific discussion of some pretty theoretical things about game design. One of the reasons I invited Psyber to guest speak was to get some people talking about the practical parts of game design, more may follow in his wake.
But really, the theory is why I'm here. Playing great games is good too, but I have a desire to dissect games as much as play them. So I'm going to start off with the first of what I'm probably going to come back to a lot. I think about the interactions between player and game, a lot.
I like to call this, the feedback loop.
When a player sits down with any game they're immediately presented with an array of choices to make. Start game, load game, etc. Obvious menu choices are familiar to us all. The choices however don't stop there.
Every moment a player is playing a game, they're making choices, these choices are based on the stimulus provided by the game. The most obvious of these stimuli is the graphical one. Put a user in front of a screen and put some moving pictures on it and more often then not, they will get whats going on.
The player-to-game part of the loop almost always has to go through something all gamers know: The controller. The controller though, is almost always extraordinarily limited in the scope of information ti carries back to the game, but these are the two main components of the main feed back loop. Video game-to-player and controller player-to-game.
This is just sort the strained cabbage boiled down to nothing explanation to get started. You can carry this almost as far as you want to go.
Now, when the game receives control inputs from the user, the situation portrayed in the game. The player character moves or some other modifier like a moving cursor or a new unit in an RTS is selected. This changes the image, producing a new stimulus for the player to make a decision on.Thus begins the never ending cycle of interactivity. Maybe this is why gamers are always saying 'just one more minute'.
But like I said, you can take this further. There is also an auditory feedback look, with environmental and action game cues related by sounds, voices, and music. Unseen gunfire tells a player he's under attack, voices relate story and provide clues and a change in the tone of music can prepare the player for the right kind of emotional response.
The player responds, and the loop continues.
This feeds me into what I will probably talk about next time, player choices.
For now, I smell heathen northerner turkey day turkey.
Dead Space: Extraction
I was recently invited to join this blog as an occasional contributor, and I gladly accepted. If there's one thing I love, it's ranting about other things I love less.
I figure for my first post, I'll take a swing at a game I've been playing recently, that reminded me of other games in its genre that I like significantly less. I'm talking about Dead Space: Extraction.
A "horror" rail shooter for the Wii, it embodies something I really hate. Which is watering down the essence of what made a game successful and then trying to transfer that into an entirely different genre and failing to do so.
In a purely technical sense, they took out everything that made the original game a success and attempted to put it into something mediocre. Let's outline below what made Dead Space, the original, such a great game:
One of the key points of the original Dead Space was the sense of atmosphere. It's one of the few games I praise for not having a musical soundtrack. The point of the game is that your interactions with people are utterly limited. Only a handful of times in the game do you have anyone within even a close proximity to you. The sense of utter aloneness is key to making the game feel right. The level design is amazing, in my opinion, as well. Cramped corridors, lots of vents, cold metal. It all intentionally looks the same, to increase how alone and lost you can feel. But mostly it was the enemies. Enemies could come at you at any time, from anywhere, and with no warning. It was jump-shock horror.
So, what does Extraction do?
Instead of being alone, you have between 2 and 4 yammering NPCs with you at all time, talking in your ear verbosely while doing nothing to help you shoot people. Enemies come at a predictable pace, at predictable points (always the same spots), and are fairly boring. And it's a rail shooter. Sure, once in a while you get the option to choose between two paths, but one is usually a path to bonus goods, and then you're right back on the rail to go through the rest of the level.
Basically, Extraction takes away the aloneness, the ability to get lost, and the randomly spawning enemies. What are you left with? A bland shooter with a fancy coat if paint over it.
This is, truthfully, much the same issue I had with Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Call of Duty: World at War. Railshooters are fun, but when you're gutting a game series to force one into its corpse, turning it into some godawful machination, wearing the skin of something you once enjoyed, you're going too far.
And that's my two cents on that.
I figure for my first post, I'll take a swing at a game I've been playing recently, that reminded me of other games in its genre that I like significantly less. I'm talking about Dead Space: Extraction.
A "horror" rail shooter for the Wii, it embodies something I really hate. Which is watering down the essence of what made a game successful and then trying to transfer that into an entirely different genre and failing to do so.
In a purely technical sense, they took out everything that made the original game a success and attempted to put it into something mediocre. Let's outline below what made Dead Space, the original, such a great game:
One of the key points of the original Dead Space was the sense of atmosphere. It's one of the few games I praise for not having a musical soundtrack. The point of the game is that your interactions with people are utterly limited. Only a handful of times in the game do you have anyone within even a close proximity to you. The sense of utter aloneness is key to making the game feel right. The level design is amazing, in my opinion, as well. Cramped corridors, lots of vents, cold metal. It all intentionally looks the same, to increase how alone and lost you can feel. But mostly it was the enemies. Enemies could come at you at any time, from anywhere, and with no warning. It was jump-shock horror.
So, what does Extraction do?
Instead of being alone, you have between 2 and 4 yammering NPCs with you at all time, talking in your ear verbosely while doing nothing to help you shoot people. Enemies come at a predictable pace, at predictable points (always the same spots), and are fairly boring. And it's a rail shooter. Sure, once in a while you get the option to choose between two paths, but one is usually a path to bonus goods, and then you're right back on the rail to go through the rest of the level.
Basically, Extraction takes away the aloneness, the ability to get lost, and the randomly spawning enemies. What are you left with? A bland shooter with a fancy coat if paint over it.
This is, truthfully, much the same issue I had with Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Call of Duty: World at War. Railshooters are fun, but when you're gutting a game series to force one into its corpse, turning it into some godawful machination, wearing the skin of something you once enjoyed, you're going too far.
And that's my two cents on that.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The requisite first entry.
Theres probably a million of these out there. Blogs about video games that is, but I want to make my playing field a little more specific. Game Design. Not reviews, not opinions about what games I like, but game design and the theories and thoughts that go behind it.
Broaching into this topic of discussion is probably a lot like the beginnings of most interactive fiction:
You see a dark foreboding cave.
What do you do?
Wading into this with just a diploma in Multimedia Design and Production, and a post-grad in 3D for Interactive Entertainment is like being a wet newborn babe with nary a teat to suckle on. With perhaps a little less crying; though I may on occasion, wail my little heart out.
But I have ideas, more like ponderances in my head that I want to put into form, and I have chosen to do so here. I want to get the thoughts out of my head and maybe even get a little back in return, but mostly I want to put what I'm thinking into words, as it is greater to exist in reality then it is just in the mind.
Theres a little housekeeping to do with starting something new like this.
The template Blogger gave me is probably going to get torn out and changed, and right now I'm using the name Riot Gear. I've had a few people creepily track me down via my real name, so you get to deal with Riot Gear for now, until I get bolder.
Broaching into this topic of discussion is probably a lot like the beginnings of most interactive fiction:
You see a dark foreboding cave.
What do you do?
Wading into this with just a diploma in Multimedia Design and Production, and a post-grad in 3D for Interactive Entertainment is like being a wet newborn babe with nary a teat to suckle on. With perhaps a little less crying; though I may on occasion, wail my little heart out.
But I have ideas, more like ponderances in my head that I want to put into form, and I have chosen to do so here. I want to get the thoughts out of my head and maybe even get a little back in return, but mostly I want to put what I'm thinking into words, as it is greater to exist in reality then it is just in the mind.
Theres a little housekeeping to do with starting something new like this.
The template Blogger gave me is probably going to get torn out and changed, and right now I'm using the name Riot Gear. I've had a few people creepily track me down via my real name, so you get to deal with Riot Gear for now, until I get bolder.
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