Yesterday was the several-th annual Statham-fest around my house - the invite-only event that celebrates the work and the spirit of not only Jason Statham - the actor - but also Jason Statham - the genre of film. At the event we watch three Jason Statham films and play games about shooting things, driving about recklessly, and beating people up. This year I learned a number of things...
- I really, REALLY want another Crank film to come out soon
- Blitz has a lot of atmosphere and a pretty-good story, but a clunky, horrible script
- It's harder and harder to find good offline co-op shooter games
- I really, really, REALLY want to see a HD remake of Def Jam: Night for New York (PS2)
- Twin Caliber (PS2) is a work of forgotten genius. It's a great example of a genuinely interesting gameplay mechanic executed and packaged so badly that it's impossible to take it seriously
- My retro-game console collection is sufficienly well organised that I managed to set up the console, find both games and the correct memory cards within ten minutes!
- The Mechanic is a big disappointment, especially if you think Ben Foster's face is too small (which it is)
- Killer Elite is quite good, despite Dominic Purcell and Clive Owen's wrong'un moustaches - My #SF2012 film of the day!
- Rage's (PS3) co-op mode takes all the best parts of the game and compresses them into well defined, and well designed chunks of perfectly honed action gameplay. It's a shame that the Single Player doesn't adopt the same mentality, as it could have been a spiritual successor to Quake 2, rather than the lackluster semi-open world title that it ended up being
In the tabloid vernacular of the day, I have finally broken my silence over the newly released Byte The Hand: Espiode 0. The awesome playable teaser/tech demo for my satirical point-and-click adventure about the games industry. It's here, go and play it.
Then you can come back and read the rest of this entry, which goes into a bit more in-depth information in a slightly more analytical way than you'll see on the website or the IndieGoGo page (if you surf through that far).
I started Byte The Hand back in February - as no doubt you remember from the fascinating blogs of the time. I was anticipating getting a demo out within the month for people to try out, but that clearly never happened. As with always, real work took precedence, so as well as completing the script for a big console title, I also contributed to the design of a little iPhone game Wonder Pants, and then quickly was employed doing the narrative design on Misifits: Community Service. So it's not like I've spent the last nine months gestating a perfectly formed game baby. Sorry! (both for the delay and for the metaphor).
A number of people have asked what the total development time was, but given its nature - snatched in lunchtimes and evenings - and the fact I was using the exercise to learn Unity and C# it's impossible to put a useful figure on it. In reality, the production phase of the demo was about two actual weeks of my time, on top of a pre-production period that lasted about six months (of fairly sporadic work).
But the important thing is that the teaser is out there... playable on the web through the Unity Web Player, and the IndieGoGo page is there if people want to contribute. I was in two minds as to whether to go for crowd funding, as the game will go ahead anyway. However I figured that if it gives people the chance to pre-order securely, as well as getting involved with their faces - if they are big spenders - then it's just another good avenue for publicity (even if it does look a bit like begging).
The game is now at a stage where the underlying infrastructure makes it possible to fairly quickly create content. Aside from having a front end and doing some tricky stuff with saving and loading, everything that I need to do to create my magnum opus adventure is now ready for me to get started. And start I shall.
A couple of weeks ago, Tim Rogers wrote his “Who Killed Videogames (A Ghost Story)” piece on Insert Credit and it was circulated apace by people who believed it was true, believed it was important, and I presume, agreed that videogames had been “killed”. They were wrong. And so was he.
tl;dr version: No one killed videogames. It’s fine, in fact it’s better than fine, it’s diverse, and wonderful and glorious.
It’s easy to get people to agree with you if you’re saying something simple, even if it isn’t actually true - cry out that things are dumbing down, or not as good as the old days, or selling out and you’re guaranteed a chorus of approval, because it’s easier to assume that things are getting worse, than it is to take the effort to realise that they aren’t.
Even if it was true, the fact is there’s so much already out there that YOU, as an individual, will love and almost limitless potential for so much more to come, that every second you spend worrying about the things you dislike, is a moment you waste. No one has time to listen to all the music, or watch all the films, or play all the games - so explore, discover, find out works for you and enjoy the hell out of it in your short time on Earth.
Simon Cowell is not destroying the music industry, One Direction have probably actually never done any harm to you. Your Favourite Band still exists, and if it doesn’t, it’s not because the latest X-Factor winner is at number 1, it really isn’t. And you know what? Your New Favourite Band is just around the corner. People will keep making music, because that’s what they dream of, that’s what they love, that’s who they are...
And making games is who we are. We make games because we love making games. Believe me, there are much easier jobs, there are much better paid jobs, there are much worthier jobs. For fucks sake, people make games for fun in their own time but some of us have managed to blag being paid to do it. If you’re employed making games and you deep down no longer care about it, you’re doing it wrong!
In the original piece, Tim Rogers stops short of directly blaming titles like The Sims Social for what he perceives as the death of videogames. However the implication is strong that - in the hands of besuited men who care about money, understand metrics, and have an understanding of psychology - games are in trouble.
Throughout my career I have met with publishers who have told me that certain players won’t appreciate a certain feature, or we should definitely implement one of their ideas, as it’s essential to drive sales... it’s just now they can come to the table with actual facts to back this up! It isn’t new that business models can and will - on occasion - drive game design, it’s just now it’s done much more transparently!
I’ve been fortunate to have been in the industry for long enough to see “the future of the industry” come and go a number of times and most of the time it’s nothing to do with the games, it’s always to do with the business. Every time it’s accompanied by End of the World proclamations. “All games will be licensed”, “All games will be publisher owned ip”, “A peripheral with every game”, “Everything’s moving to Wii”, all of these things have been said, and all of them have been proven to be incorrect to a large degree - but legacies of all of them live on. The people who have proven successful have always been the ones willing to take a chance and not blindly follow the current trend. Of course companies are going to want a slice of the new in-game purchase pie, and I suspect along the way there will be some casualties. But innovation comes from change, and something new will always be along if you wait a moment. In-game purchases are a big deal now and will get bigger, but I’m not going to be so bold to say that it’s the way things will be forever, and I’m not going to fall into the trap of assuming that all games will immediately switch to that model.
People who assume that the games industry will be the same as it is now in ten years time, are either terribly bad at predicting the future or terribly bad at looking at the past, or both. And people who decry new approaches, or harken back to the “good old days” are missing out on so much great work that is being done right now, across the board. I only ever skim the edges of the Indie games world, but from my perspective, I can see swathes of innovation, success, and acclaim that plenty of people’s work is generating. Even perennial mainstream hits demonstrate a rigorous commitment to quality and improvement that hasn’t always existed.
Someone on Twitter the other day said that it was depressing that FIFA 12 was no 1 in the charts. That’s a game with a metacritic rating in the 90s. Are people so elitist that they are depressed by quality thriving? It would depressing if EA had rested on their laurels, it would be depressing if they hadn’t deliberately striven to improve and overhaul the game because they knew it would sell millions anyway.
In the last few days - for pleasure - I have played Deus Ex, Driver: San Francisco, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Doom, Hector: Episode 2, and Triple Town. I thought it was because I loved games, modern games, fun games, exciting games, funny games, compelling games; but looking back, perhaps I’m one of the bad guys - giving money to “the man”, perpetuating FPSes as the pre-eminent console genre, supporting episodic games with their nefarious episodic game business model, and playing Freemium games on Facebook to spite the rest of the industry to death...
...that’s probably it.
Also games aren’t art!
:)
If I was a reviewer I'd talk about how Driver: San Fransico marks a return to form for the series, but given that I'm not and I haven't played any of the games since the original on the PlayStation - I am not beholden to do so. What I would say, however is that's it's a corking game - and offers some of the best writing for games I've enjoyed recently.
The story is as well executed as it is mental. And it's pretty mental. Tanner takes a wallop from arch-baddie Jericho, which plunges him into a coma. He then drives around at dangerous speeds, solving crimes, doing investigations, tracking down Jericho, and crashing into things (in my case)... EXCEPT he now has the ability to conjure an out-of-body experience which allows him to possess other drivers in a process called Shifting.
Herein lies the madness and the genius of Driver: SF. With the Shifting mechanics, Reflections have been able to craft a gameplay experience that cuts out a lot of the crap normally found in open world driving experience, and also have been able to create a whole new set of mechanics which have never before existed. To all the people complaining about a lack of innovation in big-budget, core games - here's your answer!
The story never really makes sense, and Tanner is played in an increasingly over-the-top fashion, which some of the fellow voice actors don't seem to have bought into - but it's so inherently ludicrous that it doesn't really matter. The Life on Mars plotline goes a long way to justify your gameplay antics, but similarly the story goes in directions that it couldn't otherwise do had the gameplay not made those routes possible.
The writing is tight, the presentation of the story (through "Previously on..." sections) is particularly good; but what I hold extra praise for is the volume and quality of the incidental dialogue. Normally in a driving game, there is none, but as Tanner Shifts between drivers he often finds himself with passengers, stuck in conversations with people and in situations he neither knows nor cares very much about. These are frequently very funny, and they are sufficiently numerous that I haven't found myself become tired of them.
This is how good games writing should be: an interesting story, informing and supporting the gameplay, as well as a offering an extra level of polish on top of it all.
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