Inbetweeners

"He's not a prince he's not a king, he's not a work of art or anything"

So sang mid-90s garbage-wannabes Sleeper. Whatever happened to Sleeper? Can I be bothered to wikipedia them? and then post a link here? Didn't they have some kind of comeback a while ago...arrgh stop it - i'm getting distracted, I don't want to talk about mid-90s wannabe bands- I'm trying to talk about games! The trouble is I'm very easily distracted. There I am halfway thru a game, enjoying it, fully intending to explore every tiny facet of it and suddenly something new and shiny comes along and it gets dropped in the "I'll get back to that" pile.

Shiny games come in waves, as we all know - Oct/Nov we drown in new releases - then in January the great drought begins. Another brief burst of shininess in April-may, then the looong summer of dullness. So the obvious plan is that anything I don't finish in the plentiful times I put it in the barn and save it for the slow months. This is a sound plan of gaming husbandry - the trouble is, it doesn't happen - I always end up repeatedly going back to certain games while leaving others languishing unfinished.

These games are the inbetweeners. I wonder if everyone has inbetweeners or is it just me?

My inbetweeners include Oblivion, Gears of War, Guitar Hero, Halo (original only - not the other two) Frequency, Jet set radio future - all these are games I keep on going back to in the lean times. Why them? What makes a good inbetweener? Hmmm -



Either no plot or plot that you can get back into easily.
All games should have this anyway - missions that you can look back at, that tell you what you need to do, a map marker telling you where to go - most games will have something for the main missions but not side quests. Unforgivable is the old man who says "I've told you what you have to do! Now go do it!" gaah it's been 6 months!

A consistent reliable playing experience.
I don't expect bright new adventures from an inbetweener; I want familiar, reliable gameplay - fun yes - but not new. Something I know what to expect from. If I go back to a game at all the chances are I'll go back repeatedly - familiarity makes it more welcoming.

No danger of finishing
I'm not sure about this one - just trying to think about similar aspects in my inbetweeners -but being brutally honest I do seem to have a phobia of finishing games! The amount of unfinished games on the shelf staring at me balefully when I pick up Oblivion again is embarrassingly high - the reasons for not finishing long and varied. Could I have a problem?

Straight back on the horse
Games I can just pick up and play - no danger of having to re-learn the controls, skills, or tactics. For some reason I always think that if a game's on the shelf for more than a couple of months I'll have forgotten how to play it - logically I know this isn't true - any game you've played before will come right back after ten minutes - it's not like riding a bike - but again, familiarity wins every time.

What we learned
Inbetweeners are like old friends. Except they aren't. They're nothing like old friends it's just you have to use that simile when describing things like this. They're like an old comfy pair of slippers. ugh that's even worse - they're kind of like games. Games that you play inbetween of other games. That's all I wanted to say. Sorry it took so long.

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Remember when games were designed by designers?

Dylan Moran has a section in his stand-up about releasing your potential - his suggestion is that it's a very bad idea. As long as your potential remains untapped you can imagine it to be tremendous. However when you unlock it and it turns out not to be the soaring vast colossus you imagined it to be there's no putting it back in it's box.


There's a lot of talk about sandbox games at the moment - Little Big Planet for one. It's gorgeous to look at, seems genuinely innovative and when I first heard about it I thought WOW that's great! completely flexible toolset! Make your own trees! Wow!But there's a small voice in my head that says 'So I have to design the levels myself? Can't someone else do that? that sounds like a bit of an effort.. There have been level designer add ons to games for ages of course, but they were optional extras for people with too much time on their hands. In LBP the designed levels seem added on to the central game which you have to make yourself before you can play it.

Then there's Spore - again I had the same initial reaction - WOW! That sounds great! A whole civilisation all for me! I can be a GOD! buuut...you mean I have to design them all? do all this creating? This God lark seems a bit of a faff...

All those possibilities are exciting - but in the end I'm afraid the sheer variety and scale of what can be achieved is going to dwarf what little I actually do achieve. All this limitless potential is just going to expose my own extremely limited creativity. So I'm limited only by my own imagination? Er what if my imagination is a bit crap? That means the game will be a bit crap right? But I can't complain it's a bad game, because it's my own fault for being rubbish. I have to go on the internets and write rabid blog posts about my own shortcomings, give myself -1000/10 and publish hilarious videos on youtube mocking my own crapness.

Hmm actually maybe that's another explanation for the almost universal love for spore and LBP - it's a case of emporer's new imagination, no one dares say they made a tree like on the demo then ran out of things to do. Spore isn't boring - *you* are boring!

And this is why I loved Mario Galaxy. No creativity required. No user-created content. Distinctly limited possibilities. You're locked onto a path and all you do is follow it to the end. Your gaming experience is pretty much the same as everyone else's gaming experience. All you need to do is press buttons and let someone else do all the work. Someone else has skillfully crafted (and crafted is the word) a beautiful, wonderful experience and your only responsibility is to enjoy it. I'm not saying Spore et al will be bad games - however the way they're being covered it's like they're better because you have to make them yourself. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer my games designed by designers.