Pacifist

The battle repulsed me. I exited the buggy as my teammates passed through a small fishing village on the way to a hotzone further north. The friendly tanks rumbled past, an inane inevitability. Instead of sprinting the fastest possible route to my certain death, as they did, I took to the hills above the village shacks. Ambling up surfaces shallow enough to climb, I eventually found myself skirting a river that ran across the combat zone. The air was alive with the sound of wildlife, although there were no obvious sources for the sound. Lofty trees stretched upwards in clumps amongst the dull grass, sparce, forlorn in the dense fog that lingered over the water's deep stillness. It stretched seemingly forever in all directions, save for the skewed angle that looked like a ship wreck.

Artillery growled far away, I lay in the tropical mud, blissfully aware of destruction I was no longer a part of.

Battlefield 2

A review of Battlefield 2 has been added to the archives. It currently isn't published anywhere. (If anyone wants it for their site, let me know).

UPDATE: Gone to Thunderbolt

Back on the ground, more gushing praise can be sung for the graphical splendour of the game's Eastern theatre. Enemy black hawks cast down ominous shadows, artillery sends up giant, devastating spews of opaque debris, specularity reflects the evening sun off the runway, and the environmental detail observed from a lonely dam-top watch tower takes the breath away. At maximum detail anyway. Weigh it up - graphics card vs non-essential internal organ.

Read it here

Grove Street

Following a comment posted recently about the importance of environmental detail choice, with reference to San Andreas, the game's now out for PC - I've been able to peruse its locales from about five ft nearer the screen. Barely had time to start, but tonight I fired it up for 10 minutes for a bike ride around Los Santos.

When people talk about gameplay over graphics, they've obviously never wheeled a bmx out of their garage at dusk in the newest GTA. Sauntered down the Grove Street cul-de-sac, wheelie-ing lazily past the homies' shacks before breaking into a frantic pedal down into dry canal ditch. Up the other side, veer wildly into the main road, past the gym, and over the bridge - you're almost home. The view distance stretches so far in any direction that where ever you look, the world always looks invitingly explorable.

Agency

In my opinion, a best case scenario would be to experience a game like a dream. That is, the game would unfold before us, in the expert hands of a writer, but we would still be fooled into thinking we had agency.

- JhinAlexander - IGDA forum

What a perfect definition.

Interactivity = Creativity

So TV doesn't require and decision making on the part of the viewer. This isn't interactive (in what I understand is the most common opinion of interactivity). In-game cinematics are often criticised from a design point of view - in our media, interaction is key, so any non-interactive element detracts from the essence of the form. It is argued that interactive media is fundamentally more important than non, but that is a moot point for this post.

So then if TV/film is non-interactive because it involves no impact on the part of the user, the most interactive game would be that that offers the greatest potential for diversity of player driven affect.

Now, we're seeing a trend develop in some newer, more original games, called 'sandbox' play. A method of design that offers players a set of tools to use, and manipulate creatively for their own personal goals - tailored for and by the user, unlike the traditional rigid objective style we're used to. SimCity has an element of sandbox play, Spore, The Movies, The Sims and even Dungeon Keeper all to varying extents offer sandbox elements. They all offer more freedom than usual towards an often distant aspirational goal.

But what is 'sandbox'? It looks to me like it's the design intention to cultivate player creativity. The more choices available to the player, the more creatively decisive input is required. If that is the case, what would be the purest example of this form? The maximum emphasis on player creativity? And in turn, wouldn't that also be the most interactive game?

I'm sure when The Movies hits the shelves, some people will be disappointed in the lack of complete freedom in the film construction element of the creation/management sim. So why not have a game based entirely around virtual filmmaking? Perhaps with integrated online submission/distribution/viewing systems, ratings, competitions, ladders etc etc? Sounds like the ultimate sandbox example to me. But wait, these systems already exist - level design game? Hammer or UnrealEd. Film editing game? Final Cut Pro. Music making simulator? Cubase. Are these programs (never yet described as games) actually the criterion of sandbox design and therefore, the epitome of interactivity?

'loads of cool stuff'

In a thread titled "Post your innovative game ideas!!!" on PCGF today, one 'rumpleforskin' posted this wonderful offering:

u have your own car and u have to go on this trip to get to the other side of the city cause your mum is dying or something. On your trip u have to stop fill up petrol, eat, sleep and everything. For example if u dont sleep enough ure hands will be shaking and your vision will be going and u can crash your car. U can stop and change your tires or engine or whatever. u can go anywhere you want and explore and u also have some money but u have a time limit so u cant take to long. on the way u would meet loads of cool stuff.

what do u think?

Thank you, rumpleforskin, you have inadvertantly born a new benchmark of design. A standard. I propose that every design brief ever written from this day forth should be measured in quality as 'rumpleforskins' - this example calculating as 'one'.

Projected direction

I picked a greenfly off of my t-shirt yesterday, and blew it violently off its bewildered perch on my fingertip. I wondered, what sensation does the greenfly feel as this takes place. What is it thinking? If you watch a players avatar run through a multiplayer game, couldn't the apparent thought process and number of actions available be compared to that of a more primative real world creature, like a greenfly?

What landed on my t-shirt can fly in any direction, the quake 3 player can run around and jump. The fly knows its purpose, and goes about it without question - as does the quake 3 player, but instead of feeding/mating/sleeping(?) he shoots, changes weapon and checks his score. The fly's ability to express its self (in our eyes) is very limited, as is the player's.

Perhaps evolution of the human species could undergo a change of projected direction.

Area of Effect

So, F.E.A.R. MP beta - it's like this: there's dynamic lighting, but not to much gameplay effect, melee attacks aren't (quite) useful enough, team deathmatch mode works in a similar way to Call Of Duty, and there are lots of particles. Its cute though. That is all.

Because any more description than that would be nit-picking beyond what is reasonable. I am trying to maintain a wider perspective on gaming innovation so that when it comes to my turn, I won't expect my audiences to be happy with a game that, at a glance, only increases the number of smoke.gif sprites you'll be seeing at any one time.

If I was to pursue the finer points of Monolith's new multiplayer test, I might mention the intriguing item choices - only one grenade per spawn, thrown with a hotkey (omg Halo style :O:O:O) and how the less usual balance of tight, devestating area of effect impacts on the corridor based level design. Or the tactical significance of smoke walls created by more intense fire fights, whether this mechanic will have a lasting impact on common codes of multiplayer shooters. I might also comment on the blend of carnage and the more realistic touch ironsights introduce, along with leaning - also present.

But I shouldn't, because it's all nonsense! These are minute adaptations to a form we all know like the back of our hands. Concentrating on them is to encourage the development of them, rather than the reinvention.

Numbers

Any representation of something numerical in-game retracts from something we call 'realism'. Real life is completely numerical, how heavy this optical mouse is, the friction of this flooring - the number of meters I can sprint, the amount of real hitpoints I have (subjective to real life hitboxes) is all entirely based on numbers.

But observe your surroundings for a second - you'd never know to look at it, would you?

Games are also based on numbers, just far, far less of them. The floating point clarity of the path this piece of paper would take through the air when dropped to the floor could be thousands of figures long in real life. In games, it'd be no where near as complex.

Less complex, and a lot more obvious. Look at your HUD - health is numerical, ammo, carriable weight, the damage of my sword. It's not even specific to any genre of game - the remaining health of your refinery, the movement speed of your newly researched attack chopper, how many enemies left to kill... Everything in games is too frequently, too obviously numerical. So lets fix this.

In Battlefield - you run across an open road to an alley on the other side. About half way across, you realise this was a bad idea. Enemies materialise from out of a wall of smoke further down the road and open fire. Bullets whine intrusively as you half stumble to cover on the other side. Just before you get there, your view skews slightly, and your character lets out a groan. You continue down the alley to a darkened porch, away from the advancing troops. You press the hotkey for 'examine wounds'.

No, no. Wait, stop. I was going to suggest a method of health system based entirely on visuals. No HUD, you have to be out of harm's way for a moment to check how badly you're injured, then decide what to do from there. But if you were shot, you wouldn't need to check visually how bad the damage was, the pain alone would be enough to give you some indication. You could make up some reason for it, "all our soldiers are given a couple of Neurofen at lunch time," but that'd just be insulting. Thinking about that feature, where under a limited number of animations and texture sets, your character observes his leg, arm, stomach, shoulder for wounds. It would be gimicky and boring. Not to mention laughable in terms of authenticity.

Besides, damage in games has been done before. Your already lacklustre movement speed is often halved in Swat 4, having taken a hit or two. Suddenly the thought of tackling that whole next floor at a snail's pace prompts me to restart the mission. Is that an effective implementation of realistic damage?

Yeah, well.. Games still need to be less obviously based on numbers. In another FPS example, there could be an animation to check the number of rounds in a clip, rather than the 2D HUD counter.