The Ludologist

According to rock lore, John Lydon aka Jonny Rotten of the Sex Pistols once wore an I Hate Pink Floyd t-shirt.

The standard interpretation is that the world at the time was full of symphonic (aka progressive) rock bands, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, doing massive concerts and overly pretentious, long and elaborate songs …

… and so the stage was set for Punk music, the songs of which were short, had low production cost, and which wrestled music from the claws of big corporations.

And this is my small comment on Braid in the Wall Street Journal: Indie video games are like punk rock, short, low production costs, wrestling our art from the claws of big corporations.

And we really should be wearing “I hate World of Warcraft” t-shirts.

Who would have guessed that the subject line and the following quote was from an 1895 review of Stewart Culin’s book Korean Games?

The subject of games, especially the games of children, has been generally regarded as beneath the dignity of real scientific treatment. They have been indulgently regarded as trivial pastimes, or, at best, as amusements only.

A quite different presentment of their significance is advanced in the work before us. The author, drawing most of his information from fresh and unpublished sources, describes ninety-seven games played by the youth of Korea, or by those of older years who retain the love of festal occupations.

(Science, N. 8 Vol.  II. No 49. 1895)

It just struck me because 1) it is the kind of thing that we keep on saying – games have not been taken seriously and now we should, but 2) I rarely feel I have to defend the study of games anymore. (But perhaps I travel in the wrong circles?)

One of the (few) downsides to being professionally involved with games is that there is a certain pressure towards being an expert at all games. (I believe my subpar Foosball skills once disappointed a group of people.)

So, perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many games are broken: since most people testing are in some way involved with the industry and/or are gamers wanting to show off their amazing skills, they are afraid of admitting to finding the game/UI too hard. We are afraid of looking stupid, so we keep quiet about obvious usability and balancing issues.

Fortunately, the backlash is here. In order of appearance:

1) The reviews at Games for Lunch are successful in their honesty about such matters. Here is the Parappa the Rapper review:

0:49 The next stage is a cooking show. “My style is rich, dope, phat, in which/We’ll make a cake today that looks rich.” That almost sounds like English.
0:50 “The other day I was called a little turkey/But I’m a chicken, got it, ya beef jerky?” This line always cracks me up for no good reason.
0:52 I fail the song, but I have no idea why. I thought I was doing OK, actually…

I admit it: I failed here too and never came back to the game.

2) How do I Play Game is the chronicle of a “non-gamer” playing Half-Life.

I played for 10 whole minutes last night. Got off the train, started moving around, started opening doors and wondering through. I figured out I was supposed to be looking for this test chamber. Scientists and security guards were talking to me but I didn’t have the sound up and wasn’t really listening.

Found a “break room” with vending machines and stuff … wtf?
Found a men’s restroom with feet under the stalls … wtf?
Found a room with a suit that looks like I’m supposed to get it but I couldn’t figure out how to get it from behind the glass.

Found a door, but a security guard wouldn’t let me through because I didn’t have a suit on.

Got frustrated and exited for the night.

3) Jurie Horneman has an honest post about failing at games:

Skate and Burnout Paradise, where I respectively got stuck in the tutorial and failed to find the game.

Mass Effect, where I instantly got lost in the first mission. I mean, be serious: Spawn the player in the first level and then point him in the wrong direction? Do you know how much trouble I went through to rotate the camera just so at the start of some of the Manhunt 2 levels I worked on? Maybe this was a glitch – I can’t believe this was left in the game.

Assassin’s Creed, which generally befuddled me.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Don’t get me started on the first boss battle.

4) Jurie also mentions Donald Norman’s observation that most users (of anything) tend to blame themselves, rather than the design / game / object.

That leads to the good news: It is alright to blame the game. Don’t be afraid of admitting to failure.

Which gives me the courage to admit how I utterly failed at the desert level of Patapon. Here is how it went:

• I went to the desert.
• At the totem pole with some controller markings on it (X O triangle, something like that), pressed those buttons. No feedback either way.
• Was told to watch out for the desert heat. No indication what I was supposed to do to counter said heat.
• Died.
• Repeat.
• Repeat some more.
• Looked up some walkthrough. It told me that I should have the Juju. Unfortunately I did not recall every hearing about a Juju, had no idea what a Juju was and no idea where to get one.
• Put the game back in its package.
• Behold the 145.000 google hits for patapon + desert. I am not alone. (Phew – makes it a bit safer to admit it, doesn’t it.)

5) I think it should be officially OK to blame the game: What games did you fail at?

Listen to the joy of the Spanish commentators when Torres scored the winning goal in the Euro cup 2008 final.

Junot Díaz (whom I did suspect was a bit of a gamer) has an essay on Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wall Street Journal today: ‘Grand,’ but No ‘Godfather.

Sharply:

Rockstar Games could have had a field day with Niko as immigrant, Niko as veteran from a war that was screwed up from the start, with Niko as aspirer to an American Dream that might never have existed in the first place. It wouldn’t have taken much to have made some plot alterations, to have had Niko ducking ICE special agents, to have had him actually struggling to get the girlfriend of his dreams, robbing, stealing, killing in order to dress up to local standards, or to end the game with Niko being deported back to Europe. Any one of these narrative additions would have made Niko’s journey and his successes all the more poignant, all the more surprising — would have put a face, a very real, hard face on the American Dream, which for many aspiring Americans, throughout our country’s long checkered history, is a nightmare.

I briefly appear in the sidebar on video game studies to mention that I am working on a book about casual games:

Conventional wisdom has it that gamers are predominately young men and boys. “That is a huge misunderstanding,” says MIT researcher Jesper Juul. For example, the category of “casual games,” including digital puzzles and word games, is largely fueled by female players. For an upcoming book, Mr. Juul is digging into history for more evidence. He traces videogame stereotypes back to views about card games like solitaire, which in the late 19th century was widely perceived as a pursuit for “idle ladies.”

Wagner James Au has one of the more interesting speculations right now:  The disappointing sales of GTA IV in combination with the fact that it surprisingly didn’t help sell more PS3 and 360s … means that “next gen” games as in “great graphics” have stopped driving console sales and are ceasing to be economically viable. Au further predicts that it will be a long time before the PS3 and 360 will be followed up.

I like historical moments. This also comes on the heels of the Wii outselling the 360 quite quickly after launch. Perhaps things are changing permanently, “better” graphics give diminishing returns, video games will never be the same again?