Or, How My BFF Backstabbed Me

Remember when Tetris Friends and I used to be best buddies? Well, now there's a sequel, and things just got S-blocky.

Tetris: Your New BFF

Bitmob is a website started by that 1up guy, Dan Hsu, which promotes community blogging about video games. The other day, I posted my Don't Look Back article, which was one of six featured in their weekly spotlight. Today, however, I've posted an article exclusive to Bitmob, because I simply don't like double posting. So, if you're interested in reading about my opinion on the fantastic Tetris Friends, then check it out, called Tetris: Your new BFF.

Enacting Experience Part 3: Don't Look Back

This is the third part and final part in a series on Enacting Experience. The first part, on It's a Nice Day Today, may be read here. The second part, on Don't Shoot the Puppy!, may be read here.

People debate whether or not video games are art. Honestly, it's a ridiculous question. I define art as anything that evokes emotion or provokes thought from the audience. Whether or not the creation of video games is an art form is equally debated. I believe that an art form is any medium in which artists, through inspiration, subconscious feeling, and a series of decisions, create works which can offer the evoking of emotion or provoking of thought from an audience.

As an aside, I will note that art is definitely not always intended to affect others; many people create things for themselves or at least lack any intent to evoke emotion/provoke thought. Art is also highly subjective. What may not affect one person may, to another, present a paradigm shift in life values. Who's to say? Artists can control the effect of their works only so much. Because of the inherent subjectivity of art, an artists intention with his or her work is difficult to define, excepting specific statement from the him or her. Art will be perceived as it will.

I think I've finally discovered the reason for all of the questioning behind the "are video games art" debate. There is an important distinction between what a medium does achieve and what it can achieve. Just because video games as they are commonly offered often do not evoke emotion does not mean the medium cannot evoke emotion.

The established ultimatum that games need to be fun has blinded us to the other emotions that games can evoke and the other qualities they can possess. So we look at games and ask, "on a scale of 1 to 10, how fun is this here video game?" And this question almost always comes first, before we ever ask "how is this game affecting me emotionally?" or "what is this game teaching me?"

It's a matter of status-quo. Publishers are trying to please the media and to make money, the media is trying to please the gamers, and the gamers are trying to please. . .themselves? What is for sure is that professional developers have a budget and have to please everyone, and if everyone thinks that fun and graphics are what makes a game "good" and what makes a game sell, then really, what choice do they have? With every layer of the video game strata preoccupied with pleasing the norms, not many have the luxury nor time to worry about the other potential emotional qualities of games, that is, save for the independent developers.

Terry Cavanagh of Distractionware brings us a beautiful game called Don't Look Back, a game that I feel is an ideal exemplifier of gameplay as a means of evoking emotion and, for that matter, provoking thought.

Before you read on, I highly recommended you play through the game, which can be played online or downloaded.

Like the brilliant You Have to Burn the Rope before it, or more similarly, Don't Shoot the Puppy!, Don't Look Back gives instruction in its title. If Metal Gear Solid is considered to be the cinema of video games, Don't Look Back must be its poetry. Titles in poetry are often pivotal to the understanding of a poem, even at the most basic level explaining the subject of the poem or cuing in readers on the setting or location. Neversoft's Gun is one example of an effective video game title that comes to mind . The title says it all, giving players a hint of not only the game's subject-matter but also what the gameplay might involve. Gun as a title may additionally imply the player-character's situation in the game world and the necessity of resorting to lethal action.

The title Don't Look Back has multiple meanings, explaining not only the game's rules but also, metaphorically, its messages. In an interview with GameCritics, Cavanagh explains that partial inspiration for Don't Look Back came from the greek mythological story of Orpheus, who traveled to the underworld to rescue and revive his deceased wife, Eurydice, but broke the rule of doing so and caused her to disappear forever by turning to look back at her before he was allowed. Similarly, once players retreive their wife in Don't Look Back, turning back will cause her to disappear. When players return to the grave, they find themselves already standing there, and both the player-character (who we'll call Orpheus for simplicity) and his wife disappear together.

To enact experience is to meld the content of something with the experiencing of it. The concept of "not looking back" functions in two ways: one, as a rule of the game, and two, metaphorically, a message about moving on. To me, the game symbolizes moving forward. Orpheus's descent into the abyss is a journey of mourning. As Cavanagh explains, Orpheus never physically leaves the grave, but has taken a fantastical journey, mentally and emotionally. His return trip to the grave, his wife following along, is a passage of reconcilement, of moving onward. The difficult descent, however, was first necessary to mourn his loss. When the player and the wife return to the grave, Orpheus's journey-self and his wife disappear, leaving the new Orpheus standing, having grieved and moved onward from his wife's passing. In this way, the game is a mourning process for Orpheus, allowing Orpheus to free his wife and to free himself.

What is so beautiful about this game is that its title, rules, and meaning all function as a single whole, each point reinforcing the others. Only in a video game does a person or audience have the opportunity to look back, and not only look back, but have that action support a message and theme of moving onward. The game's message is strong and impactful via the very simple gameplay rule mirroring it.

Enacting Experience Part 2: Don't Shoot the Puppy!

This is the second article in my three part series on Enacting Experience. Read the first article, on It's a Nice Day Today, here.

Don't Shoot the Puppy!, by Aragagg, is an exercise in either frustration or patience, depending upon your temperament. Fifteen levels of puppy-hopping molasses await players in their quest to not shoot the puppy. With its twitch-triggered Anti-Air Cannon and myriad of trickery, Don't Shoot the Puppy! aims to test players' patience and maybe show them something a little different of game design as well.

The gameplay concept of "non-interaction" isn't entirely new; not to mention others, the brilliant Warcraft III mod, Don't Move the Tauren, had previously explored this "do nothing" reversal of gameplay, albeit in a psychologically-driven multiplayer setting. Regardless, Aragagg experiments admirably with non-interactivity. By employing clever (evil) tricks and toying with the patience of players, Aragagg creates an interesting emotional experience.

Players have two options in Don't Shoot the Puppy!:

1. Shoot the Puppy.
2. Don't Shoot the Puppy.

Shooting the Puppy is the easier of the two by far. But since the game's title explicitly tells players one rule, and the game is governed by that sole rule, the adherence to which is necessary for completion, players are driven towards not shooting the puppy; it's a challenge. There is also something to be said for the humor of the game; the utter ridiculousness of the situation is an additional force compelling players to endure the puppy's harsh challenges. And endure players must. Assuming they're actually paying attention to the game, which I believe the humor goes a long way towards capturing, players are forced to sit, watch, and wait. The slightest budge of the mouse, the simplest tap of a key, and the puppy is disintegrated. Often, this is a mistake. Therefore, not only must players not shoot the puppy, they must specifically strive to not shoot it.

Caution and patience are the name of the game. Which is interesting when you think about it. Perhaps non-interactivity is a mislabel. Though players do not interact physically using controls (except when they do shoot the puppy), they are required to interact mentally and emotionally. The game responds to their patience via the reward of completion.

Aside from simply waiting, Don't Shoot the Puppy! tries several tricks on players to get them to lose. Each time the puppy is shot, players are returned to the first level. One of my favorite levels is 5, where the normally smiley-face marked signpost now reads "Eternal Suffering," pointing to the left in the direction the puppy is walking. This psychological trick is extremely simple, not to mention hilarious, but it also has great potential for actual emotional impact. What's more important: yhat you win the game, or that you save the puppy from endless turmoil?

 Levels 3 and 12 trick players in another way: logically. In level 3, when players click play, an Ad pops-up, covering the game. Naturally, players move their mouse to the big X button to close the Ad, only to found they've been duped. Or at least I did. It was a good laugh, too. Level 12 is even more devious. After players press play, the level delays starting for a good while. Worst of all, the play button remains, leaving players to believe they either missed the button or something glitched. They thought wrong.

Restarting the game from the beginning can be trying. Don't Shoot the Puppy! is an opportunity for either patience or aggression. In this way, the game emulates life, offering the practice of a real and necessary life skill, waiting, and a real emotion, patience. It is up to players to decide how they're going to react to the game. Like a consequence-less microcosm for life events, players can either become angry or they can remain calm. The game shows how easy it can be to twitch-react according to frustration, like snapping your fingers, revealing to players just how quickly they can become angry. For those of you who own dogs, this may sound familiar.

Oppositely, players may wait. They may wait and watch and be patient with the puppy. It's not the puppy's fault it has narcolepsy. The game does go to lengths to aggravate players, attempting to trick them several times aside from simply waiting for the puppy to leave the screen. But all this does is push the point further; how patient can you be?

This is where enacting experience comes in. The gameplay mechanics, one being shooting the puppy, the other being not, match the emotions derived from the experience. To beat the game, players must wait, act upon nothing. But to lose, players must only tap the mouse. There is an implicit message that Don't Shoot the Puppy! is sending: it is better to be patient, to practice waiting, than it is to act violently.

Enacting Experience Part 1: It's a Nice Day Today

This is the first part of a three part article series about the use of "enacting experience" as exampled in three Flash games. The concept of enacting experience comes from the world of poetry and describes how the experience of something matches it's content.

This may be the most revelatory game you've ever played. The title is God Damn It's a Nice Fucking Day Today. And let me tell you, it's a tapestry of pure genius.

Indie games, and, in particular, Flash games, are in a very unique position in the game industry. Flash games hold their own little plane of existence in game design. Because Flash is a relatively accessible way to create games, and games that have potential for mass audiences, many independent designers are taking advantage of the software to create some truly incredible games. More so, often unburdened by the weight of publishing financing, Flash developers have a beautiful opportunity to freely explore a game's design. Whereas mass-industry developers are bound by the limitations of delivering mind-blowing graphics, staying under-budget, meeting milestones, and everything else that comes with the fish basket, Flash developers have the freedom to experiment with their design, experiment with those things unsuitable for the finicky market and experiment with what matters most in video games: the experience (thank you Jesse Schell).

I'm not going to enter a long exposition on the game industry right now, but I will say a few words about a game from Scottmale24 and conceived by Prguitarman, It's a Nice Day Today. Naturally, please play the game first, or go outside. It's good for you.

It's a Nice Day Today excels, specifically, as a video game. After playing for 30 seconds, a message comes on screen: "Why aren't you outside? Go outside or the sun will fucking rape your shit." This is paired with a Newgrounds Medal: "Failure to Communicate." This is convention-breaking awesome on so many levels, just like a chocolate layered cake. It's a Nice Day Today straight-up Falcon-knees the idea that Achievements, Trophies, Medals, pick your lingo, have to be used as rewards for good behavior or skill. Quite oppositely, the message overlay and medal blatantly tell players that they fail at life. By continuing to play the game, players are just. not. getting. it.

The gameplay, angrily sun-laser-nuking every house in sight, perfectly matches the agressive message of the game. It's called "enacting experience." A concept I learned from studying the writing of poetry, enacting experience is a technique used to match the content of a poem with its message and/or meaning: you enact the experience. Rhyme, rhythm, sytanx, line breaks, consoance, and more elusively definable aspects of poetry can be used in concordance with the meaning of a poem to emphasize its overall effect, and ultimately, the reader's experience.

It's a Nice Day Today is functioning with the same technique. It's not a very nice day at all, not any more; it's an angry day, an angry, angry day. You play the sun with the sole objective (and capability) to violently burn every house to the ground, exposing stick-figures to the glory of your wrath (or, what could have been your brilliance). Where enacting experience comes in is the style of message. The game's author could have easily left out the message, left out the medal, providing the gameplay alone and not its meta counter-part. However, what players are given is a blatant, threatening message, telling players that their continuing of play is in direct opposition to the game's intentions. This message of pure gundanium not only matches the aggressive gameplay, but rockets the player experience astro-fucking-nomically. It's like "with our forces combined" creating Captain Planet. It's like when two sounds waves of equal frequency meet to form a single wave louder than both simply added. The result is greater than the sum of its parts.

As a video game, It's a Nice Day Today uses several techniques to be super-effective. Players are the ones who expose the message in the first place and who personally experience it. Scottmale24 and Prguitarman are the ones who created the game (because they had a point to prove), but players are the ones in control. They are able to exit their browser, stand up from their computers, and walk outdoors. Really, that counts as control. It's a Nice Day Today breaks the fourth wall in the hopes that players might actually listen. What is interesting is that It's a Nice Day Today makes no attempt to positively motivate nor positively inspire players to go outdoors; its means are command and fear. An alternative game could have showed the sun in all its splendor, showed a happy picnic or swim at the ocean. But would that have been as effective? It's impossible to say, but what we can say is that It's a Nice Day Today tries its darndest to inspire people to go outside, using their own lack of concern and lazyness against them, with the message, as a second gut-punch. Rather than show, the game tells players: your current actions are preventing you from enjoying the nice outside.

There's the genius, right there. It's a game. You're the one still playing the game. You're the one not outside. Your specific action of playing the game, so chastised by that very game, is the simultaneous inaction of being outside.

The Witcher: VERSUS!

The Witcher: Duel Mail was first launched a few months ago. But that was just a beta. Today, CDProjekt and one2tribe launched The Witcher: VERSUS!, the full-release version of the originally titled Duel Mail. Also, everything from the beta was reset, so everyone has to restart their characters from scratch. I played Duel Mail when it was first released; in fact, I was rather obsessed with it. And for good reason. The game plays itself.

The Witcher: VERSUS! is a free, in-browser, flash-based multi-player game. The characters and mechanics are, naturally, all drawn from CDProjeckts 2007 PC title, The Witcher. The gameplay, however, is anything but. Players choose to play as one of three character classes: a witcher, a sorceress, or a frightener. From then on out, gameplay revolves around setting up one-on-one duels with other players. Below is a screenshot of the primary menu screen.

The left column is a list of duels that have taken place. The middle column is challenges I've either sent or received. And the top right is stats on my character. Players can both initiate duels or accept challenges initiated by other players. Actual duels function similarly to rock-paper-scissors. Players fill slots in two separate bars with sequences of attack and defense maneuvers. Skills are split into four types: strong, fast, magic, and special. Generally speaking, each type is a counter to itself. Strong-type attacks will be blocked by strong-type defense, fast-attacks by fast-type defense, and so on. As characters gain levels, though, skill points can be allocated to upgrade current skills or purchase new ones. New skills offer special abilities, passive buffs, and additional damage or defense bonuses. Half of playing this game well is carefully planning your path down the four skills trees. The other half to winning is predicting your opponent's moves.

The battle screen.

Once the attack/defense sequences are slotted, players push "Fight!" to initiate the duel. If you have accepted a challenge, the duel will play-out immediately, showing with fairly impressive graphical representation, the duel and thereafter the results. Watching is intense, to say the least. Characters take turns attacking and defending in the sequence order previously arranged. Nothing is real-time. "Everything must be planned beforehand," as the loading screen often prompts. So much of winning depends on guessing what you're opponent will do and hoping that your respective battle sequences pan out in your favor. Winning is glorious. Your opponent dies, and suddenly you come back to your main screen where you discover you've gained a level. Losing, on the other hand, is the very definition of disappointing, especially when you realize your win/loss count is being tracked for all to see. My win/loss record stays at a fairly consistent 50/50 ratio.

The best part of the entire VERSUS! experience is that it plays itself. Or at least that's how it feels. When you challenge an opponent, the duel is stored away until the opponent accepts your challenge. When the challenge returns with the results, it appears in the left-hand bar as a question mark, teasing you with a video of the duel. But the downtime after challenging an opponent is extremely exciting. You can go off, do homework, mow your lawn, whatever. And all the while you know that, when you return, one of your challenges will have been accepted. So the game keeps itself on your mind, often, if your on the Internet already, begging you to compulsively check your challenge results. And so begins the cycle of Internet game addiction. However, with the whole "our game plays itself when your not here" aspect, The Witcher: VERSUS! manages to remain fun, addictive, and minimally time consuming. That's what I call good game design.

The Witcher: Versus! is a very well executed game, especially considering it was made with flash. It's seriously fun and you should check it out asap.

Google is Alive

Just when I was planning on writing a series of posts concerning Internet games, here comes Google and launches a brand new web browser game. Google Lively was both announced and launched (as a beta) today. Lively is a free, in-browser, avatar-based chat service. And it is really cool.

You may notice a new addition to Invisible Studio's sidebar today, our own Google Lively room. I'll be in and out and feel free to drop in to talk about whatever, whenever.

But back to Google Lively. The service is really quite impressive. Users assume their own avatars, enter rooms wherein inhabit other avatars, and chat like we have since 1999. Essentially, Google Lively adds a graphical-user-interface to the standard chat system. Its been before, Sulake's Habbo being a good example. But where Google excels is popularity. Already, there are likely thousands using the Lively service. And for good reason; Lively is an excellently executed program. The interface is clean, easy to use, even intuitive. Which, for Google's intended audience, is highly necessary.

It's Alive

Customizing your avatar initially seems quite limited. But that's before you realize there's a catalog filled with a wide selection of apparel. Your avatar can be personalized pretty well, which is important for an avatar-based chat service. Aside from text chatting, users can speak to each other visually using emote animations. The animations themselves are quite expressive as well, exaggerated body signals. My personal favorite is "speak no evil."

Anyone can create a room and customize it how they please. The catalog also has quite a few furniture pieces. Users choose from a small set of "shells" off which to base their room, and go crazy from there. Rooms can be outfitted with furniture, fish tanks, plants, tv screens, and picture frames, the latter two of which can be embedded with pictures or youtube videos. Any object can also be given a hyperlink.

Google Lively is really a fun service. If you're going to be chatting anyway, and your computer and Internet connection can handle it, why not chat with a cool avatar in a room designed by yourself. The service is actually quite similar to what PlayStation 3's Home will be later this year.

All of this is to say that Internet gaming is becoming bigger all the time. In-browser games are the new fad. Look at Battlefield: Heroes, Legions: Fallen Empire, both of these are complex 3D games that play in your Firefox browser. The prospect of triple-A, in-browser games is attractive. Its easy, generally free, and from what we've got so far, fun. And they will keep on coming; the rush has started.

images from google and affordable housing