Did you play DotA? Were you any good at it? If the answer to either of these questions is no, or you had to actually ask what “DotA” means (Defense of the Ancients - an incredibly popular Warcraft 3 add-on that gets more play today than Warcraft 3 itself), then Heroes of Newerth might not be the best fitting game for you. It certainly wasn’t for me.
Here’s the basic idea: each team has a well where they first spawn, and return after they die. At this well is an item shop, a giant tree/altar (depending on if you’re the good guys or the bad), a series of unit-producing structures that the players do not control in any way, and a few towers guarding everything. Outside of the bases, there are three “lanes.” Computer-controlled trees and demons will walk down these lanes, and then fight each other, and this is where the player comes in - by killing enemy monsters, they gain experience and gold, leading to more power and cashmoney. I see no reason to explain the need for cashmoney as, well, money is a goal unto itself, isn’t it? The ultimate goal here is to cross the lanes, kill enemy monsters, destroy the towers guarding the entryways into the enemy base, and then destroy their well. Each team, at default, gets five heroes, or players. Avatar control is exclusively through a point-to-move setup, more or less the same as Diablo-like games. It’s all very simple and makes a great deal of sense on the first playthrough - but that didn’t stop me from dying constantly.
Although I was familiar with DotA, I hadn’t played it much; the staggering quantity of characters and items, lack of a leaderboard system, and the lure of tower defense maps kept me far away from the game. It didn’t help that when I did try to play it, I failed miserably - just as I did repeatedly with Heroes of Newerth. Regardless of what character I chose, what items I selected, or how I went about fighting, I still died constantly and lost every game. After about 50 games, my kill-to-death ratio was an abysmal 0.1:1. But then, something happened: I picked the Scout, a character able to immediately exit combat and fade into an almost unattackable state, and the game changed for me.
For the first time since I began playing, my kill-to-death ratio (or ktd, as it’s referred to in-game) went up. Not to 0.2:1, not to 0.5:1, not even 1:1 - for each time I died in that game, I killed ten players. It wasn’t that I’d actually gotten any better at the game or had really even begun to understand it - it was that I had an escape move that I could use almost constantly, and I abused the hell out of it.
The moment that I first vanished and escaped a sure death was like an epiphany from God: I didn’t have to die everytime an enemy player came upon me. This lead, predictably, to several games of overwhelming cowardice - but it let me actually /watch/ the game, figure out how people survived and killed each other, understand how to win the game. It actually let me play the game for the first time.
What I’m trying to get at is that the single most important thing to understand about Heroes of Newerth is the difficulty curve. It’s painful and terrible, especially if you’re like me and never played much DotA. You know that rollercoaster in Cedar Point that actually curves inwards on its first descent? Learning to play the game is sort of like scaling that descent backwards, and is almost as foolish as thinking the tug of gravity will leave you alone as you ascend.
All of this sounds as though it would make for a ludicrously complicated ruleset, but it really doesn’t. There’s only one rule in Heroes of Newerth: do not die. It would seem that not dying would be a fairly straightforward matter; avoid big, muscular-looking things with sharp bits, don’t let wizard-y sorts see you with their bastard magic, and run like hell whenever something appears from the shadows to hit you with sticks. Avoiding death, however, is an incredible trial.
Avoiding death is so difficult initially due to the enormous volume of characters. As of today, there are 53, and new heroes are being implemented on an almost weekly basis (presumably until they hit 60). These heroes are split into three archetype categories, in addition to the binary choice of good and evil (titled Legion and Hellbourne). Strength, Intelligence, and Agility. Unsurprisingly, Strength heroes tend to have excellent health, armor, and physical attack. Generally, they also get some of the most useful crowd control-type abilities, like Pandamonium’s ability to grab an enemy in front of him and throw him over the back of his head, snaring him. Before I forget: it’s worth pointing out that Pandamonium is a karate panda that fights with a bamboo cane. Awesome. Okay so, moving along: Intelligence heroes are the spellcasty-sorts; low health and mediocre attack damage, but a host of highly-damaging spells or other utility-based mechanisms. Thunderbringer, for example, has the ability to cast a lightning bolt spell quite frequently. He also has a passive ability that causes damage to enemies nearby him whenever he casts a spell - which can be a pretty lethal combination, especially considering that his ultimate ability hits every enemy on the screen at once. Finally, agility heroes are the ninja-sorts; crappy health pools, generally bad crowd control options, but incredible damage output potential.
Each of the 53 heroes have entirely individualized skills, although there are some conceptual overlaps. Magebane can blink all over the screen, instantly teleporting from one location to another leaving no trail behind; Chronos, also an Agility character, can leap forward almost as far as Magebane can blink, but he leaves a trail behind him that slows enemy pursuers. To be truthful, most of the abilities are spins on tried-and-true action-RPG skills; there are whirlwind skills (via Swiftblade), hit-you-really-hard-from-afar spells (via Thunderbringer, Pyromancer, and several others); there are healy skills (via Jareziah and Nymhphora). Each hero receives a total of four skills; generally, two of them are passive, and two of them are activated abilities. One of these is the ‘ultimate’ of the character, an ability more powerful than most others, and also tending to have very long cooldown times. (Although not all of them are activate-skills; Nighthound receives permanent stealth when not attacking for his ultimate, and Armadon’s increases his stats every time he casts a spell.)
Part of the difficulty of learning how to avoid dying is learning what each of the characters do, and a tactical approach almost guaranteed to destroy the Dark Lady will falter and lead to a quick death against a character like Legionnaire. Further compounding the issue is the item shop, and not just because the organization of the shop leaves a lot to be desired. Counting just the “assembled” items - those items that require multiple other items to create - there are 59 items. 59! All of these add certain things to the heroes; a manadrain attack, an ability to create mirror-images of your character to fool the enemy, a giant mace to ignore enemy armor with, and so on. This, on its own, is enough to cause headaches - knowing what item will complement what hero is rather difficult.
Some items can dramatically change some characters. Indeed, some characters don’t really feel complete without certain items. One of my favorite strength heroes, Magmus, is one of these heroes. He has a slow attack speed, mediocre attack damage, and terrible health for a strength hero. Although he has a dash-type ability that stuns things and a stealth ability that causes area-effect damage, he still dies pretty quick; until he gets ahold of a Portal Key. The Key gives no bonuses of any kind except for the ability to teleport every 15 seconds. None of this is terribly important until looking at Magmus’ ultimate; he channels (or prepared the skill) for three seconds, and then tears the ground apart in a series of highly-damage waves. Now, Magmus cannot move while he channels this spell (although he can move while it is actually tearing the ground apart), so it’s pretty easy for the enemy to run away; why not skip a step and start channeling while hidden in some trees, teleporting in as the ground is ripped asunder?
Each character tends to have an item or two that can dramatically change not only the way that you play them, but also how they must be fought against; a spell-caster acquiring the Assassin’s Shroud, for example, can vanish into stealth at will. But there’s a counter to that; buy an Electric Eye, which reveals all stealth units in a large radius. But there’s a counter to that: kill the carrier of the eye, and they drop it on the ground. And so on - everything here has a counter, and to be perfectly honest, the game is no fun until you learn at least a number of these.
This is because of how quickly and easily one can die when unaware of what in the hell is going on; encounters of 2-4 players rarely last more than 15 seconds, and it can be tremendously difficult to understand why or how you died.
However, playing the Scout allowed me to begin to understand the clockwork mechanisms of Heroes of Newerth, and to see what it was that was killing people. On first glance, the melee and chaos of battle seems like indiscernible madness with random colors and swords being thrown all over the place. As I played more and more games, I began to be able to identiify /who/ threw that sword and from what mouth that orange beam came from. When I play Heroes of Newerth now, I can get a half-second glimpse at a battle and know not only which enemy heroes are involved, but also what skills they’ve used.
While this is a testament to the volumes of time I’ve put into the game, it is much more a testament to the design of Heroes of Newerth - although the interface needs work yet, the actual gameplay is quickly-identifiable and easily-read to the experienced player. Valkyrie’s winged-leap and javelin-throwing skills look radically different from anything Wildsoul or Pebbles or any other character could conjure. Although there are a couple skills that look similar (like almost all of the spells of Pyromancer and the Blacksmith), the sweeping majority of spells are differentiated enough that discerning them is no problem - but again, this holds true only with heavy time investment.
Character design is similarly and awesomely varied; considering that there are almost 60 characters and that none of them look the same, I’d say the dev team over at S2 Games have really outdone themselves. It’s reminiscent of the way that Valve handled the classes of Team Fortress 2; you can, at any given time, see only a silhouette of a player on either team for a split-second, and still be able to identify them. This isn’t to say that none of them are generic fantasy tropes; there are several of those. But they’re unique enough in the context of the other characters that it is a non-issue.
Finally compounding the problem is the player base at large. Although the matchmaking system is designed to keep players in approximate skill brackets, almost all of the players in any of the brackets tend to be giant assholes. The bewildering aspect of this comes in how games are titled and divided; I spend the vast majority of my time in the “Newbies Only” designation, and tend to play games catered towards mediocre players. Astonishingly, players get called “newbs” among other choice expletives for messing up and dying - even though it is a “Newbies Only” game! This really shouldn’t surprise me, but it does every time.
Although it sucks to die a lot when you first begin the game, it sucks a lot worse for your team; almost every time an enemy player gets a player kill, they gain a level and money - and the loser of the encounter loses money, and has to sit in a respawn queue for a period of time depending on their level. What this means is what several deaths early-on in a game will cause enemy heroes to become bloated with experience and gold, while the weaker player grows ever-weaker in comparison; being a new player in Heroes of Newerth is a vicious feedback cycle.
Underneath the absurdly complicated choices and variances in playstyle lie a wonderfully nuanced and tactical game. Certain character choices complement each other in such a fashion that, when skills are executed correctly and at the right time, they can wipe out an entire enemy team. Conversely, pretty much every character has a few characters that are a direct counter to them - Jareziah, the defensive-Paladin sort, laughs at Nighthound, a stealthy agility character, but the Nighthound is fully capable of annihilating many of the Intelligent-based heroes. Feinting, juking, hiding in trees, backdooring the enemy base in times of need, flanking, and simply executing a blitzkrieg all are viable and even required options at times. Playing sitting next to my room mate conferred an enormous advantage to the two of us, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee wins - as really, Heroes of Newerth is one of the most finely balanced games I’ve ever played, and defeat is never more than a few moments away.
Note that none of this speaks to the difficulty of actually managing to /kill/ someone ,and given the huge quantity of escape moves and tricky tactics of enemy players, this can be far more difficult than merely surviving. But I’m not going to detail that - you don’t expect me to give up the only edge I have in Heroes of Newerth, do you?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Leet-Beat Manifesto
I sat down, sighing, and peeled the remnants of the leet from my boot. Vile little things, leets; cute, but they scurry about like fucking ancient earth-rats - only without their systemic fear, so they tend to get trampled underfoot with alarming regularity. How they managed to evolve with such incredible stupidity and trust for giant mammalian creatures is bizarre; on Earth, they’d have never have made it. On Rubi-Ka, they never should have made it - but they did. Well, this one didn’t, and now I had an incidental meal.
It isn't that I tried to kill it - I'd been trying to avoid the thing. But they're everywhere, swarming about in leet packs like stupid, cute, and laughably armless little bodies. Swarms of blankly-staring beady eyes, judging me for killing the bureaucrat that the mission demanded. Well, fuck them. I had his head and the mission reward, and they came at me, damnit. I holstered my Sparkling Freedom Arms pistols, stood, and left, leaving a trail of leet blood behind me. Queue sunsets and happy clouds.
Johnny Robson Can Eat a Bag of Dicks
Kieron Gillen, almost as always, mirrored my initial reactions and later thoughts on over-much games writing;
..and I really think that he’s on to something. I am particularly attracted to this idea of “specialist games writing,” as it follows the trend of contemporary games in the past few years. Games are no longer run/jump/shoot, necessarily; they’re no longer good/bad/buy/sell; they are no longer time-wasting mechanisms. Actually, they are unless you make, buy, or write about games, but the breadth of people buying those games is as broad as the forms needed to write about them - so the writing really ought to reflect that.
As I’ve said in class and written about a little bit, I find the /experience/ of the player as an individual to be the single most important aspect of games-writing. While I’ve characterized doing this as sort of a Hunter Thompson approach to the field, I’m not quite sure that entirely encapsulates the idea, because often, there is more going on than just “the player run jumps and shoots” vs. “i ran, jumped and shot.” Often, it’s about what things the game is trying to say, too. Take this example from Alec Meer’s playjournal of the new RPG from Pirahna Bites, Risen:
The focus of this piece overall is most certainly not to explore the gender identification aspects of the game fully, but it points the way that there’s something to be looked into here; women are sex objects. Johnny Robson of Crispy Gamer might bemoan this as over-analyzing and looking a bit too much into a game; but if videogames are bits of media that are having a profound influence on people’s lives (if for no other reason than great amounts of time are spent on them), then it is important to look at them from perspectives like this - and what they are saying women should look like, and how we should treat them. If a game like Grand Theft Auto IV is selling millions of copies, isn’t it important to have some idea what sort-of subversive messages that it is sending (intentionally or not)?
If, for any other reason, I find huge fault with Robson simply for my own personal sake. I’ve been a fanboy of the NGJ-style since I came across it a couple of years ago, and know that the only gaming journalism I really tend to read with great interest is of that variety. If for no other reason, I want to see this overly-complex, hyper-intellectualized stuff on Gamasutra because I, as an individual, find it fascinating. Sure, I want to be a games journalist; but what I will be is the same as what I have always been: a gamer that loves reading games journalism, and demands that great varieties in style exist.
“Me? I’m a big fan of the idea that specialist gaming continues its demographic splits, so different sorts of people looking for different sorts of writing go to different sorts of places. Even sorts of writing I personally despise. *Especially* sorts of writing I personally despise.” (http://www.snappygamer.com/2008/12/02/the-problem-with-games-journalism-part-one/ [comment from Dec. 2])
..and I really think that he’s on to something. I am particularly attracted to this idea of “specialist games writing,” as it follows the trend of contemporary games in the past few years. Games are no longer run/jump/shoot, necessarily; they’re no longer good/bad/buy/sell; they are no longer time-wasting mechanisms. Actually, they are unless you make, buy, or write about games, but the breadth of people buying those games is as broad as the forms needed to write about them - so the writing really ought to reflect that.
As I’ve said in class and written about a little bit, I find the /experience/ of the player as an individual to be the single most important aspect of games-writing. While I’ve characterized doing this as sort of a Hunter Thompson approach to the field, I’m not quite sure that entirely encapsulates the idea, because often, there is more going on than just “the player run jumps and shoots” vs. “i ran, jumped and shot.” Often, it’s about what things the game is trying to say, too. Take this example from Alec Meer’s playjournal of the new RPG from Pirahna Bites, Risen:
“A shame about her character model, which I can’t help but perceive a peurile intent behind. She’s all washboard-stomach and physically improbable bosom, wearing an outfit that’s somewhere between noblewoman and stripper. At this earliest of stages, I don’t have the foggiest what the game’s general attitude to women is – but the first example Risen gives of it is not a positive one.” (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/07/the-risen-report-first-night/)
The focus of this piece overall is most certainly not to explore the gender identification aspects of the game fully, but it points the way that there’s something to be looked into here; women are sex objects. Johnny Robson of Crispy Gamer might bemoan this as over-analyzing and looking a bit too much into a game; but if videogames are bits of media that are having a profound influence on people’s lives (if for no other reason than great amounts of time are spent on them), then it is important to look at them from perspectives like this - and what they are saying women should look like, and how we should treat them. If a game like Grand Theft Auto IV is selling millions of copies, isn’t it important to have some idea what sort-of subversive messages that it is sending (intentionally or not)?
If, for any other reason, I find huge fault with Robson simply for my own personal sake. I’ve been a fanboy of the NGJ-style since I came across it a couple of years ago, and know that the only gaming journalism I really tend to read with great interest is of that variety. If for no other reason, I want to see this overly-complex, hyper-intellectualized stuff on Gamasutra because I, as an individual, find it fascinating. Sure, I want to be a games journalist; but what I will be is the same as what I have always been: a gamer that loves reading games journalism, and demands that great varieties in style exist.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Games-as-Art
I do not like arguments and discussions that revolve around entirely subjective measures concerning definitions - and find that the Games-as-Art argument falls into exactly this problem. That’s because definitions of art change depending on who one asks, and their qualifications for artistic merit shift in accordance to the individual. I even further do not enjoy this argument because of those involved in it; on one side, there are the gamers, fervently dedicated to legitimizing their craft (as any pioneer is wont to do), and on the other side lie the traditionalists, whom are fervently dedicated to protecting the sanctity of their craft - and each side has fundamental misunderstandings, typically, of what “their craft” represents. Note here that I recognize these are perhaps gross oversimplifications; individuals in each of the two groups undergo a crossover, and my binary setup ignores that. However, as will be made clear later, I find that in debating the two fields individuals fall into either of the two categories.
Towards a Definition of Art
Here’s the thing with art and the definition of art: it’s illusory. Today, any given individual that said that Van Gogh’s work wasn’t art would be laughed at; he would be called a philistine or worse, and his views would not be accepted. Even further, if that same individual attempted to lay the same criticism against the impressionist movement as a whole, he would likely suffer a far worse fate. Sure, he might find acceptance in an underground, niche-level publication, but his words would not be considered suitable to a mainstream audience (or even a mainstream art audience). Van Gogh is, however, considered one of the pre-eminent artists of the impressionist movement, lifted on high with such lofty figures as Renoir and Monet.
Yet Van Gogh wasn’t considered as much during his lifetime; his work was seen as inferior to that of other impressionists and lacking of merit. Impressionism as a whole was barely seen as a viable form of art - and yet today, we recognize both as hugely important figures and movements, and would disparage any criticisms to the contrary as stupid and ignorant. It strikes me that, at the time, the most influential of artists and art critics not attached to impressionism had a vested interest in ensuring that the previous art forms held dominance, and that impressionism remained, at best, “low art,” as Roger Ebert would say. I gather that this is because they had invested an education and career into another form of art, and that to acknowledge a young upstart version of the craft would be contradictory to their previous efforts, undermining and devaluing them. Ensuring their own career viability, one might say.
Again - today, impressionism and Van Gogh are inseparable with terms like “high art,” and therein lies the problem: that generations following those of an original creation are those that determine the “art-ishness” of a given thing. What this illustrates is that it falls not to a contemporary group of critics to determine whether or not something is worthy of the mantle of “art,” but rather those that follow them.
So What Was That About Interactivity?
One of the major criticisms against the Games-as-Art movement seems to revolve around interactivity, and the shifting nature of videogames. By which I mean, the player - not the creator - has influence over how the work is perceived. Whether they are bad at the game, miss certain details as a result of pursuing other methods of interaction, or any number of other things that can happen in a video games, they all suggest the same thing; that they simply must /change/ the game, in some way, in order for it to function. Roger Ebert, speaking towards this idea, said that
“I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.” (http:// blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/07/30/croal- vs -ebert-vs- barker-on-whether-videogames-can-be-high-art- round-1.aspx)
But here’s the thing: art does not exist in a vacuum. Sure, some works do - for example, much of Van Gogh’s work can stand on its own in a museum and be understood. If I would have visited a museum and saw an original copy of Starry Night, it would appear much the same were I to visit it today. This is generally how art functions - but not all art. Installation art - artistic concepts designed around being placed somewhere that may or may not previously had art - has become a large movement in art communities, and is considered to be high art by most critics. (Worth pointing out: during its inception, it certainly was not considered high art - or even low art.)
However, if you were to visit an art installation of Heidi Hatry, you might find that her work somehow lacks the consistency normally associated with art - each time you were to visit a particular one of her many installations, it would change. This is because they are made out of untreated meat (http://bostonist.com/2009/02/17/heide-hatry-heads-tales-menard.php), and, well, meat rots. It changes on a day-to-day basis - it will not be the same for every viewer, and that is part of the point. She uses this changing effect, presumably, to illustrate a point that I will not attempt to define. Not only does her art change, but it requires the viewer to change - the viewer must walk around the exhibit, must experience the changing of perspective, must experience differences in perspective. They, simply by engaging and viewing the piece, must change the piece. They, simply by attending the exhibit when they do, must change the piece.
This idea - that the viewer changes the work of art simply by moving around and viewing it from different perspectives - is not new. It’s been around since the 15th century, and is known as anamorphosis, and the earliest known example of this was from Leonardo da Vinci. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis)
Although the viewer does not actually change the art piece itself, they are nonetheless required, in both Renaissance and modern art, to interact with it so that the art may effectively present itself. While it would seem that the viewer initially gives or contributes nothing to the piece, I disagree - the entire purpose behind these types of art movements is to /force/ the viewer to give something of themselves, even if that element is merely a change in perspective. Why that change cannot simply be a shift in perspective/position or, to cater to a more literal crowd, the burning of the calories required to move sufficiently, I do not know.
And yet, Ebert claims that only an artist can create art, and that the viewer must give nothing, change nothing, contribute nothing for the piece to remain art. Although I am no art critic and know little about Roger Ebert, it would seem that his knowledge of fine art - “high art,” as he might call it - is lacking in a variety of ways. But how does this apply to the games-as-art argument?
Interactive Art, Interactive Games
We’ve more or less established that interaction can be a core part of a piece of art, whether this come through a change in perspective or a shifting in time. But what about a shifting of input? Does this constitute a higher definition of interaction, a notion of a higher caliber than the alterations that are the tolls of the passage of time? I do not believe so. In fact, I believe that the decision of when to attend an exhibit, as with the rotting meat example, can have a greater impact on the piece than even the wildly varying controller inputs that a game can have.
That’s because the game, regardless of what the player may attempt to do, is entirely consistent with itself. (So long as he plays within the confines of the rules; ie, no exploiting or cheating. This is a fair point to make considering that an art viewer is assumed to not break the rules of viewership; ie, no touching the painting or burning down the gallery) No matter how far through any given player progresses through a game, or what vistas he perceives, or how many scores of orcs he may slay, the game is exactly the same. The disc or binary code that the game was delivered upon is not changed in any substantial way, unless saved game progress is considered “substantial.” The progression between one player to another through a game may vary, but the beginning and end points are the same, provided that they finish the game. The sound effects for each player, unless they have a faulty sound system, will remain consistent throughout the game.
Let’s compare these examples with the meat-art installation mentioned above. Although the code of the game may shift slightly to reflect a player’s progress through a game, so too will the meat installation shift with a viewer’s progress; they may attend the gallery multiple times, and each shift in time will reflect a shift in the state of rot of the meat. Any given player will progress through a non-linear RPG in a different way, but they will have the same approximate start and end patterns, similar to how the exhibit viewer will move through a gallery in a differing pattern from his compatriots, or, to return again to the question of time, will visit the gallery during different snapshots of decay. As each player of a game will have a slightly different audio/visual setup, they will perceive the game itself differently - but so too will the gallery viewer, depending on the time of day they visit or any physical disabilities that they may have.
If anything, it would seem that Hatry’s art is a more illusory and shifting thing than any video game could be. Afterall, she could not rely on a consistency of presentation even from day to day - whereas the gamer will find the introductory level of Contra to be identical in layout no matter how many times they play it or how many years have elapsed since their last play session.
Roger Ebert is a Bourgeois Fuck
I despise the difference in reception and understanding of “high” and “low” art. It strikes me that the primary difference between the two is the artist themselves; those artists that, during the Renaissance, had noble patronage and painted great works were considered to have made “high” art, whereas those lower-class artists that lacked noble patronage made “low” art. Although my difficulty with the terms were probably eluded to, both in the previous sentence and the title of this section, I feel nonetheless that it is important to write a bit more extensively on it.
“High” art, it would seem, is the art of the upper classes - that is to say, it is the art of the status quo. Generally and anecdotally speaking, “high” art forms are those that have been accepted by the community-at-large as being noble, goodly, and beautiful. It may or may not seek to challenge, to displace, to question - it merely serves the purpose of engaging those that already understand the form. This is not to say that “high” art is bad; as said earlier, Van Gogh is considered today to be “high” art, and I find his work to be bloody beautiful, the work of an elegant but twisted mind. Generally, “high” art also seems to be the art of the previous generation; it has been examined, studied, and criticized by many before, and has been deemed worthy of viewing by contemporary audiences.
“Low” art, on the other hand, is the art that challenges the status quo. Usually disparaged by contemporary critics as being “base” and “vulgar,” it is art that often attempts to challenge and question preconceived notions; “Must art be beautiful and hyper-realistic, like that of the Renaissance?” or, “Must art be accessible only to those whom have studied it extensively?” In the last three or four decades, an actual art movement has sprung up around the idea of “low” art - Lowbrow art.
The term “Lowbrow Art” was coined by Robert Williams, an artist that could not get his paintings displayed in any major or influential art galleries. He published a book, intentionally self-deprecating, called “The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowbrow_art) that contained art that Williams described as “cartoon-tainted abstract surrealism.” (from same source) Lowbrow Art is considered invalid by many art critics; the theory goes that an artform becomes legitimate when scholarly, internally-based criticism is done upon it, and since this is lacking, it is not “legitimate” art. However, this may be intentional - my room mate, a follower of the movement, characterized one of the struggles of the movement thusly; “It’s an attempt to create art that you don’t have to go to college and study to understand.” (thanks, Garrett) If the entire purpose of the form is to challenge “high” art, then why should the standards of “high” art - that of internal criticism - be held to it?
What I mean to do is to paint Ebert as an upper-class elitist that shares many similarities with art-elitists from generations past; he is unable to identify new and significant movements, he disparages attempts from new movements to legitimize themselves, and fails to understand that the contemporarily-held definition is illusory and will thus change over time. I involve this line of thinking for a specific reason; he said that “Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.” (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/07/30/croal-vs-ebert-vs-barker-on-whether-videogames-can-be-high-art-round-1.aspx)
This is problematic for many reasons; as I’ve tried to show, his definitions of art-in-general are weak and terribly flawed, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the field, and his accusation against games-as-art never being able to attain “high” art status merely signifies him as a member of the established art community - that same established art community that, time and time again, has failed to recognize new mediums and forms as being worthy of the term “art.”
So Are Videogames Art?
I do not know. As the term “art” is so politically and controversially charged, I don’t even like to use it. As a poet, I write what I believe I know sometimes and what I’d like to know often - but I’d rarely call it art. I despise being called an artist and the weird, counter-culture dirty-city-hippie connotations that it carries. But I’m pretty sure that games can be art - but not all of them.
Similar to cinema, some works are much more profound and important than others, and one does not require an in-depth understanding of the form to see as much. Films like The Fountain are beautiful expressions of specific mindsets, agonizing over the realities of life; others, like 300 are wonderfully bloody and carnage-filled carnivals of excess, and I find the term “art” to apply to them both for obviously different reasons. However, some films - like, say, Battle Royale, a Japanese film about middle schoolers killing each other, are probably not art. One of the definitions my room mate has given (that he does not necessarily cling to at all times) is the purpose of the work; was it created to forward a medium, to make a statement, to create something beautiful? Or was it created to make somebody a bunch of money? If the answer is the latter, then, probably, it is not art; if the former, then it is. This is clearly problematic in that to do just about anything in the United States it has to be something designed to make money (if you’re getting funding for the work) - so there are a great many blurry lines.
This is especially because most major videogames are enormous financial endeavours from parent companies; AAA titles are quickly turning into tens-of-millions of dollar affairs. This is why I instead turn to more indie-based games to look for art.
Passage is a very short game. It is also light on controls, with the player only being able to move up, down, or forward. In fact, it isn’t really much of a game - it’s much more of a statement about death, and the futility of life. You cannot win this game. No matter what the player does, he will die in the end. They can choose whether or not to fall in love with a woman, and although this increases your lifespan, it also makes it much more difficult to navigate the maze that is the game.
Sure, when I play the game I might walk ten steps forward, three up, and two down; but I will still die. When you play the game, you might befriend the woman, walk fifteen steps forward, two down, and one up - but you will still die, in love or not. I might even score more points than you - but if you cannot win the game and just die in the end, then what do they even matter? Passage takes care not to state much directly to you, instead letting the player figure things out for themselves - similar to the way an excellent poet need not state an emotion as much as paint it through words, or a director need not tell you the scene is sad as much as provide a series of evocative imagery.
In the case of Passage, I’m really not sure how this can be characterized as anything but “art.” Graphically, its reminiscent of the SNES games of yore; 256 colors, low resolution, smooth animations. It’s almost like an oil painting in this. What I am not sure of at all, however, is whether or not Passage is even a game.
You cannot win. There is no competition. There are no outcomes but death. No challenges lie within its confines. Are these things that break the definition of a game for Passage? I am, again, not at all sure - but just the same, I find it a captivating and stimulating - if depressing - experience, that I have returned to many times and probably will many more through my passage of life.
Like the anamorphosis paintings of da Vinci and the bizarrely-abstracted images of Van Gogh, Passage shows us something that has not been before; it is an experience that is unique to itself. Videogames are in a similar state; until the end of the 20th century, videogames could have barely even been conceived of. Under what absurd pretense is it that we, when viewing these things contemporarily, can come to attempt to define them as - or deny them as being - art? Holding games up to prior definitions of art is as silly as holding new art forms up to the definitions of old ones - it would be like trying to analyze the black folk-metal stylings of the Norwegian band Windir with the standards we apply to Brittney Spears, and wondering why it failed to conform to our standards. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of modern music critics would denounce Windir as being a terrible sort of burden, a catastrophe to inflict upon the ear drum. But .. didn’t contemporary critics of the Beatles say the same thing?
Towards a Definition of Art
Here’s the thing with art and the definition of art: it’s illusory. Today, any given individual that said that Van Gogh’s work wasn’t art would be laughed at; he would be called a philistine or worse, and his views would not be accepted. Even further, if that same individual attempted to lay the same criticism against the impressionist movement as a whole, he would likely suffer a far worse fate. Sure, he might find acceptance in an underground, niche-level publication, but his words would not be considered suitable to a mainstream audience (or even a mainstream art audience). Van Gogh is, however, considered one of the pre-eminent artists of the impressionist movement, lifted on high with such lofty figures as Renoir and Monet.
Yet Van Gogh wasn’t considered as much during his lifetime; his work was seen as inferior to that of other impressionists and lacking of merit. Impressionism as a whole was barely seen as a viable form of art - and yet today, we recognize both as hugely important figures and movements, and would disparage any criticisms to the contrary as stupid and ignorant. It strikes me that, at the time, the most influential of artists and art critics not attached to impressionism had a vested interest in ensuring that the previous art forms held dominance, and that impressionism remained, at best, “low art,” as Roger Ebert would say. I gather that this is because they had invested an education and career into another form of art, and that to acknowledge a young upstart version of the craft would be contradictory to their previous efforts, undermining and devaluing them. Ensuring their own career viability, one might say.
Again - today, impressionism and Van Gogh are inseparable with terms like “high art,” and therein lies the problem: that generations following those of an original creation are those that determine the “art-ishness” of a given thing. What this illustrates is that it falls not to a contemporary group of critics to determine whether or not something is worthy of the mantle of “art,” but rather those that follow them.
So What Was That About Interactivity?
One of the major criticisms against the Games-as-Art movement seems to revolve around interactivity, and the shifting nature of videogames. By which I mean, the player - not the creator - has influence over how the work is perceived. Whether they are bad at the game, miss certain details as a result of pursuing other methods of interaction, or any number of other things that can happen in a video games, they all suggest the same thing; that they simply must /change/ the game, in some way, in order for it to function. Roger Ebert, speaking towards this idea, said that
“I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.” (http:// blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/07/30/croal- vs -ebert-vs- barker-on-whether-videogames-can-be-high-art- round-1.aspx)
But here’s the thing: art does not exist in a vacuum. Sure, some works do - for example, much of Van Gogh’s work can stand on its own in a museum and be understood. If I would have visited a museum and saw an original copy of Starry Night, it would appear much the same were I to visit it today. This is generally how art functions - but not all art. Installation art - artistic concepts designed around being placed somewhere that may or may not previously had art - has become a large movement in art communities, and is considered to be high art by most critics. (Worth pointing out: during its inception, it certainly was not considered high art - or even low art.)
However, if you were to visit an art installation of Heidi Hatry, you might find that her work somehow lacks the consistency normally associated with art - each time you were to visit a particular one of her many installations, it would change. This is because they are made out of untreated meat (http://bostonist.com/2009/02/17/heide-hatry-heads-tales-menard.php), and, well, meat rots. It changes on a day-to-day basis - it will not be the same for every viewer, and that is part of the point. She uses this changing effect, presumably, to illustrate a point that I will not attempt to define. Not only does her art change, but it requires the viewer to change - the viewer must walk around the exhibit, must experience the changing of perspective, must experience differences in perspective. They, simply by engaging and viewing the piece, must change the piece. They, simply by attending the exhibit when they do, must change the piece.
This idea - that the viewer changes the work of art simply by moving around and viewing it from different perspectives - is not new. It’s been around since the 15th century, and is known as anamorphosis, and the earliest known example of this was from Leonardo da Vinci. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis)
Although the viewer does not actually change the art piece itself, they are nonetheless required, in both Renaissance and modern art, to interact with it so that the art may effectively present itself. While it would seem that the viewer initially gives or contributes nothing to the piece, I disagree - the entire purpose behind these types of art movements is to /force/ the viewer to give something of themselves, even if that element is merely a change in perspective. Why that change cannot simply be a shift in perspective/position or, to cater to a more literal crowd, the burning of the calories required to move sufficiently, I do not know.
And yet, Ebert claims that only an artist can create art, and that the viewer must give nothing, change nothing, contribute nothing for the piece to remain art. Although I am no art critic and know little about Roger Ebert, it would seem that his knowledge of fine art - “high art,” as he might call it - is lacking in a variety of ways. But how does this apply to the games-as-art argument?
Interactive Art, Interactive Games
We’ve more or less established that interaction can be a core part of a piece of art, whether this come through a change in perspective or a shifting in time. But what about a shifting of input? Does this constitute a higher definition of interaction, a notion of a higher caliber than the alterations that are the tolls of the passage of time? I do not believe so. In fact, I believe that the decision of when to attend an exhibit, as with the rotting meat example, can have a greater impact on the piece than even the wildly varying controller inputs that a game can have.
That’s because the game, regardless of what the player may attempt to do, is entirely consistent with itself. (So long as he plays within the confines of the rules; ie, no exploiting or cheating. This is a fair point to make considering that an art viewer is assumed to not break the rules of viewership; ie, no touching the painting or burning down the gallery) No matter how far through any given player progresses through a game, or what vistas he perceives, or how many scores of orcs he may slay, the game is exactly the same. The disc or binary code that the game was delivered upon is not changed in any substantial way, unless saved game progress is considered “substantial.” The progression between one player to another through a game may vary, but the beginning and end points are the same, provided that they finish the game. The sound effects for each player, unless they have a faulty sound system, will remain consistent throughout the game.
Let’s compare these examples with the meat-art installation mentioned above. Although the code of the game may shift slightly to reflect a player’s progress through a game, so too will the meat installation shift with a viewer’s progress; they may attend the gallery multiple times, and each shift in time will reflect a shift in the state of rot of the meat. Any given player will progress through a non-linear RPG in a different way, but they will have the same approximate start and end patterns, similar to how the exhibit viewer will move through a gallery in a differing pattern from his compatriots, or, to return again to the question of time, will visit the gallery during different snapshots of decay. As each player of a game will have a slightly different audio/visual setup, they will perceive the game itself differently - but so too will the gallery viewer, depending on the time of day they visit or any physical disabilities that they may have.
If anything, it would seem that Hatry’s art is a more illusory and shifting thing than any video game could be. Afterall, she could not rely on a consistency of presentation even from day to day - whereas the gamer will find the introductory level of Contra to be identical in layout no matter how many times they play it or how many years have elapsed since their last play session.
Roger Ebert is a Bourgeois Fuck
I despise the difference in reception and understanding of “high” and “low” art. It strikes me that the primary difference between the two is the artist themselves; those artists that, during the Renaissance, had noble patronage and painted great works were considered to have made “high” art, whereas those lower-class artists that lacked noble patronage made “low” art. Although my difficulty with the terms were probably eluded to, both in the previous sentence and the title of this section, I feel nonetheless that it is important to write a bit more extensively on it.
“High” art, it would seem, is the art of the upper classes - that is to say, it is the art of the status quo. Generally and anecdotally speaking, “high” art forms are those that have been accepted by the community-at-large as being noble, goodly, and beautiful. It may or may not seek to challenge, to displace, to question - it merely serves the purpose of engaging those that already understand the form. This is not to say that “high” art is bad; as said earlier, Van Gogh is considered today to be “high” art, and I find his work to be bloody beautiful, the work of an elegant but twisted mind. Generally, “high” art also seems to be the art of the previous generation; it has been examined, studied, and criticized by many before, and has been deemed worthy of viewing by contemporary audiences.
“Low” art, on the other hand, is the art that challenges the status quo. Usually disparaged by contemporary critics as being “base” and “vulgar,” it is art that often attempts to challenge and question preconceived notions; “Must art be beautiful and hyper-realistic, like that of the Renaissance?” or, “Must art be accessible only to those whom have studied it extensively?” In the last three or four decades, an actual art movement has sprung up around the idea of “low” art - Lowbrow art.
The term “Lowbrow Art” was coined by Robert Williams, an artist that could not get his paintings displayed in any major or influential art galleries. He published a book, intentionally self-deprecating, called “The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowbrow_art) that contained art that Williams described as “cartoon-tainted abstract surrealism.” (from same source) Lowbrow Art is considered invalid by many art critics; the theory goes that an artform becomes legitimate when scholarly, internally-based criticism is done upon it, and since this is lacking, it is not “legitimate” art. However, this may be intentional - my room mate, a follower of the movement, characterized one of the struggles of the movement thusly; “It’s an attempt to create art that you don’t have to go to college and study to understand.” (thanks, Garrett) If the entire purpose of the form is to challenge “high” art, then why should the standards of “high” art - that of internal criticism - be held to it?
What I mean to do is to paint Ebert as an upper-class elitist that shares many similarities with art-elitists from generations past; he is unable to identify new and significant movements, he disparages attempts from new movements to legitimize themselves, and fails to understand that the contemporarily-held definition is illusory and will thus change over time. I involve this line of thinking for a specific reason; he said that “Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.” (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/07/30/croal-vs-ebert-vs-barker-on-whether-videogames-can-be-high-art-round-1.aspx)
This is problematic for many reasons; as I’ve tried to show, his definitions of art-in-general are weak and terribly flawed, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the field, and his accusation against games-as-art never being able to attain “high” art status merely signifies him as a member of the established art community - that same established art community that, time and time again, has failed to recognize new mediums and forms as being worthy of the term “art.”
So Are Videogames Art?
I do not know. As the term “art” is so politically and controversially charged, I don’t even like to use it. As a poet, I write what I believe I know sometimes and what I’d like to know often - but I’d rarely call it art. I despise being called an artist and the weird, counter-culture dirty-city-hippie connotations that it carries. But I’m pretty sure that games can be art - but not all of them.
Similar to cinema, some works are much more profound and important than others, and one does not require an in-depth understanding of the form to see as much. Films like The Fountain are beautiful expressions of specific mindsets, agonizing over the realities of life; others, like 300 are wonderfully bloody and carnage-filled carnivals of excess, and I find the term “art” to apply to them both for obviously different reasons. However, some films - like, say, Battle Royale, a Japanese film about middle schoolers killing each other, are probably not art. One of the definitions my room mate has given (that he does not necessarily cling to at all times) is the purpose of the work; was it created to forward a medium, to make a statement, to create something beautiful? Or was it created to make somebody a bunch of money? If the answer is the latter, then, probably, it is not art; if the former, then it is. This is clearly problematic in that to do just about anything in the United States it has to be something designed to make money (if you’re getting funding for the work) - so there are a great many blurry lines.
This is especially because most major videogames are enormous financial endeavours from parent companies; AAA titles are quickly turning into tens-of-millions of dollar affairs. This is why I instead turn to more indie-based games to look for art.
Passage is a very short game. It is also light on controls, with the player only being able to move up, down, or forward. In fact, it isn’t really much of a game - it’s much more of a statement about death, and the futility of life. You cannot win this game. No matter what the player does, he will die in the end. They can choose whether or not to fall in love with a woman, and although this increases your lifespan, it also makes it much more difficult to navigate the maze that is the game.
Sure, when I play the game I might walk ten steps forward, three up, and two down; but I will still die. When you play the game, you might befriend the woman, walk fifteen steps forward, two down, and one up - but you will still die, in love or not. I might even score more points than you - but if you cannot win the game and just die in the end, then what do they even matter? Passage takes care not to state much directly to you, instead letting the player figure things out for themselves - similar to the way an excellent poet need not state an emotion as much as paint it through words, or a director need not tell you the scene is sad as much as provide a series of evocative imagery.
In the case of Passage, I’m really not sure how this can be characterized as anything but “art.” Graphically, its reminiscent of the SNES games of yore; 256 colors, low resolution, smooth animations. It’s almost like an oil painting in this. What I am not sure of at all, however, is whether or not Passage is even a game.
You cannot win. There is no competition. There are no outcomes but death. No challenges lie within its confines. Are these things that break the definition of a game for Passage? I am, again, not at all sure - but just the same, I find it a captivating and stimulating - if depressing - experience, that I have returned to many times and probably will many more through my passage of life.
Like the anamorphosis paintings of da Vinci and the bizarrely-abstracted images of Van Gogh, Passage shows us something that has not been before; it is an experience that is unique to itself. Videogames are in a similar state; until the end of the 20th century, videogames could have barely even been conceived of. Under what absurd pretense is it that we, when viewing these things contemporarily, can come to attempt to define them as - or deny them as being - art? Holding games up to prior definitions of art is as silly as holding new art forms up to the definitions of old ones - it would be like trying to analyze the black folk-metal stylings of the Norwegian band Windir with the standards we apply to Brittney Spears, and wondering why it failed to conform to our standards. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of modern music critics would denounce Windir as being a terrible sort of burden, a catastrophe to inflict upon the ear drum. But .. didn’t contemporary critics of the Beatles say the same thing?
Monday, October 5, 2009
A Golden Dawn
At its most basic level, gaming journalism is heavily rooted in consumerism. The very purpose behind an in-depth examination of the features and shortcomings of a game are suggestion; a suggestion to play, or a suggestion to not play. Although systems exist in which the trade and playing of games is not done through capital, a system of review nonetheless remains focused on the suggestion of playing or not playing above and beyond any other consideration. That is not to say that games cannot be viewed from a non-suggestive perspective - academics and authors of other studies are (hopefully) immune to such considerations.
The justification for this thesis of suggestion is that most, if not all, of gaming journalism is centered around the consumer in a marketplace of video games. Whether or not they have financial incentive to look favorably on one game or another is not particularly relevant - the gaming journalist that strives towards creating a service for consumers is equally as centered on suggestion as the gaming journalist that is paid by a parent company.
With this in mind, I believe that gaming journalism ought to be done under different guidelines than those of other journalists.
Most journalists I have encountered would argue that a lynchpin of their method is objectivity, or to be as objective towards their subject matter as possible. Whether or not pure objectivity is possible is a difficult question - but one that is not relevant for a gaming journalist. This is because any given gaming experience is, at its core, an experience - from the perspective of a player, from the perspective of the writer, and from the perspective of a journalist. In order to effectively characterize a game and draw conclusions from material presented inside of it, this experience cannot be extracted from the writing process lest a critical piece of the game be lost.
Is any given game merely the sum of its working parts? Would, for example, World of Warcraft be the same game if individual components were removed, or graphical representations significantly altered? Is World of Warcraft its user interface and sound presentation? Yes, to all of these questions; its also player interaction, exploring, killing monsters and so on. But is it more than these individual components stacked on top of each other?
In my obviously anecdotal experience, gamers that I am in communication with that have played World of Warcraft all share one thing in common: their experiences. For one player, it might be an incredible experience - banding together with 39 other friends and killing giant dragons and evil eyeballs. For another, this predominant experience might have been terrible - being repeatedly “farmed,” for example, by an enemy player for hours.
To be “farmed,” by the way, is to be repeatedly killed by an enemy in such a fashion that it prevents the player-being-slayed to do anything but be repeatedly slain.
If either of these players were asked what they thought about World of Warcraft, they would likely respond in, respectively, positive and negative fashions - but they would probably both explain why. “World of Warcraft was awesome - the game let me slay huge monsters and acquire great-looking armor,” the former might reply. And the latter? “World of Warcraft sucked, man - too many gankers.”
A “ganker” is one that engages in farming against another player. They are also known as griefers, and have been playing online games since their inception in millennia past.
These experiences - although made up by me - are fairly generic and common ones found among players of World of Warcraft. Although each individual player will have an individual, personalized experience, they will, I believe, all share the act of having an experience-in-general in common.
So - does a gaming journalist writing about a specific game also have these experiences?
If they aren’t, then they’re doing something wrong - and are in the business for the wrong reasons. These are clearly opinions and will be in no way supported further, but just the same - if a gamer isn’t actually getting the full experience out of the game, then how can they write on it and have an effective opinion about it? I do not believe they can - but I also do not believe critics and journalists somehow miss these experiences.
Yet gaming journalism, outside of a few notable authors in recent years, have failed to successfully integrate these experiences with their professional opinion of a game. So, in a sense, since they are failing to effectively understand or convey a game, then they are failing the primary function of their position: suggestion.
It is with this in mind that I turn towards subjective journalism, almost in the vein of Hunter S. Thompson - ‘Gonzo Gaming,’ perhaps - to illustrate the potential of a game to a potential player of the game. By permitting the writer to shed the entrapments of objectivity, it allows him to fully embrace not merely the game, but his experience with the game - and how to convey that to a reader. There are most assuredly consuming gamers that prefer the nitty-gritty of facts and charts to determine their game selections; this style of games writing will not be tailored to them in the same sense that Thompson’s style alienated many people.
But for many people, his style brought his subjects to life in a way that no other writer in the field was capable of. So, too, can this occur with games - by sharing individual experiences with their readers, writers demonstrate to readers just what it is that a given game is capable of. Did it allow for the writer - and, by the extension of possibility, the reader - to slay a giant dragon with 39 other comrades? Did it allow him to farm an enemy mercilessly?
_________
I recently made a post on my primary blog (here: http://www.40oz1game.com/2009/10/405/) about what amounts to a staged event on behalf of the Something Awful Goons in the new MMO, Champions Online. One of the most-espoused features of Champions Online is the character creation system; an evolution of the system found in (__that other superhero mmo - ack!__), it further expanded on the possibilities of the sort of avatar one could play, and was widely-praised for being far more customizable than anything else on the market. Early previews of the game, and even reviews, were awash with a staggering variety of player avatar designs - giant claw-head things, huge eyes, meathook-hands, and so on. But it all lacked context - sure, it was cool that you could do that.
But what the Goons did actually made me want to play the game. They more or less recreated, on a huge scale, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers of Saturday morning cartoon fame (or maybe after school, depending on your age). While I detest the Power Rangers and most Jpanese pop-culture remnants along the same aesthetic lines, the Goons - in their absurd rainbow of power ranger costumes - made me want to be a part of Champions Online.
That was because, for the first time, I was able to see what sorts of experiences could be had in Champions Online. Even if I signed up this evening and had the game running tomorrow morning and played instead of going to video game class, I still could not be one of the pseudo-Power Rangers - this is because this experience is unique to them. But I could slowly build a gang of hook-headed creatures to fight alongside me, or build the security arm of a left-wing militant group: the possibilities are endless.
And it is these possibilities that made me want to play Champions Online - not the composite of its aesthetic values, not the vivid, cartoony realism (haha) of the sound effects, nor the towering and sometimes-ominous city-skylines - but the possibility of creating my own, engaging, and unique experience.
It strikes me that the greatest service that a gaming writer can perform lies in charting out these experiences; admitedly anecdotal and unlikely to be recreated by the player, they instead show the player what they /could/ do. Instead of explaining to the player that Red Faction: Guerilla has a series of enemy installations that must be destroyed to make progress, a writer could instead chronicle the campaign of increasingly-brutal insurgent activities against a fascist state and the constant use of fellow insurgents as little more than fodder and distractionary tools. Instead of explaining the charcoal and sooty landscapes of the UT:2004 mod Red Orchestra that is occasionally brought to life with the beauty of the occasional flower, a writer could rather wax and wane the philosophic after he stumbles across a lone flower in a harsh landscape when looking through the iron sights of his machine gun (http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/done_column_battle_klaxon_on_r.php)
Of course, a gaming journalist must not only elaborate on more abstract notions like “experience” and “possibility” - they must also address the structural pillars of the game, too, like sound, graphical presentation, and so on. But why must these be the focus of most review and criticism? Gaming as a medium is fundamentally about experiences and play - not the elegant arches of gun barrels or the fractal beauty of a fireball spell. These things are certainly a key part of the experience, and should be treated as such - but they should not sit atop the pedestal they currently reside on. Slightly further, it also strikes me that relying on these pillars to support writing is an easy way out - following a formula of “graphics/sound/gameplay/story/replayability/etc” is as boring as a formulaic novel or film is.
It’s a bright future we’re heading into - gaming is still a relatively new field, and the criticism and writings of it are even further nouveau. But here’s the question: do you want your future to be made of the cold steel of numbers, graphics scores, and clothing selection commentary, or a golden dawn made from the tapestries of stories, heroic exploits, and nefarious deeds of a camping griefer? It is in these experiences that suggestion will be best characterized with.
Camping, by the way, is just another term for griefing.
The justification for this thesis of suggestion is that most, if not all, of gaming journalism is centered around the consumer in a marketplace of video games. Whether or not they have financial incentive to look favorably on one game or another is not particularly relevant - the gaming journalist that strives towards creating a service for consumers is equally as centered on suggestion as the gaming journalist that is paid by a parent company.
With this in mind, I believe that gaming journalism ought to be done under different guidelines than those of other journalists.
Most journalists I have encountered would argue that a lynchpin of their method is objectivity, or to be as objective towards their subject matter as possible. Whether or not pure objectivity is possible is a difficult question - but one that is not relevant for a gaming journalist. This is because any given gaming experience is, at its core, an experience - from the perspective of a player, from the perspective of the writer, and from the perspective of a journalist. In order to effectively characterize a game and draw conclusions from material presented inside of it, this experience cannot be extracted from the writing process lest a critical piece of the game be lost.
Is any given game merely the sum of its working parts? Would, for example, World of Warcraft be the same game if individual components were removed, or graphical representations significantly altered? Is World of Warcraft its user interface and sound presentation? Yes, to all of these questions; its also player interaction, exploring, killing monsters and so on. But is it more than these individual components stacked on top of each other?
In my obviously anecdotal experience, gamers that I am in communication with that have played World of Warcraft all share one thing in common: their experiences. For one player, it might be an incredible experience - banding together with 39 other friends and killing giant dragons and evil eyeballs. For another, this predominant experience might have been terrible - being repeatedly “farmed,” for example, by an enemy player for hours.
To be “farmed,” by the way, is to be repeatedly killed by an enemy in such a fashion that it prevents the player-being-slayed to do anything but be repeatedly slain.
If either of these players were asked what they thought about World of Warcraft, they would likely respond in, respectively, positive and negative fashions - but they would probably both explain why. “World of Warcraft was awesome - the game let me slay huge monsters and acquire great-looking armor,” the former might reply. And the latter? “World of Warcraft sucked, man - too many gankers.”
A “ganker” is one that engages in farming against another player. They are also known as griefers, and have been playing online games since their inception in millennia past.
These experiences - although made up by me - are fairly generic and common ones found among players of World of Warcraft. Although each individual player will have an individual, personalized experience, they will, I believe, all share the act of having an experience-in-general in common.
So - does a gaming journalist writing about a specific game also have these experiences?
If they aren’t, then they’re doing something wrong - and are in the business for the wrong reasons. These are clearly opinions and will be in no way supported further, but just the same - if a gamer isn’t actually getting the full experience out of the game, then how can they write on it and have an effective opinion about it? I do not believe they can - but I also do not believe critics and journalists somehow miss these experiences.
Yet gaming journalism, outside of a few notable authors in recent years, have failed to successfully integrate these experiences with their professional opinion of a game. So, in a sense, since they are failing to effectively understand or convey a game, then they are failing the primary function of their position: suggestion.
It is with this in mind that I turn towards subjective journalism, almost in the vein of Hunter S. Thompson - ‘Gonzo Gaming,’ perhaps - to illustrate the potential of a game to a potential player of the game. By permitting the writer to shed the entrapments of objectivity, it allows him to fully embrace not merely the game, but his experience with the game - and how to convey that to a reader. There are most assuredly consuming gamers that prefer the nitty-gritty of facts and charts to determine their game selections; this style of games writing will not be tailored to them in the same sense that Thompson’s style alienated many people.
But for many people, his style brought his subjects to life in a way that no other writer in the field was capable of. So, too, can this occur with games - by sharing individual experiences with their readers, writers demonstrate to readers just what it is that a given game is capable of. Did it allow for the writer - and, by the extension of possibility, the reader - to slay a giant dragon with 39 other comrades? Did it allow him to farm an enemy mercilessly?
_________
I recently made a post on my primary blog (here: http://www.40oz1game.com/2009/10/405/) about what amounts to a staged event on behalf of the Something Awful Goons in the new MMO, Champions Online. One of the most-espoused features of Champions Online is the character creation system; an evolution of the system found in (__that other superhero mmo - ack!__), it further expanded on the possibilities of the sort of avatar one could play, and was widely-praised for being far more customizable than anything else on the market. Early previews of the game, and even reviews, were awash with a staggering variety of player avatar designs - giant claw-head things, huge eyes, meathook-hands, and so on. But it all lacked context - sure, it was cool that you could do that.
But what the Goons did actually made me want to play the game. They more or less recreated, on a huge scale, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers of Saturday morning cartoon fame (or maybe after school, depending on your age). While I detest the Power Rangers and most Jpanese pop-culture remnants along the same aesthetic lines, the Goons - in their absurd rainbow of power ranger costumes - made me want to be a part of Champions Online.
That was because, for the first time, I was able to see what sorts of experiences could be had in Champions Online. Even if I signed up this evening and had the game running tomorrow morning and played instead of going to video game class, I still could not be one of the pseudo-Power Rangers - this is because this experience is unique to them. But I could slowly build a gang of hook-headed creatures to fight alongside me, or build the security arm of a left-wing militant group: the possibilities are endless.
And it is these possibilities that made me want to play Champions Online - not the composite of its aesthetic values, not the vivid, cartoony realism (haha) of the sound effects, nor the towering and sometimes-ominous city-skylines - but the possibility of creating my own, engaging, and unique experience.
It strikes me that the greatest service that a gaming writer can perform lies in charting out these experiences; admitedly anecdotal and unlikely to be recreated by the player, they instead show the player what they /could/ do. Instead of explaining to the player that Red Faction: Guerilla has a series of enemy installations that must be destroyed to make progress, a writer could instead chronicle the campaign of increasingly-brutal insurgent activities against a fascist state and the constant use of fellow insurgents as little more than fodder and distractionary tools. Instead of explaining the charcoal and sooty landscapes of the UT:2004 mod Red Orchestra that is occasionally brought to life with the beauty of the occasional flower, a writer could rather wax and wane the philosophic after he stumbles across a lone flower in a harsh landscape when looking through the iron sights of his machine gun (http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/done_column_battle_klaxon_on_r.php)
Of course, a gaming journalist must not only elaborate on more abstract notions like “experience” and “possibility” - they must also address the structural pillars of the game, too, like sound, graphical presentation, and so on. But why must these be the focus of most review and criticism? Gaming as a medium is fundamentally about experiences and play - not the elegant arches of gun barrels or the fractal beauty of a fireball spell. These things are certainly a key part of the experience, and should be treated as such - but they should not sit atop the pedestal they currently reside on. Slightly further, it also strikes me that relying on these pillars to support writing is an easy way out - following a formula of “graphics/sound/gameplay/story/replayability/etc” is as boring as a formulaic novel or film is.
It’s a bright future we’re heading into - gaming is still a relatively new field, and the criticism and writings of it are even further nouveau. But here’s the question: do you want your future to be made of the cold steel of numbers, graphics scores, and clothing selection commentary, or a golden dawn made from the tapestries of stories, heroic exploits, and nefarious deeds of a camping griefer? It is in these experiences that suggestion will be best characterized with.
Camping, by the way, is just another term for griefing.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Words from the Field
I recently had a couple of questions regarding gaming journalism that I wasn't quite sure of; 1: how to best reference initial awareness of a new thing, and 2: how exactly the "videogame/video game" issue should be dealt with. Thus, I asked a new games journalist that I tremendously respect - Kieron Gillen. Here are some of his words:
There isn't really one [way to cite initial sources], basically. RPS being a conversational blog, I normally mention where I found the actual story in the first line. Other, more formal blogs, just drop it in at the end. To be honest, that seems a bit rude in most cases, as that minimises the chance of sending hits to your source's way. And that's surely the point, yeah? POLITENESS IN ALL THINGS.
Regarding videogame/video game, I use videogame, but I'm far from standard (or even coherent) in my language. I think making it clearly a neologism focuses on the fact we're talking about a unique cultural entity. It's not really about video and games any more. In fact, videogames aren't always games in a classical sense. It's something else, and making it a new word makes it clear that we're talking about a new thing.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Red Faction: Guerilla
As the walls that once housed the fuel containers of a small, EDF-controlled fuel depot fall and trigger a chain reaction of viscerally beautiful explosions before me, a solitary thought dominates my mind: I did this, and I did it alone. No scripting help from the game engine, no computer-controlled character holding my hand and telling me where to place charges and when to run, and no loss of control in the form of a cut-scene - and it is in this independence that Red Faction: Guerilla finds its apex.
Although certain missions are required to advance the plot of the game - and therefore the weapons, items and areas that are available to you - Red Faction: Guerilla usually leaves the player alone to make their own decisions. Each district, which must eventually be liberated from the EDF, the militant arm of the apparent police state of Mars, has a series of voluntary missions that may be completed in any order. Or not, really - it’s up to you, although some combination of them must be completed. Thankfully, there is such variety both in the mission types and in their delivery that they remain fresh and new with each undertaking.
But those details end up as irrelevancies as, even though some of them forward the engaging plot, they’re really just encouragements for you to go blow the hell out of something - and Guerilla makes this activity incredibly entertaining. Simple destructions, like swinging away at the foundation of a solar power array that stands a hundred feet tall, often yield unexpected results. Not the sort of unexpected where the rapidly-falling tower crushes you, no, although that occasionally happens - but the sort of unexpected that means that collapsed array falls into something explodey, which explodes, which then makes further things explode, killing a bunch of once-living things and showering the screen in glorious, beautifully-rendered carnage. It’s all really very gratuitous, but somehow it never quite gets silly - the graphical feedback and design ensure that, while things exploding are bright and vibrant, they always look just like you might imagine them to.
And really, much of the game seems to have been designed around getting you to do this sort of thing. Missions often tally the total amount of monetary damage you’ve caused, and the entirety of the second district in the game revolves around dismantling the money-making apparatus of the EDF on Mars. Of course, to accomplish this, you are required - well, asked by the game, really - to go out and kill buildings with hammers and explosives while inflicting similar things to the soldiers of the EDF.
That I mention the killing of men secondary to structures is no accident; not only does the game generally only rarely require you to actually kill soldiers, it doesn’t really facilitate their slaying terribly well. That’s not to say that Guerilla is bad as a shootey-game, but rather to say that it’s average. The cover mechanics are straightforward and simple, ‘F’ is depressed to zoom in a bit and center your view, and the left mouse button does the shooting. Enemies find cover, lob grenades, and appear to possess an intelligence that’s almost human - but none of it is quite convincing. Once I pieced together how the enemy AI acquires and assigns targets, I found it pretty easy to avoid too much incoming damage by simply running the hell away.
Fleeing works well because of the way health regeneration works: don’t get hit for ten seconds, and your life meter rapidly refills. When combined with the sprint key and a mad dash for relative cover, Alec becomes almost unkillable - which is quite possible the strangest thing about the game. This is because Alec Mason, the protagonist, and the Red Faction that he works for, are essentially an outlaw labor union fighting with sticks and hammers and guns for the freedom to live their own lives. During the first five minutes of exposition, we learn that the EDF is better-armed, better-trained, and more well-prepared for military dominance on a planetary scale. We learn that the only way to defeat them is to strike quick, bloody them, and then fade into the outlying deserts. It makes logical sense, and it works.
Only, it doesn’t because you don’t have to do that ‘running away’ part. At least, you don’t need to keep running once your health bar fills up sufficiently. Sometimes, when completely and hopelessly overwhelmed, unlimited flight is the only viable option. But usually, you can kill all of the enemy soldiers. This is because, inexplicably, Alec is bigger, stronger, faster and more accurate than the EDF is. Having a badass protagonist is all well and good (who wants to play a weakling, anyway?), but it runs contrary to every bit of narrative the game throws at you.
Incidentally, you never need to run further than the nearest safe house - Red Faction camps - to ditch any pursuers. Even though these camps have about a dozen freedom fighters/terrorists at them, the EDF simply will not pursue you into them, which makes for a rather jarring experience when three times that many were in hot pursuit. These weird blips happen often, and have the nasty habit of utterly annihilating any sense of immersion that had been previously established. For example, one mission sends Alec to a desolate valley, devoid of all life and containing only a few construction supplies. After beginning the mission, a small Mechwarrior-like suit spawns. Upon entering it, hordes of EDF soliders attack, both on foot and in vehicle, and you are informed that you must kill 60 of them. Alright, no problem - a solid amount of good-fun bloodshed. Once the 60 are slain, however, the remaining EDF - which for me was easily two dozen - all disappear. Although I was relieved that I was going to survive, I was disappointed - didn’t I earn a glorious, rusted-iron-Mechwarrior victory or a painful, humiliating loss? Isn’t that the commitment that I signed up for? Quests like this - that terminate all evidence of their being upon completion - take the responsibility of survival away from both the player and the narrative, and I found that I greatly resented it Guerilla for it.
That’s the rub of Red Faction: Guerilla: really genuinely awesome physics modeling and world-breaking that gives the player total control over his environment, juxtaposed over a narrative engine that repeatedly removes this control and independence away from the player. An interesting, Marxist-fueled paranoid sci-fi thriller with hints of the film Total Recall that repeatedly tells the player how weak he is compared to the EDF and how heroic he is for overcoming them, juxtaposed over an engine that creates a player avatar vastly more powerful than any of the foes he encounters - even though, by trade, he is a mere miner. A beautiful, fully-realized world into which great care has clearly gone into the engineering of, placed overtop of painfully generic looking enemy soldiers that behave in sadly generic ways. This, I suppose, is simply the nature of life on Mars.
Scoring:
Visual Representation: 1.6/2.0
Explosions are vibrant and intense and complement the overall, red-grey aesthetic of the game in a highly complementary fashion. The overall design sense of the game is solid all-around, whether it come in the form of the design of the protagonist, his animations, or the interface game information is presented through. However, the health bar is small and located at the top of the screen, independent from the rest of the interface, making quick reading access difficult. Further, enemy design tends on the generic side; the EDF troopers look like every other fascist solider you’ve ever seen.
Gameplay and Level of Immersion:
1.5/2.0
The integration of independence and player choice provides for an intuitive and engaging experience; the sledgehammer feels heavy and brutal when killing either buildings or people, and avatar movement feels natural and flows well. However, narrative difficulties - like the EDF ceasing in pursuit and the badass-level of Alec Mason - shatter the illusion on occasion.
Mechanics and Technical Considerations:
1.7/2.0
This is where the game shines with the intensity of a thousand exploding nitrogen tanks; buildings collapse onto each other realistically, player-placed traps detonate how it seems like they should, and the sound effects are powerful and persuasive. The paper doll death-effect is a little overdone, and gravity seems to be slightly off. The vehicle sections were often difficult to control and aim and, since they were required, were more bothersome than anything else.
Quality of Narrative:
1.4/2.0
The Marxist/Maoist backdrop provides a compelling reason to dismantle the corporate structure of Mars, giving Alec Mason good reason to be an angry badass with a sledgehammer. However, his motivations for joining up with Red Faction and his relative strength compared to his enemies alienate this from typical Marxist/Maoist dialogues and, given the importance of these dialogues that the game places on itself, it tends to fail in this. Close, but not quite.
Connectivity:x/2.0
As I played a, well, non-online version, I am unable to effectively speak on this. However, multiple leaderboards and deathmatch/team fighting scenarios seem available through Windows Live.
Total: 6.2+x / 10
Although certain missions are required to advance the plot of the game - and therefore the weapons, items and areas that are available to you - Red Faction: Guerilla usually leaves the player alone to make their own decisions. Each district, which must eventually be liberated from the EDF, the militant arm of the apparent police state of Mars, has a series of voluntary missions that may be completed in any order. Or not, really - it’s up to you, although some combination of them must be completed. Thankfully, there is such variety both in the mission types and in their delivery that they remain fresh and new with each undertaking.
But those details end up as irrelevancies as, even though some of them forward the engaging plot, they’re really just encouragements for you to go blow the hell out of something - and Guerilla makes this activity incredibly entertaining. Simple destructions, like swinging away at the foundation of a solar power array that stands a hundred feet tall, often yield unexpected results. Not the sort of unexpected where the rapidly-falling tower crushes you, no, although that occasionally happens - but the sort of unexpected that means that collapsed array falls into something explodey, which explodes, which then makes further things explode, killing a bunch of once-living things and showering the screen in glorious, beautifully-rendered carnage. It’s all really very gratuitous, but somehow it never quite gets silly - the graphical feedback and design ensure that, while things exploding are bright and vibrant, they always look just like you might imagine them to.
And really, much of the game seems to have been designed around getting you to do this sort of thing. Missions often tally the total amount of monetary damage you’ve caused, and the entirety of the second district in the game revolves around dismantling the money-making apparatus of the EDF on Mars. Of course, to accomplish this, you are required - well, asked by the game, really - to go out and kill buildings with hammers and explosives while inflicting similar things to the soldiers of the EDF.
That I mention the killing of men secondary to structures is no accident; not only does the game generally only rarely require you to actually kill soldiers, it doesn’t really facilitate their slaying terribly well. That’s not to say that Guerilla is bad as a shootey-game, but rather to say that it’s average. The cover mechanics are straightforward and simple, ‘F’ is depressed to zoom in a bit and center your view, and the left mouse button does the shooting. Enemies find cover, lob grenades, and appear to possess an intelligence that’s almost human - but none of it is quite convincing. Once I pieced together how the enemy AI acquires and assigns targets, I found it pretty easy to avoid too much incoming damage by simply running the hell away.
Fleeing works well because of the way health regeneration works: don’t get hit for ten seconds, and your life meter rapidly refills. When combined with the sprint key and a mad dash for relative cover, Alec becomes almost unkillable - which is quite possible the strangest thing about the game. This is because Alec Mason, the protagonist, and the Red Faction that he works for, are essentially an outlaw labor union fighting with sticks and hammers and guns for the freedom to live their own lives. During the first five minutes of exposition, we learn that the EDF is better-armed, better-trained, and more well-prepared for military dominance on a planetary scale. We learn that the only way to defeat them is to strike quick, bloody them, and then fade into the outlying deserts. It makes logical sense, and it works.
Only, it doesn’t because you don’t have to do that ‘running away’ part. At least, you don’t need to keep running once your health bar fills up sufficiently. Sometimes, when completely and hopelessly overwhelmed, unlimited flight is the only viable option. But usually, you can kill all of the enemy soldiers. This is because, inexplicably, Alec is bigger, stronger, faster and more accurate than the EDF is. Having a badass protagonist is all well and good (who wants to play a weakling, anyway?), but it runs contrary to every bit of narrative the game throws at you.
Incidentally, you never need to run further than the nearest safe house - Red Faction camps - to ditch any pursuers. Even though these camps have about a dozen freedom fighters/terrorists at them, the EDF simply will not pursue you into them, which makes for a rather jarring experience when three times that many were in hot pursuit. These weird blips happen often, and have the nasty habit of utterly annihilating any sense of immersion that had been previously established. For example, one mission sends Alec to a desolate valley, devoid of all life and containing only a few construction supplies. After beginning the mission, a small Mechwarrior-like suit spawns. Upon entering it, hordes of EDF soliders attack, both on foot and in vehicle, and you are informed that you must kill 60 of them. Alright, no problem - a solid amount of good-fun bloodshed. Once the 60 are slain, however, the remaining EDF - which for me was easily two dozen - all disappear. Although I was relieved that I was going to survive, I was disappointed - didn’t I earn a glorious, rusted-iron-Mechwarrior victory or a painful, humiliating loss? Isn’t that the commitment that I signed up for? Quests like this - that terminate all evidence of their being upon completion - take the responsibility of survival away from both the player and the narrative, and I found that I greatly resented it Guerilla for it.
That’s the rub of Red Faction: Guerilla: really genuinely awesome physics modeling and world-breaking that gives the player total control over his environment, juxtaposed over a narrative engine that repeatedly removes this control and independence away from the player. An interesting, Marxist-fueled paranoid sci-fi thriller with hints of the film Total Recall that repeatedly tells the player how weak he is compared to the EDF and how heroic he is for overcoming them, juxtaposed over an engine that creates a player avatar vastly more powerful than any of the foes he encounters - even though, by trade, he is a mere miner. A beautiful, fully-realized world into which great care has clearly gone into the engineering of, placed overtop of painfully generic looking enemy soldiers that behave in sadly generic ways. This, I suppose, is simply the nature of life on Mars.
Scoring:
Visual Representation: 1.6/2.0
Explosions are vibrant and intense and complement the overall, red-grey aesthetic of the game in a highly complementary fashion. The overall design sense of the game is solid all-around, whether it come in the form of the design of the protagonist, his animations, or the interface game information is presented through. However, the health bar is small and located at the top of the screen, independent from the rest of the interface, making quick reading access difficult. Further, enemy design tends on the generic side; the EDF troopers look like every other fascist solider you’ve ever seen.
Gameplay and Level of Immersion:
1.5/2.0
The integration of independence and player choice provides for an intuitive and engaging experience; the sledgehammer feels heavy and brutal when killing either buildings or people, and avatar movement feels natural and flows well. However, narrative difficulties - like the EDF ceasing in pursuit and the badass-level of Alec Mason - shatter the illusion on occasion.
Mechanics and Technical Considerations:
1.7/2.0
This is where the game shines with the intensity of a thousand exploding nitrogen tanks; buildings collapse onto each other realistically, player-placed traps detonate how it seems like they should, and the sound effects are powerful and persuasive. The paper doll death-effect is a little overdone, and gravity seems to be slightly off. The vehicle sections were often difficult to control and aim and, since they were required, were more bothersome than anything else.
Quality of Narrative:
1.4/2.0
The Marxist/Maoist backdrop provides a compelling reason to dismantle the corporate structure of Mars, giving Alec Mason good reason to be an angry badass with a sledgehammer. However, his motivations for joining up with Red Faction and his relative strength compared to his enemies alienate this from typical Marxist/Maoist dialogues and, given the importance of these dialogues that the game places on itself, it tends to fail in this. Close, but not quite.
Connectivity:x/2.0
As I played a, well, non-online version, I am unable to effectively speak on this. However, multiple leaderboards and deathmatch/team fighting scenarios seem available through Windows Live.
Total: 6.2+x / 10
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