Steamscape

I’ve been hearing about Trine lately on Twitter, so I figured I’d get the free demo from Steam to check it out. As I was perusing Steam’s selection of free stuff, to my great surprise I saw the demo for Starscape was on there.  I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoyed Starscape, so now that the demo is available on Steam, you have no excuse not to try it. Plus, Moonpod are pretty awesome as a whole – they also developed Mr. Robot – and they’d probably appreciate your patronage.

Of course, you could always download the demo directly from Moonpod, whether you have Steam or not, or even buy it directly from them.

 

Citizen Kane? I’d rather have Star Trek

There’s a lot of talk about how videogames are yet to have their Citizen Kane, and how when this game is released, we will be elevated to the same degree of cultural relevance as film and literature. But, recently, I’ve begun wondering if that’s really what videogames need.

Citizen Kane is a feat of cinematographic mastery, but there are many games out there that use visuals, game mechanics, and narrative elements successfully.

Star Trek, on the other hand, while perhaps not as technically impressive, has cultural and future relevance. Each of the serials, from the first one in the 1960’s, explores themes and situations which echoed events of our world which were relevant at the time. The money quote, from Roddenberry himself, is:

“[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network.“

Another good one is:

Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive, almost radical political agenda reflective of the emerging sexualized counter-culture of the youth movement. However, his efforts were largely thwarted by the network’s concerns over marketability. Star Trek showed mankind what it might develop into, if only it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence.

Much of the current discussion on videogames focuses on finding the medium’s own voice with which to tell engaging stories, tying the mechanics of the game to the themes and plot. And while I agree that this is important, I believe it is also increasingly important to move away from the teenage power fantasies of violent domination of faceless enemies, and look for new stories to tell. To continue with the TV references, AAA titles seem to have fallen into the same rut as the A-team, where the formula of the game/show follows a formulaic pattern, with only the slightest variations in settings and situations to differentiate one episode from the next. To use another Wikipedia quote:

“[...]a recognizable and steady episode structure. In describing the ratings drop that occurred during the show’s fourth season, reviewer Gold Burt points to this structure as being a leading cause for the decreased popularity “because the same basic plot had been used over and over again for the past four seasons with the same predictable outcome.“

The major reason why I believe we should aspire to the Star Trek of videogames is that with videogames we can do more than just show people what the future could be like, we can put them there, let them see the sights, interact with the people, and experience what could be. We can craft all manner of utopian and dystopian alternate realities, and craft our games around these ‘what if?’ scenarios. The Fallout series is a great example in that the setting shows us what could have happened if we hadn’t reigned in nuclear escalation, if diplomatic relations between the nuclear superpowers had broken down and spiralled into, to use another quote, all-out thermonuclear Heck.

Apart from being relevant in the subject matter and themes it covers, Star Trek, as illustrated in the two quotes above, also faced similar problems to those we now face as game developers: funding and censorship.

Censorship is perhaps the thorniest of the two. While it would be great to develop a game with poignant social commentary on all manner of relevant issues – unless we are very careful, or apply massive doses of saccharine -  to subjects like sexuality, gender violence, bigotry and other current social woes, our game will be whacked over the head with the AO rating, which tends to be the equivalent of  a death sentence in the current day and age. There are ways of circumventing the retail ostracising of such a game, but unless major download services like Steam and the like welcome such titles chances are such a game will see limited distribution, commercial failure, and set us back quite a number of years. The other issue, funding, is an equally formidable obstacle. With the global economy in it’s current, sorry state, is it possible to obtain funding for what is essentially a title aimed at a vapourous ‘mature’ audience that may or may not be offended by the content matter?

Despite these obstacles, I feel that to be socially relevant, and gain mainstream acceptance, we need to put the space marines and the big guns back in the toy box, and delve into the conflicts that we as average Janes and Joes have to face on an everyday basis. Conflict, the main engine of narrative and games, takes many forms. It is these forms as they appear to use on the streets of our cities that we must harness in order to appeal to those we share them with.

The game that allows us to overcome these two obstacles will, in my mind, as big a milestone for videogames as Citizen Kane was to movies.

 

Loreweaving: Crafting for Lore Enthusiasts

So, following on my previous post on Cartography, and my comments on in-game stories, here’s another idea for a crafting profession.

The Loreweaver is a seeker of knowledge, a scholar of ancient languages and cultures, and is deeply interested in unearthing the history of the world. From a design standpoint, implementing the profession fulfills the following goals:

1. It is aimed at lore enthusiasts, those players who want to know more about the story of the world. One of the products of the profession is exactly that, in-game books dealing with history, mythology, culture and other such subjects.

2. As a crafting profession, it does not require exploring the world, killing monsters, or finding gear for progression.

3. It is a new way of delivering narrative to players.

4. It is an experiment in ‘player-created content’, after a fashion.

 

Of Epic Deeds and Epic Tales

The discussions on questing and storytelling have been going on for a while, and I haven’t said much on the subject until now because personally I feel divided on the subject.

As a way of establishing a basis for my thoughts, here’s a little information about my playing habits in WoW:

I currently have the maximum number of characters allowed (50) scattered across a good dozen servers. I play mostly alliance characters, on PvE servers, but I have player all the racial and death knight newbie areas, and all races to at least level 20. On my main server, I have 10 alliance characters, 3 80’s, 4 70+, and three lowbies. I have one of each class (including death knight), at least one of each race, and all professions maxed or just about.

 

Cartography: Crafting for Explorers

Exploring the world is one of the things that draws me to virtual worlds, whether they be MMOs or single player games. I also really like crafting, to the extent that I usually take up all crafting professions in MMOs, even if it requires rolling up a bunch of alts. While juggling possible crafting professions that haven’t been explored or implemented in other games, I came up with the idea of a crafting profession that could appeal to explorers. Hence Cartography.

In my mind, Cartography would work similarly to how the world map works in World of Warcraft. As you explore the world, you gain cartography experience, and you uncover the world map. Once you uncover the entirety of a zone (in a zoned game) or a certain area, you would gain the ability to ‘draw’ a map of the area, using ink and papyrus. You would then be able to draw maps and sell them to others. Maps would be items that non-cartographers would click in order to add them to their own world map. Without these, either players would not have access to the map, and thus would have to rely on their own navigation skills and landmarks strewn around the world, or would have access to very rough maps that show only settlements and major roads. This way, travel between settlements (the ‘known world’) would not be hindered, but travelling off the beaten path would be potentially dangerous.

 

Thoughts on RPG Combat Systems #3: Character relationships as they apply to combat

In the last instalment, I touched briefly on the subject of how a relationship system could affect combination attacks during combat. Relationship systems aren’t a new invention by any means, Breath of Fire had the coloured gems on the character status screen, and Star Ocean: The Second Story had a very in-depth system of inter-character friendships and love. This system was the basis for the ‘Private Action’ system of events, where you could watch short scripted sequences that took place between characters in your party when you entered a town. Some of these private actions included interactive elements, where you got to choose how you would react to the interactions between other characters. When I first saw it in action I thought it was brilliant, and still to this day think this is a great way to flesh out character’s personalities, backstory, and relationships between characters.

 

Doing instead of Speaking of Doing

I haven’t been posting as often because I have started working on a game. I’m very excited, and look forward to sharing the outcome, but for now, I’d rather not say anything about it. More news as soon as there is something to report.

 

Thoughts on RPG Combat Systems #2: Combo attacks and Character-Specific Abilities

Combination or Cooperative Attacks

I really like Chrono Trigger’s combination attack system, and I am not alone when I wonder why more games haven’t picked up the torch and implemented their own. Suikoden is the only other mainstream game series  that features cooperative attacks I can think of, although I suppose I could mention the Romancing Saga’s and their Saga offspring too.

It’s even more surprising when considering the games that delve into the relationships between characters, since it would make perfect sense for characters who are friends and fight side to side to adopt and deploy strategies based on teamwork and taking advantage of each other’s strengths. In such a game, the combination attacks would not only become a payoff for working on the relationship aspect of the game, but would also further enhance that sense of ‘friends fighting side by side’.

 

Death to Crafting Treadmills! Part 3

Since Psychochild pointed out that the terminology used in the title for this series of posts is erroneous, I am open to suggestions as to what to rename this. For the time being, I’ll keep the same title, to maintain continuity.

Inspiration hits you for 10,000 damage. You have died.

I’ve talked before about inspirations – occasions when a crafter gets the seed of an idea for a new item recipe. World of Warcraft has a couple of systems in place which have similar goals: Discoveries in Alchemy, and Research in Inscription.

Discoveries are relatively simple. While crafting any alchemical concoction, the character has a small chance of spontaneously learning a new recipe. It’s simple, and conjures that ‘Eureka!’ moment pretty well. The concept is that, while the player is levelling their skill or creating items for sale or consumption, they have a chance of gaining a new recipe.

 

Thoughts on RPG combat systems #1

I really like RPGs. I tend to favour JRPGs more than Western ones, because to a certain extent I am a completionist, and I tend to get too involved in the sidequests of western RPGs, which ends up diluting the experience of the main story line for me. I’m not saying that JRPGs are necessarily better, just that their more linear structure appeals to me more, in general.