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I have a problem whenever I review things.  There is an inner monologue that I seem to maintain that repeats the phrase “Who am I to say this?” over and over again driving me into a guilt spiral if I’ve been asked to review something that I deem to be not-very-good.

As far as I am concerned, the best critics have a deeper understanding of whatever it is they are critiquing.  As my field at the moment is predominantly games, I have a wide range of peers to look to for inspiration or despair.   As an example of a good critic, Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation is someone I appreciate not because of his oft hilarious turn of phrase but because I always feel he has a grounding of knowing what he’s talking about.  He can be pedantically critical, but that’s the best way to help a medium improve and it is always very clear just how much he loves the games he reviews.  Most importantly for me, his understanding has come from his contribution to the Indie games field and he has self published several titles and following his blog will reveal that he often works on several more that never see the light of day due to a mix of inertia, lack of time, or a realisation that the idea was better on paper.

Other reviewers also tend to read better in my opinion when they have game design experience.  The Rock Paper Shotgun reviews are always solid because they are also written by people who not only have a passion for games, but also have some experience with designing games or mods.  Likewise the Bit-Tech reviews (and yes I am a little biased here) are generally good because the guys that write them have dabbled in game design as well.  In this day and age, if you are interested enough in games to write about them, it would be crazy if you hadn’t dabbled in a little hobby-coding at some point, even if it’s playing around with a level editor or something.

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The guys behind my favourite web show, Extra Credits, have recently done a two part episode on the issue of game addiction, the second part of which is a wildly different format to their usual set up due to the fact that it’s a subject that’s close to home for show writer James Portnow, and consisted of a very heartfelt retelling of his own personal experiences with game addiction/compulsion.

They make the point that games aren’t addictive in the medical sense as they don’t create a chemical dependency, but that they can be remarkably compelling and grown adults can turn away from real life to sink themselves into a virtual one.

They also make the very valid point that if you have fallen into this sort of lifestyle, you are not alone.

I know there are a couple of people who read this blog who politely (and often quite rightly) complain whenever I write something a little bit more personal than usual, so for you guys, this post might be one to skip.

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Any careful development or thoughtful planning on the part of anyone making games can be undone in one fell swoop from every game’s worst possible enemy.  Their nemesis.  Their one stumbling block on the way to greatness.

The player.

Any player has a unique ability to completely and utterly destroy any game.  There are several ways they can do this with some of the most popular methods being to play another game along the lines of making sure everyone else isn’t having fun, but the one that can scupper just about anything, online or offline, is where the player is given free reign to exercise their creativity.

Playing Space Marine at the preview event I went along to the other day (and look, here is my write up over at Bit-Tech), I started thinking about how the developers must dread players when we started playing the multiplayer part of the game.  Space Marine comes with the option to customize your power armoured super soldier down to the colours of individual parts of armour.  The intention here is that you can create unique designs or anything you might have painted if you happen to have been a fan of the miniatures.  The reality in most cases is however wildly different.

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by ·Comments Off on Space Marine: How to treat your source material

It’s inevitable that in this modern era, a lot of media that gets green lit and produced is going to be based on a franchise.  This is for the simple reason that the sheer amount of time effort and money that goes into these projects is enough to make you sink into a little inadequacy filled puddle of awe and they have to stand a decent chance of making a profit or at the very least not cause a loss.  If your project is based on a pre existing franchise with a pre existing fan base, then some of your work is done for you.  You don’t have to market the thing quite so aggressively, you’ve got people providing the hype for you, and you’ve got a large group of people who will pay you for your work regardless of the eventual quality.

It can be heartbreaking to see something handled badly.  There is a lot of resentment towards fan-loved properties that are somehow distorted beyond recognition by a translation to a different medium.  Sometimes it even comes from the original creators and you suddenly realise that you attached more significance and meaning to something that was somewhat a fluke.  Although it happens a lot with sequels and reboots, it’s even more common when something goes from one form to another, for example a line of toys to a line of blockbuster action films that seem to be focused on borderline racist one liners and extended screen time for American military types.

Every now and then though, somebody gets it right.  Somebody manages to take something that is complicated, dense, rich and sometimes awkward, and usher it into a new form.  The world of franchise translators and rebooters and sequelisers should take notes from Relic Entertainment for their work on the upcoming video game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.

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After playing through Stanley Parable which I mentioned yesterday and having a bit more of a think about Swordquest, I started to reflect on what a game can be.

The more I learn about computer games (and indeed board games) as a medium, the harder it is to accurately define what a game actually is.  Even the notion that a game requires a specific win condition is starting to get increasingly hazy.

Many games now no longer resemble anything remotely game like and are often more accurately described as digital interactive experiences that in many respects are introspective explorations of the self rather than anything else.  In a similar way that comics in larger and longer formats tend to be called graphic novels, I can see that video games in some cases are going to lose the game part of their description in the future.

I foresee that playing a game pretty soon will often feel less and less like an actual game.  We already see this in the sense that high scores haven’t been a core aspect of games for a very long time.  Many games of course still have them, but many more don’t and even when they are present, they are rarely a driving force for playing, mainly being included because it just feels like they should be there.  Outside of online multiplayer, games are now story driven as opposed to skill driven.

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