Fear Of Closure

When I recently played Closure, I couldn’t help but wonder how much thought the developers put into how players would respond to it.

It must come as a huge surprise to game devs when they hear about all the different experiences people have with their games and all the readings people walk away with. As someone who used to paint a lot, I’d always be amazed at the way people would read into my artworks and see things that I felt weren’t there. “Your landscapes have gotten darker and muddier – were you going through a darker patch in your life?” Ummm, no? “I love the way you painted the prostitutes in that scene!” Err…they’re ballerinas. *Beat*

Game developers and creators of texts can shape our experience with their creations by playing on common feelings and perceptions that most people hold; there are things they can expect from the audience. They can anticipate that having a swarm of zombies charge out of the darkness and straight at the player will induce a sense of panic, or that a dark, dilapidated corridor stained with blood is more likely to create suspense for a player than a camp fun-land with rainbow floorboards (although that in itself can be quite suspenseful and leave me shit-scared). There are elements that a developer can control that will guide the player in the direction that they want the game to be played. But then there are the elements that can’t be controlled. Developers can throw in all the zombies, stained corridors, rainbow flooring and camp fun-lands as they like, but the one thing that determines how a game is experienced lies in the hands of someone else – the player.

I’m not talking about a player’s particular style of gaming. Rather, I’m referring to the specific things that we pick up from our interaction with other texts that come to shape our experiences with games.

This wasn’t something I’d thought about until I played Closure a few weeks ago. I kept associating elements of the game to artworks by Alberto Giacometti – an artist who has always made me feel uneasy – and that unease found its way into the game.

Closure required me to move orbs of light around, illuminating my surroundings so that I could see where I was going. But I also had to use darkness to my advantage. If an area was lit and visible, it existed and was tangible to my character. If it was hidden in darkness, it did not exist. There were elements of the game that reminded me of Echochrome inasmuch that what was there was only there if I could see it. Walls and entire surfaces would cease to exist the moment they were cast out of the light. If I took a step into what I couldn’t see, I’d fall into the chasm of darkness and, presumably, die.

Work: Good Game – Artists Inspired By Games

You may have already come across the above image whilst perusing the intertrons for gaming goodness. A friend of mine linked me to it a while back and I read about it on a French website. At the time, I thought to myself “why don’t we ever get cool stuff like this in Sydney?” You see, my French is not up to scratch; if it was, I would have read that the artwork was in fact exhibiting in Sydney — just down the road from where I work and study. *facepalm*

What was even more frustrating was the exhibition closed just days before I pitched my story to Good Game about doing a piece on artists inspired by videogames. We could have shot all this amazing footage of Ella Barclay’s Tetris blocks in their intended setting, but we only just missed it. Luckily, her Tetris blocks were still in Sydney in her studio — a quick walk from the ABC!

It was a pleasure interviewing Ella and she was really lovely — she was even cool with me climbing onto the red block and getting myself wedged in the corner. Other artists interviewed included Rebecca Murphy and Tom Langlands — both equally lovely artists who welcomed both myself and the crew into their homes/studios.

I’m really glad my first story for Good Game allowed me to focus on two things I’m passionate about — art and videogames. I know arty things aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and, no doubt, there will be people who won’t like my story very much. A quick look at the GG forums already shows the mixed views that people have about the artists, the artworks, the story, and me. But I’m happy with how things turned out and I can only hope to improve from here.

If you’d like to have a look at the episode in question, you can download it from here. Viewers outside of Australia will have to download the episode as it cannot be streamed.

Piñatas Are For Hitting

I’ve been gaming since I was three or four, or whenever it was my family got the NES, so I’ve become accustomed to seeing things in games that generally can’t be explained. A plumber gaining extra life or increasing in size when he eats mushrooms? Fine. Corporations developing zombie viruses for the military? Okay. I can handle all that because as bizarre as those concepts may be, they make sense in their own stupid way, and I love them all the more for it. But I can’t get my head around Viva Piñata.

The premise of the game is that you’re some dude with a garden and you need to maintain your patch of grass so as to attract piñatas. Once you’ve attracted them, you have to keep them there so that they will populate your garden with even more piñatas. If you do a good job, all kinds of piñatas will visit and ‘romance’ with each other, and then you’ll have a …wait, what the fuck?

Mushihimesama Futari

A guy at work was talking about how he was having difficulty getting past a bunch of sand worms in a game he was playing. I don’t remember the title of the game, but he said he could never get further than 20 minutes into this game before quitting because the sand worms were tough like bitches.

As he told us how hard this game was, Junglist and Jo brought up what they believed to be the hardest game ever made: Mushihimesama Futari.

If you watch the above clip, the purple/pink things are the bullets. If you’re wondering how the little airship is managing to survive the onslaught of bullets, it’s because the actual target on the ship is only a few pixels wide – significantly smaller than the ship itself.

Neat, yeah? And by ‘neat’, I really mean ‘ZOMGWTFBBQ THAT SHIT IS B-A-N-A-N-A-S!’.

Review: Naruto – Ninja Destiny

In an attempt to save money, I recently took part in a games swap. My colleague and I brought in our Nintendo DS games and traded them (temporarily) so that we could play as many games as possible while paying as little money as possible. I lent him Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney; he lent me Naruto: Ninja Destiny.

My guess would be that the game was made for hardcore Naruto fans, because none of it made sense to me. It was a fighting game, that much I gathered, but why were these ninjas fighting each other? Why was the girl ninja taunting the boy ninja? Why were they talking about some master I had never heard of before and defending their honour against some other person who I had, again, never heard of before? Was I meant to have watched the anime series or read the manga before playing the game?? If so, that’s really lame.

Confusing plot (or lack of) aside, this isn’t a game of skill as much as it’s a game of button mashing. There are standard jump, kick and punch buttons, but combos tend to come at random intervals through no effort of the player. It was very much a case of ‘mash-mash-mash-COMBO WTF HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!-mash-mash-mash’. When I tried to repeat certain mashing patterns to get the combos back, all I got was Naruto doing some useless backward fly-kick, which was pretty annoying, considering my opponent was in front of me and not behind me.

Come to think of it, even hardcore Naruto fans have higher standards than this, because Naruto: Ninja Destiny is a really shit game. Never trade anyone for it and sure as hell don’t pay money for it.

Work: Chrono Trigger + Happy Lovers’ Day, Bitches!

So it appears to be Valentine’s Day! Had it not been for the café across the road from my local train station advertising pink lover lamingtons, I may have completely forgotten about it! Although a pink lamington can’t possibly be a real lamington, because lamingtons are coated in chocolate, and chocolate is not pink.

Judging from that opening paragraph, I guess it’s clear that I am not spending today canoodling with a man friend or exchanging pleasantries with potential love interests. But, you know what? That’s okay. And it’s okay because the newest issue of Hyper is now out, and who needs love when you have glossy magazines about videogames, right? Right!? Right.

Oh my, is that a superhero issue? Why, yes, yes it is! Did I write about superheroes in this issue? No, no I did not. Which is a real shame because I know so much about Joel Schumacher’s contributions to the Batman franchise.

Anyway, if you’re in Australia and need some magazine lovin’, go and buy this month’s Hyper. For those who can’t get their hands on this magazine of radness, I’ve posted my full review an excerpt of Chrono Trigger after the jump, just because it’s Valentine’s Day. That’s right, the entire review as it appears in the mag. I appear to be asking for trouble!

My Dog Has Excellent Taste In Games

My dog appears to be a h4rdc0r3 g4m3r. There will be no Peggle or Spelunky for her. Oh no. She chooses Mass Effect. If she could choose more than one game, she’d probably also pick Gears of War 2 and something else that people with massive testicles play.

Ten Trends That Are What What What?!?

IGN Australia recently published a list of ten trends that are destroying videogames. I didn’t agree with many things the author wrote, but I could see where he was coming from with each of his points, so I didn’t mind. However, there was one trend he wrote about that just didn’t make any sense and, no matter how many times I read and re-read the three paragraphs he wrote about said trend, things didn’t become any clearer.

The trend in question was “Strong Female Lead Character[s] = Edgy, Clever and Desirable”. This, according to author, Patrick Kolan, was one of the things destroying videogames. Umm…what?