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Glowing Letters In The Dark: WASD « Go To Haneda
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Sex and Ultraviolence
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Objectification and Lollipop Chainsaw -Destructoid
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Anna Anthropy: Reject Rape Jokes, Rejoin Humanity
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Glowing Letters In The Dark: WASD « Go To Haneda

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So brandneu, dass sie nur in Umhängetaschen aus Asbest transportiert werden sollte: Die erste Ausgabe der WASD, einem Magazin mit dem Herz am rechten Fleck – und einigen blinden rundherum. Der Versuch einer (Selbst-)Kritik.

Das Konzept allein ist Grund genug, Geld in Richtung WASD zu werfen (hier möglich): Das Bookzine als Format, um den Texten Raum zu geben und Dauer, im Bücherregal. Texte über Computerspiele, die die Leitlinien von Texten über Computerspiele durchkreuzen. Keine Werbung, keine Abhängigkeiten. Essays statt Reviews, Kontexte statt Prozente, und eine einladende Geste an Nicht-Spieler, sich mit dem Medium vertraut zu machen. Für Christian Schiffer, den Herausgeber, sollte die WASD eine Art “11 Freunde für (Nicht-)Gamer” darstellen, für andere die “deutsche Kill Screen“. Für mich persönlich aber hätte es die Umsetzung dessen werden sollen, was ich damals, naiv und lautstark, als Thesen für die Neuausrichtung des Game-Journalismus an die Stirn beliebiger Vollposten nageln wollte. Auf dem Papier klang das alles so richtig, dass ich nicht umhin konnte, einen Text beizusteuern. Darin geht es um Paragaming, um die Liebe zur Wahrheit, die sich in der Liebe zu Schlechten Spielen ausdrückt. Und um The Last Eichhof, das beste Spiel über eine Schweizer Brauerei EVER. Der Text hat mal so begonnen:

Die notorisch lückenhafte CHRONIK DER BESTEN IDEEN ALLER ZEITEN lässt uns mit den Details zwar ebenso im Stich wie das Gedächtnis der Beteiligten. Trotzdem lässt sich mit einiger Sicherheit sagen, dass das Schicksal seinen Lauf durch eine Kneipe hindurch nahm, ein “Rössli” oder “Leuen” vermutlich, und sich zwischen Altherren-Zigarrenschwaden und pittoresk unter Plastikglocken ausgestellten Sandwiches seinen Weg bahnte, hin zu einem Tisch, an dem Daniel Schoch saß.

Nun liegt die WASD vor mir, und auf diesem Papier sieht die Sache ein wenig anders aus. Nicht, dass die erste Ausgabe von Grund auf misslungen wäre. Wer auch nur ein flüchtiges Interesse an Computerspielen hat, soll sich verdammt noch mal nicht so zieren und das Ding endlich bestellen. Sie bietet durchaus einige Perlen, sie liegt gut in der Hand, sie ist hübsch anzusehen. Und sie hat Probleme. Das entscheidende: Die WASD will klassische journalistische Ideale mit der Wucht einer 200-Seiten-Buch-Publikation vertreten – und untegräbt statt untermauert diese mit einer zu großen Nähe zu einer Publikationssphäre, die nach sehr anderen Gesetzen funktioniert. Ein großer Teil der Autoren und Autorinnen bewegen sich mehrheitlich im Web und selten im Printbereich. Vielleicht lässt sich das bei einer Publikation in dieser Zeit nicht verhindern. Umso mehr wäre es notwendig, zwischen den unterschiedlichen Bereichen zu vermitteln – etwas, was der WASD nicht recht gelingt. Und das Niemansland zwischen Web und Print ist ein reichlich unbequemer Ort.

Leck(tor) mich good

Die In-your-face-Geschichte gleich vorweg: Das offensichtlichste Problem der WASD ist das Lektorat, das, gelinde gesagt, als fahrlässig bezeichnet werden muss. Was das mit Blogs zu tun hat? Nun, sie sind nicht per se orthographisch minderbemittelter als Print-Publikationen. Aber sie existieren, wie der Captain in Folge 12 von Captain Obvious vs. The Invaders from Bullshitania bemerkt, in einem anderen Klima; es ist ok, im Web einen (zumindest orthographisch) fehlerhaften Text abzufeuern und  ihn später, bei Gelegenheit, oder gar nicht zu korrigieren. Oder dies zu lassen. (Ich bin anal-fixiert genug, um fehlerhafte Tweets zu löschen, und überzeugt davon, die Welt damit zu einem besseren Ort zu machen. Ich bin mir aber auch bewusst, dass nicht alle Welt so tugendhaft sein kann.) Ganz anders im Printsektor, in dem jeder Tippfehler von der Publikationen einen Splitter Glaubhaftigkeit, Seriösität und… Wert ablöst. Und die WASD büßt böse viele Splitter ein. Diese Nachlässigkeit kann zwar erklärt werden mit der Tatsache, dass die WASD fast vollständig von einem einzigen Mann als Freizeitprojekt gestemmt wurde; aber es wird dadurch nur bis zu einem gewissen Grad entschuldigt. Zumindest muss sich der Herausgeber den Vorwurf gefallen lassen, die Bedeutung des Lektorats unterschätzt zu haben – mit dem Resultat, dass nicht nur einige Leser, sondern auch einige Autoren für das Heft unrettbar verloren sind.

Aber wer ein Auge zudrückt (vielleicht weil er es sich vorher an einem Duden blau geschlagen hat), der kann derartige Kleinigkeiten ignorieren. Schwieriger zu übersehen aber ist der andere Bereich, in dem sich Blogger- und Print-Gewohnten beißen: Den konkreten Inhalten. Natürlich wäre es ungeheur 00er-Jahre, zu behaupten, Blogs ließen sich auf einen Inhalt reduzieren. (Katzenbilder, Pornographie und Online-Tagebücher!) Dennoch gibt es… Tendenzen. Im Duktus der Zeitschrift n+1 ließe sich etwa sagen, die Strukturen im Web „discouraged the stylistic virtues of concision, selectivity, and impersonality.“ Ein Satz, der gleich dreimal mit offenem Streuer Salz in die Wunden der WASD schüttet.

Ich nehm so was zu persönlich

Letzteres zuerst: Gefühlte 73% der Texte in der ersten WASD-Ausgabe wählen den Ich-Modus. Welches Spiel für mich schlecht war. Welches schlechte Spiel für mich gut war. Warum ich keine Spiele schlecht finden kann. (Das dann gleich in dreifacher Variation.) Aber jetzt pass auf: Das ist ein Problem. Weil, ein Ich macht noch keinen New Game Journalism. Als Faustregel aufs Auge gilt eher: Wenn du nicht als Person verflucht interessant bist und wenn du mir persönlich nicht wichtig bist (weil, guter Kerl oder so) oder in deinem Text letztlich von dir auf größere Zusammenhänge schließt, gehen du und deine Erfahrungen mir, dem Leser, am Arsch vorbei. Ausnahme zur Regel: Du bist ein begnadeter Styler, wie balkantoni. Aber unter uns, Leser: Das sind weder du noch ich. Keine Ausflüchte. Impersonality trifft man in der hiesigen Game-Blogosphäre eher nicht. Betrachtungen starten im Spiegel und bleiben dort hängen. Und dagegen ist grundsätzlich auch wenig einzuwenden: Ein guter solcher Text kann mir durchaus ans Herz wachsen. In der Häufung wird mir das Herze aber eher bange. (Mit ein Grund, warum ich den Elan im 52 Games-Projekt verloren habe.)

Natürlich gibt es gute Gründe für die Ego-Perspektive: „Am Ende sind wir uns halt alle selbst am nächsten.“ (Captain Obvious in der Schlussrede der 3. Folge von Staffel 4.) Schreib, was du kennst. Und was kennen wir besser, als uns? Recherche geht im eigenen Kopf immer noch am einfachsten. Es ist letztlich nichts anderes als der Weg des geringsten Widerstands. Um nicht zu sagen: Bequem. Und, naja, gut, ich weiß nicht, ob man von einem Heer freiwilliger Mitarbeiter mehr verlangen darf. Recherche. Kreativität bei der Themenfindung. Variation. Ok, ich weiß es doch: Man darf es nicht nur verlangen. Man sollte. Womit wir bei concision und selection angelangt sind, diesen beiden anderen Idealen, über die sich Web und Print in die Haare geraten. Die WASD scheint auch nicht recht zu wissen, an welchem Zopf sie zupfen soll.

Die Hand Gottes ist tot

Das vielleicht größte Problem der WASD ist schlicht: Es fehlt ihr an Redaktion. Woher ich das weiß? Aus dem einfachen Grund, dass mein Text massiv von einer guten Redaktion hätte profitieren können. (Und aus dem noch einfacheren Grund, dass Tim Rogers der einzige Mensch ist, dessen Schreiben nicht profitieren würde von einer guten Redaktion. Aber erstens ist Rogers Schreiben nichts als Abschweifung und wird zweitens anhand der Pointen pro Zeile bewertet und nicht anhand so profaner Dinge wie… Inhalt. Klammer zu.) Mein Text ist etwas zu verliebt in die – zugegeben liebenswerten – Aussagen der Interviewten, er ruckelt und stockt stellenweise arg. Concision it is not. Das ist nicht zwingend ein Aufruf für kürzere Texte. tl;dr is a lie, und es könnte gerade eine Chance der WASD sein, Texten den Platz zu geben, den sie brauchen. Aber lange Texte müssen mehr als alle anderen tight sein; und gezupft an meinem Text hat niemand außer mir. (Wir erinnern uns: der von Liebe blind war.) Mein Text ist aber längst nicht der einzige, dem ein Eingriff von oben gut getan hätte.

In der mangelnden Bereitschaft, redaktionell einzugreifen, ist die WASD nun weiß Gott nicht allein. Ich habe über die letzten Jahre in einer ganzen Bandbreite von Publikationen Texte untergebracht. Bei einer einzigen habe eine ernstzunehmende Redaktion erlebt, die weder ein stillschweigendes Durchwinken noch ein stummes Abändern des Texts after the fact oder ein stumpfes Durchdrücken eigener Vorstellungen vom „richtigen“ Schreiben war. Im besten Fall ist dies ein dialogischer Prozess, bei dem, nun ja… etwas gelernt werden kann. (Leute wie Kieron Gillen oder Leigh Alexander haben beide zu Protokoll gegeben, immens von ihrem ersten guten Chef-Redakteur gelernt zu haben.) Journalismus scheint immer häufiger ohne Redaktion in diesem Sinne auszukommen. Das ist… bedauerlich. Dennis und ich haben uns mittlerweile sogar in den Anonymen Redaktionsbedürftigen zusammengeschlossen und verrichten dort gegenseitig eine Arbeit, die eigentlich nicht unser Job wäre. Vielleicht ist die fehlende Hand hinter den Kulissen auch ein Charakteristikum des Schreibens im Web oder des Schreibens im 21. Jahrhundert. Aber sie ist nichtsdestoweniger eine vergebene Chance. Für die Autoren, aber auch für die WASD, für die das Feedback eine der wenigen Möglichkeiten wären, ihre Autoren zu entschädigen.

Redaktion bedeutet aber auch: selection, den Mut zur Auswahl. Mut ist hart. Ich weiß aus eigener Erfahrung, wie schwer zusammen gerafft werden kann. (Meine eigene Leiche im Publikationskeller heißt derKosmonaut und lief voll in den Anfängerfehlerhammer, eine Zeitschrift machen zu wollen, weil wir eine Zeitschrift machen wollten, und nicht etwa, weil es etwas gab, das unbedingt hätten veröffentlicht werden müssen. Wir haben’s genau bis zur dritten Ausgabe geschafft.)

Es ist ein verfluchter Eiertanz: Fragt man jemanden, ob er/sie Interesse hätte, mitzumachen, wird er/sie die Hölle heraufbeschwören, wenn die Sau den extra erbetenen Text dann doch nicht bringt. (Christian gibt explizit zu Protokoll, Mühe gehabt zu haben mit dem Nein-Sagen. Er ist nichts, wenn nicht offen. Und liebenswert. Enorm liebenswert, dieser Christian.) Plus, hallo Geschäftssinn: Jeder Autor und jede Autorin ist eine persönliche Aufmerksamkeitsgenerierungsmaschine. Blogger sind sogar Maschinen, die Maschinen bedienen. Und nicht unbedingt dafür bekannt, einen Text nicht zu veröffentlichen, weil er irgendwelchen Maßstäben nicht genügt. Aber eben: We’re not in Blog-territory anymore. Und wenn jemand schon die enormen Eier aufbringt, ein solches Zeitschriftenprojekt anzugehen, dann müsste er auch die Eier haben, die Inhalte rigoroser auszuwählen. Beim dritten rundweg identischen Text die Hände zu verwerfen und zu sagen: „Ne du, hast du keine andere Idee?“ Oder den Mut, zuzugeben, dass eine an sich nett klingende Idee in der Umsetzung schlicht nicht funktioniert. (Die nämlich, Nicht-Spieler über Spiele schreiben zu lassen. An sich ein netter Gedanke. Könnte glatt sein. Ist es nicht. Es gibt einen Grund, weshalb Texte, die uns für ein Thema gewinnen können, von dem wir nicht einmal wussten, dass es uns interessieren könnte, von Leuten geschrieben werden, die verdammt viel über dieses Thema wissen. Die Nicht-Spieler Rezensionen in der WASD haben manchmal eine Pointe. Schlimmstenfalls aber sind sie ein riesiges „So what?!“ oder ein seitenlanger Ausdruck von abgefeierter Verachtung.) Oder auf den Punkt gebracht (concise, I am not): Die erste Ausgabe der WASD ist schlicht etwas lang geraten.

With A Little Help of Your Friends

Als Schlusswort wäre dies am Ende eines Vierseitentexts zu ironisch. Und zu böse. Es kann nicht oft genug wiederholt werden: Die WASD ist bereits jetzt sehr nett und sollte von allen Interessierten unbedingt gekauft werden. (Hier, Herrgott, jetzt bestell das Ding schon endlich!) Aber sie hat, wie man als Beckenbauer vermutlich sagen würde, noch deutlich Luft nach oben.

Ein kühner Vorschlag: In die sollte Christian sich vielleicht nicht wieder am eigenen Haarschopf erheben. Anders gesagt: Wenn man schon ein Heft von Idealisten für Idealisten macht, kann man durchaus noch ein wenig mehr an deren Idealismus etablieren. Sie ackern lassen, die faulen Säcke. Nicht im Bereich der Auswahl. Die bleibt natürlich Chefsache. Ein Lektorat oder ein redaktionelle Rückmeldung zu einzelnen Texten aber könnte in geselliger Runde aufgesplittet werden. Sagen wir ganz im Lingo von SMS und Homepage: Peer Review. Peer Feedback. Bier für alle. Dieser Text hier ist eine gebotene wäre eine gebotene Hand. (Ich kenne sogar schon andere.). Ich reiche sie, zum Handschlag, zur Gratulation für die erste Ausgabe. Und fürs Anlegen an eine zweite, auf die ich, um das noch einmal zu betonen, sehr hoffe.

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Sex and Ultraviolence

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Erstellt am: 20. 6. 2012 - 16:59 Uhr

Sex and Ultraviolence

Wer Computerspiele wegen Sexismus oder Gewaltfixierung kritisiert, muss mit dem Zorn der Fanboys rechnen. Das beste Beispiel: Die Hetzkampagne gegen die US-Videobloggerin Anita Sarkeesian.

Wer spielt, kennt das Phänomen: Vor allem Zeitgenossen, die nie in ihrem Leben ein Joypad in der Hand gehabt haben, sehen sich anlässlich verschiedenster Auslöser bemüßigt, Spiele zum Sündenbock abzustempeln. Fettleibigkeit bei Jugendlichen? Games sind schuld. Im PISA-Test mangelhaft? Zu viel Xbox. Eine Tragödie im Schulumfeld? Es liegt an den “Killerspielen”. Selbst bei Anders Breivik darf der Verweis auf dessen Spielkonsum nicht fehlen: Mit “Call of Duty” und “World of Warcraft” (!) habe der Massenmörder seine Tat trainiert, und überdies sei es “nicht normal”, dass ein Mann in seinen Zwanzigern seine Zeit mit Computerspielen verbringe.

Es ist also bis zu einem gewissen Grad verständlich, dass die Spielercommunity auf Kritik reagiert - in den allermeisten Fällen ist diese nämlich nichts anderes als argument- und intelligenzbefreites Bashing einer fremden, als gefährlich empfundenen Lebensrealität. Zugleich ist diese Welt allerdings so weit Mainstream, dass sie mit ihrem Millionenpublikum und -Etats ein gewisses Selbstbewusstsein aufgebaut hat.

Gamer befinden sich vor allem im Netz unter verständnisvollen Ihresgleichen, in riesigen Echokammern, in denen sich auch wegen der allgemeinen, als ungerecht empfundenen Stigmatisierung eine Wir-Mentalität breitmacht, die inzwischen bei fast jeder Form von Kritik die Ohren verschließt und sich wenig zimperlich zur Wehr setzt. Und besonders wenn es um Sex und Gewalt geht, fliegen die Fetzen.

Beißreflex und Schlangengrube

Als anlässlich diesjährigen E3, der großen Leitmesse der Gamesindustrie in Los Angeles, die großen Publisher die Werbetrommel für ihre Spiele rührten, zeigte sich ein interessanter Realitätsbruch: Während vor johlendem Messepublikum in unzähligen Trailern die kommenden AAA-Titel für die gerade noch aktuelle Konsolengeneration vorgestellt wurden, machte sich bei manchen Kommentatoren leises Unbehagen breit - Unbehagen darüber, dass sich die meisten “Großen” darauf beschränkten, ihre mehr oder weniger stagnierenden Games-Fortsetzungen durch ein bisher nie dagewesenes Ausmaß an Gewaltdarstellung zu bewerben.

Kopfschüsse in Großaufnahme, “anatomisch korrekte” Scharfschützengewehrseinschüsse, eine Lara Croft, die ausgerechnet durch eine Beinahe-Vergewaltigung den Beschützerinstinkt des Spielers wecken sollte und ein auf haarsträubende Weise zwischen Fetisch- und Gewaltfantasie taumelnder Trailer für “Hitman: Absolution” waren die Tiefpunkte des Hochglanz-Lineups, die mehr als die bescheidenen Präsentationen der E3 heuer für Gesprächsstoff sorgten.

Kris Graft vom Games-Industrie-Blog Gamasutra fasste wie einige andere Games-Insider seine Unzufriedenheit mit dem Status quo pointiert zusammen: “On the grand stage in L.A., at the event that I’ve heard called the “Super Bowl of Video Games”, the world’s biggest video game publishers made clear at whom they would direct hundreds of millions of dollars of investment: Bloodthirsty, sex-starved teen males who’ll high-five at a headshot and a free T-shirt.” Auch die Entwicklerlegende Warren Spector äußerte ähnliche Kritik.

Lara Croft als Beinahe-Vergewaltigungsopfer: PR-Stolpern für die neuerdings “verwundbar erwachsene” Games-Ikone.

Dass der jahrzehntelange Umgang mit Kritik von außen defensiv und zunehmend erbittert macht, ist wohl auch der Grund für die fast reflexhafte Verteidigung der Spiele, die daraufhin in zahllosen Kommentaren und Blogeinträgen losbrach: Wer die teils sehr emotionalen Wortmeldungen zu den betreffenden Artikeln durchforstet, stößt auf eine bestürzende Realitätsverweigerung, die, der Immunisierung gegen Kritik von außen folgend, vehement abstreitet, dass die zunehmende Obsession mancher Titel mit besonders “realistischer”, spektakulär blutiger Gewaltdarstellung zumindest hinterfragenswert wäre.

Die Frage, ob diese Gewaltdarstellung als reiner effekthascherischer Selbstzweck die Spiele abseits ihrer PR-trächtigen Schockwerte irgendwie besser macht, wird von den eifrigsten Verteidigern geflissentlich ignoriert - einen Gefallen, so viel sei nebenbei angemerkt, tut sich die Industrie bei ihrem ohnedies fragwürdigen Ruf damit aber wohl nicht.

Fat, ugly or slutty

Doch es geht nicht nur um die liebgewonnene Ultraviolence, die verteidigt werden muss: In ein anderes, aber verwandtes Wespennest stach in den letzten Wochen die US-Videobloggerin Anita Sarkeesian, die per Kickstarter zur Finanzierung ihrer Videoserie zum Thema Sexismus in Videospielen aufgerufen hatte. Angriff ist die beste Verteidigung: Auch hier entlud sich der Zorn der sich sofort angegriffen fühlenden Gamer-Gemeinde - oder besser gesagt: eines wohl speziell beschränkten, aber traurigerweise zahlreichen Teils derselben - in sexistischen Kommentaren, Wikipedia-Vandalenakten bis hin zu Mord- und Vergewaltigungsdrohungen.

Dank Kontroverse zumindest ein Bombenerfolg: Anita Sarkeesian wird Sexismus in Videospielen untersuchen.

Die größere Tragödie abseits der unmittelbar persönlichen zeigte sich aber wiederum in der Reaktion auf diese unrühmliche Episode: Kein Artikel zum Thema, in dem in den Diskussionsbeiträgen nicht sämtliche unwürdigen Rechtfertigungs- und Erklärungsversuche zur Begründung dieser Schmutzkampagne aufgeführt wurden. Dass sich nicht kleine Teile der Leserschaft verschiedenster Medien - und nicht nur der Fachmedien, sondern zB sogar im Standard - dazu bemüßigt sehen, Verständnis für die Attacken auf Sarkeesian zu erklären, steht ebenso für sich wie die Einträge der Seite Fat, ugly or slutty, die ein deprimierendes Bild vom alltäglichen und vielfach als “normal” empfundenen Sexismus in der Spielecommunity zeichnen.

Deprimierend, aber nicht hoffnungslos

Es ist ein deprimierender Befund, der sich aus diesen unfreiwilligen Offenbarungseiden der letzten Wochen ergibt: Ja, in der Gamer-Community gibt es zumindest in unsympathisch selbstbewusst auftretenden Teilen einen augenzwinkernden “Corpsgeist”, der sich an Gewaltdarstellung aufgeilt und Sexismus toleriert. Ja, es gibt eine leider nicht zu unterschätzende Gruppe von Spielern, die das oft gebrauchte Schlagwort von den “Spielen für Erwachsene” als Synonym für zutiefst pubertäres Rumprollen auf niedrigstem Niveau missversteht. Und ja, die großen Publisher haben mit ihrer endlosen Abfolge von Headshot-Porn, großbusigen Booth-Babes und augenzwinkerndem Sexismus auf Herrenwitzniveau Mitverantwortung für diese traurige Tatsache.

Das Gute ist, dass der überwiegende Großteil der Gamer diesem Morast nicht angehört, in dem Splatter, Misogynie und Homophobie als tolerierte kulturelle Werte missverstanden und verteidigt werden.

Anita Sarkeesians Projekt wurde auf Kickstarter nicht zuletzt von ihnen weit über seine Ziele hinaus finanziell unterstützt, und auch auf dem Schlachtfeld der Kommentarseiten raffen sich mehr und mehr Menschen dazu auf, den Trollen Paroli zu bieten. Es gibt sie, die Spieler, die ein wirklich erwachsenes Medium wollen, und es gibt zunehmend auch die Spiele, die mit ihren Themen, und auch mit Gewalt und Sex, erwachsen umgehen - das neue “Tomb Raider” und “Last of Us” könnten trotz allem solche Spiele sein. Es gibt Frauen, die spielen, und es gibt ältere Spieler, die nicht mit dem pubertär grölenden Games-Hooligans in einen Topf geworfen werden wollen. Kurz: Die hässliche Seite des Gamings ist vielleicht lauter und (noch) selbstbewusster, aber dieses Selbstbewusstsein wird zunehmend, auch durch die jüngsten Diskussionen, in Frage gestellt.

Wer etwas verbessern will, muss demnach Position beziehen und mitreden. Am bislang schweigenden Großteil der Spieler, die mit dem pubertären Internet-Mob nichts zu tun haben wollen, liegt es nun, ihr Medium mehr als zuvor nach außen zu vertreten - und zwar in Opposition zu jenen, die sich ansonsten auf die erwähnte Art und Weise zu seiner “Verteidigung” berufen fühlen. Denn Games sind tatsächlich zu mehr fähig - und Gewaltpornografie und Sexismus sind es wohl nicht wirklich wert, in Games verteidigt zu werden.

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Objectification and Lollipop Chainsaw -Destructoid

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Objectification and Lollipop Chainsaw

2:00 PM on 06.18.2012   |   Jim Sterling

160 comments

It is said that Suda 51 always has something to say with his games, even when it looks like he’s saying nothing at all. From abstract and disturbed curiosities such as Killer7 to silly and vulgar adventures like No More Heroes, there’s always some commentary, satire, or further subtext buried deep within Suda’s initially bizarre ideas. Just check out Matt Razak’s two-part analysis on the true meaning of No More Heroes 2 for some more proof.

Lollipop Chainsaw, with its focus on comedy and balls-out insanity, is perhaps the hardest Grasshopper Manufacture game to scrutinize. On the surface, the game is pure fan service — a gory zombie hack n’ slash game starring a young woman who isn’t shy about showing off her physical assets. When you dig deeper you … don’t find much else.

However, I think I cracked an underlying theme that runs throughout the story. A subtle one, but one worth examining. Lollipop Chainsaw has something to say on the matter of objectification, and before you think I’m pointing out the obvious — I am not talking about Juliet.

As an eighteen-year-old cheerleader, Lollipop Chainsaw’s Juliet Starling seems quite obviously built to fulfill the fantasies of a male audience, and I’m certainly not going to claim that wasn’t the intention. She bends over every few minutes to give us a glimpse of what’s under her insanely short skirt, and she’s not afraid to fight an undead horde wearing nothing but a bikini. I do not think anybody could deny that she, as a character, is objectified in the game.

Whether you think it matters or not is up to you, whether you think it’s played for genuine sexual satisfaction or sheer comedy is also a fine debating point. It’s not the kind of objectification I want to talk about, however. I am actually talking about a character who is literally objectified when he is bitten by a zombie and decapitated by Juliet in an attempt to save his life. The magically resurrected talking head that is the heroine’s boyfriend, Nick.

From the outset, Nick’s plight in Lollipop Chainsaw fascinated me. He spends the majority of the game hanging from Juliet’s backside with little more to do than comment on the current situation and helplessly scream in terror whenever his living transportation does something reckless. Nick, as one of a handful of male heroes in the game, is absolutely powerless, rendered unable to perform even the simplest of tasks by himself and existing utterly at the mercy of his girlfriend.

When Nick is able to help Juliet out, it is only as a tool. An item. An object. He’s tossed around, whipped about, and thrown without much in the way of consideration for his well-being. Even when temporarily crammed onto the headless body of a zombie and given a brief level of control, he’s still not in charge. In fact, players don’t even get to directly handle the man’s movements, instead completing timed button presses to drive him forth while Juliet patronizingly cheers for each struggling, flailing step.

Without his body, and completely powerless, Nick is frequently idealized and assessed by female characters who have little to no regard for how their words make him feel. Both of Juliet’s sisters talk about the benefits of having a boyfriend with no head — benefits to them, of course, not the boyfriend — and review his aesthetic qualities despite Nick making it perfectly clear how uncomfortable he is. Juliet, as Nick’s self-appointed guardian and protector, seems totally oblivious to his feelings, frequently telling him how much she loves him even as the wretched creature teeters on the verge of quite understandable despair.

The scene that truly made me stop and think about Nick’s role in the story was one that involved the entire Starling family, consisting of Juliet, her two sisters, and her father. While the Starlings plan their raid on the next undead target, Juliet’s youngest sister, Rosalind, is forcing makeup onto Nick’s face. Holding him forcefully in place and delivering a humiliating makeover, neither Rosalind or her sisters are capable of understanding why Nick is upset by his treatment — treatment made all the more worse when Juliet’s father tells Nick off for screwing around and threatens to deal with him if he continues being disruptive. It’s all played for laughs, of course, and is quite funny, but when you look at what is happening to Nick, you see him suffering through several issues that commonly affect women, especially in the game industry.

Mr. Starling in particular seems to embody a particularly alarming issue in modern culture, made all the more pertinent by the fact that he is a male character — victim blaming. Blaming the victim is something that people seem to love doing more and more these days, especially when women are concerned. Whether it’s guys insinuating that a woman dressed as a “whore” was asking to be raped, or that someone being made uncomfortable by sexual harassment should have “said something” despite the pressure she was under to keep her mouth shut or politely smile, there’s a lot of blame being thrown around by society’s peanut gallery, and a less than deserved portion of it ever seems to reach the person who started whatever problem occurred.

Base objectification, physical and emotional idealization, harassment, all perpetrated by characters who seem totally indifferent to how their behavior might affect the target of their activities. The sheer selfishness of the heroines seems to mirror the attitudes that many men can have towards women, an attitude typified by Juliet when she refuses to kill Nick. At one point, her disembodied boyfriend begs for abandonment (and the inevitable death it would result in), having zero quality of life and feeling like he’s lost everything that made him a person. Even as he asks for mercy, Juliet refuses, and gives a reason that sums up the relationship between them perfectly — “I love you.” Her reason for keeping Nick alive in a state that’s less than human is because of her feelings and what she wants.

It reminds me of certain justifications for problems that have arisen in the gamer community before. It’s been said by some that sexual harassment is just a “part of the culture” of online gaming, as if to say that anybody who has a problem with it needs to go away and not express their feelings of discomfort. People hate considering others because of a fear of how it might inconvenience them, and they dehumanize their opposition, render their feelings a moot point, and disregard the potential impact of their own decisions. When a female industry member like Jennifer Hepler is harassed, the scrabbling for excuses and assertions that it was her fault fly in thick and fast. Oh, she started it by saying something we didn’t like, she shouldn’t have acknowledged the harassment, if she’d just let us continue to insult and degrade her, we would have stopped eventually, so she is to blame.

Because of these reminders, Nick’s character started to make me feel uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable because this was a character being blatantly turned into an object, mistreated, harassed, humiliated, and ultimately blamed for his own indignity. It’s done to an exaggerated degree, but exaggeration is often needed to shine a glaring spotlight on something. As a result, I started to feel colder toward Juliet as a character because she was, in some scenes, a complete and utter creep.

And that, as far as I can assess, is the underlying brilliance of Lollipop Chainsaw. Yes, Juliet is showing her skin constantly and many male gamers will likely ignore all subtext in order to gawp at her arse, but for me, I can’t help thinking about Nick’s plight, and how it reflects upon real girls in real high schools and beyond into adulthood. By turning the tables, and by placing a male figure into those situations, it goes some way toward making a character that’s easier for men to identify with. The outright emasculation of Nick is certainly terrifying enough for a person who shares his gender, and opens the door to sympathizing with the rest of the trials he faces. Who knows? Maybe three or four gamers out there will then make the logical conclusion that, hey, women are kind of treated this way already, without having their heads cut off.

Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, but it’s the interpretation I choose to have. Lollipop Chainsaw is about objectification, but the base sexual gratification that initially greets the player upon Juliet’s introduction is something of a subterfuge. It might still exist for little more than gratification, I should restate, but it’s not, to me, the message of the story. The message I have decided to take away from Lollipop Chainsaw is that objectification without regard for a person’s feelings can be disturbing, that ignoring someone’s protests because you’re doing what makes you feel good is alarming, and that sometimes, it takes reversing the roles in order to get some of us to see that.

So, treat women with respect, because one day you might be a disembodied head hanging from a miniskirt, and then you’ll have to see what it feels like to be somebody else’s toy.

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Anna Anthropy: Reject Rape Jokes, Rejoin Humanity

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ANNA ANTHROPY: REJECT RAPE JOKES, REJOIN HUMANITY

June 22nd, 2012 · No Comments

kristen ridley

In the relatively homogeneous world of video game designers, Anna Anthropy stands out as a proud, outspoken, S&M-loving lesbian trans woman. She left the videogame program at Southern Methodist University without completing a degree out of frustration with the school’s curriculum and culture, and then turned to making her own small, personal, idiosyncratic games and distributing them over the web, acquiring a cult following along the way. Her games include Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars and Mighty Jill Off, which both integrate lesbian bondage imagery into the visuals and the game design. One of her most recent games, Dys4ia, Is about her own experience as a trans woman. This year she wrote a book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, in which she encourages budding designers to make their own games by themselves with simple tools that don’t require a lot of coding knowledge, while simultaneously railing against a corporate videogame industry culture that values conformity and marginalizes outsider voices. Her work will be featured in SUPER TETRICIDE, an art show that opens at Home Room on June 23rd. This interview conducted via email by Charles Mallison

What games are you playing right now—new, old, digital, board, corporate, indie, or otherwise? Tell me about them.
For my girl’s birthday we played 1856, a six-hour game about building Canadian railroads and exploiting the stock market. I like playing a game about being a robber baron, a game that encourages you to fuck people over—we had cigars to help us get in character—but the rules to those games have so many exceptions and special cases that it’s hard for me to come up with a good strategy. Next time we’re playing a train game set on the Isle of Wight.
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters is largely addressed to people to outside of the mainstream of the commercial videogame world. Have you had a lot of response about your book from inside the industry? From academia?
People in the industry, who are so entrenched in the way things are done in the industry that they can’t conceive of everything different, seem like they’re struggling with it. When I described the book to Kyle Orland while I was writing it—Kyle Orland used to run a site called The Videogame Ombudsman, where he took games journalists to task for their shoddy practices; now he’s writing books like Farmville for Dummies—he asked, ‘Won’t all the programs be outdated by the time the book comes out?’ Not understanding that a book about games doesn’t have to be about technology. But my book also sold out twice at the Game Developer’s Conference in March, which I take as a sign that there are people in the industry who really want change.
Do you have anything to say to people who are entrenched in the industry? What would you want to say to a career designer of Triple-A console titles or someone who is on that career path?
Shed your chains, burn your design documents, eat your marketers. Reject crunch time, reject rape jokes, rejoin humanity. If you signed a non-competition agreement, invent a pseudonym. Make your own games. Be free.
Towards the end of your book, you write, ‘Fuck Steam and the App Store.’ One of the dominant narratives about video games over the past few years is that methods of digital distribution like Steam and the App Store have allowed small developers making games with experimental content to distribute their content to an eager audience, and for a profit too. Do you feel that this doesn’t tell the whole story about this model of digital distribution?
Steam and the App Store have opened up a lot of new possibilities for game authors—I know a lady who made a year’s worth of income off of Steam sales of her game. But the App Store and Steam are both owned and operated entirely by corporations who answer only to themselves. When a couple years ago Apple decided to delete 5,000 Apps overnight for being ‘too sexual,’ there was no one the developers could go to. What authors really need is an infrastructure for distributing and selling games that is owned by authors and answerable to authors.
Many of your games embrace an 8-bit era sensibility when it comes to visual and sound design, as well as deployment of game mechanics. What draws you towards this aesthetic over and over again?
This is the vocabulary that videogames have. When in Dys4ia I want to give the player a sense of my alienation from my own body, I don’t play a movie or show a screenful of text, I give the player a weird-shaped block and a hole it can’t fit in. People have seen games like Tetris about fitting pieces inside other pieces, players can try and fit the pieces and discover for themselves that it’s hopeless. I’m studying other games to learn how to make games and other people are studying movies to learn how to make games. I think my solution makes more sense.
Dys4ia is about your own experience with hormone replacement therapy. What motivated you to turn that experience into a video game? What kind of responses have you received from the games community? What kind of responses have you received from the queer and trans communities?
I needed to vent somewhere! And if I’ve been saying nothing for the past few years it’s that the videogame form is that it’s fantastically suited to autobiography. It’s gotten a surprisingly positive response from the games community—who largely insist that it’s not actually a videogame. And a lot of queer and trans folks were really excited about it—and, I hope, more excited about videogames in general. A sex educator in Chicago told me she uses the game as an educational tool.
Is it hard to be openly queer in videogames world? Is it hard to be openly trans in the videogames world? What are the challenges? Are there any rewards?
It’s not easy to be anything other than straight, male and cis-gendered in a rape culture. Gamer dudes think they have the right to police my identity—Anthony Flack, the author of a rejected Xbox Live game called Cletus Clay, accused me of lying for not being out as trans a couple years ago when I was making all those games about my lesbian identity. So have a lot of dudes who probably fantasized about me before they realized I wasn’t a ‘real’ woman. But being out as trans has a lot of rewards beyond not having to be a sex object for sheltered nerds: a lot of trans and queer people tell me that my work connects with them, that it makes them a little bit more safe, less unwelcome, in a culture of Anthony Flacks.
You quote Bob Flanagan at length in your book discussing ‘derivative’ art. Is Flanagan an inspirational figure for you?
Yes! He was a kinky artist whose identity and kink informed every aspect of his work. And I like to believe that everything I create comes from my identity as a queer, kinky, transgender woman. I want everything I make to point back at me—I want videogames to tell us about their authors, as much as Bob Flanagan’s pooping, jizzing, barfing scale model of himself does. You can’t really blame me if I pay attention to brilliant submissive people—I collared one.
I just finished reading Easton and Hardy’s The Bottoming Book, in which they stress throughout that a successful BDSM scene is an essentially collaborative effort between the dominant and submissive participants. Can video game makers learn anything about game design from BDSM practices? Can kinksters learn anything about a well-played scene from game design?
I make videogames and I top girls—I find that these things have a lot of common territory. Making a difficult game like Mighty Jill Off, for example, requires challenging the player in a way that keeps her trying to prove her ability to meet my expectations, but without violating her trust and causing her to quit the game in frustration. That means respecting her limits, and keeping track of what I’ve trained and prepared her to deal with. It goes the other way, too. The second world of Sonic the Hedgehog has a scene where the player is chased by a moving wall of lava, and has to climb and dodge obstacles to stay ahead of it. But the lava actually moves really slowly—most players will never notice, because the threat is enough. One night, wrestling with one of my girls—at the time—she ended up suspended in the air over the side of the bed, begging me not to drop her. She would have fallen like a foot, and the floor was cushioned with dirty clothes. But the threat of being dropped was enough to get her scared and hot. She ended up dangled over the side of the bed a few times that night.
Do you have any other side-scroller-inspired tips for the budding top?
You know how in some side-scrolling games it can feel really satisfying just to move around on a platform? Maybe hop around a little? Well, in my experience I’ve found that girls make really good platforms. I recommend holding onto something to help keep your balance, and also to control the amount of weight you’re putting on her. If you have to talk to her, little crawly words like ‘bug’ are particularly objectifying here—basically anything squishable.
Do you want to follow up Dys4ia with another game about your life? Another game about queer lives?
Well, what the hell else am I going to make them about? All of my games, regardless of level of abstraction, are informed by my life and identity. The other day I made a game about having to put on my make-up in the dark—there was a black-out on Friday while I was putting on my foundation. It was a really sticky situation until I remembered the other room has windows and a mirror.
What do you want to be doing in five years? What would you like the world of video games to look like in five years?
I’ll be making games for the rest of my life. It’s my sincere hope, though, that I won’t need to—that someday videogames won’t need someone like me, an angry queer ambassador shouting from the margins—because I want a world of videogames in which anyone can make and speak and be heard without being silenced. It’s hard to imagine that happening five years from now, or ten, or twenty, when a woman like Anita Sarkeesian can get hundreds of YouTube comments threatening her with rape for daring to criticize the way women are presented in videogames, or when a gaming website as popular as Penny Arcade can sell shirts making fun of rape survivors. But someday, someday, someday—if I have to work toward it til my dying breath.

ANNA ANTHROPY’S WORK IS PART OF SUPER TETRICIDE WITH LIVE PERFORMANCES BY KID INFINITY, EVILWEZIL AND MEGA CRUSH OPENS SAT., JUNE 23, AT HOMEROOM, 3121 BEVERLY BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / FREE BEFORE 9 PM / $5 AFTER / ALL AGES. HOMEROOM101.ORG. VISIT ANNA ANTHROPY AT AUNTIEPIXELANTE.COM.

Category: Features
Tags: · anna anthropy, charles mallison, home room, s & m, trans, video game, videogame

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One Shot, One Kill, No Skill: Why a Regular Gamer Started Paying to Cheat at Video Games

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The tale of how one man from Canada became the kind of person who pays a monthly fee to cheat at video games is like many stories about good people who slide toward the more nefarious extremes of life.

There was hurt. There was frustration. And then there was the temptation to step inside from the unabating drizzle of life, to take shelter and experience some glee. The glee, of course, would cost him. It would cost him money and friends , though maybe it was worth it.

The man from Canada goes by the online name Johnb32xq. In the eyes of some he is what’s wrong with online multiplayer gaming. Some might brand him a scourge—maybe even a bad person—but that’s the common reaction to situations like these, when good people cross lines that other good people don’t.

The man from Canada doesn’t seem like such a bad person. He just pays to cheat at video games.

John lives on a 200-acre farm somewhere in Canada. He has a day-job and loves to play video games. He bought Battlefield 3 at launch last fall and played it on the PC. Then some things happened and, soon enough, John became the kind of gamer who has an arsenal of cheats at his disposal. Each was a hack that he paid for. One lets him saunter into a multiplayer match in Battlefield 3 and automatically kill the next person he sees. If he’s feeling particularly destructive, John flicks on a hack called “Mass Murder” and strolls through a Battlefield battlefield while every opposing player just drops dead. One button press and the text notices indicating the death of each opposing player scrolls in like the next line of movie credits. These hacks John uses require no skill other than the discretion not to be caught by the people who make Battlefield. His opponents stand no chance.

Paid cheaters like John are the steroid-users of video games, with two caveats.

“Technically hacking does ruin games,” John recently told me. “I do feel bad for doing it, ‘cause I know regular legit gamers—which I once was—just want to have fun and play the game with their friends. I basically go into servers and hack, because it’s like releasing anger with my job. I fix Blackberrys for Rogers Wireless, and I get bitched at and get stressed out, because people are upset.”

Cheating is John’s anger outlet, one he’s willing to pay up to $25 a month to keep using. His situation is the reverse of most video game scare stories. Video games have not compelled him to misbehave in the real world. A shooter video game didn’t turn him into a hellion in real life. On the contrary, the real world, he says, is what has caused him to be a cheating terror in the video games he plays.

Paying cheaters like John are the steroid-users of video games, with two caveats: 1) nothing they do appears to be illegal; 2) nothing they do appears to require the skill that, say, still must be present to enable even the most chemically-enhanced baseball player to swat a 95-mph fastball over an outfield wall.

Paying cheaters certainly violate what some would say is the spirit of the game. They certainly spoil what other players might have thought was a fair competition contested among players of Battlefield or Call of Duty or any other competitive PC game.

A hacker uses cheats in Battlefield 3 in this clip that was uploaded to YouTube a few weeks before BF3 was officially released.

But, certainly, paying cheaters are also gamers, members of a growing tribe of humanity who want to win so badly in, say, Words with Friends that they will peek at dictionaries to help them defeat their best friends. Some people study YouTube clips to learn how to breach invisible walls in Call of Duty. Gamers break rules to gain advantages and even one of the Mt. Rushmore heads of this field, Sims creator Will Wright, says that the best way to play games—the way he plays—is to subvert the game’s proper rules.

John is on the extreme end of a spectrum, because his tactics are so lethal, so outside of what the game’s creators intended, so far beyond what rival players can defend against and, oh yeah, he paid some hackers money to have them. John pays to be able to kill your character instantly in Battlefield. He’s surely crossed some line, though it’s anyone’s guess just where that line must be.
***

John from Canada is one of an unknown number of customers of a service called Artificial Aiming, a mirthful band of entrepreneurial cheaters who hack popular and unpopular games alike. Their star hacker is someone named HelioS, a mysterious figure who is regularly outfoxing or being outfoxed by the makers of games such as Battlefield.

There are rival providers of paid cheats too, including Project 7 and the surprisingly slick FPSCheats.com. The latter claims to be “The #1 rated hack website in the world.” Launching their website triggers a video of an attractive blonde welcoming you to their site and boasting that the four-year site has more than 300,000 members; their Twitter feed, however, has fewer than 900 folllowers.

Artificial Aiming offers cheats for lots of games, from Battlefield 2 to six different Call of Duty games to Mass Effect 3 (40 games in all, plus cheats for Duke Nukem Forever which are, for some reason, labeled as free; a “master package” to use all the cheats for all the games runs $20/week or $50/month). The cheats are provided through a separate computer program that runs in concert with the game. It essentially gives you super-powers, and unless you’re bitten by a radioactive spider, super-powers aren’t for free.

A couple dozen cheats have recently been available for Battlefield 3. The cheats tweak the game’s frame-rate or radar and are said to be undetectable by the anti-cheating service Punk Buster. The meatiest part of a $25/month Level 3 Battlefield 3 cheat subscription from Artificial Aiming is the aimbot, which will more or less do your shooting for you. Here’s a breakdown:

Aimbot :

- Uberdamage (only one bullet is needed to kill a player instantly)

- Auto Spot (spot everyone on the map, automatic. You’ll get the spotbonus for every kill your team makes)

- Massmurder (kill everybody with a single button)

- NoSpread

- No Recoil

- No Breathing

- Visibility Checks

- Soldier Aimbot

- Vehicle Aimbot (All land vehicles, Chopper gunner and Helo transport machine gunner Aimbot for air vehicles)

- Aim Styles (Off, When firing, Full auto)

- Targeting Styles (Closest Target, Closest to crosshair, Highest Threat, Lowest Health, etc.)

- SlowAim (Off, On) (+ Configurable slow aim speed)

- AimAngle (Off, On) (+ Configurable autoaim rotation angle)

- AutoFire (Off, On)

- FriendlyFire (Off, On)

Anyone who wants to buy cheats has to expect them to work only some of the time, as game developers do their damnedest to block them and hackers then have to try to work around the barricades. A forum administrator on Artificial Aiming noted this past Friday that “Our BF3 sales are disabled at this moment due to security issues. So we cant deliver you a cheat at this moment.”

This kind of business riles the people who are in the business of making games. The profiteering cheat-makers tend to infuriate.

“It used to be that hackers did it because it was fun and they want to show that they can,” Karl Magnus-Troesddson, the director of the massive Swedish studio DICE told me a few months ago. DICE are the makers of Battlefield and have been battling hackers and cheaters for years. “It’s about big money today. They want to make money off of these cheats. That’s what pisses me off the most. They’re not just ruining the game for others; they’re actually making a profit off of it. That hurts both my gamer heart but also my dev heart, I have to say.”

The folks a Artificial Aiming laugh at this kind of thing. Online, they seem as jolly a band of hackers and cheaters as there is, cackling on message boards about how they disrupt games, rejoicing when, in one instance, Artificial Aiming hackers used cheats to snag the virtual dogtags of Battlefield developers. Top Artificial Aiming personnel as well as top people at other cheating groups brushed off repeated requests by Kotaku to tell their story, to explain why they cheat and size up just how big a business it is for them to mess with games like Battlefield 3. One of their ringleaders, an AA administrator who goes by the name Haruhi, recently posted a link to a Forbes article entitled “Cheating is Good for You”. This is what he pulled from the article:

Psychologists have found that when playing games, if players aren’t allowed to punish others they suspect of cheating, the game community falls apart. People will even pay money out of their own pocket to punish cheaters. So figuring out ways to keep the larger community involved in dealing with cheaters can keep the group engaged in ways that “regular” game play might never allow for.

He supplied his own addendum: “Fact: Cheating is good for you!”

If there is profit in it for the cheat enablers, that presumably makes it all the sweeter.

All is not fair, however, even for the cheat profiteers. In January, several Artificial Aiming administrators and VIP users tried to distance themselves from a new non-AA hack that was being used to get honest Battlefield players banned from the game.
***

John from Canada used to hate hackers. All of his stats in Battlefield used to be legit, the simple tally of how good he was at a popular first-person shooter. He was part of an online gaming clan who vowed to play together. But work got in the way for John and he couldn’t play as much as he wanted to. You have to play a popular first-person shooter a lot to be competitive in it; distractions that kept him from the game would hold him back.

“One day I got pissed and fed up with one of the guys in the clan cause he didn’t have a job and just grinded the game 24/7 and gained 10-15 levels above us,” John remembered. “I wasn’t the best player in BF3. So, one of the other clan members said to me in a different teamspeak [that] he used to hack APB: Reloaded, and I’m like, ‘Really??’ He sent me the link. I looked at the site, and I made an account. I saw the hacks and I’m like, damn that’s a lotta hacks for games, so I was like, ‘I’ll give it a go.’ I bought a one week subscription to the master package, which gave me access to all the games’ hacks.”

That was John’s first injection of Artificial Aiming’s product. He suddenly had 42 hacks at his command. He loved it.

“I see a guy, press my key, instantly snap on, killed him, then snapped to a few other guys and killed them. I’m like, ‘I love this hack.’”

The first time he used a paid cheat, he loaded up the hacks and a copy of Battlefield 3, jumped to his favorite multiplayer map at the time, Metro, and configured an “aimbot” cheat to his Alt key.

“I was running around the map. I see a guy, press my key, instantly snap on, killed him, then snapped to a few other guys and killed them. I’m like, ‘I love this hack.’

His clan noticed that his scores were suddenly a lot better and they figured out what was going on. He was angry about being caught, hopped onto his team’s server and killed his teammates 13-0. They banned him.

“It took a few days to sink in as I realized what I had done to the gaming clan I had been with for four or five years,” he said. “I felt like utter crap. I actually cried for about five minutes, wishing I could go back in time. But you can’t, so, basically I sucked it up from there.”

John cheated some more.

“I bought a one-month BF3 Level 3 sub, which gave me access to everything: autofire, no spread, no recoil etc.”

He kept using the hacks. He kept enraging other players. “I just laughed at them,” he said. “Three to four months down the road, the hack team scripted uberdamage which basically makes anything a one shot kill and extends max range. On any game mode, I can run around with a G17 and one-shot kill them.

“Then, a month later Mass Murder came out. This option completely destroyed the game. Key-bind it to a button and [no matter what] you’re holding in your hand, you press the button and it will kill almost everyone on the enemy team.”

He made a video out of that one and thanks master-hacker HelioS for that mother of all cheats.

EA has banned John’s account three times, but he has continued to play, hopping from legitimate accounts to pirated ones.

He says he bought Battlefield 3 legitimately twice. He also bought the game’s first downloadable expansion, Back To Karkand. The proceeds for those sales flowed back to Battlefield’s publisher EA and its Swedish development studio, DICE, where Karl Magnus works.

He’s also bought pirated keys to access Battlefield from Russian hackers sites. He estimates he has spent about $100 on pirated keys and spent about $120-$150 on cheats from Artificial Aiming.
***

In early March, when it had become clear that cheaters were targeting Battlefield 3, Karl Magnus wanted me to know just how hard DICE was pushing back. “It has been a problem,” he said, “as it is in all shooters. We have a separate team that works in DICE that deals with cheating. The best way to battle cheating is to just look at the stats and ban people and get them out of there.”

The anti-cheating team at DICE looks for people who pad their stats through glitches that haven’t been patched out of the game. “Those are things that are easy to fix,” Magnus said. “The hacks, where people aimbot and these kinds of things that are using a third-party cheat are usually a bit a harder, because it’s usually an overlay using DirectX on top of that. We can’t patch that out of the game. From that perspective it’s easier to just look at the stats and say, ok, if they have a kill-death ratio of this or whatever the algorithm has been set up, that’s probably a cheater. Let’s look into that, and then we do mass-bans continuously.”

The Battlefield studio director described the fight against cheaters as “an ongoing arms race,” one that would never end.

Magnus would rather not ban someone, if possible. The first time they think they’ve found a cheater? “We usually start by stats-wiping them. If we see a repeat felony or whatever you want to call it, we ban them.., if we want to be really mean, we can ban them not just from Battlefield but from all EA games, but, I mean, that’s very harsh. We try to keep it within the franchise.”

He described the fight against cheaters as “an ongoing arms race,” one that would never end. The cheaters find a way to hack the game. DICE applies a fix. The cheaters find a new exploit.

In late March, with cheat services like Artificial Aiming making money selling stat-boosting cheats to gamers like John from Canada, DICE started selling perks—“shortcuts”—that level Battlefield players up. DICE isn’t selling cheats but, rather, offering the kind of quick-leveling up of player rank that unlocks better gear for players who don’t have time to play to earn those levels:

Today, we are also offering 10 different shortcut items for sale for Battlefield 3 on PS3. If you’re new to the game, this is the perfect way to gain some ground on the veterans online. Or if you’d love to get some more air time in the jets but want to equip those AA missiles straight away, this is for you.
The 10 shortcut items are available now from the PlayStation Store and the in-game store and include these:

- Kit Shortcut Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items unique to the four playable classes

- Vehicle Shortcut Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items for all vehicles

- The Ultimate Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items from all other available shortcut packs

The shortcuts cost $7-$10. A full bundle costs $40.

These official paid perks may have enabled John from Canada to keep pace with that member of his clan who kept playing Battlefield while John worked. It wouldn’t have made John a better Battlefield player, but it would have made him a better-armed one. Who’s to say that wouldn’t have kept him from becoming an Artificial Aiming customer? When DICE began offering these paid booster packs, Artificial Aiming administrator Haruhi cackled at what he saw as apparent DICE hypocrisy: “EA Games is legalizing Cheats for BF3,” he proclaimed.

John from Canada says he has been trying to quit using hacked cheats.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked an EA rep what had become of the arms race Magnus had described. Artificial Aiming and their numerous rivals continued to make new and more efficient cheats for Battlefield and other games. Their Mass Effect 3 aimbot is one of their newest products. They kept selling them to people like John from Canada. DICE kept banning players and issuing new services and paid downloadable content to Battlefield gamers, trying to get Battlefield gamers to send money DICE’s way instead of to third-party cheat services. The EA rep was unable to get an update from Magnus but provided the kind of less impassioned statement you get from a corporation that wants to convince gamers its product is safe-rather than the kind of heated words one gets from a creator who is tired of people profiting off of vandalizing his game. “We continually monitor the Battlefield 3 community to make sure everyone is having the best possible Battlefield experience. We have a dedicated team at DICE tracking cheaters/hackers.”

John from Canada says he has been trying to quit using hacked cheats. He sounds like he is tired of being banned, of having to re-start his Battlefield 3 playing again and again. But he’s still using Artificial Aiming. The temptation to cheat is strong.

He’s still not allowed in his old clan, but does play games with a few clan members who don’t mind that he hacks. They play Test Drive Unlimited 2 together. He also played Farming Simulator 2011, which is something less than escape for him. He lives on a farm.

“Gamers say hackers have no lives or they are gay or they have small dicks,” he said. “Honestly, all the guys I play with in Battlefield 3 who also run AA have normal lives and raise families, have wives etc.. I’m 21. I live on a 200-acre farm. I help my dad whenever he needs it. I work a full-time job. I hang out with my friends. I play paintball. I’m living a normal life, and I’m a gamer. I hack, ‘cause I find it fun, sometimes. And it just gets me away from shit and stuff which can happen in our everyday lives.”

UPDATE: After the publication of this story, John got back in touch with me. He says he really is done with cheating. His most recent Artificial Aiming subscription has expired and he’s resisting the urge to renew it. “I haven’t touched a hack or played BF3 for 2-3 weeks now. My friend is helping me get out of hacking and its going pretty well. When tempted to, I just play another game other than BF3.

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Gematria: A Mystical Deconstruction of Fez

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When Renaud Bédard spoke, I did not understand his language.

He was delivering his GDC lecture “Cubes All the Way Down: FEZ Technical Postmortem” and my bafflement had less to do with his Quebecois accent and more to do with the swirl of math, programming terminology and game developer jargon he spouted while describing the technical side of his five-year odyssey with Phil Fish. A couple of my fellow writers left halfway through, when the tide of arithmetic was at its crest. I would feel dishonest if I didn’t admit to letting my eyes fall closed, like in the back of a high school algebra class.

There were five of us left when it was over. We all felt that we had seen something important, something that had value, but we struggled to find the words to express it.  We were word people, we five, and the symbols we use to describe the world are often directly at odds with the symbols Bédard uses.

A code is a system of rules by which information is converted from one form into another. The most famous code is probably Morse – letters are translated into a series of dots and dashes to allow messages to be transmitted quickly over long distances. Grammar, in many ways, is another kind of code. Bédard works in a programming code, long strings of characters that delineate computational instructions, which translate naturally occurring phenomena like space and physics into an abstracted digital simulation.

Put another way, Bédard uses numbers and protocols to create his world.

———

During the Middle Ages, Jewish mystics developed an esoteric system to find meaning beneath the surface of their scripture. They sought to discover deeper connections between the infinite creator and His finite creation. Over the ensuing centuries, this system became known as Kabbalah.

One method of Kabbalistic interpretation, called gematria, involves assigning numerical values to letters, words and phrases in hopes of finding new relationships between concepts. For example, the numeric value of the Hebrew letters of the name Adam total 45, while the total for the four-letter name of God is 54, both of which combine to 9. Therefore Adam = God, which is telling since the former was created in the image of the latter.

There is more at work here than numerological games – there is also the possibility of unimaginable illumination. Through gematric calculations, Jewish mystics believed they could discover the secret name of God, the Shemhamphorasch, and learn how to manipulate its sacred letters. It was with the power of His name that God created the universe. More than that, there is no practical division between all three – the name IS the universe, just as God IS the name. To harness that power would mean having control over the very fabric of reality. It would be transcendent.

I was thinking about these things as we walked out of the lecture room into the halls of the Moscone Center. Isn’t programming code a kind of gematria? And, if that is the case, is a game engine a digital simulation of the Shemhamphorasch?

———

In FEZ, you take the role of Gomez, a cute little two-dimensional fellow who is, after the intervention of a mysterious force, given the ability to perceive three dimensions. He has been initiated into the greater mysteries of the world.

More from Unwinnable

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The plight of Metal Gear Online and the limits of videogame preservation.

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The plight of Metal Gear Online and the limits of videogame preservation.

Metal Gear Online – which sought to bring stealth action into the HD online arena – has officially gone offline. Konami shut down the servers for the game June 12th. The game stood in staunch comparison to the majority of twitchy, fast-paced online shooters that were its contemporaries. Rather than pump along at a break-neck speeds, MGO rewarded players for sitting in a box for ten minutes. It was a quirky mix of action and waiting – and now its gone forever.

Another PS3 game was scheduled to shutdown in North American this month as well: Demon’s Souls. The title’s publisher Atlus eventually backpedaled, deciding about a week before the shutdown to extend the life of the servers indefinitely. The company pledged to support the game’s innovative online component so long as “user activity and interest remain constant.” But that, obviously, can’t last forever.

Those still interested in experiencing the forerunner to Dark Souls should try to do so while they still can, because once Demon’s Souls goes offline, it will no longer be be the same game.

The subtle connectivity afforded by Demon’s Souls online mode unites players’ individual experiences, transforming the slow progression through Boletaria into a communal plight. Temporal bloodstains warn us of dead players’ blunders. Brief blurbs of text can be left for all to see. Cryptic lies line cliffs to mislead gullible travelers to their doom. In a seditious exercise of democracy, we can recommend such shifty messages. Sometimes, we help one another, dropping summon signs at the doors of demons. It is an interactive landscape where we all play a part in each other’s success and failure.

Navigating this dichotomy between trust and doubt, between dependence and self-reliance, is in part what makes Demon’s Souls so enthralling. When the servers go offline, however, Boletaria will become an empty playground, originally built to be swarming with children, left to be enjoyed alone.

As game hardware advances, the infrastructures supporting old media vanish. Henry Lowood, who heads up the game archiving effort for the Library of Congress, warns we are “already late in attending to the special preservation needs of early game software,” but the deteriorative nature of gaming’s earliest incarnations isn’t the only problem. An increasing amount of games are made to be experienced with specific, supportive infrastructures in place. When their hardware becomes obsolete, and the technology supporting them moves on, these games lose a large part of what made them unique in the first place.

Take Nintendo’s Satellaview games from the 1990s, for example. Released only in Japan, Satellaview was a Super Famicom add-on that received game “broadcasts” during set times over a satellite modem. One of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises, The Legend of Zelda, saw several spin-off titles exclusive on the platform. The first two to hit the system were graphically enhanced reworkings of the original NES title’s overworld and dungeons, released as “Map 1” and “Map 2.” Each map was broadcast in four separate, hour-long segments, with the current time of day displayed on screen. Voice-overs streamed in-time with the broadcast, and at certain points in the clock, unique game events were triggered. When the broadcast ended, the game locked up, and once a new broadcast came in, the old game code was overwritten.

Enthusiasts have since mined old Satellaview memory banks to compile the broadcasts into singular ROMs, but the voice-overs, which were streamed from the satellite providers end, are missing. Miraculously, a full VHS recording of the broadcasts popped up on Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga nearly a decade later, and were subsequently uploaded to YouTube. These wavy videos are the only archival remnants of Nintendo’s first ever use of voice-acting in a video game. Had it not been for one unwitting archivist, they’d be lost forever.

“Here is the main point from a curatorial perspective,” writes Lowood, “there is a difference between preserving game technology and preserving game content, which includes gameplay.” Unlike the disconnected games of past generations, simply emulating software won’t always suffice. There are an increasing amount of temporal elements intrinsically intertwined with modern gaming: online infrastructure, publisher support, public interest. Demon’s Souls doesn’t only need servers to retain its identity, it needs a nation of players.

While future game historians will undoubtedly have an ocean of gameplay tidbits and Let’s Plays footage to sift through, they won’t be able to fully grasp a game’s more transient elements. Hardware can be preserved – people will replacing lithium batteries in golden Zelda cartridges for decades to come – but there will likely never be a rebroadcast of a Satellaview game.

When the inevitable server shutdown does come, it will fundamentally alter the experience of Demon’s Souls. The core mechanics will remain – combat, weapon systems, boss battles – but the experience surrounding them will become irrevocably isolated. When the last summon sign fades away, when the threat of invasion vanishes and the devious interplay between players comes to the end, the game becomes a shadow of its former self. In the darkness, a message appears: My heart is breaking.

10:00 Wednesday, June 20 2012 By Patrick Elliot

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Virtuelle Welten: Ein Grundgesetz für Gamer - Digital

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Sind Computerspieler Kunden der Anbieter, oder sind sie Bürger von Online-Welten? Nach heftigem Protest gegen Blizzard stellt sich die Frage nach ihrem Selbstverständnis.

Screenshot aus “Diablo III”

Gamer haben in den vergangenen Monaten viel protestiert: gegen das Ende der Mass-Effect-Trilogie etwa oder gegen die Serverausfälle, vermeintliche Sicherheitsprobleme und sogar gegen die Grafik von Diablo III. Tun sie das, weil sie sich als zahlende Kunden mit gewissen Ansprüchen verstehen – oder geht ihr Selbstverständnis weiter?

“Gamer brauchen ein Grundgesetz”, schreibt Yannick LeJacq im Magazin The Atlantic. Er beruft sich dabei auf Professor Edward Castronova von der Universität von Indiana, einen der führenden Experten für das Wirtschaften in Computerspielen. Castronova schrieb bereits im Jahr 2002 in seinem Aufsatz On Virtual Economies: “Gamer halten sich selbst nicht für Kunden eines Spiels, sondern für Bürger mit entsprechenden Rechten.” Diese These hält er für aktueller denn je.

Schon im Jahr 2000 hat der bekannte Gamedesigner Raph Koster eine “Erklärung der Rechte von Avataren” veröffentlicht, in der er verlangte, Avatare “wie Menschen zu behandeln, nicht wie körperlose, bedeutungslose und seelenlose Puppen.” Koster, so schreibt nun LeJacq in The Atlantic, habe das zwar später als fehlerbehaftetes Gedankenexperiment abgetan. Doch vor allem der vielfältige Protest gegen Diablo III und gegen den Publisher Blizzard sei möglicherweise ein Zeichen, dass an den alten Thesen von den Grundrechten für Gamer doch etwas dran sei.

Brauchen und wollen Gamer aber überhaupt verbriefte Normen innerhalb der Spiele? Grundrechte sind schließlich vor allem Abwehrrechte gegen den Staat, und weder Spiele noch deren Hersteller sind – formell betrachtet – Staaten. Spiele sind Kunstwerke und unterliegen der künstlerischen Freiheit der Entwickler. Die Hersteller sind gewinnorientierte Unternehmen und können die Nutzungsbedingungen für ihre Produkte selbst bestimmen.

Spieler formen das Spiel

An dieser Stelle könnte die Diskussion beendet sein, weil der Vergleich zwischen Staaten und Spielen hinkt. Wer ein Spiel nicht mag, muss es nicht spielen. Wer dagegen seinen Staat nicht mag, kann nicht ganz so einfach damit aufhören, Bürger dieses Staates zu sein.

Patrick Beuth

Patrick Beuth ist Redakteur im Ressort Digital bei ZEIT ONLINE. Seine Profilseite finden Sie hier.

Zwei Entwicklungen aber lassen durchaus Raum für ein sich änderndes Selbstverständnis der Spieler, weg vom Kunden, hin zum mitstimmungsberechtigten “Bürger” eines Spiels: Erstens formen die Spieler durch ihren Einsatz von Zeit, Kreativität und Kooperation erst die Atmosphäre vor allem von Multiplayer-Online-Rollenspielen. Sie füllen die Welt mit Leben. Ohne sie wäre etwa die World of Warcraft ein öder Ort, der kaum neue Spieler und damit neue Einnahmen für den Anbieter anziehen würde. Wenn durch eine solche Mitgestaltung auch der Wille nach Mitbestimmung entsteht, ist das durchaus nachvollziehbar.

Zweitens bilden die Spieler in EverQuest, Diablo III oder künftig in The Elder Scrolls Online und vielleicht auch in Minecraft einen Wirtschaftsraum, indem sie mit virtuellen Gütern handeln oder virtuelle Arbeiten verrichten, die echtes Geld wert sind. “Sobald eine Online-Welt damit beginnt, diese Art der Interaktion anzubieten”, so schreibt LeJacq, “haben die Entwickler praktisch die gleiche Hausmacht, wie sie eine echte Regierung über ihr Volk hat.”

Ein Beispiel dafür: Blizzard hat für das trotz aller Beschwerden sehr erfolgreiche Diablo III exklusive Auktionshäuser gegründet. Nur dort können Spieler mit ihren im Spiel erbeuteten Gegenständen handeln. Angesichts der hohen Summen, die dort umgesetzt werden, so argumentiert LeJacq, muss das Unternehmen seine Rolle als Wächter über das Wirtschaftssystem sehr ernst nehmen. Es muss den Betrieb seiner Server sicherstellen, also den virtuellen Lebensraum der Spieler, und deren Eigentum beschützen – so wie es auch ein Staat für seine Bürger tun muss.

Diese Rolle aber dürfte den Herstellern nicht gefallen. Der Blogger und Autor Cory Doctorow sagte kürzlich der taz: “Für die Spielbetreiber sind Charaktere in Online-Welten keine Bürger mit Rechten, sondern Kunden, die Geschäftsbedingungen zu akzeptieren haben.” Rühmliche Ausnahme ist übrigens Eve Online, wo es einen von den Spielern gewählten Rat gibt, der in ihrem Aftrag mit dem Betreiber CCP über Verbesserungsvorschläge verhandelt.

In seinem Roman For the Win von 2010 beschreibt Doctorow, wie sich sogenannte Goldfarmer in einer Gewerkschaft organisieren, weil sie nicht länger unter miserablen Arbeitsbedingungen virtuelle Gegenstände in Onlinewelten erspielen wollen. Im Buch haben die organisierten Spieler am Ende so viel Macht über das Wirtschaftssystem eines Spiels, dass sie den Hersteller unter Druck setzen können. In der Realität ist es umgekehrt: Die Hersteller können ihre virtuellen Währungen, den milliardenschweren In-Game-Handel und ihre Nutzungsbedingungen ständig ändern, ohne dass die Spieler das verhindern können.

“Mit diesen Spielen kreieren wir Welten, in denen es kein vernünftiges Rechtssystem gibt”, sagt Doctorow.

Dialog auf Augenhöhe

Professor Castronova plädiert für eine langsame Annäherung. Er empfiehlt den Entwicklern, künftig Räume für den konstruktiven Austausch mit den Spielern einzurichten. Falls es dann Probleme gibt, müssten sich die Spieler nicht mehr nur über Twitter oder in Foren Gehör verschaffen. Stattdessen könnten sie einen echten Dialog auf Augenhöhe starten. Denn eines habe der Protest gegen Blizzard gezeigt: “Diese Neigung, sich gegen etwas aufzulehnen, zeigt, dass Spiele wirklich mehr wie Regierungen als nur Produkte aus Hollywood sind.”

Es wäre nun an der Zeit für die Gamer selbst, zu erklären, ob sie sich als Bürger oder als Konsumenten von Spielen verstehen.

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Scared Stiff: Amnesia and the evolution of the modern horror game

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Scared Stiff: Amnesia and the evolution of the modern horror game

by Colette Bennett on Jun 18th 2012 3:00PM

If it’s horror, Colette Bennett knows it. This column is dedicated to everything frightening gaming has to offer, from ghostly little Japanese girls to flesh eating zombie dogs. You fumble through the darkness, your feet slopping in the rain. You have no idea where you are or how you even got here. An unfamiliar sound reverberates in the distance, its tinny undertones stinging your ears and furthering your sense of confusion. You’re alone and have nothing to defend yourself with. And the only sound you can hear is that of your breathing, ragged with panic. There’s no mistaking it – this is survival horror.

Unlike the basic action and platform genre, the evolution of horror titles has followed a slow, twisty path. By the mid-nineties, it was known for its signature talent: the ability to reel you into a dark, unknown world like a helpless fish. Titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil acted as some of the first passports into the journey we now refer to as “psychological horror.” System Shock, Parasite Eve, Fatal Frame, and Siren were memorable trips into less-than-reassuring territory. Throw in some unexplained, mysterious figures, watch the world spin out of control, and you’ve got one hell of a recipe for an addictive genre. Who would have thought that fog-choked towns and shambling creatures who greet you with a spray of vomit could be so appealing?

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Any genre has its tropes, and horror has become known for them to the point where they can feel stale if used clumsily. Silent Hill: Downpour, the eighth game in the franchise, earned a mere 68 on Metacritic as opposed to much higher scores for earlier games. Survival horror fans often complain that the genre has become so formulaic that it is no longer frightening. More zombies? No problem. Possessed townspeople? Great. An enchanted hellhound wearing the face of my three-year-old daughter? Super. Does horror gaming need something new, a way to re-establish that bone-chilling touch of past years?

Thomas Grip of Frictional Games thinks it just might. The studio is known for subconsciously disturbing titles such as Penumbra and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which forego the run-and-gun approach for something a little bit more thoughtful, and perhaps that much more insidious as well. Frictional recently partnered with UK-based developer thechineseroom, maker of the indie hit Dear Esther, to create a sequel to Amnesia called A Machine for Pigs. Despite revealing the game to Joystiq in February, details on the Amnesia follow-up are being kept to a minimum for now; however, based on the game’s first trailer, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs sports the same moody look as its predecessor. Grip says that when it comes to developing an effective horror game, a vision of what kind of meaning will be communicated to the audience is key. “To start, you have some high-level idea of the kind of experience you want to achieve, and then the focus lies on expressing that experience in the best way possible. Horror entails a wide spectrum of possible experiences, so what kind of elements will be important depends a lot on the path chosen.” Grip believes part of the genre’s current fumbles is that that traditional game mechanics and effective horror tactics don’t always make for a harmonious marriage. “Games need to be seen as challenges,” he explained. “This often dulls the horror a lot because it forces the player to repeat events over and to learn the underlying system. A horror [game] needs to make sure the player is not overexposed to the scary elements, because that quickly dulls their impact. Horror also thrives on players using their imagination, and this is counteracted when the system needs to be figured out.”
So there’s a delicate balance when it comes to the scares. However, most games feature some sort repetition of action. With this in mind, should horror games be shorter in order to achieve maximum impact? Grip’s take is that a game should last as long as needed, whether that time frame is one hour or 20.

Games need to be seen as challenges. This often dulls the horror a lot because it forces the player to repeat events over and to learn the underlying system.- Thomas Grip, Frictional Games

“Many games are designed to be as long as possible and from the get-go aim at a certain play-time length. This can only lead to bad things in terms of building a good holistic experience. In the horror genre, many of the best works come in the shorter variety, so we are missing out a lot of interesting videogames if the minimum length is eight hours. And trying to extend a two hour experience to a eight hour one often completely removes the impact that it could have had.” When it comes to creating a horror gaming experience, as with any other gaming experience, one of the key goals is to create a product that will sell. By adding a list of features to prove to potential buyers that the game has a lot to offer, you can afford to put a high price tag on it. But in the case of great horror games, these requirements can also dull the experience by forcing it to fit onto a mold it was never intended for. “It is because of the need to create a product that we have upgrade systems, costumes, strangely placed shops, RPG elements, and all kind of features that are just thrown in without thinking about their impact on the intended experience,” Grip said. Dan Pinchbeck, creative director at thechineseroom, believes that while horror games should be effective experiences, it’s also important to recognize the value of their disposability. “Games don’t need to say anything or extend beyond the play experience to have a value. If it happens, it’s often a very personal thing, and that’s okay. But at the end of the day, it’s still entertainment, and that should be the focus. It’s really important that people have these completely separate spaces for experience that are disposable, distinct, that don’t have any particular meaning outside the playing session. If we start requiring our fiction to be valued only by what it achieves outside of being fiction, that’s a really bad thing. A good story, a good experience, a good game – that should be enough.” While the hybridization of action and horror themes has dismayed many a purist from time to time, it’s safe to say that the indie horror scene is thriving, and offering a very different kind of experience than bigger budget horror titles. It may be partially due to the fact that there is less drive to create that product that must drum up enough presence to occupy the coveted space on a GameStop shelf, when so many forms of digital distribution allow game creators to not only make exactly the game they want, but at the price they want as well. It’s for this reason that we’re seeing new blossoms within a genre that’s bravely exploring distinctly different landscapes. The most exciting times in gaming history are those in which we cast the molds aside. As horror gaming turns away from what we’ve come to expect and towards that which we couldn’t even dream of, we approach one of those great moments where the ground is unsteady under our feet. Just when we least expect to be frightened, we may find ourselves taken by surprise in a whole new way. And that’s just what we’re hoping for.

Colette Bennett is based out of New Orleans. She has written for outlets such as Kotaku, Destructoid, Gamasutra, Touch Arcade, GamesRadar, and GameRanx. She currently runs a weekly column for CNN Geek Out! You can catch her writing about less scary situations at @ColetteBennett or at her website.

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Tags: amnesia-a-machine-for-pigs, Dan-Pinchbeck, Frictional-Games, pc, thechineseroom, Thomas-Grip

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Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Info

Description

The next chapter in the Amnesia series of survival horror games.

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MSRP

N/A

Release Date

2012

Genre

Survival Horror

Developer

Frictional Games, thechineseroom

Publisher

Frictional Games

Rating

RP (Rating Pending)

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Features - Postmortem: Zachtronics Industries' SpaceChem

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By Zach Barth
[Zach Barth, developer of the cult indie puzzle hit SpaceChem explains what went into creating such a complex, nuanced game — while still working a day job — and also what held back the game from finding the audience it might otherwise have found.]

Shortly after releasing , a Flash game about building machines that create and transform alchemical compounds, I started thinking about a chemistry-themed sequel. Since Codex was already a simplified model of molecular bonding, expanding into chemistry proper would provide more mechanics (such as multiple bonds between atoms) and puzzles (different compounds, from simple ones like water to more complicated ones like benzene). Despite this, making immediate sequels is not in my nature, so I set the idea aside and moved on.

About a year later I visited Gas Works Park in Seattle and was inspired by its derelict chemical processing pipeline.

Thinking back to the idea for a chemistry-inspired Codex sequel, it occurred to me to combine the low-level manipulations of the Codex with a high-level pipeline construction mechanic. The idea for SpaceChem was born!

The idea evolved over the next six months, picking up a cosmic horror story with boss battles in the process.

I started developing the game in my spare time with a coworker from my day job, eventually growing the team to seven people before shipping SpaceChem.

The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, the predecessor to SpaceChem. Believe it or not, it’s actually harder!

What Went Right

1. We Created Open-Ended Puzzles

Although we made a lot of questionable development decisions, the game’s open-ended puzzles are unquestionably the biggest thing we did right; without them, SpaceChem would not be SpaceChem!

The standard gameplay “formula” for SpaceChem is to give the player a set of tools (instructions and reactors), a challenge with a clear end condition (create molecules X, Y, and Z), and an empty area in which to create a solution. Because of this, we were able to design almost all of the puzzles without knowing how they might be solved, focusing instead on making sure that each challenge was logically unique and could not be solved by repeating a previous solution.

After playtesting the levels, we reordered them, removed logical “duplicates”, and filled “gaps” to create a fairly linear (albeit steep) difficulty curve. In some ways this makes puzzle design easier, as it avoids the chicken-and-egg problems that arise when designing a puzzle and its solution simultaneously.

An exciting side-effect of creating puzzles this way is that they end up being more open-ended and start to resemble the kind of problems that engineers and designers face in real life. Although some players find this intimidating, others find it intensely rewarding and discover a sense of ownership in their solutions not found in other games, quickly propelling SpaceChem into “favorite game” territory.

Superfund? More like super-fun!

2. We Kept Our Risks Low

Although it’s not as sexy as full-time independent game development, most of the people who worked on SpaceChem did so in their spare time while holding full-time jobs outside of the games industry. This allowed us to rely almost entirely on profit sharing for compensation.

By working with international contractors to fill our talent gaps and using free tools and software wherever possible, the non-time investments to bring SpaceChem to market were small and low-risk. Although this clearly wouldn’t work for “serious” game developers, it allowed us to break into the games industry with a good deal of momentum and no fear of failure!

3. We Picked a Great Platform — PC!

The PC was the best possible platform for a game like SpaceChem. The barrier to entry is extremely low compared to similarly “open” platforms like the Apple App Store and Xbox Live Indie Games. Almost every person who reads about your game on a computer is capable of buying and playing the game within a few clicks. Leveraging this, we were able to roll out SpaceChem in a few phases:

1. When SpaceChem launched, it was only available for purchase on the Zachtronics Industries store, a website created solely for the purpose of selling SpaceChem. We chose to build our own store because it let us sell for all three PC platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux), because it let us keep 100 percent of the revenue (minus PayPal fees), and because we were unable to get on Steam. Despite the fact that our customer base was much smaller than other online stores, the Zachtronics Industries fan base, built on previous free games like the Codex and Infiniminer, quickly embraced SpaceChem and set us off to a strong start.

2. Before the game had even been released, PC game website Rock, Paper, Shotgun found SpaceChem in the 2011 IGF entry list and wrote a flattering post about the game. After launch it posted a review and an interview, drawing additional and much-needed attention to the game, helping to secure additional posts and interviews on other gaming news sites. The lesson here: as an independent game developer with little to no marketing budget, games journalists are your best friends!

3. Shortly after the word got out about how awesome SpaceChem was, we were able to reconnect with Valve about distribution on Steam. After a bit of work to integrate with the Steam platform for achievements and friend leaderboards, SpaceChem was launched on Steam, giving us access to their tremendous audience, epic seasonal sales, and painless update process. Although we’ve launched SpaceChem on many distribution channels in the past year, none have been as successful for us as Steam.

4. Toward the end of 2011, we partnered with the Humble Bundle to include SpaceChem in the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, something that was only possible because of our choice to target Windows, Mac, and Linux.

4. We Used C#

Using C# in SpaceChem paid off in every phase of the development process, especially when we made the post-release decision to port to a completely new platform — the iPad.

All of our developers (as well as myself) were proficient in C#, which made it an obvious choice. The excellent tool support and fast compilation times greatly reduced the time it took to try new ideas.

These same features made it easy for me, as a designer, to casually browse and tweak almost anything in the game without a developer’s assistance. Our choice of language also meant that we were able write everything — the game engine, in-game scripting, and tools — in the same language.

Early on, we were concerned that using a managed language could lead to performance problems, but it was not an issue in practice.

Using C# also gave the option of porting SpaceChem to almost any platform. Initially, we planned to use XNA to target both Windows and Xbox. When we later decided to target Mac OS X and Linux instead of Xbox, we switched to OpenGL and SDL and were able to easily develop for all three of those platforms, using Mono on the non-Windows platforms.

When we later decided to attempt a port to the iPad, we were able to leverage MonoTouch and only had to rewrite platform-specific aspects of the game. Most of the porting effort was in updating the UI to work with a touch interface instead of a mouse and keyboard.

5. We Were Innovative With Our “Community Features”

Two of my previous Flash-based open-ended “engineering games”, Codex and KOHCTPYKTOP, included a feature allowing players to save and load their solutions as blocks of text. Although it made for a terrible save/load experience, it had the unintended consequence of allowing players to compete in the comments on Kongregate and the Zachtronics Industries website to build the most efficient solutions, using the save/load text as proof. Since SpaceChem was going to be a similarly open-ended game, we knew early on that we needed ways for players to evaluate their solutions and compete in private.

SpaceChem’s histograms were developed as a replacement for global leaderboards. They solve two common problems:

1. Getting your name at the top of the leaderboards is a fantastic incentive for cheating.

2. For most players, the only thing a global leaderboard manages to tell you is that you suck (and not even by how much).

Unlike global leaderboards, SpaceChem’s histograms allow you to quickly and impersonally see how your solution stacks up against the aggregate. We have found that most players discover that their solution is terrible, but quickly formulate a personal challenge after looking at the histogram and replay the puzzle to improve their score. Because we include three antagonistic metrics (number of cycles, number of symbols, and number of reactors), players optimizing for one criterion often do poorly in the others, padding the graphs with low scores that make it easier to beat the average in a single category.

Of all the features in SpaceChem, the score histograms are probably one of the most popular, and one of my personal favorites. Considering that they’re not much more difficult than a leaderboard to implement, there’s no reason not to include them in your game and/or community platform — we’re looking at you, Steam!

Who put math in my game?!

To enable players to compete in private, we designed a feature where a valid solution could be exported to our website as a set of navigable screenshots with baked-in score information, which could then be easily posted to a forum, Twitter, or anywhere else on the internet. In addition to allowing players to compete, it would include advertising for the game, helping to increase the “viral potential”.

However, while implementing this feature we discovered that SpaceChem screenshots were absolutely impossible to follow. We switched to recording videos and leveraged YouTube as a “hosting solution” that happened to have built-in community features.

When we started implementing the in-game video recording features, we learned just how hard it is to perform cross-platform video recording in C#, both from technical and licensing standpoints. We ended up writing a small, native tool (compiled for each platform) that allowed us to stream raw RGB information (captured using OpenGL framebuffers) into Ogg Theora video files. These video files are then either saved to the user’s desktop or uploaded to YouTube with credentials provided by the player.

What Went Wrong

1. We Misjudged Our Audience

Prior to SpaceChem, I had already established a small but strong fan-base with my previous “engineering” games. On Kongregate, Codex had over 400,000 plays; it didn’t seem like a stretch to convert enough of them into SpaceChem customers to cover our costs of development and make a little money, given that the game launched at $20.

So, when we started thinking about who our audience was for the game and what would be appropriate, we assumed the standard Zachtronics audience, who seemingly wanted a longer, more polished “engineering” puzzle game. It should be noted that this is the same audience that enjoyed KOHCTPYKTOP, a Soviet-themed puzzle game about integrated circuit design and layout.

Fast forward to March 2011: three months after release, SpaceChem was available on Steam to a much larger audience and we were looking at the possibility of making far more money that we had ever imagined, if only we could convince the general public that they wanted to play a game that very much appeared to be about chemistry.

The first incorrect assumption we made was thinking that everyone likes science. Although the internet may love “Science!” thanks to games like Portal, games that look like actual chemistry remind most people of chemistry class.

The number of times I’ve read and heard the words “but I’m not good at chemistry” in connection with SpaceChem is staggering. A particular game design colleague has asserted many times that had we called the game “SpaceGems” and made it about alchemy, we would have sold twice as many copies. Although I like building games around real-life knowledge, I’m not sure if I disagree with his assessment.

The second incorrect assumption we made was thinking that puzzle games need to be difficult and long to be good. Although challenge is essential to making puzzle games “work”, the difficulty that emerges from the mechanics of SpaceChem can be bewildering, even if it’s what makes the puzzles feel so open-ended. Combining this intrinsic difficulty with an abundance of puzzles that must be beaten to “complete” the game gives SpaceChem an oppressive 40+ hour difficulty curve that only 2 percent of players reach the end of.

2. We Flubbed Our Metrics

In our first private beta playtest, our metrics capturing system failed to capture any data, an event that in hindsight describes much of our statistics-gathering strategy for SpaceChem. Preoccupied with fixing post-launch bugs, it took us weeks to realize that our demo couldn’t upload metrics data.

Later we discovered that, because we only uploaded metrics at the start of the game, we never captured any information from single-launch customers, which likely included many players who got stuck in a tutorial and then never bothered to try the game again. By the time we got things straightened out, we only managed to learn the magnitude of obvious things, such as the fact that SpaceChem is stupidly difficult.

On the plus side, I got to make some neat infographics!

Completion rates for the puzzles in the SpaceChem. (Click for larger image)

The “average” of 500 solutions for a particular puzzle in SpaceChem.

3. We Made the Game Too Long

When making a game, it’s important to provide as much content as possible — right?

The biggest difference between SpaceChem and my previous games is that it was a commercial endeavor. The second biggest difference was the amount of content — 50 puzzles, plus a full story, instead of the five to 15 story-free puzzles I would usually aim for. Although some of the earlier puzzles in the game can be solved in minutes, many of the puzzles take hours. Some, such as the game’s final boss battle, routinely take players days to solve — if they even get that far.

There’s nothing wrong with having difficult puzzles in a puzzle game; the capabilities, interest, and patience of your players will always span a huge range, so difficult puzzles can keep the best players challenged and give everyone else something to aspire to. However, when progression through a story is blocked by progression through the gameplay, making the game too difficult denies all but your best players completion of the story and the satisfaction and enjoyment that goes with it. By the time we realized this, it was too late. Since our story and our puzzles were tightly coupled, separating them so that the story ended earlier would have required reworking the entire campaign.

The puzzles available in SpaceChem fall into two categories: campaign puzzles and user-created “ResearchNet” puzzles. Although I’ve heard many players describe their lack of progress in the campaign as “not finishing the game”, I’ve never heard anyone claim that, by not beating every single ResearchNet puzzle, they felt as if they had unfinished business. This seems to indicate that players naturally tag the end of the story as the “completion” point. So, if you’re going to make a story-driven puzzle game that gets progressively harder, you really ought to put the hardest content after the end of the story!

We ran into a similar dilemma when deciding where to end the demo. Since SpaceChem is so unlike other games, it seemed fair to make sure that players got a good taste of the game before being forced to make the purchase. The puzzles in SpaceChem are divided into planets (about six puzzles each), with the first two planets consisting entirely of tutorial puzzles.

Ending the demo on the third planet had the benefit of giving players a good feel for how difficult the non-tutorial puzzles were and demonstrated the game’s boss battles, the first of which did not show up until the end of the third planet. Unfortunately, it also made the demo about four hours long, which isn’t good for encouraging impulse buys.

I’ve heard claims from various sources (particularly in the mobile space) that making your demo shorter is always better for sales. Even if that’s true, I don’t entirely regret our decision. Any player who realized the game was not for them when they reached the third planet would have been strongly disappointed if they had to buy the game to learn this. Likewise, any player who made it past the third planet and wanted more would be likely to love the rest of the game. Our business exists to make our customers happy — why would we act against that?

4. We Made a Game That Was Too Hard to “Get”

There aren’t many games like SpaceChem, which makes it spectacularly hard to explain, especially to people who are only familiar with more “mainstream” titles. To make matters worse, the surface appearance of the game — fake chemistry, often mistaken for real chemistry — completely belies the game’s addictive Portal-like problem solving. To complicate things further, our presentation of fake chemistry lacks the appeal (i.e. sexy scientists) to draw curious viewers in! The end result is a game that is nearly impossible to discover, try, and buy.

Fortunately for us, SpaceChem is extremely addictive! And, as is the case with most addictive substances, it is the responsibility of your questionable friends to get you hooked. Partially because of our planned “community features” and partially because it’s just what great fans do, SpaceChem’s early adopters took the time to tell their friends that they had to try it.

Although I doubt anyone was able to explain SpaceChem and make it sound like fun (“You went to university for computer science, right? Well, I have the game for you!”), making a game that our fans demanded their friends try got us pretty far.

5. We Never Got the Tutorial Right

Historically, my love for making complicated games has outpaced my ability to explain them properly. SpaceChem is no exception to this trend.

When we launched, the tutorial for SpaceChem consisted of 12 puzzles that covered the basics — inputs, outputs, bonding, unbonding, reactors, and pipelines. Two of the 12 puzzles were “walkthroughs”, which included explicit instructions for building a solution and explained, step by step, what each piece was responsible for. Additionally, there are also 13 “info screens” spread throughout the entire game explaining new, high-level concepts (such as atoms + bonds = molecules, and what to do on defense missions) as they are encountered.

The responses of players who played through the tutorials ranged from immediate understanding to complete incomprehension (something that I think is actually quite uncommon for modern games, given the combination of better design practices and better “game literacy” among players). Some of the reasons I suspect for this are:

We failed to clearly show the objective of a puzzle. The primary goal of a SpaceChem puzzle is to take “inputs” and convert them into the specified required “outputs”. For anyone in the software industry this is an obvious endeavor, but for the general population it’s not a given, especially in the context of fake chemistry.

Although the first puzzle (a “walkthrough”) clearly demonstrated inputs and outputs, most players follow the instructions without recognizing the purpose of what they’re doing. We partially resolved this by including a video tutorial that focuses on the high-level goal of SpaceChem — transforming inputs to outputs — giving the player some context when they reach the first walkthrough.

We failed to make the game start simply enough. To build a level in SpaceChem, it’s necessary to build an entire “loop” with the minimum following components: input, grab, arrows, drop, and output. Considering most players barely understood their goal, forcing a minimum of five different tasks on them from the beginning is overwhelming. This problem could have been fixed by changing the design space to have a smaller “minimum possible solution”, although it wasn’t much of an option post-release.

We exposed too many details too quickly. SpaceChem is filled with lots of details and rules, such as what can be moved, what can be predicted, and what is required to solve a puzzle. Although the interaction of these rules makes SpaceChem open-ended and emergent, it also makes it confusing, especially when players misinterpret what they see.

A common example of this concerns “waldos”, SpaceChem’s programmable manipulators. The default configuration for a reactor consists of a red waldo at the top and a blue waldo at the bottom; because this is the default setup, many players assume that the red waldo can only be used on the top and the blue waldo can only be used on the bottom. We mitigated this and similar cases by tweaking the tutorial puzzles to include counter-examples, although the problem is by no means fixed.

We used too much text to explain things. There were many situations where we were forced to use text to explain rules and nuances of the game. In retrospect, this is a clear sign that we needed to change the game, not explain it more forcefully.

You lost me when you started talking about molecules.

Conclusion

All things considered, the development and release of SpaceChem went much better than anyone on the team anticipated. I had originally hoped to cover our costs and make a little money, but ended up leaving my job and starting a game studio to work on new titles. New titles, I might add, that are hopefully more accessible than SpaceChem!

Data Box

- Developer: Zachtronics Industries

- Publisher: Zachtronics Industries

- Release Date: January 1, 2011

- Platforms: PC (Windows/Mac/Linux), iPad, OnLive

- Number of Developers: 7

- Length of Development: 1 year

- Budget: $4,000 and lots of free time

- Lines of Code: 17k (game) + 5k (utility)

- Development Tools: Visual Studio (C#), Subversion, MonoTouch

- Fake Elements Invented: 4

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