(este artigo foi originalmente publicado no site oitobits  )

A grande diferença entre videojogos e outras formas de entretenimento audiovisual é a sua interatividade e, mais ainda, a agência que o jogador tem sobre a ação. Mesmo nas tentativas mais elaboradas de implementar interatividade em séries de tv (em casos como free spirit, you vs the wild, black mirror bandersnatch), a interatividade resume-se a uma escolha múltipla que nos leva à secção seguinte de conteúdo pré gravado. Por norma, em videojogos, mesmo nos mais lineares, o controlo é permanente: mesmo havendo uma narrativa pré definida, cabe aos jogadores tomar decisões de segundo a segundo que, apesar de conduzirem à mesma conclusão, podem ser vastamente diferentes entre jogadores.

Para seguir em frente, olhemos para trás.

Scott Rigby, Doutorado em psicologia social e clínica pela Universidade de Rochester e co fundador da companhia Immersyve, uma empresa dedicada a estudar o apelo psicológico do entretenimento digital, descreve três fatores base que nos fazem querer jogar: Competência, Autonomia, e Afinidade ou conexão.

Competência, o que sentimos quando vencemos um boss, ou passamos um nível.

Autonomia, o desejo de ser independente e ter controlo sobre as nossas ações.

Afinidade, a necessidade de nos conectarmos com os outros, de sentir que a nossa presença interessa.

Esta componente social sempre esteve presente no espaço dos videojogos: nas arcadas; quando os amigos se juntavam em casa daquele que tinha a consola; quando havia filas de crianças agarradas aos gameboys, a trocar pokémons, ou a levar computadores inteiros para casa de um amigo para jogar em LAN.

Mas como tantas outras tecnologias, a disseminação da internet veio mudar a paisagem. Com o aparecimento da playstation 3 e Xbox 360 em 2006, as consolas juntaram-se a um universo que os jogadores de PC já conheciam, os jogos multi-jogador online. A moda e o fascínio pela jogabilidade a longa distância aliada ao facto das consolas serem o modo mais comum de jogar uma enorme variedade de títulos para quem não está disposto a investir num PC para gaming levou a uma aparente redução dos modos de multi-jogador local durante os anos altos destas consolas. Este fenómeno foi acompanhado pelo aumento de popularidade do youtube, que surgiu um ano antes. De repente gravar jogos e pôr os vídeos online tornou-se uma possibilidade e daí nasceram uma série de géneros de conteúdo: let’s plays, análises vídeo, paródias. O consumo de videojogos sem a parte de jogar propriamente dita passou a fazer parte do ecossistema. Para as companhias, vídeos com os seus jogos são uma oportunidade para publicidade, para os criadores deste tipo de conteúdo uma chance para criar uma comunidade com interesses semelhantes e até lucrar com isso, para os espetadores entretenimento dirigido aos seus interesses específicos.

Porém, um aspeto inerente a playthroughs e vídeos semelhantes é a remoção da componente interativa do meio, tornando-se equivalente a ver futebol na tv mas não jogar. Da mesma forma, milhões de pessoas vêm videojogos a serem jogados online.

Este meio com o qual estávamos, enquanto jogadores, habituados a interagir ativamente, mesmo que apenas sentados no sofá ao lado de um amigo passou a ser consumido de forma passiva, à distância, sem interação da nossa parte. No máximo, secções de comentários permitem uma interação à posteriori que resulta mais numa reação do que numa interação entre duas pessoas.

Mas o limite das secções de comentários não se manteve por muito tempo. Sentiu-se a necessidade de repor a interatividade que tanto distingue este meio.

A resposta ao porquê desta realidade parece-me bastante simples — como tantas outras atividades humanas, o centro da questão é a sociabilidade, a interação com outros seres humanos. A tal Afinidade de que o Dr. Rigby fala requer um contacto mais imediato, é preciso haver uma reação à nossa ação para que esta conexão social se estabeleça.

É aí que o site Twitch.tv, na altura justin.tv surge, trazendo consigo o começo da ideia de streaming em direto de diferentes tipos de conteúdo. Não demorou muito até a moda que vinha a crescer no youtube, os vídeos de playthroughs de videojogos, passar para o formato de live streaming. A grande força da Twitch é precisamente o poder do direto, a interação imediata entre espectador e criador, neste caso jogador. Através do chat em directo é possível criar uma conversa em tempo real, a conexão está estabelecida. No entanto, surgem duas novas questões. O que acontece quando de um lado está uma pessoa a jogar e do outro milhares a falar? E como é que os espectadores passam a ser, mais que isso, participantes ativos?

Chegamos então à resposta, integração dos jogos na Twitch. Aliás, chegamos ao ano de 2014, um ano antes da integração na Twitch propriamente dita, quando o canal Twitch Plays Pokémon começou uma experiência. Através da função de mensagens do Twitch, eram os espectadores que tomavam as decisões do protagonista do jogo. Durante 16 dias, 9 horas e 55 minutos, espectadores de todo o mundo deram comandos ao jogo na esperança de avançar até ao final. Porém o resultado era frequentemente que o personagem andasse às voltas sem fazer absolutamente nada (mais ou menos como nesta imagem)

Há mais detalhes para explorar sobre este acontecimento mas isso requer um artigo individual.

O ponto que aqui importa é esta procura pela interatividade. A Twitch estima que ao todo mais de 1.6 milhões de pessoas participaram no jogo com um máximo de 121 mil pessoas em simultâneo, e um total de 55 milhões de espectadores.

Agora, porque é que 121 mil pessoas tentariam controlar o mesmo jogo ao mesmo tempo? A resposta parece-me surpreendentemente simples — porque é divertido, porque preenche as três necessidades de que o Dr. Rigby fala. Competência, Autonomia, e Conexão. Mais do que ver ou jogar um jogo, é o aspeto social que leva as pessoas ao site da twitch. É a mesma razão pela qual no advento das consolas Playstation 3 e Xbox 360, quando de repente todos os jogos tinham multi-jogador online, os jogadores se queixavam da falta de jogos com modos multi-jogador local.

Ainda no final de 2014 a companhia Jackbox games, aprendendo com a dinâmica que surgiu na Twitch e sites semelhantes, implementou a possibilidade de qualquer pessoa com uma ligação à internet participar nos seus jogos através do site jackbox.tv, fosse como jogador principal ou membro da audiência.

Nos anos que se seguiram mais uma dezena de jogos apareceram com diferentes tipos de interação através da Twitch ou de aplicações externas, mas talvez nenhum compreenda e imite tão bem a dinâmica social de jogar com outras pessoas na mesma sala do que o jogo Dead Cells, produzido pela Desenvolvedora francesa Motion Twin.

Dead Cells é um roguelike em que os jogadores avançam por uma série de níveis construídos aleatoriamente e têm à sua disposição uma série de itens randomizados.

Cada vez que se joga a experiência é diferente. Este tipo de jogo já é popular nas plataformas de Live streaming precisamente pela sua novidade constante, mas a Motion Twin foi mais longe.

Basta um clique para ativar o modo de stream no jogo e qualquer pessoa que veja a stream pode interagir e alterar o jogo, desde ter um espectador encarregue de curar o jogador principal, ou o caminho a tomar pelos níveis ser decidido por votos, bosses controlados por espectadores, alterar níveis com novas dificuldades e características especiais, escolher que qualidades do personagens melhorar, até ajudar a dar dano a certos itens ao escrever onomatopeias no chat como “bim, bang puff”.

Tudo isto, feito diretamente no chat da Twitch, garante uma interação mais imediata e real do que deixar o irmão mais novo agarrar num comando desligado para o fazer acreditar que está a jogar.

As ferramentas de integração não só permitem enaltecer o aspeto social do jogo, como, ao oferecerem a possibilidade de tanta interação, assegurar que para o jogador principal o jogo continua uma experiência fresca e para os espectadores/participantes o factor entretenimento continua novo e relevante, criando um loop de entretenimento para os envolvidos e, claro, mais tempo de exposição para o jogo.

Numa entrevista de desenvolvedores da Twitch com Steve Filgby, gestor de Marketing da Motion twin, este comenta a integração do Dead Cells na Twitch. “O objectivo da integração é criar um novo tipo de jogabilidade híbrida, em que uma espécie de mente coletiva, (as pessoas no chat) estão todos a jogar com ou contra o streamer. Isto faz os espectadores sentirem que são verdadeiramente parte do jogo — porque literalmente são. Os inputs do chat literalmente substituem alguns dos algoritmos do jogo, alterando o Gerador de números aleatório [random number generator ou RNG em inglês] com o ChatNG o que permite que haja uma negociação entre streamer e o jogo, através do chat; não podes implorar ao jogo para te dar bom RNG mas podes certamente implorar ao Chat”

Gráfico de minutos de Dead Cells vistos na Twitch, o pico corresponde ao lançamento da integração com a Twitch, quando o jogo saiu do modo de acesso antecipado em 2018.

Este tipo de integração é cada vez mais popular à medida que desenvolvedores confiam mais e mais nas comunidades de Live stream para não só manterem o seu jogo como para o publicitarem. Não será de estranhar se nos anos que se seguem a maior parte dos jogos, principalmente jogos de companhias mais pequenas e portanto mais dependentes da publicidade de boca em boca, tenham algum tipo de integração com as plataformas de Live Streaming.

No fundo estamos a assistir ao nascimento de um híbrido, como Filgby lhe chama. Uma ponte entre jogo e show assente no pilar fulcral da sociabilidade, que sempre foi uma base da experiência dos jogadores, ainda que durante muito tempo estereótipos nos tentassem ensinar o contrário.

(Mild spoilers for The Red Strings Club ahead)

Let’s start with the most important part. The Red Strings Club is an amazing game, and the time I spent playing it was possibly the best in my last few months. (it hasn’t been easy over here, friends) That said, why is The Red Strings Club such a good game? Well, if you’ve been following Deconstructeam’s path you may be aware of their increasingly better and better ways of telling stories using video-games. If not, go here ( https://deconstructeam.itch.io/ ) and then come back to see if you agree with me.

So how do they do it?! I don’t know, but I know how I think they do it!     First, there is clearly a lot of fine tuning and dedication put into every aspect of their games, the art, the writing, the music and sound. So let's go step by step (in no particular order because when making games every aspect is equally important)

1 - Let’s start with art since it’s probably the first thing you’ll notice (you know, video games being a pretty visual medium and all), and a quick look through their library at itch.io will show just how great their visuals are. It’s one thing to create an office space or a decrepit village, another thing is to allow them to breathe life on their own. The scenes from The Red Strings Club immediately transport me to the places they portray, it’s in the lighting, the colors. I’m a bit of a sucker for pixel art already, but in this case I think what really makes the art shine is a bit of less is more, giving you just what your brain needs to be there, and your imagination does the rest. Either way it is top notch stuff. Not only in this game, mind you, but consistently throughout their work.

2 - It’s difficult to even start with music here, fingerspit (composer/musical everything) does an incredible job at crafting a memorable soundtrack that sets the mood and does something film sound tends to do a lot (and I mean this in a good way): you forget it’s there. I don’t mean that it’s indiferent, I mean that it feels so much part of the world and the feelings you’re going through that it immerses you in the game and you forget it’s there. It stops being just music* and becomes part of the game’s universe.

*(as someone with a bachelors in sound for cinema I feel wrong saying “just music” and you should totally listen to fingerspit’s albums on bandcamp/spotify, just look it up!)

3 - Writing is hard (as I write this I look at my words wondering “is this any good?”), writing dialog is harder. Writing several options, with different answers, making it all coherent in a futuristic setting and still manage to create a compelling narrative where you play detective seems so daunting that just thinking about it I feel small. But they manage it! The characters feel like people I’ve met one way or another, they feel real. It’s easy to see each character as fulfilling a specific role in this narrative, but don’t we all carry defining traits in our way of speaking, dressing, acting etc? The stern lawyer, the thrillseeker, the vain, the loner, they’re not just characters in media, they exist because we as people behave in such ways.

4 - Finally, game design. I’m saying game design, and we could desiccate it into only gameplay first and go from there, but I think it all fits well under the design part, this is the way everything comes together, basically everything I’ve written so far. It’s in the way Deconstructeam manages to turn apparently simple or mundane tasks into games, which is true of most of their works so far, the way speaking to people becomes an interesting game, the way serving drinks is not only an action but a very important mechanic, the way making phone calls is suddenly a thrilling experience (seriously, I never thought being behind a desk making phone calls would get me so hyped to play and would make me feel so much like a social hacker of sorts). This is something I’ve noticed in pretty much every game I’ve played from this team, and it is inspiring to see how they manage to create compelling gameplay from situations I never thought could lead to such cool interactions. In the Red Strings Club it all comes together when you deal with these characters, backed by the enveloping music, in a setting that conveys a feeling as much as the characters themselves, all driving a compelling interaction, and gameplay that manages to be surprisingly engaging and motivating, which isn’t always easy for text heavy games.

            In 2014 Ubisoft launched a game called Watchdogs, in this game the player is a hacker in a city entirely controlled by an operative system called CtOS. mechanically this means that throughout the game the player uses an array of tools and skills to take advantage of the system, to complete missions in an open world environment, a certain degree of liberty is given so players can tackle missions however they see fit, with the tools at their disposal.

Want to go guns blazing, making cars explode destroying everything in your wake? Go for it. Want to turn off a generator to distract a guard, move a vehicle remotely to pass undetected while everyone is focused on the confusion? you can!

To me being a sneak freak (not in terms of sneakers but sneaking mechanics) and enjoying the whole tech hacker trope a good deal, this seemed fun. I got the game and played it for some time but it remains to this day the only game I played that I haven’t finished.

Why is that? The game is boring. Mechanically it has some really neat tricks and smart ideas going on, you can tackle most missions in a variety of ways, it’s not as open as the latest Hitman titles, (which I recommend if you’re looking for a great stealth game with a lot of choices) but players have enough variations on how to deal with the problems given that it is  always interesting to figure out what best works for your gameplay style.

Aesthetically to put it bluntly the game lacks any substance, the plot of the game tries to be a gritty revenge story by developing a character with some serious issues, every move the main character makes takes him one step closer to irresponsible lunatic and further from the dark knight with good intentions the game tries to sell you on. His character above all others feels so out of place it is painful to watch, the city of chicago feels like a prison everything is dull dark, it becomes tiresome to cruise around, even if mechanically it is fun.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I downloaded the Watchdogs 2 demo. I had heard some good things but the disappointment of the first one kept me away since it’s release in 2016.

I had a class on Affect theory and it reminded me of how these two games are basically a love letter to affect theory, there is no need to go further than these to see how we need more than just a formal approach to games, we need to tackle them in multiple fronts to see the full picture. Under the hood Watchdogs and Watchdogs 2 are the same game, they rely on the same mechanics, pretty much all of the original tricks made it to the sequel.

But on the surface, these games are miles apart, Watchdogs 2 has a cast of diverse fun colourful characters, even the villains in the second game are a departure from the underworld criminals of the first one, they are vibrant celebrities, tech industry giants, pharmaceutical assholes. While the first game was all about the main character’s struggle, watchdogs 2 puts society at the core of it’s tale, in world versions of google, facebook, spotify, Uber all the major apps on peoples phones not only make an appearance but are integral to the story, people use everything and companies are taking advantage of the lack of information users have to commit serious privacy crimes (sounds familiar?).

In the 2017 game PREY by Arkane studios (not to be confused with 2006 Prey by human head studios, these are not related in any way) players are thrown into a world where an organism known as mimic has escaped containment and is wreaking havoc in a space station, it is very much a sci-fi suspense type of game, not unlike Alien Isolation or system shock, bioshock, you know the type. But PREY does something I’ve never seen in a game. So in the game there are mimics there are black octopus like beings that, as the name suggests, have the ability to pretend to be any object in the world, this ranges from mugs and chairs, to medkits and other useful items, there is no way in game of understanding weather something is just an asset or a mimic besides a sound that they constantly make, a sort of underwater hissing sound, and of course if you see one actually transforming, now I ask you to imagine.

You are on a deserted space station, you walk into a room, nothing moves, desks and chairs are thrown around, papers, mugs and other items litter the floor, a film projector muffles any sound you can hear besides the rolling of the film, a medpack stands on top of one of the not fallen desks, it’s mostly dark, the projector screen backlights the entrance you came from, what do you do?

You know for sure there are enemies here, or do you? It doesn’t really matter if there are not because they look like every other thing so you might as well behave like there are. I crouch, move slowly through the middle of the room, suddenly I hear a noise, something moved, but with the light against my eyes I can’t understand what, and in the second afterwards it looks like another object, is it that mug? Was that chair there before? I’m just going to hit it with my wrench anyway! I get up and walk towards the chair that I believe is my enemy and I smack it, nothing happens, I’m relieved for a second until the medkit sprouts black tendrils and walks towards me before I can regain my stamina, I move back in panic and trigger another mimic! Hit one run from the other and two more show up I don’t even realise they are there, I hit some of them they turn into objects somewhere I can’t tell in the middle of the messy room, I flail at everything and fail to take my medpack in time, I die.

This process is repeated with different outcomes in different rooms throughout the game, sometimes I see them transforming and use a gun that shoots rapid hardening foam to stop the mimics in their tracks and hit them while they’re stuck, others I make a lot of noise and run back near a turret that only attacks alien dna, sometimes I just cross as silently as I can, ever watchful of the tables and chairs, and screens, and everyday items I’m used to overlook in games.

(I was only 23 years late)

In 2013 two days before I turned 21 Risk of Rain came out, I remember being at home with a few of friends all sitting on the couch computer hooked to the TV playing the sidescrolling shooter, for those of you who don’t know risk of rain is a game for up to four players where you chose a character and are sent into a crazy world to fight monsters, as time passes the game gets harder, and you progress from level to level it also gets harder, the more you survive the more rewards you get, and in the end it turn into a crazy fest of particles flying everywhere numbers popping out of the screen and you running around trying to stay alive and begging your friends not to stray too far because you’re almost out of the screen and you can’t see where you’re going and there are 23 enemies surrounding you and the difficulty is already on insane and in the midst of all of this it is fun, really engaging and fun.

Last year the two man team (maybe more people now) announced they were releasing a sequel in glorious 3D! My mind instantly thought “how are they going to pull that of? The first one was already insane, dealing with that without seeing the 360º around you is going to be crazy” and yet it wasn’t, the game is still in early access but a friend got me a copy so we played a bunch of matches so far, and it is just like the first one, but may I add, better? I don’t know if better is the right word but the feeling is the same, you still feel overwhelmed with enemies, you still collect loot to unlock new items to help you, you use your cool skills to move around the world, and fight, and better yet, now the camera follows you around so you never stop being part of the action (until you die and wait for your friends to hopefully make it so you can respawn) I’m seeing myself playing this more now that when it was mostly a couch co-op game (which I still enjoy). Looking into this experience I think I finally understand a bit better what happened when Mario 64 came out and what a shock that must have been. So I’m grateful for this new experience, and I feel a little closer to an important moment in digital games history, the historical switch to a 3D environment

I’ve played few Vr titles until now, and one of those titles was Resident Evil 6: Biohazard, I was hoping for an experience that would quite literally transport me (or my conscious self at least) into the game environment, but instead I felt more tethered to reality than when I played the same game on console, the VR headset only replaced my camera control, and even that I was still able to control with the controller. Playing it on VR was a bit of a disappointment. Fast Forward a few years and VR keeps growing slowly but steady, and a week ago during a playstation presentation I saw that No Man’s Sky is scheduled to introduce an update this summer which brings VR integration. Now No Man’s Sky is a game with a lot of history and controversy, but it’s an amazing game and has had incredible support from the developers ever since it came out, I’ve loved the game since the beginning and I adore it so much more now, and one thing I said since it was released its 2016 release was, this game would be amazing in VR.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, I have never been one of those people who complains and argues about remakes and remasters of movies games, etc, because what now are old things will always have power for those people who experienced them when they first came out. Great game make an impact, two great games I remember playing when I was young are Diablo II and the age of empires, the age of empires might be one of the games I remember better besides some gameboy games I had, for some reason to this day the main theme of age of empires gives me shivers, the menu was always somewhat scary for me the lonely road of a castle town, in silence until the music kicked in, the sound of hammer hitting metal or swords clashing as I selected different icons, to this day it has some power over me.

That’s why as soon as I got a windows computer after many years away from pc gaming, I got Age of empires II, it’s amazing the feelings I have for this game even though when I was a kid I never played anything other than the map editor where I would spend hours making a map populating it with all the cool archers and horse riders and buildings and war machines, just to watch a clash of empires happen without any input on my part, and still, I can spend hours playing it now, finding things I never knew even 20 years after the game is out.

This is the same reason why I can play diablo II with one of my friends like we did when we were ten or twelve years old, and still be scared when I go into the pyramids, or why I still always pick necromancer because I rather walk around with a party of summoned skeletons than on my own.

    Journey is a game that cannot be played without sound, without music really, it just does not work the same way. It is also a multiplayer game where no one can really talk, or convey information through words I should say, there is a way of speaking, if we want to call it that. And that is the single singing like sounds that a player can do.

If the circle button on the controller is held, the avatar will “sing” the longer the press, the longer the decay will be, or the longer the note will last, this singing though is pretty much a flute note, and different players will have very slightly different notes, these notes not only sound very pleasing, they also were composed in a way that they don’t disturb the very carefully constructed music, in fact they flow along very well, no matter when or how they are played, this means that frequently, when players engage in some sort of communication, their conversation seems to become part of the overall composition, furthermore the very act of trying to get a point across, through the use of several fast presses of the button to “say” shorter rapid fire notes, or longer slower and longer lasting ones, ends up being both an act of interaction and a form of musicking as player will often react to their patterns of speaking with each other in a very musical way, almost complementing each others sounds, and dueting, in a sense.

After a Class with Prof. Grimshaw’s a teacher of Music at Aalborg University, Denmark. I was thinking of how some games do sound spatialization, mostly stealth and horror games, I think the game that had me most aware of this was Alien: Isolation, being a game where you don’t really confront enemies but rather try to avoid them had me (and other people I’ve talked to) in silence even if they had the microphone input option off (an option that has your microphone pick up sound which is translated as your character making noise in-game).

Not only the game had me aware of enemy sounds, the unresponsive and failing status of the ship allows for a plethora of noises that distract and scare the player every step of the way, sparks, flames, jets of steam all work as both audible disruptors, but also as spatial information, allowing for instance a player who’s hiding in a vent to be aware of its relative position in the larger room if they can hear some flames underneath, or a destroyed android’s circuits sparking every other time.

So yesterday, May 29th the Pokémon Company held a press conference to show their upcoming games, one of them was Pokémon Quest,

(a game that reminds me of a Pokémon rumble, and you can play it right now on the Nintendo switch if you want, just head to the e.shop and download it.)

And the other ones were Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pókemon Let’s Go, Eevee! These are the games are what I want to talk about!

The two new entries in the Pokémon games, set in Kanto, are in a design sense, a cross between Pókemon Yellow and the smartphone game Pokémon Go, These two new entries, mix classic characteristics from Pokémon Yellow, like your Pokémon following you around everywhere, not only your Pikachu and Eevee, depending on which game you choose, but also any other Pokémon you choose! Plus if you happen to have a big one following you like an Onyx, or a Charizard, you’ll actually ride them!

From the Pokémon Go side of mechanics we get the new way of seeing and capturing Pokémon, not only capturing is now a lot more like in Pokémon Go, where you flick the joy con at the screen to throw your Pokéball,

Another great addition is that you also see Pokémon in the world, coming in and out of tall grass or walking around caves for instance, which makes the world look much more alive outside towns.

Not a lot is known about combat at this time, in the trailer fights looked just like an improved version of what Pokémon players are used to, with it’s turned based combat, but in the conference something struck me as odd, now when you first meet a Pokémon in the wild instead of battling you’re given a catch screen right of the bat, I’m not sure if this means no battles to capture Pokémon, or maybe you try to capture it, and if you fail a battle ensues and you try again, once their health is lower, we’ll have to wait and see.

It was also shown that you can play the game with a single joy-con, which allows, for the first time ever to have a multiplayer simultaneous adventure, Another player can simply drop in and start playing with you, both on the same screen on the same world, and that looks really exciting!

Lastly the new Pokéball Plus, It seems to be a sort of Pokéwalker 2.0, this device which is basically a Pokéball with a joystick in the center, allows players to use it to play the game on the Nintendo Switch, but also Pokémon Go on your smartphone, or you can use it to carry your Pokémon around with you, and even though there seem to be special features if you carry Pikachu or Eevee, any Pokémon can be carried, presumably this would mean maybe some experience, stats or happiness boost for your partners.

You can see the full conference here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_qtyOa5Dg

Thank you for reading!

Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

There is something in Swords of ditto that’s incredibly captivating to me, I’m not sure if it’s the amazing cartoonish art style, if it is the subtle but always well arranged music, if it is the nostalgia for that world feel reminiscent of Zelda a link to the past, one thing is sure, I’ve already played a lot, and I find it hard to put down, and because of that I want to dive deeper into the mechanics and design of this game.

Let’s start with the first thing that pops into your eyes, the art style ande the animation, Swords of Ditto looks just like a cartoon, it looks and feels like something you could have seen on Tv in the last 10 years, It reminds me a lot of Gravity falls. Steven Universe, or Over the Garden wall, and it has that quirky mysterious vibe the Adventure Time universe has. The animations are fluid, and everything has a charm to it, there are a lot of great details in the environments but it never gets too overwhelming, different world elements fit very well together.

It’s a Rougelike, which means permanent death, but that doesn’t mean all your progress is lost, every time your character falls in battle your experience points carry over, your money as well, and if you do some right things you can choose some of your items to send to the next heroes (which is something I truly appreciate). And even though dying sucks, you get used to it after the first two or three deaths, the game does a good job of making you understand that… you know, it happens!

The more you play the better you get at the game, you soon realize the important things you need to achieve fast in the game, fast because at the start you also only have five days until the final showdown with the final boss, like in moon hunters or legend of zelda majora’s mask, and like in major’s mask there are some tricks you can pull to extend those five days to a bit more!

The map is procedurally generated but the areas of interest remain mostly the same, which basically invites you to waste a day (maybe less) exploring all the areas so you can fast travel to some of them later and save a bunch of time, this thanks to air kazoo bus transportation which takes you to specific bus stops you find around the map, usually near dungeons.

another helpful thing is that time does not pass while you’re in the main town or in dungeons, so you can relax when buying toys (the special weapons of the game) and food (which gives you health), or stickers (abilities you can equip on your character such as evading enemies faster, doing more damage, or having better defense).

Swords of Ditto is also a very fun adventure game, the high stakes of permadeath make everything in the game feel challenging, and keeps you on your toes, every zone I crossed, every dungeon I was in I felt like how I felt when I first played A Link Between Worlds, that sense of discovery and fear when facing a new area a new foe. (plus cutting grass to find money or food items really does bring me back to zelda games)

There are a bunch of side quests to do as well which make the npc characters more interesting to meet, and even if they don’t say much the writing is very charming in a way that does make you care for the world and feel like this is a recent cartoon.

There’s also something that I’m still unravelling and that’s the story behind this world, there are a bunch of hidden pieces of lore in the form of tablets, laying around the world’s dungeons, and each of them has information for you to piece together, and those get stored forever in the hall of swords, a sort of place for remembering fallen swords.

There is also Co-Op for those of us wanting to share the adventure and it’s really easy and fun to begin simply turn on the second controller press a button and a new hero with the same stats as your main will show up, so anyone can just drop in and tag along for the adventure.

there is a bunch of other things that I won’t spoil but just let me say, it’s worth to explore!

this is truly a game that (at least so far) feels better the more I play it, the more I become used to it’s systems, there is a bunch of adventure to be had here and growing stronger with each hero always feels great, plus, since the world level keeps evolving as you evolve it never becomes a power fantasy and is much more a steady challenge throughout. A really fun challenge none the less, Swords of ditto with its fun toys for example a (not so simple) Golf club, an Rc drone, or a giant robot foot that falls from the sky, is always wacky an charming at the same time, still maintaining some sort of deep secret hidden in its lore. The game feels packed with excitement, and it has is clearly made with a lot of affection from the developers, towards old school games, cartoons and overall child like adventures, without ever felling childish.

Swords of Ditto is an amazing experience, inside this beautiful cartoon world you (and a friend!) get to experience a challenging adventure, constantly sprinkled with light hearted fun be it through commentary form characters around you, or the world itself. because it speaks to the player not only with its visual appeal but fun mechanics and a twist on nostalgic games that makes it feel new, engaging, and hard to put down!

I’ve been thinking about how to best introduce games to people that have never played them, or see no real appeal in them, and this has led me to dive a bit more into the notion of games literacy. 

And if you’ve ever tried to get a friend or relative that never plays games, to play something you really like, only to watch them struggle with tasks you take for granted, then you have been exposed to the lack of game literacy that concerns me.

How do we share our beloved medium with people that are not used to it? And what games are best to introduce people to? What game should you pick to introduce basic game literacy to someone who never played games?

First let’s see games literacy and what it is, as the name suggests, is the ability of an individual to interact with any given game at a novice level, Just like literacy is an individual’s ability to read and understand the words on any given book, at a surface level at least.

But games are so diverse that a player that is amazing at Sports games, like say, Fifa, might be completely lost when playing a real time strategy games like Starcraft.

This makes it very hard for us to decide what the line for games literacy is generally, but for argument’s sake let’s say that our goal is to teach someone between their 20’s and 30’s to become game literate and they’ll be so when they have the “ability to play any given game at a novice level” so our hypothetical literate to be players will all play everything but they’re not exactly high on the leader boards for anything.

We also have to understand that children tend to learn faster, not only for their all consuming brains, hungry for information, but because usually they do not have as much distractions as a full grown adult that might very well see no point in “wasting time” with a game, but games tend to be engaging so that might be a good innate way to counteract that feeling, children have another advantage though and that is usually the games are so engaging that they’ll go beyond any frustration with mechanics and will try until they learn, an adult usually will stop after a few tries when they start feeling overwhelmed with a game, even the simplest ones.

For instance I once tried to get my mom to play Little Big planet, run and jump right? like a Mario game but more handcrafted looking, No, for some reason, something I thought so obvious as pressing jump while moving forward, to, you know, jump forward, for her was extremely hard, so hard I was able to have her play SKYRIM better than little big planet! (still an extremely comedic and ludicrous Skyrim play through but she did it mostly alone) I still get surprised when I think abou this, how could some one have more trouble playing through the first little big planet level, than Skyrim?!

how could it be that a 3D world first person simulation was easier to understand than a 2D sidescroller? surely the sidescroller would have a lot less information to worry about right?

So here’s what I think happened with little big planet, it has too much information for a newcomer, the music the different textures, the quirky characters, it’s great to attract the attention of kids, it is not so great for an older person to keep track of what is going on, unless of course you are game literate, the physics based interactions with objects and characters also don’t help much.

Ok but why was my mother’s time easier with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?

I believe the 3D environment was easier for her to understand, since it’s the one that  resembles our actual way of moving around the most, walking from point A to B was simple for her, controlling the camera on the other side had it’s ups and downs, and I noticed that she had a hard time separating body movement form camera movement, and frequently when in panic she would move both joysticks forward causing her to look straight down and face the ground instead of her foes, but still, she managed to use swords to attack (even if she was afraid of monsters) and perform basic tasks such as speak to non playable characters, or open doors, chests and so on, even if it did took a long time, she had to look to the controller and remember over and over again what button did what, even though effectively she was more literate in open world RPGs than side scrolling platformers. And this still is hard for me to fully comprehend.

it’s not like Skyrim had a tutorial so it made no real difference the way mechanics were taught, and she did play the first tutorial level of little big planet  and had trouble all the same, So I had to keep asking myself, what other differences were there between the two games, and what game should be the perfect fit to teach someone basic game literacy.

And so I did, I sat my mom down again this time to play the first level  of Super Mario world on the Snes, and then the first level of super Mario odyssey on the nintendo switch,

I wanted to see the difference in behavior from one to another, considering that the first is a course clear game and the second a sort of sandbox explorer,

It took her a few tries (about 6 actually) but eventually she did manage to beat both first levels all on her own, so the mechanics were indeed learned, they just need to be fine tuned, and I assume the more she’d play the better she’d get at it. So as far as Super Mario World went I’d say it was a major improvement over little big planet, and the simplicity of the game did make it easier to learn I believe (I still would have preferred to try this with an earlier Mario game though)

there was something interesting I noticed while my mother played super Mario odyssey though, as opposed to Skyrim, the other open world 3d game she played, in this one she had a harder time placing Mario around the map, the third person camera seemed to make it harder for her to position herself as opposed to the first person view of the elder scrolls games. I believe this has to do with a lack of experience with the controller, and how using the joysticks translates to movement and control this is something most of us are used to do since early, if we play games often, but to suddenly come in grab a controller and play it’s a drastically steeper climb.

so i’m still trying to figure my head around how this learning curve should go, but clearly a good way to start is with simpler easier games, probably, I’d say, something simple along the lines of Super Mario Bros mainly the world 1-1, that first level is a landmark in game design it has a great safe space to try mechanics of the game and most of all it’s clean, Mario is clearly visible against the background, there’s plenty of room ahead for players to get used to what’s coming and it is not overwhelming with information, it seems to be a good fit to new older players, probably something along those lines, with easy mechanics and understandable tutorials is a good choice. (please if you have any idea of games that might fit this description let me know). I thought of other types of games such as narrative driven games, or puzzle games as good gateways into the video game world since they don’t require as much dexterity with controllers, maybe some easier role playing games could then bridge the gap to more action focused games, and since rpg’s tend to have so much information packed in them, they could be a good starting point to strategy games or vice versa.

Now how can developers make their game easier to learn or at least to get a basic notion of how their game works? For that I think we should start with an Idea Zach Gage shares on his GDC talk on how to build easy to understand games, that is the three reeds rule, this is a graphic design rule that can be altered to work pretty well on a games design, it works like this:

1 what pulls you in - the core of your game

2 the key details - big unintuitive rules

3 contextual information - contextual rules

So the ideia here is to design the look of your game in a way that it is easy to read by anyone, and I’d go beyond just the look of menu and user interface and apply it to the game mechanics as well, since I’m focusing on console/pc gaming and your way of interacting or the controller is actually a very important part of how you learn/perceive a game

So in a Mario game the first reed would be Mario against the big blue sky, the question blocks and the ground you stand on, the second reed would be the question mark blocks and action enemies take towards you allowing the player to understand where interaction is possible, this isn’t exactly visible but it is well explained since you only have two buttons that work, and finally the third reed is the score the world you’re in, number of coins and the time you have left.

By making the game easy to understand for anyone, or at least easy enough to visually read, developers are able to make for an easier introduction to their game world mechanics and ideas.

But there is a long way from being able to play a game, and properly understanding any meaning one might have, this is where advanced game literacy comes into play, of course not all games have meanings or thought provoking ideas behind them, Duck Game isn’t interested in make you think about the inner workings of a sadistic duck universe where ducks fight for sport, it’s interested in being a fun crazy game for friends to play and laugh together.

But Night in the Woods for instance is interested in sharing ideas about finding meaning in yourself, in your life, in growing as individuals and even in the real life effects that a growing economical state has upon entire ways of living, and its sustainability. But imagine you never played a game in your life, I think the experience of trying to learn simple mechanics if you never tried them before, may very well get in the way of properly engage with a game’s ideas, that is why it’s important to make the learning a smooth curve for newer players, and if we can it’s up to us people that have been playing for a long time, to help our new friends to get the best experience they can, we can be curators for the great work developers put out there, and at the same time keep them  away from the sea of terrible content that is out there.

I know that this article is setting up more questions than answers, but I’m so intrigued by this situation that I felt like sharing and hopefully get some feedback and some deeper notions handed back to me.

So last year, between august 30th and September 1st Yokohama, Japan, held the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference or CEDEC.

The information gathered here has been talked about before but I wanted to analyze it, and thanks to Matt Walker, a Production manager at Capcom who translated a lot of the exposition done at the conference, through articles in 4games, Esuteru and IGN Japan, I can talk about the development of an amazing game, even one of the best games I’ve ever played, Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild!

The beginning of the presentation was about fun in the game, one could argue that is something obvious in a game, but there are a lot of details needed to have in mind when thinking about how players will find fun in your game, and in BOTW that is no exception, changes were made constantly during the game’s development, and the big question was always, “How to make this game more enjoyable to players” In the picture below are two maps, where you can see marked the diference in paths players would make, when playing first time through. In the left map, we can see players were making fairly the same journey, as shown by the dark blue lines, everyone was having a similar experience while ignoring smaller trails, and landmarks that strafed from the main roads. After the changes though we have a much more disperse map traversal, with a significant change, not only in the amount of people that go near the edges of the map, but how people travel along the center of it as well, there’s a  significant increase in the overall exploration of the terrain,

These changes, made after testing the design of the first map incite players into exploring and traverse the map in different ways depending on what sparks their curiosity, and leads to a better distribution, not only of the exploration players have, but the experience they have while playing. The problem with the first map was that initially the team though they could place Sheikah towers scattered around the map and place events and game interactions in between the paths that connected them, this wasn’t the case though because players weren’t compelled by that way of exploration, test players said that they felt guided through the game or it felt too linear, (now you see why most players were having a narrow route on a map that spans quite wide) Weirdly enough this was diving players into two very different experiences, either they would follow the intended path and found a lot of what the team wanted but in a very short time, or they would miss most things because they strafed away from the Sheikah towers and connecting roads trying to explore the world map, their travels were just empty. This lead to the team creating a solution based on the concept of Gravity, that’s right, placing structures with different visibility and importance in different places, they could attract player’s attention to various areas of the world, and appeal to their curiosity, leading players away from the main path and into their own adventure. This was the spark that lead to the notion of “infinity gameplay” an idea that focuses on having the player travel between various landmarks depending on their curiosity at any given moment, plus the map will change its look depending on the time of day, as light creates changing shadows, and visibility changes from night to day, places like the Sheikah Shrines like you can see in the image below will have pretty low visibility during the day, because they’re small, usually hidden, and you can see much better big natural landmarks, roads on the ground and the Sheikah towers.  

During the night however structures that emit light will pop much more in the darkness, the glowing blue and orange veins of the Sheikah shrines become the most noticeable thing on the map, along with stables and enemy camps, because of it’s fires and torches. This interchanging noticeability between structures means that not only will the player be excited to travel to new places but they may even run back and forth between things they might have missed during the day and only realized were there at night, this actually happened a lot to me while playing (and still does sometimes) where I want to climb a mountain and when I reach the top it’s getting dark already, from there I look on the world only to realize there are a bunch of shiny spots on the map for me to explore! and who doesn’t like shiny things?!

This obviously might change depending on how players tend to play a game, but it only means that more people will experience the same game different ways and it will be better tailored to their way of being and interacting, it makes the game more of a personal experience. players not interested in fighting monsters will gladly avoid their campfires at night and might instead look for stables, and vice versa, this means the way people will interact with the world is tied to the way they perceive the surrounding environment.

Now for the thing I see as the greatest design idea of BOTW, to lead players into that amazing sense of mystery and adventure. this is a technic of environmental design the developers call “Triangle rule” it is part of the whole gravity idea and it is pretty much what it sounds like, a rule based on using triangles to hide, show and guide players, all at the same time,  we can see how the rule is implemented all across the map in the image below 

What does this effectively do? The utilization of the triangle offers different options to the player, on how to face the obstacle ahead, you could climb up to it and get a better view of your surroundings, you could go around it keep ing a low level, and both these interactions will produce a different  outcome on how you see what’s ahead of you, the triangle can also be used to partially or completely hide an item behind it

These were divided in three different scales, each one with its own purpose when it comes to player’s interaction, and gameplay, if you’ve played the game you certainly can remember which ones they are and how they are used. Out of many I think the most notorious are the small hills or rocks used to hide chests or enemies, (among others), big triangles to hide larger landmarks such as big bridges or ruins, as well as orient player’s movement, and finally Gigantic triangles in the form of mountains, to serve as not only points of interest but reference when traveling around, these are locations you can see almost from everywhere on the map, and are great guiding aids.

The rectangle is also an important shape, even if not as noticeable, mainly used to completely hide other elements on the map or important map locations (but you can also see it as trees hiding enemies in the woods or gathering items for instance). This kind of layout gives the world a dynamic and fluid feel, that is very organic and real, but thought to give players a greater feeling of discovery and adventure that the legend of Zelda games tend to strive for. we can see this working in a sequence of pictures used at CEDEC 2017  

This environmental construction creates a chain of interest, in this particular case it works like this: Hill -> Bridge Entrance -> Sheikah Tower, So we have a triangle hiding a rectangular structure of interest that is hiding another structure behind it. And if you pay close attention left of the Sheikah tower behind the right hill you can partially see an enemy camp, all the rules of this particular design are in play here! Now that’s all for game design (for now), but what about the tech that got the team there? As far as tech goes the team as also implemented some new ideas, most noticeably, integration of editing control tools into the game itself, this way no two people would ever see something in the debug log and work on it at the same time, for lack of communication. So a job could be created inside the game and a signal would pop up in the world, clicking the sign would reveal all the technical details as well as a way to contact the dev who put up the task. A “Field task view” was created, as a window of observation so the team could see and manage tasks of greater importance.

According to the team, this was a great way for devs to share ideas with each other about different tasks. In an interview with IGN japan it was said, about the debugging process, that a member of the team realized how hard it would be to wait until the end of production to begin the working on the debugging, so they tried to implement an action of constant debugging side by side with the regular development. This way the team could block specific errors and tag programmers specifically to make sure these were fixed. Along with this a tool was created that allowed any member of the team to report an error, practically fusing the tools to find and fix bugs creating an in game system called “#ZELDA_ERROR” Finally I want to tall about the way the game looks, how the UI looks more specifically, the thing most players will have in front of them for the longest time. The user interface or UI, is the first thing a player sees when they boot up the game, and in this game there was a very important message to give straight away, this is a new Legend of Zelda, this is a new generation of games. So the look of the UI had to be new, reformed, the team had to rethink how a new look would be born, maintaining a very crucial integration between four categories, Graphics, Font, Design, and Animation. following one simple concept, only the necessary should be visible, nothing should stand out in a negative way, and all the information should be concise so players wouldn’t have to look around, and would find everything relevant to them in the same space. Having this in mind we can see it working from the very first screen. Pay attention to how the space is used as soon as you turn the game on.

See how all the information is stored on the right side of the screen and you have this huge open landscape with Link in front of it (triangles again see) what’s beyond link? what is he seeing? just hit play already! these are the things this first screen wants you to feel. ( Side note: the devs even created the color “ZELDA white” which is basically a slightly yellow tinted white, to make sure the UI was clean but not to tiresome to look at. Sweet devs are aware of your eyes.)

Now, there are things that will be different if you have the Original Japanese version or a translated version of the game, in Japan the letter font goes much more in line with the less is more philosophy of the game’s UI, in japan the fonts already existed, they’re “Logo G Black” for Katakana, and “Raguran Punch” for Kanji (Katakana and Kanji are two different ways of writing in Japanese). Now even if the western versions of the game don’t exactly break the rules, they do shy away from them a little and there was a specific font made at least for the Latin alphabet.

(If you’ve played the game you might have also seen the Pro HUD, this is an even cleaner version of the UI Presumably made as a request from Nintendo America or Europe, in an attempt to clean and help with the immersion in the game) Even the Sheikah Slate was designed along with the artists, specifically so it would have a more decorated design that would separate Sheikah objects as artifacts from an older age than when the game takes place. This is particularly more interesting when you realize that the team only had two UI designers, and they were so overwhelmed with work that they had to work together with programmers to implement small tricks, expanding the exclusive nintendo system “Layout Editor” which is a system to edit the visual composition of the game, this way designers could animate sections of the game and give programmers control over them, the big change BOTW brought to this system was the ability to see various interface images and their animations running at the same time over the main game.

Next, to make the work over the great map easier this was divided into 120 different sections, distinguishing between outdoors and indoors (done through colors) these could be loaded as needed with 4 zoom levels so the map would be easy o analyze with precision, because of this technic 2,344 different areas were created that would be impossible to fully make manually, so the map was procedurally generated (as a Minecraft map would be for instance) and every night textures were generated to each section of the map, so environmental artists would work with them later, this was done using a screen capture technology which allowed artists to add filters and make color adjustments to later harmonize with the UI, after this they’d copy the environment and hide anything that needed hiding using masks, any handmade redesign in the environment was also done here to create a real and dynamic world.

Now making a game of course is no easy task, much less a game with the scale BOTW has, and I find it very impressive to play a game that is so consistently good is so many different aspects, even if you’re accustomed by now to that sweet nintendo polish, but in my opinion, it is always great for us consumers, when we get the opportunity to dive a little into the amazing work and dedication put into the games we play, and learn a bit more about them.

Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

To write this post I went around to these cool places on the web: 4gamer - http://www.4gamer.net/games/341/G034168/20170901120/ ESUTERU - http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/20018343.html

IGN JAPAN - http://jp.ign.com/cedec-2017/16963/news/botw

I never actually played monster hunter… until recently, but before I talk about what might be, in my hyped infused enthusiasm, the amazing experience monster hunter is, and why I think so, we need to go back in time. To the first time I ever saw a monster hunter game, It was 2007 so I must have been 14 or 15 when I walked into a games store in Spain, and found Monster hunter freedom 2, I had never heard about this game, but I can tell you it was one of those cases where just the cover got me, I’ll never forget seeing this epic dragon I’d later know to be TIGREX, clawing at an unknown hunter with a huge badass sword.

I couldn’t buy the game back then and I wouldn’t buy any monster hunter game for the 10 years to come, besides a few demos, I never actually played a monster hunter game.

But now here we are! monster hunter released 2 months ago and it is the first monster hunter game I actually played in full and wow is Monster Hunter a fun game!

The world feels vibrant and alive, the maps are huge and more than once I get lost exploring its branching paths, the environment feels real, you can clearly understand the ecosystem, the food chain, and you never feel like you’re the ultimate killer in that food chain, the game doesn’t make you feel incapable but it constantly reminds you that there are bigger monsters out there than the ones you can face right now. And it does it well.

Exploring the world has you expecting random encounters sooner or later, “Random” I almost feel wrong using this word because there is nothing random in the environments the team as created, there are clear, deliberate and functioning ecosystems at work here, with or without your presence monsters will roam, interact, and behave according to their nature, and the actions you or other monsters have around them.

This is made most clearly by the evident food chain I mentioned, you witness this early in the game, In The Ancient Forest, the first area you explore, there are a few Aptonoths roaming in the grassy shore, these are docile herbivores, if you keep moving forward you’ll find another type of herbivore Kestodon, near a beach but they are not so kind to you, form this place you can only go deep into the forest and in there are the carnivores, first you see Jagras, small lizard like carnivores, and then you can find the Great Jagras, (as the name suggests the big bad lizard king) and then! Anjanath! the T-rex like monster that can grab the great Jagras in his huge mouth and flail him around. The monster hunter team as made it very clear that there is always a bigger monster around, and makes sure you learn it soon.

Monster AI also feels really smart, In a quest to steal eggs from a Rathian I noticed that, after my teammate delivered the last egg, Rathian started screaming and crying, she lied down in anguish for her stolen eggs! In another fight, against Anjanath, as a hunting horn player it was my main goal to make sure the team was buffed, during the hunt, though, frequently, as I was starting to play songs to buff everyone Anjanath would leave my teammates and rush towards me! Even if I was far away or on top of higher ledges, as if he was disturbed by the music, or he understood it as growing danger towards him, This interaction, and adaptability gives the monster a sense of awareness, of realism, and in turn makes the fight feels much more real itself.

Now this game is strong on loot, it’s all about getting items from the wild to craft the gear you want, and it has made grinding and farming enjoyable in a way I haven’t had since I played borderlands. (not because their similar in their mechanics but just because they’re both really fun) Every run out feels like a different adventure, your goals change, therefore your approach to the whole environment changes as well, some times you want a specific piece of gear so you ignore every monster but the one you really need, you track them down, hunt them and gather their claws, pelts, fangs, anything, sometimes you might need a mineral or plants to craft traps potions and other useful tools, so you go on an expedition in and out without bothering the wildlife, avoiding paths you know monsters tend to lurk around, but to be honest the game makes the hunt so fun that I went on expeditions twice in a row to fetch, earth minerals, a common find, and I completely forgot about those once I was in the wild and just had fun exploring and hunting.

Of course the more you do all of this the better you get at it, the better hunter you become, not because your character has evolved any special skill, but because you as a player have learned, the paths of the wilderness, the behavior of the creatures, you’ve crafted better gear after each hunt to defend you, but above all, you have the experience. It feels rewarding in a way that you can clearly understand, I can see how better of a player I’ve become since the first day, and honestly I’ve learned more from other hunters and playing together than the tutorials (which are a welcome addition, and are good for what they are, concise textual information, sometimes accompanied by video.)

the town hub of Astera has some great designs with ships stacked on top of each other, making buildings, never to return to their departure lands, same fate as their passengers it really does present a sense of history and time to the game. The other main areas of surrounding ecosystems like the coral forest or the Wild Spire Waste also feel very well constructed and believable in the surrounding ambient.

now of course I was aware that Monster Hunter was not a game too story driven, but as a first timer I was pleasantly surprised, It might have the perfect amount of story needed for a game like this, you have a bunch of slightly “stereotypey" characters of japanese rpg, the admiral, the general, the research team and your friendly handler, (plus of course your palicos and poogie) is has some cool action cutscenes, but nothing looks of feels as good as a hunt with a group of friendly hunters, all taking on a huge monster! And oh are the monsters amazing, everything from the look, the animations, their designs, my jaw dropped at the sight of every new monster, as someone who was always watching monster hunter from the sidelines this feels like the best way to have join the fleet!

multiplayer is so fun and rewarding, (I always preferred co-op multiplayer instead of pvp) but I do have to give a shoutout to the monster hunter community, because as a complete newbie to the full mechanics, every time I had doubts, my questions were answered in a helpful and friendly manner, no one made me feel embarrassed or ashamed of my lack of knowledge in the game, a fear I honestly have when dealing with game communities especially multiplayer driven.

The he multiplayer hunts feel like such a community effort, I do believe it is when the game is at its best. It is always a thrill when you or any of your teammates is able to mount a monster and everyone is rushed with this feeling of anticipation, while a player climbs and stabs the beasts trying to make it fall, for the group to charge in to deal as much damage as they can.

It might be important to share that my main weapon is a hunting horn, a primarily support weapon, so team play is not only the best time for my weapon to be used (to it’s fullest ability) but it is also my preferred way of experience the game. Veteran players tell me a lot of quality of life improvements have been made, and I can clearly remember a few annoying things from older demos such as stoping a long time to gather items, or being locked in place when you try to drink a potion, which resulted in the awkward situation of trying to heal yourself just to watch powerless as a monster comes to crush you, that doesn’t happen any more as now you can roll out of almost every action , in case you need to last minute doge an incoming attack.

Basically Monster Hunter World feels like the best title to get into this series, and it works best if you have friends to do it with! The Environment is thrilling, the monsters are amazingly well designed, I’ve spend more than 100 hours with the game so far and there is still gear I want to make, plus Capcom has been constantly updating the game with events, weekly challenges, and they’ve already added a new monster with more to come eventually. Overall I’m very glad to have finally joined the hunting fleet! And I’ll keep at it for time to come! Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

Dark souls isn’t hard. This might seem like a statement trying to get to your nerves, or just dismissing the hardships you face while playing, but it isn’t, or at least I’m not trying to make it sound so. It IS Scary, Daunting, it makes you feel like you’re weak, like you don’t have a chance, but it is not hard per sei, And saying dark souls I could mean any of the games “from software” has made.  Now if the game isn’t hard, why does it seem hard?

First The ambient, the way dark souls looks, sounds and feels is made to put you in a tense mood, from the majestic gothic buildings Anor Londo  (from The first Game) to the broken down shacks of The undead settlement (in Dark Souls 3), the dark humid and slimy corners, the dimly lit cathedrals, the choirs of despair, they’re all built in a way to make you feel that sense of scale, loneliness, of being smaller and intrinsically less powerful than the world around you. Try playing dark souls with different background music, turn all the lights in the room on, or with the windows open on a summer day, with or without headphones.  You’ll understand how setting the mood of the game is half of what makes it feel scary.

Then you have the precise combat See, for instance the diference between facing an enemy you’ve fought one hundred times, versus the first time you meet them. I played Dark souls II twice, the first time I had never played a dark souls game, I knew nothing except “it was hard” and not only I played 100hours and never finished it because I got stuck, I was super careful facing every enemy, everything was a threat, everyone was a force to be reckoned with, I was terrified, that’s how dark souls want’s you to feel.

The second time though? I was blasting through it, I knew the enemies, their patterns, I wasn’t feeling like a weak undead, but more like a capable knight instead, because I had all that previous experience, the game itself was a completely different experience. I knew what to expect and I had learned how to face it. Dark souls is a game about patience and learning (at least as far as mechanics go).

And it actually lends you a lot of help on the way, if you play online there are plenty helpful messages left by your fellow players, phantoms (either player or AI controlled) can be summoned to help, sure playing online can leave you open to invasions by other players, but that is all to maintain a big part of the game’s core fairness. Because it is a fair game, the carefully constructed combat is all about observation, enemy movement tells you all you need to know about how to win, every animation has a wind up, and release fail to see it, rush in, attack blindly and you’ll get punished, analyze, take your time, see the openings, and you’ll be rewarded.

Yes dark souls isn’t a walk in the park, it is challenging, but as something people seem to forget, it is also fair, even tipping the odds in your favor sometimes. (see the famous invincibility frames when rolling for instance).

The level layout can be confusing on purpose to make you feel lost at times, but it’s design is carefully constructed so as with combat, careful observation of your surroundings  will more often than not give you an advantage in the fights ahead, areas are also built in such a way that you’ll find plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to transverse the world, and more often than not there are ways for you to ”cheese” hard enemies if you feel like you really want to hold on to those souls no matter what, specially if you have a primarily ranged class, although you’ll probably pick up plenty throwing items along the way, with witch to cheese, or lure opponents out one at a time if you don’t.

Dark souls isn’t hard, but it assumes that you’ll be mindful of the experience you’re having, and it will challenge you, make you work for the victory, unlike a lot of games out there that will hold your hand every step of the way. Now of course this will brush off players that just want a power trip, or are looking for a more relaxing time but it will and has held a fan base that doesn’t get that many challenging games.

The game will actively try it’s best to trick you, to stress you and yes kill you, but as any player who’s tried it more than once will know, it is not as hard as most sensationalist video/ review/ critics make it out to be,

The phrase dark souls of insert game genre here(which I think we really should stop using) if used, should be more about calculated combat, masterful ambience, and environmental storytelling, than blandly about “I had a hard time killing things” so it is hard.

It’s important to look critically at games beyond first impressions, I feel that with the current need of reviews out in the very day of release, and races to see who gives information first, it is important for us to take our time to experience a game, and give thoughtful opportunities to learning mechanics and themes beyond the appearance.

On a side note I also believe the marketing of the game, mainly in the 1st special edition, “Dark souls Prepare to die edition” does not make justice to the game and feels more like a shot at sales through some kind of gamer credit for beating a difficult game. (I mean yes you should be prepared to die but you should always be prepared for the awesome feeling of winning, and they didn’t call it “Dark souls it will feel great when you win edition”! although I must admit prepare to die fits more with the gloomy ambience of the game)

That said I’m not a great dark souls player, but I’ve had incredibly easy times with some bosses that felt unbelievably hard at first, it is all a question of careful approach, learning and timing, that combined, I guess, would be considered skill at the game.

If you’re doubtful just watch streamers or speed runners of the game, and you’ll see how they know the enemies, their move sets, their phases, (some even do runs with no armor or with bare fists) of course they are the epitome of skill at the game, but even without long extensive play time and attempts at defeating enemies you’ll understand pretty well how the enemies in combat work like the anticipation attacks have warning you when they’re coming, and the way you deal with them it’s just a matter of  using your character’s moves to bypass their’s.

Now if you read this far first thank you for listening to me, and I’d like to add a little something that might not be directly connected to the game being hard or not, but I wanted to give a shout out to the way from software does story, and I’m not talking exclusively about the environmental story telling, (which IS a banner of these games) I’m talking about the purposeful hiding of the full story, or what I like to call “missing piece story telling”.

Not giving the players the full story right away, hiding information or just never even put it in the game in the first place creates this broken, missing, storyline that not only mimics the state of the in game world, (old, faded and forgotten) it also serves to incite players curiosity, to make dark souls a game you take beyond your play session, that keeps dedicated players thinking long after they’ve beaten a boss or they found gear from an NPC.

What the connection between those and the larger events in the world might have been, has led to countless theories and views of the Dark souls lore circling in the web. This is a gift for the very passionate and dedicated fan base they have, for the players who are invested and have spent their time with the game, as an experience and not something just to pass the time.

finally I’ll leave you with a quote from the writer at Ask a game dev that I think represents very well how dark souls fits in our gaming world

“Dark Souls is kind of like the dark chocolate of video games. It’s a little bitter and has a lot of flavor depth, but it isn’t as sweet or easy to eat as the stuff most people are used to. Not everybody likes it, but those who do like it a lot.”

So I travelled to a couple places lately, one for the joy of traveling, the other for work. In a brief moment between trips, I had the chance to relax a bit, I wanted to calm down, avoid all my inner and slightly worried toughs, and so I went for my console, looking for a distraction. As I browsed trough my library of games, they all seemed too noisy, too crowded or too complicated, they were all too much. Until I found what I needed, one of my all time favorite games, JOURNEY ( which in case you don’t know it's also the header for this blog)

As I played the game trough one end to the other I realized, Journey deals with the human being as he is, alone, and in his society, in the most brilliant way. That is, reducing both to their simplest forms.

For me this is particularly important for I tend to overthink a lot of things, and that’s why I got here in the first place, I wanted to release my mind from all the commotion that was going on. And oh boy did I!

Journey makes you travel trough your past, learning from what once was the land of your people, to find out what happened and why. It is literally learning from history, from the what is left, and from your former lives. As you travel trough the desert you will find graves, buildings, murals, it all makes you wonder what is going on, why are you here and where are you going. In Journey there is nothing forcing you to go forward, nothing other than your curiosity, your need to find out what lies beyond  that horizon, what is on the top of the mountain that always shines. Why things are the way they are! No one tells you what to do, you just do it. Why? Because that’s what we do? As humans, as a society, we keep moving forward, even when all else fails, even if what you had was striped away, some of us, the ones that keep going learn from our mistakes.

In your Journey, you uncover the truth of what happened to your equals, maybe not on your first journey, but more and more as you repeat the path you once walked and your ancestors walked. When you reach the mountain for the first time, and she sends you in your star form back to the start, you are not in the same place where you began your journey, it may seem like it, from an esthetic point of view, but you, the player, learned from your journey, you are more aware of what surrounds you, you have experienced what is ahead, and yet, there is probably so much more to uncover. Journey is a game about life, about what you do, what you take from every achievement, and how well you deal with the hardships even after you’ve faced them before.

And then there is the social aspect of Journey, do you think your journey is over just because you’ve seen all the murals? Just because you have collected all the memories from your kind, and they became part of you, like one big story living and breathing trough you? So you achieved everything this word had for you and you are now closer to your ancestors and yet better than they ever were, what now?

If you are like me, Journey will pull you back in, eventually you will want to revisit your old lands, the giant bridge, the land under the sand, the desert that flows like a river, and like I did more than once, you will find others like you, embarking on the same journey, they to long for knowledge, some of them will guide you, and teach you, and in return you will teach the next ones, the ones who need it.

As I played, after a couple of steps I found a Player, a new player I could see that his robes were unmarked, he did not bared the marks of someone who has learned. Almost unconsciously I started to guide him trough the land that now, after being where he was so many times, I knew, I knew where to take him, what to show him, even if we could only communicate making one sound, longer or shorter, soon we were calling for each other, speaking, actually, showing emotions trough jumps and fast sounds, worry and sadness trough careful slower steps, I was guiding someone, protecting them, we were socializing, creating a bond, two people who had never met before, and probably never will again. 

Journey has a beautiful way of reducing us to our simplest ways, and show us that being us it’s not that hard, that learning is essential, but isn’t that difficult, and that although you can and some times will want to be on your own, there is always someone out there willing to give you a hand, even if they themselves don’t know exactly how.

As humans we are drawn to be together, we naturally create bonds, we grow with the help of others and others with ours. Eventually you will leave a mark on some one else and that will go on, the way in which you do it is yours to decide.

I recently had a long trip to do, I was 2 hours on a train then stopped, then I was 5 hours sitting in a bus, so as any normal human being I bought a few games to play on my PSVita, these games were; “Steam world Dig: a fist full of dust” and the 20th year anniversary of “Another World”, also known as  Out of this world, today I want to share my thoughts on the latter, Another world is a game one year younger than me. In 1993 when it came out I still was trying to figure out how hands worked.

Back then life was easy for me and apparently hard for gamers, because Another World is a hard game, a small but hard game, it reminded me, of the first game I remember playing, “Heart of Darkness”, a game from 1998 which, like this one is a screen trough screen development full of puzzles, backtracking, and a lot of things to do in one place to allow you to progress further, I now see an immense inspiration for Heart of darkness was drawn from games like Another World. Not hard games per say, but challenging, and tuff, games that teach you trough failure. You know how they say, you learn from your mistakes? This is that exact kind of game, and that is a great thing! The game doesn’t assume you are an idiot who can’t learn, or identify potential threats, it doesn’t have a health counter over each enemy or a huge red flag pointing towards your objective, and it feels so good! It’s so rewarding, achieving things on your own, so rewarding that I felt terrible when I needed help from the internet to overcome something I had trouble with. And I would have made it without it (I think) if I wasn’t so eager to keep going and really though the puzzle trough!  The second awesome thing about this game is that, even though it’s small it is very well balanced, with both high action sequences, and puzzles to solve. After the first cutscene you have a few moments so you can understand how the gameplay works, even tough you can immediately feel that danger is watching, there are no tutorials, just no enemies to distract you. Then after you understand how precise jumping is needed you’re thrown into a action breathtaking action sequence, and I won’t spoil more about it. Also, the game has a story without a single word, and without ever telling you anything by the usual means of exposition. Looking at this game I can’t help but think that today companies should look back at some of these games which they grew up with, a lot can be achieved with simple game mechanics, great ideas often come from the adaptation of good old ideas to new tech and the tweaks that are made in the process. So basically I’m saying that this is a cool old game and a nice insight on the gaming culture to new gamers. Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed and maybe even got you curious about Another World if you haven’t tried it yet. And, as always, keep gaming!