It is as though we spend our whole life resisting, in search of the path of least resistance. Learning, though, requires that we abstain from the easy path and submit ourselves to struggle. One of the responsibilities of a teacher is to break through a student’s defences, find their way through to the dark recesses of their brain, and turn off the hidden switch labelled “resist”. Unfortunately this task is no easy feat and often requires the right mixture of good planning, good execution, and luck. When it does work, though, and students develop that hunger for challenge, well, that’s when the magic happens.

During a shift in semesters my favourite class had been reduced to two students, and one day only one of the two showed up. The 7-year-old girl in attendance was highly capable, but had a refusal complex where she would not participate in any of the classroom activities because they were “too simple”. The opposite was true. She was afraid of being challenged and would invariably give up every time the going got tough. Taking advantage of her role as the only student in the class, she refused to cooperate for the first half of the lesson.

In the second half, though, something clicked. I introduced my Bag, Beg, Big, Bog, Bug phonics game and ran her through variant one to eight. That is to say, she learnt how to transcribe three- and four-letter words in about 30 minutes—from nothing! The activity’s cyclic scaffolding gave her the confidence to power through to the more difficult challenges. The change in her behaviour was immediately apparent. She stopped giggling, stood upright, listened attentively, and did exactly as told. It was as though she was under hypnosis—which is, of course, true, as she was under the spell of a well-crafted mental challenge. She stayed focused for the remainder of the lesson until her parents arrived for the parent’s meeting, where she skipped out of the classroom as her usual self.

When I reflect on my own time at school and throughout life I regret that I didn’t give in to some things earlier. I guess it takes us all some time to accept the work involved in developing ourselves, and even then we’re not always accepting of it. When one puts down their sword and shield and stops fighting the squeeze of education, the results can be life-changing.

In early 2008 I stumbled across the Critical-Gaming blog. Reading the site used to give me headaches. I knew it was probably “good for me”, though, because the author Richard Terrell could articulate aspects of games that I didn’t even know existed before, and he supported his theories with a wealth of examples from popular games. After reading the site on and off for a few months I decided that I had to knuckle down and give his work the close reading it deserved. At the time I had just moved abroad to China to study and was lonely and isolated. Every couple of days I would walk down to the nearby, smoke-filled internet cafe and stash a handful articles onto a USB (enough to last me for the following few days) and then return home to read them alone. Richard’s articles were as eye-opening as they were challenging to read, but I persevered nonetheless.

In early 2009 I started talking with Richard over AOL Instant Messenger. I remember how we would get into these epic debates which I could never quite dig myself out of. At the time I was also somewhat in denial over which direction to take my writing. I knew in my gut that I had a lot to learn from this guy. Yet I also knew that he was alone on his crusade for better discussions around games and bringing my writing up to scratch would involve a tremendous amount of work (a goal which I am still pursuing today).

One day the two of us got into an argument which I could never hope to win, whether Smash Bros. is a fighting game or a party game. Richard whooped my butt and I was rightfully embarrassed. Soon after—and despite feeling bitter over the verbal bruising—I accepted the truth presented to me: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I studied up on Richard’s theories and began incorporating them into my writing. My initial efforts and the ongoing support from Richard led me to write my first book, Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4, which was the biggest struggle of my life. It took me years of hesitation to accept the ideas of someone who clearly knew much more than me, but such is the nature of learning. As life continually reminds me, good learners accept their role as a relative amateur and rather than put their pride on the line, they put faith into the knowledgable other.

A good teacher can spend many years trying to win over a student. And a willing student can spend many years attempting to burn the bridges to the path of least resistance. Yet when players (students) and game designers (teachers) come together in a video game, the learning experience is relatively free of struggle. It is as though players come into the experience with their resist switch flicked to “submit”. And that is a tremendously powerful thing.

[Originally written in 2013]

I have also taken this opportunity to update the Additional Material page with links to Wario-related articles which I have published since the release of the book.

“I think a lot of the criticism field is about proving authority through displaying how well you fit in the group. You do this by outward displays of intellectualism, which is easiest to manufacture by taking the simple and rendering it complex enough to justify your college degree. Since today’s game design culture is such a loose world of ideas with very little in the way of concrete knowledge, currying status among the critical community doesn’t mean producing results that others can reproduce and use–it means harnessing intellectual fads and making everyone feel good (read: smart). “Let’s come up with language that is less ambiguous and more concrete so we can more directly describe how games work and how we can do game design better” is actually at odds with this status quo, and thus needs to be said. It’s tempting to see a statement so close to our values and say “well, isn’t that obvious?”–it’s not obvious, though no one will argue the other side of it because admitting that games criticism is primarily a status game would damage the status communication mechanism that is games criticism and provide no benefit to the vast majority of games critics who would prefer to continue their effective status-gaining strategies.

Regardless, there are often kernels of truth and useful information to be gleaned from the needless verbal profusion of games criticism.”

The speaker sums up a lot of the ideas I was forming back in 2007-2008 when I first started writing and interacting in this space. Not much has changed since then and not much will change going forward without a critical language to ground our conversations and communities. What are your thoughts?

This video was too funny to pass up.

For the first time in a long time I was completely satisfied by the E3 showing this year. Loads of great games and plenty of innovation. After hours of reading, watching, and reflection, here are my main take aways from the show:

Presenting Gameplay

Video playthroughs focused on select portions of a game accompanied by developer commentary and gameplay trailers with few cuts are the best way to show off your gameplay to a new audience. Montages, CG trailers, early prototype video, and conceptual demos of the developers talking high concept just doesn’t cut it. Let the gameplay do the talking.

Between Nintendo’s Digital Event and the Treehouse Sessions, they covered these bases pretty well. However, the Treehouse videos were often drawn out due to the Japanese to English translation. Yes, I’m interested in Codename STEAM. No, I don’t have 45 minutes to sit through a slowly narrated playthrough with translation delays. Sony’s developer interviews were much more digestible at 10 minutes a piece, but they were too unfocused. Take this video of Hohokum for the PS4. After watching a 9-minute interview, I still have no idea what you do in this game. Start the interview with a short, elevator-pitch summary guys….geeze. The interviews are also inter-spliced with short snippets of trailer footage. It’s a good idea, but there’s not enough gameplay or context in the interviews to be constructive. Sony’s punchy length and Nintendo’s dictated playthroughs together would make a winning formula. Next year, guys.

The Conferences

If you stripped out all the CG trailers and meandering demos from the E3 conferences and replaced them with focused gameplay explanations, they’d be much more effective. I’m an E3 nut, but 1hr and a half of sizzle grows tiresome real quick.

It boggle the mind that Sony and Microsoft continue this pissing match of minor exclusivity. “Console debut”, “DLC first”, “it’s better on…”, “exclusive alpha version”, every time you hear these words—or in the case of self-apparent multiplatform titles, not hear—you know that it’s still a free kick to the other team.

Microsoft’s conference was basically a rehash of what they’ve been doing for the past 7 years: shooting, stabbing, and driving. I have no problem with these kinds of games, but there wasn’t anything genuinely new—unlike Titanfall

The start of Nintendo’s Digital Event was so refreshing especially after two marathon hours of self-important sizzle. It was funny too; I almost fell out of my seat. I also love the idea of Nintendo pushing back against the vocal minority of idiots in the Nintendo fan base. However, it was unfair of them to use Mother 3—a game which they can easily bring over to the virtual console.

Sony gave even more time than last year to indie games and it certainly injected a shot of dynamism into their showing. I’m not sure that Microsoft’s “we have 100s of these games” tactic is as effective as Sony’s curation approach. Giving these games a platform outside of a video montage and winning over some exclusivity on key titles is the best way to demonstrate commitment. That’s to say I think that players are more interested in playing the next great wave of indie games than having a large quantity of indie games to play. After all, we’ve all got PCs. In saying all this, though, maybe it’s just a consequence of the way Sony presented their indie game line up, but it was hard to see how these games were unique outside of their visual flair.

New Zelda

I was surprised that no one said that the new Zelda looks like Killer is Dead meets Skyward Sword. It totally does, right?

Nintendo say that the latest Zelda will be “open world”, but I wonder what that means exactly. Open world design works against the squeeze of gameplay, so I wonder how they’re going to pull it off while still maintaining the high level of gameplay quality that the Zelda series is known for. I guess A Link Between Worlds, which I have sitting on my 3DS SD card unplayed, will answer some of those questions for me. Whatever the case, I think it’ll take all the design ingenuity that Nintendo can muster to deliver on what Aonuma articulated during the digital event.

Splatoon

Splatoon was my game of the show. The genius behind this game makes my head spin. Territory control represented visually and organically as ink. Ink as a central dynamic that syncs into movement speed, traversal options, abilities, game flow and progression, and spatial dynamics. Ink as a solution to the issues inherent to gunplay (easy-to-see bullets that you can respond to, a weight dynamic to aiming, gyro to tune aiming, non-violent gunplay). Motion controls, touch screen controls, and traditional controller inputs. A reinvention of a well-worn genre. In terms of design, this is the most modern and sophisticated game I’ve seen in a long time.

I’m also surprised that no one said that Splatoon looks like a Sonic team game.

Odds and Ends

• Prior to the show I was hoping that Nintendo would announce a new IP. In the end they announced six and they all look fantastic.
• Project Spark was one of the only kid-friendly games shown at Microsoft’s conference and so what did they do? They added Conker to it. Well done.
• There seems to be a lot of different coloured gems in Yarn Yoshi. I hope they’re not just excessive collectables. I’m still not convinced of this game.
• It’s cool that Criterion are working on something awesome and completely new, but showing it off so early is poor form for EA.
• Shape Up treats work out moves as interactions and then builds a game around them. It’s a neat idea.
• Having recently read Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper epic From Hell, I’m curious about The Order. However, not much has been said about what makes the gameplay unique and what we saw at E3 doesn’t aspire much confidence that it’ll be anything more than Uncharted 2 inter-spliced with Heavy Rain.
• The Grim Fandango remake announcement was the biggest megaton of the show (although the game hardly needs a remake, but I’m open to being proven wrong).
•  The additions to LittleBigPlanet 3 look smart and substantial. It’s funny that the same team who worked on Forza Horizon 2 are working on this game.
•  I can’t believe that Konami put out another MGS5 trailer. I wish they would explain more about the gameplay. I guess they kind of did that with Ground Zeros… :/

Yep. Very satisfied indeed. What did you most enjoy about the show? Let me know in the comments.

In order to talk about games as I do, I need a specialised vocabulary of words to help me along. For several years now, I’ve been using Richard Terrell’s Critical Gaming Blog and the Critical Glossary to anchor my writing. Sometimes, though, I need to come up with my own words. Such as when I talked about player roles in Heavy Rain a few years ago. Below I’ve documented the twenty or so words I came up with to get me through my Wario Land 4 book, Game Design Companion.

Arrangement – A group of game elements arranged together, ie. a unit of level design.

Pre-fold – The first half of folded level design, where the player makes their way to the fold.

Post-fold – The second half of folded level design, where the player makes their way from the fold to the starting point.

Interaction set in context – A way of saying “an interaction and all the context that defines it”. Context being the feel of inputting the mechanic, the meanings and associations with the function, the background for the interaction, the visual and aural representation of the game elements and execution of the interaction, etc. An interaction set in context is the smallest unit of meaning in a video game.

Premise – The premise establishes the game world, its characters, and the personality and role of the avatar. By defining the avatar, the premise gives the player the information they need to inhabit the playable character and make interactions under their persona. Since the player/avatar interacts with the game world, the premise gives all individual interactions a collective purpose.

Restricted-to-Freer Practice – A model of variation whereby a level initially restricts the player’s freedom in order to ensure that they understand what is being taught, before opening up to slowly allow the player to take ownership of the content.

Bounding Box – The outer edges of level for a game set in the side-scrolling perspective. Bounding boxes often dictate the behaviour of the camera.

Form Accentuates Function – A type of form fits function where the form exaggerates the function so as to make the function more apparent to the player. (I’m thinking that this term is probably moot, but it served its purpose in the book).

Form is Familiar – Where a game element looks like something from real life so as to immediately give the player an idea about its function.

Test Teach Test – A form of education where the teacher proposes a problem to the students and has them try to solve it, observing as they fail miserably. Afterwards, the teacher introduces the lesson’s content before allowing the students to return to the original problem, now with the know-how to successfully solve it.

Fixed Linear Progression Model – A form of game progression where the player must complete the game in a linear order and has no control over progression.

Freer Linear Progression Model – A form of game progression where the player has some minor control over the way they progress through the game. For example, choosing which level to play first, where both levels must be completed.

Pure Fold – A form of folded level design where the pre-fold is the same area as the post-fold.

Reroute – A form of folded level design where the post-fold redirects the player to a different route from the pre-fold.

Skirting Along the Fold – A form of folded level design where the post-fold reroutes the player through a separated channel that is part of the pre-fold.

Environmental Upheaval – A form of folded level design where the post-fold is radically different from the pre-fold, but still uses the same base level design.

Dog Ear – A form of folded level design where the post-fold is very short.

Phases – Solid and permanent sections of a boss fight or key challenge. Once a phased is reached, the challenge cannot go backwards to an earlier phase.

Forms – Fluid and temporary sections of a boss fight or key challenge. Similar to phases, but the challenge can go backwards to an earlier form.

Linear Phase Structure – A structure used for bosses and key challenges where the boss/challenge has several phases and the player progresses through these phases linearly.

Looping Form Structure – A structure used for bosses and key challenges where the boss/challenge has multiple forms and can revert to an earlier form.

Without these words, I wouldn’t have been able to talk about Wario Land 4 much at all.

Games Writing and Levels of Abstraction

Writing is the least ideal means for talking about games. The process involves using an abstract set of symbols to make comment on an abstract system of rules. For the reader, this means burrowing through two layers of abstraction just to understand what you’re saying.

(In saying this, I still believe that the written word is the way to go when it comes to serious games analysis. Video inevitably amounts to entertainment, as the stimuli created from moving images distracts the brain from, and therefore diminishes, the meaning of a text. And with audio, the linear flow of speech doesn’t give the listener the ability to naturally pause and absorb the information being given. It’s a bit like being on a content treadmill).

There’s also the problem of length and details. Because games are complex systems that are defined by their details, a writer must give a significant amount of background on the game in question before they can arrive at any sort of critique. By this point, the reader may have lost interest. So what’s a writer to do? How can we make games writing more accessible without sacrificing integrity?

A Narrow Focus

At some point, preferably before any writing takes place, the writer must decide whether they want their article to have a broad or narrow focus. Most games writers go for the broad option, even though it’s easier to have a narrow focus. Writing just about one particular aspect of a game not only affords the writer more accuracy, but also allows them to cut down on the preamble and jump straight to the chase. On the other hand, without a generous word limit, writing about an entire game can be a troubling task. Games are monolithic structures that, more often than not, cannot be critiqued within the confines of a 800-word review, so while game reviewers no doubt have plenty of opinions, the format offers minimal space for the writer to explain how they came to their conclusions. So unless you’re prepared to put in a few thousand words, it’s best to have a narrow focus.

Cutting Down on Words

Less is more. I often use writing as a means to get to what I want to say, but once I know what that is exactly, I cut everything else and just say it. Here are some techniques that I use to say more with less:

• Heavily edit the parts of the article that give context to the analysis/criticism. There should be little to no fat here.
• Use video or images in place of words. There are plenty of game reviews and Let’s Plays on YouTube which already do a good job of introducing games. Why write about it yourself when someone else can do the hard work for you and the reader gets to see the game in context?
• Use diagrams to explain ideas too complex or fiddly for words, or to reinforce a worded explanation.
• Use metaphoric language. This is something that I’m not so good at, but many games criticism bloggers are adept in. Analogies and metaphor are a great way to convey a lot by saying very little. This technique suits certain topics better than others (like game feel, for instance).
• Find a creative way to present the content. I’m working on this with Adventures in Game Analysis.

Chunk it Out

By chunking your writing out, you give the reader more room to breathe. Here are some more techniques:

• Use dot points where possible, especially to break up long sentences. Here’s a good example.
• Break articles up into a series. When I write about a game, I usually identify several key discussion points and then, given that I can write about them at length, I’ll write the articles individually. Game Design Companion is a great example of this: it’s just a bunch of individual essays.

Write a Story Instead

We’ve been sharing stories since the dawn of time and so the brain has developed quite a fondness for narrative. Stories allow us to ground abstract ideas in relatable situations. Writing story-based criticism, though, can be quite a challenge as critique doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to storytelling and you have to do more than double the work (write a good analysis piece, a good story, and have them seamlessly connect together). Here’s an example of a games analysis story done well

Other Tips

• Bold key sentences. I rarely do this, but it’s a good technique.
• If you’re interested in giving this writing thing a go, then write something and send it in to me. Like everyone else, I’m pretty busy, but I’d be happy to help out too. Writing about games is hard, so us writers need all the encouragement we can get.

[NB: I’ve held onto this post for about a year so that I could publish it around the same time as Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4. It’s not particularly enlightening, and a bit self-indulgent, but I think it captures most of the feelings I had towards writing at the time.]

After more than 2 years of work, last month I finally finished my first book, Game Design Companion. Given the sheer scope of the project, the time and energy I invested into it, and how I did it all in relative isolation (that is to say, I rarely discussed the book with friends and family besides the usual, “Yeah, still not finished”), I’ve formed a bunch of ideas regarding the writing and editing process that, for my own sake, I need to get off my chest. I guess this is what blogs are for, right?

Timeline

• I started writing Game Design Companion on January 20, 2011, and finished on February 7, 2013.
• I finished the first draft on May 4, 2011.
• After a short break, I added more articles to the first draft and completed the first edit. “Phase 2”, as I called it, was completed at the end of February 2012. The Topical Essays, ATTACK and DASH ATTACK analysis, and boss battle analysis came from this session.
• I finished the second edit in July 2012 and began stress-testing any lingering ideas for articles.
• I finished the third edit on October 19, 2012.
• I spent the following month working on reference material, including images and video.
• On November 22, 2012, after some deep reading of the book, I decided that I needed to give it one more edit.
• The fourth edit was completed on February 7, 2013.

Work Situation

• While it’s all a bit of a blur now—I didn’t even know that I edited the book four times until I checked my calendar—I’m guessing that I put in about 30 hours a week into the book on average. I definitely wrote more in the second year, where my new job allowed me to basically be a full-time author. For the final stretch of the project—rounding out the puzzle rooms, boss battles, and topical essays—I crunched at about 10-12 hours of editing a day for 10 days straight.
• Half of my time writing the book (January to December, 2011) was spent in Wuxi, China, while the other half (February 2012 to 2013) was spent in Shanghai, China. I returned home to Australia for 2 months in between.
• I did, and still prefer to do, most of my writing and editing in long, uninterrupted stretches at home, taking a short 8-minute break every hour of work and a longer break over lunch and before bed. If I had a full day to myself, I would work from about 8:00am to 10:00pm. Usually I could only maintain this intensity for a couple of days. Day 3 inevitably meant some withdrawal.
• Work and life commitments acted as a good stress relief. Although I worked heavily, I still went out with my partner and friends all the time for pool, photo clubs, KTV, and dance. I don’t think that my writing affected my social life very much. I tried to just do more with my own downtime and when I didn’t have the opportunity to write, it was probably for the better.
• In between writing the book, I also played a handful of other games and blogged in Chinese for a few months.
• After I moved to Shanghai, I started editing at work because of the copious amount of office hours and light work load I’d been given. To block out the office noise, I bought inner earphones and played a continuous loop of white noise. It works a treat, but after listening to the sound of a digital waterfall all day, it can drive you a little crazy.
• On my last round of editing, I used to edit on the subway to and from work by abusing the highlight feature on my Kindle. Anything that seemed a bit off got highlighted and was looked at once I got home.

Techniques

• Make the most of mornings and before dinner: I always try to get to bed before 11pm so that I can wake up earlier and get a good start on writing. This head start keeps my confidence levels up for a successful marathon session in the afternoon. My afternoon sessions can vary considerably, though. I tend to fall into an editing rut at around 3-4 o’clock and then bounce back right before dinner time. I think this is because at around 5:30, I can feel myself getting hungry and therefore, in the mindset that I’ll have to inevitably give up soon, I try to make use of the time I have. I keep stretching that limit until I either reach a set writing goal or concede to hunger. I find that this kind of light pressure can be really motivating at times.
• Remove the time display on your computer: Time displays are the enemy of all creative pursuits. The quantification of time sets the expectations for how things should be done, not what’s best for what’s being done. If I spend 20 minutes writing the first sentence of an article, then I might look at the clock and feel that I’ve wasted time. Sometimes, though, that 20 minutes of “wasted time” is needed to create the swell of ideas that’ll see the rest of the article written in another 20. Writing is an organic process, mechanical things like time belong nowhere near it. I used to get so paranoid watching the clock, beating myself up every time I spent 30 minutes rewriting something until the idea finally hit. Also, I love guessing the length of my writing sessions. Because you get so engrossed in the process, it throws off your perception of time, which makes it all the more challenging to guess how long you’ve spent. The other thing is that removing the time display from your computer forces you to look away from the screen to check the time, which is good for your eyes.
• Full-screen mode: This is a no-brainer. If you’re gonna write, write in full-screen mode. Icons and other doo-dads can be horrible distractions. I always switch off my wireless and turn off all the power points in my room. This way, I have to make a real effort to become distracted. The difference between quickly checking your emails and quickly ducking out for a wee is that reading your emails (or social media updates, googling, or other internet activity for that matter) can break your thought process, something which is utterly invaluable. On the other hand, when you take a leak, you tend not to think about anything at all.
• Drink lots of warm water: In China, any time someone is sick, their friends and family invariably tell them to drink more warm water. If there’s a cure to cancer, it’s probably got something to do with the heated liquid. I always drink warm water just because I’m afraid of getting gallstones (aren’t we all?) and I have to boil my water over here before I drink it. For writing, though, your drink pulls you away from the computer screen, allowing you to take frequent short breaks so that you can maintain your concentration for the long haul. I’ve been drinking Chinese tea instead of water these past few months and it also works a treat. Tieguanyin is your friend.
• Don’t snack on heavy foods: This ties in well with the former two points. When writing, I always try to keep my body in a neutral state. Anything else can disrupt your chain of thought. I never drink cold water either, as it disturbs the body’s balance and can make the stomach uncomfortable. By heavy foods I mean foods with strong flavour or food products (which incidentally tend to be packed with added flavours). If I want to eat while editing, I’ll normally have sunflower seeds or other nuts. The problem I find with sunflower seeds, though, is that splitting them open with your front teeth can grow into its own fetish of distraction.
• If you have a good idea, write it down: In this game, ideas are a valuable commodity, so write everything down. This idea came to me before I finished writing about heavy foods, so I typed myself a short note and remembered to write this.
• Take note of inconsistencies in a large body of work, you can always come back later: When writing Game Design Companion, every time I noticed that I was switching between enemy names (Menhammer and Hammermen is a good example; it should be the former) or I wasn’t sure about some punctuation, I’d jot it down in a separate file. Later, when I finished an edit, I would put all the articles together into the one document and search for all the “Hammermen” and change them into “Menhammer”.
• The role of music: If you listen to music while writing, you obviously shouldn’t be writing. That is, with the exception of beautiful, unbiased white noise. After a long writing marathon, though, it’s important to let your mind be distracted by other things so that you can rest. Music is really good at this.
• Edit and edit again: When I get to the end of a first draft, I usually feel quite pleased with the article and just want to publish it there and then. Getting what it is you want to say out of your head and onto the page does this: it makes you think you’ve done a really great job, just cause you expressed yourself and expressing yourself feels great. The problem is that no matter how awesome you might think your writing is, your first draft will invariably be your worst. Each time you edit an article, you not only bring your existing knowledge of the article to the edit, but you don’t have to go through the whole process of writing out the article from scratch, allowing you to focus your attention on the finer details. To give you an example, I edited my book four times, and each time I had the freedom to focus on something different:

First Edit – Re-analysed the game, added in new commentary, added more articles.
Second Edit – Checked analysis for errors, trimmed fat, and general edit.
Third Edit – Thorough sweep for grammar and punctuation errors.
Fourth Edit – Deep read of the book, checked for commas, hyphenated words, and naming errors.

Through the process of constant iteration, you come to understand your ideas better and thereby build a more complete article.

Thoughts on Wario Land 4

In Game Design Companion, I made a point of rarely revealing my opinion of Wario Land 4 or the Wario Land series. So prepare to be shocked as I announce something you probably weren’t expecting: I like Wario Land 4. It’s not my favourite game, but it’s certainly the best designed and most focused game in the series. Aside from Wario Land 3 and Wario Land Shake Dimension, I’m fond of all the games in the main series. Wario Land and Wario Land 2 were my favourite GameBoy games when I was a kid, so it’s nice to be able to pay respect to the series by writing a book about it.

Thoughts on The Book

I feel pretty neutral about the book. I wanted to write a book analysing one game in its entirety so as to make a point about the state of games writing, and I did that. It worked out, on my first go nonetheless. Everything could have ended up being a disaster, like most first books, but it didn’t and so I’m grateful for that. There are parts of the book that are more or less interesting than others, but, as I came to realise, this is the nature of such a project. Some parts of the game just aren’t as interesting to talk about as others, yet despite this, I still had to write about them. These less interesting parts are probably the book’s main “weakness”, but I’m not too worried. Each edit, I hacked away at these sections until I got to the essence, then I polished the essence until I was happy with it. I’m confident that there’s not much of a disparity between the hills and valleys.

What I Learnt

Aside from improving my writing and analysis skills, writing this book has taught me a few important values:

Good things take time, but it’s always worth it: My original plan was to write a 120-paged book on Wario Land 4 as a lead-in to a larger book on Metroid Prime. The larger the book became, the further back I pushed the deadline I’d set for the original 120 pages of copy. Even though the book ballooned to more than four times its purposed size, I still wrote it in the mindset of the original time frame. So everyday, when I woke up, the first thing I’d think is “It’s not done”. Although the time frame became a stick that I’d use to beat myself with, I never compromised on the polish. When I decided to write this book, I committed to ensuring that I wouldn’t waver on quality, and even though it took me 2 years to get it done, I stayed true to that ideal. Through this, I understood the importance of taking the time to do something properly.

On a related note, my writing of this book has made me sceptical of the internet and social media, which are trying to speed us up and stop us from thinking. I wrote more on this topic here.

The effects of writing on the brain: Ever since I got deep into editing, I’ve started noticing how the thought processes behind my writing find their ways into other parts of my life. After a long day of editing, I used to wake up in the middle of the night in unbearable mental discomfort as I’d been “sleep editing” to myself for several hours and couldn’t switch my brain off. I also frame responses to things I disagree with in a more considered, argumentative way and really hate it when people mask poor arguments behind flashing intellectual complexity and jargon. Writing consumes you, I suppose.

I’m still not good at writing or editing: Just that really. Writing a book sure is empowering, but it also shows you that you always have so, so far to go.

Editing Style

My approach to writing and editing Game Design Companion was one of functionality. Because of the nature of the book, I needed to impart a lot of information before getting into the core of each article, the analysis. Therefore, it was my goal to convey as much as possible as quickly as possible while still maintaining readability. Here are some of the techniques I used:

• Where possible, I tried to remove excess from the book. Unless I needed to remind the reader of an earlier point, I only said everything once. This way:

1. The reader must always be active.
2. I can cram in as much analysis as possible.
3. If the reader doesn’t understand a particular point, they don’t have to look far to find what they missed.
4. I can create a forward momentum and maintain the reader’s interest.

• I concede that the book is quite dense, perhaps even too much so. Where possible I tried to use repeating structures to make the book easier to read. For example, in the paragraph below, I repeat “needed to remove”, “snow clumps/slope combo”, and the structure of the three main sentences to create a consistent pattern that makes it easier for the player to understand the multiple layers of locks and keys:

Room 2 is a prime example of maximising limited space. The snow blocks on the left prevent Wario from returning to the vortex. The snow clumps/slope combo needed to remove the snow blocks is locked behind frog blocks. The frog switch needed to remove the frog blocks is locked behind a snow block in Room 4. The snow clumps/slope combo needed to remove Room 4’s snow block is several rooms away. That’s three interconnected lock and key arrangements. Add in the silver chest and the room goes another two layers deep to a total of five arrangements.

I repeat the same writing structure throughout the room-by-room analysis too. First, I draw the reader’s attention to the various points of interest, then I make comment.

• I often allow the reader to draw the connection themselves between a bunch of related facts. For example:

The Yukiotoko sits in a shallow trench where its ice breath projectiles hit the sides and dissipate into puffs of cold air. The platforms shield the enemy from overhead attacks. Wario needs to get up close to either attack or jump over the Yukiotoko*. By making it easy for Wario to touch the puffs of cold air, the arrangement demonstrates that they still freeze him. The icy wall prevents Frozen Wario from sliding all the way back to Room 2.

At point *, I don’t say “Because of the positioning of the Yukiotoko, platforms, and Wario’s goal, beyond the Yukiotoko, it is easy for Wario to touch the puffs of cold air”. The reader can figure that out by connecting the dots, and so I just start the next sentence with the implicit conclusion.

Back to the Present: Thoughts on Life Post-Wario Land 4

Game Design Companion anchored 2 years of my life. To suddenly be set adrift makes me feel lost of any direction. 2013 was a turbulent year for me. I’ve moved house three times, gotten married in two different countries, and settled back in Australia. Adventures in Game Analysis has been exactly what I hoped it to be, an outlet for me to cover specific topics in depth, as I please. However, I’m ready to move onto my second big project. If it ends up being what I have in mind, it’ll be something completely different. That’s all I’m going to say on that matter, though. I’ve indulged far too much already. It’s time to get back to work.

Coincidentally, I came across two Wario Land 4-related podcasts over the past week or so. The first one is the second episode of the new volume of Retronauts and the second one is a Radio Free Nintendo podcast from last year. The Retronauts podcast is, as always, worth a listen, but I’m not so sure about Radio Free Nintendo. Although they spend a lot of time discussing the game and go into specifics—all of which is great—I feel that they read too much into their initial impressions. Every time they criticised the game because there was some part of it that they didn’t “get”, I wanted to pull my hair out. Part of critiquing games involves separating your personal biases from what the game is. Only then, once you understand what the game is, can you make sense of your opinions of the game. In other words, just because you think a game is good, bad, whatever, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is; you have to look at things a bit more objectively first. Even though Retronauts only spent around 10-15 minutes on Wario Land 4, the discussion is much more constructive than the 50 or so minutes RFN spent on it. In saying all this, though, I’ve been listening to a few RFN episodes lately and besides the Wario Land 4 discussion, I’ve rather enjoyed the other shows.

Oh, and yes, stuff is still happening with my Wario Land 4 book and you should hopefully be hearing some exciting news soon.

Some say that differentiating between games and non-games (like Proteus, Judith, and dys4ia) is a value judgement, but this is nonsense. In reality, it’s quite the opposite. A clear distinction prevents unfair and unfavourable comparisons between the two mediums, as some of the coverage of non-games by the games press has been of late. Here is an example of a non-game (well, not quite, but we’ll get to that in a minute) being treated as a game and here is an example of a non-game being treated as a non-game. Notice the difference?

There’s another dimension to this discussion, which is that within the definition of games, there are games which privilege gameplay and those which don’t. Think of games as existing on a spectrum of gameplay. On one side there’s pure puzzle games like Picross DS, on the other there’s games with only interactivity and a few easy challenges like Journey, and between them is, say, the new Tomb Raider game. Picross and friends are all about gameplay. They have no fancy graphics or gripping stories to distract the player, it’s just pure knowledge skills. Tomb Raider has solid, if not generic, third-person shooting gameplay, however, it often puts story and set pieces ahead of the player’s learning and mastery. Journey borders on a simulation, but because its easy challenges are compulsory, it still qualifies as a game. Because gameplay is learning and learning is hard, in recent years, game companies have been pushing the industry closer to the right-hand side of the spectrum, including more passive elements in their games so as to appeal to a larger audience and rake in more cash. That is to say, capitalism is killing gameplay. It’s no wonder I’m a socialist.

So why bring all this stuff up?

A few months ago, I caught onto the recent Twine phenomena and did a little investigating. (For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, here is a super short explanation of how Twine works). What I found was that many of the people out there claiming to be making Twine games are in fact making choose your own adventure stories and calling them games. The only game, as in interactive system that tests the player’s skill, that I could find was, incidentally enough, Dan Cox’s Cnossus, which is a game on the grounds of being so obtuse that just figuring out where you’re meant to be going is a challenge. So in response to all the misconceptions around Twine games, I thought that I’d try to make the first ever video game in Twine. No, not an interactive fiction, text adventure or a poor emulation of a pre-existing game (like quizzes or game shows), but a video game that tests player skill. Furthermore, I wanted to stick to the essence of Twine, text and hyperlinks,. After all, it’s all too easy to just import a Flash or Javascript game onto your main page and call it a Twine game. So, after stress testing a game design and story concept, I finished my Twine game last week. I’m reasonably content with what I’ve made, but it still needs to be playtested so that I can tweak up some of the gameplay challenges. If you’re interested in trying out my Twine game and giving some feedback, then please leave your name and email in the comments and I’ll send you a copy and some information to go with it. Oh, and I’m still looking for anyone who wants to discuss game design for female players. So, if you’re an avid female player or have a female friend, partner, or sister that plays games, I’d love to chat.

Breaking the News-Previews-Reviews Trinity

Thanks to the likes of Polygon and the collective efforts of Simon Parkin (I’m generalising, obviously, but these are two key examples), games journalism has made great strides over the past few years and “features” are now a significant part of most games press websites. Still, though, the uptake to long-form writing on a single game has been slow to say the least. Game-specific discussion pieces free writers from the cover-everything nature of reviews, allowing them to develop a voice and a style, assets which most games sites lack. I guess it’s up to bloggers like us to carry the torch for long-form games discussion.

Breaking the Tyranny that Publishers have over Players and Criticism

This paragraph was originally part of the preface to Rethinking Games Criticism: An Analysis of Wario Land 4.

Publishers are the dictators of the video games industry. Through trailers, controlled previews, planned leaks, media events, early access to review code, and “game journalists” who deliver PR straight from the horse’s mouth without scrutiny, publishers fuel the hype machine which sets the tone for the initial 4 months of a game’s release. The anticipation builds a near impenetrable wall of positive assumption of a games quality pre-release, which the majority of game reviewers do little to challenge. They either get caught up in it or just can’t overcome it individually—given their audience comes into a review expecting their opinions, shaped by the marketing, to be validated. This system, prolonged by DLC, traps players in a self-fulfilling cycle of purchases, which ensures continual cash flow for publishers. To discuss a game well past irrelevancy, like Wario Land 4, is therefore an act of rebellion, a move to show players an alternative to drip-fed corporate capitalism.

Freedom Vs Control

Freedom is an impenetrable beast. The positive associations of the word and the dominance of the American ideology, which ensures that said associations are always upheld, make it hard for someone to vouch for authorial control, but that’s what I’d like to do today. Freedom—as in absolute freedom, the kind that this heading is most concerned with—is destructive. You give too much freedom to a society and people will eat and rape each other. You give too much freedom to the markets and the financial institutions will rob the people of democracy. You give too much freedom to a player and they’ll choose the path of least resistance, thereby bypassing the education needed to develop their mastery of the game. Whether it be an open world game with a world so large that the designers can’t bend the landscape narrowly enough to ensure the player’s rigorously tested on the game mechanics or a strategy RPG where the player can customise their party to the point that they don’t have to play strategically, freedom can be a corrosive force in game design. Players, like students, need the guidance of a teacher before they can be let loose on their own. The more I think about, the more I believe restricted-to-freer practice is the only way to go when it comes to offering freedom in games. It seems that I haven’t finished with this idea just yet.

About 4 years ago, I started a semi-regular series of articles called Microtransactions. In these posts, I’d compile comments that were too long for Twitter, but not long enough to warrant their own article. Given that I’ve built up a few notes over the past 2 years of writing this Wario Land book, and not all of them can amount to their own post, I figure that it’s time for me to resurrect this long-forgotten series.

Cooperatives in the Business Side of the Trigon Theory

As a democratic socialist, I’m big on cooperative enterprises. When the people who make or use the services or products of a business own the business (ie. democratic ownership), instead of working to maximise profit for shareholders, like most current, privately-owned businesses, the company works for its members and the betterment of its services or products. Richard Terrell’s trigon theory of games, which you can read about here or listen about here, assumes that business’s only interest is to maximise profit for shareholders. I’m curious then, if video game companies were owned by their developers or fan base, how would that change the theory. I’d say that it’d significantly weaken the influence that business has over games (as for cooperatives, profit is necessary to survive, but it’s not the core part of their business) while strengthening the art side (as the workers would be freed from the tyranny of concentrated power at the top).

Information as Cultural Capital

About a month ago, my partner asked me to watch an episode of Miranda with her. Miranda is a UK comedy show about a middle-aged lady, Miranda, and her friends running into all sorts of self-deprecating scenarios. I didn’t think much of the show, I don’t care much for TV, but the comedy reminded me of a growing trend that I’ve noticed.

Many of the jokes in Miranda are based on the clique language Miranda and her friends use within their tight-knit circle. In many instances, it’s as though they try to make a “thing” or a “scene” out of nothing, with pop culture associations as their tool of choice. This form of comedy, I feel, is indicative of the nature of information in this current age. Information is no longer something that you know and can learn from, it’s now a fashion, a form of cultural capital. If you know something about something then you have enough capital to pretend to others that you belong to a particular membership group, which can make one appear cultured or sophisticated. It’s kind of like hipster culture, but with words replacing dress.

Social media has certainly made this way of thinking increasingly more prevalent. These networks operate on two foundations: following others (cultural membership/tribalism) and knowledge as capital (short bursts of text being the primary unit of exchange). A lot of what goes on in social media, whether people like it or not, is the use of information to define one’s brand/place their brand amongst brands which are advantageous to them. Knowledge is often used as a commodity. The contents aren’t important. What’s important is what underlying assumptions come from the information. This is exactly what Miranda and friends do when they make up silly catch phrases and nonsense words. What they say isn’t important. What’s important is that what’s said has a certain fashion which creates comical associations.

The internet is no place for sustained reading and deep thought.

That’s a strong statement, but it’s one that I feel increasingly adamant about. The form of a media determines the nature of its content, and there are aspects of the internet which dissuade the user from critical thinking. Of course, the internet is an umbrella for many different types of media. For the purpose of this post, I want to discuss the medium you are consuming right now: the article.

From early last year, I started doing most of my reading on my Kindle, a device which, I guess many Kindle enthusiasts would also attest to, has totally changed my reading habits. Almost straight away, I noticed that it was easier to read through my Kindle than through a web browser, as I’d been doing in the past. I’ve become a better reader ever since. After a bit of investigating, I discovered why. Online, long-form text is usually surrounded by:

• images
• hyperlinks
• ads
• video
• social media/comments

With all these distractions demanding your attention—not to mention things outside the browser, such as instant messages, software alerts, time displays, and the visual interface of the operating system—it’s difficult to engage with the text. On Kindle, all of these diversions are stripped away. The only thing that can cause you to lose your concentration is the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, which I can see some people fetishising over, but it’s relatively minor.

The other thing that diminishes the reader’s ability to deep read online is the transition between different types of media. Every time the reader switches between watching a video to writing a tweet to sending an email to reading an article, they must adapt to each format. There’s certainly a skill to juggling several kinds of media, but deep reading is no doubt something that becomes weakened in transition, particularly as the internet favours the most accessible, immediate media: images, video, short text, and search, none of which require committed engagement. When a reader approaches a long-form piece after having skim-read through Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter for the past half hour, despite their best intentions, they’re not in the right head space to consume the text.

Going forward, I am committed to long-form writing on video games. While it does pose its own challenges (more on that in a later article), as far as I see it, it’s the only format that does games analysis justice. Writing is the only medium in which complicated ideas can be clearly conveyed, and it’s only in the long-form that the complex nature of games can be fully unravelled. Given everything I’ve said on the internet and deep reading, it makes no sense for my long-form articles, which require deep reading and engagement, be placed in a medium which constantly tells the reader to stop reading. As the author of such content, it’s my responsibility to slow the reader down and ease them into the analysis, something that I simply can’t do online. So the only responsible thing I can do is to take my writing and put it offline. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to close down the blog, but it does mean that I’m going to be smarter with how I write and position my content.

My plan is to reserve all good long-form articles (anything more than 3 pages, I guess) for future books and use the blog for short-form articles, updates, and stuff that can’t fit anywhere else. As you may have already noticed, I’ve been customising the articles that go onto the site for internet reading. That is, more headings, bullet points, and snappy commentary. This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a real improvement over what I was doing before. Now, I have a space to bang out some real nuggets of insight and a space to sit and stew over ideas for a prolonged period. Although I’m still settling into this groove, in the long run, I think it’ll work out for the better.

There are a few more ideas that I wanted to bookend the article on. Fittingly, I’ve presented these as a series of dot points:

• Yes, I’m aware that people can still be distracted by the internet when reading on a tablet or a computer, out of browser, but these methods are still better than in-browser reading.
• I think there’s certainly a case to be made for video—it has a lower barrier to entry and allows for more “embedded” analysis—but I’m far too wary of the medium’s tendency to reduce all content into entertainment to engage in it myself (see: Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death).
• If you’re interested in deep reading online, then you might want to check out the following:

–Instapaper – This service saves online articles and delivers them, in packages, to your mobile, tablet, or reading device. Very useful. Thanks to Instapaper, I basically do all my online reading on my Kindle.

–Safari’s Reader Function – The little blue button in Safari’s address bar darkens the website and pulls up a white slate with the contents of the article inside, removing the distractions of the website.

Additional Readings

Is Google Making Us Stupid

Every day I go to work, I walk through this underground channel connected to the subway. When I first started work in Shanghai, different colours were projected onto the side panels, creating a neat saturation effect (it’s orange in the photo). About 6 months ago, the colours were replaced with video ads, so now, when you walk through the tunnel, you’re bombarded with slick marketing messages. The problem with these ads, besides being intrusive and annoying, is that most of them aren’t made for the 25-metre wide-screen format: they just project eight TV ads that play simultaneously. Stupid, right? So, I was thinking, armed with a dozen Kinnects, what kinds of interactive/reactive multimedia experiences could be created to make this underground passage more interesting? I only have a few ideas at the moment, but I suspect that I’ll get more over the coming weeks. So, I’m gonna start a list, feel free to contribute in the comments and I’ll add your ideas to the list. A few more details:

• The two screens are facing each other on opposite walls.
• There’s a series of handrails in the centre.
• The tunnel has a slight ascent.
• Sound is played through speakers attached to the ceiling.
• There are eight projectors in total, four for each side. The projected images overlap slightly.
• Thousands of people pass through here each day. Most people are transferring between subway lines.

Ideas

1) The screens display video of people walking through the passage, acting as a mirror. Zombie textures are then mapped to the passersby. This could be an advertisement for The Walking Dead, being a literal representation of the name.

2) The Kinnects could track walking data and present it on the screen. So, steps taken so far for the day, week, month or year could be displayed. By comparing sets of data—for example, how many steps were taken yesterday to how many have been taken today—a relative high score element is added, encouraging commuters to take more steps.

Any kind of quantification of activity which is then presented back to the people who engage in the activity encourages certain types of behaviour, so there’s certainly ethical questions that need to be considered*. Personally, I think it’d be better if steps were translated into calories burnt, or something like this. This would encourage commuters to think more about their health, as opposed to taking more steps, which is a bit silly.

*For a better example of ethics and gamification, watch this video and ask yourself whether the Delite-o-matic is “right” or “wrong”.

A game dynamic is a variable which affects two or more areas of a game system. For example, in many Japanese SRPGs, height is a dynamic. It affects the attack and movement range of units and the damage one unit gives to another. So, higher units have more range and slightly stronger attacks than lower units. The height dynamic allocates strategic advantage and disadvantage to certain areas of the battlefield, encouraging the player to plan their tactics around the map’s topography. In this way, dynamics make games more engaging. You can read more about dynamics here and here.

When writing about dynamics for my book on Wario Land 4, my thoughts drifted from game dynamics to real-life dynamics and how the dynamics that make life interesting could be emulated in a video game. Below are some theoretical examples that I’ve come up with. I found it quite fun putting these together, so feel free to share any of your own ideas in the comments.

Energy

• Energy is an artificial game dynamic.
• It can determine the speed of the avatar’s walk/run.
• It can limit the avatar’s actions and movement range in one turn.
• It can act as a decaying dynamic—as in Harvest Moon, where each action takes some energy—so that the avatar can only make so many actions before they need a rest.
• The restrictions of the former two dot points prompt the player to carefully consider their actions. That is to say, they add a strategic element.
• It can determine how long the avatar sleeps and therefore how much time they have available the next day.

Drunkenness

• Drunkenness is an artificial game dynamic.
• It can rise the more the avatar has to drink.
• It can determine options available in dialogue trees (the drunker, the less polite).
• It can cause the avatar to stagger (I think GTA4 does this).
• It can smear and blur the screen and make HUD elements wander from their default positions.
• It can cause NPCs to look at you.

Noise

• Noise is an organic game dynamic.
• It can obscure the player’s ability to hear and therefore respond to NPCs.
• Different places can have different noise levels.
• It can determine whether or not an NPC hears something the avatar says to another NPC (like a secret).
• Noise could be the core dynamic of an aural version of Magic Eye, where the player must listen to audio until they hear a secret message.
• Different surfaces can make different noises when the avatar steps on them (Metal Gear).

Need to go to the Toilet

• This is an artificial dynamic.
• The more the avatar eats/drinks, the stronger the dynamic.
• Like energy in Harvest Moon, the need to go to the toilet can force the player to schedule their actions.
• When the need to go to the toilet reaches a certain threshold, the avatar could be given a run ability and the player could be prompted to engage in a short button-mashing exercise to “hold it in”. The greater the need, the more intense and frequent the button mashing sequences.
• The greater the need, the longer the avatar spends in the toilet.

Sweat

• Sweat is an artificial dynamic.
• It can be presented on the avatar itself, form fits function.
• Being too sweaty can cause the NPCs around the avatar to act negatively towards them.
• On the other hand, sweat can be a positive attribute in some places, like the gym. It might cause NPCs to start a conversation with the avatar.
• It can persuade the player not to abuse the run mechanic.
• It can dynamically change depending on the seasons.
• Taking a shower resets the sweat dynamic.

Oxygen

• Oxygen is an artificial dynamic.
• Oxygen is quite common in games already, but instead of just being designated to swimming sequences, it can be used in other contexts too. Such as escaping a burning building. When the avatar stands next to smoke, their oxygen level goes down.
• It can be an indication of air quality, represented visually through smog, the colour of the sky, and whether or not NPCs wear breathing masks (I have no idea what these things are called in English. They’re called 口罩 kǒu zhào in China).
• Continuing with air quality, oxygen can determine the avatar’s running distance.

Bright Light

• Light is an organic dynamic.
• Resident Evil 5 incorporates light and shade into its gameplay, but from what I can tell, it isn’t really that deep—admittedly, I haven’t played much of the game, can anyone offer a second opinion? >_>
• When the avatar moves from shaded to bright areas, and vice versa, the game simulates the eye’s adjustment to lighting levels. The game designer or enemy AI can explicitly use this dynamic to obscure the player’s view.
• Looking into the sun stuns the player.
• Enemies/the player can use high-intensity lights or torches to temporarily blind the other party.
• Sunglasses reduce the effectiveness of bright lights.
• Enemies can detect shadows, and the player can use shadows to determine an enemy’s location.

What are some unique game dynamics in games you’ve played?

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Rethinking Games Criticism: An Analysis of Wario Land 4. When it comes to matters of politics, I hold strong views. I wrote Rethinking Games Criticism as a radical assertion of my thoughts regarding video games and games criticism. Everything in the book—from the choice of game, direct writing style, minimal subjectivity, radical extent of the analysis, and lack of excess—is a reflection of my world view, although it’s only in the preface that I state my intents outright. The rest of the book is pure game design analysis. I’ve spent two years trying to get it right, and reading over some of the final copy, I feel like I’ve finally achieved what I originally set out to do. With such a strong ideological basis for the book, I decided that it’d be best if I shared the preface first.

As for the release of the book, I’m currently in talks with several publishers, but haven’t confirmed anything concrete at this stage. I still need to finish double checking the final copy for punctuation errors, but aside from that everything’s done. Stay tuned for future updates and let me know what you think of the preface in the comments.

—

All writers are liars. You know that though, don’t you? That’s what you learnt at high school when your teacher forced you to write those essays on some book you didn’t care about and some theme seemingly unrelated to it. We write books about one thing, only to talk about something else. I too must confess to such two-faceness. And as is the tradition with prefaces, I shall now self-indulgently reveal the lie before you’ve had a chance to read the book and realise it for yourself.

This book is not, as the title suggests, an analysis of Wario Land 4. Rather, it is a critique of contemporary games writing, in particular the broadly-defined games criticism. I evaluate games criticism through the proposition of games analysis, a new type of games writing which seeks to improve the art and science of video games through clear language, authoritative evidence, and a focus on interactivity. Rethinking Games Criticism is an example of games analysis brought to its logical conclusion: a piece of writing which thoroughly explains the workings of an entire game. Everything from mechanics to engagement to level design is covered. Without trying to sound arrogant, I would contest that there has never been a deeper, more comprehensive piece of writing ever written about a video game.

This is not to condemn games criticism nor discourage those engaged in thoughtful games discussion (it is, after all, for you guys that I wrote this book), however, while there are some genuinely excellent pieces of writing out there, games criticism certainly has a few issues in its current form*. Thus, it is my intent to use games analysis as a means to improve the state of games criticism. I don’t see games analysis as a replacement for games criticism, but rather as an important subset of the broader discussion. What sets game analysis apart from other forms of games writing is that it acknowledges the following three points.

*Game designer, Dan Cook, succinctly covered many of these problems in his essay, A blunt critique of games criticism. I would recommend reading his article to further understand some of the issues this book attempts to address.

#1 Games are Complicated

Video games are sophisticated systems of rules which employ the expertise of art, maths, science, architecture, literature, psychology, and cinematography, just to name a few. The book, over 450 pages of critical analysis on what many would consider a relatively simple game, more than validates this point. The complicated, interdisciplinary nature of video games makes talking about them with any authority quite difficult.

#2 Thus, A Clear Language is Needed to Critically Discuss Them

Some games writers speak of this magical day when the language needed to critically discuss video games will appear out of thin air and they’ll finally be able to talk about the medium with real depth. While these people are off daydreaming, others have been hard at work making such language a reality. Tadhg Kelly’s What Games Are is one such example. For this book, I’ve used the work of Richard Terrell. Richard runs the Critical Gaming blog and for the past 5 years has been developing a critical vocabulary in which to understand games. His Critical Glossary contains more than 450 terms and is backed up with thousands of pages dedicated to theory and examples from popular games. If you’re interested enough in games to buy this book, then Richard’s blog should immediately strike you as profound. I urge you to take a look before digging into the main analysis.

#3 No Evidence, No Authority

The most confounding and inexcusable aspect of games criticism, and games writing in general, is the lack of evidence to support a writer’s claims. Without evidence there is only opinion, and if there’s anything we’ve learnt from the internet, it’s that anyone can, and does, have an opinion. Evidence grants authority. It proves that the writer isn’t just spouting out ideas, but has a considered and balanced argument. In the very least, it shows the reader how the writer came to form their opinion. In fairness, many writers do provide some form of evidence in their writing, but it’s often vague, insufficient, or never properly scrutinised. Saying that game X is boring because levels Y and Z are poorly designed doesn’t tell the reader how levels Y and Z are poorly designed or how two poorly designed levels can make an entire game boring, never mind what “boring” means. The more extensive the evidence and thorough the explanation of the connection between the evidence and the argument, the more credible the article.

(This is why FAQ writers and Let’s Players have a leg up over game critics. FAQ writers because they’ve already written extensively about the game system, and therefore have it all mapped out in their head. Let’s Players because they have the evidence right in front of them, which makes it easy to shoot off a quick observation in context).

When evidence is utterly void, the only way to grab reader interest is to inflate opinion. Thus, we see posts with titles like “Is Zelda Skyward Sword the worst game in the series?”, backed up with a few paragraphs of fashionable ignorance. Forget about looking at the dungeons, inventory, story, or game structure.

In Rethinking Games Criticism all assertions are backed up with evidence and detailed explanations. My opinions are downplayed to the point that I don’t even reveal if I like Wario Land 4 or not. The goal is to interpret the game for what it is; not to talk about my feelings. I’ve chosen this super objective approach so that the book acts as a polarising alternative to the over-abundance of opinion out there. I want the nuances of the game design to set the agenda, because it’s these details that define the game.

Of all the games one could write a book about, don’t you find it a little odd that I chose Wario Land 4? I could have written about a Bioshock or an Uncharted. Instead, I chose a simple game with a child-friendly veneer released more than 11 years ago on a portable platform—talk about irrelevant! This decision was intentional. Along with making a case for games analysis, I also want to challenge three aspects of the game enthusiast community:

•  The games press’s lack of enthusiasm for portable games and games for children.
• The general stigma of playing and writing about old games.
• The focus on games which emphasise ideas over interactivity (i.e. Bioshock and Journey) by writers of games criticism.

So there you have it: my ulterior motive is revealed and you’re free to press on to the first chapter. One final word though. I’ve spent the past 2 years cramming every bit of observation and insight into this book. This will make it a challenging read at times, but I encourage you to stick with it. By the end, I’m sure that you’ll have grown your understanding of game design and be able to further appreciate the level of craftsmanship that goes into these wonderful, interactive works of art.

Daniel Johnson

Recently I was contacted by Jayne Gackenbach about her recent book, Play Reality: How Videogames Are Changing EVERYTHING, which she co-wrote with her son Teace. Jayne is an established researcher in lucid dreaming and states of conciousness. Teace is a “gamer” and author of several books. Play Reality is broken into 9 chapters, each roughly 8 pages long, covering topics like game addiction, gamification, video game violence and the effects of games on our health. The dreams chapter in particular draws on Jayne’s more recent research on conciousness, realities and video games. Jayne provides the academic credibility while Teace presents it in a more accessible format with anecdotes, language and references to appeal to players.

Jayne’s intention is to bridge the divide between players and academics in order to equip players with the tools they need to understand and stick up for video games, particularly given the media’s often twisted and unfavourable portrayal of the medium. For this reason she contacted me and offered a free copy of the book. I read the it, gave her some feedback and there’s been a healthy dialogue back and forth. Since I haven’t written anything original for the blog in such a long time, and my feedback fits snuggly alongside the other book reviews on the site, I’ve decided to post my impressions on the site. It’s refreshing to engage in such an open dialogue with another writer, so I thank Jayne for that.

General Thoughts

Teace writes very clearly and has a strong, generally-likeable and occasionally humorous personality. The topics are well chosen and covered with the right amount of depth. Although in some chapters the evidence isn’t as conclusive so as to be so assertive. I found the last few chapters of the book to be better than the first few. Perhaps this is an indication of my own editing style, but I think the book could have been reduced to maybe 60 pages and still retained it’s meaning and personality.

One thing which bothered me about the book is Teace’s intentionally-juvenile, slang-filled “gamer” voice which is generally great, but sometimes irritating. It’s not so much the writing that bothers me, but what it implies about people who play games. Personally, I don’t like the “hardcore” and “casual” gamer labels, let alone “gamer”. These terms are inaccurate and contradict each other all the time. As is mentioned in the second chapter, the average age of players is 37 and the population of players is wide and diverse, including a large proportion of girls. I think that his gamer voice, like too much of the discussion around games, plays to and validates this “hardcore gamer” group which is only a minority.

Chapters

I liked the introduction a lot, it has a great personality and sets up the premise well. I didn’t read the chapter on the history of games, because I’ve read a few books on this before.

The culture chapter feels very much like clichéd academic writing and the gamer language doesn’t quite meld as well as it does in later chapters. It seems like the academic stuff is paraphrased and then the gamer terms are interjected in between the paraphrasing: they don’t meld together. MMORPGS are always used in academia to validate the study of games which I’ve always found frustrating as anyone who plays games knows that mainstream games are where all the interesting developments are happening. By primarily focusing MMOs/Second Life, I’ve always felt that academia has never properly acknowledged video games.

For the addiction article, the examples from China and Korea are dwelled on too long before the real problem is identified, that these people live in highly-stressed societies. So, for a good part of the chapter, I didn’t think that much was being said.

The violence chapter is much better. A few good examples are provided, Teace used the No Russia mission which is refreshingly relevant and then the conclusion of temporary aggression is promptly reached with suitable examples.

I love the 3rd quote at the start of the perception chapter. Again, Teace’s Splinter Cell example grounds the topic with the audience. The points in this chapter aren’t as strong as the later ones. This feels like a minor chapter which leads into the later discussion on dreams, conciousness and gamification.

The serious games/gamification chapter provides a great overview of serious games with suitable examples that highlight a surprising amount of issues. I liked 2 of the points made about gamification 1) that the future is always in the hands of the affluent and just needs to be spread 2) the generally theorising of the way games could be integrated into our society. The former got me thinking a lot and the ideas are well conveyed. However, I felt that there wasn’t enough writing on the negatives of gamification which seems to often be discussed most amongst players and developers. For example, New Labor’s reforms to improve the UK’s public service in the late 90s are an example of gamification that turned out to be a catastrophe. Artificial rewards can be extremely dangerous and I was surprised the book didn’t cover it more.

The health chapter was fine. Personally, I would have been more interested if it was focused on finger strain, sight and sleep as I think most players already know that moderate play isn’t bad for them.

The dream chapter has a lot of little insight into dreaming which I found interesting, like the way we usually dream before we wake up and how our brain can’t determine the difference. However, the research and assertions, which is primarily focused on just one example; at least in this book, are quite dubious. I’m not sure if it’s because of a lack of research or just the way you presented it in the book. (Jayne has assured me that her other research explores this more thoroughly and suggested that I plug some of her more recent work here)

The final chapter had me thinking the most after reading the book. Sure, the examples are a bit out there and I don’t agree with all the predictions, but the examples of the 6th sense tech from MIT carries this chapter in a big way.

Overall

Play Reality covers it’s topics well, with enough depth and clarity while still appealing to a wide reader base. For players looking for an entry point into many of the key issues surrounding games at the moment and a peak into the academia, this book comes recommended. If you’re like me and already familiar with the key ideas, there’s still some good insights. Some of which I haven’t been able to free from mind and may eventually make their way into blog posts.

Sonic The Hedgehog: Triple Trouble is a once-off collectors edition comic, part of Archie Comic’s long-running line of Sonic comics which my news agency imported from the states during the mid-nineties. It was also, thanks to some convincing from a friend, my very first comic. After Triple Trouble, I bought another 6 issues before my quiet country town newsagent stopped stocking the line altogether, effectively killing off my interest in comics with one fellow swoop.

Skip forward to the end of last year and my brother is placing an order through Amazon on my behalf for 3 of Alan Moore’s esteemed graphic novels; my interest has re-emerged. Having thoroughly enjoyed the selection of imported comics, I walk into Adelaide comic book store Pulp Fiction Comics in search for the next series to invest in. Yet despite still being a self-confessed comics newbie, the trans-media pollination ensures that the environment isn’t an unfamiliar one. World of Warcraft, The Legend of Zelda, Dead Space and Prototype are just a sampling of the familiar brands I see on the store shelves. As I walk through the store, trying to gain ideas, my mind drifts back to Sonic and I’m reminded of the trans-media connection which has always existed between games and comics.

Trans-media Storytelling: A Definition

Trans-media storytelling is a concept first put forward by academic Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide to define storytelling told over multiple forms of media. The crux of the idea is that each form of media supports the others and provides the reader with different, medium-specific viewpoints in which to interpret the text as a whole. Naturally, these types of texts are rich in content and artistic styles, commanding a dedicated user base who are required to spend more money to invest in the entire narrative web. In this regard, building a trans-media franchise is like building a universe.

With consumers accessing their news and entertainment through a range of different avenues (physical purchasing, iTunes, Netflix, Gamefly, RSS feed) on a range of different platforms (mobile phone, TV, MP3 player, game console, PC) it’s become more difficult for news and entertainment companies to commodify their target audience. Their markets are fragmenting due to the enormous amount of choice that new technology has given consumers. Establishing, or extending out to become, a trans-media franchise is therefore a successful way to connect audiences spread over various avenues and mediums, therefore reclaiming corporate control over the market. As can be seen by the likes of The Matrix, Twilight or Pokemon, the financial payback and consumer loyalty in these investments are worthwhile. In this regard, building a trans-media franchise is like building the next phenomena.

Two Points of Contention

And here we hit an enormous point of contention: how do we distinguish a trans-media franchise from a series of adaptions? Well, adaptions, say that of a comic to a video game or a book to a film, do not necessitate reading and interpreting texts over multiple media—and thereby through the lens of each respective medium—as there is no fragmentation. It’s all the same story, just in different forms. Franchises which use this approach to storytelling are what we’d call a media franchise and they constitutes the majority of cross-medium production. Scott Pilgrim which has had its narrative adapted from a comic book to a movie and video game is an example of a media franchise.

The Matrix, however, is a trans-media franchise as Enter The Matrix, The Animatrix and the anthology of comics all support the viewing of the films by providing context on characters and backstory. Consumers who only watch the movie are given a rather abrupt introduction to characters like Niobe and Ghost in The Matrix: Reloaded who first make their appearance as protagonists in the game Enter the Matrix. In fact, this aspect was a point of criticism for movie critics, yet fans who’d played the game didn’t find the introduction to be jarring at all. The Animatrix, particularly The Second Renaissance Part 1 and Part 2 shorts explain how the world as we currently understand it was overtaken by machines. These parts of The Animatrix, as an example, give credibility to the origins of the series as layed down in The Matrix and support the ideologies in the characters in Zion prevalent in Matrix: Revolutions. Just by these few examples, we can form an understanding of the narrative complexity at work. In this sense, trans-media franchising is the process of creating a universe or a phenomena, whereas media franchising is about transferring one narrative to other mediums.

A Case Study (Past-Present): Resident Evil

There are a number of key video game franchises which have evolved into trans-media franchises (Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros.), but, hindering the definition, also include straight out adaptions as part of their cannon, making it difficult to classify these franchises into one school or the other.

Let’s use Resident Evil as a model to better understand this dilemma. There are Resident Evil games, books and films, with the games forming the central narrative. All of the books bar two (Resident Evil: Caliban Cove and Resident Evil: Underworld) are based on the video games. Resident Evil: Caliban Cove and Resident Evil: Underworld support the events from the video games since they are side stories which flesh out the role of Rebecca Chambers and the Umbrella corporation respectively. However, several of the books (both adaptions and side stories) contradict details made within the video games (the location of Racoon City is often confused, for instance).

The relation to the films are equally complicated. Capcom claims that the live-action movies aren’t canonical, however story elements from the movies have found their way into the video games (thanks Cavia!). For example, Red Queen from Resident Evil (movie) was adapted into Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Furthermore, the recent CG film Resident Evil: Degeneration officially ties together the narrative threads between Resident Evil 4 and 5.

Even within the video game medium, the fundamental plot is still a bit of a blur. Side stories (Umbrella/Darkside Chronicles, Outbreak etc.) reference the plot of the main games, but rarely do the main games reciprocate the citations. This loosens the strings between each production, effectively illegitimising the credibility of the side narratives.

Since Resident Evil was never originally intended to be a franchise spanning multiple media, and such expansion has seemingly been driven by the profit motive, Resident Evil’s narrative has become severely mangled over the years. Alas, despite the messy story, I think it’s fair to claim that Capcom have created a universe with this property, which makes it one of gaming’s early and more significant trans-media franchises.

Awkward Growth

Resident Evil is unfortunately a pretty typical example of expanded narrative, or rather, the milking of a franchising for extra capital. For trans-media narratives to work properly keen commitment is required on behalf of publishers. It is a much better idea to begin with the intent of creating trans-media property and then acting on this principle. On the other hand though, creating an expansive narrative over several mediums is a risky proposition. Usually it’s only at the point when mass success is realised that introducing other media becomes a priority—even though the threads for added narrative haven’t been layed. The next game is an example of a production where the decision to become trans-media was made too late in the creative process but before the release of the initial product. That is, a step between a Resident Evil and a trans-media franchise built from the ground up.

A Case Study (Present): Dead Space

Although it has dissolved into a confused narrative mess, Dead Space is an example of a more genuine attempt at crafting a trans-media franchise, having decided to become trans-media from the outset. The problem with Dead Space though is that the original game was scripted before the 4 prequels which have subsequently preceded it and therefore the core narrative doesn’t acknowledge the later prequels. As a result, it’s hard to care much for the continuity without the narrative references to keep it in place. Furthermore, each of the prequels tell fairly similar tales of survivors trying to escape from the effects of the Red Marker, only the recently released novel, Martyr deviates from this clichéd perspective.

With Dead Space 2 set it arrive later this year it seems that EA are willing to keep this trans-media thing going with a new graphic novel Dead Space: Retribution and Dead Space: Ignition, a text-adventure for PSN and XBLA. Considering that these properties have been developed before the game, it should be interesting to see how the narrative between the games hold up.

Conclusion

Trans-media storytelling is inherently messy. Ideal fan fodder, but perhaps too much commitment for those of us out of the loop. Part of the issue with trans-media originating in the video games medium is the lack of foresight and planning in creating a universe from the start. Furthermore, the profit motive has often overrode narrative interests as the imperative for bridged storytelling. The results, some of which we’ve highlighted, are evidence of multiple industries still finding their feet in dealing which such a large task. Yet, as we’re seeing from the improvements from Resident Evil to Dead Space and now franchises like Red Faction where the developers are overtly declaring their intents to form a trans-media narrative (with approval of Jenkins, no less), trans-media storytelling is being taken more seriously. Certainly much more seriously than 15 years ago when video game mascots were being licensed out into comic books and other products without much added thought.

The language centre I work at in China fields us teachers out to local schools as part of what I largely consider to be a marketing exercise in bringing more students to the school. For previous years the actual teaching side has been primarily stock language games there to fill the quota of time. The external classes were never really taken seriously and there wasn’t much effort by upper management or teachers to extend these classes beyond their transparent role as business pitches. Fortunately, in recent months, some of the senior teachers put together a new program and now we cover the skill of argumentation through weekly classroom debates. It’s certainly a big improvement and one of my favourite classes of the week.

The initial lesson is a teacher-orientated push through the basic debate structure with lots of scaffolding and puppetry of students as the teacher does their best to cover the basic structure through demonstration in a tight 40-minute time frame (as well as basic introductions). From then on, the kids have a one week reprieve, debating for every lesson thereafter. Students themselves are free to choose the topic while the local English teacher chooses the speakers and assists them in their speeches during regular lessons. After each debate (20 minutes or so), the foreign teacher provides a critique, gives advice and focuses on the topic for the week (presentation skills, rebuttals, etc). This model is followed for every lesson.

The idea behind the debates is that they act as a means to introduce the students to western ideology of reason as well as to improve their oral language and presentation skills. The latter 2 are important in bolstering the school’s reputation as a foreign language school for when some students will later participate in public speaking competitions. The former is a skill that they can’t get from their standard Chinese education and an important one to have as students in these schools are known to transfer to overseas high schools.

The fatal flaw in this design is the integration between the local and international teachers. Each speaker in the debate needs to speak for between 2-3 minutes, however students have been hitting on average 40 seconds and at the shortest maybe 8. Obviously, such short length compromises the teacher’s lesson and in fact their very presence. The bond tying these 2 sides together is that student’s performances in the debates will make up part of their English grade. Yet even with this measure in place, the local teachers have not been pulling their weight, as a result leaving students to write their speeches in their own free time (not even for homework!). As you can imagine, with Chinese students overworked as it is, this leads to a few sketchy sentences on a scrappy piece of paper come the beginning of class. This output by the students, while often great considering, is indicative of the lack of teacher support on their side of the fence.

Personally, I’ve tried to remedy this issue by providing students with supplementary materials which reinforce the structure of debates and the nature of rebuttals. Rebuttals are the trickiest part of the course as it demands that either the students think on their feet or pre-plan answers to possible points made by the opposition. Thinking on your feet is hard enough for a native speaker to do mid-debate let alone a speaker of a second language. And having the students consider the points of the opposing team in their own time before the debate is unfair given the lack of time allocated to debate preparation by local teachers.

As the classes carry on, the focal point for each class has moved away from basic presentation skills and into more finer points such as rebuttals, acknowledging weakness in an argument and using the floor time (audience participation) to your advantage. The tuition is now firmly on critical thinking and for this the students need more support. In order to push the students towards critical thinking, I’ve constructed a model designed to do 3 things: elaborate on ideas and reasoning, present the benefits of rebuttals to an argument and reveal how I calculate the winners of the debates. You’d be very much correct if you preempt me by assuming that the model is that of a video game. Below is my lesson plan/outline for teaching students about debates using video game systems as a model.

Debating Game – Lesson Plan

Preparation

At the start of the class I elicit all the information in the picture below and write it on the board as such. This visual image gives the chairperson something to work from as well as informing the other students about the debate’s proceedings.

Setting the Context

(Teacher’s dialogue is in quotes)

“Who likes video games, raise your hand?”

“Cool, now in a video game what do you want?” (Answer: points)

“Well, a debate is just like a video game. So in a debate, how do you get points?”

The Finer Points of Ideas

(Students will likely make a few suggestions, try to steer them towards proposing ideas).

“You get points in 2 ways, the first is to say ideas. So….”

At this point I reference the team list I write up on the board before the debate and model examples based on the student’s performance. For the sake of the article, the topic of the debate is “Students should bring their own lunch to school”.

Elicit a point made by the first speaker of the proposition (Jake).

Elicit whether the proposed idea was a good one and how many points the students would give it. Ask the students how they get more points from a single argument/idea. Fill in this breakdown of an idea based on the students answers (may need to just explain this outright):

Idea

• state the idea
• reasons (why?)
• depth (reason linking)
• examples

Establish that each idea needs the above parts. The more of this supporting the idea, the more points the students get for the idea. “State the idea” is fairly straight forward, so too are reasons and examples. Do spend time to reaffirm this with the students by modelling with a proposed point (if the speaker’s point didn’t have reasons, examples etc, then elicit from students). By depth, I am referring to the way ideas link to reasons which link to more reasons which in turn link back to the main argument. For example:

“Students should bring their own lunch to school as each student’s food and dietary requirements are different – if students eat the food most suitable to them then they will be more healthy overall – a healthy school is a good school and will lead to better grades and a stronger outside reputation for the school – this will improve the lives of everyone at the school and is ultimately a good thing”.

Model another student’s proposed ideas (one with more reason, depth and examples) and highlight how this student would be rewarded more points. Write the number of points for next to each student. So far the board should look like this:

Reviewing Presentation Skills

“Now, there is another way to get more points, what is that?”

Students will probably mention presentation skills at which point write this on the board also under the heading “Points”. Quickly elicit a list of things that need to do when speaking and write this as a list on the board.

Rebuttals

(Students probably won’t catch on to the next point-scoring method, rebuttals, so just go ahead and take the lead).

“The other way to win the debate is through destroying the other team”.

Model the word “destroy”. You can do this by drawing an explosion on the board or pretending to break something in the classroom. I prefer the latter.

“So, how can you destroy the other team?”

(Students probably still won’t know, but let them try).

“You reply to what they say. Reply, what is a reply?”

Walk up to a student and ask “how are you?”. Let them answer and then say that their answer is a reply. That is, one person asks a question, the other replies. Drill the word “reply” orally.

Draw a line from the first speaker from the opposition (Cindy) to the first speaker on the proposition who you’d previously modelled (Jake). Tell the students that the opposition makes a reply and tell them the reply. For the sake of our example:

“Although students have their own dietary requirements, allowing them to bring their own food to school does not necessarily mean that what they bring will be ideal for their health situation. On the other hand, what the school provides covers the basic and most important nutrition for students.”

After this, ask the students whether they feel that the proposition’s idea that was replied to is now stronger or weaker. They should say weaker. Then remove a few points from the first speaker of the proposition and add a point or 2 to the first speaker of the opposition. Take another student’s point which had no rebuttal and get the class to think of a response to it. Once the explanation is over, write the word rebuttal under the arrow and drill orally. Add the word “rebuttals” to the list of point-scoring methods.

How the Teacher Chooses a Winner

Quickly draw in the rest of the points, briefly mentioning the ideas and rebuttals on either side, crossing out and adding points as you go (you can take what the students said in their debate and add if you need; if they’ve made good arguments then draw on them). Add all the points up and show a tally for either side. This demonstrates how the teacher chooses the winners of the debate.

Finally, the teacher can review, asking the students to recall the way to score points and score effectively.

Conclusion

If you read this blog then you know that video games are fantastic educators; they’d simply fail to be enjoyable and thereby sell if they weren’t. So all I’ve really done hear is presented debates as a game, incorporating the same devices that video games use to educate players and create goals (a running scoreboard, specifying player objectives and clearly highlighting the rules and means to win). Within this model, the trickier parts of the debate such as rebuttals, depth and reason are presented with much greater clarity.

Firstly, I think it is dangerous to use a subjective adjective like “meaningful” in discussing games. Anyone can find anything to be meaningful. It would be better to discuss the game in regards to design and not include one’s ideas which are external to the game. This is something I have mentioned in my tweets recently.

By meaningful, I think you mean interplay. Your quotes from Rules of Play all allude to interplay but are put in a complicated way and fail to sharply address what the relationship is between reactions and gameplay. When you say things in your own words or use examples it’s clear that there is some confusion in your understanding. Here is a clearer quote for you of how games are meaningful:

“interplay is where actions and elements in a game aren’t means to an end, but fluid opportunities that invite the player to play around with the changing situation”

You can read a full description here with examples.

And one by me here

You’ll note your quote on the descriptive definition (slide) is similar to the quote I use in my post, but it goes a little further to add the “fluid opportunities that invite the player to play around with the changing situation”. Meaningful play is not simply that games react to the player (as your quote in the initial slide suggests), it is instead that the reactions lead to more interactions (interplay). And the more interplay there is between mechanics the greater depth and “meaningfulness” there is.

Your quotes exclude or aren’t clear on this point and so too is your understanding. For example, in the slide on the descriptive definition your own words say that the push and pull reaction between mechanics (interplay) allow us to understand the mechanics which are inside the game. This doesn’t say anything about the way reactions work to open opportunities for more interaction.

The evaluative definition is also very nebulous and doesn’t answer it’s own point . I would question your quote by then asking “and what is that then?” or “so what actually occurs?”. This quote is like saying, “chocolate ice cream is what happens when chocolate and ice cream come together” instead of “chocolate icecream is chocalate flavoured ice-cream”.

Your words here are again not so relevant to the quote.

The discernable part and what you then say about it irks me. How well the games makes the unfolding of interplay apparent is not a measure of how much interplay there is in a game. Putting it another way, lucidity!=a part measure of “meaningfullness”. And you certainly can’t use it as a quotient to compare with other games. Furthermore, how can we even compare the levels of interaction in an interactive medium with mediums that have no interaction as you say?

Intergrated is all fine though.

In the bullet point slide it’s clear that you are tripping up on this needlessly complex language.

The noughts and crosses board is actually a mirror and the pieces are halves. Not sure if you noticed that. In this example, you fail to discuss interplay and “discernability”. What you want to say is that when placing a piece on the board, wherever placed, this changes the game for the other player as they must alter their strategy every turn. This interplay is discernable through the representation of the pieces on the board in regards to matching three.

In your Tetris example you again don’t discuss “discernabilty” in regards to the outcome of the interaction/interplay/the terms and conditions of “meaningful play” (ok, no more “meaningful play” from here!) . That is, when you destroy blocks through making a tetris you see new block formations open up which creates new and different opportunities to interact (via your block placement). This is readily discernable as the player can see the visual structure of the collection of blocks and what happens when they remove them and the blocks rearrange.

Personally, I wouldn’t have used chess as the 3rd example as the interplay is similar to noughts and crosses (players pipping players with the position of their pieces). But more so as it actually subverts this whole notion of discernability through the “unknown implications” which you back-peddle on. You need to be clear and say that the fact that I move a chess piece and then physically release it says that I have completed the action. The releasing of the piece represents the end of the “move mechanic” and allows the players to therefore intepret moving as a mechanical feature of the system of rules that is chess.

What you say about the environment (level design?) isn’t so much about the environment itself as much as it is the things in them and how they effect the existing rule system. What you mean here is counterpoint. Again, another quote and another link:

“Counterpoint, in gaming, is a word for the way gameplay develops past optimization by layering interactive elements into a single gameplay experience. When each layer influcences, interacts, and enhances the functions/gameplay of each other layer the gameplay emerges into a medium of expression that reflects the individuality of a player and the dynamics that reflect the complexity of the world we live in.”

Basically, the way elements of games (enemies, time limits, exploding barrels) create ripples in the interplay. And here is an example.

The Killzone 2 example is a killer, but it should have been under the other heading as it has nothing to do with the environment/counterpoint and is actually about discernability (clarity is a better word, I think) and how it cushions the reload mechanic. Using the word “consequence” is a bad choice.

The Uncharted example is again a good example but it is more about camera angles as validation for chunks of gameplay than counterpoint which you asserted as “environment” at the start of this slide.

The last part on this slide about breaking rules makes no sense to me as your 2 examples weren’t about rules, but rather mechanics and camera.

The Mario slide is utterly confusing and full of holes. You ought to talk about the way the fire flower allows Mario to gun down enemies, Super Mario can break blocks and small Mario walk through tight places. These are all good examples of the integration (level design and mechanics work together).

However, I don’t like this term as tracking the relationship between mechanics, interplay and loads of counterpoint and level design is impossible to do without generalisation. Also certain parts have strong and weak integration respective of their strong/weak roles in the system of rules and mechanics.

I grew up playing Japanese games and despite the continual global popularity of western games in recent years, I still haven’t really formed a strong taste for them yet (there are exceptions, of course). In fact I only seem to be gravitating even more closer to Japanese games, particularly with the forth-coming release of the 3DS. So, as with my prior phobia of PC games, I’ve decided to take the issue head-on and the first step in dealing with a problem is to talk out the situation. Therefore, I present a Japanese game fan’s interpretation of the nichiest of all western-made games; the western RPG. Later, after downing some of the genre’s classic staples, I will return to this piece and re-address my current suppositions, some of which are obviously a little ignorant (which is the point really).

Western Ideals of Freedom and Democracy

Despite the degradation of democracy over the past few decades due to capitalism and the centralisation of power, westerners still believe in it either as a virtue or a dogma, which goes to say that this large chunk of our ideology permeates into everything we produce, including our video games too.

Many westerner games, not just RPGs, run with this quality of freedom, which leads to more player-driven experiences. From what I can gather there are two main parts to this: the first being the option of rolling one’s own character (therefore assigning themselves to a customisable playstyle), the second is dialogue options which allow players to steer the course of content (choose your own adventure). JRPGs tend to be much more rigid by comparison, offering a grandiose director-controlled narrative . To be honest, customising the avatar and directing my own experience is something I haven’t had too much exposure to, so I’m not all that comfortable with it. Simply put, when I’ve comes across these options in some games, I just choose the less shit option and stick with that.

“High” Contexts

Science fiction and Tolkien-esque fantasy, are popular themes for western RPGs, and to be honest, this scares me a little. From what I can judge, the fiction in these games is inspired by the respective books this brand of fiction is rooted in, and I’ve always had a phobia that I will never understand the science fiction/high fantasy niches. Maybe interacting with these worlds through games will act as a point of access.

Too Much Text and Reading

Lately I’ve clued onto the fact that if not actively engaged in the media I consume then it just turns me off. I suspect that video games have instilled this taste in interactive media and utter boredom with anything else. Consider these examples of consumption habits over the past 6 months:

Movies

Faust, Nosferatu, Metropolis (German, black and white expressionist films)

• When I watch these movies I try to make sense of the metaphors of light and shadow which define this era of cinema

Inception

• It’s like cracking a puzzle as the layers of dream states pile up. Also, the narrative folds and bends, trying to connect the strings while watching is a great pleasure.

Books

• basically I just read books on cultural and social theory

Comics

Watchmen

• I would literally spend a few minutes staring at each individual panel trying to understand the juxtaposition of images and what they symbolise within both the context of the story and in the real culture pertinent to Watchmen‘s theoretical extension of the Nixon era. Then I would go and research the reoccurring themes (vigilante culture, Nixon, America’s relationship with Russia, the cold war, nuclear armourment) to better realise the world of Watchmen.

Music

Massive Attack Discography

-I’ve been listening to Massive Attack for a few years and really dig the thematic elements of their music. Their lyrics are minimal and almost invariably abstract, which allow the interpretations to work as an open slate of theories. I tend to stew over the lyrics and composition to figure out what each song is trying to say and how each song interconnect.

I don’t dig fiction that I can’t get my teeth into. The fact that the player interfaces with characters through menus and text conversation, makes me weary that there will be too much reading and not enough “playing”. And of all things that cut off my enthusiasm to critically mine a game, reading sits right at the top. The games appear to be very rich in context, so it would be disappointing if text cut the thread to some potentially compelling narrative.

Limiting “Real” Choices Which Could Instead Happen Through Gameplay

Dialogue options, their reductiveness in simplifying life down into a few binary decisions really cheeses me off. Why not give the player a toolset of potential interactions which would grant them much wider degrees of expression than 3-4 options from a menu? I guess it comes down to the way these choices are implemented and the weight they have alongside other forms of expression.

The Journal

The next part of this project will be a journal covering my observations of Interplay’s post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout. Stay tunned!