This mix has gotten me through some stressful evenings the last couple of months. I don't mind the liberal use of mario samples either. Kick back this saturday and read a couple of takunomi posts from this week
+Sitting on the kitchen floor eating some nighttime cup noodles, the conversation fell to story in video games. I used to swear that story was essential for games, and slowly came to write it off, while at the same time becoming completely engrossed if a game featured a story AND good gameplay.
+I started thinking less of narrative in games, when I began to feel like some creators simply did games to contain their stories, that to them, gameplay was simply a nuisance.
+Stories are fantastic design tools to point the players in the right mind-set, to make us feel important and powerful.
+Bioware’s two best games are Baldur’s Gate 2 and Mass Effect 2. They are great gamepaly refinements of their predecessors and they both tell much better stories than them as well. What they do better too, and I don’t think this is as realized, is that they let us become really, insanely, fucking powerful, and the story reflects this.
+Baldur’s Gate 2 most clearly reflects this when the player gets the ability to transform into the Slayer, a giant spike-covered ant-like monstrosity, that can shred apart even the toughest opponent in seconds. This is tied to the story as it reflects your origins, being the spawn of the fucking god of murder. (so fucking metal)
The Mass Effect series put you in the position of being Space Jack Bauer from the get-go, and the Seven Samurai structure of Mass Effect 2, lets you act out this role in so many good scenarios like no-nonsense conversations, and fantastic shoot-outs.
Even Doom,(pick one) with its almost complete lack of story, still told the story of a single space marine (not quite) literally punching evil in its fucking shit-talker. It’s communicated through the score, the sound effects, visuals, enemy designs and your arsenal.
This is the power fantasy, a fantastic notion that games have the potential to do better than all of media. It’s an almost unavoidable concept in Japanese RPGs, as you probably, eventually, will become overlevelled, and overpowered. Yet it feels amazing to disregard all the fiends and hell-beasts of those worlds as mere vermin.
+Clearly power fantasies aren’t necessarily balanced, and in some ways or instances they obviously break the game. This is why I don’t think them inherent in boardgames. Reading the ideas of boardgame designers and remembering my own play experiences, boardgames need balance. They need to keep you down, so that all players are on equal footing throughout often long play sessions. Almost the philosofically exact opposite of the power fantasy.
+The trick though, is that the best realization of power fantasies, require some virtuosity. The Slayer form in Baldur’s Gate 2 is supremely unstable, and taking on the legions of hell in Doom only feels good if you have the skills to survive.
+Take a look at the video I linked at the top. This is the second opening to 2014 anime series Kill la Kill. If you’ve seen this show, then that song will probably make you pretty pumped for some awesome action. The best openings to action anime series always do this to me. I believe they pretty much communicate the power fantasy, but without interaction. They can do this safely, as the viewer can’t fail. On the other hand, they never promised me that I could have a go at being this awesome. This promise is implicit in games, so for a game to give me this power fantasy, it has to (i) include meaningful interaction that can be mastered (the possibility of virtuosity) and implicit in that, it has to include (ii) the possibility of failure.
+Below is a list of other realizations of the power fantasy. Note though, that they make it seem as if a power fantasy is a tangible mechanic in the game (like the super star). That is not true. It can be a mechanic, but it can also be the narrative or emotional situation the player is put in.
+The super star in Super Mario. Look how Mario in some games will do spin in mid-air.
The piece of power in Link’s Awakening. The music change is a bit annoying, but the effect is fantastic.
Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VII.
Trance state in Final Fantasy IX. This one is a bit sad, since its pretty tied to the story, but often feels wasted when you acquire it.
Once I was well into university, I started to understand exactly how I enjoyed games. That they occupied such a big part of what I liked, that they influenced what I listened to (chiptunes), and that they steered me towards what I wanted to study (games in Japan).
+In recent years, I think a lot of people might have felt the same, because so many aspects of games have become far more social: Game James are half part workshops and half part festivals. Streaming of course, is really a thing now. Even Mario has 4-player co-op now, although it's still pretty fun to pass the controller around as people die.
+Takunomi means 'home party' in Japanese, and to me, those are the best. I never want to leave if I'm at a warm up party. At home we can decide the music, drink our own stuff, and hear each other. And we can play games.
+Takunomi expresses what I like about games. They are personal, they are fun, they require skill, they have a rich history and expect people to participate in it. At a takunomi-party (at least from my perspective) you can sit around, chat, drink beer and play games. Not just party games though, although as the image above says, some games are just destined to be played in multiplayer, while drinking. The history of games, what made them good, and what I still like about them, are often designed as solitary experiences, but understanding that I want to share this, I think it's okay to sit around and take turns at Hotline Miami or spend an entire evening talking Metal Gear Solid.
+Here's a fun thing to do: (1) Have all guests bring a bottle of alcohol and a bottle of juice or carbonated drink. Clear liquids only: Gin, vodka, etc. (2) Pour it all into a big pot. A fortunate mix will take on a sort of fun, orange-y color. (3) Play New Super Mario Bros. Everytime someone dies, they have to drink a ladle ful from the pot.
+ diff --git a/posts/New Play Style in the Good Old Way.html b/posts/New Play Style in the Good Old Way.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cba86ba --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/New Play Style in the Good Old Way.html @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +
If you've tried VR (Vive, Oculus Rift) I'm almost 100% you've been blown away. It's an experience. Despite that, for VR to mesh with _traditional gaming[1], it needs to support and enhance the Old Ways.
+Us who like traditional video games,[2] expect our hardware to support them well. We hope that when something new is created, the new expands on the old, allowing us to still play ever more complex and intense versions of the old.
+The reality is that when a console like the Wii is created, the new paradigm it heralds, is conjured from a business decision ("stand apart from Sony") and enables new ways, but they aren't necessarily better than the old: An IR controller plus an analog stick was better for Pikmin than dual analog, but resulted in some rather gimmicky, though not broken controls for Skyward Sword.
+The Nintendo DS was a place where the Old Ways clashed with new play style options. The Nintendo DS had all the buttons it need, but also a touch screen. The games played in the Old Way were some of the best we've seen of the kind. Slowly though, some new experiences that showed signs of still adhearing to the values of the old appeared. Osu Tatakae Ouendan and Soul Bubbles. The two Zelda games. Yet the two best games on the Nintendo DS, GTA: Chinatown Wars and Clash of Heroes are controls-wise really conservative (though Clash is clever as fuck).
+Can experiences like the Wii and the Nintendo DS, point us in a direction for VR to more quickly better support the Old Ways, so that VR will enhance and improve the Old Ways? First-Person Shooters, strategy games, third-person action-adventure games. Hack 'n Slash experiences, turn-based Japanese Role Playing Games and reaction intensive action games.
+From the get-go, some of the mechanics don't work super well or aren't gonna be really different with a big pair of goggles on the head. VR changes the immersiveness, so we need to think about how bigger immersion can improve what we like about those previous genre. It seems obvious that it would be even more fantastic to experience Skyrim from a more real perspective, but once we try to move around, the immersion is broken, as the controls (analog sticks on a controller) don't match the real-ness of the visual experience.
+The question becomes: Which problem do we bang our heads against?
+"How to immersively control a game like Skyrim or Diablo III (different games, same dilemma) in VR."
+or
+"How to make VR games that work within the confines of VR, yet are still built around the traits of traditional games."
+The Wii showed us that the first problem takes a lot of research until we get games that still aren't quite as well controlled as the old games (Skyward Sword).
+The Nintendo DS showed us that it takes a lot of research until we get games that both tradition yet completely new.
+And both consoles showed us that very few companies are actually willing to put in the effort to bring forth this (r)evolution.
+Trauma Center on the Wii and Pikmin 3 on the Wii U (With the stylus-based controls) show that, respectively, the second problem is worth the wait, and the first problem is worth the wait.
+For many people, video games are the work-demanding, virtuosity enabling baroque adventures that they've been since the 80's. ↩
+From Dune 2 to StarCraft 2, from Metal Gear to Metal Gear Solid V. From Dark Forces to Overwatch. Intense, violent, games, with difficult, but effective controls. ↩
+
When speaking of the imagined bigger-than-presented size of a game, I always think to myself “that’s just nostalgia talking”.
+Yet, replaying Link’s Awakening, it doesn’t seem that hard to differentiate the issues1 from the parts that stand the test of time.
+A specific element I’m often finding in the games I love, and striving to add to my own, is a sense of the world existing, even when I turn of the device. This sense usually gets destroyed in the process of playing a game, as I grow to understand the characters, their relations, the systems and mechanics, and the progression of acquiring power. An RPG will often feel very big in the beginning, and unfortunately very small as all the wildlife is massacred(sometimes never to return) and my character attains demi-godhood.
+Sometimes, a game doesn’t grow smaller in my mind. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but Link’s Awakening was one of those to me.
+Let be bastardize my bachelor’s thesis and paraphrase myself from a few years ago. Writing about the traditional Japanese beauty in certain Japanese video games, I came across the notion of Wabi Sabi or simply the wabi aesthetic. For this post, I will simply refer to one of the tenets that I extracted about it, from it from a few different sources.2
+In traditional Japanese art that makes use of the wabi aesthetic, suggestion as an aesthetic trait is used to imply a bigger world beyond what is shown to the viewer. Traditional examples are sparse brush strokes in paintings to simply hint at mountains and the landscapes beyond, and the almost short-hand like haiku poetry:
+++Furu ike ya
+
+ kawazu tobikomu
+ mizu no oto
+ (Basho’s Frog Poem)Old pond
+
+ frogs jumped in
+ sound of water.
+ (Translation by Lafcadio Hearn)
I probably don’t have to argue very hard that I don’t have any nostalgic, sentimental feeling about this poem, but I really agree that the three simple lines conjure up the image of a far more detailed and serene setting.
+Some games, I believe, manage to make use of this element of suggestion, to create far richer worlds than the sum of their parts.
+Link’s Awakening is one these games. The island of Koholint that it takes place on, is it’s little cosmos of legendary locations, small folk and nature. Yet a greater depth is hinted at through the narrative that weaves into the island’s local mythos. The simple questions are “How much of this is real?” and “If this is a dream and I wake up, will anyone survive ?”
+This is an noteworthy quality in a game, and enables the discussion of how we can make more tangible, memorable game worlds. While cinema has the mise-en-scene to help them construct a richer world in the mind of the audience, players can wonder around a stage, poking the probs, revealing the superficiality of the game world. This makes suggestion such a worthwhile trait to acquire in a game, whether it’s tied to the narrative, or even straight into the gameplay.3
+There was a good deal more to my thesis, and a good deal more to Link’s Awakening, but for now, I think this covers a very admirable and long-lasting quality.
+I constantly have to open the menu to switch items (alleviated in some zeldas, often still an issue), and the music constantly starts over, making me (somehow) tired of the Zelda theme. Some puzzles are incredible opaque, and the game is overall way too easy, my progress only hindered by moments that aren’t really tough, but rather super annoying (being pushed over the edge by the first boss). ↩
+Haga Koshiro’s The Wabi Aesthetic Through the Ages, Donald Keene’s Japanese Aesthetics, Juniper Andrew’s Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence and Sarah Chaplin’s Makeshift: Some Reflections on Japanese Design Sensibility. ↩
+Like how Final Fantasy XII is a big world, even from initial Ester Sands area, where you just stroll around murdering foxes: The huge licence board of abilities and equipment you might acquire, initialy suggests a huge world, pocketed into a smart system, constantly with you, even in the simplest locales of the game. ↩
+
I've written elsewhere how I like the the character designs we get from Japan, that manage to mix kawaii with sexiness.
+++Beyond that, the character is holding some sort of bathing-suit pin-up magazine with cat-girls, reminding me how the notions of cute, sexy, mature, lewd and kiddy always seemed to be different sizes in Japan than what I was used to in Danish culture and on the American internet that I mostly read.
+
The redesigned Cat from Gravity Rush 2 in the images above, is wearing sort of space armor bikini, from a promotional cross-over to Phantasy Star Online 2 (I think). A small video of it in action is here. I love the design of it, though I sadly don't actually have a Playstation 4 to try the game on (I've been streaming FFXV from a friend's console).
+