Jon Blow’s posted the answers to his “Name That Game” competition.  I enjoyed the obvious passion in his writeups more than the answers themselves.  One answer in particular actually got me to go through a few hoops to play the old game– Ultima 4.

He picked the perfect bit of the screen to show in the competition– the moon phases that occupy the top bit of the screen.  It’s an ideal mechanic that combines the evocative image of the dual moons with the simple, delightful puzzles of the moongates.  Despite technological advances, it’s no less a struggle today to replicate that sense of fantasy and mystery.

One of the more neglected forms of agency in games is the ability of the player to exert influence on non-player characters.  In striking contrast to mainstream entertainments such as literature, television, and film, games often seem to dedicate far more resources to deforming terrain than to shaping character responses.

Certainly we’ve all experienced the placid, untouchable quest NPC in the middle of a full-scale firefight, or the shopkeeper who doesn’t seem to have noticed that you’ve killed off the entire town.  When characters do notice your actions, it’s often in the form of a generalized love/hate slider, like World of Warcraft’s factions.

The few stabs games have taken at reactive characters have been successful.  Good/evil games such as Fable often write several paths of dialog for each character.  In KoTOR, you have the opportunity to sway a recovered dark jedi either towards the light, or into relapse.  Watching the consequences of your actions on another feels more compelling than your own good/evil choices.

The Sims pushed character interactions further than any other game to my knowledge.  It communicates the internal state changes of its characters through their actions, as well as gestures and Simlish.

Despite early successes such as The Sims and KoTOR, developers are reluctant to take on the challenges of deeper character interaction.  Understandably so– the topic gets short shrift at game development’s popular conferences such as GDC.  The state of the art is quite primitive.  But players are happy to fill in the details.  Remember, you were once quite happy to accept this as a castle.

Geoff’s post on the ending to the latest Prince of Persia brought to mind some recent (disjointed) thoughts on agency in games.  What can the player do?  Why is the player there?

Games have responded to that question with a wide range of responses: from the pathologically linear Out of This World/Another World (or more extreme, Dragon’s Lair), to “choose your own solution” games like Deus Ex, to the reactive and interactive worlds seen in Ultimas and GTAs, to player-centeric and play-focused games such as The Sims.  Is the player acting out your pre-set script, or do they have the power to substantially affect the experience?

Some of the most effective, recent indie game statements have been about the futility of agency– Passage, The Graveyard, La La Land 5.  You appear to have power, but that power is meaningless. In some ways, the games say: “We have this new medium, but we’re not sure what we can do with it.”

How do we measure agency?  How do we better distinguish the player’s low level abilities, such as performing a flip in SSX, from the higher-level power to affect the game world, or the state of an NPC?

Re:

Dear IGDA Member,

As part of the IGDA’s new partnership with the AIAS, you are eligible to vote in the Interactive Achievement Awards.

Do you have an opinion on the best story of the year?  Excellent.  Now, how about the best character performance of the year?  Not sure?  Let’s move on.   How about best sound editing?  Outstanding achievement in game direction?  (What?)

Don’t worry if you don’t have an opinion on all of them.  I mean, sure– you’re required to make a selection in each category, but there’s no reason you can’t just give Mortal Kombat the nod for outstanding achievement in story, adapted material.  Then again, I don’t know what the “Craft” category of the AIAS awards is, either, so I’m really just picking nits.

After navigating Netgear’s maze of a website, I finally created an account and opened a support request.

A day later, I received an email:

Your case has been reviewed and has been updated by a NETGEAR representative.

To review or update your case please log into the NETGEAR portal at https://my.netgear.com/myNETGEAR/

So I went to the site, typed in the (correct) login information, and was denied.  That’s odd.  Well, I’ll have it send me a new password.  “Your new password has been sent to (my email address).”  Wait… wait… wait… no password.  (Yes, I checked my spam filters.)

So I opened a new ticket (sans account), roughly paraphrased:

I’m unable to log into your support site with login information that previously worked.  When I request a new password be sent to my email address, it claims it sends a password, but I receive nothing.

Since I’m unable to log into your site, please send your response to (my email address).  I will not be able to read any responses posted to your support center.

In fairness, I knew exactly what would happen.  At this point, I was simply doing it for the expected irony.  (Hmm, if it’s expected, is it irony?)  Nevertheless:

Your case has been reviewed and has been updated by a NETGEAR representative.

To review or update your case please log into the NETGEAR portal at https://my.netgear.com/myNETGEAR/

It’s layoff time!  Not a great time to be a game developer, and Scott’s count is only the stuff from the last couple days, so doesn’t include Mythic, Funcom, Austin, or the next couple months at EA, who’s just starting their plan to trim 10% by March.

EA’s costs have recently skyrocketed across the board (development, marketing, admin), without much to show for it, at least yet.  The cuts aren’t surprising, but they are unfortunate.

The industry historically goes from “develop everything internally” to “buy external startups” and back again.  Will EA shift again?  With modern console dev costs, are there enough studios left for that to work?

Muffin Cat is king of all muffins

This is a test product.

UPDATE: I am testing WordPress shopping cart plugins for some clients.  I enjoyed the test image enough that I decided to make the post public.

Noel Llopis is working in an iPhone game, and had the great idea of taking a bit off time off of it to create an iPhone app in one day– and then make it available in the App Store.  He’s written a concise start-to-finish account of the process.  Check it out if you’re considering iPhone dev (and if you don’t already subscribe to his feed).

I just registered my Netgear product and clicked on the “contact support” link, because it isn’t working.  Here are the options I was presented with (sorry, not working on a computer with Photoshop this second):

Thank you for registering your product with Netgear, you have the following options

1. Update your profile
2. Register a new product
3. View your registered products
4. View your service contracts
5. Activate your support card
6. Online Support Submissions

NETGEAR Service portal

I guess I want to… activate my technical submission for my service card?  Or something?  I decided to click “Online Support Submissions”, and got the following new options:

My online technical submission history

Total cases found: 0

Click here to log a new online technical submission request.

Click here to log a new presales support request.

*Click here to give us feedback on your support experience.

Click here to log a rebate related inquiry.

I’m not contacting support, I’m logging a new a new online technical submission request!  Well, that’s what I clicked, anyway.  I don’t think I requested that anyone submit to me, technically.

I was just chatting with a friend about how I’d never once consciously tried to get an “achievement”.  I’ve always been an exploration player, never a score player– I could care less if I have 600/1000 or 800/1000 for Mass Effect, or if I have all my Azeroth achievements unlocked on my Death Knight (unless it gives me a faster mount).

Days later, I stumbled across Achievement Unlocked, which turned me into a bona fide achievement whore.  I absolutely had to get every last achievement.  What’s the difference?  For starters, the achievements are all listed along the right-hand side of the screen, with obvious indicators of which ones you have and haven’t completed.  There’s no hunting for your next goal: there’s a list of ‘em right there.

Also, many of the achievements require a bit of cleverness, especially if you try to figure them out without reading the hints.  (Note: there’s one achievement you can’t get without reading the hints– namely, the achievement for reading the hints.)  So, there is gameplay in many of the achievements, even if the game is ostensibly trying to show how achievements detract from gameplay.

But what about the obviously gameplay-free ones, such as the achievement for jumping for 10 seconds?  I still completed those.  Why?  Logically, I could clearly see that jumping for 10 seconds would complete the achievement, and that that would complete my 100% achievement.  Maybe I’m not as immune to completionism as I thought.