Curmudgeon Gamer
27 April 2008
Ludicrous Ludology
From Ruffin below:
Without disagreeing with Ruffin on this point (see End of the World predictions in comments to that post), I fear that most people who've heard the word think that ludology is by definition "pseudo-academic tripe".
I solicit your considered opinions: should there be ludology (or, if you think that's too high-falutin' a term, "game studies" or "game analysis" or "game commentary and criticism")? If it isn't tripe, what is it? What makes good ludology? Is it essentially the same as movie criticism for games? Or is it mathematical "game theory" applied to real games?
I'm sure there's commentary about this throughout the web (ludology.org as well as gamasutra spring to mind), but they're a bunch of yahoos. What do the curmudgeons think?
This pseudo-academic tripe gives every ludologist a bad name.
Without disagreeing with Ruffin on this point (see End of the World predictions in comments to that post), I fear that most people who've heard the word think that ludology is by definition "pseudo-academic tripe".
I solicit your considered opinions: should there be ludology (or, if you think that's too high-falutin' a term, "game studies" or "game analysis" or "game commentary and criticism")? If it isn't tripe, what is it? What makes good ludology? Is it essentially the same as movie criticism for games? Or is it mathematical "game theory" applied to real games?
I'm sure there's commentary about this throughout the web (ludology.org as well as gamasutra spring to mind), but they're a bunch of yahoos. What do the curmudgeons think?
--Bob at 09:02
Comment
[ 2 ]
21 April 2008
Gamasutra, don't BS me with RPGs, please
From Gamasutra:
I sure love when somebody looks at the state of things now, mentions a few precursors, and then writes some revisionist history, 1984 style. We have always been at war with Eurasia, as Matt likes to say.
What absolute bunk. What archetype is the ninja-jester-lumberjack from Ultima, again? And thieves in D&D and AD&D didn't exactly work like rogues and druid cat form in WoW today. There was no sustained "DPS". These alternative classes, even races, performed alternative tasks. Can we find a secret door? Call the elf. Lost underground? Hello, dwarf. Need to pick a lock? Call the thief. But when it was melee time, did the thief stick around? Heck no; s/he RAN. There were similar issues -- protect the magic-user squishie, bring in the cleric to heal the ranger, etc -- but these don't feel like they do in WoW. To heal in D&D, you had to back out of battle and head someplace safe. In WoW, in contrast, the healer is constantly dropping spells. And what's the difference between an elf and a Tauren druid? Hrm, one stomps and the other can make itself invisible when it's drinking to restore mana. Oh yea, and one's a cow. What completely different playstyles!!!
Let me put it more succinctly. There was no "threat" in D&D. Threat is, in a nutshell, the formula that makes monsters in WoW keep attacking whatever has caused them the most damage. If your tank keeps wailing, your warlock can keep railing. You have to be careful not to out-damage a monster if you're not a tank, else the monster makes a beeline for you. Keep your damage below the tanks' (again, oversimplification, but it's close), and it's as if you don't exist. Dungeon Masters tended to be a little less, well, formulaic.
Let me add to my succinctness... There were no quests in D&D. Oh sure, you had something random driving the plot, but tell me which one has a better, more memorable plot, Blackrock Depths or Ravenloft (and here I mean I6 in particular)? Why is that, exactly?
The difference between D&D and WoW is that the first is wide open. WoW doesn't copy archetypes; it's D&D on rails. WoW dumbs down role-playing to the point that it's more checkboxes than imagination (see my last post on plot again).
Ultima Online is much closer to D&D than WoW. There's no real class structure at all, which is what I was getting at by referencing the ever-popular "ninja-jester-lumberjack" crack from Worst Ninja's UO log. Obviously this gamasutra author, Mr. Hopson, is more interested in furthering WoW-specific commentary than treating each game on its on terms.
In any event, there was never any "difficult to design" hybrid issue for D&D. The players made hybrids out of every class to a degree. It's called role playing. That someone could now re-imagine D&D as such a close cousin of WoW should frighten those that like the "RP" in MMORPG. What a bunch of bunk.
(The "economic model" approach to party dynamics was about as impressive as the early statement I lambast, above. I'd be more interested in hearing how party dynamics and character creation follows the food pyramid. It'd be original, at least. OH, wow, everything works like money?!! Are you kidding me? This pseudo-academic tripe gives every ludologist a bad name.)
In classic role playing game (RPG) design, there are commonly three primary character archetypes: tank, DPS ("Damage Per Second"), and healer. These archetypes have their roots in old-school pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, and were carried forward into early single player RPGs like Ultima and then into MMOs.
I sure love when somebody looks at the state of things now, mentions a few precursors, and then writes some revisionist history, 1984 style. We have always been at war with Eurasia, as Matt likes to say.
What absolute bunk. What archetype is the ninja-jester-lumberjack from Ultima, again? And thieves in D&D and AD&D didn't exactly work like rogues and druid cat form in WoW today. There was no sustained "DPS". These alternative classes, even races, performed alternative tasks. Can we find a secret door? Call the elf. Lost underground? Hello, dwarf. Need to pick a lock? Call the thief. But when it was melee time, did the thief stick around? Heck no; s/he RAN. There were similar issues -- protect the magic-user squishie, bring in the cleric to heal the ranger, etc -- but these don't feel like they do in WoW. To heal in D&D, you had to back out of battle and head someplace safe. In WoW, in contrast, the healer is constantly dropping spells. And what's the difference between an elf and a Tauren druid? Hrm, one stomps and the other can make itself invisible when it's drinking to restore mana. Oh yea, and one's a cow. What completely different playstyles!!!
Let me put it more succinctly. There was no "threat" in D&D. Threat is, in a nutshell, the formula that makes monsters in WoW keep attacking whatever has caused them the most damage. If your tank keeps wailing, your warlock can keep railing. You have to be careful not to out-damage a monster if you're not a tank, else the monster makes a beeline for you. Keep your damage below the tanks' (again, oversimplification, but it's close), and it's as if you don't exist. Dungeon Masters tended to be a little less, well, formulaic.
Let me add to my succinctness... There were no quests in D&D. Oh sure, you had something random driving the plot, but tell me which one has a better, more memorable plot, Blackrock Depths or Ravenloft (and here I mean I6 in particular)? Why is that, exactly?
The difference between D&D and WoW is that the first is wide open. WoW doesn't copy archetypes; it's D&D on rails. WoW dumbs down role-playing to the point that it's more checkboxes than imagination (see my last post on plot again).
Ultima Online is much closer to D&D than WoW. There's no real class structure at all, which is what I was getting at by referencing the ever-popular "ninja-jester-lumberjack" crack from Worst Ninja's UO log. Obviously this gamasutra author, Mr. Hopson, is more interested in furthering WoW-specific commentary than treating each game on its on terms.
In any event, there was never any "difficult to design" hybrid issue for D&D. The players made hybrids out of every class to a degree. It's called role playing. That someone could now re-imagine D&D as such a close cousin of WoW should frighten those that like the "RP" in MMORPG. What a bunch of bunk.
(The "economic model" approach to party dynamics was about as impressive as the early statement I lambast, above. I'd be more interested in hearing how party dynamics and character creation follows the food pyramid. It'd be original, at least. OH, wow, everything works like money?!! Are you kidding me? This pseudo-academic tripe gives every ludologist a bad name.)
--ruffin at 17:27
Comment
[ 9 ]
06 December 2007
Jordan Mechner tells you why movies and games are different
Jordan Mechner is one of my favorite game designers. No fewer than three of his games are classics in my life: Karateka, Prince of Persia, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I think he also did The Last Express which I never played -- ask Bob about that one.
Anyway, I thought this was a great answer in Gamasutra's Q&A with Mechner:
Anyway, I thought this was a great answer in Gamasutra's Q&A with Mechner:
What are the differences between writing for a video game and writing for a film? How closely does the movie storyline correspond to the games?He goes on to dodge a question about future games. I hope that's a sign he's going to be back doing a game soon.
If you summarize the movie in one sentence, it sounds identical to the first Sands of Time videogame, but scene by scene it's actually completely different. It has to be, because games and film are such different mediums.
On the surface they're deceptively similar -- you can watch five minutes of an action-adventure videogame and think "this could be a movie," or vice-versa -- but structurally the requirements are totally different.
Here's one example: The game kicks off with a cataclysm that basically destroys the world and turns all living creatures except for the three main characters into raging, murderous sand monsters. That was a great setup for the gameplay we had, which was "acrobatic Persian survival horror."
But if you put that setup in a film, it would be a "B" movie, and that's not the kind of movie Prince of Persia should be. Our model is classic epic, swashbuckling action-adventure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Zorro, and Thief of Baghdad, with humor and romance and full of memorable characters. You can't get there if you turn everybody into sand monsters on page fifteen.
--jvm at 11:34
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[ 3 ]
30 November 2007
ESRB Rating Distributions
I have a piece up today at Gamasutra about ESRB rating distributions. Turns out each console manufacturer has a reasonably distinct distribution of ESRB ratings on their platforms. There are some changes over time -- the Wii has fewer M-rated games than the GameCube -- but it is there.
Here are the Nintendo platforms, for example:
The one platform that was less successful also had a different distribution of games. Obviously, that's not causality, but it is amusing.
This piece came out of my playing with the new "filter by ESRB rating" option on the front page of GameStop's online store. I would never use it while shopping for myself, but it does give parents a very visible tool to filter out games they may want to avoid.
Here are the Nintendo platforms, for example:
The one platform that was less successful also had a different distribution of games. Obviously, that's not causality, but it is amusing.
This piece came out of my playing with the new "filter by ESRB rating" option on the front page of GameStop's online store. I would never use it while shopping for myself, but it does give parents a very visible tool to filter out games they may want to avoid.
--jvm at 10:02
Comment
[ 0 ]
16 October 2007
Interview with ESRB's Vance
I recently had an opportunity to interview Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB. Originally, I wanted to anonymously interview one of their raters, but after some consideration they declined that option. They did offer to pass similar questions on to Ms. Vance, so I reworked my stuff and they answered.
I was pleased with the result, and I think it achieves a bit of what I'd pitched to the ESRB to start with: transparency. We still don't know who the raters are, but we at least know more about the process. I think that's potentially an important step toward addressing any flaws in the system.
A few tidbits for the lazy: They have six full-time raters, five are new this year, and they can rate 150 games in the busiest month before the holidays. They are all from New York and vary in gender, background, and experience with children. Cartoon violence can be tricky to rate, as well as religion and sexuality. Raters do not get to pick the games they rate, but the system appears to be one of random assignments.
I was pleased with the result, and I think it achieves a bit of what I'd pitched to the ESRB to start with: transparency. We still don't know who the raters are, but we at least know more about the process. I think that's potentially an important step toward addressing any flaws in the system.
A few tidbits for the lazy: They have six full-time raters, five are new this year, and they can rate 150 games in the busiest month before the holidays. They are all from New York and vary in gender, background, and experience with children. Cartoon violence can be tricky to rate, as well as religion and sexuality. Raters do not get to pick the games they rate, but the system appears to be one of random assignments.
--jvm at 13:05
Comment
[ 2 ]
27 September 2007
(My own) Gamasutra Piece on Exploration Games
My second all-encompassing article on game design, this time focusing on "open world" games where the player sets his own pace, went up at Gamasutra yesterday.
Once again, this isn't a "top 20" list, and once again, it is very long. The games on it are chosen, not because they're tops in their category, but for what I can illustrate by presenting them. This means there are purposely some outlier cases, and games that are not traditionally considered to be exploratory, since these games push at the edges of what the word "exploration" means.
In any case, it's up. Enjoy, if your curmudgeonly hearts haven't yet twisted and shrunk down to dense black rocks incapable of happiness.
Once again, this isn't a "top 20" list, and once again, it is very long. The games on it are chosen, not because they're tops in their category, but for what I can illustrate by presenting them. This means there are purposely some outlier cases, and games that are not traditionally considered to be exploratory, since these games push at the edges of what the word "exploration" means.
In any case, it's up. Enjoy, if your curmudgeonly hearts haven't yet twisted and shrunk down to dense black rocks incapable of happiness.
Labels: exploration, Gamasutra, list
--JohnH at 11:41
Comment
[ 1 ]
27 August 2007
JohnH on difficult games, jvm on NPD
JohnH had a rather lengthy article on Gamasutra this past week called Game Design Essentials: 20 Difficult Games. Since he wouldn't post about it, I figured I would. Apparently it was a hit on Digg and melted Gamasutra's servers at some point.
Also, my July 2007 NPD analysis for Gamasutra went up this morning. I ended up taking the weekend to get things right instead of hacking something together on Thursday night to have ready for Friday morning. My gut tells me that ended up being worth it.
Now I'm going to do what I missed out on this past weekend: playing a videogame.
Also, my July 2007 NPD analysis for Gamasutra went up this morning. I ended up taking the weekend to get things right instead of hacking something together on Thursday night to have ready for Friday morning. My gut tells me that ended up being worth it.
Now I'm going to do what I missed out on this past weekend: playing a videogame.
--jvm at 21:21
Comment
[ 2 ]
24 July 2007
NPD fun while on vacation
Over the grumbling of family, I stopped my vacation for a few hours and worked on the NPD data released yesterday. The results are up at Gamasutra today. I hope I'll have more time in future months -- there were some things I didn't get to do this time around.
As usual, comments are welcome.
As usual, comments are welcome.
--jvm at 12:36
Comment
[ 8 ]
05 January 2007
I'm sorry, I wasn't having fun?
Gamasutra is running a story called - Researchers: Deeper Emotions Keep Gamers Playing. The study from U of Rochester apparently is picking a fight with fun.
The research found that games can provide opportunities for achievement, freedom, and even a connection to other players. Those benefits trumped a shallow sense of fun, which doesn't keep players as interested.
Obviously I need to read the original, but what is "fun" again? If I change the first line to "games that provide shallow senses of achievement, freedom, and even a shallow connection to other gamers cannot trump a deep sense of fun," can we be fun-lovers again?
It would seem we're simply calling a rose (and a weed) by other names.
But to be a bit more productive, I suppose Tetris is the archetypal "fun" game. It's not particularly freedom-imbibing, and rarely, Matt and my adventures in "cooperative" Tetris aside, gives much of a connection to other gamers, yet seems to remain quite popular and "fun," even perhaps "shallowly fun," to play.
There's a girl at the local coffee shop who comes in several times a week for hours at a time. I figured she was an author. Finally, after some careful surveillance, it appears she's simply playing Solitaire on her laptop 95% of the time. Bizarre. And I was wasting $15 a month on WoW.
Take that, University of Ra-cha-cha. Wait until she finds out fun is not enough to keep her interested.
The research found that games can provide opportunities for achievement, freedom, and even a connection to other players. Those benefits trumped a shallow sense of fun, which doesn't keep players as interested.
Obviously I need to read the original, but what is "fun" again? If I change the first line to "games that provide shallow senses of achievement, freedom, and even a shallow connection to other gamers cannot trump a deep sense of fun," can we be fun-lovers again?
It would seem we're simply calling a rose (and a weed) by other names.
But to be a bit more productive, I suppose Tetris is the archetypal "fun" game. It's not particularly freedom-imbibing, and rarely, Matt and my adventures in "cooperative" Tetris aside, gives much of a connection to other gamers, yet seems to remain quite popular and "fun," even perhaps "shallowly fun," to play.
There's a girl at the local coffee shop who comes in several times a week for hours at a time. I figured she was an author. Finally, after some careful surveillance, it appears she's simply playing Solitaire on her laptop 95% of the time. Bizarre. And I was wasting $15 a month on WoW.
Take that, University of Ra-cha-cha. Wait until she finds out fun is not enough to keep her interested.
--ruffin at 09:03
Comment
[ 1 ]
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