Braid and the "Modern" Gamer

*This post contains spoilers about the game Braid, probably the biggest spoiler ever*

Recently, I've been replaying some old games, as you might now (please, please know that about me. It means you're paying attention and you love me). Braid was one of those games. Playing it again reignited my love affair with that masterpiece, and I began to pester my cousin Ed into playing it.

He played it and he loved it, like any reasonable person should. I was so excited for him to get to the end for one of the best twists I've ever seen. I tried to temper my excitement for it. My language tends to become very hyperbolic when I love something, so I'm worried that about overhyping everything.

I was disappointed when he beat the game and totally missed the twist. It's not because Ed isn't an intelligent and insightful man, because he is. Much more so than I, at any rate. It was because he doesn't play games as much as I do.

First a little expository dialogue. Braid is a game that plays with the mechanics of time. Speeding, slowing, reversing are all in there. One of the things that makes Braid so great is how the concept of time, and the gameplay mechanic itself, are infused into the story. So at the end *last spoiler alert warning*, when your character is helping the princess escape the villain and get back to her house, you have no choice but to play the entire sequence backward. Everything gets turned completely on its head. Rather than helping the princess into the safety of her home, she finds you looking at her through her bedroom window and tries to escape you. The sequence gets an entirely different meaning when simply played in reverse. If none of this makes sense, just watch this video. (Jump to :25 if you're THAT impatient, sheesh)

The first time I played the game, I was freaking out. Totally flipping the F out. I couldn't believe what was happening. Here I thought I was the hero the whole time, and it turns out I'm the unwitting villain! Chasing after a relationship wasn't endearing, it was obsessive and damaging to her. My character was a stalker.

So why did Ed miss this? He brought up something that I wouldn't have thought of without his perspective. It's because he is used to an older style of gaming. A style where the story and gameplay elements are almost entirely separate. Playing a game was simply a matter of "Play the game, watch the story, play the game, watch the story" over and over until the end. He wasn't looking for meaning in the final time reversal, he was just waiting for it to be over so he could keep playing. He was viewing it as a gameplay element rather than a story element.

I'm a good example of a "modern" gamer, as Ed put it. I'm versed in the styles and techniques of modern independent and art gaming. I was actively looking for meaning in the gameplay itself. So when I saw how things were unfolding as the rewind button was held, it seized me.

I think this points to something very significant about the current state of gaming. Games are getting closer to being art (I would just argue they already are). The same thing happens with film. Someone who has studied film is much more able to pick up on the nuances and techniques the director uses to imbue meaning. Someone who is watching films for the first time might not see these things. It's not that they are unintelligent, just unfamiliar.

Right now, the percentage of games that I would consider "art" is very low. But then, so was film when it started.

Feminism is the idea that female video game characters can kick a lot of ass.

Women and gaming is something I'm very, very interested in. I love to see women in front, in, and behind games. This is quickly becoming much more normal, but the stereotype that videogames are just for boys is going to persist for a long time.

There aren't that many games with female leads, but they run the gamut from acceptable (Faith in Mirror's Edge), to questionable (Lara Croft in Tomb Raider), to downright offensive (Princess Peach).

I just finished playing Mirror's Edge for the third time. I was struck be how well the female half of our race was portrayed. Faith is the game's main character, a "runner". Runners deliver packages in the locked-down dystopian future by running them over rooftops. This is because all other channels of communication are surveilled.

Faith is not a stereotype in any way. She's strong, and strong-willed. She doesn't have enormous breasts. In fact, she's not sexualized in any way. She doesn't even have a love interest. The story of the game is simple. Faith is trying to rescue her sister, who was framed for the murder of a prominent politician. That's it. No being rescued by men, no whining, no unrealistic bodily proportions.

*spoiler alert* The finale of the game has Faith rescuing her sister from a crashing helicopter. It's pretty moving because it's something you rarely see in gaming. No epic world-saving, just a woman rescuing her sister. If the character was male, you wouldn't think anything of it. By simply making the character female, it's pointing out all the expectation women are saddled with before things even begin.

I saw this a couple years ago and it made me furious. An asian reader on Kotaku adjusted the image of Faith (above), to this:

The reasoning given for this "adjustment" was that Western developers tend to define Asian beauty from their own perspective, and not from an Asian one. That argument seems fine for about 2 seconds, and then you wonder why a character has to be designed by ANY standards of beauty. Why does this female character need to be sexualized? Why can't her body simply be the tool she needs to perform her goals effectively? Hanging from ledges might be a little difficult with those huge boobs.

I was livid when I saw this. The developers made a very deliberate effort to downplay physical beauty and avoid inexplicably sexualizing the character (the story never calls for it), and here a fan tries to undo that progress completely. One step forward, two steps back, huh?

The original article that had me so hot and bothered.

VVVVVV is the name of the game.

I'm pretty sure it's actually pronounced "The Letter V Six Times", but that's beside the point. Or is it the point?

I've been replaying a handful of smaller games (Portal, Braid, VVVVVV). They may be small games, but they have BIG IDEAS! There was specifically one challenge in VVVVVV that I promised I wouldn't subject myself to when playing it a second time. Quickly: In VVVVVV, you can only move left or right, and change gravity up or down. The whole game is tied to these simple mechanics.

This part is so insanely difficult. The first time I did it, it took me approximately 550 tries over the course of a half-hour. But the instant retry aspect of it is what keeps it from becoming overwhelmingly frustrating. If you had to wait a few seconds after you died, or had to answer a "Retry?" question, the game would be broken.

The game's creator, Terry Cavanagh, said that he wanted the challenges of the game to stand alone. He wanted the challenges themselves to the the only barrier. No artificial barriers like a finite number of lives. You can make the simplest game incredibly difficult by limiting the number of lives or tries you get. In this way, VVVVVV is only about the obstacles, and nothing else. This kept me completely captivated despite the fact that I died 1200 times by the end of the game. 1200 times!

This is the reason I completed that ridiculous challenge again. I knew that I would never get too angry. But an interesting thing happened. I was able to beat it in about 100 tries this time. This was because I still had the muscle memory I cultivated the first time through. This challenge was so ludicrous that the only way to beat it was to program the movements into your fingers. By the end, I could probably do much of it with my eyes closed. Like playing a musical instrument, it was all about rhythm and timing, and that slowly meshed into my fingers over the course of 550 attempts. It also wasn't quite as thrilling the second time, though. The more insurmountable the task, the greater the euphoria once completed. It wasn't so insurmountable this time.

I urge everybody to play this game. It's fantastically fun, and available on PC and Mac. At least try the demo out!
VVVVVV

Extended Interviews

As much as I wanted to put all the complete interviews in the episode, I just couldn't justify the time it would take. That's what the internet is for! No time slots or requirements, I can do whatever I want!*

Freddy was awesome. He was a super bright guy who loved making stories through games, and had a very good working knowledge of how to put them together with the programs given. I had a great time talking to him; the conversation was hilarious.

When I asked all the kids if they wanted to be interviewed, I thought I got to all of those who raised their hands. I did not. I unintentionally skipped over Erik. A little while later, he caught me going out the door and, with a demanding tone in his voice, said "I thought you were going to interview me!" I apologized and told him that I would interview in him a little bit. This is that interview.

I also got a chance to talk to Nicolas Cage!

And finally, here is the extended interview with Tori. It was really encouraging to see some girls in the class. I got to talk to her about what types of games she enjoys and wants to eventually develop.

I had a really great time talking to the kids about videogames. I feel very optimistic about the future of gaming.

*Well, I can't do ANYTHING... but you know what I mean.

The Monetary Value of Games is UNDER ATTACK!

Over the past few months, I realized something about myself. My fill of a game depends pretty consistently on how many hours I've put into it. In other words, I feel satisfied with a AAA title once I've played about 20 hours of it. That means if the game is 10 hours long, I'll play it twice. If it's 20 hours long, once. More than 20 hours? Usually I won't finish it, as was the case with Grand Theft Auto 4.

Length is a strange issue, especially with gaming. Length can be almost completely unrelated to experience in the game. Some games are padded with monotonous chores and take 50 hours (most RPGs), others are a densely packaged, transcendent 3-hour run (Portal).

Portal is a perfect example of how the experience of a game completely determines its value, both in terms of length and price. When Portal first came out, it was $20, and took about 2-5 hours to complete, depending on your pacing.

The pricing of games is a controversial topic. Most publishers and developers like to think their games are well worth the $60 you pay for a new copy. You'll hear the argument, "Well, considering the amount of entertainment you get in games, $60 is a good value". They're speaking about game length, of course. Do you want to talk about why this argument doesn't make much sense? I do!

Let's say the average, 2-hour movie costs $10 to see. That's $5 per hour. How much would that make a 12-hour game cost? $60?! Right on! You're good at math. Actually, I'm good at math, since I'm not interacting with you at this point. Now you might be thinking "This is dumb, because the value of a movie isn't in its length." Now say that thought out loud to me. Holy carp, you're right! Then why the hell does this argument even exist? The value of a game has nothing whatsoever to do with its length, just like with movies.

Besides, games vary wildly in length, movies don't really. They're mostly between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. Games can be 5, 7, 12, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 50, 60, 80, or 100 hours long. Time is irrelevant anyway, because puzzle games are infinitely long, the same with something like The Sims.

Why am I spending so much time on this point? Because of how fuzzy this whole issue is. What is the value of a game? I guess it depends on the experience. Something like Uncharted 2, I have no problem paying $60 for. It was an amazing experience, one I would gladly pay EVEN MORE for.

Games miss an opportunity movies are built around. There isn't, so far, a good way to experience a game one time for a smaller amount of money. With a movie, you can go see it a single time for $8. This is pretty low risk, so even if the movie turns out to be butt, you don't feel too bad because it didn't cost you THAT much time or money. Games aren't this finite. This is why renting a game isn't a very good solution. You only have so much time with it (a week), and you probably won't complete it in a single night. You really don't have a clear idea of how long it'll take to finish. So you're spending $8-$10 to maybe or maybe not play a full game.

$60 is just too much for a single item. People will pay it, but at the expense of other games. I simply cannot afford to buy all the games that I would like to, so I have to choose the games I want the most. This is why making a game is so risky. People can only buy so many games, so they have to be really selective. This forces gaming companies to play it safe. It's damaging the whole industry!

For me, I think the most reasonable price point is $30 new. I don't have nearly as difficult a time paying $30 for something as I do $60. I would probably end up spending even more on games in absolute terms because I wouldn't struggle with each purchase. Is anybody listening to me?!

The Guilt of Playing videogames

Note: For this post, I'm listening to music, and will insert lyrics of the songs I'm listening to while writing. Lyrics will be in [brackets].

It's something I struggle with on a daily basis. No, it's not ED, it's the guilt associated with playing videogames.

I don't feel guilty when I watch TV, or screw around on the internet, why do I feel guilty when I play games? They aren't any less productive than the former activities. It's because of society, man! Society tells us that games are bad. It's all the man not wanting us to save princesses or arrange coloured blocks. (No, I'm not British, but you thought I was for a second, didn't you?)

We're constantly being told that games are bad in some way [cocaine make you grind your teeth all night]. Even if the message isn't explicit, there's an implied message there. Even if games aren't completely bad, you're still damaging yourself in some way by playing them.

Honestly, this didn't start until I became a relatively busy person, when I started working on Double Jump [it's a freaky celebration of a natural kind]. Then I felt guilty when I wasn't being productive. But playing videogames actually is productive for the host of a videogame TV show! I can't lose my credibility by not playing many games!

Let's run through my thought processes right now [let's take the boat out/wait until darkness comes].

Dan: I'm going to play some games right now, I have some time to myself, what better way to spend it than stimulating my brain. Tickling my intellect. Engaging my frontal lobe and so on.

Brain: Couldn't you be doing something else? Like watching TV or screwing around on the internet? [we can fight our desires/but when we start making fires/we get ever so hot]

Dan: How is that any more productive? I don't need to be productive 100% of the time, but watching TV definitely isn't more productive than playing games.

Brain: The world doesn't waste a lot of time telling you how TV is bad for you. They stopped bothering with that decades ago. Videogames are the newest thing that's bad for you.

Dan: But videogames aren't actually bad for you. Not in any ways that film isn't also bad for you. Or reading for that matter. Reading (derisively), sitting there on its high horse. You know, if we spent all day reading we'd be fat, just like if we spent all day playing videogames. Nobody talks about that, do they? Not ever.

Brain: Quiet, you. If you screw around on the internet, you can multitask so that it creates the illusion of productivity. You can watch videos, read articles, listen to music, chat with IM all at the same time. [it looks a lot like engine oil and tastes a like being poor and small/and popsicles in summer]

Dan: This is butt, and you know it.

Brain: Perhaps it is, you do use your butt enough.

Dan: Why does every conversation with you end with my butt? [I wish I could speak in one sweep/what you are and what you mean to me].

All of this just shows that someone like me, obsessed with the real value of videogames, can't escape the kind of conditioning that leads to a guilt in the style of Catholic Guilt. I will push though, people, don't worry. And if you're suffering from the same guilt as I am, we shall overcome. Together.

[Eyes are sober, this is the plan/I'm sitting in a car heading Neverland/A fancy man, a fancy man/He's point with fingers that are left on his hand]

My Life With PC Games (or why I don't play PC games anymore)

It's 1992 and I'm 7 years old. My uncle, who is a pastor of a local church is (ironically) showing me Wolfenstein 3D. It's so bloody and awesome. My favorite part is when I kill Hitler, and his body falls like a popped water balloon into a pile of bones, blood and flesh, with an intact Hitler head lying lifeless atop that heap. I've always wanted to kill Hitler that way.

PC gaming was simple back then. Before purchasing a game you had to answer only a few questions. Is your computer reasonably new? Does it run DOS/Windows? That was about all it took to run just about any computer game at the time. Wolfenstein 3D would give you graphs describing your computer's guts to you, but it all seemed pretty meaningless because it never affected your ability to kill Nazis/Hitler.

Installing the game was a simple, yet tedious process. Insert diskette 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. Boom. The game was installed, you typed in WOLF3D into the command prompt, and you sailed into bliss. That was it.

Things really started to change after that. Diskettes were easy to copy, so each time you started up the game you had to answer some cryptic question, usually about the game manual. "What object is on page 129?" Easy, an oil lamp. Annoying? Yes, especially if you lost the manual. But far from ruining your good time.

Windows 95/98 followed a couple years later and PC gaming was done mainly from there instead of DOS. Computers were getting more complex, so were games, and their technical requirements. You needed to worry about having enough RAM, disk space, processing power, and so forth. Installing games was still simple, if frought with problems. I remember feeling relieved if I was able to just install a game without any problems. Then came the initial bootup.

CRAP.

The sound doesn't work. Why not? My sound card is pretty new. Besides, it's a really popular sound card, so it should be supported. I check the manual, nothing of value. I uninstall and reinstall the game, boot it up. Whew, the sound works, good. I guess I'll never figure out what happened. Whatever, it's working now.

Two weeks pass and I'm having a great time with my game. It's working great, no problems since that sound thing.

CRAP.

The game crashed. Why did the game crash? All I got was an incredibly vague error message, and I couldn't even read it before the whole game disappeared leaving nothing but my clueless and windows desktop. Dammit, I hadn't saved in a while. OK, whatever, PC games crash, it's just what they do. They always have, and they always will, Dan, you know that. This isn't a surprise. I won't get too mad, because it only crashed once. I'll just play it again tomorrow.

Ok, I lost some progress but oh well. I don't mind doing fun things more than once.

CRAP.

It crashed again, at the exact same spot. This isn't good. Fortunately I played it safe and saved a bunch of times along the way. I can get right back into it.

CRAP.

Ok, this is a big problem. There's something seriously wrong here, because I just successfully and incidentally did a rigorous scientific test and the results are that when I reach a certain point, the game crashes. Uhhhh....

Another couple years pass. Video cards aren't called that yet. They're called 3D Acceleration cards. Before, the 3D was unaccelerated, which is really stupid. But, at the time, it's all we knew. We didn't know that you could speed up 3D, making everything prior the equivalent of playing Monopoly by yourself. 3D Accelerator cards aren't that difficult to understand, you either have one or you don't. Some games require one, so you get one for $100. There's a handful of different brands, but they're all effectively the same. They accelerate 3D and that's all you need.

Games are on CD now, and they usually require a code written on the CD case to play. Not too bad, but it felt like a big pain at the time. I get my 3D accelerated and wow. It looks good. Smoother or something. It sucks that I had to buy another computer component to get these results but whatever. I'm even having fewer glitches than before. 3D travelling at higher speeds must make it zip past bugs and glitches.

Another couple years go by. Video cards are starting to get complicated, but relatively straightfoward. Crashes are less frequent. Copy protection is getting more sophisticated and tedious. A regular computer is no longer good enough to play most headlining titles.

Another couple years trickle away and I can't for the life of me figure out which video card is the best one. Why in the hell is the 9600XT better than the 9800? How the blast am I supposed to figure this out? And that's just between one brand, and inside one numbering system. Forget about trying to compare video cards between two brands. I visit websites that benchmark the different video cards. They show me fancy color-coded graphs comparing all the different cards. I have next to no idea what I'm looking at. There's over 30 video cards on this graph, and the next graph of all the same cards looks completely different. OK, nevermind, I'll just buy a PS2.

Another few years. Man, Crysis looks fun and the graphics are remarkable. Assuming I only need to replace my video card and nothing else, it'll cost me close to $500 to get JUST a video card that's powerful enough to play this game at full graphical settings. I already tried to buy a video card once and I ended up confused and crying a lot. In reality, I'm going to need to replace every component of my PC. This will cost me closer to $1000 to play Crysis, and most PC games for the next 2, maybe 3 years, at THE LONGEST. This upgrade, by the way, will only affect gaming, as all other functions of my computer worked perfectly speedy with my current system, and will show no noticeable improvement after throwing $1000 at it. Also, when installing Crysis I'm going to have to deal with an anti-piracy system that's so pervasive and insulting that what I'm really doing is renting the game for $50. This is if I so choose to obey the law.

I could do that. Or...

I could just buy an Xbox360 and a PlayStation 3 totalling several hundred dollars less and have access to hundreds of games that I could never play on my PC. They always work, and I actually OWN the game. I don't have to worry about hardware or upgrading. I don't have to deal with copy protection. I can rent one, or buy a used copy. I can sell it. I can let a friend borrow it easily.

It really seems like an obvious choice.