Archives for March 2003

Second Person POV

March 30, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

One of the points I made recently in the IGDA writing forum was that unlike every other form of mainstream entertainment, interactive entertainment contains a second-person you that creators must allow for:

Mainstream (meaning commercially successful) books are either first-person (“I went to the store….”) or third-person (“Bob went to the store….”); movies are third-person, present-tense (“Jensen fires twice – BLAM BLAM!!!”); television is the same; witnessing sports, the same. Only in interactive does the almost unheard of second-person POV come into play: “You attempt to open the chest….”

Now, as writers and designers we spend a lot of time talking about first-person or third-person point of view (POV) for the graphical presentations of our games – meaning whether the player-character is on-screen (Mario) or not (Half-life) – but we don’t talk much at all about the hell of trying to deal with this second-person POV. We should, though, because in the example with the chest it doesn’t matter what our camera point of view is: we’re still in second-person relative to the game/sim. (Morrowind is a good example of this: you can toggle between first-person and third-person on the fly, which effectively means it really doesn’t matter what the camera POV is relative to much of what’s happening in the game.)

I’m not sure how far this line of reasoning goes before it becomes academic, but I think it may be fairly consequential. More to come as I get a better handle on this one.

— Mark Barrett

Space Cadet

March 12, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

Space Cadet
During a bit of down time on the road last week I opened my notebook to play a meaningless game of whatever had come with XP Pro. Not being much in a card-playing mood I was pleased to find a pinball game called Space Cadet on my machine, which I immediately launched.

After playing the game for a while I began to feel an odd kind of deja vu, as if I’d played that table before. I discounted the possibility for a while, until I noticed, down by the left flipper, the name of the developer: Cinematronics.

Cinematronics was the second company I worked for, and my first gig as a design consultant. Among the projects I reviewed for them was Full-Tilt Pinball, which contained three pinball games, one of which was – yes – Space Cadet. (Had I known how apropos that name would become years hence, I would have suggested they change it.)

No matter how slight my contribution, it was a really good feeling to see that old game still in literal play, and for a very real moment I felt good about my job in a way I rarely do. Had I been a lesser sort (you know who you are) I would have looked up the latest sales figures for WinXP, then relentlessly promoted myself as having been the design consultant on a title that shipped x million copies. Instead, I’m simply proud to report that I responded like a gamer. I set the high score as high as I could, then I kept going back to beat it.

Speaking of which…

— Mark Barrett

GDC 2003

March 6, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

GDC 2003
My annual pilgrimage to the West Coast begins in a few days, and as usual I’m ambivalent about leaving. Past experience, however, clearly shows that once I’ve arrived I’ll be glad I made the trip. The power-ups of camaraderie and intellectual discourse that one finds almost littering the convention floor always restore my interactive entertainment morale.

As for my objectives, each year I try to have an overarching goal in mind, and this year that objective is to move past teaching and involve myself even more in the process of making games. Between the explosion of interest in the games biz from academic circles – little of which is focused on, or will ultimately yield, anything of practical use – and a disheartening freelance experience I recently had with a division of Microsoft, I am wondering if we will ever truly move past old arguments about the tantalizing but unattainable possibilities that originally drew many of us to this business.

While it’s to be expected that newbies will need to be educated on the state of the art, many newbies who come to the games biz do so with their own intellectual stamps of approval, making them less inclined to pay their dues or learn the ropes. While I don’t begrudge people their bushy-tailed energy or their bright ideas, and I support anyone who has done their homework and truly believes in their vision, I just don’t have the energy to fight the tide of ignorance anymore.

If there’s a silver lining in all this it’s that I now know why I felt no desire to submit my roundtable abstract for the GDC this year. Whereas before I felt it important to evangelize as much as possible about the craft of interactive entertainment, I no longer believe that one voice – or even a hundred voices – can prevent people from wasting time and money on these naive pursuits each year.

None of which should dissuade you from contacting me if you have a question about the games biz, or about interactive entertainment design. I’m still committed to education: I’m just not trying to save anyone from themselves anymore.

— Mark Barrett

IGDA Nominations for Excellence in Writing

March 1, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago nominations for the 2003 Game Developers Choice Awards were announced, including nominations in the new writing category. The writing nominees are:

My first thought on reading this list was that I was pleased the nominations were for games that many people currently consider the best of the best. I think it’s critically important that writing be seen as a vital component of successful interactive works, not as the antiquated skill it’s often made out to be by tech-biased members of the community. While excellent writing in otherwise failed products should certainly be recognized as well, from a purely political point of view this inaugural list convincingly makes the point that writing matters.

Oddly enough I also found myself pleased that I didn’t personally know any of the individuals who were nominated. The quickest way to demonstrate how important writing is, and how important writers and writing can be to successful design, is to make sure that recognition is distributed across the industry as a whole. My friends and peers already get it, and it’s reassuring to see that the same holds true in other development circles.

My only negative take involved the fact that although there is now a separate writing category, at least some of these nominations – for example that of the ‘GTA Team’ – could be due more to the game’s design than to specific knowledge of how writers or writing actually shaped the final product. (In an earlier post I noted that nominations and votes would be based on the final product, meaning no one would really know who actually did what on a given project.) While I think that’s a fair criticism, I also think it misses the big picture. From here on out, writing isn’t going to be assumed to be design: instead, it’s going to be discussed as a distinct part of product development. And that’s a sea change in this industry.

— Mark Barrett