Bloggerjak

psdo: anderjak: but what do i know some of my favorite games are like...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:14:29 -0400

psdo:

anderjak:

but what do i know some of my favorite games are like half-movie

NANOMACHINES?

when in doubt,

IT’S ALWAYS NANOMACHINES PRESS THE ACTION BUTTON

but what do i know some of my favorite games are like half-movie

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:12:09 -0400

but what do i know some of my favorite games are like half-movie

Writing By Design: The Fallacy of Equating Games to Film

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:03:55 -0400

Since it crawled up on my dash… These are just my thoughts, and I’m still constantly reexamining and reworking them, but here goes:

What is a well written video game? What defines that?

The short answer is, no one can tell you, because video games are inherently impossible to define as being objectively good or bad, possibly more so than movies or books, since quality must then be combined by the interactive element; you’re not just catering to taste in narrative, but taste in mechanics as well.

The quest to create the “Citizen Kane” of video games is one that hopefully plenty of designers realize is kind of silly, as it fetishizes and idolizes Film with a capital “F” as a gold standard of storytelling. Though, to be fair, if you’ve played any game within the past ten years, you’d be forgiven for thinking games were just film and fancy board games smashed together.

A well written game is an inappropriate goal, as good writing in a game is comprised of multiple parts, to name just a few:

The story writer; their task is to plot out how the game’s story goes, from beat to beat. They aren’t always responsible for the pacing of story events between game events, but they are responsible for creating logical excuses for game segments, or finding ways of blending the mechanics together to create a narrative that matters to the gameplay.
The game designer; their task is to design the functions that allow the player to interact with the world and, at times, with the story itself. Every mechanic ideally must uphold whatever narrative is in place, if there is in fact a narrative to speak of. Any time the player presses a button, they must be committing an act that only their avatar in that world can manage, and should only work outside of those rules if the story calls for those rules to be changed.
The level designer and art director; These two roles will often work in conjunction with one another, as they establish the world that the player interacts with. This isn’t quite like VFX artists for film and TV; they are literally creating spaces for players to occupy, navigate, and explore. More so than any other medium, the environment the player interacts with must uphold as many aspects of the story as is feasible and reasonable. Clutter in Deus Ex: Human Revolution helps things feel lived in and “occupied”; Sterile walls bleeding into rusted, abandoned areas help define the arc of progression in Portal 1; Overgrowth in Enslaved: Journey to the West tell the story of the amount of time since the Catalyst event, and show the world’s recovery.

So, what defines a “well written game” is impossible to decipher because it’s not about writing; it is instead about channeling the player into that world and creating mechanics that make sense and feel appropriate for what the developer is trying to achieve.

It gets more confusing when you realize games aren’t necessarily supposed to be fun; games can make you commit terrible acts that are absolutely joyless, yet a good game can convince you it’s the only thing you can do in that situation. A good game can make you cry because of what you’re doing, what you’re interacting with — and, sometimes, it can do so by clever removal of mechanics. They can make you laugh or shriek in terror or make you feel void of emotion because of how draining they can be.

If you were to ask me what REALLY defines a “well written game,” I’d more likely point out games that don’t have a lot of similarities to film or comics or books. thatgamecompany’s titles, like Flow, Flower, and Journey, are great examples of games that are well designed to achieve very specific emotions, and have a very high success rate of making you feel the way the developer wants, with mechanics that feel appropriate and purposeful and help make you forget that you’re playing just another game. The Walking Dead game by TellTale does a great job of featuring dialog as a seemingly primary function — something it DOES share plenty with film — but it is the WAY these dialogs, these simple choices, affect the player emotionally. TWD is horrifying, funny, heartfelt, gutwrenching, heartwrenching, and so much more because of design from multiple fields working together to create very specific feelings and convey very particular concepts to the player, and make them feel a very specific way.

There aren’t a lot of well written scripts in game, that much is true. But a well written script isn’t entirely necessary; what matters more is how all of these other factors achieve those feelings.

With film, you can read a script and get a strong idea of how to feel, because it is conveying as much as it can through text, and though the visual and audio certainly boost those feelings, you can get a good sense of impact from what the script tells you.

Games, however, don’t quite do that. Sure, you can read a script that hits the same sort of notes as a film script, but well designed games take those ideas and implement them in a way that the player is right there when it happens — and is, by design, responsible for those moments.

Without that player interaction, without the very concept of interactivity, games are nothing more than a series of buttons to press between cutscenes. Yet, it’s the stories defined by the player, by how the player can interact with the story, by the things that they DO, which define a strong story, and that can often be done without a single cutscene or line of dialog.

Note that I say “interactivity” over “freedom”; this is because games can elect to be a very guided experience or a very open one. One isn’t necessarily more valid than the other; lots of games I consider to be incredibly well designed are typically tightly linear, with only a little freedom granted, but others are defined by results that vary radically between players, or are defined by the things they see and discover within the mechanics and world. Yet, still, even at their most linear and guided, a well designed game can still involve the player deeply by having them commit to these moments themselves, if these functions that dictate their “gameness” are implemented smartly.

So, the answer is, there’s no such thing as a well written game. It’s simply too simple a question to grasp the complexity of what defines a game.

Because, unlike film or books, the player IS the protagonist, and that dramatically shifts how the quality of the experience can be defined.

Hey look I posted my dumb face and my voice on the internet at...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:09:00 -0400

Hey look I posted my dumb face and my voice on the internet at the same time.

I said I was gonna attempt a vlog, and here’s an attempt. Just taken from my cell phone, so it’s shaky as butts.

Just talking about something that concerned me in regards to some of the reports surrounding the XBox One and how I can’t find a solid source/confirmation of that data.

EDIT: Now no longer private. I’m a doofus.

I made a vlog entry. Seeing how mobile uploads work — it’s probably gonna suck, but if...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:54:24 -0400

I made a vlog entry. Seeing how mobile uploads work — it’s probably gonna suck, but if it works out, it means I can do this shit right from my phone! No fuss, no muss.

sqoozh replied to your post: Ah, neat, woke up to find my Battle.net account… i for one...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:02:33 -0400

sqoozh replied to your post: Ah, neat, woke up to find my Battle.net account…

i for one consider this a decent enough excuse to start playing starcraft 2

you are a terrible enabler because i wasn’t thinking of it and now i can’t get the idea out of my head

Ah, neat, woke up to find my Battle.net account hacked. Which doesn’t really matter at all...

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:38:56 -0400

Ah, neat, woke up to find my Battle.net account hacked.

Which doesn’t really matter at all because it’s a simple fix, but it does mean I’m spending a good amount of my morning scanning my computer to make sure it’s not a problem on my end.

Aaaaaand now I have another Battle.net authenticator…………

Ooh! When will we be able to read those?

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:53:00 -0400

Huh, I answered this from my phone and it didn’t go through…

Okay, real talk: CFM is roughly planned to have a site up before the end of Summer, with regular updates — so, August-ish, if I had to pick a month.

Sapphixation is a whole other story. (Like, of course it is, but it’s… Look— anyway.) I’m doing a small bit of shopping around for it, to land it with a good home known for that sort of content, so it depends on if I can get the idea picked up. I’ll likely be doing a promo comic for it because of that, though — I have an idea for Eris and Wastelander I’ve been wanting to do. No idea when that promo comic would be done, though! If I had my way versus the reality of the situation, it’d wind up appearing either within a couple of weeks ideally, or appearing more realistically some time in July.

What are CFM and Sapphixation?

Wed, 22 May 2013 03:00:00 -0400

CFM, short for Crabfaceman, and Sapphixation are two comics I’ve been working on for a while now. CFM is a short form comic that’s themed around anxiety and depression, and Sapphixation is an adult series meant to be read as standalone chapters.

More on them can be found on their respective tags, #crabfaceman and #sapphixation ! I can’t link through my phone for some dumb reason, but I tag any original works I have by series, so it’s all easy to dig in to, even if it isn’t very organized.

Okay tomorrow’s plan should THEORETICALLY be what I planned to do today More brainstorming on...

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:22:29 -0400

Okay tomorrow’s plan should THEORETICALLY be what I planned to do today

More brainstorming on CFM, switch for Metroid script if that doesn’t work out (Also applicable: coming up with an idea for Sapphixation since that’s now on my brain and it’s due for a slight reworking)
Work on either one of the two illustrations I have in queue

Simple

So, rather than do work I was SUPPOSED to do, today was just a plain ol’ good-ass art...

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:42:00 -0400

So, rather than do work I was SUPPOSED to do, today was just a plain ol’ good-ass art day

I’ll take that as a win

i like to see what tags people put on reblogs because sometimes they’re really sweet things...

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:26:44 -0400

i like to see what tags people put on reblogs because sometimes they’re really sweet things and then i clicked on one and i was like “who’s this goober”

it was me

i hate that guy

sqoozh: zack and i have our work room set up so that we’re back to back so whenever i turn around i...

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:23:41 -0400

sqoozh:

zack and i have our work room set up so that we’re back to back so whenever i turn around i get a face full of whatever he’s drawing and it’s always awesome and great

ceaseless farting

anderjak-creations: I also drew Garnet, from Rebecca Sugar’s...

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:22:36 -0400

anderjak-creations:

I also drew Garnet, from Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe.

Growing up, I ended up watching a lot of magical girl anime — whatever made it to the Blockbuster anime section’s shelves, anyway, outside of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura — and always adoring it, so I can’t help but feel a little like Steven, looking at all these badass ladies and, instead of feeling emasculated, he’s just wanting to be even half as awesome as they were.

So here’s to yet another home run for CN!

… my enid got reblogged by ian jq welp my time on this earth is done nice knowing you

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:16:29 -0400

… my enid got reblogged by ian jq

welp

my time on this earth is done

nice knowing you

sephiramy replied to your post: sephiramy replied to your post: wow steven… Well then HOW...

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:10:26 -0400

sephiramy replied to your post: sephiramy replied to your post: wow steven…

Well then HOW IN THE HECK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO HELP ME??? Who WILL help me?!

NO ONE CAN HELP YOU

EVERYONE IS FANARTING ALL OVER THE PLACE

ALL THERE IS NOW IS FANART

THERE IS NOTHING ELSE

sephiramy replied to your post: wow steven universe and lakewood plaza turbo are… I am...

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:08:06 -0400

sephiramy replied to your post: wow steven universe and lakewood plaza turbo are…

I am already fanarting. Help. :c

i already fanarted

sqoozh: Oh here have a thing. Leeloo’s reconstruction scene...

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:04:14 -0400

sqoozh:

Oh here have a thing.

Leeloo’s reconstruction scene from The Fifth Element drawn in the style of and using characters from the original Cutey Honey manga.

I don’t think it’s done yet. Gotta finagle some screen tones and probably add in a few more background elements.

Edit: You can’t really see the halftone because the files I uploaded were huge. I’ll fix that eventually.

anderjak-creations: So, did you hear about Lakewood Plaza...

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:02:10 -0400

anderjak-creations:

So, did you hear about Lakewood Plaza Turbo?

I’ve been following Ian JQ since RPG World, and he’s always been one of my favorite creators out there, so him land his own show that is already becoming one of my favorite tributes to 90’s fighting games is just amazing to behold.

wow steven universe and lakewood plaza turbo are awesome legitimately awesome if this is...

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:06:00 -0400

wow

steven universe and lakewood plaza turbo are awesome

legitimately awesome

if this is what’s to come of the aftermath of shows like adventure time, then i would like to submit now to our cartoon network overlords