Mile Zero
if challenge had a taste, you'd be quite delicious
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
I love this portion from Gamasutra's interview with No More Heroes audio designer Masafumi Takada:
How large is the audio team size?MT: Right now there are four people.
And do you have a sound studio here? Like a foley room and stuff?
MT: No. I do everything at my desk. Even if you don't go all the way to a studio, if you have a microphone and a tape recorder you can recreate sound effects anywhere, like this [Takada demonstrates at his desk].
So here, in this office?
MT: Here, after everyone leaves and goes home.
No More Heroes had great sound design, although a lot of it was either synthesized or in the music. But it's both amusing and oddly heartening to imagine the head sound guy recording foley effects at his desk in an empty office.
12:58 x Thomas x /gaming/design/art x link x 0 comments
Did you hear that PC gaming is dying? You probably have, because nobody seems to be able to shut up about it.
Certainly not the big producers. Crytek blamed poor sales of Crysis on piracy, although the game then apparently sold more than a million copies, beating their expectations. iD's stopped making PC exclusives, as has Epic--they've explicitly blamed piracy and integrated graphics for the problem. And many of the big developers are not making exclusives for PC any more, or they're back-porting their lower-end console versions to the platform, or they're blaming their lower-end console versions for the lack of a PC port (see: Lucasarts and The Force Unleashed). There's a lot of scorn going around for the PC, what with its heterogeneous hardware and its sometimes maddening software stack.
Honestly (and perhaps sadly), I take this a little personally. I grew up with PC gaming--didn't own a console until college. I played Duke3D and Counterstrike in the computer lab during lunch in high school. I remember loading up Strike Commander just to fly around the landscape, and going through a nerve-wracking two weeks as my father and I tried to get the deluxe version of Simcity running in VESA-compatible mode. And writing Joust knockoffs in BASIC was one of the experiences you just can't get anywhere else.
So I've been watching this for a while. And these complaints--it's too unstable! too unpredictable! too expensive!--are kind of funny, because they've been around for years. The PC market has always been dying, it seems. And yet it's still here. It's either dying very slooooooowly... or reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
It certainly seems dire when cast in the most extreme terms. You mean some console games won't also come to the PC? Well, that's indeed a shame. But then, you're not seeing much Stalker love on Xbox, are you? Don't Darwinia or Defcon count as exclusives, too? Sam and Max: not available on consoles. And isn't WoW kind of the big elephant in the room here? Even if the other MMO's aren't making quite those kinds of numbers, I don't hear companies like NCSoft complaining, frankly.
But those don't count, because PC gaming is dying. Only generic, big-budget console releases count when we value a platform--because heaven knows that's where the really exciting design takes place. Halo 3, anyone? Another Final Fantasy, maybe?
And then there's one of my favorite new games, Sins of a Solar Empire. Sins is, to put it bluntly, incredibly addictive. There are actually very few games where I lose track of time, but I have had the experience of looking up and realizing that I've spent two hours buried in the Thinkpad. It's a very "PC" type of game--lots of mousing and menus and keyboard shortcuts. It's hard to imagine doing it on a console. The game also scales well--there's no doubt that it looks sharp at full tilt, but you can also run it on a machine that's several years old.
Sins has so far won just about every gaming award available to it, and it's been within the top ten-selling titles on the retail charts for the PC since its release (downloads have also been strong, they say). There's little doubt that it's been extremely profitable for Stardock (a relative upstart in game development), even though it doesn't use any copy protection at all to prevent piracy.
But PC gaming is dying, right? The guy from Epic said so.
Valve, meanwhile, has been making a killing off Steam, apparently. They're big PC guys. My friend Matt sends me an e-mail every now and then to let me know how neglected his Xbox copy of the Orange Box feels after the Steam patches and updates for Team Fortress 2--and I feel for him, but if he played his shooters on a platform with a mouse like a Real American, that wouldn't happen to him. In any case, Valve's support for the PC through Steam is unmistakeable--they make a point of it at product announcements. And here, again, is a company that's not betting the farm on the bleeding edge, and understands their platform. My laptop is pretty top of the line for a business-class notebook, but it's a relatively weak gaming machine. It still runs Half-Life 2 beautifully.
Still, there's no need to pay attention to the claims of one of the world's most consistently high-quality game development houses. They and Blizzard must be crazy to go through all this effort, right? Everyone knows that PC gaming is dying--just look at the NPD numbers (the ones that don't include digital distribution or MMO subscriptions).
It couldn't possibly be the case that Crysis underperformed at first because of release timing issues, not to mention because you need a small render farm to run it properly. It couldn't possibly be true that the PC really does have games that consoles don't have. Digital distribution couldn't really make up that much of the market, and MMOs couldn't really be that successful, right? Because (say it with me now) PC gaming is dying.
Except obviously it's not. What's happening is really pretty simple: consoles finally caught up (mostly) with the average computer for gaming power (also, with its more annoying "features," like having to install the game before you can play it). As such, people have somehow gotten the idea that the platforms are equivalent, and that the PC should be able to substitute for an Xbox or PS3. Unsurprisingly, the strategy of cramming the same expensive, graphic-heavy games that have sold on consoles into the PC has shown a few flaws.
Look, this is not the end of the world. PC gamers (and I count myself as one, even if I spend a lot of time on consoles these days) may not get to play the latest Metal Gear, or whatever it is that apparently sets the standard on any given day. But there are also experiences that are only going to show up on the PC, including the incredibly thriving casual game market (which both hardcore gamers and gaming publications like to pretend doesn't exist). The truth of the matter is that the computer is an odd beast. It costs more than a console, varies wildly in its capabilities, and plays host to a number of genres that practically don't exist anywhere else. To top it all off, it's incredibly widespread. The PC is a market that's simply huge--just not the same market buying GTA IV.
PC gaming isn't dying. You just have the wrong definition of "alive."
20:03 x Thomas x /gaming/perspective x link x 2 comments
It's a shame that Haze, the PS3's recent shooter, has gotten such poor reviews for bland design and inconsistent storytelling, because I think the basic concept deserves better. Let me first explain my impressions of that concept, since they apparently might be entirely unrelated to the finished product.
Haze (as I understood it) was supposed to be a meta-game commentary, in many ways. The story's fictional soldiers are dosed up on a drug that leads to some conspicuously game-ish effects--dead bodies simply vanish from the field, enemies are highlighted against the terrain, and their wounds and cries of pain are filtered out.
There's a potential here for what could honestly be a horrifying moment. We're used to games where the enemies just disappear once killed, which tends to nullify the impact of the action. Or where there's no real realistic visuals for the horrible wounds inflicted by weaponry, and the reaction to being shot is as simple as a flinch and a canned sound-bite.
Imagine a scene where the player suddenly stops being dosed, while teammates remain on the drug. They're still cheerily massacreing people left and right--but now you can hear the victims pleading for mercy, see the sickening effects when they're hit, and stumble over the mounds of dead lying around. It would be like watching a DVD of Commando, only to realize too late that you'd accidentally put Saving Private Ryan into the player instead.
Indeed, that scenario isn't just a commentary on video games. It remarks on how we treat violence in a variety of media. And I don't even think it's entirely a negative commentary, but it is thought-provoking and has room for subtlety. In this theoretical situation, fellow soldiers aren't monsters, they're just blissfully unaware of the consequences of their actions. They're gamers, in more ways than one. The point shouldn't be to turn on these former allies and kill them in revenge, but to open their eyes to the truth. Ultimately, the question is: when we discover that our actions might not be harmless, how will we react to that new ethical uncertainty?
Sadly, Haze doesn't seem to have taken that route. Instead it demonizes the drugged soldiers, and turns the game into just another shoot-em-up. Several reviews have commented that once the player character changes sides and can't use the performance-boosting chemical anymore, the game loses what little individuality it had--and what a loaded statement that could have been, when gamers found themselves wishing for the comfort of selective perception. In Wired this week, Chris Kohler has written about how these questions can surface (albeit in a limited and unintentional manner) in Ninja Gaiden 2. But Haze had a chance to address them directly, taking advantage of next-generation console power for a thoughtful and provocative message, and it blew it.
13:13 x Thomas x /gaming/design/structure x link x 5 comments
For my own future reference: Wii hackers have managed to create a Homebrew Channel for the system's main menu, putting non-licensed code on pretty much the same level as virtual console and first-party apps. Very interesting.
09:32 x Thomas x /gaming/software/homebrew x link x 0 comments
Nintendo's going to make a killing on Wii Fit. More of a killing, I mean, than the one they're already making on the Wii itself. Last Friday morning, on my way out of Panera, I stopped by Gamestop to see if they had any of the former in stock, only to find that people were lining up to buy up the newly-arrived shipment of the latter. The place sold $1,000 of game consoles in about 10 minutes.
No, Wii Fit wasn't in stock. Nobody has it. Nobody's going to have it for a very long time. Nintendo can't even get the basic machine onto shelves fast enough, much less a crossover product for it. And I suspect Fit is going to be huge, for two reasons: 1) we're an overweight country, and 2) we like sitting in front of the TV.
I'm no stranger to either of these, of course. I've gained weight since college (although I would argue that it's more that I was undernourished in college), I live a pretty sedentary life, and it's no secret that I enjoy both b-movies and buttonmashing. You have a product that will fix one and satisfy the other? Ah ha! I say, along with every other sedentary television-owner in America. Sign me up!
...if I can find one.
12:07 x Thomas x /gaming/software/wii_fit x link x 3 comments
I owe STALKER (the game, not the movie) an apology. Not for calling it ridiculously overpunctuated (although I guess over-abbreviated would be more accurate), but I quit it last time after only a few hours, frustrated at its weapons model and its opaque narrative structure.
After watching the film, I got an itch to give the game another shot. I figured I wouldn't last long, but I was a little curious as to how much of Tarkovsky's visual aesthetic had ended up in the game. I decided to head in, spend a few minutes looking around, and then I'd blow it off again. But it turns out that I'm still playing.
I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, but my suspicions, like Jay Leno's chin, are twofold. First, I started paying more attention to the automap in the corner, using it to find stashes and watch for bodies to loot. Second, at some point I was clued in about the location of one of the mission goals that I never previously had been able to find. Unless the player locates a hidden flash drive in one of the underground tunnels, the game basically halts--my first time through, I had no idea where it was.
Which, I'd like to point out, is an easy situation to end up in: the drive is actually hidden in a pipe behind some very poor level design--the lip of the pipe is just slightly too high for the Stalker to step over it, and in the end I had to resort to the old Half-Life trick of jumping forward while crouching (which, in Stalker requires the use of the forward key, the spacebar to jump, and two separate crouch buttons to reach a "low crawl" state. It's a little awkward).
But once past that point, the game has opened up tremendously (especially since that's the first moment when you get a decent weapon). It is, as I told a friend, like Oblivion with Chernobyl-born mutants and AK-47s instead of elves and swords.
As far as the film's influence, I've seen very little on display so far. Stalker does include a number of wide open fields and ruined buildings, but its color palette is much more gloomy and grim than Tarkovsky's--and of course, the first sight of a uniformed soldier dispels any hope that the game will share the movie's character-driven, dialog-heavy atmosphere. The only real similarity I've seen so far is the glow of high-radiation areas: when you stumble into one of these, the screen begins to oversaturate and acquire a kind of film-grain effect that's very striking.
Stalker definitely has its flaws. The AI can be a little wonky, and I've failed missions for what seem to be no apparent reason. The text is barely localized, and NPC conversations are oil-slick shallow. But the game does have its own distinctive atmosphere--the untranslated Russian voices and signposts, the click of the geiger counter, and howling dogs during the dark nights make sure of that. The combat itself has a very different feel from most shooters, but once you get used to it, it's got its charms. All in all, it's an impressive piece of work, as long as you don't get caught on any of the rough edges. I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
Extra credit: For those who might be curious, you can read the original short story that inspired the movie and game, "Roadside Picnic," here, since it seems to be unfortunately out of print elsewhere.
13:58 x Thomas x /gaming/software/stalker x link x 0 comments
| System Codes | Individual games |
Wii System code
|
Mario Kart DS 1 4 6 0 8 8 3 6 3 7 8 5
Tony Hawk:
Animal Crossing
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Tetris DS
|
13:50 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/networking x link x 7 comments
Just an idea I had last week.
Possibly useful information: the physics are not terribly complicated--returning the ball with the edge of the paddle does not change its trajectory. But it will sometimes put a little spin on the response, if you take my meaning.
20:54 x Thomas x /gaming/design/art x link x 6 comments
Here are three steps to better voice acting in games:
Video games are b-movies. There's nothing wrong with that. I love b-movies. At their best, the point of a b-movie is that it's inclusive. It says: the people who made this are a lot like you. Remember when you thought that a fight between a werewolf and a cyborg leprechaun would be awesome? We thought so too. And because we only had $20 in our budget for it, we need a little help from you to make it work: if you can suspend your disbelief for an hour or so, this is gonna be great.
B-movie dialog is not good, in any kind of objective quality sense. But it's written with a kind of hard-edged desparation. For most b-movies, the only reason to have dialog is to find a way to either explain or lead into the next fight (werewolf vs. mutated shark! awesome!). Perversely, this singlemindedness often translates into less padding, fewer monologues, slimmer storytelling. Again, it's not good. But it knows why it's there, and it suffers no illusions of its own brilliance.
And that's the point. The typical video game operates on exactly the same goals as the b-movie, except that you get to choreograph the fight between the werewolf and the alien motorcycle (yes!). "Better" dialog doesn't mean exposing universal truths. It just means that if it ever gets in the way of the viewer/player/reader who just wants to enjoy some irritable lycanthropes, it needs to go.
I've spent a couple of years now recording non-professional voice talent for multimedia projects, and it's been educational. I've learned the little tricks to getting a decent, inoffensive performance out of people who have no real business being in front of a microphone. It's not usually great. But it's not terrible, either. I don't think there's much excuse for bad voice-acting. But I suspect the real problem is not that the voice talent is bad, so much as they're being forced on you through an excess of terrible writing.
Who else wants to talk?
10:57 x Thomas x /gaming/roundtable x link x 2 comments
My interview with Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer is up on the Opposable Thumbs journal for Ars now, and can be found here.
It's an interesting interview in part because the game is an indie title that would be much harder to do on the console, and yet it's apparently been very successful over Steam's digital distribution. There's an argument to be made, I think, that PC gaming isn't dying--it's just going to be overtaken by titles like this, which have lower system requirements and can leverage the platform in new and interesting ways.
Thanks to Corvus for helping me get in touch with Fitterer.
12:56 x Thomas x /gaming/media/online x link x 0 comments
