Good Reading

To give you guys plenty to read about video games this weekend, I point you to a couple of really interesting articles. The overall quality of articles about gaming is improving, and I think a lot of good discussion is being brewed by the true gamers who are growing up to become writers. There is a lot to think about regarding where games are going and, while the articles conflict in ways and I agree on some points and not on others, both articles bring up valid and interesting topics.

So here you go:

The Lester Bangs of Video Games by Chuck Klosterman

CULTURE: Games and Metaphor by Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh (via Omar Kendall's blog)

(Edit: I noticed Omar Kendall has already pointed a link to the article a day before I did, so my link now points to his blog. Find the article through the link he posted on his blog.)

Enjoy!

- James

Evolution 2006

Now that summer is upon us, "Evolution Season" is in full swing. What's "Evolution" you might ask? Evolution is the largest fighting game tournament in the world. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of fighting games, and the Evolution tournaments, run by the folks at Shoryuken.com, is something I am very passionate about. As a fighting game fanatic, it is my dream to see Fighting Games become more "popular" as competitive events. Few video games, nay competitive games in general, can quite approach the level of skill, talent, and smarts required by the top fighting games in order to be one of the best. The highest level of play in Fighting Games is truly as worthy of highlight reels as any other sport.

The reason I bring up this tournament is that it all begins this weekend. This year, for the first time, the Evolution tournament, sponsored by Toyota, makers of the new Yaris (pardon the plug), is a multi-weekend event. Not content to just be a single weekend this year, Evolution has spanned from 1 tournament to three separate tournaments that will run all summer long. Evo West will be located in Los Angeles, California tihs upcoming weekend. Evo East will be located in Stamford, Connecticut starting July 15th. And the Evo Finals will be located in Las Vegas, Nevada starting on August 18th.

As I mentioned, Evo West is this upcoming weekend. So if you are based in Southern California and have a chance to stop by, try to find me and say hi. I will be working Evo West, doing my part to help the Shoryuken.com staff make it the best series of tournaments ever (more than likely, I'll be the touristy-looking guy walking around trying to take as many pictures as possible, if I'm not working any of the qualifying pools). In fact, I will also be traveling to Evo East and the Evo Finals to help out at all three events! It's gonna be quite a busy summer for me, but hopefully it'll be lots of fun and quite memorable.

After each Evo, I'll probably write up a post or two about the events, talking about the events and things that went well and ways we could improve on it and take any suggestions from those who attended. I'll also try to keep up with my regular posting, as I have every intention to put a close to the "Realism in Games" series of posts and move onto a new overall topic, something I've just been dying to address. So we'll see how well I can balance the three Evos, vacations, visitors from out of town, and keeping up with my posts!

In any case, the Evolution Summer has begun! Here's to hoping it turns out to be an awesome event!

- James

Metagaming Is For The Dogs

I've been told that Ninja Gaiden is hard.



I haven't played that XBox game myself, but I've been told some funny stories by Patrick Coyne, fellow gaming enthusiast. He wove me a tale of his futile attempts to defeat a certain boss in the game, only to die over and over and over again. After meeting his demise for something crazy like the 50th time, his friend who was watching laughed and noted that in all 50 lives he had died, the cause of death was different every life -- the boss found a unique way to dispatch him each and every time.

I have never played the game, and after hearing such stories, I'm not sure I want to. Of course, you can't really wonder why they would make the game so hard: Tomonobu Itagaki, the creator of Ninja Gaiden, has said he wants the game to be hard. And in fact, upon release of Ninja Gaiden Black, a re-release of the original Ninja Gaiden with all of the extra downloadable content already built into it, he addressed the difficulty of his game. When asked about the original game's difficulty, Itagaki made a comment that games should be hard and that he didn't feel you were worthy if you could not pass his game. But in order to address the complaints about how hard his game was, he included a new, easier mode in Ninja Gaiden Black: Dog Mode. He believed if you needed to play on the easier difficulty level, you were at the level of a dog, not worthy at all of being taken seriously.

The funny thing is that I think Itagaki was on to something. While he meant it as an insult -- calling people dogs -- I actually think he's hit upon a universal truth: most gamers are like dogs. They have good intentions, they want to have fun, and they want to enjoy themselves. But at the same time, they need to be taught how to play through repetition. They need to be coddled and rewarded when they do something right. And they need to always feel like they have a chance, even if they lose, because they believe the next time, they will win.

And this is how I have started to view the difference between the metagamer and the non-metagamer. I believe non-metagamers to be like dogs, young pups if you will, who have not yet been trained. Metagamers are the hunting dogs or the police dogs who already know, in advance, what is required of them.

Wikipedia states that "within actual entertainment games, the term metagame is used to describe either a game system layered over the game system, to increase enjoyable complexity, or a game system by which game rules are created." In my previous posts, Omar Kendall and I had a discussion about metagaming, after pointing out that my needs for a game (in particular quick and efficient information dissemination) are unique to myself and other metagamers. I can honestly say that with calling me a metagamer, he's hit the nail right on the head: I'm a metagamer through and through. I think the area that we differ on opinions, however, is that I believe that the majority of people are also metagamers... they just don't know it yet.

A bunch of my friends have recently started to own dogs. And all of these dogs start out the same: blank slates. They can all be taught, though, and can all be trained to achieve excellent levels of obedience. One friend of mine has her dog extremely well trained already, and the dog is still not even one year old. But the opposite can also be true. I also saw one owner at a random EB Games just recently forcing his little puppy to stay on a slanted XBox display stand while he played his XBox game. The dog kept threatening to slide off and fall to its imminent injury, and the owner repeatedly half-heartedly shoved the dog back onto the slanted surface while trying to maintain his attention on the game he was playing. The poor dog had the saddest expression on its face, looking frightened and confused and it continued to slip every so often. I'll bet that dog grows up to be very poorly trained. It takes a great amount of responsibility to properly train a dog (ask Nintendo).

In the same vein, I think it is a great responsibility for game designers to teach their players to metagame. The players may not know what is the pertinent information they need right away, but if you can make your game intelligently enough, you can train them. It's like putting that pill into the dog food: they are getting something good for them without them even knowing it. If you can keep them enthralled in the game, they will learn slowly by slowly what to look for, what keys to notice, and how to play the game well. Otherwise, they will never pass the later levels. But making a game properly will compel them to increase their skills because that's how badly they want to beat the game.

The perfect example of this -- and I'm not just doing this just to be obsequious to my friends -- is God of War. I honestly believe that this game has the greatest example that I've seen recently of how to teach metagaming to players. There is such a potential for very high level of play on top of what the game presents to you. The basics are there -- kill your enemies before they kill you. But the beauty of it is this: you can not only kill them, but you can kill them with style.

That's where the metagaming comes into play. And the beauty of it is that experts will pick up on the metagaming almost instantaneously in the very first battle. They will take their time beating up on the undead soldiers on the very first part of the boat, learning how to cancel their attacks with rolls and blocks, learning how to parry, learning what chain sequences there are, learning what the different throw follow-ups are, etc. In fact, most metagamers will believe that there simply isn't enough undead soldiers on that boat to continue experimenting. After they are done, they've already gained a huge supply of knowledge to use later on, learning how to attack and defend at the same time and how to wreck shop with a good mix of throws, parries, air combos, and anything they want. It's an art to the killing, not just mashing buttons.

But the reason the game works so well is that the non-metagamers don't have to pick up on this yet. In fact, they will pass the first boat section simply by mashing buttons. And that will teach them purely how to aim their attacks, something a metagamer doesn't even need to learn. But they are having so much fun beating up on the undead soldiers that they don't even notice they are learning how to aim their attacks. And every soldier you kill keeps giving you more life. So no matter how badly you get beat up, you earn life back: being rewarded for doing something right, just like how you would train a dog.

Then, the game progresses and you run into flying creatures. And then you learn that if you hit the Circle button, you grab them and rip off their wings. Not only is it amazingly awesome to do that to them (great rewarding animation for first-time players), but it kills them instantly! So now the players are learning to try the Circle button more. Different enemies spawn different reactions to throws, but because they were trained to use Circle early, they now use it later on and discover more. And then, enemies like the Minotaur and Centaurs have the special "mini-games" to finish them off (when the big Circle buttons appears over their head). You can finish them off without using the Circle button mini-games, but if you do use it you are rewarded, again, with health or magic. So defeating them doesn't become the goal anymore: defeating them correctly does. Again, rewarding players for proper metagaming, metagaming that they still aren't even aware they were taught!

And then certain enemies they run into will counter attack after attacking. Through frustration of getting hit repeatedly, they will learn to start blocking. And when they attack and get hit, they will try to block... and discovery gleefully that they can! And then they are taught how to cancel attacks into blocking. And then they run in Medusas who cannot have their stony gazes blocked. So instead of blocking, they try jumping... and get turned to stone, fall, and shatter. Bad idea. So they try something else... rolling! Once they figure out how well that works, it adds another level to their game. And pretty soon, they will start learning to attack and roll all over the place not only because it is effective, but because it is more fun that way. And since they keep running into Medusas from time to time, they will learn to use the roll eventually (except for one person I know...). Again, like a dog, taught through repetition.

Also, dogs learn to pick up on things that owners don't even know they do. They begin to put two and two together and can figure out what they are supposed to do before the owner even thinks he is telling the dog to do it. So when, in God of War, a player starts to power up their attacks, they get new abilities, such as the follow-up to parrying. So they try it once, to see what it does, and it turns out to be very useful. Now they've been introduced to Parrying and maybe, just maybe¸ they'll put two and two together and learn to parry in the middle of their attack instead of blocking, just so they can get access to that powerful follow-up attack.

And on and on and on and on. By the time you get to the point where (spoilers for the 3 people who have not yet played the game) Kratos needs to save his family (end spoilers), you need all these skills in order to win. That part of the game is nearly impossible to beat if you haven't learned these tactics. And then, after the player passes the game and starts over again and replays the first boat scene... wow. Just wow. Imagine their glee when they discover just how badly they can beat up the undead soldiers now! And now, now they are truly metagaming.

This is why God of War has been such a critical and commercial success. I've had way too many people I know come and gush about God of War to me after I recommend it to them. These are people ranging from coworkers who don't normally play games to expert gamers who have been playing for years. It's probably the most beautiful example of a recent game that appeals to the metagamer and the non-metagamer.

And that's what I'm trying to get at. Games can be designed not only to appeal to metagamers and non-metagamers, but the good ones will teach the non-metagamers to be metagamers as well. This goes very much hand in hand with Derek Daniels' 80:20 article, which states that everything a player must do in the game should be shown on the first level. Metagamers will pick up on what they can do with that stuff and use it for the whole game. Non-metagamers can be taught along the way. Now mind you, I know perfectly well how hard it is to accomplish this feat, but the great games out there all do this in some form or another: Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and The Sims, for example, all behave this way in some form or another. Thus, I don't think that by designing games for metagamers you are alienating non-metagamers, nor do I believe that a game made for the masses (the non-metagamers) can't be also appealing to metagamers as well. Being able to appeal to both audiences is what makes a good game a great game.

I think it's incredibly appropriate that Itagaki called it Dog Mode. Players can start there and learn, little by little, through repetition and reward how to play the game. Once they complete that, they will have enough skills to go on and beat the harder difficulties. And if they really want to, they will beat it eventually. Every dog has his day.

Down For The Count

My grandmother has been visiting my family from Taiwan for a few months now, so every so often I visit my parents to also say hello to my grandmother as well as she is always so happy to see myself and my brother. Every time I see her, it's the same story: regardless of how many times I tell her otherwise, she seems to have determined I am an open and willing receptacle to endless amounts of food. No matter how much I eat during lunch and how often I reassure her that I am in no way hungry for a snack, she continues to offer me pie and cookies and all sorts of other treats before dinner. Then, she stuffs me for dinner itself. And then offers me more dessert.

Well, to make a long story short, I visited her this past weekend, and this time it took its toll. All Sunday night, I was rocked by an overdose of food, which left me in no proper condition to write a post. So expect a couple of days of delay before I get back on track here, and hopefully I'll get to that Metagaming post I want to put up. In the meantime, I will be skipping 4 or so meals or something...

- James

Games and Realism: Part 3.1 - A Game Is A Game Is A Game

I think I'm probably one of the worst sleepers in the world. I crave sleep, yet I always go to bed way too late in the night. As a result, in the morning, when it is time to go to work, I always feel like I really need more sleep. When that alarm rings, it's like the call of the devil.

But you know what's worse? When you wake up before your alarm goes off. And you know it's almost time to wake up, but you don't know how much longer you have. You wanna know if you can try to fall completely asleep again or just forget it and wake up now, since the alarm will ring in less than 10 minutes. So you open your eyes to a squint just barely enough to look at your clock and find out how much time you have.

Do you know how it can get even worse? By not having a clock in plain view, because now you gotta climb out of bed to find the time. But it's so annoying and frustrating that you'd almost rather not know what time it is at all than to climb (fall) out of bed and find a clock.

Of course, most people don't have that last problem. Most of us are smart enough to always have a clock in plain view of our bed, so we know exactly what time it is when we wake up. If we don't have one, we'll go out and buy one right away, and put it somewhere conveniently in plain view of the bed.

This isn't science here, folks. You know exactly where you want your clock to be placed, though there are definitely many different ways to implement your clock's placement. You can use your cell phone as a clock so you can bring it to your face to check the time without even needing to turn your head. You can place it in plain view but across the room, forcing you to get out of bed to shut off the alarm when it goes off. You can have it on the table next to your bed in perfect arm's length, so that when you swing your arm over, it hits the "snooze" button right on target every time. Regardless of the solution, you can now discern the time from your bed. It's valuable information, information you want to obtain in the least amount of time and effort possible.

I believe that gaming is all about information. You gather all the information you know at the time and act accordingly, whether you know it or not. Be you one who is into metagaming (in the words of Omar Kendall from his comment in my last post, metagaming is "when players look past the setting and are primarily concerned with underlying systems and information") or casual gaming, this is how a video game is played. Pac-Man was a success to casual gamers because, at all times, you can see where the Ghosts are and where the dots are. And you plan your path according to where the Ghosts aren't, even playing out in your mind far in advance where the Ghosts will not be many seconds later. Tetris was a success to casual gamers because the playing field is there, along with a "Next" piece in a window on the side. All the information you need is there, and using that information allows you to react well to the randomly generated pieces. The Sims was also a huge hit because you are given all the information you need in obvious ways. Even though traditional meters are provided for most information, they still take a very entertaining way to provide the information: your Sims will have symbolic thought bubbles or break the fourth wall and yell at you directly. In all of these games, even casual gamers are very reactive to the information presented to them on the screen. It's not as heavily analyzed as it would be by the metagamers, but it is still very much processed in a similar fashion.

So, just like a clock in the morning when you wake up, you tend to want your information as quickly and efficiently as possible to be able to plan your next move. Gaming is instinctual and requires much forward thinking. Removing information for the sake of immersion or trying to emulate something that isn't a game is just annoying, like Derek Daniels commented on the last post. But of course that doesn't necessarily mean keeping ourselves stuck in the past. It's all about evolution, and we have so much to learn from the past 30+ years of gaming. If something doesn't work anymore, why bother, as James M asks in the previous post, to continue honoring it? Remembering video gaming roots isn't about re-using the same systems over and over again.

The way to remember video gaming roots, as I woefully failed to elaborate in my last post, is to remember what games are. They are a mental challenge, though sometimes requiring finger dexterity. They are obstacles presented to us as something to pass. That's why games are so wonderful: you always know you can win, regardless of how hard it is. Games are never made so that they can't be beaten, like so many things in real life are. Game makers are challenging their player to beat the obstacles they have presented. There is a great joy when you manage to overcome the things thrown at you. Sometimes players even feel like they've outsmarted the game makers, even though game makers have every intention for their games to be beaten.

But if a game is annoying and unnecessarily extra effort needs to be used to gather the simplest or the most critical information, they lose a lot of the enjoyment factor. This is exactly what needs to be avoided. Most game designers know this, but I'm afraid that, in a quest to achieve too much immersion, some may overlook this very fundamental concept. If you are planning to attempt high levels of immersion, don't do it in spite of that enjoyment factor.

When I suggest that game designers should be trying to keep adding things that make a game a game, I'm speaking in very broad terms. Of course there is no one true answer or system that makes a game a game. Maybe David Jaffe is right: video games are like porn because I certainly can't describe what constitutes a "game thing," but I sure know it when I see it. A game is a game is a game. I used the removal of the health bar in Fight Night 3 and King Kong as negative examples of immersion, yes, but it's not that I think life bars should never be removed. It's just that for those games, knowing your health at all times is mission critical information. Feel free to take away life bars if you want, but you'd better have a quick and clear indication of your health elsewhere, such as the Silent Hill example I gave in the last post. James M brings up a great example in Resident Evil. Even though your energy meter is inconveniently placed in a subscreen, the slowed run and limp are immediately recognizable signs that can give you that information you need right away that will prompt you to observe your health meter in the subscreen.

(This is the part where I admit having not yet played Fight Night 3, since I still don't own a damned XBox 360. The information of how badly damaged your character is could possibly be conveyed very well, and I could possibly be using a poor game as an example. I think I pick on it mostly because it drives me mad to hear people claim that dropping life bars makes the game more immersive, just 'cause it looks more real with no health meters.)

I do want to expand more on the topic that Omar has brought up: the metagamer versus the casual gamer. But I think that can take up a whole blog post all on its own, so I'll save that for next week.

To close up on this immersion topic, though (unless new comments spur more reactionary commentary from me... do your worst!), I am mostly fearful that some game designers may be losing focus. Immersion has become such a buzz word and, for some reason, has gained the identity of being equitable with realism. So in their strides to become more immersive, I'm afraid games might start to lose focus of what they are and gaming, as a whole, will suffer for it. I guess I'm just trying to be a wake up alarm for those that may have accidentally slipped into that path. But some of you are checking that clock and noting that it's probably far too early to sound the alarm just yet. If so, feel free to ignore me, hit snooze, and go back to bed.

- James

Games and Realism: Part 3 - Immersion

I hate immersion.

Do you remember the early 90's? Well, okay, for those of you alive and at a conscious age at the time, do you remember the early 90's? Do you remember virtual reality? It was supposed to be the next wave of everything. And, back at the transition between the 80's and the 90's, it was often envisioned as pictures of people strapped into moving chairs wearing these oversized, immensely fashionable goggles. It became such a popular concept that it began to invade our popular culture, and it gave us such wonders as "Lawnmower Man." And every one guessed -- nay, knew -- that's where video gaming was going to go soon. Video games were going to be the Eden of virtual reality, the Promised Land. Yup, virtual reality was certainly where it was at.

Of course, these days, we laugh at our older perceptions of virtual reality. With newer, more sophisticated interpretations being presented, such as in The Matrix, virtual reality is no longer as silly as it was back then. And no one ever suspects gaming will go in that direction anymore. We look at the next generation of games and there is no talk of moving chairs and unsightly goggles. So it seems like we are over that.

Or are we?

Well, okay... we are definitely over the moving chairs and unsightly goggles. But it seems as if we, the gaming world (the industry and the players), are still entranced by what even the older visions of virtual reality strived for: getting people immersed into the games, removing that line between our own real world and the world presented to us through our TV screen. And thus, the buzz word is no longer virtual reality... it's now immersion.

I hate immersion. It's not that I hate the concept behind immersion. In fact, I'm all for having games involve us so strongly that we no longer are aware of our surroundings during play. That's what immersion means to me. It's getting into such a zone that you are one with your controller, that you don't even have to use your mind and the character on the screen is at your every beck and call. It's like you're jumping platforms, dodging enemies, throwing touchdown passes, drift turning around tight corners, shooting down enemy soldiers, and dancing on four arrows without even thinking. That's immersion.

But I still hate immersion. But, once again, I don't actually hate immersion itself. To put it more accurately, I hate what immersion has become and what it has grown to represent. It has begun to poison people's minds into believing that, to achieve immersion, you must make things real. Take away things that are "game-like" and make people think they are no longer playing a game. Try to make things as you would expect to see it in real life. Create a virtual reality.

This is not immersion. It's actually a backwards step. Let me give a very recent example: the removal of HUDs. You know what a HUD is, right? It's the Heads-Up Display. It's all that stuff on your screen telling you how much life you have left, how many bullets you have left, what part of the map you are on, how much time you have left before you fail your mission, etc. It's game stuff. Obviously, while walking around in the real world, you don't see how much time left you have before your meeting at the top left corner of your vision at all times. You don't see a meter on the very right telling you that you need to get to lunch soon or you will die ("James needs food... badly!"). The bottom left doesn't have a 3-D representation of a section of your office at work with a green arrow in it rotating to tell you which way you are facing. No, these things are game things.

So in order to increase immersion, let's remove these things. From the game. Let's remove the game things from the game. To make it less like a game. Even though we are playing a game.

Does anyone else see the problem here?

Let's take a look at Fight Night 3, recently released on the 360 as part of the wave of true next-generation games. They wanted to make it as realistic as possible, so they amped up the graphics, gave a much more detailed control scheme, and removed the HUD. They removed the HUD so you can't see how much life you have left. That way, you have to determine how much life you have left by contextual clues: your character punches slower, his face becomes more bruised, etc.

I fail to see how this is immersion. If I were a boxer (ha!), I'd know at any given time just about how badly I felt. I wouldn't think to myself, "Hmm... just how badly hurt am I? Well, I can't really see out of my left eye anymore. And boy, do I feel tired. And that throbbing in my head... yeah, it's pretty throbbing. You know? I must be almost out of energy!" No, I know exactly how badly I'm hurt in a fraction of a second. That's a boxer's version of immersion. He knows exactly what his state is at any given time.

So how is removing the HUD increasing immersion? It actually slows down how well we can interpret what is going on in the game. Is this what we really want? I've have heard the argument, "When you watch boxing on TV, do you see meters above their heads? No!" Ummm... we are playing a game. I don't care how it looks on ESPN. In fact, ESPN should care how it looks in the game. How many things in sports on TV these days have been trying to emulate the video games? The yellow 10-yard line, the QB Cam, the more dynamic camera views that move around the court in basketball (please eliminate those views. I hate that camera. I call it the Vomit Cam because it makes me ill), names of the drivers floating above the cars on the track of a race, etc. You see, at one point, video games were the innovators that TV was trying to copy. Why are we trying to copy TV all of a sudden?

I've even heard the argument that boxers don't know exactly, to the pixel, how much energy they have left. That's easily fixed in games. Make a life meter more similar to Resident Evil (pre-RE4 days), where it is actually quite vague just exactly how much life you have. But you know enough to know that when that meter is in red, you'd better find one of those all-mighty First Aid Sprays pronto. Implementing a vague meter like that is a much better solution than removing the HUD altogether. After all, why should I not know how much pounding King Kong (King Kong being yet another game that chose to take the HUD-less route) is taking at any given time? It's a ludicrous decision (though to EA's credit, I should be fair and mention that you can at least turn the HUD back on in Fight Night 3). I mean, if you are going to remove your life bar from the screen, do something creative instead. For example, the Silent Hill series has always had the awesome system of making your controller vibrate faster as you are closer to death, simulating your heart beat. That's immersion.

My main point is that we shouldn't be removing things that make video games games. In fact, we should be adding more things that make a game a game. We must execute restraint, obviously, but at the same time we can't forget our roots. In order to properly immerse gamers into the game, you have to be able to disseminate information in the most efficient and effective way possible. Who here will deny that having the map on the upper screen at all times in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow feels sooooo much more convenient than having to press "Select" to get it? You definitely maintain your zone a lot better by being able to move and plot your path at the same time. That's immersion.

Fortunately, this hasn't become a widespread problem yet, this immersion thing. It's a word that, for now, just keeps getting tossed around in the gaming world. I keep saying I hate immersion, but it's really that I'm scared of it and what it could potentially do to games as long as people continue to misinterpret it. I would hate to see games forgetting what they are and trying too hard to be real, and right now I feel like that that trend is being fueled mostly by the false version of immersion. But games are what they are -- they are addicting, they are exciting, they are inviting, they are appealing -- because of the fact that they are games. And that's the true reality. Immersion, on the other hand, is just virtual reality.

- James

Games I'm Currently Playing - June 12th, 2006

Pardon the continuing hiatus of the series of posts on realism, but I figured this past weekend was a special weekend, and so today deserved an appropriate post topic to go alongside it: the U.S. Launch of the DS Lite.

I picked up one of these puppies this past weekend and, well, once you go Lite, you can't ever go back they say. It's definitely true. While the DS Lite isn't particularly smaller than the original (it is, but not by a significant amount), the thing is sure damned brighter. It is quite a thing of beauty. Derek Daniels showed me his import DS Lite a few weeks back and, after seeing his, my DS Heavy just was so depressing to look at. So I am now happy to be the proud owner of my own DS Lite, and I too can now be baked in the radioactive goodness of a brighter screen.

So I figured it would be appropriate to give you the second edition of my ongoing "Games I'm Currently Playing" posts. I call this the DS Edition, and provide a bunch of DS games with some fairly short reviews.

And don't forget: just 'cause I reviewed a game before, doesn't mean I won't review it again. As I mentioned in my maiden "Games I'm Currently Playing" post, I believe all games must be reviewed at varying phases of its play cycle, as one's opinion of a game can drastically change during the course of a game.

Name: New Super Mario Bros.
System: Nintendo DS (DS)
Stage: Heavy Rotation

In my original review for the game, I noted that I hated two things: 1) the way Mario moved and 2) the saving system. I will say this much: I have gotten more used to the way Mario moves and, after beating the game, being allowed to save at any point in time has increased my enjoyment of the game immensely. I will still admit I have difficulties moving Mario, and I still find myself falling into pits I don't think I should have. And I swear I still want to put myself out of my misery every time I run into a swimming stage. The inability to turn around quickly while swimming is the worst gameplay decision since making you use Raiden for most of Metal Gear Solid 2.

And the mere fact that the game is 10x brighter than it was before, thanks to the DS Lite, seems to make me feel happier when I play it. But despite all of these things, I still can't quite find my groove with the game. I'm not sure if I'm just getting old and impatient, but the game seems to be very good at making me frustrated. Whenever I die and have to re-obtain large coins that I had already obtained before, it drives me mad. Now, this isn't really any different than most games, so I don't know why it makes me so angry in this one. As I keep playing, they have some really interesting and neat obstacles, but most of it just doesn't feel like it has a natural flow like with so many past Mario games. Maybe it's just the fact that the music isn't even 1/10th as catchy as the music from past Mario games. I have no clue what it is. I just have not yet been able to find my zone with the game.

And I will have to say the power-ups are the worst power-ups ever created. The Mini Mushroom, the Blue Shell, and the Mega Mushroom have to be the most ill-conceived collection of power-ups ever created for a Mario game or any other platforming game for that matter. I avoid these items like the plague, except for when I need them to find a hidden passage. But otherwise, I never want to use them. They provide so many disadvantages to the player that they are a hindrance more than a help. It feels so much like they were an afterthought that was added just to give the game something new. I think the game would have been better off without them entirely.

I still want to believe, and I am having enough fun to fully play through the entire game. I guess I was just hoping to be completely blown away by the game, and it hasn't even come close to that.

Name: Brain Age
Platform: Nintendo DS (DS)
Stage: Heavy Rotation

I'm about to move this to the "Currently Put on Hold" state because I haven't played the game in a while. I just find it interest that Nintendo has decided to make every one of their new "non-games" make you feel guilty for not playing them. At first, it was the guilt of making your dog starve. Now, the Doctor yells at you since he hasn't seen you in a while.

I will have to admit that Brain Age worked for me while I was playing it. I found it very inventive, and I actually strived very hard to improve my Brain Age (though after I got to 20 rather quickly, I never wanted to test myself again). I found the exercises fun to play and I really enjoyed the fact that I could pop the game in, play for 15 minutes, and stop (I didn't have to take my dog for a walk that lasted waaaaay too long). Plus, my experience with the interface has been more successful than others. My biggest problem has been having the game recognize my "8," since, thanks to the game, I've discovered I write my 8's backwards.

But if Nintendo is trying to use this game as a flagship for promoting their non-games and trying to appeal to casual gamers, I have to say they are actually doing a good job. This game intrigues my non-gamers friends, and most people I've shown it to want to try it themselves. It's a great example of thinking outside of the box, and although I can't honestly say I'll pick up every game of this series, I encourage them to keep up with this concept.

Name: Tetris DS
Platform: Nintendo (DS)
Stage: Heavy Rotation

Okay, this review is probably a bit biased (I am Mr. Biased after all, remember?). I love Tetris. I've always loved Tetris. I am more addicted to Tetris than any other game I think I've ever played. Tetris has been such a strong part of my gaming life that it even helped me break some insomnia problems I've had in the past. Picturing falling Tetriminos in your head does far greater wonders than counting sheep any day.

So naturally I would love Tetris DS. It has rekindled my love affair with Tetris. Every time I turn on this game, I have trouble turning it off. But is there really any reason to pick up this version over the millions of other version of this game, particularly when most of the other ones are free?

Well, let's look at the additions to this version. They've added 5 extra games: Catch, Mission, Puzzle, Touch, and Push. Most of these additions feel like attempts to add worth to the game. Mission, Puzzle, and Touch are all mini-games that, once you pass, you'll never play again. Push is actually a fun multi-player game, but there is no reason to ever play it against the CPU. And for Catch, it really depends on the person trying it. I do not find anything enjoyable about this mode, but I've read some other people claiming that they love it.

So in the end, I really just play the original mode. And even there, there are some interesting decisions made by the makers of the game. Tetris has always been about getting more and more difficult, to the point where you are overwhelmed by the falling blocks that you can't handle them anymore. But now that all officially made Tetris games need to follow the same rules, this version included, the difficulty feels sapped from the game. Once you get accustomed to this version of Tetris, you simply cannot lose anymore. The ability to rotate pieces or slide pieces infinitely to prevent it from snapping into place has taken away so much from the difficulty of the game. Add to that the ability to hold and swap pieces and the fact that you can see, at all times, the next 6 pieces coming up and it's really just not a challenge anymore. That screen shot above is actually my high score that I had to abort just so I could stop playing the game. It really takes a lot away from a high score as I can imagine most expert Tetris players can achieve level 999 if they just had the patience.

But how about online play? Really, the strength of this game is the online play. I've played a good number of games online, and it's quite a blast. The only problems are not the fault of the game but the fault of Nintendo's limited online matching system. But I have had some really intense matches online, and it's a lot of fun to play. And playing against local friends is also a lot of fun as well. The ability to play with just one cart is a tremendous boost to the game's value.

I can't help it. Even though the difficulty isn't there anymore, it's still just a rush to play the game.

Name: The Rub Rabbits
Platform: Nintendo DS (DS)
Stage: Completed

I can't say much about the game. If you enjoyed the first game (Feel the Magic), you'll probably enjoy this game. This game definitely came up with better mini-games and I felt that it was a very nice touch that some games involved you holding the DS in different orientations. I even went back and messed with the original Feel the Magic for a bit, and I really noticed a marked improvement with the level of fun in the newer game. And, fairly obvious for those who have read my previous posts, I definitely applaud the game's style and presentation. And I am embarrassed to admit that I probably got a little too addicted with trying to design different dress patterns for the female character of the game.

But overall, I think the game was pretty good, but not as addictive as it probably should have been. It's fun enough to keep you going through it, but once completed there is little temptation to go back and replay each of the games to unlock everything. It's definitely a fun diversion, though, and worth a play through since it is not particularly long either.

Name: Super Princess Peach
Platform: Nintendo DS (DS)
Stage: Completed

I was really surprised by this game. Even though it is obviously designed for beginning gamers, the game played well. The difficulty of the game, being on the easy side, made the game a surprisingly fun way to give yourself a good diversion for a short period of time. They really did come up with some creative platforming and, at first, it really does do a good job of keeping your attention. The fact that you could stop and save the game at any given time added to that quick-diversion factor.

However, after playing the game for a while, its simplicity does come back to bite it. By the time you get to the later worlds, it is apparent that you've done just about everything the game has to offer, and you start to grow fairly bored. You really do feel like you are going through the motions at the end. Plus, after completing the game, the game adds even more stages to play and makes you re-play all of the old stages to finish unlocking everything. And by that point, the drive to go through all the stages again just isn't there anymore.

Definitely not for the hardcore. Play it if you really just want a nice little game to play on the side and if you aren't embarrassed that you own Super Princess Peach.

- James

Games and Realism: Part 2.1 - Profitability

First off, I would like to give a hearty welcome to all those who have visited this blog page in the past couple of days (and a special shout-out to Maj, for pointing people my way).

Secondly, I would like to say that, thanks to NBA Finals just starting and the Roland Garros French Open Tennis heading towards their finals, I haven't had as much free time of late. So I will resume my series on Games and Realism next week. But since I don't have as much time today, I would like to address a comment made about my last post instead.

For those who did not notice, Omar Kendall (who's excellent blog was one of the three, alongside Derek Daniel's and Eric Williams's, that inspired me to start my own blog) posted that my quest for games with artistically styled graphics has little logic, given the history of sales from games that did try to stray from the norm. Quite frankly, he is absolutely correct: there is very little profitability with games that try harder to be graphically daring. As others have also pointed out, America is far more drawn to realistic games, and games that attempt to innovate graphically have all tended to fail in sales. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if Okami sells very poorly in the States. Since the only measure of success for games out there right now is sales, Omar's point is almost unarguable. What is a company's motivation to fund an artistic game?

It does make it difficult, as a result, to sit here and preach that games should try harder to show me things I've never seen before when I know full well those games won't sell. So it's apparent that my complaints and pleas to game makers is a plea for increasing video gaming's artistry, not its profitability. That may give my arguments little credibility telling people to favor artistry over profitability, but I think there is enough justification to start getting people to think about making artistic games. I think we're nearing that point where games can start having a home for both the blockbuster games and the artistic games.

I hate comparing games to movies, because it's always an unfair comparison for gaming. It's like calling every new great young basketball player "The Next Jordan." The usual response from the basketball player in question is that they want to be the first of who they are, not the next of someone else. And that's how games should be. They are their own medium and not some bastard child of movies.

And yet, in the face of saying that, I do have to make a comparison. The movie industry already has the structure in place to make room for blockbusters and independent/artistic films. In fact, it's very seasonal. Summer has the blockbuster action films with high budgets and flashy effects. And the winter has all of the awards-worthy artistic films. And because of the existence of competent awards organizations and a healthy dose of people willing to talk intelligently about movies, there actually turns out to be room for both the blockbusters and the art films.

I think games can approach the same level. I may expand on this concept in a future post, but if video games can also be criticized from an artistic standpoint by creating their own competent awards organizations, games can start being recognized for their technical and artistic merit rather than purely by their sales numbers. And once we have different criteria to judge games by, I think game makers will start to be more daring since their efforts can be properly recognized. And then, like movies, games can create their own seasons within a year. Games should have their official awards in the summer time. That way, very early winter can be the blockbuster season where they release the big sellers (to coincide with Christmas). Then, spring can be the independent/artistic gaming season, since spring is typically the slowest time of the year for games. Then, in the beginning of summer, right after the artistic games are released, we can acknowledge the accomplishments of gaming from the past full gaming year (a gaming year that starts in July, much like how a television year starts in September).

And then maybe we can start seeing a reason to create artistic games. This next generation proves to have a lot of potential. The likes of the Virtual Console on the Wii and XBox Live Arcade on the XBox 360 will provide many developers a simple environment to create new games without too much production and distribution costs. But it's still tough for them. I said in my last post that I was hoping that the next-gen consoles would provide developers with the ability to finally have the muscle to make some truly interesting visuals, but games for XBox Live Arcade and the Virtual Console probably won't be able to take advantage of that muscle. So we've still got a ways to go, but I think the starting potential is there for true console-based independent gaming.

But for now, sales numbers are the only thing that can drive the way a game is made. Once we can start establishing a proper means by which we can acknowledge artistic merit, games can have another driving force to properly make a home for artistic games as well. So for now, we can only hope one of two things happen: games find their own version of the movie industry's Pauline Kael to promote gaming as a true artistic form of entertainment or some developer out there is daring enough to try something creative and it turns out to be a smash hit. Until then, I'll keep trying to fight the good fight.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and please feel free to peruse past articles. Thanks again for stopping by.

- James

Games and Realism: Part 2 - Untapped Graphical Potential

A bunch of executives are sitting in a room. One of them takes the floor and begins to talk about his new idea to the others.

"The CG-rendered cut scenes in our games have become very popular," he says. "At E3, we just show the people our cut scenes and they go crazy!" Nods and murmurs of approval fill the room. "And the technology of our craft has advanced very far!" the executive says as he eyes the people in room. "In fact..." He then pauses a bit to tease the crowd. "Our CG technology is probably the best the video game world has ever seen!" Light applause fills the room. "So I believe it is time..." he continues, with a finger pointed in the air. "...Time to take our cut scenes to the next level!" Tension fills the room. "Time to show the non-gaming word what we can do!" The anticipation is killing the others in the room. "TIME," he cries, "to take our skills to Hollywood!"

Pandemonium breaks loose. The executives applaud loudly, with whistles and cheers and yelps bringing music to the ear of the speaker. He can taste the enthusiasm of the others.

"The movie we will make," he says to interrupt the approving crowd, "will be called 'Final Fantasy: Spirits Within.' And we will make it look as realistic as possible!!!"



The crowd stands up to give the speaker a rousing ova.........

Okay, okay. Now if this were a movie or a TV show and not just a little blog, this is the part where the people in the meeting room all slow to a crawl and suddenly freeze, with the soundtrack doing the stereotypical slowdown indication of "Eeerrrrrrrr...." And then, the disembodied voice of a narrator would cut in. And it would say:

"Woa! Woa! Woa! Did I just hear right? Did he just say what I thought he said? No, wait wait wait. Let me get this straight. These guys, the makers of the Final Fantasy video game series, the series that has dragons, crystals, air ships, magic spells, meteors, Chocobos, Pugs, Malboros, Moogles, crazy machines, summon monsters, huge landscapes, eerie dungeons, elves, dwarves, and funny little men with blank yellow eyes, no face, and a pointy yellow straw hat... These guys are gonna make a movie that looks as realistic as possible?

Am I missing something here?"

Yup, that's how I would picture it. That's how I would start the movie version of this blog post. I mean, talk about a wasted potential -- the first Final Fantasy movie was made, and even though it was sci-fi, it focused on trying to make everything look and move as realistic as possible. What's the point? Why not go the "Sky Captain" route and just use real actors to perform in front of rendered backgrounds?

Even though Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was a sequel to one of the worst Final Fantasy games, that movie got it right. The characters in the film looked as lifelike and realistic as possible, sure, but they decided to take advantage of the fact that they were creating an animated film. People practically fly in the movie while fighting in the air. The Akira-inspired motorcycle chase has the camera angle whirling around everywhere during the battles. That would have been a nightmare to film with real people, but with a fully rendered film, it was no problem. That's how you take advantage of your medium, a medium generated entirely from imagination, and show you can use to its full advantage.

But we still had to make it through that first blunder. The Spirits Within was created and I will never understand their decision. The creators of one of the greatest series of fantasy video games made a sci-fi Aliens rip-off that tried to show off how realistic it could make its people look. And given that this decision was made by a bunch of video game executives, it's not shocking, then, that video games themselves are following this trend.

And I'm not going to go the Nintendo route right now. You won't hear a "Graphics don't matter!" cry from me. Because they do. Of course graphics matter! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. I just find it interesting that, given the amount of muscle these systems will have very soon, we aren't actually pushing the limits of our graphics. I feel like we are just getting better-looking versions of the same ol' things. I don't want to see that. I want to see better looking versions of something completely new.

Last post, I said that I love Capcom fighting games and other 2-D fighting games like Guilty Gear. While I mostly prefer them due to gameplay reasons, I also think they have a better aesthetic to them. I actually think, graphically, they look better than the 3-D games. Sure animation may be somewhat choppy in a game like Guilty Gear, but the things you can accomplish and get away with in a 2-D game are still heads up and above anything I've seen in a 3-D fighting game.

Let's take the Capcom series of DarkStalkers as a good example. The fighters in that game range from robots to zombies to succubi to vampires to mermen to Chinese ghosts to Frankenstein monsters to beings made completely of fire. Not only that, but the characters have the most bizarre styles of attacking, many of them requiring morphing body parts. I have yet to see anything in a 3-D game that even remotely resembles what I see in this game. Let's take a look at an animation of the character called "Lord Raptor":

As you can see, his leg turns into a freakin' chainsaw. This animation shows why I'm not surprised at all that no attempts have been made to make a 3-D version of this game. I'm no 3-D animation expert, but from what I've gleaned from conversations I've had with others, doing something like this doesn't seem trivial. An animation that has a leg morphing into something entirely different is probably not that simple. You'd probably have to hide the chainsaw in the leg at all times with its scale shrunk down to 0%. Then, upon animation of the attack, have it scale from 0% size to 100% size, giving the chainsaw the impression of "growing" out from his leg, rather than his leg just morphing into the chainsaw. And that's not really what the effect should look like.

Let's look at another example. In the classic NES game Mega Man, the first boss you fought in the final stage was a creature known as the Yellow Devil (whom my brother and I affectionately called the "Sunkist Monster," since he looked like a giant orange). In the NES game, his most famous attack is where he breaks into pieces one piece at a time that all individually move to the opposite side of the screen where he reforms by those same pieces. View the below movie by clicking on the picture:



Now, in Mega Man: Powered Up, the remake of the original Mega Man game on the PSP, they had to recreate the Yellow Devil. And how did they do it? By making the Yellow Devil "fade" into a cyclone of swirling pieces that, one by one, travel to the opposite side of the screen into another swirling cyclone before reforming. View a video of this by clicking the picture below (and I completely apologize for the low-budgetness of this clip, given that I literally recorded myself playing my PSP):



Now, is it just me? Or is the original Mega Man version far more impressive? That's a cool idea for an attack, and even though the creature himself is not animated, I think it's a far more effective presentation of what he is trying to do. When I first saw the Yellow Devil in the PSP game, I almost cried. It was such a cop-out. Not being able to see him break apart piece by piece and reforming by those same pieces on the other side felt like such a letdown.

Which brings me to my question of the day: Are you telling me that our 3-D graphical technology is still so far behind that we cannot duplicate a leg morphing into a chainsaw or a creature breaking himself into pieces and reforming somewhere else? We have 8 processors in the damned PS3, so I expect to see some advancements, here! I don't care if your textures are getting better. I don't care if you can use bump-mapping to make surfaces look more accurate. I don't care if you can animate thousands of the same solider on the screen at once. I don't care if the sky looks as real as the sky outside my window. I just want my morphing leg, dammit!

And it's not even just that. With all this processing power, don't you think game makes could come up with more games that really push the imagination? Shouldn't we start expecting games to take full advantage of the fact that video games are purely generated from imagination? Games like Killer 7 (exaggerated shading with skewed viewpoints), Viewtiful Joe (cartoonish, graphic-novel-look with lots of special effects to warp the backgrounds), The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (colorful, cartoonish, simplistic, and playful look), Feel the Magic (odd single-colored, silhouetted characters with low color counts), and Okami (emulated ancient Chinese paintings) shouldn't be so rare that, when they show up, everyone immediately talks about how different they are (and it's interesting that Capcom is the maker of three of those games I just listed). We should be seeing more games that look like these (click on each picture, all of which I've stolen from IGN, to get a full-sized version):







Who here can honestly tell me that these screenshots don't stand out? Who here can honestly argue against the fact that, even if you don't like the look, there are a lot of style points scored in these screenshots? I mean, for all the presentations given at E3 and all of the tech demos shown to promote graphics, don't you think this looks more like a tech demo than anything else?

We are playing with a medium that allows us to create anything we want. There is no medium out there that has as much visual potential as the video game. Non-animated movies can't do what games can. Graphic novels can't do what games can. Photographs and painting don't have the control over the visuals that a video game has. So why are we still stuck making video games that show us things we can already see in other forms of media?

Before, we've always had technical limitations holding us back. But this next generation of consoles, particularly the 360 and the PS3, should have the muscle to start driving us into uncharted territories. Can you imagine a game that changes its look from cubism to a sketchy look to a cell-shaded look depending on certain conditions of the game (such as different worlds in the game)? Nothing else can provide that kind of dynamic visual control. It's that type of visual excellence I am expecting next generation games to give me. I'm no longer interested in trying to make grass really look like grass. Let's strive for more! Stretch the limits of my imagination. Take my senses for a ride. Show me something I've never seen before.

Maybe then, and only then, will I think you deserve a rousing ovation from everyone in the room.

- James

Games and Realism: Part 1 - Thems Fighting Words

If it's not already obvious, it should be mentioned that I'm a huge fan of Street Fighter and other fighting games made by Capcom. I study them, analyze them, and enjoy playing them competitively at high levels. I often use the fairly horrible analogy that the good stand-out fighting games are basically high-speed chess: defeating your opponent takes a lot of mental fortitude, just at a very high pace. It's a stupid analogy, really, and one that needs to cease being used, but there is some truth in it. The lesson that needs to be taken from that analogy is that the amount of brain power required to defeat a good opponent is unlike any other game I've played. Anyone who says gaming fries your brain has obviously never played a fighting game properly before.

I've spent my most impressionable years of gaming playing fighting games and getting better at them, particularly the fighting games made by Capcom. As a result, I have a little (meaning huge) bias when it comes to fighting games: I prefer 2-D sprite-based fighting games over 3-D polygonal fighting games. To this day, I firmly believe that the gameplay of the 2-D fighting games is superior to that of the 3-D fighting games. And this has been a hotly contested debate in the circle of fighting gamers for years. Are 2-D games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear inherently better than 3-D games like Tekken and Dead or Alive?

Well, I'm not here to argue this point with you. I just need you to know where I stand on this issue so I can tell you the story of a previous argument I had. Believe me, if you try to argue with me that 3-D fighting games are better than 2-D fighting games right now, I will ignore you. That's not the issue at hand. If you wanna talk about it, we'll discuss it later, okay? Now is not the time. And so now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's move on shall we?

So yeah, the story: I once engaged in a conversation with a coworker of mine long ago. He was one of those know-it-all types who believed he is more capable than he probably really is in just about everything he does. And so one day, somehow Street Fighter was brought up, after which he promptly began to regale me with tales of his conquests using Chun Li as a result of his incredible talent. Now, I've heard numerous people claim they are very proficient in the ways of Street Fighter before and, based on the conversation, I can usually judge whether or not a player is actually good. And he wasn't actually good. And as I slowly began to expose his lack of knowledge on the game, he did what anyone would do in a good argument: he completely dismissed the main topic as irrelevant.

Sensing his demise at my hands, he quickly went from bragging about his Street Fighter prowess to implying that Street Fighter wasn't worth discussing. It was irrelevant, suddenly, whether or not he was good at Street Fighter because... because... well, because Tekken was obviously a far superior game. And suddenly I found myself in a completely different debate. I, in my infinite realm of biases, began to counter-dismiss him by claiming Tekken was actually far inferior to Street Fighter. And then, to support his new argument, he pulled out the ultimate trump card, that ol' stand-by that people love to use when debating about video games in general:

Tekken was more realistic.

That's right. The whole basis of his argument came down to the fact that Tekken looked more real and, since he was a capable martial artist when he was younger (groan), he could recognize that Tekken was a far more strategic game because the characters actually fight like real fighters. Street Fighter was a cartoon.

Now, in my days I've listened to various debates about the quality of Tekken and I've had great arguments pass by my ears of how the gameplay of Tekken actually is quite strong. The fact that it looks realistic isn't one of them. Looking realistic has nothing to do with gameplay. And isn't gameplay what video games are really all about? I couldn't believe that, while trying to have a gameplay debate with him, he gave me an argument completely unrelated to gameplay. It's like the time someone told me that Mortal Kombat was better than Street Fighter because it looked better, sounded better, had Fatalities, and you could punch people through the floor. Uh huh. Thanks.

No argument bothers me more than that "realistic" argument because, not only is it not relevant, but it also hits a sore spot with me. I mean, what you are trying to say is that Tekken is a better game because it looks more realistic. Does that mean that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness on PS2 is better than Pitfall II on Atari 2600? Hardly.

It's almost disturbing to me how much realism gets brought up when talking about video games these days. There's a disturbing trend in gaming that seems to make realism a huge focus for designing games. Particularly with the next-gen systems starting to flex their muscles, it seems as though trying to make a video game look and feel realistic is becoming the common goal for games. And I personally feel that with all that new-found power in the likes of the 360 and the PS3, trying to make games as realistic-looking as possible is a terrible waste. With that much power, there is so much more you can accomplish.

There is a time and a place for realistic looking games, but there is a need for more than just realistic looking games right now. There is a definite need for style and artistry. While some games have actually gone that route, I do not like the fact that these games are so easily singled-out as unique and different. It should be a more common occurrence.

And so for the next few posts, I'm gonna talk about various topics related to realism in games. Don't worry, this won't be a series of posts trying to say "Real = Bad!" I've got a lot more to say about the subject matter than just that.

Next up: Part 2 - Graphics, Reliastically Speaking

Saving in Games: Part 4 - Temporary Savings

Before I call it a day on this "Saving In Games" topic, I wanted to bring one last idea to the table. I've tried to establish why current save systems in games are horribly inconvenient: we should be able to stop playing a video game at any point in time, not only when we find or reach a Save Point. I do not want to live a life where my main hobby requires me to yell at friends and family, "Give me five more minutes! I need to save!"

So while I addressed one solution (giving all consoles a sleep mode) let's be realistic: it ain't happening any time soon. Because we know this to be true, current game designers can't really count on this system to make their games more convenient to play. So is there anything game designers can do now to help soften the problem with saving in games?

I think there is something they can do. Right now, the way games stand at this moment, what is the biggest fear that game designers have about Save Points? Easy, I've covered that already: letting people save whenever they want potentially makes a game too easy. But we need to dive into this issue just one more level deep: how does it make games too easy?

Well, if you can save at any point in time, you will always save your best performance. Then you can play the game from there and, if you die, struggle, or play poorly, you can load up your previous save and try again. If you do the next section well, save after that and continue this pattern. The problem is that these sections can be 10 second intervals. Anyone who has played emulated games on a PC, for example, knows how powerful Save States are. If you successfully navigate one tricky platforming section that involved three difficult jumps, you can save your state immediately afterwards and then attempt the next section. If you fail the next three tricky jumps, you can always start from that saved state and try again. Many action games are designed to force a player to pass a slew of challenges in a row. They want you to make all 6 tricky jumps in a row. That's where they want to have their challenge come from. Saved States ruins this and makes this type of game too easy.

So we are at an impasse then: allowing players to save at any point in time makes games too easy, but not letting players save any time they want is too inconvenient. What can be done?

Actually, once again the solution is already out there and has already been implemented. The first time I personally experienced it was with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Since then, I've seen it in games like Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Super Princess Peach. It's a fairly elegant solution: the non-persistent saved game.

The concept behind the non-persistent saved game is that, upon being loaded, the saved game erases itself from memory. Thus, you can't use it as a repeatable starting point. If you load the game and then perform the next section badly, you can't reload the last saved game because that saved game no longer exists. This completely eliminates the above problem of making games too easy. You're not providing players with a safety net, you're just giving them a way they can stop their game and continue without leaving their systems on.

A very obscure example of how this system can help is with Koei's historic war simulation games: the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. I bring these games up, even though no one has played them, mainly because it is a particularly sour spot with me. These games are fun and my brother enjoys them quite a bit, but they are tough to play. See, they all comprise of two halves: domestic tasks and wartime tasks. You can save at any given time during the domestic tasks, but the wartime tasks? You're out of luck here. Once you send your troops into battle, you have to play out the entire battle. There are no saves during the wartime tasks. But that presents a problem: one of the fun aspects of these games is that you can play multiplayer, so you can try to fight for control of China against your friends. However, when two humans play the battles in these games, because of the pacing and level of strategy implemented in these battles, they can sometimes take up to 2-3 hours to complete!

I will tell you this: if you have to plan ahead and put aside 3 hours every time you want to go to battle in this game, it's a poorly designed game.

Koei doesn't want to let you save in battle because, during the course of battle, a lot of bad things can happen: your general gets captured, the enemy successfully lands a ruse on your commander, fire spreads onto your troops and burns a ton of your army away, etc. And the game would be pretty pointless if you can save anytime in battle and reload if something unfortunate happens to your army. If you could do that, you could play the battle entirely safe. So to this day, Koei has never allowed you to save mid-battle and, thus, are forced to play for three hours straight sometimes. But if you implement the non-persistent save, it'd be fantastic to be able to save in the middle of a battle and, because the saved games aren't persistent, Koei's fear of a safe battle is assuaged. This is a perfect example, albeit obscure, of how non-persistent saves can improve gaming in general.

This solution, actually, is better than consoles with sleep modes. It allows you to turn off games and play other games in the meantime. My friend Eric told me a story of how he put his DS into sleep mode and later found his girlfriend had used his DS and started playing a different game, losing the game he had currently sleeping. In these situations, sleep mode obviously doesn't help at all. But non-persistent save states do.

Of course, the first question that comes up is this: what if you die? What if the power goes out? What if your portable system's battery dies? With non-persistent saves, does that mean you've just completely lost your entire game? Could you potentially lose 60+ hours of your latest Final Fantasy game?

Yes, you would. Which is why the non-persistent saved game system should only be implemented on top of the save systems we know today. Keep games with the occasional hard save points. These are the ones that persist. Thus, you can save outside of a dungeon in a Final Fantasy game at a Save Point, creating your persistent game. Then, once inside the dungeon, you can save at any given time to your non-persistent saved game. If ever you have a power outage or your party dies or some other catastrophic event occurs, you will continue your game from outside the dungeon, where you saved your persistent saved game.

Again, this system has been used in other games, and I find it odd that it hasn't been used more often. The problem is that it was used in games like Dawn of Sorrow and Princess Peach to compensate for problems associated with portables. Once again, I think it is a gaming convention that should just be used in general with all games. It solves every problem and creates no new ones as far as I can tell.

Unless you count the programmatic difficulties involved in saving a game at any time you want. I'll fully admit that this is a difficult task for game programmers to accomplish, particularly with games that have a lot going on at once. But I do think it's possible and is worth the effort.

Games are entertainment. They are here to give us a fun way to enjoy our time. They shouldn't be something that causes us or those we know unnecessary frustrations. If the industry just worked at it, the entire problem of not being able to stop your game at any given time can be solved. Hopefully, people will realize that this is a pretty significant problem, and hopefully game designers will take the time to solve this problem.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

- jchensor