The Anonymous Naughty Dog Worker

We introduce minor mechanics and then drop them like they never happened. These mechanics  end up being so one-off and inconsequential that they manage to not stick out  despite only being present in one part of the game. Usually this stuff sticks out, for better or worse. It reflects, well, something about us… that we have hidden how many of our game’s mechanics are, in fact, sort of wasted.

I have no idea how people feel about it or – as an ambitious, “old-school” game designer – how I am meant to feel about it. These are mechanics so one-off and ambient that it’s kind of insane to even ask if anybody has the strength to try and care about them.

What people talk about and care about is the “constant” pushing of the crate-on-wheels which happens too much to even be written about here, like it’s relevant.

Fact: It’s undeniable that these mechanics would lead to moderately unique gameplay scenarios if they were used in more scenarios and in even slightly more complicated ways than they currently are. (I’ll be watching the DLC brainstorming for pitch opportunities for this exact minor shit.) The crate could be used interestingly, too, so it turns out I will talk about it for a second. One of the Scotland shootouts starts in the middle of you pushing a crate. Little do you realise it, but you can push the crate into the firefight to give yourself some advantageous cover, making it into a dynamic tool it never becomes again. 

Now, these other things. They never even mix with the combat or climbing. These are small. And I doubt they will trigger very much imagination when people encounter them again, but I submit that perhaps they should.

1. Carrying a box under water, tapping X to keep yourself from sinking with the weight of the box
2.  (I know you remember using the toy gun. Here’s the unique stuff happening during this moment). Being intended by the game designer to shoot at inanimate objects, not enemies. Being intended to pay actual attention to how inanimate objects react to being shot at. (Seriously, I never once shot at a dangling thing or a pot for the rest of the game, this is the one time it actually wants you to pay attention to this stuff.)
3. Having to take cover so your NPC pal can detonate C4. (I’m going to call this “patient” or “boring” cover-taking. You’re only taking cover here so you can keep progressing through an easy section of a level that kind of plays itself. It’s basically like pushing a button, here. Only happens in the prison breakout. [Now, imagine how often you’d be made to do this this if it were a military squad shooter. Seeing as you’re with an actual “military squad,” in this part of the game, it’s a nice touch.])
4. Having overpowered AI companions who can basically kill everybody for you (Now, this is something that shouldn’t appear in the game again, but this is fine for my article because it will ultimately turn into an argument about why these mechanics should appear only once while albeit starting-off with a little explanation as to why you might think they should get used multiple times)
5. Pick-pocketing (remember the key-card you pull from the waiter’s back pocket?)
6. Being on a time limit (apparently,) and pressing the Triangle button to search through draws, toolboxes, etc, to retrieve something you want to attain quickly. Experiencing the on-screen presence of many distant, circular contextual-action prompts that are simply there to distract you and waste your time while you are searching for the *real* contextual action which will give you the item, (now imagine the same search scenario in a shootout or stealth situation or when….)
7. Avoiding spotlights

Okay, look, these are all the mechanics I’ve been reminded of so far in my 2nd playthrough. So far I’m still at the auction. But I’ve seen enough, felt enough. You’ll be surprised at how much developers forget.

It’s obvious why each individual mechanic is here, isn’t it? Why they get used even that one time? They add a little bit of uniqueness to each section.

Even a little bit of discovery, and I mean discovery that the “player” enjoys after having already played the game. When you restart Uncharted 4’s campaign you’re made to shoot, take cover, climb, carry, look around, etc. in ways that you were never asked to in chapters 10-22. These small things, bizarrely, feel like new things by the time you return to them. They’re novel. And this is how replaying  Uncharted 4 is funner than it would be otherwise. It’s how memorable moments of the early-game don’t get totally “out-done” by the later moments. Sam’s prison breakout, for example, will always feel special because it’s the only part of the game with those “squad game” touches.

I’m imagining a level in the jungle where you have to pickpocket a guard. There’s guards around the place and you have to make sure they don’t see you hovering, in plain sight, around this guard’s back. And the much easier pickpocketing scene back at the auction, in retrospect, feels basically like a tutorial for this. If there’s one thing our players hate, it’s the feeling of “playing a tutorial.” And I start to wonder what it would feel like if the (much easier) auction pick-pocketing sequence was the only pick pocket sequence in the game… it wouldn’t be a tutorial, then, would it? It’d just be a neat thing…

You see why we do some things once?

“Please Let Me Tell The Sad Story of LittleBigPlanet”

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this little opinion piece/story on your page, Video Game Reporter. I hope I can now put this series behind me. You’re giving me this opportunity because you know I will, don’t you?

Article:

Create. Play. Share. LittleBigPlanet once had a flawed, but fair system. You made a level. You uploaded the level. The level would trend on “Cool Levels” and if enough people liked it, it would earn the right to stay there for longer. Media Molecule wanted to give control to the community, wanted players to decide what levels deserved attention, what didn’t.

This probably worked as Media Molecule expected. Great levels got played. Dumb, crappy-looking ones did, too. Most of the Great Levels tended to look really nice and play very boringly (to be honest) but that’s another discussion.

(Personally, this bizarre, shitty level made by some five year old was more fun than 70% of the would-be, “Top LBP levels”.)

Unofficial websites began appearing for LBP, websites that were made for exposing Great Levels because a lot of them were being uploaded to LBP and getting no plays. The websites were there to give Great Creators a chance.

Media Molecule began directly recommending Great Levels in LBP2. They would check out the unofficial websites and recommend the best stuff from them.

Meanwhile on “Cool Levels,” the 100% in-game LBP2 community began showing signs of progressing like some organic “online community” ala 4chan. It started to have stupid memes, trends, jokes, fashions. You began entering levels that were only references to this culture.

Yes, this is an example. An “emo dress-up” craze went viral amongst LBP2’s younger players. Levels full of emo sackboys were in.

They never worked hard on a level but you could tell that the kids of the in-game community were having a lot of fun. They felt connected. While things might not have gone exactly to plan, Media Molecule had succeeded in its goals. It had created a community-world that children loved, something that had emerged from the kids’ collected efforts just as much as it had from Media Molecule’s.

You know those Great Makers I was talking about? Their levels don’t engage with the silly in-game LBP community, never reference it. The Great Creators are older than the children who are into that kind of thing.

Most of them considered LBP’s “Cool Levels” to be broken, frustrating, ruined and filled by cancer. It’s why websites like LBP Central existed in the first place, they were spaces away from the cancer.

When it was time for Sumo Digital to make LBP3, they started hiring some of these Great Makers to help come up with ideas for the game. Cool Levels wasn’t included in the released game. 

I can’t tell how the in-game community is holding up. I can’t tell if it’s alive. Kids still post meme levels but they are the same ones from LBP2. And none of them get played. None of them are able to be popular.”

I know that I come off as a little extreme, here. Please stress – VGR – that I think Sumo Digital did an excellent job with LBP3 and that I’m not even fussed about the launch bugs or the weird new features or any of the other issue-topics that make up the body-arguments of the rest of the community’s LBP3 opinion-pieces. And if it you want, you can remove the whole thing at the end that basically accuses Sumo Digital of removing Cool Levels w/ immature reasoning. I honestly have no idea why Cool Levels is gone. At the same time, I kind of want it in there for a whole bunch of reasons.

Anyway, thanks.

Regards,

Anthony.

A Video Game Is Predicted – 2007

I’m no psychic, kid. But I bet the nature of the next big game has been predicted, that’s right, by moi, yours truly. Making me the source, video game journalist. The source of your life. And I’m about to tell you everything. You’ll be begging for my number when you get a job. You will. But I won’t have, even, a second idea for you.

…..

It’s the future, okay, picture it. You’re playing, say, an FPS. You go from one room to another and see a new texture on the floor.

Throughout the game you see, like, 2,000 kinds of flooring. Mechanically, these 2,000 floors all do the exact same thing, you do everything you do on them., they don’t move, they don’t change. They’re dependable, solid surfaces. They’re all the same.

……

Of course anyone can tell you this. I’m not there yet, just listen.

The arcade game “Donkey Kong,” from the past has only one type of floor.

Unlike the FPS, it has one version of its one floor.

There’s no need for more than one type of ladder or floor because, mechanically, there is only one kind of each. There are two kinds of barrels, though (one hits the oil and produces fire, one doesn’t) thus you see an orange barrel and a blue barrel. It has the visual codes it needs to communicate its gameplay.

You can’t make beautiful landscapes in the majority of the future’s games without making millions of textures that are unneeded for communicating how the actual game works.

 The one million or so textures will just be different “visual” versions of one thing… and we will “see” or “feel” them as one thing while playing.  The visuals might “tell a story” or “set a scene” but they will be literally meaningless otherwise.

Thankfully, there is one 3D game that inspires change. One that, remarkably, has zero pointless textures. I’m talking about the next massively successful, yet critically under-appreciated games of the decade, kid. 

Every one of its visual details has a reason to exist. More than that, every one of those details needs to exist for the game to “work” in the first place. It uses no more than it needs. A first for 3D gaming. And you can feel how good this is, just playing it, looking at it. Everything you see is in fact real.

Gamers over 20 don’t know how to feel about the game. This is the nature of it, kid. It’s appreciated for the deep and insane whatever-system that justifies the visuals it has. But nobody brings up the visuals thing.

Imagine if any other famous 3D game used only the textures it needed to run its gameplay systems. Its experience would be ruined. Zelda would be the least-damaged since things like grass and stones would still get to be there. This is the only game that would survive entirely. That’s because its game mechanics actually build (or “necessitate”) all its visuals, its look, the environment that you see on the screen.

Even its dynamic lighting system, which will doubtlessly have varying levels of darkness/shadow, will have a point to it. I think you’ll feel motivated into paying close attention to those different shades for some reason. You’ll do smart things involving the light. Failing to do this will have consequences.

Maybe some of the visuals will be pointless, just a few.

Do you believe me?

 

Do You Remember How It Felt?

Some people wonder what the deal is with console wars so they ask about them on forums. It’s just one of the many things people introspect about on forums. Answers tend to be something like this:

“Engaging in a console war is like barracking for a sports team. It adds a personal quality to E3. It gives you a platform to shit-talk on, which is great fun.”

In every PS2 exclusive title I sensed the presence of an intelligent force. It was in all of them. It connected them. It was the force that begetted them. I never tried to identify what the force was. If I was 23 at that time, I would not have been able to feel it, it was something only detectable by children. The force made statements in the form of video games. Statements that were about playing, about experiencing the media of “Video Games,” about what the ideal feeling of “playing” was.

(Does anybody else remember the way staring at the screenshots and names on the back of a console box felt so… good? Have you noticed that it doesn’t feel good anymore?)

While “Sony” could’ve been this force’s name, it wasn’t. Sony was just a word on my PS2’s box. The force was… thematic. The force was a spirit, the sum of the PS2’s parts. Sony has been trying to depict this force for a long time. You see it on console menus, you hear it in the weird bootup sounds.

Idea: Maybe this force is what Sony thought it was trying to depict when it invented “Polygon Man,” for the PS1, a strange, digital monster that didn’t work as a “mascot,”  and so was scrapped.

Microsoft becoming the one and only game maker was a scenario synonymous with the great death of gaming where gaming itself would begin lying to me about the nature of “play” via left-handed games; Microsoft felt like the real thing that’s depicted above, a monster of a force, Sony should have presented that Polygon Man character as The Enemy rather than as itself. I felt it, without picturing it, whenever an Xbox-owning friend said, “PS2 games suck.” PS2 games were emotional. PS2 games valued human aspects of me that Xbox fans thought weren’t worth valuing. I’d feel the spiritual bankruptcy of the Xbox’s force.

I’ve grown up. Sony’s  would-be”good force” is now just a foggy myth to me. I have to recall how I felt, 10 years go, to know about it at all.

The presence of Sony’s force began to dissapear (without me consciously noticing) when I started using a broadband internet connection. I believe that the internet ate that force. All of the deep, strange cultural forces I was sensitive to as a child in the early 2000’s were eaten. Their energy went.

Polygon Man is only put together by himself – that is his story. He is 3D technology flexing its own scary power, coming to life, dissembling out of Crash Bandicoot or Koola World and reforming, self-aware, as a being. Thematically, this is an outdated narrative. The internet is far greater technology, it’s far more self-aware. It has eaten his force and the meaning I associate with Polygon Man.

The same thing will happen to the internet. Its force will be eaten. It won’t feel the same.

Nostalgia is the feeling of these bygone forces. That is why nostalgia is not easy to find. We often recognise old things and pretend that the feeling of that equals nostalgia. Real nostalgia invokes the dead, attunes us with energies that shouldn’t still be findable.