The Monster Hunter Podcast is taking longer. But in true Scrapbook fashion I wanted to share with you this awesome material that just came in. As you know this blog and Mass Effect have … history. Nevertheless, there is critique and there is actual resources from the developers themselves. One awesome thing about the Mass Effect team is the transparency they handle their visual design process with. A good example are these 4 videos from GameInformer about the visual design of the aliens races in the game.
A lesson I learned – buy EVERY ART BOOK YOU CAN when while it’s cheap. They only get more expensive.
But there is more! Back in the day I managed to snag this awesome book called The Art of Mass Effect. I think I got it together with the guide in this sweet deal. It was much cheaper back then. It’s a very comprehensive, detailed book with lots of concept art from the game. Some of it even commented. It explained very well how the individual parts of the game developed.
These videos are now a perfect commentary to the art book. Together they give this great insight into a visual design process of a game and an excellent resource for people, who aim to get into the games industry or develop their own creative process.
Now if only they had one more of those books on the interface design of the game…
It’s a trailer for an upcoming movie called Another Earth. It’s a sorta Sci-Fi movie about a duplicate Earth appearing in the sky. The hook is that the duplicate Earth is apparently inhabited by duplicates of the people on the original earth. It seems like the movie focues very much on the emotional implications of a woman traveling to the second Earth to meet her lost lover… or something along those lines.
There is something I admire about the way the movie feels like. There is also something that worries me.
The thing I admire is how the movie seems to focus so much human, emotional part of the story. It’s something so few Sci-Fi movies manage to achieve. Most Sci-Fi stories tend up being completely about some horribly anal, geeky things. And I’m not even talking about science. Most of them end up being about shooting things or humanity surviving or aliens or space zombies or dimension portals or something. I think what many old-school Sci-Fi writers understood much better than today is that the fantastic scenarios they come up with would have profound impact on the people experiencing them. They understood that focusing on the people alone was enough. That you wouldn’t need to add anything to make it even more exciting. But then came Lucas and everything went downhill. Well, to be fair, it went downhill even before Lucas, but you catch my drift.
While I admire this return to a more emotional and human Sci-Fi, I’m worried that something might got lost in the process. You see, the whole idea of Earth appearing in the sky would be actually very difficult to explain scientifically. In the trailer you even see the second Earth being quite large in the sky. Earth is actually quite large and massive. At such a close distance, it exerts a tremendous gravitational pull. Having another one so close would be quite disastrous to our oceans and possibly our entire climate. In fact, it could cause tides and earthquakes of apocalyptic proportions. There are also a lot of difficulties with coming up with an orbit that would even allow a second Earth to stay with us. Conditions would need to be JUST RIGHT or they would either crash or fling each other out into space.
On the IMDB forums some said that in the movie, the second Earth was hiding behind the Sun all along. If that was the actual explanation, it would be bullshit of considerable magnitude. First of all, we already checked on the other side of the Sun and there is nothing there. If we hadn’t checked there, we would still be able to tell by the perturbations in the orbits of other planets. Finally, even if there was a second Earth on the other side, the chances that it would have exact duplicates of us all are pretty much zero. That explanation is also uncomfortably close to this whole Vulcan / Planet X / Niburu Believers movement. Conspiracy theorists, who think there is a planet hiding behind or very close to the Sun that will eventually collide with us. Alternatively it may also not collide with us but there are aliens living on it, who want to have hot alien mind sex with us. Either way, the bad government is hiding everything. Luckily, they have photographic evidence.
This may not be the explanation in the movie at all. We shall wait and see. But the closeness to wacky conspiracy theorists is symptomatic of what I’m worried about. It seems to be an approach to Sci-Fi that doesn’t really take the science into account. I think that when talking about things many people have little experience with – like orbital mechanics – storytellers have some obligation to make sure their story at least aligns roughly with the facts. It’s the same as when a movie take place in a foreign country. One should make sure to do some basic research about the actual country before portraying it in a story. Many people might use the story to form an opinion about that country.
Sci-Fi is the genre of exploring potential realities and what they may mean to us. But by exploring realities that can’t happen, the insights we gain may very well turn out to be hollow and meaningless. Instead of opening our eyes to different possibilities, these kind of stories may be fostering false beliefs and ignorance.
The upside to this is that the amount of plausible stories is still infinite and Another Earth may be actually part of them. I’m curious to see the movie. I hope my worries are unfounded.
Just a quick update today. It’s easter holidays and that means I have 4 days to spend on TRAUMA. The first two days are over and I’m pretty much done with the payment system.
A custom backend allows me to browse the databases of customers, orders, payments and download links to monitor the system and fix any issues.
I have now a working barebones skeleton to receive and process payments via PayPal. Customers are being entered in a database and receive a download link automatically. The download links expire if they are used too often or not at all. Customers can generate new download links on the website. I even wrote a nice, comfy backed so I don’t need to do customer service in phpMySQLAdmin.
It was perhaps unnecessary. On the other hand, I have a custom system I can easily expand upon and it works exactly the way I want it to. On top of that, I got some invaluable experience with the PayPal API which may come in handy in upcoming projects. It would be interesting to experiment with in-game payments in the future.
I will eventually publish the source of the payment engine. But for now I’m moving on to the front-end. Over the next two days I will design and implement the website I will actually exhibit TRAUMA on. It’s not an easy task. I was collecting references and inspirations over the last week or two. I need to come up with something that compliments the style of the game while actually doing it’s job as an online shop. I’m looking forward to it!
Whenever I play Japanese games, I inevitably run into situations where I am confronted with content I am troubled by. It is often content that seemingly borders on bland sexism, racism or even pedophilia. I’m often having a difficulty to comprehend the intention of the questionable content. Is it really meant this way? Or is it me who is the racist? Am I simply applying my western values to the product of a culture so very different from my own.
In the case of Peace Walker, the situation gets really difficult. Hideo Kojima is clearly a smart man. He manages to put some deep concepts and ideas into a mainstream product. Somehow, he manages to successfully combine sophistication with popular entertainment. So I’m usually willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. But then I meet a character like Paz and I’m lost at words again.
Early in the game, you are given a mission from a man escorting a young girl. The girl is introduced as a Puerto Rican Costa Rican fugitive. Her name also means “Peace” and for some reason she is being idolized into an “Angel of Peace” or something along those lines. I didn’t really understand that part. However, the fist time she is introduced, the player is given control over a magic camera that can zoom in trough the layers of her clothes to see her in underwear. Um, what?
Talking about Airport Security
That’s weird, especially considering she is only 16 years old. But the moment passed quickly and I kinda forgot about it. All that remained was the nagging ridiculousness of her just not looking like anything like a person from Costa Rica. But then I started picking up other details. For example, the game has lots of opportunities to look up 3D models of the things you can interact with. You can see 3D models of your base, your weapons, your vehicles, your gear, etc. As a game designer, I enjoy that feature a lot. The models are masterfully done and I love examining some of their details. For certain characters you can also see the 3D models. But guess what. You can see only the female ones! Even though there are clearly good looking hi-rez models of the male main characters, you can’t access them. Isn’t that strange?
But then it gets even better. The game finally treats you with a bonus mission where Snake goes out on a date with 16 year old Paz. That’s right. Take a look.
So you goal is to use a communication system made for co-op combat missions to say things that may be appropriate on a date. Every time you say a fitting line, you score a heart. The mission ends when you get in a cardboard box. They are normally used for hiding and called “Love Boxes” in this game. If you do that in this mission, Paz will get in the box with you. Some innuendo-filled dialogue and rumbling follows and the mission is over. If you got enough hearts during the mission, you will be awarded with an S rank. Your reward is that the next time you play this mission, Paz will be in her underwear. But that’s not all. Remember the 3D models of the female characters you could watch? From then on, all of them will be in their underwear / bathing suits as well.
It seems like a clear case of sexist exploitation even bordering on statutory rape. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that interpretation doesn’t fit so well either. For starters, going on the date you can chose your “outfit”. If you chose a uniform that shows a lot of skin, Paz will actually run away from you. This really confuses me about what are they actually supposed to be doing when they eventually get into the love box.
Also, on a second thought, the idea of the date is actually not that silly. The themes of the game are the 70ies, the cold war and the ideal of peace. The mission is actually the embodiment of the “Make love, not war” mantra. Peace Walker is a combat game after all. The mission asks you to creatively re-purpose your set of verbs to engage not in combat but in a romantic relationship. If you set aside the creepiness of trying to date a 16 year old, that’s actually good way to address the inherent conflict of a war game being supposedly about peace. The game exposes it’s very own limitations to the player, including it’s inability to portray scenes outside of combat.
And then there are other instances where the game actually disrupts the “Male Gaze” you would expect from a game with shallow, exploitative intentions. So next to the Paz date, there is also a similar dating scenario with Kaz, you male sidekick.
The mission unfolds similar to the date with Paz. The only difference is that no 3D models are unlocked upon success. At least as far as I can tell.
And finally, just the regular story features plenty of actually quite credible and respectable female characters. Most noteworthy are perhaps a lesbian scientist Dr. Strangelove and especially The Boss. I wonder why The Boss is so rarely mentioned when talking about strong female characters in games. It would be very had to come up with a stronger character than The Boss. She is old Snake’s mentor figure. As war hero and an experienced combat expert, she is cool, wise and dangerous while completely avoiding sexist clichés. She doesn’t actually appear in Peace Walker but the game deals with a lot of her back-story. In countess audio logs, she is practically idealized into the unsung Jesus of the U.S. spaceflight program.
So you see, I’m having a very difficult time judging some of the content Peace Walker. On the one hand, the game contains quite outrageous scenes that should clearly be considered sexist. On the other hand, the general style style of the game is actually very progressive and dares to turn the expectations of a traditional straight male gamer on their head in some cases. Perhaps what we see here is what happens when an ambitious mind has to work with the restrictions and vocabulary of a culture saturated with busty babes and upskirt pantie shots. I would love to give Kojima the benefit of a doubt. But he does make it very hard. What do you think?
I know I have been talking about Ian Bogost recently. But this article caught my eye the other day. It’s an article by Ian Bogost based on a rant from this year’s GDC. It’s about the creativity on Social Games and it’s titled Shit Crayons.
“I’m worried about Timmy. All his drawings look like shit.”
If you know the Bogostian stance on Social Games, you might get where this is going. It’s an explanation of the kind of creativity that is often brought forward by proponents of Social games as examples of positive effects they have. Some people create pixel art using crops in Famville. Or they write poetry in Bogost’s very own Cow Clicker click notifications.
Ian compares this kind of creativity to the kind of creativity the Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka exhibited while being in prison. Being under surveillance, he came up and remembered his poems during day only too write them down in the night with the use of improvised tools. The text suggest he might have used excrements, but none of the other sourced I had on Soyinka seems to confirm this. On the other hand, I haven’t dig into it too deeply and I wasn’t familiar with Soyinka before I read the text.
It doesn’t change the point anyway. The point Bogost makes is that all those Social Games don’t really enable the creativity found in their communities. People just found ways to be creative IN SPITE of them. The pixel artists of Farmville aren’t particularly great pixel artists. The only reason they are noteworthy is that they are using something that actually wasn’t made for pixel art at all. They rise above the dullness of the game and manage to re-purpose them into something more meaningful.
Personally, I enjoy this analogy a great deal. Perhaps because the idea of Shit Crayons is so vivid and quite hilarious. But it left me thinking.
Back during my studies I remembered a particular conversation with one of my fellow students. She complained about the poor equipment the university we were studying at had. She compared it to the equipment of another university. She was not satisfied with the quality of works we have created on our school and he was convinced the equipment was to blame. I found it quite ironic that the she was being among those delivering the most disappointing results. Compared to others, it was clearly not the fault of the equipment. It was the lack of skills on her side. Personally I found the availible possibilities were already overwhelming.
As much as I enjoy the idea of Shit Crayons, there is no denial that creativity is fostered by constraint. Ian Bogost himself acknowledged that in his book on the Atari 800. In this article, he seems to make a distinction between constraint and incarceration. I’m struggling with how to determine the difference.
These days there are so many opportunities for you to join us at Cologne Game Lab. Let me count the ways:
Study: We are now accepting applications for our Master’s in Game Development & Research. It’s the second year now. We have learned a lot during the last two semesters and optimized our curriculum for even more awesomeness. It’s is one of the rare opportunities to get a Master’s degree in game studies. It’s also perhaps the cheapest too.
Internship: But we are also looking for an intern! We are looking for somebody to help with the organization. The internship is paid and the intern would be able to participate in some of the courses.
Discuss: Finally, we started something called PlayGround. Once a month there is a meeting where we discuss current topics. Everybody can just come over and join us. It’s a great opportunity to meet us and learn about what we are doing! The next meeting will be all about Social Games.
Probably what one should call the main gameplay of Silent Totems will be the gathering of totem parts. The game design intention is to have a clear goal driven gameplay available.
With the game having many sidetracked puzzle ideas, which sometimes are selvserving or fulfill extra tasks, there is also the need for a central task where the puzzles will help to fulfill it extra well.
On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: Back to Where We Were. Or not, actually. We play Demon’s Souls, things go wrong and an adventure begins…
Here is something pleasantly surprising. I was recently checking out some more GDC Videos. There was this one by Ian Bogost on how he made Cow Clicker. And guess what what Ian is talking about?
Wait, I know that game!
It’s TRAUMA. Specifically, Ian reads an excerpt from my 1 year old April’s Fool Day post as an example of the friction between the artistic ambitions of Indies and social games. I already heard that Ian quoted me in one of his presentations but somehow I completely forgot about it. Nice to re-discover that!
And of course, true to Bogostian nature, the presentation is fascinating so there are at least two reasons to check it out now!
On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: Strangling the Duck. We are back to our old selves with a straight round of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd quests and a series of listener questions. Or are we?
The Game Design Scrapbook is a second blog of group of three game designers from Germany. On our first blog, Game Design Reviews we describe some games we played and point out various interesting details. Unfortunately, we found out that we also need some place to collect quick and dirty ideas that pop into our minds. Hence, welcome to Game Design Scrapbook. You will encounter wild, random rantings. Many of then incoherent. Some of them maybe even in German. If you don't like it, you might enjoy Game Design Reviews more.
. In this article, he seems to make a distinction between constraint and incarceration. I’m struggling with how to determine the difference.
