Hard to believe the year's almost over. I've got Assassin's Creed II still to play, and then that's probably it, even though there are several intriguing games I missed from 2009. The year-end period is always hectic and exciting, this year more than most. But there's always time to spotlight some blog posts that are worth reading.
-Ben Abraham's Permanent Death series is now available in collected form. Permanent Death - The Complete Saga is a 341-page PDF, complete with screenshots on every page, and a foreword by Clint Hocking. It's a great package, wonderfully presented, and I know it was a labor of love. I'm sure there would be all kinds of legal thorny issues involved with trying to profit off of this, but if you enjoy it there's no reason you can't chip in to fly Ben to GDC.
-Chris Dahlen's best of the decade list turns into a paean to Valve, which the company richly deserves. I agree with everything he says, and I would add that Valve seems to have internal quality-control standards that they ought to be sharing with other companies. Not only has the company never released a bad game, but they've also never released a game before it was ready, and when the waits for their games have seemed interminable, they have always also been justified by the end product. I have to think that's due to the corporate culture as much as anything.
-I enjoyed Brandon Sheffield's interview with Tetsu Takahashi about localizing Western games for the Japanese market on its own merits, but mostly I appreciated it alerting me to Ratchet's giant eyebrows in Japan.
-Jorge at Experience Points writes about the trend of setpieces in games, which replaces continuous, repetitive gameplay segments with shorter, self-contained, and scripted scenes. The setpiece approach is one I always like, even if it does result in shorter single-player campaigns. Also interesting to note is that watching just a minute-long clip of Uncharted 2 provokes an uncontrollable urge to play Uncharted 2.
-I liked a recent Hardcasual post titled "Samus Checks Map Again," but you should also read Chris Dahlen's Edge column about Hardcasual. Strangely, it lacks any mention of my publicly shaming them into relaunching the site last year.
-Tom Armitage pulls a lengthy Dave Eggers quote about the importance of creating art, and the pernicious influence of the critic. I can't argue the substantive argument, that sometimes you should put your nuts on the tracks and have the courage to create something. But there's always an undercurrent to comments like this that criticism serves no useful role, which I don't agree with. More to the point, I get the sense that somebody said something mean about something Dave Eggers did, and rather than deal with it he wants to invalidate the person's right to say it. Especially the part about "do not dismiss a book until you have written one," and so on -- that is the laziest, most kneejerk defense against criticism that I have ever read, and I would have thought that Dave Eggers was too smart to make it. Presumably you're allowed to praise a book even if you haven't ever written one, and specifically Dave Eggers' books.
Showing posts with label Valve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valve. Show all posts
Friday, December 04, 2009
Thursday, December 11, 2008
A question of motive
Between the Mirror's Edge conversation* and some recent shots across the bow of the Serious Games Journalist Network of Pretension, I've seen a couple of people mention that reviewers and gamers need to be considering more seriously the intentions of a game's developers. My gut reaction is to say "No we don't" and move on, but I'm incapable of letting this sort of thing go. Plus, upon further inspection, I don't think it's all that simple. Only mostly that simple.
Whether we're talking about books, movies, or games, in general I don't put much stock in authorial intent. I think my distaste stems from way too many encounters with sloppy writers who wanted to blame their own shortcomings on their readers. It is true that sometimes a writer might be perfectly clear in his meaning, and run up against a stubborn, uneducated reader who doesn't know or care what words mean, and disdains those who do. But that's a rare case -- sort of like all those fat people who claim that they have a glandular problem just because somebody, somewhere, actually does.**
The truth of the matter is that if a reader doesn't understand what you wrote, it's almost certainly because you did a bad job writing it. You chose vague words. Your grammar was careless. Your syntax was confused. If someone responds to something you wrote, having derived a wholly different meaning than what you intended, then it's a sign that you didn't do the best job you could have -- not that the reader was an idiot. And yes, this is extremely hard to remember when somebody slams your writing. That's all the more reason to keep it in mind when we talk about a developer's intent.
So, as I said, I'm not terribly interested in what a developer was trying to do. I care about what they did. Even trying to read interviews in order to uncover their intentions doesn't seem all that valuable, because I'm willing to bet that they intended to make a good game. Should they get points for that? Trying to consider any factors other than the direct gameplay experience seems to lead in a direction I don't want to go. We should be talking about what works and what doesn't, and, more importantly, what playing this game is like. I can't read the developers' minds, but I can play their game.
Still, this is a bit of a straw man. The side of the argument that makes sense to me is that a developer sets out to make a specific type of game, and it's nonsensical to review their product as though it were something else. For example, talking about Left 4 Dead as though the single-player mode were its top priority is probably not a great idea (but I certainly wouldn't see anything wrong with bringing up the strengths and weaknesses of the AI teammates).
Here's the thing: If the developers did their job right, then you don't need to know what they intended, because it will all be right there in the game. You don't need to know, going in, that Valve was trying to make a multiplayer shooter. Every design choice they made underlines that fact. Hell, maybe they were trying to make the best single-player shooter ever, botched it, and ended up with this sweet team-based shooter instead.
That's why, when I answered Shawn Elliott's questions last week, I said that I try to answer these questions in my reviews: "How do the game's apparent goals seem to mesh or conflict with its execution? What is this game trying to say?" I specified "game" and not "developers," because a game can speak for itself. Once it's finished and shipped, it doesn't belong to the developers anymore. It belongs to the players.
*No, this doesn't count as a mention of Mirror's Edge!
**Oh my god, I didn't just.
Whether we're talking about books, movies, or games, in general I don't put much stock in authorial intent. I think my distaste stems from way too many encounters with sloppy writers who wanted to blame their own shortcomings on their readers. It is true that sometimes a writer might be perfectly clear in his meaning, and run up against a stubborn, uneducated reader who doesn't know or care what words mean, and disdains those who do. But that's a rare case -- sort of like all those fat people who claim that they have a glandular problem just because somebody, somewhere, actually does.**
The truth of the matter is that if a reader doesn't understand what you wrote, it's almost certainly because you did a bad job writing it. You chose vague words. Your grammar was careless. Your syntax was confused. If someone responds to something you wrote, having derived a wholly different meaning than what you intended, then it's a sign that you didn't do the best job you could have -- not that the reader was an idiot. And yes, this is extremely hard to remember when somebody slams your writing. That's all the more reason to keep it in mind when we talk about a developer's intent.
So, as I said, I'm not terribly interested in what a developer was trying to do. I care about what they did. Even trying to read interviews in order to uncover their intentions doesn't seem all that valuable, because I'm willing to bet that they intended to make a good game. Should they get points for that? Trying to consider any factors other than the direct gameplay experience seems to lead in a direction I don't want to go. We should be talking about what works and what doesn't, and, more importantly, what playing this game is like. I can't read the developers' minds, but I can play their game.
Still, this is a bit of a straw man. The side of the argument that makes sense to me is that a developer sets out to make a specific type of game, and it's nonsensical to review their product as though it were something else. For example, talking about Left 4 Dead as though the single-player mode were its top priority is probably not a great idea (but I certainly wouldn't see anything wrong with bringing up the strengths and weaknesses of the AI teammates).
Here's the thing: If the developers did their job right, then you don't need to know what they intended, because it will all be right there in the game. You don't need to know, going in, that Valve was trying to make a multiplayer shooter. Every design choice they made underlines that fact. Hell, maybe they were trying to make the best single-player shooter ever, botched it, and ended up with this sweet team-based shooter instead.
That's why, when I answered Shawn Elliott's questions last week, I said that I try to answer these questions in my reviews: "How do the game's apparent goals seem to mesh or conflict with its execution? What is this game trying to say?" I specified "game" and not "developers," because a game can speak for itself. Once it's finished and shipped, it doesn't belong to the developers anymore. It belongs to the players.
*No, this doesn't count as a mention of Mirror's Edge!
**Oh my god, I didn't just.
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