Video game idea/mechanic

Weapons - i.e. swords - start out blunt, so slashing at an opponent and slowly taking down their health incrementally works in a real-world sense as though you are just brutally beating the person down until they cave from being the one with the most damage. As upgrades and better weapons arrive, the opponent begins getting real-world damage like cuts and possible amputation depending on the quality of the weapon. At this point the opponents also rise in skill and are better at defending themselves. Enemies start losing their "damage sponge" quality and become serious opponents who can one-shot you, which also demands that you as a player become better at defending yourself.

The implementation of this needs to be quite a gradual learning curve as each new enemy will be a lesson in either strategic attacking or strategic defence. The goal is to make third-person mêlée combat far more dynamic by adding realism.

This idea is derived from seeing so many fantasy-based games treating swords and their ilk as mere batons that have different levels of damage and the enemies themselves not being affected by the actual real-word concept of that weapon, e.g. a sword stabbing or cutting an actual hole in someone.

An argument against this might be the idea that combat could end up very short at later stages of the game if all it took was one correct swing to connect and cut an enemy in half. Realistically, the sword would probably only slash a gaping hole, but the enemy would still go down because of it.
     An answer to this, is to make the later stage enemies very good at defence, and make the swords themselves degrade as steel connects on steel.

In reply to 'Rules of the Game' by Daniel Golding

Note: In 2012 Hyper magazine published an article by Dan Golding titled 'Rules of the Game'. I'm not sure (that is can't remember) what position he was taking in the article but this was my response. Having discovered this in my files yesterday, I thought it was written well enough to be posted here.

I think we can safely say, and agree upon, that video-gaming is not a sport. Sports, in my opinion, require physical activity beyond twiddling your fingers and exercising the synapses in your brain. I believe that a game needs competition, and that competition must be an adversary of some type. This begs the question, is chess a game if you are playing against yourself? Well, I would argue, yes, because you are facing the adversary who just happens to be yourself. Fair game, I guess.

It's easy to view sport orientated videogames such as Wii Sports and Tekken or Street Fighter as games because they inherently take the forms of sport and apply them to the computerised world, thus taking out the 'sport' but retaining the game. So by that definition, game is form, not activity.

Any sports-modelled videogame still requires a competition-based form to involve yourself in the playing of: whether you are playing against your flatmate or the computer, you are still playing against an adversary that you may not win against.

When we enter the world of story-based videogaming, we are not entering a game, as there is no other competition, no one I am competing against; I am simply taking part in an exploration of a story-based entertainment. By picking up a console controller, customising my character and deciding which reply my character will answer with, I am no longer a passive viewer accepting another person's story as it is told to me, but an active part of the story who makes sincere and often involving decisions about how another person's story is going to be told to me – that is interactive entertainment. It is not a game, there are no rules, but there is a specific storyline that must be adhered to to get the full entertainment value out of.

The problem with viewing story-based videogames as a 'game' is knowing that it is a forgone conclusion that you will win, when essentially, all you are doing is concluding the story that you begun by opening your videogame box and inserting the disc – practically no different than picking up a DVD and inserting the disc, or via a different medium, picking up a book and opening the first page.

No matter what setting you play the story-based videogame on – even on the hardest setting – you can win if you put in enough time. The reality of the true game is that another player just might be better than you no matter how much time you put in. In that sense, only the videogame itself is your adversary. Can I really beat Dead Space 2 with only three saves allowed? I certainly can! (The question is, can I be bothered?)

Online is different though. Online we have competition. We have many players playing against each other, racking up high scores and at times competing for prizes. And, although I have never played online, are there not rules that accompany how you play online? Or perhaps, codes of conduct would be a better phrase.

A game of chess, or tennis, dictates how you play simply by the rules that have been created to accommodate the form of the game. Yes, it is possible to cheat, and there in lies the necessity to acquire a judge or adjudicator to impart impartiality.

Videogaming requires no referee, no adjudicator to check if I am cheating or not. That, assuming cheat codes are available, is entirely my choice, and at the end of the day I only answer to myself.

When playing a traditional game in competition with another, you cannot afford to stand around and do nothing, otherwise your adversary will take advantage of your slack and begin scoring points against you. Many videogames I have played, I have allowed my character to stand around doing nothing, or hide in a corner to generate more health.

I believe that developers need to ask themselves whether they are building a 'game', or an 'interactive entertainment'.

If developers really want their products to be viewed as games, they need to stop making every mission and quest so easy to complete by providing instructions, cues, markers and arrows that make the story and puzzles nothing more than a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if developers are only making interactive entertainments, then it is the attitude of gamers themselves that need to change. The reason Prince of Persia (2008) flopped was not because of the game, which was a beautifully rendered semi-cell shaded enjoyable romp through an imaginary fairytale land, but because of the voices that decried its 'easiness' and the resulting criticisms towards the gameplay (and rather thin plot). For once, I had an interactive entertainment that obeyed its own internal logic – if the story requires my character to win-out in the end, then it makes complete and utter sense that he doesn't die during the story. PoP (2008) I believe, is the first true example of an interactive entertainment through the videogame form without relying on the actual 'game' element whereby it is necessary for you to try not to die or be 'beaten' by the computer.

• 2012, Whangamata

Monday 1st December, 2014

What’s been happening Mr. Stubbs?

Far Cry 3 has been happening, that’s what.

Was it any good?

Well, it was a lot of fun once the story pissed off. The worst thing about this game was being locked into missions. Second to that, I think, was the story itself. I felt so bored by all the cutscenes. I did like Vaas as a villain though, but like some forum commenters, I too thought he was under-developed. Hoyts turned out to be nothing interesting so it would have been far more interesting to see Vaas still alive and trying to kill Hoyts as well. The player then could have had the choice to let Vaas do it himself, but making him more powerful, or to try to kill Hoyts first to stop Vaas from gaining power, but having to deal with Vaas at the same time as a consequence. Or something like that. Overall, the story theme, that of slave-trading, was fine, but I thought the whole mushroom tripping and amazon-warrioresque aspects were generally pretty dumb and pointless. So many times through a cutscene I was pressing buttons on the controller in hope that the apparently non-mapped ‘skip cutscene’ button would suddenly spring into existence. But it didn’t, and I was left to voice my non-caring attitude out loud.

The story might have had more impact if the player character was one of the local islanders themselves and had to pick up weapons to save a bunch of white-American holidayers, or even make them a bit of a mix-up: French, Canadian, American, etc. In some ways, it could test the player as to how much they need to care about some random people opposed to their own fellow local inhabitants who were also in danger of being kidnapped by Vaas and his pirates. Or even, if the fellow inhabitants were getting disillusioned and slowly going over to Vaas’s side, so then some of the missions would revolve around collecting evidence through the kidnapped holidayers, or otherwise.

And with that idea in place you could even throw in the twist of if you save the foreigners, they call their parents/family to say that they are okay, but if you don’t, the families come in with their ‘big foreign weaponry’ (government sanctioned, or private) and completely fuck shit up but in doing so bomb you and the locals, thus turning them into the new and more powerful enemies.

Hmmm. Sounds like a completely different game now.

Far Cry 3 just needed to stick to its basic slave-trading template with one insane villain who was growing more and more powerful.

Here’s another way of getting around the “white guy saving the locals” colonialism aspect of the game:

1. Player is local guide that takes holiday foreigners on their trip,
2. Player is kidnapped with the foreigners,
3. Player is constantly being taunted by Vaas to become a pirate like him,
4. Player is constantly asking themselves how important saving the foreigners are, opposed to the player-character’s local community who are also in danger of being kidnapped, or losing faith and going over to Vaas,

This would have then given greater impact to the final choice of taking the life of the foreigner at the end, especially if she was the first one you saved and became a love interest who actually fought along side of you.

But then, in this version there’s no mushroom tripping either, so that choice might not work as well.

But it could.

Imagine if the syringes that the player crafted became the trip sequences whenever they were injected, and the game twisted everything around so it felt like you were fighting your own people until the effect wore off. Some players might enjoy that and do the syringes heaps, others would never use them again, but the final mushroom trip you were given took you over the edge forcing you to question everything and making that final decision more potent.

As it was I just wanted to throw my controller at the wall because the designer or writer had dared to expect me to think a final choice was hard to make when throughout the entire time I was completely invested in saving the lives of my friends. Liza’s whining throughout did nothing to change that.

Healing, Injury and Death in Video Games

There is/was an interesting discussion at AWTR¹ about the healing mechanic in games and their ability to break verisimilitude in games “in a way that magic, dragons and sword-fighting don’t.” Personally, I find just dying breaks verisimilitude in games. Every death reminds me that I am just playing a game after all, and not living through an immersive experience along with the character I am controlling.

The discussion focuses intensely on RPGs because the author is “less interested in [FPS-type games] in general” but I would like to look at two games outside of RPGs as ways of exploring the idea of realistic healing, or injury, mechanics.

The first is Dead Space. One of the aspects of losing health in Dead Space is that Isaac Clarke’s body slows down and at it’s lowest starts staggering with heavy breaths. It’s a great mechanic that adds intensity to the game when you are also low on ammo and you know that the last batch of necromorphs were a struggle to dispatch and if you don’t find health soon, those next lot of necromorphs down that dingy looking corridor are going to be the ones dispatching you. It’s intense and at least semi-realistic. That is, until Isaac finds health and all of a sudden he’s back to his old boot-stomping, leg and arm decapitating self again. It’s amazing what Med-Packs can do in the future!² Could Med-Packs actually work that quickly in the future? Well, I guess it’s possible. With a little adrenalin mixed into the concoction, I’m sure a standard Med-Pack could get you back into tip-top condition almost immediately.

I would like to propose a way of getting around that in a more contemporary scenario without the mechanic causing frustration for the player. Imagine being injured; you struggle, you limp, but you can still shoot – that’s important of course, and no programmer would be daft enough to take that away from the player. But what about after finding your health pack? Do you just spring back into action like you have just been injected directly with heroin? Perhaps. If the health pack had heroin in it … So let’s assume that it doesn’t. Maybe it takes time to heal properly. Not an overly long period of time, but just enough for the player to still be cautious about what they do with themselves, where they tread, how often they recklessly poke their heads out from behind cover, knowing full well that they need to nurse that wound like their life depended on it. Because after all, that’s exactly what an in-game injury should simulate.

There is also the scenario of being able to mix different concoctions. Say a Med-Pack is slow working but heals you fully when the healing is complete, and an adrenalin pack gives you that much needed stamina boost. Mixing those two together would literally cause you to spring back into action allowing the healing pack to still do it’s work in the background³.

I like the idea of healing having a real-time consequence, especially in games like Dead Space, where your injury causes tension in high-strung scenarios. It seems to have a lot less consequence in Fantasy-based RPGs when magic is flying all over the place and healing happens as quickly as inflicting damage. In fact I want a game where being injured is a huge factor, and where injuring an NPC is just as consequential for them – they stagger, they limp, you get an easier target, but at the risk of being hit by the stray bullets that the NPC is now recklessly firing at you to try to keep themselves covered. Although I may not be a huge stealth game fanatic, Dark Souls definitely tested my patience (I passed!), while Deus Ex: Human Revolution gave me the enjoyment of choosing stealth if I desired it. Maybe it’s a case of programming, where the logistics of dividing pixel bodies up into parts that are affected accordingly might end up taking up all your programming resources. However, if Fallout 3 could do a minor simulation of it in an open-world, I don’t see why a linear shooter couldn’t do it to an even greater extent.

“The healing mechanic is perhaps small fry in relation to the overall issue of integrating storytelling and gameplay. […] But when I look at such actions from a distance, they do affect the degree to which I'm immersed in the story, and looking ways to increase immersion is never a bad thing.”(sic)

I would argue that the healing mechanic is only ‘small fry’ because no one has found a way to integrate it with a story that continues to move forward. This is where every environmental object has weight and is able to be used as cover, something to lean up against, something to rest and inject yourself with a health pack, or drink water and allow for the time to heal; a chance also to check directions, clues and inventory items. Like in Dark Souls and Dead Space where inventory checking does not pause the game, it would seem logical not to be doing this out in the open but in a secluded or safe area – the bonfires as an example in Dark Souls. Waiting for your leg to heal might be a good time to check some details with that sidekick of yours that hangs around also. I just like the idea of an injury that takes real-time to heal, creating a cautionary play-style for the player. It’s something that could do wonders for the stealth game, or the tactical horror game.

Down on page 3 of the fifteen (!) pages of comments, CultureGeekGirl says:

“I feel that the idea of death and respawning in a video game is more immersion-breaking to me than any other mechanic possibly could be. The death mechanic is deeply engrained in the way games have worked from the very start, so you have to have that to some extent, but dying always kind of jolts me out of any reality I may have invested myself in - even in really game-y games”

But no mention was made of that much maligned game Prince of Persia (2008) where death was skipped altogether and whenever you screwed up you were saved by the comforting hand of Elika. While many saw this as making the game too easy by not dying therefore not learning a lesson, few realised that it was the gameplay that didn’t make the game challenging enough, i.e. ‘teach the player anything’. Dark Souls has one of the most integrated versions of respawning to story and setting that I know of,⁴ but despite the ‘YOU DIED’ in red fading into my screen, I never actually felt like I died in Dark Souls. Sure, my humanity was stolen from me, but respawning is respawning; it’s still not dying and the game loading to a previous checkpoint as though nothing happened. Instead, it’s like being killed figuratively but still being able to keep all your memories and inventory of collectibles and losing only your souls (‘money’) and humanity (‘human spirit’), and then restarting from a previous checkpoint.

With Prince of Persia (2008) I had finally found a game that made internal sense in relation to the story that it was telling. If the character is going to win, because that’s the role of the hero in the story, then he literally can’t die. In Prince of Persia (2008) the Prince doesn’t die, he is saved each time by the hand of Elika. “Where is the fear of dying to create the challenge for the player?” asks the detractors. Admittedly, in this game, there was little challenge. But that had nothing to do with the ‘no-death’ mechanic I would argue. That had everything to do with the environmental challenges, the boss battles and the general fighting mechanics themselves being too one-button easy to traverse.

What the ‘no-death’ mechanic did was not only eliminate the loading screen, but also keep the player’s story immersion intact. Very rarely did I ever feel like I wasn’t a part of the game.⁵ Also, just as a minor note, PoP (2008) had an injury mechanic, though very basic and pretty ignorable. If the Prince was hit while in battle, he would clutch at one arm.

“The death mechanic is deeply engrained in the way games have worked from the very start.” We know, as discussed in a number of other online critiques, that win states are a simple part of gaming that drives player accomplishments, and dying seems to be tied up in the failure state. But that certainly doesn’t mean it has to be. It’s just there because so many games are combat based and death seems the logical failure of playing these games - “you’re supposed to stay alive, idiot!!” But why can’t it be “You’re supposed to traverse that area without the walls collapsing around you and setting you back at the start and needing to find a new way, idiot!!” Sounds like too much thinking would be involved. But I do like the idea of being injured setting you back as a failure because now you have to work harder to achieve the goal that you could have achieved easier if you weren’t injured. See, now that’s an injury that makes sense and would become a challenge to overcome: “Don’t get shot! No, you’re not going to die, but you are going to have to work a whole lot bloody harder at this section now that your injury is slowing you down, idiot!”

I am the Local Atheist: Sample

If I hadn’t known any better I would have thought that God was washing the streets of Invercargill down, or at least, making a valiant attempt at it. Sometimes I admired God’s resolve to wash as much crust off the earth as possible in one foul swipe, but here it looked like rain had been an afterthought without any enthusiasm. The gutters, on the other hand, ran their streams of water down the street like there was no tomorrow. For them judgement day had arrived far too early, so they had filled up and put as much effort as they could muster into their man-made purpose. The bus stop was left to fend for itself, giving as much shelter as it dared without encroaching too far onto the footpath, as though that was dangerously close to feeling the wrath of the gutters in all their pleasure. And I was left to sit on its light blue bench with my feet being spat at from above. Thanks.

I tried to tuck them under me but the seat had been attached just low enough to make it uncomfortable. So I just sat there looking out at the rain, noticing the swaying of trees under the weight of their saturated branches in the park over the road, the falling of droplets from the cross beams framing the bus stop. It was unusual to see them fall like that – like I had never paid attention to such a simple thing before. Each droplet that fell transferred itself from one place to another – in this case, from the bus stop to the ground – and forever changed its very nature.

It was suicide.

Just as the newspaper had reported: “… girl kills herself by jumping off the overpass into oncoming traffic.”

A year later and that headline still made me feel sick.

I looked up the road to see if the bus was in sight. Nothing but tired bursts of rain pelted the streets. I sank back into the shelter.

It was so strange hearing about suicide in such a small tight-knit community, especially when God was supposed to be watching over those of us who were in His care. The shock-wave passed over at least half the town’s population, not just a small segment of family and friends like it might have in a larger city. Mum had told me that the churches were “praying together” though she didn’t actually see any of them get together: “I guess it’s the thought that counts,” she said, blowing smoke and looking sideways out of her kitchen window.

I was completely unaware of what anyone else had to say since much of the details had remained behind closed doors – doors that had been closed to me for as long as the article had been burned in my memory now; longer in fact. It had quoted an outspoken congregation leader who was more than happy to pass the blame onto the girl’s failure to attend church (“a lack of faith”), peer pressure and drugs as though that was all that was needed to explain it, as if one person’s crises could be condensed into a few catch-phrases. But one person’s transition from a natural state into a falling fragment of a larger issue could never be understood if blame and finger-pointing were all that was required to assert some kind of resolution.

I hated the way church leaders got themselves up on a pedestal once a microphone had been stuck in front of their mouths.

I didn’t like thinking about it either: It reminded me too much of the crises that Lisa had been through a year earlier and the attempts I had made at trying to help her.

The splashing of tyres ploughing puddles out of the way brought me out of my reverie and I stood up to attract the bus’s attention. The drains flooded over and washed ever closer to my feet as the bus slowed down to a sneak, almost as though the driver wasn’t sure about who they were picking up: a standard passenger? or some crazy hitchhiker waiting to take out his vengeance on a world that had deserted him?

The doors opened and I tried to keep my head low, eyes staring at the ground.

“Art Gallery please.”

“Dollar-fifty.”

I placed my coins into the dish of the ticket dispenser. I hated those damn things – I could never tear the tickets off properly. And this one didn’t do me any favours. I tugged at it, but it didn’t rip, so I twisted it and tried to tear it sideways but it only pulled more ticket out instead.

The bus driver got impatient and reached his hand over to help but I said “I can do it”.

He didn’t care and replied “Here, do it like this…” but I was too concerned about proving that I could do it that our hands began competing for the pull of the ticket.

“Just let go, kid!”

Fuck him. “I can do it!”

“Just leave it.”

“It’s alright!” Both our voices were nearing shouting level.

“Y’ fuckin’ ruining the machine – leave it!”

I let go and took a step back. My heart was beating a strong thud that echoed in my ears. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care y’ little shit. Just take the ticket and sit down.”

I took the extended ticket from his fingers, feeling as though his eyes were about to throw fire-balls at me.

I moved down the aisle as faces turned away in quiet astonishment, a few eyebrows raised as attention wandered elsewhere. I sat as close to the back doors as possible so I wouldn’t have to move past anybody when the bus stopped to let me out.

The steel bar that separated my seat from the doors was still cold from the morning’s frost, as though an afternoon that was supposed to warm everything up had nothing to say for itself. I placed my arms down on it and buried my head in the folds of my jacket trying desperately to calm the thoughts that wanted me to get off the bus and just go back to my bedroom where I would be safe again, unmolested by a world that constantly demanded answers from me.

I found solitude and silence, but once my thoughts became quiet, the world outside began to rise into recognition and conversations took the place of my abandoned thoughts:

“Where you off to today?”

“Heading to town for food. So cold in the flat.”

“So sick of being cold too.”

“I know, Chris was gonna steal some wood from the neighbour’s wood pile because we ran out and our student allowance doesn’t cover warmth. Tertiary education? Yes; Food? Yes; warmth? No!”

“The government is way to stingy to provide that kind of help. New casino? Yeah totally, we’ll help pay for that…”

“That store is the shit man, they got the best games at cheap-as prices.”

“Dude I don’t know man, I got some pretty cheap games off the net. And most of those cheap-as games are second hand.”

“Yeah but postage is crap, especially from overseas – I ain’t payin’ for that. I’d rather just walk into town just to warm up and have something to do than sit in my crappy uninsulated student flat ordering online and trying to coax as much heat as possible from the computer’s processor…”

“The gallows, of course, were originally designed to be an example of punishment being met and justice prevailing, but as Dickens was quick to observe, those who turned up to watch were only there for their own perverse viewing pleasures and the gallows were no longer about punishment but about propagating a system of belief. The gallows lost all their ability to become a deterrent from crime after seeing so much of it: if you got caught you got caught, if you didn’t you were lucky and could live to thieve another day.”

“Dickens was a pessimist.”

“No, he was the supreme optimist, who believed in the good of man prevailing. Not only does A Christmas Carol show this but practically all his other novels in one way or the other.”

“I can’t be bothered with old fat books that do nothing but exemplify nineteenth century attitudes…”

I couldn’t be bothered paying attention to a discussion that exemplified people’s opinionated beliefs. I wanted to be in my bedroom wrapped up in blankets, staring at the wall – doing anything but facing a world that hated me; that I hated for hating me.

Though I knew it was near, the gallery seemed too far away, occupied by people that I had to hide from, make myself inconspicuous and not draw attention to for fear that they find out who I was. I had thought that there would be consolation knowing that Lisa would be there, someone I knew and had spent valuable time getting to know, someone whose life I knew I had had a positive effect on and helped bring light that had lifted her out of darkness, but thoughts of her and our quiet estrangement over the past year and a half only created more anxiety that I had to deal with.

The bus lurched sideways and screeched to a halt, knocking several passengers against the walls. I stood up and got off as quickly as possible without bothering to thank the driver, as I used to so often do, thinking that they would appreciate it. Did they care? I don’t know. I didn’t care – and that was all that mattered.

No one was entering the art gallery when I got there. No one had gone in as I had crossed the road and walked up to a building that loomed over the street corner with the scars of age peeling from its pale exterior; I had the feeling of complete emptiness surrounding me – a dead town with a ghost walking the streets.

The entrance was a subtle corridor of steps that raised the level of the building above ground zero; paintings had been hung to each side – simple pastel portraits that did little but diminish the inner glow of their subject (too many greys). The inner room opened up to me with a deep red lining the wall behind the hung paintings. Numerous bodies shuffled about on a light brown carpet, dodging the occasional painting that sat on the floor or leaned against a wall as though it were too cool to be hung like a martyr for everyone to stare in wonder at.

I let myself disappear as best I could behind a group of people, slowly making my way around to the wine table of which was just a wooden barrel off a farm that someone had attached a round plank to. A large bowl of grapes centred the weight allowing the glasses to sit precariously round the edge and the wine bottles inside of them. I kept my head low, not daring to meet any eyes as I filled a glass to the brim and returned to my place against the wall behind the same group. The wine was very smooth, almost palatable enough to appeal to a wide range of tastes – hardly a drink to offend people with or cause any winces of distaste. I winced as it slid into my empty stomach and highly regretted not having something to eat before I left the flat.
My attention turned to a number of paintings that hung close by, each exhibiting random collections of shapes that left trails of black dust behind them. I wondered what the artist had been thinking. Random shapes? Black dust? The painting said nothing; perhaps abstract expressionism had betrayed the artist this time around and shown what they lacked instead of what they were trying to bring forth from deep within. A larger painting was nothing more than colours smudged into each other – and not even colours that stood out or attracted the viewer towards it. How it ended up on a wall in a gallery was anybody’s guess.

The paintings were boring. The rest seemed to meander in defining the artists’ abilities rather than invoking a sense of the paintings’ subjects. I did not care for these works. Even the angels frolicking in their wispery garden couldn’t let go of their own self-righteousness to portray anything beyond human grasp, anything worth striving for, anything worth believing in: serenity, peace, happiness; they did none of this, merely danced and held each other’s hands in the light of watercolour desperate to show something but failing to portray anything. I hated this town!

I moved along the walls among the rest of what the gallery had to show for itself, trying not to edge too close to the special ribbon that marked off the area where the new artist’s exhibition was to be unveiled. I ended up in a corner, peering down at a collection of small amateurish-looking paintings that seemed to be gathered in their very own space – why I don’t know, I can’t even remember the stupid things; perhaps they were trying to absorb the conversations that drifted by, a means of becoming something that they simply weren’t. I became the corner too.

“Very impressive detail.”

“I like the subtlety of light that exemplifies the structure of the building.”

“Yeah, I was actually talking about the snacks on the table here. You know I didn’t come for the art, right…?”

“It is true though, he was avoiding the meeting. I tried to convince him to change the time but he’s so stubborn. I’m glad though, it meant he got to spend time with his son some more, and I’m cool with that…”

“There were some paintings I saw in New York once – did I tell you that I went to New York…?”

“Art today seems so void of inspiration, true divine inspiration. For me, it’s just one big nod towards the loss of piety in the world.”

“In other words, the world is going to the dogs?”

“Yeah, and Art along with it. Atheists can pretend to be good all they like, show virtue and respect, but at the end of the day, good will towards fellow human beings won’t guarantee them an escape from the afterlife.”

I looked for a way to move myself away from the nearby voices, but couldn’t get out of the human trap of surrounding bodies that I had cornered myself in.

“Pessimists and free-will advocates will always try to tell you that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are merely human judgements and nothing more, yet our redemption through the saving power of Jesus is proof that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are real concepts that exist as part of God’s great plan.”

“Bad day at work, Jim?”

“Huh. Just sick of atheists trying to pretend that good will represents some kind of be-all and end-all of behaviour. I respect them for having that moral code, but not trying to lord it over the rest of us as a defining good.”

“Are you implying that atheists are inherently bad?”

“Well, if they have chosen to ignore the call of Christ, and allow their souls to perish in hell, then yes, that is bad. Would you dare let your son grow up without Jesus in his life?” There was a round of “No”s from the rest of the group – the women clasped themselves in astonishment, as though the unthinkable had been spoken. One of them seemed to get up enough courage to say “No. Then I think that would be bad of me, and unfair to not allow him that opportunity of knowing Jesus – it would be bad to deny any of my children that opportunity.”

That would mean that my mother and father had been nothing but good, as they had insisted that I be at church every Sunday morning getting to know Jesus. I wondered though what that made me. Had I deserted Jesus, or had Jesus deserted me? I wanted to believe that it was the latter, but knew deep inside that it wasn’t. Knowledge of this made me feel terrible, so guilt-ridden and ashamed. I hated Jesus for making me feel this way.

The woman, on the other hand, was obviously feeling quite righteous as she let go of her husband’s arm and began taking a stand for her own opinions. “It would be nothing short of immoral, degenerate!”

“That is right. Atheists are handicapped from living a full life because they have no support from a higher being, no one who will love them unconditionally. Putting faith in Jesus allows us to live the greatest human experience without fear of falling. And without Jesus to lean on, atheists fall. A long way. They fall into the never-ending spiral of moral decay, and it is only Jesus that can ever save them from that.”

“Why, no wonder there are so many young people on drugs, so many homeless…”

I stopped listening. Some conversations can’t help but reduce themselves to displays of ignorance. Not knowing Jesus had nothing to do with why people did drugs, or why there were homeless in the streets (I had no idea what she was talking about in the latter case – she must have been thinking about the homeless in other cities, other countries…); but knowing Jesus had certainly given me focus and something to believe in outside of myself.

But where was that now? I felt like I had nothing. Handicapped and unable to bring myself out of this hole that had been dug for me.

A streak of wavy light brown hair caught my attention: it belonged to a girl standing amongst some fellow companions. And all of a sudden my heart raced. The head began turning; I knew who it was: Lisa. She saw me; we both turned away.

When I had stood in the same place for long enough staring at the same painting without any recognition of its artistry, I glanced back to where she had been standing but there were only strangers there. I thought I was as far into the corner as you could stand, but I felt a finger tap me on the shoulder. It could only be one person… and she was no longer standing where I had last seen her.

I turned – ever so slightly – remembering everything as they came into my vision: the shoulders, square with a woollen jersey casually hanging from them and falling down to a large waist; feet firmly planted on the ground in loose fitting sneakers – the shoelaces hidden under the ends of casual slacks.

“At least you’re not staring at my breasts.”

www.smashwords.com/books/view/387012

An Aversion to Music in Films and Video Games

So have you ever watched a film and wished the music wasn’t so cliché, wasn’t so persistent, wasn’t so in-your-face, and could just give the characters and action some breathing space? I barely watch films at all these days, and am far more interested in watching a film with little if no incidental music, so that I am in no way ‘influenced’ in how I should be feeling about what is happening on screen. It is unfortunate that some directors rely heavily on music to support their scenes, as though they don’t have enough confidence in themselves to film a scene that expresses it’s own emotions without the assistance of music; of course there are some who are very good at using music and that’s cool. One film I really dig for allowing important scenes to exist without music is Haywire by Steven Soderbergh. The following is one of the best fight scenes in the film and not a single shred of music - until, that is, the very end when the fight has ended.

It’s just such a great example of not relying on music as a crutch to enhance a scene, allowing the action to exist on it’s own, and to very much speak for itself. I find the culmination of this scene far more shocking without music, because I am forced into this reflective position of How am I supposed to feel about this?, instead of being told by the music just how I am supposed to feel according to Western Musical conventions. More often than not, the stylish soundtrack in Haywire is used to segue scenes together, as happens prior to this scene when Mallory and her companion set out for the night.

I got over music scores in video games very quickly after having to hear the same generic string section repeating the same themes over and over for 20 hours or more. I think I can trace it back to car racing games when having to hear the same song within a certain time frame over and over just kills it for me and I’d much rather listen to my own, and far more extensive, selection of Hard Rock and Metal songs while I attempted to ram other cars off the road for days on end. Imagine putting over 100 hours into an Open-World RPG while being forced to listen to a 79 minute soundtrack over and over and over... I get that there are people who do just that, but for me this is how music gets killed. It’s also how my experience of a video game gets killed.

I think I reacted negatively to the soundtrack in Bioshock: Infinite within the first or second major fight when I heard a specific percussion thumping that I immediately recognised as ‘the combat music’. I was in the menu screen shutting that off instantaneously! The Halo games really annoy me because the music is on the same track as the dialogue track, but at least the moody music of ODST was a welcome change.

I realise that music is supposed to be part and parcel of the entertainment factor, but to be honest with you, when a game is trying to immerse me in its world, an orchestra playing in some ethereal realm is really off-putting.

Bioshock: Infinite - Linear gameplay trapped inside a non-linear story

*End of game theme and story spoilers below*

Any story that has to wrap things up with extended scenes that explain what you have never taken part in (as a game player), hasn't done the job properly.

Spec Ops: The Line wrapped things up by explaining the reality of what you had played through and thought you had experienced, whereas Bioshock: Infinite merely takes you through from A to B and there is very little that you can do or have an opinion on about any of that. In all, if not at least some, of the scenes used at the end, there was opportunity for the player to play through those scenes as part of the developing story rather than take you through them briefly at the end as a sequence of explanations. This game could have had instead Booker and Elizabeth going backwards and forwards through time trying to understand what was happening rather than just experiencing straight forward linear action sequences.

It would have been really interesting as a player to have been able to utilise the vigors to open up special tears that thrust you into gameplay that extrapolated on the Rosalind and Robert Lutece influence and separate involvement in the creation of Columbia. Some might say "but that interrupts the separate realities of Booker existing with him appearing in the same time-frame as himself", but in Infinite that happens anyway - Booker appears in the revolution where he was killed and became a martyr. So what we have is a character who infiltrates different realities that he already does exist in or has existed in, but much of that is mere framework, or even wallpaper to some extent, rather than strong narrative building.

Other things I have and had issues with:

• Daisy as a strong female revolutionary character was reduced to 'crazy black female'
  • I really hated the moment when Elizabeth killed Daisy. I sat there with my controller in my hand thinking 'yip, the white folks save the day again...'
  • Sure, if you put it in context of Booker being the racist Comstock, then it makes a lot of sense, but at that point, you're actually supposed to sympathise with the revolution. I mean, that universe's Booker is a flippin' martyr for crying out loud!
  • Or are you supposed to sympathise? It's certainly a discussion point, I guess.
   
• Gameplay aspects like Elizabeth not opening any doors or pulling any leavers, waiting for you to do it instead even after she has just said “are you going to open the door or am I going in alone?” at which point she waits forever for you to open the door. Nice one!
  
  

• Bullets having a physical effect on ghosts.
  • Okay, so if a ghost can have a physical effect on you, why can't you have a physical effect on a ghost? That's good reasoning, but it still seems really silly in terms of gameplay when a ghost is supposed to be able to move through walls but takes direct damage from bullets.
  • Using vigors exclusively, or combined with ammunition (like transferring shock jockey to your gun), would have made that fight far more interesting and less of a recycled combat moment.

Actually, there's nowhere near as much to gripe about as I'd like to think. My 'exploration with sky-hooks' has been covered.

Overall you could look at both Bioshocks as extrapolating on the pitfalls of idealism and the downfall of civilisations or societies based on exclusivity. And those are good things to discuss, but Infinite, however, left me with my alternative title: Bioshock: The virtues of suicide*. Because, even though there was revolution going on, the player was constantly fighting both sides of the revolution just to stay alive, and was reducing the concepts that could have been exploited in that idea to triviality, or 'not important', because the player has to get from A to B (constantly), and then finely discover his own role in the whole sordid mess.

But is it worth all the discussion going on over at Paul Tassi's two articles? I think any multiverse story can generate that kind of speculation if there is no closed loop or specified number of universes; Infinite spreads its net wide, though traverses only a few of the extended possibilities within the narrative. My general answer to that question is 'no, it's not worth it' but that's personal more than critical, as I would rather have a story teller be definite within their framework of multiple possibilities. As an example of this statement, a novelist may never state a character's age thus allowing the readers to speculate on the moral ambiguity of their actions within a clearly defined framework. It allows discussion to open up on the act itself and whether age actually is relevant in discussing [that] act. Infinite merely opens up discussions on possibilities.

Not to deride that in itself of course, after all, many people find that a fun and rewarding task. And that's fine. Bioshock: Infinite just might become a classic for the ending alone.

But I'll still want a prequel to the original Bioshock!

Bored with Combat: Part 2

The tedium of combat in a world that you can't explore via the new sky-hook mechanic has turned what could have been a wondrous exploration of both narrative and world building into a boring task of objective completing. The sky-hook works great as a melee weapon – gloriously violent – but that is a secondary use and its main reason for existing is never fully explored. I find myself bored every time I reach a new area and have to fight my way through it just to open a new door, only to be greeted with more combat – which I have to fight my way through just to open another door...

In such a world where everything is floating high in the sky and there are rails that connect certain sections, I wonder where the ability to use those rails to explore and travel between areas is. This great new mechanic has been completely underutilised in favour of combat and action. What we could have had instead was the challenge of finding the right rail to land on and not be swept away from the target by the wrong rail, using the freight hooks to swing between buildings with more of a fun free flow effect that could have been part of a puzzle that unlocked the next area – rather than having to constantly battle through enemies to reach the next area.

There's just no genuine fun in this game.

There's no genuine exploration in this game.

There's no genuine character development because all the characters ever do is fight their way through enemies, as though that alone is going to develop them. I could see both Booker and Elizabeth having greater development if they were allowed to genuinely argue, or at least disagree, on a path to take using either the freight hooks or rails, having them part ways, end up in the same place and then challenging the other to go back and try the other route. When the player completes both routes and gets through the obstacles in their way (not combat obstacles!), while also collecting collectables via the alternative route, there would be genuine appreciation at the end of it, a genuine feeling of "Oh, okay, so you can do it. Maybe I have a bit more faith in you now ...oh hey, what did you find?". There's always an opportunity for some great banter in interesting situations that video games seem to completely miss.

The linearity isn't stifling, because good narratives have linearity, but the ability to explore and have a fun and wondrous time exploring is stifled through not allowing sections to breath without combat, not allowing characters to get to know one another outside of combat; and what seems most important to me at the moment: not allowing the narrative to be developed without the constant interruption of combat.

The tedium of combat has made Bioshock: Infinite boring.

Bored with Combat: Part 1

Bioshock: Infinite may be the last action orientated game I play. I seem to be far more interested (but not distracted) by the sky-hooks that take you around the place, while all the shooting is just so par-for-course that it's become boring. I still remember fondly the intense action scene in Dead Space 2 when Isaac is riding on top of the giant drill and having to fight off a constant barrage of necromorphs, but that was kind of a special moment amongst quite a lot of action that probably wasn't necessary, but was still fun. In such a visually impressive environment, I wish Bioshock: Infinite had taken the Prince of Persia (2008) route and delivered a more relaxed journey with less frequent combat.

But the sad fact is that most video games are specifically built around combat. Game mechanics may be first on the list, and these may vary from travel mechanics, to weapon mechanics, to puzzle solving mechanics; but invariably they are melded with combat to create action.

Of course, it's not my goal to disparage combat, only to question whether it should be so prevalent. We know it's prevalent because of the amount of 'war-shooters' that continuously are made at the same rate that barrages of enemies are launched at players in-game, and also, because that's about the same rate that they get purchased on. There will always be a market for that. I think, due to younger players requiring action to constantly feed their rate of imagery intake, whereas, perhaps, us older generations don't need to feel hammered over the head constantly by gunfire and explosions. The younger generation will always have the numbers.

But when will game designers make the games that they want to make and nothing else? No publisher breathing down their necks demanding that the game needs to reach a wider audience, therefore needs to be simplified... Obviously I'm no longer talking about Irrational Games, since apparently they were given free-reign by 2K Games.

Hopefully with the intervention of Sony aligning the PS4 with Indie developers, games will become exactly what the developers intended. That would be a grand old thing to see.