Anyway that means I’m getting back to reading my backlog, playing my backlog and back to writing. If I have my way I’ll be start posting again next week.

Side note: if anyone has any PAX prime three day passes they aren’t going to be using, please get in contact. I’ll be interested.

Going into E3 I wanted to see only a few things: Beyond Good and Evil 2, The Last Guardian, Dragon Age 2, Mirror’s Edge 2 and anything that hadn’t already been announced. That last one is a little innocuous, because with the exception of The Last Guardian, none of the others on my list have been announced. Well I was heavily disappointed. (You have till TGS to make it up to me.)

Other than great unity that I felt with the twitterverse during the Press Conferences I got two things. One was the announcement of the next project from the studio ThatGameCompany. Journey is visually minimalistic like their other games and because of that strikes my imagination. WE don’t know what it’s about or have even seen any video of it being played. And yet I’m more excited about it than any of the over a dozen shooters put on display.

The other thing this E3 did for me was convince me it might be time to get a Wii in the near future. The number of games I actually want to play on it has reached my threshold to make it worth it. It helps that it can play Gamecube games like Wind Waker and Eternal Darkness. With Epic Mickey, Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007 remake on the horizon and games (now much cheaper) like No More Heroes, Lost Winds, Zach and Wiki, Lost Winds, and Little King’s Story. I think I may have reached critical mass of quality games I want to play on the system. Good thing I waited until a time when the Wii now does what it was always supposed to.

I think a major blocking point of the system is how much it relies on nostalgia to market their games or at least get gamers to care about them. I have never played a Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, or really a Mario game for any decent length of time. So I have never cared about these franchises based on their name value and that is the only way they have ever been sold to me. I recognize them as great, but I can’t get excited about them. In fact I’ve had to wait for there to be enough non Nintendo franchise games on the system for me to start caring.

Actually going back to the Nintendo Conference nearly all their announced games relied on nostalgia to sell them to us. Plenty of people got excited about them, amazing so. I couldn’t understand it, until they revealed Goldeneye; I was tearing up. That’s great for those have been on the bandwagon the whole time, but what about us that might be interested, but have been with the non-Nintendo systems through their lives.

I didn’t mean to go on. So that’s it. E3, the biggest week in gaming, gave me Journey, a downloadable title for 2011 and seriously considering getting a Wii buying most of the games used.

Note: I am not excited about inFamous 2, more curious and not because of E3, but because of my posts.

After PAX East sparked my interest in DnD and my players wanted to get back to it, I decided to give it a try. I liked the 4th edition simplification and streamlining of the rules. So I got the core books and read through them in anticipation of trying a new campaign. What I want to talk about came about at the end of our character creation session.  Using the suggestions in the Player’s Handbook #2 the players use the possible background bullet points to create their character’s pasts. With very limited input from me, my players came up with the following.

Krieg Fargrim, a Dragonborn Warlord, was a farmer on the edge of a desert before entering the military. His company was sent on a campaign into the bordering desert to fight a war and then they got a certain mission. They found an underground complex that had connection with long fallen Dragonborn civilization. His unit was wiped out during this mission. When he was rescued and brought back, he quit and made his way to the city. The player got this from the background elements geography-desert, status-poor, occupation-farmer, occupation-military, and racial Dragonborn-Brush with past.

Ashley Pliskin, a Half-Elf Rouge, was born to a human mother in the mountains to the north to a community of bigoted humans that ostracized him and his mother for their connection with an Elf and was cursed by his grandmother at birth. Later he escaped the mob, becoming distrustful of others and made his way to the city where he ended up joining a gang for a short time. They weren’t happy when he left. This player worked off the tags geography-mountains, status-poor, occupation-criminal, birth-cursed and racial Half-Elf-outcast.

Midnight, an Elf Barbarian (and the only female of the group), came from a noble elven family. At her birth a prophecy dictated that she would be forced to suffer humiliation and degradation before eventually achieving greatness. Her parents sent her to the city, thinking it the best place to impose suffering on their daughter. The only work she could find there was as a stripper (I am not making this up.) working in a shady section of town. She randomly chose geography-forest, status-noble, birth-prophecy, occupation-entertainer and racial Elf-urban Elf.

Finally, Rain Vavack, a Human Shaman, (for this background I kept a running list of sources as he was telling us his background, see footnote) was a farm boy in the desert before sand pirates attacked it. He didn’t beg for his life and instead of killing him put him to work turning a large wheel. While on the sand ship he learned how to fight. Eventually he escaped slavery and found an old man in the middle of nowhere. The old man explained the mark on Rain’s forehead and the old man revealed his own mark telling him all with the mark where chosen to do battle and suck the power out of the mark until there was only one. (Our group then dubbed him the “main character”) He then made his way to the city being chased by his former owners. He was inspired by geography-desert, occupation-mariner, status-noble, birth-blessed and racial Human-Heir to forgotten god.

Now here is where co-operative storytelling got interesting. Rain showed up late, so the other had crafted how they met so he had to fit himself into the situation. This, with little help from, the DM, was the final product; Ashley was caught by Midnight attempted to rob the strip joint and in return for not turning him in, he would get her out of there. She had had enough. They manage to get outside, but were seen and are forced to run with the bouncers giving chase through the twisted streets before running into an alley bar and duck behind the imposing figure of Krieg, making him spill the rum down his front just as their pursuers charge in. Krieg demands to know who spilt his rum and is pointed to the pursuers by Ashley. Meanwhile, Rain sees the men charge in, think they are slavers there for him tried to slip past. Krieg whirls around and clocks Rain in the head knocking him prone…TBC…

At the point I threw out all my plans. This was such a good setup there was no way I could not run with it. It even comes with it’s own built in cliffhanger. My input to all this was giving bonuses to skills and the act of Ashley and Midnight ducking behind Kreig. The rest was all them. We had to leave it there, but the next session saw them defeating the pursuers, Rain running away like a coward and later meeting at a city square. Here is where a problem arose. The girl who made Midnight didn’t want to play so I took the character over. I interjected her into a conversation the other two were having at an inopportune moment that spoiled the role-play, while I was dealing with Rain taking a bath in the central fountain.

I am not a real experienced DM and because of the lack of players I always did the job and ended up having to run additional characters to pick up the slack. It was even more unfortunate, because this was the first time in a campaign that my players have actually tried to role-play. Through all this and reading the opening chapters of the Dungeon Master Guide #2 I see more clearly what the job of a DM is, to provide structure. It then becomes a question of how much structure to provide.

The DM in this case is the game designer. He doesn’t create the rule system, or at least not most of them, but he does choose which ones to implement. He creates the setting and imparts it to the players. He takes control of all the other characters. He is friend, enemy, designer, and referee all rolled into one. In this case I have become the real world equivalent to the hidden calculators and systems invisible to players in video games.

When I worked on previous campaigns I was always working on the mechanical nature of the world. Dungeon maps and basic interactions, while failing to either utilize or live up to the implications and purpose of a role playing game. Too often I worked from the top down, building a combat encounter around monsters that would attack, instead of the bottom up where I figure out why they are there and learn how they would attack. The latter is much more satisfying. I would stumble across a few of these moments and it would be obvious that they were superior to the other encounters of the game. The more I’m reading and thinking about it from the design aspect the more I’m think of what I actually have to do to create a fun and compelling game.

Game/Practomime/Cooperative storytelling designers do their best work when they set the stage and let the players do the action. Or to put it another way, DMs create the story and the players create the plot.

I don’t have any definitive answers, but I feel like I’ve taken another step to understanding what the hell everyone else seems to already know. I’ve stopped looking at the surface and am now looking at the structure. I just have brush up my skills towards this craft.

[Addendum] I had written this, but then Jason Rohrer released Sleep is Death. This is probably the quintessential cooperative storytelling program. I have not yet have had the chance to try it out. I can’t afford it at the moment and when I can I hope it wont be a fad that has flown by. I put this aside for a bit so I could come back to it and edit all the details and clean up the writing, as any decent writer should. In the mean time I read Michael Abbot’s post on Sleep is Death and how to be a better player within this particular experience. I couldn’t help but notice that much of the advice is similar to the Dungeon Master Guide. One of them was almost word for word.

If you have a game that’s purpose is to create a story, whether fully or just the details, then putting a person in a sandbox is a bad idea. Putting a person in a sandbox with a shovel in their hand is a better idea. Putting a person in a sandbox and then offering them the choice of different types of shovels seems to be where we are at the moment. The best idea of all, put the player in the sandbox offer them a shovel and have a swing set sitting the background.

* Star Wars, Gladiator, Dune, Conan the Barbarian, Princess Bride, Harry Potter, DBZ, Highlander, Lord of the Rings

I got there really early, so early in fact that I sat around doing nothing and that usually leads to worrying thoughts, like: am I at the right place? Do I have the wrong time? How in the hell would I recognized them? How in the hell would they recognize me, given that there is no known picture of me on the internet because I spent a good deal of effort to accomplish that?

After an hour or so and many dashed hopes two people began to walk up, and if they weren’t there for PAX I was in serious trouble.

Denis Farr is on the left and Alex Myers is on the right. Soon we were joined by another, though because he went into the Irish pub one door down of where we were meeting up, he was actually there half an hour before me and neither of us had seen the other.

Simon Ferrari is in real life exactly like on twitter and I have no idea why I had an almost diametrically opposed image of him in my head. He will argue your head off and do it enthusiastically, but concede graciously if you’re right and he is wrong. He also insulted my spelling and use of grammar…on twitter. But praised my blog as being edited. Still unsure how to take that.

One by one the others from the internet began to materialize from the either. Before they had just been icons or disembodied heads and now were real people in front of my very eyes.

Sparky “Micheal” Clarkson showed up next. It was hard to recognize him without the thoughtful pose and sepia toned skin. He walked by us a few times, so apparently it was mutual.

If Roger Travis looks a little stunned in the photo, it might be because when he was walking up Simon leaped out of his chair, ran at him and hugged him in mid-jump. Roger is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. And he sounds exactly like he does on his podcast. I apparently don’t. I blame my cheapo headset mic.

This is Thomas Cross. I recognized the name, but couldn’t remember why. This would not be the first or last time this would happen. Justin would later say that he’s the perfect calm balance to the near hyperactive in your face attitude of Simon Ferrari. There really is no better way to say it. Every time I saw him this weekend, he was with Simon and acting as counterpoint.

The group as of 6:30. The main attraction from across the pond had not arrive yet. Everyone had forgotten about airport customs.

Here is Alex Raymond sporting a head of green locks and matching top. She had quite a trip driving up from New Jersey, walking, almost getting to CBC before turning back to her car to pick up Justin Keverne and Kate from the airport. And no, she does not look that crazed in real life. However, she did bring…

…the man of the hour. Happy 28th birthday Justin. His cake hadn’t quite melted yet. I ended up spending most of the weekend with Justin. He’s a fun guy to be around…

…if this is any indication. Die tiramisu die. To be fair he only had peanuts for the last 21 hours or so.

And here is the other Brit, Kate S. Thanks to her forward thinking her hair was easy to spot all convention long. Again it was a pleasure to meet her. The best blogger without a blog.

Chatter continued, with Simon doing most of it. And while everyone else bundled up or huddled up Denis continued to proudly display his bare arms and thin tee-shirt to the Boston cold. I guess Chicago is worse?

I was shutter bugging at this point. This pic makes her look a lot less crazy.

I have to apologize to Justin for this one. I was snapping pictures and he had just finished the tiramisu practically by himself. He was swallowing the last piece when I went to take a picture, but I had just turned the camera on, so it was taking its sweet time. All the while Justin being the good subject had frozen in place. So, sorry my camera almost choked you.

It’s been a long day, but the night has just begun.

And here we all are walking off to the Darius’ party. Me being the idiot that I am didn’t sign up for it on the PAX wave when I could have. I waved goodbye once they had gotten their name tags and went in. They I began the hour trek back to the BU campus. So I ended up heading for my friend…

…’s apartment. However, he was working sound at the Shakespeare play Titus Adronicus at the time. So I got to see the second half of it for free.

Then Friday arrived.

This was the scene at registration, where we picked up our lanyards and swag bags. This was room two on the whole line. I asked what was the point of the second room and why they couldn’t just let us into the show. Answer: crowd control.

This is one of the handheld lounges. I spent a lot of time here between waiting in line. FYI, those beanbag chairs are comfy. Before I went to the first panel, Interactive Fiction and Storytelling, I wandered around the Expo Hall where they were showing off games.

This was from the EA booth, the most crowded booth at the whole show, thanks in large part to the Red Dead Redemption demo. I had no inclination to get in that line that wrapped around the whole section.

I wasn’t so excited for this game when it was announced, but after seeing in action I feel Ubisoft beginning to earn my trust back.

Okay, this was the shot of the convention as far as I’m concerned. I was following him through the crowd, but I couldn’t get him in front. But then I realized this is the way to take it. It’s damn detailed too.

Met up with Justin after a while and he pointed me to the booth next to the main hall to pick up…

…a copy of Kill Screen. Regardless of it’s a worthwhile magazine or not, I was going to get it. Justin, lucky son of a bitch, got one for free from Chris Dahlen’s private stash the night before.

Yeah, iPhones suck down power. On the other hand, they are a lot more potable than my laptop.

This is Justin doing his best not to fangasm all over another Looking Glass employee. To be fair he did ask this one to apologize for him to the one from last night. If you could give me there names I will edit this part. (Edit: The Man in the photo is Alexx Kay from Irrational Games and the man from the previous night was Rob Waters.)

Another mysterious apparition from a person on twitter to prove they are not an ARG. I was checking out the arcade cabinet museum before getting in line for the IF Storytelling panel. When I was tapped on the shoulder from behind and asked, “are you Eric?” I know there are no pictures of me online and I didn’t recognize him from college. He introduced himself and I quote, “I’m Yu Zun from twitter.” Or at least I hope that’s what he said; it was very loud in there and I had to ask him to repeat his name. But I recognized the name, shook his hand and chatted a bit. I’m still not sure how he recognized me.

Unfortunately, I had lost track of Justin, but I soon found other friends.

This would be a very common scene throughout the weekend. I met up with them and then went to get in line about half an hour before the panel started.

This was the line. I’m actually in line around the corner. This was me reaching beyond the corner to snap the shot. The people along the wall are going towards the door at the very far corner, but then it loops back and laps around the escalators before going to the Wyvren hall. Then behind us it lapped around another room. Roger and Sparky showed up about then and thanks to the confusion we let them slip in with us. (*wink wink*)

These were the panelists. It was very interesting. They spoke a lot about the concepts of how to create a story that can react to player input. It’s wasn’t so much about branching paths, dialogue trees, but simply about how to tell a story ready for input. They didn’t outright say it like this, but it seemed context was very important to the otherwise well worn mechanics. They also rattled off a lot IF games I have to check out later.

I was at the back wall, until I saw Justin waving from near the front. He had gotten in line much earlier and was pointing out an empty seat right behind him. I took it without hesitation. I bring this up, because of the picture quality of the panelists above verses the quality below. I was much further away. (Edit: I apparently got the back of Jonathan Mills head in this pic.)

This was the panel Girls and Gaming. It was done as a Q &A, which I think only hurt it. There was little structure and they ended up answering the same questions over and over. I don’t really have many notes for this one. I really just wrote down a few of the question, because the answers weren’t worth much. Though at the top I have the note: “Apologists?” It’s covered better elsewhere.

Though, about halfway through, this woman, Beth,…

…made these two…

…levitate off their chairs, squeal and clap when she mentioned she wrote for the Border House. They spent several minutes on twitter trying to figure out who Beth was.

I didn’t get her in an action pose like I should have, but this was Friday’s witch. You could hear her from the other side of the convention hall when she was “startled.” She’d be crying in a corner, then someone would take a photo and the flash would startle her and she would chase that person down. Good fun for everyone.

There were a lot of Team Fortress 2 characters at PAX. Spy was by far the most popular character. I even saw two on Saturday that were dressed as spies with Gabe and Tyco masks on and people were going with it, asking for autographs and everything.

I finally got to meet fellow GBConfab lurker, Travis Megill late Friday. He didn’t get to speak long as he headed off and we were waiting for Kate and others to get out of a screening of Get Lamp, a new documentary about Interactive Fiction.

Yes that is my laptop in the lower right corner, the very laptop I’m writing this on.

So the movie let out and a bunch of people from ludodecahedron joined us, like…

…Mathew Gallant aka. Gangles. Didn’t get to talk to him much this night, but we chatted more the next day. All is good.

So I was tweeting who I was hanging out with and was writing down everyone’s user handle, but then I got to two people I hadn’t met and didn’t recognize. So I call Justin over and ask him who they were. He tells me they’re Dan Bruno and Chris Dahlen. I excused myself, tossed my laptop aside and went up to them. I introduced myself to Dan, but as soon as I said me name, Chris Dahlen…

…leaped to his feet exclaiming, “oh you’re Eric Swain,” and enthusiastically shook my hand. It’s very flattering to be recognized like this. Though at the time all I could think was, ‘I’m not that famous.’

Also, Dan took the heckling I sent his way about Rock Band content pretty well.

This is about the time my digital camera’s battery ran out. Luckily it was the end of the day. Afterwords a couple of us went to a bar, where we met Johnathan Mills. It’s was an obnoxiously loud place, where we could barely hear  each other talk. And Alex and Kate got hit on by some drunk guy who wanted the rest of us to be in a dance competition.

After we parted ways I walked Thomas Cross and Simon Ferrari back to Brookline. It was…interesting to say the least.

Next day I bought a disposable camera from CVS, so from here on the picture quality is going to go down a little.

Day started off with me running like hell to get in line for the Ten Best Games of All Time panel. Run by…

N’Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo, but I don’t have his picture. You can read about the game they made out of it here. This was definitely the most fun panel at PAX. At the end of the game they asked a few questions about some of the entries. They asked if Pac Man should be on the list. I actually got the mic and loved how they totally blew me off. I thought Space Invaders would be a better entry.

After the panel I got to meet Mitch Krapta.

His response at my introduction was more of what I expected instead of Chris Dahlen’s excitement. He shook my hand, posed for the pic and went back to who he was talking to.

Also met Sean Beanland for a few brief moments before security made us move along, because standing flat against the wall in a wide open hall was breaking some sort of rule. We got hustled out of there fast. Oh and note, Sean isn’t that pale, the flash is that bright.

Another homemade outfit by Alex on display here. A lovely purple ensemble. And off to the side is Grant getting into costume.

Dam straight he’s Sackboy. Very surprised Kotaku didn’t pick it up in their cosplay gallery. However, when walking with him, it took a while to get anywhere. People kept stopping us wanting pictures. one of the first ones who came up to him was a child, maybe 4 years old. His mother following asking can her son please take a picture with him, “you’re the first one he isn’t scared of.” Another dude came up a little later nearly shouting, “If I’m going to have my picture taken with anybody, it’s fucking Sackboy” He even got asked to take a picture side swiping them. Great fun by all, even the guy in the 200 degree burlap oven.

Seriously, how could I not take a picture of something this awesome. The detail is amazing.

There were two Bayonettas running around the show. Or so I’m told. I only ever saw the one. I spent most of the time wondering how on earth she got here hair to stay like that.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this must be the most evil paring people could come up with. Damn good Sepheroth, again with hair. Gel like that is only supposed to exist in computers or foreign planets.

I took this picture a bit too far away, but you can still see it pretty good. Does he not look exactly like Ewan McGregor or what?

I will admit I made a sort of mistake on Saturday, which was waiting in life for over 3 hours to do a 1 hour demo of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. I haven’t had a chance to play it and see what the new rules entail. When it was finally our turn the DM asked each of us in line if we were by ourselves or with someone else. The man next to me had the best response possible, “Well we were individually here, but we’ve sort of bonded over the last three hours.”

Honestly I think the rules are so streamlines and simple. Even I could keep up without having to stall or crunch numbers. I’ll be testing it out with my players to decide if we switch over or not this weekend.

But back to PAX, the line took so long that I had missed the Choice in Video Games panel run by a bunch of developers from Obsidian. I got out about 10 minutes before it ended. So at least I knew where to find everyone else. I headed over there and saw two people I never thought I’d see again. Such is the world in geek culture that they were in line for the stage play of Dice and Men.

If you don’t recognize them I don’t blame you. They’re friends from college. This picture also has another meaning. This is the fist picture on the internet where I am the subject. Yes that is me in the red shirt and your hair would look bad too after 12 hours in a convention hall.

Apparently Greg knew I was at PAX without having ever seen me. I forgot he follows me on twitter. A word about twitter. Forget calling people, the single most effective way of finding people and meeting up was twitter. I thought my feed would ease up with so many of those I follow at PAX. No, I think the amount went up as people were excitingly microblogging about what was going and what they were doing. The night previously, Justin just sent out a tweet of where he and I were hanging out. No less than a dozen people found us throughout the evening. I had most people’s numbers in my cell phone, I used them maybe 3 times and each time was a pointless endeavor.

I got to get a better picture of me up.

After their panel let out – I didn’t miss much, apparently the panelists got drunk instead – I went out to dinner at a Mexican place close by with Justin, Alex, Grant, Gangles, Kate and others. Gangles, Justin, myself and another whose name escapes me at the moment, got to enthusiastically talking about games and critiquing them during the meal. I had dabbled in short conversations like this all weekend, but this was the first extended one I was apart of. This is why I came to PAX. To meet people and talk intelligently with them.

After dinner we went to a hotel room for a time then went our separate ways. I had some time to kill so I went back to the convention hall to wonder around. On the third floor this was the scene:

There was a rave going on to techno music produced by a gameboy plugged into a synthesizer and a laptop. Pity the picture wasn’t clearer.

Next day I got to the convention late, about noon actually. On my way to the hall to get to the Gay Gamer panel I saw these guys and paused to snap a pic.

I made it to the panel without trouble. I was near the end of the line and I still found empty seats in the second row right behind the others. The place was half empty. I could only think it was because of the schedule change from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.  That definitely hurt attendance. It was much better run than the Girls and Gamer panel. In fact they outright contradicted that panel and god bless them for it.

Once again the panel is covered better elsewhere.

After the panel we kind of hung around outside in the hall…

… when Hellen McWilliams of Harmonix and on the panel we just saw came by.

I went wandering around and ran in Alex Myers.

It was that time however, people had to go to catch their flights or start the long arduous drive home. Said my goodbyes to Justin and Kate as they made for the airport. Also said goodbye to Alex and Grant as I was going to one last panel and probably wouldn’t see them afterwords. Though before that, I sat with them for a while.

The man standing is carrying three poke walkers. This was an all too common scene at PAX. Some people would be riding the escalators with their walkers out to try and touch with anyone going the opposite way. People would approach lines just to see if anyone there had one. And as soon as someone whipped it out a crowd would amass and congregate around that person. It was a phenomenon. Releasing it right before a convention was probably the best advertising Nintendo could have done.

Just a guy nonchalantly carrying a very big sword around. Nothing else to see here.

I went to the Snake-oil and Sequalitis panel at the end of Sunday’s festivities. Sparky Clarkson, you remember him…

… was good enough to be line with me. It was a little dry, but full of discussion. At the end they gave out 5 Andrew Ryan figurines. Clapping was enthusiastic for 1-3, then died down at 4 and was dead silent when the last one was given away. I said goodbye to Sparky and went to the front.

Damn right I was going to get a picture of Ken Levine.

After I got out of there, I was effectively the last one at PAX. I wasn’t leaving until Monday, so I had no one to meet and there was little else to do. I hung out at the handheld lounge sucking down the wi-fi until they called the first ever PAX East to a close. I am out of pictures from the event, but I have one left.

This Ladies and Gentlemen is me. Now there wont be any confusion about what I look like anymore.

PAX East was a blast. Thank you to all the friends I met at this “reunion” and hope to see you again next year. I’m already making plans for it. I wish I had more time with people, especially Joe Tortuga and Johnathan Mills, both of whom I forgot to snap a picture of and only got a few words with each besides.

So reads the title of the ever changing acronym SLRC blog. Ben Aberham if not the most prolific internet critic is definitely one of the most important. Besides his own blog he was the creator of Critical Distance, an effort to bring all the best of game criticism under one URL after the game has had time to be digested. Probably the most ambitious project in the ludodidecahedron. Ben is the reason Far Cry 2 is recognized as much and taken as seriously as it is. He is the connected critic from down under. And now he ends his personal blog.

Ben moves on to his thesis project, on internet criticism. Whether it’s solely based on video games or not I don’t know. He is not removing himself from the field, just away from the formal essays and the like. His new blog can be found here: http://iam.benabraham.net/

Though man did you have to make your last post that depressing to the rest of us.

Well I have only one last thing to restate. So Long Righteous Comrade.

1- On Resident Evil 5 I said that it would be an end to the series being about horror mostly because of co-op as an effect of its focus on action. I also said that it wouldn’t be as well regarded as Resident Evil 4. I nailed this one. Other than the discussion on race that the game spawned and some discussion on co-op this game was largely forgotten a month later. A few people in making their end of year lists had to be reminded that it came out and then ignored it.

2- I called Killzone 2 another competent, run of the mill shooter and would have as much influence as one could have. Yes, got this one too. After all the hullabaloo and yelling from the fanboys defending it, it really fell off the radar. Not to take away from the game, like I said a decent shooter.

3- inFamous, I said was a strong and solid title that would be a clunker when it came to the moral choice aspect like Bioshock was. Again I think I’m going to give myself a win for this.

4- Heavy Rain. Doesn’t matter what I said about it. It got delayed twice and is coming out first quarter of next year. So much for that one.

5- Prototype. There is some disagreement on this one. Some defend it, others fall on my side of the camp. One thing is consistent throughout, regardless on your stance on the play mechanics, the story is crap. Since that’s what I focused on, because that’s what their marketing focused on, I’m giving myself this one as well.

6- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Great game, a little better than the first in every way. As for whether or not I’ll end up defending every little nit pick that gets leveled against the game, we shall have to wait and see for me to get caught up on my reading. Glad to see everyone catching up for my love of the series.

7- I Am Alive. Another failure on my part. Ubisoft has got to get its facts straight when it will be releasing a game. Didn’t come out, so my comments are moot.

8- Assassin’s Creed 2. I said it would be an improvement over the first with more varied missions. From all accounts it does just that. It does stumble in some new territory, but I didn’t say it would now did I.

9- Alan Wake. I said it wouldn’t be out this year and I’m three days away from the end, so I’m calling it a win.

10- Dragon Age: Origins. The PC version is better than the console versions and no it doesn’t live up to Baldur’s Gate in my mind. Still an excellent game like no other. Nailed this one as well.

So in summery I called 8 out of 10. It all seems so obvious now. Maybe I’ll try and make a few more difficult predictions next year. And hope delays don’t screw up my guesses next time.

For those of you following me on twitter, which I suppose is all of you given my repeat audience, you will know of my present troubles. Two weeks ago I had midterms, which took up a lot of my time. The week after that I got a horrible case of the flu that my only condolence was that it happened after midterms. The unfortunate downside being that I missed a good deal of classes and did not write the essays that were due due to the fact my brain could not function properly. Then last Sunday, almost a week after I first became ill my computer corrupted itself. I had it fully reformatted by IT specialist and it seemed to be all clean and new. Then when I went to reinstall programs, it was a no go near the end. The whole system started to go down once again. Then earlier this evening when the whole machine crapped out and could not function. It doesn’t even recognize there being an OS on it anymore. The present theory is that the hard drive itself is corrupted, as in physically there is something wrong with the disk. Tomorrow I plan to purchase a new one and get it installed, then skip over Vista entirely and try out a free copy of Windows 7 a friend has and then get all my data and files back on. Hopefully that will be done by tomorrow night. I will then have all of Sunday to get myself caught up on the two weeks of school work I’m missed.

As of right now, I’m standing in the front hall of my dorm typing this out at a computer station as they vacuum the floor behind me.

That is my reason for not working on anything here. This is unfortunate, especially since this is the busiest and most important time of the year for a video game critic. Though I console myself with Q1 of 2010 is going to be the same or even more so.

Also I want to get one last word on this Citizen Kane of Video Games. This is a cry to the mainstream as anyone in the critical community, brainysphere or not, is pissed off at this subject for more than a few reasons. But as I was walking home from a friend’s apartment my mind wandered to it and I have to write it. Skip it if you want.

Most people decry “when are we going to get our Citizen Kane?” What they really are asking, “when are we going to get a sufficient enough example to point to when people give us that snobbish look whenever we get caught talking about them?” They want to have something where they can just say the title and have the other person nod and move on, because they will just know what they are talking about, even if they have not played it themselves. Just like Citizen Kane is that title even though most people have not seen it, but it became the emblem of film as art. Watchman did this for comic books.

In reality the Citizen Kane of video games has nothing to do with cultural relevance, or artistic viability, but with gamer’s own insecure egos. Our own predisposition fears of being cast as the outsider, while at the same time, hypocritically decrying anything that interferes with our own geek hierarchy when regular people come into the scene. We are a strange bunch, but personally I separate myself from that portion of the community. I like to think of myself as a geek with the ability to step back and recognize there is a larger world and have enough humility to realize I am not the end all be all.

I say that of course, without a hint of irony, as THEGameCritique.

Finally, when I do start writing again, it wont be anything recent. I have two essays for Heroes of Might and Magic II and then I’m probably going to move on to Silent Hill and/or King Kong. Unless I can get Dragon Age running of course. Also I plan to continue my Indie Game Spotlight over at Creativefluff.com and get more literary type criticism done over here. I also plan to start a new series looking at the form of video games. Rather than specific design choices of mechanics, I mean as Scott McCloud describes the six layers of art, Form is number two. I plan to start a series of posts, also at Creativefluff.com, of using example video games to explore the form of the medium. So look forward to that and see you on the other side.

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You said during the podcast that Nintendo had revolutionized gaming. I have to respectfully disagree. They have only revolutionized it superficially. What they have done replaced button presses with Wii-mote waggles. The idea is to simplify gaming with simple controls that can make sense. And for Wii Bowling or Wii Tennis its perfect. But as soon as you take the control outside of that simple one type movement control you up the complexity of the game. There may only be one button, but if you translated each movement to a button press or analog stick movement you’d realize how equal the complexity is for anything other than the mini-game compilations. Given the nature of motion control at present and its impreciseness it makes the controller even more complex and frustrating.

It has been proven with testing that for an abstract action a button press that stays consistent within the game, i.e the same button for the same action, makes more sense than trying to emulate the action, mainly because it is easier to replicate input with a thumb press than it is to move the entire arm in the exact same manner.

I have no doubt that motion control can offer a different experience, but developers are still treating it as a standard controller and are having to make up for the loss of button with waggle. Then there are the games that do not need it, but add it in out of some necessity of being on the Wii. Twilight Princess comes to mind where you had to act out many of the actions, where the Gamecube controller used a few simple button presses to perform the same actions.

Yes the current gen controller are prohibitive, as were last gen. In fact there is a high learning curve for new gamers, but kids some how manage it. That’s another issue of cognitive age response and learning, but the NES has a D-pad and 2 buttons. Some games now can work with that. The idea is not to simplify the machine, but the in-game system. If you gave a newcomer a game on the 360 or PS3 that only utilized the d-pad and two buttons there would be no problem in getting into it.

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I should add some testimonial I hear about the new Wii Motion Plus. I cannot verify the validity of these comments, but it sounds truthful to me. That yes it does change gaming on the Wii, but does come with some problems. Namely, when the Wii first came out people were waving their whole arms, because that is how they thought and were told it would work, but then people adapted to only moving their wrists, for it was the basic movement not the degree that mattered. Now Wii Motion Plus changes all that because now you have to control it like you first thought it would work and will cause people to re-adapt.

It is a minor concern yes, but it is worth saying. It also attaches to my argument of the Wii-mote’s movements being a replacement for button presses. Now with full motion recognition it is supposed to have 1-1 replication. The thing is you can only replicate simple motions. If you design something too difficult people would not be able to replicate the action in their own house. The basic idea of escapism that most, not all, games are based upon would suffer with this idea. Sword, tennis racket, baseball bat swinging are all basic motions that we all understand in real life and replicate on the Wii. However if you want any finesse with those motions or to do more complex motions like rowing, driving, etc. you will be sorely disappointed. One problem is that it does take some practice or practical knowledge of those activities to do them correctly. Secondly, there is a certain amount of resistance required to do them properly. Without that resistance, with the new fine motion controls you are going to overshoot what you were doing, it is going to look ridiculous and immersive breaking on screen and more than likely you are going to fail. I can see scenarios where the motion breaks the experience instead of immersing you.

Example: Say you are rowing a boat the Wii-mote and Nun-chuck are the oars. But you speed up because you get into it and there being no real water resistance you suddenly see your character flapping the oars around like a chicken with its wings. A real person cannot row like that and yet you are seeing it. Immersion broken.

It wasn’t understood when it was first created, but the control is much more than an input device. It is a blank slate of iconography. Each button, each analog stick is a symbol for an action. It is different for every game, so the controller is a blank slate. The player learns and know that the icons (buttons) are, but they have no meaning on their own. There are basic principles that people understand about the buttons, because they generally hold true through all games and if not there is a reason for it. In North America anyway on the Playstation, X is ok, O is cancel, left analog stick for movement, right analog stick for camera. This works for First Person shooters as well. In Japan X and O are reversed, but they remain the same for all games in that region. The only exception I can think of is the Metal Gear Solid series that does that for specific purposes, but that is getting a bit of topic. The controller is a bunch of icons. The game than tells you what those icons and symbols mean. You then associate when you need to do something with that icon for the rest of the game. Humans are very iconographic. We associate people, concepts, countries and ourselves with icons and symbols of the greater whole.

The Wii-mote in the name of simplifying the control removes that iconographic interface. People get sucked in by meaning and association, its why we can read, because letters are nothing but icons to sounds. Movement however is not an icon. You cannot be shown a picture of it and understand what the motion means to the game world. You may know to move the Wii-mote left will aim left, but there is no mental association going on that allows your conscious mind to focus on the interactive area, but rather on the interactive motion of your avatar. It forces the mind to think about what you are doing step by step rather than as a whole experience. That is not how people function in the real world. We do not think about every step we take, we just walk. We do not take into account every letter in this sentence you are reading right now, we just read it and comprehend what it is saying.

Simplification is needed for new gamers in the current market, but the Wii and everyone copying them is the entirely wrong approach. Simplifying means cutting away complexity, not replacing it. Most of the Wii games, use the classic Wii controller, which has the same amount of buttons are a Gamecube controller. If you want it to be simple, create games that could be played with an NES controller. Everyone got that back in the day. There is only a D-pad and two buttons to worry about, but the association will stick and it the representation can be understood by the player as he immerses himself in the game.

That was the plan and it looks like and has looked like for a while that will not be happening.

Instead what happened was a minor incident that escalated. Not to get your worries up, but it isn’t that big. A certain game on Steam went on sale a few weekends ago, Heroes of Might and Magic 5. For anyone who has noticed the few tweets that I’ve actually posted over the last week or two. This got me reminiscing about another game from my childhood that so thoroughly kicked my ass I have never won a single game of it. I would waste hours only for eventual defeat. Months passed and everyday I would be no closer. And that was before I learned there was a campaign mode. That game is Heroes of Might and Magic II.

For those of you who don’t know, Heroes of Might and Magic II is a turn based strategy game with fantasy monsters and your army controlled by heroes during battle. There is an over world filled with a variety of resources that have to managed and controlled. Everything is turn based and each individual turn doesn’t take up much time, but games take up a lot of turns.

I went on a short searching spree before tracking it down. I have all the manuals and extra inserts, but for the life of me I have no idea where the disc is. Wikipedia informed me of several compilation and one of them had games 1-4 for the price of one. I thought what a great deal. Now I think wikipedia lied to me. And none of the other compilations, for a reasonable price, exist on ebay or amazon that contains II. I eventually found a place I could download it for $15. I chose the 60 minute free trial first. After 60 minutes were up I was in the middle of my turn and a few seconds later I was $15 the poorer and one game richer. One hell of an addictive game richer. I am now on the last map of the good campaign and I have the evil side to go.

There’s more to this story.

At the beginning of this weekend another game was brought to my attention. This time on the PSN. It was Battlefield 1943, also for $15. It came with a 30 minute free trial demo. 30 minutes later I was kicked out and was soon $15 poorer and one game richer once again. I played and played this online multiplayer shooter. Then I noticed there was light outside, it was 5 am and I should get some sleep.

In short response what happened I got sucked in to two very addictive games that just ask of you “5 more minutes” at every twist and turn. The Battlefield 1943 Coral Sea challange doesn’t help one bit. I got sucked into games I did not expect, nor was I planning to. Is it just me? Am I that weak willed that I cannot do what I set myself out to do?

From what I’ve heard of people who’ve played Civilization 4, I am not alone in the turn based strategy game department, nor is that the case with online shooters. As for getting sidetracked by other games, isn’t that kind of the point. For a game to catch and hold the attention of the player. A game that distracts you from other games is a good thing, because it means you are engaged with the title. I use the term addictive and its true, both games are addictive. But a story cannot be as addictive as gameplay in our ludocerntric medium. It is the gameplay, the ludic elements that force us to continue on is such a manner. The continual interaction is not broken up and every second both both of these games has layer input and consequences. Not to say there aren’t story elements in either title, but they do not intrude into the game.

Another factor for their addictive quality is the quick play nature of the titles. For Heavenly Sword or Far Cry 2 I would have get over that initial hurdle of having to sit down for a significant amount of time to play the game. That hurdle may disappear once I am actually playing, but it exists as an obstacle that often isn’t overcome. No such factor exists with Heroes of Might and Magic II or Battlefield 1943. These are quintessential examples of in and out gameplay. I could stop typing and in 15 seconds be playing my next turn in Heroes and finish in another 15 seconds, save and be back to writing. of course one turn would lead to another and another and another and before I know it this would remain unwritten and I would have missed dinner…again. Same with Battlefield 1943. It would take about the same amount of time to jump in, then I can spend however long shooting, driving, running and then drop out and that be it, except one thing would lead to another and again I would miss my next meal for fighting in the Pacific campaign.

Both titles require a time investment to get what the game is offering, but unlike other AAA titles they don’t have the hurdle of time commitment that hype and excitement have to help to get over and actually put the disc in. It’s why everyone runs out for the first day, so when they run home the inertia lets them pop in the disc and they are off to the races. Maybe the real key is remove that hurdle altogether. The games can remain how they are, but somehow remove that hurdle that makes you think about putting the disc in, instead of just putting it in. порно сайт 1

And now for the second half of this post’s title. The plan for now is, keep playing these addictive games, for I don’t think I can stop at the moment. Then post on them when the time comes. And if by some miracle of fate the mood strikes me, actually get back to all those drafts I have waiting to be finished and find their home here.

That includes some experimental stuff for here and for the design blog I work for, CreativeFluff, on the form of game design. Hope to write again very soon and not a month hiatus.

A thought came to me as I finished up Heavenly Sword as my mind turned to stories in video games. Video games need stories crafted specifically for the medium. Every medium that tells stories has their own way of crafting a story. Length is one way to look at it, but detail, pacing, depth all contribute for a successful story in any medium. The measures of each is very different for each medium and transitions of a work from one medium to another takes effort in learning what to cut, shift or otherwise edit. Video games are different, as they usually require additions instead.

We have always known this; the difference for video games is that there is a need for the interactive elements, the gameplay elements, which changes the nature of how the story flows. The technical requirements of a game require a different type of story. Many of which grind to a halt when the interactive elements of the game show up and when transitioning between the two it’s like you can hear an audible clunk. The game portions are either wedged in or the game goes so outlandishly out of its way to force extra gameplay sections to make sense.

Heavenly Sword didn’t seem to have either of these problems, or at least not for the reasons I mentioned. I wish the game had smoother transitions between the varying sections and less load times, but back to the point at hand. The story was well crafted and the underlying structure was solid. With some edits it probably could be made into a movie, but most of it was specifically made for the video game medium. Not only did the story allow for the combat, it required it. The writer left spots open or crafted sections specifically so player interaction could happen. The gameplay sections are melded into the overall story because the story allows for their existence. The story in Heavenly Sword is simple enough that it’s easier to see the working parts from a conceptual standpoint, but once the process is understood it can be applied to more complex story ideas.

I wrote a three part series on CreativeFluff.com about the division of story and gameplay and what was being done to try and merge the two part together. I did not, however, consider the following. The first step to the process is to get a writer who understands what video games are and understands the medium’s specific needs when it comes to interactivity. It isn’t about cut scenes or in game dialogue or audio journals or visual clues for the story to be conveyed better in a video game. What is needed is a story specifically suited to the video game medium. Video games require a different set of rules when it comes to pacing, tension, information, etc etc. Those terms don’t mean the same thing in video games than they mean for movies or TV, the two most often imitated formats.

It may sound obvious, but lately I’ve been thinking that designers and developers are approaching this from the gameplay side of things and trying to find better ways to convey the information of stories that don’t suit what they are making. Most of the time they end up breaking the experience. This is fine and you may get lucky in creating a balance, but if the structure of the story is crafted so all the other elements can fall into place without minimal shuffling about then all the better.

I don’t know the specifics of how to create working stories for the medium. That will take further thought.