DITCHWALK – Page 65 – A Road Less Traveled

Image Corruption

April 20, 2003 By Mark 3 Comments

Have you noticed lately how often a television show you’re watching will be interrupted on the fly by a promo, a logo, or some other form of advertising? It’s gotten to the point that I can’t watch Spongebob anymore because Nickelodeon keeps running ads for upcoming shows on the lower part of the screen – which right now you’re thinking is maybe the bottom inch, but I’ve seen them take as much as the lower third of the on-screen image. Or take some of the NBA games I watched this year, which included on-screen promos during the game that momentarily flashed close to the center of the screen, forcing your eye to acknowledge them.

I mention this because I think it’s a measure of the degree to which television has been trivialized in the current offering of entertainment options. Sure, taken as a whole television itself is still popular, but there are so many channels now that the model is more like that of the magazine business than anything else. And like the magazine business, channels are struggling to attract and keep eyeballs while building a brand, because building a brand on TV means doing intrusive things like having omnipresent on-screen logos, border ads, overlays, etc.

What’s interesting about this relative to interactive entertainment is that it wasn’t that long ago that people were worrying about product placement practices in TV, and wondering if it was going to destroy the business, or save it. Well, those concerns are long gone in TV land, but they’re soon to roost in the interactive industry, which is already tipping toward licensing as a means of catching the eyeballs of those same consumers – who today have a ridiculous number of entertainment options available to them. I’m already seeing intrusive overlaid ads on pages like Gamasutra (that irritating Radeon-slime ad), and I guess I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before I fire up a piece of interactive entertainment and have to deal with an omnipresent logo in the lower right corner of my monitor while I’m playing a shooter.

When that happens, I’ll know the industry threw in the towel on suspension of disbelief. I’ll also know that the part of the industry I cared about died.

— Mark Barrett

Innovation is Overrated

April 6, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

Speaking of licensing, the debate framed by Warren Spector’s 2003 GDC speech and Greg Costikyan’s GDC lament may have less to do with the economic rigors of our business than I originally thought. While reading a book called What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke, I ran across the following quote:

GE’s market research [on microwave cooking] discovered that 90 percent of all American Consumers’ cooking entailed only 80 recipes….

Familiarity may breed contempt in human beings, but in what we eat, and in what we choose to do with our playtime, it may be a much more important ingredient than we’re admitting. While that kind of oversight isn’t surprising given that many of the people doing the commenting, like me, are creative types who get their enjoyment from pushing boundaries, it’s at least a reminder not to dismiss the choices of the masses outright. From their point of view the question isn’t whether there’s enough new stuff being made, the question is whether there are enough choice available so they don’t feel like they’re playing the same thing all the time.

On the off chance that the entire interactive entertainment industry may only have room for eighty licenses, you should probably lock one up today.

— Mark Barrett

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

Dodging Bullets

December 31, 2002 By Mark Leave a Comment

Regarding my previous concern about a public relations nightmare arising from the D.C. sniper killings (see previous posts here and here), while there has been little fallout against our industry so far, I’m still on the fence as to why that may be. It’s entirely possible that there is no evidence that the killers were fans of sniping simulations, which would mean that our industry’s insistence on ignoring all social concerns until cornered by Congress has been the right tack. On the other hand, the current silence may only be the calm before the courtroom storm, meaning our instinct to deny could be working against our own best interests. Because a comprehensive gag order was draped over this case shortly after the two suspects were apprehended, we don’t really know whether either of them were fans of violent entertainment of any kind.

It still seems to me that a savvy, cutting-edge industry would be proactive when threatened with scapegoating of this magnitude, but I’m going to let that go for the moment. For the sake of argument let’s say that no violent software turned up on any computers the suspects may have owned or used, and let’s say the suspects themselves aren’t claiming that GTA III made them do it. Aren’t we in the clear then, at least this time?

My answer is no, and here’s why. [ Read more ]

Terrorism and the 1st Amendment

December 21, 2002 By Mark Leave a Comment

If the events of 9/11 are destined to influence the gaming community beyond eliminating the World Trade Center from views of the Manhattan skyline, an article entitled Solider of Intifada in the January, 2003 issue of Computer Gaming World (p.36) may suggest how. The article contrasts the release of a Syrian shooter called Under Ash, in which the player adopts the role of a 19-year-old Palestinian refuge, with the recent release of America’s Army, a shooter distributed free by the U.S. Army as part of its recruitment efforts.

While the piece deals squarely and fairly with how point of view determines whether content is patriotic or propagandistic, the article also suggests a more pressing and practical problem for our industry. Specifically, could the federal government deny Americans the right to own or play Under Ash, and/or arrest or detain individuals who chose to do so? Currently a great deal of latitude is being given to law enforcement efforts to combat terrorism, and it seems a real possibility that a violent game produced by Islamic developers might easily fall under someone’s definition of ‘terrorist activity’.

That this could be the tip of a Constitutional iceberg is obvious, because if the federal government can suppress one title, there may be attempts to suppress others, even if those titles haven’t been produced by enemies of the state. And for politicians already on the record as opposed to violent games, what better way to proceed than by reframing their social agendas as patriotism?

Even if no legislation is ever passed prohibiting certain products in the United States, quasi-governmental accusations or the threat of litigation could still have a chilling effect on developers and publishers of controversial titles. Will we see publishers and developers self-censoring content for fear of being labeled un-American? (If this seems far-fetched, read up on McCarthyism, then watch some of the jingoistic movies produced during that period.) And how might such a politically-charged marketplace affect the growing trend of developers openly supporting mod communities? While Quake III isn’t a game about terrorism, is that distinction going to be apparent to the average citizen if Congress trots out a total conversion in which the goal is mowing down likenesses of real Senators and Representatives before dispatching a likeness of the current president?

I don’t know how this will all play out, but my guess is that someone will take a run at using 9/11 for political gain at our industry’s expense. Although I have criticized our industry’s timidity in confronting scapegoating (see the section above), the risks associated with defending free access to a title like Under Ash are considerable, and probably prohibitive for individuals or groups who want to market product in the U.S. Ironically, it may be the release of America’s Army, along with other violent patriotic and nationalistic titles, that prevents those bent on social engineering from getting completely out of hand.

— Mark Barrett

Accepting Responsibility

December 17, 2002 By Mark Leave a Comment

Earlier this year (see And the Winner Is), I argued that it was wrong for the Game Developers Choice Awards to lump writing into the Game Design category. A number of others must have made similar arguments, because a few months ago writers were indeed given their own award category. (Nominations will be taken for the 2003 awards beginning 1/03/03. See the Choice Awards page for details.) To those who voted for the new category, and to those taking on the workload of administering the award, belated sincere thanks.

I chose not to comment on the announcement of the new writing award previously because I felt that the inclusion of a writing category simply corrected an oversight. Now, however, I think something more needs to be said. While the importance of the award probably cannot be overstated, both because it raises visibility to the value of writing as a production craft, and gives credibility to the idea that writing can be an important component of the development process, this elevation in development status comes with a price.

Over the past decade or so, there have been several periods in which writers, critics and gurus from other storytelling mediums have forayed into the interactive entertainment market, often with the goal of showing us ‘how it’s done’. In a matter of a year or two these know-it-alls usually fell by the wayside, battered and bruised by the difficulties and complexities of our new form, but the residue of their visits remained.

Chief among the problems created by these people was the impression among industry professionals that storytellers were idiots, and that the gaming business didn’t need writers any more than it needed sleep, exercise or vegetables. As this new writing award attests, times have certainly changed, but the potential for unprepared writers to do damage is still with us, and will only increase as more developers turn to professional storytellers for help. Why? Because as demand increases more writers are going to enter the pipeline, with many (if not most) of them naive to the issues that separate our form from passive storytelling mediums.

If an award for writing is deserved, and I believe it is, such recognition is in large part due to the work of writers and storytellers who proved to be reliable, knowledgeable and professional in their dealings with the interactive industry. As a measure of thanks, and with the intent of improving the writer’s lot in this business over the long haul, I encourage writers to accept individual responsibility for learning the interactive form, and I intend to continue to support those interested in doing so.

— Mark Barrett

Taking a Deep Breath

December 8, 2002 By Mark 1 Comment

After four years in my current house it became clear that my kitchen was the weak link in what was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable home. Not only was the decor too dark for a northern room (including burgundy carpet on the floor, if you can believe it), but there were three open doorways that couldn’t be closed to reduce noise, or to help zone heat in the winter.

To rectify these and other problems, at the beginning of this year I undertook the design of a complete remodel to be implemented in late fall, and I began freeing up time from work to allow me to participate in several facets of the project. Now, as the year comes to a close and the project nears a successful completion, I find myself looking forward to a lot of good cooking, and back on a lesson learned. [ Read more ]