It gave me a ship!I tried out the Galactrix (milk tricks? someone who dominates with milk?) flash demo.
I like that you can control the direction that the pieces fall in, because it almost answers a problem I had with Puzzle Quest, where you'd have an OK combo, or even a regular move, and then all this stuff would fall in that would set your opponent up nicely. At least here you feel like an idiot when you open up the board near some damaging blocks, since that invites disaster. Still, feeling like an idiot isn't that much better than feeling like you can't control the game.
The computer player is efficient, and often deadly, but sometimes it (and the hint system) don't seem to pick the best moves. Either it can see into the future and has some sort of meta design for my defeat, or the game behavior needs some punching up.
The color blindness aspect is problematic, when I can't tell the difference between the green and yellow, and the green and yellow on the side of the board, the statistics that tell you how much you have in reserve, is indistinguishable to me. I have to say "ok, the rough-looking one is on the bottom." Hard to remember.
I like that the gems do different things, although I'd be interested to know if these powers change depending on the ship and the pilot. I also enjoy the music, which I hope changes throughout the game, but it was something I liked about Puzzle Quest and it seems they put the same priority on music as before. Got the space music thing going on. Reminds me of Ascendancy. Nice.
The demo still a bit rough, too, as the text doesn't match the powers exactly (the trident laser says that you don't spend your turn if you use it, but you most certainly do). This, plus my suspicion that the game behavior isn't optimal (or perhaps it is beyond my meager intelligence), makes me think that it has a ways to go yet.
Here's the big problem, though, and it has to do with so-called puzzle games as a species:
Puzzle games in general
OCD nightmareWhen I think puzzle, I tend to think a thing that can be solved. Tetris would count for me, even though it can't be solved, because the pieces are all laid out for you, the next piece in line is shown, and it's up to you to figure out the best place. It's tactical in that sense, but smart play will make it easier to prevent disaster. Games like Puzzle Quest, Galactrix, and a lot of the "wow, splosions!" line of puzzle games tend to stray away from puzzles a bit too much. I'm not sure what else you'd call it, but when I make a sensible match, and then I get a big combination of matches after that that I didn't plan on, I certainly feel a bit happy, but I don't feel like I earned it one bit. And it's just as frustrating when hapless AI manages to pull off a huge combination with pieces it couldn't have known were coming. Feels cheap both ways.
It's not to say that the definition of puzzle shouldn't include these sorts of games, although that would make my life a lot easier, it's that some of these games feel more like rolling dice than figuring things out. The RPG elements actually save Puzzle Quest and the Galactrix demo from being just irritating time wasters to me, I guess because it makes the game feel like a means to an end instead of a falling-blocks torture device.
Maybe I need a little schoolin'. I'm not sure of the history of puzzle games in general, but does anyone have examples of what they think were good or bad puzzle games, and why?
(Originally I used the word interesting, but I'm not sure the demo is enough to interest me after extended play sessions; I'd need a demo on the level of the old Puzzle Quest demo before I could be made to care any more :) )
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Electronic Arts has a site called Pogo, with board game translations for games like Scrabble and Monopoly. I'm a board game designer, so I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I recently had a Monopoly craving that needed fixing, and I found Pogo had a Monopoly game set up, ready to go for free, zero commitment, and I didn't even need to register to play it.
Eventually I ran into problems, the kind of problems that make me wonder if the coders anticipated there being errors on their site. Most of the windows move around, but the notice that you have insufficient funds is not movable, and sits right over the "roll" button for dice, the trade button, the build houses button, the mortgage buttons... so if there happens to be an error where the thing doesn't want to drop down, then you're screwed for the rest of the game. In my case, I wanted to buy a property but didn't have enough money, so I traded a computer player some property for some cash. Dude gave me the cash, I bought the property, and I got this:
"You ever get so broke it just becomes funny to you?"In a twist, this blog really isn't about that specific error. It's more about how the website, and how many websites in general (like Play.com, for instance), tend to put so many barriers in between you and them that it's as if they don't really care what users think. When you're in a high volume business, I suppose getting a bunch of annoying, random questions will actually reduce profits through having to set up some system to deal with them, but little old me feels a bit irritated by the idea that I have to register with this place just to tell them their code has an apparent bug. As a freebie, I was also going to let them know that the number one hit in Google suggestions for "pogo monopoly" is actually "pogo monopoly cheats" which sends you straight to site that lets you crack the game and win a bunch of "tokens" which are turned in for a chance to win prizes.
Online gaming to me has always been a bit of a dodge, especially in the PC realm. I spend time trying to get a high score, decide to register it, and seem some jerk with 999,999,997 points in a game that most people could barely get a few thousand. I don't think human nature, if you assemble everyone together, can handle the idea of having a system that can be broken down and messed with, without at least one person thinking it might be giggle-inducing to screw up the leader board. It only takes ten of these people to blot out a good number of these boards.
Folks like the World of Warcraft crowd are diligent, with paid staff whose job it is to hunt down all these weasels and try to keep things fair, but most companies, big or small, don't have the energy or resources to keep after these people, since the effort of cracking a site is probably less than the collective effort of stopping the individual who did it. I'm not even sure there's a solution to this. Maybe someone out there has a good idea, but no matter how complex you make site and software architecture, it's common sense to assume someone can break it. In a weird way, consoles are a better solution to this than I like to admit, with better ways to track hardware and software changes.
But users are a sort of untapped potential in the war against cheating and bugs. I sorta feel shunned by EA in their giving me a labyrinth to have to contact them with some simple, helpful tidbits. Maybe there's a way to help harness whatever honesty is out there? I dunno. All I know is I had a pretty sweet line of green properties that were aching for houses and hotels, but their needs could not be met. It doesn't mean I won't dive in again, but I doubt very much that I'd ever register with that place. I feel small enough in a world with a population approaching 7 Billion; I don't need my escapism to make me feel small too.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I like a little human contact when I'm dealing with a company. Places like Nintendo and others may improve those form letters they dole out eventually, answering just about every contingency out there instead of often missing the mark. But until they do, it'll always feel like they don't give a damn as long as you give them your ducats. Hey, that may be true, but it doesn't exactly make me eager to buy.
What follows is your cookie for making it to the bottom. I don't feel like warning people about the subject matter, it's not that shocking:
The last gag was a bit low, but I still thought this was pretty good given my current Monopoly fixation. Not as good as the insufficient funds link, though.
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While Roger Ebert continues to view video games at arm's length, his readers continue to write thoughtful letters about the potential of video games (and how most movies based on them miss the point):
While it's not for everyone, text-based games probably provide the greatest opportunity for games to break out of the ruts developers and gamers find themselves in. I recently found a heartening article on text games which pointed out some of the outstanding finalists of the annual contest that awards excellence in the medium: http://www.avclub.com/content/games/violet_and_everybody_dies
Beam of lightEdit: The discount I mentioned earlier has expired as of January 3rd, so I've changed the facts of this entry to represent this.
One of the games that taught me that big titles don't have the monopoly on craft was Aquaria, and I started out my blog mentioning it for that reason. It's got great art, an interesting story, and a lot of little discoveries alongside its more obvious Castlevania or Metroid-like elements (used to increase powers to access new areas and defeat enemies) that add heart to what could have merely been a great adventure title.
It's being sold on Steam as well as through direct download methods for 20 dollars U.S. It's an updated version with more features, and it's now available for both the PC and the Mac. If you happen to already have it, you can update for free.
Aquaria is a mainly mouse-driven exploration-and-puzzle adventure game, with a decent amount of combat, and beautiful music and visuals. What I like most, though, is the feel of it. You aren't rushed unless you want to be, and you're encouraged to explore and experiment. When you kill creatures or explore the underwater landscape you'll find materials you can combine in order to make new objects. Most everything can be consumed, sometimes hurting you, sometimes healing, and sometimes giving you a significant boost to your abilities for a time, and the combinations are recorded in a recipe book of sorts. Other things you can gather include treasures you can put in your home, some of which give you extra benefits you can harvest (sometimes literally harvest, as when you get some plants that yield bonus materials you can gather), as well as outfits and other interesting ephemera.
As you explore the ancient ruins and ecosystems you learn about the world, and unlock spellsongs which the player activates through a symbol/sound manipulation of the mouse cursor reminding me a little bit of Okami's power activations, though I imagine there's a closer analogy. Some of these spells actually transform the main character into other forms, these forms having better combat abilities or a better ability to navigate certain types of terrain.
Not so aloneThe lifeforms are the real charm here, as many of them actually interact with the main character in subtle or overt ways. There are the obvious, hostile kinds of interactions, including bosses, but there are others. One of my favorite moments was when I was trapped in a dark cave, with no light source to use. I saw a faintly glowing school of jellyfish nearby, and I began one of the character's spell songs. The creatures began to glow brighter and follow behind me as I swam, helping to illuminate the passages so I could find my way.
Sometimes the game is tough, and you have to know what you're doing. It pays to save, as well as create some healing items before you enter a new area, as ambitious experimentation can lead to a quick death if you're not cautious. I never took this as discouragement, though, since I liked the idea of seeing a new place a lot more than sticking to the script. And the game would tend to reward me for my curiosity when I made it to my destination.
Aquaria was created by Bit-Blot, the two-man team of Derek Yu (co-creator of Eternal Daughter (a conceptual predecessor to Aquaria), game maker and visual artist) and Alec Holowka (game maker and composer, now part of Infinite Ammo), first got together to help make I'm O.K - A Murder Simulator, a satirical jab at Jack Thompson's challenge to game makers to make a game in which the protagonist actually kills game makers.
I think Aquaria is Derek Yu's best work so far, something he's been working toward since his days at Black Eye. Check it out if you think this sounds like it might be your thing, and you have a few bucks to spare. At 20 dollars it's a good deal, especially since a lot of game sellers are putting out low-content games for at least that much under more famous franchise titles.
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Maybe you all have heard of this already. I just found out about this through TED. The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference, is a sponsored, rapid fire presentation of the cutting edge of human thought, including everything from the guy that debuted the touchscreen application people now have on their I-phones that lets you scale in and out, to biomedical advances, socio-economic theory, and a bunch of other fields all presented in an accessible way that a non-specialist like me can understand.
While looking through the list of the videos I hadn't seen yet, I cam across this:
F'ing neat, non? I wonder if the guys who made the Wii remote are kicking themselves, wondering why they didn't think of these applications. As the presenter Johnny Lee says, people are already using this free software + the Wii + some other, easily accessible equipment, to make things that usually cost a lot more.
I don't know how many game designers read GB. I guess this isn't really a game DESIGNER'S site so much as a game consumer one, although there's overlap. This is interesting anyway:
There is a contest in which 1-5 people aged 18 to 28 years old could win $10,000 dollars for a creative game concept which addresses the problem of the skyrocketing national debt in the U.S.
Take it as it's given, I don't know anything about this contest other than what's on this website. I'm not qualified to participate anyway, I just thought I'd pass it along to any budding or current game developers out there :)
Text lifted from the contest website (click on this link for full information):
What Is It?
Get rid of your debt by taking the Indebted Digital Challenge. Come up with a creative, original idea for a video game that addresses the nation’s fiscal crisis and you or your team could receive $10,000 if your concept is chosen as the winner. You will also be credited in the final game and may have the opportunity to work with mtvU to make your idea a reality.
Who Can Participate?
Applicants must be 18-28 years old and can participate individually or in teams of up to five people
When Is It Due?
Applications due: January 7, 2009 Winner chosen: January 23, 2009
What Do I Need to Know?
To contend for the winning spot, your idea must:
Raise awareness about the dangers of spending too much and saving too little, and the urgent need for citizens and government to make responsible choices about their finances.
Address the potential future ramifications of inaction.
Identify ways to combat the nation’s looming fiscal crisis through citizen advocacy and combat personal financial risk through debt management at home.
Compel users to learn more about debt-related issues and take action after game play on this website; game ideas are not required to tackle every element of the U.S. budget and financial challenge within game play.
Be interactive and able to live and be spread online.
Hey. This was for the Frankenstein's Monster concept page, but I found out there was a page just labeled Frankenstein as a character, and it's regarding the same guy...
I guess you could argue both ways as far as Frankenstein's Monster being a concept or a character, but where does it start, where does it end?
The article below isn't much, but it contains a point I've wanted to make about Frankenstein's Monster ever since I first read Mary Shelley's novel I dunno how many years ago about the monster's origins. It's not that it's necessarily known, and there are certainly some strong implications pushing in one direction, but there are actually a bunch of different ways you could take it, and the theological allusions are rather inescapable. Before the movie Frankenstein, there was the early movie Golem, and the former seemed to borrow more than a bit from the latter.
It was fun to write, and I feel honored that it jumped up to near the top of my top scoring submissions list.
-AHF
Origin
In Mary Shelley's modern horror classic Frankenstein, the eponymous doctor sets about creating a living creature, in a manner suggesting the myth of the golem that grew from the pogroms of Prague in what is now the Czech Republic, and Adam in the creation story in the Christian and Hebrew bibles. This creature, called simply the monster, then had to deal with this sudden consciousness it was given, as well as a society that wasn't ready to understand or accept it. As to Shelley's own inspiration for the story, she was said to have come up with the story during a late-night story competition among peers.
Popular perceptions and misconceptions
It's assumed that the monster is assembled from the body parts of the dead, perhaps influenced by the first film based on the story, starring Boris Karloff as the monster. However, the original story spends very little time talking about the material components that go into monster's actual creation, as Doctor Frankenstein himself is not keen on revealing to the person to whom he is writing the secrets of "bestowing animation upon lifeless matter," which is described, literally or metaphorically, as clay. This can be taken as a direct biblical reference, as if Frankenstein had stumbled upon the same processes that the biblical Adam had been born of in its creation story, as well as suggesting the afore mentioned golem, also created by animating clay with life. As to whether or not that material Doctor Frankenstein used was actually once alive is left up to the reader, though his famous use of electricity, as seen in the movie and most depictions afterward, is in the original text.
Another perception that seems influenced by the famous film version is that the monster is slow, slurred of speech, and perhaps simple-minded, though still capable of compassion. The creature of the book cultivated its mind quickly, becoming erudite in a strangely short period of time, unlike the lumbering filmic version that is so commonly repeated in cultural references.
The monster itself is often erroneously named Frankenstein, possibly because the fame of the monster outweighed the fame of its creator. One only need imagine a movie poster with the face of the monster with the word "FRANKENSTEIN" in bold, jagged letters over the creature's face to realize why people might make this mistake.
Game depictions
As to what role Frankenstein's monster plays in games, it is of course up to the creators as to how to employ the creature, but often the monster is reduced to bit parts, playing a recognizable creature that players are tasked with defeating, such as in the Castlevania games which feature such monsters. The stereotype is one of bolts in the neck (used as electrical leads, presumably), a prominent forehead with knife-like bangs, pale skin and stitches (suggesting that it's a corpse pieced together), great strength, and a lumbering walk, all of which are taken from the 1931 film. Often Frankenstein's monster doesn't play a central or prominent role, instead being part of a menagerie of creatures out of horror films, but there are a few exceptions.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, based upon the film starring Robert De Niro as the monster, was a game for 16-bit consoles which had players take on the role of the monster itself. Frankenstein's Monster, by Data Age, pits you against the creature, which you must prevent from being animated. There are others, but none are considered classics, and many are noted for poor gameplay. While the monster has been animated multiple times in other media, it seems video games have yet to bring life to the monster in any lasting way.
Further reading
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or "The Modern Prometheus" is available for free, because its copyright is long expired, at sites such as Project Gutenberg. Copyright laws vary from country to country though, so be sure to check your own country's laws before trying.
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During my random retro stumblings I happened upon a really cool video. Ignore the screechy, terrifying singing at the beginning if you want (recommended, skip to 00:38):
I love the guy on the banjo in this film (or the playtester); I keep wondering what kids were watching this guy, thinking this would be the perfect job, when in a year all these guys may not have been working there any more due to a crash in the video game market. The game you see them designing here is Wing War (I wrote up a profile here). The fellows at Imagic had no idea what was going to hit soon after, as the video game industry crash of 1983 folded a lot of these small companies. What's really neat about this video is just hearing about how much went into what, to our jaded eyes might seem like yet another primary color pixel fest. The work they put into planning the animation, the background, and the concept of the world reminds me of the stuff I'm getting into now that I'm designing a game myself, wrestling with all these problems and potential features that might seem trivial. As hard drives increase in size, and graphics seem limitless in their capacity to depict things, it's easy to forget how limited resources, software constraints and hardware constraints help foment creativity. I don't think the 2600 was the ideal system to develop on, but it seems like there is still a lot of room for video games to grow, despite it having been more than 20 years since this video was filmed.
A prequel, of sortsWing War itself was a victim of the downturn, as it was never released for North American markets, but those of us from NA might recognize stuff like Cosmic Ark, Dragonfire, or Atlantis.
It's easy to overlook these old games, I often do, but I think these rare views behind the curtain help put things into perspective. Not all game companies then probably put as much time into design philosophy as Imagic seems to, but that even seems to be the case now, as well.
See Atari Age for more information on Wing War, and Atari Guide apparently has a buggy video of actual game play, where the player doesn't know what the heck he or she is doing.
Anyway, the more I research about these old games the more I'm convinced that a lot of the games were rather simplistic not because the industry was primitive, but because the game-playing public on the whole wasn't ready or able to play a complex video game yet. We tend to demand more detail, more fiddly bits, more complexity than we used to. We've sort of collectively trained as a culture to have higher demands on our programmers.
Some of the more complex Imagic games are relatively unknown, not because they were bad games necessarily, but because they were less popular in an already niche market because they were harder to get a handle on. We're more willing now to delay gratification until we can master a game. Back then I remember not liking a game too much that wasn't easy to just pick up and play, although I guess Star Raiders is still too complicated for some folks. 2 Comments
The Plymouth Iron Windmill Company in Plymouth, Michigan had been making farm windmills for years when in 1886, the company decided to include a promotional item with purchase: an air-powered rifle. Later, when the company was about to close down due to slow sales, they noticed that the popularity of the air rifles they were giving away greatly exceeded the popularity of their main product. The board decided to switch to producing air rifles for sale. "Daisy" was youthful, polite slang for something extraordinary, so soon thereafter the company took on the name Daisy Manufacturing Company in 1895.
Red Ryder's debut issueProduction continued through the Great Depression, when sales began to slump. New, aggressive marketing campaigns in the 1930's were employed to maintain interest, and out of these strategies came a tie-in with comic book hero Red Ryder which was to strongly increase interest: The Red Ryder BB Gun. A few years afterward, the company's production was converted to help in the war against the Axis Powers, but demand for the rifle remained strong.
The Red Ryder BB Gun became the most memorable promotion in Daisy Corporation's long history, and was used as a historical detail by writer Jean Shepherd, whose partly fictional In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories were mined for his screenplay for the film A Christmas Story.
The rifle was later included in the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland, a game which also includes Red Ryder himself in a small, symbolic role. The gun is one of the game's most deadly weapons.
In the Fallout series, the rifle's symbolic encapsulation of a straight-arrow America closely matches the game's golly-gee,1950's-style ironic optimism. So while the rifle's presence references Fallout's spiritual predecessor Wasteland, it also helps add to Fallout's tone of shattered idealism. Like the real weapon, the Fallout version requires BBs (short for ball-bearings) as ammunition, and could carry 100 rounds at a time. In the first Fallout, the Red Ryder BB Gun comes in two editions, the first and most common edition is relatively useless for most combat encounters, doing very little damage. The hard-to-find Limited Edition is dramatically more effective, though much more likely to shoot your eye out.
In all its glory
The above is, hopefully, my final draft. I imagine others can add to it or whatever, but I'm really liking these shorter, more concise entries. I don't mind making them any more now that the points have been adjusted! :)
Whew, done. At least for now. I'm going to re-read the section in Levy's book and add some other facts as recorded by J. Martin Graetz.
I am more than a bit proud of this article (let me know about any errors, omissions, whatever):
The History and Impact of Spacewar! (1962)
Spacewar! was one of the first graphical video games in existence. There were games before Spacewar!; two frequently cited examples are OXO, a Tic-Tac-Toe game developed by A.S. Douglas in 1952, and Tennis for Two (perhaps an inspiration for the famous Pong) developed by William Higinbotham as an independent, analog device (instead of a piece of software developed for an existing system). The impact, though, of Spacewar! and its resultant dissemination among the small groups of computer users and programmers at the time arguably helped pave the way for the popularity of video games that was to explode in the coming decades.
Background
PDP-1, note typewriter interface and round monitorThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology had acquired an expensive computer called the PDP-1 from Digital Equipment Corporation, and had hired on several students attending the university to develop programs for the machine. Among these programmers were Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen. In 1961, these three conceived of a complex program which would fully utilize the computer's circular Cathode Ray Tube monitor.
Using sine/cosine functions acquired by Alan Kotok from DEC, Steve Russell set about coding what would become Spacewar! in February of 1962. The reason, though, that the authorship of the game itself can not be put on one man was that the development of the game did not resemble the compartmentalized structuring that many programming firms use today. The basic game which Steve Russell wrote was later added to by other programmers, many working at what Russell had dubbed The Hingham Institute Space Warfare Study Group, a fancy way of saying Russell's house.
Game
A modern play test through a working PDP-1In the basic game, two players were pitted against each other in a duel. Both controlled a spaceship, one wedge shaped, one cigar shaped. Each had a limited amount of torpedoes which could be fired at the other from the front of the craft, with one hit killing the target. The ships could rotate about their center, and had thrusters, with limited fuel reserves, which propelled them forward. Initially a random star field was added, because players needed to gauge their relative speed and position to try to be able to hit their opponent. To help add variety to the battles, a hyperspace ability was added to the ships which allowed them to blink out of existence and reappear randomly elsewhere in the playing field. Each time this was done there was a chance that the ship would explode, and this chance would increase every time the hyperspace was used during a duel. Finally, at the center of the playing area was a flickering star which exuded gravitational influence on the two ships, accelerating them slowly toward the center (and their destruction if they didn't thrust or hyperspace out of the way).
One notable addition was Peter Samson's star field (dubbed Expensive Planetarium, the term expensive being a joke referring to how much the machine itself had cost). This starfield was an accurate representation of the night's sky, in contrast to the random star field coded by Russell. Samson's star field slowly rotated as the game progressed, giving players a full view of the actual position of stars over time. This did not add to game play as such, but it did show off the processing power of this machine to contemporaries.
Other options were added and features changed. These included toggle switches that altered gameplay: the central star's gravity could be switched on and off, the existence of angular momentum could be removed, the star field could be switched off, and a "winds of space" feature could be added which pushed spaceships in one direction, forcing players to use more thrust to go in certain directions and causing drift.
A full list of the contributors to the development of the initial game of Spacewar! (as far as this author could discern) will be included at the end of this article.
Impact
As there was no video game market, and the machine that used Spacewar! was prohibitively expensive to all but the most wealthy institutions, it was decided that the game, as popular as it was with everyone who played it, would be distributed freely, and the source code was given to anyone who requested it. New PDP-1 machines were shipped with the game in their memory, both as a demonstration of its visual functions and its processing power. The game was also a valuable tool to debug the machine out of the box in case of irregularities.
Many of those who are now thought of gaming gurus, who lived through this early era in computing, had their start with Spacewar! It can be said that the game's influence helped energize the next generation of software designers, who would eventually create the first home video game consoles and arcade machines.
Spacewar! was remade in both arcade and home form. Features like gravity would later influence many games, and gravity, angular momentum, ammunition and fuel limits, and Samson's desire for a realistic star chart would hint at the coming desires for realistic physics and verisimilitude. Games that would borrow heavily from the formula of Spacewar and its clones were Asteroids, now one of the famous games from the early era of popular video games, and Star Control, which even had a gravity well at the center of the playfield while two ships with limited resources duelled for supremacy.
While Spacewar was by no means capable of entering every home on the cumbersome, expensive PDP, it helped show the appeal for such entertainment, and can be argued to have helped bring about the current age of video game entertainment.
End Notes
Spacewar! on a PDP-1
Poorly-framed picture taken of a working PDP-1 at the Computer History Museum of Mountainview, CA. Notice the streak effect behind the two ships, which helps opponents judge velocity.
Credited contributors to the game:
Conceived by
Steve "Slug" Russell Martin "Shag" Graetz Wayne Wiitanen
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