Inspiring, interesting, useful this week:
Crystal Castles repond to accusations of sample theft
Torontoist contribute a counter-point
I do like Crystal Castles, but they should just admit they like videogames.
BBC: How gaming is running with sport
More thoughts on using games as motivation to train a real ability.
Brave N00b World: The Geology of World of Warcraft
Not that big, Azeroth, is it?
Gamasuton: Opinion - Touch Generations? Con Generations!
Not wrong, and a counter-point to the BBC article above.
Monday 30 June 2008
Talking Balls
Is football a game? What about a football?
A football is not a game. It is a toy you use to play a game. It's a physical object designed specifically for a game.
Football is a game. It's a set of rules that define winning and losing, permitted actions, violations and penalties. Although there are written laws of association football, the basics are quite flexible. You can twist a lot of variables and still, basically, be playing football. You don't need to play for 45 minutes, or with regulation nets, or 11 a side. You don't need to play offside or fixed goalies or even fouls, if you're very violent or very honest.
You don't even need a football. Playing football with a tennis ball in a park with makeshift goalposts is something you should do at least once in your life. You can also use a can, or a beach ball. Some people can't see a stone on the pavement without taking round a few imaginary defenders.
You dont need to use your football just to play football. There are other games: volleyball is good with a football. Basketball less so, but it works. Tennis, using your feet over a net, is very good. So is golf, against an object across the park with a ball each. There are more outlandish things: hide it in a garden and send kids to find it, throw it at stacks of tins, build a giant pinball set for it.
All this is pretty obvious for a football, but it applies across all games (and toys). Chess is not a set of pieces: a chess set is a toy that lets you play the game Chess. Nor is a disc containing the program *Quake* a game: it is a program for playing the game Quake. Most games have many subtle variants: Quake can be played single- or multi-player, and each level and map is a subtle variant. A deck of playing cards is possibly the most flexible toy ever created - except for a ball.
A football is not a game. It is a toy you use to play a game. It's a physical object designed specifically for a game.
Football is a game. It's a set of rules that define winning and losing, permitted actions, violations and penalties. Although there are written laws of association football, the basics are quite flexible. You can twist a lot of variables and still, basically, be playing football. You don't need to play for 45 minutes, or with regulation nets, or 11 a side. You don't need to play offside or fixed goalies or even fouls, if you're very violent or very honest.
You don't even need a football. Playing football with a tennis ball in a park with makeshift goalposts is something you should do at least once in your life. You can also use a can, or a beach ball. Some people can't see a stone on the pavement without taking round a few imaginary defenders.
You dont need to use your football just to play football. There are other games: volleyball is good with a football. Basketball less so, but it works. Tennis, using your feet over a net, is very good. So is golf, against an object across the park with a ball each. There are more outlandish things: hide it in a garden and send kids to find it, throw it at stacks of tins, build a giant pinball set for it.
All this is pretty obvious for a football, but it applies across all games (and toys). Chess is not a set of pieces: a chess set is a toy that lets you play the game Chess. Nor is a disc containing the program *Quake* a game: it is a program for playing the game Quake. Most games have many subtle variants: Quake can be played single- or multi-player, and each level and map is a subtle variant. A deck of playing cards is possibly the most flexible toy ever created - except for a ball.
Monday 23 June 2008
No Links Must Read 23 June 2008
Interesting, inspiring, useful this week:
Guardian: Hiddink Rekindles the Spirit of Total Football
Association Football is a game too, you know.
Rock Paper Shotgun: Multiwinia Hands-On
More abstract graphics! MORE!
Guy Debord's Kriegspiel
I find Kriegspiels fascinating, but one designed by a French Situationist, who thought games may sweep cinema aside? Easy sell.
New York Times: The Shootout Over Hidden Meanings in a Video Game
In which the NYT does not laugh at its own headline once. This is progress. Nice to see Leigh Alexander quoted in the big sheets as well.
New York Times: Mystery on Fifth Avenue
Did you ever find something cool in a house months after you moved in? Was it anywhere near as cool as this?
Guardian: Hiddink Rekindles the Spirit of Total Football
Association Football is a game too, you know.
Rock Paper Shotgun: Multiwinia Hands-On
More abstract graphics! MORE!
Guy Debord's Kriegspiel
I find Kriegspiels fascinating, but one designed by a French Situationist, who thought games may sweep cinema aside? Easy sell.
New York Times: The Shootout Over Hidden Meanings in a Video Game
In which the NYT does not laugh at its own headline once. This is progress. Nice to see Leigh Alexander quoted in the big sheets as well.
New York Times: Mystery on Fifth Avenue
Did you ever find something cool in a house months after you moved in? Was it anywhere near as cool as this?
Falling
"Everybody's falling. Hit the ground last." Could this be the best theme ever?Falling was the first real-time game from James Ernest. It's a neat filler that suits several replays to fill the time available.
One player acts as the dealer and de-facto referee. Cards are dealt round the table, which may be played in front of other players (or yourself) to affect the cards dealt to that player next turn. Ground cards lie at the bottom of the deck, and the last person to get one wins. A few other cards push and pull the cards around and act as all-purpose cancels.
It doesn't take long to grasp the strategy: while it's obvious to play Skip [turns] on yourself and Hit [extra cards] on other players, the opposite is true early on, in order to stockpile cards for the endgame. Timing the switch from stockpiling to fighting is the key to victory, which I didn't expect to find - a classic RTS mechanic in a 5-minute filler.
The game works because the dealer can resolve the timing conflicts as a neutral: without this, it could become an unholy mess. Later Ernest real-time games resolved this by playing to a tableau, which is scored at the end of the game. However, nobody will demand exact fairness in such a short, silly and pleasing game, where victory is only another plummet away.
Falling has just been re-released in a goblin-themed edition. It's exactly the same game though, and worth picking up.
Monday 16 June 2008
No Links Must Read 16 June 2008
Links and items I found interesting, inspiring or useful this week:
BBC: Real Racing in the Virtual World
GPS telemetry from motor races could be pumped to PCs, with players racing Raikkonen in real time. Exciting, if they can answer a thousand design questions.
RetroSabotage presents "Twenty Lines"
Tetris and 2001 collide in this tidy Flash pastiche. Check out the rest of the site too!
Flickr: Balakov
My favourite art is that where established forms overlap. Balakov's photos combine classic photograhy references with pop interpretation. And Lego.
Yahoo Design Pattern Library: Reputation Solution Patterns
Only just published to the public, this is a great overview of reputation patterns, which can function in games as player rewards. The whole library is interesting. Great stuff from Yahoo - thanks also to Habitat Chronicles for the tip.
BBC: "Darlings" of UK Games Honoured
Apparently the queen is a Fantasy Island Dizzy fan.
Gamasutra: In-Depth: Audiosurf - A PC Gaming Postmortem
Not a postmortem in the sense of others Gamasutra has published in the past, but interesting all the same. Also good motivation for pushing your own original ideas: genuinely good and original designs sometimes do rise to the top.
Gamasutra: The Adventurer's Guide To Thievery
A look at the new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, with particular emphasis on things to steal for computer game design. As for 4th Edition itself, it has a much tighter (almost MMO-like) ruleset, but one that leads to more fluid improvisation. For the unconvinced, don't despair - Paizo are effectively maintaining 3rd Edition through the Pathfinder project.
BBC: Real Racing in the Virtual World
GPS telemetry from motor races could be pumped to PCs, with players racing Raikkonen in real time. Exciting, if they can answer a thousand design questions.
RetroSabotage presents "Twenty Lines"
Tetris and 2001 collide in this tidy Flash pastiche. Check out the rest of the site too!
Flickr: Balakov
My favourite art is that where established forms overlap. Balakov's photos combine classic photograhy references with pop interpretation. And Lego.
Yahoo Design Pattern Library: Reputation Solution Patterns
Only just published to the public, this is a great overview of reputation patterns, which can function in games as player rewards. The whole library is interesting. Great stuff from Yahoo - thanks also to Habitat Chronicles for the tip.
BBC: "Darlings" of UK Games Honoured
Apparently the queen is a Fantasy Island Dizzy fan.
Gamasutra: In-Depth: Audiosurf - A PC Gaming Postmortem
Not a postmortem in the sense of others Gamasutra has published in the past, but interesting all the same. Also good motivation for pushing your own original ideas: genuinely good and original designs sometimes do rise to the top.
Gamasutra: The Adventurer's Guide To Thievery
A look at the new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, with particular emphasis on things to steal for computer game design. As for 4th Edition itself, it has a much tighter (almost MMO-like) ruleset, but one that leads to more fluid improvisation. For the unconvinced, don't despair - Paizo are effectively maintaining 3rd Edition through the Pathfinder project.
The Perils of Honest Feedback
"How's your blog going?"
"I haven't updated it for a while-"
"Yeah, to be honest I stopped reading after the third boring World of Warcraft post."
Ouch. Accurate, though - the diary was pretty poor. I was tempted to excise the offending posts, but I wrote it: I can't unwrite it. There may be more concrete analysis of WoW later (involving some actual, you know, numbers), but I'll leave it for now.
Expect more frequent posts in future, covering a more varied range of games. I'll report on some of the board games I've played recently as well, and there'll be a weekly round-up of articles that I've found interesting.
"I haven't updated it for a while-"
"Yeah, to be honest I stopped reading after the third boring World of Warcraft post."
Ouch. Accurate, though - the diary was pretty poor. I was tempted to excise the offending posts, but I wrote it: I can't unwrite it. There may be more concrete analysis of WoW later (involving some actual, you know, numbers), but I'll leave it for now.
Expect more frequent posts in future, covering a more varied range of games. I'll report on some of the board games I've played recently as well, and there'll be a weekly round-up of articles that I've found interesting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
