Making Games Relevant
October 8th, 2008
Before I arrived in China I decided to watch over Nintendo’s E3 2006 Press Conference. My reason for doing so is because I’ve slowly become more attuned to Nintendo’s greater vision for play to be universal and wanted to familiarize myself a little more with their message.
Watching the conference jolted my mind as to how difficult it is to initially become motivated in and then actively maintain an interest in video games. I came up with the following list of comparisons between the different entertainment mediums to highlight my point. These are all just rough ideas which I have tried to constrict to a median range:
Literature
Teaser – 30 seconds – 2 minutes (blurb)
Sample – 10-25 minutes (first chapter/few pages)
Completion – 3 – 10hrs
Music
Teaser – 20 seconds (chorus of one song)
Sample – 8-12 minutes (handful of songs)
Completion – 30 minutes – 1hr (album)
Film
Teaser – 30 seconds – 2 minutes ((teaser) trailer)
Sample – 5-15 minutes (one scene/extended trailer)
Completion – 1-3 hrs
Video Games
Teaser – 1-3 minutes (trailer)
Sample – 10 minutes – 1hr plus (demo)
Completion – 5–25hrs
This logic is highly flawed though, as each medium has it’s individual constructs which set them apart. If we talk dispensability then you can start up a Flash game on Kongregate and be done in 5 minutes, the same length as it’d take you to listen to a few music tracks. Then again it’d only take you less then 5 minutes to read this article (literature), right? So where do we draw the line? Who cares anyways? These are just loose approximations.
As you can see by the notes, “generally speaking” video games demand the highest threshold of the four, in each of the three categories. This means that for busy everyday people with mouths to feed playing a game can easily be seen as selfish fun (horrah for the manchild!). So how do you capture their attention?
You get their attention by making the game itself relevant to these people, relevant but also accessible because even if your product is relevant, it means nothing if it is out of reach. Now, we should define both ‘relevant’ and ”accessible ‘ to further understand how they operate within the notion of this “mouths to feed” market.
Relevancy
To be relevant means being set in a field (of interest/necessity) related to the consumer’s but also having merit and/or significance in that field. For example, my Mum is an unbelievably good cook so a game like Cooking Guide for the DS is relevant. Unfortunately for Nintendo, she is already a good cook hence there is little merit in her buying Cooking Guide (as it teaches her how to cook). So in the end she is disinterested.
Accessibility
Much like relevancy, accessibility is multi-faceted and can be summed up under the following:
-communication – through clear advertising, let them hear about it
-ease of access – is it a straight up purchase or does it require extras? Will it be there? I want it now!
-ease of use – is it easy to use and understand
I think that as games continue to develop and expand, these layers will then begin to disappear. That is through way of instant purchases, a widening market etc.
I’ll leave the marketing101 here and next time (or sometime thereafter) will look at some case studies of successful games to apply these concepts to.
Metal Gear Solid 4 – Smoking Metaphor
October 6th, 2008
I’ve been thinking about Metal Gear Solid 4 again, sorting through the game’s many metaphorical elements to discern a connection to other something article worthy. I think I’ve got one, I’m sure that I’ll have a few more in future, here goes.
Spoilers, of course, including the game's conclusion.
Throughout the Metal Gear series, smoking has always been significant, to a certain degree. There’s obviously a connection between cigarettes and the ‘grizzled soldier’ stereotype of Solid Snake (main character) . Quite often the cancer inducing product is cleverly melded into the gameplay too. Such as in the original game where smoking slowed down the timer of a bomb, prompted to detonate, giving our hero a greater chance of escape.
In Metal Gear Solid 4, the role of cigarettes represents a crucial piece of Snake’s fading identity, in a world which has succeeded him. As the game’s introduction puts it “war has changed”, war in MGS4 is no longer about training and experience, it’s about manufactured output. Something that Snake has a hard time dealing with.
Indie Play Impressions (4/9/08)
October 3rd, 2008
Fractal Fighter
Fractal – A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry.
Fractal Fighter is a two dimensional, vertical shooter set in a hard line, black and white, vector environment. The crux of the gameplay is orientated around dismemberment of a fractal shape. Each fractal has a series of increasingly powerful turrets layered within it. To completely destroy the fractal you need to clear each wave of mounted turrets until the whole unit is destroyed. From there, the pattern repeats and another fractal surfaces with greater complexity in shape and a multitude of additional turrets.
Your ship has the ability to fire standard bullets and long distance lasers. The rapid fire bullets are the primary mechanic and most useful of the two. These bullets can only pierce the face of the structures though, in which case the laser function – which passes through the whole fractal – is useful for picking off turrets from the back of the creature. As the structures becoming increasingly more elaborate, they grow additional limbs from the back much like sprouting wings, easing your attention onto balancing the rapid and laser fire. Since the laser has a time delay between pulses the power-to-fire ratio of the mechanics are matched and evenly balanced. Furthermore the fractal’s evolution outwards forces you to focus back and forth between the front and back of the shape, ergonomically curving your concentration levels into complete immersion.
The process of identifying constituents and then tactically removing them piece by piece likens itself to the amusing task of pulling the pettles off a lone daisy. Except it’s wrapped within the mechanics of a shoot ’em up and as such the game feels half like a shoot ’em up (pattern recognition, strategic ‘twitch’ movement) and half like an amusing way to kill some time (the daisy). Because the game is spun around this idea, much like pulling apart a helpless object, the game feeds into this piece-by-piece satisfaction.
It’s interesting this emphasis of patterns. We all know that the shoot ’em up genre revolves around pattern memorization, yet Fractal Fighter shows visual proof of this. Each shape, each creature you face is born from a pattern, a pattern which dictates the shape of the fractal and the way in which it behaves. Furthermore, as the fractals become ladened with more complexity, we also have a visual representation of the game’s difficulty curve right in front of us since we can see the number of turrets increasing and how they’re increasing. The two core components; the shooting and the fractual development are both cleanly implemented, allowing the player to focus on the job at hand, distraction free. The evolution of the fractals and way this is visually identified feels organic in design and native. These things make Fractal Fighter a very engaging game to play, the single music track as well comes off very well and aids in pulling you into the experience.
GoldenEye 2D
GoldenEye 2D is a cute little Game Boy remake of the original Nintendo 64 success; Golden Eye 64. Pening that sentence makes me wonder if people give higher precedence to the movie or the game, I guess it’s just this niche. Anyways I lied, this retro remake is just of the Dam level. Still it’s a pretty tough romp so it’ll take you a while to push through.
As Bond you basically have two primary actions; jumping and shooting. You’re also equipped with a checklist of objectives to complete, although most of the gameplay is about shooting and dodging the heavy onslaught of enemies walking in your direction. As you continue to mow down more agents (and avoid being shot at), your score increases, automatically upgrading you to better weaponry. All pretty simple, run and gun action.
It’s obvious that a lot of care has been taken into making this title very apt and authentic to the canon. The game plays typically like other run-and-gun action games and delivers the same delightful action while it lasts.
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