#games analysis

The aim of the game is to go out and for Larry to have sex with various women. But the problem is Larry can die,  and he will die so easily and so frequently. If he doesn't have sex within 8 hours of play he will kill himself, if you sleep with the prostitute with no condom you will die shortly after from an STI (which kills your savegame if you saved after her), if you go down the wrong alley a mugger will beat him to death. That and the strange lack of leading the player throughout the level is very overwhelming. This game does what a lot of games did in their time, and have artificial length to them due to how long it will take the player to beat the short game if they are dying and restarting the game a ton (or get stuck). Very early on into this game I just gave up and switched to a walkthrough.

Mechanics:

Type to interact: The type to interact mechanic is a strange one, apparently this game came with a manual to show all the things you can type to potentially interact with things. In theory this feels like you have a lot more possibilities that you can do, but in the actual execution it's annoying because you want to try almost every option on every item in every room to see what you can do. The dynamics of this are essential for interacting with the items around the world, and the girls you are trying to sleep with. The idea behind these aesthetics is to really immerse you in the world, but I don’t feel like it works too well in my own personal opinion.

Items:

The items in the game are important because you have to use them to progress through the game much like many adventure games, and give the girls gifts so they will like you (yeah, I know).

The items interact with all the mechanics, the type to interact is needed to do stuff with them, the girls respond well to the gifts, and getting some gives you points.  The aesthetics of this means that finding any item is rewarding.

Girls:

The girls are important in this game because… the entire game is based around trying to sleep with them so you don't kill yourself (yeah, I know….).

The girls actually have animated graphics and close up shots unlike the other npc’s, which is presumably to gauge their attractiveness.

The dynamics here, apart from the previously mentioned ones, is this is your biggest source of points. The Aesthetics of this means you feel like you really are Larry, a greaseball used car salesman type, who is literally ‘scoring’ with all these girls.

Points:

There are 222 points to get in the game. When you get them all, you have completed your mission and win the game. The points are kinda arbitrary, but they do let you know when you are on the right track.

The points interact with all the mechanics listed above.

Core Loop:

With a game like this that lacks so much fluidity the core loop is very hard to quantify. I’m going to say it looks something like this:

Summary: I think this game is a cool weird take on an adventure game theme, there were absolutely not many games like it in it’s time.

Introduction/Core Gameplay:

Clash of Clans is a sub 100mb real time strategy mobile game, where the objective is build up an ever developing home base. As you become more developed, you can attack npc bases or even the bases of other players, but with the catch that other players can attack your base as well. The reason this is a good fit for a mobile game is because it operates in the real time- if you begin an upgrade it will often take over 24 hrs + to complete. It’s a kingdom in your pocket that you can check into once to a few times a day to collect the resources you have generated, begin new upgrades, and perhaps launch an attack if you have the time and you’re feeling up to it. 

Core Mechanics:

The core mechanics of this game consist of collecting resources, developing (building/upgrading), and combat with other kingdoms (attacking/defending), and the social aspect (clans). These mechanics are connected in a linear fashion- the resources are collected to spend on upgrades and new buildings, which overall progress your kingdom, and also inside the barracks and similar buildings so you can get units. These units can then be used to attack other kingdoms. The aesthetics tied to these actions are fairly intense, because the player is in charge of these resources and everything that’s derived from them from start to finish, and the player will then become quite attached to the kingdom he sees forming and evolving under both the time investment and the strategic decisions he has made with his limited number of resources.

On top of that, these attacks and defenses can be bolstered by becoming a part of a clan and a social circle, which has the side effect of drawing the player in further due to the social aspect.

Game Loops:

This game has two phases, the basebuilding and the attacking, with the battle phase resulting from the core building phase when the player is ready and has decided to.  This is the core loop of the game.

Revenue Generation:

This game makes money via a real money microtransaction based ingame shop, with almost any action you take directing you there if you try to do something above the scope of the limited income the default free to play game provides.

The company doesn't release specific sales figures, however in 2017 it’s still estimated to have a download rate of 29,173 times a day, and generate $306,801 daily.

Social Impact:

This game totally changed how developers may approach smartphone and tablet games in the future, due to it’s outstanding success. 

However, it did have some downsides with many people criticizing the ‘addictive’ properties of the game. This, combined with the ‘pay to play’ aspect has resulted in many internet horror stories of people's life being overtaken by the addictive properties of the game and financially destroying them via microtransactions. 

I have chosen to analyze the dramaturgical structure of the game Super Adventure Rockman (Kouyousha, 1998), a choose-your-own-adventure game belonging to the Megaman franchise, known as Rockman in Japan, that is fully animated in the anime style. Like in many other games in this genre the player gets to choose the path to the goal but in this game the different paths are of little importance as they primarily only give different animations and possibility of finding more items. The basic story is unchangeable and divided into three episodes.

The first episode opens with exposition that tells of a ruin suddenly appearing in the Amazonas rainforest during an earthquake and emits an electromagnetic field which destroys all electronic equipment that comes too close. After one year of investigations the United Nations decided the ruin was from the Maya civilization and closed all formal investigations. It should be noted that the game presents a number of factual errors here as the map shows an area of southern Colombia that doesn’t belong to the Amazonas and the Maya people never lived that far south. One can also discuss whether the U.N. would cease archaeological investigations after a mere year and if electromagnetic fields are capable of such destructivity that they can blow up a helicopter. Regardless of basis in reality this is the game’s premise.

A few weeks before the game starts Dr. Wily travels to the ruin alone to investigate it in an attempt to redeem himself and soon after the electromagnetic field begins to increase in strength. Dr. Light and Megaman notices this but it isn’t until Megaman’s sister robot Roll collapses, because she is a girl robot, that it becomes a problem but roboticist genius Dr. Light stands helpless before what he realizes is an oncoming mass extinction ot the world’s robots, which for some unexplained reason would cause humanity’s extinction. This is changed when Dr. Wily airs a TV segment where he demands all the world’s governments surrender to him within two weeks, which is the point in time when the electromagnetic field will have grown so big and strong the mass extinction will happen, and Dr. Light equipe Megaman with an electromagnetic shield. Why Roll can’t be equipped with one is never mentioned but here is where the game really starts.

Once Megaman have landed in the jungle he’s quickly discovered by hostile patrol robots and the game’s combat mechanic is introduced. It’s worth noting that the third fork in the road in the jungle determines which robot master becomes the second boss, either Heatman or Bubbleman, but this is the only time this happens and it doesn’t affect anything else. After the fight is more exposition that introduces the alien supercomputer Ra Moon that Dr. Wily found in the temple ruin’s center and who recreated Dr. Wily’s destroyed robot masters.

After a short fight with a robot patrol is three boss fights in fairly quick succession, broken up by a longer dialogue between fight two and three where Megaman argues with Quickman until Shadowman appears. Episode one concludes with a last dialogue before Quickman dies.

Episode two starts with more exposition where Dr. Wily laughs to himself that the U.N.’s attacks can’t penetrate teh electromagnetic field and that he’ll soon have built the world’s strongest robot. Thereafter a series of blackouted cities and a U.N. meeting where it’s confirmed all troops sent to the ruins have been annihilated. Megaman builds a small pile of rocks to honour Quickman and meets Protoman who has come to help out. After that comes a series of possible fights with robot patrols with increasing frequency between three boss fights. The tempo is pulled down as the sun sets and Protoman appears for a chat, there’s also a cutscene explaining Ra Moon’s backstory. The journey continues with another three boss fights but these all have calmer moments between them where Megaman explores the environment. After the last boss fight is a dialogue between Dr. Wily’s hologram and Megaman about the world’s future which is interrupted when the camera malfunctions, and episode two concludes with a final dialogue where Geminiman, who had just been defeated, warns for traps in the temple’s main entrance.

The third and final episode starts by once more showing darkened cities and the U.N. meeting where it’s finally decided they surrender to Dr. Wily’s demands. Megaman have arrived at the temple where Dr. Wily and Ra Moon resides and finds an alternate entrance with three doors of which only one actually leads somewhere. The situation with Dr. Wily is given some more exposition before Megaman wanders the temple’s labyrinthine corridors where it’s possible to encounter several robot patrols plus and extra little cutscene where the old men at the U.N. meeting fails to contact Dr. Wily due to the electromagnetic field. After that comes four boss fights fairly close after one another of which the two in the middle are successive, and Megaman collapses from exhaustion.

When Megaman awakens he finds himself chained up in front of Dr. Wily who introduces Ra Moon to him and smugly talks about the world’s strongest robot Ra Thor who has just been completed. Megaman argues with Dr. Wily and it escalates to the point where Dr. Wily orders his yet again recreated robot masters to destroy Megaman, but just then Ra Moon decides to show its true colours and defeats all the robot masters with the help of Ra Thor who refuses to obey Dr. Wily. Megaman is cut loose from the chains by two robot masters to fight Ra Thor and after a tough battle Ra Thor falls. But Ra Moon’s got yet another boss, New Yellow Devil, up its sleeve and proclaims it to be the perfect machine and is the game’s final boss. If Megaman loses this battle a heartwarming cutscene is triggered where all of the robot masters give their last energy to Megaman to give him a alst chance to win which he eventually does and Ra Moon is blown to bits.

The epilogue shows how the electricity returns to the darkened cities and Roll wakes up. Megaman is dug out of the collapsed ruin and awakens at dawn surrounded by the robot masters built by Dr. Light (they are present throughout the game but primarily appears if Megaman loses to a boss) including Protoman and they chat about what’s happened. Dr. Wily escapes on a hoverbike and promises to defeat Megaman next time they meet which doesn’t worry Megaman and his friends especially much. What happens to the other robot masters isn’t mentioned at all.

When you look at the dramaturgical curves for the three episodes the first and third one are very similar while the second is flatter, mostly because of the breaks between the last three boss fights. All in all the dramaturgical structure works very well for this type of game and the ramping up of tension at the end of the third episode is exemplary with a for games typical hidden final boss. Some cutscenes can be trimmed down though and certain details cut out to not lose too much tempo between the gameplay segments even though this is basically an interactive movie.

Like the play Macbeth (Shakespeare, 2003) the game centers around a single basic conflict without sudsidiary themes or subplots: Dr. Wily is out to take over the world with the help of the supercomputer Ra Moon, whose ultimate goal is to exterminate all life on Earth, and Megaman will stop them. A few of Dr. Wily’s robot masters have personal reasons to fight Megaman but nothing is really done with it and it’s only Quickman who gets a longer moment in the spotlight. The goal is always to prevent the mass extinction of all life and it’s really only the time limit that makes the conflict escalate until the confrontation with Ra Moon. According to Brunetière a drama should be a battle of wills (Brandell, 2014, p. 55) and according to that definition Super Adventure Rockman is a good drama as Megaman’s will to save the world is opposed by Dr. Wily, Ra Moon and their subordinates.

The different historical classifiactions includes a unit for time (Brandell, 2014, p. 39-40) even though they disagree about the details. Super Adventure Rockman has a particularly vague such unit as the flow of time is relative to the events and jumps in time are not always presented. When the game starts there’s two weeks until the mass extinction and Dr. Light points out once more that Megaman has two weeks to go when the electromagnetic shield have been installed, a process that has taken an unknown amount of time to complete. The journey to the rainforest where the temple ruin lies also takes an unknown amount of time, is made in a kind of jet plane and Megaman arrives in the middle of the day. After eight boss fights, roughly halfway through episode two which is halfway through the game, the sun sets and three boss fights later, when episode two concludes, a new day dawns. A little while into episode three it’s mentioned there’s 22 hours left to the apocalypse. Next timestamp is when the game’s final boss have been defeated and it’s shown how a darkened city in the middle of the night get the electricity back, and the characters in the epilogue looks out over a rising sun. It should be noted that Megaman during episode three loses concsiousness twice and almost all events happen inside an old temple without windows so the vague flow of time can be excused here. The overall flow of time leave a lot to be desired though.

Concerning the variation in settings, or stage rooms if you will, (Brandell, 2014, p. 99-103) they’re relatively few considering the genre. The settings consists of an office, a computer laboratory, a generic jungle with a river, a partially overgrown temple ruin, generic caves and the temple interior with rooms and corridors. Beyond these settings cutscenes show several large cities, a meeting room, space and a generic cave people civilization in the jungle. Nothing interesting is done with the settings and they simply provide context and some aesthetic change to show the journey’s progress. The weather is always bright sunshine or moonlit night and not many clouds can be seen.

The various elements of the game are solid and shows a competent craft and the game is overall a pleasant experience without any greater breaks of immersion. The settings could’ve been more varied and the premise a bit more logical and less sexistic but it’s not worse than modern games can be. As a narrative it works well and with some polish be very good, it can also be a really good game if you polish the integration between story and gameplay.

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