Pioneer Project – Page 12 – Video games, UX, Sustainability

Metroid over mantra: forgetting gaming rivalry

Post author By Michelle B
Post date August 11, 2010
8 Comments on Metroid over mantra: forgetting gaming rivalry

Samus Aran runs through a barren planet world.

I genuinely believe that gaming like many other aspects in life is affected by mood. Even as the most ardent gamer there are moments where I simply don’t feel like playing anything. I decided to make the most of this lack of motivation and play something truly out of my comfort zone.

The choice may surprise you; it’s an atmospheric classic that I’ve somehow avoided for years, but remarkably Super Metroid isn’t a obvious fit for me.

Getting over the old mantras

I now realise that Super Metroid a masterpiece of design, atmosphere and gameplay, but I have not always thought this. It will seem obvious to anyone that has played the game or grown up in it’s shadow, but for someone playing the series for the first time retrospectively it’s become a bit of a metaphor for all the games that I’ve chosen to ignore for whatever reason over the years. There are so many remarkable games out there that I will never have the time to finish, so I’ve developed an unintentional coping mechanism to rationalise my regret – “I wouldn’t like them anyway”.

I’ve always placed a number of games series in this category, for as far back as my memories go. I can’t even remember where the motivation for these decisions came from, they’re as clear in my mind as night and day. Old presumptions developed in childhood about a series or genre that I can’t quite shake even as an informed adult. Decisions I didn’t question until others expressed alarm at me never having played certain widely-acknowledged classics.

Why does this happen?

Personally at least, most of the games this concerns are the remains of the legacy of growing up during the 1990s during the peak of the Sega/Nintendo marketing rivalry. This faction-based model for playing games is a old approach that I am still working back from. I am slowly revisiting the back catalogue of games that I denied myself as a child; and the Metroid series is one of them. As hard pressed as the Nintendo or Sega mantra seems now, there was some logic to it – it saved my parents the financial worry of buying two sets of consoles and two sets of games, and it saved me from realising there were twice as many games in the world to obsess over. I would have been overwhelmed.

It seems quite bleak looking back on my gaming history, but I was happy then in my little world of Sega, and I am even happier now that I am able to fully experience everything I missed many years later: free from assumption and prejudice. I am as bewildered and excited playing these games now as the eight-year-old I would have been back in 1994 when Super Metroid was released.

It is the weirdest feeling playing a game that I have obviously misjudged for years, particularly as I stumble to grasp the concepts and ideas Metroid develops that are completely new to me. It’s a testament to the timeless beauty and rigorousness of Super Metroid’s design. As such I am playing a game that I have subliminally known for years, I recognise almost every noise and score; and yet it feels new and oddly nostalgic – all at once – like an old, yet happy memory I had long forgotten about.

I am beginning to fall in love with an old “enemy”. Thank you to everyone who recommended it to me.

Game design analysis

The difficulty of Demon’s Souls

Post author By Michelle B
Post date August 2, 2010
5 Comments on The difficulty of Demon’s Souls

My hunter character looks around in body form.

One of the most compelling reasons to pick up Demon’s Souls is it’s perceived difficulty. The game is supposedly as uncompromising and challenging as the games we grew up with – the games of our early childhood needed determination and above all imagination to play and complete.

In a nod to our gaming heritage, determination is the key requirement for Demon’s Souls; and if you “get” it’s carefully crafted design decisions, a unique gaming experience reveals itself out of it’s dark, foreboding gloom.

An unforgiving personality

Many games have a personality, successfully managing to disguise the fact that they were created from the minds of a team of developers, but Demon’s Souls sense of personality is particularly palpable. Primarily in it’s main theme; the insignificance of death. Your character is held perpetually under the thumb of the game, pinned into the swirling limbo of the Nexus (the game’s central hub). From there you are forced to meekly step out into five equally challenging worlds in your ethereal “soul form” to regain your body by defeating a boss.

In doing so you explore a crumbling world; a once great kindgom riddled with the dead and half-dead, as you avoid or kill the other beings and enemies locked into the ghostly spirit world with you. It sounds ghastly – as you step into the first world fresh from a bluntly ended tutorial – but Demon’s Souls magic is in slowly convincing you to the masterpiece of atmosphere it’s pulling you through.

Joyfully the game is equal parts horror, puzzle, and action game. The first playthrough of an area will take hours, as you tiptoe along each path in terror, you will gain an understanding of how to master each level either alone or co-operatively with other phantoms. The controls are solid and as such you are infrequently annoyed with the game – only with yourself for making a mistake that cost you time and the chance to complete things. It’s a testament to how fair and balanced the development model of Demon’s Souls is, with every exploit, shortcut and time saving trick fully-intended by the developer.

A different approach

Demon’s Souls is also a community game which sinks or swims based on the frequency and reliability of the messages that others choose to leave you. It is the friendliness or apathy of the wider community which will decide whether you will be encouraged by another person, or spurned by those who seek amusement in the bleakest of worlds. Demon’s Souls true genius is in it’s ability to create empathy for another player experiencing the same (difficult) world, players are pushed to the point where they begin to understand the motivations of others who choose to play more dubiously.

There is a malevolent force running in parallel to your adventure, slapping the back of your hand as you make mistakes; a noise for a successful blocked attack, another for one that fails. This will infuriate you until you can eliminate your bad habits in combat and do better. So much of the gameplay is left unexplained, so you are left to make mistakes by dying in a trap, falling, or failing a one-on-one fight. You will fail moments continually with little encouragement until you either figure it out or do better. However Demon’s Souls makes you feel the master of your own destiny, you are left to explore and fumble through the game, growing in confidence as you slowly master it’s almost animalistic environment and begin to work out your own strategies to survive longer.

Demon’s Souls a usability nightmare at first glance

You can kill anyone

Including any friendly NPCs in the game (accidently or otherwise). This can also prevent you from buying or using certain items or spells, or progressing certain story arcs.
There is no map

Or mini-map or a guiding trail. Any exploration done in the game is done through trial and error or memorising the game’s landmarks and traps.
The menus can be cryptic

It can be quite difficult to decipher the information in the menus, the icons that represent different types of damage are cryptic and lots of important information about how to increase damage using your stats simply isn’t in the game.
Little in-game help

There is very little explanation of how to play after the initial tutorial, no way to review what you’ve learnt and no help with finding the key NPCs/locations.
There are no checkpoints

So if you die in a particular area after a long, precarious journey through a level you have to start all over again.
The multiplayer features are quite buried

It is quite difficult to arrange co-op play with friends without pre-arrangement using external voice chat and careful timing (or you risk your friends being poached by someone else).
Mandatory player vs. player

If playing in body form (which is normal after defeating a boss) if you also decide to play online you may and will be invaded by other players attempting to gain their body form back by killing you. There is no way to stop this attacks other than playing offline or staying in soul form and no limit on how often you can be invaded.
Gets harder rather than easier as you fail

Keep dying in a world in body form and enemies will become stronger, hit harder and drop less healing items. The game difficulty also increases with each new playthrough.

But there’s method in the madness

The choice to do this is a deliberate one. At the heart of Demon’s Souls is an experience which allows you to fumble, struggle – but learn. Very soon the style of gameplay struggle gives way to empowerment. Demon’s Souls is the wonderful exception to the rule – the boundaries set-up by the game are ultimately what defines it. This changes everything:

You can kill anyone

So you become more cautious and aware of how precious the NPCs are, and value them more. Experimenting with killing NPCs on purpose depending on who you kill can effect the neutrality of the world, your character and open up newer and darker plotlines.
There is no map

So you learn to memorise the level, and due to the excellent level design you are seldom left wondering where to go. This is supported by a set of solid controls and camera that mean that although you are frequently challenged by a level it feels completely manageable.
The menus can be cryptic

So you learn through experimentation. Every enemy has a particular attack type, elemental or magical weakness, making the cryptic nature of the meuns more intuitive over time.
Little in-game help

So you begin to learn the pitfalls and secrets of Demon’s Souls through the anonymous message system. There is a strong sense of community, fair play and support at the heart of the game, so it is other players – whether new or experienced – that become your main support mechanism.
There are no checkpoints

But as you get more accustomed with the game you’ll be able to find and open the many helpful shortcuts and secrets more easily saving you battling through the same area over and over again.
The multiplayer features are quite buried

So when you do manage to find someone else to play with, or you arrange to play with a friend the experience is remarkable, playing with others through a new area is one of the best ways to learn the tiny details of the game, or discover new strategies that may not have occurred to you.
Mandatory player vs. player

As you play more you get more confident and this becomes less of a problem, particularly when you can invite two friends (or strangers) to even the odds.
Gets harder rather than easier as you fail

And when Demon’s Souls really gets it’s hooks into you this is a blessing not a curse, with the confidence you gain through playing the game through once prepares you for the balanced upscale of difficulty.

Playing Demon’s Souls makes you realise the notion of a game’s difficulty is part design, part confidence in the player’s ability. In this game From Software presents you with a challenge, and if you have the optimism to look at the prospect of Demon’s Souls as an opportunity rather than a problem the experience will reward you tenfold.

Video games

The game box’s big moment

The cover illustration from the Rez box.

There are few things that excite me more than a stack of humble game boxes; because of the promise they bring. The look and feel of the box is largely unimportant.

For me the game box represents more than just the pretty casing of the game I desire, they summarize the range of feelings in those exciting first moments just before playing a new game.

The moment of anticipation

Personally game boxes have only ever served one important purpose; to quell the need to play a new game just long enough until I can do. The period of time between buying the game and finally getting it home to play is usually a minute amount of time, and yet it can be some of the most difficult and agonising moments of a game’s release.

It’s time that I spend that time digesting everything possible about the games controls, concept art, mechanics; basically anything readily available from the back of the box or inside it. Until the time finally comes that I can put the game in the console. It’s childish; but it’s still something I can’t help but do, as it’s one of the few gaming behaviours of mine that have changed little from my first tentative attempts with a video game.

Stupidly it’s one of those secret little pleasures that make that extra moment of anticipation before playing a new game so enjoyable, and as such it’s a little gaming ritual I still can’t help but observe – mainly due to a lack of time to play immediately as I’d like to. This is something that happens almost every other release day as the elation of getting a game I have waited months (or years) for is postponed by the fact that I need to work or observe other commitments.

Ironically, once this initial adoration of the box is over I don’t tend to look at the box again, save to rescue the game I want to play from it. So in some ways game covers and boxes are a metaphor for the time we spend as gamers, patiently waiting for our next big game. For me they’re simply about representing that moment of anticipation as the the contents of the box or art on top of it is muted by the arrival of another, bigger game or surpassed by the desire to know a more about the game than the marketing on the back of the box can handle.

When cover art works

The reason game boxes will never be too important to me is because cover art, descriptions or screenshots will never match the workings of my own imagination. The very best examples of cover art use this to their advantage, encouraging the player to try and pick apart what might be in store for them. Simple designs work best; such as the Rez art above.

I had heard only minor details about the content and design of Rez, and yet the minimalist nature of the European box seemed to challenge me to make sense of what the game might contain. It was an exciting risk but one that ultimately inspired one of my greatest gaming experiences.

I enjoy the process of looking forward to a new game; that whole moment is represented by having something physical in my hands that I cannot wait to open. I suspect this is why downloadable content doesn’t ignite the same feelings of excitement within me.

The hundreds of game boxes stacked in my collection are a proud shrine to the games that have evoked those past moments of anticipation. Every so often I’ll pick up one of those old boxes, marvel at the cover art and develop those same feelings all over again.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

Other takes:

Silvercublogger: Don’t Cover The Art, Unless…

The Average Gamer: Cover Art

Aim for the Head: Browsing the Aisles

SnipingMizzy: In the eye of the beholder

Extra Guy: On Books and Covers

Zath: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

carocat.co.uk: Cover art? No, thanks!

Man Fat: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

Video games

The importance of character creation

Post author By Michelle B
Post date May 17, 2010
15 Comments on The importance of character creation

This may be an unpopular view, but I can count the gaming characters I have genuinely related with on both of my hands, it is a tiny number, a feeble landmark considering all the thousands of games I have played and enjoyed.

While I can share the moods of any given character, appreciate their tragedy or enjoy their success, the average video game story feels more like their narrative than mine, I am borrowing the moment from them, and I hand it back when the goal is reached.

Me, myself and I

The exception to this rule are the characters that I have created, these are the personas I can identify with best as through time and emotional toil I’ve had a hand in their making. They share my personality entirely rather than me attempting to bash mine into a predefined character, they have my appearance preferences, they share my hair colour, eyes and sense of self, they even wear the clothes I desire (or sometimes the things I wouldn’t be caught dead in.)

But above all they cannot exist without me, the adventures we partake in are ours, they stop when turn the console off and they return when I resume. These characters exist only for me, while we explore the world of any game, many others will follow the paths I take, and many more will see the places, but few if any will decide as I do, move when I do, explore and run and enjoy the ride. So even if another plays them, their journey is not quite the same as my unique playthrough.

That’s not to say that looking back on an adventure played with a normal character can’t be a brilliant experience also. Sometimes it’s nice to escape from our own image, to walk a mile in someone elses shoes, and in that regard the majority of my favourite games have involved playing as another person, following their unique stories, watching the influences of the other characters around them. The key is to maintain a healthy balance between playing the character that you want to share your personality with, and the character who will invariably end up lending you theirs for a moment.

The free-world agenda

If I find myself playing a game when I am a rigid character I long for the ability to customize, all too often this means the ability to choose the correct gender, to mould a gruff male warrior into the being that represents me. An average game (despite its apparent excellence elsewhere) leaves me little room to be anything other than “him”. As a result very few video game characters meet with me eye-to-eye – certainly compared to the characters that I have made. I have admired the adventures of Jade and Alyx and many other magnificent men and women. I have appreciated their intelligence and personality, but bold – yet engaging – (female) characters such as these are still sadly the rarity not the norm.

As long as developers continue to dictate that “I” must play “he” in certain games there will be a minute distance between the games I like and the ones I love. This doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the narrative or even the fun of the characters or any of the many other hundreds of enjoyable components of a game – but it does highlight the contrast between who I am for that game and who I want to be, and it’s jarring.

Sadly even the biggest, most open gaming world is usually closed to females in this regard. The world may be enormous, beautiful and begging to be explored but it’s slightly hollow if the character you’re exploring it in is usually the same generic male persona.

It’s in the best interest of everyone that more games blend the themes of character customization and story-led content. Bioware have shown us that how a game can work in duality, allowing for both male and female audiences, for personal traits and preferences, Bethesda have shown us that this element can work on an open landscape, and Valve’s Left 4 Dead along with Gearbox’s Borderlands has shown that including a playable female character even in the most percieved “male genre” does work.

The gaming characters I identify with most characters are the beings of my own creation, most people will never meet them, they will never gain the notoriety or credence of bigger, more popular personalities, but that’s okay, I know how unique they are, and that’s all that matters.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

A love letter to the Monster Hunter community

Post author By Michelle B
Post date May 3, 2010
8 Comments on A love letter to the Monster Hunter community

I’m ashamed to admit that I underestimated Monster Hunter for many years. However the last year has led to a series of epiphanies – this is a game that calls for more thought than most games, encouraging you to improve with the promise of a thrilling and compelling experience just out of reach.

The community is at the heart of that experience – so here’s what Monster Hunter feels like to play with them in tow.

Fighting through difficulty with others

Camaraderie is at the heart of this game, and that works because of how the rewards and drops are independent to other players, there is very little sense of competition, and the balanced etiquette of play means that the focus is on information sharing, helping each other avoid failure by striving to make a strong group. The deepest criticism about this game is the steep learning curve, but ultimately all that is needed is time to learn each monsters patterns, made infinitely easier by a group of friends willing to spread the difficulty between them. Even the vastest struggle becomes a series of battles made fun just because of the thrill of play.

So all at once what was once a slow, unwieldily weapon, transforms into the tool right for the job, utilized with new-found precision and fluidity, no levels have been gained, no experienced unlocked just a better sense of how to succeed. The only thing that has improved is your intuition of how to play, amassed after observing every monster for minute weakpoints, evening the odds over time, and as such each victory feels all the more rewarding.

The balance of tension and humour in this game is paramount, after a hair-raising fight or titanic struggle against a new foe nothing beats the comic relief of playing with others – a perfectly timed comic gesture shared between one another, a playful kick once the fights over – sending someone flying using a powerful attack. With no friendly fire the moments of hilarity are ripe, easing the tension after short, very focused moments of concentration.

So in Monster Hunter success is hinged on the collective skill of your group, clawing back respect from a monster as your group grows in confidence, all with the encouragement and support of each other. This is a game of friendship and initial gameplay complaints aside the synergy between community, the lush environments, and captivating music are a fantastic reward to those bold enough to keep going.

Mind over matter

Like any healthy community there are veterans and newbies, all drawn together by Monster Hunter’s stylish, old-fashioned gameplay elements. The old idioms of risk and reward from 8-bit consoles and older have returned; nothing is for free, everything has to be crafted, bought or grown.

As a result most objects in Monster Hunter come from toil. Money comes purely from finishing quests, meaning everyone has everything to play for – constantly. While it’s a different item mechanic to most other games, starting to gather the money and resources to start a hunting career can be tricky, but this doesn’t mean that the game is punishing, it simply takes more patience to get started.

In the beginning the camera can difficult to manage, the individual weapons take some time to register in the memory, the lack of enemy health bar can be a burden. But slowly but surely over the course of each hour things begin to click and Monster Hunter sprinkles you with hope eternal. Be it in the form of your post-battle reward or the rush of success. Suddenly the game becomes less about constant struggle and more about a comfortable dance around your enemies, as you revel in your new-found mastery of both combat and self-sufficiency.

Over time we become master hunters capable of moving between strict professionalism in the face of danger and comic relief, as we fight enemies methodically with the smartest movements between evasion and attack, we move between the role of hunter and player behind the persona with ease; destroying a foe and then returning to laughter, gestures and drinking, relieved to have succeeded, or simply laughing because of how badly we failed.

With a good party not even winning becomes too important, just the idea of completely escaping the normal online pressures of competition.

For the greater good

This represents the sort of online game we should be getting from developers – a simple to play, hard to master challenge supported by a free drop/in out model that is the antithesis of modern MMOs. Monster Hunter comprises a friendly, co-operative community bound together by a common goal – to succeed and to have fun while doing so.

This is Monster Hunter’s addictive element and it helps to create a game that is vastly improved by the quality and character of others playing.

Most of the appeal at the moment surrounds the buzz of the online version, because it’s a game of vivid experiences and memories, this is the sort of game you think about every waking moment, looking back on your time played years after with nothing but the fondest of memories.

Ultimately this is a game of friendship with each person bringing skills to the table, offering a different tactic or approach, and while Monster Hunter Tri is by far the most accessible by quite a margin, the elements of the gameplay still left explained in both this game and previous iterations are clearly meant to be a point of discussion.

Monster Hunter has built up a ferocious reputation for being hard to master, but this is offsetted by the genuine passion its fans have for the game, they are its ambassadors, helping and explaining its intricacies to others so no one is left behind, and that’s the way it should be.