Ah, the semester has come to an end, time to look back and reflect on how I’ve grown as a person and the things I’ve learnt… Ok, first up: I’ve learnt that my first blog post in week 1 wasn’t particularly interesting nor were my answers to the questions that profound. But to be honest I probably haven’t improved as a blogger much at all ^^

Anyway. Before I get into a short and light-hearted list of things that have stuck out for me throughout the term, I’d like to focus on one thing I really enjoyed learning about and experiencing… resonance! Out of anything I think learning about the concept of resonance changed my perceptions of games and game design the most. I guess it was always a subtle sort of thing in games that I never really fully noticed – perhaps always just taking it for granted. Now that I’ve learnt about it I can really see and appreciate all the finer little details of my favourite games that can make all the difference.

All up though, I think I’ve learnt quite a bit from this course, possibly more than most of my other subjects at uni. Some of the things I learnt (in no particular order):

• How to make games in Python (also that Asteroids is a deceptively complicated game)
• How to make games in Unity (also that platformers are deceptively complicated to make)
• All about the various different types of “fun”, and who knew there could be so many! Never have I appreciated all the experiences my beloved video games provide me with .
• The whole mechanic/dynamic/aesthetic model of games, a really useful tool for game design and thinking about games.
• That things like “game” and “art” are hard to define.
• Playtesting is important!
• Feedback loops can build drama! Oh, and drama is important too.
• Lectures can be a ridiculous amounts of fun (also that the tunnels under uni are epic)
• Indie games can be awesome (Braid and World of Goo ftw!)
• Some people still haven’t played Portal! (seriously guys…)
• Play-doh is still fun to play with, and so are post-it notes.
• Games can be serious.
• And the Trogdor comes in the niight!

Thanks for the great semester Malcolm, its been… FUN!

In Missing, it took me a little while to realise that you can’t actually achieve anything, that the whole point of the game is to wander around in an aimless, ultimately futile search for your missing son. But when I did realise… *sadface*. How did the gameplay achieve this? I guess because of the simple lack of gameplay. The tediousness and ultimately useless actions of printing out fliers, sticking them up, or having the same dead-end conversations with all the towns people were both really interesting gameplay mechanics intended to do nothing. And that’s the thing – there wasn’t really anything that I could do, and that helplessness was perhaps exactly what the designer wanted me to feel.

Home

As for Home, the slow depression just sort of creeps in as the old man’s existence becomes less and less… interesting? I’m not quite sure that’s the right word. I thought the worst had come when the final moments of gameplay (or lack thereof) came around, when the antidepressants weren’t letting me enjoy conversation, the feeding tube had taken away the fun of eating, and the sedatives refused to let me sleep. All I could do was sit there waiting for my bladder to empty itself, not even being able to go to the toilet because that’s the last thing I just did. The kicker came when the game decided to throw in a nice little taste of dementia. I’m not quite sure what the point of the game was, aside maybe to make me wish I never grow old enough to be in such a state. But if the game’s purpose was to stir emotions, it did, quite powerfully.

Emotions and Art

So its clear that, for me at least, games can definitely evoke some sort of emotion. As Roger Ebert’s article suggests, it’s all really about the personal definition you use to define what art is or is not. Now, since I agree with the definition he quotes from Wikipedia:

“Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.”

With this definition, games are, for me at least, then almost certainly forms of art. I’d go so far as to say that I respond a lot better to video games than the most modern of artworks (I felt a lot more from playing the above games and games like Braid than I do looking at the sort of super-modern-minimalist-contempary-arty-stuff-that-is-only-a-blue-dot-on-a-blank-canvas). That might make me some sort of uncultured-swine, but I prefer to believe that I simply was brought up being instructed that this is what great art is, rather than being allowed to decide for myself – instilling me with a simple distaste for most modern artwork.

However, I should point out that I almost certainly don’t think that this doesn’t make them art. Roger’s point about the semantics of definition when it comes to art is one of the few things in his article I agree with. But the key focus of his article seems to be that he doesn’t like/doesn’t agree with/find interesting/isn’t compelled by modern video games, and that this for some reason certainly doesn’t make them art.

His arguments against Braid, for example, I find almost offensive. He suggests, along with admitting that he has never even bothered to play the game, that because in Chess you can’t take back a move, then therefore any game where you can is clearly not a game. He childishly belittles the story and seems to conclude that because he doesn’t like/agree with the idea of the game nor can he see himself being influenced by it, that the game is simply not art. I probably can’t very eloquently express why I think so, but to be honest he just seems arrogant and stupid for the majority of the article.

I’m fairly sure that (just like how I don’t appreciate modern art), many great artists in the past were not heralded as geniuses in their time, as many people didn’t like/agree with/find interesting/weren’t compelled by their artwork. The narrow-mindedness of some people certainly didn’t make them any less great.

I think the makers of Facade are correct in pointing out that the fairly common system of presenting players with a small set of fairly limited text choices actually detracts from what they describe as “agency” (the idea that the actions of the player are linked with feedback). Personally I find systems such as those quite shallow and predictable attempts at creating an illusion of choice for the player. As a particularly indecisive player, they were often just annoying. While I quite enjoy the possibilities of choice and customisation in games, I’m usually fairly… controlling? I’m not particularly fond of the idea that seemingly random and intermediate conversations might affect my character or story without my knowledge. Often if the story dialogue isn’t particularly well written or interesting, and I’m faced with choice upon tedious choice of dialogue, I skip through them picking random things, hoping that it won’t ruin my game.

What’s more, usually I’ve found that if games attempt to have dialogue that affects the story or characters, especially in a major way (and not with random unrelated conversations having unforseen circumstances down the line), the corresponding choices of dialogue are often fairly basic: with some variation of yes/no/maybe or I’m good/bad/in a morally gray area. Don’t get me wrong, often the actual text can be quite colourful or an attempt at humour, but the subtext and the outcomes of the conversation are thinly veiled.

I think what I’ve just said is that I don’t like it when there are random conversations that have an unexpected outcome on the game, and I also don’t like it when there are obvious “the way you answer this question will affect the game” conversations. Hard to please aren’t I? I will say that what I do remember enjoying is… if I recall correctly, the old Monkey Island games? From what I can remember, when presented with conversations, there were heaps of options you could choose: which is understandable, because I don’t think they had any affect on the game so it wasn’t necessary to provide each one with some sort of discernible affect on the game. What this meant was that I didn’t really have to think about them, and they just provided an interesting little side of the game if I could be bothered to read them all etc. (I could always just skip through them if I wasn’t in the mood). They were also genuinely funny which helped.

What is important about that example though is I think that it was somewhat of a step in the right direction: there were many different choices, which provided more interesting dialogue than a small few (despite the fact that they would actually affect gameplay). What I think this reflects is a more realistic approach to dialogue. When faced with the often tough decision of what to say in real life, our choices are rarely as simple as choosing from 3 different witty one-liners. I think any system that tries to reduce the art of conversation to such a primitive form would struggle to be taken seriously.

Also, one other problem I see is that often the focus is entirely on “dialogue”. You choose from a few lines of text, and that’s it. Anyone knows however that actually having a conversation is something far more complex than just the transcript of what is said. Two main other areas come to mind: body language and perhaps more importantly, the way you speak. Things like the  tone of voice you use, hints of sarcasm, the way you are standing, how loudly you are speaking, how close you are to the person, where your eyes are looking when you speak to them, what you’re doing with your hands, etc etc. Essentially, conversation is complex, and I’d be skeptical of a system reducing it to choosing from a few options.

So I think the key to a better dialogue system is a more complex system of interaction and choices. However there is a delicate balance, because of course having a system too complex and tedious would just start being annoying and distracting again, assuming it wasn’t the whole point of the game. In summary, it’d be a tough thing to do properly, and that’s probably why its one of the least developed systems in games.

Morality has always been an interesting and… confusing train of thought for me. What interests me the most about morals and ethics is the idea of consequences. I fairly strongly believe that whenever morals and ethics are in question, that one must examine the motivations behind actions. Consider the option of stealing money for one’s own personal gain. In my opinion, if one chooses not to steal the money there are two very distinct possibilities, that they either:

1. Did not steal because stealing is wrong.
2. Did not steal because they were afraid of the consequences.

And the consequences could be anything: from as small as not wanting to feel guilty later, up to not wanting go to jail if they’re caught, or even as far as fearing eternal damnation after judgement. I feel quite strongly that a decision to do or not do something that has been tainted by the consequences of that action ceases to be a “moral” decision. Where things get confusing for me is when I consider that as human beings, in the physical world with lives to lead where essentially every action and decision we make has a consequence, suggests that none of our choices are really moral (except maybe for thought experiments or questions that we ask ourselves) – which just seems hard to accept. I like to think that I obey the law because I believe it is the right thing to do, not because I fear punishment – and I hope that goes for most people too. But can I be sure that I haven’t been tainted? Always in the back of my mind considering the “what ifs?”. I think I settle on the idea that it’s not so black and white: that consequences are inevitable, and as long as they aren’t the deciding factor (e.g. “I would steal if I know I wouldn’t be caught”), then decisions can be considered moral.

Morality in games adds another layer of complexity and confusion for me. I’ve considered two possibilities. My initial thought was that video games provide a sort of barrier against consequences. When faced with decisions in games, the player is often completely disconnected from the consequences, with the actions having no bearing on actual life, and with the characters and situations being simply not real. In this way I concluded that the morality in video games was perhaps more “real” than that in our lives? It made sense that what a player does without fear of consequence to his or her real life would constitute their moral code. This lack, or at least disregard of consequences is what I believe is necessary for a meaningful moral decision.

However, my thinking did not stop there. I decided my logic had a rather large flaw: that choices in games usually do have consequences. Often not in the real world sense, but usually within the game itself. These consequences however are slightly different to real world ones. Consider a situation: choosing between peace or… taking over the world, killing lots of people in the process. In the real world, the consequences would be huge, and the moral decision is a pretty simple one. In a game however, the consequences are far less serious: the “people” aren’t real, and the consequence is simply whether or not the player gets to experience whatever fun experience they might gain from the course of action. And this, at least in all the games I have played, is the general gist of “moral choices” in games: having no real consequences, just offering players different experiences of fun, and as Yahtzee suggests this is usually a fairly distinct path of either enjoying being the hero or enjoying bringing destruction on things (which can be pretty fun, and I certainly don’t think that people who enjoy simulated violence are immoral). The fact that you usually can start again and choose and enjoy the other paths also lessens the actual “moral” side of the choice.

Essentially, I think games are mostly a way to create a “fun” experience for the players – and for games to offer meaningful moral choices it would have to involve moving away from simply offering players a choice between two contrasting experiences into something much more.. serious. Having said that, I don’t think its impossible for games to do this, but I don’t think all games should have to incorporate real moral choices.

There are a number of different approaches to the game, and objectives people set/challenge themselves to when they play:

• Simple as possible. “Elegant” solutions are my favourite: only one object allowed, with no manual movement of the ball. These are usually devilishly sneaky/clever/fluke-ish, and awesome
• Creative! Complex things that just look cool/unnecessarily complicated, like Rube Goldberg machines. e.g. using elevator like machines to move the apple around.
• Others (like me on my first attempts) just try to finish the level in whatever way they can!

I think the lack of any clear “point” system during the level really encourages creativity and a variety of different approaches.

• It doesn’t count how many lines you draw, how many you delete, how many times you restart or anything. You can really take your time and draw whatever you like and experiment with anything.
  • There is so much freedom in the game, and there is nothing stopping you from using as many or as little lines as you want. You are free to create the most complex systems for the simplest of levels.
• The world map/level selector also lets you go back and play any of the levels again, to try out new things or just have fun. It doesn’t frown upon this or seem like you’re going backwards. They are just little islands you can explore and revisit if you like.
• There is also very little direction in the levels, as in, it rarely feels like the level wants you to complete it in some way.

The visual and audio aesthetics also encourage the creativity, relying heavily on the idea that the player is simply doodling away with crayons:

• Heavy resonance throughout the game. Everything is crayons! The menus, the instructions, the buttons! Even the levels draw themselves as you start them.
  • Invokes the childish sense of creativity and expression that is associated with crayons
• Just little things like being able to change the colour that you are drawing with: it has no impact on the game / the lines you draw, but adds to the feeling of just messing around with crayons.
• The music is always relaxed with hints of the “magic” that is bringing your crayons to life. In a way sometimes the lack of sound encourages the creativity: there is no sadness or repercussions if your ball rolls out of the screen. It’ll come back, don’t worry. It’s just crayons, relax, take it easy, draw whatever you like, just go for it!

To start things off I’ll admit I’m no stranger to improv games. “Theatre Sports” was a big thing at my school, we even had competitions between the houses, just like how we had competitions for swimming and athletics etc. Here at Uni, they also are very common in Revue cast rehearsals. Next, I’d like to add that I’m not particularly good at it. But I have noticed a few of the pitfalls of “creativity” (and I’m not immune to these haha).

When playing the games and faced with the opportunity to steer the scenarios, I’ve found its common for players to resort to one of a few things:

• Confrontation/violence/guns. Whether it’s subtly rejecting an attempted introduction of something into the scenario, escalating something in the scenario into a fight, or simply starting the scenario with some crazy Hollywood James Bond plot involving terrorists and guns. One of the first things we learnt was to avoid physically fighting and guns/gun fights when attempting improv. At the very least it just looks silly when you try to act it out.
• Crude humour/language, sex. Things don’t need to be crude to be funny, but often its the easiest way and most obvious answer (especially when playing physical games involving creating new scenarios out of inevitably compromising player stances). Crude language and insults are also under this category (tieing back with confrontation as well). Eventually anything but the wittiest of insults and most inappropriate of sexual gestures gets boring.

There are others, but I forget, and these are the ones that I think correspond to video games the most. I think the most common expectation of computer games can be summed up with one question: “which button is shoot/punch/jump?”. A large portion of video games involve fighting or shooting something. If an “online play” element is introduced, then chances are flinging insults at each other while shooting things comes into play as well. Obviously, there is only so much of an experience that can be gained from shooting things and insulting people – and this expectation of video games as mindless violence taints even those games that aren’t as such: with players inevitably waiting for the game to “get interesting”.

So, how can we attempt to have players take a different approach to video games? Well some of those improv games have the right idea. Of the games listed, “Yes Lets”, “Presents”, and to some extent “Word at a Time” seem to try to avoid the confrontation pitfall by simply ruling out confrontation. They all to some extent insist that the other players simply roll with whatever decision/scenario change has been made, whether it be: agreeing with the new person’s suggestion, gladly accepting the next present, or building on the story using the previous player’s word. By keeping the game always positive, there is little room for things to degrade into some lame boring fight.

“Just Gibberish” and “Word at a Time” also encourage creativity over an unproductive downward spiral to confrontation by encouraging team work. Both involve a group of people creating a story, and if the players don’t work together, or go of on their own or do/say something stupid, then the stories suffer. These principles can be applied to gaming: perfectly enjoyable games can be made without the need for confrontation as the basis for gameplay, and online games that really truly encourage and reward working together (and not just in a confrontational scenario) could be awesome.

• Role of story can be very diverse:
  • Not at all important/non-existent, e.g. Quake/Unreal Tournament: the story is usually just an excuse for shooting things.
  • Central theme, e.g. text adventures
• Possible to make a meaningful story, but probably very hard.
  • Always be people who skip the story and just play the game?
    • When there are two things in the medium: story and game, gives people this chance to skip one and focus on the other
    • Can’t do this reading a book: whats the point in skipping the story of a book?
• Freedom of play can make things very difficult:
  • People expect this freedom in games, unless it is very linear which people tend to not enjoy?
    • When things are linear the story is generally quite disjoint from actual gameplay:
      • e.g. platformers: level, story, level, story, level, story etc.
      • Things you do in the levels don’t actually affect the story, but when you finish them more of the story unfolds etc.
  • Essentially means you have to make a “choose-your-own-path” story, and make every path a good story.

Get lost with Google Maps!

A fairly simple premise: using Google Maps’ street view, players would start in a random location within inner Sydney (somewhere not too remote or random). Presumably the player would initially be somewhat lost, with the object of the game to use their skills of navigation and sense of direction to become un-lost: either finding their way home or to some landmark they decided would be their goal (such as finding the University or the Sydney Tower etc). The catch being that they can’t actually use the map: only the compass and the movement that clicking on the images in street view allows. This would have all the fun of getting lost, but without the downsides: being a lot quicker to move around and navigate and not as expensive as driving around aimlessly. While driving people are usually focused on the road and cars around them, and often miss out on observing their surroundings. Using street view instead however would let you take your time and look around for interesting things without the fear of crashing

For an added layer of complexity, and to encourage actual exploration over mindless clicking through streets (desperately trying to find something recognisable) – one could add smaller goals. If the player starts in some suburb, one of their goals could be to find certain interesting places/things in that suburb before they are allowed to explore other areas and make their way home. The street view aids in this, as it occasionally points of interest appear highlighted in the images. The nature of street view also aids in encouraging exploration, as not all streets are available: I was very close to my house (about a 2 min walk away in real life) when I discovered the most direct path to my house wasn’t available in street view! I had to take a detour and actually got lost in my own suburb trying to find my way home, as I had to take a path that I never would’ve taken otherwise.

I’ve found that the most interesting subject can be turned into dreary dullness and the seemingly most boring subject can become a pleasure to learn. To me it seems that regardless of what I am learning about, it is the teacher, environment, and fellow students that can make learning fun or enjoyable. I think what makes learning fun is quite simply the fun I have whilst I learn! And the question of how I can have fun whilst I learn is quite a broad one, but over the years a few teachers and scenarios have stood out amongst the others – I look back on them as fun moments in my life, and conveniently as they stood out in my mind I learnt well.

In high school it was humour that was the most important in providing a fun learning environment – both from the teachers and my fellow students. My two favourite teachers were my Maths and Physics teachers. What was great about them was that they were just down right amusing, they just knew how to make us laugh and provide a setting for us to laugh and make jokes as well (but of course maintaining a degree of order that meant we were still quite productive). The teachers were quite different in their approaches to humour, but the overall result was the same: classes became something to look forward to.

My Physics teacher was quite a strange man who would often tell us anecdotes from his past. In our last ever lesson he showed us a video of him bungee jumping… and by jumping I mean he sort of curled up into the foetal position and was pushed off the bridge and looked like he was screaming the whole way down. It was hilarious to put it lightly, but what I remember more than that was what he told us: that it is always good to be able to look back and laugh at one’s self. I think I’ve gotten a little sidetracked but my point is that he was always willing to make the classes more enjoyable (and sometimes at his own expense: he was aware of his strange ways and not afraid to make them visible).

Fellow students were also important in creating a fun atmosphere in which to learn. There’s not much more to say about this: without a good friend with me to laugh and talk to occasionally in class, I’ve found that classes become too boring to be able to concentrate on my own accord. While I may be laughing too hard with my friends to pay attention sometimes, I think those rare occurences vastly outweigh falling asleep/drifting away and not paying attention at all – or having classes become so boring and unproductive that I lose the incentive to attend altogether.

This was a very unique unique game that I thoroughly enjoyed. What was remarkable about the game was that at the start I had very little clue what was happening nor what I was supposed to do/achieve. The only input I had was the fact that jumping around the screen uncovered more of the “world” from blackness. Admittedly however, this was more than enough incentive to me, and I (somewhat correctly) assumed that this was exactly what I was meant to be doing. I quite enjoyed this aspect, and believe that the exploration and discovery of the worlds within the game is what made it fun for me. Surprisingly the very simple graphics worked with the ambient music to still create an interesting and immersive environment to explore, so kudos to them for that.

At first I continued playing the game to explore the worlds and discover their little secrets – I was obsessed with uncovering as much of the blackness as I could (to the eventual irritation of those watching me play). Soon however this was compounded by also wanting to discover the nature behind the game, and what the actual purpose of uncovering the worlds was. This was sparked by the discovery of the glowing gems and warps to other worlds. So while I was eager to know what collecting all the gems would achieve – and knew that touching them was the ultimate goal of each world, I was still obsessively exploring every little square of the worlds – going so far as to ignoring the gems if I found them and had yet to explored all of the world.

I was quite impressed at how they had manage to create such an interesting yet “simple” world that had me so compelled to explore. As I said before, despite the simple graphics the artwork was still very nice and was complemented by the music. Amusingly, the very fact that these were “Small Worlds” was also a large factor in my desire to explore them. They were small enough to not get boring and provided something interesting to uncover at every turn. I found it refreshing as many new games these days tend to focus on “amazing expansive sand-box worlds!” when in fact they are usually just small parts of a world many times over which can become tedious and boring to explore. Huzzah for Small Worlds’ novel approach to exploration and discovery .