Recently, Michael of the Brainy Gamer wrote a brilliant (yet terribly misunderstood) exploration of the phenomenology of keeping a scorecard at a baseball game. Sounds a little boring eh? You bet… until you understand the level of intimacy that he creates just by writing down a few numbers and thinking through the game. In this post I’ll try to do justice to just what Michael might have meant by the word “engagement” by talking a little bit about what people do when they “engage” themselves with a game. Before you read this, it’s critical to read Michael’s post first… because I’ll be referring to it throughout. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Let’s deal with scorekeeping a baseball game first:

“Scoring a ballgame brings you closer to the game being played on the field”

How is it possible that keeping a score card at a baseball game could actually create a level of intimacy with the game that goes beyond spectating? Isn’t it just a cold calculus of the mind?

From what I can tell, this intimacy is produced in two ways:

1) Through the mechanics of maintaining the scorekeeping card. Michael writes of his experience: “A right-handed batter steps to the plate to face a right-handed pitcher. These two have faced each other many times, so I note that this pitcher “owns” this batter with a mark next to the batter’s name. The flags, which indicated that the wind was blowing out at the start of the game, have now gone limp, so I note that on my scorecard as well.”  From what we gather from his story, keeping the score card requires patience, attentiveness, technical skill, judgment, and a darned good memory. This skillful act, while important (as we’ll find out), is secondary to another personal act…

2) Through the imaginative work of playing the roles of the pitcher, batter, fielders, basemen, etc. This act, as form of engagement with the game, is primary. It involves how we imagine the on-field players are feeling and thinking. As Michael says in a later comment, “If the batter can be patient, he will likely see a good pitch to hit, but if he’s over-anxious, as my scorecard tells me he was both previous times, he’s probably going to be vulnerable to a pitch low and away. He knows this. The pitcher knows this. And so do I.”

Now let’s think about what happens when someone scorekeeps the way he does. The scorekeeper does not just record numbers, statistically analyze them, and spit back out the results. He also does not just imagine the game as a personal fantasy; the game is going on in front of him. He is also not a passive spectator - he feels invested in the game as if his judgments were just as important as the pitcher’s choices.

What the scorekeeper does, and I daresay all people familiar with role-play do, is engage themselves with the game at a level beyond both rule-following and imaginary fantasy. The scorekeeper is like an appreciator of fine art or music: they are mindful of the subtleties and nuances of the ‘rules’ while simultaneously mindful of the art work itself. Where the casual spectator can only engage with the game in fantasy, and the rigid statistician does not “see” a game but a complex calculus, the scorekeeper plays the game. They are engaged with the baseball game at a bodily and spiritual level - the game unfolds for them at their personal pace.

Based on those distinctions we can imagine that there are three (idealized) kinds of video game players:

“The Accountant”

The game is enjoyed at a distance as sets or levels of generative rules. The game is played in terms of understanding these rules and making distinctions, and using this understanding to obtain something of personal interest: in-game artifacts, treasure, quest completion, character attributes, etc.

Because the player has no personal engagement with the rules, the rules are seen as inviolable, impersonal, and external; the player often attempts to master or dominate the game.

“The Devourer”

The game is enjoyed as a flight into fantasy; it is “consumed” by the player because s/he makes no distinctions of quality or quantity within the game. This kind of player simply relies upon their inchoate sense of personal value which determines their play style, and the game is subsumed by their desires. If the game rules do not suit them, they are tossed, ignored, or violated (ie. cheating). The kind of game does not matter much in the end; an FPS could be just as enjoyable as an adventure game as long as it satiates their desires.

“The Role-Player”

The game is understood as deeply personal yet otherworldly. The game world exists as a living, breathing, self-sufficient world, separate from the player’s desires. Yet, the role-player finds ways of discovering his/her desires within the game, by understanding the game’s rules. The player’s desires, in the end, are reshaped by their understanding of the rules. They engage with the game world (usually through a Player-Character or avatar) with a sense of commitment, care, and personal value for what happens in the game. This player plays in the game.

Of course we can see that these player types are idealized, and every player sits in all camps simultaneously, but drawing out the distinctions brings us closer to understanding just what’s at stake for the average player.

Loving Games is Hard Work

Appreciating anything is more than just distilling our personal enjoyment from it, and more than just coldly analyzing its constituent elements one at a time. Appreciating games, art, music, baseball, the subtleties of my cat’s meows, all require a deep personal engagement only possible when we allow ourselves to become mindful of the rules, what’s happening in front of us, and our selves. Developing a phenomenology (a description of our personal engagement with some phenomenon) of video and computer games is one of the new languages that we have to develop, among other things. Understanding and appreciating games allows us to engage with them in deeper waters and ensures that they won’t become just another flavor of the month. I’m deeply thankful that Michael started paddling us down this creek in the first place.

"Video games, particularly the twitch-and-shoot kind, are remarkably passive activities for ones that involve such an increase in heart rate. I wonder what kind of effect that has on us? Do we feel less need to do other activities because, at least chemically, we feel we've already accomplished so much?" [link]

Always with an ironic, yet good-natured, sense of humor, Carrington’s work features some of the most subtle yet recognizably Canadian takes on modern and retro video/computer games. And, with a quick wit and tendency for poetic verse, his writing and speaking both exude a laid-back yet artistic sense. Not bad for a Torontonian!

Although all of his podcasts are worth listening to, I found his retro game reviews especially insightful. Podcast #1 features a review of “Tass Times in Tone Town” - a game that I referred to in “Revitalizing Dead Culture: Why Game History Matters” article, Podcast #2 has an excellent review of the classic Lode Runner, and Podcast #6 features what I think is his best review, of the game Portal. No, not the recently over-hyped game from Valve. Portal is a one-of-a-kind interactive novel that came out in the early 1980s for the PC. In a genre of its own, it’s hard to pigeonhole this excellent story in any particular game genre. Carrington’s review of the game does an amazing job of giving us the feeling of how the game plays - something rarely done in any review I’ve seen. While I don’t want to give away the premise of Portal, it still stands as a beautiful example of how literature itself can become the object of exploration in games. The whole idea of reading an in-game book or listening to a character’s voice logs in order to advance the plot, found in modern games such as System Shock, BioShock, and Mass Effect, was unimaginable before Portal. Unlike these games, however, Portal manages to unfold the storyline only through the player’s discovery of in-game literature and diaries.

So head on over to the 1 MHz Podcast and give it a listen, or check out his latest article on passivity in video gaming.

This article is part of a new series of articles that I call “Treasures from the Tickle Trunk” where I pull a game from my basement game library and take a deeper look at what it achieves. This style of article is deeply influenced by Corvus’s Narrative of the Moment series.

As I played through the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures this morning, I kept reminding myself that writing comedy is difficult - and writing interactive comedy well is nigh impossible. Not only is quick wit, rich satire, and goofy slapstick necessary, but it has to be reflected in gameplay in such a way as to play funny. With so few adventure games, and even fewer games with a sense of humor, I thought I would take a fresh look at one of the bright highlights of gaming humor in the 90s - Day of the Tentacle.

Drawing upon the strange, quirky, world of its predecessor, Maniac Mansion, the first minute of DoTT sets the tone for the rest of the game. The game is an excellent example of how every element of a game can be integrated into a holistic theme.

Visual Art

The most striking aspect of DoTT is the bizarre and striking artwork found throughout the game. If you’re familiar with the German Expressionist film movement, you may recognize the kinship between the artistic style of DoTT and films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Instead of the generic 2D perspective view common to most adventure games of that era, the backgrounds are lavishly painted in a tilted, helter-skelter fashion: walls curve into one another, objects lean at impossible angles, characters are illustrated as distorted figures. Unlike German Expressionism however, DoTT combines this illustrative style with a saturated palette of bright purples, greens, and blues.  The artwork, both foreground and background, shrieks of goofy and lighthearted yet sincere zaniness. The game is similarly animated: Bernard struts around with his pants pulled up to his chest and feet far in front of him, Laverne’s neck stretches to impossible lengths in the introduction, and Dr. Fred wrings his hands outrageously in every scene. Nothing in the game is unembellished, and most things are exaggerated to a ridiculous degree.

Music and Sound

Although less exaggerated than the visual art, the music still retains the goofiness of the game. Thanks to the iMUSE system, every piece of music in the game is synchronized and arranged on the fly according to the mood of the scene or specific event. In terms of musical style the game relies upon wind instruments throughout; very few percussion and string instrument pieces are found. The wind instruments - mostly flutes, clarinets, and tubas - give the game a light atmosphere punctuated by the occasional slapstick tuba honk. Although less aggressive in its strength, the music is in many ways reminiscent of the Looney Tunes cartoon musical scores - every scene is arranged to fit the particular scene. In scenes where the character is surprised by something, we are greeted with the familiar and hackneyed da-da-daaaaah! of daytime soap operas or B-grade horror flicks that only serves to make the scene even more outrageous and fun.

The sounds in the game accomplish the same feat: Bernard picking his ear wax makes the sound of two balloons squishing against each other, picking up objects gives the player a yoink! or swipe! feedback sound; the introduction to the game gives a good overall survey of the theme. But unlike the great majority of games that rely upon the same kinds of sound libraries, the most cliched sound effects are put to perfect use in this game because they are so overused and ridiculous. 

The characters in the game are not only voiced convincingly, but the voices always suit their character illustrations in uncanny ways. Bernard is voiced by the somewhat unknown, but excellent, Richard Sanders who played ‘Les Nessman’ on the American sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Bernard’s voice is so thickly nerdy that at times Sanders manages to capture in his acting what I think is the quintessential nerd: long periods of whining interrupted by brief, pathetic, moments of bravery.

Story/Narrative

What could be more bizarre than a twisted Scooby Doo troupe bumbling their way through a search for a crazed purple tentacle bent on taking over the world? Apparently this: by sending them all through portable toilets fashioned into time machines to the past, only to have them end up in different time periods because the crazy professor was too cheap to pay for a real diamond to power the Chron-O-Johns!

Hoagie is trapped in pre-confederation America, Bernard in the present, and Laverne in a disturbing purple-tentacle-controlled mockery of the future. By satirizing each period the game does an admirable job of presenting its own twisted look at history: Hoagie for instance spends his time interacting with American colonialists like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock, each of which are thickly stylized personalities. Although the characters are lampooned mercilessly, they all manage to retain their signature styles and contribute to a hilarious and surprisingly educational American conferedation history lesson.

In truth the story theme is itself nothing new (mad scientific experiment goes wrong, threatens world, kids save world), but what makes it so compelling is the sheer oddity of the characters and world, and the sense of humor they constitute together. The story is one long schtick that always stays safely on the side of witty and good-natured, and never makes excursions into senseless violence or needless sarcasm. Because the story and gameplay are so well integrated with one another, both compel the player to keep playing.

Gameplay

As I mentioned in the introduction, finding ways of making gameplay goofy often borders on impossible. Because games depend upon repeatable, predictable, and logical rule systems, making games that operate on a twisted logic and play well is rare. Although DoTT does nothing new in terms of its inventory system and point’n'click verb interface, both are put to new uses thanks to an interesting world and puzzles. Instead of commanding just one protagonist, the player can switch between three protagonists throughout the game: Bernard, Laverne, and Hoagie. Each character has their own distinct personality and will or will not do certain kinds of tasks - Hoagie is hideously lazy, Laverne is not altogether bright, and Bernard is downright clumsy. Since each character is trapped in a different time period, certain puzzles can only be completed by “flushing” items down the Chron-O-John to another time period. Many items are combinable and often in strange and bizarre ways, which many times left me baffled as to how to complete the puzzle. However that is not to say that the puzzles are irrational - the player must simply learn to immerse her/himself in the wacky logic of DoTT. For instance, a great amount of the game is spent changing things in one time period in order to effect changes in future periods; the game does an admirable job of making the most seemingly insignificant change in one period change the entire game. As Chris Remo of Adventure Gamers puts it, “Indeed, the story of the game and the gameplay itself are deftly intertwined. Almost without exception, the puzzles tie directly into the plot, rather than existing on a separate plane.”

Conclusion

Although this game has been reviewed a countless number of times, given the recent releases of Penny Arcade Adventures and Telltale’s Sam and Max episodes, I felt it was important to remind myself that the humor in these games was eclipsed over 10 years ago by a true modern adventure-humor classic. I could have written this same article about Sam and Max Hit the Road (which has a completely different style of humor) but I felt that Day of the Tentacle is unmatched in its synthesis of humor, story, and world. Game designers and writers do not need to write or design anything funny - they need to make worlds and characters that in themselves are compelling and hilarious - the jokes come as a natural consequence of that after the fact.

Thanks to the excellent ScummVM project, you can play Day of the Tentacle in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. I highly recommend playing the CD “talkie” version with full voiceovers.

Whether cavemen, plumbers, femme fatales, cutesy dinosaurs or aliens - they’re all bound to save the world by the end, or die trying.

Although taken tacitly as the standard for the vast majority of character-based video/computers, the Hero protagonist is the ubiquitous yet completely understudied workhorse in the history of video games. In this article I explore the uses of the hero in video game narratives, and how an over-reliance upon certain kinds of hero characters has limited the kinds of stories being told in video/computer games.

What is it about the hero role that we find so engrossing and rewarding? Why do we always shake on the social contract that sets us up as the beasts of burden that repair worlds in imbalance, deliver miscellaneous goods, rescue damsels in distress, return ever-missing kings to their mushroom kingdoms, or rise up against ridiculous tyrannical dictatorships?

Hero Stories

Within the heroic genre, there seem to be a few kinds of roles. The first kind of role is an already established, somewhat powerful, protagonist who must overcome an army of villains. We might think of these as the James Bonds, Lara Crofts, or Sam Fishers of video games - protagonists born of high standing and carry out deeds of Supermanesque proportions. For these characters doing The Right Thing is a foregone conclusion, and inner tensions are nonexistent - we simply cannot progress in the game without carrying out some kind of predetermined task of moral rightness, which usually results in the world being saved. The great majority of video/computer games rely upon this kind of hero. True, we speak quite generally here, but the idea is to draw out a few ideal characterizations that will serve as a guide for later.

The second kind of role is more akin to a Campbellian hero - a weakling protagonist that rises up to meet the call for adventure, and in doing so, becomes a savior in the end. These characters are often born of low stature and come to great fortune as they overcome terrible obstacles, and in the end typically discover that they are in fact of nobler birth than once thought. Although it is much more difficult to pick out examples of this kind of hero, Link (Zelda), Cloud (Final Fantasy VII), Cutter Slade (Outcast) and Norman Gordon Freeman (Half-Life) are particularly straightforward examples. In each of these games the hero is drawn into the (sometimes reluctant) role of savior, yet always rises to the occasion in the end. Again, in the end the world is saved and everyone goes home and eats their bucket of KFC.

A third kind of role has only been explored more recently, and involves some amount of moral relativity on behalf of the player. This kind of hero can be either powerful or weak to begin with, but her/his choices throughout the game come to determine (to some degree!) if they will save the world, or assist in its ultimate destruction. These relativistic heros often must choose between good and evil by doing good and evil things. Protagonists like this are found in games such as Mass Effect, Fallout, and Knights of the Old Republic. The fate of the world hinges upon whether the hero freely helped the old lady across the street, demanded cash from her before doing it, or pushed her into oncoming traffic.

All of these kinds of heroes share a common thread: their actions ultimately lead to the liberation, repair, destruction, or transformation of an entire planet or galaxy. All of these stories draw their appeal from the oldest hero myths that pit the protagonist against unwinnable (winnable!) odds, usually consisting of ultra-evil corporations, god-like enemies, or behemoths of an evil nature. What counts as ‘winning’ the game is having some kind of effect upon the external world; almost always the inner world of the hero is left unprobed. The player, as hero, satisfies these external criteria and in doing so, satisfies her/himself.

A Road Less Travelled

This is where we hit much more interesting narrative territory, I think. Because there are so few games that offer non-traditional protagonists, we will have to dig a bit deeper.

In Dreamweb you play the anti-hero Ryan, “a bartender in a futuristic dystopian city whose nights are plagued with strange dreams. In the last dream before the game starts, Ryan is asked by the master monk of the keepers to be the deliverer and kill the seven evils who are united to break the Dreamweb.” As Ryan, you pursue these seven evils throughout the game and murder them using whatever means possible: shooting a rock star to death in bed, crushing a man to death with a heavy crate, and driving a doctor into an oncoming carriage. All of the deaths are grisly, public, and morally justified in the eyes of the player.

In the end, Ryan is thanked by the mysterious Dreamweb monk for his deeds, and is sent back to the material world. SPOILER ALERT (Please - first play this game and return later to read the remainder of the article!): The game ends as Ryan walks out of his apartment, recently acknowledged as savior of the world, only to be confronted by the police who shoot him to death on the spot. The player has, through Ryan’s delusional dreams, aided and abetted in the brutal murder of seven innocent strangers. The ending is one of the most powerful conclusions to a game I have personally played, and stands out as a narrative marvel that predates films such as Memento by almost 10 years.

In Dreamweb there is no recognizable way of “winning” the game - we are always chained to Ryan’s situation, his state of mind, his dreams. If Ryan is killed during the game, the player is treated to a heartwrenching story sequence that relates the annihilation of the world as the Dreamweb falls into the hands of evil forces. If Ryan saves the world it is only in his own eyes; his reward is death, and worse his acts of heroism are treated as outright murder by an unwitting populace. There is no way out for the protagonist nor the player than to simply acknowledge the tragedy of heroism. This kind of hero story leads to an inward effect: the hero (player) is forced to come to terms with her/himself in the end.

This kind of story, I think, is far deeper than any of the aforementioned hero tales. The ideal of the hero is not only inverted in the story, but is ultimately destroyed. The game destabilizes the mythical footing that players are used to relying upon, and ultimately draws the protagonist into a truer moral world: is it right or fair to be heroic? Who do I put in danger by acting selflessly?

Roads for Other Journeys

What I’ve tried to present here is an often taken-for-granted character role in video/computer games, and how these kinds of roles lead to different kinds of experiences. Despite the sharp contrasts I’ve drawn here, the kinds of protagonists we play in video games are always much more relatively crafted; in fact many ubiquitous kinds of heroes lead to fun, enjoyable experiences for the player. Role-playing games have led to the idea that the player must make choices and that their choices have consequences for the protagonist and her/his world. Yet, I strongly suspect that these kinds of hero stories bear few psychological fruit for the player in the end: winning or losing come with no meaningful conclusion for the player beyond the mere completion of unfinished tasks. Only in games that feature more complex protagonists, whose fates are bound up with their own flaws for instance, do we see the seeds for powerful, deep, storytelling. Games such as Dreamweb, Shadow of the Colossus, and Planescape: Torment sketch out protagonists that can grip us in powerful ways without turning to melodrama, and in doing so transform us in the ways that stories should.

Note: 100footcroc posted an excellent review of Wander, the hero protagonist of Shadow of the Colossus. The article is absolutely worth reading!

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on character archetypes in video and computer games. Follow the below drop-down list for other May ‘08 Round Table entries. The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

But does playing these old games matter? Does writing about them matter? What value is there in sweatin' to the oldies? Is it only for reminiscence or nostalgia? In this article I make a few arguments about retro gaming/computing that outline the meaningfulness of tying together the past and the future in the present..

Earlier this week I was listening to the 1 Mhz Apple ][ podcast (which I highly recommend!) and its host, Carrington Vanston, mentioned that his interest in retro computing isn't just for the sake of reminiscing about old stuff or waxing nostalgic about the good ol' days. Rather, Carrington's interest lies in showing how the Apple ][ is a fun, exciting, system that has found new uses in the present. His inaugural episode includes a review of Tass Times in Tonetown - a classic graphical text adventure set in a wacky re-imagining of the 1980s new wave culture. In the review Carrington focuses upon his current-day experience of the game and the ways in which it stands out as something different from the usual fare, such as the inclusion of a feelie newspaper included in the box called “The Tonetown Times” which the player must read to discover the names of characters s/he can talk with in-game.

But why should this matter? Isn’t this just like digging through your old box of hockey cards and marveling at your memory of opening the first pack? Here’s where we get into the nitty-gritty of understanding history.

Understanding what History Means

First, let’s correct a false assumption that often undermines this kind of historical exploration: it does not involve living in the past, in involves living through the past. In history we look at ourselves in the present through the past, and come to understand ourselves as standing in a long genealogy of meaning that pre-exists us. Now that’s a lot to swallow for the modernist who sees him/herself as largely being self-made and sees the past as a sequence of barbaric events that are thankfully left far behind her/him. That kind of modernist philosophy still persists today: we see it in people who cannot understand why Yar’s Revenge, Chrono Trigger or The Faery Tale Adventure are still compelling games. They simply stare blankly at the screen and think to themselves, ‘these graphics sure suck!’.

A corollary of this is that every game we’ve ever played, whether it be Wonder Boy in Monster Land or Mass Effect, all bear some kind of relation to the games, films, novels, poems, myths, paintings and other art media that came before it. Not only do they stand in artistic relation (in terms of the genres, styles, inspirations) but they stand in phenomenal relations. That is, when I say that I “enjoyed” Mass Effect yet “found the gameplay repetitive”, I try to tug at the entire web of language implicit in the meaning of enjoyment or repetition. Put differently: we experience enjoyment and repetitiveness in different ways, depending upon the way we are able to use those words to describe different games. If we’ve only played 10 console games in our lifetime we are going to have a very empty idea of what repetitiveness means, because we’ve only experienced the kind of repetition associated with level-based japanese RPGs. However, the gamer who has played hundreds of games understands that calling Windows Solitaire repetitive is a fundamentally different meaning than calling the battles in every Square-Enix RPG repetitive.

History for Gamers and Game Writers

The current bemoaning of the state of video game reviewing can almost be completely attributed to a problem of language. Reviews are superficial and empty typically because the people who review games typically do not engage themselves with games as standing in a history of meaning. Saying that, “I found the gameplay repetitive” is for all intents and purposes a meaningless statement. If the reviewer says that “the battle scenarios are not unlike the random battles found in all Final Fantasy games prior to XII” we have a fundamentally different meaning, one that breathes life into the doldrums of using the word “repetitive” to describe gameplay.

Now, here’s the big leap that I’d like you to take with me: changing our understanding of words changes our very experience of them. This stands in long relation to the certain forms of philosophy (if you’d like, look up folks like Herder, Goethe, and Charles Taylor). But the point here is that when I make comparisons of repetitiveness between Solitaire and Final Fantasy I actually come to experience the gameplay differently because I can see how each game I play comes to re-shape just what I mean by repetitive. History is about breathing new life into the present and future through the past.

But that’s not possible without actually playing, and writing and talking about, the thousands of games that came before us. Without making the miniscule distinctions between the qualities of the text parser in Tass Times in Tonetown and later Infocom text adventures that on the surface seem petty and redundant, we lose the chance to enrich the language of video/computer games, and in doing so, our experience of modern day gaming!

History Matters for Developers: Any Good Writer is a good reader

I should make one thing clear: understanding history won’t stop anyone from making an unsuccessful game. You can spend your life reading all the works of Shakespeare and still write poetry that nobody reads. But, like a good game, your poetry can be rediscovered decades or even centuries later because it managed to tap into the eternal - the long history of poems, stories and myths that preceded it. Although digital gaming is a medium in its infancy, we can still draw from the deep well of history to fill our games with meaning.

Whether plumbing the depths of The Hobbit on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or reading Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo a good developer hones her/his craft through immersing her/himself in history. The very idea of playing a game through the eyes of a protagonist, themes of friendship and betrayal, or the story of the journey home, have been around for over a thousand years. The way that these themes were became typified in the great (and not so great!) works of art of human history all bear upon the way that people experience computer and video games now.

The developer, as artist and creator, can only make their creation compelling for an audience by steeping it in a vast ocean of meaning. Without a historical engagement the developer both re-invents the wheel and turns what could have been a deep, compelling work, into a hackneyed consumer product that lasts a week in a gamer’s stomach. The great works, the games that we come back to after 20 years and wonder to ourselves how the game still feels current, are the ones that withstood the test of time because they managed to capture the infinite wisdom of a thousand years of storytelling and poetry on humor, sadness, or friendship - and to a lesser degree at least 30 years of gameplay.

Conclusion

What I tried to suggest here is an alternative to the disappointment that we face when we pick up our dusty copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and find out that the game just isn’t as compelling now as it used to be when we were 12 years old. Nothing can be more traumatic for the gamer than finding out that their favorite game just didn’t grow with them - and if that’s the case it’s even more important to understand why it didn’t grow. If we try to live in the past through our “rose tinted memories” of games we surely can learn nothing new about them, or ourselves.
 

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on our ‘favorites’ and ‘least-favorites’ in video games. Follow the below drop-down list for other April ‘08 Round Table entries. The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

“Not being a games designer, Douglas was still thinking linearly,” says Steve [Meretzky]. “As we got more comfortable working together, and I began to assert myself, and Douglas got more familiar with the possibilities of non-linear storytelling, that changed - the majority of the game has the most fiercely non-linear structure of any adventure title I’ve ever worked on.” 

As a followup to friday’s link to Andy Baio’s archeology of Milliway’s (which incidentally made Slashdot), I remembered an excellent article posted in issue #45 of Retro Gamer magazine. Since this is a rather obscure magazine I decided to scan in the entire article because getting back-issues of the U.K. based magazine is rather difficult. You will notice that several of the Infocom folks who contributed to the article also commented on Andy Baio’s page, which gives a sense of interconnectedness to the situation. The article gives a quick look into the creative forces behind the games as well as a sense for the creative environment engendered at the time.

Warning: each page image is over 500kb. It may take you less time to order it from the U.K. than wait for it to download via 28.8k modem.

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4

Edit: I forgot to include a link to the publisher’s web site! If you’d like to order a copy of, or subscribe to, Retro Gamer - which comes with my highest recommendations - head on over to Imagine’s eShop to order it online.

design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

So why does this matter? Because he went through the drive and weaved together the tale of why Milliway’s: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was never completed nor released. If you have not played the excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy IF game (designed and created by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams) you’re missing out on a crucial piece of computer game history and a damned fun (difficult!) game. I’ll let Andy tell the story, except for two points:

1. It tells the story of a venerable game company in decline; crisis even. Being 1989, Infocom had already merged with Activision and Milliway’s had been languishing since its inception in ‘85. The company closes with not a bang…
2. It comes with a playable prototype of Milliway’s (!!)

Comments from the ex-Infocom folks on the story seem to agree with some of Andy’s story, however it is quite clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the following weeks, as it quite clearly has ruffled a few feathers - and for good reasons.

Thankfully Jason Scott’s new documentary, Get Lamp, is scheduled for release some time this year. I suspect that his own exploration into the world of interactive fiction, complete with interviews of major designers and programmers, should be just as utterly fascinating just as his epic BBS: The Documentary was.

Although I initially reported on Periscopic’s excellent re-envisioning of the Oregon Trail some time ago, the game managed to garner nearly universal acclaim from gamers and critics alike, most notably indiegames.com who ranked it #19 in the top 20 freeware adventure games of 2007.

It took me a little while, but I managed to get a hold of Periscopic’s co-founder and Head of Conceptual Design (not to be confused with the Head of Impressionistic Design) - Kim Rees. Kim ever so kindly rounded up the crew to give us a peek at how Thule Trail was built from concept to finished product. Much thanks goes to Dino Citraro - Periscopic’s other co-founder - who invited me to ask a few questions about the game in the first place. The sheer craftsmanship put into this game is stunning and is a testament to how the right kinds of collaborative relationships in game development can lead to great things - but I’ll let our Oregonian friends over at Periscopic describe how that works…

Chris - Was the concept generated in-house, or did Thule have some specific ideas that were integrated into the work? Not a lot of work has been done using retrogaming as a subject, and it’s surprising for most to see a major corporation (Thule) take computer games on as an advertising uh.. vehicle (ignore the pun).

Kim - The idea actually came from TDA Advertising, our partner in this project. The original concept came from Thule’s existing “road trip” campaign. TDA thought it would be fun to parody the “original road trip.”

Chris - What kinds of collaborative opportunities did TDA offer you (and vice-versa) during the development process?

Kim - We’ve worked with TDA for several years and have a great collaborative relationship with them. They were great for honing the personality, the aesthetic and the humor of the game. Since it was their original idea they had specific ideas about how the finished product should look and perform. They communicated these to us at the start of the project and we used them as the basis of our interactive design phase. We came back to them with the game logic and interface designs and we went back and forth a little bit to tweak them, but for the most part, it was a pretty smooth process. They had many great ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into the final game, and sadly, some of their best ideas were relegated to Phase 2 due to budget restrictions.

Chris - What kinds of inspirations went into Thule Trail? Oregon Trail is an obvious one, but were there other influences that gave the game the overall look and feel?

Kim - We took cues from other simple games like Microsoft’s Ski Free. That’s another addictive “game” that has painfully simple graphics and audio. We worked hard to pare things down to their essence.

Also, TDA was largely influential in the development of the game. It was their original idea and they wrote most of the dialog. They also had very strong ideas about how the game should look, its pace, and personality. We spent most of our time developing the game logic, the point structure, and the overall playability.

Chris - How did your development team capture aesthetic/gameplay so authentically? Were there specific design choices that went into developing the music (great mono-voice melodies!) and 16-color dithered artwork?

Kim - Conceptually we wanted to stay as true as possible to the original game, so prior to any development we downloaded the emulator and captured all of the interface screens. We then used that as the basis for our interactive design and storyboards.We focused on the nostalgia of the game; with those of us who had played the game in our youth making sure we identified what we felt was most compelling, how it made us feel, and how we felt we could best bring that into a modern-day scenario.

We found an illustrator here in Portland who actually specializes in pixel illustrations. He created all the images: people, cars, landscapes, skylines, etc. We tried working with these at 16 bit, but found that 8 bit was the only way we could achieve the correct aesthetic.We worked with a sound designer in New York City, Sean Eden, to create audio cues that would be reminiscent, yet also modern. We gave him an audio “palette” and he ran with it.

Chris - Do any ideas come to mind that couldn’t be fit into the final release of the game? Did it begin as a different kind of project?

Kim - Yep, we wanted to have Easter Eggs in the game that would allow people to choose different cars, acquire Mario-type bonuses and tools (like a rocket launcher), and see funny animations. These were all relegated to an as-of-yet unfunded Phase 2.

Chris - What kind of testing process did the game go through before release? Did the game “play” and entertain as you hoped, or was gameplay tweaked significantly later on?

Kim - We did a lot of play testing throughout the development of the game. The logic was the toughest part to hone. By staying true to the original game, we had to make sure all the choices gave similar results at the end of the game.

For instance, the choices of profession impact the money you have to buy goods, and we needed to calculate how quickly items should expire, and how expensive goods should be. Additionally, we needed to gauge how quickly car morale should deteriorate, and what influences the trip would have on this. If you pick up one hitchhiker, it affects the car’s mood in a different way than another. That was a major focus during our testing and revisions.

Chris - Was it a complicated design to implement in Flash? What kinds of challenges/benefits did the Flash IDE provide during the development process?

Kim - Aside from the complexities of dealing with asynchronous events, and the logic problems associated with a multifaceted game, the most interesting challenge was LO-FI-ing flash while keeping the right vibe—one that is true to the fact that this is current, not simply a product of the 80s.

Many of the tools within Flash are about making an interface or animation smooth, clean, and polished. In Thule Trail, it’s exactly the opposite. Everything, whether audio, user interaction, movement, or rendering is guileless. Creating something that feels right within this idiom requires rethinking what your ideal feel is and working within a totally different mindset.

Chris - Finally - what’s the weather like in Portland? It’s been damned cold up here (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) …. it was -30F last week for several days. I drove through Portland last year on a trip to northern CA, and it was a stunning city.

Kim - Yikes! Well, it’s a colder than normal winter here in Portland, but that only means near freezing temps. It’s actually snowed a few times which is unusual. Mostly the winters are a solid shade of grey for about 6-8 months. It helps us stay focused on our development, but does nothing for tanning our complexion.

Chris - My thanks to you and the team for taking the time to answer everything. I’m sure readers will appreciate the inside look at Periscopic!

Kim - And thanks for writing us up!

Normally I avoid posting news, but I found this bit o’ information a little too tasty to keep to myself. First reported at the Dark Castle News blog, a Return to Dark Castle trailer video (Youtube version here) has been posted over at the publisher’s web site. The gameplay looks hilarious, and definitely captures the spirit of the original. I can’t wait for this classic to hit the Super Happy Fun Fun online store.

If you missed my earlier coverage of Return to Dark Castle you might want to take a peek at the article.

A Few Examples of iMUSE in Action

Note: I’ve intentionally dropped the speech volume on the audio tracks in these video clips so it’s easier to focus on the musical score. You’ll need Flash installed to view the following clips I uploaded to Youtube. The clips have been resized to fit this page, so click on them to see larger versions.

In this scene from The Curse of Monkey Island, Wally - a cartographer-cum-pirate - breaks down under Guybrush’s relentless teasing (“I’m gonna… I’m… gonna…. <sniff>”). As you watch the clip, listen to the way in which the metre and rhythm of the score remains the same, while the melody changes to suit a more upbeat and less sinister atmosphere. The transition, heralded by a few light drum beats, reflects the “lightening up” of the situation after Wally finally stops threatening Guybrush with his revolver. The melody transitions seamlessly and gives me the sense that the silly but desperate situation has resolved for our bumbling hero.

In this scene, Guybrush enters the Voodoo Priestess’s swamp, greeted by Murray the Talking Skull. As Guybrush enters the rotting swamp boat the music transitions from a soft ethereal score to a slightly spookier score with the addition of another wind instrument (anyone know what that instrument is called?). The mood changes again when Guybrush pulls the alligator’s tongue and as the Voodoo Priestess appears she is introduced by the addition of a subtle reggae beat played on the organ. Mixed into the Voodoo Priestess’s beat is a soft trumpet chorus that fades in and out that adds a sense of foreboding to the scene. All of these subtleties are, of course, recognized only at the subconscious level as we play the game but add a fine atmosphere to each scene and help paint the characters in certain musical tones.

In this scene, Guybrush walks into the Barbershop and the music transitions immediately. See if you can pick out the five different themes that are played here as he speaks with each buccaneer hairstylist. The differences are all subtle, and serve to both colour the personalities of each pirate and the player’s expectations. If you want to hear the different audio tracks independently, head on over to iMUSE Island - my thanks to them for noticing the different mixes in the first place!

How does iMUSE Work?

According to the original patent document for iMUSE, the purpose of the system is to produce “aesthetically appropriate and natural” music and sound effects that modify the “texture, mood and character” of scenes in response to “a directing system”. The musical sequence (composed of notes and instruments) that the composer sends to the directing system is marked at crucial musical junction points, ie. at every ‘measure’, marking positions at which the music can branch. The musical sequencer has the ability to jump to any specific point of a composition (unlike most music), thus giving a standard musical score much more flexibility much like the difference between an mp3 file and a cassette tape. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate in the next part, iMUSE was also able to transpose musical arrangements into completely different tunes, giving the melody different tones and moods to suit the scene. The easiest way to imagine iMUSE is to think of a musical version of interactive hypertext - the user can jump around and re-arrange things at her/his whim.

The early versions of iMUSE-based games used “MIDI” tracks. Since midi arrangements are progressions of electronic musical notes, each note could be remixed on-the-fly. In some LucasArts games that use midi, such as Monkey Island 2, all sorts of transforms (tempo, volume, pan, instruments, etc) are applied to the midi sequence in order to achieve some dramatic effect. In this scene, Guybrush joins a spitting contest. As he approaches the ’spitmeister’, listen as the music detunes and quickly drops out instruments, hailing the entrance of our blundering protagonist. Hey, at least he hocked up a decent loogie this time!In games that use mp3-based musical data, the score is broken up into many constituent musical tracks. Each track, as we saw with the Barbery Coast pirates earlier, are timed identical to each other, so the music engine can seamlessly transition between tracks. While the sound designers lose some flexibility with mp3-based music (because they cannot mix the track note-by-note, instrument-by-instrument, in realtime), they at least can standardize the sound coming out of the speakers on the player’s end because the tracks have been pre-recorded according to their specifications.

Final Thoughts

While the musical feats that the iMUSE technology accomplishes are impressive in themselves, it is clear that all of these examples work not only because of the smooth transitions and/or identical rhythms - they work because the sound designers and composers found the right melodies and rhythms that suited the particular dramatic effect represented in each scene or for each character. iMUSE does not create good arrangements itself, as is evidenced by the occasional failed drama in several games, but rather relies upon the creative composers and designers who use it to craft the right mood for a scene. The subtlety that iMUSE allows for gives players the sense that they’re playing a game, and not simply interacting with a computer. And, when scripted-in with interactive dialogue, art direction, animation, story, and unique characters, the end products are adventure games that capture dramatic moments reminiscent of old radio and television dramas. Add in the rather kooky humor that most LucasArts game writers are known for, and every game beams with a gentle yet compelling story that’s downright enjoyable. Since iMUSE was one of those under-the-hood engines that was meant to work through subtlety, it isn’t surprising that it hasn’t really gotten its due now that it has faded into obscurity. It’s sad that there are so few games that can match the kinds of dramatic achievements that the creators of iMUSE did in their time.

If you’re interested in playing some of the classic LucasArts adventure games, I highly suggest heading on over to the SCUMMVM web site and downloading one of the best open source software projects on the web. SCUMMVM allows you to play all of those great oldies on modern PC’s running Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

If you’re looking for LucasArts-composed music to add to your music library, wander over to WorldMaker.net (scroll down to the comments section) and take a look at the suggestions - I can confirm those are all great compositions!

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on music in video games. Follow the below drop-down list for other January ‘08 Round Table entries. My sincere thanks to Corvus for accepting my rather last-minute entry! The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

I’ve spent the last few days reading her impressive back-catalogue of posts and while I think all of them are certainly worth your time, her six-part composition on the history of video games stood out for me. These articles demonstrate Keira’s intimate knowledge of retro games, a keen eye for details, and impeccable research skills. For someone born in 1984 (the year of King’s Quest I, Championship Lode Runner, and Seven Cities of Gold) she sure as hell knows her Dune II and Command and Conquer - two games that I spent countless hours playing and subsequently debating about with my junior high school friends. If you’re at all interested in reading a thoughtful piece on the history of video games (and their developers) with some interesting analyses, be sure to read the entire series of articles (start at the bottom).

Edit: Keira posted a reply to the lively ongoing discussion started by Michael over the Brainy Gamer on “photorealism” in video games. I’m hoping to continue the discussion in my next post, and attempt to outline some new ideas on the subject.

ChipWits was an edutainment game that was released in the early days of the Macintosh. One part puzzler and one part GUI-based programming teacher, ChipWits used an icon-driven programming language (IBOL) to command a miniature robot on rollerskates around a room. Through combinations of operators and arguments, the robot would traverse the room picking up, eating, or frying objects at your maniacal whim. I don’t doubt that games such as The Incredible Machine, and more recently Chibi-Robo, gained much of their inspiration from this classic.

Dark Castle was a mixed action/puzzler/platformer that put you in the shoes of the bumbling adventurer Duncan in his quest to defeat the Black Knight. The game featured eery waveform sound effects and wonderful character animation reminiscent of later ‘rotoscoped’ animation. (Interesting side note: Co-developer Jonathan Gay later came to pioneer the now-ubiquitous Flash animation software. The designer and illustrator Mark Pierce later became the co-founder of software giant Macromedia. Holy jebus!) Full of slapstick humor and frustrating puzzles, Dark Castle is probably one of the least known indie masterpieces of the 1980’s.

Unfortunately, neither of these games have been playable on modern systems without frustratingly clunky emulation software. That is, until now! I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that both have been remade into modern sequels by indie developers:

Return to Dark Castle (Mac OS X only) has been in production for the better part of 7 years. Originally developed for Mac OS 9, the game engine had to be completely reprogrammed for OS X, and the art had to be redrawn for a 16-bit color depth. Since then, the game has went through years of bumpy roads; finally making it to an immanent final release through its publisher, Super Happy Fun Fun. For now, I strongly suggest downloading the latest demo beta (link courtesy of the Dark Castle forums) and playing it through. The demo is rather short, but demonstrates the potential the final release of the game will have, especially considering that the full version will include all of the levels from the original Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, the new levels for Return to Dark Castle and a level editor. The production quality is simply stunning and demonstrates the kind of polish that is possible when a game receives nearly 10 years (!) of attention. The final release of the game is definitely on my 2008 must-buy list. Now, someone just has to convince ZSculpt to port this to XBOX 360 Live Arcade…

Edit: If you want to keep up on the latest news for Return to Dark Castle, head on over to the Dark Castle Blog.

After stumbling upon Doug Sharp’s blog a few months ago on an unrelated search, I found out that a beta of ChipWits II has been released! The original programmers, Doug Sharp and Mike Johnston, re-wrote the entire game from scratch using the Adobe AIR Flash framework - meaning that it’s playable on both Windows and Mac! The sequel very much captures the enjoyment of the original, and it’s great seeing these oldschool designers back on the saddle. So head on over to the ChipWits II web site and give it a try. Even 25 years later, it’s still great edutainment software since the goals have stayed the same, so if you have kids let them take a crack at some procedural programming. The only criticism I have is that I miss the old ChipWits interface… there’s something slightly clunky about this one. Hopefully that gets resolved for the final version…

Update: The original ChipWits was remade for the Windows platform by Klaus Breuer. Klaus painstakingly reprogrammed the entire game from start to finish, and it’s available as freeware at his web site. I highly recommend playing the original, and this is the next best thing.

From Wikipedia:

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out.Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights. 

I played it last year on my Sega CD (after downloading it here) and the description that Wikipedia gave it is absolutely accurate. It is truly the worst, funniest, game that I’ve ever played in my life. After the initial laughs wear off, the tedium sets in and the next 7.8 hours of your life will be among the worst.So, LoadingReadyRun.com is hosting their first annual Desert Bus For Hope marathon for the children’s charity Child’s Play. The Canadian comedy group is self-inflicting the worst kind of torture I’ve ever seen: sponsors pay them to play Desert Bus, hour by torturous hour, until the clock (or the money) runs out. If you’ve got $5 to spare, head on over to the Desert Bus web site and prolong their suffering.

The first, Privateer: Ascii Sector, is an impressive ascii-based interpretation of the original. The graphics are colorful and almost completely faithful to the gameplay of the original … minus one dimension of course. While the interface shares many similarities with roguelikes, there are many interesting enhancements that give the game a completely unique style. Most of the time I was absolutely stunned that a single developer - Christian Knudsen - built the entire game - ascii art, gigantic maps, fluid and colorful animations, and in-game economy algorithms - his work is absolutely polished. The game is currently at v0.2, and Christian is hard at work at bringing v0.3 to completion. If you play the game, please send Christian some encouragement, either over at his forums or at his Great Games Experiment page - I’d love to see a final release candidate of the game get released some day. Download it here.

The second project, Privateer Gemini Gold, is a 3d platform-independent remake of the game for Windows, Linux and OS X using the Vega Strike game engine. If you’re looking for a way of playing the original Privateer with high-res 3d graphics without running Dosbox - this project is definitely the way to go. A very large team of 3d artists, programmers, designers, playtesters and audio engineers have created a truly faithful reproduction of the original game. The development team is die-hard dedicated to the project, and respond to suggestions and comments on the forums regularly. If you were a fan of the original game, you will be immediately at home with this remake - it is probably the most detailed remake of a 3d game I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t played this classic, I strongly suggest heading over to the download page and giving it a shot.

Congratulations to Petri, of Kloonigames fame! He correctly guessed that the pumpkins I carved (in order) were: Day of the Tentacle, Katamari Damacy, and The Legend of Zelda. Petri’s prize choice was a copy of Defcon. There were only 2 entrants in the contest - was it really that tough?

Defcon, like all of Introversion’s games, stands out as an impressive indie effort. The game succeeds precisely in its focused effort: the play map is small, the player has only a few different options in battle, and the battle interface is simple and clear. With that simplicity comes the polish of balanced gameplay, a very Cold War era-esque aesthetic, and chilling soundtrack. I hope Petri enjoys it as much as I did!