Good thoughts over at Erratica on why some superheroes have found lasting fame, while others (Ant-man, I’m looking at you) have languished unnoticed despite the best efforts of their creators to make them all equally compelling.
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Well, it’s official: I’m going to the Origins convention later this month. I’m not yet quite sure what I’ll be doing there, but I figure with four days, a bag full of dice, and a 400-page Star Fleet Battles rulebook, I can probably find something with which to occupy myself.
The only other game convention I’ve attended was Gencon in 2003; it was much fun, although I decided afterwards that I’d spent too much time wandering the dealer hall and not enough time actually playing games. I hope to remedy that at Origins this year. Wish me luck!
by Gamasutra has an interview with game-design legend Chris Crawford. Lots of interesting ideas in there, but the gist of it can be boiled down to a theme I’ve heard more than once over the last few years: innovation in games is dead, and the industry is living on borrowed time.
I don’t know much about the economics of the game industry, so I can’t comment on the latter point. But I have done a lot of reading and thinking about the first point–that there is no more innovation in game design. Is the age of game innovation–an era of quirky, bizarre and sometimes brilliant gameplay ideas that weren’t pigeonholed into narrowly defined genres–long past us? Has the experimentation of the 1980s been quashed by endless sequels? Have we been reduced to simply re-playing fancier-looking but completely derivative iterations of the same two or three games?
Looking at the game shelf of your local Best Buy, it’s awfully hard to deny this. Lots and lots of sequels; lots and lots of unimaginative games that simply splash a fresh coat of paint over gameplay that’s ten or fifteen years old.
But I’d like to disagree a bit with the doomsayers–partly out of a stubborn desire to play the devil’s advocate, and partly because the gamer in me (who has played many excellent games in the last decade) rebels a bit against the implication that what I’ve been playing lately is utterly lacking in creativity.
One problem I have with these “innovation is dead” arguments is that they tend to be unclear on what innovation actually is. Words like “storytelling” and “narrative” get tossed around, but these terms are maddeningly vague. Nor is it clear that this sort of innovation will make for games that are more fun. I’d like to suggest that innovation does exist today, but rather than taking the form of avant-garde gameplay styles, it consists of taking tried-and-true styles of basic gameplay (of which there are only a finite number, after all) and stretching them in new directions. Consider the following, none of which boast truly unique gameplay styles but which have earned a place in many a gamer’s heart:
All of these games came out in the “dark ages”–the last decade, in which innovation has supposedly been dead. Yet each left a profound mark on the gaming landscape because they took existing gameplay frameworks and spun them in new directions. That might not be the textbook definition of “innovation,” but if it produces games like these, I’ll take it.
The “innovation is dead” crowd laments the decrease in the variety of gameplay styles available. But I think this is just the natural result of years spent refining gameplay styles that were once new and original: over time, the truly fun gameplay remains, and the not-fun gameplay is dropped. It is unlikely that we’ll see more than a handful of entirely new gameplay styles in the next few years; what falls to game designers now is to stretch the existing library of ideas into unexplored territory. There is art and, yes, innovation in borrowing proven game elements and refining them into something even more fun.
My last game purchase was Galactic Civilizations II, an explore-and-conquer space empire game that consists almost entirely of elements borrowed from games that came before it. I just hit level 37 in World of Warcraft, a game that’s mostly built on all the good ideas from other massively-multiplayer games. And you know what? Both games are really, really fun. I’ll be there to cheer on the new and bizarre when it appears (Spore, I have high hopes for you). And I’ll roll my eyes along with everybody else at the release of the 80th game in the Madden series. But in the meantime, I”ve got some fun, if not strictly innovative, games that need playing.
by The Minibosses perform a Castlevania medley. Really takes you back, eh? The Castlevania series had some truly excellent music. It crops up regularly in my MP3 playlist, at least…
by I’ve been in a comic-book mood lately, and so have spent the last week or so working on a blog post about Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, the story that brilliantly redefined the Batman character and had a tremendous impact on the entire superhero-comics industry.
The Dark Knight Returns is an amazing piece of work, and the challenge has been simply trying to sufficiently convey its coolness within the confines of a blog post.
All was going well. My enthusiasm for everybody’s favorite caped vigilante had never been higher. The blog post in praise of DKR was nearing completion. And then… then I saw this [caution: strong language].
I think… I think I’m going to have to shelve that DKR post while I take some time to think about what all this means.
by Downfall belongs to that elite cadre of films that manage to tell a truly disturbing story with such artistic skill that you simply can’t avert your gaze. A recounting of Hitler’s (and Nazi Berlin’s) final days, Downfall introduces us to a bizarre cast of villains and… well, I can’t really bring myself to think of them as heroes. The death throes of the Third Reich are seen through the eyes of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary, who remained in the Fuhrer’s bunker almost to the bitter end.
The film works because it doesn’t pursue much of an agenda beyond simply introducing its rogue’s gallery and letting their own words and actions speak. It’s certainly not a vindication of Hitler or the Nazis; it doesn’t try to sell us any archetypal “noble Nazis” who secretly hated Hitler’s policies, nor does it try too hard to moralize or condemn.
The film begins with Junge accepting a much-sought-after position as Hitler’s secretary. During the first half-hour, we meet most of the famous Nazi personalities and see the hopelessness of Germany’s situation. Some of the early scenes feel a bit staged for effect, but they work. Hitler’s delusional state is clearly established, sometimes through bleakly comic moments. In one early scene, as explosions sound in the streets outside, Hitler demands to know who is shelling Berlin. It can’t be the Russians, his generals reply, because they can’t be that close! Unfortunately, wishful thinking can’t make the Russians disappear, nor can the grand, war-winning, and completely imaginary strategies Hitler continually orders to be undertaken by Germany’s virtually non-existent armies.
The bulk of the film simply depicts the comings and goings of Nazi Germany’s generals and leaders. As Russian bombs fall throughout the city, some people engage in virtual orgies of drinking and dancing; others casually discuss the manner in which they’ll kill themselves when the Russians finally arrive. Some plot their escapes from Hitler’s bunker (he himself refuses to leave, and expects the same from his loyal friends and staff), or try to arrange for the escape of loved ones. Still others follow Hitler around like dogs, hanging on his every word, clearly unable to imagine life without him.
Downfall is, as you might expect, a dark and unsettling film. Its characters occupy places on the moral scale ranging from “flawed” to “monstrous,” and while the film depicts them as real human beings–it’s hard not to pity even Hitler as his friends and advisors abandon him one by one–a pall of godlessness and depravity hangs over every single person, sympathetic or not. We see Hitler both as murdering tyrant and gentle father-figure. The film’s spiritual nadir comes not with Hitler’s suicide, but with Magda Goebbels’ murder of her prepubescent children to prevent their contamination by an unworthy post-Nazi world: the mind simply reels as she walks quietly from bed to bed, placing cyanide capsules in each child’s mouth like communion wafers, clutching their heads in her hands as they convulse and die.
It’s not the visceral horror of Schindler’s List, but the effect is much the same. The film allows us a few glimmers of hope towards the end, as Junge and a handful of other survivors flee the bunker in hopes of escaping. (We know at least that Junge survives the war, since she is interviewed briefly at the beginning of the film.)
Throughout much of the film’s final hour, I fought a constant urge to weep. But what for? It is a strange thing to be profoundly moved, but unable to pinpoint exactly what is moving you. Do we weep for Hitler and his cronies, however pathetic they may be? Certainly not. For the death of a dream and the end of an ambitious vision, however depraved? I think not. For the “ordinary” people who found themselves in Hitler’s bunker at the end not because they were depraved monsters, but because they were morally flawed creatures? Perhaps. For the millions dead and ruined throughout the years of war? Certainly.
As they say: never again.
by I note that the Battletech developers have a blog in which they’re discussing the upcoming Battletech overhaul. Among the items that caught my eye is the mention of an upcoming revised version of the Mechwarrior RPG, renamed the Classic Battletech RPG. That’s great news–I was afraid the RPG side of the Battletech line was going to be lost amidst all the revisions and upgrades being applied to the rest of the franchise.
I’m really eager to see what the new Total Warfare main rulebook looks like. I think the Battletech revision is shaping up to be the game I’m most looking forward to seeing at Gencon, assuming I can find my way to Indianapolis this August.
by A couple quick links worth checking out:
by Mike Mearls has an interesting post about the effect of the internet on the way he views his local game store:
Before the Internet, a trip to a game store was fun. I liked shifting through racks of Ral Partha and Reaper miniatures looking for cool figures. In high school, I was lucky to have a well-stocked hobby store that dabbled in a few obscure miniatures lines, so there was always something new to find. The same applied to a lesser extent to RPGs and boardgames.
With the dawn of the Internet, that enjoyable part of shopping is gone. There’s little there to discover, because I know what’s out there. My information is a little too good.
This is something I’ve certainly noticed as well. When I was but a wee lad, a trip to the game store was an exciting, momentous occasion; I had no idea what strange and wonderful game books and other goodies were waiting for me on the shelves. I had little concept of the game “industry” and no understanding of the way that game lines were developed; I could never predict what game products were coming next. I might go to the store one month to find a book about psionics in D&D, or I might find a Battletech sourcebook unveiling crazy new mech designs. Whatever it was, it was always unexpected and exciting.
(Sure, I had a few outdated game line catalogs that sometimes came packaged in with boxed sets, but the odds of any particular book from those catalogs making it to my local game store were pretty slim, and I didn’t do the mail-order thing much.)
But with the internet, we now know all sorts of details about upcoming game books well in advance of publication–sometimes years before they actually hit store shelves. Publication schedules are planned out months or years in advance; book previews are made available to entice gamers into pre-ordering products online. If you pay attention to the major game publisher sites, chances are you know nearly as much about the next batch of upcoming games as the developers do.
It’s really, really hard to be surprised by a game these days.
That’s certainly not a bad thing–I like knowing what’s coming down the pipe, personally–but it has robbed the excursion to the game store of any sort of suspense or anticipation. If the game you want isn’t on the store shelf, you can just order it online and have it show up in your mailbox two days later. And so one major reason for bothering to frequent a local game store–to find out what’s new, to pick up rumors about what’s coming next–is gone.
In the post above, Mearls notes that this has caused him to approach his local game store less as a source of news and discovery and more as a social hub. (Speaking for myself, since my own local game store isn’t really a place I’d want to spend serious time hanging out at, I mostly patronize it to support local business.) The old thrill of discovery is gone, so he’s found different ways to make his trips to the game store worthwhile.
An interesting situation, to be sure. I’m a fan of this internet thing, myself, but there are certainly times when I wish for the relative “ignorance” I enjoyed during the pre-internet era!
by A Sunday evening game story for you, if you will. Pull up a chair while I recount a harrowing tale of defeat and revenge… in the cold depths of space!
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been playing a Star Fleet Battles campaign with a friend. A campaign is a series of linked scenarios that you play through in sequence–in this case, six scenarios depicting the long and difficult journey of a Hydran dreadnought trying to escape Klingon territory after a particularly disastrous diplomatic fiasco.
I’ve been playing Star Fleet Battles with this friend for months now, and I’ll be honest: I’ve never won a single game. Not one. Not even when he handicaps himself by giving me access to better ships and technologies than he has. So you can imagine how I felt going into this campaign, in which I was going to have to try and stop his dreadnought’s escape.
The first battle in the campaign went even worse for me than I had anticipated, and made me start questioning why I play this self-esteem killer of a game in the first place. The opening scenario of the campaign featured an encounter between his dreadnought and two small, lightly-armed Klingon frigates. There was no question who was going to win; I just hoped to inflict a bit of damage before my frigates died.
Not only did I inflict very little damage, but within a few turns he had crippled and captured both frigates, meaning that he could bring them in as reinforcements for himself during future scenarios in the campaign.
My chances of success had been low enough just against his dreadnought; how was I possibly going to succeed against his dreadnought and two of my own captured ships? The shame was nearly too great to bear. I almost surrendered to despair.
And so we met up to play the second game in the campaign. This fight was a bit more evenly matched–his dreadnought was being faced not by two lowly frigates but by a Klingon strike carrier and its escorts. And of course, mocking me with their very presence, there were the two captured Klingon frigates, now serving as escorts for my opponent’s dreadnought.
The fight began, and my opponent decided not to engage my carrier force; if he could just get his dreadnought far enough away from me, he could disengage and successfully complete the scenario without having to bloody his hands in actual battle. When I saw the dreadnought turning about to make a run for the edge of the map, I knew what I had to do.
Forget the dreadnought. I was going to get those frigates back.
“Let the coward run,” barked the commander of my Klingon carrier group. “Leave no Klingon behind! All vessels, bring me those frigates–alive!” Ignoring the dreadnought, I turned the pride of the Klingon fleet against the two frigates, which (still badly damaged from the drubbing my opponent had inflicted on them in the last game) were trying to limp off of the board without being noticed.
The frigates put up quite a fight, considering that they were both nearly crippled. But although one of them was accidentally destroyed in the ensuing fracas (remember the scene in Star Trek III in which the Klingon captain executes his ship’s gunner for accidentally destroying the target ship instead of just crippling it?–well, it went like that), the final frigate had no chance. A careful disrupter salvo stripped its shields away without damaging the ship itself, and shortly thereafter Klingon boarding parties were flooding aboard, quickly overthrowing the despised Hydran captors and restoring the nearly-decimated frigate to its rightful place on the bottom rung of the Klingon navy.
Meanwhile, the dreadnought slipped away. I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen the last of it.
The craven Star Fleet Battles rulebook would have you believe that letting the dreadnought go constitutes a huge tactical defeat for the Klingons.
But by Kah’less–I have done as honor required. The next time I face down that damnable dreadnought… at least he won’t be stealing any more of my frigates.
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