The Ludologist

I wanted to share my two game reviews from the Space Time Play anthology: Defender and Asteroids.

This was two attempts at writing more theoretical and media-historical reviews where each game is considered from a specific angle. I.e. reviews with a little more reflection that your usual game review.

I also experimented with using time lapse images to illustrate how the games change character from the beginning to the end of each level.

To give away the conclusion, I think that Asteroids ultimately does not work, but that Defender is wonderful. Conversely, I think the Asteroids review is the most successful review.

Some quotes:

Defender: “… Defender is an exaggerated version of the early 1980s arcade game in all its virtues: a large number of possible ways to fail, extremely unforgiving and no rewards beyond a high score and a few smart bombs. The purest arcade game.”

Asteroids: “… Asteroids is a nostalgic game of the future, but the actual future has better games.”

From Magical Wasteland via GameSetWatch, this funnily and unfairly entirely sums up all game industry keynotes of 2007:

*

1. Let’s think about the future for a second. You probably don’t understand the kids that make up the bulk of our audience, but I do. I call them the network MySpace remix 3.0 social generation. Unlike any other people before them, young people today like to interact with each other. They also like music. YouTube is the perfect example of whatever point it is I’m making. Everything should be online and customizable.

2. Iteration is the key. Everything is about iteration. How many times can I use iteration in this talk? Iteration, iteration, iteration. This is how you make good games: by iterating.

The more you iterate, it doesn’t matter what direction you’re going in or what you actually do, as long as you get the number of iterations up. This process (iteration) is what turns all the bad stuff into the good stuff. Here’s a graph showing game quality and number of iterations approaching infinity together. This graph proves my point.

3. For our last project we used Scrum, and boy, are we glad we did. There is no way anything we did would have been possible without it. What is Scrum, you ask? It’s a set of new terminology for things that already happen when groups of people work together. For example, instead of a “meeting,” you have a “Scrum,” and so on.

You should use Scrum too, since it will solve all your problems. If I’ve piqued your interest, sign-up sheets for my specially discounted seminars on Scrum can be found clipped to the bottom of your conference program.

4. The game we made was great – because we’re great. We are just a group of awesome people. We never crunch, and we go to the beach every other Friday to play volleyball. Even those times when we did crunch, we had delicious catered meals. And there was one time we got a masseuse in the office. Awesome. Yes, our studio’s amazing array of perks and benefits keep us happy and doing our best work all the time.

We have a ton of open positions we need to fill very quickly so please send us your resume as soon as you can.

5. The game industry is in trouble. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing before. We need to do this other thing, which is the thing that I’m doing. I said this last year but none of you came with me. Well, this time I really mean it.

The Hypermedialab in Tampere, Finland has put out an amazingly thorough report on Finnish gaming habits.

• Solitaire is the most popular digital game.
• “During the last month 66 % of the respondents reported playing traditional games, 59 % money games, 31 % digital games and 4 % engrossment games [LARPs etc].”

And lots more.

I guess the cliché is that winter is so dark in the Nordic region that we have nothing to do but play games or code. I would really love to see comparable data from other countries.

The Danish Poker Association is quite disappointed: A lower court had decided that Poker was a game of skill, and hence not subject to gambling laws, but a higher court has now overturned the ruling, deciding that poker is a game of chance (article in Danish). The ruling is likely to continue upwards into the judicial system.

The upshot is that it is illegal to arrange Poker tournaments involving money in Denmark. The underlying legal issue, to the extent of my understanding, is that it is illegal (outside casinos) to play non-skill games for money, so whether a game is considered a game skill is pretty important.

The court even had a mathematician testify that skill is important in Poker, making the ruling even more absurd. I also severely doubt anyone who has actually played poker believes that skill plays no role.

It seems to me that much confusion comes from the dichotomy I used in the headline – skill or chance. In actuality, those are not opposites, but a game can have smaller or bigger amounts of chance, and involve smaller or bigger amounts of skill.

Roger Caillois (who I like to blame) is partially guilty of the same confusion since he has separate categories for agon (contest) and alea (chance).

Here is the interesting logical mind-trick: Chance and skill do not in any way preclude each other, but their absences preclude each other. Games can have any amount of skill and chance at the same time, but you cannot imagine a game with neither skill nor chance, as that would mean the outcome was always the same and hence it would not be a game in any meaningful sense.

*Update.

The Economist has an article on the rise of Poker, including its status as skill/chance in the US.

 The skill-versus-luck debate has crackled back to life because of the passage of a law last year, sneakily tacked on to a port-security bill, which sought to bolster existing legislation against internet wagering by blocking Americans’ access to accounts that can be used to gamble online. All games that are “predominantly” subject to chance were covered by the ban. Poker was included. For reasons best explained by lobbyists, horse racing, fantasy sports and lotteries were exempted. This discrepancy had already landed America in hot water at the World Trade Organisation, thanks to a case brought by tiny Antigua, home to several online gambling sites.

America’s Department of Labour has given a nod to the element of skill, in some eyes, by last year recognising “professional poker player” as an official occupation. Courts, however, tend to view poker as a game of chance. That, Mr Lederer is convinced, is only because the opposing arguments have been botched at the bench.

With the announcement of XNA 2.0, Microsoft is hinting that they will, eventually, in some form, open the 360 to allow developers to distribute their XNA games. (Currently you can only share developments with other subscribers to the creator’s club, so it’s pretty dead as a platform.)

Notice how weighted his words are… Hint, hint, but not saying anything definite. (So we can try to divine the intentions while also waiting for Nintendo to deliver on their Wiiware promises.)

Finally, Satchell said that next year Microsoft will announce full details on, and its vision for, opening XNA creations to the community. “Think of it as publishing channel for the community,” saying when launched it will create “a revolution for the industry.”

Satchell referred to development of XNA as coming in three tiers — first with the initial release of the package and the Creators Club, now opening up Live networking, and finally providing the publishing channel. “Nobody’s done it,” he said, “we’re really opening up the console.”

Asked just how much Microsoft would be managing the service, or if it would be opening it up entirely as a true YouTube, Satchell said full details would have to wait until the new year, but offered, “We want it to be open so people can participate in it, and we want to stay true to principle of owning your own IP. There’s going to be some innovations in what we do that bridge the gap between fully free for all and completely managed portfolio.”

He similarly said no announcements could yet be made on whether the service would allow players to freely download community creations, or whether it would continue the Creators Club scheme it currently employs.

But again, what is holding them back? As long as the platform holders get a slice of any income, why not let developers be free to publish whatever they want?

Is it video game exceptionalism – that no platform holder want seedy, bad, controversial content on their platform for fear that it might hurt it? (Even though seedy, bad, controversial content works great for the sales of books, CDs, and DVDs.)