I AM BACK BABYLet's be honest. Who uses blogs anymore? No one. I barely used this one in 2015. But I decided to resurrect it not for the enjoyment of anyone other than to try and chronicle some of the things I learn about game development so that I don't forget. I am bad at studying and remembering things so I thought I'd use this to update what I achieve and maybe it will help me focus on one project.
Of course I am starting this blog at the worst possible time (I am about to begin an 8-week teacher placement.) But procrastination often begets the best ideas. So hopefully I can update at some point. Anyway there are my current projects I am working on: -East of Wasteland: Planned as a 3 Episode JRPG set in a post-apocalyptic version of Melbourne's Eastern Suburbs. I've currently nearly finished the first Episode (about 2-3 hours of content) but I burnt out when polishing. -Untitled RPG Maker Puzzle Platformer: I heavily customised RPG Maker to have the aesthetics and gameplay I wanted for an interactive point-and-click puzzle platformer using all my own assets. However this is a pretty intensive project and I am not sure I want to proceed with it, this way yet. -LEARN Game Maker Studio 2: I now have Game Maker 2 and it's comfy and easy to wear. I'd like to continue using it so this blog may predominantly be about that for the time being. Need to find out if his website can host games. One day I vow to become the greatest pirate in the world. And to finish one of these projects.
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I remember being in a church one day when I saw the petition for Australia to add the R+18 censorship policy.
I was 18 or nearly 18 at the time. And I thought it was great that churches were backing the R18+ category. It showed that churches understood that the problem was not just banning video games but it was more important to actually address the issues and make sure everything had it's place. Heavens knows that from the time I was 15 and able to play M or MA15+ games I'd seen quite a bit of content in video games that I should not have seen at such a young age but had slipped in because developers either took clever or lazy loophole methods to make sure their games were still released in Australia and passed our Australia. The problem with censorship is not that content exists. It's when inappropriate content falls into the hands and eyes of children. From my primary school teacher experience I've seen the attitude and behaviour effects of age inappropriate content. Not that a violent video game will make a student violent but it does mess with a child's sense of innocent. Children mimic and copy a lot of actions from their parents and homelife and the media they consume because they do not have a fully developed sense of right and wrong or sense of self and agency. Kids can be negatively impacted from what they take in. Where as a well developed human being is less likely to be influenced as much. The R18+ classification was a great step. Because at the time this meant kids would not be able to get their hands on games filled with swearing, or sexual themes and gratuitous visual violence. or so we thought. The Australian R18+ still turned out to be broken. Censoring and blocking ridiculous scape goats. It's ruleset is too vague, it falls over and doesn't specifically understand itself. Things still leak through where they shouldn't and other things that decisive and wisely advised adults should be allowed to play are blocked to the point where developers encourage piracy as a way around it. And still, our parents and grandparents are poorly educated about the rating system. Children still get access to R18+ games either through deceit and bamboozlement or because the parents just don't care, believing their child is "the special" case that is exempt from the rule. **SPOILER ALERT** You child isn't not special and needs age appropriate boundaries, just like every other child. **END OF SPOILERS** It's really frustrating. It's holding back our video games on many fronts. Firstly from being a truely expressive artform. Hideo Kojima has talked multiple times how censorship and being afraid of going to dark places is really holding back the full potential of video games where gameplay is a platform of narrative. And the amount of children still playing content not appropriate also holds us back because it sets broken expectations for what games should be to kids, as well as tars and smears the good name everyone else in the media and press. No wonder the media blame video games every time there is a serial killer. I just hope the Australian government start to realise video games aren't a fringe hobby anymore and they're not just toys. They're a multi-billion dollar industry, that's just as relevant to art and entertainment as film. And they need to support this and actually put into infrastructure that supports the industry and allows it to go. Not cripple it with concrete ceilings any time it tries to grow. References: http://www.classification.gov.au/Industry/Pages/Specific-provisions-and-downloads.aspx Licking the disk of a video game does not automatically cause me to trip out and hallucinate. It doesn't alter my brain chemistry driving myself to be locked away in my bedroom for hours gaming. At best I'll get a weird metallic taste and at worst I'll ruin the disk.
So why are people so scared of video game addiction? All research into video game addictions have largely turned back inconclusive results. This is partly because the field of study is so young but also because the evidence so far is that video games in and of themselves are not addictive inherently. The problem lies with what has always been a problem within humans: The Human Condition. As much of a cop out of an answer as that sounds, it treads the grounds of truth. Humans have these voids in them, deep psychological needs and conflicts. Such as anxiety, depression, uncertainty, vulnerability, powerlessness, low self-worth. When these aren't regulated, when they're unbalanced or not being dealt with, the human being has incredible urges to deal with these needs with self-destructive behaviours. So playing video games for long periods of time won't rewrite your personality so that you cannot leave them. Instead, if you are in need of an outlet or some method to fill problems in your being, video games may become the shelter under which you hide, instead of addressing your real problems. There have certainly been days in my life where I've collapsed under the desire to play video games as a hiding refuge instead of dealing with the actual problems causing me stress. This can definitely be negative and appear addictive to people. But it is not inherent to video games. Books, TV, drawing, shopping, sport, any possible form of human interaction that takes quantities of time can be used to replace these voids. People need to be aware if they have these kinds of natures in their personality that video games can become an unhealthy outlet for them certainly. But comparing video games to drugs? That's inaccurate. Video games are not addictive. But Human beings do need to make sure that all things are practised moderation and balance. References: https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/video-game-addiction-is-it-real http://kotaku.com/5978808/science-isnt-sure-yet-if-gaming-addiction-is-a-real-mental-disorder Gender in gaming has been an extremely controversial topic across game journalism for the last two or so years. With anything to do with social politics there are very extreme divisive sides and heated subjective opinions that have created an intense land field around the topic. As such this week I will not attempt to summarise the entire issue but rather present a few of my personal thoughts on the topic:
-The definition of "Strong Female Characters" is extremely subjective: I have a couple of friends who were heavily into feminism and in my friendship with them I have spent a lot of time researching different feminist theories and spent a lot of time in discussions with them trying to sympathize with their opinion and listen to their wants and ideas about how the video game industry could improve. For a long time based on two particular friends, I thought they wanted to see better written strong female protagonists. Female warriors either wielding a gun or a sword, who could go toe to toe with female counterparts, are not oversexualised and designed with muscle and sensible armour. What these particular friends wanted were female characters that were hardly any different from male characters in terms of role and ability. And for a while I thought this is what all women wanted in games. Then I started dating my girlfriend. My girlfriend was a whole new world and I had to very quickly learn modern day third wave feminism doesn't apply to everyone. My girlfriend loves pink and feminine qualities. She is constantly disappointed when playing games with me that there aren't enough "pretty" female characters, pink clothing and fashion options in the games we play. A very opposite set of ideals to what my feminist friends want out of their variation of "strong" being masculine qualities given to female characters, my girlfriend would be much more attracted to a video game if "strong" was defined by strong feminine qualities given to female characters. This has taught me a lot that gaming needs to be very diverse with the definition of diverse not defined by a single ideology of social politic. -If you want to see something in a game, make it. I am not a fan of retconning culture. It bugs me when changes to established characters or canon take place, especially when minority groups are shouting the loudest and putting a lot of pressure to change someone else's artistic design and choice. As such I don't think game developers should ever have to be bullied to change their characters, or narrative (Unless they promised and sold a product lying about what the end product delivered: I.E. see Mass Effect 3 ending debacle). If people want to see something in a game, they shouldn't call for a change, censorship or retcon of art. They should go out there and start working and talking about the game they want to see. An example of this I am going to use is not specifically related to gaming, but when Marvel Comics heard a call from people wanted more diverse superheroes they could look up to, rather than retcon a pre-existing character (like D.C. Comics are more likely to do), Marvel launched a variety of legacy characters with well written backstories, worldviews and mantras that justified their existence in the world. One of my favourite characters in the Marvel Universe at the moment is Ms. Marvel, A.K.A. Kamala Khan a teenage Muslim girl from New Jersey. She is one the best written diverse characters I've ever seen because she deals with issues of her own culture, she makes her own choices about how to behave as a superhero but she doesn't step on the toes of the previous Captain Marvel, she's not a fill in or a replacement, she's her own character leading the front lines of representative for both female comic book fans and Middle eastern and Islamic comic-book fans. -The last point I wanted to touch on incredible briefly is Gamergate. I do not have the time to get into the whole ordeal of Gamergate. But please check out my links in my references below. Gamergate is an issue that impacted game journalism last year and I think it it is one of the most concerning and important issues that has ever arisen in gaming culture. Basically when Game Journalists were caught out for unethical and inappropriate behaviour (to do with collusion, biased journalism and mistreatment of their own fan base) they turned around blamed the entirety of gamer culture, shifting the blame and responsibility from their own actions and on to radical feminist social justice side issues that all gamers were “privileged white and male” and all gamers were “misogynistic and sexist”. This was a huge abuse of power as the influence of game journalism grasped most of the web warping the narrative away from important discussion of gameplay and how we can make games actually a better place for female gamers. It was a dark time for game journalism as they pushed "gender studies" theories as their means for reviewing a game, rather than the actual gameplay and integrity of game. Games especially indie games could lose points in a review or be refused to be reviewed because game journalism acted on subjective systems of bias and gender politics when reviewing games. I really personally believe after tracking the events of Gamergate for an entire year that the games media behaved disgracefully and really hurt a lot of gamers of all genders and ethnic groups with their forced stereotypes and assumptions that were ultimately about them receiving more money from clickbait articles. References: https://gitgud.io/gamergate/gamergateop/tree/master/Current-Happenings I want to talk again about Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain again this week. I am so sorry if you haven't played the game yet, but there's going to be massive spoilers so please get out of this blog post now if you want to experience this moment in game because you really should. A lot of people complain about a lot of games promoting and misusing violence. However Kojima is a master game designer when it comes to thematics in a game in Phantom Pain he actually created a gameplay experience where I as the player learned through violent gameplay, Kojima's personal message of pacifism and why wars and heroes of war are futile. You spend most of your time in Phantom Pain collecting and recruiting honest, brave and hard working men for your private military company. But at one point in the story a deadly parasite breaks out in your base and you as Snake are tasked to weed out the infection by any means and save any survivors. But here's where the game plays you like a damn fiddle. Most other parts of the game has given you free control over tactic an choice as you have been able to spare people to raise your heroism metre or earn demon points by killing enemies in explosive ways. But now the game forces you as the player to make a choice you don't want to make. All the men in your facility are infected with the parasite and the only way to proceed through the game, is to hunt down each of your infected men and put them out of your misery or risk your whole base and operation becoming infected. As you search the base innocent survivors show up as infected with the use of night vision goggles. People beg you not to kill them, that they're not infected. The game shows you each solider's name, they are randomly taken from any point in the story at any recruitment moment. When you shoot them, their blood splashes on you. You lose heroism points. Because you the player promised you would protect your troops, and gunning them down is outright lying. Your Diamond Dogs scream. They pause and salute you out of respect, knowing you mean only good for their will. Only for you to betray them minutes later. You are not a hero. And this is the point Kojima is trying to make. In this horrific scene of violence and painful loss, the player is taught something powerful. That even when we hype up violence in video games and the protagonists in video games as these awesome kick butt take nothing heroes just like we do in real life with real soliders. The realities is these men kill people. And violence is not the solution to peace. Violence is revenge. It is futile. It is painful. And you the player learn this lesson by killing virtual men in a virtual space. The scene is incredibly powerful and it really disturbs you soul your begin to realise what Kojima wanted you to learn the whole time. Revenge is not the solution. Revenge breeds war. True peace is found in not playing the game and the world agreeing to disband all nukes. His pacifist messaged that has echoed all the way since Metal Gear Solid 1. References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3loxdc/mgsv_spoilers_a_shining_light_even_in_death_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3l78f1/shining_lights_even_in_death_spoilers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3kyxuj/shining_lights_even_in_death_mission_43_discussion/ This week I wanted to talk about my experiences at PAX 2015 and how it reshaped my evaluation of genres. There will be no reference link this week, as this is a summary of my personal thoughts based on my interactions with the developers I spoke to.
I used to think genres were a really important part of gaming. And I think when video games were emerging, especially when they were transitioning into 3D and when video stores were still a think, genres were important. It's how you categorised, located and discussed video games when describing it to another friend. For example: Friend A: "I like 3D Platformers?" Friend B: "OH then you'll love Platformy the 3D Platformer in: 3D Platformer Land!" Humans often need categories to understand, perceive and figure things out. However the video game industry has grown so much now that it's hard to slot games into genres. I may have been in denial about this, not willing to accept that the ways I discussed video games as a child are now not fitting. However after attending PAX this weekend, I realised that now more then ever, there are SO many video games, especially indie games that are really difficult to fit into a category. Games like Mushroom 11, where you control a circle of light pushing blocks of slimy fungus around. It's some kind of puzzle platformer but it's set in a post-apocalyptic world and is vaguely story driven. Cuphead is some kind of bullet hell platformer shooter with 1930s cartoon animation. Dungeon League (as pictured above) is a dungeon crawler that is also a party/team competition sport game. I even played some kind of a compeitive death match game where one team plays as first person divers swimming about while the other team plays as 3rd person sharks mauling them. Totally different genres for each team! My experiences were broadened as I realised it's not so clear cut any more. There are so many different styles and experimental concepts among the young indies that trying to categorise game in the traditional means is hard. I chatted to some of the developers about this. Some did not like being roped into a genre because it spread misconception for them, whilst some devs loved it because it helped them find their niche audience. Ultimately I think the use of genres is still important to describe some of the mechanics in a game, like I have above where I tried to describe a game based on experiences you may have already had. But I don't think we should fully define a unique game by a genre that it totally doesn't fit. Rather then be dualistic about it, I think we need to take a holistic approach and talk about what the game is, rather then what it isn't. This week I wanted to talk about Ludonarrative games. Games that allow the narrative structure of the game to flow in harmony with the gameplay aspect of a game. In contrast a game that is not ludonarrative but experiencing "ludonarrative dissonance" is for example Uncharted 1, where in the game's story, Nathan Drake is portrayed as a cocky wise-cracking protagonist but gameplay requires you to massacre dozens of goons every five minutes with no emotional effect on his character. This for example is comparable to the Last of Us, where Joel whilst still likeable as a protagonist, is shown in the story of the game to be much darker with his personality providing narrative justification for why he must kill hundreds of NPC humans. However I want to discuss an overlooked genre of video games that is a silentmaster of ludonarrative game design. The humble Point-And-Click Adventure game. Point-And-Click Adventures games took form as some of the first story driven PC games (The first King's Quest) and were largely perfected and pioneered by Lucas Arts Studios (Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones). Point-And-Click Adventure games are often widely drive by the story, the narrative providing scenarios, locations, characters, puzzles and items that they player must interact with and often to progress through the story. Players must participate in branching dialogue paths, and collect items for their inventory trying to figure out how it all fits together to reach the next chapter of the story or character development. These games often provide a really good example of Ludonarrative game design. In Monkey Island 3, the whole game is designed with the aesthetics of a Disney Film, or at least that of a saturday morning cartoon. You play as Guybrush Threepwood walking around gathering items to solver puzzles. The game features very minimal menus and user interfaces. Every action Guybrush commits is the player's choice and fits into the story of the game. Did Guybrush's story immediately unfold with him finding the Chicken with the Pulley in the middle straight away at the International House of Voodoo? Or did it take you an hour of walking around and talking to all the characters? Guybrush's journey as part of the player's actions and choices becomes the player-canon version of the story as every action is part of the game, with the exception of some cutscenes. Items and characters in the game are not just there to interact with or gun down, they each placed as part of a story to interactive with and learn from. Similar another Lucas Art's adventure game, Grim Fandango. In Tim Schafer's audio commentary of the "remastered" edition of Grim Fandango, he talks heavily about how the game was designed to "have no metaphors". Unlike some other point-and-click adventure games that used heavy onscreen action input interfaces due to limited graphics representation, all actions in Grim Fandango are performed within the logic of the game, with no menus or components representing actions in the game world. Even Manny Calavera's inventory system is represented storywise by items he fits into his jacket that you cycle through. His head also tracks objects of interested in the environment, without the game having to highlight them. One final example of a point and click adventure game that follows through with the idea of the narrative in tune with the gameplay is recent 2015 re-imagining of King's Quest. This episodic game is told from the perspective of an aged King Graham (voiced by Christopher LLoyd) who in the game's meta-story recounts tales of his youth that act as the true game's setting and gameplay. As the gameplay is all the story told by the king, the player's actions and route through the multipath gameplay become the canon version of the story that King Graham is telling his granddaughter Gwendolynne. This is interesting because the first episode of King's Quest offers three different methods of progressing through the story based on player choices and action. Depending on path you take gameplay-wise through the story affects the story King Graham tells and that ultimately affects Gwen. If you teach her to use strength to solve puzzles she'll rely on her brawn in the meta story. If you teach her to use her heart, she will show kindness.
In conclusion, when reflecting on what style of gaming I felt best resonated with Ludonarrative games. I couldn't move past the good old school point-and-click genre. It's a great example of how a game's narrative can be portrayed literally without metaphors breaking up the flow of story and gameplay. References: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.389092-Essay-Ludonarrative-Dissonance-Explained-and-Expanded http://v2.razputin.net/index.html@page=razputin%252Ffeatures%252Ftimwords.html Grim Fandango: Remastered Director In-Game Commentary. This week we had a discussion of graphics and visual styles in video games. Some games quest for verisimilitude (realistic graphics that give the appearance of being real and true.) Verisimilitude can be great for creating an immerse gaming experience, communicating realistic emotions and reactions from characters and aiding function of game mechanics. However other games intentionally trust their visuals to a more stylised or classic cartoony look, to avoid the uncomfortable sins of the uncanny valley and to help players suspend belief in order to absorb a moment of gameplay, character or landscape that would be impossible in the real world. To explore this topic, I am going to list 4 games. Two games will be an example of Verisimilitude or Stylised graphics done well and two others will be an example of the limitations of the opposed styles. For years, the Metal Gear Solid series was desperately waiting for technology to evolve so that it could exist in the realistic representation of itself that Hideo Kojima (the series' creator imagined). With each game in the series always pushing the generation's graphical limitations, it wasn't until MGS4 and ultimately MGS5 that we finally got to see the Metal Gear world burst to life in true verisimilitude. This game uses the it's realistic visuals very powerfully. MGSV provides lush realistic sandbox environments that you must use to your advantage as if you were infiltrating them in the real world. Realistic cinematic shot in one take is like watching a movie with real people. When exploring the darker themes of the game, this helps generate deeper and more horrific emotions in the player. In fact this game pioneers some heavy facial motion capture technology, and characters such as the previously talkative Snake and the thematically silent character Quiet, were written to express more dialogue through facial animation and twitches then through actual words. The game also incorporates incredible detail to gameplay based on realism such as snipers reflecting in the light to reveal enemy and player locations, the need to shower if coated in too much blood and tranquillized enemies drowning if they land face down in the smallest of puddles. These kind of augmented gameplay elements would not be possible if it wasn't for motion capture and the visual style simulating verisimilitude. Sweet Solaris... Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is the textbook example of bad game design and how to screw up a successful franchise. But we are only going to focus on one of its many cardinal sins of game design today, that being it's choice to develop the game's aesthetics with realistic verisimilitude. This game was rushed to meet the launch of the Xbox 360 and the exciting new world of HD next-gen graphics. I owned a copy on PS3 and it is still to this day, one of the few PS3 games I actually own that runs in full 1080p. So it is no surprise that Sega fell for the trap to push Sonic the hedgehog into that world. But as they attempted they learned some really inconvenient truths about the world they created. Mainly that you can only make a blue anthropomorphised cartoon hedgehog look so realistic. Whilst some of the environments in Sonic '06 look quite lovely with their real world Europe inspired flair, this game is rife with uncomfortable and uncanny moments. Sonic and all his friends look like freaks of nature standing aside detailed final fantasyesque humans. This is made worse by Dr. Eggman's ugly uncanny redesign and the moment when Princess Elise kisses Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of things did not gel well in this game, but the visual aesthetic of giant mutant hedgehog making out with a realistic human girl is enough to make any gamer, get out of their chair, take their guns and defend their porch and daughters. Rayman as a series has always been cartoony and whacky and that's one of the reasons the franchise was so successful in the early 2000s. But after Rayman got knocked off of Ubisoft's priorities due to their crippling obsession with raving Rabbids, and the 3D-platformer having sailed, Ubisoft had to think of an inventive way to bring him back. So they decided to throw back to their original cartoon origins with the aptly named Rayman: Origins. This game is built in a powerful new engine Ubisoft invented called the Ubitoon Engine. Which allows for characters to be animated automatically by stretching silhouettes. This meant the whole game was made from stunning handdrawn cartoon animation was was both hilarious and added to the zany quirky and fast flow animation of the hectic 4 player platformer. The world is whacky and zany and perilous with crazy themed lands so the cartoony-style and slap-stick sensibilities with the added in-game ability to literally slap your friends meant that Ubisoft hit stylisation gold with this rebooted approach to Rayman. I seriously hope Ubisoft continue to make games in this engine because all the games they've made with it so far have been gorgeous. This may be a little unfair as the game isn't out yet and we've only seen a small dose of E3 trailers and gameplay footage. But when your announcement trailer has a 90% dislike ratio and a petition for cancellation that reached 7,500 signatures in 24 hours and 20,000 within 2 months, that means people take issue with your game. There are a couple of other reasons that coincided with the dislike, Samus not being the main character, the lack of focus on exploration and the confirmation that a Wii U Metroid game was not in the works left a lot of Metroid fans feeling bitter. But I sincerely think the art style is what disappointed people the most. Next Level Games is handling the Metroid Franchise for the first time and they are capable of some pretty fun aesthetics from their brutal take on the mario universe in Mario Striker's Charged to the delightfully spooky aesthetics of Luigi's Mansion 2. They are a capable studio. But even from this promotional art here, it looks bland uninteresting way too angular and lacking any of the exotic and mysterious sci-fi stylings that usually accompanies the metroid universe. Because the game is on 3DS the visuals have been made very simple and polygonal, with the human characters inside the suits stylised as very "chibi" or super deformed almost Mii-like. The Metroid universe has never been portrayed like this. Even in other GBA hand-held Metroid games, the player was treated to beautiful detailed pixel art. So I believe this over stylisation to make the Metroid universe has actually blown up in Nintendo's face in a rare scenario. They have not picked the visual style that best suits the characters and lore of the Metroidverse. The gameplay may yet to be fun, but Nintendo will have a long uphill battle with this title to get fans to play it, purely on aesthetic alone.
References: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/10/17/microsoft-office-2016-review/ http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/reality-check-verisimilitude-in-game-design/
Sometimes journalism tries to pit gamers against each other in a debate of which is better 3D gaming or 2D gaming. Perhaps this extends out of generational gaps as gaming now expands into abundant richness where we have a generation that only play 2D games, a generation like myself that grew up in the transition between mediums and a generation that has mostly known 3D games as the industry standard. One game franchise that often gets caught up in the middle of this debate is the Legend of Zelda series. You will hear nearly every gamer who has played their game voice their opinion passionately about which one is their favourite. Some love the traditional 2D Zelda style of gameplay expressed best in Link to the Past, which focuses heavily on world exploration and simple combat. Whilst other praise Zelda's successful jump into the 3D realm with Ocarina of Time being the flagship of the series, many Zelda fans sail by. A perfect example of this debate is captured quite humorously by Animator/Voice Actor/Entertainer Arin Hanson in his seqelitis series:
So that's why this question is sometimes a big deal. Which style of gameplay is actually better? 2D or 3D?
Honestly my personal answer, is both. I am a big believer that the style of gameplay you choose at the initial stage of design should be chosen in order to best reflect the gameplay mechanics. One isn't necessarily better then other, you have to assess what works best for the gameplay experimentation. I can give you a list of tonnes of games that in the late '90s failed to make the jump between 2D and 3D. (Bubsy 3D I am looking at you.) Adding the Z-axis radically altered and broke a lot of classic SNES era games. Even games that were considered commercial success like Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 failed to necessarily contain the same polish their 2D predecessors used to have. To swing our sword back to Zelda for a second, Link to the Past works great because they used the best spiriting power on the SNES to tell a story set in two very open worlds told from a traditional RPG top down view. Ocarina of Time works great because Nintendo knew they had to radically alter the game to make use of new depth. We got a lot more personal control of Link as we guided him through new terrain, hit switches and solved camera related puzzles more realistically and this all helped to immerse us and create a cinematic feel more so then top-down sprites ever could. Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages great Gameboy Colour Zelda games because they push the gameboy's limited graphics to allow us to explore a really big 2D world involving time travel, colours changing and the continuing of an epic story via the Gameboy link cables. And as my final example, I want to talk about Link Between Worlds, the psuedo-spiritual sequel to Link to the Past. This game is 2D Zelda gameplay in terms that it is top down and emulates a lot of Link to the Past's mechanics. But it makes total use of the 3D camera to enhance gameplay. Not only do enemies use 3D depth to attack and to increase the difficulty of puzzles and locations, the game also introduces a seamless mechanic that allows Link to turn into a 2D image embedded on a wall and explore linear walls radically changing how you move through the world. This kind of genius demonstrates that Nintendo aren't concerned which Zelda style is better. As game developers and Zelda's creators, they love them both and will pick the style that best enhances the mechanics they want the gamer to experience. I think this is ultimately the best approach. There are so many different styles and genres of games and gamers, it seems petty to lock video games into a non-existant war on 2D vs 3D. Instead I think you can enjoy all sorts of games. As long as game developers continue to be creative with genres like Super Paper Mario, Rayman: Origins or Terraway there are infinite possibilities for hybrid combinations of visual perception and gameplay mechanics. Reference: 1.https://youtu.be/XOC3vixnj_0 2.http://www.screwattack.com/news/2d-vs-3d-which-better On December 31th, 1999, kids across the western world knew three facts deep down within their hearts: 1. 3D Platforming games were totally madnuts. (I am assured this is '90s slang for for the word "cool") 2. The best 3D platforming games were made by Nintendo (Super Mario 64) and Rare (Banjo-Kazooie, DK64). 3. All the computers in the world were about to malfunction and send the world into a nuclear holocaust in the next few hours. Fortunately the world didn't end in the new millennium. But with the evolution of graphics, technology and play-styles, the worlds of the 3D platformers would. Up until this point the home console game market had been ruled by Japanese companies. Nintendo, Sony and the now struggling Sega. But in 2001, America and Microsoft finally stomped their foot in their game industry with the apple-pie-guzzling, base-ball-bat swinging Xbox. Backed by a lot of money Microsoft had already gained off the computer game, the Xbox was able to attracted quite a lot of developers relatively quickly. Even buying up Sega franchises and making deals with everyone to secure exclusives. At launch they tried to follow the status quo of gaming, adhering a series of hit and miss mascot powered 3D platformers (Blinx the Cat, VooDoo Vince, Vexx) but it was their flagship game Halo and their pseudo-mascot Masterchief that appealed to the now adult gamers of the '80s. Thus the 6th direction of video games began taking a different direction. Shooters, Racers, Sport Simulations, Sandbox games, anything that could try and mimic "real life" quickly became the genres where the money was at. Now we had more polygons, gameplay revolving around humans made gaming more accessible to wider audiences, rather then Saturday morning anthropomorphic protagonists. Then in 2002, a day of great tragedy came for fans of the 3D Platformer. In order to add to their own collectathon, Microsoft paid a good deal of jiggies in order to acquire Rare as an exclusive developer for their company. There was much confusion at this time for both fans and devs, about exactly what this deal meant. Even after the acquisition, one of the Microsoft executives walked through the Rare studios and eyed a poster of Donkey Kong, believing they now owned him and not understanding which IPs they controlled. There was much jubilation when a Banjo-Threeie trailer announced the continuation of the 3D platformer on Microsoft Platforms but this joy turned to bitter tears when the game finally came out as Banjo: Nuts and Bolts, sacrificing the traditional 3D platforming/world exploration gameplay for clunky customisable car building challenges. This marked the end of foreseeable end of 3D Platformers, as Rare shifted their development at Microsoft to other projects such as Viva Pinata 2, Avatars and eventually kinect sports. The rest of the industry at this stage had also moved on. Shooters, Action games and Western RPGs had largely become the staple of the industry. Even Mario Galaxy, whilst still a 3D platformer revealed a shift from open world collectathon style to a much linear more 2D focused level design. However 3D platformers were down but not out. This year in 2015, a team of original developers from Rare opened a new company called Playtonic and launched a kickstarter, sourcing fans and support for a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. Crowd-Sourcing websites like Kickstarter have now proven that game developers can break free from the reigns of publisher control and politics, sourcing fanbases and niche interest groups for any genre and variety of games. Banjo-Kazooie's new cousin, Yooka-Laylee due to release on all PC and home console platforms, managed to raise £2,090,104 from 73,206 backers. I myself am one of these backers and I will happily admit that, not because I now have financial investment in the project, but because of the joy that in the modern gaming world, no genre or style of gameplay is ever truly forgotten. The creativity and passion is so rich, that even when corporate shifts and projected expectation alter the direction of development, we now live in a world were people can break free from the system and create games they want to play. Many other 3D Platforming games (such as Hat in Time) are now being developed and kickstarted thanks to passionate fans. In conclusion my seven year old self that woke up not in a post-apocalyptic wasteland on January 1st, 2000, would be extremely happy right now, that the video game industry is also not currently in one. References: 1.http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/06/microsoft_execs_thought_they_owned_donkey_kong_after_acquiring_rare 2.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playtonic/yooka-laylee-a-3d-platformer-rare-vival 3.http://www.playtonicgames.com/ 4.http://au.ign.com/articles/2002/09/24/microsoft-buys-rare |
AuthorBen Spanos is currently playing Undertale, Uncharted: Among Thieves and Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes. Archives
March 2018
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