quiet pixel riot

The bipolar world of games

2008-03-11T11:15:00.001-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've wrote on my blog, but I'm at the end of my project and my band is starting to record new materials, so there you go for the explanation.
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I've started a DEBATE EMAILS at work for the past 2 months. How it works is as follow: Every end of the month someone sends an email with a debate subject. Than people in the mailing list replies as they please. The experiment is somewhat successful depending on the subject. (I should do a recap of the debates here).
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This is the latest:
Coolest Girl in School
click to article

Although some of the subjects do make me raise an eyebrow, I believe there are some game design elements we should think about (which I also find lacking in games).

"… should the player choose to invest in the ultimate goal, then there's an opportunity for them to try and increase their standing by thinking about who needs what and why, utilizing the online social networks and being strategic with their answers and actions."

"At either level, however, the player is constantly being put into a position where there isn't necessarily a 'right' or 'wrong' answer. Each choice produces consequences."

I believe this falls into the consequence/punishement/reward debate comming up...
I do find games to be extremely linear and bipolar. It seems like gamers only know Right & Wrong and Good & Evil (all of which are based on Christian morality but that’s another topic…), are players that simple? Do we still have the minds of kids struggling with the uncertainty of life? Do we still need a clear black and white world? I guess that’s what gamers demand. All the consoles on the market are powerful enough to support complex algorithm, why just use them on graphics and physics? Maybe games are just for entertainment, and entertainment are made to forget are daily worries, but I believe games need to cross that line in order to be taken seriously as an art form… if at all.

I know I’m straining a little bit here but I believe that in any art form artists needs to push the boundaries and make people think. And this is how the form will evolve.

The next generation is casual

2007-12-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

I've been working in the casual games of mobile for the past 3 years and as a hardcore gamer this is sometime a drag. Not only do we face hardware limitations, we have to concentrate mainly on the casual gamer.

The industry is going further down that road and the numbers do support them. As a business point of view, why would someone invest 80M to gain 20M profits while by investing 2M you gain about the same... (these figures are completely spawn out of my mine). The point is today's games cost a lot of money to make and the revenues more often than none doesn't pay. It's probably better to invest less and earn the same.

The casual gamers market is unbelievably huge compare to the hardcore gamers. Sure most of us in the industry will claim to be a hardcore gamer but when you step out of your gamers circle, you realize that there's a whole world living and breathing without a single knowledge of what we are up to. The number of people I know, who owns any next-gen console, represents about 10% of all my friends. And I am not talking about my 10 gamer friends. I am talking about all the people I know. Friends, family, neighbours, etc.

Now a days, people owns PC for web surfing mainly, but generally not consoles. Even my uncle in the back country of Vietnam has an Internet connection. He will never ever spend his hard earn money on a 400$(US) console, but is willing to do so on a 50$ crappy console. This said, he will never play Assassin's Creed or Mass Effect but he is playing variant of Bubble Popper. And this is the real Next-Gen.

In a market dominated by kids, the next generation is not the younger followers it's the older recruits. Your moms and dads, grand-pa and grand-ma, uncles and aunties. These are the untapped resources of the gaming industry. This is the Next Generation of gamers. And this generation of gamers demands casual games.

Le 10ième art?

2007-12-09T23:06:00.000-08:00

I was in this party with people in the film industrie. We discussed about the likeliness of Games and Films - mainly the realtionship between the creators (directors, writters, designers and producers - yes, I believe producers have a say in the creation of a work). The talks were revolving around the creative process of a project when there is so many people involved. Whos project is it? Who can sanely take ownership of a collective work? And than The Question arised: is a game Art? We all consider movies to be art. And modern games are often considered interactive movies. But are games, as beautiful as they can be, works of art? Maybe the answer is obvious to gamers, but not to the art folks.

If take it down to the strict definition of art, than yes, games are Art. But if we further down the distanction of The Arts, than Games come to fail. If one accepts the 9 art forms and the criteria which makes them Art, than Games are not Art - well not in the present form anyway. Games do represent a part of our world (and many others...) but there goal is not to search for the sensible in the things which surrounds us. In other words, games do not try to understand anything. By playing games, one doesn't learn about nature or the human condition. One can only learn to play in a certain set of rules. These rules doesn't really apply in our world. Games are designed to entertain, not to see the beauty in the shapes of things.

I know this topic is pretty sensible in a field which so tries to give importance to its existance, but this is only a thought thrown into the debate. One can probably spend years writting such a thesis but I am mearly standing on my soap box babbeling.

It's that wonderful time of the year!

2007-11-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

It's now that exiting moment of the year for all gamers. All the big titles are coming out. It is also around this time that we wonder if it's time to upgrade that 6 months old PC or buy a 360 or a PS3 (if that's not done already). Of course I base all this on old me, which haven't bought a 360 or a PS3 nor updated his PC.

Just to set the record straight, I do own a Wii. But even there I can't seem to find the time to play more than the Wii Sports and Wii Play games... That is, only when family and friends come around.

That said a lot of the games coming out this year has my hype meter blowing in the red. We finally see a glimpse of the actual next-gen gaming. I'm not talking about the hardware nor the software technology but really the core gameplay. We had about 10 years of the same FPS, RPG and so fourth without any really new way of playing games. Maybe the Wii has something to do with all this... But maybe it's the gamers who grew up playing Pac-Man and Mario Bros. which have grown up and or holding the reign of the gaming industry that are making a difference.

Whatever comes next, I'm pretty exited about the direction the industry is going. We finally have the feeling that companies are ready to risk more in order to increase sales. If we can get a 10th of the creativity the video games had in the 80's, we will see amazing things in the years to come.