I don’t know if many of you can relate, but I remember when I was much younger being asked to grab something from the basement/garage. Aside from these rooms being the least occupied for the house’s lifespan, they were also the most cluttered of the house. So walking into the basement, you are already pretty unfamiliar with the room, but now you have to go looking for something in there. After rummaging around the shelves and boxes, you find whatever you were looking for and you need to leave the place. The problem is the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs and once you turn it off, the security of light was gone. The security of knowing what could be around you in an unfamiliar room was gone. The security of awareness vanishes and you’re left with your paranoia and hypervigilance to anything that could be living in the basement.
I’m leaving Prague right now and have spent ample time on the TV finding something to pass the time during the moments when your legs and feet hurt just a bit too much to keep the adventure going for the day. With a small selection of channels to keep my viewing attention, I was able to catch some Czech TV when the BBC Entertainment and news channels couldn’t hold my interest. This meant I happened across a few dubbed TV shows from the States and UK like Doctor Who, a minute of Big Bang Theory and some South Park among a few other shows and movies being rebroadcast over in the Czech Republic. If you were watching a documentary or a series of facts, the voice over seemed very normal. But because I was watching Dramas and Comedies, the movies were not-bearable.
The boring stuff: Dreadnought is an online-multiplayer starship arena game for PC, blah blah blah.
The interesting: The pacing for Dreadnought is much different than traditional online-multiplayer games. You have your fast-paced and hectic, aka Call of Duty; you’re always running and scoping out the next area while calling in for backup, aka Battlefield and Counter-Strike; or you’re always running from place to place to find the next person to force-feed bullets aka Halo. Dreadnought, however, fluctuates considerably while playing. Because you’re controlling such colossal ships, it’s not like you won’t be spotted from time to time, but the stages are massive enough that you aren’t constantly in a struggle against a constant barrage of laser fire.
The Wii U version of Super Smash Bros was fine. If you’ve played any other version of Smash Bros’s Free-For-All, than you know exactly what to expect. On a side note, Wii-Fit Trainer is pretty strong.
Super Smash Bros WiiU
The 3DS Version of the game, however, was a mixed bag. There were two kinds of stations, the Free-For-All station and the Smash-Run Station. I opted for the Smash-Run station to try my hand at something different… (SO MUCH WAITING) After each demo ran for about 6 minutes, with 3 people in line per station, and what you get is a timed labyrinth with enemies akin to those found in Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Bros Brawl where you collected stat-increases to help you fight in a Free-For-All against the CPU after the labryinth section was complete. It helped that I picked a fast character so I can at least have mobility on my side and explore the maze as much as I could in the 5 minutes alloted, but with a slow character this game mode feels opposite the pace of what Smash Bros is used to. Multiplayer smash bros is a game of high-intensity, fluid, frantic, fun but this game mode is anything but that. I don’t want to say it’s as bad as how Sonic turned itself into, because they made A LOT of strange design changes to get that to happen. But, Smash-Run is definitely not as enjoyable as the FFA modes because the mechanics of the characters aren’t designed for exploring and traversing, but for combat with a character in front of you. Guilty Gear tried designing the same explore+beat-em-up in GG:Isuka and that mode was pretty garbage as well, but they also understood that exploration was going to be slow and limited. We’ll have to see when the game gets dropped later in October 2014.
After watching a few streamers play through Five Nights at Freddy’s it reminded me that the player’s agency, their ability to control their actions to elicit outcomes, is extremely important to create a consonance (harmony) between the player and the game. And it is when that agency is reduced or limited is when cognitive dissonance sets in. You’re playing a game and you aren’t jiving with it. The actions that you want to do and the reactions that you’re getting on screen aren’t connecting. In psychological terms, you have multiple mental beliefs that are conflicting with one another causing discomfort – cognitive dissonance. The actions that you want to do and the actions that you’re allowed to do are in conflict, causing the anxiety and discomfort. But in a game like Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) or any other suspense game designed to instill paranoia and anxiety, it’s the lack of agency that helps to inspire these emotions.
We can always look back on games the past games like Resident Evil where Jill Valentine moved like a Old 70s Buick, or Panzer Artillery Tank, which actually worked as a benefit to the game. The lack of mobility took away any agility that we could have had and made even the slightest danger – zombie, hound, Lisa Trevor – much more tension-rising than normal because we knew maneuvering pass them was a chore and a half.
This isn’t entirely accurate. The character in the image can probably control better than Jill.
It occurred to me just before I sat down to write that people in my generation are the first to grow up not knowing what life was like before gaming (as we know it) was a thing. Being born between 1984 and 1990 when the NES reigned supreme over the gaming masses, those of us born in this era grew up with names like Mario, Link and Megaman as a constant throughout our lives. Just like us from the past, those born around the 2001 will never know of an age without the name Master Chief in their gaming vernacular. Or kids the were born in the mid-90s never knowing a time before the Internet in every household, or 2007-ish without a smartphone or tablet in your household.
What’s important to remember is that while many game designers were around and developing games while we were growing up, there is a fresh generation of minds that have been exposed to a rich history of game design, good and bad. This might be an incestuous relationship because our ideas tend to be anchored to past experiences so our inspirations are “borrowed” from ideas that we’ve played in the past instead of coming up with something completely original. Regardless, our game-design parents and mentors helped to foster our experiences, our morals, our social dilemmas, our peaks and pits through our gaming experiences. Our games were growing up while we were growing up.
Every one should check out Zac Gormon at http://magicalgametime.com/ His work hits so many feels buttons, it’s not even fair
Game Idea: Draw your enemies away – RTS (Wii U Pad)
The Game:
The idea is this: you’re doing the standard “make + build + kill” deployable units thing that Real-Time-Strategy games do (RTS) or even TTS (Turn-based Strategy games. To make things interesting you have a “draw”-ability that is limited use per game, but it allows you to set the stage in your favor when you’re on the offense or defense.
Game Idea: Ico (but if Yorda was a dog that needed to poop really badly)
This isn’t really a completely original game mechanic per-se, because the description of the game is completely within the header. For completeness-sake, let’s go about describing this, though.
You know that look a dog gets as they are pooping. That pathetic, helpless, protect me face? There’s a reason for it.
Game Idea: Suspense-Horror with Oculus with Tactile Information via physical objects
The Mechanic
Oculus game again. You and your Oculus are in a small room, 10 x 10, or the standard living space in downtown San Francisco for your month’s paycheck. But the room is set up with hundreds of tiny jets, like the ones from Jacuzzis and jets are laced throughout all planes of the room. The floor, the walls, the room. Maybe there are obstacles around the room, with air jets on them as well. But here’s the fun part, it’s a chase game, e.g. SlenderMan or If Only.
Maybe this many is a bit overboard, but you get the idea.
I talked about different controller types lending itself to the birth of different gameplay mechanics here, well the new interactive medium will be the room itself. Suspense/thriller games get you to jump by two main means, jump scares and creep-factor. But now you have a new set of mediums in the room to mess with your adrenal-glands.
GameIntrospection 