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I'm taking a few days off to catch my breath and steel myself for the sublime madness of GDC. I'll be posting from the event, hoping to bring you stories that won't replicate all the fine coverage you'll find elsewhere.

It's impossible to attend all the sessions I'm curious about, so I'm building a schedule that allows me to take in as many as I can, while still leaving time to explore and chat with people I meet. If you plan to attend, look me up. I'll be the older guy with the curly hair and the wide-eyed goofy look on his face. 

Stay tuned for more on GDC '10. I hope you enjoy.

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I'm taking a few days off to catch my breath and steel myself for the sublime madness of GDC. I'll be posting from the event, hoping to bring you stories that won't replicate all the fine coverage you'll find elsewhere.

It's impossible to attend all the sessions I'm curious about, so I'm building a schedule that allows me to take in as many as I can, while still leaving time to explore and chat with people I meet. If you plan to attend, look me up. I'll be the older guy with the curly hair and the wide-eyed goofy look on his face. 

Stay tuned for more on GDC '10. I hope you enjoy.

Go to Source

IGN is reporting that Six Days in Fallujah, the first game to focus directly on the war in Iraq, is finished and ready for release. The controversial title by developer Atomic Games was announced by Konami last April and cancelled three weeks later following criticism from a variety of groups and organizations.[1] Atomic Games is a division of Destineer Games which, among other things, makes training tools for the US military.

Atomic doesn't say so directly, but it appears they're looking for a publisher willing to step up and publish the game. I say it's time for a publisher to do just that. It's time for someone with vision, conviction, and cash to unequivocally lay claim to creative autonomy and freedom of expression as fundamental imperatives for games. It's time for a publisher to publicly assert, with money as its marker, that games can resonate culturally only if they're free to explore unexamined ideas and challenge our comfort zones.

Plenty of people have argued on behalf of Six Days in Fallujah, citing a double standard separating games from film and television. Why, they say, should games be prevented from going where films like Battle for Haditha or The Hurt Locker have gone? 

This is a useful observation, but it relies on the increasingly threadbare argument that games deserve to occupy the same culturally respectable space as other media. Claiming it doesn't make it true. It will never be widely seen as true until games finally elbow their way to a place at the table. No one is holding that place for us. No invitation is forthcoming. You gain your place at the table by forcing your way in and then making yourself essential to the conversation that ensues. We aren't there yet because we haven't demanded to be there.

Six Days in Fallujah is that elbow to ribs. I don't know if it's a good or a bad game. I haven't played it. What I know is that the developer interviewed 70 people with intimate experience in Iraq, including returning Marines, Iraqi civilians, enemy insurgents, war historians, and senior military officials.[2] I know they hope to convey through the player's experience an emotional and psychological arc that reflects something truthful about what happened in that battle.

The game may or may not deliver on its ambitions, but success or failure are beside the point in this case. Konami didn't cancel the game because it fell short of its design goals. Six Days in Fallujah was canceled because Konami decided it had more to lose than gain by publishing it. It bowed to pressure from people who made (mostly) baseless or uninformed claims about the game.

Several phrases recur throughout the criticisms leveled at Six Days in Fallujah – a game, by the way, that not a single critic has played. The most common among these are: "exploiting," "trivializing," "glorifying," and "too soon."

I don't mean to diminish or overlook the suffering that many of the game's detractors have experienced. I understand their objections stem from real, heartfelt concerns. But these are the very places artists must go. There is no safe way to explore these painful issues. In fact, the safe way is the surest way to oversimplification; the surest way to telling lies.

The fact that I charge an audience money to see the art I create doesn't mean I'm "capitalizing" on a painful event that caused great suffering. What fuels an artist's fire may also be the cause of human conflict or desperation. The artist is drawn to these places. He has no choice. His freedom to explore the world using the tools of his art must be assiduously protected, encouraged, and, yes, even funded.

The charge that Six Days in Fallujah trivializes or glorifies horrific events will surprise no one. It stems from an assumption that games lack the capacity for any other response to violence. Games have done little to challenge that assumption, and no amount of blog posts or GDC roundtables will convince anyone otherwise. 

Six Days in Fallujah is an opportunity to begin tearing down that wall. If we believe games can be, or do, or say more, then we must produce those games and push through the inevitable resistance to them. If Six Days fails, we learn what can be learned from that failure, and we build the next game better.

What's needed now is an enlightened publisher willing to facilitate that process, clearly articulate the stakes, and take the inevitable heat. Maybe it also means losing money. I don't know if such a publisher exists, but for the sake of dangerous games, I hope so.

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Since posting my thoughts on Heavy Rain, I've been reading other views on the game – some affirming, others opposing mine. More than once I've seen Heavy Rain described as a love-it or hate-it affair, but such a simple summary doesn't reflect the broad spectrum of responses this game has received, even among the commenters here. 

It's hard to ignore so many reasoned viewpoints, so I've begun playing Heavy Rain again to see if approaching the game with a different mindset will alter my experience. I don't re-play games often, but in this case it seems like a thing worth doing. We'll see what happens.

The conversation that's sprung up around Heavy Rain is the most interesting I've seen since Braid was the game in our crosshairs. It invites ruminations on storytelling, agency, mechanics, and genre (among other things); and it provokes proclamations ranging from "…the future of video games may be closer than we thought"[1] to "…ham-fisted schlock and downright broken storytelling."[2]

Given the range of responses to Heavy Rain, I thought it might be useful to account for some of the most salient ones. I've already had my say, so I won't rehash those issues here. But plenty of people see the game differently – or see other problems I didn't see – and here's a sampling of what they're saying.

Note: I'm summarizing perspectives shared by a variety of people, so for simplicity's sake I won't attribute them to individuals. I encourage you to peruse the comments on my previous post where thoughtful folks like Unanbangkay, CBZ, Nat, JPLC, Louis F, Nels and many others share their individual takes.

• Heavy Rain's emphasis on controller inputs is an effective expression of agency. The player is forced to respond, often in real-time, with little opportunity for reflection. Branching dialogue trees that strive for agency through 'player choice' break the sense of urgency games ask us to accept.

• David Cage wants us to identify with the everyday physical lives of his characters, so he gives us control over trivial physical actions. The problem is that reproducing an everyday movement with a thumbstick gesture is nothing like doing it for real. So, in the end, we're being asked to substitute one abstraction for another. Twirling a thumbstick to open a refrigerator is no less artificial or arbitrary than pressing a button to open it.

• Heavy Rain forces the player to absolutely focus in critical pressurized situations. When a cop is bearing down on you, asking questions Ethan should know the answers to, the barrier separating player from character is dissolved. You can't shoot your way out or hit the Pause button. You're in the spotlight sweating.

• The game fails because it refuses to use the language of the medium. Heavy Rain attempts to translate a film into a video game by incorporating interactivity, but that media marriage doesn't add value. Consequently, it's neither a good film nor a good game. It's a regressive hybrid.

• The game has the power to make you feel afraid/nervous/tearful/anxious/guilty. Dismissing Heavy Rain as a glorified point-and-click adventure grossly understates its impact on an open-minded player. Get on board and take the ride the game wants to give you.

• Heavy Rain illustrates 'the uncanny valley of player agency.' The more control a player is given over trivial things, "the more
  unrealistic, jarring and infuriating the arbitrary barriers become.[3] Simulating everyday reality in a game is an interesting exercise, especially when we're accustomed to playing epic shooters. But after the novelty wears off, what's the point?

• Why must every major game be measured by its ability to move the ball down the field? If Heavy Rain doesn't usher in a new era of games, does that mean it's a failure? Is there no room for a game like Heavy Rain? Does it threaten the existence of other games? Heavy Rain tries something new and different. It may not fully succeed, but few big experiments do.

• If you're looking for well-written interactive drama full of meaningful high-level choices, play a great text adventure game.

My experience with Heavy Rain wasn't especially positive, but I'm willing to give it another try. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the vigorous conversation surrounding the game. Maybe that's where the real lasting impact of Heavy Rain will be found.

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Note: storytelling is paramount in Heavy Rain, so I've purposely limited my descriptions to its prologue. You can read without fear of spoilers.

I am the target audience for Heavy Rain. I'm a devoted gamer hungry for something different. I'm a father who has begged for games that address me and my concerns. I'm a theater artist who wants more expressive characters and complex stories. I'm the guy who's tired of saving the world, and I'm sick of guns.

Heavy Rain addresses all those concerns. Why, then, does it leave me feeling so cold?

Creator David Cage has said "Heavy Rain is not a videogame…" and he's mostly right. The first trophy the game awards is called "Interactive Drama," which suggests how Cage and his team at Quantic Dreams see this game from the player's perspective. 

The problem with this description is that Heavy Rain's interactive elements intercept the drama that might have emerged from the player's experience inside the story. Ironically, the game that doesn't want to be a game is sabotaged by its "game-ness."

Heavy Rain fails as interactive drama because my interactions have almost no dramatic dimension. Heavy Rain mistakes player input prompts for agency. It assumes calibrated control over an avatar's movements produces a stronger connection between player and character, when in fact it produces the opposite effect. Ultimately, playing marionette with an on-screen character distances me from the inner life of that character and forces me to focus on activities that have very little to do with drama.

Heavy Rain situates a system between the player and the game that heavily mediates the player's experience. Such systems exist in every video game, but the trajectory in narrative game design has been toward system/interface invisibility, with games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 erasing (or seeming to erase), the lines separating player from in-game experience.

Heavy Rain adopts an opposite approach, persistently interjecting on-screen prompts, timed or sequential button presses, and other "do this now" commands that repeatedly remind the player he or she is playing a game. What's more, the gamepad itself functions as a recurring object of player awareness, with on-screen indicators to tilt or shake the device precisely as the game requires.

I don't object to games making me aware of their 'game-ness' (nod to Mr. Suda), but Heavy Rain is at cross-purposes with itself in this regard. It wants to immerse me in a realistic, character-driven story with detailed environments and atmospherics; but it also wants me to remain outside that experience, ever-vigilant for the next quick-response button-press. 

The game insists that I focus, even for mundane activities like carrying groceries, on carefully following directions delivered to me visually on-screen. The simple act of carrying groceries is subsumed by the mechanical procedure of executing a series of prompts for no apparent reason. This, for me, is the primary disconnect in Heavy Rain. My mechanical game-directed actions don't amplify or add meaning to the in-game behaviors they execute. They don't pull me in; they keep me out. 

And so the game manages to reverse the player/avatar relationship. In Heavy Rain, I'm the object manipulated and the game plays me. While I can imagine a game leveraging this role-reversal in exciting ways (Eternal Darkness comes to mind), Heavy Rain does little with it that feels meaningful. My job is to press the right buttons when I'm told and occasionally respond to a palette of choices I'm given. After I respond, the game delivers me to the next situation where I will be precisely instructed how to proceed. The game treats me like a trained monkey.

Confoundingly, I'm given control over exactly how slowly I wish to open a door or flush a toilet, but my decision to take a shower triggers a cutscene in which I watch the character shower…followed by motion control prompts to dry his hair with a towel. It all feels arbitrary. Characters reveal their thoughts when I pull the L2 trigger (e.g. "Should I work or tend the garden?"). But when I'm prompted to pick up a wedding photo and look at it, he has no thoughts at all. The game cuts to a closeup of his face and a small smile appears, but nothing more. Why? Once I've returned that photo to its place, I'm unable to pick it up again. Why? 

I want to explore the rest of the house, but when I attempt to descend the stairs, the game cuts to a shot of the character's face, and I hear him say "I'd better take a shower and get dressed before I go downstairs." Why am I free to impose my choices on this character by exploring his environment in an un-timed fashion, but only upstairs? 

Such constraints permeate the experience of playing Heavy Rain, and when the stakes are raised later in the game, they feel especially confining. The game is at odds with itself from beginning to end. It persistently reminds me that neither I nor my avatar possess consequential autonomy. In Heavy Rain, the game itself controls the game, and that doesn't feel much like interactive drama to me.

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Note: storytelling is paramount in Heavy Rain, so I've purposely limited my descriptions to its prologue. You can read without fear of spoilers.

I am the target audience for Heavy Rain. I'm a devoted gamer hungry for something different. I'm a father who has begged for games that address me and my concerns. I'm a theater artist who wants more expressive characters and complex stories. I'm the guy who's tired of saving the world, and I'm sick of guns.

Heavy Rain addresses all those concerns. Why, then, does it leave me feeling so cold?

Creator David Cage has said "Heavy Rain is not a videogame…" and he's mostly right. The first trophy the game awards is called "Interactive Drama," which suggests how Cage and his team at Quantic Dreams see this game from the player's perspective. 

The problem with this description is that Heavy Rain's interactive elements intercept the drama that might have emerged from the player's experience inside the story. Ironically, the game that doesn't want to be a game is sabotaged by its "game-ness."

Heavy Rain fails as interactive drama because my interactions have almost no dramatic dimension. Heavy Rain mistakes player input prompts for agency. It assumes calibrated control over an avatar's movements produces a stronger connection between player and character, when in fact it produces the opposite effect. Ultimately, playing marionette with an on-screen character distances me from the inner life of that character and forces me to focus on activities that have very little to do with drama.

Heavy Rain situates a system between the player and the game that heavily mediates the player's experience. Such systems exist in every video game, but the trajectory in narrative game design has been toward system/interface invisibility, with games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 erasing (or seeming to erase), the lines separating player from in-game experience.

Heavy Rain adopts an opposite approach, persistently interjecting on-screen prompts, timed or sequential button presses, and other "do this now" commands that repeatedly remind the player he or she is playing a game. What's more, the gamepad itself functions as a recurring object of player awareness, with on-screen indicators to tilt or shake the device precisely as the game requires.

I don't object to games making me aware of their 'game-ness' (nod to Mr. Suda), but Heavy Rain is at cross-purposes with itself in this regard. It wants to immerse me in a realistic, character-driven story with detailed environments and atmospherics; but it also wants me to remain outside that experience, ever-vigilant for the next quick-response button-press. 

The game insists that I focus, even for mundane activities like carrying groceries, on carefully following directions delivered to me visually on-screen. The simple act of carrying groceries is subsumed by the mechanical procedure of executing a series of prompts for no apparent reason. This, for me, is the primary disconnect in Heavy Rain. My mechanical game-directed actions don't amplify or add meaning to the in-game behaviors they execute. They don't pull me in; they keep me out. 

And so the game manages to reverse the player/avatar relationship. In Heavy Rain, I'm the object manipulated and the game plays me. While I can imagine a game leveraging this role-reversal in exciting ways (Eternal Darkness comes to mind), Heavy Rain does little with it that feels meaningful. My job is to press the right buttons when I'm told and occasionally respond to a palette of choices I'm given. After I respond, the game delivers me to the next situation where I will be precisely instructed how to proceed. The game treats me like a trained monkey.

Confoundingly, I'm given control over exactly how slowly I wish to open a door or flush a toilet, but my decision to take a shower triggers a cutscene in which I watch the character shower…followed by motion control prompts to dry his hair with a towel. It all feels arbitrary. Characters reveal their thoughts when I pull the L2 trigger (e.g. "Should I work or tend the garden?"). But when I'm prompted to pick up a wedding photo and look at it, he has no thoughts at all. The game cuts to a closeup of his face and a small smile appears, but nothing more. Why? Once I've returned that photo to its place, I'm unable to pick it up again. Why? 

I want to explore the rest of the house, but when I attempt to descend the stairs, the game cuts to a shot of the character's face, and I hear him say "I'd better take a shower and get dressed before I go downstairs." Why am I free to impose my choices on this character by exploring his environment in an un-timed fashion, but only upstairs? 

Such constraints permeate the experience of playing Heavy Rain, and when the stakes are raised later in the game, they feel especially confining. The game is at odds with itself from beginning to end. It persistently reminds me that neither I nor my avatar possess consequential autonomy. In Heavy Rain, the game itself controls the game, and that doesn't feel much like interactive drama to me.

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You will alway be with me now, father. Your memories, your drives. And when I need you, you'll be there on my shoulder, whispering. –Eleanor Lamb, Bioshock 2

In 30 years of gaming, I've played endless variations of the same character: the brave hero who, against all odds, must save the world. Our fascination with this story is at least as old as Homer's Iliad, and it's unlikely we'll grow tired of it any time soon. 

Games rely on heroism as a sturdy foundation for interactive storytelling, but unlike the Iliad, they rarely explore what it means. They seldom contemplate the human consequences or the personal cost. No game I've played has approached the moment in the Iliad when Priam falls to his knees and begs Achilles for his slain son's body. This grieving father moves Achilles to tears, and the two lament their losses in the war. 

For Homer, the Trojan War is a bloody backdrop for exploring honor, vengeance, morality, and fate. His characters are fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and these familial connections underpin everything that happens in the Iliad and the Odyssey. At stake is family, and if we strip away all the obstacles and complications, Odysseus' 10-year journey is about one thing: returning home to his wife and son.

No game I've played has come close to conveying what it means to be a father. Fighting to avenge the death of a wife or child can provide a handy context for gameplay bad-assery, but nurturing and responsibility don't translate so well. Lots of games have made me feel like a fighter, but no game has ever made me feel the responsibility of fatherhood. No game has touched me in a way that feels familiar and real to me as a father. 

No game, that is, until Bioshock 2. 

I'll get this out of the way now so I can spend the rest of my time explaining. This game had a profoundly moving effect on me. The ending – my ending, the one that reflected my values – resonated deeply. As the father of a 2-year-old daughter, my journey through Rapture touched on my fears and aspirations for her in ways I never expected from a game. That experience lingers, and I'm grateful for it.

Bioshock 2 is a dialectic hyper-yin to Bioshock's hyper-yang. Andrew Ryan's distorted utopia exalts the individual, while Sofia Lamb's "Rapture Family" exalts the collective. The player can track this philosophical collision by exploring Rapture's ruins, and much of the appeal of both games comes from the drama that unfolds via audio diaries. For what it's worth, these games owe much to radio dramas of the 30s and 40s, once a staple of American popular culture.

Ryan's "Great Chain" produced an intellectual backdrop for Bioshock, but the player's choices and actions were mostly disconnected from those ideas. The player uncovers facts about his relationship to Ryan and others, but those reveals occur in a sender-receiver format. Ryan's warnings and exhortations colored my journey, but they never added meaning or provoked personal reflection.

"Love is just a chemical, no matter the origin. We give it meaning by choice." –Eleanor Lamb

Eleanor Lamb changes everything. She elevates Bioshock 2 by offering a warm familial relationship to the player's avatar, a Big Daddy called Subject Delta. Eleanor raises the stakes. Suddenly, I'm not in this for myself, but for her. She's watching me, helping me, and learning from me. I am bound to her as a father to a daughter, and her pain is my pain. My existence has no meaning if I cannot help her become the hopeful, self-reliant woman she is meant to be. As long as she is imprisoned, I can never be free.

Suddenly these little girls with glowing eyes are more than ADAM vessels to be rescued or harvested. They're the child Eleanor once was, before the madness. They're my charges, relying on me for protection and deliverance. They are, truly, Eleanor's 'little sisters,' and I am, in a way I never expected to discover, their 'Big Daddy.' 

This game makes me feel the weight of compassion and responsibility. I won't soon forget confronting the rat-like Stanley Poole in the train station, every bit of me itching to kill him and make it painful. He stood there cowering, defenseless, bent at the waist, gripping his head. I watched him for a moment, savoring his suffering. And then I realized that she was watching too. Eleanor was there with me, just as she was 10 years before, when her mother faced a similar opportunity to kill a man. I turned and walked out the door. Near the end of the game, some 15 hours later, I discovered I was right. She was watching; and she learned.

So much of Bioshock 2 suggests it was built by smart people with loving hands. The name 'Eleanor' is derived from two Greek words: 'elios' meaning 'compassion' and 'Helen' meaning 'ray of sun.' Both are especially apt sources for Eleanor Lamb … or at least the Eleanor Lamb that appeared in my Bioshock 2. Her behavior at the end of the game can change drastically depending on choices made by the player.

Near the end of the original Bioshock, the player gets to feel what it's like to be a Big Daddy, but it's really just a novelty act. Aside from a change in visual perspective, the game doesn't do anything with it. But in the sequel, Eleanor saves your life after nearly losing hers, and then she injects you into the body of a Little Sister. 

It's a brilliant transition because now the player sees the world as the Little Sisters see it. Soft and lovely, with elegant ladies and gentlemen, only briefly punctuated by sharp flashes of ugly, bloody decay. It's the first and only time we see the conjured lie of Rapture – or in Sofia Lamb's mind, the promise of Rapture – with our own eyes.

Eleanor is that rarest of women in games: a gifted, intelligent, brave, determined, nurturing, compassionate, self-reliant, kick-ass sister. She loves her father enough to die for him. She loves her mother enough to forgive her. That's my Eleanor Lamb. That's my daughter on my shoulder, whispering.

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Lately it seems every game I a play has a "2" in its title: Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, No More Heroes 2, Assassin's Creed 2. I'm not complaining. The common wisdom that says sequels are bound to be inferior cash-ins on their originals ignores a mound of evidence to the contrary. With the exception of NMH2, which both improved on and fell short of NMH1, these games illustrate how developers can smartly iterate on a successful formula and produce games markedly superior to their originals.

So how did they do it? I think these games impart some useful lessons in how to do sequels right. I'm not a game designer, so my observations are derived purely from a player's perspective; but from where I sit here's what I see.

1. Hold fast to the vision of the original, but resist the temptation to retrace your steps. Give us a new destination and ensure that journey amplifies the meaning of the first one. Bioshock 2 is a case study in how to do this effectively. Bioshock 2 functions as a dialectic with the first game, re-exploring Rapture by revisiting and re-contextualizing its environments and opposing ideals. I'll explore this further in a post devoted solely to Bioshock 2 later this week.
2. Learn from your mistakes, including the ones we don't know about. The most obvious outcome of positive iteration is fixing the stuff that didn't work in the first game. Assassin's Creed 2 eliminated the repetitiveness; Mass Effect 2 upgraded the combat mechanics; No More Heroes 2 jettisoned the open world; Bioshock 2 killed the maddening "Circus of Values!" clown (voiced in the original by Creative Director Ken Levine) – a little thing, yes, but THANK YOU.

   These are welcome changes, but skilled designers see things many of us don't, and targeting those issues too suggests a development commitment that transcends addressing player complaints. Mass Effect's awkwardly staged cinematics didn't draw much ire from fans (in fact, lots of reviewers praised them), but ME2's greatly enhanced dialogue scenes prove its designers weren't satisfied with what they accomplished the first time.

3. Bigger isn't necessarily better. Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 are both shorter and more compact than their originals, and both are better games for it. Some bemoan the loss of backtracking in Bioshock 2 or the fewer number of planets in ME2. Not me. The narrative drive forward is more powerful in both sequels, and neither sags in the middle as their predecessors did. More stuff to do doesn't necessarily translate into better.
4. You don't have to 'go dark.' The common trajectory in storytelling across media is to darken the protagonist as he/she grows more complex. This can be a good or bad thing (Prince of Persia: Warrior Within = bad; The Dark Knight = good), but it shouldn't be treated as a default choice. We learn more about Drake, Desmond, and Shepard in these games, but their designers wisely avoid the sullen, doleful fate that befalls other game heroes. Travis grows a little angsty in NMH2, but the game isn't committed to exploring it.
5. Don't assume "developing the characters and story" are sufficient reasons for a sequel. Uncharted 2, Bioshock 2, and Mass Effect 2 each advance an existing storyline, but they also do more important things like enhance their gameplay with genuinely fun new options and features; refine their interfaces; lower their barrier to entry for new players, and generally communicate a sense that this game has been honed and polished by a development team that went all-out. A sequel needs a compelling story, but that story should be embedded in a game that feels like it's advancing too.

   This, in my view, is the particular triumph of Bioshock 2 - a game whose most convincing initial argument for a sequel was financial. That 2K Marin overcame this cynical impetus and built a game that surpasses the original in nearly every way is a testament to their ingenuity and their devotion to creating a sequel second to none.

I'm sure I've neglected a few 'rules' in my list. If so, I hope you'll let me know.

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