by ·Comments Off on What a Game Can Be

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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by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: The Stanley Parable

Making a habit of coming in late to any party, last week I was clued into The Stanley Parable, a fan made mod for Half Life 2.

Playing this has the potential to redefine what you think of as a game, and its very existence as an entry to the medium makes actual definition of what a game is increasingly difficult.  It’s an exploration into the nature of free will, of fate, of futility, and of the way we are conditioned to respond in certain situations.  At least, that’s what I got out of it.  It’s also grimly rather funny.

There were also moments where I identified that the narrator was starting to sound a lot like I do after GMing for Dungeons and Dragons with a particularly inventive group of players.

The mod can be obtained here.  It is possible to play on Mac and PC through Steam and you require the Source SDK Base 2007 (If you have Half Life 2, you’ll have this).  Further instructions can be found on its download page.

In their words, the game is best if you don’t know anything about it before you play it, so actually, sorry for telling you something about it, but my original post of just a link and a name didn’t seem like enough.

by ·Comments Off on Steam and Digital Distribution

Last week in talking about constant internet connection requirements, I mentioned Steam, a digital distribution service from Valve, one of the most respected, beloved and successful studios.

Steam is a service where you can buy digital copies of games and manage them under a single utility. You can download your purchases to any other machine you own with Steam installed, it will update and patch your games automatically, it will resolve several troubleshooting issues for you, and you can even maintain a friends list making it very easy to jump into multiplayer games with people you know.

The service also requires an internet connection to function properly, and is a form of digital rights management and not only restricts but prohibits the resale of games that you’ve purchased.

I initially was never a fan of Steam because I didn’t like my games all being tied into a single service and didn’t like being held hostage to an intermittent internet connection, but more recently I have come to accept the service. It gets my seal of approval just because it provides enough extra value to justify what it takes away from me. It did this by offering me older titles that I can no longer get working on my modern machine fully patched and running fine, by offering me newer titles for prices that are less than a pint and by introducing me to the world of crashing other friend’s multiplayer games and all of us as a result grabbing impromptu unplanned entertainment.

However, Steam is not without its drawbacks and in my view can only operate in a vacuum. There are several other companies that are trying to do the same thing and this could make for an awkward gaming landscape in the years to come.

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by ·Comments Off on Swordquest

Games can and should entertain.  They can be frivolous or deep.  They can be artistic or irreverent.   They can be funny or they can be grim dark and serious.  Sometimes, a game can inspire.  Swordquest is one of those inspirational games.

First of all, a quick confession.  I have never played the Swordquest series, but being inspired by this series isn’t quite as simple as just the games themselves, but their whole construction, what approach they took and the wider context of their release.

Swordquest was a series released for the Atari 2600 in the early 80s when video gaming was still finding its feet and developers were still experimenting with what they could do.  Just about everything that came out for the Atari were highly abstract due to the limited technical prowess of the console and when looked at today appear almost like impressionist art.  In fact, a lot of indie developers today are enraptured by the impact of pixel art that stems from playing games on machines like the Atari.  The Swordquest series is no exception to these trends on the machine but represents something greater and shows a potential for games that has yet to be realised again.

Swordquest was a competition.  It was a game where players would ultimately be fighting against each other to win real world treasures made of actual precious metals and gems and the fighting would take the form of a series of punishing puzzles and lateral thinking exercises.  This is nothing short of exceptional.

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by ·Comments Off on The Death of the Arcade

The gaming press often rolls out the odd nostalgic piece about arcades and how they were the prototype for gaming as a social activity and introduced hundreds and thousands of people to the hobby.  I often read these with a certain amount of awe as the gaming landscape they describe might as well be from Mars for all the sense it makes to me as I’ve never had an arcade experience in this way.

An arcade is a large, normally noisy, room full of game cabinets that eat your money in exchange for a goes on any particular game.  In my experience spanning the 90s to today, the games situated within tend to be punishingly difficult side scrolling beat-em-ups or shoot-em-ups, fighting games along the lines of Street Fighter, racing games often complete with a steering wheel, pedals and gear stick, or shooting games with their own gun peripherals.  In the early days of video gaming and technically before my time, things like Pac man or Donkey Kong started off in cabinet sized machines and the arcade was in actual fact where you had to go to do your gaming before the advent of home consoles.  Until relatively recently, the actual computing power of an arcade machine was vastly superior to anything you were likely to have at home.  The early console versions of arcade games in the 80s were often mere shadows of their technically superior cabinet dwelling cousins.

I recently watched something by the highly articulate and ever insightful Bob Chipman about the death of the arcade and unusually, nothing really resonated in the episode for me because I have no fond memories of arcades.  This is partly because I suspect they were never quite such a massive thing in the UK, partly because I’ve lived in a very rural area for most of my life, and partly because whenever I was confronted with an arcade machine, they tended to be far too expensive.  I vaguely remember being confronted with the occasional arcade machine in pubs when I was growing up and being fascinated by the flashing lights and how exciting they looked, but even at a young age being knocked back by how much money you had to continually feed into the things.

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