Hello Dear Readers!

We, the Game Design Scrapbook Team have decided to move our Blog here. It is finally our very own webspace with our very Wordpress installation. It has taken us quite some time to do the jump, which is why you haven’t heard from us for so long. But now it seem like most changes are complete and we are ready to welcome you to the new and improved Game Design Scrapbook. No worries, you will find all of the old post & comments here.

We are still ironing out the last details. Meanwhile, if there is something you don’t like or something you would like to comment on, please don’t hesitate! We are eager to find out what you think of our new interface. It look similar to our old one but we polished out some of the details and added some functions that we just couldn’t do on Blogger.

Stay tuned for more frequent posts in the very near future and maybe even some more exciting developments (*cough*podcast*cough*).

If you are a recurring visitor, thank you for being loyal to us. Please update your bookmarks & rss feeds. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Wow, it’s been quite some time since the last and first episode of Videogames in other Media. Recently, I’ve stumbled over a good example and I remembered that there was this series of articles I wanted to write. So here is another great example of how Videogames are portrayed in films. This time, it’s a positive one:

The Example is from Darren Aronofsky’s most recent Movie “The Wrestler”. I like the director very much. So far enjoyed all of his movies a lot. I liked “The Wrestler” as well. It’s much more subtle and realistic than his other movies. It’s not the epic soul-destroyer that “Requiem for a Dream was. It’s more subversive, like an itch in a place you can’t quite reach. A complex message, lots of interesting characters. Watch it!

The scene in question is where the main Character, an aging Wrestler, invites his buddy, a young Kid, into his Trailer for a round of video games. They play NES. It’s the present. You might think that the anachronism is a mistake. It turns out it’s not, it’s the whole point of the Scene. The kid proceeds telling the protagonist about Call of Duty 4. He even goes into great deal about how the entire Call of Duty series progressed from World War 2 to Iraq. The old Wrestler, of course, has no idea what the kid is talking about. He thought he still had the edge by being able to play Videogames with kids. But now, he must realize that even Videogames moved forward while and he wasn’t able to keep up with the word. This is a small puzzle piece in the entire Story where the Wrestler finds himself totally alienated and disconnected form the World which seemes to have left him behind. This story climaxes in the last scene of the Movie. I won’t give it away.

My point is that this is a great example of how the specific characteristics and features of Videogames and their History can be portrayed realistically to actually tell a story in a movie. If you know Videogames, you totally get the point of view of the poor kid who plays with the old geezer out of pity. If you don’t know Videogames you will have no clue what the kid is talking about, understanding the viewpoint of the Wrestler. This is lightyears ahead of the typical generic bleeping box that Videogames are in most of the Movies and TV Series.

Have you seen the Movie? What do you think?

With E3 Memories almost faded away, I wanted to drop a few of my thoughts. I’ll make it super-quick by putting all the things we saw into categories:

We all know it’s going to be awesome So thanks guys for showing us the game. You could have shown much less of it and we would be equally hyped. We played the prequel to death and we know it’s good. On the other hand, we knew you were working on it and it’s really no big surprise. Looks good though, please continue:

Modern Warfare 2
Last Guardian
Super Mario Galaxy 2

This looks cool! You win. I need to try your game. It might suck but even then, I want to find out for myself. You have cool ideas and bring something new to the Industry. I want to pay you money so you can continue your efforts.

Heavy Rain
Scribblenauts
Metroid: Other M (ok, this isn’t really innovative but still awesome)

Personally I don’t care. Um, great. People seem to be excited. I’m not, but I guess it’s not you, it’s me.

Everything Hideo Kojima does
God of War 3
Forza 3
Halo: ODST
Alan Wake
Splinter Cell: Conviction

You sucked before. I hope you got better. You haven’t shown anything that would make me think you suck less now. On the other hand, I might be mistaken. Will check your game out and hate you if you still suck.

Assassin’s Creed 2
Mass Effect 2

You will never catch up with Nintendo. It’s cool that you’re doing the Motion thing now but even though your solution might have advantages, you’ve shown no real product yet which means you are now where Nintendo was even before they announced the Wii for the first time. There are no games yet and I doubt 3rd Party developers will take the risk when developing for the Wii is so much cheaper and more lucrative. And the realy cool thing about Nintendo is that it is so cheap. Your solution doesn’t look cheap. Nice try, tough.

Project Natal
PS3’s glowing Ball Vibrator thingy

This is the most anybody will ever talk about your game. Congratulations, you’re mediocre. Your have shown a game that looks and plays like pretty much thousands games out there. You shown one feature that is trying to make look unique but that’s like make-up on a Zombie. You are going to fail, or at least I hope you will.

MAG
Uncharted 2

Gameplay or GTFO. You are even worse then anybody else. You’ve practically shown nothing. You are stupid. You waste my time. I hate you. Go away and come back when you have actual gameplay.

Wii Vitality Sensor
Halo Reach
Brink
Final Fantasy 14
Avatar (Sorry Cameron, you are an awesome guy but especially you should have learned that by now)

There were others as well but at this point, commenting on them would take up too much time. So here my main takeaways:

Microsoft: I really hate it how the Natal thing was hyped. Yes, there are some things about it that look cool and I would have liked a honest, objective presentation of the system’s capabilities. But getting Master Bullshitter Peter Molyneux onboard with that Pedo-Simulation muddled things up beyond repair. Because what he is claiming is that Project Natal will basically somewhat solve all problems we had with realistic game characters. I can clearly see he is lying and that his demo is totally staged.
Otherwise a solid presentation. I like the new Movie, Twitter and Facebook features. Good move from Microsoft.

Nintendo: Wins the “Bullshit of the Show”-prize for the Vitality Sensor. Otherwise solid presentation. Not quite as revolutionary but then again – they are the winning team and not really under pressure to show something mind-blowing.

Sony: You guys are fucked. PSP GO is mildly interesting but has the same problem as your other systems – it’s expensive and has no games! Besides, getting out a system so depended on on-line functionality would be only wise if you had a solid on-line experience. And yours suck!
I will buy your PS3 eventually for Last Guardian and Heavy Rain but I’m hardcore and even I have trouble justifying the expense. Also I can wait until you drop the price. Judging from how it goes now, I don’t see a PS4 coming out.

What do you think?

Suprise, I’m alive. No time to explain, here is a quick thought on Game Design. Game Designers and AI Theorist like to discuss the conditions that would accurately define what kind of qualities an Artificial Intelligence should exhibit. There are things like the Turing Test but that’s a pretty fuzzy one, focuses on text interaction and of little help for Game Design.

I came up with another approach. It’s not really practical but pretty fun… ok, it’s a very dark sense of humor but stay with me. There are several systems for categorizing the state of consciousness for coma patients. They have been based on the real impairments those patients exhibit. Interestingly, they faithfully reflect a bunch of things we take for granted when interacting with a person. They also describe the things we might notice as MISSING when a person fails to perform them.

For example, here is the Rancho Los Amigos Scale of Cognitive Functioning (more after the jump):

Continue reading “Coma AI”

So I’ve complained about it. I re-discovered it. Now I’m done with it. Yesterday I got my last achievement. I’ve finished the game 3 times. I’ve seen both – the evil and the good ending. I started additional 2 games which I quit before the final dungeon. I’ve seen all romance plot permutations. I’ve tried all three “pure” classes. What’s my verdict?

It’s a very ambitious game which didn’t even come close to accomplish what they have originally set out to do. It becomes apparent if you check out the quite enlightening art book. I called it “dancing bearware” at the beginning and it’s still true. They cut corners a lot. It’s especially apparent in the side missions but it even caries over into the main quest. At least two of the 5 missions you play feel half-finished and rushed. I once mentioned how games like Call of Duty 4 have no filler. Mass Effect is ALL filler. You can clearly see how the developers were desperate to create just STUFF in order to get their checklists done. So even in rather polished missions like Feros you get 4 fetch quests which can ALL be solved in ONE big room. You can clearly see how initially, there was a much more complex environment planned which had to be slowly reduced to this single room simply because there was no time for something more complex. In the end, there wasn’t even time for some basic tutorials. It’s been a long time since I had to look in the manual to figure out how things work.

But it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.

• Play as a female
  Fellow bloggers have recently criticized Fallout 3 for not really supporting the playtrough as a female character. I found that Mass Effect was actually MORE fun with a female character. Especially going badass, punching reporters in the face and whatnot. I always though Captain Janeway was long overdue. The script for a female Shepard is actually well polished and every line has a separate female version when needed. The costumes are unusually tight for armor which look weird (I’m struggling not to say “gay”) if you are a guy but actually quite fashionable for a kick-ass space gal.
  But most of all, the lesbian alien sex romance plot permutation is the most enjoyable one. Kaidan may be the best looking character in the game but flirting with him was pretty dull and uninspired. Flirting with Ashley was better written but I thought she was poorly modeled. Besides she is characterized as a racist, religious, militaristic fanatic. Hardly an attractive love interest. Which leaves us with Liara. And here is the deal with her: her entire romance plot is insultingly hypocritical. Her entire race was designed from the ground up to serve as a kinky alien-sex excuse. Yet, when it actually comes down to it it’s all about puritan bullshit like “a melding of the minds” and “I want this to be special” and “I’m not ready”. Fuck this! If you are doing kinky sex scenes then you can at least have the balls to go all the way. That’s why lesbian alien sex is the better choice here.
• Play it on hard
  Even on Insanity, the game becomes trivial by the end. Good equipment and leveling up will allow you to obliterate any kind of resistance you encounter. So you might just as well crank the difficulty up to the max. If you do, you will have a hard time at the very beginning but a reasonable period where the game is in the “sweet spot”. Playing on low difficulty makes the combat, equipment and character management very boring and dull. It’s only advisable if you ONLY want the plot. And trust me, the plot alone isn’t worth it.
• Play it with the same characters
  The game lets you select two supporting characters at the beginning of each mission. Even though you can select from up to 6 different characters, it’s more reasonable to lock down to two of them early in the game. The reason is because it simplifies the choices you need to make when distributing equipment. The sheer ammount of time that goes into equipping all 6 characters (PLUS the player character) is staggering and will wear you down quickly. So select the two you like, stick with them and ignore the others as far as equipment or leveling goes. The game even gives out achievements for preferring characters.
• Play it as Adept
  You can select among as many as 6 classes when you roll a character. There are 3 “pure” classes (Soldier, Adept and Engineer) and 3 additional cross-over classes which are always combinations of two pure ones. I haven’t tried the cross-overs but from the pure classes Soldier and Adept were the most fun. Soldier is good in combat so you will be able to dive right into action but gets repetitive rather quickly. Adept requires a more careful approach but is more satisfying in the long run. Also the Adept’s “magic” powers are sometimes pretty neat… or unintentionally hilarious. In any case, stay away from the Engineer. He doesn’t fight well and the powers are basically all the same.
• Play the main quest only
  The most polished missions are the main ones. It’s always pretty obvious what the main missions are. Don’t do the assignments and CERTAINLY don’t do the item/resource deposits collecting stuff. The assignments are basically all the same so you’ve seen it all after the first two or so. They will just take time, have nothing to do with the story and have no interesting plots. The item collecting will take A LOT of time and will get you even less. The worst thing about the side missions is that they make you use the Mako a lot which is the most frustrating experience in the whole game. Oh yeah and don’t buy the DLC, it’s not even worth the time.

I must admit I had some fun with the game. There are some nice aesthetic details here and there. The plot is not revolutionary and sometimes cheesy but quite cinematic and well-polished. And especially in the main missions there are moments where you can see glimpses of the game it was meant to be. I’m curious if Mass Effect 2 will finally live up to it’s own expectations.