Gaming gets Oscar nods

No, not a real Oscar nod, but a telling couple of mentions. For years now, gamers have talked about how it will simply take time for the generation that grew up with games — and considers them just another part of the modern media landscape — to come into their own and help push aside the notion that games are somehow different. The “bad” different. Every year I see and hear games more often mentioned in other media, just in passing, and in a way that makes them seem pretty normal. Because, you know, they are.

On the red carpet tonight:

• “Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman, who is 32, told Ryan Seacrest he was “playing some Xbox” earlier in the day to chill out and shake off the nerves. No jokes about Pong or Pac-Man were made. Hurrah!

• Jake Gyllenhall, who stars in the upcoming “Prince of Persia” movie said he believes the film will finally prove that video game adaptations are worthwhile. That remains to be seen, but if Jerry Bruckheimer can turn a cheesy ride at Disneyland into a genuinely cool, thrill-ride adventure film, then surely “Prince” has a shot.

Tough sell

Six Days in Fallujah is apparently finished. This is news not because anyone was anticipating the game’s release, but because precisely no one was anticipating its release. The title by Atomic Games, which attempts to be something of a historically accurate recreation of the 2006 mission in Fallujah by U.S. troops, was presumed to be a dead project after it was dropped by publisher Konami last year in the wake of a negative public reaction.

Today Michael Abbott at the Brainy Gamer makes a very strong argument for why the game should be picked up by an enterprising publisher that values the merits of the medium as much as its quarterly balance sheet. It’s a passionate pitch and I urge you read it.

It’s a tough sell, though. I don’t foresee any publisher picking this one up in today’s tough economy and retail landscape. And I fear for the game itself. As I wrote last year, it was irritating and disconcerting to see Konami backpedal and refer to the project as “just a game.” How much of that mentality seeped into the core design of SDIF? How much of the original vision remains after the busted deal with Konami forced layoffs at Atomic Games? Will it even be any good, as a game, at all?

I’d like to find out. But I doubt the game will ever see the light of day. If it does, I hope the finished product is at least better off for being severed from corporate influences.

Pong clock keeps time via gaming

Someday, when I have a man cave/game room, I want to put this clock in it.

It’s actually an open source kit available from Adafruit Industries. The computer is truly playing a game of pong, and the score changes every 60 seconds to track time. Not sure I’d want to bother with soldering it and all that, but I think it’d be worth buying a finished one. Adafruit has a short video showing how it works.

MONOCHRON – open source retro clock from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

In the unlikeliest of places …

Well… I’m blowing into the cartridge slot and spamming the reset button here, trying to get some posts going. I’m working on a few things that I hope will materialize soon. Right now I just want to post a link to a year-old essay from the London Review of Books.

Why? It’s strange to say, but LRB writer John Lanchester has penned one of the best pieces I’ve ever read on the current state of games as a medium. The piece is from early 2009 and most of the games cited are from 2007 or 2008, but because it takes a big-picture view of where things stand it’s still very relevant. There won’t be much here that gamers don’t know, or haven’t thought about, but it’s just so well-said that I want to share it. What I mainly love about it is that it’s written for a broad audience, but doesn’t dumb down the subject material one iota. That, in my opinion, is a difficult task but one more enthusiast writers should strive for.

Not all games are cynically, affectlessly violent, but a lot of them are, and this trend is holding video games back. It’s keeping them at the level of Hollywood blockbusters, when they could go on to be something else and something more. It seems clear to me that by the time my children are adults, video gaming will be a medium whose importance and cultural ubiquity are at least as great as that of film or television. Whether it will be an artistic medium of equivalent importance is less clear.

It’s a long piece, but well worth the time.

Quotable: Jenova Chen

If I’m making sections of a game that will just extend the life of that game it’s like a crime, because you are wasting your players’ time. They don’t learn anything new from those levels. I want to make sure when we design games we feel responsible for our audience.

-Jenova Chen, founder of Thatgamecompany and creator of “Flower” and “Flow” in an interview in the October issue of Edge magazine

This is one of the first times I’ve heard a developer make reference to “wasting” a player’s time. That is often how I feel when I play what I perceive to be a “bad” game. I have too few hours in the day to waste on poorly-designed or overly-long-for-no-reason titles.

NES 101 article is up at Racketboy.com

I’ve got reference-style article posted over at always-informative retro gaming site Racketboy.com. It’s in Racketboy’s “101″ series, giving the basics of gaming hardware through the years. I’m taking on the Nintendo Entertainment System in this edition. Tip of the hat to publisher Racketboy – who also wrote part of the article.

If you like what’s at Racket’s site, check out the forums. The community is really cool over there.

Alien Hominid HD: Fun in the third-person

There’s something to be said for the infectiousness of having fun. I’m not talking about fun in the first person here, but rather in the third person. Even when you’re not participating in the good times being had, it’s easy to get caught up in the vibe if you’re watching someone who’s genuinely having a blast.

At least, that’s how it is for me. It’s a huge factor for me when it comes to live music. Even if the band in front of me isn’t necessarily playing music I’d listen to on my headphones, if the musicians are clearly loving what they’re doing – if they look like they’d be having a good time just playing in their basement with no one watching — then I can’t help but grin, bob my head and get into the moment. The same goes for watching Jon Stewart on the Daily Show — it’s not just the sharp satire, it’s that he clearly relishes dishing it out. I think this is why I like Coen brothers movies so much, too. Their films are fun to watch because I can just tell they had fun creating them. The Coens’ faces aren’t on the screen, but the love of the process still shines through in the end product. It’s indirect exuberance, but — at least for this viewer — it’s there.

It’s hard to get that vibe with most games, even indirectly. Games can be an impersonal medium when it comes to a direct connection between creators and consumers. I can only think of a few games — regardless of overall quality — where I’ve felt like I get a little bit of the developer’s personality in exchange for my thumb time.

I’ve recently found an exception: Alien Hominid HD, the stylish 2D run-and-gun game by indie developer the Behemoth (I recently downloaded the XBLA verison). It’s not just that AH is fun to play, though it is damn fun. It’s the sense of unadulterated joy that seems to be oozing through the screen from somewhere just on the other side of the code. Each ingredient in the Behemoth’s rollicking recipe, taken on its own, isn’t all that remarkable. Explosions. Cartoon violence and a few fart jokes. Tight, simple gameplay. Explosions. Huge character sprites and massive bosses. The distinct art direction. Flashy power-ups. Exploooosions.

But when you put them together and consider the subtlties of some of the game’s other traits, the result is undeniable. The Behemoth clearly had fun making this game — and they clearly have a deep-seeded love for the videogame cannon. This is a gamers’ game — one that knows what it is and one that has some soul.

The hand-drawn art by Dan Paladin is, for me, the direct descendant of the old-school pixel art of the ’80s and early ’90s: the work of one guy who can put his own stamp on the character at hand. The game mechanics are an homage to the run-and-gunners that devoured countless quarters and hours two decades ago. The massive character sprites are the kind of thing that used to blow away players back in the day. The bigger, the better. These guys aren’t just imitating; with AH, the Behemoth pays respect to the games that made people of a certain age fall in love with games in the first place. They began by flipping a videogame cliche inside out and pitting a single alien against an unending army of human baddies. And then there’s the sly references. At various times I see echoes of Contra, Metal Slug, Battletoads, Asteroids, Bosconian, Donkey Kong, Rampage, Missle Command and Smash TV. The hard-as-nails, pattern-heavy difficulty level is a throwback to the 1980s, as is the inclusion of the (admittedly goofy) Russian KGB. The Behemoth’s newest game, Castle Crashers, is a similar tip of the hat to 16-bit hack-and-slash games, though I’ll admit I haven’t explored that one as fully as AH.

Alien Hominid’s core gameplay is simple, and its learning curve is maddening. It’s a game I shouldn’t really like, let alone be so enamoured with. Yet I can’t help but have a great time with the game when the developers were so clearly doing the same as they created it. AH is now several years old, but the hand-drawn art and loving references to past greats will make it as classic years from now as the games that inspired it.

I love Edge’s list capsules

Every time UK gaming mag Edge does a top games list, I’m always amazed by their writers’ ability to capture the essence of a game, and do it so well, in just a few sentences. As a writer, I get a kick out of reading them. From huge narrative epics to the smallest purely ludic titles, they have an ability to nail it.

A couple of favorites from the recent 100 Best Games to Play Today list from the mag’s 200th issue:

No. 83: Peggle

Detractors who say it’s just random miss the point.‭ ‬You’d think the Ode To Joy might give them a hint as where to find it.‭ ‬Always rewarding you,‭ ‬always cheering you on,‭ ‬Peggle may just sway favour by charm alone‭ – ‬but beneath the purposeful goofiness of unicorns and rainbows lies an undeniable compulsion.‭ Yes,‭ ‬chance plays a large part,‭ ‬but it is precisely the struggle to impose your will over the random that forms its deadly addiction.‭ ‬It plays to the gambler in us,‭ ‬and be it by luck or judgement,‭ ‬triumph rarely feels as good.

No. 79: Pac-Man Championship Edition

There’s nothing wrong with plain old Pac-Man,‭ ‬but it took Championship‭ Edition to show us just how right he still is.‭ The basics stay‭ – ‬Pac-Man,‭ ‬ghosts,‭ ‬dots,‭ ‬power pills,‭ ‬fruit and a maze‭ – ‬but it’s all about how CE toys with them.‭ Mazes morph,‭ ‬paths of dots grow,‭ ‬ghosts accelerate,‭ ‬power pill patterns change‭ – ‬all governed by collecting fruit.‭ ‬Every game begins with a mind to the hi-score by chaining ghosts and ends with the panic of sheer survival.‭ The best thing about Pac-Man:‭ ‬CE isn’t the sense you’re playing with a classic,‭ ‬it’s that designer Toru Iwatani was doing the same.

No. 43: Portal

We’d never suggest that originality is‭  ‬the be-all and end-all,‭ ‬but it’s difficult to resist the thrill of the new.‭ ‬And what a rush of novelty Portal delivers:‭ ‬not in its technology,‭ ‬not in its perspective,‭ ‬not in its puzzles‭ – ‬not in any one element‭ –  ‬but in their combination into a deliriously thrilling,‭ ‬mind-breaking firstperson puzzle-platformer.‭ And that’s before Valve wraps it up in a story that’s weird,‭ ‬deadly witty and oddly touching.‭ ‬Few developers could smash genres together so wantonly and produce a game of this staggering level of class.‭ ‬For Valve,‭ ‬it seems like a piece of cake.

Dig that last little in-joke there.

If you haven’t checked out this latest list, you should. Yeah, sure, Ocarina of Time in the No. 1 slot is predictable and almost cliche at this point, but overall the list is well-reasoned and, as mentioned, well-written.

About that ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ movie …

Via Ben Fritz and the Variety Cut Scene blog: Shadow of the Colossus is being adapted for the big screen.

Sigh.

This probably a bad idea. I’m sure to somebody in a boardroom at Sony (which published the game and is backing the film), it looks like a good idea. The game sold well enough. It’s a favorite of critics and players (including this one). Unlike a lot of action games, it’s incredibly moving and cinematic at times. It’s the only game to ever make me tear up because of an emotion other than frustration.

It’s pretty strange, then, just how poorly suited Shadow of the Colossus actually is for a film adaptation. There are practically no characters beyond the player character. There’s hardly any dialog outside of the intro and ending. There is zero action in between the 16 giants the player must first find, then figure out how to take down. Where other games fill the space between high points with pointless fetch quests or vapid townspeople, Colossus designer Fumito Ueda created a barren wasteland with nothing but miles of deserts, forests, lakes and ravines for the player to explore.

Defying common sense and conventional wisdom, this is actually one of the game’s biggest assets. The emptiness of the cursed and isolated world Ueda created imparted a feeling of loneliness on me as I made my way through it. Besides a few birds and scampering lizards, the only other souls I encountered were the colossi, the dead woman I hoped to bring back to life, and my horse. The solitary, sinking feeling I got as I wandered the terrain made the ending all the more bittersweet. I’d done what I had set out to do, but to what end? The girl is alive, but what kind of life will she have if she’s trapped in such a lonely place? For me, the desolate landscape was as much a character in this story as was the lively and life-like Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto 4.

It worked so well only because I spent so many hours in that place, alone. Passively watching a shortened version of someone else’s journey there will not be the same.

Something else the game lacks that actually added to its effectiveness for me, again despite conventional wisdom: a back story. You have no idea where you’ve come from, or why the girls is dead. There is no cut scene explaining the details of some ancient myth about bringing souls back to life. There are no explicit instructions about why you must do what you’re about to do. So much of the storyline is implied, and I loved that. There is something about being in the shoes of a character that makes implied narrative work so well. Was it my fault the girl died? Was it just an accident? What will happen when she finally opens her eyes — if she ever does? What is this place? I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience, and I would never try to, but for this player the questions fueled my motivation to keep going, even as other questions about the consequences of my actions began to creep up on me the further I went.

My fear is that the filmmakers will be tempted to fill in the spaces Ueda artfully left open. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog, lead writer Justin Marks said he will try to avoid adding cliches like a cheesy sidekick. But in the same interview he also says SOTC holds such great potential for a film adaptation because there is so little to begin with and the writers can “start building” on what’s there rather than “tearing down” the things that won’t fit in the two-hour screenplay. Marks also says fans shouldn’t be afraid of adapting stories from one medium into another, citing how many of the greatest films were book adaptations. He has a point, I guess, but can somebody show me a game-based movie that comes close to being watchable?

So Shadow of the Colossus fans are anxious. Yet if the movie somehow manages to be well-done and true to the game’s spirit, might that lead a few more people back to Ueda’s modern classic? I thought The Watchmen movie failed to translate very well to the big screen, but it did get me to pick up a copy of the graphic novel, which I hadn’t read before. The hype turned me onto the book, and helped me appreciate the original work for what it was.

Maybe it’ll be a blockbuster and turns new legions of players onto the game. Or maybe Sony will go the next step in cashing in, and just offer those people the inevitable tie-in — Shadow of the Colossus: The Movie: The Game, featuring a third-person cover mechanic, rocket launchers and a multi-player death match mode sold seperately as DLC.

Just own it

“It’s just a game.”

For people who care about the possibilities and promise of the interactive medium, those can be stinging words. They’re not entirely wrong or off the mark when it comes to most games. Many games are, indeed, just games. There are a few that have tried to reach beyond “just a game,” even if their grasp doesn’t always measure up. But often times, “just a game” is a phrase used by people pulling a huge cop-out.

In a preview story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Atomic Games president Peter Tamte talks up his company’s upcoming shooter, Six Days in Fallujah. The WSJ reporter says Tamte and Atomic view Six Days as more documentary than mere FPS, even going so far as working with soldiers who lived the events depicted in the game to ensure accuracy.

“For us, games are not just toys. If you look at how music, television and films have made sense of the complex issues of their times, it makes sense to do that with videogames,” Mr. Tamte says.

…

“Six Days,” which uses actual events as its backdrop, is billed as having far deeper roots in reality and will be the first major game released about the ongoing war in Iraq. “We replicate a specific and accurate timeline — we mean six days literally,” says Mr. Tamte. “We track several units through the process and you get to know what it was like from day to day.”

To develop the game, Atomic is working with more than three dozen soldiers who were in Fallujah, consulting thousands of photographs (some of which were mailed on memory cards from Camp Fallujah), and looking at classified satellite imagery to ensure that the game’s appearance is faithful to the actual location. In addition to creating the game, Atomic will also use some of the material to create a training simulation for the military.

But asked if his game would have a moral component of some kind, or a slant, a message or theme, Konami – which is publishing the game — strangely backed away, saying:

“We’re not trying to make social commentary. We’re not pro-war. We’re not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience,” says Anthony Crouts, vice-president of marketing for Konami, the game’s publisher. “At the end of the day, it’s just a game.”

Some people are upset about that statement. Patrick Klepek was the first to shake his head over this (nod – that’s how I heard about it), and I think there will be many more doing the same in the next couple of days. I’m disappointed, too, and not only that Konami seems to be copping out. It’s disappointing that we seem to want to have it both ways. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, however, that maker and marketer would have two different visions for the product.

Whether the developers like it or not, there inevitably WILL be some kind of messages gleaned from Six Days in Fallujah. As the WSJ story pointed out, nothing exists in a vaccuum. Everyone brings their own viewpoints, backgrounds and biases to the table when they absorb any form of media. Depending on how a player feels about the current war in Iraq, he or she will likely see what they want to see in the game. Any steps Atomic takes toward narrative realism in this game is a step toward a message — it just may not be a message they intend to send. I’ll bet you a few space bucks there will be no shortage of debate about Six Days once it’s released.

And if the gaming community feeds off of that attention, and holds up this game as yet another yard stick for how far the medium has come, then we have to be prepared to own up to the consequences, too. Did you notice that Atomic is also working with the military to create training software based on the tech used for Six Days? Do you not think that little fact won’t end up being used against the industry by the “murder simulator” wing nuts? We can’t have it both ways. Konami is muddying the waters for all of us, and I hope they know that. When the wing nuts come calling, the “just a game” cop-out won’t hold water. So don’t cop-out, Atomic and Konami. Own it. Own it now, and save yourselves and all of us the headache and embarassment later on.