My New Job in the Gaming Business

While Parker is wasting away his time I entered the workforce. Last month I started a job at a recently-founded game design studio in Berlin. Currently, my main job is writing the design document. A design document is basically communicating the overall vision of a game to each and every team member. It's goal is to describe the overall concept of the game, target audience, gameplay, interfaces, controls, characters, levels, media assets, etc. In short, everything the team needs to know about the design of the game.

It gives programmers an idea of what modules are going to be used, artists know how interfaces will look like and so on. Basically, as Tracy Fullerton puts it in "Game Design Workshop", a "good design document is like sound blueprints for a building. Everyone on the team can refer to and add comments while they do their separate tasks and understand how their work fits into the game as a whole."

The documents ensures that everyone is directing their efforts towards a common goal and not interpreting what they know about the tittle in their own unique ways.

Accordingly, I have to communicate with the whole team. As we're still preparing the prototype, I mainly talk to the main game designer (my boss and the founder of the studio), the artist responsible for the characters and visual design of the game world and the author of the game's story. This is to agree on the fundamentals of the title.

At the same time, this document will also be the basis of a pitch to the owner of the platform we are planing to release the game on and publishers. As such it also needs to be concise and very visual, containing concept art, flowcharts etc.

The document will end up having between 50 - 100 pages, and it may also include subsections or sub-documents on certain aspects of the game which need a more detailed explanation. There's still a way to go but the job is actually quite fun.

One of the reasons this is so fun because although this document is traditionally written by the main game designer,  this work was delegated to me. This means that I also have some input in regard to the game's design. Yesterday, for example, I spent most of my day trying to think of possible achievements and how they would influence the game play. I loved it.

Of course I'm quite curious  to see how the final product will develop. I can't wait to play the prototype!

-Jens

When Did You Finish Your Last Game?

When I came back from my trip to Australia, I hadn't played video games in about six weeks. Before I went, I started playing Mass Effect 2 for a little while—basically just enough to get an idea of the gameplay and sense why it got rave reviews. Then when I came back, something funny happened. I was reluctant to pick it up again. Instead I played Wario Land on my Virtual Boy. Mass Effect, as brilliant as it is, seemed too much of a commitment. I arrived at a stage where I was asked to scan planets for minerals and cross the universe for quests. Hours upon hours of gameplay lay ahead of me. I refused; my time budget would have been blown.

The next game I played was Heavy Rain, which I got for cheap during my stopover in Hong Kong. I bought it because I was curious about its adult content; but I also bought it because it is linear, it is divided into shorter chapters, and because I could finish it in 10 hours or less.

One thing I liked about Modern Warfare 2 was that the single-player campaign was brief but sweet. It was an intense action-filled six-hour experience with no pause. I loved it. For everyone else there was the multi-player.

The thing is: I'm the norm.

Yes, games get bigger, and yes this ambition is hailed by a vocal part of the gaming public and critics. And really, why wouldn't we want more?

However, John Davison at Gamepro says:

The problem is, the vast majority of gamers don't really behave the way they say they do. How do we know this? Because an increasing number of games incorporate telemetry systems that track our every action. They measure the time we play, they watch where we get stuck, and they broadcast our behaviour back to the people that make the games so they can tune the experience accordingly.

Every studio I've spoken to that does this, to a fault, says that many of the games they've released are far too big and far too hard for most players' behaviour. As a general rule, less than five percent of a game's audience plays a title through to completion. I've had several studios tell me that their general observation is that "more than 90 percent" of a games audience will play it for "just four or five hours."

Moreover, as Davison points out, the game business, unlike any other part of the entertainment business, is maturing at roughly the same pace as its most influential (or at least most affluent) consumers. Not only the players are getting older, but also the designers.

As designers are deciding that they want to make different experiences to indulge their own lives, they can be fairly confident that their audience is in the same boat.

So what could this mean for the future of games?

For once they are going to become more modular, offering a (shorter and cheaper) core experience that can be expanded by downloadable content (DLC) or episodic content, which can accommodate different tastes.

This is something Namco recently recognized:

Namco Bandai’s Vice President Olivier Conte has said that game companies should diversify videogame selling in the future. He even went as far as saying that videogames are “too expensive for the audience” and that “a good price of a game should be around £20.”

He suggested making games cheaper by shortening them to around “four or five hours” and using additional DLC to increase revenue from the titles. “Games just have one model, the sale of the product either as a box or a digital download. So we need to think about how we can develop a secondary business model”.

Of course one of the dangers is that in the long run this gateway to micro-transactions will come with a hefty price tag.

The other change could be to accommodate players' tendency to, as calls Davison calls it, "dick around". How did you spend your time in GTA IV? Doing all the missions or having fun with its open world?

Games could increasingly reward this behaviour and become more of a playground. They might be based on actual player behaviour and not misguided assumptions about it. You don't have to follow certain structures; you will get something you can enjoy in small doses, something that feels less like "work"—follow the rules, get rewarded, move on—and liberating. This is why the GTA series, for example, has a reward system for spectacular car crashes.

What do you think? When was the last time you completed a game? How many unfinished games do you have lying around? What games do you want to play in the future?

-Jens

Google's Console?

As John "Wardrox" Kershaw observed on his blog: Google is about to release Google TV, a software platform for set-top boxes and HDTV. It will also feature a browser, remote control, and keyboard interface.

Google also released an app shop which allows you to play PC games in a browser.

The interesting question is:

Does this mean Google is entering the console race in the same way the iPhone entered the hand-held race?

Details on the app shop and the integration of games are still light. In any case, this will have huge implications for the industry; here we have Google getting behind cloud gaming with its own console.

-Jens

Can Video Games Be Art?

Roger Ebert did it again: after watching a recorded lecture about games' artistic potential by game designer Kellee Santiago, he once more stated how he remained "convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art.” The overwhelming reaction: Ebert is passing these judgments because he knows games. Surely he based his criticism—and his vision of the future of an entire medium—on an intimate understanding of the subject matter. Right.

Ebert has never played any games. He isn't familiar with the medium. He doesn't like it, play it, understand it. He has merely watched videos of different titles. As the Globe and Mail points out:

That’s akin to judging a movie’s artistic worth based on stills and trailers. … For him to weigh in on the artistic value of interactive entertainment is like someone who believes the work of Jackson Pollock has no merit or meaning talking about the lack of artistry in splatter painting.

What I find fascinating about Ebert's standpoint is that it also seems to be closely related to a generational conflict. He belongs to a generation which simply lacks the instruments to make sense of a new mass medium. He doesn't even attempt to acquire them.

If someone as knowledgeable and outspoken and competent in terms of (more established) mass media such as Ebert is already affected by this generational gap, you can't really be surprised at the resistance games have to face from parts of mainstream society and media.

While they paint video games as an unwholesome leisure pursuit and idle waste of time ("Murder simulators! Violence! Deviance!"), Ebert is just able to express his misgivings more eloquently.

-Jens Schroeder

Indie Games and the Assertion of Value

A couple of weeks ago, Destructoid's Jim Sterling wrote an article in which he took issue with people who defend (bad) art games: McGarvey's comment ["I'll take a 'pretentious artsy-fartsy indie game' over creatively bankrupt bullshit any day'] was but one of many that shared similar sentiments, but it was a perfect snapshot of the big fallacy among those who stand up for art games—this idea that art games cannot be creatively bankrupt themselves, and that if you are against the indie crowd, you are against originality. This also leads onto a further incorrect but all-too common assumption—the idea that because something is innovative, it is automatically good.

He continues:

We seem to be stuck with this incredibly false idea that indie games = originality and AAA games = uncreative garbage. This is simply not true, and I think it allows indie developers to be incredibly lazy and slapdash with their ideas, safe in the knowledge that their game will get a free pass for innovation, when all they did was follow all the other indie games out there.

Sure, there are examples of beautifully crafted indie games which have helped to widen the means of expression of the medium. But I do believe that Sterling has a point: just because a game purports to be indie does not mean it is automatically good or innovative or some sort of contribution the industry was not able to make.

However, we are much more inclined to regard it as such. I believe the reason for this lies in differences in the attribution of value.

In relation to cinema, Tom O'Regan explains that national cinemas can be evaluated through a limited number of conceptual means. These include a relation with the dominant Hollywood cinema in which the national cinema is situated under the sign of culture and Hollywood under the sign of the profane economy; a division within the national cinema between its mainstream and its peripheral or independent cinemas; and a positive evaluation of Hollywood and its legacy in local markets, which simultaneously values and devalues the local national cinema.

Considering the distinctiveness of the game industry, there is no such thing as an explicit national game culture in the Western world (in the sense of a national cinema). It is a thoroughly international industry, a prime example of a globalized, post-fordist field that hardly knows any localism. However, indie games come close to it in the sense that they belong to a prestige "minor stream". As such, they are situated under the sign of culture.

They are products that were produced in response to the dominant international game culture and dominant industry patterns. They are akin to an international art cinema vehicle that is associated with cultural values—aesthetically and in the sense that they promise a game-making ecology separate from or to the side of the market; they stand opposed to an ecology which promises the utility of the market itself as the conferrer of value.

They might operate in a supranational space but like national cinemas are often attached to larger aesthetic movements and styles or the foregrounding of different agendas, be they related to minorities, environmental issues or other causes. As could be expected, such games find their greatest assertion of value in the festival circuit or on specialized blogs.

They are the games all the cool kids play. However, this does not tell us anything about their actual qualities.

What they do is help a certain milieu with its self-actualization. As something that claims to be counterculture, avant-garde, nonconformist, and edgy, these games dare to not submit themselves under the logic of the market as the conferrer of value. This makes them more "authentic" which in turn suits their players' narcissism way better than "creatively bankrupt mainstream bullshit".

These games contribute to their players' philosophy of life—the perfection of one's self—in two ways: they are "anti-barbaric" in the sense that they are constructed against the "popular", "low", "vulgar", and "common". Their distinctiveness lies in them being "contemplative" and involving reflection upon their object. This is more than just the crassness of Call of Duty.

At the same time, art games are anti-conventional. Not only do their players set themselves apart against the undeveloped and crude, but also against a standardized, deformed psyche which is not identical with itself—a psyche that is as standardized as the mainstream media it consumes. Art game players have a desired perception of themselves as people who are interesting, exciting, and unique. This narcissism tells them that there is nothing more important than oneself. This is a claim that is difficult to support by playing Halo.

By being anti-barbaric and anti-conventional, art games first of all contribute to the social distinction of their players and their self-perfection; this is their main project in a society in which even the most simple, mundane product becomes an "experience" that lets its consumers know just how unique they are. Your breakfast is not, say, bacon and eggs, but made up of some exotic European-style bread and coffee from a country no one has ever heard of but whose farmers are now better off not just because it's organic but also because of the fair trade, etc.

Does this mean it tastes automatically better than Starbucks? No, of course not. It's the same with indie games. Just because they derive their value from something different and therefore they make people feel better about themselves (as in more interesting and unique), this does not make them better games.

Of course these are extremes. It should be pointed out that, similar to the cinema, indie games' relationship to the mainstream is not clear cut as, for example, they are sometimes distributed via the platforms of the big three console manufacturers (Xbox Live, WiiWare, PlayStation Network), making for a fuzziness that is also characteristic of film.

-Jens

My Trip to Australia

As you may have noticed, I haven't contributed much to blogcampaigning lately. The main reason is that I was organizing a trip to Australia. Now that I have finished my Ph.D. thesis about the differences in perception of digital games and mass media in Germany and Australia, I'm going to introduce it at several Aussie universities. If there're any Australian readers out there, I'd love to meet you!

I'll be in Queensland from 1 April to 11 April. I'll be giving a presentation at QUT on 7 April (Z2 Block, Level 3, Room 306, Creative Industries Precinct, 2pm – 4pm). Later that day, I'll probably be at the Mana Bar.

From 11 April to 15 April I'll be in Sydney. On 13 April I'll give a talk at the Centre for Independent Studies. It's not game-related, but it'll deal with the question why Europeans often see Australians as the plebeians of the Western world.

On 15 April I'll arrive in Melbourne. I'll be at the University of Melbourne on the 16th, at Monash at on the 19th and at RMIT on the 20th. I don't know the exact times yet, but let's hope I'll be able to get to sleep in.

I'll continue to Adelaide on the 21st. No talks this time, but I'll meet Melanie Swalwell who has done a lot of research on the history of digital gaming in Australia. I'm looking forward to some exciting talks with her. Maybe I'll also get to meet the people behind the Gamers4Croydon party.

On 24 April I'll fly to Perth. My presentation at Murdoch University will be either on the 27th or 28th. Again, some details still have to get figured out.

In the first week of May I'll give a talk at my alma mater, the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University.

And that's pretty much it. For further details check my twitter account, as I'll be posting updates about the times and dates of the talks.

-Jens

Fanboys: These Days' Mods and Rockers

When I was writing about the iPad and technicity, I noticed that the notion of technicity can also be applied to the scourge of the game world: Fanboys, and their hatred of other people's choices. To recapitulate what technicity means: it is an “aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g., rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters” (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006).

Technicity comes to stand for identities that are formed around and through technological differentiation. This is even more true for the confusing 21st century where these new allegiances—based on attitudes towards or adoption of technology—seem to offer more critical purchase in representations of technoculture than the old more fixed sureties of class, ethnic or gender identities (ibid.).

Gamers in different countries might have more in common with each other than with other groups in their own country. This is because being a gamer is associated with certain skills and styles:

"The significant aspect of the term of ‘technicity’ is to encapsulate, in conceptual terms, the connections between an identity based on certain types of attitude, practices, preferences and so on and the importance of technology as a critical aspect of the construction of that identity. To be subjects within the privileged twenty-first-century first world is to be increasingly caught up in a network of technically and mechanically mediated relationships with others who share, to varying degrees, the same attitudes/ tastes, pleasures and preferences" (ibid.).

To make this notion a bit more palpable, the aforementioned mods and rockers make a very good example. Mods rode scooters; rockers motorbikes; and they were dead serious about it. To the outsider, both seem like a mode of transportation that will get you from A to B; just like to the outsider there is not much of a difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation. However, as everyone who has seen Quadrophenia can testify to, scooters and motorbikes were serious business. They were an extension of one's personality.

Within a dominant frame—e.g., youth culture, digital culture—different forms of technicity clash. This clash is not about which mode of transportation is better or which graphics are prettier. It's something personal, it's about one's identity expressed by one's gadget choices.

Additionally, and this is something that makes the arguments surrounding game platforms even more intense, games force you to invest much more of your personality. You need skills, you need to decode a game's structure or system—of levels, architectural organization, scoring systems, timing of events, non-player characters’ actions and interactions, etc. Without you, there is no game.

Accordingly, by questioning the purchase of a console you question someone's self in two ways: not only is the person's choice an expression of a "wrong" technicity, and therefore a "wrong" personality, but also the person's investment his or her self in the games is a waste of time. Their practices, their preferences, their skills, their decoding abilities, they themselves are doubted. And they don't take too kindly to it.

This also explains the clashes over platform exclusivity, and the accompanying notions of superiority and disappointment when a title is made available on other platforms. It also accounts for the tendency to compare titles which have been released on several platforms to the very last details. "Yes, it may be the same game, but my technicity is still superior to yours!"—Uh, I mean, "Yo gaylord this game iz much better on PS3, faggotbox cant do shit cuz its de gheyz!"

Kinda makes you long for some good old bank holiday clashes, doesn't it?

-Jens

Breaking with Technicity: The iPad is the Nintendo Wii of the Computer World

Apple introduced its iPad to mixed reactions: It's not capable of multi-tasking, lacks Flash support, and has no camera. It was derided as a blown-up iPod touch. The enthusiasm that has surrounded other Apple launches was lacking. I believe one of the main reasons for this is the iPad's break with the dominant technicity of computers.

Technicity is that "aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g., rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters" (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006).

Technicities associated with the consumption and manipulation of digital technologies have become key characteristics of the preferred subject of the twenty-first century, which in turn means the marginalization of other kinds of technicity.

Particular kinds of skill with particular kinds of technology are privileged in the developed world. They were mainly born in a male environment, laboratories, the MIT Model Railroad Club, etc., and influenced by such popular myths as that of the "hacker".

Accordingly, for a long time we associated computers with white males. Sure we moved on, but there's still a particular skill set attached to it. It's the ideal of being able to control the technology, to browse the net while uploading photos and chatting on an instant messenger.

"The ‘idealized modern subject’ has always been marked by an enthusiastic acceptance of their connection with machines—for instance, as a … gadget consumer. The contemporary version of this ideal subject is the digitally competent producer/consumer whose ‘technicity’ plays a key role in formations of taste and lifestyle" (Dovey & Kennedy).

The iPad, however, breaks with this form of "technicity". It is not the site for the production of a culturally valued technicity. Instead, it is the kind of device you would buy your grandma or your elderly parents.

It is very easy and intuitively to handle, photos can be flicked by your fingers—something 2-year-olds as well as 80-year-olds understand. There is no distracting multi-tasking, no parallel processes which burden the user. You do not have to hook it up to the 'net through a modem, but can get online with 3G. It does not get any easier than that.

Here a form of dominant technicity is challenged. The result of this threat of cultural capital is a lack of enthusiasm, ridicule or simply disinterest. The reactions would definitely be harsher if Apple and its other "cool" products did not simultaneously embody the pinnacle of preferred technicity. The Macbook and iPhones—these are what the modern person just have to have.

The thing is: all this happened before—with Nintendo's Wii. The Wii likewise broke with certain notions of technicity. Games have been produced by very particular kinds of people who have developed very particular cultures and tastes which command a disproportionate amount of "cultural space". This resulted in contents and marketing strategies which did not appeal to large demographics such as women or ethnic minorities.

Instead, the ideal gamer was white and male. Along came the Wii. Its Wiimote made gaming much more accessible. Suddenly your mum was playing tennis or a work out game. Nursing homes had Wii bowling competitions.

However, the hardcore crowd hated it. There were too many casual titles and seemingly unfulfilled promises. This was not the kind of gaming traditional gamers were used to, now their hobby was shared by a much larger demographic. But it was not shared on their terms.

It is doubtful that the iPad will ever be as successful as the Wii. However, if there is one thing to learn from Nintendo, it is that it pays to break with dominant technicities. By making it easier to access technology you will offend people, but you will win enough fans to make more than up for it.

-Jens

Oh, the Games We'll Play!

When I used to play dodgeball, I always found that my best games came after I'd ripped a few rounds of Armored Core for PlayStation 2. If you've ever played either, the similarity is obvious. In both, you're primarily facing your opponent with nothing really in between. Shots are lobbed from shoulder level, and there is lots of sideways shuffling or jumping to avoid being hit. The only difference is that one takes place in a gym and is co-ed while the other takes place in your living room and involves controlling giant robots. Now that I'm playing soccer, the guys on my team are urging me to start playing FIFA 10. "It'll help you understand the game better," they said, and they're probably right. They are all huge soccer fans, and understand the ins and outs of the strategy. I just like to run, and I never watch professional soccer games.

In related news, there is an actual race car league that pulls its members from the top ranks of Gran Turismo players (Gran Turismo being probably the best, most realistic racing game ever). I'm willing to bet that within the next five years, there will be at least one professional race car driver that got his start in one of these Gran Turismo contests (and I'm also willing to bet that within 10 years a computer-driven car will be able to best the top human driver).

A few months ago, I read a great article in Esquire about the unmanned planes operated by the American military. Shortly after reading the article about the guys that piloted these planes flying over Iraq and Afghanistan from an air-conditioned room in the States, I started playing Modern Warfare: Call of Duty 2. There are scenes in that game where you are able to call in missile strikes from these drones, and your ability to control them is almost exactly what is described in the Esquire article.

While some might see the military applications as a negative impact, I'm urging you to look past that and see that video games will play an increasingly large role in our lives. Chances are, champion sports teams are going to spend part of their time reviewing strategy using an interactive system like games. People of my generation will probably have major surgery done on them by a doctor that has been trained primarily by video games.

-Parker

PS: My roommates, neither of whom really likes games, said they wished there was a game where you just sit and have coffee with your friends. "Call of Do Tea" was the name they eventually came up with.

'Internet Eyes' put gamers on police patrol

A couple of months ago I wrote about a $2-million citizen surveillance system installed along the Tex-Mex border which allowed to people to catch Mexicans from the comfort of their home. I was joking about what would be next: Xbox users collecting achievements by helping to catch gang members?

The answer came quicker than I thought: gamers can now use use security cameras to spy for the man.

A brand new PC game called Internet Eyes will allow players to view thousands of CCTV cameras around the United Kingdom and essentially act as a snitch, reporting any crimes they discover. The most successful rat will win £1,000.

Every time a player finds something suspicious, they click their mouse. The camera operator will then receive an SMS message along with a snapshot of the naughty activity.

"I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money," said Internet Eyes mastermind Tony Morgan. "We've had a lot of interest from local businesses and hope to roll it out nationwide and then worldwide."

The Web-based "game" will launch next month in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, with a site that also includes a criminal Hall-of-Fame. The "snooper's paradise" will rent cameras to businesses around the country for £20 a week, meaning that not only will the police force have ordinary citizens doing their job for them, they'll make a bit of cash on the side.

Uh… yeah, who would have thought that Orwellian nightmares could be that entertaining?!

-Jens

Should I buy a PlayStation 3 or an Elite X-Box 360?

Last Christmas, my roommate Claudio's brother gave him an X-Box 360. I subsequently spent most of January and April playing Halo 3 online. (I was away for most of February and March.) While we bought a few other games, they were pretty much shelved permanently, and I never even tried the campaign mode of Halo. Multi-player was our entertainment ticket for those snowy nights. It is also probably the reason why there were so few posts from me on BlogCampaigning then.

Just in time for summer weather, Claudio moved out and took the X-Box with him. I've spent a good few months enjoying the fresh Toronto air.  When I go to sleep these days I dream of soccer, not Master Chief.

But now the combination of a crispness in the air and price drops from both Sony and Microsoft for their respective consoles has me thinking that I should once again work on my gaming skills.

The question: Which system should I buy?

Readers of this blog and friends of mine will know that I am a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series of games, and that Jens and I can spend hours talking about the creator of those games, Hideo Kojima. He is to video games and cyberpunk what Hitchcock was to film.

Metal Gear Solid 2 for PlayStation 2 was definitely one of my favorite games of all time. Not only is the gameplay amazing, but the actual story line is worthy of a movie itself.

Metal Gear Solid 4 for PlayStation 3 has received rave reviews. Gamespot gave it 10/10 and described it as "an awe-inspiring synthesis of dramatic story telling and entertaining gameplay."  IGN also gave it a 10/10 with similarly glowing comments.

Unfortunately, it's an exclusive title for PS3.

Similarly, the Halo series are also exclusive for Microsoft's X-Box. As I mentioned above, I love Halo 3—the multi-player mode in that game is almost perfect, and from what I've heard, Microsoft essentially changed the face of game-testing when it was first developed. And Halo ODST also looks amazing.

The Microsoft X-Box Elite Bundle (which includes a copy of Halo 3 and a Gold Membership to Microsoft Live for online playing) is currently selling on BestBuy.ca for $329.

The PlayStation 3 is selling for $299, but doesn't include Metal Gear Solid 4. But that's only another $29.99.

So, dear gamers: Which one should I chose? Is Metal Gear Solid 4 that good? Is the online play good?

-Parker

Left 4 Dead in the Aussie Censorship System

It looks like Left 4 Dead 2 has been banned in Australia. The reason: [C]lose in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.

This was not deemed suitable for 15-year-olds.

Despite the average Australian gamer being 30, the country is the only Western democracy not to embrace an adult rating for video games.

This is the result of a 1996 piece of legislation that followed a moral panic over the Sega CD game Night Trap. It was basically grounded in the belief that only kids and teens play games. (For more info see this thesis [PDF] and this excellent article.)

In 2009, Aussie gamers still have to endure the result of this obsolete thinking (which was never accurate in the first place).

The sole person responsible for maintaining Australia's status as one of the few Western countries without an adult rating is West Australia's attorney general, Michael Atkinson. He has plenty of reasons, none of them overly convincing—at least not to the vast majority of the Australian population.

Several games have been banned before or—in the case of Fallout 3—had to be reworked to suit the criteria. But Left 4 Dead 2 is the first high profile title to endure this fate.

Given that other highly violent zombie titles like Dead Rising (banned from sale in Germany) and House of the Dead Overkill (not released in Germany) passed the rating process without problems, this will surely lead to more intense discussions about the future of Australia's censorship system. Hopefully for the better.

-Jens

More To Marvel At

No, this post isn't about Disney acquiring Marvel. Instead, it is going to talk about how awesome the Marvel Create Your Own Super Hero website is.

Using the basic building blocks of a few major characters, the site allows you to customize your own superhero with all the flashy comics and crazy weapons or accessories that are the stuff of comic books.

The ability to mix and match and even to change the costumes of your favorite characters (creating a yellow Spiderman, for example) really shows that Marvel wants their fans to have fun with their brand. I can't help but feel other companies might let you build your own character with stock accoutrements but not do anything to change their image of the main characters.

Once you're finished, the site lets you sign in with a Marvel.com free account or create one so that you can save your customized hero or share it via e-mail.

Unfortunately, the ability to download it didn't work on either of the computers or times I tried (giving me the message "There Was An Error" when the download reached 95%). It would also be cool if Marvel had tied it into Twitter or made a Facebook app out of it. I might be wrong, but I think that you were able to do this from the website for The Watchmen film.

If FaceYourManga was the go-to avatar generator a few months ago, and the Mad Men Yourself one is hot right now, I wonder if this Marvel one will blow up next?

Below you'll find avatars that the BlogCampaigning team created—feel free to psychologically evaluate us based on those (and those of you that know Jens won't be surprised that I had to ask him to redo his TWICE in order to make it appropriate for posting here).

Check it out at, create your own super hero, and let us know!

-Parker

PS: You should also totally check out the Marvel Universe wiki that I wrote about a few years ago.

Could game play at work actually improve engagement?

"Button" is a nice example of how games can be used to mentally stimulate people in order to keep them engaged in their mundane jobs. The game is as simple as it gets: there is a button on the screen and when it lights you push it.

Explains Techcrunch:

Blank Software will choose random times to light the button up, and it will light up for every user around the world. And occasionally, they will randomly select one of the Button players and replace their regular button with a prize button. If they see and hit it, they’ll get the prize.

At first, there will be things like $20 gift cards, but eventually they may include larger prizes.

When the makers were testing the game out:

they began to notice feedback from testers mentioning that playing the game helped them with their normally mundane tasks at their jobs. The thought is that the effort required to open up and play Button on the iPhone was just enough brain stimulation to keep people engaged in whatever boring tasks they may be doing. Also, knowing a reward was possibly coming for pushing the button made it interesting to users.

Could this be the beginning of a trend of gaming at the workplace?

A game like Button would certainly enliven some dull cubicle jobs, especially if you connected it to something meaningful—not necessarily to the winning of prizes. But if you turned this game or something based on an equally simple premise into a contest between different parties within the same company you could spice things up a little.

Say playing is about keeping the company afloat or the game is tied to some fictional empire and by your actions you determine its future—against the guys from accounting or some branch office. I'm sure the distraction would be appreciated.

A company would just have to handle it in a way that doesn't result in the whole thing getting too distracting. Keeping it as simple as possible is certainly a good idea in this regard—something Button surely excels in…

What do you think? Will games be used one day to enhance people's engagement in their work?

-Jens

Policenauts Fan Translation Finally Sees Release

Snatcher is one of my all-time favourite games. I'm lucky enough to own the original game for the Sega CD. After reading a review in a German gaming magazine, I bought Hideo Kojima's early masterpiece right away. In this cyberpunk adventure you play as Gillian Seed, a "Runner". Your job is to track down the source of the mysterious snatchers, bioroids who kill their victims and take their place in society.

While the game play is limited—Snatcher is basically a digital comic book—the setting and the story make more than up for it. The localization is superb, so is the voice acting.

But it's not only the story itself that makes this a cult classic. It's also the little things you can do and explore in the city of Neo Kobe.

Feel like phone sex? Exploring the history of the city via historical records? Talking to your ex-wife? You can do it all, and it adds strongly to the game's atmosphere.

Your interactions with your sidekick robot, Metal Gear, are hilarious. Gillian and he are basically an old couple. Add to these well realized characters and places and you get Kojima's brilliant vision of Blade Runner.

Snatcher's spiritual successor is Policenauts. However, in contrast to Snatcher, the game never saw an official American or European release. Which is a shame because Policenauts is just as brilliant.

Policenauts are astronauts with police training, assigned to ensure the safety of Beyond Coast, mankind's first fully-functional space colony. Your character, Jonathan Ingram, is involved in a freak accident while testing a new space walking suit and drifts into space. He is found alive and well nearly 25 years later thanks to the cold-sleep module connected to the suit.

Three years later, Jonathan is a private investigator in Old L.A. His ex-wife sees him at his office and asks him to find her new husband who suddenly disappeared only to be killed by a car bomb shortly after. Jonathan must return to Beyond Coast to investigate the circumstances surrounding the murder and the disappearance.

Policenaut's game play resembles Snatcher's. The cover announces it as "interactive cinema", but the game basically stays a digital comic book.

However, the parallels also continue in regard to the way Snatcher creates its atmosphere. Policenauts includes all the little quirks that made Snatcher so memorable.

How many titles allow you to touch boobs in zero gravity? Exactly.

Since the game was never released in the West you had to play it in Japanese. Which was possible but obviously not much fun given how text-heavy it is.

Until now.

Recently a fan translation of the Playstation version of the game has been finished. After years of checking the project's status I finally woke up to the good news.

The patch offers a "completely uncensored" English translation by "a professional video game translator who has worked on AAA videogames" the included text file claims. Given the high quality of the work—and the amount of time put in it—these claims are more than hollow words. I have yet to find a bug or a typo.

The translation is a great achievement and one I'm really thankful for.

So do yourself a favour and get your hands on copy of Policenauts. If you're only mildly interested in the Hideo Kojima universe you won't regret it.

-Jens

How I Met the Inventor of the Videogame

Ralph Baer, inventor of the videogame console, recently came to Berlin to celebrate the online launch of the "History of Video Games Timeline" by the Berlin Computer Game Museum. Quite an exciting moment for me, and probably the last chance to have a chat with the man behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world.

After he gave a speech on his time at Sanders, where he started working on the Brown Box—the grandfather of all consoles—as early as 1966 and invented the light gun, I had the chance to have a brief chat with him.

He really is a likable chap. However, you can tell that he had to fight hard for recognition. If you asked a random person on the street who invented the videogame, the answer would very likely be: "Atari!"

As a matter of fact, though, Nolan Bushnell's inspiration for Pong came from a game included in the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, the 1972 commercial iteration of the Brown Box.

While Bushnell can be considered the inventor of the videogame industry, Baer was the inventor of its basis.

He has the documents to prove it, and he held the patents. Consequently, Magnavox not only succeeded in suing Atari for patent infringement but also Coleco, Mattel, Activision, and Nintendo.

Unfortunately he could not sue the public's imagination. As a result, he likes to remind everyone that it was in fact he who made the first step.

When I asked him to sign my copy of Steve Kent's Ultimate History of Videogames, he pointed out that he really liked the book because it presented his version of events. But even someone as invested in game history as Steve needed some persuasion to believe his story.

This is probably the reason why Baer never holds back when it comes to pointing out his numerous inventions and how much ahead of their time they were.

Asked if he considered the Wii the spiritual successor to the Brown Box and the Odyssey, given their family-friendly focus and use of peripherals, the first thing he told me was how he thought up a similar concept in the late 1980s.

But credit where credit is due: the patents he holds are indeed evidence of his visionary nature. He thought of delivering games via cable, entertained the idea of online games and invented other electronic games, such as Simon.

This was finally recognized by the American government in 2007, when was awarded the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor the US can confer for achievements related to technological progress.

He was still wearing the pin when he was in Berlin. It was an honour to meet him.

-Jens

Community-based video game funding – could it work?

Gabe Newell recently suggested letting gamers fund a title, and in the process cutting out the middle-man that is the publisher. "One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community. So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget — it needs to be huge, it has to be $10m–$30m, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative.

"What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, 'Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'

"So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer… Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like."

Newell probably isn't aware of it but this has actually been done before. The German band Angelica Express financed its last album by selling "shares" to fans.

They issued 500 "shares" at 50 Euros each (which sold out in record time and came with a detailed plan of how the money would be spent). With those 25,000 Euros, the band financed the recording of their album, the album artwork, the manufacture of the actual CDs, and the accompanying promotion.

Not only do the people who signed up for the shares get the new album but in return they also receive 80% of the earnings.

Could this also be model for the game industry? As Anthony Burch points out, there's no set format in which a game has to be released—the medium is much more "fluid" than films and print. Therefore, we as gamers can choose which way the medium goes forward simply by choosing what to pay for. They can be anything we want them to be based on how we vote with our wallets.

But will it work? As Burch points out so far we only buy finished games; we pay for the chance that this game is going to be good—but we don't value indie games by simply donating five bucks to the maker. We don't donate for quality but just the chance for it.

Is it because we assume that free stuff is automatically worthless? Is it the marketing behind big titles?

It might work with Valve, a company with good relationships with customers and a proven track record of awesome games. But will it work with others? Could this be one direction gaming might take in the future? What do you think?

-Jens

Off the Couch, On the Couch: Consoles' Future

There're two trends in video-gaming I've noticed lately: First, a shift towards more peripherals and consoles taking over more functions of computers—a development confirmed by the latest E3. One of the first companies to successfully introduce accessory-enhanced games into the mainstream was Sony with its Singstar and Buzz franchises.

Then there was the final breakthrough: Guitar Hero, first just being bundled with a plastic guitar, later even with a drum set. This step was a huge risk: Bemani games were pretty much relegated to a niche existence in the West, no one knew if people were willing to spend significantly more on a game with a toy guitar, and the competition for scarce retail space was intense.

The risk, however, paid off: People loved the new interfaces, which allowed them to immerse themselves in the gaming experience deeper than before. Dreams of a rock star career were easier to pursue with a plastic axe than with a joypad.

Apart from appealing to people who never might have played video games before, another advantage is obvious: Games can be pirated, peripherals can't. You want to play your Pirate Bay Rock Band with a controller? Sure, bore yourself to death.

We had also better get used to the thought of these new interfaces. Kids these days often play their first games on the Wii. As this generation grows up, it won't understand why it can't control FPSs in a similar, active way. The couch will be deserted, that's for sure.

But then again, a second trend might keep people right there: Increasingly, consoles take over the functions of computers.

Think about the Xbox, for example; it was basically introduced because Microsoft wanted to carry the dominance it had in the office environment over into your living room, a space which at that stage was mostly in the hands of the PlayStation.

Soon you'll be able to access your Facebook profile with it, update your Twitter status and listen to Last.fm. These are very significant developments. Microsoft might have won, we just haven't realized it yet.

This Offworld piece makes some very good points:

"The announcement that I thought was missed was the opening of the Xbox Live Dashboard interface to the internet," [industry analyst Michael] Pachter told Gamasutra. "Later this year, Microsoft will allow members to access last.fm and to select music, to access Netflix and instantly watch films/TV shows, to access Facebook and interact with other friends, and to access Twitter and post/read tweets."

Pachter argues that the gaming media entirely missed the significance of this announcement, which puts the 360 firmly in the same territory as Apple's AppleTV, only with a library of awesome games. With so many 360s already installed around the world, MS have a good chance to become the default choice for web media on your TV.

The author adds:

If the 360 does start to support all these things (there's no confirmation as to whether Last.FM will be able to run in the background as a soundtrack to your games), it'll become the kind of gaming machine that I want to spend my time with for more reasons than just because it has some games that my PC doesn't.

It will become a device that has more of the networked infrastructure, and more of the media tweaks and toys that I take for granted as part of my desktop computer.

The thing is: This development does not only apply to stationary consoles: Just think of the iPhone and its growing success as a gaming device. People play on it because they always take it with them and it combines pretty much everything you can ask for: wifi, email, surfing the net, games, etc. Before my iPod Touch was stolen (donations welcome!), I totally neglected my DS, simply for the fact that the iPod combined all my entertainment needs.

The PSP is taking the same direction; its new incarnation, the PSP Go, will come with an app shop (albeit without a touch screen).

When thinking about these developments, keep in mind the falling price of the 360. As the Offworld piece points out:

Rather than having to release a new console, the 360 just gets cheaper, and makes more sense, to more people, because it does something that it didn't do before: Guitar Hero, Last.FM, Twitter, motion-tracking control... A spiralling feature list, a net that gets bigger and drags in more people.

The Xbox indeed develops back to its PC heritage and becomes increasingly flexible. It fulfils a PC's functions, but with the convenience of a console. Sony does have a lot of competition on their hands, and yet they don't seem to do much about it. In view of the PS3's impressive hardware architecture, it's difficult to say if they are able to lower its price, but that would be a first step in the right direction.

All this doesn't even take into account the effect of cloud computing. Maybe the 360 will be the last console you ever buy, because the rest will be done in the cloud. Not only would this apply to applications but also to gaming.

This demands the questions: Will one platform be obsolete one day? What will happen to the PC? Surely it won't disappear, but it will suffer. Eventually you might simply end up with another Microsoft product.

What do you think? Are consoles the future of computing?

-Jens

Alice and Kev

Alice and Kev is one of the most fascinating blogs I've read in a while. Robin Burkinshaw, a student of games design/development at Anglia Ruskin University, is playing the Sims 3 with two homeless characters. He moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. Kev, the father, is mean-spirited, quick to anger, and inappropriate. He also dislikes children and he’s insane. He’s basically the worst dad in the world. His daughter Alice has a kind heart, but suffers from clumsiness and low self-esteem. Her best friend in life is her teddy.

The blog is divided into different episodes whose story is dictated by the game's rules. Once I started reading, I was hooked. I was curious what the game had in place for the two and how its assumptions about life would shape their path. A new, strangely engrossing form of fiction developed right in front of my eyes: Burkinshaw made some decisions, the rest was "told" by the game. (Spoilers ahead.)

Alice hungry, tired, and stressed, struggles at school and gets into arguments with her father. She gets a job at the supermarket.

When her shift ends... that evening, she has 100 hard-earned simoleons, but she is as exhausted as it is possible to be. She wobbles slightly after walking out the door, and only just manages to stop herself from losing consciousness there and then.

(…)

She takes all of the money she has just earned, places it into an envelope, writes the name of a charity on the front, and puts it into a mailbox.

You might think that Alice has the worst life in the world, but she doesn’t believe that’s true. She will turn down the chance to improve her life in order to give others the opportunity to improve theirs.

Asks Burkinshaw:

What does it mean when a character you’ve created makes you re-examine your own life through their astonishing selflessness?

It means that rules can have an emotional impact after all.

Of course one could start the same experiment with other games; yet the Sims is about life itself and not about Super Mutants ("Today I killed five locusts"), something we can easily relate to. This is why the game has the potential to make us re-evaluate our lives and tell us about ourselves (or rather, the designers' assumptions about our lives).

It also makes you wonder which path Alice would have taken if the game received a less commercially oriented rating on account of its drastic rules. How would the story have evolved if the game was designated Adults Only and included drugs and prostitution?

At the same time, Alice and Kev is a great example of how a future could look like; a piece of art utilising screenshots and gameplay videos to be consumed on platforms like the iPhone or Kindle. Kev and Alice can even be downloaded to be put in one's own game, everyone can live their lives, make different choices and tell their own story: instant, touching art created by play (or rather, the recounting of play).

-Jens

Kiwi Government Censor: Prosecute Parents Who Give Violent Games to Kids

What's up with the other end of the world all of a sudden? First Australia plans to spend millions of dollars on an inane net fiter that is perfectly suited to censor free speech and would make one of the slowest internets of the Western world even slower; then New Zealand contemplates to introduce a draconian copyright law.

And now this: New Zealand's chief government censor has called for the prosecution of parents who give their children access to violent video games. Anyone letting his children play GTA could face up to three months in prison or a fine of $10,000.

His reasoning:

They might think the offence is silly, but it ain't... That's what the law says, but... you're not going to have police officers in every bedroom... There would certainly be some shock value to prosecuting a parent who gives their under-18 child access to a restricted game. It would send out a message that the enforcement agency means business.

I think the word 'game' can mislead people for sure. It's not checkers. For the first time in history, kids are more savvy with technology than parents... parents need to get up to speed on the digital divide. They need to look at what their kids are playing and doing...

It should be the pleasure in being able to sleep at night knowing that you have done the right thing by your kids. That should be the motivating factor.

As Destructoid points out, this proposal would make videogames even more tightly restricted than alcohol, since it would apply to what happens within the family home. So while it's legal for a child to imbibe booze behind closed doors, a medium whose links to violence at the end of the day cannot not be verified is not. Cheers to that!

-Jens