Not having grown up in Michigan and mostly rooting for the Detroit Tigers only when they played the dreaded, hated, despicable New York Yankees, I never had to sneak my transistor radio under the mattress in order to hear Ernie Harwell's broadcasts. My sneaking had largely to do with listening to Vin Scully broadcast the Dodgers and Dick Enberg (and his predecessors I have sadly forgotten) broadcast the then (and now again) L. A. Angels. My only experience with Ernie Harwell was on an old PC version of APBA Baseball for Windows. Harwell was the voice for that product, a marvelous but clunky digital rendition of the popular board game. Yet, that experience is enough to make me feel diminished this morning as I hear about Hartwell's death.
I suppose nearing the magic 60-year-old mark is having a psychological effect on me. I find myself glancing at the obituaries a little more attentively each day. I shake my head sadly when I see more and more people younger than I am listed there. Yet, here I feel diminished by the death of a 91-year-old man who only retired about 8 years ago. Even though I'd only heard him via digitized voice within the context of this sports product (that I'll be digging out of storage soon for sentimental reasons), it seems as if some of my memories of youth--watching the CBS telecast of The Baseball Game of the Week on Saturday mornings with the late Dizzy Dean and late Pee Wee Reese, live from the old Tiger Stadium--have lost energy. I experience a personal sense of loss.
Yet, I was able to hear a rebroadcast of Harwell's final broadcast this morning. I was struck by what he said. He started out by stating that it was the last broadcast of his career. He hated to say good-bye, so he preferred to say "Hello" to a new life and "Thank You" for allowing him to be a part of his listener's lives. He assured his listeners, "God has a new adventure for me...." Wow! Could there ever be a more eloquent epitaph than gratitude combined with certitude. Thank you for what we've experienced together. Take comfort that I'm certain to be moving on to a new adventure.
This is a great example for all of us--especially the old geezer who has been so negligent in keeping up this blog. I've always had trouble saying "good-bye." It always feels like I'm leaving a part of myself behind so that I am constantly disintegrating. Too often, I forget that while I'm leaving a part of myself behind, I'm also departing with accrued experiences, relationships, knowledge, and wisdom from those with whom I've worked and played. If I could only learn to say, "Thank you for letting me be part of your lives!" and then, share that I'm certain that God has a new adventure for me, transitions (even that one of which I'm so conscious as of late) would be easier.
I do want to share some thoughts about sports games with all of you, but I want to take some time to take care of some long, unfinished business. For those of you who knew me during what I consider my golden years at Computer Gaming World, I want to say "Thank you for reading my editorials, even when I was 100% wrongheaded, but believed in them passionately. Thank you for putting up with my bad Rumor Bag humor and groaning inside with all of the improbable, if not impossible, ways the bag guy claimed to get his rumors. Thank you for all of you who shared "off the record" and "deep background" material with them. I hope you never felt betrayed because I consistently tried to maintain confidences and treat any information I received with respect. Thank you for those who accepted my verbal NDAs. Thank you for those of you who let me see your innovative products, computer game history in the making." I need to say this in public because I've been very resentful of CGW's transition and demise after my stewardship. But for the record, I'm tremendously thankful and feel incredibly warm about all those years there.
And for all of my colleagues: Russell Sipe, our founder, Vince DeNardo who taught me to get over myself (sort of), Chris Lombardi who forced me to grow as a person as he matured even faster than I did, Ken Brown who literally saved my life, Alan Emrich who collaborated with me on numerous wicked projects, Terry Coleman who was my frontier marshal to solve any problem, a great competitor, and tremendous collaborator, Jeff Green who always made coming to work fun, Denny Atkin who inspired me with his professionalism and challenged me when needed, Mike Weksler who showed me the meaning of curiosity, Dave Salvator who showed me the value of consistent testing, Robert Coffey who proved that there could be quality freelancing and quality editing overlapping in a single person, Charles Ardai who transformed my perception of quality by constantly raising the bar, and Loyd Case who still blows my mind with his prolific activity in both technology and gaming. And even though I mentioned more names than most of you wanted to read, I know I will always have a fondness for Charlotte Panther whose intellect was even more compelling than her beauty, Kate Hedstrom who broke the gender ceiling in "Johnny's Boys Club," Joe Vallina who tried to help us move from U of Chicago to AP style, Thierry (sic) Ngyen (sic) whose boundless energy and enthusiasm spilled over to the rest of the staff, and all of you I have shamefully failed to mention.
And, while I'm being indulgent, Thank you to everyone who made my experiences at Wizards of the Coast and Paizo such a wild ride. Thank you to Charlotte who hired me, John Dunn who led us into a new frontier technologically, Pierce Watters who worked circulation magic, and all of the creative people like Chris P, Jesse D, Erik M, and Dave G who made those universes come to life. I so regret not being able to work with you again, but be assured that I remember our experiments, our successes, and our failures fondly. My new adventure in academia is much quieter, but still challenging.
And now, something about games. You know, I truly regret the loss of control compared to what I used to experience in SSI's Computer Baseball, the Lance Haffner text-based games, APBA for Windows, XOR Football, and even Dani Berry's (Dan Bunten's) Computer Quarterback. I know those first games had about 16 offensive plays and 5 defensive formations for football and extremely limited physics (compared to Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony LaRussa Baseball) for baseball, but there was something tremendously satisfying about making a play call and watching how it played out. You see, I haven't fantasized about being a professional ballplayer since I was cut from the freshman basketball team in high school. I never deluded myself with the idea that I was coordinated. However, anyone can second-guess a baseball manager or football coach. So, I fantasized about taking on that role.
I know Accolades' Hardball! won hearts and minds by giving us that TV-eye view from center field and offering us a chance to choose pitch location. I know High Heat offered the most satisfying pitching simulation with high-res, high-speed performance. Still, I remember those days of waiting for the clunky old Apple II to spit out those Computer Baseball results with the same kind of intensity I used to listen to San Francisco Giants games on the radio when Mays, Cepeda, Alou, and my personal favorite, Stu Miller, were playing. I remember my heart almost stopping as I awaited each pitch when Leon "Big Daddy Wags" Wagner was batting for the Angels in Chavez Ravine (the euphemism for the ballpark when the Angels were still playing in Dodger Stadium). That's the way I used to wait for the Lance Haffner baseball game to resolve its calculations.
Maybe it's because those earlier games were all words and statistics that I'm reminded of them with regard to Harwell's passing. I love going to games and I love watching games on television (or even streaming on the web), but there is something basic, comforting, and exciting about listening by radio and having to fill in the gaps with my imagination (I get twice as tense listening as I do watching.). Maybe that's why I loved those early, crude simulations (as well as some of the early versions of Front Office Baseball and Baseball Mogul. They seemed to be the primordial baseball experience--not all they could be, but enough to keep me fascinated. For those of you who have grown up with the more vivid displays and reflex-testing versions of these sports, I just want you to know that those of us who played those ugly, primeval versions of your favorite sports games enjoyed them the same way some of us listen to radio broadcasts of sports games--with great anticipation. Text games may be commercially dead, but they live in some of our memories and they still have a place in our hearts. And, in case none of this made sense to any of you, a lot of you still have a place in mine. Thank you! I'll still be here for a while and I'll try to post more regularly. But even when this old ticker stops, know that God has a new adventure for me.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Little Wars
One would think that someone who espouses the value of gaming and loves to play games as much as I do would take better care of this blog than going months upon months without updating it. It isn't that I'm not playing and that I'm not involved in working behind the scenes on some game projects, it's just that blogging keeps falling back to a low priority. I apologize.
A little over a week ago, I was privileged to attend a gaming convention I've always wanted to attend, but used to live far enough away that the travel was prohibitive. I arrived in the Chicago area and let this convention slip past me twice before I finally made it--mostly because the convention organizers changed the date last year from its traditional date. But this year, I made it to "Little Wars," the convention named after H. G. Wells' classic set of rules for playing with "toy soldiers" on table-tops. I've been to GenCon where I've played board games, role-playing games, and wargames with miniatures. At Origins, I've played board games, role-playing games, and miniatures. I've even enjoyed World Boardgame Championships as the most amazing experience in concentrated board wargaming, ever. But this was the first time I've been to Little Wars.
My friend, Don Perrin, goes every year. I've known Don by reputation as a wargamer for years and now, I'm privileged to be in a writer's group with him. I've also read a few of his books. In fact, I saw Don at a great little seminar on designing scenarios specifically for conventions. Imagine how thrilled I was to listen to guys I've only read about like Jim Purky (brilliant figure painter and scenario designer for Seven Years War games like the one he did at Historicon, last year) and Keith Leidy (believed by many to be the grandmaster of hosting Napoleonic games like this one).
I was intrigued by Tod Kershner, author of Pig Wars, the now out-of-print skirmish rules for looting during the Dark Ages, when he quoted Donald Featherstone (the father of our current era of miniatures gaming)as stating, "Never let history get in the way of a good game." And, I was a firm believer in his basic rule of thumb: "By the end of Turn #2, you want everyone to be able to read/understand the charts--you don't need tight command/control rules."
Keith Leidy had a slightly more organized approach. He said that there are four elements to a good game: 1) beautiful aesthetic, 2) playable rules, 3) good players, and 4) a balanced scenario. He further defined the latter as saying that if there are four players on each side, "Every person needs an objective or something that puts them in immediate conflict with someone across the table."
All of the panelists agreed on things to avoid. One shouldn't put unmanageable terrain in the middle of the table because it tends to divide the entire conflict into two very different games. Leidy suggested that if you do have significant terrain features, you need to give at least a 2:1 advantage to the attackers.
Of course, I must confess that I wasn't really at the convention to listen to seminars. I'd done enough of that at a comic book convention the weekend before. I went to play. I met Trent Burg, author of Warbirds in Miniature, and he led a short Pacific Theater WWII scenario using those rules. I hadn't realized that these rules were inspired by an old favorite of mine, GDW's Blue Max. The great thing about these rules (besides playing quite fast and being easy to learn) was that the miniatures were all enhanced with Airestands.
These have components representing different heights that can be easily adjusted in increments of 10, 5, 2, and 1 so that you can simulate any given altitude. In addition, they have magnets in the top section so that you can adjust the angle to reflect that of the plane within its given maneuver.
Our particular scenario was going great as our P-40 Warhawks took down a bunch of Japanese Kates. Things were going quite well until I crashed into my own wingman (both of us rolled 7's on simultaneous 2-12 die rolls). One plane immediately exploded and the other three had to limp home. Technically, we thwarted the bombing mission, but at what a cost!
Another game used the Mein Panzer rules for an obscure Russo-Japanese battle (not in the Russo-Japanese War, but in 1939) just prior to WWII. It was called "One Rickety Pontoon Bridge: The Battle of Khalkhin Gol." My Japanese troops (with meager platoon of tanks trapped on the wrong side of the river) managed to hold off Zhukov's units (only a splinter of the bridge was holding everything together at the end of the battle, but it wasn't destroyed). Most impressive was getting to move lead (okay, pewter) alongside the author of the rules, Jonathan Coulter. By the way, he didn't "rules lawyer" even when the referee didn't rule quite as he had intended the rules to work.
Finally, I was reminded that old magazines are still good magazines. Someone had created a miniatures game based on Kamikaze, a magazine game published in Fire & Movement #31, back when Alan Emrich's Diverse Talents, Inc. were publishing it, if I recall correctly. This was the only full game ever published in F&M to my knowledge, but it's a player and a half. Unfortunately, my U.S. convoy was annihilated in the game. Yet, it's a fast-playing game with lots of waves of incoming. If you like lots of die-rolling, you'd love this game.
A little over a week ago, I was privileged to attend a gaming convention I've always wanted to attend, but used to live far enough away that the travel was prohibitive. I arrived in the Chicago area and let this convention slip past me twice before I finally made it--mostly because the convention organizers changed the date last year from its traditional date. But this year, I made it to "Little Wars," the convention named after H. G. Wells' classic set of rules for playing with "toy soldiers" on table-tops. I've been to GenCon where I've played board games, role-playing games, and wargames with miniatures. At Origins, I've played board games, role-playing games, and miniatures. I've even enjoyed World Boardgame Championships as the most amazing experience in concentrated board wargaming, ever. But this was the first time I've been to Little Wars.
My friend, Don Perrin, goes every year. I've known Don by reputation as a wargamer for years and now, I'm privileged to be in a writer's group with him. I've also read a few of his books. In fact, I saw Don at a great little seminar on designing scenarios specifically for conventions. Imagine how thrilled I was to listen to guys I've only read about like Jim Purky (brilliant figure painter and scenario designer for Seven Years War games like the one he did at Historicon, last year) and Keith Leidy (believed by many to be the grandmaster of hosting Napoleonic games like this one).
I was intrigued by Tod Kershner, author of Pig Wars, the now out-of-print skirmish rules for looting during the Dark Ages, when he quoted Donald Featherstone (the father of our current era of miniatures gaming)as stating, "Never let history get in the way of a good game." And, I was a firm believer in his basic rule of thumb: "By the end of Turn #2, you want everyone to be able to read/understand the charts--you don't need tight command/control rules."
Keith Leidy had a slightly more organized approach. He said that there are four elements to a good game: 1) beautiful aesthetic, 2) playable rules, 3) good players, and 4) a balanced scenario. He further defined the latter as saying that if there are four players on each side, "Every person needs an objective or something that puts them in immediate conflict with someone across the table."
All of the panelists agreed on things to avoid. One shouldn't put unmanageable terrain in the middle of the table because it tends to divide the entire conflict into two very different games. Leidy suggested that if you do have significant terrain features, you need to give at least a 2:1 advantage to the attackers.
Of course, I must confess that I wasn't really at the convention to listen to seminars. I'd done enough of that at a comic book convention the weekend before. I went to play. I met Trent Burg, author of Warbirds in Miniature, and he led a short Pacific Theater WWII scenario using those rules. I hadn't realized that these rules were inspired by an old favorite of mine, GDW's Blue Max. The great thing about these rules (besides playing quite fast and being easy to learn) was that the miniatures were all enhanced with Airestands.
These have components representing different heights that can be easily adjusted in increments of 10, 5, 2, and 1 so that you can simulate any given altitude. In addition, they have magnets in the top section so that you can adjust the angle to reflect that of the plane within its given maneuver.Our particular scenario was going great as our P-40 Warhawks took down a bunch of Japanese Kates. Things were going quite well until I crashed into my own wingman (both of us rolled 7's on simultaneous 2-12 die rolls). One plane immediately exploded and the other three had to limp home. Technically, we thwarted the bombing mission, but at what a cost!
Another game used the Mein Panzer rules for an obscure Russo-Japanese battle (not in the Russo-Japanese War, but in 1939) just prior to WWII. It was called "One Rickety Pontoon Bridge: The Battle of Khalkhin Gol." My Japanese troops (with meager platoon of tanks trapped on the wrong side of the river) managed to hold off Zhukov's units (only a splinter of the bridge was holding everything together at the end of the battle, but it wasn't destroyed). Most impressive was getting to move lead (okay, pewter) alongside the author of the rules, Jonathan Coulter. By the way, he didn't "rules lawyer" even when the referee didn't rule quite as he had intended the rules to work.
Finally, I was reminded that old magazines are still good magazines. Someone had created a miniatures game based on Kamikaze, a magazine game published in Fire & Movement #31, back when Alan Emrich's Diverse Talents, Inc. were publishing it, if I recall correctly. This was the only full game ever published in F&M to my knowledge, but it's a player and a half. Unfortunately, my U.S. convoy was annihilated in the game. Yet, it's a fast-playing game with lots of waves of incoming. If you like lots of die-rolling, you'd love this game.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Flames of War-A Personal Reaction
Please don't expect a detailed review or even "after-action report" on Flames of War. I've only played a few scenarios of the game, but I've enjoyed my experiences thus far. My first experience with the system was a minor meeting engagement using the starter set. This engagement, set late in the war and featuring smaller U.S. tanks versus larger German tanks was surprisingly well-balanced. My opponent and I played the same scenario, changing sides after each turn, before we finally managed a victory for the Allies.
The reason for this is that the system so accurately portrays the "tin-can" or "rolling coffin" nature of tanks that one doesn't need too many good shots to put a vehicle out of action. So, our very introductory scenario led us to believe that forsaking maneuver in favor of "dice" was the wiser course of action. Indeed, even with my propensity for lousy luck with these cubes of destruction masquerading as random number modifiers (random doesn't quite account for the number of poor die rolls I accumulate in the course of the average game), I always fared better eschewing maneuver for an extra die.
What our introductory experience didn't teach us was what would happen when an aggressive player inexorably moved in with adequate combined arms. At that point, those tanks with their big cannon didn't seem to accomplish much against infantry (all armor-piercing ammo) and my machine gun dice seem to have jammed. It seemed almost as easy for infantry to put my tank crews outside their vehicle as it had to put entire tanks out of action in that first meeting scenario. In short, once I teamed up with guys who had lots of models/bases and could take advantage of 2-3 books of the prolific series of expansion rules, the game simply became better.
Below are some pictures taken with my telephone's camera (sorry about the slight blur). First, my Soviet infantry group began to deploy on the grounds of this farm. Some tanks were already using the walls as partial cover and firing on the advancing Nazi units, so my units were reticent to enter what would soon become a killing zone. In other words, I failed a dice check.
However, I soon discovered a marvelous wrinkle in the Soviet infantry rules. Each infantry unit has a commissar (I believe they are referred to as "political officers" in some WWII accounts) who have the power of shooting a soldier as an example to the others. In Flames of War, one can place a base of infantry in the dead pile in order to get another die roll for maneuver. Wow! What a tough call!
I started the evening with so many troops that I felt like Zhukov himself. I had "high ideals" of serving the Motherland without having to sacrifice her precious soldiers. Yet, as the Nazis seemed to have sufficient momentum (die rolls) to keep moving in every situation, I ended up having to sacrifice three bases in this manner before I was through. I was certain that the troops would have killed the "political officer" (commissar) before they would have allowed this, but I was now desperate enough to give up my "ideals" and merely "game" the situation. We scrambled into position behind the haystacks (the round European-style painted by Monet) and quickly discovered that the line of sight problems we expected to cause the enemy had become as much of a problem for us.
Unfortunately, with all of my political posturing necessary to get my infantry to move, the Nazis attained the haystacks before we did. They crossed the bridge under abysmal machine-gun fire and managed to establish enough of a beachhead that the tanks had to focus on them instead of their opposite numbers. We might have been able to stalemate the enemy infantry with more consistent fire (again, the dice were not good to me), but things looked so bleak on my side of the farmhouse that my colleague tried almost a suicide attack (in all fairness, he was trying to work out some of the nuances of the Close Assault rules) on the left flank.
Our left flank faltered and it was only a matter of time before the Germans would have positioned all of their forces against my relatively tenuous position. In spite of the presence of the murderous commissar, Stavka (two tired Russian players, in this case) elected to surrender. You would think that losing so badly in one's first big engagement would have soured the entire experience. Instead, I found myself continually shaking my head in realizing what I had done. I had been as ruthless as Stalin himself in terms of sacrificing men for objectives (and, even then, as with Stalin, failed a lot). In spite of the fact that the flow of this game (in spite of all the rules expansions) is fast and many of the typical nuances of WWII miniatures have been abstracted away in a trade-off for fast, efficient play, I found that there was just enough color to get me hooked. What little I had played of the game felt just right. I experienced just enough sense of real history that I'll be back for more.
The reason for this is that the system so accurately portrays the "tin-can" or "rolling coffin" nature of tanks that one doesn't need too many good shots to put a vehicle out of action. So, our very introductory scenario led us to believe that forsaking maneuver in favor of "dice" was the wiser course of action. Indeed, even with my propensity for lousy luck with these cubes of destruction masquerading as random number modifiers (random doesn't quite account for the number of poor die rolls I accumulate in the course of the average game), I always fared better eschewing maneuver for an extra die.
What our introductory experience didn't teach us was what would happen when an aggressive player inexorably moved in with adequate combined arms. At that point, those tanks with their big cannon didn't seem to accomplish much against infantry (all armor-piercing ammo) and my machine gun dice seem to have jammed. It seemed almost as easy for infantry to put my tank crews outside their vehicle as it had to put entire tanks out of action in that first meeting scenario. In short, once I teamed up with guys who had lots of models/bases and could take advantage of 2-3 books of the prolific series of expansion rules, the game simply became better.
Below are some pictures taken with my telephone's camera (sorry about the slight blur). First, my Soviet infantry group began to deploy on the grounds of this farm. Some tanks were already using the walls as partial cover and firing on the advancing Nazi units, so my units were reticent to enter what would soon become a killing zone. In other words, I failed a dice check.
However, I soon discovered a marvelous wrinkle in the Soviet infantry rules. Each infantry unit has a commissar (I believe they are referred to as "political officers" in some WWII accounts) who have the power of shooting a soldier as an example to the others. In Flames of War, one can place a base of infantry in the dead pile in order to get another die roll for maneuver. Wow! What a tough call!
I started the evening with so many troops that I felt like Zhukov himself. I had "high ideals" of serving the Motherland without having to sacrifice her precious soldiers. Yet, as the Nazis seemed to have sufficient momentum (die rolls) to keep moving in every situation, I ended up having to sacrifice three bases in this manner before I was through. I was certain that the troops would have killed the "political officer" (commissar) before they would have allowed this, but I was now desperate enough to give up my "ideals" and merely "game" the situation. We scrambled into position behind the haystacks (the round European-style painted by Monet) and quickly discovered that the line of sight problems we expected to cause the enemy had become as much of a problem for us.
Unfortunately, with all of my political posturing necessary to get my infantry to move, the Nazis attained the haystacks before we did. They crossed the bridge under abysmal machine-gun fire and managed to establish enough of a beachhead that the tanks had to focus on them instead of their opposite numbers. We might have been able to stalemate the enemy infantry with more consistent fire (again, the dice were not good to me), but things looked so bleak on my side of the farmhouse that my colleague tried almost a suicide attack (in all fairness, he was trying to work out some of the nuances of the Close Assault rules) on the left flank.
Our left flank faltered and it was only a matter of time before the Germans would have positioned all of their forces against my relatively tenuous position. In spite of the presence of the murderous commissar, Stavka (two tired Russian players, in this case) elected to surrender. You would think that losing so badly in one's first big engagement would have soured the entire experience. Instead, I found myself continually shaking my head in realizing what I had done. I had been as ruthless as Stalin himself in terms of sacrificing men for objectives (and, even then, as with Stalin, failed a lot). In spite of the fact that the flow of this game (in spite of all the rules expansions) is fast and many of the typical nuances of WWII miniatures have been abstracted away in a trade-off for fast, efficient play, I found that there was just enough color to get me hooked. What little I had played of the game felt just right. I experienced just enough sense of real history that I'll be back for more.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Critical Gameplay
Critical Gameplay?
On Friday evening (April 17, 2009), I attended a fascinating exhibition of original games by a colleague in the Game Art & Design department at Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago. The exhibition, entitled Critical Gameplay, consisted of several games which challenged the typical preconceptions of electronic games. Indeed, the concept behind each game was counter to usual game play.
For example, one game was entitled Black vs. White (not to be confused with Peter Molynieux’s classic game). It consisted of a platform-style game where, contrary to the expectations in the title, all of the characters were black. Also contrary to typical platform style, not all of the characters were enemies. You couldn’t tell from originally looking at the characters on-screen which were enemies and which were not. You had to watch for changes in facial expression that suggested behavior. Then, you could pounce on them to remove the threat or drop objects on them to remove the threat. Obviously, the purpose of the game was to remove stereotypes (because of “color,” the racial stereotype comes to mind, but since all of the characters look the same, the lessons apply to gender and social stereotypes as well).
Another intriguing game was simply titled, Kill! The interface was set up as a if it were a first-person shooter. Indeed, you had the choice of shooting a variety of enemies. The twist was that every time you shot an enemy, you were “rewarded” with a multimedia presentation on that person’s life, a photo montage honoring the one you killed. Certainly, fans of the FPS genre will not appreciate having either the flow of their game experience interrupted or being reminded that actions have consequences.
While I’m mentioning breaking the expectations of FPS players, there was a fascinating game called Wait! In this game, the longer you would wait, the more detailed the scene would become. Once you moved, you would get a fogged-in view that would clarify as you would wait. Most gamers at the exhibition found that they couldn’t get over 1,000 points, but I noticed one team of women who were patient enough to score over 6,000 points. Of course, I don’t expect that a game that is so Taoist that one is not expected to act will satisfy many gamers.
Another game was a variant on Pong! The intent of this game was to “give” the “ball” to your opponent rather than to get it past her or him. If you were successful, your opponent's paddle would grow larger (empowerment?) and if you played it like Pong!, your own paddle would diminish. It was a fascinating experience to play, even if it just seemed "wrong" from a gamer's perspective. Of course, that was precisely the point. Sometimes, we simply don't think about the overall statements about ourselves and about life that we are making when we simply give in to game conventions.
It's encouraging to me to know that someone is doing this kind of thinking about computer games. Maybe, if there were more professors of Lindsay Grace's caliber, game design would start to mean something more than pushing more polygons through the art pipeline, creating bigger monsters and larger waves of enemies, and conceiving of more and more powerful weapons. I concede that there is a need for conflict in order to have interesting games, but if life were only conflict, I'm not sure life would be interesting. I thank Lindsay Grace for a provocative and thoughtful exhibition.
On Friday evening (April 17, 2009), I attended a fascinating exhibition of original games by a colleague in the Game Art & Design department at Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago. The exhibition, entitled Critical Gameplay, consisted of several games which challenged the typical preconceptions of electronic games. Indeed, the concept behind each game was counter to usual game play.
For example, one game was entitled Black vs. White (not to be confused with Peter Molynieux’s classic game). It consisted of a platform-style game where, contrary to the expectations in the title, all of the characters were black. Also contrary to typical platform style, not all of the characters were enemies. You couldn’t tell from originally looking at the characters on-screen which were enemies and which were not. You had to watch for changes in facial expression that suggested behavior. Then, you could pounce on them to remove the threat or drop objects on them to remove the threat. Obviously, the purpose of the game was to remove stereotypes (because of “color,” the racial stereotype comes to mind, but since all of the characters look the same, the lessons apply to gender and social stereotypes as well).
Another intriguing game was simply titled, Kill! The interface was set up as a if it were a first-person shooter. Indeed, you had the choice of shooting a variety of enemies. The twist was that every time you shot an enemy, you were “rewarded” with a multimedia presentation on that person’s life, a photo montage honoring the one you killed. Certainly, fans of the FPS genre will not appreciate having either the flow of their game experience interrupted or being reminded that actions have consequences.
While I’m mentioning breaking the expectations of FPS players, there was a fascinating game called Wait! In this game, the longer you would wait, the more detailed the scene would become. Once you moved, you would get a fogged-in view that would clarify as you would wait. Most gamers at the exhibition found that they couldn’t get over 1,000 points, but I noticed one team of women who were patient enough to score over 6,000 points. Of course, I don’t expect that a game that is so Taoist that one is not expected to act will satisfy many gamers.
Another game was a variant on Pong! The intent of this game was to “give” the “ball” to your opponent rather than to get it past her or him. If you were successful, your opponent's paddle would grow larger (empowerment?) and if you played it like Pong!, your own paddle would diminish. It was a fascinating experience to play, even if it just seemed "wrong" from a gamer's perspective. Of course, that was precisely the point. Sometimes, we simply don't think about the overall statements about ourselves and about life that we are making when we simply give in to game conventions.
It's encouraging to me to know that someone is doing this kind of thinking about computer games. Maybe, if there were more professors of Lindsay Grace's caliber, game design would start to mean something more than pushing more polygons through the art pipeline, creating bigger monsters and larger waves of enemies, and conceiving of more and more powerful weapons. I concede that there is a need for conflict in order to have interesting games, but if life were only conflict, I'm not sure life would be interesting. I thank Lindsay Grace for a provocative and thoughtful exhibition.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Free and Easy
In teaching the theory of electronic game design, one of the basic concepts that has to be ingrained in my students is the fact that everything you see on-screen has a mathematical underpinning. Even if that mathematical underpinning is as simple as a percentage chance that something will or won't happen (what we actually call an "algorithm" in the trade), there is an equation that determines all outcomes. That equation may be a simple percentage chance based on one character's attribute (the simplest pen and paper role-playing game may use this), a chain of calculations designed to create a percentage chance (based on attributes, skills, weapons, terrain, range, defender's armor class, and lots more), a chain of percentages that use look-up tables to determine outcomes, or even complex physics calculations based on speed, materials, and cover.
To illustrate this principle, many of my math-challenged students have to learn to simulate some algorithms using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that calculates percentage chances and uses a look-up table to check against certain attributes or situations that they have quantified. Then, I introduce them to a free game on the web called Dragon Tavern. Dragon Tavern is a free, fantasy role-playing game with a host of character class options that is a hybrid of high fantasy and steampunk. It features a minimum of artwork and all results are strictly text-based. But, if you mouse-over various spots on the page, the algorithms used to determine your percentage chances for success are clearly delineated. In addition to the fact that I've been addicted to the game for so long that one of my two characters is in the Top 100 of its character class and the other is closing in on position #330, it is a dynamic teaching tool for basic game design. Plus, I've had students who have continued to play a half-dozen characters after discovering the site during their course work.
To be sure, the character sheets may look amazingly like those of Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, and the Fantasy Trip of old, but the process is almost (though not quite) as interesting as generating characters for the old Traveller series. In the old Traveller series, one would enlist in various branches of a futuristic space navy or merchant service and develop the character's skills, attributes, and weapon sets via rolling the dice through various terms of service. Of course, Traveller had the strange anomaly that your character could die in character creation before you ever got into the game. That anomaly no longer exists in the newer (and quite beautifully done) Traveller D20 version.
In Dragon Tavern, you don't "roll" through terms of service, but you do focus on the type of character you want to be. My oldest and best-performing character is a Steam Crafter, a steampunk-type character. I chose the character class and the place from which he hailed before the program gave me my basic attributes and weapons. Naturally, I was able to select some adjectives describing my character's appearance and a catch-phrase for being triumphant, as well as one for the inevitable deaths.
Battle is far too simple for some players to enjoy. Although Dragon Tavern provides a ton of calculations in the background (available for viewing via mouse-over), it is simply one-click combat. Then, the program rolls the percentage dice as modified by that ton of calculations. with a regular "monster," you only have to roll the success percentage (or less) on one occasion to win the fight and gain the experience points and treasure. With "boss monsters," you may have to roll the success percentage up to five times (at my highest level so far). Whenever you miss the percentage roll, you take a wound.
When your wound total is equal to your wound allotment, you're dead. You aren't finished with the game. Your character is automatically resurrected and you don't lose a character level, but you incur (remember this old chestnut?) an experience point debt. So, until that experience debt is paid, you only receive half credit for the experience you're gaining within the game.
As a free game, you are allowed 25 action points per character per 24 hour period in your real life. You can purchase additional credits to perform more than 25 action points in a day and you are given bonus action points whenever you level up. I actually spend less than 10 minutes per day between my two characters, but it's something I look forward to on a daily basis. Some of my students play up to a half-dozen characters per day and, alas, there have been times that they were supposed to be working on their own game designs that I have walked by their monitors in the computer labs and seen them catching up on Dragon Tavern.
That's probably a good sign. If hardcore game design students who have grown up on the likes of Gears of War and Half-Life are interested enough to keep playing a text-based game, the designers must be doing something right. And, as I hope you'll be able to see from the "boss fight" pictured below, the designers seem to have hit something that I enjoy, as well.
To illustrate this principle, many of my math-challenged students have to learn to simulate some algorithms using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that calculates percentage chances and uses a look-up table to check against certain attributes or situations that they have quantified. Then, I introduce them to a free game on the web called Dragon Tavern. Dragon Tavern is a free, fantasy role-playing game with a host of character class options that is a hybrid of high fantasy and steampunk. It features a minimum of artwork and all results are strictly text-based. But, if you mouse-over various spots on the page, the algorithms used to determine your percentage chances for success are clearly delineated. In addition to the fact that I've been addicted to the game for so long that one of my two characters is in the Top 100 of its character class and the other is closing in on position #330, it is a dynamic teaching tool for basic game design. Plus, I've had students who have continued to play a half-dozen characters after discovering the site during their course work.
To be sure, the character sheets may look amazingly like those of Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, and the Fantasy Trip of old, but the process is almost (though not quite) as interesting as generating characters for the old Traveller series. In the old Traveller series, one would enlist in various branches of a futuristic space navy or merchant service and develop the character's skills, attributes, and weapon sets via rolling the dice through various terms of service. Of course, Traveller had the strange anomaly that your character could die in character creation before you ever got into the game. That anomaly no longer exists in the newer (and quite beautifully done) Traveller D20 version.
In Dragon Tavern, you don't "roll" through terms of service, but you do focus on the type of character you want to be. My oldest and best-performing character is a Steam Crafter, a steampunk-type character. I chose the character class and the place from which he hailed before the program gave me my basic attributes and weapons. Naturally, I was able to select some adjectives describing my character's appearance and a catch-phrase for being triumphant, as well as one for the inevitable deaths.
Battle is far too simple for some players to enjoy. Although Dragon Tavern provides a ton of calculations in the background (available for viewing via mouse-over), it is simply one-click combat. Then, the program rolls the percentage dice as modified by that ton of calculations. with a regular "monster," you only have to roll the success percentage (or less) on one occasion to win the fight and gain the experience points and treasure. With "boss monsters," you may have to roll the success percentage up to five times (at my highest level so far). Whenever you miss the percentage roll, you take a wound.
When your wound total is equal to your wound allotment, you're dead. You aren't finished with the game. Your character is automatically resurrected and you don't lose a character level, but you incur (remember this old chestnut?) an experience point debt. So, until that experience debt is paid, you only receive half credit for the experience you're gaining within the game.
As a free game, you are allowed 25 action points per character per 24 hour period in your real life. You can purchase additional credits to perform more than 25 action points in a day and you are given bonus action points whenever you level up. I actually spend less than 10 minutes per day between my two characters, but it's something I look forward to on a daily basis. Some of my students play up to a half-dozen characters per day and, alas, there have been times that they were supposed to be working on their own game designs that I have walked by their monitors in the computer labs and seen them catching up on Dragon Tavern.
That's probably a good sign. If hardcore game design students who have grown up on the likes of Gears of War and Half-Life are interested enough to keep playing a text-based game, the designers must be doing something right. And, as I hope you'll be able to see from the "boss fight" pictured below, the designers seem to have hit something that I enjoy, as well.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Fair or Unfair Use
I know there aren't many folks reading this site, but I thought I should post my horrible dilemma. For several months, I've been trying to put together a plan for a company and dedicated staff to put together a new kind of game magazine. Now, since we know that we won't make any money for a while and we don't have sufficient capital to do the full start-up mode and hire artists, art director, freelance writers, editors, and pre-press folks, we've been trying to do this on the "cheap." I have a friend who is hosting the website, friends who have contributed articles for free, a friend who would fund the printing of the first year's magazines, and a brother who is deeply committed to the concept with both his limited funds, time, and experience.
Yet, less than a month away from my target date of going to press and just at the time that I was preparing a public announcement, I find myself devastated. My enthusiastic brother contacted one of the more prolific publishers in the industry about cooperation in creating scenarios for some of their existing games. In other aspects of the hobby, this is one of the most enlightened companies. To my brother's surprise, the company took the position that publishing scenarios in a magazine that was sold for profit was essentially making a profit off their intellectual property. And if that company feels that way, they will set a precedent for other companies to feel that way.
Now, legally, this is more of a gray area than one might think. Media can use intellectual property under the rather amorphous rubric of "fair use." For example, even if the art on the cover of a game box is copyrighted by the artist and the publisher, a magazine or newspaper can reprint a photo of that cover and game box to illustrate editorial that mentions that game. This is the editorial use of an intellectual property and is generally accepted as "fair use" by both courts and intellectual property holders. No fee is required and there is unlikely to be any legal action taken against the magazine or newspaper (or television program, podcast, or website) because no "damages" can be demonstrated. In fact, publicity generally increases sales as opposed to deflating them.
With scenarios, this is a gray area because the question remains whether they would be considered product or editorial. I have always considered them to be editorial because they would, presumably, enhance the value of the game that was being used. If I were selling them as a separate download from a publication or packaging them together in a book or boxed set of scenarios for that particular game, I would consider them a product (and the courts would, as well). In the latter case, the scenarios would clearly infringe the intellectual property since they would presumably dilute the potential market for an expansion product or add-on (or a company's in-house publication). Yet, there is considerable question in my mind as to whether a handful of unauthorized scenarios in a publication that featured unauthorized scenarios for multiple games would have the same impact.
For publishers, this becomes a gray area, as well. Does the publisher risk losing protection for the intellectual property in general if said publisher doesn't immediately enforce its copyright or trademark? Actually, there is that risk. Even if the effort to enforce is merely a letter demanding that the infringing person, corporate entity, or publication "cease and desist," publishers must make some effort in order to protect their IPs (intellectual properties).
There is a potential solution, but not one that is likely to be popular. If publishers provided a free license for magazines to publish exclusive scenarios, provided the content of the publication did not use 10% of said publisher's IP within a given issue and the game publisher would own the scenarios upon publication, said publisher would not be allowing infringement, magazine scenarios would not threaten future expansions, and the publisher could sit on or revise poor scenarios rather than allow them to proliferate for perpetuity.
Why would this not be popular? Licenses require legal documents. Legal documents cost money. A magazine publishing scenarios for board games is not likely to generate enough income to make a royalty agreement interesting and auditing the magazines (for content as well as revenue) would cost more in time and resources than it would generate.
So, I sit broken in front of my monitor screen. The vision of a magazine where the content never expired, a game magazine that was more about playing games than reviewing them, and a magazine that would be publisher agnostic (ready to grab the best material from any publisher in order to cover it) lies with its spine broken in my mental image.
I wanted to do this magazine as a labor of love. I wanted it to eventually become self-supporting, but now, it is crumbling away because of a major publisher wanted to protect its legitimate rights. And as for me, if I had unlimited money, I could take the fight to the courts and argue "fair use," but it would still depend on what judge was looking at the issues at what time and how familiar said jurist happened to be with the table game industry and its very low profit margins. Since magazines have even tighter profit margins, it would be a "no-win" court decision for either side.
As a result, I don't think my dream magazine is going to happen. You can't build a user base by only covering the small companies that recognize that any publicity is good publicity and ignoring the companies that have built a following. For now, it looks like I'm going to have to put the dream magazine on hold--perhaps, forever.
Yet, less than a month away from my target date of going to press and just at the time that I was preparing a public announcement, I find myself devastated. My enthusiastic brother contacted one of the more prolific publishers in the industry about cooperation in creating scenarios for some of their existing games. In other aspects of the hobby, this is one of the most enlightened companies. To my brother's surprise, the company took the position that publishing scenarios in a magazine that was sold for profit was essentially making a profit off their intellectual property. And if that company feels that way, they will set a precedent for other companies to feel that way.
Now, legally, this is more of a gray area than one might think. Media can use intellectual property under the rather amorphous rubric of "fair use." For example, even if the art on the cover of a game box is copyrighted by the artist and the publisher, a magazine or newspaper can reprint a photo of that cover and game box to illustrate editorial that mentions that game. This is the editorial use of an intellectual property and is generally accepted as "fair use" by both courts and intellectual property holders. No fee is required and there is unlikely to be any legal action taken against the magazine or newspaper (or television program, podcast, or website) because no "damages" can be demonstrated. In fact, publicity generally increases sales as opposed to deflating them.
With scenarios, this is a gray area because the question remains whether they would be considered product or editorial. I have always considered them to be editorial because they would, presumably, enhance the value of the game that was being used. If I were selling them as a separate download from a publication or packaging them together in a book or boxed set of scenarios for that particular game, I would consider them a product (and the courts would, as well). In the latter case, the scenarios would clearly infringe the intellectual property since they would presumably dilute the potential market for an expansion product or add-on (or a company's in-house publication). Yet, there is considerable question in my mind as to whether a handful of unauthorized scenarios in a publication that featured unauthorized scenarios for multiple games would have the same impact.
For publishers, this becomes a gray area, as well. Does the publisher risk losing protection for the intellectual property in general if said publisher doesn't immediately enforce its copyright or trademark? Actually, there is that risk. Even if the effort to enforce is merely a letter demanding that the infringing person, corporate entity, or publication "cease and desist," publishers must make some effort in order to protect their IPs (intellectual properties).
There is a potential solution, but not one that is likely to be popular. If publishers provided a free license for magazines to publish exclusive scenarios, provided the content of the publication did not use 10% of said publisher's IP within a given issue and the game publisher would own the scenarios upon publication, said publisher would not be allowing infringement, magazine scenarios would not threaten future expansions, and the publisher could sit on or revise poor scenarios rather than allow them to proliferate for perpetuity.
Why would this not be popular? Licenses require legal documents. Legal documents cost money. A magazine publishing scenarios for board games is not likely to generate enough income to make a royalty agreement interesting and auditing the magazines (for content as well as revenue) would cost more in time and resources than it would generate.
So, I sit broken in front of my monitor screen. The vision of a magazine where the content never expired, a game magazine that was more about playing games than reviewing them, and a magazine that would be publisher agnostic (ready to grab the best material from any publisher in order to cover it) lies with its spine broken in my mental image.
I wanted to do this magazine as a labor of love. I wanted it to eventually become self-supporting, but now, it is crumbling away because of a major publisher wanted to protect its legitimate rights. And as for me, if I had unlimited money, I could take the fight to the courts and argue "fair use," but it would still depend on what judge was looking at the issues at what time and how familiar said jurist happened to be with the table game industry and its very low profit margins. Since magazines have even tighter profit margins, it would be a "no-win" court decision for either side.
As a result, I don't think my dream magazine is going to happen. You can't build a user base by only covering the small companies that recognize that any publicity is good publicity and ignoring the companies that have built a following. For now, it looks like I'm going to have to put the dream magazine on hold--perhaps, forever.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Coin-Op Lives
Maybe it was because I was in the presence of coin-op, arcade design greatness or maybe it was because I'm the world's worst photographer--even with a digital camera--but I botched most of the pictures I took at Raw Thrills, recently. Raw Thrills, for those of you who don't keep up with coin-op goodness, is the company founded a few years ago by Eugene Jarvis. Yes, founded by that Eugene Jarvis, the creator of Defender, the mega-quarter muncher of yesteryear and the first video game ever to offer a "radarscope" to let players know about enemies coming from off-screen. As President of Raw Thrills, Jarvis has proven himself to be a survivor in an industry that seems to have reached equilibrium at a level far reduced from its glory years in the Space Invaders, Gorf!, Ms. PacMan, and Defender days, as well as something of a Renaissance Man in terms of design, distribution, innovation, manufacturing, and testing. Eugene can do it all.
Design innovation in coin-op games? Come on, has there been any? Yes, but it may not show itself in anything other than graphics. Graphics are what catch one's eye in the bars, restaurants, and movie theaters where coin-op games thrive in the current, admittedly niche, market. But as those beautiful 3D graphics whip across the screen with lightning flash screen refreshes, there have been advances. No longer do you see blocky images cavorting across a Cathode Ray Tube. Today's cabinets sport the latest flat screen monitors.
But flat screen monitors produced their own challenge. In the old days, one merely used a light gun in order to bounce the signal off a CRT. Today it requires a custom LED approach to read the signal's trajectory. Raw Thrills developed this in-house for their Big Buck Hunter and Big Buck Safari games. The fuzzy photo provided below shows such an array from the Big Buck Safari game.
Another successful game for Raw Thrills has been their Super Bikes game. The impetus for the design innovation in this game was a result of interviews with owners and operators of previous motorcycle games. Their biggest complaint was that the moveable handles would break off and malfunction, so they needed something more serviceable. Raw Thrills opted to make the handles stationary, but provided plenty of simulated movement through force-feedback mechanisms such as the one pictured here.
The in-house dev staff is currently working on Super Bikes 2, but the company has a great-looking boat racing game (imagine their old H2O Thunder on steroids) being developed in conjunction with Specular Interactive and continue to develop products with their Play Mechanix subsidiary.
Speaking of Super Bikes, the successful racing game's construction is particularly illustrative of the Renaissance Man aspect of creating coin-op games. The components for this game require a mixture of injection molded plastic parts, vacuum molded parts, and rotational molded parts. Rotational molding is where plastic pellets are dumped inside the mold and, as they are heated, the mold is moved in a centrifugal pattern so that the melting plastic adheres perfectly to the mold. The bike's body itself was crafted in this fashion. Here is the part before assembly:
Perhaps, the most amazing feature about visiting with Eugene Jarvis, though, is the recognition that he turned the industry on its side with less than 64K. The program itself for Defender was less than 18K and even the dedicated audio and graphics hardware didn't amount to 48K. In an era where 256 MB of RAM means you have a lackluster machine, that seems nothing short of phenomenal. Of course, in an era with all of these scripting languages, it doesn't seem real that anyone would laboriously code in machine language, either.
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