Alexx's Journal

My current gaming obsession is The Witness. I have not yet discovered all of its secrets, but I have found enough to want to talk about it, and to highly recommend it.

In form, The Witness owes a significant chunk of its DNA to Myst. You find yourself upon an apparently deserted island with some beautiful scenery, some puzzling mechanisms, and a few hints that there is a larger narrative story behind it all. The puzzles, however, are more structured than those in Myst. The first door you come to teaches you to draw a line from an open circle to an endpoint. Every other puzzle is an elaboration upon this. There are the expected variations of size and shape, a variety of symbols which impose constraints on how the line must be drawn, and so on. What I was not expecting, however, was the way in which the… level upon which the puzzle solving happens changes multiple times over the course of the game.

The game encourages, sometimes in audio or video format, but more significantly in terms of the gameplay itself, a mix of scientific and Zen thought. It carefully teaches you how to make and test hypotheses – and also how you must sometimes abandon hypotheses in favor of perceiving the actual world in front of you. Eventually, you will come to expect certain things from the game. Most of them are there, somewhere, or the game will teach you to stop expecting them. Play this game enough, and you will begin to see the world in different ways (and not just through the desire to draw lines on everything!).

I do have to dock a few points for accessibility. There are a few puzzles based on sound; even if you have good hearing, as I do, these may prove quite difficult/impossible if you are not good at identifying pitch. Some other puzzles require fine-grained color differentiation which will cause problems for some varieties of colorblindness. A very few puzzles near the end of the game contain elements of flashing light which might be dangerous for some kinds of epilepsy. And a very few puzzles contain timed elements, requiring not just cleverness, but speed. That said, several of these difficulties can be mitigated by judicious use of Internet spoilers.

I do recommend resisting spoilers. There are only rare situations where a single puzzle is a bottleneck. Most of the time it is quite viable, when apparently stuck, to employ the “go do something else and come back later” strategy without even leaving the game. And, indeed, I frequently had the experience of a seemingly-insoluble puzzle cracking instantly when I came back to it.

There are a mere two achievements on Steam. The first is titled “Endgame”, which is a lie. It does commemorate a significant landmark, and you could stop there if you wanted, but there is much left to discover. Steam tells me I got that achievement at the 24 hour mark; I have now played for 48, and think I may be closing in on “completely done”. I still haven’t gotten that second achievement. There are many puzzles and story elements that I don’t think are actually accessible until after “Endgame”. If you haven’t both “walk through the credits” and spent a goodly time listening to “Hall of the Mountain King”, then you definitely aren’t done yet. The vast majority of that time was racked up in 30 minute chunks, so even as a busy adult, it should be playable.

The Witness is available on multiple platforms. It sometimes comes around on the Humble Bundle (which is how I got it). It is Highly Recommended.

In the game Marvel Puzzle Quest, I've recently spent a lot of time playing both with and against a particular version of Black Widow (gray suit). When used strategically by the player, she is a *considerable* badass. The opponent AI, however, has no idea how to properly apply her powers.

I take this as an accidental-but-apt commentary on the character's recent treatment in the movies. The actors and directors make her badass, but none of the money people know what to do with her.

Talking with rickthefightguy recently, he mentioned why he had stopped playing Vampire: The Masquerade LARPs. It was after the second time that he had built up a character with a great deal of power, both in terms of combat and politics, had started arguing that The Masquerade was a stupid idea which be abandoned, and had that character summarily killed by an extremely powerful NPC. Sensing the pattern, he declined to go through it again.

Now, on one level, it’s obvious why that happened. When a player attempts to undermine one of the very foundations of the game world, the GMs HAVE to stop that from succeeding. And The Masquerade IS one of the foundational points of the game; its presence in the title is no accident. It marks a genre distinction, between Secret History and Alternate History. In a Secret History setting, if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief enough, you can just barely believe that the details of the setting might actually be true. By contrast, an Alternate History setting is obviously and irrevocably not the world we are living in. A Secret History can become an Alternate History, but it’s a very significant one-way change. An author might be willing to make that change for a setting of his (Charles Stross has done so twice so far), but GMs who are running a licensed setting are going to be understandably reluctant to make such a large and fundamental change to that setting. Even if they were willing in theory, making such a change is a LOT of work, for both GMs AND players.

Of course, all that is a Doyle-ist explanation, and I far prefer Watsonian ones whenever possible. So I started considering possible solutions from that angle.

The Masquerade IS, on the face of it, a pretty stupid political idea. It carries very high costs for very arguable benefits. But what if it WASN’T a political idea at all, what if it was an existential one? Not prescriptive, but descriptive? Posit a world where the Rules of Reality (a superset of the laws of physics) prevent vampires, werewolves, etc. from being acknowledged by society.

I have read a number of time travel stories where, when you try to change history, you can make small local changes, but the timestream “cancels them out” with a series of what would normally be considered low probability events. This is just a science-fiction gloss on one of the classic conceptions of Fate, or how one has to pay the appropriate “price” in a magical bargain. Technically, you can avoid fated outcome X, but that will just result in outcome Y, which is much worse. A really skilled sorcerer, who has anticipated many of the possible outcomes, might avoid X, Y, and even Z – but that just leads to an Omega which is nigh-apocalyptic.

So, imagine that that is what The Masquerade is designed to avoid. Before it was established, there may have been incidents where powerful vampire clans attempted to reach some sort of stable political arrangement with humanity at large, only to have those clans entirely wiped out by mysterious accidents. Maybe not just clans, but one or more entire mythological SPECIES. As soon as this pattern is understood, there is a strong incentive to create political structures that will prevent anything like it from happening again. The rank-and-file wouldn’t even have to understand the true reasons for The Masquerade, as long as they scrupulously followed the rules. (It occurs to me, I’ve just invented a Secret History of a Secret History. Yay, recursion!)

In a world like this, when a character like Rick’s started getting too powerful and threatening The Masquerade, instead of killing him outright, some of the clan elders would quietly take him aside and tell him what was really going on. In most such cases, the troublemaker would cease to cause trouble. (I’ve been rereading H.P. Lovecraft, and a very similar situation occurs in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. When the US military does a lot of violent, top-secret stuff in the vicinity of Innsmouth, at first, a bunch of newspaper reporters are very inquisitive about it. They are quietly told at least a piece of what’s really going on, and why they shouldn’t write about it, and they mostly shut up.)

As a further thought experiment, how might the Rules of Reality have come to exist in such a way? I’ve come up with one model, though doubtless there are others possible. Consider a universe that begins much like many primitive creation myths: at first there is formless chaos, but eventually gods coalesce out of it. The first generation of gods don’t do much except (perhaps accidentally) create the second generation of gods, which promptly overthrow and/or kill the first generation, and start building the physical universe out of their remains. This early version of the universe contains mankind, but is still pretty chaotic and “magical”. One God can declare something about reality and make it true, but another God can easily come along and declare something else, or even the opposite.

Eventually, more generations of gods happen, getting more sophisticated over time. As these gods gradually form more complex and stable societies among themselves, they begin to realize that a universe where the nature of reality is in constant flux is “bad for business”. The majority faction of the gods decide to impose a consistent Physics on the universe (possibly some time during the Roman Empire). But, though they are a majority, there exists enough powerful dissent that compromises must be made. Certain entities (e.g. vampires) which do not actually obey the laws of Physics are allowed to be “grandfathered” in – with restrictions. They are only allowed to exist on the fringes; if their presence became known, it would be a threat to Physics, which is not permitted.

Maybe what happens to a sufficiently determined vampire who avoids the vampire legal system and attempts to go public, is that he discovers, much to his surprise, that he is NOT a vampire, but an ordinary human being except for some broken brain chemistry that has driven him insane…

I have spent a nontrivial amount of time over the last 24 hours playing the new iPad game Loot and Legends. I say “new”; actually, it’s a new slightly-simplified port of a PC game called Card Hunter, made by some ex-colleagues of mine a few years ago.

The gameplay is a unique combination of tactical wargame and collectible card game. You control a team of three figures, each of them can be equipped with many different types of gear. Whereas, in most games, deer would add directly to your stats, in these games gear adds cards to your deck. Each round of combat, you draw three cards (per character) that you can use over the course of the round. But you can’t just build an arbitrary deck, since each piece of gear comes with a specific set of cards. Once you’re out of the early game, you often find gear that has some great cards really want, paired with less impressive (or even outright negative!) cards that you have to put up with in your deck if you want the good ones.

The game’s aesthetic is one of old-school tabletop D&D. The miniatures are represented as little cardboard cutouts, there is a pimply DM who will taunt you, and each “adventure” starts by displaying a “cover” whose layout and typeface will be very familiar to most of my friends list.

While it is a free-to-play game, there actually seems to be no need to give them money if you don’t want to. On my antique iPad 2, I have found it to be quite crashy, but, thankfully, the programmers seem to have set it up to aggressively save state, so that despite these crashes I have never actually lost any gameplay progress. Moreover, after a crash, the game reloads quite quickly. It does require a near-constant Internet connection but is pretty good about reconnecting smoothly after your connection drops.

Highly recommended, especially for Rickthefightguy.

Tale of Tales is a tiny Belgian game company that I've been following with interest for some years (since falling in love with The Path). I don't think everything they do is successful, but they are out there pushing boundaries that no one else is.

Their latest game, Luxuria Superbia, is out now, and is fucking brilliant. Or perhaps I should say "love-making-ly brilliant". While it's got a floral/garden metaphor on its surface, you don't have to penetrate very far before you realize that this is an extended metaphor for sex. And a really well-made one.

Each 'flower', starts off blank, but when you touch it, color appears. Most games try to please the player; in this one, you try to please the game. You might call it a rhythm game, but it's nothing like the exacting precision required by most games with that label. Instead, it's about flow, and feedback, learning what kind of strokes will evoke the best results in the varied flowers. Just as with human partners, there are many similarities, but also subtle and important differences in response. You can use multiple fingers to deploy colors more quickly, but if you overdo it, you might 'finish' too quickly, leaving the flower unsatisfied. Conversely, chasing high scores feels so much more meaningful, when the game breathily* informs you "This is the best it's ever been!" [*OK, it's just text, not speech, so technically not "breathy". But the text fades in and out in a sensually suggestive manner.]

As someone who is fascinated by both games and sex, I've seen many attempts to blend the two in various ways. This is perhaps the most successful. It actually feels like I've been making love to my iPad. Which sounds creepy when I say it, but actually felt really joyful to do.

Here's a couple of good articles about the game:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/nov/06/luxuria-superbia-the-game-you-please
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/gaming/2013/11/luxuria_superbia_new_game_lets_you_get_close_to_your_ipad.html

Really, though, no amount of writing (or video) can tell you what it feels like to play this game, as it is such a tactile, feedback-based experience.

It was just released a few days ago, and is still having a launch sale, so you can get it cheap. It's available for many platforms, but you really need to play this on a device with a touchscreen; a mouse just isn't the same. If you care about Games As Art, or you enjoy sex, this is a Must Buy. Absolute Highest Recommendation.

Played a few games of Sentinels of the Universe (a cooperative superhero-themed card game) t'other day, including one that was truly epic. The heroes were facing off against Grand Warlord Voss, one of the toughest villains in the basic set. He incapacitated two of the five heroes before the heroes had managed to damage him at all! The third hero fell after getting him down to a 'mere' 80 hit points, but by that time the remaining two heroes were in the single digits each. But The Visionary (herooftheage) managed to draw *just* the right card combo. He had an ongoing card that did (a small amount of) damage to all enemies on each of his turns, and he drew a card that made him completely immune to damage, but also prevented him from taking any actions during his turn. But the already-played ongoing card wasn't an action, so could gradually chip away at the baddie. Bunker was still in play, and managed to get her hit point total to exactly equal The Visonary's, which was great, because any time the baddies did damage to either "the hero with the highest HP" *or* "the hero with the lowest HP", The Visionary could opt to take it, and have the damage bounce off. It took a lot of rounds, and Bunker did very nearly fall before the end, but at last the forces of Goodness prevailed!

Also had an epic battle in Xenoblade Chronicles recently. One of the benefits of insanely-lengthy JRPGs, when well done, is that they get you *really* familiar with an aspect of the game, and then upend your expectations. This works for story elements in obvious ways, but also can be applied to gameplay. On rare-but-excellent occasions, it can be both at once. Minor spoilers follow:( Read more... )

Saturday was the annual 21st Century Party. Most of it featured playing of Artemis, which Tom had requested I get set up in the living room. It's a great multiplayer co-op computer game, where each player takes on the role of a bridge officer on the starship Enterprise Artemis. It's an impressive achievement, and really captures the core fantasy quite well. There are still some bugs and kinks to work out, but it's already great fun, and still under active development.

Sunday morning, I did some final polish on my Sandman paper, and got it uploaded. If you read the last version, you'll be happy to know that it now has a Version History at the end that lists new stuff since last time.

After some thought, I decided that, rather than try and sell it in a traditional fashion, i would make it freely available, and just put a Paypal button on it. After all, I could never have completed it in the first place if lots of other people hadn't freely put the efforts of *their* scholarship on-line.

That said, I figured it was worth publicizing a bit, so I sent out announcements to a bunch of major geek news sites, in the hopes that they will link to it. No posts, as such, yet, but Neil himself has tweeted it, calling it "Astonishingly well-researched". That got me some readers, one typo correction, and (so far) two small donations. From this small sample, I infer that French speakers are generous, as one of them came from France, and the other from Quebec. This sort of cross-continental interaction seems *very* 21st century to me!

The Wager is a free (Windows-based) game I just discovered about exploring a Carribean-like setting. Randomized, replayable, good in small chunks. Reminiscent of Strange Adventure in Infinite Space, only (IMO) meatier. Recommended.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of gaming on my iPad. The iPad has a very nice surface, that can be easily cleaned. And after enough fingerprint smudges build up, you really ought to clean it.

What I am amused by is that most games have a very distinctive smudge pattern. When my iPad is off, and light is reflecting in such a way as to highlight the smudges, I can tell what I've been playing lately. The regular grid of dots that make a game of Oasis. The up-from-the-bottom strokes to play cards in Lost Cities. The over-from-the-side strokes of a game of Ascension. Plants Versus Zombies has a straight column of smudges on the left, and then scattered smudges all over the main playfield (though more dense at the left of it). The row of smudges for the Glyphs at the side of a game of Elder Sign: Omens. Not all the games I play have such distinctive patterns, but many do :-)

[All games mentioned in this post are highly recommended, by the way.]

Just finished playing a great iOs game called Waking Mars. I really, really enjoyed it. It's a science fiction game about explorers on Mars, discovering the remnants of an ancient ecosystem, whose seeds are still viable. You study the relationships between the various organisms as you attempt to restore this ecosystem to full working order in the mysterious cave beneath the Martian surface.

The game is, in the broadest sense, an action-platformer, but doesn't require extremely high hand-eye coordination. (At least on an iPad. I suspect it would be a bit trickier on a phone-sized screen.) When you bring up the menu of seeds to throw one, the game pauses, making it generally easy to aim.

Besides being an enjoyable experience on its own terms, I got the strong impression that the makers of this game were making some implicit political statements about the possibilities of games, as opposed to the 'accepted wisdom' of the big game companies. This is one of the few games I've played lately that *can't* be described as "shoot, shoot, take their loot"; it's entirely themed around growth, restoration, exploration, and discovery. Yet I found it no less exciting, for all that. The two human protagonists (there are a few AIs in the cast, also) are a Chinese male and an African female, so there's complete gender balance, and not a single Caucasian to be seen. I didn't have any trouble identifying with these protagonists.

Very highly recommended.