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Games have some really bad PR. Some of it is certainly undeserved, but lots of it (sadly) rings true. When I tell people that I make games, the first thing that is said is “ooh they are so violent. Doesn’t that bother you?”. It doesn’t occur to most normal folks that violent games are only one genre from a large spectrum. No one has that reaction to the idea of a movie – although it used to be fairly common.
I am not really against violence in media, though. I guess what I have issue with is the glorification of violence. One of the most common sorts of challenges in games is to fight/kill/crush “bad guys”. Who decides who is bad? Where’s the love? What roles do games play with our society?
For most animals (and historically for humans as well) play is form of practice/training for adult life. Animals pretend to bite and scratch each other for fun, but it is direct training for survival in predatory world. Children used to go fishing – a skill set that has a pretty direct application in that it is a means of obtaining food. Likewise, children would play with dolls in part as preparation/familiarization for parenthood.
Sooo… what does that say about the games we play (or create)?
Either developers are either inadvertently training our audiences to solve problems with force, or (what I find to be more accurate and relevant) NOT training our audiences for anything they are more likely face in their lives.
The play that developers are currently offering isn’t relevant to our players’ lives.
Could we make interesting games with more general relevance? Perhaps there could be some form of economic content that would help folks understand money and debt better in real life. Maybe there could be something that helps people to better understand how to work up the social hierarchy of the corporate ladder.
Could we make a game that prepares people for life in a cubicle? Would we want to?
On the game that I am currently working on, the core mechanic is all about exploration, which seemed fine to me – as it does not have any particularly negative aspect to it.
But perhaps that is not good enough. The ‘message’ of the game as I intend it, would be the importance of exploration and experimentation. But then I wonder if it’s just an excuse and that I could be offering content that is more directly useful in people’s lives.
I have been thinking and reading about artificial intelligence a little bit lately and this has spawned some thoughts about why we only perceive some of our surroundings.
When a child is first born, it cannot make sense of the images it sees and hears. It has no model of the world yet, and therefore sees only meaningless shapes. Only after it has experiences can the child start to make a crude map of what these shapes represent. A mother’s face might initially only be understood as food and safety.
As children have new experiences their mental model of the world quickly becomes more detailed. After some time, the child starts to construct ideas of what to view as ’safe’ and what is unknown or could be a threat.
Eventually we grow into adults and have an extremely sophisticated models of perception. We have a very complicated understanding of what is safe and what is a threat, what is out of the ordinary, and what parts of our environment could be useful.
As an adult, we can walk by a tree and have a model of what to expect — there is very little chance of that tree attacking. Nor is that tree likely to have $100 bills hidden away in the branches. Trees are certainly useful and wonderful, but there is no signal to react (or sometimes even notice them) as we walk by. We have walked past thousands of trees in our lifetime and usually have no trigger for concern.
The same could be said about the leaves on the tree, but with even less trigger for concern, as there are so many more present. It could take years just to look at and notice the differences between the leaves on a single tree. Even if we try to perceive the individual leaves on the tree, it is extremely difficult because we have built a mental model that categorizes the individual leaves as being so similar that they are more or less interchangeable.
Alternatively, if there is an EXPLOSION nearby – we have no choice but to perceive it. There is a very intense signal sent to the brain that this is something important and out of the ordinary. Even if you wanted ignore it, there is almost no likelihood that you would succeed. Your body has considered it a potential threat and will most likely flinch in reaction.
This line of thought raises a few new issues for me. For one - if we are a slave to our perceptions and predispositions, can we change our mental models? If so, how difficult is that to accomplish? Also, how does Art fit into this? Art (by some definitions) has no practical quality, but can be extremely compelling.
For those interested, the book that I was looking through is called ‘Society of Mind’ by Marvin Minsky. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but the chapters I’ve read have been extremely thought provoking.
You want to be happy. You are attempting to be peaceful. You are trying so hard to be nice.
But then someone comes along and says something attacking that is hypocritical/untrue/irrelevant. Or maybe you are chewed out for something that is beyond your control. It could even be a genuine accident on your part that was blown way out of proportion.
Often it comes from a loved one or someone you generally respect. You might have even been going out of your way to help that person, making the attack feel even more inappropriate.
And you feel your blood begin to boil at the injustice! You feel an instant need to set them straight and clear your maligned name.
Hold on there, partner. There are a couple ways this could go:
1. You could ‘set them straight’ and defend your position. Or
2. You could ‘accept’ the barrage of negativity without taking a position.
Let’s consider the two options.
Scenario Number 1 – You point out the flaws in the other person’s argument. You masterfully argue your side logically and mask your inner rage (with great effort).
For some reason, the other person only becomes more unreasonable. Now they are bringing up issues from the past that aren’t directly relevant to the current situation. They are citing times where you did the exact same thing. What a shit storm!
You can’t understand why the other person is fighting you so hard. You wish you had a microphone to record the conversation so that you could share it with the other person when they are feeling more rational.
Eventually, the discussion/argument is discontinued without resolve. You just barely escape – but you still feel resentful. Neither party has gotten resolution from the ‘discussion’.
Sometimes the other person apologizes for the actions. Sometimes not.
And if the other person doesn’t see your side of the argument, you never fully forgive them because in your heart you know that you were right.
With time, the bad feelings fade and life goes more or less back to normal but your connection with this person has been weakened.
Scenario Number 2 – **You sit and listen while the other person attacks. Instead of using you masterful understanding of logic to contradict the other person, you focus that logic silently on figuring out why this person is attacking you.
You are already secure in the fact that you did nothing wrong. You don’t need to prove that to anyone else. So you listen. And ask questions. And an interesting thing happens.
After a bit of time, the two of you realize that the REASON for the attack has nothing to do with CONTENT of the attack. Even though you were chastised for something unfairly, it will eventually come out that there is an underlying issue.
Again you choke back the urge to point your finger at them screaming “See! See! Don’t you see how UNFAIR you were being!” – because you know that this would start another wave of attacks, citing times where you did the exact same thing, etc….
You find out that the person has some big issue that is clouding their judgment. You realize that whatever insignificant thing that you did was only a catalyst that opened the door to their deeper feelings. Usually it has something to do with feelings of fear on some level.
By not engaging in the argument, you have shown that you will not judge their feelings. You have indirectly made the environment ’safe’ for talking about the deeper feelings of fear.
You realize that you no longer feel the need to be right. You understand their feelings and why your insignificant action ignited such a strong reaction. You still feel that their reaction was unfair and out of place, but you forgive them.
You forgive them because you understand why it happened (whether justified or not). You forgive them because they have gotten their temper out of control and you want to enjoy their company once again. But most of all you forgive them so that YOU can move on - so that you don’t have to carry around resentment.
It is unfair. But this is an important component to maintaining happiness.
Why do we always feel such a compulsion to be right?
**Note – I know that some feel that this would be ‘backing down’ or ‘being weak’. The truth is that it takes a tremendous amount of strength not to engage when someone is egging you on. It’s easy to indulge in your negative emotions. Keeping positive throughout someone else’s negativity is way harder.
The other day I took my daughter to the local neighborhood playground for a play date. While there, I had a grand time chatting and joking around with the other parent. Eventually I mentioned my interest in personal finance and entrepreneurship and that steered the conversation in a new direction.
I told this other parent that I don’t believe that a job is a very logical way to earn income and he found this curious and a bit shocking. Then he politely asked just how one could earn income other than a job.
I said that there are actually a lot of different ways but growing up with traditional middle class ideals doesn’t expose us to anything different. We learn both explicitly and implicitly to pick a profession so that you can get a ‘good’ job.
Then I used this analogy for the mindset of the entrepreneur:
- Suppose you earn your living mowing people’s lawns. You can mow 8 lawns in a day at $20 each. You are earning $160 a day. So you make roughly $40,000 a year (before taxes, etc) - not so bad for something so straightforward.
- The middle class mindset is to learn more about landscaping and become an expert so you can charge $30 an hour. Then you buy the best lawnmower, so that you can mow a whopping 10 yards in a day! Now you’re making roughly $75,000 a year before expenses. Wow, now you are rolling in the dough!
- Now in walks the entrepreneur. He heard through the grapevine that you are making some big bucks doing some simple lawn mowing and decides that this might be worth pursuing.So he hires someone to start mowing lawns – 8 a day. He pays the new employee $18 a lawn and withholds $2 for himself/the company. Now the employee gets roughly $36,000 a year before expenses, and the entrepreneur only gets $4,000. But the entrepreneur doesn’t work for it.
So after a little while, the entrepreneur decides that he wants to earn a bit more income. So he hires 9 more employees. Now there are 10 folks all on the work force earning their $36,000 a year before expenses. Now the owner is making about the same as the employees. At this point the entrepreneur is working pretty hard to obtain clients.
After some legwork, business continues to expand. Word of the company has gotten around and there is more business than the 10 employees can handle. So the owner hires 5 more people and better lawn mowers to speed up the process. He also increases the price of the service to $26 a yard.
The owner splits the price increase with the employees and now they are each mowing 10 yards a day and making $52,000 before taxes. The owner is now making roughly $187,500 a year before taxes.
Business continues to pick up and the owner, so he hires 10 more employees – bringing the total up to 25 people. Then he increases their share of earnings from each lawn from $21 per lawn mowed up to $22 per lawn mowed. The workers get a little bump in salary to $55,000 a year before taxes.
The owner is now making $250,000 a year before taxes and expenses. And he doesn’t mow any lawns. What’s more is that now the business is stable, he is free to start a second business on the side if he chooses to.
And that is the entrepreneurial mindset.
Resident Evil was one of the first and most prominent survival horror games created for the Playstation.
I want to launch with an exploration of the control scheme for the game. The user inputs that were chosen for character movement were heavily criticized for being ‘unintuitive’. [Indeed it took me 3 or 4 attempts at playing this game before I finally figured out how to shoot the pistol]
The game uses an unconventional mapping for character movement - the ‘up’ button moves the character forward, and the ‘left’ and ‘right’ buttons rotate the character. I believe that this mapping was chosen to anchor one consistent direction to the up button. Because the game has dramatic camera angles that change orientation in almost every room, it is functional to be able to hold down one button and continue progression in a consistent direction.
In order to shoot a weapon the player needs to hold down the L1 button while pressing a 2nd button on the keypad. This is also an unconventional choice but serves the useful function of not wasting ammo by accident – because this is a game with limited resources.
The limitation of resources is not only a gameplay mechanic, but adds a level of emotional tension. Most players experience a sense of anxiety as their resources diminish. The amount of times that a player can save is also a commodity. This inability to easily leave the game world beautifully mirrors the core of the story – that the characters cannot escape the house.
The flow and content of the game is fairly predictable, but balanced and well executed. The player can find various keys that unlock different types of doors. This mechanic is straightforward and in most instances the game does nothing to mask this element.
At certain junctures there are puzzle elements which are necessary for progression. This is a bit curious in that the puzzles are not a core element of the game, yet do not add substantial depth.
The visual aspects of this game do give substantial depth, however. The backgrounds are pre-rendered, which allowed them to be created with far more detail than its real-time contemporaries. That detail allows each part of the mansion to look unique, and helps the feeling of reward when a new area has been unlocked. Each room is displayed from different camera angles, giving a dramatic aesthetic.
Katamari is certainly a unique game, and many people have had different feelings about the game.
The first thing that I want to point out is that this game is a direct descendant of Pac Man – a game also built by Namco many years before. The primary focus is on collecting things and avoiding baddies – unless the game is in a state where you can consume enemies.
Much like its ancestor, this game is extremely focused on simple core mechanics. There are no power ups to manage in Katamari, and user control is absolutely consistent within levels. This allows the learning process to be fairly straight forward, slowly refining the skills that are introduced early on.
The visual and auditory feedback is continuous, letting you know how much you are picking up with satisfying pops (and the occasional scream from a sumo wrestler).
One of the things that make the mechanic of collect distinctive is that the relationships between your character and the environment are not absolute. An item that serves as a barrier early in a level will usually become something consumable later in the level.
Also an animal that causes you harm (or at least inconvenience), can be rolled into your ball later on. This potentially taps an undercurrent of the human compulsion for revenge.
I would guess that this relative relationship between things would make level design extremely challenging. How do you place a level wall that is also an item to be collected? I can almost imagine the items needing to be placed in a fractal sort of arrangement.
The game has an extremely simple but unique Art style. This item simplicity has a couple of secondary implications for the game:
1. They can be created faster, allowing for more things to be built in the same amount of time, and
2. They have a lower polygon count so that more items can be shown on screen at on time.
Both of which contribute to a larger variety of items that can be seen and interacted with throughout the game. If there were only a handful of items that could be picked up, the game would feel significantly different.
The multitude of items and their (seemingly) unusual placement give the game a powerful sense of absurdity. The game has a sense of humor, but does so without telling any jokes.
Ironically, the story elements of the game are fairly serious. The relationship between the main character and the father character is strained. But in a subtle way. There is not any major event that plays out for the sake of drama. His quiet disapproval of an incomplete mission adds some emotional weight to the game. Somehow this is accessible in a personal way that more epic stories are not.
Emotional content aside, the concept truly uses the media of games in a powerful way. It allows the player to experience something that they cannot in regular life in an interactive way. You would NOT have a similar experience if this was described in book or movie form.
What role do clones play in the creative world? Do they simply feed off of another’s hard work? What value can the end product be if it is simply a facsimile of what has already been created? What can be gained by simply cloning another’s work?
As an Artist and someone who makes video games - and have a push/pull emotion when I see clones being created. But a great deal can be learned by simply copying a master’s work.
As a youngster just opening up to the field of Art I copied artwork directly out of comic books. Soon after, (in Art school), I made copies of renaissance Artists’ and Post Impressionist works – emulating their style and technique.
I found that even when I could reproduce the image with success, it was kind of empty. Although I had learned something, there was no real statement being made with the pieces.
In a true clone, the creative process will stop here – A direct copy of the original. This occurs sometimes in the game development world: Tetris clones, Chess clones, etc. Even when executed superbly, there is nothing new being added to the creative community.
But in the majority of cases the creators will add something unique in the second generation. Maybe the technique is refined. Sometimes a new element is added. Perhaps the context has changed giving it new meaning.
Even if the core idea is the same, each generation has an opportunity to add something significant.
Example from the video game world:
- Space Invaders
- Galaxian
- Galaga
- Raiden
- Ikaruga
[We could also many, many others but I like the above example because you can clearly see how each one has built on the framework of the previous]
This is part of the natural evolution of creative media.
Of course, there are plenty of times where an attempt to clone or innovate on an existing idea fails miserably. Often this is a result of poor execution - there are many reasons for this, many of which are out of the creator’s hands (too little time, too little budget, imposing publisher, etc).
There is another part of the evolution that I would like to mention, and that is the cross pollination of genres. This is innovating on an old idea specifically by fusing it with another old idea.
This can have some interesting results. For some reason this kind of methodology tends to have much more volatility in quality. It seems to breed both the most inspiring pieces of Art as well as the biggest turkeys. There is less precedent. It involves more risk.
But then again, why not be risky? No one’s life is hanging on the quality of a piece of Art (career maybe, but not life).
Our bodies are strange vessels.
We identify with a state of being that is tangible and stable, but that is not entirely so. Our size and shape changes constantly. We perceive ourselves as solid – we are and we are not. When we touch something solid, we stop. But we have many cavities throughout our body. The pocket inside our mouths. The passage to and inside of our lungs. One could also argue that there is the space between the atoms. That being said, these cavities are efficient beyond anything made by humans. When we close our mouth, the tongue and teeth and jaw and roof of the mouth contract into a perfect tightness. Our bladders expand and contract depending on the liquid they hold.
Our bodies change frequently – changing temperature with sickness. Gaining mass with food consumption and loosing mass when we excrete. We shed skin cells and hair. In my case lots of hair. Our hair and fingernails grow. Our skin changes color when we bruise or burn. In our younger years our size changes dramatically in short periods of time. Through childbirth, a woman’s internal organs will change location. We get wrinkles with old age.
And oddly, we usually use this constantly changing vessel as the basis of our identity. We look in the mirror and obsess over the color of our hair or the shape of our nose. We forget that this body is just the container for our consciousness. We think about the color of our eyes more often than we consider their role in visual perception.
So if our bodies are only the exterior shell for our true being, what are we? What is the deeper meaning of being human?
I have more ideas to jot down on this subject, but must end this article now because I’ve needed to use the restroom since writing the part that says “Our bladders expand and contract depending on the liquid they hold.”
Sometimes I find it empowering to view aspects of life like a game.
In a game there are elements of challenge and reward that drive you towards completing objectives. When a player learns and experiences success, they feel good – and look to repeat the experience with more challenge.
As a result, there is a learning curve in games. If there is nothing new to learn, the game becomes boring and is soon abandoned (examples: Tic Tac Toe, Candyland). Also if the game is too difficult learn, unappealing, or unclear (example: Minesweeper, or Playing Chess against a superior opponent), the game is often deserted in favor of something more accessible.
The games that are the most enjoyable are the ones that are perfectly suited for our ability level. Candyland and Tic Tac Toe are great games for younger children, but not challenging enough for most adults.
Our experiences in life operate in exactly the same manner. An appropriate challenge tends to keep us contented and happy.
When things come to us too easily we tend to get bored and move on. Most people have at some point had a job that was just plain boring. Usually that is a result of not having enough challenge within that atmosphere.
Likewise, when a challenge seems too large (or unappealing or unclear) – it feels inaccessible. We often walk away from the challenge without even trying to accomplish it.
Most people do not attempt to *earn $1,000,000 in one year’s time because it feels inaccessible. People either
Are totally unclear as to how to accomplish this,
Find it a too difficult of a task, or
Find it unappealing for some reason (perhaps citing that “money is the root of all evil”)
Shifting back to the game analogy - If you were playing Chess against someone who kept won every time, you could
1. Give up Chess altogether,
2. Continue to play Chess and find an opponent who is better matched to you, or
3. Learn strategies to becoming a better player.
If you had interest in Chess you would likely opt for BOTH #2 and #3. You would innately understand that you are able to become a better player with more training and experience. You accept that there will lose some games on your road to success. Eventually you may be able to outplay the nitwit who formerly crushed you every game.
Likewise with the $1,000,000 goal, you could:
1. Give up on the goal altogether.
2. Find a goal that is more accessible to your current situation.
3. Learn strategies to earn more income. If you are tenacious, you may find this ambitious goal achievable.
Unlike games, in life most people end up doing #1 and #2. In most cases #3 is also an option, but fear of failure, uncertainty of path or disinterest (like an internal contradiction of believing “money is the root of all evil”) keep us from continuing on the path to success.
When I am faced by a daunting task, I often find myself trying to think of it as a game. If it is too overwhelming to try right away, I read about it and try to understand the problem more clearly. I may try to complete a smaller objective as a learning experience.
So right now I am learning how to become financially independent.
I consider it the miniboss of this level.
*I am only using money because it is clear and easily measurable. The objective could be something far less tangible like: living a healthy lifestyle, keeping a positive attitude, or creating more time to spend with your family.