This is a fairly short entry, and remember that this will be the last one until this Thursday. I'll explain more of the details about why specifically this is in my next entry. However, until then, I'll explain about my philosophy for this year and one of the decisions I want to make about it. It all started with my New Year's resolution: This Must End.
Let me clarify that I don't mean any particularly crazy definition of this phrase. I don't me my life or the universe or something. I do mean the way my life is right now, however. I came to this realization late last year when the comfortable but dull life I've formed started to change for the worse. One of the programmers at work quit, which was jarring already; I figured I would be the first to go. But that means the workload increased for the last two of us by 50% or so, not to mention the sudden influx of more complex projects. Meanwhile, my roommate told me he planned on moving out. His girlfriend turned into a fiancée, and the two of them bought a house. He actually physically moved out this February, but the contract doesn't end until July. I can look for a roommate until then, and I have tried a bit, but it won't be essential until this summer.
But that is the deadline. Come July, I either have to find a roommate or move out. My life will change, and now it's a question of how I want it changed. Meanwhile, I can't ignore my problems at work, either; they became part of the problem at this point. I know exactly what I want out of life, but I have no idea if I can even get it at my current level of education and experience. So, if Plan A is still not available, what exactly IS Plan B?
I recently came upon one solution, at least. A friend of my suggested that a lot of my problems, including my relationship woes, come from living in the suburbs. I have to admit, she has a point. I recently learned to love going into the city, nearly all the girls I do meet already live there, and it would even make school easier. Most important, it would be change, and it would be me making the change for once. The hard part, of course, is the job.
Do I stick with the current job? If so, how to travel there and back again every single day? And if not, what do I do? Can I accept a pay cut, and how much? For me to do this, I'll have to figure out how to find a job, find an apartment nearby, probably find one or more roommates, and move. All in about 3 months. I'm a bit nervous, and I'm worried about where to start.
But, even when I thought about the idea, I'm happy. Sure, there will be some things I'd have to let go of, but there are surprisingly little left. My cat will stay with, I could continue running my D&D game by stopping into the area, and what else is keeping me here? Yes, there's the writer's group, but is that enough? More importantly, it will mean getting up and going to a new job, something I haven't done in almost six years. But that number alone is terrifying. Six years, all in one building, one room, one half of an office. That's 50% longer than I spent at any school I went to. At least most people change positions within a company every few years.
So, I'm torn, and to any readers I theoretically have, I ask you this: what now? I need to figure out a way to find a job, for starters, and from there get cracking on the apartment. And that's assuming I go through with this. But if I don't, what do I do?
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Reviews: Premature take on Simpsons, Season 7
This is technically not the way I want to do these things. My rule is to finish something, and then review it. Technically, I have four episodes to go on the DVD first. That being said, I did of course finish this season, back when in it was on television. Back when the syndicated Simpsons was worth watching, I saw pretty much every episode again a half dozen times or so. I may not remember which episodes were which season, but I easily can recognize one by name. More importantly, this is the closest I can get to a reviewable product. The latest video game hasn't been finished, nor the latest book, and I didn't even buy any music in time for a review.
So Simpsons it is, and this is an important season. It is, in some ways, the final Simpsons season, or at least the final one that counts. Okay, that's not entirely fair. There are plenty of quality episodes in later seasons, from the James Bond parody and the Insanity Peppers to the Behind the Music spoof many, many seasons later. But this, to me, is the last "pure" season. It's here that the excellence, or at least quality, of a Simpsons episode is guaranteed, sight-unseen. Later seasons could not make that promise. Some episodes from season 8 on were awful, quite simply. And they weren't the "even a bad episode of Simpsons is better than 90% of television" awful, either, unless you simply assume 90% of television is simply unwatchable, which I admit is possible, since I don't watch it.
But I came to praise Simpsons, not bury it! I mean, I can't; no one can. That show will be on until the end of days. After the nuclear war, the cockroaches will curl up in front of the TV to watch it while eating Twinkies. In the first post-Bomb episode, Homer will get a new job.
Season seven, despite a few weak but not awful episodes, was consistently excellent. Like every season of the Simpsons, though, it's impossible to comment on the overarching plot. There is none. There barely is any theme, but nonetheless there were seams that started to develop this season. In a way, it felt like the series' universe was falling apart, as expectations of character and story started to become false. For example, there was the episode where Lisa learned that the town's founder, the creator of Springfield itself, was a fraud. But that's minor compared to the way the story itself began to warp and self-reference. It was in this season that Sideshow Bob, the criminal genius, started with a scheme to destroy the entire city in an atom bomb, and ended it so defeated that he was rendered nothing but a joke for the entire last third of an episode. The other characters had to play down their abilities and were even bored with his antics. He just no longer mattered.
But the one that really gets me, the one that I wish the show really explored further, was the episode where Bart and Lisa accidentally got Itchy and Scratchy cancelled. At the end of the episode, they find a solution (though we never hear it,) but by then, the day was saved! By two never before seen incidental characters. Who look like first season Bart and Lisa. The episode ended with our main characters unsatisfied because, for once, the universe righted itself without their efforts. That's pretty damn zen, if you get right down to it.
I wish the show considered what it was doing here more; the repetition of the sitcom formula, now seven years old, was being recognized by the very characters, and it was breaking down. This is a fundamental aspect of the Simpsons universe, as much as the planet, skies, air, ground, etc. were. The ramifications, especially for a clever show like the Simpsons, were endless. Instead, we got...this.
I have reached the point where I won't hide my disdain for later Simpsons seasons. Oh, habit and hope have motivated me for longer than I should have; it wasn't until the last season or two where I didn't regularly watch every new episodes. But I can't say I truly enjoyed the show in a long time. It's not as bad as it's ever been; it's been years since we had jockey elves and Homer being raped by a panda. But the soul is long since gone, the characters empty vestiges of their past selves (except for sometimes Lisa, actually,) and the jokes repetitive and flat.
My review, therefore, is tripartite. The Simpsons, season 7: A. The Simpsons, as it is: C on a good week. The Simpsons, as it could have been: Unprecedented. A glorious end that both questions the very nature of the traditional sitcom and is hilarious. To summarize, let me tell you what I watched tonight was on. There was a new episode of the Simpsons on tonight. At that time of night, I watched an episode twelve years old and that was seen countless times instead. I laughed my ass off.
So Simpsons it is, and this is an important season. It is, in some ways, the final Simpsons season, or at least the final one that counts. Okay, that's not entirely fair. There are plenty of quality episodes in later seasons, from the James Bond parody and the Insanity Peppers to the Behind the Music spoof many, many seasons later. But this, to me, is the last "pure" season. It's here that the excellence, or at least quality, of a Simpsons episode is guaranteed, sight-unseen. Later seasons could not make that promise. Some episodes from season 8 on were awful, quite simply. And they weren't the "even a bad episode of Simpsons is better than 90% of television" awful, either, unless you simply assume 90% of television is simply unwatchable, which I admit is possible, since I don't watch it.
But I came to praise Simpsons, not bury it! I mean, I can't; no one can. That show will be on until the end of days. After the nuclear war, the cockroaches will curl up in front of the TV to watch it while eating Twinkies. In the first post-Bomb episode, Homer will get a new job.
Season seven, despite a few weak but not awful episodes, was consistently excellent. Like every season of the Simpsons, though, it's impossible to comment on the overarching plot. There is none. There barely is any theme, but nonetheless there were seams that started to develop this season. In a way, it felt like the series' universe was falling apart, as expectations of character and story started to become false. For example, there was the episode where Lisa learned that the town's founder, the creator of Springfield itself, was a fraud. But that's minor compared to the way the story itself began to warp and self-reference. It was in this season that Sideshow Bob, the criminal genius, started with a scheme to destroy the entire city in an atom bomb, and ended it so defeated that he was rendered nothing but a joke for the entire last third of an episode. The other characters had to play down their abilities and were even bored with his antics. He just no longer mattered.
But the one that really gets me, the one that I wish the show really explored further, was the episode where Bart and Lisa accidentally got Itchy and Scratchy cancelled. At the end of the episode, they find a solution (though we never hear it,) but by then, the day was saved! By two never before seen incidental characters. Who look like first season Bart and Lisa. The episode ended with our main characters unsatisfied because, for once, the universe righted itself without their efforts. That's pretty damn zen, if you get right down to it.
I wish the show considered what it was doing here more; the repetition of the sitcom formula, now seven years old, was being recognized by the very characters, and it was breaking down. This is a fundamental aspect of the Simpsons universe, as much as the planet, skies, air, ground, etc. were. The ramifications, especially for a clever show like the Simpsons, were endless. Instead, we got...this.
I have reached the point where I won't hide my disdain for later Simpsons seasons. Oh, habit and hope have motivated me for longer than I should have; it wasn't until the last season or two where I didn't regularly watch every new episodes. But I can't say I truly enjoyed the show in a long time. It's not as bad as it's ever been; it's been years since we had jockey elves and Homer being raped by a panda. But the soul is long since gone, the characters empty vestiges of their past selves (except for sometimes Lisa, actually,) and the jokes repetitive and flat.
My review, therefore, is tripartite. The Simpsons, season 7: A. The Simpsons, as it is: C on a good week. The Simpsons, as it could have been: Unprecedented. A glorious end that both questions the very nature of the traditional sitcom and is hilarious. To summarize, let me tell you what I watched tonight was on. There was a new episode of the Simpsons on tonight. At that time of night, I watched an episode twelve years old and that was seen countless times instead. I laughed my ass off.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
My Inspiations: Toys that Aren't Transformers.
Most of my inspirations assume that some of the theoretical readers I may have or eventually will get have some idea what I'm talking about. This may not be true here. In 1985 or so, I first got a collectible type of toy called, in this country, M.U.S.C.L.E. And that's the first and last time I'll spell it like that. These toys were tiny, pink, plastic figures based on a Japanese manga/anime/etc. about professional wrestlers. From space. Or it's something like that; I never really bothered to learn the Japanese version of the story, and the American version didn't even exist per sec.
So, as far as I was concerned, story was irrelevant, which is ironic given my earlier posts, but still. It was about seeing virtually hundreds of strange, not remotely human figures, and figuring out their powers. I gave them names, backstories, levels of powers, and even ranks. The guy with a cross on his back and an antenna was Hospitality, who could heal or resurrect the dead. The various guys with weird symbols for faces had special ranged attacks tied to the symbol. An "X" killed with a shot (like how in cartoons characters that "died" had Xs in their eyes,) or one with a triangle face created dimensional portals. And the obvious cyborg was clearly one of the best characters. Even then, there was that bit of transhumanism.
Inspiration-wise, one can’t really discount these toys, no matter how silly they are. They were, after all, one of the first inspirations that don't just inspire a creation, a setting, a genre, or a medium; they inspire me to actively create. Now, there were limits, since I had to base any powers on the actual physical bodies. But working within limits is one of the greatest tests a creative person can perform. That's infinitely more so for hopeful video game designers, who have graphical power, processing power, space limitations, and the constant battles against other designers, executives, writers, test groups, and customers struggling against your creative vision. This was sort of superhero/villain fuel, and in addition to creating characters, it makes it easy to create your own plots. Pick up a few of the tiny plastic inaction figures, pretend they fight, and you have a functioning comic book battle and such.
Unlike most of my inspirations, this is one that hasn't come up often in my life, but as creativity gristle, this was crucial for my development. Remember that, in the 20 or so years of creation, I have literally thousands of characters made. This is not an easy thing to do, especially making them all unique in at least some power, personality, or physical form/appearance. Every development of this sort requires a first step, and these little figures provided it, no matter how obscure they were. Or, for that matter, how pink they were. I have no idea why they ever thought these would sell.
So, as far as I was concerned, story was irrelevant, which is ironic given my earlier posts, but still. It was about seeing virtually hundreds of strange, not remotely human figures, and figuring out their powers. I gave them names, backstories, levels of powers, and even ranks. The guy with a cross on his back and an antenna was Hospitality, who could heal or resurrect the dead. The various guys with weird symbols for faces had special ranged attacks tied to the symbol. An "X" killed with a shot (like how in cartoons characters that "died" had Xs in their eyes,) or one with a triangle face created dimensional portals. And the obvious cyborg was clearly one of the best characters. Even then, there was that bit of transhumanism.
Inspiration-wise, one can’t really discount these toys, no matter how silly they are. They were, after all, one of the first inspirations that don't just inspire a creation, a setting, a genre, or a medium; they inspire me to actively create. Now, there were limits, since I had to base any powers on the actual physical bodies. But working within limits is one of the greatest tests a creative person can perform. That's infinitely more so for hopeful video game designers, who have graphical power, processing power, space limitations, and the constant battles against other designers, executives, writers, test groups, and customers struggling against your creative vision. This was sort of superhero/villain fuel, and in addition to creating characters, it makes it easy to create your own plots. Pick up a few of the tiny plastic inaction figures, pretend they fight, and you have a functioning comic book battle and such.
Unlike most of my inspirations, this is one that hasn't come up often in my life, but as creativity gristle, this was crucial for my development. Remember that, in the 20 or so years of creation, I have literally thousands of characters made. This is not an easy thing to do, especially making them all unique in at least some power, personality, or physical form/appearance. Every development of this sort requires a first step, and these little figures provided it, no matter how obscure they were. Or, for that matter, how pink they were. I have no idea why they ever thought these would sell.
Friday, March 28, 2008
My Ideas: Mega Man Ideas! Round 1!
And so begins the start of a series that will last a while, especially since I'll be breaking them up as well. This refers to the very first video game ideas I ever wrote, ideas that started many of my later series. Megaman ideas were simple to make even when I was eight, as all it takes was toss an adjective to man eight times, drawing up some maps, and it's done! Sadly, in the first game idea, I didn't have that much.
The names of the characters at the time were Fastman, Explodeman, Webman, Stoneman, Waterman, and...that's it, at least briefly. My original plan was to have one boss from Megaman 1 and two from Megaman 2 to finish the list. Why those two? Those were the only two Megaman games that existed!
That eventually didn't last, as I realized it was a silly idea. Fortunately, I already planned on adding two characters that didn't match the normal nonlinear set; an intro boss named Garbageman and a Wily-based robot master boss named Rayman (as in Ray-gun, like the hi-tech laser guns as we imagined them in the 1950s.) Garbageman was based on a Captain N joke-cameo, so at this point things had to be improved upon. Eventually, Garbageman became Grinderman, Explodeman was just Explosionman, Rayman became Laserman, and a few other robots had to change their names because other games or even Megaman sequels already used them. Stoneman became Graniteman, for example. As for Waterman, well, that changed because it was stupidly generic. It was Aquaman, Hydroman, and others, and finally I gave up. It's Generic Water Boss in "canon" now. Oh, and I tossed in a generic fire robot boss, called him Infernoman, and we had our 8!
Hilariously, after taking years to make just eight bosses, I eventually went mad and tossed in twelve bosses. This became a recurring theme in later Megaman games, save for one. The assumption was either that four were later "advanced" characters, or some would be editted out and we'd have our eight. The four new guys were Tornadoman, Hawkman, Rocketman, and Nightman.
The second major feature I made for this game is one I'm sort of proud of. Midway through the development above, half of the "man" characters became "woman" in an attempt to have gender equality. So I had to come up with which gender each boss had; for the record, the women were Fastwoman, Webwoman, (Water/Hydro/etc)woman, Infernowoman, Hawkwoman, and Nightwoman (who was Nightmarewoman at this point.)
Here's my opinion on this game, overall. It wasn't good; come on. Most of this was conceived of when I was in elementary school. By junior high even, the games were much more clever. There were some clever game ideas, mind you. Fastwoman's level was autoscrolling, Waterorwhateverwoman's level had a series of paths you could choose from, and there were a few other platforming elements that I still want to use one day. Otherwise, the story was simplistic even for this series; Dr. Wily wanted to conquer the world, beat his robots, and game over. This represents just a tentative step, not a revolution. I did my first "design documents" at this point, but it was about 5 pages or so at the most. It also had "drawn" designs, which means I made pictures of the levels, using my 8 year old art skills. And like all video game ideas, they later brought new concepts to later games. Even Grinderman, one of the first characters I ever made for a video game and little but a lame transfer from a cartoon when I started, became a major enemy for one of my most recent and advanced games. I'm sorry that there are less to review for this game, but it does set the stage for the other ideas of this series. All 6 or so of them; like I said, this arc can last a while.
The names of the characters at the time were Fastman, Explodeman, Webman, Stoneman, Waterman, and...that's it, at least briefly. My original plan was to have one boss from Megaman 1 and two from Megaman 2 to finish the list. Why those two? Those were the only two Megaman games that existed!
That eventually didn't last, as I realized it was a silly idea. Fortunately, I already planned on adding two characters that didn't match the normal nonlinear set; an intro boss named Garbageman and a Wily-based robot master boss named Rayman (as in Ray-gun, like the hi-tech laser guns as we imagined them in the 1950s.) Garbageman was based on a Captain N joke-cameo, so at this point things had to be improved upon. Eventually, Garbageman became Grinderman, Explodeman was just Explosionman, Rayman became Laserman, and a few other robots had to change their names because other games or even Megaman sequels already used them. Stoneman became Graniteman, for example. As for Waterman, well, that changed because it was stupidly generic. It was Aquaman, Hydroman, and others, and finally I gave up. It's Generic Water Boss in "canon" now. Oh, and I tossed in a generic fire robot boss, called him Infernoman, and we had our 8!
Hilariously, after taking years to make just eight bosses, I eventually went mad and tossed in twelve bosses. This became a recurring theme in later Megaman games, save for one. The assumption was either that four were later "advanced" characters, or some would be editted out and we'd have our eight. The four new guys were Tornadoman, Hawkman, Rocketman, and Nightman.
The second major feature I made for this game is one I'm sort of proud of. Midway through the development above, half of the "man" characters became "woman" in an attempt to have gender equality. So I had to come up with which gender each boss had; for the record, the women were Fastwoman, Webwoman, (Water/Hydro/etc)woman, Infernowoman, Hawkwoman, and Nightwoman (who was Nightmarewoman at this point.)
Here's my opinion on this game, overall. It wasn't good; come on. Most of this was conceived of when I was in elementary school. By junior high even, the games were much more clever. There were some clever game ideas, mind you. Fastwoman's level was autoscrolling, Waterorwhateverwoman's level had a series of paths you could choose from, and there were a few other platforming elements that I still want to use one day. Otherwise, the story was simplistic even for this series; Dr. Wily wanted to conquer the world, beat his robots, and game over. This represents just a tentative step, not a revolution. I did my first "design documents" at this point, but it was about 5 pages or so at the most. It also had "drawn" designs, which means I made pictures of the levels, using my 8 year old art skills. And like all video game ideas, they later brought new concepts to later games. Even Grinderman, one of the first characters I ever made for a video game and little but a lame transfer from a cartoon when I started, became a major enemy for one of my most recent and advanced games. I'm sorry that there are less to review for this game, but it does set the stage for the other ideas of this series. All 6 or so of them; like I said, this arc can last a while.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A Missed Update and An Announcement
Yes, unfortunately, I must take another day off. I didn't even get home until 11 pm or so tonight, so I didn't really have time.
I also have an announcement: I likely will change my schedule into a 3 a week system. My current plan is to have updates on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Doing four updates in a row was getting to me, I'm afraid, and I'll be working on some other writing projects, which I plan on discussing more on Friday or next Monday. Starting next week, I'll do Life and Rant updates one week, Ideas and Writings the next, and Reviews on weekends if I finished anything reviewable over that week.
This change will almost definitely happen this coming month, and I'm not sure if I'll revert back in May. I have to admit, one reason for a lack of as many updates after April is the lack of responses. I never set out to become a huge public success with this thing, but one reason I write in public is to get public feedback, comments, recommendations, even criticism. If I don't get any, it's hard for me to evaluate my work and improve, or at least the enjoyment of knowing other people read some of what I wrote. Hopefully that will change with time, though.
I also have an announcement: I likely will change my schedule into a 3 a week system. My current plan is to have updates on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Doing four updates in a row was getting to me, I'm afraid, and I'll be working on some other writing projects, which I plan on discussing more on Friday or next Monday. Starting next week, I'll do Life and Rant updates one week, Ideas and Writings the next, and Reviews on weekends if I finished anything reviewable over that week.
This change will almost definitely happen this coming month, and I'm not sure if I'll revert back in May. I have to admit, one reason for a lack of as many updates after April is the lack of responses. I never set out to become a huge public success with this thing, but one reason I write in public is to get public feedback, comments, recommendations, even criticism. If I don't get any, it's hard for me to evaluate my work and improve, or at least the enjoyment of knowing other people read some of what I wrote. Hopefully that will change with time, though.
Monday, March 24, 2008
My Life: Proof My Weird Taste Doesn't Just Lie In Games.
It's about time for another post that's weird, possibly too personal, and kinda dark. Off we go, then!
This one was inspired by, well, my life in general, but also dinner. I went out to a local, cheap noodle place. There was a cute girl who was in front of me in line. She was also alone. She ordered her food, and then I did the same. We ate well apart, she finished first, and then she left. I'll probably never see her again.
But still....
This is a problem for me in general. I mean, in this specific case, I don't think I could've done much. It was a crowded, public restaurant, and she probably wanted to eat in peace. I just wish, if not this case, I'd find some situations where I could meet woman. Because I really suck at this part.
But this isn't about missed opportunities, no matter how numerous. This is more about what I'm looking for in the first place, irregardless of how unlikely it is that I'll ever find it.
Though if I was good at describing it, maybe it wouldn't be a problem in the first place, now would it? Well, there are the basics. I'm looking for someone intelligent, attractive, nice, funny, all the generic stuff people say at this point. It's the "Long walk on the beach" step, save for the part that people actually want them.
Most of them require clarification, anyway. Intelligence is a pretty easy one to discuss. I want someone intelligent enough to carry on a conversation, who knows enough to get around in the world in general, and who understands at least the basics of philosophy, politics, science, etc. More importantly, I want someone who has at least some creative or intellectual passion. It doesn't have to be mine, though we'll get more to that. But it has to be something beyond just getting through life.
Next up is funny. That's pretty subjective, and a lot of it comes down to similar interests. I don't expect her to share all the movies, television shows, books, etc., that I like, but a few that I like would be nice. My humor tastes range from surreal to more sarcastic, with lighter things like cartoons thrown in. A Buffy or 30 Rock fan, for example, would score big points. And beyond fun, having similar concepts of "fun" are nice. Finding a girl who likes Dungeons and Dragons is a pipe dream, I know, but someone who wants to play video games sometimes, or head into the city to explore, or go biking, would be great.
As for nice, that's a bit trickier. Some of that is similar politics and religion, if you think about it. I still don't want to talk much about either here, but as a relatively young, technology-embracing futurist, you can guess I aim towards more open-minded and tolerant beliefs, and I would have trouble dating someone who believed otherwise. She wouldn't have to have the exact same religious beliefs, but at the very least she doesn't have to think, say, that I'm going to burn in Hell. But there's more to "nice" than that. I have to face it: being single for so long makes it harder for me to trust the concept of relations. I'd need a girlfriend that was caring and affectionate, who showed me that she felt strongly about me as I did for her, that she cared basically. I want someone to rest on or near me while sitting on a couch and who rested on me in bed. I want someone who is nervous about romance; who giggles and is awkward at times, because I know I sure as hell will be.
As for attractive, that's the most subjective of all, and it's easy to sound picky about it. I like to think I'm not, though. I mean, there are some restrictions; I don't find myself attracted to people who are extremely overweight, to use one shallow example. But what I am attracted to is more nebulous. I generally like people who have an unusual sense of style, so I like people who identify with a sub-culture. For example, I've often been attracted to goths, but I also like women who have a more "indy" style, or even classical geeks. It probably has something to do with the fact I'm already interested in designs and archetypes; if you think that way enough, it becomes the way you see the world. One of the most unusual of these attractions, though, is that I find myself attracted to smokers. I don't know why, exactly: I never even tried smoking and have no interest in doing so. It's just another archetype to me, I think, or perhaps an intellectually intriguing element of someone. It could even be a subset of my interest in goths or other classical styles, like the flappers. But that's about my weirder interests, I think.
I guess it's not that strange a list of things to want. Similar interests, personal beliefs that don't repel me, etc. It doesn't help that I have absolutely no way to find someone even closely matching these requirements, especially, for some reason, the one that means they care about me. But that would have to be another update, I think. Assuming it ever is one.
This one was inspired by, well, my life in general, but also dinner. I went out to a local, cheap noodle place. There was a cute girl who was in front of me in line. She was also alone. She ordered her food, and then I did the same. We ate well apart, she finished first, and then she left. I'll probably never see her again.
But still....
This is a problem for me in general. I mean, in this specific case, I don't think I could've done much. It was a crowded, public restaurant, and she probably wanted to eat in peace. I just wish, if not this case, I'd find some situations where I could meet woman. Because I really suck at this part.
But this isn't about missed opportunities, no matter how numerous. This is more about what I'm looking for in the first place, irregardless of how unlikely it is that I'll ever find it.
Though if I was good at describing it, maybe it wouldn't be a problem in the first place, now would it? Well, there are the basics. I'm looking for someone intelligent, attractive, nice, funny, all the generic stuff people say at this point. It's the "Long walk on the beach" step, save for the part that people actually want them.
Most of them require clarification, anyway. Intelligence is a pretty easy one to discuss. I want someone intelligent enough to carry on a conversation, who knows enough to get around in the world in general, and who understands at least the basics of philosophy, politics, science, etc. More importantly, I want someone who has at least some creative or intellectual passion. It doesn't have to be mine, though we'll get more to that. But it has to be something beyond just getting through life.
Next up is funny. That's pretty subjective, and a lot of it comes down to similar interests. I don't expect her to share all the movies, television shows, books, etc., that I like, but a few that I like would be nice. My humor tastes range from surreal to more sarcastic, with lighter things like cartoons thrown in. A Buffy or 30 Rock fan, for example, would score big points. And beyond fun, having similar concepts of "fun" are nice. Finding a girl who likes Dungeons and Dragons is a pipe dream, I know, but someone who wants to play video games sometimes, or head into the city to explore, or go biking, would be great.
As for nice, that's a bit trickier. Some of that is similar politics and religion, if you think about it. I still don't want to talk much about either here, but as a relatively young, technology-embracing futurist, you can guess I aim towards more open-minded and tolerant beliefs, and I would have trouble dating someone who believed otherwise. She wouldn't have to have the exact same religious beliefs, but at the very least she doesn't have to think, say, that I'm going to burn in Hell. But there's more to "nice" than that. I have to face it: being single for so long makes it harder for me to trust the concept of relations. I'd need a girlfriend that was caring and affectionate, who showed me that she felt strongly about me as I did for her, that she cared basically. I want someone to rest on or near me while sitting on a couch and who rested on me in bed. I want someone who is nervous about romance; who giggles and is awkward at times, because I know I sure as hell will be.
As for attractive, that's the most subjective of all, and it's easy to sound picky about it. I like to think I'm not, though. I mean, there are some restrictions; I don't find myself attracted to people who are extremely overweight, to use one shallow example. But what I am attracted to is more nebulous. I generally like people who have an unusual sense of style, so I like people who identify with a sub-culture. For example, I've often been attracted to goths, but I also like women who have a more "indy" style, or even classical geeks. It probably has something to do with the fact I'm already interested in designs and archetypes; if you think that way enough, it becomes the way you see the world. One of the most unusual of these attractions, though, is that I find myself attracted to smokers. I don't know why, exactly: I never even tried smoking and have no interest in doing so. It's just another archetype to me, I think, or perhaps an intellectually intriguing element of someone. It could even be a subset of my interest in goths or other classical styles, like the flappers. But that's about my weirder interests, I think.
I guess it's not that strange a list of things to want. Similar interests, personal beliefs that don't repel me, etc. It doesn't help that I have absolutely no way to find someone even closely matching these requirements, especially, for some reason, the one that means they care about me. But that would have to be another update, I think. Assuming it ever is one.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Reviews: The Last Angel Reviews For Awhile
This weekend (hell, this afternoon,) I finally finished a second season of Angel DVDs in the strike-themed lapse of new television shows. This time, it's Angel's third season, the last season I saw nothing about when it was still on the air. Previously, I never got hooked on it, but I watched the second half of Season 4 so I could connect its plot to the series finale of Buffy. And of course I watched all of Season 5; Buffy was gone by then, and that was the only way to get a Joss Whedon fix.
But that means that once again I knew the major plot points, but none of the reasons how or the nature of the characters involved. This also feels like the first season of Angel where the year long plot arc went according to the creator's plan. An early actor departure derailed season 1, and the entire arc of season 2 short-circuited where guess actors were unable to play in the final episodes, bringing in some "alternate dimension" goofiness.
This time, the story revolved from episode one about the birth, growth, and adulthood of Angel's child, impossibly a human, and about another arch-nemesis from his past. The arch-nemesis is Holtz, a vampire hunter from Angel's evil days, brought back into modern times. This is a very unusual concept, especially in the Buffy universe. Instead of a season-long Big Bad villain, they brought back a Big Good; a hero suddenly faced with the fact that his greatest enemy is another good guy. So instead of inducing new personalities, goals, and at least some moments to offer sympathy for an evil out to conquer the world/universe/etc., we see the good guy sink into his own flaws, deceit, and justifications.
Meanwhile, we see Angel's own transformations. If the first season was about turning a brooding anti-hero into someone forced into dealing with friends and people again, and the second was seeing him at his lowest and struggle to return to the position of hero, this season was about seeing him deal with a complication almost all humans must endure. It's the opposite of last season, as he slowly reaches his emotional peak, and then it drops him down again. Angel first has to deal with his returning, pregnant, semi-evil ex-girlfriend, and then a needy and healthy human baby. This creates all the problems of single fatherhood, coupled with the less typical handicaps of his vampire nature and the violent enemies he accrued, but it also shows the joys being a father, finally showing a form of love from Angel outside of the romantic or semi-platonic.
But babies are boring, so of course the plot fixed that soon enough. After his child is abducted to a hell dimension, Angel's darkness returns and becomes personal. That was temporary, but soon the child, Angel, came back as a teenager. Now we see the path of fatherhood at another stage, and again Angel reaches his peaks and valleys, ending in one hell of a valley. His nemesis, despite dying, finally got his revenge through Angel's own son, leaving Angel in an uncertain fate at the end of the season.
This season also had one more element to it: the long game. I can't speak much until I finally finish the next season, but I will say that there are hints of a much larger plot, beyond even one season. Well, it's possible that the major plot of next season is just being ad-libbed from hereon and they just tossed in some plot points from first season, but regardless there were other advanced plots beyond Angel's. The first is that of long-term secondary heroine Cordellia, who went from a human with occasional prophetic visions to a half-demon with the same visions to an ascended higher being, off to a fate as uncertain as Angel's. And Wesley, the last major character left from season 1, was torn between loyalty to his allies and fear that Angel would one day endanger his child and the attacks by Holtz would hurt his friends. He elected to betray Angel by abducting his child, on the hopeful condition that this would save the child's life and keep Holtz at bay. Instead, the child was sent to a hell dimension, Holtz attacked anyway, Wesley was almost killed, and Angel and the rest of the regulars hate him for his traitorous actions. This brings Wesley even further down the darker but more pragmatic path.
These arcs were handled competently, but others were less successful. Fred, a minor character introduced last season, became a regular this season, but she hadn't yet developed much of a personality. She's cute, spunky, smart, awkward with a tendency to ramble or obsess about science, and both Wesley and Gunn, another Angel regular, had the hots for her. But she didn't really develop as a person beyond this point, nor did she do much to become competent with the normal series violence. And many single-plot episodes felt like they needed at least one revision. An early episode where Gunn's old friends revealed a darker side was one example, as was a very strange episode about a demon who somehow owned Gunn's soul. (Gunn had a lot of weird development arcs, actually.) Often, they were resolved too quickly, aiming for a clever subversion of a normal trope but without actually explaining how that subversion makes sense within the universe of the series.
So the entire season got, say, a B+ or A-. I liked it better than last season, due to its much better story arc and moral complexity, but it still never reached the archetypal appeal of Buffy. Maybe that's unsurprising; after all, I have been a high-schooler and an awkward oddball trying to live a normal life, but I never was a centuries old superhuman or a fallen being struggle for redemption. Nor was I a resident of a large city, for that matter. But while I never was a father, either, I at least understand the theme of family it means. Who knows if that will become a part of my life as well?
But that means that once again I knew the major plot points, but none of the reasons how or the nature of the characters involved. This also feels like the first season of Angel where the year long plot arc went according to the creator's plan. An early actor departure derailed season 1, and the entire arc of season 2 short-circuited where guess actors were unable to play in the final episodes, bringing in some "alternate dimension" goofiness.
This time, the story revolved from episode one about the birth, growth, and adulthood of Angel's child, impossibly a human, and about another arch-nemesis from his past. The arch-nemesis is Holtz, a vampire hunter from Angel's evil days, brought back into modern times. This is a very unusual concept, especially in the Buffy universe. Instead of a season-long Big Bad villain, they brought back a Big Good; a hero suddenly faced with the fact that his greatest enemy is another good guy. So instead of inducing new personalities, goals, and at least some moments to offer sympathy for an evil out to conquer the world/universe/etc., we see the good guy sink into his own flaws, deceit, and justifications.
Meanwhile, we see Angel's own transformations. If the first season was about turning a brooding anti-hero into someone forced into dealing with friends and people again, and the second was seeing him at his lowest and struggle to return to the position of hero, this season was about seeing him deal with a complication almost all humans must endure. It's the opposite of last season, as he slowly reaches his emotional peak, and then it drops him down again. Angel first has to deal with his returning, pregnant, semi-evil ex-girlfriend, and then a needy and healthy human baby. This creates all the problems of single fatherhood, coupled with the less typical handicaps of his vampire nature and the violent enemies he accrued, but it also shows the joys being a father, finally showing a form of love from Angel outside of the romantic or semi-platonic.
But babies are boring, so of course the plot fixed that soon enough. After his child is abducted to a hell dimension, Angel's darkness returns and becomes personal. That was temporary, but soon the child, Angel, came back as a teenager. Now we see the path of fatherhood at another stage, and again Angel reaches his peaks and valleys, ending in one hell of a valley. His nemesis, despite dying, finally got his revenge through Angel's own son, leaving Angel in an uncertain fate at the end of the season.
This season also had one more element to it: the long game. I can't speak much until I finally finish the next season, but I will say that there are hints of a much larger plot, beyond even one season. Well, it's possible that the major plot of next season is just being ad-libbed from hereon and they just tossed in some plot points from first season, but regardless there were other advanced plots beyond Angel's. The first is that of long-term secondary heroine Cordellia, who went from a human with occasional prophetic visions to a half-demon with the same visions to an ascended higher being, off to a fate as uncertain as Angel's. And Wesley, the last major character left from season 1, was torn between loyalty to his allies and fear that Angel would one day endanger his child and the attacks by Holtz would hurt his friends. He elected to betray Angel by abducting his child, on the hopeful condition that this would save the child's life and keep Holtz at bay. Instead, the child was sent to a hell dimension, Holtz attacked anyway, Wesley was almost killed, and Angel and the rest of the regulars hate him for his traitorous actions. This brings Wesley even further down the darker but more pragmatic path.
These arcs were handled competently, but others were less successful. Fred, a minor character introduced last season, became a regular this season, but she hadn't yet developed much of a personality. She's cute, spunky, smart, awkward with a tendency to ramble or obsess about science, and both Wesley and Gunn, another Angel regular, had the hots for her. But she didn't really develop as a person beyond this point, nor did she do much to become competent with the normal series violence. And many single-plot episodes felt like they needed at least one revision. An early episode where Gunn's old friends revealed a darker side was one example, as was a very strange episode about a demon who somehow owned Gunn's soul. (Gunn had a lot of weird development arcs, actually.) Often, they were resolved too quickly, aiming for a clever subversion of a normal trope but without actually explaining how that subversion makes sense within the universe of the series.
So the entire season got, say, a B+ or A-. I liked it better than last season, due to its much better story arc and moral complexity, but it still never reached the archetypal appeal of Buffy. Maybe that's unsurprising; after all, I have been a high-schooler and an awkward oddball trying to live a normal life, but I never was a centuries old superhuman or a fallen being struggle for redemption. Nor was I a resident of a large city, for that matter. But while I never was a father, either, I at least understand the theme of family it means. Who knows if that will become a part of my life as well?
Saturday, March 22, 2008
My Inspirations: Final Fantasy, Round 1.
This was inevitable, of course. I already established that my interests include video games, narrative video games, and genres like RPGs. So of course Final Fantasy was included. However, I've been a fan of the series since the original on the Nintendo, and this is not the first Final Fantasy to get his consideration. In fact, it's not the Final Fantasy anybody expected. The game is, and I'm almost ashamed to admit it, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
Even I find it weird to write that, and I'm writing it! At this point, to be fair, my memory of exactly what other RPGs I played and beat at the point where I played this game. I think there weren't many. I don't even think I beat Final Fantasy 2 (4 for those who care about accuracy and the Japanese numbering,) which many consider to be the best of the series, at least of that era, but I'm not sure. Mystic Quest, by comparison, was the series' idiot cousin.
This isn't really an insult; this was the plan. The console role-playing genre was still pretty dead at this point, so to try and counter this, Squaresoft, Final Fantasy's developers, created an American-specific game. It was vastly easier than other games of the genre, relatively short, and only $20. There were worse deals, especially in that time frame, where console games could cost $60 or more! So it wasn't too hard to get the game.
Mystic Quest is, as I said before, a very simple game. I had a simplistic plot where the simple, personality-free hero had to retrieve four elemental sources of power, and then confront the originally-named Dark King who ran the whole sinister plan. There were only four types of weapons, at least that the player could use, and only three of each, with an obvious advancement path for each one. The same is true for armor, but you never even had to choose the best one for a circumstance. Your party always consisted of exactly two characters, and the second one could even be computer controlled. Spells weren't much better; there were only twelve, and most of them were rendered obsolete quickly enough.
So it was tripe, or at least it was vapid and shallow. Why did it inspire me? Well, for one reason, I was twelve, and thus vapid and shallow. Surprisingly, despite the game's low cost and simplistic gameplay, the presentation was incredible. It included features that are used too rarely today. For example, in combat, the game shows the party members with their backs turned to the camera and the enemies and backgrounds taking up much of the screen, and the backgrounds were often incredible. Some were static, generic images of trees and whatnot, but others, like the overcast desert, were moving and more detailed than I've seen in Super Nintendo games at this point. Also, the enemies were reactive to damage. In other words, when reduced to half their health, they appear wounded, hinting that they were near death. The major bosses had the same traits, but they had more stages of damage to better clarify.
The music was also impressive, again taking advantage of the Super Nintendo's technological jump. Gone were the bleeps and bloops of ancient video game systems, or even the catchy but minimalistic tunes from Nintendo. Some of Mystic Quest's music, well, rocked. Or at least it emulated rock music as best as it could, which was an amazing contrast to the more subdued and ambient music most role playing games used and still use to this day.
It's not that everything I love about the game was so shallow, though. For all its shallow elements, it's simple storyline encouraged both innovation and imagination; you could tell the programmers were eager to give the game hidden levels that were far from necessary. For example, curative magic targets the party by default, and there's no reason to suggest using them otherwise would ever be wise. If you do try it, though, you'd learn that cure spells were effective on undead, that status-curing magic would inflict random statuses on an enemy, and life-restoring magic instantly killed foes! And the constant changing of the single ally forced the game to regularly shift the plot to introduce or force their departures. I am happy most games let you choose your party, but all the same it makes it easy to forget your own allies exist, as there is no story compulsion to feature them again in any way.
There are plenty of other technical details that I loved. They include the surprisingly deep and complex dungeons, the use of items and even a jump button for puzzle-solving (another feature rare even today,) the total lack of random encounters, and replacing tedious and endless monster fights between locations with specific monster-infested squares you were free to ignore or could clean out for treasure. As a result of all these tiny, charming details, the game was revisited several times, much more than longer and better games were. And the simple but fluid world inspired my imagination, making me create new adventures and even characters out of it. Some of these characters, based on little but a monster sprite, remain some of my favorite creations.
The lessons this game taught were myriad. Never underestimate a game, and never let the supposedly unimportant job stand in the way of your creativity. A designer could hide surprising and clever elements of even the most clichéd of games, and those will find somebody who loves them and the game for what it is.
Even I find it weird to write that, and I'm writing it! At this point, to be fair, my memory of exactly what other RPGs I played and beat at the point where I played this game. I think there weren't many. I don't even think I beat Final Fantasy 2 (4 for those who care about accuracy and the Japanese numbering,) which many consider to be the best of the series, at least of that era, but I'm not sure. Mystic Quest, by comparison, was the series' idiot cousin.
This isn't really an insult; this was the plan. The console role-playing genre was still pretty dead at this point, so to try and counter this, Squaresoft, Final Fantasy's developers, created an American-specific game. It was vastly easier than other games of the genre, relatively short, and only $20. There were worse deals, especially in that time frame, where console games could cost $60 or more! So it wasn't too hard to get the game.
Mystic Quest is, as I said before, a very simple game. I had a simplistic plot where the simple, personality-free hero had to retrieve four elemental sources of power, and then confront the originally-named Dark King who ran the whole sinister plan. There were only four types of weapons, at least that the player could use, and only three of each, with an obvious advancement path for each one. The same is true for armor, but you never even had to choose the best one for a circumstance. Your party always consisted of exactly two characters, and the second one could even be computer controlled. Spells weren't much better; there were only twelve, and most of them were rendered obsolete quickly enough.
So it was tripe, or at least it was vapid and shallow. Why did it inspire me? Well, for one reason, I was twelve, and thus vapid and shallow. Surprisingly, despite the game's low cost and simplistic gameplay, the presentation was incredible. It included features that are used too rarely today. For example, in combat, the game shows the party members with their backs turned to the camera and the enemies and backgrounds taking up much of the screen, and the backgrounds were often incredible. Some were static, generic images of trees and whatnot, but others, like the overcast desert, were moving and more detailed than I've seen in Super Nintendo games at this point. Also, the enemies were reactive to damage. In other words, when reduced to half their health, they appear wounded, hinting that they were near death. The major bosses had the same traits, but they had more stages of damage to better clarify.
The music was also impressive, again taking advantage of the Super Nintendo's technological jump. Gone were the bleeps and bloops of ancient video game systems, or even the catchy but minimalistic tunes from Nintendo. Some of Mystic Quest's music, well, rocked. Or at least it emulated rock music as best as it could, which was an amazing contrast to the more subdued and ambient music most role playing games used and still use to this day.
It's not that everything I love about the game was so shallow, though. For all its shallow elements, it's simple storyline encouraged both innovation and imagination; you could tell the programmers were eager to give the game hidden levels that were far from necessary. For example, curative magic targets the party by default, and there's no reason to suggest using them otherwise would ever be wise. If you do try it, though, you'd learn that cure spells were effective on undead, that status-curing magic would inflict random statuses on an enemy, and life-restoring magic instantly killed foes! And the constant changing of the single ally forced the game to regularly shift the plot to introduce or force their departures. I am happy most games let you choose your party, but all the same it makes it easy to forget your own allies exist, as there is no story compulsion to feature them again in any way.
There are plenty of other technical details that I loved. They include the surprisingly deep and complex dungeons, the use of items and even a jump button for puzzle-solving (another feature rare even today,) the total lack of random encounters, and replacing tedious and endless monster fights between locations with specific monster-infested squares you were free to ignore or could clean out for treasure. As a result of all these tiny, charming details, the game was revisited several times, much more than longer and better games were. And the simple but fluid world inspired my imagination, making me create new adventures and even characters out of it. Some of these characters, based on little but a monster sprite, remain some of my favorite creations.
The lessons this game taught were myriad. Never underestimate a game, and never let the supposedly unimportant job stand in the way of your creativity. A designer could hide surprising and clever elements of even the most clichéd of games, and those will find somebody who loves them and the game for what it is.
Friday, March 21, 2008
My Ideas: At Least It Wasn't Moulin Rouge
This week will be another of my ideas, but while I briefly considered doing another of the Big 16 or one of my newest ideas; the ones that are so recent they don't even fit into the original lineup. But instead, I'll cover a game that always came thiiis close to becoming a fully written and designed game concept, but it just never reached that level.
The game in question has been dubbed The Dying of the Light. The game came from "Do Not Go Into That Good Night," a poem by Dylan Thomas. I actually learned these details two minutes ago, which shows why it's taken so long for me to write of this game.
The game, if I had to use the earlier system, would probably be either a Genre or Conceptual game. I believe I first started thinking about the idea after watching The Others, the horror movie starring Nicole Kidman from several years back. So it was sort of a "me too" idea, but one that came from a movie instead of another game or game genre. I already had the genre in mind, though. My concept would be a perfect survival horror.
The movie had tons of elements about ghosts, Sixth Sense rip-offs, and other supernatural elements, but those didn't affect me. What interested me was the disease the protagonist's children had. According to her, the two had an acute vulnerability to sunlight, to the point where it would kill them if it even shone on them. So the entire mansion that served as the movie's setting had shuttered windows and locked doors, which must be re-locked whenever somebody used one. It made the light into a form of enemy itself, as if it flowed into rooms to endanger people. I decided to use this concept, but the concept would be reversed. It would be darkness, not light, that flowed into rooms to endanger its inhabitants. Combine that with some elements of the classic horror move the Haunting (the original, yes,) and you had a premise.
The game takes place in an Others-like mansion isolated from society at large. A few dozen survivors, explorers, or other inhabitants of the manor learn about a horrible curse upon the area. In the darkness, a malevolence lurks. It is virtually omnipresent, but it can only be in areas of darkness. Anyone outside when night falls is thus dead instantly. At this point, the survivors have no vehicles fast enough to get back to civilization fast enough before night falls, forcing them to stay in the mansion every night just to survive.
Given this concept, the game uses a dual-timing system based on night and day. In daylight, the enemy is mostly gone, so the surviving characters have to ignore the "horror" of the title and worry about the "survival." This means exploring the mansion, getting access into previously inaccessible parts of the mansion, researching the nature of the malevolence, and finding a way to either stop it or find another way out of the area that's faster or safer. But they can't advance too quickly, because they have to scavenge resources. Windows and doors must be barricaded, light sources and fuel must be found and arranged in every room, and defenses must be set up.
And then, night falls. At this point, the game becomes a very dangerous siege. The concept is that not only is the outside world dangerous at night, but any room previously infected by the malevolence immediately descends into darkness as well! So the survivors have to guard any remaining uninfected rooms and ensure the lights are strong. Furthermore, the malevolence attacks the uninfected rooms, trying to force its way in. This is reminiscent of the Haunting mentioned above, where unseen ghostly forces pounded on the walls and doors. In the game, though, the pounding is dangerous, and as it continues, it slowly damages any locks, doors, and barricades set up. If the barricades are destroyed, the darkness seeps in, instantly killing anyone in the room. Even worse, if the player didn't barricade the doors between safe rooms, the darkness almost instantly enters these adjacent rooms, causing a potential chain reaction. During the night, the player has to order survivors to fix barricades or push against the forced ones, reducing the damage, but doing so also increases the potential casualties should the darkness force its way in.
When morning rises, the malevolence vanishes, but not completely. Any room that was infected last night or any one prior to that morning still has lingering effects of the malevolence, so monsters spawn in those rooms every few times someone enters it. This provides some of the usual action expected in survival horror games, but in practice they serve as another reason to protect rooms and a drain on resources. Canny players can kill or evade the monsters, but otherwise they drain medical supplies, ammunition, and time every time the survivors must deal with the monster.
The idea intrigues me, but I never could figure out the meta-elements of how the game works. For starters, is this just a single narrative, like Resident Evil and other survival horrors? In that case, the mansion is the same each time, so once the player figures it out, it would make beating the game easier. The problem is that this system brings the expectation that the game is deep enough to last 10-20 hours. However, limited resources means that if enough rooms or survivors are lost due to a dumb mistake in the first few hours, it makes the game impossible by the end. The second option is to make the mansion randomized, along with the survivors and possibly even the timeframe of the game's setting. This means the game should take 3-5 hours to beat, at the most, but it means that the depth of each game decreases.
I suspect this last option was the one I would have chosen, but that also probably explains why I didn't make it a regular part of my design collection. I'm a narrative fan, as I said two days ago, so while one could cobble together a great number of characters and story elements, it still won't be as deep as your average Silent Hill or Eternal Darkness. Still, the game works great as an indie or low-budget title. Ideas like this, where a big sweeping story and world-spanning journey aren't needed, work great for that level, and I need to start thinking about games of this sort as I look into careers in the industry again. After all, you don't need the prettiest graphics to scare the crap out of you.
The game in question has been dubbed The Dying of the Light. The game came from "Do Not Go Into That Good Night," a poem by Dylan Thomas. I actually learned these details two minutes ago, which shows why it's taken so long for me to write of this game.
The game, if I had to use the earlier system, would probably be either a Genre or Conceptual game. I believe I first started thinking about the idea after watching The Others, the horror movie starring Nicole Kidman from several years back. So it was sort of a "me too" idea, but one that came from a movie instead of another game or game genre. I already had the genre in mind, though. My concept would be a perfect survival horror.
The movie had tons of elements about ghosts, Sixth Sense rip-offs, and other supernatural elements, but those didn't affect me. What interested me was the disease the protagonist's children had. According to her, the two had an acute vulnerability to sunlight, to the point where it would kill them if it even shone on them. So the entire mansion that served as the movie's setting had shuttered windows and locked doors, which must be re-locked whenever somebody used one. It made the light into a form of enemy itself, as if it flowed into rooms to endanger people. I decided to use this concept, but the concept would be reversed. It would be darkness, not light, that flowed into rooms to endanger its inhabitants. Combine that with some elements of the classic horror move the Haunting (the original, yes,) and you had a premise.
The game takes place in an Others-like mansion isolated from society at large. A few dozen survivors, explorers, or other inhabitants of the manor learn about a horrible curse upon the area. In the darkness, a malevolence lurks. It is virtually omnipresent, but it can only be in areas of darkness. Anyone outside when night falls is thus dead instantly. At this point, the survivors have no vehicles fast enough to get back to civilization fast enough before night falls, forcing them to stay in the mansion every night just to survive.
Given this concept, the game uses a dual-timing system based on night and day. In daylight, the enemy is mostly gone, so the surviving characters have to ignore the "horror" of the title and worry about the "survival." This means exploring the mansion, getting access into previously inaccessible parts of the mansion, researching the nature of the malevolence, and finding a way to either stop it or find another way out of the area that's faster or safer. But they can't advance too quickly, because they have to scavenge resources. Windows and doors must be barricaded, light sources and fuel must be found and arranged in every room, and defenses must be set up.
And then, night falls. At this point, the game becomes a very dangerous siege. The concept is that not only is the outside world dangerous at night, but any room previously infected by the malevolence immediately descends into darkness as well! So the survivors have to guard any remaining uninfected rooms and ensure the lights are strong. Furthermore, the malevolence attacks the uninfected rooms, trying to force its way in. This is reminiscent of the Haunting mentioned above, where unseen ghostly forces pounded on the walls and doors. In the game, though, the pounding is dangerous, and as it continues, it slowly damages any locks, doors, and barricades set up. If the barricades are destroyed, the darkness seeps in, instantly killing anyone in the room. Even worse, if the player didn't barricade the doors between safe rooms, the darkness almost instantly enters these adjacent rooms, causing a potential chain reaction. During the night, the player has to order survivors to fix barricades or push against the forced ones, reducing the damage, but doing so also increases the potential casualties should the darkness force its way in.
When morning rises, the malevolence vanishes, but not completely. Any room that was infected last night or any one prior to that morning still has lingering effects of the malevolence, so monsters spawn in those rooms every few times someone enters it. This provides some of the usual action expected in survival horror games, but in practice they serve as another reason to protect rooms and a drain on resources. Canny players can kill or evade the monsters, but otherwise they drain medical supplies, ammunition, and time every time the survivors must deal with the monster.
The idea intrigues me, but I never could figure out the meta-elements of how the game works. For starters, is this just a single narrative, like Resident Evil and other survival horrors? In that case, the mansion is the same each time, so once the player figures it out, it would make beating the game easier. The problem is that this system brings the expectation that the game is deep enough to last 10-20 hours. However, limited resources means that if enough rooms or survivors are lost due to a dumb mistake in the first few hours, it makes the game impossible by the end. The second option is to make the mansion randomized, along with the survivors and possibly even the timeframe of the game's setting. This means the game should take 3-5 hours to beat, at the most, but it means that the depth of each game decreases.
I suspect this last option was the one I would have chosen, but that also probably explains why I didn't make it a regular part of my design collection. I'm a narrative fan, as I said two days ago, so while one could cobble together a great number of characters and story elements, it still won't be as deep as your average Silent Hill or Eternal Darkness. Still, the game works great as an indie or low-budget title. Ideas like this, where a big sweeping story and world-spanning journey aren't needed, work great for that level, and I need to start thinking about games of this sort as I look into careers in the industry again. After all, you don't need the prettiest graphics to scare the crap out of you.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Rantings: Why Games Should Be Art
Subtitle: Why I really hope Raph Koster is wrong.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't mean about everything. I'm impressed by a lot of what he has to say, and while I disagree on the details of his Theory of Fun For Game Design novel and the principal behind it (he mostly focuses on one kind of fun, while I have brought up a good 4-6 or so of them earlier in my bloggings,) but I respect him as a scholar of the industry. There is one thing he said, though. I unfortunately don't have the link or a citation, so I have to paraphrase here, but it's the concept behind the statement that matters anyway. He said, approximately, that the age of the single player game is dying or dead.
That, frankly, terrifies me. Now, it doesn't mean an end to every genre that I love, since narrative games can be cooperative or even competitive, but nonetheless it represents a disturbing trend in games. The industry, if the experts are to be believed, is undergoing a major shift. The day of narrative gameplay, of the cutscene, of levels and bosses and the linear dramatic arc, are dying. In this brave new world, we won't be reduced to emulating the language of cinema! We'll have customized characters, settings and stories! We'll have emergent gameplay! We'll let the players tell the stories they want!
Great. So when's Lost on?
That's a little cynical, but this is not a happy scenario for me. And frankly, it represents to me a step in the wrong direction. Oh, sure, we can stand to kill a few of our sacred cows in this industry. The non-skippable, unpausable dialogues and walls of text that last for minutes on end have to go, for one. But we're giving up too much of what we earned as a respectable medium. In a time when prominent politicians are desperately trying to treat video games as obscenity or the equivalent of drugs, when they claim we have no artistic value and never will, we're happily tripping all over ourselves to prove just that.
Narrative or not, video games will mostly be art. It's too late to go back to Pong levels of presentation. There will always be settings, beauty and horror, and visual and aural expression on par with movies. But if this becomes background for what strictly revolves gameplay, we lose our chance to tell a story, to create ideas and emotions with our worlds beyond the surface.
And let's not pretend this is about emulating cinema. The stories cinema tell were emulated from stage, which emulated literature, which emulated spoken word. Story and narration are older than writing, than civilization. Why should we divorce ourselves from that?
But isn't that what people want, the designers ask? Shouldn't they have the right to tell their own stories? Of course they can, and there should be games and game settings that accomodate that. But this should not be universal, or even the dominant part of gaming.
And there are two very good reasons why it shouldn't. First, while it's entirely true that games can be a great way for people to tell their own stories, there already is a place that does this expertly: real life. People's stories are told everywhere. It happens when you first meet someone. It happens when something funny happens on the train. It also happens in every game every made, from sports to chess to board games to tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons (though these tabletop RPGs often are also narrative games to some degree.) If we give up our attempt to "emulate cinemas," we simply ape another common human tendency since before civilizatin, and one we already exclusively focussed on in our industry's infancy. Of course, people already can tell these stories for the cost of a basketball, or a few pencils and paper, or for free. We're charging them $50-60 for the same thing in a prettier environment. That's a risk I'm not so sure we can afford.
Secondly, people don't always want these stories, they want written ones. After all, they're creating their own stories 24 hours a day already, so why would they only want more of the same. What they're looking for is meaning. No, to clarify, what we're looking for is meaning; in fact, most storytellers become even more obsessed with stories to ensure what they say is new and gain more proficiency in the telling. We want to know that there are stories of heroism and horror at the archetypal level, stories that reflect on our own lives and help us fine the reason and purpose for them. Look to any other medium and you'll see this response. Remember when interactive movies were about to become the next big thing in the 90s? It's a clever concept, but of course it didn't work. And "choose your own adventure" style books never got out of the children’s' genre.
It's even happening in games. I mentioned before that while sports are not art, many aspects of them, from cheerleading to touchdown dances, are. This sort of thing is precisely why these things exist. A sport, especially a professional one, is meaningless. People slightly related to you in terms of living distance might defeat people not in physical proximity, and their victory will have no meaning on your life and will not be caused by you in the slightest. But give those teams names, and locations, and traditions, and histories, and you imbue them with meaning. It becomes a matter of scrappy underdogs rising up to defeat villains, or the value and honor of your city, or what it means to call yourself a fan. Ironically, as we scramble to take this meaning from games, the infinitely profitable sports industry, containing fans so dedicated it puts all but the most hardcore MMO players to shame, learned how to do the exact opposite.
So ends part two of my "Games ARE art!" rantings, which honestly are one of the main reasons I began this ranting sub-section. Stay tuned in two weeks for the conclusion, where I will discuss why, even if we accept video games are art and should remain so at a narrative level, video games are special as their own medium and its designers shouldn't bother making movies and other more traditional forms of art. In other words, why I think video games are better artistically than movies or television. It should be fun!
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't mean about everything. I'm impressed by a lot of what he has to say, and while I disagree on the details of his Theory of Fun For Game Design novel and the principal behind it (he mostly focuses on one kind of fun, while I have brought up a good 4-6 or so of them earlier in my bloggings,) but I respect him as a scholar of the industry. There is one thing he said, though. I unfortunately don't have the link or a citation, so I have to paraphrase here, but it's the concept behind the statement that matters anyway. He said, approximately, that the age of the single player game is dying or dead.
That, frankly, terrifies me. Now, it doesn't mean an end to every genre that I love, since narrative games can be cooperative or even competitive, but nonetheless it represents a disturbing trend in games. The industry, if the experts are to be believed, is undergoing a major shift. The day of narrative gameplay, of the cutscene, of levels and bosses and the linear dramatic arc, are dying. In this brave new world, we won't be reduced to emulating the language of cinema! We'll have customized characters, settings and stories! We'll have emergent gameplay! We'll let the players tell the stories they want!
Great. So when's Lost on?
That's a little cynical, but this is not a happy scenario for me. And frankly, it represents to me a step in the wrong direction. Oh, sure, we can stand to kill a few of our sacred cows in this industry. The non-skippable, unpausable dialogues and walls of text that last for minutes on end have to go, for one. But we're giving up too much of what we earned as a respectable medium. In a time when prominent politicians are desperately trying to treat video games as obscenity or the equivalent of drugs, when they claim we have no artistic value and never will, we're happily tripping all over ourselves to prove just that.
Narrative or not, video games will mostly be art. It's too late to go back to Pong levels of presentation. There will always be settings, beauty and horror, and visual and aural expression on par with movies. But if this becomes background for what strictly revolves gameplay, we lose our chance to tell a story, to create ideas and emotions with our worlds beyond the surface.
And let's not pretend this is about emulating cinema. The stories cinema tell were emulated from stage, which emulated literature, which emulated spoken word. Story and narration are older than writing, than civilization. Why should we divorce ourselves from that?
But isn't that what people want, the designers ask? Shouldn't they have the right to tell their own stories? Of course they can, and there should be games and game settings that accomodate that. But this should not be universal, or even the dominant part of gaming.
And there are two very good reasons why it shouldn't. First, while it's entirely true that games can be a great way for people to tell their own stories, there already is a place that does this expertly: real life. People's stories are told everywhere. It happens when you first meet someone. It happens when something funny happens on the train. It also happens in every game every made, from sports to chess to board games to tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons (though these tabletop RPGs often are also narrative games to some degree.) If we give up our attempt to "emulate cinemas," we simply ape another common human tendency since before civilizatin, and one we already exclusively focussed on in our industry's infancy. Of course, people already can tell these stories for the cost of a basketball, or a few pencils and paper, or for free. We're charging them $50-60 for the same thing in a prettier environment. That's a risk I'm not so sure we can afford.
Secondly, people don't always want these stories, they want written ones. After all, they're creating their own stories 24 hours a day already, so why would they only want more of the same. What they're looking for is meaning. No, to clarify, what we're looking for is meaning; in fact, most storytellers become even more obsessed with stories to ensure what they say is new and gain more proficiency in the telling. We want to know that there are stories of heroism and horror at the archetypal level, stories that reflect on our own lives and help us fine the reason and purpose for them. Look to any other medium and you'll see this response. Remember when interactive movies were about to become the next big thing in the 90s? It's a clever concept, but of course it didn't work. And "choose your own adventure" style books never got out of the children’s' genre.
It's even happening in games. I mentioned before that while sports are not art, many aspects of them, from cheerleading to touchdown dances, are. This sort of thing is precisely why these things exist. A sport, especially a professional one, is meaningless. People slightly related to you in terms of living distance might defeat people not in physical proximity, and their victory will have no meaning on your life and will not be caused by you in the slightest. But give those teams names, and locations, and traditions, and histories, and you imbue them with meaning. It becomes a matter of scrappy underdogs rising up to defeat villains, or the value and honor of your city, or what it means to call yourself a fan. Ironically, as we scramble to take this meaning from games, the infinitely profitable sports industry, containing fans so dedicated it puts all but the most hardcore MMO players to shame, learned how to do the exact opposite.
So ends part two of my "Games ARE art!" rantings, which honestly are one of the main reasons I began this ranting sub-section. Stay tuned in two weeks for the conclusion, where I will discuss why, even if we accept video games are art and should remain so at a narrative level, video games are special as their own medium and its designers shouldn't bother making movies and other more traditional forms of art. In other words, why I think video games are better artistically than movies or television. It should be fun!
Monday, March 17, 2008
My Life: Education and Even More Important Parts of College.
One of the decisions I made for this blog has always been to avoid the really dark, whiny, emo stuff. That killed another pseudo-journal I made, and frankly it's not productive. This is supposed to be a celebration of my work, a reflection of my goals, and an examination my life, not just another place to worry about my relationship and employment woes. That being said, I can't ignore the aspects of my past that led up to some of the unhappy moments of my current life, either. Those things are just as much a part of me as the happy elements, anyway. So this will be a darker blog, but it won't be complaints, either. This will be a learning experience.
This blog is about my experience at college, at its base. The earlier post already suggested that I had some pleasant college moments, but those aren't exactly monopolizing in this period, or even dominant. My first mistake was a matter of timing, I think, or perhaps a matter of naiveté. No, it was definitely a matter of naiveté, but it had more than one element.
You see, my college of choice was Marquette University, a decently prestigious Jesuit university located in Milwaukee. It's famous for a number of its excellent departments, including law and dentistry. It's computer science department was also...present, but that's not the main problem. The first problem, actually, was the "Jesuit" part.
Another thing about this blog is that I want to avoid getting too far into my religious and political beliefs. And that won't change here. I will say a bit about my religious past, though. I was raised Catholic, and as a result I was pretty devout, at least in the spirit of the church if not all the dogma. This was one of the reasons I went to a Jesuit university. The problem came after I started college. It wasn't a rapid change, but it started only days after I started, so it was somewhat inevitable. Finally, about the time my grandmother died shortly after school started, it was pretty consistent. I won't say what religion I eventually became, at least not yet, but I lost my current faith pretty quickly.
That was one thing that alienated me from the school. I suddenly lost my connection to one of the main motivations to even be at the school. It hurt my identity, and it meant missing out on a lot of the activities the school supported. I also meant I lost a connection I had with most of the other students.
This was a problem, but it wasn't the only reason I had problems with college; it was just one of the symptoms of the lack of foresightedness I had. I assumed too much about what college was and what it meant, and I assumed even more about my major. The problem is that, even as recently as 1997, there was no easy path into the video game industry. There certainly were no field of video game design; there was Digipen and that was about it. So I went into college not knowing what my path in life should be. I literally thought that nearly every job in the video game industry demanded a computer science major. So, that's what I did.
It could have been worse, really. Two dumbs almost made a right in this case. As a more liberal arts university, Marquette demanded that I have a well-rounded curriculum of classes, so I had English, history, philosophy, theology, match, science, other languages, and psychology along with computer science classes. I have friends who went to schools that offered nothing but computer-related classes. I think it would have driven me insane.
Nonetheless, it wasn't really the path in life I would have taken had I know. If I knew what I really wanted, an English or other writing-themed major with a computer science minor and an emphasis on the classes and software an actual game designer uses would have been perfect. But, just like my choice of colleges, I didn't change after I selected it. I told myself I couldn't. Finances were tight at home, and finishing in four quick years made things much easier. Besides, I always thought there was Digipen afterwards.
But this flawed thinking was mistaken in almost every way. I thought that it would be easy finding friends and activities that matched my interest. Of course there would be people into role-playing games and even a club, I thought. It was college! It was expected! But no, most activities at school involved religion, community service, or general partying.
My biggest mistake, though, was buying into the theory that college was a new life, not just a new setting. I didn't like my normal public experience, so I hoped I could reinvent myself in college, as so many hoped. This is not as likely as one can hope. Popularity and the social abilities it entails are not something you will yourself into having. If it's not something instinctive and natural, it's something learned. And being in a new city doesn't make you suddenly better at conversational skills or confident. It doesn't tell you what to do if you pass a cute girl on the way to class, or how to follow through if you do manage to work up the nerve to talk to her. It doesn't make you less uncomfortable at a dance or a party. It's just another part of life, not a magic cure for life's problems to date.
Well, what I've learned from this experience is a bit late, barring reincarnation (not a hint at my beliefs, just a comment.) I might go back to school some day, sure, but I'm 28. I'm not going to be part of that generation, even if I wanted to be. But it could be a lesson to my readers, if I had any. Don't assume that the system we have in place is an automatic one. It's not a matter of high school-college-job-marriage-kids-etc. And never be afraid to realize you made a mistake in life and change it before it gets too late. If your major is not the right one, or your school, change it! Yes, my life would have been harder back then if I went to school for another few years. But my brother did it without dying, and where would I be now? Somewhere else? Would I be happier? In a relationship? Married, even? Only God knows, I guess. And that's not a hint, either.
This blog is about my experience at college, at its base. The earlier post already suggested that I had some pleasant college moments, but those aren't exactly monopolizing in this period, or even dominant. My first mistake was a matter of timing, I think, or perhaps a matter of naiveté. No, it was definitely a matter of naiveté, but it had more than one element.
You see, my college of choice was Marquette University, a decently prestigious Jesuit university located in Milwaukee. It's famous for a number of its excellent departments, including law and dentistry. It's computer science department was also...present, but that's not the main problem. The first problem, actually, was the "Jesuit" part.
Another thing about this blog is that I want to avoid getting too far into my religious and political beliefs. And that won't change here. I will say a bit about my religious past, though. I was raised Catholic, and as a result I was pretty devout, at least in the spirit of the church if not all the dogma. This was one of the reasons I went to a Jesuit university. The problem came after I started college. It wasn't a rapid change, but it started only days after I started, so it was somewhat inevitable. Finally, about the time my grandmother died shortly after school started, it was pretty consistent. I won't say what religion I eventually became, at least not yet, but I lost my current faith pretty quickly.
That was one thing that alienated me from the school. I suddenly lost my connection to one of the main motivations to even be at the school. It hurt my identity, and it meant missing out on a lot of the activities the school supported. I also meant I lost a connection I had with most of the other students.
This was a problem, but it wasn't the only reason I had problems with college; it was just one of the symptoms of the lack of foresightedness I had. I assumed too much about what college was and what it meant, and I assumed even more about my major. The problem is that, even as recently as 1997, there was no easy path into the video game industry. There certainly were no field of video game design; there was Digipen and that was about it. So I went into college not knowing what my path in life should be. I literally thought that nearly every job in the video game industry demanded a computer science major. So, that's what I did.
It could have been worse, really. Two dumbs almost made a right in this case. As a more liberal arts university, Marquette demanded that I have a well-rounded curriculum of classes, so I had English, history, philosophy, theology, match, science, other languages, and psychology along with computer science classes. I have friends who went to schools that offered nothing but computer-related classes. I think it would have driven me insane.
Nonetheless, it wasn't really the path in life I would have taken had I know. If I knew what I really wanted, an English or other writing-themed major with a computer science minor and an emphasis on the classes and software an actual game designer uses would have been perfect. But, just like my choice of colleges, I didn't change after I selected it. I told myself I couldn't. Finances were tight at home, and finishing in four quick years made things much easier. Besides, I always thought there was Digipen afterwards.
But this flawed thinking was mistaken in almost every way. I thought that it would be easy finding friends and activities that matched my interest. Of course there would be people into role-playing games and even a club, I thought. It was college! It was expected! But no, most activities at school involved religion, community service, or general partying.
My biggest mistake, though, was buying into the theory that college was a new life, not just a new setting. I didn't like my normal public experience, so I hoped I could reinvent myself in college, as so many hoped. This is not as likely as one can hope. Popularity and the social abilities it entails are not something you will yourself into having. If it's not something instinctive and natural, it's something learned. And being in a new city doesn't make you suddenly better at conversational skills or confident. It doesn't tell you what to do if you pass a cute girl on the way to class, or how to follow through if you do manage to work up the nerve to talk to her. It doesn't make you less uncomfortable at a dance or a party. It's just another part of life, not a magic cure for life's problems to date.
Well, what I've learned from this experience is a bit late, barring reincarnation (not a hint at my beliefs, just a comment.) I might go back to school some day, sure, but I'm 28. I'm not going to be part of that generation, even if I wanted to be. But it could be a lesson to my readers, if I had any. Don't assume that the system we have in place is an automatic one. It's not a matter of high school-college-job-marriage-kids-etc. And never be afraid to realize you made a mistake in life and change it before it gets too late. If your major is not the right one, or your school, change it! Yes, my life would have been harder back then if I went to school for another few years. But my brother did it without dying, and where would I be now? Somewhere else? Would I be happier? In a relationship? Married, even? Only God knows, I guess. And that's not a hint, either.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Reviews: Insert "Still Alive" Pun Here.
This review is considered "better late than never" for many reasons. Both because I was late about this column, and the game I reviewing really should have been played and finished like a year ago by now. Well, that's hyperbole, but it's not much of one.
The game is Portal, the tiny puzzle game included with Team Fortress 2 and various other Half-Life related games in Valve's collected Orange Box. Despite being a relatively short and unassuming title, Portal soon rose to become the start of the collection, often winning Game of the Year awards from various publications. Not bad for a game that can be beaten in 3 hours.
The game can be summed up simply enough. Though seen from a first person viewpoint and using the same engine as the first person shooter Half Life 2, it's really more a puzzle game. You play a test subject (possibly the last surviving one) of the doomed Aperture Research Center. The Center, which is apparently under the control of the increasingly insane AI GLaDOS (yes, I had to look up that spelling,) is testing one of their recent inventions, the Portal gun. Said gun creates two interconnected dimensional portals that can be attached to most walls. Under the guise of testing the gun's capacities, the player is forced to solve puzzles using the gun's properties.
The game is praised for both its gameplay and its story-telling elements. The former comes into play more, it being a game and all. Using the Portal Gun is often hilarious, especially with the way it plays with physics. For example, you could fire portals on the ceiling and floor so that one is right above the other, and simply fall forever. Or you could make two portals on the floor, drop an object down one, and watch it constantly pop up between the two like a Whack-a-Mole. It helps that many of the puzzles utilize the portals' momentum-based attributes, or as GLaDOS puts it, "Speed goes in, speed comes out." For example, if you put one portal at the bottom of a drop and one on a wall, after falling through the portal at the bottom, you go flying at high speeds out of the wall portal, often letting you clear otherwise impassible gaps. It's great fun and one of the best uses for a first-person perspective I've seen outside of shooters.
The story is more subtle, but just as compelling. Initially, the test circumstances are often seen humorously, but not that ominously. You often hear glitches in GLaDOS' instructions, but by and large the tests are simple and you are praised for completing them. Then GLaDOS starts to openly lie about tests. And then you notice that while you often see labs above you as you perform, those tests are invariably empty. And then the tests turn lethal, including one where GLaDOS "accidentally" has to send you into a test with lethal gun turrets. And then you see warnings, hidden by past test subject, that the entire test, or at least your rewards, are just a lie.
It's less exposition than we're used to in a video game, but it's no less unsettling. It helps that so much is left unsaid, including the antagonist's motivations. Are you really the last living thing in the lab? Who was the predecessor that helps you indirectly throughout the game, giving you hints on how to escape? Is your escape just another test? After all, someone else did the exact same thing you did at some point. How does the game fit into the Half Life universe as a whole? And what is your protagonist, a woman named Chell's, deal?
This isn't the best story in video games, but it's the method that makes it resonate so well. Nearly everything in the game has created a meme just by its presence. The phrase "the cake is a lie," the fixation on the Weighted Companion Cube, a minor object from only one level of the game, the perfectly hummable and deeply unsettling credits song "Still Alive," where the antagonist you just spent most of the game to defeat, disassemble, and burn in a fire reveals she survived the attack and continues to alternately praise and threaten you; all of these have become timeless moments in a matter of months. The only commonly quoted downside is the game's length; many went in expecting it to last for longer than the 2-3 hours it takes to beat. Fortunately, I went in knowing how short it was, so I expected it to only last an hour and was pleasantly surprised to learn otherwise.
And so, Portal gets an A from me. It's not my usual style of game, but it fit in perfectly between the defeat of Persona 3 and the just released Smash Brothers Brawl. It has moments I'll never forget and ones I'd love to play again (once I get sick of Smash Brothers Brawl, obviously.) I regret only not playing it sooner; well, that and not having a computer that could easily play it, leaving me with a few days of frustration as I struggled to make the damn thing work. But work it did, and I'm grateful for it. In conclusion, the game takes the cake. And I'm very sorry for that line.
The game is Portal, the tiny puzzle game included with Team Fortress 2 and various other Half-Life related games in Valve's collected Orange Box. Despite being a relatively short and unassuming title, Portal soon rose to become the start of the collection, often winning Game of the Year awards from various publications. Not bad for a game that can be beaten in 3 hours.
The game can be summed up simply enough. Though seen from a first person viewpoint and using the same engine as the first person shooter Half Life 2, it's really more a puzzle game. You play a test subject (possibly the last surviving one) of the doomed Aperture Research Center. The Center, which is apparently under the control of the increasingly insane AI GLaDOS (yes, I had to look up that spelling,) is testing one of their recent inventions, the Portal gun. Said gun creates two interconnected dimensional portals that can be attached to most walls. Under the guise of testing the gun's capacities, the player is forced to solve puzzles using the gun's properties.
The game is praised for both its gameplay and its story-telling elements. The former comes into play more, it being a game and all. Using the Portal Gun is often hilarious, especially with the way it plays with physics. For example, you could fire portals on the ceiling and floor so that one is right above the other, and simply fall forever. Or you could make two portals on the floor, drop an object down one, and watch it constantly pop up between the two like a Whack-a-Mole. It helps that many of the puzzles utilize the portals' momentum-based attributes, or as GLaDOS puts it, "Speed goes in, speed comes out." For example, if you put one portal at the bottom of a drop and one on a wall, after falling through the portal at the bottom, you go flying at high speeds out of the wall portal, often letting you clear otherwise impassible gaps. It's great fun and one of the best uses for a first-person perspective I've seen outside of shooters.
The story is more subtle, but just as compelling. Initially, the test circumstances are often seen humorously, but not that ominously. You often hear glitches in GLaDOS' instructions, but by and large the tests are simple and you are praised for completing them. Then GLaDOS starts to openly lie about tests. And then you notice that while you often see labs above you as you perform, those tests are invariably empty. And then the tests turn lethal, including one where GLaDOS "accidentally" has to send you into a test with lethal gun turrets. And then you see warnings, hidden by past test subject, that the entire test, or at least your rewards, are just a lie.
It's less exposition than we're used to in a video game, but it's no less unsettling. It helps that so much is left unsaid, including the antagonist's motivations. Are you really the last living thing in the lab? Who was the predecessor that helps you indirectly throughout the game, giving you hints on how to escape? Is your escape just another test? After all, someone else did the exact same thing you did at some point. How does the game fit into the Half Life universe as a whole? And what is your protagonist, a woman named Chell's, deal?
This isn't the best story in video games, but it's the method that makes it resonate so well. Nearly everything in the game has created a meme just by its presence. The phrase "the cake is a lie," the fixation on the Weighted Companion Cube, a minor object from only one level of the game, the perfectly hummable and deeply unsettling credits song "Still Alive," where the antagonist you just spent most of the game to defeat, disassemble, and burn in a fire reveals she survived the attack and continues to alternately praise and threaten you; all of these have become timeless moments in a matter of months. The only commonly quoted downside is the game's length; many went in expecting it to last for longer than the 2-3 hours it takes to beat. Fortunately, I went in knowing how short it was, so I expected it to only last an hour and was pleasantly surprised to learn otherwise.
And so, Portal gets an A from me. It's not my usual style of game, but it fit in perfectly between the defeat of Persona 3 and the just released Smash Brothers Brawl. It has moments I'll never forget and ones I'd love to play again (once I get sick of Smash Brothers Brawl, obviously.) I regret only not playing it sooner; well, that and not having a computer that could easily play it, leaving me with a few days of frustration as I struggled to make the damn thing work. But work it did, and I'm grateful for it. In conclusion, the game takes the cake. And I'm very sorry for that line.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
My Inspirations: Dungeons and Dragons Before It Was That.
We'll conclude the unofficial Dungeons and Dragons theme, probably, with the first time I actually heard of it. Said time was noteworthy for many things, including the fact I didn't actually believe it existed yet.
Well, I believe something existed, but not the tabletop game most people think of when they think of the game. In fact, for all the impact the game had on my life, I only learned it existed due to a series of random events and misunderstandings. My dad, back in the day, subscribed to a number of vaguely geek-themed magazines, like Games, which were mostly crossword puzzles. But it sometimes talked about other games, like console and computer games. At one point, it (or a magazine like it,) collectively reviewed many computer games. One of them, a game called Pool of Radiance, interested me from the first time I saw the review. It was one part that surprisingly hit me close to home was the race/class description. The sample character was a human. I inferred that, since they so specifically pointed it out, the characters could be something other than human, and you could decide this! I realized what sort of game this was immediately: a science fiction epic where you could play as aliens and cyborgs.
Well, after I finally pressured my parents into getting the game, I was in for a surprise. Pool of Radiance, if you don't know, was one of the first video games to be directly based on the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game, and the first to really follow the rules in any discernable way. So, in other words, it was a fantasy game where nonhuman options included elves and dwarves. Whoops. Nonetheless, once I figured out the game and my dad and I wouldn't get lost in our own city's capital building, which happened far too often in that first day, I got into it. Hell, I loved it. This was my first real role-playing game. It wasn't a real one, of course, but it was close enough, and this was well before I heard of Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior/Quest, or the other console RPGs I focused on more as I grew up.
This led to misunderstanding number 2. One day, in the library, I found a magazine by the name of Dragon. I got interested, as it seemed to talk about the same game I was playing. But it was much bigger. There were options to run your own castles, monsters I never heard of, and much more. My first response was "Wow, Pool of Radiance gets much more complicated than I thought!" My second response wasn't much less embarrassing. I thought this was for another, much more advanced computer game I had to get. My dad, of course, explained the real situation. He told me that Dungeons and Dragons was more like a board game, and it involved a real pen and paper environment, not a computer. I, of course, didn't believe him for a second.
I obviously figured out the truth eventually, though. And that was how I blundered incompetently into the game. But Pool of Radiance remained special even without being directly tied into the actual games I run now or the science fiction adventure I once wished it was. I know that, like most games, it isn't perfect, though many of the imperfections were grandfathered in from the regular game. Notably, playing first level characters is a real chore, with their low hit points, lack of varied monsters they could fight, and limited variety of attacks. And the ancient Commodore 64 we played it on had some loading issues. And then there were the many ways you could permanently screw yourself, like the eventually inescapable burrowing insect tunnels. But eventually we did win the game, which I can't say about most of its sequels. And it was well ahead of its time in many ways, from the ability to change your characters' appearance both in battle and in their character portraits and the wide range of playable parties you could create from scratch.
The lessons this game taught include that, while I generally prefer narrative driven stories where the characters have a greater level of personality than customized options can give, it's fun making your own characters sometimes, too. And it taught me that you shouldn't let your expectations of something bind you into liking or disliking it. You'd be amazed what a mistake can bring you.
Well, I believe something existed, but not the tabletop game most people think of when they think of the game. In fact, for all the impact the game had on my life, I only learned it existed due to a series of random events and misunderstandings. My dad, back in the day, subscribed to a number of vaguely geek-themed magazines, like Games, which were mostly crossword puzzles. But it sometimes talked about other games, like console and computer games. At one point, it (or a magazine like it,) collectively reviewed many computer games. One of them, a game called Pool of Radiance, interested me from the first time I saw the review. It was one part that surprisingly hit me close to home was the race/class description. The sample character was a human. I inferred that, since they so specifically pointed it out, the characters could be something other than human, and you could decide this! I realized what sort of game this was immediately: a science fiction epic where you could play as aliens and cyborgs.
Well, after I finally pressured my parents into getting the game, I was in for a surprise. Pool of Radiance, if you don't know, was one of the first video games to be directly based on the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game, and the first to really follow the rules in any discernable way. So, in other words, it was a fantasy game where nonhuman options included elves and dwarves. Whoops. Nonetheless, once I figured out the game and my dad and I wouldn't get lost in our own city's capital building, which happened far too often in that first day, I got into it. Hell, I loved it. This was my first real role-playing game. It wasn't a real one, of course, but it was close enough, and this was well before I heard of Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior/Quest, or the other console RPGs I focused on more as I grew up.
This led to misunderstanding number 2. One day, in the library, I found a magazine by the name of Dragon. I got interested, as it seemed to talk about the same game I was playing. But it was much bigger. There were options to run your own castles, monsters I never heard of, and much more. My first response was "Wow, Pool of Radiance gets much more complicated than I thought!" My second response wasn't much less embarrassing. I thought this was for another, much more advanced computer game I had to get. My dad, of course, explained the real situation. He told me that Dungeons and Dragons was more like a board game, and it involved a real pen and paper environment, not a computer. I, of course, didn't believe him for a second.
I obviously figured out the truth eventually, though. And that was how I blundered incompetently into the game. But Pool of Radiance remained special even without being directly tied into the actual games I run now or the science fiction adventure I once wished it was. I know that, like most games, it isn't perfect, though many of the imperfections were grandfathered in from the regular game. Notably, playing first level characters is a real chore, with their low hit points, lack of varied monsters they could fight, and limited variety of attacks. And the ancient Commodore 64 we played it on had some loading issues. And then there were the many ways you could permanently screw yourself, like the eventually inescapable burrowing insect tunnels. But eventually we did win the game, which I can't say about most of its sequels. And it was well ahead of its time in many ways, from the ability to change your characters' appearance both in battle and in their character portraits and the wide range of playable parties you could create from scratch.
The lessons this game taught include that, while I generally prefer narrative driven stories where the characters have a greater level of personality than customized options can give, it's fun making your own characters sometimes, too. And it taught me that you shouldn't let your expectations of something bind you into liking or disliking it. You'd be amazed what a mistake can bring you.
Friday, March 14, 2008
My Ideas: The Seconds Simplest RPG
Well, I covered some of my more recent RPG situations, and my history of Dungeons and Dragons. But my love of RPGs goes back farther than that, though the term gets pretty vague in this case. And the word "tabletop" is right out.
The game in question had exactly one player at any time, making the total group my friend and me, and at this point I don't even know which of us started it. The idea was simple, at least at first. One of us would play a hero of the most generic sort, though he sort of morphed into a high-tech spy, and the other would be the game master. Everything after that was, well, improv. There were no adventures, no rules, and almost no drama. It was mostly a font of silly jokes of the sort we found funny at the age of, say, the 9-12 range. If we wanted to resolve something, we used exactly one random element; a single coin. If I remember right, heads meant something good, bad meant something bad. And the results were pretty vague and often ridiculous. Once, a "bad" result teleported our collective hero into jail for no good reason.
Even then, our styles of game control varied. My friend's style was intentionally silly, much more random, and surprisingly punishing. Often, he would create an impossible logic puzzle or impenetrable barrier that we struggled against until enough random things happened for us to move on. I already leaned towards larger plots and drama. For examples, we would occasionally pit the hero against an equally random boss, like a psychic little girl. I leaned towards making the defeated ones into an adventuring for the party, and I even made a final boss of sorts to climax the game's laughable plot.
We made a second game after this one. This one used the same resolution of actions, but it had a structure besides that. We actually started with a team of heroes that were basically the four from the last game, but with actual names and unique items. There were hit points and values for the characters' attacks. It was like a real RPG, except everything was still coin-based. We also were more structured with the plot. We had a series of MacGuffin quests and alternated control between them. Our gaming psychologies were similar; they just got more entrenched. In my friend's methods, things were just as painfully random, but now the damage was real. In my case, I set up settings, regular boss fights, even NPCs to assist the party. Sadly, this one never ended; we got up to the last mission, but then we lost interest. Why? Who can say? Video games and actual role-playing games (and even more complex versions of this same madness,) proved to be too alluring to resist.
I won't deny the results were often laughable, both when intentionally so and even when I try to make things more coherent. Overuse of the coin system was often to blame. One bit in particular I still remember a good 15+ years later.
Me: (Flips coin) Suddenly, dragons appear out of nowhere! (Flip coins again.) ...and then they leave.
Why, brain? Why would you do something like that? But sheer, inspired lunacy mixed only with the vaguest hints of coherency proved the perfect primordial soup for my creations. From these ideas, the game and concept that would become the mono-plot began to form. This mono-plot, in one way or another, is connected to almost every idea I ever seriously created and worked on. It also specifically created some of my favorite characters, from token comic relief to an entire species. The mono-plot won't be found in this blog, but the next proto-RPG, where the plot moved from pre-natal concepts to a struggling infant, will be, as will that species.
Part of me, now that I think about it, misses this sort of thing. I write 400 page design documents. I have 50 years of development of the mono-plot, not counting the trillions of years of backstory. Everything is linked in ways both brilliant and surreal to everything else. It's inspiring to me, but Lonny is that a lot of baggage.
What if I tried something like this again? Not just a new system, a near-total lack of system itself? Would I be clever? Would I manage to make a plot out of it? Would I make the same jokes I made when I lived at home and anywhere I wanted to go to was within biking range? I wonder sometimes.
The game in question had exactly one player at any time, making the total group my friend and me, and at this point I don't even know which of us started it. The idea was simple, at least at first. One of us would play a hero of the most generic sort, though he sort of morphed into a high-tech spy, and the other would be the game master. Everything after that was, well, improv. There were no adventures, no rules, and almost no drama. It was mostly a font of silly jokes of the sort we found funny at the age of, say, the 9-12 range. If we wanted to resolve something, we used exactly one random element; a single coin. If I remember right, heads meant something good, bad meant something bad. And the results were pretty vague and often ridiculous. Once, a "bad" result teleported our collective hero into jail for no good reason.
Even then, our styles of game control varied. My friend's style was intentionally silly, much more random, and surprisingly punishing. Often, he would create an impossible logic puzzle or impenetrable barrier that we struggled against until enough random things happened for us to move on. I already leaned towards larger plots and drama. For examples, we would occasionally pit the hero against an equally random boss, like a psychic little girl. I leaned towards making the defeated ones into an adventuring for the party, and I even made a final boss of sorts to climax the game's laughable plot.
We made a second game after this one. This one used the same resolution of actions, but it had a structure besides that. We actually started with a team of heroes that were basically the four from the last game, but with actual names and unique items. There were hit points and values for the characters' attacks. It was like a real RPG, except everything was still coin-based. We also were more structured with the plot. We had a series of MacGuffin quests and alternated control between them. Our gaming psychologies were similar; they just got more entrenched. In my friend's methods, things were just as painfully random, but now the damage was real. In my case, I set up settings, regular boss fights, even NPCs to assist the party. Sadly, this one never ended; we got up to the last mission, but then we lost interest. Why? Who can say? Video games and actual role-playing games (and even more complex versions of this same madness,) proved to be too alluring to resist.
I won't deny the results were often laughable, both when intentionally so and even when I try to make things more coherent. Overuse of the coin system was often to blame. One bit in particular I still remember a good 15+ years later.
Me: (Flips coin) Suddenly, dragons appear out of nowhere! (Flip coins again.) ...and then they leave.
Why, brain? Why would you do something like that? But sheer, inspired lunacy mixed only with the vaguest hints of coherency proved the perfect primordial soup for my creations. From these ideas, the game and concept that would become the mono-plot began to form. This mono-plot, in one way or another, is connected to almost every idea I ever seriously created and worked on. It also specifically created some of my favorite characters, from token comic relief to an entire species. The mono-plot won't be found in this blog, but the next proto-RPG, where the plot moved from pre-natal concepts to a struggling infant, will be, as will that species.
Part of me, now that I think about it, misses this sort of thing. I write 400 page design documents. I have 50 years of development of the mono-plot, not counting the trillions of years of backstory. Everything is linked in ways both brilliant and surreal to everything else. It's inspiring to me, but Lonny is that a lot of baggage.
What if I tried something like this again? Not just a new system, a near-total lack of system itself? Would I be clever? Would I manage to make a plot out of it? Would I make the same jokes I made when I lived at home and anywhere I wanted to go to was within biking range? I wonder sometimes.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Rantings: Why Video Games Are the Future, or Visa Versa
Remember a time, early in its history, when science fiction was less about spaceships blowing each up other up? Oh, sure, it still was about spaceships and explosions, but it wasn't as dominant. This was before Star Wars and Trek made the concept so mainstream that it became the default. It was a genre of hypothesis in those days, a genre of "what if?" Well, I'm 28, so I'm working mostly on assumptions at this point, but you know what I mean.
More importantly is how one can classify a "what if" story, especially a science fiction one. There are two main subjects, "What if we royally screw up?" and "What if we don't royally screw up?"
The former is more common, because it makes for an easy conflict generator. If, say, we accidentally make Artificial Intelligence too good so it becomes uncontrolled, we just got ourselves an easy villain. The rest of the story could be about the war to stop them, the resistance against them if they already won, or just the daily struggle to survive. Also popular are nuclear war, leaving a post-apocalyptic wasteland, some sort of natural or cosmological disaster that threatens to wipe out the Earth, or at least humanity (big rocks from the stars being a good example of this,) or governmental militarism that created an evil despotism at a planetary or galactic level. Here we have our friend Star Wars, along with far less pulpy fare like Brave New World and 1984.
The second category, while rarer, has its noteworthy examples. Star Trek is probably the most famous. Future civilization is hardly perfect in this case, especially in interaction with other species, but the common assumption is that humanity is more enlightened, generally peaceful, and united in spirit. Also common are stories where things are far from perfect but hardly doomed. Firefly wisely fits into the middle between the Star Wars and Star Trek concepts, with an aggressive but theoretically well-meaning government and the ability to survive without dealing with this government, however tricky that may be.
There are plenty of interesting topics here, but what do they have to do with video game? Well, as a narrative medium (ideally,) the stories are often identical. Bioshock looks at dystopian ruins, Half-Life presents a unique viewpoint for alien invasion plots, while Halo is slightly more traditional. Portal presents an intentionally limited look at the "Killer A.I." storyline.
But, as you might have noticed, most of these are of the first type of "What If" storyline. This is reasonable. After all, the source of the conflict is much easier to find in these circumstances, and while a television show or a movie can try to explore a what if circumstance entirely through nonviolent resolution and character growth, video games thrive on conflict.
That being said, I find that in my own work, when I make a science fiction game, I prefer the latter method. It's not totally unheard of. I have to admit, I still have yet to play Mass Effect (lack of an XBox 360 and a crappy gaming PC at this point are to blame,) but every indicator I've seen suggests that it at least starts in that category. On that note, don't forget that just because civilization has generally advanced, it doesn't mean peace is a given. Look at Star Trek again. There are plenty of local stories of exploration, but they never fail to find another alien race eager to engage in galactic warfare either.
But the advantage of making a second category "what if" is that it fulfills an often lost role of science fiction. It helps modern society advance by letting us answer the question of "what if" and, if we find the answer to our liking, gives us a theory on how to make such a society and mentally prepares us for such a world. The former "what if" stories, by their inherent negativity, are more a warning and a way for us to prepare for the worst. Who hasn't planned how to survive the zombie apocalypse at this point? And our fears about A.I. have magnified so that, when we can actually reach that point of technology, we will be really careful now that we know what the consequences of failure are.
The positive stories are just as valuable, though. If things don't go wrong in a plot-convenient way, we have to understand how we would live our lives in such a world. It's not as easy a question as you may think. If robots advance and don't try to kill us, what happens if they take all our easy jobs? Will everyone be forced into creative or intellectual jobs to survive, or is the era of capitalism over? What if they could do ALL our jobs better?
The same is true for every other advancement. What does bio-engineering mean to the food industry; will we even eat meat, and will the meat no longer mind? What does rapid internet connections mean when we could fit them into our own minds. What if the Matrix is created, not from robot conquerors, but because we all just collectively want to live there?
Video games now have an audience of millions, and that audience consists of the youngest, most tech-savvy, and most network-capable citizens. They will be the first ones to ask these questions en masse, and the first ones to make answers. By creating games that first make these questions mainstream, we can make our images as iconic as black-armored cyborgs with breathing problems or elf-eared aliens with a penchant for logic. We'd do both our industry and our society a favor. And we could still have exploding spaceships if we wanted.
More importantly is how one can classify a "what if" story, especially a science fiction one. There are two main subjects, "What if we royally screw up?" and "What if we don't royally screw up?"
The former is more common, because it makes for an easy conflict generator. If, say, we accidentally make Artificial Intelligence too good so it becomes uncontrolled, we just got ourselves an easy villain. The rest of the story could be about the war to stop them, the resistance against them if they already won, or just the daily struggle to survive. Also popular are nuclear war, leaving a post-apocalyptic wasteland, some sort of natural or cosmological disaster that threatens to wipe out the Earth, or at least humanity (big rocks from the stars being a good example of this,) or governmental militarism that created an evil despotism at a planetary or galactic level. Here we have our friend Star Wars, along with far less pulpy fare like Brave New World and 1984.
The second category, while rarer, has its noteworthy examples. Star Trek is probably the most famous. Future civilization is hardly perfect in this case, especially in interaction with other species, but the common assumption is that humanity is more enlightened, generally peaceful, and united in spirit. Also common are stories where things are far from perfect but hardly doomed. Firefly wisely fits into the middle between the Star Wars and Star Trek concepts, with an aggressive but theoretically well-meaning government and the ability to survive without dealing with this government, however tricky that may be.
There are plenty of interesting topics here, but what do they have to do with video game? Well, as a narrative medium (ideally,) the stories are often identical. Bioshock looks at dystopian ruins, Half-Life presents a unique viewpoint for alien invasion plots, while Halo is slightly more traditional. Portal presents an intentionally limited look at the "Killer A.I." storyline.
But, as you might have noticed, most of these are of the first type of "What If" storyline. This is reasonable. After all, the source of the conflict is much easier to find in these circumstances, and while a television show or a movie can try to explore a what if circumstance entirely through nonviolent resolution and character growth, video games thrive on conflict.
That being said, I find that in my own work, when I make a science fiction game, I prefer the latter method. It's not totally unheard of. I have to admit, I still have yet to play Mass Effect (lack of an XBox 360 and a crappy gaming PC at this point are to blame,) but every indicator I've seen suggests that it at least starts in that category. On that note, don't forget that just because civilization has generally advanced, it doesn't mean peace is a given. Look at Star Trek again. There are plenty of local stories of exploration, but they never fail to find another alien race eager to engage in galactic warfare either.
But the advantage of making a second category "what if" is that it fulfills an often lost role of science fiction. It helps modern society advance by letting us answer the question of "what if" and, if we find the answer to our liking, gives us a theory on how to make such a society and mentally prepares us for such a world. The former "what if" stories, by their inherent negativity, are more a warning and a way for us to prepare for the worst. Who hasn't planned how to survive the zombie apocalypse at this point? And our fears about A.I. have magnified so that, when we can actually reach that point of technology, we will be really careful now that we know what the consequences of failure are.
The positive stories are just as valuable, though. If things don't go wrong in a plot-convenient way, we have to understand how we would live our lives in such a world. It's not as easy a question as you may think. If robots advance and don't try to kill us, what happens if they take all our easy jobs? Will everyone be forced into creative or intellectual jobs to survive, or is the era of capitalism over? What if they could do ALL our jobs better?
The same is true for every other advancement. What does bio-engineering mean to the food industry; will we even eat meat, and will the meat no longer mind? What does rapid internet connections mean when we could fit them into our own minds. What if the Matrix is created, not from robot conquerors, but because we all just collectively want to live there?
Video games now have an audience of millions, and that audience consists of the youngest, most tech-savvy, and most network-capable citizens. They will be the first ones to ask these questions en masse, and the first ones to make answers. By creating games that first make these questions mainstream, we can make our images as iconic as black-armored cyborgs with breathing problems or elf-eared aliens with a penchant for logic. We'd do both our industry and our society a favor. And we could still have exploding spaceships if we wanted.
Monday, March 10, 2008
My Life: The Life of a Dungeon Master
Okay, so the twofer idea didn't go so well. Such is life, however, especially on laundry day. And when you officially have a Laundry Day, you know it's time for your life to get more exciting.
I covered some of the details of this post back on Saturday, but I didn't really explore this side of the issue directly. So tonight, the topic is my history when running Dungeon and Dragons games, and the remarkable fact that I still do so.
My luck with the game on that front has admittedly been pretty horrible. To date, I have yet to actually conclude a campaign the right way. But it's improving. Back in high school, I never really started.
That was a problem with my age and my players. The first time I tried, the players were, like me, in the 15-16 range or so. They had the attention spans one would expect. I was able to get them to play Toon, but that's a shorter, simpler game, where the average adventure lasted 2-3 sessions tops and never really related to later ones. D&D was another story, and it almost never went as well. It didn't go horribly, at least not the first time. Sure, one of my closest friends ripped up his character sheet and quit the game midway through game one, but he tended to be over-dramatic anyway. But from there, the game lasted some three and a half adventures, including an elaborate dungeon and a tower I completely ripped off from Legend of Zelda. By that point, some of the players just ignored the game and made jokes, one didn't care if he lived or died, and things just stopped.
The second attempt included the reconciled first friend mentioned above and several of my brother's friends. This game was notable in that many of those friends were girls, which was rare in the gaming culture, especially at that age. It still didn't go well, though. The game ended after about 3-4 adventures, with the final adventure ending with the entire party captured by orcs. Stupid orcs. Nonetheless, that game at least proved amusing, even though once again I had to work my ass off just to corral the group long enough to get them to the game.
Campaign 3 occurred much later. I went to college, was a player for three years, witnessed the arrival of 3rd edition, and returned to my neighborhood eager to handle this like an adult. No old friends and browbeated acquaintances. This time, I advertised and found a few players the old fashioned way. That went better, at least eventually. Unfortunately, this campaign taught me two things. First, just because a game actually involved adults, it didn't mean they would all act so. Oh, most players were fine, but one players' departure via obscenity-laden emails was enough to burn me out for almost a month and move my game from a weekly to a every other week schedule, a pattern I maintain to this day.
But the thing that killed the game permanently was that adults have a new, adult problem: time. I was pretty good (no social life and my terrible luck with women helped here,) but some players were not so lucky, and we almost always missed at least one or two player. This is where I first determined that 6-8 was the ideal number of players; that way, if we missed a few, the group was still mostly complete. However, that wasn't what killed the group. What killed the group was when life intruded so much that people had to move out of state. I lost 3 players in a matter of weeks, and others shortly afterwards. We tried to make it work by moving the game online, but by then the party was at or near epic level, and combat took forever even in real life. We got an adventure or two done online, but it soon proved impossible. We were only a few adventures away from the conclusion, too.
After an incident like that, you might think I'd be burned out and discouraged from gaming altogether. And you'd be right; it took me over a year before I played again, and that time I started with more preparations. Before I sat down for game one, I made an entirely new setting, including new cities, a backstory, the whole nine yards. That game is about halfway to 2/3rds to completion now. I worry that it won't finish, and I'm already seeing danger signs. We lost regulars to moving or distance issues, and others are planning on moving again.
But it's worth this risk, because of the little moments, and because it means this is a story being told. I love the days when the game truly works. When the players solve a mystery or when a fight is long, epic, and climatic, everything is perfect. And that moment, that challenge, is the greatest moment of art and design I can achieve right now. I couldn't even resist expanding the game; as of right now, I run two games in the same setting. One is my real life group, and on off Saturdays I run a game online. This makes for a great contrast; the real life group is about epic combat and battles, while the online group, by necessity and player preference, is light on combat and deeper on noir and character issues. This lets me explore two facets of the same setting. And I can even get the groups' actions to influence each other. I always wanted to try this; to challenge myself and each party while maintaining setting cohesion.
It's not easy; I often get stressed when making adventures, procrastinate, and finish at the last minute. But it's worth it. It's arguably the only thing right now that truly makes me feel like an artist and a creator, not just a hopeful with ideas and no way to make them into something complete. For that alone, all the time, pain, and stress is worth it. For that alone, practically anything is.
I covered some of the details of this post back on Saturday, but I didn't really explore this side of the issue directly. So tonight, the topic is my history when running Dungeon and Dragons games, and the remarkable fact that I still do so.
My luck with the game on that front has admittedly been pretty horrible. To date, I have yet to actually conclude a campaign the right way. But it's improving. Back in high school, I never really started.
That was a problem with my age and my players. The first time I tried, the players were, like me, in the 15-16 range or so. They had the attention spans one would expect. I was able to get them to play Toon, but that's a shorter, simpler game, where the average adventure lasted 2-3 sessions tops and never really related to later ones. D&D was another story, and it almost never went as well. It didn't go horribly, at least not the first time. Sure, one of my closest friends ripped up his character sheet and quit the game midway through game one, but he tended to be over-dramatic anyway. But from there, the game lasted some three and a half adventures, including an elaborate dungeon and a tower I completely ripped off from Legend of Zelda. By that point, some of the players just ignored the game and made jokes, one didn't care if he lived or died, and things just stopped.
The second attempt included the reconciled first friend mentioned above and several of my brother's friends. This game was notable in that many of those friends were girls, which was rare in the gaming culture, especially at that age. It still didn't go well, though. The game ended after about 3-4 adventures, with the final adventure ending with the entire party captured by orcs. Stupid orcs. Nonetheless, that game at least proved amusing, even though once again I had to work my ass off just to corral the group long enough to get them to the game.
Campaign 3 occurred much later. I went to college, was a player for three years, witnessed the arrival of 3rd edition, and returned to my neighborhood eager to handle this like an adult. No old friends and browbeated acquaintances. This time, I advertised and found a few players the old fashioned way. That went better, at least eventually. Unfortunately, this campaign taught me two things. First, just because a game actually involved adults, it didn't mean they would all act so. Oh, most players were fine, but one players' departure via obscenity-laden emails was enough to burn me out for almost a month and move my game from a weekly to a every other week schedule, a pattern I maintain to this day.
But the thing that killed the game permanently was that adults have a new, adult problem: time. I was pretty good (no social life and my terrible luck with women helped here,) but some players were not so lucky, and we almost always missed at least one or two player. This is where I first determined that 6-8 was the ideal number of players; that way, if we missed a few, the group was still mostly complete. However, that wasn't what killed the group. What killed the group was when life intruded so much that people had to move out of state. I lost 3 players in a matter of weeks, and others shortly afterwards. We tried to make it work by moving the game online, but by then the party was at or near epic level, and combat took forever even in real life. We got an adventure or two done online, but it soon proved impossible. We were only a few adventures away from the conclusion, too.
After an incident like that, you might think I'd be burned out and discouraged from gaming altogether. And you'd be right; it took me over a year before I played again, and that time I started with more preparations. Before I sat down for game one, I made an entirely new setting, including new cities, a backstory, the whole nine yards. That game is about halfway to 2/3rds to completion now. I worry that it won't finish, and I'm already seeing danger signs. We lost regulars to moving or distance issues, and others are planning on moving again.
But it's worth this risk, because of the little moments, and because it means this is a story being told. I love the days when the game truly works. When the players solve a mystery or when a fight is long, epic, and climatic, everything is perfect. And that moment, that challenge, is the greatest moment of art and design I can achieve right now. I couldn't even resist expanding the game; as of right now, I run two games in the same setting. One is my real life group, and on off Saturdays I run a game online. This makes for a great contrast; the real life group is about epic combat and battles, while the online group, by necessity and player preference, is light on combat and deeper on noir and character issues. This lets me explore two facets of the same setting. And I can even get the groups' actions to influence each other. I always wanted to try this; to challenge myself and each party while maintaining setting cohesion.
It's not easy; I often get stressed when making adventures, procrastinate, and finish at the last minute. But it's worth it. It's arguably the only thing right now that truly makes me feel like an artist and a creator, not just a hopeful with ideas and no way to make them into something complete. For that alone, all the time, pain, and stress is worth it. For that alone, practically anything is.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
No Post Tonight.
Sorry, I got in late, and honestly I'm not in the mood. "Crazy moon language you people call love, die alone and unloved, yadda yadda" and all that. I'll try to make tomorrow a twofer, though.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
My Inspirations: Come On, Like You Have to Ask
There really only can be one subject for this week. The only surprise was that I forgot to include him among the original list I planned on using for this blog. Despite that oversight, how can I not write about Gary Gygax this week? I mean, I think I have to. You're not legally allowed to remain on the Internet without talking about it.
Sorry, I don't want to be too glib here. It's harder to write about this sort of thing when you're a few days past the original shock, but that doesn't mean Gary doesn't deserve it. My story on how Gary changed my life is a bit different than most, however.
Part of the problem is that I'm 28. Many of the stories I read in the past week were made by people slightly older, and who grew up in a different time. They predated not only the Internet and the general fad of geekiness, but also video games and other semi-popular geeky interests. For them, Dungeons and Dragons were often it. It becomes the tale of a shy, awkward outsider who made their first close friends, and sometimes even found love, through the game.
My story was a bit different, because by the time I was in grade school, let alone junior high, high school, and college, low-level geekery had already flooded the world. The Internet wasn't a mainstream thing until high school or so, but until then, everyone and their brother had a Nintendo. School lunch rooms rang with battles between Nintendo and Sega supporters. Our entire generation grew up to be gamers, of one degree or another.
And so I already found a place and a community of sorts that way. I read gaming magazines, memorized the names of famous designers, and dedicated much of my mental capacities to gaming. And I had friends in the same way. My closest friends as I grew up were all gamers in one way or another.
But they weren't role-playing gamers. Bonding for us meant playing Earthworm Jim or Contra 3. I nonetheless tried to influence them otherwise. I asked, pleaded, and/or browbeat them into at least occasionally trying other types of games. And it wasn't always Dungeons and Dragons, either. In fact, it was often Toon, a much simpler RPG designed to do little but make the players laugh, or even an even simpler, almost rules-less game of my own making. I will be dealing further with both of these games in later blogs, but I'll be focusing on D&D now.
But that begs the question of how D&D, and thus Gary, became one of my inspirations. I never played regularly until college, after all. Sure, I enjoyed the trappings of the game. I liked going to Gen Con annually, and getting the books, and making campaign settings. But finding nobody who really wanted to play was disappointing, and watching games I planned in the very long term crash and burn before they could even start was often painful.
But it did inspire me, just not in the "here's a social group for geeks like us" way. It inspired me to create. I didn't exactly need the help; video games did this well before I even realized Dungeons and Dragons existed as something beyond the Pool of Radiance video game. But the differences were notable, because making something in an RPG gave you two things that making video game design documents didn't. They offered validity, and they offered public evaluation and gratification.
The former is a bit ironic, since Mr. Gygax himself was once famous for his hard-line stance against house rules. But it's still applicable. When I want to make a video game, my ideas never can get past stage 2, at least in a foreseeable future. I conceive of them and then, if I really get lucky and passionate about it, I write down the details. That's really about it. Very simple ideas could theoretically be made using cheap and novice-friendly build engines, but the big ideas, the ones that really inspire me, are forever elusive without a massive budget and an interested development team. An RPG idea, though, ends at the written level. If I write a module, I have a module. It may not be as polished as a professional one and the art is nonexistent, but the basic element is identical.
The second aspect is harder to appreciate, but just as important. Since my video game ideas never get past the design level, they can't ever be evaluated. I can't determine if they're good or bad. When I'm DMing, though, the idea can be evaluated by an interested and appreciate group immediately. Is the game fun? I won!
This does feel less like a tribute to Gary Gygax and more like a general "why I like tabletop RPGs," I have to admit. But I know precisely how any of these things came into being. Gary Gygax (and Dave Arneson; let's not forget him,) were largely responsible for this codification of fantasy, of adventure, of the arts that have inspired so many of us geeks. Without that system, making adventures, campaign settings, and monsters for that system would be impossible. And the influence of D&D is felt throughout the world well beyond D&D. The same ideas were used to influence video games, and both influenced modern fantasy in television, movies, and other mediums. And who do we think design these modern fantasies? People who, more than likely, were themselves players of D&D as kids. No, Gary Gygax didn't personally create Megaman, or Final Fantasy, or Buffy. But the greatest artists are the ones who uplift other artists, to support kings and philosophers, and to elevate culture throughout the world. Gary Gygax did just that, and I can only hope to do the same some day.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Gygax. I hope you're somewhere out there still, groaning with irritation at all the "he failed his saving throw" jokes.
Sorry, I don't want to be too glib here. It's harder to write about this sort of thing when you're a few days past the original shock, but that doesn't mean Gary doesn't deserve it. My story on how Gary changed my life is a bit different than most, however.
Part of the problem is that I'm 28. Many of the stories I read in the past week were made by people slightly older, and who grew up in a different time. They predated not only the Internet and the general fad of geekiness, but also video games and other semi-popular geeky interests. For them, Dungeons and Dragons were often it. It becomes the tale of a shy, awkward outsider who made their first close friends, and sometimes even found love, through the game.
My story was a bit different, because by the time I was in grade school, let alone junior high, high school, and college, low-level geekery had already flooded the world. The Internet wasn't a mainstream thing until high school or so, but until then, everyone and their brother had a Nintendo. School lunch rooms rang with battles between Nintendo and Sega supporters. Our entire generation grew up to be gamers, of one degree or another.
And so I already found a place and a community of sorts that way. I read gaming magazines, memorized the names of famous designers, and dedicated much of my mental capacities to gaming. And I had friends in the same way. My closest friends as I grew up were all gamers in one way or another.
But they weren't role-playing gamers. Bonding for us meant playing Earthworm Jim or Contra 3. I nonetheless tried to influence them otherwise. I asked, pleaded, and/or browbeat them into at least occasionally trying other types of games. And it wasn't always Dungeons and Dragons, either. In fact, it was often Toon, a much simpler RPG designed to do little but make the players laugh, or even an even simpler, almost rules-less game of my own making. I will be dealing further with both of these games in later blogs, but I'll be focusing on D&D now.
But that begs the question of how D&D, and thus Gary, became one of my inspirations. I never played regularly until college, after all. Sure, I enjoyed the trappings of the game. I liked going to Gen Con annually, and getting the books, and making campaign settings. But finding nobody who really wanted to play was disappointing, and watching games I planned in the very long term crash and burn before they could even start was often painful.
But it did inspire me, just not in the "here's a social group for geeks like us" way. It inspired me to create. I didn't exactly need the help; video games did this well before I even realized Dungeons and Dragons existed as something beyond the Pool of Radiance video game. But the differences were notable, because making something in an RPG gave you two things that making video game design documents didn't. They offered validity, and they offered public evaluation and gratification.
The former is a bit ironic, since Mr. Gygax himself was once famous for his hard-line stance against house rules. But it's still applicable. When I want to make a video game, my ideas never can get past stage 2, at least in a foreseeable future. I conceive of them and then, if I really get lucky and passionate about it, I write down the details. That's really about it. Very simple ideas could theoretically be made using cheap and novice-friendly build engines, but the big ideas, the ones that really inspire me, are forever elusive without a massive budget and an interested development team. An RPG idea, though, ends at the written level. If I write a module, I have a module. It may not be as polished as a professional one and the art is nonexistent, but the basic element is identical.
The second aspect is harder to appreciate, but just as important. Since my video game ideas never get past the design level, they can't ever be evaluated. I can't determine if they're good or bad. When I'm DMing, though, the idea can be evaluated by an interested and appreciate group immediately. Is the game fun? I won!
This does feel less like a tribute to Gary Gygax and more like a general "why I like tabletop RPGs," I have to admit. But I know precisely how any of these things came into being. Gary Gygax (and Dave Arneson; let's not forget him,) were largely responsible for this codification of fantasy, of adventure, of the arts that have inspired so many of us geeks. Without that system, making adventures, campaign settings, and monsters for that system would be impossible. And the influence of D&D is felt throughout the world well beyond D&D. The same ideas were used to influence video games, and both influenced modern fantasy in television, movies, and other mediums. And who do we think design these modern fantasies? People who, more than likely, were themselves players of D&D as kids. No, Gary Gygax didn't personally create Megaman, or Final Fantasy, or Buffy. But the greatest artists are the ones who uplift other artists, to support kings and philosophers, and to elevate culture throughout the world. Gary Gygax did just that, and I can only hope to do the same some day.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Gygax. I hope you're somewhere out there still, groaning with irritation at all the "he failed his saving throw" jokes.
Friday, March 7, 2008
My Ideas: The Valley of...Something.
On tonight's horrendously late blog, we discuss the third of the video game ideas fit for this column. This is the third and last game of the Genres category I'll be sharing with you; remarkably, the fourth one managed to generate 180 or so pages of material before I started losing interest. To be fair, I got excited over that one in the summer, so I had time to kill.
This game, however, was more traditionally an idle concept, with one exception. The inspiration was another Playstation classic called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I'll provide a bit of background. The Castlevania games are a series action/adventures stretching back to the original Nintendo. Most were strictly arcade affairs where the main character, a warrior with a magical whip and/or morning star, had to travel the countryside and a haunted castle to fight Dracula. This sequel to earlier Castlevania games had a similar premise, but the normal warrior was replaced with Alucard, Dracula's far more versatile and noble half-vampire son. And instead of a normal series of levels, the game featured a single, often open-ended maze of a castle that could be explored in many different ways. It took the original concept and turned it into something bigger, more expansive, and extremely entertaining. It also turned it into Metroid specifically, but that's fine. If you have to borrow, borrow from the best.
I was enchanted; I had to improve upon it! Sadly, the first idea I had to do so was "make it 3D." I feel sort of dirty typing that, as if any indy cred I had just flew out of my soul. But I couldn't help it! The game painted the castle as such a big, beautiful, surreal, horrific world that I wanted to see what I was missing. And yes, something can be both beautiful and horrific. Especially in my mind. But there were so many mysteries in the background of the game; stairwells to nowhere, ruined towers, a giant floating eyeball, etc. It made the game feel a tiny bit incomplete.
So, in my game, the game's setting, a cursed manor (instead of a castle! See how clever I was?) was in full 3D. It wasn't the only change. I realized I couldn't utilize Earth's mythology, since Castlevania already used so much of it. Classical horror tropes, Greek mythology, Judeo-Christian demons, classic undead, it had them all. I had to get creative, which is only fair since I started this project by shamelessly ripping off someone else.
I worked on a mythology for the game and then created a simple child's faerie tale to work the story around. The story revolved around the Valley of...Something. I had the name written down in the faerie tale, but that was only written on paper, not stored digitally. I have no idea if I still have that paper, and in the ensuing years, I forgot the name of the Valley. It was Korroth or something; on my scale of made up names, it got a 3 or so out of 10. So it's just the Valley for me and has been for years.
This Valley was created by the gods, or specifically by a god. When I made the game's mythology, I wanted to create a pantheon of gods, but I did something I never saw in fantasy before; I made them all women.
I saw all-male pantheons before, you see. Tolkein's counted, I think, and some of David Eddings' works had one as well. Most are nicely mixed between genders, but this was different. Once I agreed on the idea, I had the gods spring into being and handle things the usual way; each one added their godly focus into the collective universe, altering the lives of mortals as they did. This continued until one goddess, Bas, didn't get the chance. The next gods came too quickly into being, so she never had the chance. This, understandably, pissed her off.
And so, when the last goddess appeared, the twelve goddesses, called the Sisters, collectively decided to start a new planet fresh; one untouched by the chaos that came from emerging goddesses imposing their own views onto a pre-established civilization. And it was good, up until when Bas got involved. This time, she would give the world a gift. She would give it war and strife.
Since that was exactly what the other Sisters wanted done away with this time, they opposed her. But fighting a war god is always tricky, and all of them combined had to defeat her. They couldn't kill her, but they defeated the divine element within her, leaving her massive body to fall onto the planet she corrupted. She hit a mountain range with such force that it created a giant valley. She was buried, to sleep forever ideally.
Instead, her body began to emit demons; the products of her war nature. And eventually, a tyrannical wizard discovered the Valley. Megalomaniacal, this wizard, named Prince Khaspar or simply the Nightmare Prince, wanted to become a god himself. He believed he could subvert the sisters by proving himself the master of all their elements. He thought he proved it for all but Bas, but to prove himself her superior, he would have to summon and control the demonic hordes she created, and possibly tap into her unconscious form's power directly.
It's here where things get complicated. The other goddesses sent avatar to try and stop him, but he defeated and imprisoned or killed most of them. But his own experiment went awry, and the demons were summoned but not controlled. They trapped his immortal body in stone and flooded the valley and the manor itself. This continued until two of the imprisoned avatars escaped. The players controlled one or both of them, as they explored the manor and below it. Eventually, they found Bas' dormant body and defeated it just as it began to awaken.
I'm not that embarrassed about this project. Some parts were bad, sure. The main playable leads were incredibly weak. They had no personalities, and in fact I couldn't even tell you their names without looking them up. But the setting, that's another story. It really was a tragic, deep place, and one well divorced from vampires and their hunters. There were horrific elements, like the fate of many of the avatars, and sad moments, like the levels the surviving servants of Khaspar were willing to go to survive the demon-infested manor. There were even rudimentary explorations of gender relations, and that was well before I became a Buffy fan.
In fact, Khaspar and the Sisters made their appearances in many places beyond this story. They were central to my first serious Dungeon and Dragon game's setting and present in the second, and they often factored into the meta-plot of my other ideas. In many ways, the lesson of this game is the opposite of that of the Dark Banner. There, the lesson was to remember the characters and concepts even if the game itself never panned out. In this case, it was the game's outer casing, its shell if you will, that was valuable, and it merely needs a game and characters to fill it. I can tell you that of the four original genre games, this is the one that still has the best hopes of becoming something real some day. Let's see the 180 pages of spaceship components and mechanics say that!
This game, however, was more traditionally an idle concept, with one exception. The inspiration was another Playstation classic called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I'll provide a bit of background. The Castlevania games are a series action/adventures stretching back to the original Nintendo. Most were strictly arcade affairs where the main character, a warrior with a magical whip and/or morning star, had to travel the countryside and a haunted castle to fight Dracula. This sequel to earlier Castlevania games had a similar premise, but the normal warrior was replaced with Alucard, Dracula's far more versatile and noble half-vampire son. And instead of a normal series of levels, the game featured a single, often open-ended maze of a castle that could be explored in many different ways. It took the original concept and turned it into something bigger, more expansive, and extremely entertaining. It also turned it into Metroid specifically, but that's fine. If you have to borrow, borrow from the best.
I was enchanted; I had to improve upon it! Sadly, the first idea I had to do so was "make it 3D." I feel sort of dirty typing that, as if any indy cred I had just flew out of my soul. But I couldn't help it! The game painted the castle as such a big, beautiful, surreal, horrific world that I wanted to see what I was missing. And yes, something can be both beautiful and horrific. Especially in my mind. But there were so many mysteries in the background of the game; stairwells to nowhere, ruined towers, a giant floating eyeball, etc. It made the game feel a tiny bit incomplete.
So, in my game, the game's setting, a cursed manor (instead of a castle! See how clever I was?) was in full 3D. It wasn't the only change. I realized I couldn't utilize Earth's mythology, since Castlevania already used so much of it. Classical horror tropes, Greek mythology, Judeo-Christian demons, classic undead, it had them all. I had to get creative, which is only fair since I started this project by shamelessly ripping off someone else.
I worked on a mythology for the game and then created a simple child's faerie tale to work the story around. The story revolved around the Valley of...Something. I had the name written down in the faerie tale, but that was only written on paper, not stored digitally. I have no idea if I still have that paper, and in the ensuing years, I forgot the name of the Valley. It was Korroth or something; on my scale of made up names, it got a 3 or so out of 10. So it's just the Valley for me and has been for years.
This Valley was created by the gods, or specifically by a god. When I made the game's mythology, I wanted to create a pantheon of gods, but I did something I never saw in fantasy before; I made them all women.
I saw all-male pantheons before, you see. Tolkein's counted, I think, and some of David Eddings' works had one as well. Most are nicely mixed between genders, but this was different. Once I agreed on the idea, I had the gods spring into being and handle things the usual way; each one added their godly focus into the collective universe, altering the lives of mortals as they did. This continued until one goddess, Bas, didn't get the chance. The next gods came too quickly into being, so she never had the chance. This, understandably, pissed her off.
And so, when the last goddess appeared, the twelve goddesses, called the Sisters, collectively decided to start a new planet fresh; one untouched by the chaos that came from emerging goddesses imposing their own views onto a pre-established civilization. And it was good, up until when Bas got involved. This time, she would give the world a gift. She would give it war and strife.
Since that was exactly what the other Sisters wanted done away with this time, they opposed her. But fighting a war god is always tricky, and all of them combined had to defeat her. They couldn't kill her, but they defeated the divine element within her, leaving her massive body to fall onto the planet she corrupted. She hit a mountain range with such force that it created a giant valley. She was buried, to sleep forever ideally.
Instead, her body began to emit demons; the products of her war nature. And eventually, a tyrannical wizard discovered the Valley. Megalomaniacal, this wizard, named Prince Khaspar or simply the Nightmare Prince, wanted to become a god himself. He believed he could subvert the sisters by proving himself the master of all their elements. He thought he proved it for all but Bas, but to prove himself her superior, he would have to summon and control the demonic hordes she created, and possibly tap into her unconscious form's power directly.
It's here where things get complicated. The other goddesses sent avatar to try and stop him, but he defeated and imprisoned or killed most of them. But his own experiment went awry, and the demons were summoned but not controlled. They trapped his immortal body in stone and flooded the valley and the manor itself. This continued until two of the imprisoned avatars escaped. The players controlled one or both of them, as they explored the manor and below it. Eventually, they found Bas' dormant body and defeated it just as it began to awaken.
I'm not that embarrassed about this project. Some parts were bad, sure. The main playable leads were incredibly weak. They had no personalities, and in fact I couldn't even tell you their names without looking them up. But the setting, that's another story. It really was a tragic, deep place, and one well divorced from vampires and their hunters. There were horrific elements, like the fate of many of the avatars, and sad moments, like the levels the surviving servants of Khaspar were willing to go to survive the demon-infested manor. There were even rudimentary explorations of gender relations, and that was well before I became a Buffy fan.
In fact, Khaspar and the Sisters made their appearances in many places beyond this story. They were central to my first serious Dungeon and Dragon game's setting and present in the second, and they often factored into the meta-plot of my other ideas. In many ways, the lesson of this game is the opposite of that of the Dark Banner. There, the lesson was to remember the characters and concepts even if the game itself never panned out. In this case, it was the game's outer casing, its shell if you will, that was valuable, and it merely needs a game and characters to fill it. I can tell you that of the four original genre games, this is the one that still has the best hopes of becoming something real some day. Let's see the 180 pages of spaceship components and mechanics say that!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Rantings: Ode to Plot Judo
I remain burned out on writing, and events of yesterday have left me a bit shaken anyway. No, I'm not talking about the primary; at least not much. I mean that yesterday, we lost an icon. This isn't really the time to discuss it, but I can tell you I already have my next Inspirations topic plan. For now, it will have to be a Ranting, which I'll dedicate to another deceased idol of mine who earned an inspiration blog some day as well. That idol is Douglas Adams, the work in question worth idolizing is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the design concept of his that I would like to champion is Plot Judo.
Adams described this in the script of the radio play that launched the multimedia series. He described a problem he had with his script, which was like all Adams products done notoriously close to or well past deadline. In this case, he wrote himself into one hell of a cliffhanger. He had his characters thrown out of an airlock by hostile aliens, where they faced certain death. There was little he could do. He could have them get rescued, but the odds of a passing ship finding them in space before they died was astronomically small.
He was stumped, until he saw a television show about the martial art known as Judo, which let its practitioners use the strength and momentum of their opponents against them. This skill with counters inspired Adams. Instead of fighting the sheer improbability of the characters in the story, he used this potential plot hole against it and created one of his greatest ideas: Improbability Drive, a method of spacecraft propulsion that ran entirely on unlikely odds. It was amusing, let the heroes get rescued (this time,) and set up constant scenes where the inherent chaos the ship's engines released affected the people around them. It even saved the ship from a missile attack later in the plot, by conveniently and very improbably turning the missiles into a whale and bowl of petunias.
I love using this method, especially if you have the time to really ponder the problem. Or if you have so little time that it's your last hope. Either way, it's good. Because the work I revealed to you people are so ancient, I can't use many examples, since I didn't really practice Plot Judo when I made them. Really, they were so simplistic I rarely had to, though you could argue that solving the problem of having too few characters by tossing in a pile of homeless characters might count.
Instead, I'll use some limited examples from more complex "investment" works. One of these was a long-needed revision of an action-rpg made in college. It's very close to my soul; I first made the thing when I was 12. No, I don't know why these two time periods specifically pop up so often. I guess I was in a creative slump when I was 11 and 14. Anyway, despite it being close to my soul and already on its third major revision by the time I was in college, it was also incredible tripe. It was clichéd up in every possible way. This wasn't entirely my fault. Months after I started working on it, Final Fantasy Seven came out, and that game altered everyone's perspectives on what a role playing game could be. Hell, it even used one of the same climatic plot-based dooms that I had planned for my game, which annoyed me at the time.
When I wanted to revise the game to match up to my current standards, this became a problem I had to work on. I couldn't remove the clichés completely; they fit the plot and setting too much. So I made them my weapon; I made the game into a bit of a deconstruction of the fantasy genre my making the world one where the clichés often spring to life. Yes, it's a bit like Discworld, but different enough to give it its own voice. More importantly, it offers a sort of counter-argument to the idealism of fantasy. This is especially true by making the fantasy elements not an inherent part of that world's scientific law, like it is in Discworld, but rather something planned by imperfect and potentially sinister forces.
Another example of how this works is in character development. Often, a plot develops in a way that forces a character to do something stupid or requires incredible coincidences, as it did for Adams. Instead of trying to work around it, Plot Judo suggests that the weakness of character be studied. No character can ever be completely explained, detailed, or rendered. There are also facets to explore, psychological issues left untapped, and secrets to reveal. These moments are perfect to expand the depth of a character. I can't tell you how often that's worked for Dot, just to use one example. Coincidences can become conspiracy, moments of weakness can show hidden phobias and traumas, and annoying character traits reveal facades the character keeps up or just leave a new opening for development.
Hell, technically, every example of Plot Judo is not just a way to explore your writing's weakness, it's a way to explore your own. If you were really a perfect writer, you never would even get yourself into these sorts of messes. By engaging in this sort of thinking, you can use it to explore your own weaknesses, discover new things about yourself, and develop your own personality at the same time you do it to your characters.
Adams described this in the script of the radio play that launched the multimedia series. He described a problem he had with his script, which was like all Adams products done notoriously close to or well past deadline. In this case, he wrote himself into one hell of a cliffhanger. He had his characters thrown out of an airlock by hostile aliens, where they faced certain death. There was little he could do. He could have them get rescued, but the odds of a passing ship finding them in space before they died was astronomically small.
He was stumped, until he saw a television show about the martial art known as Judo, which let its practitioners use the strength and momentum of their opponents against them. This skill with counters inspired Adams. Instead of fighting the sheer improbability of the characters in the story, he used this potential plot hole against it and created one of his greatest ideas: Improbability Drive, a method of spacecraft propulsion that ran entirely on unlikely odds. It was amusing, let the heroes get rescued (this time,) and set up constant scenes where the inherent chaos the ship's engines released affected the people around them. It even saved the ship from a missile attack later in the plot, by conveniently and very improbably turning the missiles into a whale and bowl of petunias.
I love using this method, especially if you have the time to really ponder the problem. Or if you have so little time that it's your last hope. Either way, it's good. Because the work I revealed to you people are so ancient, I can't use many examples, since I didn't really practice Plot Judo when I made them. Really, they were so simplistic I rarely had to, though you could argue that solving the problem of having too few characters by tossing in a pile of homeless characters might count.
Instead, I'll use some limited examples from more complex "investment" works. One of these was a long-needed revision of an action-rpg made in college. It's very close to my soul; I first made the thing when I was 12. No, I don't know why these two time periods specifically pop up so often. I guess I was in a creative slump when I was 11 and 14. Anyway, despite it being close to my soul and already on its third major revision by the time I was in college, it was also incredible tripe. It was clichéd up in every possible way. This wasn't entirely my fault. Months after I started working on it, Final Fantasy Seven came out, and that game altered everyone's perspectives on what a role playing game could be. Hell, it even used one of the same climatic plot-based dooms that I had planned for my game, which annoyed me at the time.
When I wanted to revise the game to match up to my current standards, this became a problem I had to work on. I couldn't remove the clichés completely; they fit the plot and setting too much. So I made them my weapon; I made the game into a bit of a deconstruction of the fantasy genre my making the world one where the clichés often spring to life. Yes, it's a bit like Discworld, but different enough to give it its own voice. More importantly, it offers a sort of counter-argument to the idealism of fantasy. This is especially true by making the fantasy elements not an inherent part of that world's scientific law, like it is in Discworld, but rather something planned by imperfect and potentially sinister forces.
Another example of how this works is in character development. Often, a plot develops in a way that forces a character to do something stupid or requires incredible coincidences, as it did for Adams. Instead of trying to work around it, Plot Judo suggests that the weakness of character be studied. No character can ever be completely explained, detailed, or rendered. There are also facets to explore, psychological issues left untapped, and secrets to reveal. These moments are perfect to expand the depth of a character. I can't tell you how often that's worked for Dot, just to use one example. Coincidences can become conspiracy, moments of weakness can show hidden phobias and traumas, and annoying character traits reveal facades the character keeps up or just leave a new opening for development.
Hell, technically, every example of Plot Judo is not just a way to explore your writing's weakness, it's a way to explore your own. If you were really a perfect writer, you never would even get yourself into these sorts of messes. By engaging in this sort of thinking, you can use it to explore your own weaknesses, discover new things about yourself, and develop your own personality at the same time you do it to your characters.
Monday, March 3, 2008
My Life: And My Writer's Group
I'm a little burned out with writing lately, and time is short, so I'll focus on a simpler topic than normal. Today, we'll be talking about one of the few groups I belong to that isn't directly geeky at an incredible level. It's just a little bit geeky.
You see, about a year-year and a half ago, while looking for inspiration and possibly a new place to meet friends (and girls,) I learned that a local book store had a writer's group every two weeks on Thursday. At this point, my writing was a bit more random. I wrote game design documents, and I did National Novel Writing Month almost every year (that's another blog topic right there,) but that was about it. And it was all designed to be processed only through me, at least so far. That's fine for what it is, but it wasn't helping me, either professionally or to be a better writer. I needed actual advice, evaluations, tests, or at least projects different from the stuff I worked on for most of my life.
The writer's group provides that. Through the able hand of the group's current leader, Paul, we go over goals, plan our lives, brainstorm for each other's work, and, in my favorite part, do writing challenges. These are little, improvised tests that last 3-5 minutes at the most and that had topics we couldn't know about until the last minute. This is exactly what I need as a writer. No simple write up of video game idea #25's spell list; this could be fiction, dialogue, description, or anything, and I had to make it up on the fly.
I find that my style, whenever possible, drifts towards irreverence. I go for the humor, usually of a satirical or surreal nature, if I can. I don't mind this especially, as everyone has their own writing style. But I have to admit that I worry it's a bit of a crutch, which is a common trait among humorists anyway. What if I rely too much on humor, to the point where it's difficult for me to write anything serious? But learning to write the "real" way is not an easy process, nor is it one you can do quickly, at least not when already stuck with unemployment. As long as I remain enthusiastic, I can improve. And I already got some compliments on the subject, both about the writing and (even more importantly,) the presentation. You can't just pass what you just wrote to other people, since that would take too long and most writers tend to have illegible handwriting anyway, ironically. You have to speak out loud, which is an unnerving concept at best for the socially awkward like myself.
I also enjoy interacting with different writers. Our group consists or consisted of a former nuclear scientist, a fiction writer, a verbal storyteller, a former financial writer turned magazine contributor, a poet, and much more. Each has their own story and their own style, making comparisons interesting and every writing challenge different.
It's not like everything's perfect, of course. Sometimes the writing challenges fall by the wayside as we focus too much on goals or discussions of specific writing elements, which don't tend to get us as far. And the group's still looking for a more specific level of organization. I get annoyed when our normal spot at the bookstore gets abandoned, forcing us to crowd in the coffee shop's little tables. Plus, well, the whole "meet girls" plan? This hasn't really helped. It's been a long time since there was a woman even remotely near my age there. My best bet has been to admire the barista from afar. But that discussion's getting into creepy territory, so it's time to move on.
My point, though, is that I generally do enjoy the writer's group. It gives me many things I feel I need; good friends not meeting by geeky necessity, a chance to grow as a person, and actual social demands, damn it. Not that I need more writing-themed demands after this month, but you know what I mean. All that plus the excuse to buy expensive coffee shop cookies every two weeks; that's more than worth taping Lost and The Office/30 Rock every other week.
You see, about a year-year and a half ago, while looking for inspiration and possibly a new place to meet friends (and girls,) I learned that a local book store had a writer's group every two weeks on Thursday. At this point, my writing was a bit more random. I wrote game design documents, and I did National Novel Writing Month almost every year (that's another blog topic right there,) but that was about it. And it was all designed to be processed only through me, at least so far. That's fine for what it is, but it wasn't helping me, either professionally or to be a better writer. I needed actual advice, evaluations, tests, or at least projects different from the stuff I worked on for most of my life.
The writer's group provides that. Through the able hand of the group's current leader, Paul, we go over goals, plan our lives, brainstorm for each other's work, and, in my favorite part, do writing challenges. These are little, improvised tests that last 3-5 minutes at the most and that had topics we couldn't know about until the last minute. This is exactly what I need as a writer. No simple write up of video game idea #25's spell list; this could be fiction, dialogue, description, or anything, and I had to make it up on the fly.
I find that my style, whenever possible, drifts towards irreverence. I go for the humor, usually of a satirical or surreal nature, if I can. I don't mind this especially, as everyone has their own writing style. But I have to admit that I worry it's a bit of a crutch, which is a common trait among humorists anyway. What if I rely too much on humor, to the point where it's difficult for me to write anything serious? But learning to write the "real" way is not an easy process, nor is it one you can do quickly, at least not when already stuck with unemployment. As long as I remain enthusiastic, I can improve. And I already got some compliments on the subject, both about the writing and (even more importantly,) the presentation. You can't just pass what you just wrote to other people, since that would take too long and most writers tend to have illegible handwriting anyway, ironically. You have to speak out loud, which is an unnerving concept at best for the socially awkward like myself.
I also enjoy interacting with different writers. Our group consists or consisted of a former nuclear scientist, a fiction writer, a verbal storyteller, a former financial writer turned magazine contributor, a poet, and much more. Each has their own story and their own style, making comparisons interesting and every writing challenge different.
It's not like everything's perfect, of course. Sometimes the writing challenges fall by the wayside as we focus too much on goals or discussions of specific writing elements, which don't tend to get us as far. And the group's still looking for a more specific level of organization. I get annoyed when our normal spot at the bookstore gets abandoned, forcing us to crowd in the coffee shop's little tables. Plus, well, the whole "meet girls" plan? This hasn't really helped. It's been a long time since there was a woman even remotely near my age there. My best bet has been to admire the barista from afar. But that discussion's getting into creepy territory, so it's time to move on.
My point, though, is that I generally do enjoy the writer's group. It gives me many things I feel I need; good friends not meeting by geeky necessity, a chance to grow as a person, and actual social demands, damn it. Not that I need more writing-themed demands after this month, but you know what I mean. All that plus the excuse to buy expensive coffee shop cookies every two weeks; that's more than worth taping Lost and The Office/30 Rock every other week.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Reviews: Thanks You, Makers of Most Addictive Video Game Ever
Wow, this'll be a late one! But it was a weird day. Moving on.
Today's review is for the recently released and very recently completed game, Persona 3. Now, I would like to start by saying that normally, I'm not the type of person who gets addicted to one activity above all else. I multi-task, schedule, and plan my free time way, divvying it up into tinier portions until I generally have 20 things to do every day anyway. As a result, barring some weekends, I have almost exactly an hour to an hour and a half every day to play video games. The rest of the time is for work, sleep, meals, transit times, television, reading, daily internet website checks, and this blog, among other things. My self-control remains good, and most games that are notorious for their game sink natures either fail to attract my interest in the first place, like World of Warcraft, or don't last in the long term, like City of Heroes/Villains.
Persona 3, however, is an exception.
Oh, I never had the five hour marathon sessions the cliché demands. But if I had free time, or even time that wasn't remotely free but where nothing essential had to be done, this game would be what I would do. I got the game for Christmas. On February 29th, I finished it. It took me about 102 hours. You can do the math; in the meantime, I'll think about it, realize I played and defeated other whole games in this period as well, and quietly weep.
The game itself is a strange one. It's a role-playing game from Japan for the Playstation 2, as many games are. But. like its predecessors and most of the other games from the series Persona spun off from, it abandons the usual fantasy setting for a more modern one, albeit a twisted version of modern life. The game takes place on a small island in Japan in the years 2009-10, making it more or less modern. The players are high school students who discovered an invasion of sorts from another plane of reality. Every night at midnight, the world mostly shuts down, and most people enter a sort of suspended animation in coffin-shaped crystals. Meanwhile, the world shifts into a sort of alternate reality.
This period, called the Dark Hour, is a dangerous one for those not safely suspended, as it is filled with evil monsters called Shadows. the players are awake during the Dark Hour, but they're better protected than most, as they can create protectors out of their own minds called Personas. These Personas give them extra strength, protection, and a source of the usual RPG magical powers, letting them take the fight to the Shadows. This usually comes from attacking a mysterious tower they call Tartarus, which in actuality is their high school after transforming every Dark Hour.
The first really strange thing about this game is how they access their Personas. The user must undergo severe mental trauma, which can be done using fairly morbid methods. In this case, they use devices called Evokers, which resemble guns, and point them at their own heads, simulating suicide. This game has a "Mature" rating for a reason. I mean, they're not really shooting themselves in the heads every time they use their powers, it just looks like it. That still doesn't help.
The second strange thing is the game's time limit. In addition to Tartarus, the Dark Hour also releases a major Shadow boss every month or so in game time, giving the party limited time to explore Tartarus and gain experience and treasures. This is made more difficult by the third strange thing. The main character, which is nameless until you the player give him one, doesn't have one Persona like the other main characters. He can instead create new ones and alternate between them, giving him much greater versatility. But to get the best ones, and give them often useful bonus levels, he must make connections with living people in and around his school that correspond to types of Persona. So when not exploring the monster-filled tower of the damned, he has to spend time attending classes, taking tests, making friends, dealing with girlfriends, and other real-life stuff.
In short, the game's addiction comes from combining two very addictive game genres into one. Tartarus is a randomly-generated dungeon, so it's new every time you explore it, making the grinding experience comparatively fresh and Diablo-esque. Thank Lonny the weapons aren't as random or varied, or you'd never want to leave. Meanwhile, the social half of the game resembles a normal dating sim, which I never really explored before but now can definitely see the appeal of. Often, I was annoyed at having to explore Tartarus and do normal RPG stuff out of a desire to focus on the relationship with the latest girlfriend!
The appeal of the game is threefold. There's the usual enjoyment of tactical combat, gaining levels, working to optimize power, and the other benefits of a good RPG. There's the surreal setting, combining semi-normal childhood experiences, the often alien Japanese culture when compared my own childhood, and the whole alternate reality full of evil beings. The last source deserves more exploration, though. Just what about the dating/social elements appealed so much to me?
I think the real answer, at least in my case, is a little depressing. Video games are a lot about fantasy fulfillment. And while my high school experience was not that bad, it certainly wasn't much fun, either. A game like this offers a chance to re-explore high school, often in a way I didn't or couldn't in real life. And it's not just the experience, it's the illusion of control. The Sims was another game that affected me the same way. Everything was quantifiable, understandable, and had a clear path of correction. Not socially confident enough? Just perform a courage-building activity like karaoke enough times, and your courage boosts automatically! See a girl you like? Talk to her x times, convince her to go out, say the answers that don't make you look like a total jackass, and love was guaranteed! Being socially awkward at best, concepts like the elusive "chemistry" drive me crazy. If two reasonably attractive people had similar interests and philosophies, then it would only make sense for attraction and love to develop given time, at least as my thought processes think. Frankly, the idea that real life was so simple and love so successful is as much a hoped fantasy as that of the world-saving hero to me.
Not that the game doesn't have downsides, even if most were intentional from the concept. For all the control issues I just commended, the game is often eager to show how little choice you really have. Events in game come regularly and without warning, ruining any plans you made on how to advance your character. One day, you have an entire week planned, and the next, you learn that you're being forced into summer school for days on end. Or a typhoon hits. Or you get sick. Or Dark-Hour themed plans intrude. Similarly, the relationships you have are often without any long-term realism or death. For example, your friends would often call to try and make plans with you on Sundays. This is fine, except you have no way to call them. If you don't see them at school, you can't even talk to them in most cases. And the game rewards you for how many maximized relationships you achieved. So when a relationship reaches this maximum, there's nowhere else to go. Your friends will rarely even want to hang out again, and the girlfriend you just formed an everlasting bond of love with will not only never date you again, she won't care in the slightest that you're dating other women in an attempt to maximize THEIR bonds.
The only other complaint is that the randomized Tartarus dungeon and some of the daily aspects of high school life both get tedious midway through the game. Nonetheless, this game would earn a solid A just for innovation and appeal. In fact, this was the game that motivated me to try to make another game of the Genre section. The trick is both coming up with something new and up to my modern standards while also original enough to not be Persona 3.5, but I'm confident I have something. If a game manages to compare to Final Fantasy Tactics and Symphony of the Night, there's little other praise I need to give it.
Today's review is for the recently released and very recently completed game, Persona 3. Now, I would like to start by saying that normally, I'm not the type of person who gets addicted to one activity above all else. I multi-task, schedule, and plan my free time way, divvying it up into tinier portions until I generally have 20 things to do every day anyway. As a result, barring some weekends, I have almost exactly an hour to an hour and a half every day to play video games. The rest of the time is for work, sleep, meals, transit times, television, reading, daily internet website checks, and this blog, among other things. My self-control remains good, and most games that are notorious for their game sink natures either fail to attract my interest in the first place, like World of Warcraft, or don't last in the long term, like City of Heroes/Villains.
Persona 3, however, is an exception.
Oh, I never had the five hour marathon sessions the cliché demands. But if I had free time, or even time that wasn't remotely free but where nothing essential had to be done, this game would be what I would do. I got the game for Christmas. On February 29th, I finished it. It took me about 102 hours. You can do the math; in the meantime, I'll think about it, realize I played and defeated other whole games in this period as well, and quietly weep.
The game itself is a strange one. It's a role-playing game from Japan for the Playstation 2, as many games are. But. like its predecessors and most of the other games from the series Persona spun off from, it abandons the usual fantasy setting for a more modern one, albeit a twisted version of modern life. The game takes place on a small island in Japan in the years 2009-10, making it more or less modern. The players are high school students who discovered an invasion of sorts from another plane of reality. Every night at midnight, the world mostly shuts down, and most people enter a sort of suspended animation in coffin-shaped crystals. Meanwhile, the world shifts into a sort of alternate reality.
This period, called the Dark Hour, is a dangerous one for those not safely suspended, as it is filled with evil monsters called Shadows. the players are awake during the Dark Hour, but they're better protected than most, as they can create protectors out of their own minds called Personas. These Personas give them extra strength, protection, and a source of the usual RPG magical powers, letting them take the fight to the Shadows. This usually comes from attacking a mysterious tower they call Tartarus, which in actuality is their high school after transforming every Dark Hour.
The first really strange thing about this game is how they access their Personas. The user must undergo severe mental trauma, which can be done using fairly morbid methods. In this case, they use devices called Evokers, which resemble guns, and point them at their own heads, simulating suicide. This game has a "Mature" rating for a reason. I mean, they're not really shooting themselves in the heads every time they use their powers, it just looks like it. That still doesn't help.
The second strange thing is the game's time limit. In addition to Tartarus, the Dark Hour also releases a major Shadow boss every month or so in game time, giving the party limited time to explore Tartarus and gain experience and treasures. This is made more difficult by the third strange thing. The main character, which is nameless until you the player give him one, doesn't have one Persona like the other main characters. He can instead create new ones and alternate between them, giving him much greater versatility. But to get the best ones, and give them often useful bonus levels, he must make connections with living people in and around his school that correspond to types of Persona. So when not exploring the monster-filled tower of the damned, he has to spend time attending classes, taking tests, making friends, dealing with girlfriends, and other real-life stuff.
In short, the game's addiction comes from combining two very addictive game genres into one. Tartarus is a randomly-generated dungeon, so it's new every time you explore it, making the grinding experience comparatively fresh and Diablo-esque. Thank Lonny the weapons aren't as random or varied, or you'd never want to leave. Meanwhile, the social half of the game resembles a normal dating sim, which I never really explored before but now can definitely see the appeal of. Often, I was annoyed at having to explore Tartarus and do normal RPG stuff out of a desire to focus on the relationship with the latest girlfriend!
The appeal of the game is threefold. There's the usual enjoyment of tactical combat, gaining levels, working to optimize power, and the other benefits of a good RPG. There's the surreal setting, combining semi-normal childhood experiences, the often alien Japanese culture when compared my own childhood, and the whole alternate reality full of evil beings. The last source deserves more exploration, though. Just what about the dating/social elements appealed so much to me?
I think the real answer, at least in my case, is a little depressing. Video games are a lot about fantasy fulfillment. And while my high school experience was not that bad, it certainly wasn't much fun, either. A game like this offers a chance to re-explore high school, often in a way I didn't or couldn't in real life. And it's not just the experience, it's the illusion of control. The Sims was another game that affected me the same way. Everything was quantifiable, understandable, and had a clear path of correction. Not socially confident enough? Just perform a courage-building activity like karaoke enough times, and your courage boosts automatically! See a girl you like? Talk to her x times, convince her to go out, say the answers that don't make you look like a total jackass, and love was guaranteed! Being socially awkward at best, concepts like the elusive "chemistry" drive me crazy. If two reasonably attractive people had similar interests and philosophies, then it would only make sense for attraction and love to develop given time, at least as my thought processes think. Frankly, the idea that real life was so simple and love so successful is as much a hoped fantasy as that of the world-saving hero to me.
Not that the game doesn't have downsides, even if most were intentional from the concept. For all the control issues I just commended, the game is often eager to show how little choice you really have. Events in game come regularly and without warning, ruining any plans you made on how to advance your character. One day, you have an entire week planned, and the next, you learn that you're being forced into summer school for days on end. Or a typhoon hits. Or you get sick. Or Dark-Hour themed plans intrude. Similarly, the relationships you have are often without any long-term realism or death. For example, your friends would often call to try and make plans with you on Sundays. This is fine, except you have no way to call them. If you don't see them at school, you can't even talk to them in most cases. And the game rewards you for how many maximized relationships you achieved. So when a relationship reaches this maximum, there's nowhere else to go. Your friends will rarely even want to hang out again, and the girlfriend you just formed an everlasting bond of love with will not only never date you again, she won't care in the slightest that you're dating other women in an attempt to maximize THEIR bonds.
The only other complaint is that the randomized Tartarus dungeon and some of the daily aspects of high school life both get tedious midway through the game. Nonetheless, this game would earn a solid A just for innovation and appeal. In fact, this was the game that motivated me to try to make another game of the Genre section. The trick is both coming up with something new and up to my modern standards while also original enough to not be Persona 3.5, but I'm confident I have something. If a game manages to compare to Final Fantasy Tactics and Symphony of the Night, there's little other praise I need to give it.
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