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E3 Day Zero: When Game Violence Becomes Vile
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E3 Day Zero: When Game Violence Becomes Vile

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Vilence

By Nathan Grayson on June 5th, 2012 at 5:00 pm.

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One of the most striking scenes of yesterday’s E3 press conference gauntlet didn’t take place on a stage or a screen. It wasn’t rehearsed or pre-planned, and it most certainly wasn’t expected. I sat in a jam-packed arena-sized auditorium and watched a game demo unfold on a screen bigger than my hometown. OK, that wasn’t the surprising part. I’d been doing that all day. This one, though, came to a rather abrupt halt when – mere inches away from the camera – a man’s head erupted into a volcano of hyper-detailed gore after a point-blank shotgun blast. And then: deafening applause from hundreds of people.

This was the blaring exclamation point on the end of a day of gleefully grotesque neck-shanking, leg-severing, and – of course – man-shooting. I can honestly think of maybe five games – in four multiple-hour press conferences – that didn’t feature some sort of lovingly rendered death-dealing mechanic. And oh how show-goers cheered. So then, have we all become brainless barbarians with a lust for blood bordering on fetishistic? Hardly. That’d be a simple black-or-white (or, I suppose, red) answer, and this issue’s a whole lot messier than that.

Obviously, over-the-top killing in games isn’t new. Violence, as it turns out, is the answer when the question is “What’s the most immediately engaging, compulsively satisfying way to interact with a game world?” The problem with yesterday’s showcase, then, is manifold, but its frail, probably soon-to-be-skewered heart lies in presentation.

It’s amazing what a few dabs of makeup, some ill-advised comments from a clueless presenter, and a trailer cut to draw an incredibly specific target demographic from its collective Man Cave can do. See, during all of yesterday’s Internet furor, many (very intelligent) people failed to notice something: a few of these games – blood-spewing kneecapitations and all – are trying their damndest to push games forward into interesting new territory.

Seriously! Far Cry 3 – to hear its creators tell it – is a purposefully over-the-top examination of how first-person shooters and the surrounding culture affect both players and developers as human beings. Tomb Raider, meanwhile, is playing up character vulnerability to a point of cringe-inducing discomfort, and Last of Us – the (sadly) PS3-exclusive apocalypse survivor with the aforementioned shotgun blast heard ’round the Internet – did an excellent job of making violence look and sound terrifying, like a last resort of desperate, miserable people fighting to protect the few remaining things they love.

Admittedly, an alarmingly high number of other games – for instance, Assassin’s Creed, Dead Space, Medal of Honor, Black Ops, Splinter Cell, and (so far, at least) even Watch Dogs – stuck to the ol’ slow-mo shooty shooty bang bang for its own sake, and that’s definitely part of the problem. I do not, however, believe there’s necessarily a moral quandary in having fun with ultraviolence. These things are fictional. We’re all (read: mostly, I hope) responsible adults here, and we know where to draw the line. I mean, goodness, the entire “Games don’t cause violence, so calm down everyone jeez” line of thought is almost entirely predicated on that assumption.  That, however, is precisely the problem: yesterday’s press conferences suggested anything but.

Responsibility is the key, and there’s been a tremendous lapse in that on all sides of this issue. In the press conferences themselves, shocking acts of rapid-fire violence became the central message – not simply part of a larger experience – and showcases were structured to facilitate that. Far Cry 3, especially, was flat-out misrepresented as a result. To those who hadn’t seen it behind closed doors (read: plenty of press, everyone tuning in for the livestream), it just looked like a mess of blood, bare breasts, and ruthlessly slaughtered wildlife. And then, to make matters worse, conference host Aisha Tyler enthusiastically announced that she, too, wanted to “use a tiger as a tool and then kill it.” Disgusting, right?

That’s what Ubisoft’s writers and presenters chose to emphasize and even glorify. But honestly, flinging quick, sloppy spectacle onto our plates is much easier (and more instantly gratifying) than slowly ladling out context, so it’s really not much of a surprise that Ubisoft took that route. Similar mentalities showed through in the rest of the day’s presentations – including, even, Tomb Raider and Last of Us. And, of course, this comes in the wake of the nigh-indefensible Hitman trailer from last week. Is it irresponsible on the part of publishers? Absolutely. But they were trying to sell products, and that tactic – at least, on paper – has “proven,” “effective,” and “fool-proof” written all over it.

It would be a colossal mistake, however, to pin this thing entirely on publishers. Once again, as Responsible Adults Who Know Where To Draw The Line, it’s our job to, you know, draw the line. But, quite evidently, we’re not doing that very well. So either we don’t actually know where to draw the line, and there’s a serious problem with, well, humanity here, or – more likely – we’re also being irresponsible. We’re clapping – basically sending the universal human signal for “Yes! Amazing! Keep doing that until one of us dies!” to publishers – without thinking. We’re endorsing the way these games are presented in all sorts of public channels and forums without considering the consequences.

Yesterday, I saw games that treated violence as the raddest, most Mountain-Dew-can-crushed-against-your-forehead thing in the world, an utterly bone-chilling, blood-curdling last resort, and quite a few things in between. But wow, it sure didn’t look that way. And, if we don’t stay mindful of what game-makers are doing and how we’re acting in response, it won’t be that way for too much longer. So pay attention and speak up. Sure, a thousand hands clapping paints a pretty damning picture, but you know what’s a thousand times worse? Silence.

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Eurogamer Investigates The Mighty Simulator • Articles • Eurogamer.net

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The story behind Tow Truck Simulator, Gardening Simulator and many, many more.

Throw Call of Duty in the bin! Move aside, Diablo 3, budge it, Battlefield and make way for The Simulator.

Crane Simulator, Digger Simulator, Forklift Truck Simulator, Driving Simulator, Farming Simulator, Truck Simulator, Bus Simulator, Tow Truck Simulator, Demolition Simulator, Space Shuttle & Apollo Simulator, Police Simulator, Gardening Simulator, Tanker Truck Simulator, Road Construction Simulator, Surgery (not Sugary) Simulator, Garbage Truck Simulator, Street Cleaning Simulator, Port Simulator, Bus & Cable Car Simulator, London Underground Simulator, Delivery Truck Simulator, Ski Region Simulator, Oil Platform Simulator, Underground Mining Simulator, Airport Firefighter Simulator, Fishing Simulator, Emergency Ambulance Simulator, Utility Vehicle Simulator, Stone Quarry Simulator, Construction Simulator.

There are so many! And that’s not all of them. They’re even on 3DS, and there are plans for other platforms like iOS this year. Evidently someone’s buying them. But who? And why? And who makes them? And why?

Meet Robert Stallibrass, founder of Contact Sales. His Excalibur and First Class Simulation labels commission and publish these bizarre and curious Simulator games.

He began by making add-ons for Microsoft Flight and Train Simulator a decade ago, but in the last few years he branched out, largely because of FarmVille.

Real truckers play Truck Simulator. And they love it.

“It’d be lovely to say it was all my idea, aren’t I absolutely bloody brilliant!” chirps Stallibrass. “But that would be a complete lie.” Developers were pitching him ideas for truck simulators and construction simulators and farming simulators, and “in the background”, FarmVille had tens of millions of players. It was his proof of concept. “That’s a great way of putting it,” he agrees. “Yes, absolutely right.”

“[Our customers have] had that period of their life between 15 and 30, where they go out and get pissed and have girlfriends and do all sorts of interesting things, and now they’re married and the pace of life is slightly slower.”

Robert Stallibrass

But aren’t Facebook simulation games the cartoons to Stallibrass’ documentaries, I ask - aren’t they played by different people? Two types of people predominantly play Simulator games, he answers. 15 per cent are aged between seven and 12-years-old, and 60 per cent are aged 35 or over.

“We’ve certainly got people who play it who are over 70-75,” Stallibrass lets me know. “Because, you see, the point about it is, people of that age, they don’t want to go and shoot people. They’re not interested in driving a car fast. They had that period of their life between 15 and 30, where they go out and get pissed and have girlfriends and do all sorts of interesting things, and now they’re married and the pace of life is slightly slower.

“They’re not so interested. People’s tastes change. They used to play action, they used to play first-person shooter games, they now want something a little bit slower, and this is why these simulations appeal to them.”

I laugh, I can’t help it. How does he know all this - is it anecdotal? Or do people write in? Confessions of a Simulator lover, I imagine.

“You laugh,” he says, “but we’ve just released Airport Firefighter Simulator, and this bloke who drives these trucks around for an airport, he says, ‘This is fantastic! This is just what I want to do all day long.’ And he does it at home.

“We have truck drivers who write in saying, ‘God, you know, UK Truck Driving Simulator - it is the most realistic thing. I recognise the gantry as I go up the M1 now.’ You think, bloody hell!”

Worldwide sales of the Farming Simulator series (FS 2009, 2010, 2011) are 1.8 million units. Huge and expensive and celebrated PC role-playing game The Witcher 2 has only managed 1.7 million sales, including Xbox 360 numbers. It’s different, of course, but it offers perspective.

“The big thing that we had at the beginning when we launched Farming Simulator and some of the other simulation products, was that nobody believed us,” Stallibrass remembers. “Except for GAME. They believed us. They said, ‘Yeah, we think this will work.’ And it took off like a rocket. And now, if you go into GAME and other places like PC World, you will see the shelves with eight to 10 of our type of product. Because it sells, because there are people out there who want to buy this product.

The smug satisfaction that farming offers.

“But Robert,” Stallibrass reminds me, bringing me back down to earth, “[Farming Simulator] is the best of our products. We have other products like Street Cleaning Simulator, for example…”

The Simulators are made by six or seven different developers. The biggest teams are 15 people, and budgets are modest. “Some people like to flash budgets around like telephone numbers,” Stallibrass says. “We just say that unfortunately, for better or worse, we do make games that make a profit. Some people don’t understand that the whole objective of running a business, or publishing, is to make money. And there are a lot of publishers out there who don’t make any money and lose large amounts of that. So I just preamble that by saying what we do is profitable.”

“Now, I’m not saying that Tow Truck Simulator is a good or a bad game, but I do feel that sometimes people in the press say things for effect.”

Robert Stallibrass

The main Simulator teams are Swiss team Giant (Farming Simulator), German team TML (Bus Simulator, Street Cleaning Simulator) and Czech team SCS (Truck Simulator). In-house development has also now begun, with two juicy new games planned for this year. Announcing Circus World and Zoo Park Simulator! Sound the E3 horn! Alert the presses! Circus World takes inspiration from Theme Park and will be out at the beginning of July, and Zoo Park Simulator will be out in September. “Then we have more,” he teases, “which I can’t tell you about yet.”

Popular, perhaps, but are these Simulator games actually any good? Not if you take Eurogamer’s brutal 1/10 review of Tow Truck Simulator as evidence. I read aloud the conclusion to Stallibrass. Throat cleared, I repeat, “I’ve never given a 1 before, so I guess I’m just keen to let you know it’s not because of the subject matter. It’s because Tow Truck Simulator is unwashed offal hacked from the belly of the ugliest of digital cows. It’s not hard to imagine a game that’s worse than this, but it is hard to imagine that game getting published. So, sod it.”

An uncomfortable pause.

“I would say that sometimes, and I’m not casting any aspersions on your profession, but some of the people in the press think it’s very funny to write things like that,” Stallibrass remarks. “Now, I’m not saying that Tow Truck Simulator is a good or a bad game, but I do feel that sometimes people in the press say things for effect. That would be my comment to that.

“On reflection,” he plods on, “a product like Tow Truck has not sold very well, and therefore, your reviewer, whoever it was, is probably correct. But I can say that about thousands upon thousands of other products that have also come into the market that have also been disappointing. What I would say, again, is that I can’t remember Eurogamer covering some of our better products.”

My idea of Circus World. Apparently the ratings people wouldn’t approve.

It’s true, we haven’t.

“We embrace the press, because it’s our way of communicating with the public,” Stallibrass says. “Unfortunately, the press don’t necessarily embrace us.

“They are much more interested in covering Modern Warfare 3, which has a large budget, which has lots of activity. And Modern Warfare 3 has sold lots of millions worldwide, and I understand that the press have to cover the top products.

“The weirdest we’ve had is Hairdressing Simulator. And somebody came to us with Ice-cream Simulator. And we just thought, ‘Ah, err, not sure on either.’”

Robert Stallibrass

“But that doesn’t bother us, necessarily. Because there are still tens of twenties of hundreds of thousands of people out there who do buy us, who want to buy our product, and who aren’t interested in Modern Warfare 3. “

Fearing the conversation has taken a turn for the serious, or that I’ll have to say something intelligent, I ask about the pitching process. Stallibrass tells me that it’s “a two-way conversation” - sometimes his company asks a developer to flesh out an idea, other times developers pitch him. Intrigued, I wonder if any ideas are too banal, too bizarre?

“The weirdest we’ve had is Hairdressing Simulator,” he recalls. “And somebody came to us with Ice-cream Simulator. And we just thought, ‘Ah, err, not sure on either.’

“More Ice-cream Van Simulator,” he explains. “So it goes a bit like this: you drive your ice-cream van around, and you find a nice pitch and you sell them and you make money. And then you get another ice-cream van, so you drive two ice-cream vans - it’s sort of like an Ice-cream Van Tycoon type thing.”

Ice-cream Van Simulator is a great idea, I insist, and flesh out the pitch, talking streamlined school and park routes, van jingles, ice-cream trends and on and on. “Robert, do you want a job?! Do you want a job? Do you want to come and work here?” he badgers me.

No. But I’m encouraged now. I dig out my ‘just in case’ list of Simulator pitches. I hit him with Rainforest Clearing Simulator. Stallibrass giggles. “Haven’t had that one before,” he tells me.

Victorian Chimney Sweep Simulator. He likes it, he really likes my idea!

Milk Float Simulator? “Well, actually, we have had that one thrown at us!” he reveals. “When was it? It was some while ago. The problem is with this isthat more often than not, it’s a question of which is more interesting than another. It’s not a case of we don’t like it - maybe at the time there was something we felt was better. So Milk Float Simulator - yep, quite like that one.”

“So, we have to be a bit careful on blood and guts.”

Robert Stallibrass

Jellystone National Park Simulator? “No, haven’t heard that one!” He snorts.

Mobile Library Simulator? “Well, I suppose in light of the government closing all the libraries, it’s probably a damn good idea!” he agrees. “Would you get the opportunity to fine people if they bring their stuff back late?” he asks. Yes, you could drive to their house. “Could we do that? We definitely could! Quite like that one,” he affirms.

Motorway Service Station Simulator? “Again,” he answers, “that’s not a bad idea. Quite like that one.” I’m amazed no one has pitched it before, but apparently that’s the case.

How about Port-a-loo Maintenance Simulator? “Is this the serious end of the ideas still?” he laughs.

Pest Control Simulator? “Yeah, OK,” he nods, “I could probably live with that one, as they say.”

Time to shock him. Morgue Simulator? But he’s unabashed! “Well, we’ve got Surgery Simulator, which isn’t quite Morgue, but there is a health warning on the front that says, ‘This mustn’t be used on real people.’” he reveals. “Because we’ll get some idiot who’ll try and practice it on his wife and we’ll get sued because we didn’t say it.”

The ratings people can make life “a little bit difficult sometimes”, Stallibrass tells me. The game could end up in the hands of a four-year-old, these people argue, so if a lion were to escape its cage in upcoming hit Circus World “and eat one of the audience”, he notes, completing my train of thought - “I mean, it’s a pretty poor show, and not quite the thing you should show to a four-year-old.

“So, we have to be a bit careful on blood and guts.”

I save my best until last: Victorian Chimney Sweep Simulator. Stallibrass is blown away! He laughs and says, “I tell you what, I’m going to give you 10 per cent royalty for that. I like that one in particular!”

But as his Simulators inevitably get more and more bizarre, will there come a time when Robert Stallibrass has to put an end to it all - declare that enough is enough?

He guffaws.

“Robert,” he says, “we’re here for eternity - how about that? Exclamation mark, question mark.”

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What Can Our Smartphones Say to Stilt Houses?

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May 28 2012 Essays By Josiah Harrist

What Can Our Smartphones Say to Stilt Houses?

The games Josiah Harrist played in the Third World reminded him of the Mario and zombies of his home. But will the fantasies of videogames outlive the technology that outlines them?

The biggest shock in coming back to America after a year teaching in Asia was when the plane touched down in central Texas. The wheels had barely connected with the asphalt when the cabin collectively breathed a sigh and everyone took out their smartphones and iPads. A chorus of tones, email notifications, and texts filled the cabin. I’m not in Laos anymore, was all I could think.

Living in the Third World puts one back 30, 50, 1,000 years. When I was seven, our family lived in the middle of a slum in Java, Indonesia overlooking a wide vista of rice paddies and farms. We had books and a radio, but no television. The books had yellowed with acid, and the comics were all leftovers from the ’70s.

I’m not in Laos anymore, was all I could think.

We made our own Mario. I came home from school one day to find my brother and his friends from the streets on the cold tile floor scribbling crayons on construction paper. The paper was a screen, with a control pad drawn beneath, and they were designing death traps: pits of lava, silver spikes, floating fireballs. These levels they “played” with their index fingers, tracing a path, occasionally dying arbitrarily. I decided to become a game designer. Cutting another sheet of paper to size, I appended it to the front of the level to make a kind of flip book, and I set to designing a pyramid of death. The next was an ice cave, and the one after that was a desert. By the time I grew bored, I’d drawn up at least 20 levels.

These levels held a strange mirror to my life. Weeks after sketching Level 16’s quicksand, I found myself sinking in actual quicksand at a dormant volcano. An angry farmer chased us through the rice paddies with a machete. Years later on the island of New Guinea, I nearly fell to my death in a seemingly bottomless pit. The disparity between the digital world and my own grew larger as our family relocated to the central plateau of New Guinea when I was a teenager.

The island of New Guinea is vast, densely forested, crowned in the center with a ring of high mountains. My dad flew between disparate villages, knitting together a small network with much-needed supplies and transportation. A five day hike through the jungle can be flown in minutes. Most of the tribes in these villages lived in bamboo huts and traded pigs as currency. The people are dark-skinned, descendants of the Aborigines who migrated north from Australia.

We lived high in the mountains in a small town named Wamena. Dani farmers came down from the mountains wearing nothing but feathered headdresses and gourds to sell shells and game at the market. Our family kept a pig in our backyard hut overnight and watched it hunted and disemboweled on our front lawn, then ate it at dusk with the rest of the village. I spent many evenings hunched over my Game Boy, consumed by the 8-bit fantasy world while mountains and hoodoo loomed just outside our backdoor.

We made our own Mario.

For a year after college I taught English in Laos. Our rural town had just one brand-new convenience store, stocked with overpriced Thai imports. In the central row was a section of cheap Chinese game systems masquerading as PlayStations. Yellow cartridges were also on sale. For about six dollars I picked upBao Bao Long, a “deluxe” version that came packaged in a large box covered with pictures of James Cameron’s Avatar. The cartridges advertised 256 games in one, but when I went home to play I found the same eight games renamed 248 different ways.

I introduced gaming to my Lao friend. The cords were so short we had to move the couch within a foot of the television, and the buttons broke on the 10th press, but I got a chance to show off my early American childhood. “This is Mario,” I told him. “This is Pokémon.” Granted, the Pokémon game was Super Mario Bros. remade with a Pikachu sprite. We spent hours saving Princess Peach-kachu (yes) and enjoyed every moment.

But a weird schism persists between life in front of the TV and life outside. It was one thing to save the pretty girl as an Italian plumber or electric mouse. It was another thing to take a night bus up to Vientiane, stop at a market at 2 a.m., and see 10-year-old girls dressed up as prostitutes on the side of the road. I felt completely powerless, reminded of my status as an outsider in Laos, an alien even in my own head, on the internet, in forums, on Facebook: how I was the person I wanted to be in front of a screen, and someone else when actually confronted with my sleepy expatriate self.

We are strangely empowered by these other selves—our digital avatars—in ways people haven’t been before. We learn, sense, and think differently. Our thoughts are simultaneously truncated and expansive. We are on a screen in Brazil, in Mongolia, on a train or in someone’s basement, and we’re not even aware. Yet we are also disconnected from billions of people, some of whom still live in the Stone Age, who are dying of AIDS and sleeping under mosquito nets. We are all the same: nobody here has evolved or become the Übermensch. Digital life has begun to separate us more than class, language, or ethnicity.

But a weird schism persists between life in front of the TV and life outside.

For my 16th birthday I found myself on an outdoor education trip on Yapen Island, about two days’ journey from civilization. As the new kid I was elected to play “Candy Shirt” with about 50 adorable five-year-old Papuan kids. The game was simple. Wearing a shirt covered with candy, I had to run from a mass of kids through the forest. I remember the moment the crowd rounded the side of the building for the first time, and how their eyes lit up with a kind of inhuman hunger. I knew that day what it felt like to be hunted for food. I managed to run for a long while before collapsing in a heap in the village courtyard as the hungry children pawed me like zombies. My training with killing zombies as Link or Chris Redfield were utterly alien out in the jungle where people bathed in the river, hunted pigs, and built houses on stilts.

Our universal language isn’t halted speech, text, or anything else. Modern videogames pay a crude, sporadically transcendent homage to something deeper, more substantial, that we all share. In the smartphone-saturated First World it might seem futile to dichotomize life into “real” and “digital”: these classifiers lose all meaning when we drop everything to run free in the wild world beyond.

Photograph by Nutch Bicer

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Blip Festival 2012: chiptunes move past nostalgia and into the future

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Gaming and everything related to it is sometimes described as “nerd culture” or “tech culture,” part of an increasingly broad range of topics loosely based around modern technology. But visiting New York’s Blip Festival, one of the largest gatherings worldwide for chip music, is a reminder that these terms have always been insufficient. Chip music or chiptunes is a medium based around the sound chips of old game systems like the NES or Game Boy, comprised of a loose community of artists interested in pushing limited electronic systems to make anything from simple melodies to multilayered walls of sound. In the six years since the first Blip Fest, it’s grown to include sister events in Japan, Australia, and Denmark, and people who come as fans often end up making music themselves or even performing at a later festival.

Chip music’s star has risen along with Blip Fest. Although the medium is still seen as niche, longtime chip musicians Anamanaguchi composed the soundtrack to Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim video game and will be performing at Lollapalooza in August. Beyond that, chiptune-like sounds are also showing up in the music of mainstream artists like Ke$ha. Anamanaguchi songwriter Peter Berkman attributes this to a maturation of the style and an increasing acceptance of it. “People just aren’t as confused by it any more. People can hear a sound and just be like ‘Oh, that sounds dirty, it sounds cool, it sounds like a computer breaking.’ They don’t have to be like ‘That sounds like Level One in Mario.’” Blip Festival founder Mike Rosenthal isn’t as sure. “You literally hear, on pop radio, samples of these sorts of things… I think that’s more of a fad,” he says. “I’m not sure there’s enough overlap to really matter to the scene.” He’s far more excited to see festival participants make it outside chip music-specific events.

Anamanaguchi wasn’t listed in the Blip Festival 2012 lineup, but Berkman and drummer Luke Silas are still at Gramercy Theatre, stepping onstage for performances with George & Jonathan and others. Although they’re in one of the medium’s seminal bands, though, Silas and Berkman feel they’re moving beyond even the loose label of chiptunes. They’ve begun including older electronic instruments along with game consoles and drums or guitars, expanding into something outside their traditional oeuvre. “Us and a lot of other artists, like George & Jonathan and Unicorn Kid, are in this fun region that’s almost like ‘post-chiptunes.’ The stuff that we’re doing is informed by chiptunes, and it’s an element of what we’re doing, but it’s not the entire picture.” It’s a sentiment echoed by several of the people I meet. Chip music may always be tied to early game consoles, but there’s no reason it can’t also incorporate other non-traditional instruments. “You hit a point with the music hardware where there is no sound inherent to [new] gaming consoles,” says Rosenthal, “but at the same time, there’s more people digging into more DIY hardware like the Arduino.” And as younger musicians enter the scene, they bring a perspective that doesn’t include previous experience with early electronic music or gaming systems.

The question of nostalgia is one that almost any chip musician will have to deal with. As Rosenthal acknowledges, the scene prominently features original Game Boys or other consoles linked to the era during which many of the artists grew up. And though he points out that you won’t hear any covers of game soundtracks during Blip Fest, gaming is a common entry point to the scene. Danimal Cannon — who taught a class on the Little Sound DJ Game Boy music tracker this year — started out by reverse-engineering game soundtracks and has played with Metroid Metal, which reworks songs from the Metroid series into rock arrangements. Infinity Shred, formerly known as Starscream, takes inspiration from a different type of past: their aesthetic is based on media from the age of early space exploration.

When considered along with the live motion graphics of Blip Festival’s visual artists, which tend to incorporate art that wouldn’t look out of place in a 1980s science fiction movie or an even earlier public service announcement, there’s a certain retro-futuristic tinge to the scene. As with the more general retro-futurist movement, this raises questions about imagining the future of the past: does our love of streamlined spaceships or slick cyberpunk wire-frame models mean that we’re having trouble imagining a future for the present? Damon Hardjowirogo of Infinity Shred doesn’t think so. “We definitely want actual futurism,” he says. “We try not to be a political band, but there is the message there that we hope for a brighter future.”

Danimal Cannon, one of the more traditional chip musicians, is similarly optimistic about the future of his work. Unlike Infinity Shred or Anamanaguchi, he doesn’t seem to be remotely “post-chiptunes;” if anything, he’s looking to share his love of the limited palette the hardware can provide. He’s found fellow musicians who are far too young to have played a Game Boy or Atari console growing up but are still interested in emulating the style of early game music rather than changing it completely, something he says gives him hope that the sounds themselves have traction outside of gaming. “It’s not just nostalgia driving it,” he says. “There’s a legitimacy to it.”

For other performers, chip music is simply one of many possible labels. Radlib, who played electronic music for years before learning to play on game consoles, sees himself as a mainstream electronic musician first but appreciates the simplicity of consoles and the community the movement can provide. The support that other musicians give each other can range from going to shows and buying music to teaching and discussing technique, and sometimes it reaches well beyond that, artists say. Peter Berkman, for example, tells us about fellow musicians helping Anamanaguchi replace their fried NES consoles.

Wherever chip music ends up going, the most interesting parts of the festival come when artists step outside any standard genre. Bit Shifter plays a set of bright, tightly constructed pop with a Game Boy. George & Jonathan create a light show with a live dancer who floats across the front of the stage like a shadow. Omodaka, one of the few performers this year from outside the US, is almost hypnotic, his medium a combination of consoles, synthesizers, and samples from enka, itself a Meiji-era Japanese genre that was revived and reinterpreted in the 1950s. Throughout his show, he takes classic methods of audience interaction and calls attention to them, spelling out the reasons that what he’s doing works.

“Lately we have chosen hope over fear,” he says at one point, the words projected on the screen beside him. “But personally, sometimes despair comes over hope… I hate to do nothing.” He urges the audience to yell along with him in order to wash away the “despair” of inaction. We don’t need encouragement, of course, but the commentary on musical catharsis turns the song and the performance into something new. This kind of recontextualization is, for me, what the best parts of Blip Fest build on.

Music Credit: Danimal Cannon, Anamanaguchi

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Why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2: a “scientific” explanation

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June 5th, 2012, by alex

Why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2: a “scientific” explanation

UPDATE: Got a response from Blizzard! Click here to read it.

Lately I’ve been amusing myself by reading Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit” and playing Diablo 3 (not simultaneously). Diablo 3’s launch was a clear success, with 6.3 million sales in the first week, but also came with the predictable chorus of “the old game was so much better!” complaints.  One section in “The Power of Habit” struck me as an amusingly on-topic explanation of why some of the complaints have a grain of truth to them.

Why Diablo 2 was addictive

“The Power of Habit” describes an experiment performed on a macaque monkey named Julio. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Julio was placed in front of a computer screen showing some shapes, with a lever, and a reward in the form of a tube with blackberry juice. The book explains:

First, he saw a shape on the screen:

Over time, Julio learned that the appearance of the shape meant it was time to execute a routine. So he touched the lever:

As a result, Julio received a drop of blackberry juice.

That’s basic learning. The habit only emerges once Julio begins craving the juice when he sees the cue. Once that craving exists, Julio will act automatically. He’ll follow the habit:

This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop.

Julio’s brain activity is particularly illuminating:

Even more interesting, once the habit is formed the reward response happens before the reward is even delivered:

The parallel to Diablo 2 is obvious to anyone who’s ever played it: see monster on screen, kill monster, receive reward in the form of an item that makes your character stronger. Diablo 2’s brilliance was in how the rewards were designed and spaced out – just powerful and rare enough to be meaningful, just frequent enough to enforce the loop described above throughout the game.

Why Diablo 3 is less addictive

On the surface, Diablo 3 would seem to follow the same basic structure: see monster on screen, kill monster, receive reward in the form of an item. However, for a number of reasons – many of them having to do with the introduction of an Auction House – the rewards are designed to be much more rare, and much less satisfying.

Diablo 3’s cycle is actually very different. As strange as it might sound, the reward comes from playing the game itself, which is for the most part very well done. The characters and skills are interesting, combat is a blast in the two middle difficulty settings, and satisfaction comes from bashing and destroying your way through the game world, complete with loud noises and shaking screen. Eventually the game becomes more difficult, and the only way to progress without being frustrated is to open the Auction House, buy new equipment, and proceed to enjoy the game again as your character is now significantly stronger - until the next time you get stuck and have to buy more equipment.

A hypothetical “enjoyment graph” for Diablo 3 might look something like this (forgive my crude diagram):

While for Diablo 2, it might look more like this:

Diablo 3 has no real reward loop – there is only a frustration loop, which can be temporarily alleviated by using the Auction House. As the game progresses in the hardest difficulty (Inferno), the frustration part of the loop gets longer and longer, as upgrades become more and more difficult to buy.

“The Power of Habit” has something to say about this, too:

When the juice didn’t arrive or was late or diluted, Julio would get angry and make unhappy noises, or become mopey. And within Julio’s brain, Schultz watched a new pattern emerge: craving. When Julio anticipated juice but didn’t receive it, a neurological pattern associated with desire and frustration erupted inside his skull. When Julio saw the cue, he started anticipating a juice-fueled joy. But if the juice didn’t arrive, that joy became a craving that, if unsatisfied, drove Julio to anger or depression.
[…]
For those monkeys who hadn’t developed a strong habit, the distractions worked. They slid out of their chairs, left the room, and never looked back. They hadn’t learned to crave the juice. However, once a monkey had developed a habit […] the distractions held no allure. The animal would sit there, watching the monitor and pressing the lever, over and over again, regardless of the offer of food or the opportunity to go outside. The anticipation and sense of craving was so overwhelming that the monkeys stayed glued to their screens, the same way a gambler will play slots long after he’s lost his winnings.

Ouch. Hits a bit close to home, doesn’t it?

In the end, Blizzard is left with two groups of players:

- New players will not experience Diablo 2’s reward loop, and will not get hooked. They will enjoy the game, get to the end, and (for the most part) wonder what the big fuss was about, lose interest, and wander away.

- Old Diablo 2 players will be left frustrated, unsatisfied by the lack of in-game rewards they were craving, and become angry, depressed, and reduced to flinging poo on the Battle.net forums.

Out of necessity, Diablo 3’s reward system has to account for the Auction House. Because equipment is never destroyed, in-game rewards can never be too frequent or powerful or they will flood the Auction House, eventually trivializing game difficulty. There have been many solutions proposed (here is one particularly insightful discussion), but the reward system seems so intertwined with the Auction House that it’s difficult to see a radical change coming. Blizzard’s response over the next few patches will be very interesting to watch.

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Author: Alex Curelea

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A Humble Interview With The Humble Indie Bundle

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A Modest Proposal

By John Walker on June 7th, 2012 at 1:30 pm.

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The fifth Humble Indie Bundle has been an unqualified success. Only halfway through its run, and it has already raised an astonishing $3.2 million, from over 400,000 purchases. With additional surprises pretty much inevitable, it’s fascinating to see just how high those numbers are going to go. I grabbed the chance to speak to one of the Humble Indie Bundle’s team, Richard Esguerra, to find out what it’s like to be sat at the other side of this. We talk about the experience of achieving this level of success, controversies encountered along the way, and whether this money is changing lives.

RPS: When you started doing these Bundles, what were your expectations?

Richard Esguerra: Our co-founders, John and Jeff – they did the first Humble Indie Bundle as a project for their indie games studio, Wolffire Games, and I think they had an inkling that it would do pretty well. But the numbers I hear batted around were that it did about ten times better than they thought it would. And that first bundle, if I’m recalling correctly, was a million seller. So it was pretty clear, I think, when they got rolling it was beyond what they had expected.

RPS: Then it had to be followed.

Richard Esguerra: After the first one the question was, could this happen again? Was this a fluke, or is it something people are really into? So the second Bundle worked out even better. It sold more, more people heard about it. It became clear at that point there was something cool going on. I think that the thread is experimentation. There have been all kinds of bundles, with different arrangements, and it’s all been in the interests of figuring out what works, what people find exciting, what developers are able to do, and what they find intriguing as creators.

RPS: Doesn’t the success of this project, where you can get something for a cent but choose to pay way more, fly in the face of the messages we’re constantly receiving from major publishers, IP owners, copyright people? Even yesterday EA were saying 75% discounts devalue games. Yet people are choosing to pay thousands times more than they need to.

Richard Esguerra: Yeah, you know, it’s a mix. All of the signs point toward doing a sale being strategic and pretty successful. Otherwise it would be hard to justify the parade of Steam sales, and developers – appearing at least – to be happily engaging with Steam on those initiatives. I feel like those are sort of conflicting narratives.

RPS: I love the competition between the Humble Brony guys and Notch, constantly out-bidding each other.

Richard Esguerra: [Laughs]. It’s a completely spontaneous rivalry. I find it very entertaining.

RPS: And it’s almost a pointless one! Notch is currently giving $10,000, but that’s from a $3.2m total.

Richard Esguerra: If I’m remembering correctly, Notch’s initial engagement with the idea was that it was great for indies, and that he was making a statement about independent game creation. What’s interesting about the Bronies is they came to it with another perspective – we’re kind of misunderstood and we want the world to understand how great we are. So yeah, it’s a fun thing. One of my favourite gifs on Reddit was when people were discussing the rivalry, and someone posted a link to Smithers and Burns just throwing money at each other. “Money fight!” And of course, Notch is believed to be a fairly wealthy person, and the Bronies are a community of people.

RPS: So, people are getting rich, right?

Richard Esguerra: I… I wouldn’t really say that. The developers are definitely getting rewarded fairly well for what their input is, but a lot of the developers are also running multi-man teams. The teams for these games range from a single person to a small studio, and when you break it down like that I think everyone’s making a pretty reasonable, healthy living off of making games. Which I think is part of the goal. But when you break it down, “rich” for the non-profits and charities is also an interesting thing. So far I think it’s been $5.5m donated to non-profits. And that money is going into Child’s Play charity reaching out to more hospitals and being able to buy more stuff, now worldwide, and it’s allowing the Electronic Frontier Foundation to put more research toward fighting stuff like SOPA and PIPA, which were defeated largely on the back of their work and their leadership. I feel like there’s a lot of healthy stuff going on, but while the numbers are super-impressive, you’ve got to remember that they’re being broken down in a lot of different ways. When you think of that way, everyone’s making a healthy go of it, but no one is back-breakingly rich.

RPS: But say I’m a two-man development team, and I get my game in there, I’m going to be making a couple of hundred thousand dollars, at least.

Richard Esguerra: Yeah, with the Humble Indie Bundles it’ll probably be about that…

RPS: But that’s life-changing money, right?

Richard Esguerra: True, I totally agree with that. But a lot of the games will have development cycles of a year or two years, so it’s life-changing money, but if you were thinking about what sacrifices you made along the way, distribute that back across the development of the game, and distribute it forward while you’re maybe not making money while you work on the next thing, I think it turns out to be life-changing because you’re able to continue making games. Life-changing in that way, but it’s like mansions.

RPS: There must be developers who desperately want in on this, because of the money. Do you have any issues with this? How do you go about choosing who’s next?

Richard Esguerra: Really, the main question that it falls down to is: will this be exciting for gamers? That’s really the baseline where it has to start, for us. There definitely are a lot of developers who are contacting us. But really, it’s organic. There are a lot of conversations running in parallel about what developers’ plans are, what our schedules look like, porting always turns out to be something that throws a twist in there. Between all those factors there’s this divining of how things can become a bundle. That usually happens about a month or two before, with all kinds of directed bouncing around beforehand. Some of this comes out in the experimentation – is there a game available that someone wants to debut in a bundle, or is there a studio with a catalogue of works that they want to do?

RPS: Talking of debuting a game, did you receive any of the flak from Botinacula’s being released in the bundle. I know Amanita did. They were perhaps a bit surprised by the hostility they received, especially from those who had pre-ordered.

Richard Esguerra: Yeah, that was kind of a weird bummer. I guess I can understand the hurt feelings. But in some ways you’d hope people would be cool with doing a pre-order in the knowledge that it’s helping the developer, it’s helping the creation of something. It’s like a vote of confidence. That felt like it was a little rough. But Amanita worked out what worked best, and everyone navigated their way to a good place with it.

RPS: So, apart from the charities, you’re the consistent factor here. So you’re making money for every bundle deal. How much money are you guys making?

Richard Esguerra: Basically, our tip is publically there on the site. And that turns out to be about 15%. So we’re doing fine. We’re trying to grow a little bit so we can do other cool stuff. That’s the main goal – to do more cool bundles, be able to develop new features for the site. We have a lot of experiments we want to try. There’s been a little bit of talk about Humble Store, that’s been an experiment. That’s been interesting, and we’re trying to see if developers are interested.

RPS: How many people do you have working there now?

Richard Esguerra: We’re a team of ten in the office in San Francisco. Our support staff are on a contract basis, since so far the Bundles are a thing that pops up all of a sudden, and then goes away for a while. So on a big day we’re looking at about fifteen people.

RPS: It does seem exciting. You guys have a week to go on this one, and with 15% you’re already close to half a million dollars for a week. I hope you guys are being made comfortable by it! But do you now have more money than you can spend?

Richard Esguerra: [Laughs] We’re looking to grow at a pretty reasonable pace, and that means adding on software engineers, crew who really know what they’re doing. What we’re doing is technically challenging. If we’ve done our jobs right, which is to inform people but keep it a surprise – we think it’s more fun that way – then all of a sudden as much of the internet as we can reach arrives at once. That’s technically difficult. And we’re delivering ever-increasingly large files is technically interesting.

RPS: Your bandwidth costs must be terrifying.

Richard Esguerra: It’s definitely something to keep in mind when we’re trying to keep abreast of cutting edge technologies, how we can do this and serve all our customers. Another thing we pride ourselves on is very personal customer service. We have a team of support ninjas that’s always growing as the Bundle becomes more popular. So when a customer has a problem there’s live-chat on the site. We spend money on that. So the goal I think is to do these awesome things, continue benefiting developers who deserve it, continue helping charities, and to see where this goes in terms of digital distribution for games. It’s been interesting to see how the bar keeps rising, as we keep trying to beat it.

RPS: The Electrionic Frontier Foundation is a very political choice. Have you run into any issues with that?

Richard Esguerra: No. Not in particular. In wanting the internet to be available for people to be able to do interesting things on, I think that’s generally pretty popular. I guess there have been times when people don’t get it, or maybe they feel more empathy with what the Child’s Play charity does, so they’ll give their money only to Child’s Play. But it’s all stuff that we believe in – we find it important to be able to do what we’re doing, to see a lot of these interesting transformations for independent game developers requires the internet to be an open place.

RPS: So there’s a slight controversy with this current bundle regarding quite how indie it actually is. With Limbo originally published by Microsoft, Psychonauts by THQ, Majesco, and so on, do you think you’re pushing the boundaries on what indie can really be?

Richard Esguerra: I don’t know. It didn’t really feel like it to us. These discussions took place with the developers directly, and all of them are in the situation where the IP is owned by the studio. I don’t know that that should preclude them from additional appreciation. Especially for example I would want everybody in the world to play Bastion, to play Limbo, to see and experience those ideas and those emotions. To say that these people who, in my opinion, took a creative risk, and to say “that’s not indie”, I dunno – that’s drawing lines in a way that I think is weird when it’s also so apparent that there’s something to celebrate in what they’ve created.

RPS: It’s certainly not affecting sales, that’s for sure.

Richard Esguerra: And it’s part of how things are in transition. Psychonauts – ownership of that reverted back to Double Fine, and they’re a great example of a studio that are trying interesting things.

RPS: So, finally, I want to ask – after you’ve launched, do you guys sit and stare transfixed at the tickers rolling up?

Richard Esguerra: [laughs] Yeah, to be totally fair, there’s a little bit of that. In between other stuff like jumping on and helping customer service, and squashing bugs, there is definitely a culture of checking back. Yeah, having a good time, checking out the numbers, and seeing what people are saying and looking at retweets, communicating with people on social networks – it’s fun. It feels like a little party every time. We spend weeks and months setting these things up, so it feels like we finally got to invite people to this big thing we were excited about, and then everybody’s celebrating. It’s fun to be a part of it.

RPS: Thank you for your time.

__________________

« Hacker’s Paradise: Ubisoft On Watch Dogs | Purple In The Face: Planetside 2′s E3 Bit »

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The AI game that knows you better than anyone - tech

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A new type of game will mine your social media to personalise the experience

“WHEN I put my son to bed, I quite often tell him a story,” says Peter Molyneux, a British game developer who recently left Microsoft to start his own studio, 22Cans. “I will have crafted that story around what I know about him, what he has done in the past few days. Those are the best stories I can tell him - better than Harry Potter, better than anything else because they pull his life into the story.” Molyneux, who has worked in the industry for 30 years, wants to create an artificial intelligence that can offer players the same tailored experience in his next game.

Game developers have traditionally attempted to create AI systems that model realistic human behaviour and emotions, but Molyneux says this is too difficult with current technology. “Human beings can read emotion in faces down to a level of fidelity we can’t even dream of in games at the moment,” he says. Instead, he plans to harness the wealth of personal data shared on social media to learn what players enjoy and create characters that connect with them as individuals.

It’s a lofty goal. How do you turn social media information into a game? Michael Cook, a computer scientist at Imperial College London, is using social media to teach games about the real world. He has created an AI system that designs its own simple video games and recently added the ability to base these games on news articles using personal opinions gathered from Twitter users. Cook says the system has a good opinion of Rupert Murdoch at the moment. “I’m not sure whether that’s a bug or not,” he says.

In a few weeks’ time, Molyneux will launch the first of 22 experiments designed to explore the psychology of social-media users. The results of these experiments will inform the final design for a game he plans to release in two years’ time.

The first experiment, “Curiosity”, puts players in a virtual room containing a single black cube. Players tap away at the cube, causing it to fracture and shed tiny layers from the surface. Other fractures also appear because everyone playing the game is tapping away at the same black cube.

After an undivulged, large number of taps, the cube will open, revealing something “truly amazing, absolutely unique”, says Molyneux. The twist is that only the player who performs the final tap will get to see inside the cube, and 22Cans will study how news of the revelation spreads. “We will rely entirely on social media,” explains Molyneux. “How will this person prove it? That in itself becomes a fascinating aspect of this experiment.”

Before the cube opens, a second phase of the experiment will be launched. Players will then be able to purchase one of a limited number of chisels to amplify their tapping strength. These range from a iron chisel, costing 59 pence, that is 10 times more powerful than just tapping alone, to a diamond chisel that is 100,000 times as powerful. Again, there is a twist: Molyneux will only sell one diamond chisel - and it will cost £50,000. “It’s an insane amount of money,” he admits, but the aim is to see whether pure curiosity will drive one player, or a syndicate of players assembled through social media, to buy the chisel. “This is not a money-making exercise; it is a test about the psychology of monetisation.”

Other experiments that use social-media data more directly will follow, but how will they help build an AI that treats you as an individual? Molyneux says the key is to identify small changes that provoke a strong reaction among players (see “When the player gets played”).

Demis Hassabis, who worked with Molyneux in the 1990s and is now a neuroscientist at University College London, takes a different approach to personalisation. He is advising a start-up company that is working on an AI designed to give players unique experiences by reacting to the choices they make during the game.

“We’re creating agents that can learn how to play games, rather than being programmed how to play them,” he says. “It will learn from the human players’ interactions.”

Hassabis also hopes that gaming AI could help improve machine intelligence in general: “Games are good testing environments - they are not too simple, nor are they as complex as the real world.”

Cook suggests that Molyneux’s completed game may reflect your current social-media mood - tweet about having a bad day and the game could become more sombre. “It is going to be inspired by events that have happened to you, but it may not represent them in a literal sense,” he says.

But what if you don’t want your personal information to bleed into a game? Molyneux says that although it is currently easy for apps to access personal information, that is likely to change in the future as people realise the potential dangers of oversharing.

“Saying, ‘Let me look at your Twitter feed’, is not enough - I’ve got to make people want to give it up.” He hopes his experiments will convince players to do so.

When the player gets played

Blurring player’s lives with games has been tried before. Players of Majestic, an ahead-of-its-time conspiracy game, received puzzles via real-world phone calls, instant messages and faxes. British game designer Peter Molyneux’s Black & White scanned players’ computers to identify their name and if it was one of the 200 most common ones, then whispered a creepy recording.

Another of Molyneux’s projects, Milo & Kate, saw players interact with a startlingly lifelike child. Each day a few new lines of dialogue were added referencing real-world events. “It was 90 per cent trickery, but people wanted to believe that he was real,” he says.

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Do What You Love - Valve

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A good third of the mountain of mail I’ve gotten since my first post has been of the general form:

“What should I study in college/learn to do/work at to get hired at Valve/have a good career/have a good life?”

The most useful response I have is drawn from my own life: Do what you love. There are no guarantees, especially in the short run, about where that will lead – but at least you’ll enjoy the trip, and it is likely to lead to exciting things. It is true, however, that it can take a while; consider my own long journey to being a full-time programmer.

In 1975, I was a freshman at Clark University with absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was a Geography major, but only because I had taken an intro course and done well enough so that a professor had decided to mentor me. I did my Geography homework and papers the way I did all my homework and papers – under pressure and generally at the last minute; classwork was just what I had to do to stay in college. Then, as part of my major, I took Dick Howard’s FORTRAN course, and something interesting happened.

Dick had the habit of writing each homework assignment on the blackboard (this was before whiteboards) at the start of the class that covered the relevant material for that assignment. So during class, I’d listen to the lecture with half my mind, and with the other half I’d figure out how to do the assignment, then write the code for it in my notebook (this was before laptops, let alone tablets). As soon as class was over, I’d head for the computer center (this was before PCs), type the assignment out on punch cards (this wasn’t before teletypes or terminals, but those weren’t available to normal users at Clark), and see if my code worked. Once I had it working, I’d extend and embellish it beyond what the assignment required, seeing what I could coax our feeble Xerox minicomputer into doing. It was easy, it was fun; in short, it was what I wanted to be doing.

That summer, I decided to stay on campus, so I had to take a class. I picked the one that looked like the least work, a half-credit class in assembly language taught by Andrea Goodman – and unexpectedly got a hint of just how deep the rabbit hole went. I hadn’t even realized there was a native language the computer used, and suddenly I was learning it. I did well in the class, but Andrea told me I had a lot more to learn, and suggested I TA her programming course the next semester, which I did, staying about one lecture ahead of the students, since I’d never had a real programming course myself (as opposed to FORTRAN for Geographers). I started to learn about algorithms, program design, coding for readability, and the like. I even had my first taste of crunch time, going to Andrea’s house with the rest of the TAs and a pile of pizza and spending a whole day grading finals.

I’d say I loved programming back then, but it wasn’t even that complicated – it was just what I did naturally. I was good at lots of other things I did academically, but they all felt like work. More importantly, the material in those other classes didn’t lead anywhere for me; I learned it, and thought about it no further. Programming was different; I remember my roommate Chris Caldwell and I sitting on our beds and trying to figure out as many different ways as we could to convert from ASCII to binary. How’s that for wild dorm life?

Clark didn’t have a programming major, though – in fact, Andrea was half of the entire computer department – and even if it had, programming was not on my career radar or that of anyone I knew. So I remained a Geography major, albeit one who programmed at every opportunity, often to the detriment of my classes.

After I graduated, I eventually wound up as a PhD student in the Energy Management and Policy program at Penn, studying under Steve Feldman. This was near the end of the great oil price spikes of the 1970s, and energy was a hot area. Steve was a brilliant entrepreneur, landing lots of grants and projects, and one of them involved computer-based energy modeling and analysis, a godsend for me, since I had been starved for programming since becoming a grad student. I headed down to the computer center and started implementing the code on an IBM mainframe…

And found out that, unlike Clark, neither students nor professors got free computer time at Penn. Steve’s project would have to pay for its time – but there was no money for that in the budget. We were well and truly screwed.

I don’t remember what made me think of it, but it occurred to me to check out a microcomputer. By now it was 1980, and I had been seeing ads for Radio Shack computers for a few years, but I didn’t know anything about them. I assumed they were toys, but there were other systems around that seemed more businesslike. There weren’t a lot of computer stores around; I finally found a place in Haverford that had a very sharp tech named Richard Beyer; Richard sold me a Vector Graphics VIP CP/M computer loaded with 56K of RAM and dual 320K floppies (quad density; the controller couldn’t keep up, so every sector read required the floppy to rotate twice, which was incredibly slow – but think of all that storage space!) – and one other very important thing, a Microsoft FORTRAN compiler. (This wasn’t before C, but it was before C was widespread on microcomputers; I had never even heard of it.)

The only way to get my work to date off the IBM system (short of retyping the whole thing) was via a serial port; to do that, I had figure out how to write a serial comm program, which resulted in the worst week of my programming life until Richard saved me by explaining the concept of a null modem. Then I finished the project on the microcomputer, uploaded the results to the IBM system and wrote them onto a tape, and delivered the tape to complete the project.

That was just the start for me and the VIP, though. CP/M was pretty lame in terms of built-in utilities, so I wrote a bunch of utilities for it, such as a full-screen disk browser; it was a great learning experience to try to replicate the functionality I had taken for granted on minicomputers and mainframes, and see that I could do it myself. Better yet, the VIP had a button that dropped you into a ROM monitor from which you could dump the contents of memory and do disassembly, which was a revelation to someone who had only ever used computers that carefully sealed users off from the OS and hardware. Best of all, though, was that it had memory-mapped video.

We’re not exactly talking desktop-class RGB bit-mapped graphics here: The VIP could push the grand total of 160×72 black-and-white pixels.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? In those days, it was magic. I figured out how XOR-based animation works, learned Z80 assembly language, and wrote a Space Invaders-type game; the VIP didn’t have sound, but otherwise it was a complete, smoothly-animated game, complete with levels and high scores. Only a handful of people ever played it – I didn’t even know yet that there was a computer game industry – and none of them understood just how cool it was, but that was okay. Creating the game was its own reward.

As you might expect, the time I spent programming reduced the time I spent doing energy research, and especially the attention I gave to figuring out what my dissertation was going to be. In fact, I did my best to figure out a way I could work programming into my dissertation, with no success. While I was trying to get myself moving on my academic career, something happened that forever changed the course of my life: The IBM PC.

When I read about the new IBM microcomputer, I mentioned to my wife that if I ported my game to the PC, I could probably sell a lot of copies. (By this time I had met Dan Illowsky, who had the best-seller Snack Attack on the Apple II, and I knew that there was money in selling games.) She generously agreed to let me spend half our life savings on a PC (all the more generous since she was the one holding down a real job to support us). I got the PC, ported the game in a few months (to 320×200 – nearly six times as much resolution – with four glorious colors!), and sold it through Dan’s publisher, Datamost. Space Strike shipped in plastic baggies with printed cardboard inserts; I still have one, complete with a floppy that I can’t read on any machine made in the last two decades.

And then one day I came home from Penn, got the mail, opened a letter from Datamost, found a quarterly royalty check for $8,000 – and I was on my way. I immediately dropped out of the PhD program, and went on to write or co-write three more games in the next year. The funny thing is that I never got a royalty check nearly that big again; it turned out that the PC was a business machine in the early days, and apart from Flight Simulator, entertainment didn’t sell nearly as well on the PC as on the Apple II and the like. So eventually I got a real programming job, then moved to Silicon Valley and started writing articles and books; there were plenty of bumps along the way, but it was obvious that I was finally doing what I was meant to do.

If you can read that story and see any master plan – or any planning at all, for that matter – you’re more insightful than I am. The only thread that runs through it is that I did what I loved, even though most of the time it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing and seemed counterproductive. (My mother was convinced I had thrown away my professional career when I decided not to get my PhD, changing her mind only in the mid-1990s, somewhere around the time of my first meeting with Bill Gates.) The point is emphatically not that you should neglect everything else in order to program; it’s that you should figure out what makes you want to neglect everything else, and do that. It might be video games, it might be repairing cars, it might be starting companies, it might be raising a family. Whatever it is, find it and do it.

Perhaps the most useful way to figure out what you really want to do is to observe what you actually choose to do. Lots of people say they want to write games, and get excited about it and make plans and talk about it, but just don’t find time for it. To be really good at something, you have to immerse yourself in it, and that’s just too hard to do unless it’s what you want to be doing all the time – unless it’s what you have to be doing. Something that seems compelling from the outside may not suit you when you actually try to do it; writing video games is nothing like playing them, any more than writing novels is like reading them. So if you think you want to write games, start doing it, and see what you learn – about yourself, most of all.

In general, try things that seem worthwhile, set goals and work hard to achieve them, and see where that leads and how you respond. It’ll be clear when something becomes compelling, because it’ll be where you choose to spend your time and attention. It may not be what you expected or wanted it to be – but by definition you’ll find it fascinating and satisfying. And when you think about what you could do with your studies/career/life, really, what more could you want?

There’s no universal prescription for such things, but I’ve seen similar patterns with many other people with interesting careers. Your mileage may vary, of course; it’s your own personal journey, and, in fact, that’s the whole point.

This is just my own opinion and experience, offered in response to some major life questions I’ve received; it’s strictly personal, and doesn’t represent Valve’s position in any way. That said – if your journey eventually brings you to Valve, all the better!

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Day Z-Tagebuch, Teil 1
29.05.2012

Über die Lebenden und die Toten: DayZ, Teil 1

Denn Ihr wisset weder den Tag noch die Stunde: Völlig unversehens brach jüngst mit DayZ die Endzeit über unsere Computer herein. CHRISTOF ZURSCHMITTEN mischte sich unter die Überlebenden und entdeckte, dass die Apokalypse ungeheuer brutal, aber auch brutal einnehmend sein kann – eine letzte Geschichte vom Ende der Tage. (Eine erste fand sich auf Superlevel, eine dritte und letzte hier.)

Die Apokalypse kam ohne Propheten: Fernab der üblichen Hype-Zyklen und Aufmerksamkeitsoffensiven entwickelte sich DayZ nur durch Mund-zu-Mund-Propaganda zu einem der meistverkauften Spiele der letzten Wochen. Oder, präziser: Es verhalf es einem bereits dreijährigen Projekt, das eher Kult- denn Massenappeal hatte, zu einem nie gekannten Verkaufshoch. Der Erfolg von DayZ ist nur noch erstaunlicher angesichts der Tatsache, dass es nicht einmal ein eigenständiges Spiel ist, sondern lediglich die Vorabversion der Rumbastelei an einer notorisch sperrigen Militärsimulation: Ein kostenloses, nicht-professionelles Projekt, das den auf Krieg getrimmten Detailfetischismus in Sachen Geographie, Balistik und Zerstörbarkeit der Körper von Arma 2 - Combined Operations nimmt und ihn im übernatürlichen Schrecken unendlich potenziert. Dadurch wird DayZ zu so viel mehr als nur zur Mod des Monats: Es wird zur Neudefinition des Genres Survival Horror, die alle vorangehenden Versuche als Geisterbahnspäßchen entlarvt. Es wird in der Anwesenheit der 49 anderen Spieler, die den Server und damit die Spielwelt mit einem teilen, zum Diorama der Degenerierung von Menschlichkeit im Angesicht unmenschlicher Herausforderungen – punktuiert von aufflackerenden Momenten unerwarteter Großzügigkeit. Und es wird zum besten Argument dafür, dass die Steigerungsform von Immersion nichts anderes als PANIK ist. Noch vor allem anderen aber ist DayZ in seiner ungeheuren Komplexität und Unberechenbarkeit die nächste große Geschichtengeneriermaschine, die dieses Medium hervorgebracht hat… lasst uns also eine  Geschichte erzählen.

Wie ich gestern bereits auf Superlevel geschildert habe, beginnt jedes neue Leben in DayZ einfach genug: Mit dem Aufwachen an einem Strand, vor dem sich eine 200 Quadratkilometer große vermeintliche Idylle landeinwärts erstreckt. Die Ausrüstung, die einem mit auf den Weg gegeben wird, ist spärlich genug: Eine Ration Bohnen, eine Flasche Wasser, Verbandszeug und eine Waffe mit einem kümmerlichen Rest Munition. Selbstvertrauen und Orientierungssinn nicht inklusive. Klar ist einzig das Ziel: Überleben, so gut es eben geht. Dass es meistens nicht gut geht, ist gewährleistet: Ein fragiler Körper muss versorgt werden – mit Ressourcen, die meist nur in verlassenen Siedlungen zu finden sind, in denen ungeheuer agile und hellhörige Untote umgehen und keine Sekunde zögern, um einen Nahrungssuchenden zur eigenen Nahrung zu machen.

Andere Mitspieler könnten einem beim Überleben helfen – aber im Angesicht der Apokalypse wird der Wert einer Allianz nach ihrer Nützlichkeit bemessen, eine instabile Währung, deren Kurs sich von Augenblick zu Augenblick verändert: Jemandem den Rücken zuzukehren ist in diesem Spiel meist tödlicher, als ihm seinen Rücken nie gezeigt zu haben, Umsicht die wichtigste Überlebensstrategie. Denn der Blick  reicht weit in DayZ, und Kugeln fliegen mit dem brutalen Realismus der Militärsimulation, die diesem Untergangsszenario sein physikalisch korrektes Rückgrat leiht. Überleben ist in DayZ bereits bei Tag ein ständiges Rückzugsgefecht gegen die fortschreitende Paranoia.

Als ich die Welt zum zweiten Mal betrete, ist es Nacht geworden. Die Nächte in diesem verlorenen Teil der Welt scheinen von einer besonders undurchdringlichen Konsistenz zu sein, eine Dunkelheit vom finstersten Ende von »Keine Hand vor Augen«. Wie viele andere in den letzten Tagen habe ich Arma 2 nur gekauft für DayZ und keine einzige Mission dieser detailversessensten aller Militärsimulation gespielt. Immerhin habe ich mir die Einführung angesehen, in der mir beigebracht wurde, wie man läuft, schleicht, wie man Wunden verarztet und sein Gepäck verwendet, wie man Waffen abfeuert, ohne sich vom Rückstoß an die Wand nageln zu lassen. Und ich habe gelernt, dass das Militär tausend Mittel hat, die Nacht mittels Technologie im Zaum zu halten: Nachtsichtgeräte und Infrarot-Marker, Wärmesensoren und Laserpointer. Arma bietet all dies auf, um den schwärzesten Nächte, die dieses Medium je gesehen hat, den Schrecken zu nehmen.

In der Nacht von DayZ bin ich mit meinen Ängsten allein. Ich drücke »L« im Vertrauen darauf, dass der Lichtkegel meiner Taschenlampe eine Schneise durch die Nacht brennen wird. Nichts. Ich versuche es zweimal, dreimal, versuche, das Nachtsichtgerät einzuschalten, von dem ich weiß, dass es sich nicht in meinem Gepäck befinden kann. Die Nacht bleibt unberechenbar. Ich überlege, mit der trügerischen Sicherheit des Meeres im Rücken auf den Tag zu warten. Doch die Zeit verstreicht elend langsam in diesem Spiel, von der Dämmerung trennen mich womöglich Stunden. Ich taumle also halbblind vorwärts in der Dunkelheit, über die altbekannte Hügelkuppe hinweg, bis ich zu einer Straße gelange. Am Tag meide ich Straßen, denn Straßen führen zu Überresten menschlicher Zivilisation – und in den entvölkerten Dörfern und Militärbasen warten Zombies und die abgeklärtesten unter den menschlichen Mitspielern darauf, dass sich ein unterernährter Überlebender auf der Suche nach Ausrüstung in einen Hinterhalt locken lässt.

Doch in der Nacht wird der graue Asphalt, der sich schemenhaft vor der Landschaft abzeichnet, plötzlich zum Boulevard der unterdrückten Träume: Kein Versprechen von Sicherheit, aber ein Anhaltspunkt. In dieser Dunkelheit muss das genügen. Ich laufe los in irgendeine Richtung, im deprimierendsten Road Movie aller Zeiten. Ich komme vorbei an Felderschemen, an Stadtumrissen, an all den unsichtbaren Schrecken, die in der Kindheit im Schrank und unter dem Bett gelauert haben. Irgendwann bemerke ich, dass einer von ihnen hinter mir herläuft. Ich laufe weiter, vernehme das Aufheulen von jemandem, der Witterung aufnimmt. Die Geräusche werden mehr. Links am Straßenrand kriecht jemand heran, ich wechsle die Spur, renne an ihm vorbei, er schließt sich dem Mob hinter mir an. Ich renne, der Straße entlang, ohne Ziel, ohne Zweck. Als ich mich umdrehe, sehe ich mindestens fünfzehn Verfolger, ich will die Waffe zücken und feuern, es ist nicht möglich im Laufschritt. Ich richte den Blick wieder gerade aus, und laufe weiter.

DayZ gehört zu den seltenen Spielen, die einem einen Körper anvertrauen. Einen Körper, der nicht nur beschädigt werden kann durch physische Gewalt, sondern auch durch einen Mangel dessen, was gut für ihn ist: Die Befriedigung der grundlegendsten aller Bedürfnisse ist das Herzstück des Spiels. Man erzählt sich, es sei möglich, in dieser Welt auf Orte zu stoßen, die Versteck bieten vor den Zombies und Banditen. Orte, die eine Ahnung von Frieden geben. Doch sind es letztlich immer Hunger, Durst und das Bedürfnis nach Sicherheit (für das DayZ kein anderes Symbol als Waffen kennt), die einen Spieler zurück treiben zu den Siedlungsüberresten, wo verrostete Wasserpumpen zu finden sind, Konservendosen und der Tod. Der Körper ist in DayZ ein zerbrechliches Gut, das sich ständig bemerkbar macht: Der Blick schaukelt beim Rennen hin und her, die Atmung wird zunehmend lauter – das hier ist Leben, und es steht ständig auf Messers Schneide. Angesichts dieser Körperlichkeit sollte es als Versäumnis erscheinen, dass dieser Körper nicht müde werden kann. Aber ist ein Versäumnis von poetischer Ironie: Der gesunde Körper gerät ins Schnaufen, aber er wird nicht langsamer. Und er ist, solange er nicht unter Hunger und Durst kollabiert, exakt so schnell wie ein Zombie.

Ich rannte also, rannte auf dieser Straße durchs Nirgendwo, die Untoten hinter mir her, darauf abgerichtet, mich einzuholen, doch nicht dafür eingerichtet, es je zu tun. Mit jedem Meter, den wir gemeinsam hinter uns brachten, machten wir einen weiteren Schritt auf die Welt des Schwer-Symbolischen zu: Sie und ich im unentscheidbaren Wettlauf um den Tod (frei nach Beckett), ein Sabu-Film mit Schauplatz Totenacker, Sisyphos auf der Rundbahn, Orpheus samt Eurydikes aller Geschlechter und Verwesungsstufen in der Zwischenwelt. Und als ich mich gerade zu fragen begann, ob irgendwann doch noch die Dämmerung kommen würde und ich vielleicht eine poetische Verpflichtung hatte, diesen Lauf ins Unendliche fortzusetzen, machte die Straße eine sanfte Biegung, auf der ich meinen Schritt verlangsamte und mich umwandte. Jede Kugel fand ihr Ziel und fällte es, und als schließlich ich fiel, tat mein Avatar es wohl mit einem Lächeln auf dem Gesicht.

Ein erster Teil des DayZ-Tagebuchs findet sich auf superlevel.de. Nächste Woche wird das Tagebuch an dieser Stelle fortgesetzt mit einer Nahtoderfahrung und einem Morphin-Trip, der in eine Welt des Friedens führt - und wieder zurück.

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