Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

More from the world of gaming through the eyes of my five year old daughter…

She was humming a tune this evening. Something she hasn’t quite done before. You know, when you get a song stuck in your head and you can’t get rid of it. It is funny to witness these kinds of moments for the first time in her life. So I get to asking her about the song. Turns out it was from a children’s music band that she listens to while riding in a friend’s car. So I start to ask her more about it to see what she really thinks of it. She says it is a song about bikes and that she likes how the singer asks the audience what their bikes look like. She seems to love that he speaks directly to the listener. I ask her some more fairly directed questions about how it makes her feel and what parts she likes, etc. But she really doesn’t reveal much more than she just likes it because it is about bikes. Now, I have to hand it to her, she has had some pretty profound thoughts of late. Things have come out of her mouth that amaze us on an emotional level. But with this song she was coming up short on her opinion of it. Or was she?

So, of course, I go directly to games after that. We haven’t played anything in months (I don’t bring up games unless she asks about them and she hasn’t been) so I ask her what her favorite game is that she remembers us playing. She says Animal Crossing. I ask her what she liked about it. She basically says that she likes the “animals and the people.” As I try to delve further into that thought she only really says that she likes to move the people around. I asked her what she liked to do in the game and it boiled down to just playing it and being in that world. Even pointed questions about how she felt playing it or when she brought up Viva Piñata (ñ = Opt + n, then n for those who don’t know how to type that accent) what was boring or scary or funny (as my wife joined in and added) came up with nothing more than descriptions of what she did in pretty general terms.

Overall I was suprised she didn’t want to talk more deeply about how she liked or disliked these experiences when she typically does with other experiences. Now it could be the types of games she is playing, those with no real linear stories. Or it could be she just isn’t ready to talk that way about entertainment. But I had a different thought which brought up a feeling I bet most of us have had about judging or being a “critic” of anything remotely artistic, “just let it be what it is.” We talk all day long at work about what we think of this game or that game and we rank them and judge each other’s ranks of them but why can’t we leave well enough alone and just enjoy it (or not) as is and let it stop there. I kept wanting Lia to be a critic and hear the five year old analysis of a song or a game but all she wanted to do was talk about what she did in the game and what the song was about. That was all that mattered to her. I guess I’m coming down to the point that maybe we should spend more time just enjoying experiences for what they are and maybe we can learn a few things from kids on how to do that without all this baggage of criticism creeping into whatever we consume. It might help us all move forward in some way. But as you judge this post I bet it won’t.

So I’ve been trying to play more and more web games lately. I find that we pass them around at work fairly often and it turns out that while we have been spending all this time making these damn multi-year long games on these ridiculous consoles that all these amazingly talented web developers are using the one platform that outnumbers all the consoles sold combined, Flash, to make games just as compelling as anything we could make (if not more). Playing from a browser. That is it. Well, whether you can say it is part of the indy revolution or not, truth is it has sort of snuck up on all of us and proven that in the end the power of the hardware and the big budgets have little to do with the art form.

Some may have seen this already, but a recent game that crossed my path via a friend, Jason Botta, is called Questionaut. It seems that the design company Amanita Design created it as an educational game for the BBC for 11 year old kids. But trust me it is great for all ages. I had forgotten that these folks also won Best Web-Based Game from the IGF (Independent Game Festival) last year in 2007 for Samorost 2. I knew I had seen the Questionaut art style somewhere.

Questionaut is a wonderful blend of what games can do with integrating learning and interactivity but with style and originality as well. We get so caught up in all the crap of making huge games, we sometimes forget about the fundamentals. Well that is all these folks have to work with…and frankly I’m envious. We could all learn a thing or 200 from these devs.

Well enough of this crap, go play Questionaut. Everyone.

Well between GDC(thanks to all those who came to my lecture - slides incoming), homeownership (for our first time) and having major DSL issues during the move, I’m finally back up and running on the web in our new home. Sorry for the downtime. I have to share some numbers related to my experience with AT&T (which also happens to be the company my father retired from - so I’ll watch my step…hi Dad!)

• 15 days of downtime.
• 7 members of customer service.
• 2 different companies (Apple and AT&T).
• over 10 hours on the phone.
• ~2 hours of just being on hold.
• A new DSL modem ($50).
• ~4 hours of solo troubleshooting.
• 6 (of the 7) customer service reps gave up.

I wouldn’t even know where to start if I were to try to really add up the money spent on dealing with this issue from both my side of things as well as the companies’ side of things. I can only assume that the above list and numbers can’t really make any good sense when it comes to the amount of time and resources that were used to eventually solve the problem. Something somewhere HAS to be wrong. I’ll point one obvious finger at inefficiencies. Or has the pressure for these companies to keep up with the competition caused them to enter into areas they aren’t ready to fully support but have to try to support anyway to stay competitive? Are things over the phone just too complicated? If so, could all this money be spent on better standards and more streamlined User Interfaces where even someone tech savvy like myself can more easily navigate the world of PPPoE (WTF does that even mean, anyway?!). I shudder to think how these phone conversations would go with my grandmother. And Apple products are supposed to be the best around, but they still have a long way to go. And yet, after all that, even if I wanted the freedom to make my own choice and boycott the company that screwed me, I can’t. I’m stuck between a terrible choice in pricing with Comcast or terrible products and service with AT&T. What kind of free market do we really live in, anyway?

This reminds me of a similar utopian view I’ve always dreamt of where we put all of our time and money and resources we currently devote to the automobile industry and instead plug it all into a massive public transportation network. But god forbid we all give up the privacy of our own cars. However, that is another post altogether.

Apparently I didn’t find my breaking point though, because I continued calling and trying to figure it out despite the pain. Did I not learn a lesson of some kind or is this just what we are left with at the end of the day? I’ll step off my soapbox for now, but as I write this post to you over my new DSL connection I’ll curse the dogmatic and complacent monopolies of the world and go back to my hobbit hole.

There isn’t anything more I can say about No Country For Old Men that hasn’t been said before now. Watching the Oscars last night, I was happy to see that it was recognized as I consider it to be one of the most perfect films I’ve ever seen. And though, at the end of the day, awards like those really can’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things (judging art, all that crap) there was one other award given last night that I was extremely happy to see. The award for best song went to “Falling Slowly” from the film Once which was an independent movie from last year that I completely forgot I saw until they performed the song on the show. I saw it alone in Eugene, Oregon while I was up there on a business trip in a small art house called The BiJou. The theme song for the movie stuck with me while I was walking back to the hotel and I remember thinking that it was such a great song (matched with a great movie) that it must have been from someone’s album that they bought the rights for to use in the film. The heart behind the performances of the song in the movie during the opening scene (as I recall) and beyond and the backdrop for the whole circumstance for the story had an honesty that is rare in film these days.

Well, I pretty much forgot about it all after that but when they performed again last night it all came rushing back. I figured they wouldn’t win anyway, some stupid Disney movie had three nominations for best song from the same damn movie, so as always…no justice. But then it happened. They won, I find out they made the movie with 100k in three weeks and it was mainly the two of them making it happen. I was so happy for them. Glen Hansard gave a genuine speech and all was well until Marketa Irglova got cut off an didn’t get to give her own speech. Then, for the first time in the 80 years of the Oscars, they paused the show to allow her to come back on to give her speech after all. Justice served twice. Marketa’s speech was even better. Awards shows like these are pretty ridiculous, but they can sometimes have a big impact on the right people and I can’t deny that. The tune will stick with me now for sure.

Please go out to see or rent this movie. It is the real deal, to be sure.

Here are their speeches if you missed them.

This is a link to the performance of the song in the movie with both of them for the first time and here is the Wiki for the amazing history behind the making of the movie itself.

By now everyone has shared their “Games of the Year” (GOTY, of course) blog post and news articles. So, why should Bullet Points be any different? Except I’ll be doing things a bit differently because I don’t see why these sort of proclamations have to only fall within the one previous year. No one other than extreme hard cores and journos (thanks for the term Garnett) can play all the right games for the year to even make that kind of judgment. Even then they often don’t get to finish everything so how can we really know for sure. So for Bullet Points I’m talking about the top “Games I Played This Year” (GIPTY) instead. These are my personal games of the year because they had the biggest effect on me during 2007 but I won’t be taking into account their release dates. Forget about these arbitrary annual devisions. Go with the biggest games for you personally. Don’t let the tide of the larger group sway your decisions.

So, I won’t be talking about the same damn games that everyone else is. How can you argue with some of those top tens for 07 and why re-hash. In fact, in some cases, the games I’ll throw out there were not even top games in the year they did come out in. Could it be that another title for this post is “My Favorite 80% games of the Year?” So here we go…

HITMAN BLOOD MONEY
3BR (Three Bullet Review)

• HIT: Near perfect execution of Hitman fantasy fulfillment. (Yes, for some reason I have always wanted to be one.)



• HIT: Delivering a world with the right choices are given to the player and are always fun to discover and execute.
• MISS: The few mechanics conflicting with core goals (Such as rewarding the player with more guns when guns are not what the game is about at all.) keep the game from being an award winner for most.

Any game that lets you smuggle a live pistol into an opera rehearsal via the coat check and then go and take out one of the actors back stage to impersonate them by wearing their costume and then actually taking the stage during the rehearsal to use that same live gun on your target while he is singing on stage as the “fake” gun sound effect goes off in an opera about an execution is brilliant. Then you just walk away like nothing happened. And that is only one way to do it. There were too many unforgettable moments to be shared. Now why the hell is Agent 47 a clone again?

DEAD RISING
3BR

• HIT: Non-linear Survival Horror in a mall with unlimited Zombies to kill with nearly unlimited weapons. I mean, for anyone who was a fan of Dawn of the Dead, it is pretty much a done deal.



• HIT: Extremely compelling tension set up by the survivor mechanic (which also had its fair share of frustration, I’ll admit) which gave you a great sense of what it actually might be like to live through a Zombie apocalypse.
• MISS: Baffling design choices (only one save, promoting restarting the game multiple times, mutually exclusive events happening at the same time, and more) which either were lost in translation from being a Japanese developer trying to deliver a more Western game structure or someone was playing a joke on their audience.

I wrote a post awhile back about embracing bad design and used this game as one of the examples. I’ve been wanting to play this “type of game” for years and this one got the closest. Once you gave in to the choices they made then the game took on a whole new meaning and was extremely hard to put down.

LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE
3BR

• HIT: A fully realized Middle Earth (for as much as they have of it so far) where I, for the first time, actually felt like I was playing the books. Not the movies.



• HIT: If you can’t beat them, join them. WoW may hold the crown but LotRO cloned enough of WoW to seem familiar to new WoW players while still maintaining enough of its own identity (new class structures) so that it still feels like a new MMO experience in many ways.
• MISS: Suffers from some of the same things as WoW such as terribly boring quest activities and too much repetition.

I can’t say enough about this game if you are an MMO player and more specifically a WoW player. I guess it does help to be a Lord of the Rings fan as well, I’ll admit. It is stunningly beautiful for an MMO (takes a beefy machine) and has cracked the whole mismatched armor looking like crap issue that WoW still has in spades. You look good no matter what you wear (It’s important!). Also, the “single-player” aspect of the Epic quests complete with cutscenes and voice lines all along the way (from Gandalf!) makes you feel like you are right behind Frodo on his quest. I hope they stick around long enough to make it to Mordor. Even if I have to take the damn ring their myself! (Yes I’m playing a Hobbit.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Mainly because I started these in 2007 and have not yet finished them. So they seem to be promising but I don’t want to say for sure yet.

• Beyond Good and Evil: As a full package it rivals Zelda for that “complete adventure” feel. Unlike Zelda though I actually care about the characters and what I’m doing. May be a hit for me.
• STALKER: This game might just hold me over while I wait for Fallout 3. It is also way too early to tell, but combining open-world with factions with a post-apocalyptic shooter is pushing all my buttons.
• Armageddon Empires: Developed by one fellow, this turn-based tactical card game with a hex board is a throw back to the good old days. I’m not too deep into this one yet but if I get the hang of it I can see some addiction happening.

So there you have it. I didn’t even mention any of the usual suspects for this year. You know the ones I mean. So let’s all cheer for the games that left their mark on us when we least expected it. I can’t argue with the amazing successes that 2007 brought us all. But I also can’t ignore the fact that some of my favorite games are the ones that are easily missed. Don’t let the good ones (for you) get away. And don’t let people give you crap for liking them.

P.S. Though it got some good press this year as well, I think it needs a bit more. Crackdown warmed my heart in a few ways (not being a GTA fan but wanting something like it) and I hope we get to see more iterations of that series because the sequel could really hit the target.

This blog has become a bit more about parenting and gaming than I had thought it would. Today’s post is a plug directed toward a new web site devoted to educating parents about what their kids are playing. It offers features, news and reviews about video games from a perspective that a parent can appreciate. The web site is called “What They Play” and was started by one of my favorite industry editors (along with some friends) John Davison who helped start, and has recently left, the 1Up network and magazines like Official Playstation Magazine and EGM.

In a world where the art forms in any and all mediums are having to defend themselves more and more as a result of poor parenting choices, there are those out there like this site who are trying to help parents make better choices which will both help the children behind those parental actions as well as prevent unnecessary censorship (a la Manhunt 2 and beyond) of the products.

So parents and parents-to-be please check out and use the site…for everyone’s sake.

Ok, so this is a blatant plug for my own site with a not so healthy dose of egotism in there as well, but I wanted to thank one of my favorite weblogs for giving Bullet Points some public traffic. GameSetWatch is a sort of “clearing house” blog site for game industry news, blogs, articles and general tidbits about the work we love so much. Every so often they collect a group of links from interesting, random, and personal blogs and such and post them so people may find some pages they may normally miss or not even know about. For the first time, as far as I know, my site was linked on a recent GameSetWatch post.

So, I wanted to let people know about GameSetWatch to try to return the favor a tiny bit. I wanted to also thank GameSetWatch and Simon Carless (the editor and great supporter of Indie Gaming) for linking my page. I’m honored and humbled to have been up there at all. Now I’m actually worried that people are reading this thing. Goodness.

Here is a quote from their page as a sort of mission statement I presume:

• “THE FINAL WORD: GameSetWatch believes that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. We’re committed to finding and exposing excellence in video games and game writing, whether it be in the indie, mainstream, or other more esoteric sectors. Join us on that journey, won’t you?”

Thanks Simon! (…and thanks to the person who told them about the site to begin with.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Rudy for catching my misspelling. Sorry Simon. It is Simon Carless, not Careless. Though Careless sure would be cool. Also found another link to my site that I missed before from Simon and GameSetWatch.

This special edition of The Lens (where my poor daughter’s gaming life is recorded on this blog for any fool to read) deals specifically with a slight marketing angle for gaming. I knew this would happen and I should have gone with my gut in the first place but as much as you try to protect them from the evils of the world, sometimes it turns out the problems are right in front of you. I recently decided to show some studio and franchise spirit and wear more Tomb Raider related t-shirts from time-to-time. I’m proud that my studio works with Tomb Raider and consider it an important part of my gaming life, so it made sense to me to fly the company colors openly. Jen, of course, was not too happy but hey, it is my work so it seemed justified.

Once I started wearing them though, something struck me. Each and every shirt (except one) has Lara holding a gun usually in a very prominent way. I remember thinking to myself that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to wear them around Lia because of this. Then I talked myself out of it and figured she may never notice and really probably doesn’t care what is on my silly shirts. Well, turns out I should have listened to my gut (you can see where this is going).

As I was brushing her hair after a bath the other day she looked at my shirt and asked me some questions.

Lia: “Daddy, what is that lady holding?”
Daddy: “Who, this lady?” (Pointing to my shirt hoping she was talking about something else. Oh crap.)
Lia: “Is she holding a wand?” (Magic and Fairies and Mermaids is her life right now, thank the gods.)
Daddy: “No it isn’t a wand.” (Shit, let’s hope she doesn’t…)
Lia: “Is that a gun?” (I have no idea how she knew that really.)
Daddy: “Yes, that is a gun.” (Already knowing this is quickly going south.)
Lia: “What is she doing with the gun? Does she want to shoot people?” (At this point I’m not even sure how she knows that guns do that in the first place. The most violent game she has played so far is Zelda - report incoming, she likes the sword apparently.)
Daddy: “Well, she does sometimes, yes. To protect herself.” (Here I’m trying to soften the blow, of course.)
Lia: “Why does she want to shoot them? Does she want to kill them with the gun?”
Daddy: “Well, this lady goes on adventures and sometimes she need to use her guns to protect herself.”
Lia: “You mean she goes on adventures like princesses do?”
Daddy: “Well sort of. You could say she is a type of princess.” (Jen and I try to go pretty princess-lite but Disney is too powerful for us it seems.)
Lia: “Would she shoot me with the gun?” (Right about now I’m feeling like the hole I dug is pretty damn deep.)
Daddy: “Oh no, she would never use the gun on you. She is a sort of hero, like…ur…Peter Pan.”
Lia: “Can she fly?” (In the image Lara is jumping through the air.)
Daddy: “Oh no, she can just jump really high.”
Lia: “Is she bad?”
Daddy: “Well, not really, but she can be really mad sometimes.” (Thanks Toby!)
Lia: “She should be careful with her guns.” (And truer words have never been spoken…)
Daddy: “Ok, open your mouth for teeth brushing!”

I guess I’m not wearing those shirts after all. Back to Wilderness themes with trees and animals. Maybe they will make good cleaning rags.

This is admittedly a SPOILER post for anyone who has not yet played Portal. Lord save you if you have not. If you make games there is really no excuse at this point. It is only about 4 hours long and it is one of the most brilliant 4 hours you will play all year (if not in the past 5 years). There is a song that they created for the ending credits of the game that has sort of become our industry’s new “anthem” (as if we ever had an old one) and I think it is very well deserved. I listen to the thing from time-to-time just to cheer myself up (and some days even make myself cry). VG Cats comics did a flash movie version of the song that I’m sharing with you here. Have fun with it and try not to cry. :o)

• To relive the original credits version go here.
• Free MP3 of the song here.
• Enjoy and Happy Winter everyone!

There is something to be said for loot. When you defeat your enemy and they leave you a nice little package of goods on their corpse that you can take from their still warm body and then go and sell to the nearest stranger in order to buy more crap you don’t need, that is power. It really drives the moment-to-moment progression, right? Well, there is no better way to prove this fundamental drive than to force yourself to not do it at all. On this “pilgrimage” of pacifism through Oblivion I have vowed not to loot. It is a feeling so foreign to me that when I was presented with that very situation I literally had a physical reaction when standing at the first dead body.

In the beginning of the game, unfortunately, I am forced to kill a few goblins and assassins to escape the typical opening of any Elder Scrolls game which is a linear dungeon setting you must escape from after being imprisoned. My vow of pacifism would have to reluctantly be put aside (a first failing of the game’s messaging of “play the way you want to play?”) in order to get to the main world so that I can actually start my pilgrimage at all. Consider it my character’s dark past, a monk fighting for self-defense and forever changed, asking himself how the gods could have put him in this situation. Was it a test? Did he fail? Regardless, I did what was necessary and escaped from my captors. Of course, despite wanting to lead a simple life, I was forced to participate in some sort of royal conspiracy where the king of the land was convinced I was some sort of savior (imagine that), a chosen one, and I must admit I had no idea what he was talking about. So I played along, nodded my head and moved on. When the assassins came for the king I had to kill them too (another act of self-defense), but gave them a pilgrim’s farewell. When all is said and done, yes, I knew how to play the game (because they forced me to for tutorial purposes) but in the process I also temporarily lost my way. I am a pilgrim (I keep telling myself). This means I should not be killing and I should not loot. So I don’t. I stand there, looking at all the dead bodies, questioning my path and the knot in my stomach as I leave the free loot on the corpses for some thankless rogue to pick through. Quite possibly the first time in my RPG career where I want to loot but can’t. Though it sounds small it actually had a bigger impact on me than I had anticipated. There was a sort of release. A transition happened and I thought to myself, “Maybe this can work after all.”

Though the Pilgrimage has only begun as I walk out of the dungeon, blinded by the fake sun and overwhelmed by the “open” world in front of me, it seems that maybe the hardest part is behind me. As terribly cheesy as it sounds, the simple act of not looting a corpse for the first time ever, by choice, gives me a feeling that this Pilgrimage may have more to offer than just a ridiculous idea. Dropping my bloody sword and taking the first step toward the nearest city, I run for my life from the local man-eating fauna and leave my killing days behind me.