#RAPIDFIRE - 2: A Game of Timings

 

#RAPIDFIRE - 1: How do you do stop-gap consoles?

Hello everyone! Today, I'm going to start a little column on Videogames Beyonder titled #RAPIDFIRE: it is based on concise, straight to the point opinions that makes for very fast reads, but with more breathing space than Twitter's strict 140 bar less characters rule. Hopefully it'll enable more frequent updates to the blog too :) Text blocks on #RAPIDFIRE will be formatted differently from regular articles in order to make them identifiable at first sight; the format may change over time to further improve readability. Let's start with a topic that went on fire in the very last days:

EDIT 06/20: 40 chars per line, 15 lines/600 chars spaces included at best. Seems like an acceptable format.

The clash of identities at E3 2016

While the Internet is full of journalists, analysts and commentators predicating the progressive loss of relevance of gaming trade shows, common people still floods these events year after year, eager to dive into the restless stream of content that the industry churns out, both in the hardware and software departments. 3 years into a new console generation, fairs like E3 serves more as an indicator of what the market balances are, what the developers are able to do with machines they've properly gotten to grasp with, and how the manifacturers' commercial offering shapes up their identity. I'd like to elaborate on the latter point, and more specifically on what are the overarching reasons why people are more attracted to Sony or Microsoft at this point in time.

Redmond's giant played out its E3 2016 conference on an alternation of tones that gave it an enjoyable rhythm: it started with a Battlefield 1 demo focused on its expansive 64 players online battles, followed by a more light-hearted overview of Dead Rising 4's over the top undead carnage. The hot trail of action went on with a colossal boss fight demo of Final Fantasy XIV, a live multiplayer session for the paint-trade friendly Forza Horizon 3, and a blood drowned run through a campaign mission in Gears of War 4. Action seems to be the underlining theme at Xbox, along with a pronounced taste for big scales and online interactions that projects a very dynamic, "in your face" image to consumers. Sure, there's more subtlety to be found among the platform's independent offering, but it's not something that really transpires from the company's communication, and experiences like the aforementioned ones tends to get more time under the spotlights. As the wording of Project Scorpio's annoucement demonstrates ("The most powerful console ever", "Uncompromised 4K gaming"), the company adresses a crowd which is more sensible to impact messaging.  

Things gets pretty different on Sony's court. The japanese company has always strived to valorize more nuanced, alternative contents on its platforms, resorting to impressive presentation styles: at this year's E3, they brought a full orchestra and had it score the biggest demos live, on the fly. The trick added a further emotional layer to Kratos' return as a father in God of War, and more atmosphere to the gritty apocalyptic open world of Days Gone. Speaking of worlds, one thing that this generation of PlayStation titles is doing on a regular basis is opening up to exploration and experiencial narrative: whether it's full-on open worlds like Horizon: Zero Dawn's or wide sandboxes à la Uncharted 4 and God of War, space seems to play a key role on the visual expression of games this side of the barricade. The Last Guardian will have players constantly checking out their surroundings for ways to leverage the interaction between the hero and his animal companion, and the same goes for the criminally overlooked Gravity Rush 2 with its physics altering mechanics. Along with a strong, recurring attention to heroes' design and characterisation (Detroit: Become Human), these elements seems to resonate greatly with Sony's audience.

There's both a necessity and a struggle to mix things up while mantaining a certain degree of uniqueness - in other words, a reason for people to choose one product over the other

It is interesting to point out these differences in a time where the gaming offering, on both sides of the pond, is getting somehow more homogeneous in its pursuit of diversity. After all, there's an infinite landscape of tastes to cater to, and manifacturers are modulating their software lineups accordingly: Microsoft is more inclined to put light-hearted things like Sunset Overdrive and ReCore on the forefront, while Sony is cutting down on the racing and shooting departments to reinforce its focus on exclusive, atmospheric AAA titles. There's both a necessity and a struggle to mix things up while mantaining a certain degree of uniqueness (in other words, a reason for people to choose one product over the other). This leads to an evolving exchange in communication styles where Microsoft's "call to power" about Scorpio sounds like a more extreme take on what Sony did with the PS4.

As discussed in a previous article, the way new hardware is going to be introduced in the coming months will change the market's configuration in ways that we've never seen before, but let's not underestimate how the shape of both manifacturers' identities is going to evolve as a result.

Time to ditch the console generations paradigm?

There's a very interesting blog post over at Gamasutra (source) reflecting on how the advent of PS4K is going to change the way console cycles are handled from its release on. Author David Galindo speculates on how we might be in for a new, incremental update model that basically erases the concept of "new generation console" entirely, incorporating some tenets of the PC world: manifacturers have all shifted to x64 architectures, meaning that running the same games over multiple hardware iterations becomes much easier than it was before. However, are we really done with cycles and generations?

The so called seventh generation, marked by hugely popular consoles as the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, has lasted much longer than the previous six, a situation that had both negative and positive implications: people mantains that improvements on graphical fidelity and complexity of game mechanics have been held back, but at the same time we've seen Sony and Microsoft's online platforms grow bigger and stronger, hosting services and initiatives that shaped them into the viable, attractive environments of today. A completely new gaming market blossomed during the seventh generation by way of indie games, often put under the same spotlight as their AAA counterparts.

As technological advancements slow down their pace, consoles needs to stay around longer and provide the developers with opportunities to make their super expensive games last longer too

Where hardware stood still, the market responded with new opportunities. As technological advancements slow down their pace, consoles needs to stay around longer and provide the developers with opportunities to make their super expensive games last longer too: the era of "enhanced modes" is upon us, driven by (you name it) stop gap incremental updates to existing machines without having to re-release the software entirely. Word on the Web is that programmers are not very happy with what's happening in the console world right now, but their tune may change as soon as they start seeing more revenues coming from their games over time.

What about consumers, then? What will their perception of this new marketing model for consoles be? This is a trickier question, as the masses' idea of what they consider "new" or "progressive" is extremely brand driven: they are not likely to change their equipment until something that is branded as new and progressive comes across. This is what leads me to think that the concept of "generation" is not really going to go away, even with its meaning reduced to a simple marketing hook. But from now on, people will have to think very well through when buying a new console, as waiting for the cheaper model to show up is probably not going to happen anymore.

If you're looking for culprits (and I'm entering pure speculation territory here), VR is probably your best option as the new technology's sudden and unexpected uptake is what prompted Sony to come up with the PS4K idea in the first place, not the will to disrupt the current market setting. The japanese company had no reason to even think about a new console, having an almost 100% sales' lead over its main competitor, but they surely need a stronger base platform supporting their position as the cheapest VR solution provider around - bar Google Cardboard. For once, creating a "just in case" prototype like Project Morpheus turned out to be a very good stroke for them!

Better resolutions and framerates for games may have been the only cascade effects of PS4K, if the vision of a new marketing scenario didn't come along with it.

Nintendo and the (unintended?) Linkle challenge

In a recent update for the upcoming Hyrule Warriors Legends, a portable version of the widely appreciated Zelda spin-off for WiiU, two new playable characters found their way into the game's roster, namely fan favourite Tetra (remember The Wind Waker?) and newcomer Linkle, a female counterpart for the series' traditional male avatar Link. While part of the audience were quite pleased with the initiative, something Nintendo had teased in the past but never translated into actual game content, some other people were less enthusiastic about it and labeled it a stereotypical, pandering cash grab.

I won't put quotes around that definition because it's actually mine, and it only serves the purpose of encapsulating the range of sentiments expressed by others in relation to the matter - with different shades of grey of course, but I think it's a pretty accurate synthesis. As you can see from the trailer up here, Linkle is an adorable female Hylian that shares the same colour scheme as the reference character, while swapping his iconic Master Sword with double crossbows and adding a distinctive golden compass on her neck. Well, each of these elements seems to lend itself to criticism about the alleged unfair depiction of a female character, with particular reference to...

• The outfit and complexion: Linkle retraces exactly the same racial features and clothing style of Link, rather than presenting herself as an original and distinguished counterpart for the hero. Nintendo played it safe by simply applying girlish twists to the existing template, down to the name, making the base male audience more comfortable in the process - not the female one.
• The crossbows and compass: why didn't Nintendo trust Linkle with the legendary Master Sword? Isn't she worth it? Or are the crossbows a more appropriate, graceful and prejudicial option for a lady at arms? The compass in itself adds nothing to Linkle's femininity, serving more as simple merchandising material (it's a physical bonus for the game's limited edition).

With the gaming industry as a whole striving (with variable degrees of success) to propose more effective and nuanced depictions of female characters, in both main and supporting roles, Koei-Tecmo's approach to Linkle's design may come off as simplistic and outdated: the developers stated that they wanted her to look like "a cute little sister to Link", an idea that Nintendo itself scrapped initially. But little did the publisher know that Linkle's abandoned design in the Hyrule Warriors artbook would actually become popular among fans of Zelda, despite its derivative nature.

The natural question is "why?", so let's venture into seeking answers, shall we? Anybody familiar with the Zelda franchise is aware of Link's conception as a neutral avatar, a shell for any gamer to dive into the world of Hyrule. But it also represents the basic features of the hero according to the lore: an innocent young Hylian, blond of hair and blue eyed, with a green outfit and a pointy cap. Those are the elements forming the long standing trope that defines the whole series' identity, not the gender, even though for many years Nintendo has been addressing Link as a boy (an assumption of theirs about the games' fanbase that doesn't hold much ground nowadays),

Link's neutral avatar represents the basic features of the hero according to the lore: an innocent young hylian, blond of hair and blue eyed, with a green outfit and a pointy cap. Those elements forms the long standing trope that defines the whole series' identity, not the gender

This perspective, in my opinion, effectively invalidates any accusation of pandering based on the character's appearance alone: Linkle represents Koei-Tecmo's compliance to the lore's premises. The lore premises allowed a woman to hoist Mjolnir and become Thor in Marvel's comics, along with all the appropriate marketing considerations. Speaking of weapons, I for one would love to see Linkle brandish the Master Sword to unleash some special musou techniques, but at the same time I'm OK with the crossbows as her regular mean of offense: it's not like Link has never touched a crossbow in 29 years, although in the context of a less than stellar spin-off, and she's got a powerful tornado attack too, for those still worrying about a "weak woman trope" reinforcing risk. Who said she's going to be a weak character in the first place?

In conclusion, I think Koei-Tecmo is providing both an opportunity and a challenge to Nintendo: by making Linkle a worthwhile addition to the Hyrule Warriors roster, the Big N may consider giving her more relevance in the future by creating dedicated titles or even better, turning her into the alternative avatar for mainline Zelda games. That alone would be a simple yet important step into contemporaneity for Nintendo, and a way to shake up accusations that often have an end in themselves. 

Warren Spector calls "failure" on Uncharted and other big hits: does he have a point?

One of the first posts I've written for Videogames Beyonder was about Warren Spector and his 'One City Block' design dream - I'm going to translate that one from the original italian text soon, as it's a very interesting description of some of the highest objectives attainable in the realm of game making. And I'm happy to return to Spector in the wake of his PAX Aus 2015 keynote, where he made a distinction between "low", "medium" and "high expression games" based on players' agency and the potential for emerging, unpredicted situations. For instance fighting games, sport games and sandbox experiences (Dishonored, Fallout, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Sims are explicitly mentioned) would fall into the high expression category, while things like Uncharted and Heavy Rain would respectively be low and medium affairs.

Taking such successful brands and associating them with a "low rate of expression" has caused a bit of unease among the fans, as if Spector was trying to imply that certain genres were somehow "better" than others. While some of his words about Uncharted suggested that this was not the case...

"It's not that games like these are bad, but they limit your ability to interact with the game world, so the story can unfold the way the storyteller wants it to unfold.
You have very limited ability to express yourself; it's about how you accomplish a predetermined path to get to the next plot point.
It's a great story - a better story than I'll ever tell in a game - but it's not a player story; it's not your story."

 ... some others weren't chosen as wisely, causing an apparent contradiction:

"If all you want to do is show off how clever you are, get out of my medium! Go make a movie or something, because that's what you should be doing."

Game developers are not required to be subtle or elegant, but such statements creates unnecessary friction rather than helping to get the real point of discussion across, and that is: certain genres are somehow better than others at doing what? There's no misinterpreting Spector here, as he talks about offering engagement through chances, variety and reiterated unpredictability, rather than an underlying scripted narrative that justifies the gameplay.

In fighting games, the moveset associated with a character is a tools allowing the players to build their own emerging narrative, match after match: the story you tell your friend about how you beat a boss or a strong contender online, is something the game creators may or may not have predicted. The same goes for RPGs and adventures where open mechanics (= interactions) can be used to resolve particular problems and puzzles in clever and unscripted ways.

Offering engagement through chances, variety
and reiterated unpredictability, rather than
an underlying scripted narrative
that justifies the gameplay

That's what it means "making the most out of the medium" in Spector's terms, which are quite a departure from the kind of experiences he is known for; storytelling is one of the original Deus Ex (2000) strong points after all*. With the rise in computing power for both PCs and consoles, a merge of complex IA and physics could contribute towards making Spector's design dream a reality: games where the objectives are only loosely defined, and the players can use the world rules to attend them while weaving a deeply personal, active and surprising narrative all along.  

Sounds rather futuristic, right? Maybe not that much, but there's no denying the need for extensive (and expensive!) research on how the underlying systems of such games should work, and that's something that is simply not possible in the current AAA space without a radical change of philosophy from the publishers - call it courage if you will. If anything, it should be up to people like Spector to find ways to carry on such research, possibly within the scope of smaller projects: his assertions at PAX Aus may be interpreted as a wake up call to whoever has similar ambitions at heart, but the monetary problem remains.

Nowadays, it is much easier and cost effective to tie specific gameplay systems into rigid (or semi-rigid) scripts, and there's actually nothing wrong with that - both Uncharted and The Walking Dead are compelling experiences that people loves AND expects to spend a finite amount of time with. Their existence has perfectly valid commercial and design reasons, in spite of a scope that is barely comparable to what Spector would aim at - a goal that is unquestionably worth pursuing somehow.

* Quite curiously, one title that better aligns with Spector's recent views would be Thief: The Dark Project (1998), a particularly gameplay-centric experience that he produced until the mid-1997, when he dropped out of Looking Glass Austin to set up Ion Storm: in the words of project director Greg LoPiccolo, the goal in Thief was to "build a type of simulator where object interactions are correct and physics are tied in correctly". Lead designer Jeff Yaus wanted everything in the game to "behave as it should. For example, things that burn will burn, and then is up to the player to burn things, whether or not we've anticipated it" (sources: Wikipedia's "Thief: The Dark Project" and "Warren Spector" entries).

Should you be interested, here's Naughty Dog's timid response to Spector's opinion about Uncharted

Paris Games Week 2015: What is GT Sport exactly? (Hint: not GT7)

Last night, in the context of the Paris Games Week, Sony made sure to drop a series of announcements to set the stage for PS4's 2016, and build up the hype: we finally had a pretty sharp release window for fans favourite No Man's Sky, a gorgeous announcement trailer for Quantic Dream's next epic Detroit, an unexpectedly solid lineup for PlayStation VR and much more. But I don't think many people expected Kazunori Yamauchi to step onstage with Jim Ryan, and reveal the next installment in the legendary Gran Turismo series: it is called GT Sport, and it comes with official backing from the FIA as a bonafide, officially recognized motorsport.

Remember that tagline, because it says a lot more about the game than Polyphony Digital and Sony actually revealed on stage: carefully avoiding any reference to Gran Turismo 7, the presentation focused on (1) the aforementioned endorsement, (2) a prominently competitive structure and (3) the presence of two online game modes that ties with real life rewards from FIA itself to the best players.

It was a very different introduction than any other Gran Turismo title so far: for the first time in the franchise history, no relevance was given to the number of vehicles, tracks and modes included in the game. The typical encyclopaedic approach of the series to the world of racing was nowhere to be found, strongly suggesting that we better not confuse GT Sport with a mainline GT entry: the scope, the objectives and in turn the contents seems much more specific.

So what does it means for fans of the franchise eagerly awaiting for a full fledged seventh installment? Well, that is a tricky question to answer, as the Gran Turismo crowd is particularly loyal to the brand and mostly willing to pick up anything that comes out of Polyphony Digital: at the same time, I wonder what their attitude is towards a product that feels especially gauged at the most competitive fans. Will the chance to root for particular manifacturers and nations be enough for the average players?  

One of the few certainties about GT Sport lies in it sharing the strict core values of the Gran Turismo experience, namely the aestethic and dynamic qualities. Vast improvements will be made to those elements thanks to the power of the PS4, Yamauchi said, included the unexpected support for PlayStation VR. However, we've got nothing on how the developer plans to create value for the less-than-Schumachers among us.

EDIT: Just in time for Jim Ryan confirming the obvious, GT Sport is neither GT7, nor its Prologue.