Lonely Hearts

I returned to my roots this weekend in more ways than one! I spent an embarrassing chunk of time replaying (and beating!) the entirety of Ys I & II -- man, I loved that game so much when I was a kid that I have no idea whether the awesomeness I associate it with now and the fact I had such a great time with it is because of nostalgia or because it was really, really that great. I'll have to explore that a little more later.

Second, this week's Aberrant Gamer column goes back to my dating sim niche. Playing Harvest Moon more than a bit lately, I noticed that I could easily predict what bachelors and bachelorettes would be available. Harvest Moon in particular tends to recycle characters, subtly and knowingly, even when they have variations on their appearances and names (this sounds like it'd be a terrible thing, but it's actually kinda fun). But beyond the series itself, I noticed that there's a broader archetypal pattern to the gals and guys "available" to you in dating sims, just as there are in hardcore hentai games, so I decided to have a little stab at analyzing What Your Dating Sim Choice Says About You.

All the stuff I've been doing lately means I am not, like many people I know, in the LittleBigPlanet beta. I can wait at least until retail for that one -- since I'm rarely big on multiplayer anything, and prefer structure, and find that "making things in a video game" holds my attention for all about ten minutes, I'm suspicious that I'll fall into the "it's cool, but not my kinda thing" camp.

I'm also sort of leery of groupthink in general. It leads people to enthuse that Braid is super deep just because everyone else has said so, without discovering that fact for themselves -- or worse, it leads them to shut up if they disagree. I had a dinner conversation lately with some fairly special industry folk who, after a moment of hesitation, all shyly admitted they didn't "get" Braid and didn't see what all the fuss was about -- and also said they'd been afraid to admit this because they were afraid it made them "stupid" in the face of the group sentiment. These were all absolutely brilliant people, too.

And I think the same kind of groupthink might be leading to a little bit of over-hype for LBP -- I've seen it a couple of times at events and stuff, and not that it isn't legitimately exciting, but I confess to feeling peer-pressured to be "really awed and excited" about it when I'm merely "interested." So yes, I do plan on having a go at LBP myself for sure -- wouldn't miss it -- but as to whether it's the Second Coming or not, I'll actually wait until I play it at length to decide.

Anyhow, playing a retro RPG and writing about aberrant gaming was a nice refresher for me after a heavy week of survival horror and Silent Hill: Homecoming. I'm gratified, like I've said, to read long threads on forums and stuff to see there's quite a chunk of players really enjoying the game, but it was still just a little bit lonely last week being one of the only reviewers to really like it (1UP and UGO reviewed it fairly well, but those are the only ones I know of).

SVGL's Mailbox: Discussing Braid

A friend of mine (who plays piano in an awesome band you ought to listen to, by the way) recently asked me why I haven't written so much about Braid. Well, the answer to that is because I think I've made it fairly evident my strong opinion of the title -- notice, by the way, that we're having an impromptu David Hellman Week at SVGL?

And really, I feel like my critical peers are pretty universally agreed on it -- it's immersive, it's innovative, it marries gameplay with narrative message, it's aesthetically pleasant, and I think the fact that it represents one designer's fairly pure, unadulterated vision is a great thing to stand behind.

But I recently had an email convo with another friend of mine, Sean, who is a designer, and he had something of a different opinion -- he feels we lose a learning opportunity when we (both media and designers) decide a game is "perfect" and refuse to criticize it just because it's done great things. So I got his permission to reprint some portions of our email exchange, and I'd be interested in the opinions of the SVGL army, too.

From: Sean
To: Leigh
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I hear a lot of comments in the press and from critics about how original Braid is, and what a brilliant design, and I don't entirely agree. I'm not saying it's a bad game, but I think it's being a little overrated. I'm not going to get nitpicky about the same little things that every game has problems with, I'm just interested in Braid's high-level design decisions. So here are a handful of things I don't see the press talking about that I think about while playing.

If I had to tell someone quickly what Jonathan Blow is trying to do with games, I'd say he is pushing for stronger integration of theme, narrative, and gameplay. He emphasizes (though I haven't heard him use this word) a holistic approach to design, where every aspect of the game is intentionally planned to enforce the overall theme.

So for me, Braid makes a weird decision right from the beginning -- the explicit narrative is told in text, optionally, between worlds. Why? It doesn't get rolled into the level design directly, and what is going on per level has very little to do with the narrative itself. It feels like an optional component to the game, which feels directly contrary to what Blow purports to be doing. I'm not saying that I have a better solution, and I'm not saying that it's worse than any other game on the market that uses cutscenes; but, it doesn't seem to fit into Blow's stated goal for his game, and so I don't understand the decision.

Second, the overall gameplay is a questionable choice. Braid is a puzzle game at it's core. It has some platforming elements, but the real trick is solving the puzzles to get each puzzle piece. Specifically, Braid is a logic-puzzle game, where the player's goal is to figure out which sequence of actions get him the desired goal. I have two problems with logic puzzle games. The first is, there is no replayability. Once I've solved a puzzle I'm done with it. The second is that if the puzzle is not obvious in the first few seconds, it becomes a game of, "What was the designer thinking?" And if you're stuck, that's not a fun game.

On that note, Portal has the same problem but since I never got stuck for more than about 10 seconds, it just never bothered me.

Contrast this with Chess, or Go, or Checkers, or any number of familiar games. In the video game world we have Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Ninja Gaiden, Mario, and any number of other games. These games fit into a lot of different categories, but the thing they all have in common is giving the player a set of rules (a gameplay space) and allowing him to explore that gameplay space to improve his skills. To me, this is the real strength of games (not just video games). Give the player a skill set, and allow him to improve at that skillset.

Going right back to Raph Koster's "theory of fun," learning and improving at this skillset is what makes us enjoy games in the first place. The problem I see with puzzle games is that their skillset is limited (a fixed number of puzzles ship with the game). Other types of games have the potential for much longer-lasting fun, and along the way as I learn the skillset I can watch myself succeed or fail and understand why. In a puzzle game, failure means, "failing to figure out the designer's thinking," which is less fun or interesting than a lack of skill on my part that I can try to improve upon in the next attempt.

Ok, those are my high-level questions about the game. I have some lower-level questions, too, but they are less important. All that said, I appreciate what Blow is trying to do. It's a conversation we need to be having in game development and we're not having it often enough.

Too often when I send videos of Blow's talks to developers I know, I get the response, "Yeah, so? Most of that is obvious." And my response is always, ok, maybe it's obvious -- but no one's doing it. At least he's trying, and at least he's talking about it, and he's willing to throw his work out there to the world for us all to judge.

From: Leigh
To: Sean
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You raise a good point about Braid. What I think is phenomenal about it is the environment, firstly -- it really does create a mood and feeling, and what I think is so admirable about that is the way the quintessential game mechanic -- you can go back and fix things -- meshes with the main narrative, the message of forgiveness.

But I wholly agree with you that the idea of it being presented through text is a little bit dichotomous. I mean, I love Braid, I love what it stands for and I love the experience of playing it, but I'm not sitting here saying it's the second coming of christ (like Portal is).

Your criticism regarding the logic puzzles though, might be a matter of your taste. Not every game's replayable -- most books, for example, are not re-readable infinitely, but that doesn't take away from their experiential value. If you watch a movie twice you don't necessarily get a different experience each time, but that doesn't mean people don't enjoy seeing their favorite movies over and over.

[Once again, header art by David Hellman -- hey David, email me if I should stop posting it! <3]

[UPDATE: Freelance designer Charles Joseph Pratt points us to his blog post in which he largely agrees with Sean.]

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

If you believe those ludicrous sorts of books marketed aggressively toward females age 20-40, you need only "speak your wishes into the universe" to have them answered. Apparently the universe has heard me in my last post, because this morning Gamasutra has some relievingly honest thoughts from Braid designer Jon Blow about why he wishes there were fewer Xbox Live Arcade certification requirements.

He also says he probably will never make a sequel to Braid, because he doesn't care about money, and that he wasn't interested in releasing Braid dashboard theme stuff under the old layout because having a Burger King ad flashing in your face ruins immersion.

It's rather nice to hear someone talk about their experiences honestly without the fear of reprisal from suits. One of the advantages to being independent, one supposes.

And speaking of Braid, get up from the computer, turn on the Xbox and download it, seriously. Like, what's wrong with you? Shoo!

That's David Hellman's dreamy promo art for the game, by the way. I really love when people find a way to be genuine in this industry -- not just through what they say, but what they conceptualize and produce.

New, New, New

Nintendo's WiiWare launch yesterday is a bit easy to overlook, isn't it? I see it as a potentially significant thing, though. One of the things I find really exciting is that companies like Square Enix can think outside their usual parameters and develop ways to do more with smaller file sizes. If others can follow suit, my hope is that WiiWare becomes a new breeding ground for experimentation and innovation, like its siblings on XBLA and PSN have been (to some extent).

Speaking of innovation, please don't miss Lost Winds. Seriously.

It reminds me more of Knytt and Braid than anything I've ever played on a home console, the way that both of those feel like a natural evolution (and a subtle revolution) on the platformer, while incorporating art and music in a really polished, elegant way. In particular, you'll see that Lost Winds has the same seamless progression from high, open skies above ground to mysterious, deep underground spaces as Knytt does. And the way the narrative leads the player gradually and fluidly into the gameplay is exactly the kind of thing I've heard Jon Blow give lectures about.

So yeah. Don't back-shelf WiiWare just because you're not excited about FFCC: My Life As A King - which, by the way, I have not tried yet, but colleagues I trust tell me it's good, too. The way Lost Winds has shown up as a console downloadable with all of the simple elegance for which we usually turn to our indies feels like a really important event to me.

To put it plain, it's good. Buy it!