Category: games

Variation over Time – The Transformation of Space in Single-Screen Action Games

Here is a paper I wrote a few years ago but never posted: Variation over Time – The Transformation of Space in Single-Screen Action Games was published in the Space Time Play anthology in 2007.

At that time, I was becoming interested in doing detailed analyses of specific video game designs. (Also evident in my Swap Adjacent paper.) I think it is important to paint the big picture, but I find it interesting to supplement this with more specific examinations of very focused topics. The big and the small pictures are then meant to supplement each other.

Variation over Time concerns the kind of early video game design where variation was provided by opening the playing field during the course of a level. Examples include Space Invaders, (Ms.) Pac-Man, Pengo, and Super Bomberman. From the paper:

My interest here is in a specific way of providing variation, the qualitative change of difficulty that is created by opening the playing field during a game level. This is a type of design where obstacles are gradually removed and the playing field becomes more open as a result. We can see this design in a number of board games (e.g. backgammon, chess, checkers), and it was a popular design in the non-scrolling action video game, most prominently in the 1980s. But for reasons I will discuss later, this design has become unusual in contemporary video games. Consider the early video game Space Invaders (Taito 1977) as a first example. (Figure 1.)


Figure 1. Space Invaders (Taito 1977)

More.

4:32 – the Life of a Conceptual Game

My conceptual game 4:32 from the 2010 Global Game Jam has taken on a pretty fascinating life of its own. (Blog announcement here.)

Here is Alec Meer’s post at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, where the game was presented under the heading of “PC Gaming In 2010”. A long flame war ensued on the site, showing that some people clearly felt cheated by the game. Which they were, of course, but that sort of is the game. One commenter compares 4:32 to rickrolling and is taking the whole thing personally:

… I bet there will be many other people disappointed or outright enraged by this. This has got nothing to do with “playground attitude” as it deserves to be called out for what it is. There are good and there a bad jokes, but this one is completely off the mark.

Part of the strong reactions at Rock, Paper, Shotgun seemed to come from people who felt that the game had crossed some line by forcing them to install and uninstall plugins.

Over at Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan’s post about the game immediately led to a flame war about PC vs. console gaming.

Petri Purho also blogged about it here.

I am pretty happy with the response, but it’s also interesting to see how players interpret the game in their own way. I didn’t think it was about PC vs. console gaming, and I didn’t think that a conceptual piece like this could get people that agitated. But then again, it’s a long-standing observation that some audiences will get angry if they feel a specific “work of art” breaks the conventions they expect – and the audience may even take it as a personal insult. That wasn’t intended, but it seems I did succeed in making something that played with player expectations!

Statistics: 13.000 games played. 513 games completed. (Cheating may have been involved, but I think that’s part of the game.)

Ten Million Sports

Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s 100 Thousands Billion Poems, Andrew McKenzie’s site Ten Million Sports randomly combines elements from football, polo, water polo, lacrosse, ice hockey, table tennis, basketball, rugby, the Kirkwall ba’ and beach volleyball … to generate new sports.

Here is one randomly generated sport (ice skates + ping-pong in Kirkwall).

Duration: 60 minutes, 3 periods of twenty minutes each.

Playing area: The town of Kirkwall in Orkney, Scotland.

Objective: To score more goals than the other side. The goals, located at both ends, are 3m wide x 0.9m high.

Players per side: 5

Attire: A helmet combo, shoulder pads, trousers, shirts, elbow pads, gloves, shin guards and ice-skates.

Ball: A polo ball: spherical, high compact plastic. Circumference: 23-27cm. Weight: 120-135g.

Method of play: The ball may only be hit with a ping-pong paddle.

This is a pretty great idea – could be interesting to try out in actuality if you managed to have all the equipment available. (We may have to renege on Kirkwall, Scotland.)

Ten Million Sports.

(Via Nick Montfort.)

Alex Galloway speaks at the NYU Game Center

On February 18th the NYU Game Center will be hosting a lecture by writer, programmer, and media theorist Alex Galloway on the long connection between philosophy and games.

For centuries philosophers have explored the concepts of “game” and “play,” from poet Friedrich Schiller’s notion of the “play-drive” to cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s image of “the human as player.” In this presentation we will explore the interplay between philosophy and games in these and other writers, ending with a quick introduction to the contemporary trend known as “object-oriented philosophy.”

Dr. Galloway will give a short lecture followed by an interview by Game Center Director Frank Lantz, and will then take questions from the audience.

Feb. 18, 6pm – 8pm
721 Broadway, Room 006, lower level
RSVP: gamecenter@nyu.edu

Refreshments will be served.

4:32, my conceptual Game from the Global Game Jam

The 2010 Global Game Jam took place this weekend at over 100 locations around the world.

I made a small conceptual game called 4:32.

The theme of the Global Game Jam 2010 was deception, and the constraint for the time zone of the NYU Game Jam was “Rain, Spain or Plain”. This game furthermore fulfills the achievement “instant gratification” by being playable in the browser.

Without giving too much away, 4:32 is a response to Petri Purho’s game 4:33, which in itself is a response to John Cage’s silent composition 4:33.

4:32 won the vote for “most innovative game” at the NYU game jam.

Play it here.

Update February 21, 2010: I have changed the game a little to prevent some of the more obvious ways of cheating. (Linking to the final page, for example.)

Kasparov on Human and Machine Chess

The New York Review of Books features a long piece by Garry Kasparov (it’s actually a book review) in which he discusses what it means to be an expert chess player and ponders the history of human vs. machine chess matches.

It was my luck (perhaps my bad luck) to be the world chess champion during the critical years in which computers challenged, then surpassed, human chess players. Before 1994 and after 2004 these duels held little interest. The computers quickly went from too weak to too strong. But for a span of ten years these contests were fascinating clashes between the computational power of the machines (and, lest we forget, the human wisdom of their programmers) and the intuition and knowledge of the grandmaster.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

Modern Warfare 2 loses out to Dance Game

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that the video game market is changing, here is news from the UK that Modern Warfare 2 has been knocked from its #1 chart position by Just Dance (Feel the groove, Hit the move!).

Just Dance appears to be a dance game where the Wiimote tracks your dance moves. (A bit like ParaParaParadise I suppose.)

Now, this game wasn’t exactly a hit with the gamer press. Just Dance has a GameRanking of 53.6%. IGN rates it 2 out of 10:

I could try to talk about the visuals or the sound or sloppy way the game grades your dance moves, but I just don’t have the strength. It’s attention that the game, quite simply, doesn’t deserve. Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game, do not look at this game on the shelf, don’t even think about this game lest someone at Ubisoft find out and they prep a Just Dance 2. Such would be the end of all things, mark my words.

Sounds so bad it just might be good, doesn’t it? Amazon US users currently give it 4½ stars out of 5.

(Full disclosure: I got MW2 when it came out – and I really enjoy it. It’s just that I wouldn’t mind playing Just Dance as well. And that I enjoy watching the whole anti-casual posturing.)

2010 Nuovo Jury Releases Finalist Statement

I am a little late in posting, but here is the finalist statement from the Independent Games Festival Nuovo Award (on which I served as a juror).

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Alongside the announcement of 2010 Independent Games Festival finalists, the IGF Nuovo Award jury has revealed its finalists for the $2,500 award, which is intended to “honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games.” The Award, which was won (when called the Innovation/Nuovo Award) by Jason Rohrer’s acclaimed abstract multiplayer title Between in 2009, allows more esoteric ‘art games’ to compete on their own terms alongside longer-form indie titles. For the 2010 Independent Games Festival, the IGF Main Competition judges, numbering over 160 in total, recommended games entered into the IGF Main Competition this year to be considered for this award.

But a separate panel of notable game and art world figures — spanning previous IGF winner Rohrer, Area/Code’s Frank Lantz, N+ co-creator Mare Sheppard, EA division head and art-game creator Rod Humble, and more, have decided the finalists (and will decide the winner) for the Nuovo Award in discussion-based, juried form — mirroring similar, artistically important awards in other industries. All five Nuovo finalists will exhibit their games at GDC 2010 in San Francisco in the IGF Pavilion, and a Nuovo Award winner will be revealed at the IGF Awards Ceremony on the evening of March 11th, 2010.

The Nuovo Jury’s finalist statement discussing and justifying their picks – also adding a number of ‘honorable mentions’ for games that were just outside the finalist selection, but had fascinating characteristics – reads as follows:

“To start, we wanted to thank everyone who submitted their games to the Independent Games Festival this year. All of you were in consideration for this award, and there were over one hundred games recommended to the Nuovo Jury by the Main Competition judges as being potentially worthy to be a Nuovo finalist. This shows the breadth of talent out there in independent games right now, and especially those looking to push the boundaries and produce new ideas and new concepts.

The Nuovo Jury has selected games that deliver two kinds of ‘newness’: Firstly, does the game have a new game design mechanic, element, or idea that makes they jury think: ‘Wow, I really haven’t seen that done before in this way’. Secondly, does the game make the jury feel something new — something that a game rarely or never has, emotionally or otherwise?

With this in mind, we discussed the games that were most-recommended by Main Competition judges, as well as putting forward our own picks from IGF entrants. We have decided (via jury voting) on the following finalists for the 2010 IGF Nuovo Award, each of which will receive all-access GDC 2010 tickets and the opportunity to exhibit their game in the IGF Pavilion there:

Finalists

– Today I Die (Daniel Benmergui)
The jury was struck by the evocative game mechanics of of discovery and exploration in Daniel’s experimental Flash game Today I Die. The game uses words and poetry as a gameplay mechanic in striking, emotion-inducing ways, and while short in length, leaves a lasting impression.

– A Slow Year (Ian Bogost)
This newly coded set of mini-game experiences — made for the distinctly retro Atari 2600 console — consists of “slow-moving meditations on time and attention”. And A Slow Year made it to its Nuovo finalist position due to its charmingly retro art and thoughtful, deliberate, determined gameplay, which a number of jurors found relaxing and genuinely evocative.

– Tuning (Cactus)
The jury found praise for Cactus’ platform game thanks to its bold style and its “uncompromising exploration” of almost psychedelic abstraction. Although the title can be frustrating as times, one juror noted that “you have to see the visual distortions and transformations as gameplay”, and under that lens, the game seems even more charming.

– Closure (Closure Team)
Tremendously evocative in its audio and visuals, and with some genuinely new gameplay concepts that come with the complete absence (or presence) of light, Closure was praised by the Nuovo jury for twinning robust gameplay with rarefied atmosphere and a fully realized game world.

– Enviro-Bear 2000 (Justin Smith)
Enviro-Bear 2000 blossomed from its ‘constrained competition’ origins to a Nuovo finalist, thanks to two things that struck the jury. Of course, the first is the joyfully off the wall, grin-inducing concept and art direction. But the second is the genuinely novel gameplay idea of having a ‘time management’ approach to limited player controls (steer or eat fish or attack badger?).

Honorable Mentions

There were a number of titles that were recommended or advocated for by judges and received multiple votes in our final tally, but did not make the Finalist list due to insufficient votes. Nonetheless, we’re happy to mention and recommend these titles as Nuovo ‘honorable mentions’, that those interested in alternative independent games should certainly check out:

– Hazard: The Journey Of Life – a genuinely interesting philosophy-based abstract first-person action game mod.
– Trauma – an atmospheric photo-based evolution of the adventure game with gestural elements.
– Fig. 8 – in which you ride a bike through technical diagrams, with clever wheel-based gameplay elements.
– Lose/Lose – as you destroy aliens, you destroy files on your hard drive. Controversial, but still thought-provoking?
– Flywrench – extremely tricky, rewarding vector-ish art game with a cunning central gameplay mechanic.
– Art Of Crime – a semi-procedural detection game with an interesting, alternative illustrative style.

Clint Hocking, Eric Zimmerman, Eddo Stern, Frank Lantz, Rod Humble, Jason Rohrer, Carl Goodman, Marcin Ramocki, Mare Sheppard, Jesper Juul, Simon Carless. [IGF 2010 Nuovo jury]