Jason Rohrer’s game design sketchbook at The Escapist is pretty darn cool. His latest, “Police Brutality“, looks at civil disobedience. Inspired by the footage of a man getting tazed at a Constitution Day (oh, the irony) forum where John Kerry was speaking, the game explores the strategies an individual can take in such a situation by voicing protest.
What’s especially interesting to me about the game is that it leans towards a dispositional bias – that being the assumption that people either resist authority or conform in such situations based on their inherent personality, or disposition. Alternately a situational bias would look for factors in the environment that cause people to either resist or conform.
This question has bothered me for a long time. Since my first brush with real genre criticism (going to GA Tech before the take off of the LCC school my unfortunately minimal humanities requirements were nonetheless wonderfully met by classes like “Movie Genres” and “History of Science Fiction”), I’ve looked for subversive elements in games much like the elements in subversive genres like science fiction.
This isn’t exactly easy. If being subversive means making the reader (as in a person “reads” a “text” in any medium, to save me the pain of typing reader/viewer/listener/player) question their own assumptions, games seem to start with a handicap. In order to play a game, you must play by rules set down by someone else. If you are always inherently working within a given rule system, is it ever possible to subvert it?
So I’ve been blogging here just over one year – going to get a little meta on you for a brief moment, if you don’t mind. It’s funny to me somewhat (and probably not to you – sorry folks, not every post is winner), looking why I started the blog in the first place and the response to it.
I had started game-related blogs a couple times before but never really got into the groove with them. I was never 100% on what to include or not include. I realized this time, going into it, that I had finally reached the point where my voice as a developer was somewhat more coherent. I knew the things that were important to me, and they weren’t really things being discussed at large very much. I also wanted to improve on my consistency/voice through regular practice. I actually think managed that, with more or less regular posts (not counting the last two months, for over half of which I’ve been out of town for various reasons, mainly freaking weddings).
So that was why I started a blog, not necessarily why I started this blog. I had eventually realized the pursuit of games that offer insight into ourselves and the world around (via themes more serious than fat plumbers and speedy hedgehogs), that’s what gets me going. And it simply wasn’t being discussed enough to my liking.
On a secondary but not inconsequential note, I was also just kinda annoyed at the lack of decent reading material on game analysis/criticism. Sunday morning coffee was pretty boring after I got through GSW, GTxtA, and Level Up.
Another reason was actually to aim this type of discussion at several groups that particularly might value it: students and journalists. While the large majority of professional developers I meet or know have no particular desire to work on games with serious themes, I’ve always been impressed by the students I’ve met, that are much more passionate about this sort of thing. They’re not particularly inhibited about thinking along those lines – but if there’s no real discussion about it, my fear is just that some won’t feel encouraged to continue to explore down those avenues. Journalists, on the other hand, have it a bit rough. They often want to write about games as intelligently and critically as possible, but let’s face it, there’s absolutely no easy way to come to the level of knowledge one needs to do so.
Still though, I’ll admit I’ve been a bit surprised that, you know, people actually read the blog. Having folks post here & discuss (even marginally) and getting linked by game industry sites and other blogs, makes me think I achieved something in those directions. That’s kinda cool (and you’ll have to forgive this rare moment of self-congratulation).
It’s also pretty damn cool that the amount of my Sunday reading material has definitely increased (as the growing blogroll here attests), the overall discussion in the “blogosphere” as it were, definitely seems healthier today than it was a year ago.
Well, here’s to another year, blog!
(And here’s to RPS for telling me how to find Pathologic!)
So with Steve Gaynor’s wager, GDC, and the discussion after each, I’ve been thinking about the tools we have at our disposal as designers to create emotional response. Not just what tools are in the toolbox, so to speak, but the biases designers have for and against using some of those tools. Some biases seem natural, and others baffle me. It seems difficult to discuss what sort of techniques to use when, if we can’t even agree on what should be in the toolbox to begin with.
I started reviewing games for Play This Thing, the defacto arbiter of taste in indie game circles (or so I imagine). Except I think I’m the token mainstream guy, starting with this review of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Well, in the same way Canada’s right wingers are still pretty left by some comparisons, I think.
Speaking of (the game, not Canadian politics), gotta love this quote on the AI of stalkers (from an AIGameDev interview, via Gamasutra):
“Every character in the game always has a goal: to uncover the mystery of the Zone.”
That’s some pretty damn existential AI right there.
Now speaking of Canadian politics… Michael Noer writes (old link I know) about the future of games, specifically predicting that WOW or similar MMOs will spawn guilds that become offline political forces. Well, they may organize politically, but the fatal flaw in the argument that they would be actual forces for change is the same reason the Canadian Marijuana Party isn’t exactly a political powerhouse. When the driving shared commonality between all the members of a political group is sitting around their houses, you’re not off to a stellar start, you know.
Apparently I’m a true neutral human sorcerer. But only 4th level? Fuck off. Always thought I’d be more chaotic good though. Via Psychochild.
And that’s it. For now.