Before I begin my next topic, I would like to say thanks for people for their comments on my previous post, made some good points and to carry on further extension of my previous topic/discussion I would to show you a quote which I always to use in my blog regarding our modern fears reflected within horror films such as “Saw” “Hostel” “The Hill have eyes 2”, etc. The quote is from: “Jennifer Ashlock”, a professor of sociology at the College of Notre Dame, here’s the link if you want to have a read: http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/804/804194p1.html
"You have a potential to make more money with torture (horror films) now because that's what actually scares a mainstream audience today," she says. "I don't think that they were very popular before because it just seemed so far off base. Like, 'That could never happen,' and it seemed very fringe back in the '70s and '80s. Not that you didn't have gore back then, but now that is something that we know is going on in the world. We know about certain atrocities in Guantanamo, for example. Even in Iraq, under Saddam Hussein supposedly, and even in our own American prison system, we know that torture goes on. Because of the Internet and the global media, we know that torture is a way of life really. That information is just more accessible to us. I also think it's more fundamentally frightening to us, because it's sort of a given now that torture is happening around the world."
I thought the quote has an interesting insight because I’ve never thought about how this current fear of “torture” has originated from being expressed within pop culture as I thought it’s something that we are all afraid of despite our current social awareness from the media. These films are produced very well as you can tell they really think about how they can subconsciously place the theme/fear of “torture” within an context/cover. The producers and writers of these films must have huge crazy brain storming sessions especially when they may be planning to release up Saw VIII (8). What’s the most creative and smart element of these films is that they are never directly about “torture” as a theme but as anticipation/fear mechanic but creators have thought up world/characters/set pieces for such things to happen in entertaining and coherence way.
I think perhaps game developers should have this same approach and think about as this is area where games as medium excels at exploring themes without player’s awareness, making players learn/train things about such themes. I think this is one way where developers can examine our fears without it being a direct part of gameplay as such thing as “torture” as I think would be perhaps too much as interactive part of gameplay. This is one area where horror games could excel at, what you people think?
E3 2009 is over, I hope you enjoyed it? I thought it was certainly the best E3 in a long time, they got their action together. What did you think of E3 this year? The other big surprise from watching the Microsoft conference (other than “Splinter Cell: Conviction” which I spoke about in my last post) was “Alan Wake” which I thought was going to end up being another “Duke Nukem Forever” with it either being cancelled or finally released with out of date ideas and mechanics. If you haven’t seen any gameplay footage of “Alan Wake” check it out below, I have to say its looks great and the timing for its revelation or release date for Spring 2010 couldn’t be better with the recently disappointing yet promising horror game “Resident Evil 5” and the lack of horror games in development these days.
“Horror Survival” is one of my favourite sub genres within video games, being quite fond of the genre since the PlayStation days of the original “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” which were based around unforgiving and unique mechanics and design approaches. The whole item management element for an example, where you had to plan out what items you think you would need for journey to the next location trying to predict what enemies/scenarios you would encounter. This was interesting element/mechanic which allows the designers to control the player’s psychology to embrace a sense of uncertainly and fear making the player feel weak and vulnerable.
Most of the horror games these days lack this sense of horror or suspense with titles like “Dead Space” or “Resident Evil 5” focused towards more visceral approach towards gameplay and expressing of “horror” via gory shock value and panic whereas old horror games were far more psychological experiences. I don’t find these recent horror games that frightening, (more unnerving perhaps?) but why is that? I think it’s not just the obvious game direction of “never outgunned, but always outnumbered” but for the player’s purpose/reward for interacting with such experience is empowerment and that’s one of the issues with the approaches towards horror within video games medium is that horror isn’t meant to make you feel good. It’s meant to make you feel bleak, desperate, weak, etc for your character and hopefully at the end, the character survives the incident and you are relieved for this result but I wouldn’t say this is empowerment. This is debatable; I would like to know what you guys think of this? Is this still empowerment if the player goes through emotional hell for just the character’s safety/ survival?
Lately, I’ve been playing a PlayStation 3 game called “Siren: Blood Curse”, not sure if you have hear of it? If you like horror games, I recommend it, it’s very unique and most frightening and intense game I’ve played in a long time. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/siren-blood-curse-review .It’s another great PlayStation 3 exclusive that Sony fails to market which is great shame as it deserves more credit. Anyway “Siren” takes place on remote Japanese cursed island where you play as 8 different character's perspectives over the course of the story, cutting back and forth on the timeline and revealing alternatives viewpoints and plot twists, basically imagine “Lost” meets “Ring” or “The grudge” (any J-horror movie). What I find interesting and smart is how the creators play about with the player’s feelings/motives via playing with different characters as every character has own set of ablitlies/actions within the context of their situation and characteristics. For an example, you play as “Bella Monroe” who is a young girl stuck inside of hospital who is too young to defend herself from the shibito (which is what the enemies are called in this game which are basically zombies) so she can’t pick objects to use as weapons but she is small giving her a great ablility to hide in many places forcing the player to sneak past the shibito making the player feel weak, small and tense . You also play as her father “Sam Monroe” who is grouped with another character equiped with weapons found within the mines, shooting any shibito encountered which makes you so grateful and powerful for such simple primary function in most games which makes this very empowering. The game explores a diverse array of moods/situations which solves the issue with horror I spoke about earlier and also pacing of player emotion. If look at “Resident Evil 4” (I think RE4 is best 3rd person shooter ever) I thought forwards the end of the game, it wasn’t frightening as I was too empowered, I felt like god and I could take out Godzilla with a knife whereas “Silent hill 2” was too tense for me and wasn’t empowering enough to carry on playing.
This is where I wonder what path is “Alan Wake” is going to take; more psychological or more action style of gameplay with such personal characteristic narrative as being “Alan Wake”? Will the game be embracing empowerment as “Alan Wake” like “Resident Evil 4” batting the horror incident becoming more powerful as the game progresses or will be more personal journey of surviving such incident? One of my concerns for this game that it may end up being an action game with horror elements like “Dead Space”, I guess its too early to tell but I think this would be obvious option for “Remedy Entertainment” as empowerment is easier to place within action games rather horror games. I hope they have the ambition to try otherwise, like with “Siren: Blood Curse”, balance player empowerment with emotions of fear and suspense, maybe even empathy.
Hello people, sorry it’s been a while since my last post. I promise I won’t let it happen again, you know how it is within games industry when you go through crunch time. But at last, I’ve had some holiday, time to reflect on things and lately I’ve spend my time watching lots of E3 stuff which I’m sure lot of you reading this have too. I think best surprise game of the show so far for me has to be “Splinter Cell: Conviction”, (a video below if you haven’t seen the gameplay demo, check it out) for being so confident towards a new creative direction improving and addressing criticisms that this established franchise has had previously with one being most obviously: narrative and story.
For me, personally I always found “Sam Fisher” to be very boring one dimensional character compaired to most main characters from action games, with the most obvious comparion, “Solid Snake” from the “Metal Gear” games. What I thought lacked with “Sam Fisher” wasn’t character personality as such (Sam Fisher is voiced by “Michael Ironside”, a great actor and has some decent character dialogue to boot) but it’s just the fact there isn’t never any game context/scenarios for you as the player to relate with him or learn more about him as an character.
You could argue that such elements wouldn’t translate well within the realistic cold espionage theme of the game, and player emotional involvement and character development would push away from such theme/feel. Although if compared with the yet again obvious comparion of “Metal Gear” being so over the top and melodramatic making character development and motives easier to express with the setting of such great contrasts of good vs evil. Where “Splinter cell” lacks in meaning and narrative it gains in gameplay and player functionality and interactivity with “Sam Fisher” being able to so many actions making the levels/environments multilayered and multi dimensional (game and level design is excellent in Splinter Cell games). This new “Splinter Cell” is like their “Resident Evil 4” for the series reinventing what it is but also remains to stay true to the core of what “Splinter Cell” is which is a rare compromise among games.
Another common criticism I agree with, is that Splinter Cell’s gameplay seems to rely on motion of trial and error due to the multilayered level design and the player’s access to so many game interactions/game paths (linear level progression point A to point B but non-linear approaches to these points). This was especially noticeable in “Double Agent” (4th title in the series released back in 2006 on Xbox 360) within the terrorist cell undercover missions which were very frustrating due having too many options which was shame as it was a great concept with the theme of infiltrating a terrorist organization from within. This problem would also occur for me within certain sections of levels where I wouldn’t know where to go, let alone know what to do once you reach your destination, walking to every corner hopeing it’s the correct location to progress the level. This is due to bad level signposting and Game “Mise-en-scene” which I spoke about in some detail in this blog (link of the post at the bottom/end of this post) You should check it out if you haven’t read it yet. Basically in a nutshell, some games lack the logic for giving the player direction throughout the game world making the player feel lost or disconnected with the game’s universe. This is also referred as the technique/computer tool “Director agent” which controls the perimeters of the camera movement for every action, the player does or every section of the game like with resident evil as a good example.
Here is another area, which I think the new “Splinter Cell” has addressed so well within it’s new cinematic direction with the mission objectives projected across the background as creative director says in the demo “One of our missions is to keep you immersed in our world and make the narrative move at a fast pace”. I think they have already achieved that not just because how cinematic and atmospheric (creative and artistic aspect of the game) but their use of the placement of the camera angles and the mission objectives in the background (design aspects using “director agents”) for signposting, giving the player direction keeping the fast pace up.
I think they been very clever with narrative and scenario for this game as I’m actually interested in the main character of “Sam fisher”. They have given him a sense of life and purpose, driven towards motive. I want to invest in this story; I want to know who the guy is in the toilet was, why Sam Fisher's daughter has been killed? Why is he so pissed off? I’ve connected it straight away, I guess it was like what I was saying earlier as it's over-exaggerated and melodramatic enough translate Sam Fisher’s story and state of mind. Lots of games are using similar methods, from the use of “director agents” like “Uncharted 2”, watch the video below if you haven’t seen it yet.
“Uncharted 2” gives a great sense of life and personality through the main character and how each event has it’s own unique character animation making it exciting and fun plotting along a simple narrative/signposting for level progression giving the illusion of being real character within realistic eniviroment like action movie. The game mostly (judging by the 1st title I’ve played) uses audio as sense of signposting and character development as he would say one liners related to the current situcation like “Be careful, big drop” as you jump off edge of a cliff just like action movie which works really well. This is most common/typical use of “director agent” within action games but within the context of “Uncharted” it works as “Nathan Drake” is such interesting cool character although it’s one of cheapest tricks in the book.
Back to “Splinter Cell”, I think it’s really interesting how they come up their own way of introducing narrative and the use of “director agent”. Most impressive element of this game isn’t just the new content/context of the game but how they all fits and co-exists within the “Splinter Cell” universe without feeling awkward or forced and how it has it’s own style and own voice using narrative in a new creative way.
My name is Chris Jones who loves designing games for fun and works within the computer games industry as QA lead working towards a games designer role. I write this blog to express my understanding and thinking of "game design" analyzing and detailing all aspects of this subject matter, which I hope will inspire people but also learn something new too.
This book is so crazy and funny! I love it! Anyone who works in games will certainly be able relate to this as its about lows and highs being game programmer working with crazy personalities!
Games that I've playing at the Moment
Uncharted 2 - Amazing game, I'm writting a blog post about this one, so you will hear what I think soon!
Batman Arkham Asylum - I just finished it recently. Its pretty polished and solid but I didn't think it was anything too spectacular though, little too casual for my liking but it did have some interesting design choices with the combat and health system which I digged
Trails HD - Great old skool score raker of a game! very simple but yet very playable and addictive
Still playing - PixelJunk Monsters as in the last two posts before - you have to play this game if you have PS3! NOW! Its so addictive!
What I'm listening to these days..
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport- This is their 2nd album it's actually pretty hardcore for my typical tastes but just haven't hear anything quite like these guys! They got a sense of timing of beats and rhythm. Just came out the other day!
Atlas sound - Most disturbing cover ever but musical engaging ozzing with style with similar sound of "Yeah Yeah Yeahs" or "Sonic Youth" in more ambinet subtle musical direction.
bout how this current fear of “torture” has originated from being expressed within pop culture as I thought it’s something that we are all afraid of despite our current social awareness from the media. These films are produced very well as you can tell they really think about how they can subconsciously place the theme/fear of “torture” within an context/cover. The producers and writers of these films must have huge crazy brain storming sessions especially when they may be planning to release up Saw VIII (8). What’s the most creative and smart element of these films is that they are never directly about “torture” as a theme but as anticipation/fear mechanic but creators have thought up world/characters/set pieces for such things to happen in entertaining and coherence way.
