Archive All • Download Newest

Read Later

» Es gibt kein Leben auf dem Mars 99leben
99leben.de

trioptimum's tumblr
usernamegone.tumblr.com

Eine Branche im Umbruch: Der Games-Journalismus in der Krise - GamePolitics
derstandard.at

What Games Journalism Needs: More Honesty, Fewer Standards
gameranx.com

Gamer's Paradise: Worshipping At The iOS Altar
thecreatorsproject.com

On Kairo and Death: Endgame
lockeddoorpuzzle.com

Postpartum: Mainichi – How Personal Experience Became a Game
borderhouseblog.com

Lost for words: new relationships and Journey
nightmaremode.net

Archive All • Download Newest

Become an Instapaper Subscriber for just $1/month to get up to 50 articles at a time and support Instapaper’s development. Visit the Account section of Instapaper.com to subscribe.

» Es gibt kein Leben auf dem Mars 99leben

99leben.de • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Es gibt kein Leben auf dem Mars

Curiosity, Plattformen: iOS, Android

Veröffentlicht: 10.11.2012 | von: loess | Rubrik: Reviews

Wer sich bereits einige Jahre ausgiebig mit Videospielen beschäftigt, wurde wahrscheinlich nicht nur einmal von Peter Molyneux enttäuscht. Die wandelnde Ein-Mann-Werbetrommel und Hypemaschine verspricht uns auch dieses Mal wieder die großartigste Spielerfahrung unseres banalen Lebens und das sogar ohne überhaupt ein richtiges Spiel dafür programmiert zu haben. Curiosity ist vielmehr eine alterierte Version eines Würfelspiels, an dessem Ende unzählige Verlierer und nur ein einzelner Gewinner stehen werden.

Hat der Riddler seine Finger im Spiel?

Es fängt alles ganz harmlos an. “Bist du neugierig?”, werde ich gefragt, und auch wenn mir diese persönliche Ebene ein wenig verfrüht erscheint, bestätige ich diese Frage mit einem Fingertippen, welches sich anschließend auch als einzig erforderliche Eingabemethode entpuppt. Man hämmert immerzu auf den Bildschirm, um so Schicht für Schicht eines riesigen Würfels abzutragen, dessen Kern sich am Ende nur einem einzigen Spieler erschließen soll. Man hämmert also nie allein, sondern jeder hackt online auf dem selben großen Würfel herum, was in den ersten Tagen für einen erschwerten Zugriff auf den Spieleserver gesorgt hat und nach wie vor einen großen Teil der Nutzer aussperrt. Für mich war somit schon während der Bearbeitung der ersten Schicht selbige im Schacht, da ich mich seitdem nicht mehr anmelden konnte. Zeit genug also, um darüber nachzudenken, ob ich das denn überhaupt noch einmal will.

“There is something we haven’t told everybody about when you play the cube. When you play the cube you’re also doing something else. You don’t realise you’re doing it. […] You’re not just doing things in the cube. You don’t realise it but you’re doing something in something else as well at the same time.”

-Peter Molyneux

Was sich mir in den knapp 20 Minuten Spielzeit bot, hat auf jeden Fall wenig mit einem klassischen Videospiel zu tun. Es ist ein wenig wie ein Minecraft, welches nur aus dem Abbau von Rohstoffen besteht, weil es um seine kreative Schaffenskomponente beraubt wurde. In grenzenloser Monotonie tippen die eigenen Finger immer wieder auf den Bildschirm, während einem der minimale Fortschritt beim Abtragen der Würfelschicht durch ein paar Münzen “versüßt” wird, deren Nutzen sich wohl erst nach einiger Zeit erschließen wird, wenn man damit Dinge kaufen kann, die das Kratzen am Würfel beschleunigen sollen. Schwer vorstellbar, dass Neugierde allein ausreicht, um sich darauf stundenlang einzulassen. Und was meint der Molyneux nun wieder mit dieser völlig schwammigen Aussage, man tue eigentlich noch etwas anderes, während man den Würfel bearbeitet? Warum kriege ich davon überhaupt nichts mit? Vielleicht meint er ja den Abbau weiterer Ressourcen, wie Lebenszeit und Verstand. Oder aber den schleichenden Verlust rationalen Denkens, wie er bei Spielautomaten- und Lottospielern beobachtet werden kann, welche ihrem großen Ziel in der Regel ähnlich fern bleiben, wie der ominöse Würfelkern dem Curiosity-Spieler. Da diese Dinge jedoch eher zu den passiven Begleiterscheinungen dieses Spiels gehören, muss man wohl auf die Auflösung dieser Frage noch eine Weile warten.

“What is inside the cube is life-changingly amazing by any definition.”

- Peter Molyneux

Fool me once…

Vielleicht sogar so lange, bis endlich ein strahlender Gewinner des Würfels Kern zu Gesicht bekommt. Dieser eine Spieler, dessen Neugierde mit einer lebensverändernden Entdeckung befriedigt werden soll, hat schließlich die Wahl, den Inhalt des Kubus via Facebook in die Welt hinauszuposaunen, oder ihn für immer für sich zu behalten. In diesem vollgepackten Würfel steckt also noch ein ganzes Sozialexperiment mit drin, welches eigentlich das einzig wirklich Spannende an diesem in allen Belangen übertrieben angepriesenen Spiel ist. Denn mal ehrlich, wer die haltlosen Versprechungen zu Black & White oder zu Fable von Molyneux für bare Münze genommen hat, der traut diesem Mann nun keinen Millimeter mehr über den Weg. Und das sollte man auch nicht. Am Ende ist womöglich der einzige Gewinner nicht etwa derjenige, der das Zentrum des Würfels erreicht, sondern einzig und allein Molyneux selbst. Denn sollte es soweit kommen, dass sich tatsächlich abertausende Menschen zusammen unzählige Stunden, Tage und Wochen dieser absolut öden Tipperei hingeben, obwohl es nahezu ausgeschlossen ist, das Licht am Ende des Tunnels je zu erblicken, dann hat er uns mal wieder alle zum Narren gehalten. Und wenn sich im Kern des Würfels nun Molyneuxs ausgestreckter Mittelfinger befindet, sei es als Bild oder als Metapher, dann wird sich wohl niemand groß wundern. Wir wurden schließlich hinreichend gewarnt.

Logging In…

Profile

99leben.de • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

trioptimum's tumblr

usernamegone.tumblr.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Curiosity (for iOS and Android) may be the Molyneuxiest game of Peter Molyneux’s career. It’s high-concept, abstract, and unique.

It also feels like one of the most exploitative games ever made.

So, let’s play a game. There’s a huge sheet of graph paper, about 400 square metres with a 2mm grid, and every player—thousands of them—is holding a pencil. You all simultaneously colour in the tiny squares on the graph paper, one by one.

When, collectively, you’ve filled in every single square, you are rewarded with a slightly smaller sheet of graph paper! And you begin again.

It may sound like I’m taking the piss a little, but I promise you this is a 1:1 analogy for the mechanics of Curiosity.

If this sounds like menial labour, then you fully understand the experience of playing this game. The only thing there is to do is to try to chain up a good score multiplier, or leave messages and draw cocks in clear areas of the grid before others inevitably wipe them out by tapping the cubelets surrounding them.

Yet this bizarre stripped-down non-game is indisputably addictive. The constant feedback and the call of the untouched cubes makes it hard to pull yourself away. Like a slot machine in a casino, it’s built to feed on compulsion.

At some point in the future, the last piece of graph paper will be reached. And the person who colours in the very last square on that smallest piece of graph paper will win…

Well, we don’t know. We’re just told that it will be:

truly amazing.  It’s truly unique and I believe life changing for anybody

Leaving aside the fact that only one person gets to enjoy it, let’s take a moment to consider the source. Are people willing to take, on blind faith, the word of Molyneux, an accomplished designer but a man whose name for over 10 years, by his own admission, has been the canonical example of overpromise and underdeliver?

In this TED talk, game designer Jane McGonigal talks about the incredible number of human hours that are spent on games every day, and how designers can try to harness this energy for positive means. I wish Molyneux had watched this talk.

It’s an interesting exercise to try to estimate how much time will be spent playing Curiosity.

The first layer of the cube was 4096 cubelets to an edge. So that’s 4096*4096 cubelets to a side, and 6 sides… that makes 100663296 cubelets in the first layer.

Let’s say each player can tap 5 cubelets a second. It’s probably faster than this when an agile player is working in a large untouched area, but it’s a lot slower when hunting for the scattered remnants toward the end of a layer. I think 5 cubelets per second is a safe overestimate.

So, 100 million cubes, 5 per second… that’s 233 man-days, minimum. January 1st to August 21st, working 24/7. That’s a lot of time, and it’s already been spent—the first layer is gone. Nobody is ever getting that time back.

But that’s just one layer. Let’s try to work it out for the whole cube.

The problem is that we don’t know how many layers the cube has, and whether it’s hollow or solid. It could have as many as 2048 layers, though the inner ones will be very small—the smallest just 2x2x2 cubelets.

For the sake of argument, let’s say it has 1024 layers, so a line through the original, intact cube from the centre of a face to the centre of its opposite face will pass through the same amount of empty space as it does solid cube. That’s pure speculation, as it could have only a handful of layers, or it could be a solid cube, so I split the difference between the two extremes.

With 1024 layers, there would be 60129542144 cubelets. Total time to clear: 3.3 million man-hours. A massive human resource.

After that many man-hours, could what’s inside the cube—no matter how amazing it is—possibly be anything other than a massive anticlimax?

Something that is this huge a timesink would be entirely forgivable if it was fun. But there is no fun here. It’s a mindless grind. It’s literally just tapping squares on a screen, and the transient graffiti we see on the sides of the cube? That’s the result of boredom, because there’s nothing else to do.

But if it’s not bad enough that this colossal timesink has been unleashed on the world, there’s something even more troubling about Curiosity. It hasn’t happened yet, but they’ve talked about it. It’s their plans for $50,000 DLC.

Exploiting compulsive behaviour and milking players for all the money they’re worth is not a new thing. Facebook games have done it for a while. Vegas has been doing it for decades. It’s distasteful whatever guise it’s in. And an A-list game developer doing it feels like a step toward widespread acceptance.

None of the DLC, up to and including the $50,000, will come with any guarantee. If it doesn’t net the buyer the prize, there is no other reward; it’s money down the drain. While we don’t know whether the prize at the cube’s centre will be life changing, for most people losing $50,000 surely would be. It could lose someone their house, destroy someone’s marriage. Molyneux could be placing himself in the role of enabler for somebody’s self-destructive gambling habit.

However Molyneux dresses it up:

This is not a money-making exercise; it is a test about the psychology of monetisation.

…it’s the attempted exploitation of whales and it feels like the crossing of a moral line.

I like Molyneux. But this is not OK. Maybe they were never going ahead with this plan after all. Maybe it was just for publicity. Maybe it’s real but Apple and Google will put a block on it; I certainly can’t see Apple being OK with it. But if this goes ahead, I’ll say it plainly: it’s a loathsome, exploitative act and it should be Molyneux’s career obituary.

Update: Wow, I got linked on the RPS Sunday Papers! For new readers—which is basically everyone—I wrote a few words of introduction here.

Update 2: Now linked on /r/Games. A lot of worthwhile discussion there and on the RPS comment thread. Thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to give opinions. I’ve tried to address the most common points and criticisms in a followup post.

usernamegone.tumblr.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Eine Branche im Umbruch: Der Games-Journalismus in der Krise - GamePolitics

derstandard.at • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Print-Sterben, zu wenig Geist, zu viel PR: Warum das Schreiben über Spiele in einer Krise steckt

Es ist ein bemerkenswertes Paradox: Spiele sind spätestens 2012 in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen. Mehr Menschen als je zuvor opfern einen Teil ihrer Freizeit dem gar nicht mehr so jungen Medium, und es sind bei weitem nicht mehr nur männliche Jugendliche, sondern Erwachsene, Frauen und Senioren. Die Umsätze der Games-Industrie stellen jene Hollywoods in den Schatten, und die weltweite Bekanntheit von Games-Ikonen wie Super Mario, Lara Croft oder Halos Master Chief macht sie zu globalen virtuellen Superstars.

Gleichzeitig - und hier liegt die bemerkenswerte Ungereimtheit - ist der Gamesjournalismus, also jener dieses erfolgreiche Massenmedium beobachtende Teil der Öffentlichkeit, in einer systemischen Krise, die sich allem Anschein nach zunehmend verschärft.

Probleme, Probleme

Games-Magazine, vor Jahren noch erfolgreich und massenhaft im Handel, leiden weltweit unter existenzbedrohendem Leserschwund. Zugleich stellen unter der Oberfläche brodelnde Skandale, wie jüngst Dorito-Gate, das Selbstverständnis der gesamten über Spiele schreibenden Branche in ihrem oft ungesunden Verhältnis zur PR der Spielebranche ins Scheinwerferlicht.

Dass sich das Schreiben über Spiele trotz der enormen zumindest wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung des Mediums immer noch nicht im Kultur- oder Feuilletonteil allgemeiner Publikationen, sondern im naturgemäß eingeschränkteren Technologie-Ghetto und Fachblättern versteckt, ist bedauerlich. Dass dieses Selbstverständnis aber durch alte Gewohnheiten wie scheinbar nüchterne Prozentbewertungen und braves Aufzählen spielmechanischer und technischer Details gerne weitergepflegt wird, macht den Gamesjournalismus an vielen Orten auch für große Teile potenzieller Leser zunehmend uninteressant.

Kurz, das Paradox ist dieses: Einem wirtschaftlich, kulturell und lebensreal bedeutsamen Massenmedium steht eine oberflächlich im Print schrumpfende, sich ins spezialisiert Technische und zu seiner jugendlichen Hardcore-Gemeinde flüchtende Berichterstattung gegenüber, die noch dazu fürs Überleben auf Werbe- und PR-Gelder von jener Branche angewiesen ist, die sie eigentlich kritisch betrachten sollte - eine problematische Symbiose.

Print plus online

Für die Krise traditioneller Printpublikationen kann die Games-Presse freilich nicht selbst verantwortlich gemacht werden: Durch das Internet sterben überall gedruckte Magazin- und Zeitungsformate. Tatsächlich bemüht sich hier just der Gamesjournalismus, dank besonders technikaffiner Zielgruppe zum Teil nicht ohne Erfolg, seine Printleser mit zusätzlichen Inhalten im Internet bei der Stange zu halten.

Alexander Amon, Chefredakteur des österreichischen Videospielmagazins consol.at, erklärt den Spagat: “Wir versuchen, den Leserschwund mit guter Onlinepräsenz - wir waren ja zuerst ein Online-Magazin und sind dann erst auch in Printform erschienen -, unserem erfolgreichen Podcast, Kino-Events und Messe-Stand sowie 24/7-Präsenz auf den eigenen Kanälen auszugleichen.”

Ohne umfangreiche Online-Aktivitäten geht es also nicht - doch Print hat immer noch einen eigenen Reiz. “Ich würde nie auf Print verzichten wollen bzw. auf ein periodisch erscheinendes Produkt. Es gibt einfach nichts Schöneres, als etwas abzuschließen und dann in Händen halten zu können”, sieht Amon im gedruckten Magazin auch für seine Leser einen die Flüchtigkeit des Netzes überdauernden Mehrwert.

Journalismus ohne Journalisten?

Die Konkurrenz in Form reiner Onlinepublikationen wächst dennoch täglich. Einzelne Plattformen wie etwa das von Ex-GameStar-Chefredakteur Jörg Langer gegründete Portal gamersglobal.de setzen als offensives Gegenmodell von Vornherein auf Web-2.0-Mitmachjournalismus und auf die Gamification des Leseerlebnisses, indem Nutzer selbst News vorschlagen oder Artikel schreiben können, um im “Rang” aufzusteigen.

“Qualitätsjournalismus” ist hier weniger das Ziel als die möglichst große Identifikation mit einer jugendlichen Zielgruppe, die, zynisch zugespitzt, schlussendlich ohne Honorar für sich selbst schreibt. Braucht das Medium etwa bald gar keinen “professionellen” Gamesjournalismus mehr?

Christian Schiffer hat ein anderes Ziel, und er teilt offensichtlich Amons Liebe zum Printprodukt: Das Schreiben über Spiele kann und sollte seiner Meinung nach nicht nur mehr Qualität haben, sondern durchaus auch im Bücherregal Platz finden dürfen.

Das hat der deutsche Hörfunkjournalist im Juni dieses Jahres mit der ersten Ausgabe des von ihm gegründeten und aus eigener Tasche finanzierten werbefreien Magazins WASD - Texte über Games im Taschenbuchformat, im mutigen Praxistest bewiesen.

Ausgabe 1 hat ihre Kosten eingespielt, der zweite Band erscheint noch im Dezember. “Ich glaube trotzdem, dass Games-Magazine über kurz oder lang verschwinden werden. In Zukunft wird der der klassische Testjournalismus komplett ins Internet abwandern”, so Schiffer.

Mehr Geist

Christian Schmidt, ehemaliger stellvertretender Chefredakteur der deutschen GameStar, hat bereits 2011 in einem vielbeachteten Spiegel-Artikel mit seiner Branche abgerechnet: Was dem deutschen Gamesjournalismus fehle, seien “mehr Geist” und der Mut, nicht nur klassisch technisch, sondern vielfältiger und kritischer zu berichten.

An diesem Befund hat sich wenig geändert, findet auch Christian Schiffer: “Klar ist seine Kritik noch aktuell, und natürlich gibt es für den von ihm geforderten Journalismus ein Publikum: Es gibt ja auch ein Publikum für Fußballjournalismus mit mehr Geist (11 Freunde), oder für Wirtschaftsjournalismus mit mehr Geist (Brand 1), oder sogar für Wurst(!)journalismus mit mehr Geist (Beef). Aber natürlich ist das noch eher eine Angelegenheit für die Nische. Eine Nische allerdings, die wächst.”

Bislang war diese Nische wohl noch zu klein: Produkte, die erwachsener über Spielkultur berichten wollten, wie die GEE, die [ple:] oder die deutsche Ausgabe des Branchenprimus EDGE, waren in den letzten Jahren am deutschen Markt langfristig erfolglos.

Alexander Amon stimmt zu, dass der reine Testjournalismus vom Internet zunehmend obsolet gemacht wird, er sieht sein Magazin consol.at allerdings ohnedies auf einem anderen Weg: “Vielen Lesern ist mittlerweile egal, wie du ein Spiel bewertest. Sie wollen deine Meinung hören, die Vor- und Nachteile herauslesen können und im Idealfall einen witzigen Artikel lesen. Du musst Reportagen liefern, gute Retro-Geschichten und - wenn alles klappt - ein Zielpublikum zwischen acht und 40 Jahren befriedigen. Das erfordert schon ‘mehr Geist’, als man als Außenstehender vielleicht denkt.”

Die Hand, die füttert

Aber will die Gamesbranche selbst überhaupt eine derart erwachsenere Presse, die “kritisiert” statt nur “testet”? Mit dem Fall Gerstmann 2007 und jüngst Dorito-Gate rückt das oft ungesunde Naheverhältnis der Industrie zur über sie berichtenden Zunft wieder einmal ins Bewusstsein der Leserschaft: Wenn es sich Gamesjournalisten aus Angst um Werbegelder oder “Exklusiv”-Previews nicht mehr leisten können, kritisch zu berichten, werden sie zu reinen Werbeträgern und Aufmerksamkeitsbeschaffern der Games-Industrie.

Amon bestreitet dieses einseitige Negativbild: “Überall gibt es schwarze Schafe, aber ich würde sagen, 99 Prozent aller Kollegen sowohl in PR als auch Presse nehmen ihren Job sehr ernst und können als Insider nur gequält über diese immer wieder hoch kochenden Vorwürfe lächeln.”

Christian Schiffer wirft allerdings ein differenzierteres Schlaglicht auf das Verhältnis seines - bewusst branchenuntypischen - Magazins zur Industrie: “Klar unterstützen die PR-Agenturen am liebsten den gängigen Gamesjournalismus. Für WASD Ausgabe 2, die im Dezember erscheinen wird, habe ich nach der Erlaubnis gefragt, ein Bild des Spiels ‘Hitman’ zu verwenden. Square Enix hat dann gefragt, für was ich das Bild brauchen würde - Test oder Preview. Ich habe dann gemeint, es sei für einen Artikel über Sex und Gewalt in Computerspielen. Das Bild habe ich nicht bekommen - und eine Antwort auch nicht.”

Tausend Inseln

Vielleicht liegt es auch am Medium selbst, dass im Unterschied zu anderen Medien nicht einige wenige relevante, sondern tausende Spezialpublikationen hauptsächlich im dafür wie geschaffenen riesigen Netz ihre Leser finden: Nur von außen betrachtet ist das “Medium Computerspiel” homogen; die Spieler selbst sehen überdeutlich, wie groß und vielfältig das Feld inzwischen ist. Abseits ganz spezieller Communities wird der Großteil aller Spieler aber vom klassischen Gamesjournalismus weniger und weniger angesprochen.

Der Opa, der gern “FIFA” spielt, die kleine Schwester, die “Farmville” und “Sims” liebt, der Familienvater, der abends “Starcraft”-Shoutcasts ansieht, die Mutter, die in “WoW” ihr Gildenleben pflegt und der 17-Jährige, der stolz darauf ist, sich als Hardcore-Gamer zu bezeichnen, haben von außen betrachtet dasselbe Hobby - der Gamesjournalismus sieht aber nur die Hardcore-Gemeinde als ihre Zielgruppe.

Tatsächlich ist dieser von der klassischen Games-Presse fast ausschließlich bediente männliche, jugendliche Hardcore-Gamer, der von “GTA” bis “Assassin’s Creed” und “Halo 4” Blockbuster um Blockbuster konsumiert und jede Preview liest, aber eigentlich nur mehr ein recht spezifischer Rezipient unter vielen anderen - und zugleich auch jener, auf den auch der Mainstream der Gamesbranche als Käufer gewohnheitsmäßig abzielt.

Die Krise als Chance

Ist das eingangs erwähnte Paradox - neue Breite des massenhaft erfolgreichen Mediums bei gleichzeitiger Krise des Gamesjournalismus - also gar keines, sondern nur Ausdruck einer verblüffend leeren Marktnische, nämlich jener nach einer “anderen” Form des Schreibens über Spiele, die auch anderen Lesern als Hardcorespielern zugänglich ist?

Christian Schiffer sieht hierin einen Teil des Problems: “Ich glaube, dass der Gamesjournalismus der Zukunft eine Mischung finden muss zwischen Geschlossenheit und Offenheit. Die WASD wurde in den Rezensionen in gamesfremden Medien oft als Magazin beschrieben, das auch ‘Nicht-Gamer’ lesen könnten. Das ist vielleicht nicht ganz falsch, aber in der Überbetonung dieser Aussage spiegelt sich immer noch die ‘Angst’ der Außenstehenden vor der Gameskultur, wie sie im traditionellen Gamesjournalismus dargestellt wird.”

So betrachtet fehlt es dem Gamesjournalismus vielleicht nicht (nur) an Geist, sondern schlicht an Ideen, wie auch Spieler abseits der lautstarken Verfechter der kriselnden Testtradition als neue Leser zu gewinnen wären; es fehlt schlicht an jener Breite, die dem Medium in der Realität längst zukommt. Die Chancen stehen gar nicht mal so schlecht, dass gerade durch diese Krisen eines geschlossenen Fachjournalismus am Ende ein Schreiben über Games stehen kann, das dem lebendigen Medium gerechter wird als bisher.

Keine Frage des Mediums

Alexander Amon sieht auf jeden Fall gelassen in die Zukunft: “Was die Breitenwirksamkeit betrifft, werden Special-Interest-Magazine immer Special-Interest-Magazine bleiben. Das ist auch gut so. Ich will für Leute schreiben, die eine Xbox von einer PlayStation unterscheiden können. Den allgemeineren ‘Bildungsauftrag’ in Sachen Games, die größere Breite, müssten die Massenmedien übernehmen, was noch viel zu wenig der Fall ist . Aber wenn hier die Jungen weiterkämpfen und den alten Chefredakteuren erklären, dass das Medium Videospiel eine Daseinsberechtigung hat, dann sehen wir alle rosigen Zeiten entgegen.”

Die Anzeichen für ein breiteres Schreiben sind da: Einige große, auch qualitativ anspruchsvolle deutsche Breitenmedien wie der Spiegel oder die Zeit versuchen - zumindest in ihrer Onlinepräsenz -, über das gar nicht so neue Medium anders zu berichten als die Special-Interest-Medien.

Bis Christian Schiffers Vision Realität wird, wird es aber wohl trotzdem noch etwas dauern: “Der Spielejournalimus der Zukunft ist kritisch, kontrovers und verliert auch die Ränder und die Subkultur der Szene nicht aus dem Blick. Und er testet nicht, sondern erzählt Geschichten über die wirtschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen und popkulturellen Zusammenhände der Gameskultur.” (Rainer Sigl, derStandard.at, 14.11.2012)

Update: Kurz nach Fertigstellung des Artikels kündigte der britische Herausgeber Future an, nach “GamePro”, “PlayStation: The Official Magazine” und “Nintendo Power” mit “Xbox World” und “PSM3” zwei weitere Games-Magazine einzustellen.

Links

consol.at

WASD

gamersglobal.de

Spiegel.de

GEE

EDGE

Nachlese

“Doritogate”: Sind Videospieljournalisten glaubwürdig?

derstandard.at • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

What Games Journalism Needs: More Honesty, Fewer Standards

gameranx.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

What Games Journalism Needs: More Honesty, Fewer Standards

Enter the brave new world of games journalism.

by Rowan Kaiser on 16th Nov, 2012

In 2010, television reviewer Alan Sepinwall, made a cameo appearance in the Community episode “The Psychology Of Letting Go.” Sepinwall is the biggest name in television criticism, credited with popularizing the most common form of TV writing, the weekly episode review. He’s also been a champion of Community, a cult and critical hit that’s struggled in the ratings. This is a clear-cut conflict of interest (indeed, Sepinwall has acknowledged it as a mistake). If it took place in video games, it would have set off a month of soul-searching, anger, screeds about corruption, and more. An extremely vocal contingent of fans and even some critics would consider Sepinwall everything wrong with the industry. But it wasn’t in the video game industry. It didn’t spark any major controversy. It was treated as the slight mistake it was, then forgotten.

Over at Kotaku Australia, David Rayfield, a former music writer (as I’m also a television critic) makes a similar point about that medium. Behavior that would be treated as shocking proof of corruption is the norm there. But I disagree with his conclusion—that game writing is in good shape because of the screaming hordes demanding perfect objectivity—for a few different reasons. Game writing has issues, but if you compare it to other entertainment journalism, those issues seem to be proverbial mountains made out of molehills.

The paroxysms of rage and paralyzing insecurities are, at the least, exhausting, and at most, may be driving game writing into narrow forms. Instead of circling the wagons around idealized concepts of integrity, I think it’s worth examining games and game writing in a wider cultural context. This will let us forgive the supposed missteps, like Sepinwall’s, and be able to focus on the potentially major ones.

A few recommendations:

We should acknowledge that games are entertainment. This is not to say that video games can’t be important—after all, movies and novels and plays are all entertainment, and very few people consider those irrelevant. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that we’re in or around the industry because we enjoy it, find it meaningful, want it to succeed, and love certain parts of it. Behaving as though gaming is as important as politics, and needs to be covered in the same way just doesn’t work. If we can say “we’re here because we love games,” we can talk about them and our role in a healthier sense.

Imagine this scenario: a major game publication asks the lead designer of a major military shooter to review another company’s new shooter. This would be treated as a massive conflict of interest, because the two games are treated as competitors. I’ve seen Giant Bomb’s Alex Navarro, a former Harmonix employee, say that he wouldn’t review a “competitor’s” game.  But if we treat games as a medium that we all wish to see at its best, competition becomes friendly. The market is improved and grown.

Does this sound far-fetched? It’s not—it’s common in book reviews. A novelist will review a theoretically competitive novel, or an expert in, say, Roman History, will review a colleague’s book that might even supplant his or hers as the dominant text on the subject. Why? Because the goal of having writing, knowledge, art, whatever you want to call it, is the dominant form of literary culture. Better books are better for everyone involved.

Actually, it’s happened in gaming. It wasn’t a review, but the most important piece of criticism in the last five years was Clint Hocking, designer of Far Cry II, writing on “Ludonarrative Dissonance In BioShock.” I’m not trying to say we should get rid of critics and replace them with designers, but rather, that by viewing the medium as essentially competitive, we do ourselves a major disservice. We’re all in this together.

Also, if we acknowledge that we’re in entertainment, then the idea that it’s somehow wrong to report on press releases, game announcements, or whatever, can stop being treated as if it’s “bad” journalism. An announcement is the relevant news, so writing about it deserves no shame.

However, we’d be better served by clearer delineations between news and criticism. One of the big differences between game writing and other media writing is that most of our publications do both business and criticism. Compare, say, Entertainment Weekly to The A.V. Club and the difference seems clear. Yet most video game sites have some combination of news, previews, reviews, and features, often written by the same people. (Also, previews are weird—I’m not sure there’s anything comparable in any piece of media, like reporters regularly being sent to watch films before they’re edited.) That’s potentially confusing for both readers and writers.

We’d also be much better served if we didn’t adopt a holier-than-thou attitude toward these ethics. A few weeks ago, Polygon posted a bit of news that was essentially a repackaged press release on the grounds that it was of potential interest to their readers. True or not, they were widely attacked and mocked for it. Why? Because they’ve built themselves up as something serious, special, and significantly better than anyone else. That’s basically begging to have their behavior policed and then mocked for any kind of hypocrisy. Those kinds of high, perhaps even impossibly high, standards, also come from the same anxiety about game journalism not being any good, even when it often is. Relaxing those demands, on ourselves and others, would be healthy.

You may be thinking that if all my advice about relaxing these standards instead of tightening them is followed, what’s to stop game journalism from becoming a corrupt free-for-all? The answer, I think, is in cultivating specific points of view. If our sites, our writers, our journalists each behave in a consistent fashion, with a specific writing style, then they can be trusted. A site like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for example, cultivates a specific analytic, sarcastic, playful tone, which makes most of their work trustworthy in that it aligns with the quality of the rest of the site.

Or, take two very different Halo 4 reviews, an aesthetic-focused review from Simon Parkin in Eurogamer, or the mechanic-focused review from Simon Ferrari in Paste. Each of these is specific and has a strong enough voice that they earn the reader’s trust in and of themselves. We don’t need to see their official review guidelines in order to understand that the reviewers are honest, because the honesty shines through.

And one last thing: fuck the trolls.

And one last thing: fuck the trolls. The class of people who believe that reviewers are bought and sold like cattle? Or the fanboys, who treat any slightly negative score of their preferred game as an insult? These people are not your audience. Their understanding of how reviewing works is so fundamentally flawed that you’ll never be able to convert them en masse, and it’s not worth trying. They may be loud, but comments can be deleted, and NeoGAF/Reddit ignored. The people who hate you should not dominate your discourse. They want game journalism at every level to be objective, to conform, to hate itself, and in the end, to be boring. I want game journalism to acknowledge that it loves games, to be subjective, to relax a little, and to be filled with distinct voices.

gameranx.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Gamer's Paradise: Worshipping At The iOS Altar

thecreatorsproject.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

- Back to listing

Leigh Alexander November 14, 2012

In this recurring column, Leigh Alexander visits exciting new creative frontiers in the video game space, which is seeing a period of incredible growth and diversification, attracting new talent and demonstrating intriguing innovation. Here she’ll cover emerging artists, trends, and so much more.

It makes me uneasy to see infants and iOS devices together. It’s not just the wrongness of chubby, spit-slick little fingers reaching for sleek, pricey gadgets, the nuh-uh-uh. It’s the way the rectangle of light looms so large in their eyes, the look of wonderment, the appetite in even the clumsiest child to swipe at the screen, to touch and stare.

Game designer and academic Ian Bogost says the iPhone is a bit like a rosary. I have this way of refreshing my Twitter feed even when it doesn’t need reading, thumbing the touchscreen with a tactile pull-and-release, a sort of nervous lozenging that makes a popping noise when I let go.

Bogost was recently commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville to do an installation for their Project Atrium series. When he saw the gallery space, it reminded him of two things simultaneously: First, an Apple Store. Secondly, a church.

Increasingly, the economy for mobile games and apps is shifting toward a free model monetized through in-app purchases. Players can buy more turns, better items, and a better chance at moving up the leaderboards—the looming fear, founded or otherwise, in a free-to-play gaming economy is that it ends up being a pay-to-win system.

Pay-to-win culture was once a problem for the church, too. In Dante’s Inferno, people are consigned to spend eternity head-first in holes with their feet on fire for the sin of simony—buying or selling sacraments or positions within the church. To play Bogost’s MOCA installation game, Simony, one enters the gallery space and ascends a dais, where an iPad awaits like a holy book.

“I was interested in trying to make some connection between religion and technology,” says Bogost, who made headlines last year with Cow Clicker, his playable critique of the design and economy of popular social games on Facebook. We’ve sort of replaced technology for religion,” he says.

The game itself, illustrated in the fashion of an illuminated manuscript, is a sequence-repetition memory game (think Simon, from the 1980s), but you can buy victories through boosting moves with a paid multiplier, or by paying for the game to complete the sequence for you if you’ve forgotten it. It’s mostly in Latin. On Simony’s high, glassy altar, alongside the iPad is a credit card reader to take payments—and a leaderboard is projected on the wall in the fashion of a stained glass window.

And the exhibit will actually ultimately fund the museum. The top entrants on the leaderboard will form a jury that decides how the game’s earnings will be spent on behalf of MOCA, which means playing the game and spending money on it is essentially a way to buy influence in the museum itself. Even players that don’t attend the installation itself can play along by downloading the Simony app, which goes live on the App Store this Friday.

Will people pay? That games can pose questions like that for their players to answer, act as matrices for behavior that can be studied, is part of their potential as art. Another designer, widely-reputed dreamer Peter Molyneux, recently took to the App Store with Curiosity, a game where players pool their efforts to erode a plain cube layer after layer, in a race to be the single one who discovers the “life-changing secret” at its center.

Molyneux has a legacy of leading games like Populous and Black & White that allow players to act as gods.

“Game design is about having a god complex,” Bogost points out. “We think we have left God behind these days, but then we worship gadgets, and we want worlds we can’t control with lowercase-gods in charge of them.”

Simony’s traditional Christian stylistic imagery illustrates the duality inherent in Christianity: “Everything can either be righteousness and good works, or sin,” Bogost explains. “That’s the whole gambit of Christianity, the tension and slippage between righteousness and sin. We need them both.”

Similarly, he says, we need prideful benefactors in order to have art museums; maybe we need free-to-play games so that we can appreciate making the decision to decline to pay. “Do we go to church because we believe? Or do we go to church in order that we have some structure that demands belief?” he continues. “Do we buy iPads because they change and improve our lives in positive ways? Or because we need something we can believe improves our lives?”

Simony’s exhibition space at MOCA

Even the idea of an iOS game on display in a museum as art presents an interesting duality. “In the whole ‘games as art’ thing, we want games to be art, but we don’t want to have to do any work,” Bogost says. “Games want it both ways.”

Wanting it both ways is really what the exhibit seems to be about, even beyond the idea of tech as an object of worship and paying to win as a “sin” in the economy of play. Modern Westerners want to reject religion but worship tech. They want to be challenged but they also want to buy their way out of challenge; they want the ability to buy assistance while decrying corruption. People want art institutions, but don’t want to fund them—or make funding selfish and competitive, a game you pay to win.

Visitors to the Simony installation will take away with them an “icon”—not a painted tile with an image of the Christ or Mary, but an actual picture of an App Store icon with directions to further information about the game.

Apple approved Simony for release on its store this Friday. “I’m terrified they’ll change their minds,” says its creator.
November 17th is also when the installation opens, and visitors to Jacksonville’s MOCA will be able to pray at the altar of the App Store through March 10, 2013.

@leighalexander

Previously: Kickstarter’s Retro Gaming Boom

- Send to a Friend

Next

Previous

loading

thecreatorsproject.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

On Kairo and Death: Endgame

lockeddoorpuzzle.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Locked Door Puzzle

Home

Sun
11/11/12

On Sunday 21st October 2012, after two and a half years of development I released my video game Kairo. Exactly seven days earlier I received a phone call to let me know that my father had died. After two weeks in intensive care with pneumonia his body couldn’t take it anymore. Normally I try not to talk about my personal life in public like this but it’s impossible for me to adequately explain what it was like finishing this project without giving you some understanding what I was going through.

I owe my father for everything I am today. He always encouraged me to take whatever path I wanted in life and once I made a choice he did everything he could to support me in my decisions. We went down quite a few dead ends together before I really figured out who I was and what I really wanted to do with myself. I don’t know where I would have ended up without him but I doubt very much I would be pursuing a creative career I love. I know he was proud of me and I just hope he knew how proud I was of him.

Finishing any long term creative project is never easy but as the end of Kairo appeared on the horizon I was finally starting to enjoy working on it again. The long slog of finishing all the content was over and all I was doing now was polishing. The polish phase is normally for me the most fun, as it’s when all you’re doing is making a finished game even better. I have half-jokingly said that I could easily spend another entire year on the game polishing it to perfection. Ultimately the more time I spent doing that the more diminishing returns I began to see so I decided enough was enough. I set a final deadline on which date the game would be released and booked a London venue to celebrate the end of an era with a launch party.

Just to make things even more complicated, Kairo wasn’t the only project I was working on. I have been funding my game development over the past few years by doing contract work as well. During this same period I took on a project from a client that seemed simple initially but quickly turned into a high pressure project with very strict deadlines that could not be delayed even by a single day. This involved me working evenings and weekends and even taking a day off for my father’s funeral was a huge inconvenience. I could have ditched the client and told them to replace me but it would have derailed the project and knowing the stress the rest of the team was under I couldn’t do that to them.

I could have delayed the release of Kairo of course, but I needed it off my back. With the things I still have to deal with in the coming weeks I just wanted one less thing to worry about. So the last few weeks of development were utterly miserable but I got the job done. I made long lists of things that needed improving and worked through them like a machine. Focusing on the work at least made for an effective distraction. The whole final process just felt so clinical for me but I couldn’t deal with it any other way.

Now I’m done people keep telling me “It must be a relief being finally done” or “It must be really satisfying.” and when they do I smile and agree and talk about what a long journey it’s been. However the truth is I don’t have any positive feelings about the game, right now I mostly feel numb. For a long time making something personal to share with an audience was important to me, however now I’m weighing it up against what I’ve lost it all seems very pointless.

I hope those of you who’ve bought Kairo enjoy it. Though it may not seem like it there is a lot of me in that game, the person I was as I went on that long journey to make it. Now I’m at the point where I need to decide where to go next. Thematically Kairo is a game about hope when all seems lost, and that came from a personal place of where I was mentally when I started making it. Right now though hope is not something I can relate to so I think whatever I work on next is going to draw from much less optimistic feelings.

I should end by saying that I am not without perspective. I know losing parents is something most people will go through sooner or later so my loss is not really special. I also know that making games probably isn’t that important in the overall scheme of things. However I wanted to write about finishing this long arduous project and this was the only way I knew how.

Good luck to everyone else out there working on a long project that seems like it’s never going to end. Just don’t forget to spend some time with those you care about while you still can.

Richard Perrin

Welcome to the portfolio of Richard Perrin, an indie game developer living in London.

email: perrin (at) lockeddoorpuzzle.com
twitter:
@perrinashcroft

lockeddoorpuzzle.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Postpartum: Mainichi – How Personal Experience Became a Game

borderhouseblog.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

A screenshot of Mattie Brice’s Mainichi displaying an overhead view of several rooms in an adorable apartment, and a cute stylised character with dark skin and dark hair wearing a white and purple outfit.

This will be a design article on my game Mainichi, aiming to be insight to my thought process during its creation and serve as a guide for others to make games. To get the most out of this, download Mainichi here and then come back to read this! If the download is giving you problems, use my contact info and I’ll send you a copy. For extra reading, I also suggest getting a copy of anna anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, as I’ll be speaking to many of the ideas she advocates in it.

There is a movement. A movement that says “You can too.” It is growing in size, accessibility, and voice. Game design is, and always has been, for everyone, but the narrow path the industry took blocked off many peoples’ opportunity to join in on this artistic revolution. It’s assumed you must have the best graphics, know how to code, have the money to develop a game that can speak to the world.

I only know life with computers and video games in them. My father is a programmer and shared a love for technology with his children. I grew up surrounded by games and, naturally, wanted to make them. But my father never passed down the skill to code, and I never realized how important programming fit into making a game until I tried making them years later. Coding became a monster; I couldn’t get it and felt my creative energy dissipate every time I tried to learn. I entered university believing game design wasn’t for me and gave up on that dream to join the industry.

But now, I’ve come full circle. The industry badly needs to diversify and there’s still roadblocks. Publisher model game development is choked by putting profit above all else, and the monochromatic landscape of non-AAA development still values methods that require monetary investment and a previous buy-in to programming culture that many of us just don’t have. Despite this, I still had something to say, or rather, something I didn’t know how to say. I had something I needed others to play.

This is how Mainichi was born. It was an experiment in translating a personal experience into game mechanics, and also a push to prove to myself that I can make a game, even if the video game industry wouldn’t accept me. I want Mainichi to be a call to arms, a triumph of the personal. I made a game that only I could make, and I’m hoping this exercise empowers others to express a life that is uniquely theirs.

Choosing Vocal Chords

The biggest roadblock I had to overcome was choosing the program I would use to make my game. I asked for suggestions, consulted lists, and tried out many to no avail. I ran into many bumps; usually, the more free and open source something is, the more programming is integral to the making process. Though, some did come with their own scripting language that was easier to learn and a viable method for those who aren’t completely code-phobic like I am. Many of the more popular game makers are primed for certain types of games, like shooters or platformers. Looking to make something akin to an adventure game, the obtuse methods to simple get someone walking across the screen on a level plane and generating a textbox from an NPC were quick to grate my nerves.

If there was something I learned, it’s the increasing amount of tools for people to use all assume different competencies, wants, and conventions. Authoring programs are prepared for certain users, and make it easy or difficult to do particular things. This isn’t simply a practical thing to know, but political. Many programs assume you have the privilege, tastes, and wants of the hegemonic man. However, some of these tools come with communities that make it easier to subvert this assumption, and is, in particular, something I encourage others to factor in when choosing a program for themselves. Here is what I came up with for myself and the needs I perceived I needed for my game ideas:

*Programming unnecessary or extremely minimal/optional *No to low cost
*Made it simple or easy for me to use textboxes, characters, variables, cutscenes
*Has an active enough community to provide custom content

These and other factors contributed to me picking RPG Maker VX, despite its price tag. Mostly, my personal disposition and skills overcame the cost for it after not feeling compatible with all my other options- I was familiar with the toolset already, had the skills to edit its art assets enough for my own devices, and most of my ideas would benefit from the assumption of an RPG/adventure game being made. There were narrow expectations about the kind of game I wanted to make inside those conventions, but there was room to subvert these paradigms. As an aside, RPGMVX does have a cheaper sibling, RPGMXP, that I ended up not choosing because I had the familiarity with the former. However, for those new to both and interested in using them, XP is as viable, just for different reasons. I think others can find similar, free programs and still do what I did with Mainichi, RPGMVX just happened to be right for me.

Training My Voice

It’s easy to have a story or an idea. What makes a game significant is its designed experience. Coming into this experiment, I knew that current attempts of doling out social awareness just through story devices plainly didn’t work. I had to choose methods of design to communicate the feelings of my experience to the player, because otherwise I could simply point them to an essay I’ve done. I would say Mainichi lets someone feel rather than tells them what to feel. It’s a key difference to create empathy instead of telling the player what’s right to think.

If this experiment is judged successful, I think it will be because of my philosophy of being hyper-personal, or like what my colleague Jenn Frank says is “alarmingly specific.” This applied not only to the topic but the design as well; I wanted to draw upon my ideas about sociology, postmodern art, ludonarrative resonance, and diversity politics in video games and have them influence the way the player interacted with the rules. I wanted this game to be dripping with the intersection of all of my influences, and create a new way of looking at design as a byproduct. I think for a personal piece like this to work, you have to speak to the world in general through a very specialized perspective.

How to design a game for social good is a fraught question. It’s difficult to position the player in a way that doesn’t have them exploit the minority and unknowingly replicate the problematic ideologies the game set out to defeat. This is why I stressed reactivity of the system and eliminated min/maxing of any sort. When you look at the system as a metaphor for society, the suffering that happens to the character doesn’t become something the player enables but joins ranks against.

There is something to be said about being too referential in a game, but I decided to be extremely so. I made the character after my likeness and named them after myself, I have a Japanese title, there’s a Dragon Age II cameo, etc. However, everything does have a personal link to add to the aesthetic and ‘meaning’ of the piece. Since the game is essentially interacting with a system, it could be replicated with numbers and without any sort of cultural representation. So it felt right to imbue as much of the game with my personal easter eggs because the game won’t make complete sense without the meta-awareness of how it fits in. And really, all games that try to mean something have to do that as well.

Speaking

I also recognized there would be audiences for my game, but no ‘perfect player.’ There is no one person that can absorb everything this game is meant to do. I’m not even the perfect player for my game. Rather, I knew that it would be released to the world and many people of different relationships to games would play it, including those who don’t game at all. So my game doesn’t have a target audience like many other games, and I didn’t have a genre in mind when making the game. However, I was aware of the different expectations people would bring to my game.

A lot of this game is speaking to the game development community. It is a community that finds making a game about minority issues near-impossible, so I ended up making one in about a week. There are also different paths for it to be analyzed, genealogy-wise, and one could see Mainichi as an offspring of Dys4ia and Passage. From Dys4ia I am intentionally making my game political through the personal, merely repeating the idea in a different format to diversify how we see, define, and interface with games. Another game in this lineage would be Merritt Kopas’ LIM, which also relies on mechanics replicating emotional experiences. I also see Mainichi as a critique to Passage in this regard; just because this isn’t AAA development doesn’t mean the types of games coming out of the indie scene aren’t dominated by heterosexual white men’s narratives. I want the community to know that some people don’t have the luxury of mulling over something as long term and general as the passage of life towards death or saving the world. Some of us have to worry for our physical safety every day we leave the house, some of us will live and die unequal citizens in a system that doesn’t care; the street scene in Mainichi hopes to be referential to the design of Passage for the community of developers that care about that sort of design canon.

Because of the look and that it is in fact made with an RPG Maker, I knew some players would be bringing the baggage that comes along with RPGs. I also have quite a lot to say about RPGs, how I think they are evolving, and my answer to ‘what is an RPG.’ So I specifically highlighted certain conventions, like choice, time management, NPCs, cause/effect, multiple paths to the end goal. I then proceeded to flip the expectations players would have with elements; the choices you make aren’t epic or demarcated by a clear morality, the player is taught to avoid as much interaction as possible, and the player will be depressed looking for the ‘good’ ending. Mainly, I find RPGs abstract things so we can interact with them, an exercise in turning something qualitative into a system. The player gains empathy through my attempt of abstracting how people gender me, and allowed the player to experiment in the system to realize the experiences I’ve been through.

Outside of the highbrow stuff, I wanted to communicate an experience that I couldn’t do with words alone. Ultimately, this could be a project in telling my best friend why I was often depressed despite the good intentions of my support group. Similarly, I wanted players with cisgender privilege to also empathize with one aspect of having a queer gender or presentation. It can also serve as a tool for a trans* person to share with their friends if they have the same trouble explaining like I did.

You Can Too

A huge reason I made Mainichi was to say that, yes, anyone can make a game of critical merit. You don’t have to be a programmer, you don’t need a whole bunch of disposable income, be on a triple digit design team, or a part of the indie in-crowd. The important thing is to know game design is something everyone has the capacity to work on, and the implementation into a program is the hard part.

This is important to note because video games aren’t the only types of games there are: I am currently working on a card game that will allow players to simulate and interrogate the dynamics of a first date or sex. In addition, as The Border House has already shown, there are also non-traditional formats of digital games that beg to be used and experimented with, like Twine and Ren’py. What I think a lot of the non-AAA developers forgot was that one leaves the publisher model behind in order to do something different. I’ve seen many failed projects because so many want to make the next Final Fantasy with RPG Maker and don’t see the dissonance in politics concerning that. Instead, take part in diversifying not only the characters and stories we see in games, but how we fundamentally interact with them as a whole.

borderhouseblog.com • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Lost for words: new relationships and Journey

nightmaremode.net • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

Alan Williamson

I’m in a bar with the girl I like. I want her to like me back. I’ve decided the best way to do this is by talking about video games. I’m talking about Journey and struggling to find the words: not great for a writer, really.

“So why do you like it so much?” she asks.

“Umm, uh, well it’s hard to describe really, it’s one of these things I don’t want to spoil but uh, it just makes you feel… do you want another drink?”

“Words cannot describe…” When you’re a writer, words must be able to describe everything, because your mental well-being depends upon it. A wordless writer enters a state of thought paralysis, unable to convert the intangible into the tangible. The next thought is right there, tantalizingly close, but you just can’t grasp it.

Journey is, superficially speaking, easy to explain. You can talk about the glistening desert sands that ripple as you slide down them; the magic carpets you befriend reminiscent of Disney’s Aladdin; mystic ruins; icy wastes. In the distance, a mountain calls to your shrouded pilgrim, and there’s nowhere else to go except towards the glowing summit. Yet in the same way a camera shows only a snapshot of a landscape, a description of a journey doesn’t let you walk its path. There is no explanation for why we are ascending this mountain: we summit Everest because it can be summited. That’s reason enough.

Strangers come and go in this world. They look just like me, same rags and glowing scarf. I want them to like me. Yet I can only speak in abstracted verbalization, where tapping a button makes my character sing. “Words cannot describe” is exchanged for another cliché: “I have no words.” My partners and I chirp at each other, trying to convey information through monotonal rhythms. Some partners echo the noises I make and we walk through this haunted world together, while others ignore me.

The constant coming and going of fellow pilgrims on this journey mimics life: they are the strangers at the bar, the colleagues you meet on a new project, stumbling through the world and colliding into each other until someone catches your eye that you feel compelled to befriend. Without having learned to communicate with them—from non-verbal nods and knowings to finishing each other’s sentences—your language becomes as abstract and stilted as your little shawled game avatar.

Journey is a game about building relationships. What really matters in life are the relationships we make, not the mountains we have chosen to climb because we assigned meaning to the climbing. Like life’s journeys, the game is easy to describe in terms of what you see and how you feel, but such descriptions fail to capture the holistic nature of the experience. You and I could walk the same steps through our journey with the same people, but it would never be the same.

This makes it a difficult game to assess because you’re describing situations another player may never encounter, but unlike the random dice rolls of Civilization and its malleable computer opponents, real people aren’t so easy to predict. After all, you can’t even speak to them to guide or direct them, and the first step of issuing orders is surely the ability to give them.

I have a crush on this game. I am infatuated with it. It consumes my thoughts for a couple of days. Like all crushes, you are loathe to start the journey again with another person: you want that initial encounter back to savour it again. I asked my friends on Twitter whether one should only play Journey once and and cherish that single memory. I received the reply “but how else would you get all the trophies?”

After I completed my first journey, I received a friend request and message from one of the pilgrims. “What did you mean by the single note?” they asked, referring to my mysterious utterances. No longer confined to the enforced silence of the game world, I still didn’t know what to say. I guess I didn’t mean anything by a single noise, or even a sequence of them. I wanted them to know that my intelligence was not artificial, that I was real. Most modern games offer a range of expressions, from voice chat to the nuanced controls that have led to the rise of machinima, and Journey’s stripped-down sound-barking and scarf-flapping make me feel inarticulate and out of control.

I’m struggling to find the words as I’d equally struggle to describe a crush to someone who’s never had one: the girl’s initial question of “why do you like it so much?” could just as easily have been ”why do you like me so much?”, and both those questions lead to me staring sheepishly at my shoes and searching for a means of interruption.

Ordinarily, I put tremendous effort into communication. This essay will have been redrafted five or six times before you read it, each sentence scrutinized and forced to justify itself. Even day-to-day conversations have some degree of forward planning as I try to wedge in a terrible joke I concocted earlier. The vagueness of Journey’s communication is threatening to me, because if a mere chirp is as expressive as an entire paragraph, it suggests most of my communication is wasted effort. Yet ultimately, the reason I communicate in the game is the same reason I am writing about it now: I am shouting into the darkness hoping that someone will hear me, understand me, and echo back.

We start dating. One day at my place, she asks to play Journey. It’s interesting to watch a newcomer play games, one who doesn’t instinctively target an enemy’s head or grind against walls looking for swag and secrets. She can come to it like a tourist in a foreign country. My impressions are in the contextual and critical frame of the hundreds of other games I’ve played. That’s not always a good thing.

Her challenges are different from mine. She’s anxious about jumping between platforms and navigating tunnels, but the lack of nuanced communication is inviting for her where I was fazed. I am well-versed in the language of games: I know the names of the buttons on the controller, I can explain my surroundings in terms of previously-encountered paradigms. The age of constant voice chat is unforgiving to a newbie, especially when they don’t even know what a ‘newbie’ is. In a world of one-note conversations, we are equally naive.

She’s walking the same paths as I, but our journeys are not the same. One of the great things about video games is that both what you experience and your impression of that experience differ, which makes for great conversation. Even in a game that is arguably ‘linear’ like Journey, each playthrough has a unique story that is a product of the player, the pilgrims they meet, and their route through the environment.

I feel the same optimism in Journey as I do in my new relationship. We’re walking the same path, two pilgrims ascending a mountain. Our anxieties are different, framed by experience. We learn new ways of communicating that move beyond mere verbalisation. Around every corner, there’s an unexpected new horizon. We hope we’re heading for the same destination.

But it’s not so much about the destination. It’s about the journey.

nightmaremode.net • Archive • Like & Archive • Like

♦

Archive All • Download Newest

Become an Instapaper Subscriber for just $1/month to get up to 50 articles at a time and support Instapaper’s development. Visit the Account section of Instapaper.com to subscribe.