The Introversion Software Manifesto

I made mention of Introversion Software in my last post.  I have to emphasize yet again just how much I respect the UK studio – their talent, their vision, and the works they’ve put out.  I know I’ve gushed about them at least twice before.  I highly encourage those of you that haven’t played their stuff to do so this instant.  They’ve got creative ideas with a typically minimalist but effective aesthetic.  Anyway, I was browsing the Uplink CD (purchased years ago directly from the company) while researching for my last post and stumbled upon a “bonus” directory that contained, among other things, a studio manifesto.  The file is dated around the end of December 2001.  Upon reading it, I realized that even though its contents are nearly a decade old, it still has a surprising amount of relevance regarding the state of the game industry in the present day.  I searched Introversion’s website and could find no online copy of the manifesto, so I acquired permission from them to reprint it here.  I really don’t think it needs any additional commentary from me, so here it is, raw:

The Introversion Software Manifesto

What is wrong with our industry?

The games industry is ruled by the ego of the programmer
This is fundamentally a bad thing. Programmers are engineers – which is why we see every games company making their own engine, every company spending 90% of their time writing engine code when they should be writing games. Game design is done by these engineers, or people with this engineering background (“so they can understand what is possible and impossible”) – which goes some way to explaining the glut of copies that the industry is suffering. It also explains the domination of established themes – space Sci-fi, sword/sorcery fantasy etc, since the programmers grew up with these niche genres. With the programmers responsible for establishing what is possible and what is not, the artist is immediately restricted in the worst possible way.

The programmer is ruled by the money of the publisher
Game developers often have good intentions but require the financial assistance of publishers, and have no protection against them. The majority of this money is used simply to re-invent technology that already exists. This also puts the game design in the hands of Corporate opportunists who are considerably more interested in profit than artistic expression. This unfortunate fact leads to the destruction of the last elements of creativity.

The publisher’s primary aim is to produce an endless stream of revenue generators
Their interest in creating a good game is insignificant in comparison. All that money spent creating another generic copy while a more creative company is “consolidated” for daring to do something new.

The Games Industry stands on the verge of becoming an established artistic medium – one day maybe the greatest, yet at the same time it is in terrible danger of being swallowed by the Corporate world that supports it.

What is wrong with our games?

Fundamentally, Games do not need jaw dropping graphics.
Graphics that WORK are much more important – graphics that fit the theme or concept. We are not here to show off our skills at 3d engine programming. Again, the programmers ego has pushed the Games industry in the wrong direction.

90% Technology, 10% gameplay
It takes two years to write a game, and in most cases about 10% of that time is spent on game design, usually at the start and end. This is the wrong way around, since the game engines are fundamentally all the same and the games themselves are what is supposed to be different. The fact that every games company under the sun has written their own particle engine, or their own skeletal animation system, or their own physics library is symptomatic of the problem. THEY ALL DO THE SAME THING. They also all cost a fortune and take months to implement.

The common assumption “Above all else, a game must be fun” is FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED
It is also one of the reasons why the current “cutting-edge” games are still viewed as children’s entertainment by the popular media. To say that any creative art form “must be fun” immediately limits the scope of any project attempted, and removes the possibility of games that have any real emotional depth or resonance – since this depth stems from conflict and drama, which are inherently negative emotions.

95% of the games available today could have been implemented using a very small number of established technologies and engines, requiring considerably less programmer time. They might not have looked quite as good, but they would have cost half as much and taken half as long to produce, freeing up time to concentrate on less trivial issues such as creativity and gameplay.

This is not a statement of intent

It is a statement of belief

It is a statement of our philosophy

This is our manifesto

What is wrong with our industry? The games industry is ruled by the ego of the programmer This is fundamentally a bad thing. Programmers are engineers – which is why we see every games company making their own engine, every company spending 90% of their time writing engine code when they should be writing games. Game design is done by these engineers, or people with this engineering background (“so they can understand what is possible and impossible”) – which goes some way to explaining the glut of copies that the industry is suffering. It also explains the domination of established themes – space Sci-fi, sword/sorcery fantasy etc, since the programmers grew up with these niche genres. With the programmers responsible for establishing what is possible and what is not, the artist is immediately restricted in the worst possible way. The programmer is ruled by the money of the publisher Game developers often have good intentions but require the financial assistance of publishers, and have no protection against them. The majority of this money is used simply to re-invent technology that already exists. This also puts the game design in the hands of Corporate opportunists who are considerably more interested in profit than artistic expression. This unfortunate fact leads to the destruction of the last elements of creativity. The publisher’s primary aim is to produce an endless stream of revenue generators Their interest in creating a good game is insignificant in comparison. All that money spent creating another generic copy while a more creative company is “consolidated” for daring to do something new.

The Games Industry stands on the verge of becoming an established artistic medium – one day maybe the greatest, yet at the same time it is in terrible danger of being swallowed by the Corporate world that supports it.

The case for cyberpunk

I went and purchased Mr. Robot on impulse from Steam when it went on sale for two bucks.  I enjoyed playing Moonpod’s Starscape, so I figured I’d try another of their games.  I also remember when Kotaku started a “game club” to discuss Mr. Robot.  I didn’t plan on playing it at the time, and I decided not to read the commentary in fear of spoilers.  From the screenshots, I assumed it was just a generic puzzle/platform game.  Now, some two years later, at two bucks, I couldn’t resist.

It turns out the game is not just puzzle-platforming.  It’s also got a healthy dose of turn-based RPG wrapped in cyberpunk-style hacking.  Sweet.  Which got me wondering – why aren’t there more cyberpunk games out there?  There are a few I can think of, which I’ll mention later in this post, but really, it doesn’t get anywhere close to the number of fantasy games, outer-space sci-fi games, or historically set games.

I can think of four major, practical reasons why more developers should look into integrating cyberpunk themes into new games:

1. Under-served market: the fact that there aren’t that many cyberpunk games out there is reason in itself to explore it further.  It’s not like it’s an entirely new genre  – just vastly untapped.  It’s got an established audience and a lot of related fiction has already been written.  I’m willing to bet there’s a huge market out there just waiting for something to come along and scratch that itch.
2. Simple abstraction: the representation of cyberspace is wide open to interpretation.  We navigate it now with mouse and keyboard entry and our current, “primitive” GUI’s.  Maybe one day, non-invasive technology will allow us to jack into a Gibsonesque world of neon lines and polyhedral avatars.  Or maybe we’ll go the way of the Matrix and find ourselves in realistically simulated virtual spaces.  In any case, the open-endedness of cyberspace representation means that just about anything goes.  “Hacking” – the general means of conflict resolution in a cyberspace universe – can exist in any form without breaking theme (unless you’re already a computer savant with vast knowledge of actual hacking and an anal, purist affinity for the craft).  Mr. Robot turned it into an RPG.  Assassins Creed II used visual puzzles.  BioShock made it like a game of Pipe Dream.  Uplink employed unique minigames and time-management mechanics.
3. Inherent dual-layer gameplay: the separation between meatspace and cyberspace feels like it should be game design gold.  One can use the interplay between those two layers in a myriad of ways.  Mr. Robot uses the separation to fuse an RPG with a puzzle-platformer.  One could also imagine isolating the main narrative function to meatspace with the game existing in cyberspace – somewhat like Assassin’s Creed.  Or one could design two separate-but-interacting layers of gameplay, such as in the Source mod Dystopia.
4. Simpler assets: cyberpunk games have potential to be very lightweight.  As an example, Uplink (which single-handedly made me a lifetime devotee to all things Introversion) has all of its data contained in a 32 MB installer – no 3D models or high-res textures or bloated data files.  You’d realize the potential simplicity of a cyberpunk game the moment you play Uplink.  Even if you decided to go the way of a Gibson-inspired cyberspace, you wouldn’t need densely populated environments – just neon lines and amalgamations of a small number of simple polyhedra or quadrilateral planes.  You could get away with that.  Just look at the acclaim Rez received for its visual style, despite the fact that the majority of it is comprised of lines, simple shapes, and bright, solid colors.  Anyway, for the developer, simpler assets equates to smaller teams, less development time, and lower costs.

These reasons don’t even go into the less substantial but still relevant assertion that cyberpunk is simply a rich theme to exploit, with the eerie familiarity of a world to which we seem to draw closer and closer.  You know, a few years back, at the end of a game design class I took at my company, I pitched a cyberpunk themed MMO.  Suffice it to say that we went a different direction.  But now, with The Matrix Online no longer filling that niche, maybe it’s about time someone took its place.

Gaming memories of 2009

Everyone and their mothers are writing “Top 10 games of 2009″ lists around this time.  And I figure that most of those people are probably more qualified than me to judge this year’s cache of titles (especially seeing as I haven’t yet touched some of the heavyweight contenders like Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2).  So I decided to take a more personal approach to my remembrance of 2009 with 10 of my gaming memories of the year.  Okay, so they’re not so much memories of individual events as much as they are just general subjects of recollection, but whatever.  Here they are in roughly chronological order:

1. Area 5/CO-OP:  I can’t describe how much I love these guys.  Their layoff from 1up hit closer to home than most others in the industry that have occurred in this economic climate.  So when they came back with their own show, I was absolutely thrilled.  I’ve watched every episode they’ve produced, and I generally hold their opinions of games in high regard.  They’ve definitely influenced more than one of my purchasing decisions.  And in a recent outing to San Francisco, I even stopped by all of their recommended eateries throughout “Mother Mission.”  I hope to meet these guys one of these days.
2. PSP: My wife got me one for my birthday this year, and I’ve had no trouble putting it through its paces.  (Apparently, neither did she.)  In fact, my wife blames 2.0 on my… gratitude… for her gift.  Anyway, despite the PSP’s horrible battery life, I’ve managed to sink hundreds of hours into it.  Hands down, my favorite so far has been Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which is easily the biggest surprise game this year.  After the travesty that was Crisis Core (admit it, guys, random leveling sucks), I was expecting another cheap fanboy cash-in – that is, until a friend at work recommended it.  My tastes in gaming don’t always align with his, but I gave it a try and fell in love with it.  I also spent a ridiculous amount of time with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – solo!  A group of guys at work had been playing it regularly during lunchtime with imported Japanese copies, but since the localized version wasn’t released until months later, I barely missed the bandwagon.  I got to play with a remnant group of lunchtime monster hunters, but the fervor had mostly died down.  It didn’t stop me from sinking 100+ hours into it, anyway.  And then there was Half-Minute Hero.  Seriously, why haven’t I seen that game on all of the other top-10 lists?!  It’s amazing.
3. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game: My wife and I actually purchased BSG last Christmastime at a little swap-meet-style place called Frank and Sons during our annual SoCal soujourn to visit family for the holidays.  I played a pre-release copy with coworkers months before, so when we spotted it for an unmarked price at a random board/card game booth, I was immediately interested.  When we asked the merchant how much it cost, he had no idea, so he just assumed it cost $30.  Sold!  Since purchasing it, we had a solid group of friends come over on a regular basis to play.  Sessions lasted well into the night with tensions high and voices raised.  Unfortunately, since 2.0’s arrival, we haven’t really had much chance to participate in a good BSG session, but my friends have borrowed the board game multiple times for their own nights of collaboration and conspiracy.  They’re convinced it’s the greatest board game ever.  Clearly, they haven’t played Agricola yet.
4. Console failures: While these weren’t exactly good memories, they were unforgettable ones nonetheless.  Both my Xbox 360 and PS3 failed this year.  The Xbox red-ringed days before I was to get my copy of Street Fighter IV.  The PS3 stopped reading Blu-ray discs just 10 minutes shy of the end of Burn After Reading that my wife and I borrowed from Netflix.  We still haven’t finished the movie.  The PS3 was out of warranty, but lucky for me, American Express has an extended warranty benefit that covers purchases made with Amex cards, so I got my repair costs reimbursed.  And Sony still sends boxes.
5. Fighting games: Speaking of Street Fighter IV, this year has indubitably been the year of the fighting game.  Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue, Tekken 6, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 re-release.  There has definitely been a resurgence of fighting game interest in the West.  We probably have Street Fighter IV to thank for that.  Consequently, this year has been loaded with amazing fighting game memories and events: MadCatz released the Tournament Edition fightsticks to give console players an outstanding and competitively priced alternative to the top-of-the-line Hori sticks; Evo2k9 was live-streamed for the first time in its history, allowing upwards of thirty thousand people to witness live another epic bout in the endless East vs. West war between Daigo and Wong (with SoCal rep Ed Ma taking 3rd and doing us Californians proud);  I began teaching my younger cousin the Street Fighter basics and watched him level up from a flowchart Ken into a formidable Chun Li diving into the arcade scene at SJSU; my masochistically chosen Carl Clover went from being pitied to being “disgusting” (except against lame Arakune dive spam) during lunchtime and after-work BlazBlue battles.  Here’s hoping 2010 continues to nurture the fighting game scene.
6. GM’ing priveleges: As a programmer at a game studio, I helped launch my first title this year, which is a huge step for my future career in the industry.  One of the highlights of that milestone had to be when the Community Relations team invited all of the developers to participate in an apocalyptic end-of-beta event in which we were given ridiculous powers and an order to kill players.  We had to play nice and let them kill us once in a while (I even stuck around so they could get screenshots of my corpse), but it was a memorable moment becoming a living part of hundreds of players’ experiences.
7. 2.0: I basically spent two consecutive months of this year on family leave lounging around at home.  A screaming, pooping child really limits your options.  On the plus side, with a kid that slept all day except when he was eating, I got a lot of gaming time in.  Of course, that was only after my body adjusted to the three-hours-of-sleep-at-a-time schedule.  But after that, I must’ve completed something like ten games in that period of time: Brutal Legend, ODST, Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, Jeanne d’Arc, Half-Minute Hero, Final Fantasy II, Torchlight, Wind Waker, and others I probably just can’t remember.  I told myself I’d be productive and do some work on a side project I’ve been designing, but that just didn’t happen.  In any case, retirement is looking extremely desirable now…
8. Assassin’s Creed: …was one of the games I mentioned that I played during my family leave.  I just recently picked up Assassin’s Creed II and am making good progress to complete it in another couple days.  The series is phenomenal.  I wasn’t trying to make this a top 10 games list, but the two Assassin’s Creed games definitely comprise a couple of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had this past year.  A little cyberpunk here, some history there, a healthy dash of conspiracy theory, with a mixture of free-running and stealth action gameplay, not to mention the top-notch production values – seriously, if you haven’t played the Assassin’s Creed series yet, do it now! Heck, buy it here through Amazon (who usually offers great prices, free shipping, and no tax) so I get me some commission monies.
9. Steam holiday sale: This thing’s been better than getting actual gifts!  For the past week, the first thing I’ve done after getting out of bed is to go to my computer and check the daily sales on Steam.  In case you haven’t noticed, they’re insane.  The deals are so crazy that on the first day of the sale, I overheard a couple of my coworkers talking about how they spent hundreds of dollars on “impulse purchases”.
10. You!: I know I’ve neglected this blog a lot, but my motivation has steadily increased as of late.  It really wouldn’t be possible without seeing the traffic and occasional comment to remind me that people still take some remote interest in this hunk of junk.  I especially want to thank GameSetWatch for linking a lot of the stuff I write.  Overall, putting my thoughts onto this metaphoric paper has really taught me how to more deeply appreciate and understand this genre we all know and love.

Happy New Year, everyone!  Game on!

Toward better collections, part 3: Treasure World

Over the past couple of posts, I’ve explored a variety of properties that can make game collection mechanics more engaging.  In this last post, I’m going to focus specifically on a single game – Treasure World.  Treasure World is a collection-centric game for the DS that involves wardriving as a means of collecting a number of unique treasures.  It got some good publicity around the blogging community around the time of its release (primarily due to a well-circulated writeup on Offworld).  At this point, though, the game appears to have fallen into obscurity, garnering very little attention at all anymore.  Fortunately for us, the game serves as a great subject for examination with regard to the topic of collections.

Here Comes A New Challenger!

Toward better collections, part 2: The “collective” experience

In my last post, I talked about some of the basic components of what I feel comprises a good virtual collection.  One of the things I mentioned (about first-party Nintendo collections in particular) is that the act of collecting becomes more compelling when the player is given greater opportunity to appreciate the collection.  In this post, I’ll explore a corollary to that assertion: a collection becomes more compelling when a player is able to appreciate another player’s collection.  I think it’s safe to say that when collections move beyond the isolated realm of single-player, the driving motivational forces of collection become not those of tangible experiential rewards, but of those age-old vices of envy and pride.  The potential to demonstrate one’s superiority (or better fortune) to others is enough to make the other set-collection guidelines practically obsolete.  The very idea behind a game like Progress Quest is evidence that the compulsion to achieve in the eyes of one’s peers can be used to motivate any activity – even if that activity is purely comprised of watching numbers go up.

When considering the profound effect of exposing a player collection to the outside world, my mind immediately jumps to the Animal Crossing series.  The advent of WiFi support for the DS’s Animal Crossing: Wild World allowed players to enter each others’ towns via WiFi, a feature lauded by many reviewers as one of the best things to have ever happened to the series.  Why?  Because the player’s collection of fossils, fish, bugs, and Tom Nook’s eclectic decor suddenly went from being an odd, private obsession to an odd, shared obsession  – one in which players can admire each others’ wealth or fulfill each others’ wants.

Toward better collections, part 1: Assassin’s Creed

During my family leave, I’ve gotten some time during 2.0’s sporadic sleep schedule to play a ton of games. The majority of those games features a common, popular gameplay element – set collection.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  It’s that optional gameplay element in which you’re invited (usually unsuccessfully) to “collect them all” or “find them all”.  A few examples:  Okami’s stray beads, Gears of War’s COG tags, Fallout 3’s bobbleheads, Ratchet & Clank’s golden bolts, Super Smash Bros.’s trophies, Pokemon’s… pokemon.  There are also other, more subtle forms of set collection that you may not have thought about: multiplayer titles, skill sets, armor sets, crafting recipes, beastiaries, codexes (I’m looking at you, Bioware) – even Xbox/PS3 achievements/trophies can fall into this category.  Since I’m a bit OCD and somewhat of a collection nut, I spot these collection opportunities rather quickly.  I also tend to determine rather quickly that the vast majority of such opportunites are not worth my time investment.  And I’m sure many of you have done the same thing – shelved a game without even giving a second thought to those things you left uncollected in that bygone world.  There’s a reason for that – it’s because most games implement set collection badly.  In this series of articles, I’d like to use personal experience from playing various games to examine how other games could improve the quality of these collection mechanics and give players more incentive to participate in these peripheral activities.

Schlaghund v2.0

It’s been way too long.  The last 3+ weeks have been quite an adventure.  Per my usual modus operandi, I’ve neglected to update this page with any info.  But to be brief, I am now a father to a very handsome son – sure, he’s fickle and rambunctious, but he’s so cute.

Hopping onto the Twitter bandwagon

I joined Twitter recently – mainly because my wife joined it and she mentioned how the username she wanted wasn’t available.  Since I’ve clearly had problems reserving my name of choice in most other services (and since I figured that Twitter was an inevitable eventuality), I preemptively claimed sole right to my namesake before the other notorious “schlaghund” could take it.  Besides… WordPress already has a widget that shows my recent tweets, so why the heck not?

Oh, and forgive me if my tweets aren’t using the latest lingo.  I’m getting too old to figure out all this “RT @blah” stuff.  And God only knows what else the hip kids have conjured up to compress their tweets beyond legibility.  Does no one write plain English anymore?

And bit.ly?  I guess tinyurl wasn’t tiny enough.  Man, I feel like a tech fogey.

Yes, I’m still alive

For anyone still waiting for something to come out of this blog, I’m sorry about my neglect.  Yes, I’m still alive, and yes, I still have an interest in blogging.  And I honestly have no valid excuse for the lack of posts aside from laziness and a greater interest in actually gaming rather than writing about it.  That, and my company finally upgraded my nigh-three-year-old work computer, so the time I might’ve spent jotting thoughts down while waiting for stuff to compile or load is now spent actually being productive.

Anyway, what am I up to these days?  Two things, mostly: BlazBlue and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite.  One of my cousins also recently got an Xbox (finally) and Live, so when I’m not playing the two aforementioned games, I’m probably playing Street Fighter IV or Halo 3 with him.

I watched the Evo 2k9 live stream almost a month ago.   (It was every bit as epic as I had imagined it would be!)  I was tempted to write about it (and I still probably will when I can gather my thoughts on the state of fighting games), but I realized that I’m starting to blog (or at least think) a lot about fighting games and I’d rather try to vary the subject for those that aren’t as interested in the genre.

Oh, and thanks to modern technology, I got a neat peek at my little nublet, who’s less than three months away from entering the world of loud noises and bright lights.  He looks something like this:

He’s a feisty sucker.  But he respects Daddy.  He hasn’t kicked me in the face.  Yet.   Although I’m quite convinced that my persistent vocal intrusion into Mommy’s cavernous belly will soon persuade him to try.