Isn’t That Spatial?

Every video game has certain benefits and constraints in the way it represents space. Interaction fiction, arcade titles, 2D side-scrollers, isometric RPGs, and first person shooters all have advantages and disadvantages to how they deal with space–some technical in nature, some design-based. This month’s topic invites you to explore the ways games have represented the spatial nature of their storyworlds and what this does for the audience experience. Is it possible to ignore the constancy of spatial relationships in a graphical game? What would such a game look like? Are there ways of representing spatial relationships that we haven’t explored? Do you have ideas for games that could intentionally twist the player’s perception of space, or do you want to write about a game that already has?

Back in the old days, video games were almost entirely side-scrollers or vertical-scrollers. The camera either didn’t move (Space Invaders) or it tracked to the right, or upwards. This had one massive benefit - you weren’t going to get flumoxed by an uncooperative camera, nor were you ever going to be surprised by finding yourself going in a different direction to the one you thought you were going.

But the quest for both realism and a love for the cinematography of the film industry led us neatly into a number of different ways of handling the camera. There was the first person ’shooter’ perspective, the top-down, RTS perspective, the rolling 3-D mid-range ‘fighter’ camera. As it became more complex, it became much easier to screw up. A first person camera, designed to increase realism and immerse you in the characters world, would instead cause vector-buildings to explode into bizarre polygons when you came too close. Just like in the real world.

Hands down, the top-down, or side-scroller is still the easiest, simplest and most useful of all the ways of creating space. First person has its uses, and shooters could never abandon that now. However, clever use of space and camera can enhance and develop certain themes within a game.

Claustrophobia is an easy one. A first person pov, a small light-source, rapid movement that you’re never quite quick enough to catch, and all the unseen horrors of the imagination can create an atmospheric back-drop for a game. Equally, a rolling panorama with wide-angle mid-range lenses can firmly drop characters into a beautiful and well-realised world - ideal for fantasy and sci-fi.

My suggestion then, would be to keep to the simplest camera/perspective possible, and only deviate from that if you have a very well realised and developed reason for doing so. In which case, make it flawless. The camera should be invisible, a subtle undercurrent to the atmosphere, and not an obtrusive and difficult mechanism that increases the games difficulty.

Selling a Game: Word of Mouth

First up, let me apologise for disappearing for a month. I moved house, lost my internet for a while, and then my computer died. Not a good chain of events! However, I’m back now - with my follow-up to Selling a Game: Making People Want to Buy.

Once your website is up, and polished, your cover art is done, and your promotional materials finalized and ready for the public eye you have to ensure that the public actually notices. Many people spend a huge amount of time and effort on their publicity materials, and then just trust that people will find their way there. Not so.

I am not going to get too in-depth with this, as generating publicity is an entire field in itself. But for the bootstrap developer with no money this quick guide should get you pointed in the right direction.

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Selling a Game: Making People Want to Buy

Let’s face it. Most people out there building mods, indie games, browser games, flash games - are doing it for the love, and not for the money. If you’re one person running it out of your bedroom, then you are probably happy enough earning a few bucks from ad revenue.

But if you’re serious about video games earning you enough to pay your bills and let you quit your day job, then you need another skill set. You must be good at writing, drawing, modelling, coding, and animating - or good at finding people who can do those things - but you must also be good at selling.

The internet is either the best thing, or the worst thing, to happen to the industry. If you want to make games the traditional way - big boxes of promo material, shelf space in Game, DRM protected disks going for $40+ a pop… then you’re reading the wrong article.

Can you use the internet to help sell your game? Absolutely. The best part is that there is a very low barrier to entry. Anyone can buy a domain name and some cheap webhosting, and you are ready to go.

First of all, assess your game. Is it a cheap ‘n’ cheerful flash game with an addictive hook? Then you’ve got a good chance of going viral, and ad revenue may well work nicely for you. Is it a more traditional downloadable game with slick graphics? Then you are going to want people to pay for it.

You might think this is as easy as getting x-million people to look at your site. Not true. If your website (or facebook page, or twitter stream, or whatever) is boring, difficult to navigate, or gives off completely the wrong ‘feel’ then you won’t sell anything. So what do you do?
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International Borders: Online Games Create a Shared Global Culture

Cultures clash sometimes. Put two people in a room, one who thinks long beards are divine, and the other who thinks they are sinful, and you’ll have a generational war before you blink twice. People have clashed over everything from skin colour to the way they eat. Got a sacred animal? The next tribe over will slaughter it and have it for dinner.

So when you create a truly international forum, you can expect misunderstanding and conflict to spring up. Unfortuantely, the only way to progress to a deeper understanding of other people is to interact with them. Somehow, we have to create a place that allows us to see past the immediate ‘wow, look at how different they are’, and observe that everybody thinks, breathes, feels, loves and despairs.

Enter online games.
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Project Natal: The Next Step

It wasn’t so long ago I talked about XTR, the single-camera input method. Not that much later, Xbox announced Project Natal, which takes the idea of motion-sensitive technology and takes it to the logical end.

Where one company leads, others are sure to follow (and sometimes overtake). The wiimote began the trend, and the end point will be … well, quite possibly all you’ll have to do is think what you want to happen - and it will.

In the meantime, motion-sensors are going to be the next big thing. In turn, game designers are going to be walking a strange line - on the one hand, the sense of immersion and virtual reality can be improved by having people ‘act out’ the role they are playing. On the other hand, the gap between what video game characters are capable of and what real people are capable of may have to be questioned. Sure, I can cope with running around pretending to shoot things - but I’m not sure I can execute drop kicks and saumersaults. It doesn’t take much except co-ordinated thumb movements to work the average game at the moment, but in the future how are the less physically able going to be able to cope with the range of movements that may well be required?

On the other hand, video games will quickly leave behind their couch potato status, and become a bonafide fitness and education tool. When a system can see exactly what I am doing wrong with my downward facing dog pose, or exactly why my golf balls always fly 50 miles straight up in the air, they can teach me how to fix those problems - all without expensive lessons that create a barrier for many people.

One thing is for sure - like DDR mats and the wii mote before it. Project Natal is going to bring yet another wave of non-gamers into the gaming domain. This can only be a good thing.

Let’s Play, Let’s Cook: The Blurred Line between Games and Tools

On the one hand you have Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and on the other you have Happy Cooking. On the train you start up Chinatown Wars, and when you get home you load up the PSP e-book reader. One day you are deep into Manhunt 2, counting bodies, the next day you fire up Wii Fit and count some reps.

Somewhere, the line between video games and electronic tools became blurred. Now the DS has as many or more ‘lifestyle’ titles as it does hardcore games, and the difference between them is not always easy to spot. Devices such as the iPhone have brought games into a world more normally dominated by useful tools, and portable gaming consoles have brought useful tools to the world of gaming.

We expect all of our devices to do much the same things. Voice-chat, internet browsing, basic applications, some kind of ability to store files. Of course, each device has its strong points and weak points, but generally speaking you can get decent functionality from them all. The result is that most of our lives go into these devices - or into the cloud that the devices access. The result? A kind of smushing together of all these things - they utilise the same interface, the same input methods, the same kind of instructions and reward mechanisms. So what’s the difference? Well, presumably you are playing the games for fun, and the other stuff is merely useful - a way to achieve a goal like becoming fit, cooking a great meal, managing your time productively. Yet, at the same time, many games are a grind that only becomes fun at the moment when you finally accomplish the big goal (defeating the super-boss, getting the exalted rep, acquiring that rare item, getting the high score). Meanwhile, the tools often add a layer of ‘game-like’ fun, by measuring your progress, providing detailed instructions on how to progress, and rewarding you with cut-scenes, points, or unlocking harder ‘levels’.

You could argue that story-telling is the difference, with games containing escapism and role-play. You might be right - but many games contain little to no story, and are just basic repetitive puzzles. Meanwhile, tools can place themselves within a story, treating you like a master-chef (role-play) or placing you in an alternate world whilst doing what you need to do.

What do you think the difference between the two is?

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