Strategy

I’m going to frank and upfront about this. I know very little about the Strategy Super-genre. My experience with this type of game is limited to a handful of titles and has nowhere near the depth and understanding the complexity others do. In fact my definition of Strategy games was outsourced to those who do know better. My work on this genre is based on their short discussion on this episode of Three Moves Ahead.

Because of this I invite Troy Goodfellow, Rob Zacny, Julian Murdoch, Tom Chick, Bruce Geryk and any other of the alumni of the Three Moves Ahead podcast to come here and tear this entry to ever-loving shreds. Poke any holes, ask any unanswered questions and tell me where I’m just plain wrong in my think or missed an obvious example.

Having said that, here’s the definition:

Strategy – a focus on the management of limited resources towards a long range plan, where the physical execution is not the deciding factor

This is where the main separation between Action games with strategy and Strategy games that utilize a clock. There is some difficulty in separating the two concepts especially in RTS where minute manipulation of units can become a deciding factor of a match. But Strategy is its own separate entity from the other 3. There are enough pure strategy games with enough sub-genres and sub-types to set it aside as its own thing. The closeness of certain titles is the exception to Strategy games, not the rule. I don’t believe anyone would make this mistake who reads this blog, but I’d like to make the point nonetheless.

The focus of a game is the primary interaction of a work and where the dynamics come from. In thinking of Strategy games looking to a common element requires that you slow down the play and pick apart what you are fundamentally doing. In StarCraft you collect resources and build units in order to take out your enemy. This is the same outline to Neptune’s Pride, Heroes of Might and Magic, Civilization, WarCraft and that’s pretty much the extent of my play experience. But the Tower Defense games follow a similar, yet not exact method. You have limited resources to execute a defensive strategy against wave of enemies. Then there are management games like Diner Dash or Football Manager that focus on limited resources, but not their collection, but merely the implementation. And then there is Chess. There is no collection of resources, just the pieces set out at the start of the game and implementation of moves. Yes, you can upgrade a pawn should it get to the other side of the board, but is that really what makes Chess a Strategy game? No, it is the management of those pieces towards an end goal of checkmating the king that makes it a Strategy game.

I bring this up, because I amended the language of the original definition. Originally it was “the collection and spending of resources” well Chess alone disproves this as do tower defense games and certain story missions of RTS games. Which means that it while it captured the essence of the idea, the meaning of the words fell short. “Management” I think is a better words as it covers a wider range of actions to be done with the various resources a game puts in your command.

Now what do we mean by resources. Nominally resources are the things you collect on the map to spend in the constructions of building and creations of units. But those building and units are resources in themselves. Troops are resources in a battle that you have to manage to get through a skirmish and on a wider scale get through a campaign. Boiling it down again, what other resources do you have in Chess other than the sixteen pieces on the board? Sure there is area of influence and special control, but it is the pieces the player directly interacts with. Anything that can be gained and lost with regards to the end goal or sub goal I think would be a resource.

Then there is a long-range plan part of that definition. This is the part I am most uneasy with. I’m not sure about its inclusion, but on the other hand it is the goal in a game and without a goal would it be a game. It doesn’t specify if the long range plan is set down by the game or at the player’s own whims which I like, but is it necessary to the definition at all. I included it because it was in the original definition given by Troy Goodfellow and unlike the other part I could come up with no suitable counter to it, but then I’m not sure it need be included at all. Another possibility is that it is a matter of word choice that makes me uneasy. This question was sprung on them at the last minute so I can’t fault them for thinking on their feet and doing their best. Of course there may not be a problem, but it is a point that sticks out for me and I’d like it addressed one way or another.

A Matter of Timing

This needs its own category – the difference between Action games and Strategy games. Action games are all about the timing of player use of mechanics, while Strategy games are about the management being the defining factor and not the minute interactions. With most games this is fine. A battle between a tank and an infantry unit would be akin to a boss fight in a shooter with the player having to dodge and weave before getting the anti-Tank weapon de jour and taking it out, whereas in a Strategy game the systems calculate how this scenario plays out. Again this difference is easier to see when extrapolated out, as in easier to see in an FPS verses a turn based Strategy game than it would be in StarCraft or the like.

But speaking of StarCraft, isn’t that game determined by clicks per minute to the point that clicks per minute (CPM) is a term? Yes and no. This tripped up both Troy and Rob in their quick 5 minute answer, but I think I’ve got it with a couple of weeks worth of rationalizing put into it. Again the determination of a Super-genre is not the mechanical nature of the systems, but rather the point on which the game focuses on. With very little effort I’m sure StarCraft could be transformed into an Action game (and thanks to mods probably has a dozen times over), but the focus of the game is not on the minute detailing of destroying an enemy unit. It is in giving orders to the units to do the work. You are managing units to attack and defend areas of the map, but you are also managing something else, time. Remember adding a clock does not make a game Action. The clock in StarCraft’s case would be the resultant changes in enemy unit placements and the relative health of each one for it to last an encounter verses your own, but this only means you are now managing another resource: time. This is not changing the fundamental nature of the game. Were you to slow the game down to half or even a tenth the speed the game would remain the same, just the time in which to manage you decisions would change. You are not only managing the resources of currency and units, but time in which to enact the steps of your long-term plan.

To further illustrate this point I look to the other example they brought up during the short podcast discussion: speed Chess. Adding a clock does not make a game Action. Adding a clock to Chess just means that in addition to managing the pieces on the board you are also managing the clock and the time in which you have to act out your move. Seeing the clock, set to a set amount of time dictated to each turn, added to a turn based game makes it easier to judge the fundamental discrepancy between an Action game with strategy like Football where the ultimate execution decides the outcome verses a Strategy game where the fundamental strategy executed in a certain amount of time decides the outcome.

Yes real physical aptitude does become apart of the execution, but only so much in that it can match the strategy you are implementing. The higher you go up the rankings in StarCraft 2 the more difficult the match will become physically in terms of clicks per minute to stay competitive, however clicking fast and doing so in an effort to execute strategic decisions in a different matter. Action games are focused on execution towards the actual timing, while a Strategy game is focused on the execution of a plan within a timed scenario.  They are similar on the surface and can indeed get confused for one another should a person choose to focus on mechanics and excursion of what the player is doing rather than the fundamental focus of the design who and see what is going on underneath the surface apparent elements.

In working on this series I erroneously kept attributing the puzzle game Tetris as an Action game due to the nature on timing. The quick movements to position the blocks in the right place to be able to continue playing were what I looked at. Since puzzle games are not confined to any single Super-genre and are simply a method of dynamic interaction with a game that can appear anywhere. I failed to see the concept behind the interaction of Tetris. Yes it is a faced paced game with minute alterations within a window to achieve success and failure, except that it isn’t. That part is just a clock added to the fundamental Strategy game underneath. I should have known because of the game’s history that started as a tabletop management game to fit blocks together. Adding a clock does not make it an Action game. In Tetris you are managing the pieces as they fall into an optimal structure for the long term plan of keeping the game going for as long as possible. The idea is to position the shapes in the most optimal way to so that you would remove as many lines as possible to keep the game going. This is management, this is strategy, this is a Strategy game.

The RPG Overlap

Remember from my last piece on RPGs that combat caused no end of headaches in part because the game turns into a Strategy game during the fighting of many as you try to manage the stats and create an optimal outcome. World of Warcraft in particular comes to mind with regards to fighting. Since the RPG has its genesis in the wargames of old where the concept was reduced from a squad down to a single individual many of the mechanical focus seems very much Strategy oriented. The more battles between choices and development of your character(s) the more like a Strategy game it seems to become. Even if the battles become difficult and seem to lack strategy as attack, attack, and attack some more becomes a viable strategy doesn’t loose that feeling. A poor Strategy game is still a Strategy game. No game is excluded from it’s Super-genre on account of difficulty or lack thereof.

Of course none of that answers the developmental problem that RPGs and Strategy games have due to the slim divide in certain portions of their play. Baldur’s Gate plays very much like a Strategy game while in combat. Pausing the game while you give orders to the individual members of your party is very Strategy like. Even earlier games are more like that with the combat in Wizardry and Bard’s Tale seeming like the old wargamming back with a squad of people instead of the focus on the player character. Again it’s this dogmatic adherence to combat in RPGs that confuse them even within their own game. Many RPGs feel divided in their elements with the RPG on one side and Strategy game appearing every so often. Again I have to say it comes down to a case-by-case basis to determine what exactly the focus is with regards to RPG combat. Is it a Strategy slog or is it a test of your RPG choices?

Now I feel the need to point out Strategy games that utilize RPG elements as another added resource to work with. In this case I’m thinking of Heroes of Might and Magic II in particular. You have heroes that travel around the overworld map with armies that appear in battle. These armies have their effectiveness altered by the heroes stats and special abilities that he gains when he gains a level via experience points earned through battle or certain locations on the overworld map. You can gain either experience of gold at treasure chests and witch huts or just increase you stats at certain overworld buildings. These are RPG elements used not in a character development, but as another contending resource. They are firmly in the Strategy game sphere of influence despite being a set of mechanics popularized by another Super-genre.

What Falls Under Strategy Games?

I know I’m going to miss a lot, but let me give it a go. Turn based Strategy games like Civilization, real time Strategy games like StarCraft and it’s predecessor WarCraft, there are tower defense games, management games like Diner Dash, simulation strategy like Hearts of Iron III. The 4x genre mostly made by Paradox Entertainment. And this is where my inexperience with this type of games shows. I can list of a litany of games I’ve heard of from the Three Moves Ahead podcast, but my knowledge of how far each goes and the specifics of what constitutes a genre or sub-genre are limited.

Strategy Analogs

I’ve mentioned quite a few already. The granddaddy of the all Chess of course and it’s older counterpart Go. Checkers, Backgammon, Candyland, Monopoly, Clue, basically any board game ever. The only one I can think of that isn’t is the previously mentioned basketball catapult game. Of course the tabletop wargamming scene is where much of the Strategy game history started with as they got converted in the 1980s to digital format. Though I’m not sure about the original tabletop wargame Little Wars. May need to have the experts check that out. Card games like Poker are essentially Strategy games with a bit of luck that a good player can effectively ignore. Gin Rummy, Go Fish and Magic: The Gathering are all card based Strategy games. The only card game I can think of that isn’t one is previously mentioned Egyptian Rat Screw.

One interesting thing to note is how thanks to board game adaptations we can see how the thematic qualities can be converted into different genres. The Gears of War board game is a Strategy game that has been translated from an Action game thanks to an alteration in mechanical focus. The themes are the same and emotional resonance of the Action game is apparently well converted over into a turn-based scenario. Horror as well has been translated into every Super-genre with the like of Arkham Horror the board game and House on Haunted Hill. I bring this up that these Super-genres don’t limit what they are capable of, merely explain how they accomplish what they do. It is important to understand the focus of something in order not to mess it up.

Strategy Conclusion

This is the shortest entry yet, mainly because I know so little about the Strategy Super-genre. I know some games and of course the classics like Chess and Go, but I’m at a loss of the nuance and detail of their modern incarnations. I do feel that I have covered the general essence of what Strategy games are and closed a few obvious confusion loops in the logic, but I’m sure there are other things I’ve missed. Once again I invite the Three Moves Ahead crew or their audience to point out what I may have missed or left open.

Now comes the big enchilada. The one I’m sure to get the most arguments/hate mail about.

RPG

I’m going to break up the formula of the posts for this one and instead of starting off with the definition of the Super-genre, I’m going to work up to it via the thought process by which it came about. This is probably the most hotly debated topic in the critical sphere at the moment, with near weekly twitter debates (used to be daily) at least a dozen blog posts either as theoretical as my own or as specific as to focus on a single title. And of course Extra Credits just finished their three part series on wRPG vs JRPG, which incidentally was what got my butt in gear to actually sit down and write this series.

In each case it all starts with a deceptively simple question: what is an RPG? I started with a game where you play a role. Facetious, yes I know. But it was only a starting point and as good as any other that does not focus on mechanics or repeated elements through examples of the genre. At one point this definition as tautological as it may have been probably was good enough to describe RPGs from litany of other games out there because it was at a time where other games could not include such role elements like detailed character and story choice. Of course we have long since left that era and now seemly every game has characters and story with as much to say as any series of novels or movies. The Uncharted series has a cast of characters described by critics like they are following along the adventure of real people. Drake, Sully, Elena, Chloe are all names of rich characters and you play in the role of Nathan Drake getting him through encounter to encounter on his adventure. You step into his shoes and are playing as him, but the games are not RPGs. Likewise most games nowadays have stories, some passable, some awful and a few are great, but this is true for everything from RTS to FPS to rhythm games of all things. So we have to define what we mean by role and playing a role.

The key comes from understanding the focus of what is traditionally considered an Action game and traditionally an RPG. Let’s for the sake of things compare Pac-Man and Ultima. In both you play a role, in the former you are a yellow circle that moves around eating pellets and in the later you are whomever you create in the character creator known as the Stranger. Already we have our first difference. A pre-defined character vs. one the player creates. Except if we bring this forwards we see Action games like Saint’s Row and most FPS now offering a level of character customization that is not in most RPGs. Going back, what else is there? Well in Pac-Man the “character” is defined by his verbs, the mechanics the player interacts with regards to the game’s timing, while in Ultima the “character” is defined by the player’s choices. This becomes even more prominent in later Ultima games, most notably Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. So RPGs are defined by player choice with regards to character?

Again no because this brings us back to the character creation screen and since most Action games, a few Adventure games and one or two Strategy games I can name include experience points and leveling up we have to include that those factors do not make an RPG either. The key is not in what we do, but why we do it. Let’s take a closer philosophical look at Ultima IV. In it you are the Avatar and instead of the ultimate goal of defeating the big bad, the goal is to master the eight virtues through your adventures across the countryside. You will have numerous choices embedded into almost every facet of the game that affect your standing on the various bars. These choices, letting the Goblin go verses finishing off the evil creature determine the kind of person you are. Role-Playing Games work towards answering the fundamental question: Who are you?

RPG – a focus on the exploration and development of the self to achieve mastery via self-definition

It is similar to the focus of Adventure games as both concern the idea of abstract exploration as a form of interaction. With Adventure it was with the world, with the RPG it is with yourself. The exploration is about the player-controlled character to determine who you are. This can be anything from how you interact with the various NPCs in the world to choosing what mechanics or even what verbs are available to your character. It is the idea that your character is yours, it is you or whatever type of person you want to be. Stories are centered around you character and not just that you are in the same plot as the rest of the world, but that the stories focus is on you. You either are the defining consequence to the world or the rest of the world is a backdrop to your story.

Of course this isn’t narrowed to just one character within a game, but to any number of characters as you define them as people. This is to include the older style RPGs where you created a party and not just a single character. Immersing yourself as a single person is not the focus of an RPG, it falls under it, but is a part not the whole. The focus is on the idea of exploring who they are through self-definition of who they are by the player. This can be done as a virtual individual or as a virtual group.

The Problem With Combat

I think RPG combat has caused more headaches in working out the Super-genres than anything else I’ve had conceptualize or explain. Part of the problem is that RPG combat doesn’t come from a traditional history a player embodying a person and defining them as a character, but from a wargaming background, Strategy games in other words. This heavy focus on fighting in the RPG Super-genre has cause some problems in the understanding of what they are as well as real world vitriol and death threats. RPGs are not their combat. Their combat, like leveling up and experience points, have been conflated with the genre because no one can be bothered to try anything else. Well in the digital space anyway.  Whenever a new RPG is announced the first question invariable asked is what is the combat going to be like. This is not because of that is what RPGs have to have to be an RPG, but an understanding by the audience that that is what all video game RPGs have, further conflating the elements together.

In essence though RPG combat is about expression of a character of your development. Whether it is on a micro level of what numbers and modifiers from equipment and spells to a more macro interactive level of choosing the very verbs one uses. The level of the effect doesn’t matter it is the focus of it that does. But making decisions based off of the numbers isn’t defining a character, it’s solving a puzzle. Yes, yes it is. The problem with understanding RPGs comes from a severe lack of focus from their mechanics towards their proposed goals of a player affectation with regards to play. Combat often is geared towards a puzzle solving direction than free from expression of character. Design wise anyway. There are players who can forgo the need to grok a system in favor of self-definition. Of course at the same time any intrinsic character examination from prescribed combat is a delineation of Action games. The of course there is fact to contend with that the combat itself has its roots in Strategy games. Yeah, RPG combat is kind of a clusterfuck of concepts and points.

The key to seeing the narrow band in which RPGs tend to reside within these two confines is to reduce how often it happens. I know of know actual RPG that does this so it will have to be hypothetical. Take an RPG that has combat and when you level up you get to either put points into attributes or make choices towards how your fight in combat or simply give you more agency in how much you can already do what you’ve chosen to do. In most RPGs this is where you fight numerous battles until you gain enough experience to level up again. Let’s futz with those numbers a bit and say it takes only 1 or 2 fights before you level up and are given more material with which to define your character’s combat capabilities. In this reduced aspect the choice comes in the level up decision making process and the combat then becomes the consequences of your choices played out as a tactical or not so tactical battle as the case may be. If this is how the game is focused then the combat systems don’t become an end in themselves but are themselves a stimuli response to the choices that do define the character. The only difference in this example is instead of one or two battles there are dozens in between such choices. The grind dilutes the focus, but does not eliminate it.

In the early RPGs – Ultima, Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, Gold Box etc – the focus was almost universally on the combat and not any other systems. They are not Strategy games, even though there was a certain amount of strategy to playing them. Here the self-definition of your party members was not a focus of their overall character and being, but minutely to one aspect that was the game. Their “who are you” question was a matter of whoa are you in the party? What role do you fill in this group of adventurers? Over 30 years later we are still asking this question of our players each time we have them step into combat and level up their fighting abilities. Recent release Kingdom’s of Amalur allows you to drastically change how you self-define yourself by reallocating your class, points and abilities. In doing so it allows the player to reinvent their character over and over as to suit their personal play style. Again you are defining a character by how they fight and what roll they play in a fight. It doesn’t matter if they are permanent choices, so long as they are choices of self-definition.

Understanding this brings up another issue not seen until the recently crop of multiplayer shooters. Battlefield in particular is class based. I’ll use Battlefield 1943 because it’s simpler. Each time you respawn you choose a class – infantry, engineer, sniper – and you are given different guns, secondary weapon and tools based on your class. You are choosing how to fight and it doesn’t matter that it isn’t permanent as you can choose again at each respawn or if you find a different pack on the ground, you are still choosing. But what are you choosing? You choosing the representations of modifiers to the timing of play; the machine gun fires faster than the rifle, but the rifle is more powerful and the sniper rifle is more powerful still with a longer range, but smaller clip and longer reload. None of this defines a character, merely the modification of verbs, which is the realm of an Action game. Of course how does this differentiate between the modifier of seconds to execute and action verses the modifier of numbers on a stat sheet in and individual fight. Likewise how does this differentiate between the state sheet of an individual in an RPG and the stat sheet of a tank in a Strategy game?

Headache coming on.

The thing is the answer waffles on a case by case basis. Because RPGs are so flimsy and seem to enforce a dichotomy between combat systems and everything else it is hard to make a distinction. With some games it is easy to see how choosing different thing when leveling up defines a character, see Deus Ex, whiles others despite tropes and common elements associated with RPGs its hard to see differences in them verses other Super-genres, see Final Fantasy. It gets even messier when you start thinking in terms of immiscible games.

I have stated how combat works as a tool of self-definition and I cannot go through every single example of poorly integrated combat.  I’m going to move on.

Talking About Character and Story

I started this in the last post on Adventure’s use of these two elements and now I will go for the RPG side of things. Character in Adventure games were about them being part of the milieu. With RPGs, character is about you. NPCs in Adventure games were part of the milieu that you had to learn what place they occupied in the world. NPCs in RPGs are characters there to help define your character by how you interact with them. This is most commonly done through dialogue options, sometimes with story choices affecting of certain characters see you. It’s your character’s relationships with other characters the help define who you are in a larger sense than what tactile position you take up.

This has come to be more obvious with the rise of Bioware in the late 90s. Their focus on character and most importantly interaction between party members has created a new set of ideas of what RPGs are. They have focused on character via what they say and what they believe as a method of expression, which hadn’t been done so much and not on a scale where it could determine who you were or have that determination affect the outcome of a story. Of course I say the rise of Bioware, but now most other RPG makers have included this type of party and NPC interaction as a matter of course. Do not confuse this for saying that dialogue trees or their equivalent are the defining factor of RPGs’ focus. It is just another mechanical trope common to the Super-genre that occupies another possibility space under the umbrella. It is also a transferable mechanic should the focus change. Adventure games have used them in the past like The Longest Journey.

The second factor is the RPG story. Whereas Adventure game stories were about the milieu, an RPG story is again focused on your character and a method by which it will allow you to express yourself. Often an RPG places you as some savior of the world. This allows the game to take you to a variety of different locations and cultures in an effort to save it. Of course you are not going to these places because you are learning about the world, but because you are defining your Role within the role of world savior. You have a role in the story and you roll along rolling dice to fight in your determined combat role in your Role-Player Game. Okay I’ll stop. The story of an RPG is the circumstance by which you define your character. It can be about saving the galaxy, defeating the Darkspawn, retrieving a water chip, locating your sister or regaining your place on the throne of the outer gods. Or in the case of one browser based game, Alter Ego, living an ordinary life from birth to death. You make dozens of choices through each stage of your life and have those choices effect different stats determining who you are and what you are. You learn, you love and if you are prudent enough you die peacefully and old. If nothing else this game is probably the best proof that combat is not necessary for an RPG. You defined and determined a character as how you see them through ordinary daily life situations.

Stories can be epic or small, fantastical or mundane or anything in between. The common element of all stories in RPGs, they are centered around the player character. They may not be about the player character, but they are the player character’s story.

I can’t be bothered going through specific examples to make my point. Plug the concept into your favorite RPGs and I think you’ll find it fits.

One Unusual Addition

In the final run up to this piece Rowan Kaiser presented a case on twitter for The Sims to being an RPG. The Sims is a dollhouse simulator and I can certainly see the argument of it being a game that allows self-definition. There is no fantastical or large scale situation, The Sims is very mundane, if a bit wacky, but it allows you to create a person or family to explore the possibility space and live out their lives as characters of your devising. You do define these characters within a very broad creation space.

I have not played any variation of The Sims and I’m know Troy Goodfellow has his own ideas of what the game is, but from my limited knowledge I do believe that it would fall under the RPG Super-genre. Especially if Alice and Kev is anything to go by.

Analog RPGs

This one is so easy. Tabletop/pen and paper/dice based Role-Playing Games. Dungeons and Dragons is the granddaddy of the whole Super-genre and the most famous of this type of game. Off the top of my head I can also think of White Wolf, Vampire: The Masquerade, Traveler, GURPS, and Bhaloidam by Corvus Elrod my go to example to show that leveling up isn’t necessary for an RPG system. Many of these were the basis of or the inspirations for many digital RPGs so it isn’t too hard to see them as the same game type, albeit with a grander possibility space because its run by humans rather than machines.

I do have another example though. Model UN is an RPG of a type. For those who don’t know it is a club generally in high school where one person or group of people represent a nation and the lot of them are a model of the UN. They research them and apply their situations of presented problems. They are acting out roles, while not entirely self-defined their persona as a representative of that country and their interpretation of what is in their best self interest is a self-definition.

I’d put kids playing house and the like under the definition of an RPG. It may be more limited to the concept of husband and wife or whatever variation or profession the children come up with it fits the classification. The descriptor is about defining a role and should the role be defined from preconceived notions about a title like ‘housewife’ or ‘doctor’ or ‘astronaut’ then so be it. Limitation of scope, information or imagination does not disqualify it from its central focus.

RPG Conclusion

This is a very loose explanation of a concept that seems to walk a tightrope between other established game focuses. I don’t believe that to be the case. It’s just that the RPGs as a whole have been pigeon holed into such a narrow definition of concepts in part because on the conflation of mechanics with focus and another part economics that much of the possibility space has not been used at all. I can think of a number of Adventure games if they were repurposed and refocused could be reclassified as RPG. Change the focus from the world to the individual and these worlds could be playground for different types of stories and game system concepts easily. But always it comes back to combat, level up, save the world. RPGs have mostly been defined by a sub-genre of a sub-genre of game space. This is the main reason the genre debate gets so on my nerves. So much focus is placed on what has been done that we never look up to see all the blank areas yet to be explored and filled in. And because we keep looking down at this narrow subset it is inevitable that we conflate experience points or levels or sword and sorcery or class combat with what an RPG is.

If a Super-genre is the method of delivery and all the descriptors underneath on the genre and sub-genre stratifications consist of the emotional and thematic experiences that are being delivered than we are sorely under delivering. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say among the 4 Super-genres, if Action is the most diverse than RPGs are the least and it’s making our understanding of them stupid.

The next one on the docket: Strategy

Adventure

Adventure games are a little more difficult to talk about than Action games. There is a mentality that sticks with them because Adventure games were always understood as this very narrow brand of games. Descriptively called point-and-click Adventure games equaled Adventure games as a whole in the popular mindset. Also, unlike Action games, Adventure games have a number of nuances to how they function and work with regards to their focus that Action games, to me at least, is a lot more obvious.

The definition please:

Adventure – a focus on the exploration of the game’s milieu to achieve a mastery of understanding

First a game’s milieu is the game’s world, but unlike world that has a connotation of the landmass only, it refers to everything. It concerns the geographic, logical, societal, moral, and physical laws that govern the place the game is set in. An Adventure game is all about looking around this world, learning about it and understanding it. This can be a world wholly unlike our own such as The Longest Journey that takes both a Sci-fi and Fantasy approach in a single game or just off like Monkey Island or grounded in a facsimile of our world like L.A. Noire.

Achieving a master of this world usually comes in the form of puzzles. Puzzles can be many things is different types of games, but in Adventure games puzzles are expressions of the game’s milieu by which it teaches and tests the player on the nature of the game world. This can be anything from the geographic laws like the white house is S to a forest path in Zork to Sunset Blvd. is X long in L.A. Noire. These are the special realities of the game’s world. It also refers to things more esoteric and non-tangible like the logical rules that govern a place. Monkey Island is not a fantastical location because of the setting or the people, but because the rules of logic and how people think are very different from our own. To give an example, in the first third of the game you have to bypass a troll guarding a bridge by answering a riddle. It asks for Guybrush Threepwood for something that distracts an audience. The answer is a red herring, so you give him a fish. In what other world does this work? Only in Monkey Island because the world is based of language in puns in-jokes and double meanings. You can see examples of this all over the game. The third game has a puzzle that is solved by finding a word that doesn’t have a rhyme so the game can progress.

Understanding a world is key to the Adventure Super-genre’s focus. It can be from the simple of special realities to the complex of having to play working with laws of physics that might be different to different social structures or logical rules.

This Super-genre is a descriptor for an interactive medium, so concentrating on the world building alone is not enough to be an Adventure game. Plenty of games from various different Super-genres work on their world building and detailing it to the player. But there is a difference between given the information in a expository dump and exploring the digital environment to learn about the rules. The interactive portion of the game has to be concerning the player driven learning of the milieu and acting upon that information.

Additionally, the general understanding of a milieu or a world is of a vaste place with a large cast and so much detail and intricacies to learn that are so vastly different than our own humble lives. One thinks of Lord of the Rings’ Middle Earth, Monkey Island or such. This is not the case. A milieu can be small as a train of passengers such as in The Last Express or maybe just a dinner room full of guest that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern Thanksgiving. The setting and the people can be familiar, so can the situation. None of that matters when it concerns milieu. Every work of fiction has a milieu, a world, the size and depth may differ and it may not be the focus, merely a backdrop, but it does exist in everything. With Adventure games, what matters is that focus is squarely on it, big or small, fantastical or mundane.

The Super-genre is not defined by the point and click puzzle structure of find object that is really a key and apply it to gate that could look like anything. Nor do Adventure games have to be about going on adventures in the standard thematic genre meaning of the word. From this we can extrapolate what other types of games fall under this umbrella.

What Fall Under Adventure Games?

Other than the standard point and click affairs of the Sierra and LucasArts stable we find a few other possibilities. Text adventure games being the predecessor to the graphic adventure games also fall under Adventure super-type. They consist of worlds like the point and click games, only expressed through words alone. The other descendant – Interactive Fiction – and the similar visual novel genre also fall under the scope of Adventure games. But past these genres we find that the Adventure games beyond this similarly structured genres.

Exploration is a key component to the focus of the Super-genre. It is the key interactive component in the genre. Poking around to find where the boundaries are, finding out what works and what doesn’t is the bread and butter of Adventure games, but you can lean about a place by soaking up the ambiance and understand the feel of a place as much as the technical specification of how the place works. Think of it as the digital equivalent of sitting outside a Parisian Café to soak up the atmosphere of the city.

Dear Esther, the experimental mod turned full Steam release, would fall under this type of Adventure game. The experimental Dinner Date and the indie darling Passage also fall under this kind of Adventure game. In Dinner Date you don’t have much control over the proceedings and are really only in charge of small movements and the main events of the evening always proceed the same way. The game is imparting all the details about the milieu via what amounts to expository dialogue, but small ticks can detail and inform a character as you explore what is and isn’t possible. Passage is also about exploration, thought the world you are given in a metaphor you are still exploring a digital space. In this space all action are allegorical and not literal as we are accustomed to when we think of exploration. We think of finding some landmark or in my early examples, solving some puzzle that reveals how some small corner of the world thinks. But it does not have to be literal. The most surprising thing I found in my think tests with these definitions was how Flower fell under the concept of an Adventure game.

The Separation of Action and Adventure

I hinted at this in my last post, but it makes more sense to explore it in depth here once I’ve covered Action’s most common partner Adventure. Action games are about the timing of verb usage. Adventure about exploring a world. The former about mastery of actions and the latter about mastery of one’s own understanding of the world they are apart of. Adventure games obviously have verbs; they have to if you are to interact with the world. You can even master the verbs you are given as a means to solving the puzzles an Adventure games gives you, but none of the focus is on the timing use of the verbs.

In King’s Quest 6 there is a puzzle on the Isle of Wonder where you have to get passed five gnome guards by tricking their sense, one for each. After each verse of a poem a gnome steps up to you to find out if you are a man or something else. You are given a short window of time to go into your inventory and trick the gnome with an item. Should you wait to long you are detected and killed. I said before that an Action game is determined by the use of timing regardless of how small or how large the window of opportunity is. The fundamental difference that sets this situation as an Adventure game and not an Action game is how the problem is overcome. Not in the individual solutions but the philosophy by how you process the problem. Adding a clock to unaffiliated focus mechanics does not make them Action oriented mechanics. Were it an Action game the solution would not only give you a window of timing to execute your solution, but the execution would require more than adding a clock. This hypothetical action sequence would let you fight the gnomes or run away from them or any other verb I can’t think of right now as a moment-to-moment challenge with every changing windows and danger levels. In the situation as is looking at your inventory and deciding figuring out a solution based on known facts overcome the problem. The solution is derived from understanding a part of the world and using it to solve a problem.

Which brings me back around to Flower. The game has action like elements of flying around and collecting the petal by hitting the flowers to restore the level to its natural beauty before moving on. None of these are inherent to an action game. There is a certain amount of timing to flying just right to collect the flower petals, but there is no penalty for messing up. You cannot die in Flower; you can’t even be kicked out of the level, even the 5th one with all the electrical towers. Collecting the flower petals to access the next area is the equivalent of collecting a strangely shaped key for a strangely shaped door in a point and click Adventure game. You can say that having to go around again is a sort of minimal failure that the timing window would allow for and yes I would agree to that. Challenge is not a signifier of genre. But the severely reduced challenge to near non-existent firmly places emphasis on other matters. Focus is taken off the timing and place on the ambiance. The collecting of flower petals is something that you do in Flower, but it is not what the game is about. Anyone who has played the game, whether they like the game or not, will agree that the game is about the Zen experience of being in the peaceful naturalistic environments. It is about the atmosphere the game generates. You learn about the world through a few key moments in each level, the opening cutscene before the level and tone the game sets by existing in the milieu. That is how that game imparts its experience.

Talking About Character and Story

Two particular elements that tend to get confused with RPGs are character and story. They are both significant factors in the development of the respective game types, but each uses them to different ends and in different ways. Functionally there are similarities in casts and methods of interactions, but ultimately the focus underneath dictates that they serve a different purpose. I will talk about Adventure’s use of them here and save RPG’s use for next time.

When I say character I’m talking about the one you control. Your personal avatar in an Adventure games is a creation not of the player’s devising. They are their own person, with their own motivations, desires and personalities down to the fine details. You are a puppet master when playing the game to immerse yourself in the milieu of the game. The Graham family of the King’s Quest series are established people in their own world and you are merely a play actor, no a stage manager in charge of one person. Your character is a part of the world and you have to learn about him/her/it just as much as any other factor.

Some games get really meta with this like The Longest Journey. If you “look at” April Ryan she responses with a number of quips some that are clearly addressed to you, the player, and not to herself like her other observations. “What – I got something on my face? IS my hair ok? What are you looking at?” “Big surprise, I’m still here.” In fact, in no Adventure game do you make a choice defining a character, but only ones that reveal it. As the story moves forward you find yourself learning about who your character is and what lengths they will go to, by virtue of all the time you spend with them. Like everything else you are exploring your avatar just as much as you are exploring any other factor of the world.

This is not to say that in some Adventure games you are not granted options. One particular choice in the second chapter of The Longest Journey sticks out in my mind, as do the trials in Heavy Rain. In The Longest Journey you are given a choice that is mostly meaningless to the plot and story of the game and are instead both legitimate options for April Ryan to take. In Heavy Rain they are a bit more self-defining for Ethan Mars in answering the question of how far he is willing to go to save his son, but do not fundamentally change him as a character. He can go through with or is given the option to leave in every case. In the religious nut’s house Norman Jayden is constantly given the option to shoot him or talk him down. Both choices are acting on competing desires, desire for safety and survival vs. the desire of not shooting someone if he has a choice. For many it could be a reflex decision.

Heavy Rain is one of those difficult to piece apart games because many of the choices the four characters get look like self-defining choices. They don’t actively reveal who the character is, but put us in charge to decide for them and see who they are when push comes to shove. However, it isn’t presented like that. These choices are presented to ordinary people put into dangerous circumstances in milieu not too far from our own (Jayden’s ARG specs not withstanding). The game is so staged and the game has to hit certain moments on its schedule that you are in a virtual play defining a character in the same way you did in Dinner Date, inconsequentially, regardless of their ultimate fate.

To help illustrate my point I’d like to use another example, namely Deirdra Kiai’s interactive fiction The Play. You play as a director to the titular play during the dress rehearsal the night before it opens. You are dealing with your three actors and your stagehand. After each segment you are given choices for how to direct the action and move forward with the rehearsal. The thing is you cannot play it only once and get the full story. In most cases you will be confused by the character’s history and their full motivations in certain story paths. The choices are about defining the actions, but not who the character is. The actions reveal or keep hidden who these people are. There are quite a few endings dependant on how the various people feel with regards to your direction and can even walk out ending the story prematurely. The point is two fold. You are not defining the character as a person, but revealing who they are in the moment. It can look similar and even function similarly to the defining aspects of an RPG, but if the focus of those actions is different then they are different Super-genres. In both Heavy Rain and The Play the focus is on you looking in and discovering a world and learning about it through the nuance interactions of the elements with in, whether they represent people or things.

Speaking on The Play leads nicely onto the detail of story. Back in Adventure game’s heyday they were the go to place for getting detailed stories out of their world’s and situations. These were generally linear affairs with numerous puzzles acting as gates that had to be opened to progress to the end. However, since Maniac Mansion and possibly even earlier, that does not mean there was only one strict path to completion. Multiple endings or paths were always apart of the genre. With The Play it is easier to highlight. The story progresses along any number of paths as your choices dictate. The game becomes a possibility space to explore canonical fan fiction of the scenario if you will. This possibility space of the world becomes a part of the Adventure game milieu. Each playthrough becomes an exploration of part of that world or rather one possibility of the world. The focus is on what happens should you do this or that with your puppet character. With smaller, quicker and simpler games it is easier to see than it would with the likes of Maniac Mansion or The Longest Journey, though it exists there as well.
The Adventure game’s story is also part of the exploration of the world. If the focus stays on the milieu and how the story works with it rather than just in it, the game is an Adventure game.

Adventure Analogs

Analog variants to Adventure games were harder to come up with outside of one very obvious example because of the nature of trying to interactively explore a milieu as a game. It can be done as a passive medium rather easily in both film and books. The latter of which does have a subset that does fit into thee interactive nature of a game.

Choose your own Adventure books are Adventure games very much like Deirdra Kiai’s The Play. You have a situation, predefined characters and options to progress the story. It is literally interactive fiction only on paper instead of on a computer. One interesting example I would like to bring up is that the Desert Bus Choose your own Adventure books. Yes this is a thing. They were prizes at last year’s Desert Bus for Hope charity drive that converted that very dull Action game Desert Bus into a Choose your own Adventure trilogy. And yes it was accurate to the experience. They are also mighty thick. Though it was originally an Action game with the focus on the continued pressing of a button to keep from going off the road and the experience delineates from the long drudgery of driving in real time, the books have to convey the experience as a book with several options at the bottom of the page to determine your actions. They are the same options on every single page It uses descriptive writing to describe the world of Desert Bus and how innocuous it is. The meaning and emotion of the experience is the same, but the method how it is conveyed through the interactive elements different. It also has nothing to do with the change to analog format. It may be just a boring, but a digital Adventure game would be the exact same.

While thinking on it, I think co-operative storytelling would also fall under Adventure games. The exercise of creating a story one word, one sentence, one paragraph or one minute at a time playing off of the information previously given allows the focus to be on the story and hw it works within the concept of the other people around you, but not on defining one character and there is no minute interaction dictated by timing. You can argue whether you would call co-operative storytelling a quote, unquote game, but the focus is clearly the same as quote, unquote real Adventure games. I’m not here to argue the definition of game, but merely the difference in focuses within a medium of interactivity.

Adventure Conclusion

Explaining Adventure games is about explaining subtle differences and nuance in mostly intangible, unobservable concept space. It feels like I’m trying to explain color to person who has been blind all their life. Of course if you have played an Adventure game you are not blind to the experience, but trying to explain it especially when much of it seems to graze other Super-genre’s sphere of influence that I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not explaining myself well enough. Adventure games share many core mechanical, conceptual tropes and elements with other Super-genres that it cannot be pinned down so easily. Other Super-genres have their focus on clear definable attributes and interactions, while Adventure games seems to delve into the more abstract attributes and more passive qualities in between interactions. Verbs are only a concern with how it allows the player to interact with the world via an avatar to learn and understand it. This is not something you can see happen in others only in yourself. And sometimes, especially in the older Adventure games, understanding does not come, mere guesswork until the gate comes down. A failure of game design can undermine the understanding of a game and subsequently its entire genre. I hope I didn’t fall into that trap.

Onto the big one: RPG.

And now to the first Super-genre on the list.

Action

The key to understanding the Action Super-genre is understanding the commonalities between so many genres that we think of as Action games. Where does the platformer intersect with the shooter with the racer and so on? What is the common element between all these disparate genres? It was looking there that I came up with this definition of Action games.

Action – a focus on timing of the physical execution of the interactive elements to achieve mastery of verbs

This is a more clarified statement what I said previously on the general understanding of Action games to be: lots of button presses in a short amount of time to do actions. Of course we need to be more specific or we end up including games that fit the definition, but are working towards a different focus. With actions games the focus is centrally placed on the input and specific timing of it for the player’s success or failure. This is including the lack of button presses at the right moments should that be an optimal choice.

Of course the basic concept that comes to mind when ‘button press = action’ are games of quick reflexes like the fighting game, the platformer or shooters.  I do not go into specifics about the timing, because that does not matter. Where you have to press the dodge button in a millisecond or a minute does not matter, because the timing needed to accomplish tasks is different depending on the game, tasks and difficultly level. The timing required in a match of Call of Duty is subtly different from one in Battlefield and for a more drastic comparison it is different from the timing in Dynasty Warrior. This time in which a button or combination of buttons have to be pressed is called the window. Outside the window is failure. Either you attacked too soon or responded too late to the game’s stimuli. The penalties can be anywhere from a virtual slap on the wrist to an instant game over. None of that matters. What matters is that the focus of the game is centered on the player working with the windows they are given for their actions.

In a complex example like an FPS for this Super-genre umbrella I feel requires a little clarification. You are always providing input in a shooter even if it is just movement. In Call of Duty to take a single accurate shot requires the subtle manipulation of the analog sticks or mouse/keyboard to center the target and a press of the fire button. Shooting may be the primary verb that the genre is named after, but the player is always providing input during play even if they are not shooting. Those subtle manipulations for accurate shooting to kill before being killed are just as key as pulling the virtual trigger.

Now games from other genres may incorporate “Action elements” just as games of other genres may incorporate “RPG elements” but again that does not inherently mean those games are Action games just like it does not inherently mean a game that does the latter is an RPG. An example would be a game that adds specific windows to its otherwise unaffiliated dynamics by adding a timer. Final Fantasy VIII’s action timed battle system comes to mind. We have a decidedly non-Action game incorporating Action elements by adding a restriction over core elements that do not focus on it. Really any game that adds a clock on top of its primary focus as a mechanic is really something else with Action elements rather than an Action game.

What Falls Under Action Games?

Action was a good place to start because it really has the widest variety of genres and sub-genres of any of the Super-genres. Whether it was the rise of technology, the focus on inputs in early designer’s minds or economics or the short attention spans of our youth, it has spawned so many more variations and concepts than Adventure games, RPGs or Strategy games.

There are the shooters of the first person, third person and top down variety. There are driving games, racing games being a subset. There are fighting games, platformers, and the dozen different types of brawlers. And some games combine the elements of these genres together like Tomb Raider and its ilk. Mini-game collections, games like Marble Madness that I’m not sure have a genre title, but also under this definition you will find rhythm games.

Usually though of as its own separate genre all by its lonesome, rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR and all the others I wont name for time are the most stripped down version of an action game. They are literally all about the specific timing of an input to onscreen stimuli. It is usually a colored shape crossing a predetermined target that we have to press a button or combination of buttons to be successful. The focus is quite clearly on making those timed presses. While the meaning of a game like Guitar Hero is to put you in the place of a rock god and make you feel like you are creating the music, to do so the player must focus on hitting the inputs correctly to channel that experience.

In fact, the best way to understand the basics of any of the Super-genres is to look at the most stripped down version to get a handle on things, before they are complicated and it becomes difficult to dig down to the core. There is no more perfect example of an Action game at its core than Dance Dance Revolution. There are four hollow arrows at the top of the screen with neon arrows flying up towards them. When they cross the hollow arrow you are to press the corresponding arrow button on the dance pad. Not only does it provide clear direction and input goals, but it also has a scaling window of success. Get it on the edge of that window and you get a Good rating, which the closer you get to the center of that short time span the rating becomes Great, Wonderful all the way to Perfect. You can build up streaks of correct hits as further game stimuli encouragement to hit that window. Should you miss the marker the punishment is the resetting of hit streaks and the loss of potential points. The timing is drastically altered by a series of options of difficulty, arrow speed and any other amount of potential challenges added to the stimuli for the sake of challenge. The fact that your entire body is in motion in order to play feels like a perfect cherry on top to get the point across that it is an Action game.

Rhythm games are a very different experience from the combat or competition of many of the other genres that fall under the Action category, but the experience is not the point. To understand the focus of a game is not about what it means, but to understand what the delivery method of that meaning is. With Action games it is the focus on player input as a matter of correct or incorrect timing. You are trying to achieve correct timing (save for cases where the player purposefully messes up) and as such looking for mastery of the game’s verbs to achieve that success. You can argue purposefully messing up means you are aiming for outside the window and though it isn’t the intent of the game it just means that the windows and concept of punishment has been reversed. The conceptual focus of Actions games remains the same.

Combining Genres Within Action Games

Thanks to the wider variety of concepts and purposes that Action games have accumulated over the years they have a wider variety of cross genre pollination with regards to the purposes of the Super-genre’s focus. Back in the old days you had a pure experiences born out of technological limitation and the fact that designers were building experiences from the ground up in a digital age. Centipede, Pac-Man and the like only had movement as an input verb. Later we added in jumping, then shooting, then jumping and shooting and so on and so forth. Verbs and mechanics got added and combined, but Action games always remained focused on the concept of input timing. From this stand point there is very little difference between Pac-Man and Contra. One has more verbs than the other and more possible actions at any given time, but both are centered on hitting success windows and avoiding falling outside of them.

This was back before game genres had been codified as a thing in digital games like they are now. Now we have the likes of rhythm-shooters (Rez) and racer-platformers (Mirror’s Edge) that take the concepts and tropes born out of each of these genres and blend them together. The focus, however, remains the same just in a new guise. The type of shooting in Rez is something new born from elements well covered or rather the timing of the shooting has changed to correlate to a beat rather than dynamic stimuli of enemies. The type of platforming has changed in Mirror’s Edge, both from its first person perspective, but also that it puts you on a timing both external (best time) and internal (chasing enemies) rather than giving the player the leeway of making the jump at their own pace to avoiding failure. It changes the dynamic, but not the focus.

I cannot stress this enough. It is the game’s focus that determines the game’s Super-genre because that is how it is experienced and is the method by which the game’s meaning is delivered.

Adding Elements of the Other Super-genres

This is where the oft-brought up example of Call of Duty multiplayer’s leveling system comes in. The “RPG elements” of gaining experience and using that to increase your level is either cited as an expansion of what an RPG is or a hindrance to the discussion of what RPGs are. The simplest way to understand it is to look at what those elements are trying to accomplish in a game. In the case of Call of Duty multiplayer or any FPS multiplayer with a leveling system it usually amounts to unlocking new and sometimes better weapons or tools to use and maybe the ability to alter the look of the avatar or the performance of the tools. So what does this achieve with relation to the game?

For example, what does an increased ammo clip or more deadly ammunition or faster reloading time or a new weapon mean for the player’s avatar? The timing window has changed. All those things mean that you have slightly expanded you opportunity to hit the timing window and therefore shifted the game in your favor. Larger clips mean you can shoot longer without having to reload and more opportunity to kill an enemy before you die or have to reload. More deadly ammunition means less shots are needed to kill an enemy meaning less time spent in the window before success and less chance of leaving that window. Same goes for faster reloads and a new weapon just changes the parameters by which you can interact with the timing window. All of these things affect how you interact with the timing of a game and nothing else.

Some games when leveling up allow customizing of one’s avatar. This is purely a cosmetic change and does nothing to influence the focus of the game either in Action games or RPGs by themselves. Unless, the cosmetic changes make you harder to see or easier to attach to and develop a character respectively. By themselves cosmetic changes are meaningless.

One could say that by leveling up it becomes a representation of your own skill in the game due to the time and effort you have put in. But that has nothing to do with the game. Any improvement in your mastery of the verbs is part of the Action Super-genre’s focus. Of course you will get better at timed actions the more your perform them, but that doesn’t mean you have fundamentally changed the game to a different focus. Adding experience points and levels are adding mechanics for the purpose of giving players long term feed back they can see easily represented. Maybe they are rewarded with goodies like improving their combat numbers or new toys to play with, but that doesn’t change that Call of Duty and the like are still Action games.

It’s not just RPG elements. It’s anything generally belonging to another Super-genre with a different focus now being implemented in Action games. Strategy on some level has always been apart of Action games, but became more pronounced with the tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Now suddenly you needed a plan to take out the bad guys or you would fail. But ultimately it still required a proficiency in the timing of the game verb’s execution. Due to the nature of the game the player’ performance had changed and generally the players were better prepared to take out a room of buy guys than in the normal run and gun shooter, but it still resulted in a player’s need to move, aim and fire in just the right amounts to achieve victory.

Action games can have strategy, but they are not Strategy games. The focus is different and so the method of experience delivery is different.

Action Analogs

I debated whether or not to put these sections in, but for multiple reason I decided in favor. I did the work, might as well show it off and sine I’m going to be a lightning rod for so much attention and assured backlash, might as well get it all out of the way all at once.

The Super-genres are game genres, not video game genres. There is nothing inherent to digital games that preclude the defining focuses from appearing in analog counterparts.

The big and obvious one with the Action Super-genre are the games we call sports. Basketball, Football, Soccer (I’m American), Baseball, Curling etc, etc are all based around timing. The input has changed from button presses to physical body movements, but the principal is the same. Instead of using analog stick to move a digital avatar you use your feet. Instead of a button press to throw the ball, you use your hands. You get where this is going. I don’t have to list out every single body part. Again these games do have an element of strategy to them, but as the New England Patriots proved this year that doesn’t matter if you cannot execute.

Certain board games also fall under this Super-genre. I remember one I owned as a kid where you had a little catapult to fling a tiny plastic Basketball into a little hoop. Clearly timing based. (Also, wasn’t very good.) Tiddlywinks also falls under Action. As does the card game Egyptian Rat Screw. Now there is a pure Action game is I ever saw one. No strategy, just recognizing when two cards with the same number appear on top of one another and being fast enough to grab the pile.

In a way it might be easier to see the timing based focus when removed from a digital realm. When a computer isn’t controlling and resolving everything and things are taken out of strict number quotients it is easier to see that the timing is only in reaction to the other nouns of the game and verbs they are performing. Passing a ball past a defense isn’t measured in seconds or equations, but if you can do it before you are tackled and whether the pass was good enough to be caught un-intercepted. No I’m not bitter about the Giants, why do you ask?

Action Conclusion

The Action Super-genre I feel is the easiest to explain mainly because it has such a wider variety to it. Yes there are a lot of combat games, but there are also a lot of games that allow you to avoid it and quite a number that don’t involve combat or violence at all. There are games about movement on foot and in a numerous different vehicles, in both 2D and 3D spaces. Action games seem to cover an emotional and thematic spectrum from their dynamics unseen in the other Super-genres. Plus, it is easier to point out these subtle similarities by virtue that the games underneath the umbrella all look so different ironically. In being so different what is similar becomes more pronounced.

Moving on to a more difficult genre to talk about next post – Adventure.

So I’m going to start from the beginning.

What is Genre?

In general genres are used as a form of categorization so that stores and libraries can split up their offerings on different shelves so that customers can have an easier time finding them. It is used as a categorization technique for what people want in their media. On broad levels people understand that Comedies make us laugh, Action gets us pumped up, Drama works our pathos etc etc. The problem comes from how people then think of what these categorizations mean. In every case I’ve seen talk about genres, I see them used as short hand for tropes and techniques common to the type of media people think of as that genre rather than fundamental core of what that genre is about. For example, when you say Western people immediately think of the American Frontier, cowboys, horses, miles of desert and wilderness, shootouts at high noon, John Wayne etc. None of that has anything to do with what a Western is. All those things can and do appear in Westerns, but aren’t fundamentally what a Western is. A Western in a genre about an exploration of a certain theme against a backdrop setting that highlights in physical terms what it is talking about in on a philosophical one. Namely nature vs. society, lawlessness vs. civilization, the nature of man between the savage and the moral, the struggle between the frontier and the march of progress. That is what a Western is about. It doesn’t even have to take place in the Wild West to be considered a Western so long as it addresses what the genre is about.

This confusion of tropes for meaning comes from the idea that genres are categories instead of descriptors. Genres are adjectives applied to a work to detail what that work’s core is constituted from. To continue with the above example of the Western genre, that genre itself can further be subdivided into sub-genres: the Classic Western, the Deconstructed Western, the Present Day Western, and the Post-Apocalyptic Western. Some of which can be further subdivided like John Ford Western would be a subdivision of the Classic Western. This is possible because further descriptions cause a genre to become more detailed with what the work is about though a person associations of similar works with those descriptions.

Think of it the Biological classification system. There are multiple levels that as you go down them you become more and more accurate in your descriptions and narrow what you are talking about. (For reference: Life -> Dominion -> Kingdom -> Phylum -> Class -> Order -> Family -> Genus -> Species -> Sub-species) These are hard and fast boxes in which to place a living being in, but rather a set of descriptors that apply to a species. The further down this list, the more precise. The above labels are an indicator of how specific each descriptor is. Last I checked there were 5 Kingdoms the most prominent being the Animal Kingdom and the Plant Kingdom. They are different branches and the resulting branches of each, as one moves on to Phylum, do not intersect.

Genres are like that. Except where the biological classification system deals with cell functions or DNA markers, genres deal with ideas. Each descriptor adding more of an idea of what a game will or does consist of depending on which side of the industry you are on. For example. Action -> Shooter -> First Person -> Military -> Modern -> Call of Duty 4. Of course artistic works are not living things, so this metaphor breaks down at a certain point, but I wont get there for a while.

A Word of Video Game Genres

There is a difference between what we normally conceive of as genre in other mediums and that of video games. Where as other medium genres are generally defined as the thematic and emotional space/questions the work generally deals with – Westerns with civilization vs. the wild or Noir the isolation of modern man in a post industrialized world – video game genres deal with the not the essence of a work’s meaning, but how that essence is delivered to its audience. In broad strokes, a game has mechanics, it delivers its focus through the interactive dynamics of those mechanics, to that focus, context is applied and from the result a meaning can be derived and extracted from the work. In no other medium is this a consideration. Artists may play around with the formalism aspects of their chosen medium, think Bergman’s Persona or more stereotypically Wells’ Citizen Kane in movies and House of Leaves for books, but they are fundamentally working within the same delivery system. The only thing I can think of would be that is remotely similar is that although a movie, a TV show and a youtube video are all ultimately the same medium, their delivery mechanism dictates content, style and the general thematic content of a piece. But that’s if you really want to stretch it.

Video game genres though don’t need that sort of stretching, because a first person shooter is fundamentally different from a point and click adventure, which is fundamentally different from a real time strategy game, which is fundamentally different from an open world RPG. In other words you wouldn’t apply the same design logic or critical methodology to Half-Life like you would Grim Fandango like you would StarCraft like you would Baldur’s Gate. I didn’t even choose as disparate titles in that example as I could have, all 4 games are from the same year and a product of the same environment. But no one will see them as similar because basically they belong to different “Kingdoms” of video games.

Video games do have thematic genres and even examples of genres that exist in other mediums like the above Western with Red Dead Redemption, Gun and Call of Juarez. But those descriptors are further down the list. Before you start to deal with them you have to deal with how it is going to deliver its experience.

Why Are Genres Important?

I feel like I’ve partially answered this question only two paragraphs above, but I feel a little more can be said with regards to how people approach the concept of genre now.

RPGs to most people are about gaining experience and leveling up. This idea that this is fundamental to what an RPG is that we’ve gone on to call these mechanics RPG elements as if no other mechanics matter in the grand scheme of things. These mechanics get the title of the genre itself, that’s how important they are. No they’re not. They are tropes common (okay super common) to the genre that like the cowboys and American Frontier to the Western they get confused for being the genre itself.

Common tropes and elements are born out of the fundamental determinant of a genre and do not inherently define it. It is the general focus of a work and from which the potential meaning is derived from. The broader the genre scope the broader the defining concept of the genres is. Genres are descriptors. This is in contrast to how they are mistakenly thought of, as doctrine. I use the word focus as opposed to meaning because the meaning is individual to each work, but the focus is where that meaning will emerge. It is confusing the techniques or common elements as the defining aspect of a genre where both creators and critics run into problems. It is the disconnect of the underlying concepts to the minutia of tropes that causes unfocused works both in creation and in evaluation.

With video games these amount to mechanics being solely associated with genres and then replacing them with what a genre is actually about. In all the genre discussions I’ve seen people have, they essentially are looking at Westerns and one says saying cowboy before the other counters with barman as some sort of argument to confuse the definitions. In doing so they narrow the definitions and trip themselves over trying to figure out, for instance what an RPG is. Always looking to the widely used concept of the leveling system or the inclusion of a dynamic story as a starting base for defining a genre, when both are simply tropes born out of creators driving at the core of what an RPG is. Up until very recently Adventure games were defined as only point and click affair with maybe some deference to text adventures and interactive fiction. Again we have tropes being replaced for the core. Just because it is just how something has always been done doesn’t mean it is the only way to do it.

Without proper understanding of what genres are we end up with a mess. A new game comes along the doesn’t look like anything before because it uses new mechanics and has its own way of doing things and suddenly people are at a loss of how to understand it, or misattribute what it is trying to do. They end up calling it junk because it does not conform to their expectations or maybe the creators didn’t realize what they had and ended up cramming in common mechanics and designs in an effort to categorize themselves in an already established “genre.” This was the fate of L.A. Noire, a game that took people over 6 months to recognize it as an Adventure game. Or how about people wondering why there isn’t any shooting in Dear Esther simply because it is in first person mode. On the other hand it’s also why L.A. Noire crammed in so many wasted sand box elements.

People claim it is genre that limits creativity, drastic innovation and design because it has to fit into the neat little holes in people’s mind, but in reality it is the opposite. Genres are a focusing agent that allows the creator and the critic to get to the heart of the work. I will concede that once a creator/critic has a handle on the basics of what particular genres are about, than mixing and matching defining elements appropriately can work wonders into new ideas. Though I believe there are limits. But throwing popular elements or mechanics into a work willy nilly without any naturalized understanding of why those mechanics were used, when used properly, and what they were about leads to disasters.

A Word on Nomenclature

Another pothole of this concept is conceptual stratification. What I mean is while we call an RPG a genre and a shooter a genre, they aren’t. One has a much broader spectrum of potential to cover than the other. Without thinking of the one to one, an RPG would be a “Kingdom” to a shooter’s “Phylum.” Back in November I tried to get around the generalization of what the community as a whole called genres. First Person Shooters, Racing games, Platformers were all called genres. In reality they are all Action games and are different in that they are distinct sub-genres, “Phylums” to Action’s “Kingdom” and the first in that list more of a “Class.” But since everyone still calls them genres I deferred and called the more encompassing concepts Super-genres. Given how that blew up in my face in trying to accommodate people I was willing to say, “Fuck that this time around.” I did it to facilitate understanding and it only muddled the waters. But then I came across my handy little metaphor and realize that idea if not the term Super-genres was very necessary. This series will only be covering in detail the Super-genres. Any descriptor and details below them on the scale will be used as examples and explanations only. I wont get to it because frankly covering the macro stuff is taking up more of my time than I’m comfortable with and at this point I sort of just want it done.

Secondly, there is difficulty in codifying definitions due to the inherent slant of video game terms to etymologically favor the Action genre. Verbs, use, act, do, perform, interact, execution and action are all words that if not in their specific definition cause confusion due to their usage in common understanding. These words all common to video game theory sort of infect any understanding of other genres given associative definitions. To try and head this off I may end up being a little wordier in places than I’d normally like to be to try and dull confusion. Because there are standard understandings to these words and video game understandings to these words I’d thought mentioning and asking to keep that in mind in future installments might ease the burden.

Thirdly, with regards to the words action, adventure, role-playing, strategy, racing, shooting and any other words that are also named for Super-genres, genres or any other classification descriptor look to the capitalization. If I write Action and not action be assured I am talking about the genre not the concept of an avatar doing something. As for RPG, the genre term will be written out like that and role-playing will be lower case and written out.

I don’t know how much cross-reference words there will be or how convoluted some of the sentences are going to be when written out. I’ll do my best, but keep and eye out and call me on it if I happened to mess up on capitalization.

Fourthly, up till now I’ve been careful with my wordings so as not to give the impression that these genre labels and genre labels in general are dictatorial doctrine with check lists and strict definitions, but rather adjectives that apply to a wide variety of games. I’m not going to keep that up for the whole series. Words like definition, categorization, heading etc will slip in, as they are needed. This is not to be taken as me dictating a narrowing of what games can be or what certain games can specifically be. To the contrary this system of thought opens the world up to new things rather than the confining and confusion of the present thought process.

Finally, during the prework I realized I needed help to get my thoughts in order and someone to bounce my ideas off of trying to poke around for the holes and fill them up. I had adjusted much of what I came up with into a better concept and actually dealt with a number of nagging doubts when it came to certain “problem” games that by myself I couldn’t work through. Thanks go to Seb Wuepper for talking to me for hours to get through this. I bring this up here because he did bring up one idea that I considered for a few seconds before realizing the suggestion could go horribly wrong. He suggested I drop the previously used genre terms for my Super-genres and label them as descriptors. He even renamed a few for me. I think it’s difficult enough that I’m trying to put forth these ideas and concepts that go against such an established and ludicrous grain that I’d be adding more trouble for little to no pay off. Thought it deserves mentioning though.

Graphing the Super-genres

Before I get down into defining what I see as the 4 Super-genres I’d like to take a moment on how I came up with them as a different level of classification and some additional thoughts on the idea surrounding the number 4.

Originally when I had started this piece I only sought to clarify the problems I saw with the discussions, not create some new genre system by which to change the critical sphere. (I’ll be using it anyway.) Since many posts and the discussions were all about RPGs and Adventure games I focused on those, also throwing Action games into the mix because I had written a post on the concept of Action/Adventure games recently. But since I decided to throw all my efforts into this I shouldn’t leave it at just what is discussed.

I knew at the time I wrote that piece there was a fourth Super-genre – Strategy – mainly because the games under its descriptor didn’t fit under any other Super-genre label. I didn’t have any idea how to define or quantify it at the time.

But I had 4 Super-genres all the same. Humans are creatures of patterns. We see patterns everywhere, whether they exist or not, and we create patterns in everything we make almost instinctively. Or at least we see the patterns in what we created after the fact, whether they are there or not. Given this and the fact I had 4 of a categorization I figured I could place these Super-genre into the 4 quadrants of an X-Y graph. Then I tried to figure out X and Y lines were and what type of opposing scales would be. It did not go well. Without exception I could not place all 4 Super-genres on the graph. I could always fit three together along logical labeling of the lines, but the fourth Super-genre would always defy either the X or Y line. The fact that I could get some Super-genres to be on opposite sides in one definition of the graph and next to each other in another further hampered this effort.

It was about this time it dawned on me to ask what the point of graphing it would be. Doing such a thing would try to quantify rather than qualify artistic works and would change the focus of my argument. It would also create a system of limitation, the kind of which I sought to get away from in the first place. It did, however, open one line of inquiry for me. If you are familiar with Magic: The Gathering you will know there are 5 colors of mana and spells. White, Blue, Black, Red and Green. These colors are placed at the points of a pentagon. Each color has two allies that have overlapping philosophies and concepts. They even share some of the same mechanics, thought use them differently. For instance, White is the color or order and law, of society and structure. Its allies are Green and Blue. Green overlaps on the concept of society and groups. Though where White is culturally and governmentally imposed groups, Green has the groups found in nature and natural law to White’s societal one. Blue meanwhile takes White’s order and structure concepts to the arenas of self-discipline and mental pursuits to White’s societal ones. You can see the overlap, but not quite. Additionally the other two colors are their opponents’ antithesis. White’s order is to Red’s Chaos and White’s community is to Black’s self serving. I see the Super-genres this way. Vague overlap when it comes to certain concepts with its philosophical allies and different directions when it comes to its philosophical opponents. Even with the opponents there is common ground, but more in dealing with issues rather than answers.

Much of the work I did in trying to ascribe the 4 Super-genres to a X/Y graph lead me to see certain overlaps with the Super-genres’ focuses and that no Super-genre was really a direct opponent in whole. In some cases I could even see where they might fit with one another, but all this is reliant on the fact that there is a fifth Super-genre. That is what I wanted to make clear. There might be a fifth Super-genre that either I can’t see or we as an industry haven’t delved into that space yet or have under-delved into that space that we can’t separate it yet. Hell, there might be a sixth or seventh or however many. The minor point I’ve laboriously trying get to is that this systems and these definitions are not the end all be all.

The 4 Super-genres

And after all that I finally get to the definitions of these so-called Super-genres. And they aren’t so much definitions as philosophical descriptors of what any given game’s core would be about. They are inclinations derived from looking at the most desperate of examples with each genre and looking for the core, the thing you cannot take away without fundamentally altering the game and the experience it delivers. The 4 Super-genres are: Action, Adventure, RPG and Strategy.

Action – a focus on timing of the physical execution of the interactive elements to achieve mastery of verbs

Adventure – a focus on the exploration of the game’s milieu to achieve a mastery of understanding

RPG – a focus on the exploration and development of the self to achieve mastery via self-definition

Strategy – a focus on the collection and spending of limited resources towards a long-term plan where the physical execution cannot be the deciding factor

Full disclosure: I outsourced that last one to Troy Goodfellow and Rob Zachy of Three Moves Ahead fame. Both will know more about Strategy games than I could ever hope to. In working with it I’ve only made tweaks to the wording and essentially functions, as I need it to. A big Thank You to the both of them.

Another problem I felt with my original post on the subject of Super-genres was that I don’t think I gave enough time and space to each one to fully explain what I meant by each of these philosophical definitions. I felt it was obvious, but then it’s always obvious to the person who spends the time doing the work. I’m sure Calculus is obvious to some and would struggle with my ineptitude with it. I didn’t explain myself well enough the first time, so I’m giving myself the breathing room for each Super-genre. I will cover in upcoming posts in detail what I mean by these definitions. I’m sure as definitions they are lacking. Right now they are more of guidelines to facilitate my explanations. I will explain each in turn and detail where the tropes get confused for the definitions themselves. There were also quite a few surprises when you follow the logic about certain game genres and titles.

Immiscible Genres

This subject label is a product of my discussions with Seb Wuepper. In looking for a way to describe games that combine Super-genres we eventually came across this word from Chemistry and it’s opposite: Miscible. Miscible liquids are homogenous solutions where they are the same all the way through. A Miscible genre game would be where it is a single consistent genre, or in this case Super-genre. Immiscible liquids are those that will not mix together, namely oil and water. They are in the same container, yet still distinct parts of the mixture. An Immiscible genre game is how I explain the ludicrous term Action/Adventure.

I will go into detail in its own post what I mean specifically how Super-genres mix, or rather don’t mix as the case may be given my choice of terms. Again because of the mixture and commonalities they get confused. Action/Adventure is the most troubling term because as I noted a while back it is used as a catch all term for something we can’t be bother describing properly. It’s how Grand Theft Auto gets lumped in Zelda and Skyrim.

Not only identifying the problems that such a thing Action/Adventure poses to my conceptualizing I also see Immiscible games as a way of detailing the cross over of different philosophies. (This is where the Biology metaphor breaks down in case you were wondering.) We all understand the difference between an Action/RPG and an Action game with rpg elements on the broadest level. Again I want to detail underlying core that comes about with Immiscible games.

Out of the Starting Gate

If you managed to get through all that, I thank you. If not, the upshot of it is, game genres as we use them now are screwed up and I intend to strip things down to their basics to build up a basic understanding of what we are talking about when we talk about in terms of what a game is trying to do. This is something for both creators and critics not because it will provide a road map or add anything significant, but because the lack of this understanding will only produce problems and poor output. I also want to try and get rid of the tribalism mentality when it comes to ethereal concepts. I may tread on the established consensus, but if the established consensus is wrong by virtue it doesn’t work than I’m okay with that. The key to understanding this series is the fact that just because something has always been done this way does not mean implicitly that it is a key-defining factor of a genre.

Next post: Action

Again I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up.

I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. Driving games generally get left by the wayside in general criticism and mainstream press, but there have been other breakout hits that have lasted for years. Burnout Paradise, Mario Kart series and Grand Turismo all have done so (even if only two of them deserve it). Also releasing it September right before the glut of highly anticipated sequels arrived wasn’t such a good idea. The marketing of this game was all in all awful all around. At E3 the touted the highly entertaining shift mechanic and balls to the wall crazy premise of the game. They gave no context and showed none of the more dramatic turns or the fluid dynamics and had the game come off as stupid. I wrote this off halfway through the developer interview as I generally do when it is only sounds bytes and/or sounds like its trying to insult my intelligence.

In fact maybe showing it on the E3 show floor was a mistake unto itself. There you have to be loud and instant with your gratification. Driver: San Francisco is not something you can get in 30 second sound bytes. It takes a while, a few hours before the game’s brilliance sinks in. But you know what you don’t have to show off brilliance to market a game, but the promise of a good time and you can get that in 10 minutes, which is about how long it takes to fall into the coma because the first mission after doing so hooks you. The more I think about it the more brilliant the placement of missions is. As soon as you learn how to drive in the intro and then you fall into the coma your mission is to take over the ambulance driver and get yourself to the hospital before you die. It’s bizarre, it’s weird, but it also makes a certain amount of sense on conceptual level if not a logical one. Your will is what lets you survive to get proper treatment in the real world and in your head.

The races are only fun after you understand the ground rules of the game and the difference it makes having that stay in the back of your mind during them. Otherwise they are just standard races with some rubber banding.

I say in the piece there are too many small moments that I love to list and there are for that article to keep it flowing. So here they are in no particular order. (*Spoilers*)

-Taking over the ambulance driver and driving yourself to the hospital

-The recurring characters of the street racers and Tanner’s ever escalating exasperation

-Keeping a rapper alive by destroying all the sidewalk board advertisements and Tanner doing so with glee

-Stalking myself in one car while trying to lead that car I’m in into a trap remotely (it makes more sense to do it than explain it)

-Tailgating an ambulance in order to regain health and escape purgatory

-The mid-chapter recap montages straight out of a serialized TV cop show

-The music track list

-One of the stunt challenges to drift in an 18 wheeler X distance

-Stopping evil 18 wheelers with good garbage trucks

-A mission where you have to drive insane to keep a passenger from dying to snake venom

-Shifting into a car driven by a little old lady and her son and then freaking the son out with jumps

-The biting satire on reality TV shows with the caught on camera missions

-Running away with your possessed man’s fugitive wife only to learn she did do it and Tanner just shrugs

-The so deadly serious police dialogue about the culprits stealing from churches its hilarious

-Not the recurring mad bomber character, but the mission where you have to disarm a bomb by driving up a 18-wheeler in a sports car

-Highway car fu

-The later chases are downright tense as new baddies keep appearing

-Ripping off gangsters after shifting into the middle of a deal for an antique car

-The dozens of different conversations you shift into the middle of are hilarious and some downright WTF

-The subtleties of the sound when in high altitude shifting

-The mission that actively uses high altitude shifting to solve it

-The story arc of the cops turned vigilantes taking out drug stashes like it was a rally car race

-This moment this gameranx post talks about

(Too awesome an image not to include. Props to Ian.)

There is so many moment and details that just improve the impression the game leaves you with. Each of which is just more reinforcement and their own little subtleties about the driving conflict, premise and themes of the game. (Pun not intended, but appreciated.) I could write about each individual moment  I listed above and plenty more and how it all works into the main themes, but what would be the point. I’ve stated my position and everything leads to it. All those potential posts would sound the same anyway.

And with that I think I’ve said all I can about the game. After about half a dozen posts plus their associated add on posts I think I am finally out of words about this game. Looks like I’ll have to find another game to talk to death.

In my campaign to single handedly push Driver: San Francisco into the critical consciousness I have written yet another piece for PopMatters on the game. That makes 3 total so far. I amaze myself that I’m still able to write about the game from fresh angles after all this time. I knew I was going to write about Driver and how it relates to Drive before I had even the seen the movie. I felt like there could have been a connection, but then I saw it and it’s a phenomenal movie and has absolutely no connection to what Driver is about despite the similar titles.

But a gantlet thrown must be accepted, especially when you threw it for yourself. So I thought about it and noticed a lot of the criticism about Drive centered on the character and how he is defined by his profession. Wait, video game characters are defined by their profession. In fact it’s really the only way to read them. So there was my angle, but beyond that I had no idea what I could write. I should do that more often. This isn’t an essay so much as a think piece. I have a starting point and I go from point to point seeing where the logic leads me. I don’t know where I’m going to end up or what the writing is going to say until I get there. It’s a fun way to write. Of course it’s also a dangerous way to write if you’re on a deadline and your output ends up being crap.

In looking back on it, I kind of wish I could spend more time with the concept and really dig deep on the details of the movie and examine how the verb defines him. I’ve already spent quite a bit of time on Tanner. If you haven’t seen the movie and played the game (or read my previous criticism) you’ll end up taking a lot of my points and comparisons on faith. It may not be the best way to write, but I also didn’t want to start repeating myself on the basic points to get to the brand new ones.

Of course maybe me wanted to go back and write the longer version is just I want an excuse to think about Drive a bit more and write about despite the fact I work for the multimedia section of the site. That is also a possibility. Seriously though, it’s a shame the Oscars overlooked it, it might just be the best movie of 2011 hands down.

Due to one thing and another I didn’t get all the suggestions from the week dumped on me until Saturday evening. So I had to plow through them as quickly as possible while taking in what I was reading. No skimming in other words. It didn’t help that my upper torso and back were in massive amounts of pain due to the concert I went to the previous evening. The pain began affecting my eyesight by blurring my vision. So yeah, it probably wasn’t good that I was in charge of the weekly curation. That, in a nutshell, is why it was late. Then I began thinking on was this even a good TWIVGB. I used to be really good at doing this. It’s one of the reasons Ben asked me to take over for two weeks in the first place. I used to be able to tell a good piece worth putting in the round up and what wasn’t. Over the years the community has stepped up its game so much that we are plateauing on a level of quality that once used to be the exception. Many of the pieces linked to at the beginning of the endeavor probably would be given the time of day now.

Then we enter the question of what is worth curating and why. Are we making a snapshot of the week? Are we basing the choices on the relevance, the quality of the prose, the reaction and discussion it might have spawned, the quality of the ideas? Or is it somewhere in between all of those. This probably should have been something I dealt with before doing the 2011 TYIVGB, but frankly that was a project I just wanted over by the end of it. No matter how you slice it I much prefer 2010 edition as a work unto itself than 2011s. Maybe it was expectation, maybe it was a rise in quality that blurs everything together. If everything is good, than nothing is really.

This is too big a concept to deal with in a single post, but mainly I want to focus on what struck me with regards to the issue of relevancy and reaction. Last week the debate that sprawled across the critical sphere on twitter and on the blogs was that of used games sales and what the publishers are doing the combat them. There were pleanty of posts, but I only linked one. The Rock, Paper Shotgun piece on whether we own our Steam games or not. This was a huge topic for the week, but none of the writing on it was that exceptional or noteworthy. It isn’t an easy topic to write about ( I know I tried and failed) and given the current climate some really bizarre and frighteningly mainstream thinking needs to be curtailed, but does that mean we curate it? Is historical importance enough in its own right for us to link it?

We, the editors of Critical Distance, were debating what exactly TWIVGB and Critical Distance are for, or rather what their direction is. The podcast got pulled into it as well. The short of it was, none of us knew or were quite on the same page. Critical Distance had some vague ideals of archiving and pointing out good critical pieces because the community was scattered and disparate, not even knowing the other end of the sphere existed. All of this was way back in ’08. Now 4 years later we haven’t defined it much beyond that. Each element being trial and error. The podcast itself was because Randy Ma and I wanted to be on a podcast. I revived it for that same reason. Now 5 episodes into my tenure I have to face what exactly do I want and can I do with it.

I get the feeling had Kris persevered through this weekend and done TWIVGB it would have been a very different list than mine. I’m thinking if Katie had not been busy it would have been different as well. While I’m not unhappy with it I find myself dissatisfied because I’m not sure. Hell here’s a piece by Kirk Battle that I really liked and even suggested when Kris was still going to do it. I cut it because I didn’t know if it was enough about games even tangentially to fairly include it. Then of course I couldn’t even do anything interesting with the TWIVGB itself because it was late and I was in pain. Kris liked its matter of factness, but I think I should have tried and gone with a football motif or something. We can’t do this every week no matter how easy it would be.

I know someone will think I’m putting way to much thought into this and worrying over nothing, but if I and the others didn’t TWIVGB wouldn’t be worth looking at. I was once asked who we thought we were to curate and declare something the best. We are the people who do it and worry about doing it well.

PS. Seriously I need podcast ideas. I only have one recording left before I have to make new ones. I thought about a behind the scenes sort of interviews with the different editors about how they do TWIVGB. None of us are the same and knowing the people behind them may help people understand the round-ups and what to expect when a certain person does it. Please, I need help.

Well, PopMatters put up their list of top 20 games of 2011. I was a proud participant in their first ever end of year list for games. Back in December G. Christopher Williams put out an email that we were doing this and despite it only coming out recently all the decisions and blurb writing was completed obstinately before the new year. It was done by having all of us listing our favorite games of the year in order and our editor did some voodoo math to come out with this list. First thing I said out loud upon seeing it: “This list makes no f-ing sense.” Yep, self censor and everything.

For reference here’s the list:

20. Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars
19. Dead Island
18. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
17. Battlefield 3
16. Mortal Kombat
15. Shadows of the Damned
14. Gears of War 3
13. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
12. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
11. Batman: Arkham City
10. Fate of the World
09. Assassin’s Creed Revelations
08. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
07. Dragon Age 2
06. Inside a Star-filled Sky
05. Dead Space 2
04. L.A. Noire
03. Catherine
02. Portal 2
01. Bastion

Again, I say, this list makes no f-ing sense. It doesn’t look like any other lists out there, but that’s not what bugs me. Nor is it that a number of these games wouldn’t be anywhere near my top games of 2011 list. Or the order of certain games. I can totally understand Dragon Age 2 over Skyrim, especially knowing who works at the Moving Pixels blog. I can also get past the fact that Driver: San Francisco was completely overlooked. After all I hadn’t gone on my promoting spree across 4 different sites yet. No, I don’t really have an issue with the list, it’s just really really weird. Logic doesn’t seem to enter into the equation and I end up thinking more about how on earth this came together rather than feeling any unique voice to the site and the culture it embodies.

That’s not entirely true of course. Like I mentioned before the Dragon Age 2 above Skyrim speaks volumes on our priorities. That both blurbs were written by Mattie Brice just adds to it. Catherine coming in third also says something, what I’m not sure. Portal 2 and Bastion are both rather conventional picks for top honors, because they totally deserve them, so it’s what comes after that speaks to our collective tastes. Honestly, a big shocker to me was Fate of the World coming in at #10. It deserves to be there, but I don’t know anyone other than Jorge Albor and myself who have actually played it. Either a small group put it extra high or a lot of people just haven’t mentioned it.

I think what throws this off, is not the unconventional picks for top honor, nor certain absentees that have been noted in the comments. They explained why they weren’t there in the podcast about this list (no one on staff had played them yet.) It’s the rhetorical order of them. Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars coming in at #20 makes sense in looking it over, doubly so for the average reader. It’s an indie game they’ve never heard of at the very bottom of the list. No one is going to complain. It’s conventional to squeeze something in at the bottom. Dead Island speaks to what we as a staff thought of it, not that great, but solid enough. Then you smack the reader with Skyward Sword at #18. Ok, even fanboys have to admit there has been backlash against the game recently. Any fanboy complaints will take that into account in their screeds. But the reader is reeling at the surprise of seeing it so low on the list. Then Battlefield 3 comes in, followed by Mortal Kombat and Shadows of the Damned. Were these three games on anyone’s talking list for GotY. Then we go back to conventions, strong AAA end of year releases not quite as good as their predecessors. The logic behind them where they are makes sense. It’s understandable. Then a minor quibble with Batman. You can see how maybe this group didn’t think it was the bees knees like other sites did. But it’s ahead of other action games, it’s still in relation to other games that are comparable and it makes sense. Then you throw Fate of the World in their face, a game I can guarantee they’ve never heard of. It’s in the top 10 what the hell. Above all these other critically acclaimed games that I have heard of. This threw me through a loop because I didn’t know any of my fellow writers even knew of it. The Critical-Distance editors sure didn’t. The Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, generally considered the worst in the series. It could be accepted an understood in relation to other titles if they weren’t still reeling from Fate of the World. Oh Skyrim, thank you Skyrim familiar territory…Dragon Age 2 what the hell!!! Again an argument I think could have been made and understood if not agreed with were it not for the reeling still going on.

Inside the Star-filled Sky…ok I think you’ve broken our dear reader. He wont make much fuss, but it’s getting a little awkward with him just sitting there. What makes it doubly weird, it’s only the third indie game on the list. Were it more populated with smaller, flash, downloadables etc one could understand the mindset of the people behind it. They like indies over the AAA cheeseburgers. The reader puts himself in a different mindset expecting something else. They expect artsy fartsy stuff they’ve never heard of, but now might try. Instead they’re in a AAA mindset with levels of story being their driving factor as evidenced by Dragon Age 2 over Skyrim, but wait Mortal Kombat is in there and Battlefield three. Ok he’s drooling now. Dead Space 2.

Once said reader has stopped hopping up and down to a chorus of “that came out last year?” It’s another head-scratcher as it was forgotten and to be this high doesn’t meld with the lists narrative from previous Action titles that came before. Then L.A. Noire, which works on a list where story is king, but such a list this is not. Catherine, while it says a lot coming from the top on down, is dumbfounding coming in the other direction. It’s not just that the list doesn’t conform to other people’s opinion, it’s that it doesn’t seem to conform to an internal logic of priorities of the people making said list. (I stop here because Portal 2 and Bastion make all kinds of sense, though it’s a little late for the reader’s faculties.) Artistic statements mixed with story priority games, next to message games, next to riproaring B movie action games, world building and character building all in the top 10.

Said reader was me when I first read this list. Some choices were baffling all on their own, but it’s the lack of any internal logic to what the staff prioritized as personal preferences in picking particularly pleasant play proceedings to present to the petulant people. Hence what I meant when I said it made no f-ing sense. Of course the blurbs don’t really help in this regard as they only explain what we liked about the game and not in how it relates to the rest of the list. I don’t think we could have done that anyway, because this isn’t anyone’s list really. Maybe that makes for a better site to see such diversity.

Of course, what I’m really saying is I would love to see the math that lead to this. There has got to be an interesting story or two in there. I meant to ask back in December, but then the Critical-Distance projects took over so that idea got pushed aside. Take a gander at what we had to say about each game. I had the privilege of making my case for Fate of the World and Portal 2. Oh yeah, and Mike Schiller wrote one hell of an intro to the whole thing.

This was a piece that spawned from the end of last year’s debate on Limbo. I figured I might try to be more positive and provide an example that actual does the atmospheric storytelling well instead of ragging on Limbo all the time. I really did want to like that game. If only it wasn’t avant-garde just to catch attention and could follow through.  After a little time thinking of a few titles, I figured Flower was the best one to make my point. That and I’ve been wanting to write about it like a proper critic ever since I played it almost three years ago now.

In a way I can see that as my growth as a critic. I may be a little off, but at least I think I’m ready to tackle it. Of course it still took more than two weeks to actually get it from first draft to published. I was ready to publish it when I realized I should expand upon the individual levels and the base thematic meaning they are trying to convey. I only did the first two originally as examples. Of course I couldn’t quite remember details of the later levels as well so I had to go back to the text. Still a great game.

Of course most of it worked and I inserted the thematic details in, but oh wow does that last level tear my argument apart. My main argument that Flower is a good example of a game whose story is told via atmosphere and ambiance still holds strong, but major parts of my reading start to crumble in the face of the sixth flower. In fact I started to go on too long about it and had to cut it for the original piece. But now, after the image I will get to it, because the last two levels deserves a close reading all on its own.

In looking over the last level I was astonished to find how much surrealistic imagery manifests throughout the dream city. While all the other levels had a magical quality to them and each had their own rules they played by, the small white flower seems to go the extra mile.

It begins by not looking out at the city and we are thrust into the level directly. A petal floats to a space surrounded by the menacing rusted electrical towers. The petal grows a flower and upon the player pressing a button, the flower purifies the constructions out of existence. The field is brought back to life and the sky lightens. Following the level we destroy barriers of web shaped iron bars and purify more bent constructions returning life and color to the city. It’s not just nature either. Once within the city walls in the first field upon clearing certain areas it is a three story building and some streetlights that grow out of the ground instead. They don’t rise out either, but twist out like an enormous vine. Later we travel along a highway road flinging roadblocks and collecting flower petals and the road has color return to it as the same speed was travel on it. The player restores an industrial fan and uses to fly high from building top to building top, collecting flower petals and returning color to the skyscrapers.

Each of these purifications have the constructions burst apart, slow in mid air and turn pure white before vanishing. There is no violence to the moment. It happens when the petal train merely touches one of the constructions or brushes past and it is accompanies by the sound of a call of a heavenly choir singing a single note. We are removing an abberation, but not because it is man made. Some of these things are hindering the growth and life of the city itself. They dull the city, constrain the buildings and create a dark atmosphere. The constructions themselves look like parasites in the environment. They attach themselves to buildings and grow from the nooks and crannies to strangle the life out of them. In the entering the final corridor of buildings, additional ones grow from the slates in the buildings to try and halt your way. Once they are all purified, color and light return to the areas they once occupied.

The flower petal comes and clears it away. It purifies it and brings life to both nature and the world of man. In the final part of the level a ominous tower seemingly built from the these things looms overhead and on your approach spires grow in batches to try and halt your progress. You blast your way through them and begin you assent through in the inner workings of the tower. Three times the flower petal blasts its way through a spiderweb barrier. More and more spires try to block your way and you sail through their efforts, purifying them out of existence until you soar out of the top. The camera pulls out and you see a single point of light hanging in the sky; the trails of flower petals heading up and up towards it. Then the camera zooms in and we see that point of light is a window with a empty flower pot hovering over the sill and the chair from the menu at and askew angle. The window is hanging in the night sky showing a bright sunny day in the city it looks out on to. The flower petals, like they did in all the previous levels, streaming into a single point, in this case the flower pot, and grow a single flower as if all the collected life energy from all the other flowers collected into a single point gives life to a new flower.

It doesn’t end there as the tower is bathed in light. All the spires and constructions turn white and the screen whites out. In the tower’s place we see a large sakura tree in full bloom, an eastern symbol of spring and new life and beginnings. The tree is so massive that it towers over the rest of the city, taller than any of the skyscrapers. It does’t blooms so much as collect the massive amounts of petal that float towards it and collects them on its branches. It is a cloud of pink to hang over the city.

Here we see the full thematic argument of the entire game made plain. All the other dreams were mere pieces building up to the whole. Wish fulfillment of the flowers whose lives are missing something. In the youngest flower we see an idealism and hope for co-existence between the two worlds. It manifests the conflict between them as the iron constructs and the spires that stand in the way of growth and life for both nature and the city. In a way there is a Jesus motif for the light pink flower. Through it all things may be redeemed and it is the bringer of light. Peace reigns once he reaches towards the heavens and bathes the world in light, ending on an eastern symbol of peace and tranquility. In fact we get both an Eastern and Western mythology of peace and spirituality in the final level. The harmony between nature and man and then focus of the light through all things are brought to peace.

Both the level’s beginning and ending sort of throw my initial reading of the game out the window in my Nightmare Mode post. It is the climax of the game, but it isn’t independent of the other levels. It picks up right were the previous dreams leaves off and ends in a far more grandiose and surreal fashion that any of the previous levels. It isn’t about the internal peace of the individual, but about the peace that can be achieved for all through societal harmony. It also emphasizes the dream of the flower being beyond what it can personally attain by wanting it to bring this dream into the real world. It dreams of its place on the windowsill and from there seeing the sakura tree, based in the dream world stretching high to the window in the sky.

The final level of the game is another anomaly, but for a very different reason. It isn’t the dream of a flower, but a world within a painting of a flower. Here we have a playable denouement. Each flower releases a name of the credits hovering over the flower before the letters float up into the sky. We traverse new terrain that uses elements of the previous levels: the moving canyon walls, the lighting up of haystacks, the industrial power cable tower, the windmills etc. They are mixed and matched into a world where nature and man made constructions are existing in harmony. But more than that, the level is an artistic signature in the painting. Instead of having the credits roll at the end like movie, it integrates them into the form of the medium. It makes them apart of the game. To see the credits you must pursue the flowers and have them bloom. Then at the end, the flower train flies into the night sky as the names are collected in more traditional scrolling fashion and fly into the night sky. We have sent them to the heavens above and so concludes the game.

I don’t know what this ending level means, but I feel it appropriate with the rest of the game. Few games integrate their credits into the game dynamics and make them playable. Instead most use them as a reward for completing the game. This method is much more satisfying. I’m glad they did it in a way that feels thematically relevant. I don’t know how, but at least it is aesthetically consistent with the tone and design of the rest of the work.