So here, for the record, is something I’ve avoided doing in the past–my own Game Manifesto.

The more rigidly we declare what games are not, the more culturally irrelevant we threaten to make them.

That’s it. Everything else I do involving game is a semiotic exploration based on that underlying principle. I believe we would be far better served exploring how people interact with games than running around saying they aren’t art, or aren’t stories, or can’t end, or must have challenge/reward loops, or must be indie, or must make a statement, or blah Blah Blah. We, as an industry, don’t have an ounce of understanding about how the games we produce impact our audience emotionally and only a small idea of how they impact them intellectually. And most of the things we think we know we’ve borrowed from Hollywood, only to discover that once we apply them to a game–we don’t really know them after all because they don’t seem to work.

So let’s stop this masturbatory process of dictating what games are and, most importantly, what they aren’t and start exploring what people do with them. That’s the important part of the equation and so far–we seem to be missing it.

“This is a videogame, those are real peoples’ lives, we are not trying to make a statement with that.” #devquote #missingthepoint #semionautvia Twitter

Make eye contact with everyone. If they look back at you, smile. If they smile back say, “Hi.” If they say hi back, ask them how their conference [day/week/month/year] is going. The next thing you know, you’re in a conversation with an industry [interesting/insightful/intelligent/angry/crazy] pro [artist/geek/homeless person/middle-aged woman with a golden retriever *].

The trick, of course, is finding value in talking to people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives. If you’re not genuinely interested, the above advice won’t do you a lot of good.

* Crazy Middle-Aged Woman with a Gold Retriever appears to be a Portland archetype. I’ve met at least three in as many months.

If you don’t use Google Reader or another RSS reader (my shared items do have a feed), then feel free to stop by and check out the semionautical items I’ve brought back from my travels around the datasphere.

And that page is just the tip of the Field Notes iceberg. There are so many interesting people and ideas out there that deserve discussing and I want to ensure this blog reflects that. So stay tuned for new Field Notes features as I unveil them!

Quick Dev Poll: Are the extras a full-blown IDE provide worth the learning curve of moving beyond a robust text editor? #semionautvia Twitter

“All you need to enter is a normal web browser” Did EA nail the future of online games with the HTML5-driven LordofUltima.com? #semionautvia Twitter

The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.
Bill Watterson *

* From an interview at Cleveland.com

This means I got very little sleep between 5am Friday morning when I got up until around 8pm on Sunday after I got home and spent a little time cuddling with my partner, Rachel, and our poodle. In fact, I tracked it, and I only got 6 hours in fitful 1-to-2 hour chunks.

Needless to say, I’m a bit knackered today.

But my brain is buzzing with ideas for a local game jam later this year that addresses some of the structural, social, and, quite frankly, ethical concerns I have about putting 20+ people into a room together with the task of self organizing into teams and produce a video game in 48 hours straight.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing and educational experience for everyone involved. I am super glad I was part of it and so were the vast majority of the participants. I’m even planning on coordinating the local site next year as well. I just feel that the structure is conducive to an unhealthy and counter-productive approach to making quality games.

So although I should be asleep right now, I’m busy planning a local Jam event for later this year. An event that will incorporate multiple creative disciplines, focus on quality of life, provide more opportunities to build local community, and perhaps most importantly–take the shape of a massive game the participants are playing with multiple goals, rewards, and strong focus on engagement at every level of planning.

Emails have been written to people and organizations that will play a strong role in this process and my brain is still frantically putting ideas together, looking for weaknesses in the event design (both the one I just went through and the proposal I’m working on) and figuring out how to counter them.

I’m sure I’ll be sharing more details with you about the process as they happen. In the mean time–did you participate in the GGJ? What would you like to see changed, if anything, to make the experience better?

Also, if you’re reading this and have a game in this year’s GGJ, please post a link, so the rest of the Semionauts know which games they should be downloading and playing first!

* You should certainly browse through the database of submitted games, there are some real gems in there.

In fact, Diego followed up my previous posts on DMs with a post of his own. He quotes me extensively, which is very flattering, but concludes with a notable quote of his own on Half Life 2’s in game conversations.

I see more clearly why Valve’s philosophy struck a chord with so many people: They refuse to treat the player like a puppet.
Diego Doumecq

Now, Deigo still refers to these scenes as developer moments, but I’m not sure that they entirely qualify. After all, the player is typically afforded all the same verbs they would normally have access to.

Excepting, of course, shooting the people talking to you. Or opening up a door and leaving.

But wait! You can’t shoot friendlies while in full gameplay mode either. And there are plenty of doors that can’t/don’t open unless you complete some related task.

So the question really is–does the automatic lowering of your weapon when pointing at a friendly constitute a developer moment, or is one of the core verbs of Half Life 2, “don’t shoot your friends, m’kay?”

I’ve chosen the open source, cross-platform PC game Cube 2: Sauerbraten for the evening. You can download it for Windows, OS X, and Linux here.

Cube 2 is a first person shooter with a pretty unique feature–in-game, cooperative level editing. My thought was that rather than run around shooting each other all evening, we could start with an open map and work (play) together–all at once or in small groups–to build up the map into something fun.

I plan on having a world-editing cheat sheet available by the event and I’ll update this post once it’s done. In the meantime, you should download it and try some editing for yourself. It’s pretty amazing to mold your environment with goddess-like powers.

We’ll be chatting via Skype during the event, so feel free to search for me and add me before Wednesday and we’ll add you to the conference call.

1/27 UPDATE

You’ll need to browse for our server, which will be called (cleverly enough) VGHVI. If need be, we’ll recruit people to start more servers, which will be named VGHVI1, VGHVI2, etc. We’ll explain editing once you get connected. It’s really not that difficult. Hope to see you there!

I enjoyed the kill verbs in both Assassin’s Creed games. Particularly rooftop kills. In the first I’d bound happily from building to building, pouncing on unsuspecting guards. In the second, I delight in sneaking up on them and throwing them to the ground below.

But as I did so, I couldn’t help but feel I was acting out of character. And while I appreciated that the game gave me the freedom to do this, I found myself wishing there were in game consequences that reinforced the overall narrative tone (particularly in the second game where Ezio will occaisionally question his assassination of the primary targets).

Guards, after all, are not a renewable resource. Their deaths would be sure to be noticed. Their families would be sure to be angry. In the first game, it would certainly increase the numbers of beggars on the street. In the second, the Templars would have turned public opinion against you until even your friends found you to be a political liability and be reluctant to associate with you.

And yet… bound, bound, bound, bound, pounce, aaaaaaugh!

It strikes me as one of the many ways in which Ubisoft Montreal didn’t go far enough in their attempts to provide a compelling narrative experience via gameplay. Good storytelling requires consequences for actions and the structure of the Assassin’s Creed gameplay and storyworld seems ideally suited to a more comprehensive approach.

Almost there, but not quite.

I first mentioned an idea for game where you fed bits of color to small cubes five years ago. I’ve even mentioned working on it from time to time and while that work hasn’t resulted in the actualization of any code, it’s certainly refined the design.

As some point over the last year I met Charles Berube at a PAGDIG meeting. At the time he identified himself as a web developer who was looking to move into games. He launched The Wasabi Project with the goal of releasing a Flash game a week. I found one of those games in particular, QuestLine, to be very interesting and hold it up to anything produced by Gregory Weir. Charles and I met outside a PAGDIG meeting last fall to talk about QuestLine and I’ve been paying more and more attention to his career as he explores how (and if) an individual Flash game developer can make money producing Flash games of his own design.

Today, Charles and I are announcing a collaboration between The Wasabi Project and Zakelro Story Studio. The project, if you hadn’t guessed, is Addicube, a virtual-pet sim that challenges you to maintain balanced diets for an ever increasing family of tiny cubes in a petri dish. If their diets become to unbalanced, they begin to act out emotionally and as you progress you’ll unlock tools that help you keep control over their intake.

We’re launching this project on Kickstarter, which means we need you to help us fund Addicube or it’s not going to happen. We have 90 days to reach our target and we’re offering some fun rewards, so please click the following link now and…

Back Addicube.

As we raise money, I’ll be posting updates about the design, our our preproduction phase and business/legal hurdles. I’ll also be posting update to show off the rewards we’re offering. And when we hit the goal, we’ll begin in earnest–sharing every detail of the project and how we’re going about it.

Any time the player’s available verbs are restricted beyond what can be attributed to a clear narrative device.

Let’s talk about some classifications of developer moments. I’m going to try and keep my player-centrist attitudes to a minimum, but forgive me if I slip. At the very least, I’ll try not to rant.

And keep in mind that these classifications actually apply to video games and traditional table-top RPGs. Technically they apply to board and card games as well, but I don’t know many board game designers with their heads stuck so far up their… oops, I promised not to rant.

I’ll start with three basic classifications, Exposition, Foreshadowing, and Puppeteering. Please feel free to suggest refinements and new classifications.

Exposition: These DMs give the player insight into the world. They establish history, set up scenes, and show character moments that can’t be easily revealed through gameplay. Beyond Good & Evil made great use of Exposition DMs. When people defend cut scenes, they most often reference this classification of DMs. They are also the easiest to get right and probably the hardest to implement as actual gameplay.

Foreshadowing: These DMs are the other half of the narrative coin. Instead of showing what is, or what has been, they harbinger what is to come. Yesterday I referenced Tombraider’s camera swoops that show you where you need to go in a level. That’s a use of Foreshadowing DMs. In Castle Crashers there’s a level where you can’t advance until you’ve watched an animal shit itself to death in fear of something. Since you can normally advance after dispatching all the enemies on a screen, I consider that a Foreshadowing DM as well.

I believe that Nintendo’s controversial, and patented, Hint System is an attempt to turn Foreshadowing DMs into foreshadowing gameplay. I’ll let you imagine how I feel about that (hint: I get a wicked gleam in my eye).

Puppeteering: These DMs involve ensuring the player behaves in a manner consistent with the developers’ expectations. Puppeteering DMs typically involve showing the player’s character performing actions that could normally be performed by the player. For example: moving the player’s avatar to a specific point in a room to keep them from colliding with an incoming boss, which happened Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain, or switching to a cut scene to show them walking them through a door they’ve just opened, as happened in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Puppeteering DMs may also depict actions that are consistent with the core verbs available in gameplay, but require special-case implementation. In Matrix: Path of Neo, Neo is depicted jumping off a sky scraper in a cut scene immediately after (or was it before?) a level where falling off some scaffolding resulted in Neo’s immediate death.

And, because I promised to avoid angry rants, I’ll set my opinions about Puppeteering DMs aside for now and turn the conversation over to you.

Did I miss something? Am I chasing white rabbits? Did I not go far enough? Have at me!

Cut scene seems to be an emotionally charged term that polarizes the conversation. And it’s really too broad a term to have much meaning these days. Is a pre-rendered movie used as an introduction a cut scene? Is a pre-rendered movie used as a denouement a cut scene? Is an in-engine camera swoop through a level a cut scene? Although technically those answers are probably No we tend to lump any moment where the player doesn’t have some measure of control under the heading cut scene.

So what do we do when a topic becomes so divisive that we find ourselves arguing different arguments whenever it comes up? We re-frame the conversation by introducing a brand new term that doesn’t have the emotional bagged!

I’m going to start using the term Developer Moments (the acronym DM is not accidental). But I’m actually going to take the idea a bit further than just cut scenes and propose the following:

Developer Moment: Any time the player’s available verbs are restricted beyond what can be attributed to a clear narrative device.

The inability to throw knives at a fleeing Templar in an Assassin’s Creed 2 tomb is a Developer Moment. Ezio was not shown to have lost his knives. His attempts aren’t hampered by the environment, and all his throws just simply go wild–the player is simply not given the option of equipping the knives.

In contrast, when Samus loses her equipment after the tutorial level in Metroid Prime, this is not what I’m calling a Developer Moment.

Batman’s long, slow walk down the corridor with the Joker at the beginning of Arkham Asylum is a Developer Moment as the player is not allowed to make Batman run, jump, blind, punch, or even crouch (if I recall correctly).

Being locked in room with Barney at the beginning of Half Life 2 is not a developer moment as the player is free to use Gordan’s entire available skill set during the scene.

Likewise, some of the extended conversations in Fable 2 aren’t Developer Moments as you’re allowed to wander away from the speaker who will sometimes call you back and will always stop talking, only to resume the conversation from the top of the last bit of dialog when you return.

The Tombraider habit of showing you the path to take through the next room with a camera sweep is a Developer Moment.

As you can see, many Developer Moments serve a very beneficial purpose. Some, on the other hand, simply seem unnecessarily restrictive. Tomorrow we’ll talk about classifying Developer Moments by what they’re trying to achieve, but today I’d like to know whether you think this is a useful approach to talking about the shared control of a video games’ narrative path.

And then, when the time came to get that promotion what if you were thanked for all your efforts and told that without your hard work, management wouldn’t have been able to give that promotion to this other person who hasn’t done the work, but looks a lot like you and is clearly more qualified because they can accomplish tasks you are not even allowed to try.

There are games that use cut scenes to do exactly this.

This is a terrible design choice, as far as I’m concerned. There is no reason to solve game design issues using interstitials. Period. If you’re not providing your wow moments through gameplay, your design is flawed and the project needs to be reworked from the ground up to let the player take part in creating the moments you’re looking to provide.

Thoughts?

English is a liar’s language. Oh dear, please don’t quote me on that.
Suzette Haden Elgin *

Her point being that English is one of the few (maybe even only?) languages where it’s semantically correct to leave the subject out of a sentence.

For example, if a mother asks her child, “Did you take out the trash?” it’s possible in English for the child to implicitly take credit for it–even if someone else has done so–by replying, “The trash was taken out!” In Spanish the rules of grammar insist that you append a subject, such as, “by dad,” to a sentence with that structure.

*At a 1996 Minicon panel on creating alien languages.

But people will object to this assertion, often citing Emily Dickinson who seemed to have written predominately only for herself. *

So why did she write her poems down then? Why not simply entertain them as day dreams and let them go?

Because she wanted to record them. She wanted them fixed in time, marking a specific emotion or thought.

And as anyone who has ever gone back over their journal or blog and thought, “Oh, you idiot, **” can attest–you’re not the same person you were two years, a year ago, or even a month ago. You’ve grown as a person, your perspective has changed. You’re no longer that same author. You’re now the audience.

* Completely ignoring that she contacted a publisher about her poetry and shared select poems in correspondence with friends.

** Every once in a while I think, “Oh, I wrote that?!” instead.

I have two words for this approach–Ha and Rumph.

The HoneyComb Engine handbook uses terminology that serves as a reminder that role playing games are not competitive, but cooperative.

the Skein Drawing upon a rich history of craft-based storytelling metaphor, a group of participatory storytellers (role players) is called a Skein. Like the Norns of Norse mythology and the Moirae of Greek mythology, the Skein works together to determine the destiny of their characters and storyworlds, cooperatively spinning yarns, weaving stories, and untangling plots. To put it another way, the Skein is comprised of many individual threads wound together into something with nearly unlimited potential.

the Spinners Players correlate to the HCE role of Spinners. This title emphasizes their individual control of their characters, including their strengths and weaknesses, goals and fears, dreams and actions. The Spinners collectively produce the individual threads that make up the storyplay. Spinners ought to be free to spin minor plot threads, as well as the thread of secondary and tertiary characters–influencing the over-arcing story and permanently altering the storyworld.

the Weaver The position of game master correlates to the role filled by the Weaver. This is an important position, as it is the Weaver’s role to combine all the threads created by the Spinners and work them into an elaborate and compelling tapestry. The Weaver is also a Spinner and spins the warp—the major plot threads—as well as the threads of numerous secondary and tertiary characters.

This approach inverts the normal top-down structure of the RPG group. The Weaver may still generate the plot threads, but their role is to work with the Spinners to create the final tapestry of the story experience, not merely guide them through a pre-determined pattern.