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ham’ darauf geachtet, dass der Text noch Sinn hat – ich verlang nicht viel, nur dass ihr euch daran erinnert : random:notes
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ham’ darauf geachtet, dass der Text noch Sinn hat – ich verlang nicht viel, nur dass ihr euch daran erinnert : random:notes

volker-bonacker.de • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Um’s kurz und krass zu machen: Ich habe meine Stelle als freier Journalist aufgegeben. Jetzt, hier, mit sofortiger Wirkung, nicht für’s Erste und ohne einen Gedanken daran, ob es eine Wiederkehr gibt oder nun Schluss ist nach sechseinhalb Jahren. Sechseinhalb Jahre. Fast. Was für eine verrückte Zeit. Nun sitze ich hier und tippe an einem Beitrag, den ich in Gedanken im Bett liegend vor dem Einschlafen schon seit Wochen fertig geschrieben habe. Wie immer ist er darin besser geworden als das, was ich nun meine, hier zu Papier bringen zu können und ich überlege, warum es auch 2012 noch keine Maschine gibt, die aus Gedanken Sätze baut.

Wovon will ich erzählen? Vielleicht von den vergangenen Jahren und dem, was darin passiert ist. Weniger von dem, was nun passieren wird. Das weiß ich ohnehin nicht. Was ich weiß, ist: ich habe Bock drauf. Es ist etwas anderes, etwas Neues. Und ich stehe dem nicht mehr mit einem Gefühl entgegen, dass ich noch vor wenigen Jahren hatte, als ich dachte “Boah, da sitzt du nun mit diesen Typen von diesen Magazinen, die du in den 90ern selbst gelesen hast und bist selbst einer von ihnen.” Genau das war es während einer Taxifahrt in London 2008, nicht anders war es während einer Taxifahrt in Montreal 2012. Mit einem Unterschied: irgendwann war mir klar, dass ich nicht mehr zu wem aufschauen muss, sondern selbst wer geworden bin und gleichzeitig die Typen, zu denen ich aufgeschaut habe, keine Götter sind, sondern auch nur Menschen. Aus der anfänglichen Unsicherheit darüber, ob das überhaupt alles wahr sein kann, dass ich nun in genau der Branche arbeite, in die ich immer wollte, ist die Gewissheit geworden, dass ich genau hier hin gehöre, genau das tue, was ich kann. Das wird sich übrigens auch mit dem Ende meiner Zeit als Journalist und dem Beginn meiner Zeit als Nicht-Journalist nicht ändern: ich arbeite weiterhin mit dem coolsten, innovativsten Medium unserer Zeit. Alles andere wäre für mich gegenwärtig ganz einfach undenkbar und ich hoffe, dieser Zustand dauert noch eine Weile an.

Was kann ich jemandem, der heute 18 oder 20 ist und sich überlegt, ob’s nun die Uni / FH sein soll oder der Berufseinstieg in genau diese Branche, mitgeben auf den Weg? Letztlich vor allem eines: Egal, ob’s nun ein Einstieg als Freelancer wird, der 50 Euro pro Test kassiert, auf ein Volo hofft und irgendwann dann den Sprung in die wohl gewärmte Redaktionsstube schafft oder ob’s zunächst der akademische Weg sein soll, derjenige, bei dem über alles das Schreiben betreffende doziert wird – ohne Liebe geht nichts. Ohne Liebe ist alles gar nichts. Wir schreiben nicht über Waschmaschinen. Wir schreiben über digitale Spiele. Das ist ein himmelweiter Unterschied und das darf nicht vergessen werden. Wer nie ein Spiel in der Hand hatte, wer nicht das Gefühl kennt, nachts im Wahn aufzustehen, um eben noch diese verdammte Stelle zu schaffen, wer nicht schonmal vor Wut darüber, dass es auch im hundertsten Anlauf nichts wurde ein Gamepad zertrümmern wollte und dann beim 101. Anlauf, nachdem die Stelle geschafft wurde, jubelnd durch’s Zimmer sprang – wer diese Gefühle nicht kennt, der sollte besser in den Handel mit Waschmaschinen einsteigen. Was wir tun ist nicht nur Arbeiten mit einem Medium, sondern auch arbeiten an einem.

Braucht’s Fachwissen? Ganz ehrlich: Jein. Das Schreiben über digitale Spiele endet nicht damit, zu wissen, welche geistige Blähung der japanische Designer XYZ 1998 im dritten Quartal auf PS-X abgelassen hat. Es ist schön, wenn diese Daten im Kopf vorhanden sind, es ist schön, wenn sich diverse Anekdoten dazugesellen und derartiges Wissen ist nie verkehrt, aber es darf nicht der alleinige Inhalt eines Textes sein. Denn der 14-jährige Forentroll, der im Leben schon alles gesehen hat, weiß es ohnehin besser, wird es ohnehin im Netz nachschlagen und anschließend aufgrund der Tatsache, dass eine der 458 Waffen im Multiplayer-Modus nicht aufgezählt wurde, Inkompetenz attestieren. Auch das ist alltäglich geworden: Die Kids wissen’s alles besser. Und wir sind mitschuld, wir haben uns genau diesen Typ Leser herangezogen mit einer Schreibe, die historisch betrachtet meist aus dem Autodidaktischen heraus entstanden ist, dabei zu technik- und feature- und objektfixiert war, ist, sein wird. Wer sich 2012 nicht loslöst davon, dass ein Spieletest eine Aufzählung von Features ist, wer 2012 noch meint, Wertungen über Spiele objektiv abgeben zu können und sich vor Subjektivität drückt, salopp gesagt nicht die Eier hat, seinen Text die Kraft aus den eigenen Worten schöpfen zu lassen, sondern sich mit einer Note oder Prozentzahl aus der Affäre zieht, sollte überdenken, ob er morgen noch gebraucht wird. Mehr Mut – das ist alles, was ich mir manchmal wünsche. Weniger Fragen wie “Will das wer lesen?” oder Drückebergerargumente wie “Aber wir haben eine Serviceleistung zu erfüllen, das haben wir immer so gemacht!” Schön, können wir weiterhin. Nur bitte, bitte, macht’s einfach endlich anders. Und wenn’s nur ein wenig ist. Ein wenig mehr Texte, die Reiseberichte sind, die von Gefühlen beim Spielen erzählen, nicht davon, ob die PS3-Version der Xbox 360-Fassung technisch überlegen ist oder die Framerate einbricht nach dem Bossfight im Lavalevel, der nach durchschnittlich 3:47 Spielstunden auf dem mittleren der 12 zur Verfügung stehenden Schwierigkeitsgrade und mit 23% der Achievements erreicht wird.

In den letzten Jahren habe ich das getan: auf dererlei verzichtet. Das ist es auch, was ich jungen Menschen raten würde. Schreibt keinen Text für 100.000 Menschen. Schreibt einen, den 100 Millionen verstehen können, von der Mutter, die keine Ahnung hat bis zum Forentroll, dessen Lebenserfahrung in 14 Jahren so gigantisch angewachsen ist, dass ihm niemand mehr was über das Leben und Spielen erzählen muss. Schreibt einen Text, der eine Geschichte über ein Spiel erzählt. Einen, der Sinn hat. Keinen, der Produktattribute auflistet, runterbetet, sonst nichts leistet. Macht mehr aus euch, aus der wichtigsten Fähigkeit, die ihr besitzt: den eigenen Worten. Stagniert nicht. Sorgt nicht dafür, dass euch eure Kumpels auch morgen noch Sätze sagen wie “Weißt du, ich lese ja keine Spielemagazine mehr, die sind mir alle zu kindisch in der Aufmachung, das ist mir peinlich, wenn ich damit in der Bahn gesehen werde” sondern tragt was dazu bei, dass sie kommen und sagen “Alter, ich hab da grade ein Gamesmag endteckt, das muss ich dir zeigen!” Macht etwas anders. Werdet jemand anderes. Behaltet euch mit dem täglichen Aufgang der Sonne die Möglichkeit vor, euch zu verändern. Schaut über den Tellerrand – vor allem, da nur schreiben heute längst nicht mehr alles ist. Ich hatte das große Glück, dank abgeschlossenem Online-Journalismus-Studium diverse Trends quasi von Haus aus zu erkennen, zu sehen “Hey, das könnte was größeres werden” und zu überlegen, wie man wo dort mitmischen könnte – und das in kredibiler Art, nicht als Ranwanzerei an einen Trend. Andere können das nicht. Sie können es lernen. Das zählt.

Das ist etwas, vor dem ich wie erwähnt anfangs selbst Angst hatte. Ich dachte Dinge wie “All diese Menschen hier und ich gehöre hier nicht rein. Die sind alle älter, die kennen einander alle, die haben alle schon Millionen Zeilen getippt, sind erfahrene Routiniers, ich dagegen bin 24.” Das war damals, bei Gelegenheiten wie einem Abendessen mit Führungspersönlichkeiten von Sony, als am Tisch Redakteure von FAZ, Focus und Co. saßen, die addiert vermutlich das zehnfache meines Alters hatten und mir die Knie zitterten. Das ist gewichen mit den Jahren, verdrängt davon, einfach auch mal hinzugehen und zu sagen “Yup, das ist ein schöner Text geworden. Hab ich gut gemacht”, ohne dass jemand anders das sagen muss. Bisweilen reicht Eigenlob vollauf. Als Grundstein für’s Geliebtwerden ist Selbstliebe noch nie die schlechteste Option gewesen. Es hat funktioniert: Vor zwei Monaten während der Gamescom war ich derjenige, der angehauen wird, weil man mich erkannte. Aufgrund meines Twitter-Nicknames oder meiner Visage? Aufgrund eines Textes über ein Spiel oder eines Blogposts? Völlig egal. Der Routinier, das war nun ich, irgendwo. Die Aufregung, sie ist nie ganz verschwunden.

Gleiches gilt für den Stolz, ein Heft in der Hand zu halten, von dem sechs Seiten aus der eigenen Tastatur stammen. Oder die Freude über Klickzahlen eigener Beiträge. Oder – am Wichtigsten – Zuspruch. Ein einfaches “Haste schön gemacht”, ein Schulterklopfen. Ganz ehrlich: Ich bin nicht unglücklich darüber, bislang nicht für Coregamer-Publikationen als festangestellter Redakteur gearbeitet zu haben. Denn die Kommentare derer Leser gehen mir auch mit 28 Jahren noch nicht am Arsch vorbei, ich nehme sie immer noch zu einem gewissen Teil persönlich. Und ich könnte es nicht ab, wenn mich einer verbal anpisst, der nicht zehn Prozent der Titel, die ich gespielt habe, gespielt hat und nun meint, nur weil meine Wertung “seinem” Game nicht gerecht wird, bashen zu müssen. Irgendwann würde ich wider besseren Wissens über Trollfütterung zurückballern und das dann mit Kanonen auf Spatzen in einer Weise, die mich vermutlich jeden Arbeitsvertrag der Welt kosten würde. Dass mir das bis heute weitestgehend erspart geblieben ist, kommt mir durchaus gelegen.

Rockstars sind wir trotzdem. Halbwegs. Zumindest mit einem ähnlich ausgestalteten Leben. Das war der andere Part und wenn ich daran denke, vermiss ich es schon jetzt. Die Reisen. Das Aufstehen nachts um vier, um den ersten Bus zum Flughafen zu nehmen, während der Koffer am Vorabend geübt binnen 15 Minuten fertig gepackt wurde und mir unverständlich ist, wie Leute keinen Reisepass haben können. Die Flüge in den Maschinen, zu denen ein kleiner Junge als Zaungast am Flughafen Zürich-Kloten früher hingeschaut hat und dachte “In so einer flieg ich mal!” (Boeing 747, mittlerweile weiß ich, wie schrott die Teile sind). Die fancy Hotels, das Leben in Gehaltsklassen, die nicht die eigene sind auf Kosten von Firmen, die mit einem Spiel mehr Umsatz machen als manche Länder Bruttoinlandsprodukt haben. Die Illusion, das alles sei real, das alles könne für immer sein. Aufwachen an Orten, die Los Angeles oder San Francisco heißen, Boston, Montreal, Paris, London, Madrid, Annan, scheiße, einmal sogar Mallorca. Der gigantische Spaß dort. Das Surreale. Aufwachen im Flieger zu den letzten Klängen des Soundtracks von “Shadow of the Colossus” oder “David comes to life”, kurz auf den kleinen Monitor blicken, erkennen, dass das Land darauf Island ist, der Flug also noch rund drei Stunden dauert und dann wieder die Augen zumachen. Die Dankbarkeit darüber, so ein Leben zu haben und nicht das eines Typen, der 9 to 5 malochen geht in der Hoffnung, die Rente möge vor dem Tod kommen und nicht umgekehrt. Die Gewissheit, nicht nur mit dem coolsten Medium zu arbeiten, sondern das auch auf eine alles andere als alltägliche Weise. Und die Menschen. Über allem. Diese verdammt coolen Leute. Begegnungen, aus denen Freundschaften wurden. Einfach so. Wie oft haben mir Menschen Dinge gesagt wie “Kommst du rum” oder “Ich beneide dich” oder schlicht “Alter!!” Das alles war nicht alltäglich und ich fürchte, mit den Jahren nimmt die Gefahr zu, dass man es für genau das nimmt: alltäglich. Gottgegebenes Recht a la “Natürlich fliegen die mich dahin! Die müssen!” Erste Anflüge davon habe ich nach dieser Zeit in dieser Branche selbst verspürt, das will ich absolut nicht verleugnen. Vielleicht ist es deshalb ein guter Zeitpunkt, etwas Neues zu beginnen.

Deshalb und aufgrund einer anderen Sache: Wenn ich in die Liste der Spiele schaue, die ich in diesem Jahr gespielt habe, dann sehe ich darin sehr viele wunderbare Titel. “Catherine” ist so einer, “Journey”, “Spec Ops: The Line” oder “Papo & Yo”. Das sind Spiele die gezeigt haben, was alles noch geht. 2012 scheint es mir, dass das Medium größtmöglich ausdifferenziert ist: Wer keinen Bock auf Kommerz-Blockbuster hat, greift zum Indie. Wer keinen Bock auf in der Garage oder im Keller gemachte Games hat, findet genug Kommerz-Ware. Kurz: alle bedient. Eigentlich. Und doch ein Vakuum, eine größer werdende Leere. Denn die Anzahl an Spielen mit Zahlen wie 2, 3, 4 oder 5 im Namen nimmt zu und zu. Sicher, irgendwo freue ich mich als Fan selbst über einige davon, aber nennen wir die Dinge beim Namen: es ist eine Industrie geworden, die sich kein Risiko mehr leisten will. Eine, die auf Nummer sicher geht. Videospiele kosten hohe Summen und diese Investitionen dürfen nicht danebengehen. Eine Konsequenz davon ist, dass die Qualität insgesamt betrachtet zugenommen hat, während andererseits die Innovationsbereitschaft den Bach runterzugehen droht. Das ist schwärzer gemalt, als es ist und es wird auch morgen noch kommerziell erfolgreiche Games geben, die anders sind. Aber da ist ein Damoklesschert, das aus eben jenen neuen Titeln ebenso eine Sequel-Nummer zu werden droht (“Borderlands” ist so ein Kandidat. Oder “Darksiders”) und ein einst cooles Spiel nun zum Erfolg ins Serie zu avancieren hat. Das eröffnet jenen, deren Produktions- und Vertriebsstrukturen ohnehin nicht die der Majors sind, Möglichkeiten und ein wachsender Indie-Markt zeigt, dass die genutzt werden. Kurz: Schaffen es etablierte Publisher nicht, uns was neues zu liefern, machen wir’s eben selbst. Punkrock, baby, alles prima. Bis auch der Indie-Markt groß wird.

Wieso betrifft mich das? Vielleicht, weil ich ganz froh bin, mich nun nicht mehr mit Besprechungen zu Sequels beschäftigen zu müssen. Denn – abermals ganz ehrlich – irgendwann wären mir die Worte ausgegangen, irgendwann wäre ich an der Herausforderung, das Ewig-Gleiche mit immer anderen Worten beschreiben zu wollen, gescheitert. Meine Texte wären Blubb geworden, Aneinanderreihungen von Floskeln, für deren Verwendung ich mir in den letzten Monaten das eine oder andere Mal schon selbst eine reinhauen wollte. Sicher, man kann mit Superlativen um sich werfen und sie Games attestieren, wenn’s denn passt, aber so verkommt es zu einer Institutionalisierung, die jedes Jahr im September oder November stattzufinden hat. Ich bin nicht unglücklich darüber, dass ich mich vorerst nicht mehr mit der Frage herumschlagen muss, was ich dieses Jahr noch schreiben könnte, nachdem ich schon im letzten Jahr meinte, alles geschrieben zu haben. Wenn eine Rezension nur noch daraus besteht, Unterschiede zum Vorgänger herauszuarbeiten, dann weiß ich, dass ich mich irgendwann fragen würde, ob ich eigentlich noch meine, was ich schreibe / schreibe, was ich meine, oder nur noch stur tippe. Zum verlängerten Arm des Marketings geworden bin.

Oh, auch so ein schöner Punkt. Die Verbindung von PR und Journalismus. Wollen wir drüber reden? Nein? Danke für die Shirts in XL. Ich schlaf gern drin. Danke für die Stories, die Kollegen erzählt haben von Anrufen in Redaktionen und Beschwerden über Wertungen – dieses Mal nicht von minderjährigen Angryvideogamenerds kommend, sondern von erwachsenen Männern mit in diesem Moment sicher hochrot leuchtenden Birnen. Von Drohungen der Einstellung der Zusammenarbeit, von Machtgehabe. Davon, wie in der Öffentlichkeit beständig das Bild aufrecht erhalten wird, so etwas komme nicht vor oder nur in Fällen unprofessioneller Amateure. Sowieso. Nennen wir’s beim Namen: Es kommt selten vor, ganz selten. Ich hab’s leider nie am eigenen Leib erfahren. Schade! Manchmal war ich streitlustig genug drauf, um auf genau so eine Scheiße einzusteigen. Ganz zu schweigen davon, mit welcher Lust ich manchmal Kumpanei angeprangert hätte, die schlimmer ist als Herkunft der Nebeneinkünfte von CDU- und SPD- und FDP- und B90 und Linken-Politikern addiert. Aber auch hier gilt: Einzelfälle (außerdem: erst mal wen finden, der wirklich sämtlichen Lockrufen standhält. Dazu würde schließlich auch gehören, Spiele selbst zu kaufen oder Reisen selbst zu bezahlen. Was in anderen Teilbereichen des Journalismus zur Obligation gehört, um Korruptionsverdacht im Keim zu ersticken, wird bei uns vielfach gern hingenommen mit Verweisen darauf, dass wir ja sonst nicht unsere Arbeit tun könnten. War ich da besser? Ich sag’s so: Das hier ist nicht als Fingerpointing auf andere zu verstehen. Nicht nur.). Rückblickend waren manche Vorkomnisse sogar für den einen oder anderen Lacher gut. Etwa wenn jemand blöd genug war, sich beim Verkauf von Rezensionsexemplaren auf eBay erwischen zu lassen. Oder überhaupt blöd genug, Rezensionsexemplare auf eBay zu verkaufen. Hi-hi, wisst ihr noch, ho-ho, Witz vorbei.

Gleiches gilt für die Arbeitsbedingungen: Keine Sätze mehr wie “Wir würden dir gern mehr zahlen, können aber nicht” und darauf entgegnen wollen, ob man diese Worte auch einer Prostituierten gegenüber äußern würde und wenn ja, mit welcher Antwort man da rechne. In den vergangenen Tagen hat sich ein Kollege furchtbar darüber aufgeregt, dass man ihm 10 Euro für eine News geboten hat. Ich kenne Menschen, die welche für die Hälfte tippen. Soweit ist es gekommen? Soweit ist es gekommen. Der Weg, zu erkennen, dass textliche Qualität einen Preis hat, der zu zahlen ist, muss erst noch gegangen werden, dafür sind die Auflagen eben noch nicht genug im Keller und die Berichte der Onlinemagazine noch nicht austauschbar genug. Mehrfachverwertung, der Zwang, für mehrere Arbeitgeber tätig zu sein, um wenigstens die Miete berappen zu können, wird dem aber Vorschub leisten. Make no mistakes: Machen wir genauso weiter wie jetzt und irgendwann bekommen wir qualitativ, was wir eben bekommen, wenn Kids für Reziexemplare den “Test” schreiben. Erneut gilt: Das ist schwärzer gemalt als es ist. Ich habe mehr als einmal Fairness erlebt, gute Bezahlung für gute Arbeit, vernünftige Preise ohne jede Verhandlung. Ich bin gut behandelt worden. Weil ich auch wusste, wie man “Nein” sagt. Es braucht nicht nur einen Ausbeuter – es braucht auch einen, der es mit sich machen lässt. Es geht anders und wer sich über Ausbeutung beschwert, sollte sich eine Minute Zeit nehmen und sich selbst fragen, ob er nicht wider besseren Wissens selbst unter Wert arbeitet und damit fleissig mitdreht an der Abwärtsspirale.

Witz vorbei. Ab jetzt wird’s ernst. Und ich freu mich immer noch drauf. Es gibt keinen guten Zeitpunkt, um zu gehen und niemand kann die Bedeutung von “Gehen, wenn’s am Schönsten ist” nachvollziehen, bis er / sie es selbst erlebt hat. Ich glaube, bei mir ist das gerade der Fall. Ein wenig zumindest. Die vergangenen ein bis zwei Jahre waren Quantensprünge in vielerlei Hinsicht: ich habe mich angekommener gefühlt, angenommener, aufgenommener. Wie jeder Schreiber treibt mich die Sucht nach Aufmerksamkeit vorwärts. Ich brauche eine Bühne, egal ob in der Provinz oder der Hauptstadt. Nur deshalb entsteht dieser Blogbeitrag, nur deshalb sind zig Texte entstanden, nur deshalb habe ich nachts um vier geschrieben, oder betrunken, oder im Flieger, oder in der Wüste, ganz egal. Wir machen das, weil wir etwas lieben: Videospiele. Wir machen das, weil wir etwas wollen: geliebt werden, spüren, dass Leute mit dem, was wir ihnen geben, etwas anfangen können. Rockstars. Verdammte Rockstars. Mit genauso vielen Allüren, allerdings meist in festen Beziehungen lebend und eher im Mazda unterwegs als im 911er.

Was mache ich nun? Gerade sehe ich auf die Uhr und lese dort die drei Zahlen 5:42. Irgendwann musste das hier getippt werden. Es gab keinen bestmöglichen Zeitpunkt. Vermutlich war es nicht die Hälfte dessen, was ich mir vorhin im Bett liegend zusammengebastelt habe. Vermutlich habe ich diverse Vorsätze über Bord geworfen, die ich mal hatte, diesen Beitrag betreffend. Aber das hier ist ja auch eine private Veranstaltung, mein kleines Eckchen namens “Volker plaudert aus dem Seelenleben”, das muss wer immer es liest nur so ernst nehmen, wie es ihm / ihr behagt.

Ich möchte mich bedanken. Für die Chance, die ich erhalten habe. Für alles. Für die Gelegenheiten. Es war mir ein unendlicher Spaß, ein epischer Win. Ich gehe mit Liebe.

(Oh: Und habe nie gesagt, dass es für immer sein wird.)

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Adapt or die: Eine Branche in der Krise

videogametourism.at • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Es ist kein Geheimnis, dass der gesamte Printjournalismus in der Krise steckt - der Videospieljournalismus noch ein bisschen mehr. In seinem Gastkommentar prägt Christoph Lurz, Blogger und ehemals selbst in der Gamesbranche beschäftigt, das treffende Wort des “Individualjournalismus” als Gegenentwurf zur herrschenden Katerstimmung.

Das klassisch gedruckte Videospielmagazin ist vom Aussterben bedroht und obwohl wie immer die Unschuldsvermutung gilt, gibt es einen Hauptverdächtigen: das Internet. Schier unendlich viele Inhalte sind nur wenige Klicks von potenziell konsumfreudigen Käufern entfernt und im Gegensatz zu azyklisch auf toten Bäumen erscheinenden textlichen Massenabfertigungen sind diese Inhalte kostenlos, individuell, inhaltlich anregend und sofort von quasi jedem Ort abrufbar. Zeitgleich mit dem Erscheinen eines neuen Videospiels tauchen „Let’s Play“-Videos in einschlägigen Videoportalen auf, innerhalb weniger Stunden werden Texte online veröffentlicht und bis die Verfechter des digitalen Individualjournalismus in Blogs, Foren und auf YouTube ein Werk in seine Bestandteile zerlegt haben, dauert es meist nur ein paar Tage.

Die populistische Überschrift sowie der einleitende Absatz sollten für ein abwertendes Augenrollen bei den Verfechtern und Vertretern des gedruckten Videospieljournalismus ausreichend gewesen sein. Schon wieder schreibt ein Blogger, ein Onliner, ein Nachäffer der letztjährigen Causa Schmidt, ein selbsternannter „Individualjournalist“ in egozentrischer Manier über das Sterben des ebenso selbsternannten hochqualitativen Printjournalismus und nutzt dabei möglichst viele Fremdwörter in Kombination mit standardisierten Vorurteilen. Zum einen vermutlich, um klüger zu wirken, und zum anderen, um den Eindruck einer fundierten und qualifizierten Meinung zu hinterlassen. Ich geb’s zu: Im Gegensatz zu Christian Schmidt und seinen ehemaligen Kollegen habe ich nie Journalismus studiert, aufgrund fehlender einschlägiger Praxis keine fundierten Erfahrungen in Bezug auf qualifizierte Recherche, kann nichts über den fachlich korrekten Aufbau von Texten schreiben, die systematisch korrekte Aufarbeitung von komplexen Themen ist mir fremd und ich würde mich selbst trotz der Möglichkeit, online zu publizieren, nie selbst als Journalist bezeichnen. Dafür besitze ich wichtigere Dinge: (m)ein Bauchgefühl und meine Integrität, zwei Dinge die den Inhalt meiner Texte bestimmen, zwei Dinge die anscheinend bei Videospielmagazinen an Relevanz verloren haben und, um zu pauschalisieren: Ich bin offensichtlich nicht der Einzige der es so sieht.

Printjournalismus im Bereich Videospiele ist schon lange kein Qualitäts-journalismus mehr

185.080 Heftverkäufe, das sind 1.581.522 Leser (Quelle: IVW/Computec mit 8,5 Lesern pro verkaufem Heft), hat PC Games, die selbsternannte „Pflichtlektüre für alle, die im Dschungel der PC-Spiele-Neuheiten den Überblick behalten möchten“, innerhalb von zwölf Jahren eingebüßt und ein kurzer Blick auf die Quartalszahlen anderer gedruckter Marktverlierer zeigt dasselbe desaströse Bild. Was hat ein Absatzrückgang von etwa 70 % zu bedeuten? Umsatzrekorde und die Erschließung zusätzlicher Zielgruppen durch die Adaptierung neuer Konzepte haben zwar stattgefunden, aber primär nur auf Seite der Videospielindustrie. Es ist nun ein Leichtes, eine These à la „Die Zielgruppe und Industrie entwickelt sich weiter, der gedruckte Videospiel-Journalismus nicht!“ in den Raum zu werfen und, was soll man sagen, die These stimmt.

In den letzten Jahren wuchs die Zahl der generischen, standardisierten und im Internet kostenlos verfügbaren Inhalte über das Medium Videospiele stetig und der Großteil der interessierten Kunden sieht einfach keinen Sinn mehr, zum gedruckten Magazin zu greifen. Ausnahmslos jeder hat mittlerweile die Möglichkeit, seine Eindrücke und Erfahrungen zu veröffentlichen und auch wenn Quantität nicht mit Qualität vergleichbar oder gar ersetzbar ist, bietet die Summe etlicher Beiträge ein deutlich breiteres sowie oft auch fundierteres Spektrum, als es ein Printmagazin mit einem klassischen Review aus der Schublade mit einer abschließenden zweistelligen Fantasiezahl bieten kann.

Wo liegt die Herausforderung ein Videospiel nach einem standardisierten Verfahren zu bewerten?

Videospiele unterhalten und wecken im optimalen Fall auch Emotionen in der Person hinter dem Eingabegerät, und Gleiches sollte auch für Texte über dieses Medium gelten. Wie Christian Schmidt in seinem letztjährigen Kommentar richtig fordert, gilt es Geschichten über Spiele zu erzählen, nicht Geschichte aus Spielen und auf gar keinen Fall nur technische Fakten herunterzubeten. Hinter jedem Videospiel stehen unzählige Personen, die oft mehrere Jahre ihres Lebens damit verbracht haben, dieses zu erschaffen. Das Medium und die Menschen dahinter verdienen es nicht, in standardisierten mit belanglosen Fakten angereicherter Form mit einer zweistelligen Zahl am Ende abgefertigt zu werden, sie verdienen mehr.

Das Schreiben über dieses Kulturgut Games muss sich also weiterentwickeln und sich den Bedürfnissen der Zielgruppe anpassen. Das Traurige daran ist, dass die Motivation im gedruckten Videospieljournalismus dafür offensichtlich nicht vorhanden ist, zumindest waren in den letzten Jahren merkbare Veränderungen praktisch nicht existent. Anstatt die Entwicklung des Individualjournalismus auf das Medium Papier zu übertragen oder gar das Medium zu erweitern, bleibt eine sich quasi selbst wegrationalisierende Branche lieber beim jahrelang „erprobten“ Muster.

Stattdessen wird zum Gegenangriff übergegangen: Dem Individualjournalismus wird fehlender sprachlicher Stil sowie mangelnde Objektivität angekreidet. Der jahrelang erprobte Gegenstil in Form einer Review-Vorlage wird als effektiver und einem schlicht technischen Produkt angemessen verteidigt. Wo liegt die Herausforderung ein Videospiel nach einem standardisierten Verfahren zu bewerten? Die vom Fachjournalismus verkaufte Objektivität ist in Wirklichkeit keine, es ist die subjektive Objektivität des jeweiligen Autors in einer ebenso standardisierten Ansammlung von Phrasen („Darf in keiner Spielesammlung fehlen“, „Langzeitmotivation“, „Spielspaßkurve“ etc etc)  und anstatt dem Leser die für die Entscheidungsbildung relevanten Informationen aufzubereiten oder zu begründen, wird die Entscheidung mittels einer Zahl vorweggenommen. Paradoxerweise steigt mit dem Festhalten an diesem verbissen verteidigten, technikzentrierten „professionellen“ Schreiben  auch der Anteil an Praktikanten in den Reaktionen. Natürlich ist es lobenswert wenn junge Leute an das Medium tote Bäume in Hochglanzform herangeführt werden, aber es stellt sich die Frage, inwieweit das dort praktizierte „Testen“ etwas mit Journalismus zu tun hat, aber das ist eine andere Geschichte …

Der Printjournalismus im Bereich Videospiele ist schon lange kein Qualitätsjournalismus mehr. Musste man früher als Autor Fachwissen vorweisen und ein gewisses sprachliches Talent besitzen, so reicht es heute, möglichst leidensfähig und flexibel zu sein. Dass das nicht mehr genügt, ist bei den gedruckten Branchengrößen nicht so richtig angekommen: Sie wundern sich über sinkende Absatzzahlen bei zugleich steigenden Umsätzen der Videospielindustrie, kritisieren liebend gern die Kritik aus dem Internetund werfen böse Blicke in Richtung des im Internet stattfindenden Individualjournalismus. Das wird auf Dauer zu wenig sein.

Verfasst von rainer sigl am 10. Oktober 2012 - 12:26

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GamesMarkt - News - Blogger vs. Presse - eine Bestandsaufnahme

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München, 09.10.2012, 12:50  GamesMarkt | Märkte

Blogger vs. Presse - eine Bestandsaufnahme

Sind Blogger eine Presse zweiter Klasse, oder laufen sie den klassischen Testmagazinen als Multiplikatoren den Rang ab? GamesMarkt klärt, welchen Stand die Netzschreiber in der Spielebranche wirklich haben.

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“Es werden keine Akkreditierungen an Inhaber privat initiierter Spiele- Homepages, privat initiierter Blogs sowie Podcast-Seiten ausgestellt.” Es war nur ein kleiner Satz, der dieses Jahr im Vorfeld neu und fast schon klammheimlich in die Akkreditierungsrichtlinien für die gamescom geschrieben wurde. Von der Koelnmesse, die Veranstalter der Videospielmesse ist, und damit natürlich als Inhaber des Hausrechts darüber entscheiden kann, wem sie eine Pressekarte zugesteht und wem nicht.

“Shitstorm” gegen die gamescom Die Reaktionen auf diese Entscheidung hatten aber wohl auch die Messebetreiber selber unterschätzt. Kurz nach Beginn der Akkreditierungsphase entlud sich ein Proteststurm im Internet, im Webjargon “Shitstorm” genannt. Besonders in sozialen Netzwerken beschwerten sich auf Spiele spezialisierte Blogger und Podcaster, die im Vorjahr noch eine der begehrten Pressekarten bekommen hatten, über die vermeintliche Rückständigkeit und Netzfeindlichkeit ausgerechnet einer Videospielemesse.

Business-Bereich der gamescom 2012. Zu voll wegen Bloggern?

Business-Bereich der gamescom 2012. Zu voll wegen Bloggern?
Natürlich durften auch Betreiber von privaten Spiele- Homepages nach Köln reisen, allerdings erfolgte der Zugang zu den Messehallen nur über ein reguläres, kostenpflichtiges Ticket. Der Besuch des Businessbereichs sollte neben den Fachbesuchern nur der “klassischen” Presse vorbehalten sein. Die, so ein oft geäußerter Vorwurf, würde sich insgeheim ins Fäustchen lachen und mit der Industrie unter einer Decke stecken, um sich die unliebsame Blogger-Konkurrenz vom Hals zu schaffen. Die Diskussionen um die Zugangsberechtigungen für die gamescom wirkten rückblickend wie ein Stellvertreterkrieg, der durch althergebrachte Animositäten zwischen Presse- und Blogger-Lager befeuert wurde. Beim Anblick der Businessbereich- Besucher konnte man sich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, dass eigentlich nicht die Blogger das Problem waren, sondern (meist minderjährige) Besucher, die über Kontakte an einen Fachbesucherausweis gekommen waren.Hört man daher in beide Gruppen hinein, sind die Meinungen zum Thema grundsätzlich gar nicht so verschieden.

Meinungseintracht

Manuel Fritsch ist Blogger und Podcaster

Manuel Fritsch ist Blogger und Podcaster
Manuel Fritsch ist Betreiber des täglichen Gamespodcast “Breakfast@Manuspielt’s”, der jeden Monat über 25.000 Downloads erreicht. Zusätzlich schreibt er für die bekannten Blogs Polyneux.de und Superlevel.de. Er ist also genau der Blogger-Szene zuzurechnen, die die Koelnmesse offenbar nicht mehr im Geschäftsbereich sehen wollte. Für strengere Einlassregeln zeigt er aber Verständnis. “Es war trotzdem viel los im Businessbereich und sehr deutlich, dass dort nicht alle Fachbesucher sind, sondern manche sich über Umwege eingefunden haben”, sagt Fritsch.

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Auf eine Pizza #4 – R.I.P. Singleplayer-Spiele?

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Daniel: Hallo Christian, nach langer Zeit haben wir endlich mal wieder die Zeit für ein Gespräch gefunden. Leider ist der Anlass eher traurig, denn wie es scheint, müssen wir Abschied von einem alten Bekannten, guten Freund und Spielkameraden nehmen: dem Singleplayer.

Christian: Ja, den Eindruck muss man haben, wenn man in letzter Zeit die Nachrichten der großen Spielehersteller verfolgt. Frank Gibeau von Electronic Arts sagt, er gibt keiner Produktion mehr grünes Licht, die eine reine Singleplayer-Erfahrung ist, Rob Pardo von Blizzard nennt Solo-Spiele eine „bedrohte Art”. Nichts wird so heiß gegessen, wie es gekocht wird, aber die Botschaft ist schon deutlich: Globale Hersteller halten Singleplayer-Spiele nicht mehr für rentabel.

Daniel: Momentan blasen alle Hersteller ins gleiche Horn. Das sieht man auch deutlich an vielen Großproduktionen der letzten Zeit. Da bekommen Singleplayer-Spiele auf einmal einen vollkommen unnötigen Mehrspielermodus aufgepfropft: Assassin’s Creed, Dead Space, Uncharted, Max Payne und so weiter und so fort. Der Multiplayer dieser Beispiele mag für sich ganz ordentlich sein, aber so wirklich interessieren tun sich Spieler nicht dafür.
Eigentlich ein Paradoxon: Obwohl man ohnehin schon Probleme hat, die Entwicklungsbudgets wieder einzuspielen, wird für zusätzliches Geld noch ein unnötiger Multiplayer programmiert.

Christian: Wird sind in einer Übergangsphase, in denen die Hersteller damit experimentieren, wie sie Solo-Serien wie Assassin’s Creed in Online-Erfahrungen umbauen können. Der klassische Multiplayer-Modus ist die einfachste, aber nicht unbedingt immer die beste Lösung. Wir werden da in absehbarer Zeit neue Modelle der Vernetzung sehen, vielleicht entlehnt aus den Social Games, wo man mit anderen Spielern Gegenstände tauscht; bei diversen Nintendo-DS-Titeln funktioniert das ja ganz ähnlich. Letztendlich ist das Ziel immer, aus Spielen soziale, vernetzte Erfahrungen zu machen.

Daniel: Der Spieler bleibt dabei doch aber auf der Strecke. Denn diese sozialen Features dienen doch fast nie der Bereicherung des Spiels, sondern der Kundenbindung, besseren Monetarisierung, Sammlung von Spielerdaten oder Förderung der Mundpropaganda. Läuft man denn als Publisher damit nicht Gefahr, dass man den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht mehr sieht? Vor lauter Vernetzungsgedöns vergisst man glatt, ein gutes Spiel zu machen.

Christian: Der Online-Drang ist durchschaubar, natürlich geht es den Herstellern um den modernen Dreiklang „Raubkopien verhindern“, „Gebrauchtkäufe verhindern“, „DLCs und Services verkaufen“. Aber die Spieler haben nach wie vor eine klare Vorstellung davon, was für sie ein gutes Spiel ist, und wer das nicht erfüllt, bleibt auf der Strecke.
Man kann das auch als Verbreiterung des Angebots sehen, denn eine Spielserie wie Call of Duty richtet sich inzwischen an zwei Zielgruppen, die nicht unbedingt deckungsgleich sind: Die Solo- UND die Multiplayer-Spieler. Aber letztendlich ist im Multiplayer mehr Musik drin, also liegt darauf der Fokus, wie man an Battlefield gut sieht. Die Nachfrage bestimmt das Angebot.

Daniel: Aber Battlefield ging doch im dritten Teil genau die andere Richtung: Eigentlich immer klassischer Mehrspielertitel bekam das Spiel auf einmal einem Singleplayer. Das spricht doch dafür, dass auch die nicht-vernetzte Erfahrung nach wie vor wichtig ist und von viele Kunden wertgeschätzt wird.

Christian: Das spricht nur dafür, dass EA auf direkten Konfrontationskurs mit Call of Duty gegangen ist, um dessen Spielern ein ähnliches Angebot machen zu können. Das war eine taktische Dreingabe, finanziell ziemlich irrelevant – ein Lockvogel-Modell, um ein paar weitere Solo-Spieler in Multiplayer-Spieler zu konvertieren. Dort wird das Geld gemacht. Das Spiel hat 1,3 Millionen Premium-Abonnenten, und schau dir an, wofür die DLCs erscheinen: ausschließlich für den Multiplayer-Modus. Soviel zum Stellenwert der Solo-Kampagne.

Daniel: Denkt man das konsequent zu Ende, dann werde ich als Spieler von Singeplayern-Titel auf lange Sicht von den großen Publishern nicht mehr bedient werden. Da bleibt mir nur, mich bedingungslos dem Multiplayer zuzuwenden oder im Indiebereich zu suchen.
Sollte es wirklich so einseitig kommen, dann ergibt sich daraus ein zweiter Aspekt: Das Medium Computerspiel gibt seinen Anspruch auf, als erzählerisches Kulturgut ernstgenommen zu werden, bevor es ihn überhaupt ernsthaft innehat.

Christian: Das ist in der Tat eine interessante Befürchtung, aber das würde voraussetzen, dass nur Solo-Kampagnen Geschichten erzählen können. Dass das nicht stimmt, zeigen MMOs wie World of Warcraft oder Guild Wars sehr deutlich. Womöglich werden wir mehr Erzählspiele sehen, die gleichzeitig Online-Welten sind und ihren Spielern die Wahl lassen, ob sie sich darin alleine orientieren wollen oder mit anderen…

Daniel: …und genau das geht meiner Meinung nach nicht. Geschichten lassen sich in der Gruppe schlechter erleben. Das kann jeder bestätigen, der schon in heiterer Wohnzimmerrunde einen Film gesehen hat. Da wird gequatscht und geblödelt, diskutiert und gestritten, was durchaus auch seinen Reiz hat, vom Inhalt bekommt man meist aber nur die Hälfte mit.
Genauso ist’s bei Spielen: Borderlands mag eine Story gehabt haben, außer Eckpunkten weiß ich davon nichts mehr, weil ich mit meinen Koop-Kameraden über Gott und die Welt geredet habe. Auch MMOs halte ich fürs Erzählen von Geschichten nicht geeignet. Guild Wars 2 und The Old Republic wurden für ihre aufwendigen Stories beworben. Doch jeder Spieler, den ich kenne, hat nach wenigen Stunden angefangen, alle Dialoge und Zwischensequenzen wegzuklicken, um schneller an die Quests zu kommen.
Daher meine provokante These: Mit dem Singleplayer verschwinden auch die guten Geschichten aus Spielen.

Christian: Nur weil du eine Geschichte nicht wahrnimmst oder als Angebot nicht annimmst, heißt das nicht, dass sie nicht da ist. Zwingt dich doch keiner, Borderlands 2 im Koop zu spielen. Aber die Tatsache, dass dir das lieber ist als die Solo-Erfahrung, sagt ja auch etwas darüber aus, wofür du hier dein Geld investiert hast. Genauso wie du halten das vermutlich sehr viele andere Spieler auf der Welt auch.

Daniel: Da spricht aber jetzt der Mitarbeiter eines Spieleentwicklers aus dir: „Wenn der Spieler die Story nicht versteht oder ignoriert, ist er eben einfach zu doof. Da können wir aber nix dafür, an der Story oder an unserer Arbeit kann das auf keinen Fall liegen.“

Christian: Moment, da legst du mir Worte in den Mund, die ich nicht gesagt habe. Es hat doch nichts mit Doofheit zu tun, wenn man die Story wegklickt! Womöglich ist sie langweilig, aber das kann dir auch in Solo-Spielen passieren. Doch die Qualität von Geschichten ist ein Thema für ein anderes Gespräch.

Daniel: Kommen wir zu eigentlichen Fragestellung zurück. Wird der Singleplayer jetzt aussterben oder nicht?

Christian: Wie vorhin schon gesagt: Das ist letztendlich eine ökonomische Frage. Solange es einen Markt für Solo-Erfahrungen gibt, wird er auch bedient werden, vielleicht in Zukunft von anderen Anbietern und in anderer Qualität. Spiele mit AAA-Produktionsqualität sind inzwischen so teuer, dass sie entweder Mega-Marken wie GTA sein müssen, um die Kosten einzuspielen, oder ein langfristigeres Geschäftsmodell nutzen, in dem die Spieler mehrmals bezahlen. Deshalb werden reine Solo-Spiele wohl qualitativ in die Mittelschicht zurückfallen. In Sachen Produktionsqualität meine ich, nicht bei der inhaltlichen Qualität.

Daniel: Am Ende des Tages ist es also alles ein Frage des Geldes. Wie so oft.
Bleibe ich optimistisch, dann wohnt dieser Entwicklung auch eine Chance inne: Während sich die großen Publisher mit Millionenbudgets die vollvernetzten Multiplayer-Titel um die Ohren dreschen, bekommen kleinere Entwickler im Singleplayer-Markt wieder Luft zum atmen. Weil sie im Konzert der Großen gar nicht konkurrieren können und wollen, ist hier vielleicht Platz für neuartige Konzepte und Geschichten.

Christian: Auf jeden Fall! Wir sehen ja seit geraumer Zeit, dass sich der alte Gleichschritt von Story und Inszenierung wieder auflöst und vor allem Indie-Titel mit neuen Erzählweisen experimentieren, mit Symbolsprachen und Abstraktion oder völlig textlos wie die wunderbaren Adventures von Amanita Design. Darauf muss man sich natürlich einlassen. Wer Handlung als spielbaren Film begreift, also als möglichst fotorealistische Inszenierung, der wird es in Zukunft womöglich etwas schwieriger haben. Aber es wird auch da noch genügend Angebote geben, keine Frage.

Daniel: Als Fazit sehe ich, dass jede Medaille zwei Seiten hat. Nur weil die großen Publisher aus finanzieller Sicht kein Interesse mehr am Singeplayer haben, heißt das nicht, dass diese Spiele aussterben. Wir müssen sie nur woanders suchen.

,Auf eine Pizza‘ ist ein in unregelmäßigen Abständen geführtes Gespräch zu einem Videospiele-Thema zwischen Christian Schmidt und Daniel Raumer, dem Betreiber dieses Blogs.
Christian ist ehemaliger stellv. Chefredakteur der GameStar und arbeitet mittlerweile für den Hamburger Spieleentwickler Bigpoint. Zusammen mit Gunnar Lott betreibt er den privaten Retro-Spiele-Podcast Stay Forever.

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Trendspotting: How Gaming’s Changing In 2012 (Sez I)

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So I turned myself to face me

By Alec Meer on October 9th, 2012 at 5:00 pm.

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No doubt there are big things yet to come from the last quarter of 2012, but even by October it feels like it’s been an uncommonly important, even vital, year for games. The hit rate of great things, expected and unexpected, has been pretty steady, but on top of that there have been major emerging trends as gaming starts to move out of the awkward transitional phase between olde worlde boxed sales and anything-goes online existence.

I’m really just ruminating on a truly fascinating 10-ish months to myself here, but see if you agree with – or better still can add to – any of these arguably defining aspects of the year nearly gone.

Note – I’ve not included the ongoing move to phone and tablet gaming here, purely because it’s a little too far from RPS’ remit. But yeah, that. And there will only be more of it, of course.

1) The year of comebacks

The many, many openly nostalgia-centred projects on Kickstarter – from Wasteland 2 to Double Fine’s adventure game to Leisure Suit Larry to LootDrop’s curiously unspecific Old School RPG – are obviously the bedrock of this, but they’re not the sole element of old favourites and old values returning. Dishonored picks up Thief’s abandoned baton, XCOM is as much an attempt to reinvent turn-based strategy for a new era and a new audience as it is a veneration of an ancient game and Tribes: Ascend wants a return to multiplayer shooting that’s built around movement first and foremost. You can even look to FTL and the Binding of Isaac (a 2011 game, but its 2012 expansion pack Wrath of the Lamb has kept it a mainstay for many this year) as putting roguelikes in the front and centre of a far less niche consciousness, again remixed and reimagined for a changed age.

2) The year of the MOBA

This terrifies me. It seems to have happened so fast, and yet of course it’s been brewing for years. It’s not that I don’t understand MOBAs/lane-pushers/whatever you want to call them, or that I don’t see the appeal. It’s that they hold no appeal to me, and as such I cannot be truly educated in them, at least not without an undue amount of forcing. It creates a bigger issue both personally and, perhaps, for this site – gaming is going into places that many 30-somethings such as I struggle to reach. I am an old dog, and I already make myself learn more new tricks than I’m necessarily able to.

But it’s important that we cover this stuff, and hopefully we will do a better job of it soon. MOBAs seem to me to be the point where the competitive gaming/e-sports we’ve unconvincgly been told are The Future for years actually meet the mindset of the layperson. League of Legends, Dota2 et al are games for everyone (as demonstrated by their pan-generational playerbase: these are not purely young folks’ games), not just a ludicrously skilled elite, and as such they encourage the same hyper-competitive thinking and the swift learning of a new language. Once, the raid and PvP aspect MMOs like Warcraft were fulfilling this role, this need for great learning and great teamwork at ferocious speed, but now the MOBAs are performing some of the same purposes with all the filler and all the drek, even all the long climb, removed. You go straight to it, and you get better at it. I am too tired for it, I really am, and that scares me, but these games, their culture and whatever spins out of them are a vital movement, both in terms of persistency and being a necessary reaction against the errant perceptions of gaming ‘skill’ brought about by Achievement culture.

3) The year the PC returned to ascendancy

I don’t wish to bang any drums with a zealous expression here. Yes, the PC is inevitably the technologically superior platform due to its modular nature, but the age of today’s consoles isn’t the real cause of the recent shift back towards PC, or at least I don’t think so. Contemporary console games look pretty darn good on a decent telly, y’know – developers have become better at wringing every ounce of power out of them even as engines (especially Epic’s ubiquitous Unreal) mature and offer more. It’s simply the freedom of PC that’s caused it to return to the head of the pack. We’ve been all but force fed hyper-scripted action games for quite some time now, and as such hungry communities have organically formed around alternative offerings – see the MOBAs above, or Tribes Ascend, or TF2. Even seemingly (but not, I well know) out-of-nowhere indies like FTL and before it Minecraft. Word of mouth, Twitter and Facebook are making small games gain huge attention.

At the same time, low-end but perfectly capable gaming laptops have become more affordable than ever before, lowering the pecuniary barrier of entry. That so many of the PC’s games are much cheaper, or even free to play much of, than the increasingly absurd-seeming £40+ console games is likely informing this new escalation too.

4) The year free to play made sense

No longer just a dirty word, and no longer inextricably intertwined with the horrible, cynical shit on Facebook, free to play is on its way to becoming the new demo. But in a more powerful way, both for players – they get to actually attach to the game, not simply be teased by a tiny portion of it – and for developers – they have a new arsenal of ways to try and convince a speculative player to turn into a paying customer, rather than the simple do or die methodology of a demo. I don’t believe free to play is the only future of games, but I do believe it is a necessary part of the future. An analogy I’m reaching for but haven’t quite polished into full sense, but if traditional, paid-for games are movies (be it on DVD or at the cinema), free to play is the serialised TV drama (be it in a boxset or broadcast week-by-week). Microtransactions can far too easily be made deeply unsavoury, but as well as/instead of a means to exploit they can also be a means of handing out a game at a schedule and/or financial rate that feels more palatable to the many, many people who feel short of both time and money.

I’m not saying that it’s done right most of the time – because it isn’t, it really isn’t – but the concept of it makes sense on levels far beyond arguments of pay to win or meanly chopping games into chunks.

5) The year the role of violence in games was questioned by games

Only questioned. Not damned, not decried, not dismissed, but there’s definitely been a trend towards exploring the issues around our bloody proclivities in games. Again, I’m not arguing that there’s a shift in the industry towards wagging a finger at violence, but I think there is one of discussing its consequences rather than having it be simply be something that happens then happens again. Spec Ops is obviously the poster child for this, and the argument around it commenting so much on the horrors, both literal and psychological, of grand-scale killing while at the same time being a pretty routine third-person manshooter will rage for a long time to come. (Pretty much every feature pitch we’re sent on RPS seems to concern it, to the point that I’m worried it’s become the new ‘I cried when Aeris died’). Me, I’m just glad to have the discussion at all – or at least something that tries to have me turn the mirror on myself rather than just flex my digital biceps.

But Spec Ops is far from alone in sniffing around this question. Dishonored offers not just the option for a non-lethal (or even entirely non-violent) playthrough, but whole new quests dedicated to uncovering and enacting bloodless neutralisations of the ‘assassination’ targets around which each level revolves. And there are, of course, pay-offs – both in the events of the plot, but also the contents of later levels. It isn’t a half-hearted option for a creepily dedicated niche, but an entire, endorsed and pandered-to method of playing the game through while roleplaying with hardline principles. In an age where blockbuster action games are promoted off the back of their INTENSE VISCERAL GUNPLAY, too see something of Dishonored’s importance to a large publisher’s bottom line offer a non-lethal alternative is deeply refreshing.

Then there’s the unexpectedly incredible Walking Dead series, which does great, moving things with both the need for and consequences of violence. The knowledge that an innocent child observes my every move in a planet turned to horror informed my actions enormously, while life seems so very precious in a world so desperately short of it.

More discussion/consequence comes from other unlikely sources – while obviously a freeform multiplayer game rather than the more direct choices and ruminations of a singleplayer campaign, a critical part of DayZ is assessing, without any visible cues or clues, whether someone can help you or hinder you, whether they’ll most do so alive or dead, and whether the short term gains of either attacking or allying with them could come back to bite you later. Solving this dilemma involves true, human interaction with people (by talking, by spying, by intuiting), adding a skein of honest morality absent from something that’s essentially scripted. Meanwhile, Lone Survivor offers flight or fight options, even to the point that you actively choose to take certain in-game medications to turn it towards a gun-wielding survival horror affair.

Yeah, the permutations, consequences and avoidance of in-game violence is barely a concrete trend, let alone a conscious movement, but it feel it’s but one glacier-slow rumble of movement towards greater maturity from this industry, and I’m excited to see even the slightest signs of it.

6)The year always-on perhaps won more battles than it lost

I’m going to massively and probably unhelpfully stretch the definition of always-online here, because I mean more the concept of and consumer comfort with a game constantly talking to a server rather than the abused reality of a game that unnecessarily demands to be online for no reason other than publisher paranoia. Ubisoft backed down, as they needed to do, but it’s the games that have stealthed into always online that have, I’m afraid, scored a major victory in the war. Games like Diablo III, like Guild Wars 2 (at least as much a singleplayer RPG as it is an MMO), like Mass Effect 3 and its victory rating gubbins, like Borderlands 2′s drop-in play, like Dark Souls’ clues and invasions from other players… Aye, several of those don’t go all the way or fit the descriptor neatly, but what they are doing is further acclimatising us to the idea of being online and that because of that we can experience more, rather than simply have our freedom constrained. There are and there will be many people doing it desperately wrong, insensibly using it as an anti-piracy tool that punishes their legitimated customers, but as more games move into being more enriched by being online in ways big and small, the question of the online requirement is more than likely to become less acute than once was. For more worthwhile always-on systems to win, the bad types have to lose, and their creators must understand why they are bad – and, thankfully, there are increasing signs that’s happening. Of course, where there’s still choice of on or offline there’s no complaint – whether the rewards of being thoughtfully online are anything like enough when/if that choice is taken away is a whole new battle yet to come.

7) The year fan pressure was taken seriously

Communities are becoming able to mobilise in ways that are probably profoundly terrifying for developers and publishers. Bioware bringing in a replacement ending for Mass Effect 3 as outrage over unmet promises reached fever pitch is the most notorious moment of this (whether it’s positive or negative is not a question I wish to address), while a more unanimously happy outcome was Namco releasing a PC version of Dark Souls after an enthusiastic petition. The port might have been a bit iffy, but people still adore it and it’s been, as far as I can tell, a commerical success – so the wisdom of the crows can certainly work. We’ve also seen CCP have to take big steps to appease EVE fans after trying to foist faintly absurd microtransactions upon them – and of course there’s Ubisoft finally, finally backing down on their self-sabotaging always online DRM for singleplayer player games. You could perhaps also argue that fan petitions around the eternally absent Half-Life 3 has eked some response out of Valve, even if it’s not the desired illumination.

8) The year that gender roles and perception took baby steps towards equality

Whatever side of the argument you might stand on, we are seeing the issue come up time and again, both in terms of depictions of women in game and the industry’s treatment of women outside of games. Whether or not you symapthatise with some, all or none of the controversies that have peppered the year (and I’m well aware that a great many gentlemen who don’t agree that they play life on Easy Mode believe undue, even hysterical, fuss is ritually being made by observers and media alike), the industry is nonetheless being forced to address subjects it formerly steamrollered right over without thought. The outcome is uncertain, but the debate keeps coming back. We’ve got the Hitman nuns, Borderlands’ ‘girlfriend mode’ hoo-hah, Anita Sarkeesian’s divisive Tropes vs Women in Videogames project and attendant abuse for it, a game conference (Eurogamer Expo) mandating no more booth babes and banning a big YouTuber who was either acting like or pretending to act like a sexist jackass (the jury’s still out there)… All of these caused outrage on both sides of the fence, and both sides were guilty of unwise words: but again, the debate is happening more and more. We’re also seeing a huge rise in writing from both inside and outside the industry on the problems around its depiction and treatment of women, and there is a slow but refreshing rise in games journos who aren’t straight white men.

I’m not saying we’re on the cusp of a seachange. Sadly, there’s such a long way to go before that. I’m not even saying every example of controversy is justified. I’m just saying that the conversation’s happening more and more, and I honestly believe that’s ultimately good for the industry and for its customers. (I’m also very glad to see that two of my favourite games of the year, Dishonored and XCOM, both entirely avoid sexualising their female characters. I hope those games don’t prove to be happy aberrations in that regard).

9) The year of new independence – and its silent masters

Kickstarter has freed some important developers from the shackles of publisher demands and fears – Double Fine, Obsidian, InXile, Revolution – the list goes on – while Steam’s Greenlight has opened at least a door to marketing budget-free indie games getting onto Steam without having to meet the unknown demands of invisible gatekeepers. There’s a long way to go and not a little risk of over-pandering to the loudest minority, but it is a massive movement towards game-makers and game-players having direct access to each other and making the games people really want rather than the game a CEO’s bottom line wants to make. It’s a ridiculously exciting prospect, very much in line with the interests of this site, and I can’t wait to see the first fruits of this new deal next year. (In a similar vein, if the aforementioned Dishonored and XCOM sell well that may help persuade publishers not to be quite so risk averse, to know that there is an audience for the stuff people on forums constantly cry out for after all).

But even if the power of publishers is winding down, gatekeepers still exist. Kickstarter and Steam (and to a lesser extent IndieGoGo and Desura) wield enormous power now, and as they struggle with the paradox of appearing to be quasi-philanthropic and interference-free while needing to forever increase profits they may well make any number of mistakes. The $100 Greenlight fee could be said to be one (though there is much debate, to say the least), while Kickstarter’s wariness about ensuring the legitimacy of projects on it might be another. Hopefully all will be well – I just can’t help but think of Twitter and its many botched attempts to turn a system that’s inherently about freedom of expression into a source of greater revenues. Then there are rumours that big publishers are trying to stealth their way onto Kickstarter, using fan-favourite developers as a front for their projects. Hopefully just flash in the pan darkness – but wherever the prevailing winds of profit are, someone will turn up to try and exploit it.

A confusing year. A busy year. A year full of controversies. A year with a whole lot more still to come. Most of all, I think, a year of a hope – big baby steps towards a brighter future for games. Things are changing fast, in profound ways – even if there are many lessons yet to be learned, and no doubt some nasty falls with them.

I honestly don’t know what 2013 will bring, but where a couple of years ago I was seriously worried that (mainstream) gaming had become entrenched in cynical, often lowest common denominator ways, I now feel once again that it is still young, still with so much left to happen, and that we still don’t know it at all. And hooray for that.

__________________

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The Legend of Zelda’s opening gameplay screen is iconic. Link, viewed from a skewed overhead perspective, faces away from the player with four possible path options: north, east, west, and a small cave puncturing the rock face.

Which path will you choose?

Compare this screen with the opening of Super Mario Bros., a game developed by the same team at the same time as Zelda. Mario is positioned just beyond the left screen edge, facing right. A long stretch of unimpeded runway extends to the right edge of the screen, set against a vibrant blue sky. Naturally, the player’s compulsion is to go right–a compulsion that will carry the player through the entire game.

What does Link’s position communicate? Choice. There are no signposts directing the player toward the ‘correct’ path. I’m sure many players who skipped or overlooked the cave took a while to figure out they were supposed to have a sword. (Some players have made swordless play a viable option.) That’s a remarkable bit of trust in the game’s design, a confidence that even Nintendo fails to reproduce in their modern versions of NES games. You can hear the focus groups now: ‘But how will the player know how to get the sword without a pop-up dialogue box? They might miss it and not have fun.’

The opening hub area in Dark Souls has the same structure. Multiple paths radiate from the Firelink Shrine, one of which is manageable at low levels; the others, less so. The player learns through exploration, not through pop-up text. What was once called level design is now known as hardcore difficulty.

My choice of paths is limited by experience. I know to get the sword in the cave, so I do so. I also know the path to the first dungeon by heart. And ‘by heart’ is the appropriate expression, because the island entrance is located almost directly in the center of the overworld map. This is another example of careful design. Link is dropped near the lower center region of the overworld. What’s a lost explorer’s first instinct? Head toward the center of the map!

I do so, heading toward the first dungeon. There are several feasible routes, but I take the shortest path: north, east, north three more screens, then cross the bridge west to the hollowed tree stump that leads below.

The tree leading to the first dungeon

Zelda is much harder than I remember. Octoroks move in rapid, erratic patterns, Leevers tend to emerge directly beneath your feet, and Zola has some preternatural ability to hurl missiles directly where I intend to be. But Link’s ability to fling his sword across the screen is awesome–so much so that taking a hit and resorting to close-range melee changes the balance of combat completely. Closing in on opponents makes you more susceptible to colliding with their jittery movement patterns. And when enemies surround you en masse, your life can drain quickly.

I descend into the first dungeon, then quickly exit and re-enter. This is another trick I remember from strategy guides–the quick turnaround triggers a bug that automatically unlocks the first keyed entry. It’s not necessary, since the first dungeon provides ample keys, but WHY NOT, right? I need ALL the keys.

I know the dungeon layout fairly well. This is the ‘eagle’ pattern, with unicorn dragon Aquamentus living in the ‘eastmost peninsula,’ as the old man tells me. My obsessive compulsive nature compels me to find the map, boomerang, bow, and compass. Due to my overambitious exploration, I end up depleting my three hearts to one. In the compass room, I’m overwhelmed by bats and register my first death.

My first defeat.

The enemy designs are one of Zelda’s smartest features. Most enemies occupy a 16×16 pixel region (Zelda uses the NES’s 8×16 sprite size option), but they exhibit a range of dynamic patterns: the Keese (bats) move in odd diagonals, then slow and pause; the Stalfos (skeletons) move rook-like, attacking more aggressively along vertical lines; and the (hateful, HATEFUL) traps only spring when you cross their vertical or horizontal plane. In combination, they create interesting, emergent attack patterns. Harmful patterns that kill me dead.

I choose to SAVE rather than CONTINUE, which leads me back to the opening overworld screen. Oops. I retrace my path back to the first dungeon and try again. Thankfully, Zelda maintains your inventory store of both overworld and dungeon items. This design perk alleviates much of the drudgery of running through the dungeon again. With full hearts, I continue to Aquamentus. He hits me twice, but I prevail and snag my first heart container piece. Four hearts gives me a much better chance of survival.

Once outside, I decide to head directly to dungeon two. I know the manual has a rough map of its location, but I try to see if I can recall it from memory. I trek north from the bridge, then head east through the desert. I end up in the mountains, facing a swarm of Tektites. Sensing I’ve gone too far, I return west for one screen, then head south. Forest!

Lost.

The forests contain multiple narrow, branching pathways stocked with tough, arrow-spewing Molblins. I get lost and rerouted through a series of turns that lead me in a direct circle one screen away from where I’d ran from the Tektites. By the time I reach a new body of water in the northeast region of the overworld, I’m down to a half heart. A mistimed swing at an Octorok ends my second life.

I select SAVE on purpose this time so I can reset back to the starting screen in preparation for Session 2.

STATS Death count: 2 Triforce count: 1
Session time: 00:15
Total play time: 00:15

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The economics of video games

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(Credit: superbrothers)

Inflation can be a headache for any central banker. But it takes a certain type of economist to know what to do when a belligerent spaceship fleet attacks an interstellar trading post, causing mineral prices to surge across the galaxy.

Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is just that economist. Working for the Icelandic company CCP Games, he oversees the virtual economy of the massively multiplayer video game Eve Online. Within this world, players build their own spaceships and traverse a galaxy of 7,500 star systems. They buy and sell raw materials, creating their own fluctuating markets. They speculate on commodities. They form trade coalitions and banks.

It’s a sprawling economy, with more than 400,000 players participating in its virtual market — more people, in fact, than live in Iceland. Inflation, deflation and even recessions can occur. Which is why, from his office in Reyjkjavik, Guðmundsson leads a team of eight analysts poring over reams of data to make sure everything in Eve Online is running smoothly. His job bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Ben Bernanke, who oversees the U.S. economy from the Federal Reserve.

“For all intents and purposes, this is an economy that has activity equal to a small country in real life,” Guðmundsson says. “There’s nothing ‘virtual’ about this world.”

Nowadays, many massively multiplayer online video games have become so complex that game companies are turning to economists for help. Without oversight, the games’ economies can go badly awry — as when a gambling ban triggered a virtual bank run in the online world of Second Life in 2007, with one bank alone costing players $750,000 in real-life money.

But there’s a flip side, too. Just as video game designers are in dire need of economic advice, many academic economists are keen on studying video games. A virtual world, after all, allows economists to study concepts that rarely occur in real life, such as non-fractional-reserve banking, a popular libertarian alternative to the current banking system that cropped up in Eve Online. The data is richer. And it’s easier to run economy-wide experiments in a video game — experiments that, for obvious reasons, can’t be run on countries.

That ability to experiment on a massive scale, academics say, could revolutionize economics.

“Economic theory has come to a dead end — the last real breakthroughs were in the 1960s,” says Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist recently hired by the video-game company Valve. “But that’s not because we stopped being clever. We came up against a hard barrier. The future is going to be in experimentation and simulation — and video game communities give us a chance to do all that.”

At least, that’s the dream. The reality, as always, is more complicated. Game companies are often wary of meddling economists trying to conduct experiments that suck the fun out of their virtual worlds. And some academics scoff at the notion that there’s anything to learn from universes filled with warlocks and starfleets. Game companies and economists may need each other. Now if only they could learn to share the controller.

Running a virtual economy

In June, Varoufakis announced on his blog that he had been hired as an in-house economist by Valve, the maker of the popular Half-Life games. Varoufakis wasn’t an obscure number-cruncher. From his perch at the University of Athens, he had become famous for his trenchant analyses of Greece’s debt woes and the euro crisis.

It was clear why Valve was interested. The company oversees a network of games such as Team Fortress 2 that run on its online gaming platform, called Steam.

Valve wanted to link different Steam games together so players could trade virtual items. As Gabe Newell, the chief executive of Valve, explained in an e-mail to Varoufakis: “We are discussing an issue of linking economies in two virtual environments (creating a shared currency), and wrestling with some of the thornier problems of balance of payments.”

Whom better to ask, Newell figured, than an expert on the difficulties that Germany and Greece faced after joining the euro?

To date, only three companies* — CCP, Valve, and ArenaNet, the company behind Guild Wars 2 — have gone so far as to hire in-house economists. But several academics who study virtual worlds say they have consulted with game designers.

“If you’re creating a game with 100,000 users, with things that they can buy and sell, you need an economist just to help you tweak that system so that it doesn’t spin out of control,” says Robert Bloomfield, an economist who studies virtual worlds at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management.

Two historical price indices for the Eve Online economy. (Data: CCP. Graph: Washington Post)

In Eve Online, Guðmundsson oversees an economy that can fluctuate wildly — he says it expanded 42 percent between February 2011 and February 2012, then contracted 15 percent by the summer. His team will periodically have to address imbalances in the money supply. For instance, they can curb inflation by introducing a new type of weapon, say, to absorb virtual currency — not unlike the way a central bank might sell bonds to shrink the money supply. (In theory, Eve Online’s currency has real-world value — the highest-level spaceships, the Titans, are worth the equivalent of $5,000 to $8,000.)

Guðmundsson, who gave up a tenure track position at the University of Akureyri to join CCP in 2007, says that managing the virtual economy can be surprisingly difficult: “It’s so much more compelling and much more interesting and much more in-depth than I ever imagined.”

Periodically, for instance, CCP’s game designers will introduce a new type of technology or alter the availability of certain raw materials to keep things interesting — not unlike real-life technology shocks. But, Guðmundsson says, the players will often speculate on what the game designers are planning, affecting the markets.

“We’ve even seen large alliances trying to manipulate aspects of the market to control the supply and affect prices,” Guðmundsson says. “It’s a lot like OPEC.”

In some ways, the economy of Eve Online is a libertarian experiment on a grand scale. There are few overarching rules. Labor markets quickly bounce back from recession because there’s no minimum wage. Players can voluntarily band together to create all sorts of innovative arrangements, including corporations, trade alliances and financial institutions.

Eve Online’s banks aren’t supported by a central bank or lender of last resort. Much like Ron Paul has proposed for the United States, there’s no fractional reserve banking, in which banks need to keep only a portion of their deposits on hand at any time and can lend the rest out freely.

“That increases the burden on banks to be diligent and efficient,” Guðmundsson says. On the downside, the financial system is sometimes ripe for abuse — one large bank, EBank, collapsed in 2009 when its founder seized its virtual funds and traded them for real-life cash on the black market.

A lack of oversight has caused havoc in some games. In summer 2007, the game Second Life experienced a banking crisis not unlike the one that would grip the United States the following year. Thousands of players had entrusted money in virtual banks that had turned around and invested in lucrative land deals and casinos. When the deals soured all at once, panic ensued. Ordinary depositors found they couldn’t withdraw cash from ATMs, and one bank, Gingko Financial, lost its customers $750,000 in real-life money. The game designers had to step in and ban certain types of lending.

Real-world applications?

As fascinating as these virtual economies can be to observe, however, experts are still divided on whether they have much to teach us about the real world.

“To this day, we haven’t seen anything in these virtual environments that violates fundamental economic theories,” says Ted Castronova of Indiana University Bloomington, one of the first scholars to study virtual worlds. After all, the fact that prices rapidly adjust to supply and demand in Eve Online isn’t shocking. Economists have studied artificial currencies in other contexts, such as cigarette trading in prisons.

Some economists, however, are starting to observe intriguing phenomena. A 2010  study by Cornell’s Bloomfield looked at an unregulated stock exchange in Second Life, called SLCapex, which raised $145,000 from investors. He found that the market tended to favor large investors over small investors. And, he realized, existing economic theories could not explain why issuers continued to raise so much money in such a setting.

Another scholar who studies virtual worlds, Magnus Thor Torfason of Harvard Business School, says it’s surprising that there’s not more cheating in virtual worlds — as when the head of EBank simply absconded with the bank’s funds. That, in itself, may reveal something interesting about how norms and trust shape markets. “If you break these contracts, there’s not much that can be done to you,” Torfason says. “So one thing I’m looking at is, why isn’t [cheating] more prevalent?”

Others say that the fullness of the data available in online worlds allows for the study of concepts that can’t be studied nearly as accurately in real life.

“In real life, if you want to know what’s happening with car sales, you might call up a handful of car dealerships and ask what their sales are like this month,” says Dmitri Williams, a researcher at the University of Southern California. “In a virtual world, you just know everything. There’s no sampling, there’s no error. It’s perfect information.”

Few economists, however, are as ambitious as Varoufakis. He says that, to date, most economic studies of virtual worlds have merely mapped existing concepts onto the games. “They’re just imposing their own prejudices rather than genuinely trying to extract new knowledge from these worlds,” he says.

Varoufakis argues that the games in Valve’s Steam platform may have a great deal to reveal about theoretical economics. Take general equilibrium theory, which economists rely on to model economies. This well-known theory is based on a barter system, which rarely occurs in the real world and is hence hard to test empirically. But a complex barter economy does exist in many of Valve’s games.

So Varoufakis has been probing abstract economic theories by studying how Valve’s games work. “You find a huge variety of startling and interesting phenomena,” he says.

Consider, for example, the concept of arbitrage. Economic theory suggests that markets will usually tend toward equilibrium — if there’s an opportunity for someone to buy low and sell high, enough people will do it that these imbalances will disappear. This is difficult to track in real life. Yet this summer, while working for Valve, Varoufakis used data from the game Team Fortress 2 to measure how often this actually happened. As it turned out, the economy can veer far from equilibrium surprisingly often.

Another thing that virtual worlds could, in theory, allow economists to do is run massive experiments. At the moment, when economists want to run financial experiments, they are typically limited to rounding up college students and putting them in a lab. While that has led to some discoveries — market participants, it turns out, don’t always act rationally — it also has real limits.

“A couple dozen people in a computer lab isn’t enough to test things like the development of banking,” Bloomfield says. “We can’t test how things like property rights and the ability to write contracts and taxes and regulation affect growth.”

Virtual worlds offer one possible way forward. In his essay explaining why he took a job at Valve, Varoufakis noted that the field of econometrics is a “travesty,” in part because of “our inability to run experiments on a macroeconomy such as rewinding time to, say, 1932, in order to see whether the U.S. would have rebounded without the New Deal.” But, he added, in a digital economy, it was possible to alter values, rules and settings, and go “back to observe how the community responds, how relative prices change, the new behavioural patterns that evolve. An economist’s paradise indeed.”

It seems economists are only just warming up to the possibilities. “My academic colleagues initially get startled when I tell them I’m working for Valve,” Varoufakis told me. “They know I don’t have any actual interest in video games. But I only need to talk to them for a few minutes, and they quickly get excited, asking, ‘Well, what if you tried this . . . ?’ ”

Getting along isn’t always easy

One problem, however, is that it’s less clear whether video game companies are willing to cooperate with economists and academics salivating over the possibilities.

“The last thing these companies want to do is partner with academics,” Castronova says. “The academics will come in and say this is interesting, these people are killing monsters, there’s this market, but you know what? This business of killing monsters is interfering with my intellectual pursuit. Can we change that? The game people look at you like you’re crazy.”

Trust between the two groups is low, adds USC’s Dmitri Williams, because for so long scholars were only concerned with whether video games were making teenagers violent.

Indeed, Guðmundsson, the economist behind Eve Online, says he is reluctant to conduct the sort of theoretically interesting experiments many academics would like to see. “If I started changing the parameters, the players would be upset,” he says.

Varoufakis, for his part, has run into a slightly different dilemma. Whenever he tries to run randomized control trials on, say, different pricing strategies for Valve, the players will rapidly catch on and spread the word on online message boards. “They very quickly suss out what we’re doing,” he says. But, he adds, Valve’s customers often enjoy reading about his experiments after the fact.

Other social scientists who study virtual worlds say that getting cooperation from game companies is, as Williams politely puts it, “nontrivial.” (When data is shared, it is always made anonymous.) And when companies do go to academics for help, it’s usually with a narrow set of questions: Why do players quit? What causes them to spend money? Which players in the game are most valuable?

That rift has spurred a few economists to try to create their own games. Bloomfield is working on a platform, called the Synthetic Economy Research Environment, that could enable economists to produce games that simulate large-scale economic phenomenon like a central bank.

One problem, however, is that it’s difficult for academics to create a game as popular as those such as Eve Online. “Academics don’t always have the best understanding of what makes things fun,” Castronova says. “You look at games, see the thing you’re interested in, and think I’ll just make another one of these games. It’s like seeing something scientific in Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and saying, ‘I just need to sculpt another “David.” ’ ”

How games and life intersect

Apart from studying the economic systems of video games, some academics are interested in how online worlds function within the broader real-life economy. Americans are set to spend $2.9 billion on “virtual goods” in 2012, according to trade figures, and the market in Asia is even bigger. That’s still a fairly small slice of the global economy, but academics think virtual communities could raise interesting questions if they get bigger.

“Just for example,” Castronova says, “Facebook has an entire currency system that isn’t taxed or regulated. At what point does that threaten what the Federal Reserve does?”

There’s also a question of whether actions in online worlds count as real-life economic activity. “Say someone is playing Eve Online for a whole week and not providing services in real life,” Guðmundsson says. “That would hurt GDP [the measure of real-life economic growth], but it would increase the Gross User Product in the virtual world. So did overall value creation really decline?”

Similarly, if these worlds grow big enough, could they allow players to “work” online, doing small tasks in exchange for money? Would that help alleviate unemployment? Can video games enable people to find skills that they never knew they had? Eve Online players frequently discuss ways in which gaming skills translate into real life. Chief executives say they have honed management abilities after learning to corral fellow players inside virtual corporations that span star systems.

Those questions all tantalize Guðmundsson. “I once said if Eve Online closed tomorrow,” he says, “I would have enough material to do research for the next 10 years.”

But not right now. There’s no time. After all, he’s got a galactic economy to oversee.

——————-

* Update: This article originally neglected to mention the fact that ArenaNet also recently hired an economist, John Smith, to “study and help mold” the virtual economy for its game, Guild Wars 2. You can check out Smith’s work here and here.

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Self Actualization and the Mini-Roguelike

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Call for Book Reviewers and Bloggers

Moving Pixels

Multimedia | Neuromance

7:00 am

Wednesday, Oct 3, 2012

by G. Christopher Williams

There is something, somehow less deterministic about the mini-roguelike, something more like an advocacy of choice and control being made actually significant when placed in the hands of the player.

I am currently teaching a survey of American literature from the 19th century.  As a result, part of my goal is to help students understand two of the more dominant literary philosophies of the period, romanticism and naturalism.  Part of the benefit of teaching these two philosophies side-by-side is the fact that one can contrast varying qualities of the two in order to more clearly define each one.  One such contrast that I spend some time on is the approach of the romantics and the naturalists to the question of free will, and it is fairly easy to demonstrate the ways in which the romantics tend to champion the notion of human beings having control over their own choices, while the naturalists tend to assume a more deterministic approach to human behavior, assuming that people’s biology and natural instincts as well as their socialization and education tend to determine more about who and what they will become.

We have already looked at some examples of romantic fiction and are now reading stories by Stephen Crane and Jack London, and thus, are largely considering naturalism in contrast to those earlier more romantic stories by Hawthorne and Melville.  Following a recent class, a student who was aware that I wrote about video games approached me and began discussing Bioshock in this context.  He astutely observed that the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is signified by the position of Andrew Ryan in the game, was one more aligned with romantic thought.  While Rand is often viewed as a pragmatist and even Machiavellian in her approach, it is true that she is much more of an idealist when it comes to notions of free will and human beings’ control over their own destiny.  In terms of Bioshock, Ryan’s infamous line, “A man chooses, a slave obeys,” would certainly be one that many romantics would likewise align themselves with (Byron and Blake’s advocacy of the notion that it is “better to reign in hell then to serve in heaven,” for example, seems along similar lines).

He then began discussing the “Would You Kindly?” business from the game, and the notion that the protagonist of Bioshock finds himself “in service” to the demands of an external force, one that he has been programmed to follow and noted its deterministic or naturalistic qualities.  I responded by noting the beauty of creating such a contrast within the medium of video games, a medium in which players so frequently are given the illusion of choice.  He quickly followed up by finishing my thought, noting that in reality most games push us in particular directions because the plot must move forward ultimately as it was scripted.

Of course, none of this understanding of Bioshock’s themes are especially new.  I was just pleased that this undergraduate was clearly identifying concepts from the class and applying them to other storytelling media.  That being said, I did begin to think about my recent love affair and preference for (nearly above all other games) what I have come to call a “mini-roguelike,” games like The Binding of Isaac and FTL, and how the idea of self actualization and control of our destiny and control of the game and the system might be related to this dichotomy.

The Binding of Isaac and FTL are short form versions of roguelikes.  Like longer and more involved examples of the genre, they ask a player to confront a randomized setting through randomized encounters within a game in which failure is more or less permanent.  While characters in a roguelike often gain levels and attributes or pick up new items and equipment to “better themselves,” some or all of these improvements evaporate on death.  The player doesn’t get to continue after death or pick up from a save point.  The player has to begin again.

Since play is randomized and advancement and loss of that advancement is a part of play, this Is a different experience than playing Pac-Man.  Sure, Pac-Man will eventually lose all of his lives and the player will have to plunk down another quarter to try again from the beginning of the game, but, then again, no investment was made in Pac-Man himself through character development, nor will the mazes that you experience be different the next time.  You can learn the “script” of Pac-Man, know what to expect as a result, and then adjust accordingly.

The roguelike or mini-roguelike also treats death and failure as a learning experience, but there is no regular script to consider.  Environments change, encounters change, what items are available on a given playthrough, and what you encounter and where vary constantly.  You have to make choices and you have to learn to play this game and apply that knowledge to an ever shifting and changing experience.

By contrast, most games offer saves and continues to push one to an inevitable conclusion.  The honest truth is as long as the game is and as frequently as people fail to complete Grand Theft Auto IV if you play long enough, you will reach its conclusion.  You will reach the end of the script and inevitable resolution.  You also will not have to recreate yourself each time.  You can count on you’re the progress of your character remaining a part of that character.  Interestingly, while naturalism and its tendency to adopt a deterministic philosophy historically has been associated with fatalism, these games in which the outcome is predetermined and expected and the player is pushed towards it resolve in a far less than dismal fate.

You might be seeing where I am going with this, though, there is something, somehow less deterministic about the mini-roguelike, something more like an advocacy of the significance of choice and control in the hands of the player, perhaps, present here.  Despite the fact that the player character is likely to be destroyed often, it is the player’s progress and his or her own development of strategy and skills that are retained from playthrough to playthrough.  These are games that are about the development of a player, not a character, and as such celebrate the player’s skills and smarts in ultimately overcoming obstacles despite the fact that these games feature more failures than not.  Victories are made sweeter in the knowledge that the game does not expect me to run through from beginning to end successfully, it expects me to only reach a conclusion if I can develop myself as player enough to do so.

In some sense, then, I am almost coming to think of The Binding of Isaac and FTL as examples of anti-Bioshocks, games that do not presume the player can only succeed by following a script, but that the player can develop a sensibility of his or her own about play and through which victories that can only be attributed to you, as that player, are achieved.

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The Millions : Salman Rushdie Meets Super Mario

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Essays

Salman Rushdie Meets Super Mario

By Nina Martyris posted at 6:00 am on October 8, 2012

A religious tyrant decides that Salman Rushdie should die for writing a “blasphemous” book. For ten years he is forced to flee from one safe-house to another with no one for company but his bodyguards and an increasingly estranged wife. How does he pass the time?

How about video games?

In his newly released memoir Joseph Anton, which is narrated in the third person, Rushdie briefly describes how he went through a phase when he found himself immersed in Super Mario Bros, the popular Nintendo game that his son Zafar taught him to play.

Those were dark days for the 41-year-old writer. Every morning brought fresh reports of either The Satanic Verses being burnt or him being burnt in effigy. Then came the chilling news that the police had foiled a group of assassins dispatched from overseas to execute the fatwa. If it sounded straight out of a bigoted video game, well, it wasn’t – or not yet, at least. But more on that later.

Given Rushdie’s lonely and claustrophobic circumstances in what his late friend Christopher Hitchens called “the time of the toad,” it was scarcely surprising that the fantasy-loving novelist whose favorite childhood stories were The Wizard of Oz and The Arabian Nights should occasionally transform himself into Mario the mustachioed plumber and run away to Mushroom Kingdom. The magic console was the next best thing to a magic carpet or magic lamp, and it quickly became the “Genie-come-lately” in his fantasy arsenal. It helped that in this digital world of magical mushrooms and fire flowers, he was hunter rather than hunted. A vital role reversal, even if his wife didn’t think so.

Marianne came around and scolded him for playing video games. Thanks to Zafar, he had grown fond of Mario the plumber and his brother Luigi and sometimes Super Mario World felt like a happy alternative to the one he lived in the rest of the time. “Read a good book,” his wife told him scornfully. “Give it up.” He lost his temper. “Don’t tell me how to live my life,” he exploded, and she made a grand exit.

And, gleefully, a few days later:

Alone at Hermitage Lane he reached the end of his Super Mario game, defeating the big bad Bowser himself and rescuing the insufferably pink Princess Toadstool. He was glad Marianne was not there to witness his triumph.

Rushdie’s triumph must have dissipated quite rapidly, however, when reality intruded with cruel irony in the form of a flesh-and-blood West Indian plumber who showed up at the shoddy safe-house to fix the central heating, forcing him to scurry out of sight and “hide in the bathroom for several hours, drenched in the now habitual sweat of shame.”

But no experience is wasted on a writer who is a compulsive memory-miner, and Rushdie put his video-game expertise to good use in the two children’s novels he wrote for his sons, though the second, Luka and the Fire of Life, is more directly indebted to Mario and Luigi than the first. The first, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, was dedicated to Zafar and written during the fatwa years, investing it with an immediacy that gave it a haunting power. Easily the most enchanting of Rushdie’s many novels, this allegorical tale about the war between Storytelling and Silence was an acutely topical portrayal of the synchronous real-world battle between free speech and fanaticism. In the novel, one of young Haroun’s tasks is to rescue the talkative and tuneless Princess Batcheat (baatcheat is the Urdu word for conversation) from Khattam-Shud, the emperor of Silence. Was the chatterbox Princess a reincarnation of the “insufferably pink Princess Toadstool?” And did Mario inspire the character of the mustachioed water genie Iff, who uses his plumber’s wrench to turn on and turn off the faucet through which the Stream of Stories flows via “a P2C2E” (Process too Complicated to Explain)?

It certainly seems like it. But where the impact of Super Mario bursts forth in full bloom is in Luka and the Fire of Life, which Rushdie wrote for younger son, Milan. (Incidentally, Rushdie, with an over 4,00,000 Twitter following, is quite the Geek Dad. He plays Angry Birds on his iPhone and when asked by the Wall Street Journal how he, living in New York, had managed to tell his boys in London bedtime stories, he replied, “There’s Skype and Apple’s Facetime.”) Luka is an Arabian Nights-meets-Nintendo novel in which “Super-Luka” is cast as a modern-day Prometheus who sets out to execute “the most deliciously Disrespectful Deed in All of Time.” Namely, to steal the fire of life and carry it back home in order to wake his beloved storyteller father Rashid Khalifa from his fatal coma-like sleep.

The young boy’s quest is constructed almost exactly like a Super Mario video game. He is given 999 lives, and has to pass through several levels of increasing difficulty to reach the magic fire. Each level is given a suitably video game-sounding title – the Respectorate of Rats, the Mists of Time, the Great Stagnation, the Inescapable Whirlpool, the Trillion and One Forking Paths and the Great Rings of Fire. Each time an enemy pots him with a loud BLLLAAARRRTT!, Luka loses one or more of his lives and bursts into “millions of shiny fragments” that join up again with “loud sucking noises.” Each time he clears a level, he saves his progress by punching a gold ball, which makes a loud and satisfying Ding. Eventually, after going through many “bouncing, burning, twisting, bubbling levels” and P2C2Es and magical M2C2D (Machines too Complicated to Describe), the plucky fire-thief and his friends ding their way to victory.

Naturally, a punster like Rushdie couldn’t pass up the temptation to game with the word “console.” Early in the novel, Luka’s mother, Soraya, who disapproves strongly of her son’s love of video games, angrily asks her husband if all these “hedgehogs and plumbers” will help improve their son’s poor handwriting. Rashid, a genial stand-in for Rushdie, is actually quite sympathetic about Luka’s gaming passion. Which is bad enough as far as his wife as is concerned, but then he makes the additional mistake of correcting her mid-rant to say that the right term for the “pisps” and “wees” her son is addicted to – “Such names! They sound like going to the bathroom or what” – is console. At which point, she stages a grand exit from the room (like Marianne?) declaring over her shoulder: “I am in-console-able.”

On a more serious note, video games seem to hold a special appeal for Rushdie for reasons that go the very heart of his writing. First, as glorious purveyors of an “infinite number of parallel realities,” they fit perfectly into his exuberant mosaic of magical realism in which everything from the mythological and historical to tabloid headlines jostle for space. Which other writer can give you Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Akbar, and Angelina Jolie in one line? And what other game allows the player to become a “plumber” or a “zooming hedgehog” or even an “Intergalactic Penguin named after a member of the Beatles?”

The other reason is the discursive narrative architecture of a video game, a non-linearity which he finds fascinating. Rushdie’s elliptical, story-within-story, detour-friendly, digression-heavy style is anything but linear. It can be maddening when he overdoes it, and he often does, but also richly rewarding if one just goes along for the ride. His books are not clean, blue Olympic swimming pools where each story has the good manners to stick to its own lane. Rather, they are an unruly and inquisitive and shape-shifting Ocean of Stories, into which hundreds of rivulets from different centuries and cultures – or streams of our collective sub-conscious, if you like – pour to pollute and mingle and fertilize one another.

Over the last few decades, with the exponential growth in the popularity of video games, writers have often been asked about the impact of these games on the future of the novel. Few have responded with as much insight as Rushdie did two years ago in this excellent Big Think interview. It’s worth listening to it in full. While he agreed that the concerns are legitimate and that too much gaming could have a dumbing-down effect and perhaps even erode man’s ancient attachment to the story, he made a powerful case for the new form. It interested him, he said, because of “the much looser structure of the game and the much greater agency the player has to choose how he will explore and inhabit the world that is provided. He doesn’t really have to follow the main narrative line of the game at all for long periods of time. There are all kinds of excursions and digressions that you can choose to go on and find mini stories to stories to participate in instead of the big story, the macro story. I think that really interests me as a storyteller…To tell the story sideways.”

It’s no coincidence that one of the trickiest levels that Luka has to pass through is called The Trillion and One Forking Paths. This was Rushdie doffing his cap to Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths,” widely credited with having predicted hypertext on the Internet. “I’ve always thought of the Borges story of the garden of the forking paths as a kind of model,” Rushdie said in the same interview.

It’s a story whose author has gone mad because what he’s tried to do is to offer every possible variation of every moment. So boy meets girl, they fall in love or they don’t fall in love. That’s the first fork. And he wants to tell both those stories and every variation of every moment down both those lines. And of course it’s like nuclear fission. The possibilities explode into millions and billions of possibilities and it becomes impossible to write the book. It seems to me, the internet is the garden of forking paths where you can have myriad possibilities offered at the same level of authority, if you like. I think that’s one of the ways storytelling could move. These games, these more free-form games, where the player can make choices of what the game is going to become, is a kind of gaming equivalent of that narrative possibility.

To loop back to the fatwa years where it all began, it’s quite strange that video games should continue to pop up in the relationship between Rushdie and Iran. Though the fatwa was lifted more than ten years ago, the present government evidently has no qualms about stoking the old death diktat. Earlier this year, the government-sponsored Islamic Students Association in Iran, as if determined to prove that history repeats itself as farce, announced that it had completed initial production on a video game called The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of his Verdict. Two years ago, Rushdie told Big Think that in his opinion the great conflict in the world today is not so much the conflict between the West and the Islamic world but the conflict within Islam, between modernity and tradition, between the youth and the greybeard mullahs. This held true for Iran too, he said, and joked: “I often think the best way to liberate Iran is to drop Nintendo consoles from the air.” On second thought, perhaps not.

Publicity image via nintendo

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The Deadly Rooms of Derek Yu • Articles • PC • Eurogamer.net

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Spelunky’s creator discusses a life in games.

Do you like video games? Do you like poetic justice? If so you’ll probably like this, too. Derek Yu, the youthful creator of Spelunky and the father, in a sense, to Spelunky’s legions of angry shopkeepers, was playing Dark Souls recently. Guess what happened.

“One of the things I love about Dark Souls is that it doesn’t really tell you how to do anything,” says Yu, still groggy with jetlag from a recent holiday in Japan. “But it also lets you do and try so much that doesn’t work. At one point when I was playing, I turned a corner and there was this ghoulish-looking character behind these metal bars. As soon as I saw it, I jumped back and, really without thinking, I threw my spear and stabbed him dead.

“It turned out to be a shopkeeper.”

Revenge. Sweet, ludic revenge. After three years of chucking testy, shotgun-wielding merchants our way on PC and - more recently - Xbox 360, Yu’s finally beaten at his own game. Beaten, in fact, within someone else’s game.

“I mean it looked like a monster behind bars,” Yu continues, although he should probably just save it for the judge by this point. “But I guess I really could have given it a chance. After that, you know, you can’t buy from that character ever again. It’s a crazy punishment that very few games would ever let you go through, let alone in such a permanent way. Things like that make the game feel so immersive.”

There’s something wonderfully pulpy about Spelunky’s original artwork.

Is it surprising that the creator of Spelunky really likes Dark Souls? Or that, when he talks about the things that happen in Dark Souls, he could be describing the things that happen in his own game, too? Demanding, rigorous, thrillingly riddled with barbed complexity, both titles feel like characterful expressions of a very similar approach to design.

Want another example? Check this out: “There are secrets in Dark Souls where - this seems novel now - they don’t expect you to find the secret,” says Yu, his voice fairly cracking with delighted awe. “In so many games, if there isn’t a sign right next to the secret, they wouldn’t even put it in the game.

“Then there’s tactical stuff. So many times when I’m fighting a boss or a monster and I finish a battle, I’ll feel like I’ve done it in such a strange way. I remember one fight where I slowly led the boss up to the top of these steps. The way the boss is designed, he can’t really attack anything below him. I got him above me on the steps, and then I very awkwardly poked him to death. It took forever. On the one hand, it feels kind of broken. On the other hand, it’s awesome. Instead of just going through the motions and patterns that the developers put in place for me, I really feel like I came up with something for myself.”

Yu’s not shy about coming up with things for himself. The designer and illustrator’s been thinking about games since his cousin introduced him to Super Mario Bros. when he was a kid. Uh-oh. Here’s the old Mario Bros. origin story: what really made the game stand out back then? The physics? The scrolling?

“Honestly, I kind of want to say it was the pipes,” laughs Yu, and, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you’ve played the game, you’ll instantly know exactly what he means. Those pipes! The mystery of it all! Chug Chug Chug! “The first time you go into a pipe in Super Mario Bros. and it takes you to a whole other world? Man, it was the first game where I felt like the sky was the limit: there was just this unlimited potential in that game.

“When you’re a kid, you really soak this stuff up. For someone like me - I liked drawing, I liked creating my own little worlds on paper - to actually be able to move around in one was just huge. Especially the fact that my parents didn’t actually own the Nintendo. I only got to play it when I was at my cousin’s. It was like having a nice dream or something like that: every now and then you’d have this great dream that would open up this whole new world for you.

“That Super Mario Bros. feeling of possibility is something that I love about games,” he continues. “And part of it, I think, has to do with the nature of all the best video games. Especially back in the day when things were so open: the bugs and glitches in games just added to that effect that there was more to the game than there actually was. Minus World in Super Mario Bros., right? It’s a programming error, but it becomes this incredible lore for the game. That is something that I miss somewhat in modern games, where they’ve become a little more streamlined. It’s harder to find a game that piques my imagination the way those old games did. Partly, of course, that’s because when you’re a kid you don’t see any of the smoke and mirrors, but part of it’s also the fact that the nature of games has changed a little bit.”

Spelunky’s probably Yu’s most famous game, and since 2009 when it was released for free on PC, it’s been kindling exactly these kind of emotions in the players who venture into its caverns and grottoes. It’s a roguelike that looks like a platformer, and each time you load it up, the game performs a few quick-fingered tricks with randomisation. Certain things - the level layouts, the arrangements of enemies, the locations of numerous treasures - get shuffled around in the dealing, but other things remain fixed and consistent. Bats always swoop at you and frogs always hop, the arc of the adventure always takes you from mine to jungle to ice field to temple, and the same arcane combinations of items will always open up the routes to - well, perhaps you should find that bit out for yourself. It’s a great game, but it’s not Yu’s debut. Not by a long shot.

Eternal Daughter has aged really well, and remains a clever and generous adventure.

“I definitely started drawing seriously first,” says Yu when asked about the beginnings of his creative ambitions. “Game-making started as an extension of that. I’d just draw game ideas on paper. I have a good friend called Jon Perry who I’ve known since second grade: we’d just draw together all the time, creating games in our school books. It wasn’t until Klik & Play came out that we actually started making games. It wasn’t until then that we could.”

Klik & Play was a streamlined game development tool released for PCs in the mid 1990s, and it may yet turn out to have been one of the secret engines driving the current crop of inventive, personable, low-budget games. Other veterans of Klik & Play college include Zach Gage, for example, who’s probably best known for the fiendishly claustrophobic word puzzler Spelltower, or for Lose/Lose: a spin on Space Invaders in which each enemy you kill deletes a random file from your computer. Proceed with caution when it comes to that one. Actually, maybe don’t proceed at all?

“I think Klik & Play really did spawn a whole generation of game developers - especially independent game developers,” says Yu. “I think that’s just down to the nature of the tool. It had a really simple scripting editor, it had built-in sprite editors and it had everything you needed to make a game. I think the generation that grew up with it, they got very good at handling all aspects of game creation. It’s kind of unique to this generation to have people who are interested in the programming and the artwork and the music and whatever else.”

Yu’s first Klik & Play project was a two-player deathmatch title called Trigger Happy. “I did all the sprites myself,” says Yu, with an unmistakable hint of playground pride still in place, “and I put it up on AOL, which was the place to be at the time. I got a fantastic response from people, from strangers. I was already hooked, but that was definitely a very exciting moment to get an email from a stranger like that.”

More games followed, Yu often working alongside Perry, with whom he formed a label called Blackeye Software. The culmination of all this was Eternal Daughter, a complex blend of platforming and RPG progression that leaned heavily on the Metroidvania template. The duo started working on the project towards the end of high school in 2000, and assumed they’d finish it in the summer holidays before college. The game continued to grow in scope, however, and it would eventually take two years to complete.

“It was tough. I don’t remember ever feeling that this is never going to end, though,” laughs Yu. “You just get a feeling for the day-to-day thing. You know you have to keep working and I actually enjoy that kind of development. A game actually feels like this nice steady constant in your life. No matter what else is going on, you feel like there’s this thing that you can always make a bit of progress on. Then, once you get past it, you survived, and that feels great. It’s been like that with every big project I’ve been on.”

Coming from Spelunky, the sense of calm in Aquaria’s early levels is a real surprise.

Eternal Daughter’s protracted development at least prepared Yu for Aquaria, another Metroidvania-style PC game he released in 2007 in collaboration with Alec Holowka. Yu and Holowka met while working on I’m Okay - A Murder Simulator, a project that was designed around a brief laid out by infamous anti-gaming zealot Jack Thompson. “We were the most dedicated people on I’m Okay, and we had plenty of time to chat while we were waiting around for other people to do their stuff,” says Yu. “In the end, he showed me a prototype for this game called Aquaria where you controlled a mermaid using a mouse. It was very short, but I thought it was cool, and I started working on it with him and we kept working on it after I’m Okay was finished. Pretty organically, we just decided to make it a full game together. It’s kind of scary, actually, how easily we decided to just devote two years of our lives to it.”

Aquaria was another step up, not just in scope but in polish. Beautiful and otherworldly, the game’s intricate levels are tied together by a neat system that sees you learning different songs in order to use different powers. With smart puzzles and dreamy mouse-based traversal, it’s a game with a strong sense of place and character. Play through Yu’s games in reverse order, though, and you’ll be in for a shock: Aquaria is a clockwork universe that has little in common with Spelunky’s brand of freeform chaos. If anything, it actually feels like the inverse of Yu’s hectic roguelike.

“I think that’s exactly right,” says Yu. “In fact, the original Spelunky came about as a way to get some relief after Aquaria, which was a very exacting game to work on. I remember working on Aquaria, using the level editor Alec had built, spending all this time just placing rocks and plants in these very specific ways, and moving something literally a quarter of an inch at a time. Spelunky was a pet project and it was definitely my means of getting away from that: giving up some of my control, and actually relaxing a little bit.”

You could almost certainly have avoided this sort of problem.

Ah, Spelunky: with its emergent clusters of Yetis, UFOs, and Jackal-headed freaks. Spelunky with its dead ends and its Tiki trap tennis. Spelunky with its endless array of fatal surprises. Of all the games you’ll ever play, this one seems like the most fun to actually make. You can almost picture Yu getting the basic level randomisation down and then just, you know, adding stuff, like an amoral but fiercely imaginative zoo keeper who’s decided to see what really happens when the lions share a food bowl with the lambs.

“Spelunky was definitely a lot of fun to work on,” laughs Yu. “With the randomised elements, it’s the kind of game where you get to experience the game as a player over and over again for the entire length of development - definitely a lot more than with Aquaria. It’s definitely a lot more fun to make and test something like that.

“After I finished Aquaria, I picked up GameMaker, and to learn it, I just made a bunch of very small games,” he explains. “Once I realised what Spelunky was going to be, it was just a case of taking all of those ideas and turning them into something coherent. I think game development works like that a lot of the time - it feels like you’re taking the good pieces out of all these ideas that are just floating around, and you’re trying to make the right connections with them. Is this a game that I’m going to enjoy working on? Is this a game that I’m going to want? Is it intellectually challenging enough to work on? Is it going to add something new to video games? These are all these little requirements that I think game developers have when they decide to invest a good portion of their lives to working on a new game.

“For me, whether I’m drawing or working on a game, I feel I’m creating fragments of ideas in my head: creating a chaos, and then pulling pieces of that chaos into something coherent. So the level-generating algorithm fundamentally came from this very simple Roguelike game I made that was just a series of square rooms next to each other, for example. There were no hallways like most games: it was just a grid where some rooms connected and some wouldn’t. Those rooms became the fragments of each level that gets pieced together randomly, and into that I threw a load of those different platform games I’d been messing with.”

Was there a single point where Yu realised how entertaining his new game was going to be? “You know, I never had that,” he says. “I was definitely having a lot of fun, but I never thought, ‘Oh, man, other people are going to love this.’ I think that was a really good thing, actually. With Aquaria, we had a lot of expectations about the game, and that can add a lot of stress to the development. With Spelunky, I was always planning on releasing it at some point, but I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking, ‘Are people going to get this?’ It really freed me up. Spelunky was all about freedom, really. After working on two large projects with other people - both great guys - the fact of working with other people so intensely on something means you want your alone time as a developer, too. Spelunky just represented my break from all of that. I could just focus on what I wanted entirely.”

Yu’s still playing Spelunky today, even after working with Andy Hull for another couple of years on the brilliant Xbox 360 version. “I like the fact that it feels very much like me and all the things that I enjoy about games,” he says. “Not just the gameplay but also the artwork. I feel like everything fits together. I like the detail in the game: the tiny details in how things work, and how that’s reflected in the artwork. The style has a lot of heavy details in each tile, and then there’s the way that those tiles come together. I’ve always loved that about video games, how all these little pieces come together to make a game, and how this looks on the screen. It feels like everything has its place.”

What’s next? Yu admits that after Spelunky, “I’m really itching to make actual levels again.”

“I’m already playing around with a couple of ideas on GameMaker again,” he says. “Without getting too much into specifics, I’m going back to well-trodden arcadey type designs. After Aquaria, I think this is a little bit of a reaction to Spelunky now, so I’m into tightly designed, everything’s-thought-out sort of games. Part of it is just to prove to myself that I can still do it, but also, I think, I really want to be able to do those classic game designs. I feel that, as a game designer, there are these fundamental ideas, and I want to be able to feel like I’ve mastered them. If I was a chef, I’d want to be able to make sure I could make basic dishes really nicely, and see if there was anything else I could glean from them. These genres that people are very familiar with? I want to make sure I can do them well. I want to make sure my understanding of the fundamentals of game design is good.”

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Bringing back the dead: the revival of 'Left 4 Winchester'

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It began almost four years ago. For a long time, it was believed the project also died four years ago. Polygon caught up with the developers of Left 4 Winchester to talk about the revival of their Shaun Of The Dead mod.

A little over a week ago, actor Simon Pegg came across a story about a team of developers making a Shaun of the Dead and Left 4 Dead mod called Left 4 Winchester. The actor, who co-wrote the screenplay for Shaun of the Dead and starred in the film sent out a tweet: “This would be absolutely awesome!” he excitedly wrote. “The rights belong to Universal but we will do what we can.”

At the time of his tweet, Left 4 Winchester had already been abandoned for almost four years. The independent developers behind the mod had asked Universal for permission to create a mod inspired by Shaun of the Dead, never heard back, and so decided it was best to just leave it, even though they’d already assembled a team and had a rough build of the game that was in a semi-playable state.

The game was left untouched for years. That is, until Simon Pegg’s tweet.

“The article [about Pegg’s tweet] was passed to me from a friend of mine on Steam and it was also posted in the discussions section of our Steam group not long after,” says Left 4 Winchester’s writer, Alex Musser. “We were obviously shocked and excited that Simon Pegg had said our project idea was awesome, even though it was more or less dead at the time.

“It definitely caused us to rethink the project. We were able to bring Nat [Carmichael] (level designer) back after he saw the tweet as well. And since, Matthew [Perez] (level designer) has been brought on. To say his tweet sparked a fire would be a bit of an understatement.”

In the week since Pegg’s tweet, the development team has grown rapidly, with the original members coming back together and bringing on more level designers, prop artists, and texture artists.

With Simon Pegg’s blessing, the team is now picking up where they left off.

The original members of the Left 4 Winchester development team are all avid modders, having dabbled with source engines and development kits in their spare time. After a silly conversation about Left 4 Dead co-op games almost four years ago, the name Left 4 Winchester was thrown around, the Winchester being the pub used in the film Shaun of Dead, which was held up as “the safest place” the characters could go in the event of a zombie uprising.

“Once the name was nailed down, which happened surprisingly quick, our confidence rose and the project began,” Alex Musser tells Polygon.

The team launched into designing maps and levels of a Left 4 Dead meets Shaun of the Dead mash-up, making three levels that are now in the process of being fleshed out. Musser says that the maps they designed all those years ago were in a playable state inasmuch that players could wander through the game world while zombies randomly generated. There were no set spawn points or events, and Musser says that everything was randomly created by the Left 4 Dead Director engine (Musser assures that this will all be changed now that the game is being restarted).

But while the team was perfectly capable of finishing their game and, within the short space of time that they began their project had already amassed a following of fans who wanted to see a Left 4 Dead and Shaun of the Dead crossover, they hit a road block.

“We really didn’t think about legal issues when we started the project,” Musser says. “During early development Nat raised legal concerns. By day he is an attorney so he’s rightfully cautious. We sent out an email to Universal who never responded. And that kinda left us feeling uneasy.

“Thinking back now, it was probably lost or tossed in a trash bin. At the time though it was enough to leave us paused and eventually everyone left to deal with their own personal lives leaving the project to stagnate.”

And just like that, four years of silence.

“It wasn’t a great feeling,” Musser says. “We were eager to work on the project, but without our map designers we weren’t moving forward at all.

“To be honest, we never really had a scope of how much of a community was out there already. Looking over all of the older internet forum posts and news articles now, it feels a lot worse knowing that these people were left with high hopes for a project that was effectively stopped for so long.”

When the game was put on indefinite hold, all the game’s files were kept and put to the side. The team members went to focus on their day jobs, college, families and work duties. Universal never told them they couldn’t make their game, but not hearing back from them gave the team a reason to doubt what they were doing. And with the game’s map and level designers leaving the project to focus on other things, it seemed like the project was really dead.

That was until Simon Pegg’s tweet last week. Not only did it kickstart the original team’s enthusiasm for their project, but it renewed their hope and belief that they were onto something good.

In the space of a week the team has almost doubled in size and they are still recruiting members to help them finish the game.

“The plan is to continue development where we left off,” Musser says. “Thankfully, we have two great mappers to start with, one of which was our original mapper, which we’re really thankful for. We never lost the materials that we started on. It also helps that Left 4 Dead 2 already includes some things like the Cricket Bat and Jukebox.

“We are also continuing recruitment,” he says. “Right now, structure is the most important goal. Once we have the paths and maps sorted, we can start pushing more custom content into it. Keeping the community informed is also very important at this point. It will help them help us and keep us on our toes.”

The team behind Left 4 Winchester are now confident that they will be able to complete the game they started all those years ago and, with the support of Simon Pegg, they’re putting any potential legal concerns to the side for now.

Those interested in getting in touch with the team and following the game’s development can follow them on Twitter or visit their webpage.

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