Asymmetrical Cooperation

 My partner and I enter the derelict ship, responding to a distress signal we picked up not long ago. The creatures have infested all of the scrap floating out here, turning it into an orbiting graveyard; The cabin is no different. We make our way further in, dispatching the former crew members, now turned hideous undead guardians, along the way. Upon entering one of this ship's engine rooms, my comm. system starts up. 

We must've jump started something on this old craft, and with that some new audio logs begin playing. It's a boy calling out to his father. Touching, yet tragic - these ships are hundreds of years old and the boy who sent this message is long gone. Yet, even knowing that, it chills me to think that the boy never got to know what happened to his old man. Part of me thinks that no matter what pain he felt from not knowing, as I look at a recently re-killed monstrosity with pieces of a face sprinkled liberally here in the engine room, I know the truth would've been far more hurtful.

My partner's been pretty quiet, maybe that last log struck a nerve with him too. Calling out to him, I ask what he thought of that last log transmission. 

"What? You heard a transmission? Did you pick something up or turn something on?" 

He asks me, disappointed that he might've missed out on some verbal piece of the bigger puzzle. I tell him to check his comms and sweep the room again, make sure he didn't miss anything. 


We move ahead after he comes up empty handed, and just like that a new audio signal begins playing. Its the kid again, pleading to his Dad, asking him why he stopped loving him, to call him back. I turn to my companion while its playing this time, checking if he hears the boy's voice. Even with the full helmet our RIGS have equipped, I knew the face he was making at me. 

I can barely hear his response over the kid languishing to his father. My partner's answer was more horrific than the boy's cries could ever be.

"Um, I don't know what you're talking about. I can't hear anything." 


For gamers, I think the reason we love defending the almost sacred pillars of the Survival Horror genre and the titles that it generates is because of the emotional reaction they conjure. Think about it, developers have been chasing the holy grail of making software that can make you cry for decades, but sadness is just one emotion on a spectrum. Fear on the other hand is far easier to derive from an audience, and depending on the illicit-or, far more memorable. I guess that's why fans can be so fearful of things that challenge our understood machinations of what makes this particular genre work so well. However, things have to evolve or else we run the risk of stagnation, and that is something that survival horror has done on the 'survival' and gameplay side, but not so much on the horror side. That is, until Dead Space 3.

Dead Space 3 is an interesting title for survival horror because it went through the same media machine all games in the genre go through when they change the formula in major ways. This time around, the big sticking points fans and journalists had were the emphasis on combat the game had from earlier entries and the addition of co-op potentially undermining the atmosphere the genre and this series is known for. While many have their opinions on the former argument, the latter is something that hasn't been touched on enough in my opinion.

 Asymmetrical design is a topic that I could create a series of posts exploring, but let's just focus on Dead Space 3 for the moment. Survival Horror games have mostly focused on isolating the player and having them exploring a setting or characterization in varying contexts. No matter what the situation, the design goal almost all survival horror games have done was to find a way to isolate the player and its character.

Player isolation works when attempting to create empathy between the player & the character, as well as establish a sort of base level of dread in the game's tone, and for good reason. Isolation is a feeling human beings are terrified of, the simple act of isolating a person against their will for even a moderate amount of time is enough to psychologically scar a person, so isolation is an effective tool when attempting to craft horror. This explains why the industry has done horror, and done it well, for 20 years. But game design is a creative field, and we have to shake-up the established status quo to see what comes out from time to time.

Resident Evil 5 tried to implement co-op into its survival horror brand, it just approached it from the wrong angle. By allowing 2 players to occupy the same space and tackle the same challenges with the same capabilities, they just undermined the elements RE would ordinarily use to raise tension. i.e. Low Ammo with the weapons you have in your too few inventory slots? Not to worry, your partner got ya covered!

Where Dead Space 3 sidesteps the pitfalls outlined in RE5's design was by allowing both players to experience separate things in the same space. Go ahead and spend some time with someone who thinks they are seeing or hearing something you aren't, see how freaked out you get. Visceral managed to make a game that delivers that experience regularly. To be fair, they have some shortcomings as well - due to the way the co-op and SP campaigns were setup, it made drop-in play impossible in the scenario, which is a terrible shame. Starting a game with a random co-op buddy can be particularly difficult. By having the co-op experience in a separate mode, it made particularly difficult to change your mind mid-play session. Also, with a random buddy, you run the risk of playing with someone who has experienced all the narrative has to offer and will run past things - an even greater deal breaker considering the design's execution is relying on both players following a set pacing. Still though, some restructuring of the player experience fixes almost all of these problems.

Visceral Games, for all intents and purposes, nailed asymmetrical cooperative design in a modern survival horror game. Much of what is outlined in Dead Space 3 is the foundation that future co-op horror games will be built on. What they built taps the potential of asymmetrical design and what it can provide to our already understood design formulas for all kinds of genres. In common-talk, what they did was utilize the equivalent of a new cooking spice, and I hope you enjoyed the taste cause we're gonna be getting a lot of it in the coming years.

Chronicles of a Traveling Brazilian: Prologue

Man, i've been meaning to write about this for awhile. I keep telling my friends that whenever I go on a traveling trip, i'm gonna take tons of pictures and chronicle it on facebook and other sites. That almost never happens. Over the summer, I think I only made 1 post about my cross-country road trip, and that thing was about a solid month of traveling.

 I've done a ton of traveling over the years, especially in the last year. It's so much fun for me, going around and seeing new places whilst meeting new people. I don't wanna paint myself as some globe-trotting Nathan Drake-type (I fully tuck my shirts in, thank you), but I do love to get around. When I make these posts, i'll make sure to get as many pictures of those times as I can. I won't guarantee they'll be the best, but something beats nothing right? right???

So, I guess what I should tell you about is some of the places i've been to or things i've done. You probably doubt that they are even interesting enough to read about, but i'm gonna prove you wrong! Whether it's about my frequent trips up to Boston with the Jersey crew to spend time with our friend Cakes over the years, or my trips to Virginia and DC, my month long cross-country road trip where I friggin moved from NJ to LA to get in the games industry, and most recently my 3 month stint as a Production Assistant for the hit TV show 'American Pickers' which had me trekking to various states, I got tons to of entertaining enough stuff to share. I also got some childhood/teen stories from Brazil I would love to share. I'll take some requests for starters, but look for my next post on this next weekend. Until then, happy trails!

Grimrock'ing it the hard way

I really do want to talk about more than just games on this blog. It's been a couple months since I stopped working on the TV show, and i'm still looking for a job at a game studio, so I guess writing about some games in the meantime won't hurt.  Luckily I got a great lil' gem I think is worth writing about.

Okay, so i'm gonna go ahead and assume (even though we all know what happens when you do! (Ugh, my apologies, I get terribly punny this time of year, makes me sick)) that most people reading this haven't even heard of this game, let alone played it. Its only been out for a week so it's understandable. Made by the new indie studio out of Finland, Almost Human, this game is a callback to RPG's of yesteryear. When telling people about this game, the closest I can come to describing it is it resembles the first-person dungeon crawling RPG's from the 90's. Think Might & Magic and Wizardry and you'll have an idea.

Now, i'm not going to claim I was old enough to appreciate those classic series back in their day, but knowing this game is an homage to those titles had me excited to play it. I didn't know what to expect really. But what I got were 2 interesting game design lessons I want to share with you now.

Lesson 1: Simplicity

Alright, so lets ignore the giant troll and the nice graphics in this screen shot for a moment. They look great, but really take a look at the content the SS contains. This is an RPG, same kind of genre that delivered to gaming both Skyrim and Dark Souls within the last year. Think about those games for a moment, then let me hit you with some knowledge; everything pertinent to any and all gameplay, outside of the inventory, is contained within that screenshot alone. Hell, the inventory screen doubles as the level-up/stats screen, so its not like i'm hiding some giant secret from ya.  I'd post a picture of it, but honestly its not a big concern for the point i'm trying to make. Those other games I mentioned have a ton of more stuff you need to go through just to do some of the basic stuff you are trying to do here.

Just by glancing at the picture, we already know the obvious UI staples; red bars are health; blue energy/mana,  portrait is the individual characters in the party, and the item in the left and right in each portrait is what is held in their individual hands. It's an easy concept to grasp, so I was surprised when I got everything so well considering this is my first time playing an RPG like this. How do we take down that baddie with the stone mallet? Just right click objects in players hands and they will attack him with it. See a key you want to pick up? Right click that shit! That brick in the wall look like a secret button? Click it and find the fuck out, why don't ya.

 Movement is pretty simple too, you just move in 4 cardinal directions using W,A,S,D, turn left and right 1 space using Q and E respectively. Notice I just said '1 space'; let me clarify this real quick. This game isn't first-person a la Call of Duty. This is more tile-based movement, where you move 1 tile at a time and inspect the surroundings in that tile. Imagine playing Final Fantasy Tactics in first-person, except 4 party members took up 1 tile and there are no turns to speak of. It sounds stiff, but trust me it ain't, and i'll show you why in lesson 2. 

And that is pretty much it. No, seriously, the game's gameplay mechanics are really not much more complex than that. There are systems that dive into things slightly deeper, but really this is all the game has to offer mechanically. Now hold on a second before you judge this thing and let me slam you with why this simplicity is a God-send for this game.

Lesson 2: Beating you softly

With spiders that big in your face its no wonder.

I'll be blunt; this game is pretty fucking hard. It's not even in the same way Dark Souls is considered hard. The way this game confronts you with both its environment and its enemies make it one of the harder games i've played lately, Dark Souls included. Better yet, the game never comes across as cheap or unfair. Should you ever come face to face with that screen above, you will know exactly what you should do to avoid it in the future. How is it accomplishing this level of difficulty? It breaks down to 2 things; environment and enemies.

Enemies adhere to the same movement system you do. They move from tile to tile and must face the direction they wish to attack. They can only attack the front party members they are facing you from, unless its an attack that affects the entire tile. Now, your first reaction is to face enemies and right click weapons until they die. And you'd be right, at first, but then the game will go ahead and take the gloves off. You see, there is more to the combat than just facing the enemy and attacking until they die; you gotta move around the environment and take advantage of the system to really get the most out of the game's combat system. To the game's credit, it presents the enemies you must face in such a way that these lessons are slowly but surely learned.

It gives you a feeling of accomplishment when you finally learn the way the game wants you to dance around the playing field to destroy your enemies. It certainly is interesting seeing how the primary activity the player engages in (combat) will evolve throughout the course of the game without any additions to combat potential. The evolution is achieved only with enemy variety, and its an amazing lesson I want to gleam from going forward.

Also, puzzles. This game has a ton of puzzles you need to solve in order to get from floor to floor. The greatest rewards each floor has to offer can only be gained by solving some of the most basic yet hard to solve puzzles i've seen yet. The puzzles the player comes across play as a refreshing contrast to the pacing the combat sets.

Typical game design often has players following a breadcrumb trail of progression, with each new morsel leading the player to the games conclusion. Many times we do this by offering bigger and better weapons or skills, or new-fresh ways of interactivity for the player and its character. In Legend of Grimrock, we see that sometimes we can setup that ideal pacing with really smart puzzle and enemy design that delivers in player engagement, without bogging down the player with too many buttons he needs to press.

Build That Wall

Who'd have thunk, a game dev writing about a game he recently enjoyed? No way!!!! This isn't a new game necessarily, Bastion came out last summer, and its not like i'm speaking crazy saying its great, but I just had some thoughts about this experience I wanted to share.

I've been playing games a long time, so I find it hard these days to play something that is wholly unique. Heck, Bastion is an isometric homage to Super Nintendo top down RPG's like Secret of Mana and even Diablo. However, using a pretty simplistic design in its gameplay, this game was able to do something incredible in another area we sometimes over look in game development.

Out-fucking-standing Audio.

Let me start off by saying that if you don't have the time to go out and actually play Bastion and you're a music fan, do yourself a damn favor and download the soundtrack. Those exciting and yet hypnotic sounds coming through your speakers and drawing you into another world? Yeah, that's a videogame soundtrack you're listening to.

I feel like this is one of the areas we don't necessarily give as much thought into these days as we should be. Afterall,we live in the age of ipods and podcasts, so its safe to assume that if your soundtrack isn't top-shelf, players are just going to tune it out in favor of things they'd much rather be listening to. However, this game immediately makes you turn your ipod down and turn the game volume up with a very simple yet amazingly realized story-telling technique; the narrator.

Ruck is an amazingly well written character and voiced by Logan Cunningham. From a literary stand-point, he is not the typical narrator. He is a character in the game, and yet he is also omnipresent to whatever your character, The Kid, is doing at all times. While you're playing the game, he is commenting on a variety of things ranging from the events that lead to that point in  the world, the environment you are currently traversing, and even actions you the player are specifically doing with The Kid. Ruck works from a design stand-point because while he may be an actual character in the story, as well as its narrator, he is still impartial to the actions and decisions of the player. He is the main focal point the player has to draw story and setting details from, so its fitting that he never speaks in a way as to discourage a particular course of action the player may be doing at that moment in time. There is a particular moment at the end of the game where his character has the potential to completely break the narrative foundation the game has established with the player, and the developers were wise in having Ruck be silent at that moment.

It's disarming and unusual, and yet it works. Some have said that Ruck's constant talking is annoying, and I argue that if you don't like it you might as well not play the game. He builds the world and the atmosphere with his words. Without them, you might as well be playing in the dark. One of my favorite uses of Ruck is in a gameplay segment called 'Who Knows Where', a dream sequence the player goes to and faces off against waves of enemies. Between each wave of enemy, Ruck will tell the player a portion of the back-story pertaining to one of the characters. The player is being rewarded for lasting in increasingly difficult waves of enemies by filling in pieces of the narrative, all thanks to the excellent execution of a narrator in a game.

What also works well in the 'Who Knows Where' segments is the other side of the audio coin of this game; the music. In truth, the music works well everywhere, but it feels like in these segments the music acts as a framing device for the narrative Ruck is telling you about a particular character. Each song played fits the context of the tale being told, with the songs shifting into other melodies in order to match the change of pace in the story being told. It creates this added feeling of tension as the player becomes engaged in the tale and handles the opposition in a similar pacing of the music and the place in the story they are. Segments in the story that usually have a quicker pace usually spawn larger quantities of enemies that take very few strikes to kill, and it'll be at a moment like this where the music will fade into a number such as "Terminal March". When a game is throwing music at you which matches the feelings of the environment and scenario the player is placed in at that point, you know you're listening to some amazing stuff.

It's easy to recommend games for either its story or its gameplay, and it almost feels wrong recommending Bastion for anything else because it really does excel in those areas, but the audio design work here is too strong to be ignored. Ruck and the music bed that he speaks over create an interactive experience you gotta see and hear in order to believe.

Check out "Build That Wall", tell me this doesn't just take you to another world all on its own.

MolyJam 2012

Holy shit, talk about an amazing experience!

 This past weekend was the Peter Molydeux (@petermolydeux) inspired Gamejam event which took place around the world. The goal of the event was to team up with people of all different backgrounds and to create a game in 48 hours, based on one of the game ideas @petermolydeux has come up with over the last few months.I'm sure that can sound difficult, especially for those of whom making a game is a bacon-wrapped mystery, but I can assure you the reality exceeds any and all expectations you may have had.

There were organized locations all over the world where this gamejam took place. The one I took part in was in Los Angeles at the Next-level Space office, sponsored by the game studio Magic Pixel Games (Shout out to Holden Link, @Holdenlink, for throwing together an amazing event all weekend long). The office was incredibly comfortable, a good thing considering a number of the jammers did not leave the entire 48 hours of the event.

Getting together with my team and working on our title was an amazing learning experience that I will expand on in another post dedicated to the game itself. I really just want to touch on some of the things that occurred to me at this gathering. For starters, walking around and seeing the sheer amount of creativity and dedication is awe-inspiring. To be fair, the ideas presented on @petermolydeux twitter aren't necessarily immediate game ideas, in the traditional sense. And at its core, that is what this event was all about. We can use the term "thinking outside the box", but what surprised me was the realization that there is a 'box' in this industry to begin with.

I remember the aspects of game development that fascinated me and made me want to become a developer myself, and one of those was the concept that anything could be made into a game given the right people and execution. Hearing people discuss the design of their games, both at the event and all over the web, one of the things I noticed is that everyone started their design discussions by trying to create the game using pre-established design methodologies that fit closest to what they perceived the idea to be. Seeing many of these finished products however, we see that so many teams were able to go ahead and break that box, and deliver compelling and interesting game ideas over a 48 hour period.

It's fitting that the symbol for the event was a cartoon Peter Molyneux kissing a green box/cube. I know that the image comes from the tweet that Molyneux said which would go on to inspire Molydeux to create his feux twitter account. However, when I see the logo and that box, I see an event where we are taking the box and kissing it goodbye, if not forever at least for the next 48 hours.

First!

Man, I sure picked the time to finally start a blog. After spending the last 9 months travelling, moving, getting accustomed to a new culture on the other side of the country, and attempting to settle into my industry of choice, now is the time I decide to create a place that showcases aspects of the grand adventure I call my life.

Talk about great timing.

I kept putting this thing off because a part of me thought I would honestly have nothing interesting to put out there. The internet is full of people trying to get people to listen to ‘em, it definitely doesn’t need one more. Then it dawned on me that it doesn’t matter if this does get heard. It can be what I want it to be and I can use it to not just chronicle parts of my life, but help them grow and develop as well. With that being said, I invite you all to come and join me on this new endeavor!

Of course, what can you guys expect to get from this, I’m sure you’re wondering. Well, as someone who is aspiring to become a hot shot Producer in the videogames industry, I’m sure I will have a ton of interesting things to tell. No, I’m not talkin NDA-breaking secrets, just some insight on how my journey in my career field of choice is going. Also, I’ll be sharing some crazy stories of my life. To those who know me, they understand that those tales are well worth the time it takes to listen to them. I hope I don’t disappoint.