Dana Massey writes an excellent article on The Escapist about the recurring topic of emotion in games. I had some comments about it:

In truth it’s a simple problem and Dana touches on it with great insight: most games rely on being a series of challenges that HAVE to be overcome. The attention of the player is forced into success or failure, where failure interrupts the narrative and emotional experience. In a way, it’s like having to pass a test after each chapter in a book. Would you be so immersed in the issues of the characters and situations if you always had that concern in the back of your head? "I’m sorry, you can’t experience Act II in Hamlet because you haven’t truly grasped all the implications of what happened in Act I." Your enjoyment and emotions would turn into an academic study of the play, which is why so many "forced readings" in teenage literary studies fail to transmit the beauty of the art (sometimes it works, and it’s an important part of general education, but I’m sure you’ll recognize the feeling).

Total Annihilation won’t be remembered as a pinnacle of emotion in games, but it’s interesting that Chris Taylor decided to experiment in that area: if you fail a mission, you can still move on to the next one. You don’t need to feel stuck, you don’t need to be anxious and concerned about your success, you can let go of your worries and just play the game as comfortably as you can. The missions themselves played in the standard manner, but I found it a really interesting and engaging concept.

Another experiment, this time self-imposed, was playing Unreal 2 in god mode. At some I had become so annoyed by the long load times, that I just went ahead and used the cheat. Woah! I still tried to outplay the enemies and puzzles, but the attitude change was astounding… I was experiencing the game rather than fighting against it. The game had no subtle emotions to transmit, but I’m damn sure I would have been much better prepared to experience them in this fashion.

Those two examples come from the leftfield because neither was aimed at improving the emotional or "higher art" elements in those games. As dynamics, they are also quite pure. Taclking the whole problem of what to do when you remove the requirement for success in the challenges is, as you say, a very compelx topic and one that easily brings production nightmares. That’s why I like to isolate aspects like those I described.

The classic emotions elicited by games are: fear, anxiety, frustration, surprise, attention, desire, and the usual range of sensory or thought overload. You are too busy for anything else to take place inside your head.

Games like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus have all of those, but they cue in other ideas like empathy, awe, mistery, concern and devotion. They do so probably more through what they don’t do: they don’t keep you necessarily busy and overloaded with activity; They don’t explain every little bit; they surround you by an environment and a pacing that oftentimes lets (encourages!) your mind roam free to ask "Where did all this come from? What happened here? Who was here before me? Why does this have to happen?" While you play, a part of your is left alone to think, wonder and create a unique internal experience which you can relate to, because you created it.

Another interesting read on emtion in Shadow Of The Colossus can be found here.

Guess I never got down to post my notes… actually, I haven’t written most of them yet! Ah well, it’s not like I promised anyone. 🙂 Keep checking the Archives page because they have added many new slides.

Halo 2 is a fantastic game. I only played it halfway through when it first came out, so I took the opportunity to replay it to the end. The story ended up confusing me with the twists and jumps, but the very fact that I was paying attention says a lot about how well presented it was.

Currently reading The Game Design Reader and Patterns in Game Design, both quite interesting.

– Tomb Raider: Legend demo: Surprisingly good! I’ll play the full game after Easter, although I doubt I’ll finish it. I enjoyed the first Tomb Raider a lot but eventually grew bored with the puzzles, and never really played the rest. After the series went downhill, this one goes back to the roots. It seems to have more combat and physics-based puzzles, and might very well prove to be the best Tomb Raider. Plus it looks gorgeous.

– Burnout: This is the racing game that has nearly destroyed my appreciation for "real" racing games. It looks brilliant, is instantly fun and playable, moves fast as a bullet, and just feels great. The menu interfaces have a lot of punch, but I somehow feel more comfortable with the ones in the PSP edition. It is incredibly rewarding, although some people may find it too shallow.

– Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter: The heavyweight release on the 360. Visuals are quite detailed and have a lot of personality, although the city just doesn’t feel like Mexico; everything seems smaller than in the real world, and it’s all too static, lacking the presence of civilians in such a heavily populated city. Small debris, dust, leaves or paper trash thrown around by the wind, or even just rats and other critters, would go a long way towards making it less of a scenery and more of a real city where people used to live. Gameplay is solid and has a good amount of options for tactics, but it’s a bit too slow paced and repetitive. I soon found myself reverting to trial & error to locate enemies and solve situations, because staying under cover all the time while you detect every enemy on patrol (or just plain hidden and waiting to jump on you) became boring after the first mission.

– Oblivion: While I can appreciate the amount and quality of the work that went into creating this huge game, I just can’t get interested in playing it. Another example where I just prefer more action-oriented gameplay, I suppose. I find the outdoors scenery visuals fantastic, but the rest of the graphics (character close-ups in particular) look quite fake in their not-real-but-not-cartoon style. Everyone is going nuts over this game, so if you are interested in it, then chances are it will fulfill all your expectations.

Games on the 360 are apparently making all predictions good. After the ok-ish first wave, there’s a solid and polished offering of sports, shooters and racing games. Each one is clearly more detailed and better looking than their current-gen equivalents.

The Live Arcade selection keeps growing steadily with nice little games for the more casual or oldschool player. However, I think the rigid Dashboard interface is soon going to become insufficient to handle all the content in a comfortable way.

All in all, the 360 right now is a great console for any gamer that is not strictly expecting something new and different.

Noticed today in Gamasutra that there’s a Postmortem for Galactic Civilizations 2. The article is very interesting and the team should be proud of their accomplishments. They mention how the first game sold quite well but they failed to receive a good chunk of their royalties due to publisher Strategy First going bankrupt.

Then, in the news section of the same site, I see that Strategy First just acquired small studio Malfador Machinations. I’m sure there’s an explanation for things like this, but damned if I know it.

In another funny coincidence, nipples are (not) showing up everywhere!

All I can say is: yay!

Who wants to pay more in order to own a movie they probably already own on DVD, with lesser quality, in a format that can only be played on a specific piece of equipment, and which can’t even be connected to a TV. At GDC I asked the Sony reps if they planned on releasing the devices they used at the booth to display PSP games on TVs, and they said those were test kits and that such a device was not in the works.

I’m still hopeful that all this DRM craze will die someday, and companies will go back to giving value to the consumers instead of removing it. When we buy something, we want to OWN it and we want to use it in any way that’s technically possible!

Edit: I still find it hard to believe that Sony is removing region codes for PS3 games. There’s gotta be a catch somewhere.

Nintendo is counting on their new controller and low prices for both hardware and software, as the key factors for their next offering, the Revolution console.

As a goal it is laudable, but the part I don’t get is… doesn’t this consumer already have exactly that in the form of a PS2 or XBox? Both have a pretty extensive collection of fantastic games at budget prices. That’s the kind of user that Sony counts on to keep the PS2 alive the next 5 or so years. Microsoft targets them with the Live Arcade.

Gamers who have already enjoyed the top games in the current generation and have suddenly become "price conscious" should be a MUCH smaller demographic – yet they are the only ones that need a low-priced new console.

Creating new forms of playing games… ahem sure, the freeform Revolution controller sounds cool, but I look back at the PS2 and see Eye Toy, Guitar Hero and the lot of dance matresses available. If I wanted to play games with a stylus I could have bought a Palm years ago. Hobbysts and very small indie PC developers are putting out lots of crap, along with many great and original games.

Nintendo’s ideas of low cost, innovation and new forms of gaming really strike a chord with me, and I left Iwata’s GDC keynote desperately rooting for Nintendo, but… I’m sorry, the strategy still doesn’t add up in my head.

I believe they will be finnancially successful, and Nintendo’s games will do well. But as long as the business model remains closed and under tight control, I don’t see the Revolution becoming a really attractive option for most 3rd party developers, much less a market leader again.

The Revolution will be good for Nintendo. That’s about it.

Blizzard has one of the best track records in gaming history, with every game release becoming a massive hit. But they have had their share of failures as well: Warcraft Adventures was canned after a year or two, and Warcraft 3 was redesigned from the ground up two years after development started. Now, you may have heard that Blizzard has haltedthe development of Starcraft: Ghost.

So is Starcraft: Ghost going the way of Adventures, or will they pull off a redesign? A fairly descriptive job offer from Blizzard may offer a hint or two: they say "consoles", and they say "action, tactical or first-person shooter genres".

Whichever way it goes, my hat is off to a company that is willing to accept their mistakes and go the extra mile to ensure that nothing but the best comes out of their studios. Other companies are not given the luxury of a second try.

Somewhat related to the topic of revitalized games, any Total Annihilation lover should know about Spring.

Ah, GDC trip prevented me from uploading the slides from my lecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña on March 16th 2006. Here you go! Edit: Updated with the latest version of the slides.

They are in Spanish, and if you have read other slides from previous lectures, most of the material will ring a bell. Call me lazy, but there’s a reason for that: lectures aimed at general audiences (any student at the University) can’t dive too much on the details of technical issues or they will necessarily alienate parts of the audience who don’t have the necessary background. Therefore, I basically try to give a good overview of what’s involved in the business of professional videogame development: history, process, team composition and a few bits of philosophy. The real meat is in the Q&A session, anyway. 🙂

The Gamelab at the Universidad de Oviedo has kindly invited me to give another lecture on July 13th, and with the expectation of a fairly technical audience, it will contain new and more in-depth material.

Cool as ever, with lots of interesting insights and a few disappointments. My one-liner summary: "How we stopped worrying and loved to Prototype". I’ll post some notes and impressions on various lectures later this week. You can hop over to the GDC Archives or Gamasutra for slides and writeups on several conferences.

Edit: Alberto Garcia-Baquero passed me this link to the Microsoft GDC presentations

Mandatory Will Wright article link

Ok, so maybe not a full-fledged Making of feature, but a very interesting interview with the creators of two of the most beautiful and unique games of the past 5 years: ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Focus is mostly on visual technology, but there’s a little bit for everyone. Both the game and the article are a must for anyone interested in game development.