Zen and the Art of Videogames

sorry for the delay. I actually wrote 'this' post yesterday but it vanished into the depths of the poorly designed profile/proxy infrastructure at my work. I must remember to Copy these before posting in future.

I've been thinking a lot about videogames lately. Especially about the nature of "genre." Last week one of my most anticipated games of the year arrived direct from Hong Kong. Actually, I'd been anticipating Every Extend Extra for MORE than a year, ever since I'd played the game it was based on, the PC freeware: Every Extend (do yourself a favour and grab it from HERE) The concept is devilishly simple, basically a modified version of the classic Asteroids, only, instead of SHOOTING the "asteroids" in Every Extend you blow yourself up near them and try to create chain reactions to blow up as many of the buggers as possible. Your limitations are TIME (which runs down from 2minutes and 30seconds) and STOCK (how many ships you have left) You can "extend" STOCK by scoring the right amount of points, and extend time with one of the 3 special power-ups released when certain yellow coloured "asteroids" explode. The other two power-ups are greens which give you exponentially increasing bonus points and the most valuable of them all: The pink Quicken. Quickens increase the speed of ALL of the asteroids in the field of play, thereby gaining the classic videogame Risk/reward axis. Getting Quickens is essential to scoring points because with them come more asteroids flying more quickly, giving you more objects to create bigger chain reactions.

It's a nearly perfect concept for a game. Simple, rewarding requiring just the right combination of skill and luck. Skill to dodge the flying objects and know when and where to blow up, luck in that the patterns of "asteroids" will sometimes give you an easier go of it than others. Many of the things which have been written about Every Extend and Every Extend Extra note the "cross-genre" nature of the game, calling it a "Puzzle-shooter" or "shooting-puzzler." This really got me thinking about the nature of videogames and the idea that, perhaps, the concept of genre in this context is an outdated one. To ME, more important than genre is what I'm going to call: "Modality" based on the idea that HOW we play is more important than WHAT we play.

Taking a step back: Both the Xbox360 game Oblivion and the (now) Playstation Series Final Fantasy are both placed within the RPG genre. Because in both of them you play in a fantasy universe with a character who can "level up" as well as shop and "preform quests" But beyond this they are quite different. Oblivion is a action oriented first person experience while Final Fantasy is a menu driven 3rd person one where you play as multiple characters at the same time. In Modality Final Fantasy has more in common with Major League Baseball games in Franchise or Dynasty mode than with Oblivion. People who write about games have tried to deal with this in much the same way as has been done with genre tags in music: combine existing ones and make up all new ones. But rather then infinitely sub-divide I would rather pull together games of disparate genre into similar modality.

The first two Modalities I've come up with are:
"Zen" or "Pure" videogames
vs
"Grinding" or "Thinking" games

the first category contains games like Every Extend Extra and Tony Hawk where in order to play them well one must enter an almost zen-like state where both conscious and unconscious thought are expressed instantly in physical movement and reaction.

The second contains games like Final Fantasy and Civilization where most of the game is being played in the players head before any action is taken. These kind of games often require a lot of time to be expended.

One isn't better than the other, and some games artfully combine both modalities. Madden for example is a fairly even mix of both but also allows players to tailor their experience so as to wholly reside in one mode or the other. If you JUST play other humans or the computer in scrimmage mode you are existing within the Zen, if you JUST play dynasty and simulate the actual football games in between making management decisions then you are just Grinding.

I think this is a really useful way of thinking about interactive entertainment. And it will only get more useful as technology works to provide more possibilities. Maybe this way we can get away from the argument about if Metroid Prime is a "First Person Shooter" or an "action adventure" and realize that at it's core it is a "Grinding Explorer"

What do you think about the nature and labels of genre? What Modalities do you think there are?

Manifest Eternity

They say there are no new Ideas.

I'm not quite sure who THEY are but if you see them make sure to smack them upside the head from me.

There is a new Comic out, published by Wildstorm, called Manifest Eternity which is not only brilliant, but also beautiful and based on the best new idea I've heard in a good long time:

Fantasy Universe goes to war with Sci-fi Universe.

That's it. How great is that? Mordor launching a sneak attack on the Federation, Oz invades Star Wars, World Of Warcraft Vs Starcraft, whatever, it's in there.
With such a great start I could easily see the material letting down the premise but, thankfully, it doesn't... it props it up more and adds the kind of beauty and intelligence which should probably be making lesser creators cry.

The Art is solely credited to Dustin Nguyen and possesses an unearthly beauty which is perfect for the setting. Colour washes the background while he uses (I think) Computer effects to generate laser blasts and holograms. Most of the art has a dreamlike quality, which makes sense as the combatants each exist on a plane which is neigh unfathomable to the other. Occasionally the ambient looseness of his art begins to compress into some of the tightest action sequences imaginable. Taken as a whole Manifest Eternity looks quite unlike anything else I can think of outside of perhaps the weird fusion of a Chris Bachalo's stylized kineticism and Yoshitaka Amano's ornate beauty.

The writing also pops. In issue #3 the 8 year old captain of the Sci-Fi armada comments that laser blasts have no effect on the enemy's ships (gigantic zombie dragons) so they have learned to jettison booby-trapped raw turkeys in the paths of the beasts, which they will consume and thereby be killed. That kind of bizarre attention to detail is par for the series so far. Also each issue is a stand-alone Done-in-one which not only manages to tell a compelling story but manages to slowly reveal more information about the overall conflict as well as give context for how each issue fits into that whole.

Manifest Eternity is brilliant, beautiful and original. I want to read 500 issues of it. I want to play the computer and Xbox360 games of it. I want to buy the action figure and watch the Saturday Morning Cartoon... but first you all need to get out there and start buying it, if it gets canceled I'm coming after all of you so watch out.

The Origin of Ping33

Wow, I've got a blog!
I'm about 3 years late on that one, if I were cool I would probably be doing this all on Myspace. I guess the main point of this thing is to give myself an outlet so that I can stop hijacking message boards and other Blogs' comment pages and give all you people on the infoweb a handy-dandy central repository for my frenzied ranting.
I'll be surprised if anyone really reads this so I thought the best way to embark on this voyage of self-indulgence would be to start with myself and answer the question: Who or What is Ping33?

Ping33 is an alter-ego which only exists in the Idos, Comic Book fans may recognise my avatar as being Gideon Stargrave from Grant Morrison's Invisibles. To refresh your memory Gideon Stargrave is a fictional character invented by King Mob, the leader (and series protagonist) of the titular secret underground rebellion. His cover is that of a mystery writer who writes the Stargrave books. When he is captured by interdimensional invaders and interrogated for information regarding his Invisibles Cell he can only reveal information from Stargrave's life because he has trained himself to believe his own fiction to the point where it becomes reality.

The name "ping33" itself is a combination of two things:
The Stereolab song Peng!33 which is a riff on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude, specifically how through dreams alone we can make our reality a more magical place.
and the computer command Ping which sends out small packets of information to another machine and demands reciprocal info from the other side.

Taken as a whole: Ping33 becomes the magical point at which idea becomes reality through force of idea alone and is brodcast out for the world to hear and respond to. The Idea is as real as anything else once it's out there, just as Ping33 is as real as if he were a real boy.
I hope I can keep this blog up, I am determined to make a go of it. I also hope that at some point I find some readers, but that is secondary. I see this Blog being about what I am about, a mish-mash of culture both high and low as well as politics, current events, and even sports.
I encourage comments (from all 0 of you) and I pledge that I will be open to reasonable criticism and always will be willing to take a new look at things if my perspective is lacking or flawed.