Currently playing

Bored - want to post something but have nothing really to talk about. So welcome to what will probably be a long, rambling and unfocused post.

I'm "currently playing" 3 games - Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, Project Sylpheed and Battlefield 1943. Oh and the tales of Monkey Island but I'm probably not going to talk about that much. Our mutual friend has already talked about it enough I think.

So Henry Hatsworth. Which is - if you're not already aware - a DS platformer with a block-matching element that has a non-traditional old-fashioned british gentleman for a hero.


With pipe and trilby, Henry would be charming and innovative if Professor Layton hadn't come along and totally won forever the title of unconventional gentlemanly hero. Compared to Layton, Henry looks like a boorish cad with the manners of an uncultured baboon. Which is unfortunate - we are a long way from upper-crust gents being as common as space marines in games, two coming along so close to each other seems a waste. And they are different - Henry is more a broad caricature of a Victorian explorer whereas Layton is a far more complete character.








Also Henry has a whiff of corporate-controlled eccentricity to him - "Let's just have some crazy goofball character like a totally british guy, cos the kids, they like the crazy" kind of thing. But they're both male, be-hatted, under-stated and genrally more civilised than your average game character so comparisons are inevitable. And the similarities don't end there - they also both have a small boy apprentice with a cap and a cheeky attitude. Who is annoying but a neccesary counterpoint of impetuous youth used to highlight the aged wisdom of the main character. I guess. There must be some reason for them.










Moving on to game play however, Henry couldn't be more different. It basically applies the puzzle quest idea to a platformer. As you move through the original Mario-type 2D levels on the top screen a set of coloured blocks gradually moves up the bottom screen. When you kill enemies they go into the puzzle to become grumpy blocks. If these grumpy blocks move up enough to reach the top screen they come out and try and crush you. To prevent this at any time you can switch between the screens to do a bit of block matching to get rid of the grumpy blocks and generally keep the level down. The same thing happens to power-ups - you find them in the level then they go into the puzzle. If you match enough blocks you unlock Henry's robot suit - slightly spoiling the Victorian gentleman explorer image - and making you invincible for a short time.



The game is fine - I suspect the problem is that I hate platformers. I'm not a careful person. I have little patience for cautiously timing ducks to avoid lasers or precisely landing jumps on moving platforms - I like to rush in, guns (or walking sticks) blazing. It's generous enough with the save points - if you die you restart a little way before you fell or at the start of a boss fight. If you run out of lives then it's back to the start of the level with 4 lives. There's also balancing in the form of replaying old levels for cash to buy power-ups in the shop. The game gives me every chance - I feel churlish for saying I find it frustrating and repetitive. However I do -I'm sure it's all my fault though. I just get to a stage - probably the stage where you can no longer get away with just running through pushing buttons randomly - where I just get into a cycle, I die, I'm annoyed so i'm less cautious, so i die, so I'm annoyed etc etc

The puzzle element helps - it means I have another recourse to recover health, damage enemies etc. It also adds a new twist - but in the end I can't get over my stumbling block of hating platformers, so overall I can't say it's the best game ever. Also, though character is really not a vital part of a platformer, Henry grates so badly after Layton - it just makes me long for the next Layton game.

Hmmm - have to be honest I kinda hoped I'd come across a theme as I was writing. Sort of thought I'd have a thought and then restructure the post to reflect a general point. Didn't happen. Sorry about that. Next up is Battlefield - let's see if anything jumps out.

C

Reached level 100 on Space Giraffe.
Reached but not breached.
What will happen? Will the giraffe be in the damn castle? Will I get a telegram from Jeff Minter on completion? Will I stay sane long enough to find out?

Stay tuned.

Some Points.

1. The first time doing something, that you will then go on to repeatedly do throughout a game is not an achievement.
   First time finishing the game- achievement, first time killing a mid-level boss - fine, but first time casting a spell? First level-up? Congratulations you found the A button? WTF? what's the difference between the first time and all the other times you do that thing? What's so great about the first one? The thousand millionth time- that's an achievement, doing a basic action once- really not.
   
   
2. Completing the tutorial is not an achievement.
   Well duh - you haven't even started the game and you're already earning points? How is that? How the hell do you fail a tutorial? By definition it's the easiest part of the game - in fact it's not even part of the game - it's even easier than the game! If the tutorial in your game is a challenge then u r doing it very wrong!
   
   
3. Being player 2 is not an achievement
   This is unbelievable - yes I'm looking at you Gears of War - even tho I happened to benefit from this complete lack of logic ("Baggsy Dom!") - it really shouldn't be excused. Obviously having a friend is an achievement for most gamers, but really, they shouldn't have to pay them points.
   
   
4. Being crap at the game is not an achievement
   It may seem funny, Harmonix, it may seem oh so amusing at the time - how we laughed, when we saw it in the Guitar Hero II achievement list "Fail a song on easy" Har Har Har. Achievements are not jokes, Harmonix, they are not a way of showing how crazy and unconventional you are. Grow up.
   
   
5. Being bored is not an achievement
   If you can do the achievement, without even touching the controller, from the kitchen, making a cup of tea, it is not an achievement. The tea is more deserved than those points. GTA4 was particularly guilty, with it's long taxi rides and copter tours but any game that has "watched all the cut scenes" achievements...*shakes head* No. Wrong.
   

People say to me "Oh Judy," they say "What's your problem? Do you not like points? What does it matter that some achievements are a little easier than others?" Oh you fools. Oh you poor, blind, foolish fools.

We know where this leads. Giving out all these points for sub-prime achievements is dangerously devaluing the Live economy, and there's only one result - rocketing inflation followed by a gamerpoint crunch. That's right. Currently an xbla title has 200 points worth of achievements - conservative estimates say that if this devaluation continues a typical xbla game achievement will be worth 10,000,000 points. Independent developers just can't afford to put that many points into a game - they'll just go to the wall. This will cause a points scarcity that will lead to gamer self-esteem collapse, which will result in ever easier achievements for even more points and the whole system will be trapped in an ever decreasing spiral. Maybe the big boys will survive a little longer but with the value of gamerpoints circling the drain even the likes of EA and Ubisoft will come tumbling down.

We have to act now. All gamer points earned from any achievement that fits one of the descriptions above should be stripped from players' profiles immediately, and all developers should be provided with a dictionary with the definition for achievement underlined in red, with pictures and examples. Any game found giving points for non-achievements should be banned and the developer's point-distribution license revoked.

It's extreme but it's the only solution. It's the only way I can have more points than Tug.

Is Space Giraffe the best game ever?

Yes.

Well in a way yes -but generally whatever game I'm playing is the best game ever for it's duration - so it's probably not a very reliable declaration. I'm playing Apollo Justice on the DS and that's the best game ever too - so, pinch of salt, but the point of this is - 'raffe has been horribly under-rated.

Not least by me. Mr Judy downloaded SG on release. Wow! I said, it looks great. Crazy! Mad! British comedy references! Ow eyes hurting now, stop playing. What do you mean I've got no achievements? Give up.

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago. We're in the middle of one of the longest droughts in gaming history. Every day I scan the shelves for something new to play.
"Can I help?" says the teenage assistant
"I don't know - I'm looking for something good, something overlooked - something that is amazing and yet has somehow got past everyone I know and all the reviewers on the internets, something impossible, yet incredible.. do you have anything like that?"
"Um...TNA Impact?"
Even my inbetweeners are starting to pall. Edge is full of fascinating, complex, incredible games promised for the coming months that are still *weeks* away from release. And, tucked away in the "what we're playing now" section, Space Giraffe rates a mention.

Hmm never did get on with that - maybe time for another go. At least try and get the sneezing achievement....and an obsession was born. Then over nights of swearing, internet scouring, many varied attempts to reach the zen-like state you need to play- the obsession was tempered and formed into evangelical fervour. Time to spread the word.

Why you were wrong about Space Giraffe.
A lot of people give up after the tutorial. Which is not aptly named. Jeff Minter, a genius with light and music, has a lot to learn about pedagogy. Key terms are not defined. Concepts are not explained. Examples are not given. Don't get me started on assessment for learning. If he worked for our institution, we'd be having words. You get a vague instruction. Then a bit later it says "well done you did that" You wonder what just happened. I discovered I'd been playing the game completely wrong after reading a FAQ on the internet.

Of course, you could argue that the "tutorial" is deliberately bad, just as the level design is deliberately eye-bleedingly confusing, which is the next hurdle for the contemporary gamer. We've been molly-coddled by namby-pamby games in which you can actually see what's going on. Stuff like the things trying to kill you. The things you're supposed to pick up. Most games make these things stand out. Not SG - you have to visually wrench such information from the chaos on the screen and it's often unfair. I've played zone games before, the feeling of your muscle memory overriding your conscious mind - 'raffe is the first game I've really felt you need the Force to play. And we're not talking some weedy blast shield, it's like injecting your eyeballs with LSD and trying to split a gnat with a stick of spaghetti. With guns.

But I forget, I'm trying to convince people to play it, not put you off...well let's see -

Colours!
Most games these days have about three colours (brown, grey and browney-grey), SG has megabezillions.

Online leaderboards!
A mere 10,000 people bought Space Giraffe. You're pretty much guaranteed top 1000 by being vaguely competent. (currently 72, thanks for asking. Oh you didn't. Well I'm just happening to mention it then. It's my blog.)

Weekly online leaderboards!
Out of 10,000 how many do you think played this week?

Jeff needs the money.
Llamas don't come cheap.

CONGRATULATIONS!
You have finished this blogpost, but our giraffe is in another castle!
You are bored

The Sheep Speaks!

Apparently I am a sheep. Yes that's right - a sheep. According to a so-called gentleman of my acquaintance- I, readers, am a woolly, usually horned, ruminant mammal related to the goat.
And what prompted this attack? This slight on my character? Well, I mentioned that I read game reviews before buying them. Apparently the gentlemen in question regards this as sheep-like behaviour, that to read a review is to unavoidably be influenced by it.

Well it goes without saying I reject that accusation completely- so after thinking about it for a week, procrastinating for a week and dithering for a week - I got straight on the internet to correct his mistake. Here are some reasons why game reviews are great:

Game reviews are important. More important than other reviews - a film takes £5 quid and two hours of your time, a game costs ten times more in time and money. You can't just go wandering into HMV and get games based on the box art. Not if you value time and money.

Game reviews are great to read - a good review tells you what you need to know - i.e. how it feels to play the game - in an entertaining way. Check out Ste Curran's classic Monkeyball review [which he has irritatingly taken offline...grr], or Kieron Gillen's great EDF review. Avoid Playr style reviews that just list the controls. They're worse than useless.

Game reviews can cut through hype. One problem with deciding which games to buy is that games are seriously hyped to death - years of careful marketing - teasers, previews, fake websites, screenshots, viral marketing - all designed to get you wetting your pants with excitement, but it's all lies. None of it really matters until the reviews come out - which makes good unbiased reviews so vital. If a hyped to death game comes out with 4s and 5s then you know to steer clear no matter how amusing the trailer is.

It works the other way as well - game reviews can highlight great games that didn't have a multimillion pound advertising budget. I wouldn't own Katamari Damacy if it wasn't for the reviews, or Portal, or Okami or Phoenix Wright or Amplitude or well lots.

So we've all learned that game reviews are great. Without them we'd be lost in a sea of hype, all sitting and waiting for our friend to buy something so we can go round their house and try it out. And so no one would buy anything and the games industry would collapse and we'd all have to go out and find useful things to do with our time.

And no one wants that. Not even sheep.

The Not-Quite-Weekly Blogosphere Moment of Zen

And there was the master himself: shoes off, socks on, dressed in shooting gear, but sitting behind a computer, stuck on the fifteenth level of a first-person shooter called BioShock.

"This is like months to get to this level, and he can’t get past this one little mysterious spider god, and he’s losing his mind. He’s like, ‘I can’t do it, Shia! I can’t do it.’ ”

Shia LeBeouf witnessing Steven Spielberg playing the Earth Defence Force version of Bioshock

GQ, via kotaku

GTA:Great Teaching Aids

[This is an article I wrote for the newsletter at work - as it relates to games I thought I'd put it here]

Videogames are making the leap from living room to classroom -and they have a lot to teach educators about motivation, feedback and challenge.

First off - let's dispel a few myths - the idea that videogames are solely played by geeky teenage boys sitting in their bedrooms is simply not true. A survey by the BBC in 2005 showed the average age of a gamer as 28, a more recent survey put the average as 34. The gender gap is also suprising - 48% of gamers are female, with 21% of females across all age groups saying they were 'Heavy' gamers (more than once a week). The recent impact of GTA IV - culturally and economically - has shown games are a powerful force in entertainment - but what's that got to do with learning?

Games as learning tools
Modern games are far from simple - often the player has to manipulate a vast array of tools to progress through complex worlds. And as most seasoned gamers will tell you - they never read the manual. Try reading the manual of a modern game and you'll rapidly see why - the sheer amount of information is overwhelming. And yet players rapidly absorb all that information plus more and enjoy the process- how do games teach the player, and how do they make the learning process so entertaining players will gladly spend their time and money for the privelige of being taught?

In his paper - Learning by Design:Good Video Games as Learning Machines -James Gee boils it down to 3 key areas:

- Empowerment
In a video game the entire world reacts to the player's decisions - they're free to decide what they want to do and when. Their decisions may sometimes have adverse effects, but ultimately don't ever result in complete failure. In order to feel motivated learners need to feel they can personalise and control their learning. They need to feel they can make decisions and get feedback - either negative or positive - to guide them.

- Problem solving
Games build logically from simple to complex problems and are always challenging. In fact games are often criticised for being too easy - not a common complaint in a classroom! If a player fails a task the game will always give feedback, and often some form of reward. For instance a player might fail to kill a monster but will be awarded experience points or collect some treasure while fighting it. It's important to note that the reward doesn't make the monster easier to kill -games very rarely make challenges easier. Games that do are criticised and bizarrely accused of "cheating".

- Understanding
Knowledge presented in context is easier to learn. Games always present knowledge just before, or even during, the problem that it's application will solve. You learn how to climb walls when you need to get into the castle. Learning always serves a purpose. Learners need clear goals, they need to understand why they need to know things. "To pass the exam" is not a compelling reason! Unfortunately there may not be any other real reason why the learner needs the knowledge then and there - however by using avatars and simulations (another trick games use) learners can be presented with virtual problems that need solving. for instance in a recent psychology lesson I heard a teacher asking students to think as if they were members of the Ethics Committee.


Games in classrooms
Evidence that using games for teaching improves results is increasing - and there is much research ongoing. However teachers are still reluctant to use "off the shelf" commercial games in classrooms. This is understandable - the common media image of video games is that they are all violent "murder simulators" -however games can be powerful learning tools. There are an increasing number of "educational" games on the market. The problem with many of these games, however, is that they're just multiple choice quizzes albeit presented in a novel way. They don't tap into the central power of interactive experiences.

I have a particularly bad example on my laptop - picked up from a conference somewhere - called Alien Attack. It's a basic space invaders game where the player has to shoot down waves of aliens that are descending - the "educational" aspect comes in when the player dies. In order to continue they have to answer a question, set by the teacher, if they get it right they can continue playing, if they get it wrong they lose a life. This is typical of many educational games - the game itself has nothing to do with the subject being learned and just acts as a carrot to encourage students to answer questions. Even worse the learning is associated with a negative event in the game, education is a punishment for being bad at the game! While these types of games can be good for motivating students to revise facts, games can do a lot more.

Some games that are:

Fatworld (needs to be installed)
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=fatworld
a game that aims to "demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations."
September 12th
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm
Short but effective game dealing with the war on terror
Darfur is Dying
http://www.darfurisdying.com/
A game that puts the player in the shoes of a displaced Dafurian trying to survive the crisis in Sudan.
Real Lives 2007 (needs to be installed)
http://www.educationalsimulations.com/products.html
Compelling game that uses real statistics to model life in a different country. The player is "born" in a random location and lives out an entire virtual life governed by the politics, customs and laws of their country of birth.

Lie to me

I got very confused about Wii Fit. On one hand it's a game - it's previewed and reviewed on all the gaming sites and magazines. It's written about in gaming blogs and promoted at games events. It's got "Nintendo" written on it. So it's a game. But it's not a game. It really isn't anything like a game. It's an interactive exercise video. No amount of cute 3D avatars speaking in impossibly high-pitched voices is going to make it a game. With Wii Fit these self improvement titles have finally crossed the line - they need their own category, they can't be called games.



I haven't played Brain Training but I would argue that it's still a game. In fact it's a very pure game - all games are essentially brain training. Whether you're training your brain to spot the tree-coloured bad guy against a background of trees or training your slow human fingers to react with robotic speed to visual cues - it's all brain training. I see no difference between Dr Kawishima telling me my reaction speed is getting better and getting 5 stars in Guitar Hero. Brain Training is just spectacularly unimaginitive in it's premise. Or honest - depending how you look at it. Brain Training is for people who don't want plot, character or beauty alongside their brain workout.

The counter argument to this is that these self-improvement titles teach "real" skills - not like playing a fisher-price guitar, or running round a fantasy planet shooting unreal aliens in their made-up heads - those aren't "real" skills. "Dr K teaches us maths and logic skills." say these "real" people "Skills we can use in everyday life." Sorry no - real life teaches real life skills. Skills you use every day you already practice every day. You don't seem to be getting any better at them. Brain Training is like any other game -the only thing it trains you to do, is be better at Brain Training.

Half the fun of games - in fact maybe 100% of the fun - comes from the sense of achievement you get from making progress. Learning is inherently fun -this article explains why - [well it would if I could find it to link to..], supposedly we're genetically pre-disposed to enjoy solving things and remembering the solution. In a game, this sense of progress is controlled by the designer - they decide when to hand out rewards, how to achieve that delicate balance of challange and reward. To be fun, a game's learning curve must be pitched just right - so we get a genuine feeling of achievement all the way through. Brain Training games are just the same - it's just they pretend you're making progress in a "real" skill, thus increasing your sense of achievement.

But Wii Fit is different. Weight isn't an abstract concept like intelligence - it's a real measurable quantity. Which means this game can't lie. It can't pretend you're making progress -all it can do is uncomfortably squeak that sometimes it takes time for exercise to show results. But I'm a gamer! I've done what the game says I want my reward now! My brain improved with improbable swiftness, why can't my body? Wii Fit has the structure of a game - rewards, stamps, even collectibles - but it doesn't have that progress curve, the spine that games need for all the other parts to work. So it's not a game. It's real life in a game-shaped box - don't be fooled people. Stay away.