Switch Me Up: discussing Nintendo's new console on YouTube

This brief article is based upon a response I gave to a YouTube user complaining about the negative sentiment that some people in Italy expresses in relation to Nintendo's new console, the Switch. Our national commenters often manages to be less gentle than the worldwide YouTube average, which prompted a disgruntled reaction from the young Giuseppe (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjKjHQXGauy8up1BOURZdyw):

Comments to this video are really sad, you're just making excuses of any sort to dump shit on a console that has no issues as of today. I've read some people complaining about "too much stuff to plug in and remove"

That's kinda sad, actually, so I decided to step in and clear things up in favour of a device that is not flawless, as many outlets are pointing out in these hours, but has every right to play a good chunk of the match before being dismissed. Here I go:

I'll tell you, Giuseppe, despite having immediate issues with the Nintendo Switch design choices, I've always been possibilist about it. The Wii had a cyclopean success, while its unlucky successor still has some great games that people should go back and play. Saying that the console is flawless, though, sounds a little bit too defensive in light of the opinions of those who already had the chance to test it and share their experiences on YouTube, as opposed to us. 

Speaking of the manifacturing, the console doesn't sound sturdy at all: I've seen the tablet shaking inside the docking station to a worrying amount, and the joycon's fastening at the sides of the tablet doesn't seem keen on accomodating energic solicitations.

The most sensible thing to do would be sitting comfortably on our sofas and wait for the developers to show us what happens when they really settle on making this pretty little harmless looking console sing 

As far as the autonomy outside of the docking station is concerned, the best observed value amounts to 3 hours and half on the OS interface, with the screen always on (75% luminosity) and no games played, before the console died out. Frankly, it is hard to deem this acceptable, improvements are bound to happen in the next firmware updates, but energy consumption is typically hard to improve on the initial figures, so we better not delude ourselves. 

Computing power: the chinese portal Taobao.com already dissected the console to find a Tegra/Maxwell chipset inside, which includes a 1.78GHz CPU, a 921Mhz GPU and 4 GB of shared LPDDR4 RAM, which lines up to a recent leak from Foxconn. Those clock speeds decreases from 15% to 40% in portable configuration, in a developers defined figure that directly impacts battery life. On the technical side, then, the Switch doesn't even try to come close to its direct competitors, and everyone is free to deem this a valid approach or not, depending on what they expect from a console. 

So, is the Switch flawless? It is not, and that's perfectly physiological for any kind of device. But nonetheless, it's way too early to dump shit on the Switch, when the most sensible thing to do would be sitting comfortably on our sofas and wait for the developers to show us what happens when they really settle on making this pretty little harmless looking console sing.

#RAPIDFIRE - 6: A tip for morality in games

Game or experience? The Virginia case

One of the things making the indie gaming scene so interesting is that there are very little restraints on what developers can try, both in terms of concepts and form. Of course, such freedom of experimentation is far from a free ticket to attention or success, and I guess the guys at Variable State knew better when they set in stone the design of Virginia. But what's going on with the game, for starters? Well, today's subject is a Steam Greenlight project with an interesting hook (its story is set in the titular American state, and features two female FBI agents dealing with a bizarre case of disappearance) and an approach to game design that focuses entirely on storytelling at the expense of player agency.

What may sound like a walking simulator at first is actually a shade of that genre where dialogues are completely absent, and sound effects are sparse at best: the player is supposed to explore the surroundings, feel the mood set by the music while looking for clues, and use these cues to understand what is happening in the scene. Yes, the experience is structured in discrete, sequencial scenes intersped with various kinds of cuts (temporal, oniric etc.); interaction is limited to walking around and manipulate objects that are essential to the story with a simple left click, and fixed results. Virginia is a game that makes a clear functional point out of its stern linearity.

The whole design is in fact aimed at surrounding the player with a deeply atmospheric story told through non verbal means, where all the beats happens precisely when they have to, and characters emerges from their scripted actions - or the reactions to what little the player can do. There's an interesting, yet stark opposition between the barebone gameplay scheme and a rich visual language sporting exquisite care for framing, lighting, timings and cuts: the scale of variation is purposely leant towards the latter, and as a result, the mood and emotional impact of every scene are bumped up extraordinarily. This is not at all a first in the gaming world, as we often see AAA productions reinforce their climatic moments by briefly restraining the player's agency: Virginia, though, extends this approach throughout the whole span of the adventure.

A working gameplay structure can rely on simple one button contextual interactions, as long as it serves another basic function besides "click here to progress the story", and that's challenging the player on some level

In a touch of cleverness, here and there are scattered some very short scenes that does nothing to push the story forward, but only exists to reveal some facets of the world and its inhabitants: in one instance, the older agent stops by a convenience store leaving you in the car. A few instants later, a blue coupé with some white boys stops by your car, they give you the middle finger and then flee. In a matter of seconds, you get to understand the youngsters' relationship with the law, the female gender and the black people (both agents are black).

As you may have guessed, there's no arguing the validity of this structure in experiencial terms, but whether Virginia constitutes a proper game or not is another matter. There is so little to do in the game that some may feel compelled to say "I could have watched it on Youtube after all"... and yes they could. It's a pertinent doubt spawning a legitimate question about whether interactivity alone can turn something into a game, and if not, what type and degree of interactivity is required for this to happen. In my experience and opinion, a working gameplay structure can rely on simple one button contextual interactions, as long as it serves another basic function besides "click here to progress the story", and that's challenging the player on some level. As far as the demo goes, Virginia technically does this - you have to walk through the scenes and look for that particular clue that triggers the next event - but it's too straightforward in its approach.

Rare is the impression of working towards an objective in this experience, as powerful as the narrative rewards are. In this sense, there's an unavoidable comparison to be made with Dear Esther, a game widely criticized for its structural simplicity, but with a stronger element of challenge in the randomization of story clues at each new playthrough. The narrative may not be as elegantly exposed as in Virginia, but the player is required to reconstruct it and make it come together in his mind, thus bringing a tangible sense of accomplishment upon succeeding. The same basic mechanic, used in a different way, ultimately brings more weight to the gameplay and the meaning of the interactions, making the act of playing Dear Esther more attractive than watching it on YouTube. Virginia stays on the very edge of what we call "games", and does it knowingly.

Going by how favourably Virginia is being received by the specialized press, it can't be said that Variable State's gamble hasn't paid off: it sits comfortably into the wider spectrum of interactive experiences, naturally lending itself to other media such as VR. Ironically, working so well in video form doesn't do any good to its interactive nature.

Speed Oddities: embracing the flaws in Genki games

When we think about racing games, names like Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport and Need for Speed are unquestionably the most popular in town. Over the years, we saw those series routinely set new standards in terms of polish, accessibility and mass market appeal, their influence bleeding into every declination of the genre's landscape - from hardcore simulations to pure arcade racers. Raising the people's expectations towards the category since the late nineties to such an high extent, though, had both good and not so good implications: on one hand, the overall quality of the products rose accordingly, while on the other, developers that used to do things a little bit differently ended up falling by the wayside somehow, especially in the West, and that includes the japanese Genki.

I've never concealed my appreciation for this studio, born in 1990 and firmly rooted in the racing genre (but they did Jade Cocoon for the PS1 in 1998 too, a lovely JRPG). Awkward logo aside, most people will probably recognize them for the Shutokou Battle racing series, known outside of Japan as Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Tokyo Highway Battle, Import Tuner Challenge or Street Supremacy, depending on the publisher. Born in 1994 on the SNES, this longstanding saga had 10 main releases up until 2006, when it was officially discontinued, and something like 11 spinoffs that dabbled with its core gameplay in interesting ways. Western developers recognized Shutokou Battle's importance by embedding some of its tropes (japanese cars, the focus on tuning, high speed public roads used as racing tracks, especially at night) into hit series like Need for Speed Underground, Midnight Club and Juiced.

Despite sharing some of its elements with the titles we've just mentioned, the core racing dynamics and rules in Genki's products are apart from all of them - so far apart, in fact, that they could even be considered the main factors behind the generally mixed reception of Shutokou Battle in the West during its 10 years run. To better understand why, let's try to sum up the Genki driving experience: racing occurs mainly on the Shuto Expressway, a sprawling system of highways that encompasses four prefectures (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama), and is articulated in multi-lane routes with tunnels and elevated roads, all faithfully reproduced in the games but most importantly, blazed through at speeds far north of 186 mph (300 kph).

In Shutokou Battle, the fun emerges as the player becomes more and more aware of how to exploit the game systems' interactions - not by cherry picking and dismissing them for not being as elegant or refined than [insert any big racing game name here]

The extreme speeds makes breaking, cornering or even the basic lane changing maneuver far more dangerous and complicated than they should be, courtesy of some very deliberate vehicle dynamics: straight breaking at 300 kph screws up the cars' weight distribution, making them swerve nervously until the player tames them with equally nervous wheel corrections. Understeer affects each and every single car to various degrees, so the cornering phase has to be set up as early as possible in order to send the vehicle into a state of controllable drift: there's a precise timing for this, but randomized traffic placed in trajectory can make its evaluation pretty hard, so it's easier sometimes to just ram into the barriers and let them do the job.

Gli Achievements come base per ridefinire il Performance Gaming

Uno tra i meriti più evidenti di Microsoft nell' ambito delle console è quello di avere introdotto gli Achievements, serie di obiettivi facoltativi che consentono ad ogni giocatore di vantare presso la propria community un grado di abilità superiore all'ordinario, perlomeno nell' ambito di certi titoli. Sino a qualche tempo fa, ritenevo che gli Achievements non avessero altra funzione di la da questa, e che soddisfacessero le esigenze di cerchie ristrette di giocatori... Salvo accorgermi con l'esperienza (un' esperienza comunque indiretta in quanto maturata nell' ambito dei Trofei PlayStation) che esistono altre sfaccettature di questa realtà, ormai inestricabilmente legata al processo di game design. Si parla di continuo della necessità di evolvere il media, quando in realtà, un'idea come quella degli Achievement non fa che convalidare ancora oggi il concetto di "performance gaming", ossia di uno stile di gioco improntato al conseguimento dei migliori punteggi o all'esecuzione di azioni particolarmente difficili che forse, il giocatore non inseguirebbe nell'ambito di una normale partita.

È un po' quello che accadeva decenni fa nelle sale giochi, dove il riconoscimento maggiore consisteva nel vedere tre lettere rubate al proprio nome o soprannome nella stessa riga del punteggio più elevato. Un tempo ci si poteva ritrovare in sala per scoprire a quali volti si associassero le tre lettere più prestigiose, per cui, quell'unico Achievement diventava in qualche modo un elemento di aggregazione sociale oltre che di distinzione. Persone accomunate dalla stessa passione si scoprivano così, dando un significato particolare ad azioni tutto sommato vacue come il raggiungimento di un high score. È inutile sottolineare come questa dimensione del performance gaming si sia del tutto perduta nel tempo: persino il concetto stesso ha rischiato di scomparire a metà degli anni '90, quando il grande boom delle console ha spostato il fuoco dei programmatori verso esperienze casalinghe per giocatore singolo, ed è trascorsa un'intera generazione prima che Xbox Live tornasse a dargli una nuova valenza.

Tale valenza è quella di un confronto tra giocatori ridotto al senso più letterale ed asciutto della locuzione, incoraggiato dalla necessità di giustificare un acquisto costoso come oggi è quello di un videogame. Per gran parte dei consumatori odierni, è semplicemente impensabile che 70 euro di software finiscano nel dimenticatoio dopo qualche decina d'ore, anche quando il prezzo occulto di questo pensiero consiste nel ripetere per ore azioni dubbiamente divertenti, se non apertamente tediose. Ecco spiegata la ragione per cui di questi tempi, Achievements e multiplayer online si trovano inestricabilmente legati tra loro: entrambi concorrono a legittimare una spesa, e lo fanno ancor meglio se associati nello stesso contesto, ma bisogna anche domandarsi sino a che punto è lecito spingersi nell'uso di questi mezzi. Sfortunatamente, la stampa di settore fa ben poco per sollevare l'interrogativo ed al contrario, tende a premiare oltremisura i giochi più "completi" nei dipartimenti appena citati.

Probabilmente, la mia personale visione del videogioco è troppo romantica e slegata dal tempo, ma ciò che vorrei precisare è che non intendo condannare gli Achievement (o Trofei, poco importa) in quanto tali. Credo semplicemente che siano tanto più rilevanti quanto più aiutino a scoprire caratteristiche concrete del gioco: per capirci, la soddisfazione di effettuare 50 kill usando un tomahawk in Call of Duty non mi sembra neanche lontanamente paragonabile a quella che deriva dal riuscire a scalare il sacrario di Shadow of the Colossus accedendo al suo giardino segreto. È davvero troppo chiedere a chi realizza giochi di dare agli obiettivi un significato diverso, capace di elevare realmente il valore dell'esperienza e far confrontare gli utenti su basi diverse dal semplice killcount? Gli estremismi del "performance gaming" e le ricompense fittizie ad essi legate rientrano a pieno titolo tra le ragioni per cui ancora oggi, frange della stampa generalista e dell'opinione pubblica considerano il videogiocare un'attività alienante e nociva.