Alexx's Journal

Ran into this about a month ago, and forgot to post it. Today I Die, a poem/game by By Daniel Benmergui. Should only take about 30 minutes to play, and is likely to put a smile on your face at the end. (There are two endings, but the branch point is just before the end.)

(Sadly, not blind-accessible. I may get around to writing up a narrative about it, if asked...)

Jesse Schell talks about games interpenetrating the real world. Starts a bit slow, but well worth watching to the end. Even if you don't think of yourself as a gamer.

This year, I'm actually getting to go the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco for the first time ever! Very excited!

I'll be arriving late Wednesday, busily conferencing Thurs-Sat, and flying back early Sunday. So no time for touristing, per se. But I might be able to get together for dinner with some friends on one or more of those nights. Drop me a line if you'll be there too (or happen to live reasonably nearby) and want to get together.

Korsakovia is a Half-Life 2 mod developed by thechineseroom.com. It's an arty game, more about inducing emotion than interesting gameplay. The protagonist is "Christopher", who is (probably) suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome, which is a bit like the problem the protagonist of Memento has, only even more extreme/scary, with an extra dose of "trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy". I say that he is *probably* such a person, because Christopher's own point of view is very different, literally. The world he sees is not the world that his doctor describes -- she herself is never seen, but is only a voice in his head. Of course, the reason that he doesn't see her may be because he is actually blind, and just imagining what he sees. One of the early lines in the game, which is a good enough example of the atmosphere that they used it for a tagline on their website: "The paramedics report that they were unable to find his eyes. We think he may have eaten them."

On an audio level, this mod is extremely good. Haunting music, and well-written and performed (and often post-processed) dialogue. In both themes and production values, this reminds me of The Path, and I would recommend it to the same audience.

Unfortunately, audio is the only aspect that lives up to that standard. Level design is much less impressive. There are many repetitious and confusing areas. There are many repetitious and confusing areas. There are many repetitious and confusing areas -- though to some extent, this is clearly deliberately in support of the themes and emotions they are exploring.

There is combat, some interesting, some infuriating. The primary enemies are floating balls of black smoke, which are very scary in both image and audio. They can be beaten to death, but only if you have a weapon -- which for long periods of the game you don't, so you run in terror. Sadly, there is a variant enemy which has the same creepy sounds -- but *no* visuals, and no apparent way to damage it. Invisible, unkillable enemies are Not Fun. The only way to deal with them is to move fast and far enough that they lose track of your location, which often conflicts with what you're trying to accomplish in a given level.

One (net) positive gameplay aspect is the way the flashlight works. Much of the game is quite dark, and you need the flashlight to navigate. But it's not very reliable; frequently flickering and going out. It's trivial to relight it, but the momentary darkness is scary -- sometimes there's actually a monster in it, or the light fails in the middle of a combat. This adds to the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.

The visual art in general is quite poor. Many assets are clearly lifted directly from HL2. The narrative actually integrates this fairly cleverly, though. Christopher's mental illness seems to have incorporated a post-apocalyptic fantasy into his world-view, perhaps actually inspired by HL2. (Though he must have played a console version, since televisions are important symbols to him, while computer screens are not.)

There are some areas of interest to the visuals. There are a number of things which would generally be considered rendering bugs, but which are deliberately used here in order to produce disorientation and alienation in the player.

Observation: in the game universe, psychotic breaks are invariably accompanied by jumping puzzles. I don't know why this is so, but it is what I see. Max Payne, Batman: Arkham Asylum, American McGee's Alice, and now Korsakovia. The worst of these have jumping puzzles with moving parts under combat stress. Korsakovia goes even further, by making some of that combat stress be the aforementioned invisible, unkillable monsters. I resorted to cheats to get through several sections.

Final analysis: If you're interested in arty games, or games which play with the player's perception and emotions, it's worth checking out the first level of this game, and perhaps going a small distance into the second. But the obnoxious gameplay prevents me from recommending going further.

Had a dream last night in which I was playing a game which was a cross between Spore and Grand Theft Auto. Liberty City was full of purple octopuses, all well armed...

Game Developer Magazine's latest issue features the results of their annual salary survey. Although there are caveats involved with any set of self-reported data, I think at least the relationships between different subsets of data are likely to be accurate. And I noticed something that surprised me in the table "Average Salary by Education and Discipline".

In all disciplines, those who completed "Some College" make significantly *more* than those who completed a Bachelor's Degree. Those who went on to "Some Graduate" made even *less* than those with Bachelor's.

Actually *completing* a Master's Degree gets you a salary roughly comparable to "Some College", though in some disciplines it's a bit less, in some a bit more. In none is it *enough* more to suggest being worth the investment.

At the Doctoral level, only Programmers reported anything. "Some Doctoral" makes more money than "Some College" -- but an actual Doctorate makes *less*.

So, if you're a college student who wants a successful career in the games industry, apparently the best thing you can do is drop out!

Fascinating pair of interviews, ranging over neuroscience, game psychology, ethics, futurism, and other interesting topics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7G0fPb-w-0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFiT9p6NkxQ

http://grandmothers-house.net/
This is an interesting experiment in interactive storytelling that I commend to those interested in such things. I don't recall ever seeing anything quite like it before. I don't think it's directly applicable to my current project, but good food for thought nonetheless.

Caveats:
1) Despite the description, it is only vaguely game-like. Very few standard gaming conventions, and most of those subverted in some way.
2) *Very* slow-paced. There is considerable content here, but it may take you a long time to discover it.
3) The narrative is very symbolic and allusive. You will not get a pat ending explaining what everything 'really means'.

If none of those is a show-stopper for you, check it out. It's only ten bucks, and I found it well worth that.

If you're on the fence, I can point you to this review for more information.

Was helping interview a candidate for a game design position today, and in the course of the conversation, he made a really interesting observation:

Videogames that have a morality system typically reward the player for picking one morality and sticking with it through the whole game. If you're always good, you get access to the best "good powers"; if you're always evil, you get access to the best "evil powers". This means that the player is (from a game-mechanics sense) discouraged from having any sort of character arc. If the player acts in a way that implies a character arc, current games can't even recognize that behavior, much less reward it.

Questions for future pondering:
Can videogame main characters have an arc?
If they could, would it be a Good Thing?

herooftheage and I have both been playing Fable 2 on the 360 (though not at the same time). Tonight the following exchange occurred:
V: I figured out how to donate to the Temple of Light. They gave me a really cool axe!
A: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You favorably impressed a bunch of Good-aligned pacifist tree-worshippers and they gave you... an axe. Oooookay...