The Games That Define This Generation

I recently watched a video on IGN where four of the site's editors discussed the question: What game most defines this generation of platforms?  Of course, there's no easy answer.  Would it be Modern Warfare, the game that sold millions of units and is probably at least partly responsible for the recent burst in shooters, or would it be another one of the increasingly huge blockbuster games to have graced this console cycle?  One could make a good argument for World of Warcraft, the MMO juggernaut that continues to deliver massive expansions and boasts over 10 million users.  Maybe it should be Wii Sports, the game that launched the motion control craze that even Sony and Microsoft have hoped on board with now.  Could it be Minecraft, the indie hit that embodies player control and creativity?  What about Angry Birds, the casual game that defines casual games in an era where the sales numbers for casual games are far surpassing those of games released on consoles and PCs and are reaching a far wider audience?  The games in the Angry Birds Series alone have seen over 1 billion downloads worldwide.  Personally, I think the field has become far to vast to pick any one game.

Scary Games

I know its a little late for Halloween but I wanted to recommend this free horror game called Slender: The Eight Pages.  It's a short but creepy game based off of the big-foot like mythos of an internet meme named Slender Man.

An alleged photo of Slender Man 

I don't want to ruin the game for anyone who might play it so instead I want to ask if anyone agrees with me when I say that video games are way scarier than movies.  Honestly, I haven't seen a horror movie that has scared me in a long time, but there's something about a horror game that makes them scarier.  I think this is because in a movie the characters on screen are the ones being threatened.  However, when you play a video game the avatar is suppose to represent you, so any threat feels more like a direct threat to yourself.  You're the one slowly edging forward, shining your flashlight in all the dark corners.  You're the one constantly turning around to see if you're being followed.  You're the one walking down the hallway, putting bullets in the heads of all the corpses just to make sure they don't stand up and attack you as soon as you turn your back.  In my personal opinion, scares are just another good example of video games' powerful ability to elicit an emotional response.

The Next Generation of Gaming

It is amazing how far the visuals in video games have come over the past 50 or so years.

1961 - Spacewar!

2012 - Halo 4

So, here's a look at the game engines that some of the games of the next generation will be using.

Though technically run on the Playstation 3, the tech demo Kara is developer Quantic Dream's (Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls) attempt to show how modern game engines allow them to create much more expressive characters.  Quantic Dream's games are largely plot centered games, almost like interactive movies.  They need to reproduce realistic facial expressions in order to strengthen the emotional appeal of their characters.  Kara is an intriguing short story about an android (a robot built to resemble a human) that gains sentience.

On the more tech heavy side, Epic Games has shown of their Unreal Engine 4 in the Elemental Cinematic tech demo.  For this engine Epic Games concentrated on something that remains particularly difficult to achieve, particle effects.  In particular, things like snow, rain, fire, and smoke can be particularly hard to produce because in the real world they all involve lots of extremely small pieces.  As a result, in most games none of these effects actually physically react with their surroundings.  Epic Games however, has managed to reproduce the real world behavior of light in their engine.

The final tech demo is Agni's Philosophy.  This is a real time tech demo shown by Square Enix to demonstrate the technology they will be using in their Final Fantasy games, games famous for their long cinematic.  One of the focuses of Square Enix was to get the characters' hair to look realistic, another issue that is particularly challenging for video games due to the numerous, individually moving pieces.

The incredible detail in these demos makes me wonder, how long until we cross the uncanny valley?

And You Thought 'Passage' Was Depressing

Every Day The Same Dream is an "art game" created by Molleindustria, an independent game developer that creates short, satirical games.  Molleindustria is also responsible for the hilarious McDonald's Video Game that Sheila briefly showed in class.

Depressing

I call it an "art game" because the only challenge comes from trying to figure out what to do next and the only real purpose of the game is to be symbolic.  The player controls a character who can only move left or right and interact with a few objects in a world that is almost entirely grey.  The player does things such as slowly creeping towards work in a traffic jam full of identical cars, sitting in a cubicle in a row of identical cubicles with identical people sitting in them, getting fired, following a hobo to a graveyard, and jumping off of the office building.  If the player performs certain actions they will eventually trigger an ending sequence in which the player wanders through a world devoid of people.  The game is meant to symbolize alienation and the repetitive dullness of the everyday world.

More Depressing

"Art games" like Every Day The Same Dream and Passage are quite unique, focusing more on the message they are delivering than the actual gameplay.  Do you find this unique niche of gaming interesting or does taking much of the 'game' out of a video game render it pointless and uninteresting?

Most Depressing

Gaming outside your comfort zone, redux [Bonus: Games that defined retro consoles, and hidden gems]

Nobody wants to read Great Expectations, but in high school we were forced to. Nobody wants to read Shakespeare, but in the interest of having more cultural knowledge, all (or most) of us have.

Reading, watching, or gaming outside your comfort zone is a way both to discover more about yourself as a person and your own interests, and also about what is widely regarded as "good." Blade Runner isn't everyone's cup of tea, but anyone with an interest in film should see it. I'd rather drop fifty pounds on my crotch than read Pride and Prejudice again, but I have (and you probably have had to read something from that time period, too.)

Now, video games have been around for long enough that there are games considered to be classics, and there are games that are credited for inventing, reinventing, or epitomizing a genre. Hundreds of games come out yearly and with dozens of available outlets, game reviews can be accessed with unbelievable ease.

"Gaming outside your comfort zone, redux" is my schpiel on why you should play games you don't think you'll like. Limbo is an awkward, dark, linear platformer/puzzler with a specific aesthetic that won't appeal to most. Grabbed it for fun during a Steam sale and didn't regret it one bit. Like Mass Effect? Try a more action-oriented role-playing game, like Fable or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Like the Grand Theft Auto games? Try another open-world game in a different setting: more serious, higher-fantasy games like Fallout  and the Elder Scrolls games come to mind.

I'd never thought I'd like StarCraft as until I bought it I only had a passing interest in games like Civilization . I barely even liked Tower Defense-style games. But as it turned out, the micromanaging I was so fond of in RPGs translated into unit control and attack timings.

Like Halo? Try Borderlands for something a little less linear. Like turn-based role playing games? Try something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Star Ocean games for a slightly different take. Play Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and shoot bees at people.

Play WarCraft and see what all the hype was about. Go back and see God of War's female counterpart tear shit up in Heavenly Sword. Experience the PlayStation's "Halo Killers," Killzone and Resistance: Fall of Man. 

Like relatively casual games with a high skill cap, good aesthetics but are easy to pick up and fairly short (e.g. Portal)? Try Bastion or Odin Sphere. Are you a masochist and like brutally difficult and unforgiving games? Try Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Mount & Blade, War of the Roses, or Ghosts'n'Goblins. 

Don't be afraid to try a cheap, older game that some consider to be the epitome of gaming. Final Fantasy VII is still a pretty good game, as is Final Fantasy X. Some of the storytelling in these games, as well as in the N64 and SNES Legend of Zelda is second to none. Like rhythm games? Get RezHD on XBLA for a surreal music-game experience.

Pick up an old Pokemon game (Snap or Red, for example) and see what everyone was talking about ten years ago. Nazi Zombies is only so much fun - Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil (especially RE4) and Dead Island provide variations on the co-operative zombie smashing experience. L4D and Dead Island are more of a scavenge and survive with friends while RE games tend to be fairly linear, one against many type shooters.

Play weird games. Play Katamari. Play story-driven games like Dear Esther. Try dungeon crawlers, from Diablo to Dungeons of Dredmor. Get Heroes of Might and Magic or Dungeon Defenders and fight with friends. Try something from every genre, and something weird from every genre you don't like - maybe Burnout is your racing game when Forza rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe saving the princess doesn't tickle your fancy as much as getting scared shitless in Amnesia does. Bored of shooting terrorists? Kill some twenty-foot-tall trolls. Get out there and game.

Here is a list of games that "defined" retro gaming consoles: http://www.racketboy.com/guide/games-that-defined-retro-gaming-machines

"hidden gems" from past generations: http://www.racketboy.com/guide/hidden-gems

Are Video Games Art?

This is obviously a very difficult question to answer, and it is further complicated by the fact that there is no simple answer to the other question: What is art?

An argument that video games are art was put forward earlier in an excellent post made by my classmate Christopher.  The post contains a video that rebukes Roger Ebert's claim that video games can never be art because of their interactivity by pointing out the improvisations that can occur in music, especially in jazz.  I would take the argument further.  Literature, film, painting and sculpture also require interaction.  Even when the artist has a specific message in mind different viewers, readers, and players will make unique interpretations of a piece. 

I also believe that the interactivity of video games can be an advantage to them as an art form.  You should see some of the totally insane things players have built in games designed for player creation such as Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, and Spore.  Even shooters like Halo and Crysis have produced some cool creations.  Click on the links to see some.

The interactivity of video games can also be important when considering a definition of art as a human creation meant to elicit an emotional response.  When we watch a good movie we become emotionally invested in the characters.  Its why we root for them to overcome their challenges and feel upset if our favorite dies or fails.  Consider the emotional impact games such as the Mass Effect Series might have then, games where the player's own choices determine their character's relationship to the others and whether they live or die.

If we consider paintings and sculptures as art, then there is definitely no reason not to regard some of the spectacular visuals provided by video games as art.  Below is one of my personal favorites, and I encourage any readers to comment with a link to their own favorite.

The underwater city of Rapture from Bioshock

So what do you think of the video games as art argument?  Personally, I've always best liked this simple definition: If you have to ask if its art, then its art.

Gambitious-the Kickstarter of Video Games

Sheila and I had a little thread going on Lindsey's post about the Arcane game table, and I thought it was useful knowlege to know about Gambitious.

It's a new (just announced a few weeks ago) crowfunding platform that focuses on funding and developing independent games.

Think Kickstarter for video games.

What's different are a couple of things:

1) It's only in the UK for now because
2) the company's staff makes sure there is a business plan and idea of how the projects will progress before they even allow them to be posted.

The result, future backers don't get burned out as often.

I think it's a great idea, and will be following the progress of Gambitious to see when it will be in America.