<< Portico: January 2006

1/22/2006

The End of the Booth Babe?

Brenda Brathwaite at the IGDA has noted that the new E3 rules may cramp the style of those game developers and publishers that like to dress up their dross with eye candy. (Hat tip: Utopian Hell.)

"Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the Show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the Show. ESA, in its sole discretion, will determine whether material is acceptable."


There will be one warning, after which a fine will be assessed until models comply with the dress code.

So no bathing suit bottoms and no nudity. That seems pretty clear. I'm not sure that "sexually explicit" has ever been a problem, but some peoples' definition of explicit is a little broader than mine.

Now "sexually provocative" is another matter altogether. Barring the fact that some of the attendees will get aroused by the PS3, the whole purpose of the booth babe (or spokesmodel) is to be provocative. They dress in skimpy outfits, draw nerds with cameras to their booths and maybe get a little more coverage for whatever they are selling.

It is often pointed out that many trade shows use models to attract attendees and vendors to their product. Game shows are not alone in hiring would-be actresses, low rent models or whoever else doesn't mind standing around in a vinyl dress while being gawked at by whoever walks by.

It doesn't really matter.

The gaming industry has an image problem. Even if you disagree with the blue stockings who want to sell games in plain brown wrappers, the public image of the industry is one that seems to be aimed at juvenile men who can't keep their violent or sexual urges under control. This is clearly an effort to defuse criticism of the industry that it is obsessed with sex. Almost all of the complaints from the NIMF or Jack Thompson join the issues of sex and violence in a single critique. For even serious observers of game content, the union of sexual and thuggery prowess in the GTA series makes one pause, if not uninstall.

Not to mention the much debated gaming gender gap (which, judging by the students I teach, is decreasing rapidly). Young women who might be interested in gaming can't surf a website in E3 season without being bombarded by "BEST BABEZ OF E3!!!" articles. An effort to tone down the titillation factor at the expo could be yet another attempt to reach out to an audience that has felt excluded or objectified by the industry's biggest party.

Mind you, the E3 is supposed to be for adults only. Every year, people come back with stories of clearly adolescent youth wandering the floor despite the age requirement. Maybe this was an easier step than telling some Hollywood heavyweight not to bring his kids.

Brathwaite raises the concern that this amounts to ESA censorship of the content on the showroom floor. Does "material...conduct" would include the games themselves? Would a game with sexually provocative material be limited? Is this the kind of measure that the industry guardian of speech rights should be taking?

Of course, all of this could go nowhere. There are lots of ways to look pretty and not cross the ever-so-vague "provocative" line. We won't see bikini bottoms or thongs, but you can bet that miniskirts or biking shorts will be conveniently ruled OK. The booth babe will be a little more dressed, but I don't think she's going anywhere.

1/21/2006

Medieval II: Total War

Creative Assembly has announced a new real time battle game - a sequel to their immensely popular Medieval: Total War.

Medieval II will have 21 factions, over 250 units, and an extended map to allow the player to do battle against the large American empires of the Aztecs and Inca. In an adaptation of the role of the Senate in Rome, the new game will have the Pope make demands of his Christian followers.

It looks like princesses and priests are back, which is OK so long as they don't have as many pointless civilian units as the original Medieval did. Inquistors, bishops, princesses, spies, emissaries - many necessary for very basic functions - contributed to the long and annoying end game.

New combat animations and better lighting are promised, but I'm not sure to what end. Rome looks great already and I'm not sure that Medieval needed more graphical gewgaws, especially if that means that I will need to upgrade my computer again.

IGN has some screenshots
but no release date; late 2007 seems like a safe bet.

I liked Medieval but never loved it the way I do Rome. The battles were great - they always are - but the campaign game got very frustrating as the number of armies and civilian units exploded and the AI unfailingly predicted what your next move would be. Putting the design improvements from Rome into a Middle Ages setting could make this the historical strategy game to beat in the next year.

1/20/2006

Developer Interview: Philippe Thibaut

Philippe Thibaut is a French strategy game developer best known for his design of the board game Europa Universalis. He helped Paradox adapt that design to the PC, and therefore had a crucial role in Paradox's first huge hit.

He then began working on his own PC games, developing Pax Romana - a game full of great ideas but poor execution - and the still mostly unknown Great Invasions. His new game is Birth of America, a game based on that first great example of Franco-American cooperation, the Revolutionary War. He agreed to answer a few questions about his new enterprise and offer some general thoughts on game design.

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Your first two games (Pax Romana and Great Invasions) dealt with the ancient world and used similar engines. Besides the obvious difference in subject matter, what will change in Birth of America?

A lot! First of all the engine is completely different, hence the gameplay. Second the approach of the gameplay is to have something very instinctive and straight to the point. This is feasible because the scope of the simulation is more limited, except for its military aspect where it is the contrary.


Have your experiences with Pax Romana and Great Invasions changed how you approach development?

They have indeed, in the sense that we have decided to build the design around a new generic engine that corresponds better to the current tastes of the consumer. My previous games were RTS because this was fashionable to be so (in other words, the publisher asked for RTS lest they refuse to take the game). A lot of technical and practical experience was acquired too, allowing us to develop our latest game with a much smaller team in much less time too. And the key lesson is that it is far better to have a small and efficient team of dedicated players-developers than a large team of people who are doing game development like any other computer development..

How would you describe the current market for strategy games in general and independently developed ones in particular?

It is a vast question. My feeling is that we have too many look-alike games on look-alike subjects, just as if you needed a WW2 or Napoleonic-era game to face the market. A lot of developers and almost all publishers make an error when choosing a new title, by jumping into the fashionable subjects which they feel will automatically be popular, but without really looking into what the game is supposed to bring as a new playing experience. Hopefully, independently developed games are here to remind the consumer that he can get a feel of something else than the Big Artillery stuff provided by the Big Guys.


How well has your boardgame experience translated to the computer arena?

I would say this is the basis of everything. My way of developing a game is rather old-fashioned and I usually do a boardgame model of every new project. I do play it extensively with friends and the development team, and once we are confident it is fun and interesting, we take a good time to see how we can adapt it to the computer. If the boardgame market wasn’t so dead, I would even like to publish those models (which are indeed complete games per se).


Birth of
America has been almost a stealth development. There's been very little discussion of or promotion for it in America even though it is about its founding war. Why such a low profile?

Secrecy is often key to victory! More seriously, the title was adapted from our latest engine some 4 months ago, after lack of financing and interest from major publisher forced us to shelve the original big strategy game project it was supposed to be (a game on the XIXth century, with all its aspects). We did not make any comments on the project until we finally collected the required funds for its development and also had something to show. We were just not ready to speak about it earlier.


What game would be the closest comparison to Birth of America?

I would say none at this stage, even if you could find similarities of engine with some recent successes like Dominions II. The theme and the detailed military coverage of the game is rather unique.


Tell me a little bit about Ageod.

Ageod was created to make sure we would be able to complete our project and deliver the game to the players in due time, without interference from publisher’s or retailer’s constraints that should not have to be borne by the customer, i.e. the player. I wanted to avoid some past know disasters where a game was dumped on to the market, un-properly finished, badly time released and lacking any follow-up, for reasons totally unconnected to the game or its intrinsic value.

And we want to share this experience with other independent developers as well: we want to have games for players, that we promote as best as we can, and not only our games! Every game is welcome, as long as it is interesting, fun and nice, and properly made by state-of-art professional teams. We will not be the guys pushing them to the wall with market deadlines: not one single game ever distributed by Ageod will be released unless it is deemed complete.

This of course does not mean there won’t be patches, on the contrary: this is a living proof a game can always improve and has the support of the playing community.


Have you already started work on your next project?

Yes, on two of them very seriously, even if we have not yet found all the required financing. And we have at least 3 other titles pending which we would love to have some time to pre-test.


As an independent developer, what do you see as the role of the press in gaining exposure for your work?


I’d like the press to report news from our projects as objectively as possible. Also I feel that once a project has made it to the test boards of press companies, there should always be at least 2 independent reviewers for it. I know it is tantamount to wishful thinking, but some un-cautious reviewers do speedy jobs that often miss the point but torpedo the project anyway. This is all the more true when you do games that are light-years away from the usual latest-Full3D-FPC and the likes….

1/18/2006

2006 in the strategy arena - a wishlist

2005 was a good year, and I have hopes for the upcoming year, as well. Corvus's "Round Table" has asked for people to submit their wishes for the new year, and for their expected consequences. So here are my hopes for the strategy genre in 2006.

My first hope is that there will be a big, new strategy game released with no franchise attached. 2005 was full of huge franchise titles and sequels. Age of this, empire that, civ again...each with something to offer. Strategy games need a breakout hit - especially on the PC - unless we gamers want to play variations on the same titles for the next twenty years. This is expensive, of course, because of the immense risk involved in launching any game. The last new pseudo-strategy game that became a breakout, must-have game was The Sims, and that was many years ago. It transcended gaming, of course, and became a pop culture phenomenon. I have no such hopes for any game released this year. But if strategy gaming could deliver the next Civ or the next AoE or the next Starcraft, then I will remain confident in the power of my favorite genre to move minds and units. (BTW, I could call out Firaxis here for just pillaging the past and not using all the immense brainpower they have to do something surprising and amazing, but I have too much discretion to do such a thing.)

Second, I hope that the MMO-Strategy world gets its Ultima Online - a game that moves the multiplayer strategy world beyond PBEM clients or ladder games and gives us wargamers and desktop gods a persistent world to make in our image. Civilization promised me the chance to build an empire that stood the test of time, but didn't quite deliver the eternal glory it promised me. SimCountry is a detail heavy version of what a MMO-S game could look like if they could just work out some of the glitches. And maybe have bigger explosions.

Third, Rise of Legends better be good. Big Huge Games took a bit of a risk in moving away from the historical grounding of Rise of Nations to a completely new world. And I am astonished by the look and ambition of the game; it's probably easier to balance 12 similar nations than it is to balance 3 distinct cultures. Though Reynolds might not know it, a triumphant Rise of Legends
could open the door to a lot of new and crazy worlds.

Fourth, I hope that indie strategy developers get a publishing alternative to Shrapnel and Matrix Games. I have nothing against either publisher. Both have treated my inquiries with great respect and both have put out their share of good and not so good games. But I sometimes wonder about their PR or marketing strategy since I almost never hear about many of their games unless I visit their sites or I mention them in a forum. Salvo!, for instance, sort of popped out of nowhere and then I was asked to review it. Sure, I would have been better off not playing it at all, but that's not quite the point. Though I have doubts about what exactly Manifesto Games will bring to the table, I hope that Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson can provide an option for indie developers that gives some of these games more mainstream exposure. And it might push the big two to promote some of their best products (like Starshatter or Land of Legends) with more energy.

Finally, I hope that the wargame/strategy columns in both PCGamer (Steve Klett) and Computer Gaming World (Bruce Geryk) become popular and influential movers in the greater interest of strategy/war gaming. To be honest, I know little about Klett. I've liked what I've read so far, so no major complaints. My deep respect for Geryk is obvious - I check his blog daily - and I'm sorry that his CGW column is so small. But if you look at magazine covers, the twelve months are overwhelmingly dominated by MMOs and shooters. Only Civ IV and Age of Empires III really seem to get the covers, or the multiple previews. Strong advocates within the magazine structure could mean more and better coverage. Which could mean more and better games. (Like anyone listens to press...) So if you read either of those magazines, write in to support their columns and their coverage.


1/17/2006

AIAS Award Nominees

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced its nominees for this year's Interactive Achievement Awards. Oddly not available on the organization's own site, you'll have to check Kotaku to get the whole deal for now.

First thought that occurred to me was surprise that Call of Duty 2 was the only PC game nominated for Game of the Year. Then I realized that they are talking about the console version - it's not nominated for computer game of the year - so the biggest category has no PC games at all. Thanks guys.

There are three strategy type games in the computer game of the year category - Civ IV, The Movies and Age of Empires III - fighting it out with two shooters (FEAR and Battlefield 2). In the strategy genre category, Civ and AoE are nominated along with Empire Earth 2. Yeah, I know. They consider The Movies to be a simulation game, though its tycoon component makes it more of a strategy game to me.

The predictability of the nominees is disturbing. Were none of the jurors familiar with the dozen strategy games from this year better than Age of Empires? I can only guess that its name recognition earned it votes. Empire Earth 2 is one of the most shocking entries I've ever seen.

Then again, We Love Katamari is in the children's category with Chicken Little and Madagascar.

Mostly, the AIAS does a better job than anyone else who passes out game awards at a show. Of course, that's only SpikeTV. But the domination of the large studios and predictable nominees in every category (except for King Kong in Outstanding Game Design...) means that either the jurors aren't doing their jobs in pushing for titles that are beyond the foreground or they just have no knowledge beyond the best sellers. No Act of War in the genre award, but they find a place for AoE III in Best Online Game Play. And it's not like they don't have room. Five action games get nominations in that genre. Five children's games. But only three strategy games and only three simulation games.

Mind you, the major magazine and website awards mean more to me as a reader/gamer. When Gamespot or CGW calls something its "Game of the Year", that means something to me. I've read their reviews so I can compare title to title and opinion to opinion. But I've heard the AIAS called gaming's version of the Oscars.

Except the biggest budget always wins.

1/09/2006

The Art of the Designers' Note

Though all of the praise for Civ IV is well-deserved, little of it is as merited as the kind words directed at Soren Johnson's afterword in the manual. It is a beautiful little essay that gives some insight into the game design process, specifically how to adapt a classic game and make it better. Potential pitfalls are mentioned, justifications for design decisions are made and the whole thing is written in a familiar style.

It made me wonder why more games don't have a "designer's note" or "afterword" in their manuals. It's certainly not new for Meier and co. Brian Reynolds wrote two excellent concluding essays for Civilization II and Alpha Centauri. Of the latter, Reynolds writes:

"...in spite of the industry's headlong rush to get on the real time bandwagon, [we believed] a strong market still existed for turn-based strategy games. Gamers wanted a new sweeping, epic of a turn based game, and they wanted us to design it."

He goes on to talk about the challenge of sci-fi settings, the important role of Bing Gordon and how the entire Firaxis team made the game come to pass. Curiously, Civ 3 had no such commentary from Jeff Briggs.

Back in 1990, Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley wrote an afterword for the Railroad Tycoon manual that paid homage to the classic board game 1830. They go into how the design changed as the game developed and what had to be done to keep the whole thing accessible.

As I rifled through my shelf, though, I found few other designer's notes in strategy manuals to compare to the Meier-esque oeuvre. Caesar III has a note from David Lester that reveals that C3 was originally going to be city building in space. (Maybe someone should try that...) None of the Paradox games have great notes, though Hearts of Iron II has a great one from the manual author. Imperialism's manual has one of the great first pages in game history, but nothing from the Frog City developers. Many wargames have designer notes, but they are rarely very insightful into game design or development. None of the Age of Empires games have notes at all.

Why so few? The growth of design by committee could have something to do with it. There is little sense of "authorship" in many games, though I suspect this would change if we gamers got a little more of a feeling for the developers. Good designer notes also let us look a little at how the design process moves in fits and starts.

The decline of manuals in general is an issue. In-game help and interfaces have evolved to the point where thick manuals are mostly unnecessary and this is a good thing. Whatever manual there is will tend to be short, full of pictures, and with no room for "fluff."

Still, I like designers' notes and want to see more of them. Even a bad note lets us understand something about the anonymous people who make our fun. There are lots of great things to imitate in Civ IV. I ask developers to imitate the afterword first.

1/07/2006

Online journal for games

The inaugural issue of Games and Culture is available online.

As a survivor of the academic world (and still a hanger on), part of me rejoices to see an academic journal devoted to game studies - ludology if you prefer the fancy word.

As a gamer, I am confident that none of this university provided criticism will have any impact on the range of game opportunities provided for me. How much has film criticism affected Hollywood? How often has literary criticism pushed novelists in new directions?

None of this is meant to suggest that ludology is not important. All human activity is probably worthy of study, and for a select audience this type of analysis will help make sense (or ascribe artificial meaning) to a major form of entertainment.

My concern is that ludology will fall into the trap of analyzing the easy. Human interactions within MMO worlds, race/gender in games, narrative structures, etc. All these subtexts of gaming have established parallels in the academic community. Moving sociology, race/gender studies and literary theory to the gaming world doesn't create new tools for analysis or a new way of understanding gaming. Just as you cannot simply take the language of book criticism and apply it to film, shifting the subject matter without changing the language could lead to a lot of dead ends in ludology.

From the articles I have read, it is not easy to determine if the authors are "gamers" or not. There is clearly some familiarity with the form, but whether this familarity is in fact a deep passion for the media is another matter altogether. Not that I know how many hours qualifies one to speak intelligently about gaming.

I will bookmark the journal and maybe print out a few of the articles. Since this blog is really the only place I get to pretend that I am still a scholar, maybe I'll even wax philosophical about an article or two.

New Old Column In CGM

The independent games column/insert Alt.Games returns in February's Computer Games Magazine under new authorship - mine.

Appended to the "Mods and Ends" section, alt.games is no more than a few hundred word reviews/blurbs on free or inexpensive indie products. There's no opinion column attached, like there was when DIYGames' Greg Micek wrote this thing. You can trust that CGM will still give proper reviews to those indie games that deserve greater recognition than a small notice in a small bit.

My first alt.games contribution looks at Facade, Trash and DoomRL. All old news, but worth another mention - especially since Facade and DoomRL are free.

If you have any suggestions for the column, feel free to drop me a line. There's a lot out there I don't know about.

1/03/2006

Not Quite the Worst. And Where's the Best?

If you read gaming blogs, you've already been pointed to Something Awful's "Five Worst Gaming Articles of 2005." And you've probably already read some commentary on this commentary. Kotaku writes that the article is both obnoxious and correct while both Game Girl Advance and Mile Zero point out that game articles are actually not journalism - something that Something Awful never actually claims, though GGA notes that the whole "New Game Journalism" thing is what Tim Roger and Kieron Gillen (two of the winners/losers) are a part of. Or something.

The thing is, there are much worse examples out there. Take anything that Jessica Chobot wrote for IGN in 2005. Or a random review from Digital Entertainment News? It gives us this gem of an opening paragraph:

"The Age of Empires (AoE) series feels like it’s been around for years, almost a constitution to be associated with PC gaming. Yet the series has only graced our computer screens for 8 years; with the original specimen being released in 1997. The original is still utterly playable even after nearly a decade, but how does its latest predecessor do?"

The thing is, pointing out bad game writing is like shooting fish in a barrel. Even on the biggest sites and in the biggest magazines. Some of the bad writing is born out of pretension, some out of trying too hard, most of it from just plain lack of skill. People forget, I think, that even writing about something as ultimately trivial like electronic games is writing and requires an understanding of grammar, context, and the difference between "predecessor" and "sequel".

But why pretend that the landscape is all barren? There are many good (and a very few great) writers out there. Point them out.

I'd like to hear some nominees of the best gaming writing out there. I have personal favorites (in both print and online) but am more interested in what you, gentle readers, find interesting and good. Best written review, best turn of phrase, best insight, best interview question, what have you. Maybe then I'll share my picks.

1/02/2006

So why do I bother?

The thing with gaming blogs is that there is always more criticism than joy. This is probably inherent in the form itself. Blogs are very personal and driven by a small number of motivations. It is easier to make a gripe interesting than a celebration. Plus, criticism more easily provokes discussion than praise.

Bruce Geryk has posted a couple of interesting posts on the limits of strategy games in the last couple of weeks. He has written that strategy games aren't really able to create new and original worlds. He has also written that strategy games are generally poor tools for education. Considering that these are counter-intuitive for the great mass of strategy gamers out there, it could be seen as undercutting the Positives of Gaming camp that seeks to defend a media form that probably doesn't need all that much defending.

I agree with much of what Bruce says in his posts. I quibble with his argument on the inability of games to communicate new geographies (milieus de novo he calls them in all his academic splendor), but his case is well reasoned and eminently defensible if not precisely correct. I've been making the same education argument he does for some time now. But in spite of these limitations, strategy games remain my genre of choice with only sports management games competing, and it's not a close competition.

So here is a celebration of what strategy games do for me.

1) FPS and RPG games let me be a hero, but strategy games let me be a god.
2) Even if they fail to truly educate, strategy games allow me to appreciate what I know on a deeper level.
3) Random maps - there really is no comparison in any other genre to the thrill of pushing back a black shroud and finding something new every time you play.
4) Replayability and setup options means that a single strategy game can satisfy me much longer than a game with a beginning or end.
5) In RPGs, evil means insulting a merchant, usually with little cost. In strategy games, evil is a way of moving your country further ahead faster - and there is almost always a cost.
6) Every multiplayer game is different since so many players have different play styles. Admittedly, this is less true at the highest level of MP RTS competition, but I'm not good enough to play at that level.

There are probably more.

As time goes on, I will return to my regular bitching about clumsy interfaces, stupid patches and Cossacks. But for today, I will revel in my good fortune at the range of strategy games available to me.