['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at video game albums, with a album of three examples.]

Video games are most often compared to movies. They are usually long, monolithic works that tell a single cohesive story. Sometimes, however, a video game release will break this mold and present an experience that is not quite so unified. These games are less like movies and more like music albums, where a group of thematically related pieces are collected in one release.

Some video game albums are more like rock operas, where the pieces connect to form one story. Others are concept albums, where the games share a theme or mechanic but are separate entities. Still others have little connection beyond being released at the same time by the same group. In the spirit of the video game album, this column will discuss three different releases, one of each type: Odin Sphere, Kirby Super Star, and The Orange Box.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - The Video Game Album" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at enemy interplay in Left 4 Dead.]

The role of enemies in video games tends to be as obstacles. The player character must get from point A to point B, and an army of goons stands in her way, forcing her to take time to thin the mob before continuing on. In most games, these enemies do not cooperate in any meaningful way.

Yes, they are all pursuing the same goal — kill the player character — but they do it in a simple way, without taking advantage of each other's abilities. The power of a group of enemies is equal to the total power of its members.

Sometimes, enemies are more complex. Half-Life is one of the first games to use squad-based artificial intelligence, where human grunts share information and coordinate their attacks to better inconvenience the player. Occasionally, a particular pair of enemy types are designed as partners to work together. It's especially common in strategy-focused games to find a rock-paper-scissors pattern of enemy strengths, but on a small scale this is more about the units' individual weaknesses than any sort of interaction of abilities.

Valve Software's Left 4 Dead, however, has a very complex example of cooperation and interaction between enemies, compressed into just six types of Infected units. These units, through the interplay between their unique abilities, have more than additive group strength. The power of a group of these enemies is greater than the sum of its members, because of this interaction.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Interplay in Left 4 Dead" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at customization in Disgaea.]

One of the primary appeals of roleplaying games is their customization. A player can shape her characters and the party as a whole to her specifications, which can support a wide range of gameplay styles. One player might want a hack-and-slash, action-filled game, and so build characters that are best at dealing and absorbing damage.

Another player might prefer a more slow-paced, bag-of-tricks approach, and focus on special abilities like status ailments or techniques that control the flow of battle. By incorporating this customizability, roleplaying games broaden their appeal. The more variable a play experience is possible in a game, the wider its possible audience.

However, customizability introduces a paradox. More customization provides a more varied experience, but it also introduces complexity. The old Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons computer games have a complex character creation process that must be completed for each character in the party (as many as six). They offer pre-built characters, but in order to customize the party at all, a player must roll random stats, choose a name, gender, race, alignment, and class, create an icon, and possibly customize spells.

This has to be done for each character before play even begins. Purchasing equipment is also a virtual necessity before the adventuring can really start. Each of these steps requires the player to consult the manual for things like the function of spells or the power of weapons. To enable customization, a game must become more complex, which will scare away many of the players that the customizability would attract in the first place.

The trick to resolving this paradox lies in layering gameplay. A game can allow customization while keeping it entirely optional by separating the customization from the primary gameplay flow. That way, a player who wishes to customize can do so as much as she wants, while one who is uninterested can skip it entirely. One game which excellently demonstrates this technique is Nippon Ichi Software's Disgaea.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Layered Gameplay in Disgaea" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at adventure game interfaces in Hotel Dusk: Room 215.]

The graphical adventure game has fallen from its former prominence among video games. In the 1980s and early 90s, Infocom, Sierra, and LucasArts produced best-selling games that are still referred to today. However, with the rise of high-budget, technologically advanced games and the accompanying increase in the complexity of the average game's storyline, traditional adventure games have lost their prominence. While point-and-click adventure games are still produced (with TellTale Games's Sam & Max episodic series as a prominent example), they have mostly been reduced to a niche product.

One of the reasons for the fall of the adventure game is the detached nature of the gameplay. As interesting as the story and puzzles in a game may be, the player is still just pointing and clicking to control an avatar or disembodied first-person protagonist.

There's not much gameplay there, when compared to a Mario Kart or Grand Theft Auto game. The experience is very cerebral, and a player used to more action-packed games will tend to become bored with a game where she doesn't do anything. It's a shame, because there's no other kind of game that offers generally non-violent, mind-focused gameplay.

One way to make an adventure game more accessible and interesting to the modern player is to involve her more directly in the game's events. Cing's Hotel Dusk: Room 215 does this in an interesting way: thanks in part to the Nintendo DS's unique hardware, players are provided with a hands-on approach to puzzle solving that feels much more involved than other adventure games.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - The Interface of Hotel Dusk" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at character roles in Team Fortress 2.]

The concept of character roles in video games is a common one. It's most common in traditional RPGs, where the player chooses a certain character class with unique skills and abilities. In the mid-to-late-nineties, the concept of class or character role spread to other kinds of games, with one of the first examples being the original Team Fortress mod for Quake.

The Team Fortress series features first-person, multiplayer, team-based gameplay where each player selects a class and the classes compliment each other. Each class has an important role, and the strength of the team as a whole depends on each player properly fulfilling their role. The series came into its own with the release of Team Fortress Classic, an official mod for Half-Life. TFC refined the classes and reinforced team-based goals like capturing the flag or protecting territory.

Multiplayer class-based games like Team Fortress can be quite entertaining. The separate character roles make it necessary to work together, which promotes socialization among teammates and increases the feeling of accomplishment when the team succeeds.

The multiple classes also broaden the appeal of the game; a player who doesn't feel comfortable dodging and weaving can choose a slow-but-strong class like TF's Heavy Weapon Guy, and there are even roles for players who like to avoid combat, like the Medic class.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Personality in Team Fortress 2" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at puzzle design in the Myst series.]

Puzzle. The word has many different meanings in the context of video games. The term "puzzle game" can refer to a game in the mold of Tetris; there are many shaped or colored blocks or jewels or bubbles that must be cleared by manipulating them within a time limit. In this context, the "puzzle" tests the player's coordination and reaction time.

However, the word "puzzle" is also commonly used in a broader and more conventional context to describe an intellectual obstacle in any video game. When the developers of Half-Life 2 break up the shooting-and-driving gameplay to have the player assemble a makeshift ladder, that's a puzzle. So are the ubiquitous sliding-block puzzles of Zelda infamy. In these cases, puzzles are intended to serve as pacing devices, allowing a moment to relax and think in the middle of all the killing.

However, there are categories of video games where the game is entirely composed of puzzles. One group is games like Chip's Challenge, 3D Logic, or Portal, which all present a sequence of similar puzzles differing only in complexity and scale. However, to the true puzzle connoisseur, the height of the art is to be found in the adventure game.

The Monkey Island series, the Infocom interactive fiction games, and escape-the-room games portray worlds in which puzzles are a fact of life. The developers try, with various degrees of success, to incorporate puzzles seamlessly into the game world, so that players can inhabit a character who thinks her way around difficulties rather than shooting her way through them.

In the adventure game category, few games are more maligned than Cyan Worlds' Myst series. Spanning five single-player games and one repeatedly-resurrected online game, Uru, the Myst series is often blamed for bringing about the death of the adventure game. It popularized the concept of a silent, faceless protagonist exploring an uninhabited game world, and led to a myriad of copycat games where the atmosphere was spooky but the puzzles were arbitrary and banal. These concepts were anathema to fans of the character depth and humor of the Sierra and LucasArts adventures.

However, it really is the puzzle-solving where the Myst series shines. By looking at the best (and worst!) puzzles of the series, we can gain an understanding of how to construct truly compelling intellectual challenges. For a puzzle to be effective, it must be three things: fair, novel, and integrated.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Puzzle Design in the Myst Series" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at failure-friendly gameplay in Crayon Physics Deluxe.]

One of the basic issues of video game design is that of the skill challenge. Early arcade games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders are gauntlets to be run, where a high score is the goal and failure is all-but-guaranteed. Indeed, the developers didn't even expect players to be able to succeed as well as they have.

Pac-Man crashes on the "kill screen" at level 255, and Space Invaders's score counter rolls over to zero after 9,990. These early games were descendents of carnival amusements and pinball; they provided ways for players to test their skill against the machine and against each other.

Games are no longer simply about skill, but the idea of the skill challenge remains. Many games, such as Super Mario Galaxy, still record "lives," even though the player is able to save and continue indefinitely. This apparent need to challenge the player often leads to what Shamus Young calls "do it again, stupid." The player will be assigned a particularly difficult task, where failure simply means that she must keep trying, over and over, until the task is accomplished. It's as if the punishment for failure is lost time and frustration.

Difficulty has an important role in video game design. It allows the player to empathize with the efforts of the player character, it helps to pace the game, and it provides the player with a feeling of accomplishment (provided the player doesn't just give up in frustration).

However, there is a difference between challenge and punishment for failure. The 2008 Prince of Persia was widely criticized for being too easy, in part because it doesn't punish the player enough for failing at a jump or a boss fight. However, this has little effect on how difficult the game is; it just means that the cost of failure is reduced.

Petri Purho's recent game Crayon Physics Deluxe presents an almost frustration-free experience by being failure-friendly. It presents true challenges, but does not severely punish the player for failing at them. Indeed, the failure experience not only teaches the player how to do better, but it is fun in its own right.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Failure-Friendly Gameplay in Crayon Physics Deluxe" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at the use of scale in Katamari Damacy.]

The narrative of most video games is one of increasing power. The player begins the game weak and unskilled, and gradually gains experience and abilities over the course of gameplay.

Typically, games start off relatively easy and become more difficult, with the hardest part of the game being the end. In some games, like roleplaying games, this character growth is explicit, represented by increasing statistics. In others, such as many arcade games, there is only the player's growing skill and experience.

Nowhere is the process of increasing character power made more concrete than in Namco's Katamari Damacy. The game begins with the player character smaller than an apple, rolling up tiny object into his ball, or katamari. By the end of the game, the player character is pushing a ball bigger than a city and tearing up continents.

Pac-Man

Katamari Damacy has essentially the same gameplay as Namco's most famous product, Pac-Man. The player overcomes navigational difficulties to collect a large number of mostly identical objects.

When a certain number of objects has been collected, play progresses to a different arena. Their settings and aesthetics are different, but the feeling of collecting "stuff" and the flow of an efficient path is shared between both games.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Scale in Katamari Damacy" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at goals and immersion in Minotaur China Shop.]

Virtually all digital games provide goals. It's a defining feature of the medium. Even games often described as "toys," such as The Sims or Tamagotchi, provide implicit goals that players can choose between. It's through the pursuit of these goals that players experience challenge and interactivity.

When a goal is difficult to achieve, it creates challenge. A game is interesting because of the challenge, but if a game is too hard, it becomes frustrating. Frustration is the enemy of fun and engagement. It makes players detach from the game, and possibly quit altogether. If a game is too easy, however, it can become boring, which also causes the player to give up. Even worse, different players have different difficulty sweet spots; some players want hard games, and some want easy ones.

There are several solutions to this problem. Selectable or adaptive difficulty allows the player to customize the game, and RPG-like experience mechanics allow the player to adjust their character's strength. However, there is another way to address frustration and boredom: offer more goals to the player, in the form of side quests or alternate play modes. That way, when a player becomes frustrated or bored with one goal, she can switch to another.

Flashbang Studios has taken this one step further. In their latest free web game, Minotaur China Shop, they have created a game mechanic that channels the player's frustration and boredom and uses it to add sympathy for the player character and transition smoothly into an alternative, opposing goal.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Opposing Goals in Minotaur China Shop" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at genre fusion in Puzzle Quest.]

The concept of the video game genre is one which is both a blessing and a curse on the medium. Video game genres categorize and describe games, allowing players to easily guess what games they will like and allowing developers to use a successful and proven formula.

That latter aspect, however, is what makes genres a limiting concept. A genre, in this context, is really just a collection of game design elements: a perspective, a mode of interaction, a game structure, and so on. An individual game might benefit from most of the elements in a genre, but be better suited by a different choice of perspective or gameplay style. However, a designer who blindly follows a genre will miss that fact, and shoehorn her game into a genre just for the sake of fitting the template.

Few games utterly ignore genre. There is, however, a long-standing tradition of genre fusion: taking two or more established genres and combining them into a game that is neither one nor the other. ActRaiser, Sacrifice, and System Shock 2 are among the many excellent games that take this approach.

This allows developers to pick and choose from the design elements of multiple genres without abandoning the benefits of easy recognition by players. Marketing can refer to a game as a "FPS/RPG" and appeal to the fans of both genres. Especially well-done instances of genre fusion can spawn genres themselves; The Legend of Zelda was originally an action/RPG hybrid, but it's now regarded as one of the first examples of the action-adventure genre.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an excellent example of a game that mixes genres well. Created by Infinite Interactive in 2007, Puzzle Quest combines the color-matching puzzle genre with the RPG genre. As a pure concept, it's appealing: a strategic roleplaying game where battles are fought through a Bejeweled-like puzzle system.

However, what's remarkable about Puzzle Quest is that it actually works. Beyond being a high-concept novelty, Puzzle Quest is a good game. By looking at how it combined genres, one can get a deeper understanding of how to effectively create a genre-bending game.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Puzzle Quest and the Best of Both Worlds" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at diegesis in Grim Fandango.]

In video games, there is a division between the world inhabited by the game's characters and the representation of that world to the player. The game environment, world objects, and most sound effects and dialogue exist in the game world; that is, they can be perceived by characters. Other elements, such as most background music, loading screens, and subtitles, exist outside of the game world. They are part of the narration of the game, and help to provide the player with information or emotion that is not necessarily apparent to the characters of the game.

The film world calls this concept "diegesis." This is most easily explained in relation to music. If a film's music comes from a source inside the world of the film, like Casablanca's piano-playing Sam, it is said to be diegetic.

The dramatic music that plays over a James Bond action scene, however, cannot be heard by Bond; it is non-diegetic. Video game music can be looked at in the same way; Super Mario Bros.'s earworm background music is decidedly non-diegetic, but when the player comes across a radio in Portal playing a Latin version of "Still Alive," that music is diegetic. The player character Chell can hear it just like the player can.

The concept of diegesis applies to more than just music, of course.HUD elements can be non-diegetic or, as in Metroid Prime or Star Wars: Republic Commando, incorporated into the player character's helmet and therefore diegetic. Metroid Prime, in fact, plays with diegesis via the game's very interface. By using the X-Ray Visor, it becomes clear that while the player selects Samus's weapons with the C Stick, Samus herself chooses weapons by moving her fingers into various positions.

One work that pays particular attention to the concept of diegesis is LucasArts's 1998 game Grim Fandango. The game creates a very cinematic atmosphere by dispensing with many non-diegetic elements. Playing the game feels very much like watching a film noir piece due in part to this decision. By looking at how Grim Fandango handles diegesis, we can see how this concept can be used in video games.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Grim Fandango and Diegesis" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at Spore's character development innovations.]

An experience common to most video games is that of inhabiting a character. Since the days of Pac-Man, players have adopted the roles of people and creatures with distinct appearances and personalities. Today, few games are released where the player character is not given a specific identity. Sometimes, this identity is fixed; the Half-Life series stars MIT grad Gordon Freeman, and the Mario series features the world's most famous plumber. Other games, however, allow the development and customization of a character which is unique to each player.

Character creation can take many forms. In many cases, characters are created seperately from the game, usually in a "character editor" that pops up before the beginning of the game proper. The Fallout series, most MMO games, and many more allow this sort of customization, where forming the character is a very "meta" experience; it's done in a seperate mode, and any changes that are made after gameplay begins are separate and disconnected from the actual experience of the game proper.

Pre-game character creation has an essential downside, however. Because it is separate from the game, the player does not know when making her first character what the consequences of her choices will be. When playing the game, the player may discover that some statistics or abilities are less useful than they initially appeared, or decide that a differently built character would better suit the game.

Additionally, having character creation as a completely separate takes away some of the unity of feeling of the player's experience. Because of this, a few games integrate character creation into gameplay. Maxis's recent game Spore takes an unusually broad approach; the entire evolution of the player character's species is shaped over the course of gameplay.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Integrated Character Creation in Spore" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example.]

Musical composition has a technique called theme and variation, where a musical theme — a sequence of notes, chords, or rhythms — is repeated throughout a piece with variations, inversions, and embellishments. Variations serve both as a demonstration of the composer's prowess and as an exploration in depth of a specific theme. The most famous example of this technique among layfolk is probably Bach's Goldberg Variations.

We see a similar technique used in video games. Many games, especially those focused on puzzles, start with a simple concept and complicate it by embellishing and expanding that initial idea. Lemmings is a classic example. The game begins with simple introductions of the various "skills" that the player can assign to the lemmings, then gradually adds hazards and obstacles until the player is navigating truly complex levels.

This technique of increasingly complex variations is useful enough to be presented as a design pattern, a specific, repeatable approach to a commonly encountered situation. As Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen have pointed out [PDF], a creative task like game design is less-suited to the solution-based approach used in other software design patterns. Instead, game design patterns serve as a template with certain advantages and consequences. By looking at 2D Boy's recent (and excellent) game World of Goo, we can see how this pattern works in practice.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - The Goo Variations" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example.]

The ability to save is a given among modern video games, but there doesn't seem to be a save system that can satisfy everyone. As players, we want to be able to save and resume our games at any point. For many, even save points are too restrictive; PC gamers are used to quicksaving, which allows the player to save every five seconds in fear of failure.

And that's the downside of saving, really. While it means that players can exit the game without losing progress, it also means that player failure — as well as player choice &mdash holds less weight. Playing Half-Life 2 can turn into an exercise of frequent quicksaves, where taking too much damage or becoming overrun can be reversed by loading the save made just seconds before.

In this environment, messing up doesn't matter for longer than five seconds, and important decisions can be trivially reversed, meaning that there's little consequence for poor strategy and little impact for momentous decisions. Imagine the cliche where a protagonist is presented with two identical allies, and must shoot the impostor. There's little urgency in the situation if the player knows she can just quickload if she makes the wrong decision.

Checkpoint-based save systems seem like an attempt to address this, but they really just make mistakes and choices more inconvenient to reverse at the cost of limiting the player's ability to save and exit the game at any time. Persistent-world multiplayer games often address the issue by eliminating saving and permanent death altogether, but this is hard to apply to most single-player games.

However, there is a rare approach that allows saving at any time while also making the player's choices and actions important and irreversible. It's the approach taken by TaleWorlds' recently-released game Mount&Blade, and it can be used in any game that would benefit from stronger consequences for a player's actions.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - No Quit Without Saving" »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example.]

One of the nebulous terms that game journalists seem to use to taunt developers is "replay value." According to many reviewers, a game's not very good unless it's fun to play multiple times. This is partly an issue of economy; a game that bears replaying provides more hours per dollar than one that does not.

It's more an issue of breadth, however. Replay value comes from many things, and one of them is the ability for the game to let players have a different experience each time they play. This breadth of experience means that players who enjoy a game the first time can experience more entertainment from the game by replaying in various ways.

Replay value's not just a buzzword. It means that players that like a game can see more of it without the developers creating an expansion pack or a sequel. It increases the longevity of the game in the hearts of individual players and, on a more mercenary level, increases the amount of time word-of-mouth can spread about the game.

There are three basic kinds of replay value. The first is the ability to reexperience previous game content, in relatively unaltered form, with a minimum of fuss. The second is the ability to reinvigorate the game's challenge by making it more difficult or adding constraints on the gameplay. The third is the ability to reimagine the gameplay by changing the goals or the style of the game on a second play-through. Each of these three has a different appeal to different players.

There's really no excuse for a developer making a large game to leave any of these three types out. Each of the three kinds of replay value — reexperiencing content, reinvigorating challenge, and reimagining gameplay — can be added to a game with little additional effort.

Daniel Remar's new indie game, Iji, is a good example of a game that gets this right. Besides single-handedly creating a strategic platformer to rival Flashback and Turrican, Remar included an array of features to enhance Iji's replay value.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Three Kinds of Replay " »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['The Interactive Palette' is a new column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example.]

In video games, there has been a gradual trend from skill challenge to story. Many of the first arcade games were tests of skill and reflexes: the player was challenged to score as many points as she could before losing. High score tables are a symbol of this era: a skilled player's initials were immortalized for all to see... until more skilled players pushed her off the bottom of the table.

Ever since the debut of saved games and passwords, however, games have been becoming more and more forgiving of failure. This allows for longer, richer experiences, as in the classic The Legend of Zelda, the first game to feature a battery-backed save feature. This has allowed developers to write stories that last longer than one gameplay session, has made death much less final, and has led to our modern story- and character-focused games.

But the skill challenge aspect of gameplay has largely been lost. Players expect a story, and that apparently conflicts with the concept of running out of lives and getting a game over. The loss of that very experience, of finding the player's skill, is often lamented among old-school "retro" gamers and new-wave "indie" gamers alike. The two ways of designing games seem mutually exclusive.

However, indie developer Anna Anthropy's recent freeware PC game, Calamity Annie, manages to do the impossible: provide a cruel skill challenge and still have a long, ongoing game story. It's a groundbreaking lesbian cowboy fast-draw romance where every game ends with the shot of a pistol, and it uses an approach that I think is applicable to a wide array of games.

Continue reading "Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - Love Transcending Death: Challenge Versus Story in Calamity Annie " »

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)