Expertologist.

The question of when videogames will have their own Citizen Kane – that is, one that provides the great leap forward from embarrassing hobby to legitimate art form so desperately craved by so many – seems to crop up more and more with each passing month. It’s the bad penny of games journalism, the go-to question whenever a developer talks up their current title as providing a new, deeper experience for players or someone from another medium mentions games in a positive light. Across magazines and websites dedicated to talking about videogames, there’s a sense of anxious anticipation for the One True Game, a title of such messianic portent that it will immediately make the rest of the world stand up and take notice. No longer will videogames and the people who make and play them be ghettoized as boring virgins or the safe nerdy friend with the unrequited crush in sitcoms and movies. In the wake of this unknown game, videogames will be take their rightful place as the tenth art form, placed high on a pedestal along side art, music, theater, film, comics and all the rest to be respected and admired for having something to say worth listening to.

Unfortunately for those waiting and watching for such a game to appear, it’s not going to. There will be no Citizen Kane of videogames, no one game that suddenly vindicates gaming as an art form in the same way as Orson Wells’ masterpiece purportedly did, because that’s not the way the world works any more, assuming it ever did in the first place. Legitimacy doesn’t come from one person in a field doing one thing right; it comes from movements, from consistency, from progress across the board creating a new standard for future work to be held against. We’re spending all our time looking for one very special tree, when we should be paying attention to the overall picture of what’s going on with the forest.

As someone who works in games, I find the idea of waiting around for one wonderful game to solve the industry’s concerns with being taken seriously to be particularly grating for a number of reasons, the biggest being that it smacks of wanting someone to come along and do it for me. I’ve seen the question of when videogames’ Citizen Kane will come along put to the likes of Peter Molyneux, Ken Levine, Warren Spector, and a dozen others, and I can’t help but wonder if any of them ever felt a bit insulted at being relegated to John the Baptist status, forever doomed to be remembered best for paving someone else’s way. To ask the question implies not only that such a game or event hasn’t already happened yet, waiting for some future huddle of thoughtful types to point it out as the turning point, but that when it does appear it’ll do so with bells on and a note around its neck declaring its importance. It is, really, a stupid thing to ask of anyone, so loaded down with assumptions and deep misunderstandings on the nature of games and art as a whole that asking it should make you feel a bit ashamed of yourself. Why should games evolve the same way film did, and why should we expect them to? Why would you assume there aren’t already games deserving to be called art, with all the good and bad that carries with it? Why are we waiting for one great turning point, when games make so many small and important ones each year? And more important than any of those questions, why oh why do we as a medium need any one else to tell us how smart and pretty we are?

For all the tremendous leaps and bounds videogames have made since first appearing, our medium’s story is ultimately one of evolution, not revolution. The incredible strides made towards more and more meaningful and engrossing experiences are the results of countless iterations big and small to discover what works and cast aside what doesn’t. Videogames are a medium unlike anything the world has ever seen, with greater potential and challenges than nearly any other art form can muster. Instead of waiting to be taken seriously by the world at large like a child squirming for permission to sit at the adult’s table, we should claim the art form status that’s rightfully ours, even if we aren’t entirely convinced we deserve it yet. The first step to being a grown up is calling yourself one – sooner or later, the rest of the world will come around.

Posted on June 1st, 2009 by chrislamb
Filed under: talk about games, thinking outloud | 2 Comments »

I really should have mentioned this earlier, as it’s both something I find incredibly interesting and feel deserves all the support it’s possible to give. Ian Schreiber, game designer, teacher, and co-author of Challenges For Game Designers with Brenda Brathwaite (you can find his blog on teach game design here and while you’re at it, check out Brenda’s always-interesting site Applied Game Design), is giving an online class on game design concepts - called, handily, Game Design Concepts - that starts in June and runs over the summer. The course description sums it up better than I can, and sounds all nice and official too:

This course provides students with a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design, along with practical exposure to the process of creating a game. Topics covered include iteration, rapid prototyping, mechanics, dynamics, flow theory, the nature of fun, game balance, and user interface design. Primary focus is on non-digital games.

The bit at the end there about non-digital games is particularly interesting, as I have almost no experience in terms of analog game design and have always considered it a huge hole in my toolset, one I’m lookingforward to filling in. Perhaps even more exciting, though, is the program’s price - The whole thing is free, other than the required text (aforementioned Challenges For Game Designers, which even outside of Amazon is half the price of your typical book on game design) and any supplies needed for the game you’ll create during the course. I picked up Challenges For Game Designers back when it first came out, and after reading through a good chunk of it, I think anybody participating will be in very good hands. All the information on the course can be found at the Game Design Concepts site, including where to to send an email if you’re interested in registering.

I think this is an absolutely great idea, and one I’d love to see more of. There are all kinds of events, conferences, festivals, and so on happening year-round with a focus on various aspects of the games industry and the academia built up around it, but many of them are just too cost prohibitive in terms of time and money to be doable for someone like, say, me. I’ve never attended the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco becaust I can’t afford the thousands of dollars involved in going an no company has ever offered to pay for me to go. Next week sees the five-day Games For Change Festival happening at Parson’s New School here in Manhattan, including the likes of Henry Jenkins, Ian Bogost, Brenda Brathwaite’s incredible game Train, and more, but with the bulk of it happening during my work week and passes running several hundred dollars, there’s no way I can make it. There are some cheap or free events concerning games that are more compatible with my work schedule - the IGDA hosts regular meet ups and demo nights, and recently NYU’s Game Center opened up lectures featuring Warren Spector, Mark Leblanc, and Eric Zimmerman to the public, which was greatly appreciated. I attend as many of these things as I can, but it doesn’t do much to take away from the feeling that I’m regularly missing out on things I could really benefit from as a designer. At my more bitter moments, it’s hard not to look at things like GDC and other big, expensive events as a private club I won’t be able to buy my way in to any time soon.

So before the course even starts, I’m already tremendously grateful to Ian Schreiber for taking the time and effort to offer this sort of thing free of charge to any and all who are interested. I didn’t go to college for game design (or anything else, actually); I kind of stumbled-ass backwards in to the thing, discovered I had an affinity for it, and almost immediately never wanted to do anything else with my life but make up things for people to play. I’ve spent a lot of time amassing a library of books, lectures, blog posts, articles, and anything else I could find on game design to temper my own experiences with, and am constantly looking out for anything that might teach me something new and make me a better designer. As such, to have someone who’s approach to design I already appreciate and admire offer a college-level that won’t plunge me in to debt and adapts to my schedule is something of a dream come true, and I can’t wait to get started.

Posted on May 25th, 2009 by chrislamb
Filed under: Game Design Concepts, Grand Theft Auto IV | 3 Comments »

It was all going so well until the boat arrived. I’m at the end of “Death Toll”, the second of Left 4 Dead’s four campaigns. We’ve called the boat via radio, meaning my fellow survivors and I just need to stave off the waves of undead pouring down upon the ramshackle boathouse we’re holed up in for another ten minutes or so. Despite hundreds of the monsters raining down on us, including more of the special infected than I’ve seen before and at least two Tanks appearing to pound us in to jelly, we’re all still alive when the fishing boat idles up to the dock, its captain screaming over the P.A. for us to get aboard. We make a break for it, clambering on to the deck just as another wave emerges from the trees. I’m firing on the zombies from the boat, waiting for us to pull away to safety, when I realize the hold up - only Louis the IT guy and Zoey the college girl are with me. Francis, the potentially unhinged biker guy, is still back at the boathouse, pumping shotgun rounds in to the ravenous mob surrounding him. The boat won’t leave till he’s on board or dead, and with him just out of rang of my assault rifle my only choice is to watch him die or try to help. After all it took to get here, it’s not really a choice at all.

I swing over the side of the boat, cutting a path to Francis just in time to help him back to his feet. They swarm me almost instantly, pummeling me from all sides, providing just enough of an opening to let me think I might make it back to the ship before knocking me down. I’m screaming for help while emptying my pistols in to them, but I already know no one is coming. Out of the corner of my eye, I can just make out the outline of Francis being drug down again. The pistols empty, my health bar slips from green to yellow to red, and the screen starts to dim around the edges…

Left 4 Dead is more than the zombie game I’ve always wanted without realizing it, it’s also pretty much the only online multiplayer experience I’ve had the patience for since Team Fortress 2 arrived a year and change ago. That both are from Valve is hardly coincidence - indeed, it’s hard to imagine the former existing without the lessons of enforcing cooperation between players first taught by the latter. But where TF2 introduced players to the ida that a team of average players working together would almost always overcome a team of more skilled lone gunman types, L4D tightens things even further by sticking hard and fast to the core rule of all zombie fiction: if you don’t work together, you will die alone. For better or worse, the three survivors accompanying you from safehouse to safe house, whether they’re human or AI bots (and, as a quick hat-tip to the lovely computer brain running things behind the scenes, I should mention that I was the only actual person in the above anecdote), are your best and only chance at making it out alive, and vice-versa. The fear of death as a motivation for sticking together is somewhat balanced out by the game constantly congratulating players on saving their friends by watching their back, healing them up, or even rescuing them from a Hunter or Smoker, but it’s never really goes away. Even in a safehouse, surrounded by friends and a pile of unlimited ammo, you can never quite shake the feeling that the walls could come down at any moment.

The results of being asked to trust the computer, complete strangers, or (sometimes worst of all) your friends with your livelihood are almost always unpredictable, and never fail to entertain no matter how many pieces you end up in. As great as it is to power through with a team of Captain Sensibles ready and will to shoot massive holes through anything that moves, it can be every bit as fun to go in with three little lost lambs who’ll snap the first time they hear a Witch sobbing in the dark. Sure, it can annoy to have your team fall to pieces within sight of a safehouse or while waiting for rescue, but it also offers a touch of realism that only you and your fellow players could have brought to the game. For all the atmosphere created by Valve’s carefully smashed levels and occasional pre-scripted flourishes, for all the looming menace that the AI Director adds by knowing just the worst possible moment to spawn of a wave of undead right behind you, it would all be for naught without the very real panic provided by the players. It’s a zombie film does as a conversation rather than a lecture, and there’s really nothing else like it.

Left 4 Dead is already one of my favorite games so far, and there’s so much I haven’t done in it. I haven’t even touched the “Blood Harvest” campaign, set in a rural farmland with little in the way of shelter and lots of wide open spaces for enemies to come at you from. I haven’t tried the Versus mode, where you take on the role of one of the Special Infected and use your knowledge of the maps to torment the other side. I haven’t seen all the hilarious scrawled messages between other survivors long since gone that line the walls of the safe houses. I haven’t managed to take down one of the monstrous Witches with a headshot, something I keep trying despite it ending in a mess of tears and blood nearly every time. I haven’t seen anything as funny as the time at the end of “No Mercy”, when my valiant stand off against a Tank was cut short by him punching me so hard I flew off the hospital roof like a rocket. For a game some have criticized as skimping on content, Left 4 Dead seems to bristle with new opportunities for amazing, completely unpredictable moments. It’s a game that I come away from each time with a new favorite bit, and while I’m sure that’ll wear off eventually given time, it’s not something I see happening any time soon.

Posted on December 19th, 2008 by chrislamb
Filed under: Left 4 Dead, talk about games | 1 Comment »

It’s very easy in Fallout 3 to stumble in to situations you just aren’t ready for. What’s left of the world has had a good long while to get used to the kill-or-be-killed side of post-apocalyptic living, meaning by the time you arrive on the scene they’ve all formed little gangs to handle gun toting loners like, well, you. Raiders and slavers travel or camp out in groups, wild dogs and mole rats with the size and temperament of boars roam the land in packs, and super mutants have turned the buddy system in to the stuff of nightmares. For the times you find yourself out-gunned and out-classed (something that happens quite often early in the game), there are a few options available for attempting to stave off death.

1. Run. This is the least likely to work. If wild animals are after you, you can bet on them being faster than you. If it’s raiders or mutants, they’ll chase you down for sport. You’ll just die tired.

2. Fight. The VATS system helps even things out, but until you’ve leveled up a bit nearly every fight is going to leave you cut to little ribbons. If you opt to stand your ground, make sure you have plenty of stimpaks and keep a safe place you can recover at within limping distance.

3. Improvise. There are all kinds of things you can use against enemies to take them by surprise. Wrecked cars will explode with just a few bullets put in to their engine, and the various residents of the Wasteland tend hate each other as much as they hate you and will happily tear each other apart upon meeting. There’s every chance you’ll die in the process, but hey, at least it’ll look cool.

Evergreen Mills is in the Midwestern part of the map - make your way north from Tennpenny Tower and you almost can’t help but find it. In a past life it was a quarry of some sort, but now it’s crawling with Raiders, each armed to the teeth and considerably better fighters than the rabble scraping out a life in the Wastes. When I find the camp, I’m at the point skill-wise where I have a choice: I can try to kill them all and loot the place, but it’ll cost me in stimpaks, ammo, and wear on my weapons that I can’t necessarily afford, or I can try to make my way around the camp, hopefully not tip off any of the guards, and come away with nothing. Not trusting my skill with a rifle to be high enough to pick them off from a distance, I’m making my way through the rocks above camp when I notice the solution to all my problems: in the middle of the quarry is an electrified pen, and inside the pen is a Behemoth, a twenty-foot tall super mutant that can kill with a punch and soaks up damage like a sponge.

I hide in the rocks till night settles, watching the guards through the scope of my sniper rifle in opes of a gap in their patrols big enough to squeeze through. At midnight I turn on a Stealth Boy to max out my sneaking ability, put two rounds in to the pen’s generator to blow it up, and skid down the rocks in to the camp proper. Despite my added sneakiness, one of the Raiders spots me just as I make it to the Behemoth’s cage, but by then it’s too late. With the gate open, the Behemoth is free, and he’s angry.

The fighting lasts till sun up, but only because some of the squirrelier Raiders were smart enough to stay out of arm’s reach for as long as they could. Their friends aren’t so lucky - the ground is littered with bodies that were decapitated by a single punch. After a long night of sustained gunfire, the Behemoth still has over half his health left and shows no signs of slowing down. I’ve been watching the whole thing from a safe distance, taking shots every one in a while at the Raiders he can’t get to. After a while the quarry is quiet again with all of its residents dead, leaving the place ripe for looting. Over the course of the fight, I’ve only been hit two or three times and used up maybe a clip of precious rifle ammo. Not bad for a night’s work.

Of course, around now is when the flaw in my master plan becomes apparent. If I leave my hiding place to have a go at all the lovely bodies loaded down with all the ammo, weapons, and bottle caps I’ll need for a while, the Behemoth will turn me in to jelly. I can hit him from range with my rifle, but I don’t have nearly enough ammunition to put him down. The strongest weapon I have is a combat shotgun and forty-nine shells to put in it, meaning my only choice is to get as close as I can while avoiding his reach. I take a shot at his head, causing one of his health notches to fade a bit. He roars back, stomping the ground and kicking a corpse a good dozen feet or so in frustration.

It’s going to be a very long day.

Posted on December 5th, 2008 by chrislamb
Filed under: Fallout 3 | No Comments »

Completely forgot to mention this last week, between work being busy and gearing up for four days of doing as little as humanly possible, but hey, lookit: my most recent game is now a real thing you can put your hands on and exchange currency for.

I worked as both producer and lead designer on this one, a combination of duties that, while incredibly rewarding (particularly for the OCD part of me), took up more bandwidth than I consistently had to offer. That said, I’m happy to have had the opportunity, as the lessons learned over the project’s remarkably short schedule have proven to be incredibly valuable. Design is where my heart’s at, but having that skillset tempered with the experience of shepherding the game from start to finish and working firsthand with the publisher is the sort of thing I think anybody wanting to be a game designer should go through. Work-wise, I’m currently moving out of production, working as lead designer on two new projects, and having the importance of clean, realistic design that fits within the time and resources provided drilled in to my by a ticking clock hanging overhead has already paid off. In the long run, not having a day off in June seems like less of a big deal.

Imagine Movie Star is part of Ubisoft’s crazy-successful line of Nintendo DS games aimed at young girls. It’s a rhythm game where players live the life of a movie star they create, going to auditions, attending movie premieres, and generally living the high life while earning new fans for keeping the beat through each challenge. The game also comes with a wide range of customization options, giving the player more freedom to create characters and clothing that’s all their own than any other DS game I can remember seeing. I’m particularly proud of this aspect of the game, as it’s provided us with a wide range of new features to work in to our games at Powerhead.

I understand Ubisoft expects Imagine Movie Star to be something of a Big Deal, and I’ve already seen commercials and a full-page add in Cosmo Girl proclaiming its arrival to the masses. If you’re interested in fulfilling your secret fantasy of becoming a super famous actress with gobs of fans and your own clothing line (or, y’know, need a Christmas present for someone who might be), you can find it at pretty much any place that sells videogame entertainments, including Amazon.

And now, back to work.

Posted on December 2nd, 2008 by chrislamb
Filed under: Things What I Made | 2 Comments »