#111: Hidden Agenda and the Creativity of Limitation

Recently, I have been hearing people in my gaming news feed, like Patrick Klepek at Waypoint, talk about a game called Hidden Agenda. It isn't the first time the game fell onto my radar, coming up briefly in some of the presentations at E3 2017. As someone who has been casually looking out for news on it, I was surprised that it had been released without so much as a peep.

Hidden Agenda is the product of Supermassive Games, the same studio that brought us the surprise smash Halloween hit Until Dawn in 2015. Rather than continue Until Dawn's loving homage to horror movies with another, similar game, Hidden Agenda applies that same sense of genre-awareness to the modern crime-drama. Taking the roles of ace detective Becky Marney and hard-hitting prosecutor Felicity Graves, players attempt to solve the case of the Trapper Killer, who booby-traps their victims’ bodies in order to kill responding officers. 

The Texture Pop: Episode 25: Video Grenades

Another week, another episode of The Texture Pop. Unfortunately, Garrett was unable to attend this week because he was having some technical difficulties on his end.

Also, we had no viewer questions. If you guys want to send us some questions, comments, or feedback, go to thetexturepop@gmail.com and send us an e-mail. We'll be happy to indulge you.

Lastly, I deeply apologize for the terrible audio quality on this episode from both Chris and myself. We suspect it was due to my internet connection, but nothing concrete.



0:00:45 Gaming News
Microsoft Hololens Reveal
It has great potential, the story is accurate. However, the proof will be in the application.

EVO 2015 Lineup
Since Chris and Sam and more about fighting games than I, I'll let their commentary stand. I do agree though, that it is weird for them to put games on the list that have yet to be released. Since it takes time and practice to get good at fighting games, you'd think recent releases would put all the contestants who play them at a handicap, making them a little less entertaining to both play and watch.



0:13:10 Sam finished Valiant Hearts
I hear a lot of criticisms about Valiant Hearts in the same vein as those that Sam is making. I still have yet to play the game, though I have little reason to doubt all of these people when they are being so consistent in the critiques.



0:16:32 Sam play The Walking Dead: Season 2
Season 2 is not, strictly speaking, bad. It is a fine story. There are just a number of problems with it.

• At this point, we are already extremely familiar with Telltale's brand of choices that feel like they should matter, but actually don't in hindsight.
• The characters in Season 2, while not bad, do not compare well to the characters in the first season.
• The main conflicts in the story, logically, aren't Clementine's problems. She could easily just walk away and be no worse off as a result.

It also makes it clear that Telltale has basically ceased, for better or worse, trying to fit in puzzles. It's more of a long-form interactive movie, where it takes every few moments to let the audience state their preferences. I can understand why fans of old-school adventure games are disappointed by it, but overall I think it lets them have stronger writing. The Wolf Among Us was a great example of this, but Season 2 just feel flat.

0:34:10 Sam finished Saya No Uta

Sam went into heavy spoilers with us before the podcast. Let me say that there is a reason he is vague here. It was quite interesting to listen to.

It's hard to convey why you like things like that without spoilers, so I sympathize with him.

0:39:50 Chris has finished Assassin's Creed 3 (and the Tyranny of King Washington DLC)

This. This is the conversation I've been waiting weeks to have. I hate this game so much that it hurts. Here, we take half an hour to just complain about Assassin's Creed 3's endgame and the DLC. Nothing I write here could compare to the sheer joy I take in knowing that Chris suffered as much as I did. Just listen to this. Really, just listen to this. It's that good.

1:04:10 I played a bit more Diablo 3 on PS4
I'm getting more and more convinced that loot fest games just really aren't my style. I find that it just seems pointless to continually play the game just for loot. Every single element is just about acquiring loot. I need something more than that from games I play.
Even the fighting isn't even that much of a challenge. On easy, enemies are pushovers. On hard, it's just sitting there while waiting for numbers to go down. I cannot say I find it particularly fun. If not for my friend, I probably would've stopped by now.


1:11:00 I played inFamous: Second Son and inFamous: First Light
I plan to release an article later this week about it, but overall I did not like it as much as I did the other inFamous games. First Light was better, in my honest opinion.
And, as an aside, the reason I repeated a lot of stuff early on in this segment is to catch Chris up since he was in the bathroom.
What I was most surprised to hear is Chris's complaining when I said that karma made a return. In previous discussions we've had over the years, Chris used to defend the system because it recreated the comic-book style super good or super evil. I guess something must have changed his mind in the years since our last discussion on this series.

1:40:00 Wrapping Up
Sam's article is here.
Interactive Friction, the collaborative project between Sam and I, is here.
My Deadly Premonition article is here.

The Texture Pop: Episode 21: Legal Podcasting

The Texture Pop turns 21 episodes old this week. As everyone knows, 21 is the legal drinking age in America. As a result, we took the podcast on its first wild party.

That might explain what happens every episode. In other news, Garrett is back, but still kinda sick.



0:00:00 Introduction
Title drop already.
We'll get to the Far Cry 3 stuff later.



0:02:50 Viewer Questions
"What are some of your favorite overlooked games?"
Dark Cloud 2 is definitely my favorite overlooked game. It takes from so many genres: RPGs, Action-Adventures, Rogue-likes, and Simulation games. It blends them all together so well that it's amazing.
Wild Arms 3 is another. WA3 does a lot to fix many common problems with JRPGs. Spells have a minimum amount of MP needed to cast them, but they are otherwise free. Characters use Vitality to recover HP after a battle. And there are also the random encounter cancelling mechanics I talked about in the cast.
I'd also like to mention Shadow Hearts as another overlooked game. We've talked about it in previous podcasts. Sam's pick of Atelier Iris reminded me of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, which I like for similar reasons.
I love questions like this, because they give me opportunities to gush about games I loved from back in the day. You should also pay attention to what the rest of the cast thought. Their picks were as interesting as mine, and it shows you what kind of games we all play.

"Do you guys have an old-school genre of video games that you wish to make a comeback?"
The only things that came to mind are non-Nintendo 3D Platformers. Even then, I'd only like them to make a comeback as smaller, $10-15 budget titles so that they maintain what made them great. This was a difficult question, as there were often many reasons why old genres died out. If they were $60, they'd have to be something like Mirror's Edge, with very high production values.

"Is there anything you'd like to see/not see in the new StarFox game?"
I had nothing to add here. StarFox isn't really my area of expertise.



0:34:50 We give Garrett space to better explain his Game of the Year choices from last week.
Since he wasn't present to do so himself, We tried to do it in his stead, but none of us believe we did his picks justice.
I'm going to let this part stand on its own.



0:42:25 Gaming News
PlayStation Network and Xbox Live got hacked on Christmas Day
The worst part of the whole thing is that the entire reason for the hack is that the hackers thought it was funny. There was no statement to be made. There's no good reason for hacking into a network anyway, but that just makes it hurt that much more.
It is also interesting to note that Sony was hit much worse than Microsoft. Sony really does not seem to have a solid grasp of cyber-security. They should probably get on that. After all, this is far from the first, or even the biggest, hack they've had in recent history.

Hatred reinstated on Steam Greenlight
Since we didn't talk about it last week with the Game of the Year stuff, we talked about it on this episode instead.
I think an interesting debate over the open-garden versus closed-walls approach to marketplace curation. There are merits to both approaches, but Steam doesn't really adhere to either philosophy. Were they to show more consistency, I would be okay with their decision. It's the inconsistency that is the problem.
The argument of censorship is another thing entirely. This isn't censorship, end of discussion.



1:06:50 Sam played Destiny (on Xbox One).
Such is our fate.
It's a good shooter, with solid mechanics. There's just nothing to do with those mechanics.
And nothing to the story at all, except the stuff that you have to look for online.



1:20:00 Garrett has been sick with the flu.
And it sucked. (This is mostly why he couldn't make the podcast for a while.)



1:25:20 Garrett saw Frozen on Ice
And we also talk about me watching the movie, since I did that this week. It's a Disney movie. I don't need to say anything else. I am a sucker for Disney movies, so I loved it. People who dislike Disney movies won't like it either.
I like how it subverts typical heroic and villainous roles by making the Ice Queen the hero and the stalwart knight the villain.
We also detour to discuss movie theaters and other things movie-related.
The Destiny video we talked about during this segment is here.



1:33:00 Garrett talks computers and Steam Sales.
Windows, computer parts, the works. Not much more to add here.

On the topic on Steam Sales, this current sale (as of the time of writing) hasn't really been that great. My wallet has been mostly safe. I bought a couple of things, but nothing worth talking about here.
But Chris did...



1:37:30 Chris played The Walking Dead: Season 2.
And he highlights the two biggest problems of the new season.
First, the new cast doesn't really stand out all that well from every other group of survivors in a generic zombie apocalypse. They don't feel as interesting as the original group from the first season.
Second, we have already wisened up to the Telltale formula, where none of your choices made a difference. It is more of a movie where you affect the tone of the interactions, for better or worse.



1:43:50 Chris had Christmas Oreos.
So we talk Oreos briefly. It took him a whole three days to do it.



1:46:20 Chris discussed his Christmas haul.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
The Ratchet and Clank HD Collection
$10 Nintendo EShop Card (for Megaman X on Wii U)
Guilty Gear Xrd

Not a bad haul. A lot of quality games in this assortment.



1:48:10 Chris played the Ratchet and Clank Collection
It is interesting to see how those games evolved over the years. The first game is easily the worst of the three, and they got so much better over time. Even as the worst, it's still a great Ratchet and Clank game. As they series went on, the developers learned many lessons about both characterization and gameplay. You can see it in the design. The thing we talk about with Ratchet being a huge jerk was one of the biggest problems. Like we said, they performed this same routine better in Tools of Destruction.

The Going Commando/Up Your Arsenal Developer Commentary LP can be found here.

We also discuss HD re-releases in a general sense in this segment.



1:58:50 Chris also got Gears of War: Judgement
He didn't play it, so we didn't discuss it. However, we get into a really interesting conversation about the class of games that exist purely to milk a successful franchises. Games like Gears of War: Judgement, God of War: Ascension, and Halo 4. We all know why these games exist, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.



2:01:10 Chris played a bit of Assassin's Creed 3.
This is, by far, the worst main series Assassin's Creed game. He just finished the best part of the game, and it's all downhill from there.
I absolutely cannot wait until he gets through Sequence 8. Everything after Haytham's segment was bad, but that segment in particular was awful.
The mission design was bad. The story was bad. The protagonist was boring. It is so terrible. Hearing Chris complain about the game will be Catharsis.



2:05:20 I played more Persona Q.
The biggest issue by far with the game is its pacing. It is about the same length as Persona 3/4, but it is purely dungeon-crawling. You can take breaks to talk to the people in your team, which coincidentally happen to be the best parts of the game.
The combat isn't even a problem either. It's fun. The reason the pacing is so bad is because every single floor in the Labyrinth is a massive puzzle that takes about 10 minutes to solve, but about an hour to draw a complete enough map that you can solve it.



2:07:30 I beat both Wolfenstein: The New Order and Far Cry 3.
Which I wrote an article about here. I took a lot from the conversations Sam and I have had in the past when I wrote that.
I spent most of this segment complaining about Far Cry 3, because the story of the game is a bunch of horseshit. Both games play very well. I'd easily recommend them both, but Far Cry 3 grinds my gears. Vaas was easily the best part of the writing. Once he left, the wind was blown right out of the game's sales.
I find the discussion here, comparing Tomb Raider to Far Cry 3, to be very interesting. There are many parallel's between those games. And overall, I found Tomb Raider much more palatable. Having said that, there are merits to both games.



2:22:30 I started my Holiday Movie Binge.
Inception
It wasn't anywhere near as trippy as people said it was. Still, it's a great movie. Leonardo DeCaprio and Ellen Page pull off great performances.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
If you like video games, you'll get a huge fan of the film. I really liked it. Micheal Cera plays a great maladjusted mid-20s dude.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
I like the difference in tone this movie had to other Marvel movies. It's a bit obvious in terms of social commentary, but overall I loved it. It's still a superhero movie, but a much more "grounded" one.

Frozen
See above.

Thor: The Dark World
Tom Hiddleston is a great Loki. There really is no other person I would have in the role. Aside from his performance, the movie isn't bad, but it is not as good as the other Marvel movies.

The LEGO Movie
I really enjoyed this movie. Up until the plot twist, it is a very cute movie with great, if obvious, social commentary. Once the plot twist is revealed, it becomes a very emotional story. The movie does so many things right that I would easily recommend it. Everything is awesome!



2:44:30 Wrapping Up.
My Wolfenstein/Far Cry 3 article is here.
Sam's itch.io article is here.

The Texture Pop: Episode 11: Jumping Achark

I could take this space to explain exactly how this picture and title were conceived for this episode. I could also explain why this post is out two days after the podcast was release and why no one posted that a new episode was released.

I could do that... but I won't.

Also, Nick joined us again as a guest. You remember Nick. His name starts with an N and ends with "ick".



0:00:00 Introduction
In which I take the time to make fun of Sam and his living in Georgia-ness.
I also remind Sam of the reason why he wasn't there last time, because he apparently forgot.
I'm pretty sure Garrett was drinking during the cast, but I'm honestly not sure.

0:06:14 Viewer Questions
Truthfully, we did not do these last week because we are all lazy. Please don't tell Sam that.

"Are you guys fans of the old school space sim games?"
Honestly, unless Star Fox counts, the answer is no. At least for me.
We take a brief detour to discuss Star Citizen again, for reasons.

"Have you guys ever played a game you found so complicated that you gave up?"
I'm sure fighting game players are displeased with my answer, but it's true for me. I'm fine at a couple of fighters like Soul Calibur, Injustice: Gods Among Us, or Persona 4 Arena, but most of them just take too much time in order for me to really get good at them. Street Fighter, Tekken, and others of their ilk escape me. I get the theory behind them, but I just cannot execute when push comes to shove. We didn't mention Tekken here, but it applies all the same to me.

My answer side-tracks the discussion and heavily derails it.

0:34:20 Nick has been playing Super Smash Bros. 3DS
Though I've never owned a Nintendo home console, I have to admit that I've always had an interest in Smash Bros. The mechanics are very solid, and it's perfect for large groups. At some point, I'm going to have to get it.

0:39:05 Nick has been playing Brave Frontier
F2P leaves a bit bad taste in my month after Marvel Puzzle Quest. It's unfair, but it's true.
We use this time, however, to discuss Bendgate. By the end, we completely forgot the original topic.

0:44:50 TITLE DROP!

0:45:30 Nick watched Dracula: Untold
Which leads to pun times, movie talk, and making theaters laugh.
Talking about bad movies gets us to start talking about The Room, and unintentionally funny movies.

0:55:56 Garrett released a review for Destiny.
And it's right here.
We continue to be the best Destiny podcast on the internet.

0:57:00 Garrett's Two Cents editorial are going to be a monthly feature.
His description is pretty comprehensive.

1:01:50 Garrett plays Game Dev Tycoon.
I wish actual game development was this easy. The game is a nice little excursion, but it's incredibly easy make tons of money in-game.

1:04:20 Garrett talks real life.

1:05:00 Comic talk with Garrett and Chris.
And we discuss how Status Quo is God and nobody ever stays dead, unless they get cancelled.

1:11:03 We briefly disconnect while Garrett was talking
Because Sam's setup makes no sense.
His motherboard is probably cursed.

1:12:41 Garrett talks about his developer class.
And his partner sounds like a moron.

1:16:55 Garrett talks League of Legends.
You know how it is.

1:17:30 I played Persona 4 Ultimax.
You can hear more about my thoughts on the game here. Part 2 should be out in a few days.

1:21:30 I watched a Heavy Rain LP.
This LP, to be precise.

I remember liking Heavy Rain at one point, but honestly the game is really bad. I'm legitimately surprised at how much badness was crammed into a single game. The voice acting is awful, the story is terrible, and the choices are meaningless.
And David Cage somehow got worse in Beyond: Two Souls.

1:26:14 I watched Two Best Friends play The Walking Dead: Season 1.
You probably don't need a link, but it's here just in case.
It's actually pretty amazing at how easy it is to dislike most of the cast. The entire weight of the plot seems to come from the relationship between Lee and Clementine. The rest of the cast is either take it or leave it, but without those two characters, very few of the rest of the people who join the group serve to just cause problems.
As for Kenny, fuck that guy.

1:31:15 Nick talks about The Walking Dead: The TV Series.
The TV show and the comics are interesting in how quickly they make you hate the characters. I have never read the comics, but I watched one episode of the TV show and decided that if the next episode was "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies", that would be better than anything else.
Hearing Chris talk about how Meryl and Darryl (I couldn't care any less if spelled their names wrong) were added in to make the cast more relatable is infinitely fascinating. We then discuss other comic to movie adaptation.

And I talk more about the game after that during this discussion.

1:37:50 I yell at Sam for his hosting abilities.

1:38:41 I mention that Naruto is coming to an end.
BELIEVE IT!
We then talk about manga franchises that have lasted entirely too long, of which there are many. Bleach is mentioned. Though we never bring it up, I feel that One Piece belongs on this list.

And Chris talks about why he quit Spawn on a related note, following up with more comic talk. Bottom line, comics are bullshit.

1:51:50 Chris has played Mario Kart.
And I have nothing to add to this conversation.

1:59:25 Sam is reading a love series which I didn't get the name of.
It's anime/manga.

2:02:45 Sam bought some movies while out on holiday.

2:03:05 Sam saw Austin City Limits in Texas.
YEE HAW!
And we discuss musical politics. Like musical chairs, but much less fun.

2:08:20 Sam bought a loud keyboard.
A Razer BLACKWIDOW to be precise. I love Corporate Cool names.

2:11:50 Sam played Shadows of Mordor.
And I'm super jealous because I really, really want to play it. I don't care about Lord of the Rings, but the game just looks awesome.
We then briefly discuss other Lord of the Rings games.

2:20:20 Sam beat all the Dead Rising 3 DLC
And doesn't care about it.

2:21:10 Sam beat Neverending Nightmare
And Garrett wants it to be good, and I'm tired.
It still sounds pretty gruesome, even when it's trying to be a game.
I assume that without spoilers, this is a hard game to talk about.

2:25:20 Sam bought Assassin's Creed: Liberation and Freedom Cry
And he finds their portrayal of slavery weird.

2:26:30 Sam bought Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition on the PC.
Not much to say, aside from what was said during the cast.

2:27:55 Sam watches anime with one of my friends.
It's Japan, and therefore weird.

2:29:50 We start to wrap things up.
None of us can apparently not play games during a podcast.
I'm so, so sorry for this cast.

At the same time, we randomly give our one fan a happy day.

#53: Railroading: How it Doesn't Have to Suck

As many of you know, I am a very big fan of choices in games. I love it when a game allows me a degree of agency over the story and the way things unfold. To me, this is a major part of what helps gaming separate itself from other mediums, like books or movies. However, this does not mean that I am against the notion of linearity in video games. There is nothing wrong with games having players follow a path that is decided by the designers well before they gets their hands on it. Many of the better games and stories in this medium are of high-quality because of their linear nature. The key for developers to have well-executed plots that railroad players into one path is to carefully mask those rails as much as they possibly can. This can be done in a number of ways and with many different approaches. Today's article will be dedicated to outlining a couple of possible methods with which railroad-y plots can work.

The first of these methods is simply to create a large world and build the perception that there are many places and locations for the player to explore, while at the same blocking off areas until they have completed a significant enough portion of the story. Final Fantasy games, especially the earlier games in the franchise, are some of the most well known practitioners of this strategy. In many of this franchise's games, players start off in one town, but see that all around them there is a fairly large and expansive world map to explore when they depart that town. Most sections of the map are blocked off simply because the player requires certain means of transportation to get passed obstacles like mountains, rivers, oceans, and so on. After making significant enough progress in the story, the player is given some method with which to bypass the obstacle like a teleporter or some kind of vehicle (most famously the Airship). This tactic comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, it gives off the illusion of a massive world which the player can explore. Earlier Final Fantasy games always had the feeling of world-sprawling adventures that took players to varied, exotic locals. It also allows for strategic placement of locations and towns to give off the impression that players are exploring an actual place with people. Taken further, designers can also use this world to place side quests in deliberate locations that make them feel like natural extensions to the game and its lore. This can best be shown by contrasting early Final Fantasy games with a later game in the franchise that did not utilize such a mask, Final Fantasy XIII. That particular game is notorious for presenting the majority of itself as a long, linear corridor. Without the illusion of a large world, the game feels like a straight line and there is very little room for side content. On the other hand, there are downsides as well to this particular illusion. For one, it is fairly difficult to scale up. This worked well on small scale pixelated games because we accepted a degree of abstraction. We did not need to see other people using airships or traveling around, gathering resources and trading, to assume that it was happening. When we scaled up to high-fidelity 3D, this was no longer sufficient. For games to employ this tactic in modern AAA gaming, it requires a great deal of effort. The place has to look almost exactly like a living breathing world in the vein of an Elder Scrolls or Assassin's Creed game, especially an Assassin's Creed game, in order to maintain the illusion. Because of this, the blocks that prevent players from proceeding further into unexplored territory before advancing the story can seem increasingly artificial. In particular, the Assassin's Creed series is extremely bad at this. The barriers that determine how far players can explore are literal force fields that appear when they are going too far out of the designated free area. It justifies them by saying that the ancestor of the day did not explore those locations during the memory segment that the player is currently reliving via the Animus. While crafting natural blocks that make sense in the world can be difficult at times, Ubisoft did not even try and many games in the series feel decidedly linear because of it. That is not to say that this is a bad tactic to use, but we have to consider the weaknesses of doing things this way.

Another good way to disguise linearity in games is to plan the player's actions and the level design so that the correct path to take feels like the one they are most likely to take anyway. This is easier said than done as it takes a fair amount of work, play testing, and knowledge to get right. One of the biggest problems with games and plots that railroad the player into doing certain things is that often the player is forced to take actions that are obviously stupid even without knowing what they will lead to later on. A good example of this is the start of Mass Effect 2, where Shepard decides to work with the organization Cerberus despite knowing already that they are a terrorist organization that is responsible for completely reprehensible crimes against humanity. Most players who are familiar with the events in the first game would NEVER want to join up with Cerberus, but are forced to anyway because the writers have already made that decision. Assassin's Creed 2 is also responsible for this by forcing Ezio to spare Rodrigo Borgia at the end of the game despite the fact that he is and will be responsible for thousands of deaths. These kinds of moments make it seem like the protagonist or designer of the game is attempting to troll the player, both acting illogically and placing the player in situations that could have easily been avoided. Simply put, neither the player nor the player character should ever be forced to take actions that are obviously stupid in service to a plot. If that does happen, then the players will often mark the game down for being overly-linear and “railroad-y.” Hiding a game's linear nature is easiest to pull off by reading and re-reading the script of the game with a critical eye. Designers need to think about logical actions that the player or protagonist might consider taking and either finding a way to explain why it would not work or rearranging the plot element or set piece in question around that. Play testing and bringing in fresh eyes can also help as watching what others do and asking why they make those choices can greatly help in planning scenarios in a way that they seem less linear. It is hard to point to games that do this particularly well because those are the kinds of games that are so well done that it is hard to notice that designers are funneling their audience towards one end. While I am an advocate of doing things this way, again one has to acknowledge that it is not easy and requires quite a bit of forethought and adaptability.

Lastly, one of the more ambitious ways to create a linear game is to actually enable players the ability to make choices as the plot goes on, but weave those choices into the story in a way where the player feels like they were making significant choices, when in actuality they were just being funneled into the tale that the designers wanted to tell. Out of all the possible tactics to employ, this is the most risky. Done well, it can give players a strong feeling of authorship over the narrative until playing through the game again. When poorly executed, players can feel like the game is invalidating their choice and forcing them into situations they would rather avoid. One example of the former is Telltale's The Walking Dead. While there are moments where it seems like the game is conveniently sweeping decisions players have made in the past under the rug (particularly in Episode 3), for the most part the game is pretty good about guiding players towards their intended paths while acknowledging and respecting the choices they made along the way. But of course, for every good example of a game doing something right there is a counter-example that demonstrates the worst way to implement the same thing. In this case, Mass Effect 3 serves as that counter-example. There were several moments in Mass Effect 3 where the script seemed to do what it wanted despite the choices players have made. In order to avoid spoilers in this article, I will instead point to my previous works that detail this phenomenon. This is something hard to talk about because in order to do it justice, I would have to prepared to go into massive spoiler territory and I am trying to keep this spoiler free for once. Nonetheless, such a skillful weaving is something that takes genuine effort. Players will notice and appreciate it.

Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with games being linear. Done well, a good linear story can make for quite an enjoyable game. It is worth noting that none of these strategies have to be done in isolation. In fact, it is ideal if a few of them overlap. This is also by no means a comprehensive article on the subject. I am sure that other tactics exist to help facilitate linear storytelling in video games. Lastly, my final disclaimer is that sometimes not hiding the rails can be a legitimate tactic if the game's story calls for it, as seen in games like Spec Ops: The Line or the first two-thirds of Bioshock. By no means is game design an exact science with hard and fast rules. The medium is still very much in its youth. Designers should feel free to experiment with and test other ways to improve how we tell stories.

#49: The 2012 VGAs: A Sign of Good Things to Come?

Despite my many misgivings, harsh criticisms, common sense, and prior threats to boycott them this year, I went ahead and watched the Video Game Awards when they aired via Spike TVs livestream. For those who are unaware, the Spike TV Video Game Awards are held annually every holiday season. Most people who follow the industry write off the award ceremony because the show usually announces the awards in the background and places a major focus on the announcements and trailers for upcoming games in their stead. While this is no less true for this year's ceremony and the VGAs were still very groan-inducing, something happened which may prove to be significant in the coming years: The Game of the Year of 2012 was revealed to be Telltale's The Walking Dead. It was chosen over Assassin's Creed 3, Dishonored, Journey, and Mass Effect 3. While some might argue that this is largely irrelevant, I would strongly disagree. This week, I will explain why this decision to make The Walking Dead Game of the Year is great for the medium. (Note: I do not intend to spoil anything about The Walking Dead and will be speaking in broad strokes. Those afraid of spoilers should not be worried.)

One of the first reasons that this is a big deal is that unlike previous Games of the Year for the Spike TV VGAs. The Walking Dead is not a AAA game. Up until now, the Game of the Year has gone to a AAA published game without exception. Previous awards have gone to Madden '04, GTA: San Andreas, every Bethesda RPG since Oblivion, and Uncharted 2. While these are all well made games that deserve some sort of accolades (even Madden, despite my total lack of interest in sports games), they are all games that come from the biggest publishers in the industry. Given the nature of the VGAs as more of a hype machine than an awards show, this makes sense and is something to be expected. However, this year, the title did not go to one of the ingrained and well-established names in the industry or one that has a very high brand recognition. It went to Telltale's take on a comic book franchise that receives a fairly positive reception, but it largely irrelevant to the industry at large. This defies the trend of previous VGA awards. Many people, myself included, figured that Game of the Year would go to one of two established franchises in the running, either Assassin's Creed 3 or Mass Effect 3. The Walking Dead is a game that is produced on a lower budget and on a much lower scale than most of the other games released this year. This proves to developers and publishers that AAA-style extremely high budgets are not required in order to game a great game that can achieve a high level of popularity and profit, which is something I have complained about more than one.

The next reason that The Walking Dead “walking” away with the trophy is a good thing is that unlike other previous winners of Game of the Year, it does not have a high emphasis on action. The Walking Dead is very much a game about talking to people, making decisions, and observing the emotional impact these decisions have on the ensemble cast of characters that players meet. It also has a slight emphasis on puzzles, going back to its roots as a point-and-click adventure game. This is not the kind of game that one would expect to win Game of the Year. Those types of games usually have a large focus on other types of gameplay. Bethesda games tend to focus on exploration of the world and dealing with the enemies and obstacles that confront them on a regular basis. Uncharted 2 is a very solid third-person shooter/platformer hybrid. Bioshock, which won in 2007, is a very tightly polished shooter. The Walking Dead is a massive change from all of these. While it does have “combat,” it is incredibly rare and takes the form of quick-time events. Players will mostly be talking and solving simple puzzles. What this communicates to the industry is that games do not always need to involve violence and killing waves and waves of mooks. It is okay to experiment with mechanics and try to make games that involve minimal killing or violence on the players part. Gamers are willing to give new ideas and concepts a chance. In the past, many people have criticized our medium for its focus on violence. Knowledge that we can experiment with this is a very healthy for the industry. Maybe one day we can see a game where protagonists can be less violent than the usual fare.

The last reason that The Walking Dead's victory is a great thing for the industry is that unlike other games who have won the award in the past, the primary reason to play The Walking Dead is its story and how players interact with it. This is directly contrary to years past, where the winning game's real draw was the mechanics and the gameplay associated with them, which were almost always completely divorced from the story. In Bethesda RPGs, the plot is rarely ever of great significance. The real reason to play is to explore the world that Bethesda has crafted and see what players can find. GTA games are well known for giving players the ability to disregard the campaign in favor of screwing around and playing in a open-world sandbox. Uncharted 2 and Bioshock do have an emphasis on story, but they are mostly referred to by their gameplay mechanics and their nature as shooters. The Walking Dead is not a game that is heavy on “gameplay” as much as it is “interactivity.” (This is going to get a little confusing as the vocabulary used to describe video games is decidedly limited.) Characters and their interactions are very much at the forefront of the game. Players are encouraged to talk to people and get to know them. Although it is a “point-and-click” game, puzzles are not the real reason to play it. The message this sends to the industry is that we encourage developers to meddle with the definition of a video game. It is not vital to include quick-time events or puzzles so that something is “technically” a video game. After all, those parts of The Walking Dead tend to be the least interesting, but not necessarily bad, parts of the game, especially in Episode 1.

To me, the VGAs are indicative of what the average gamer's perspective. The enthusiasts like myself sometimes forget that while we love the industry and are highly involved in it, we are not the only ones in the industry. Most of the people who are gamers only buy one or two games per year, probably a Call of Duty and another game, and mostly play those. It is these people who the VGAs cater to and there is nothing wrong with that. Looking at it through this lens, the fact that a game like The Walking Dead was able to win the Game of the Year is truly astounding. It means that the average gamer is willing to branch out from their normal gaming routine and try something new and different. This can only be a positive thing. While I know this is not going to dethrone the major shooters of the industry, it is a great start to instilling some sort of change. It is a small victory that will allow us to press on and aim for larger changes. Do not think of it as a large victory so much as a shift in momentum. A small victory is still a victory and we should celebrate while we can. Now that The Walking Dead game has been achieving so much and doing so well, it allows us to call into question many deeply-entrenched beliefs and practices of the industry.

#48: The Post/Zombie Apocalypse: Is it Overused?

The prospect of zombies and the undead has always been a theme explored in video games since the days of the Atari 2600. The reasons for this are obvious, since they pose an easily comprehensible threat and provide cannon fodder for players. In recent times however, they appear to have seen a bit of a resurgence. Many modern games have incorporated zombies and zombie-related tropes and as a result many people, including myself, have begun to think that zombies, “infected,” and their ilk have grown to be overplayed, stale, and increasingly uninteresting. Having said that, I have recently finished a game that has made me rethink my sour opinion on the subject. That game was Telltale's adaptation of The Walking Dead, available now on the PC, the 360, and the PS3 via their respective online stores. After playing the game, I appreciated the zombie apocalypse (and general post-apocalypse) setting much more than I used to. The realization came that this setting is stagnating not because it is begin overplayed, but because game developers have not done anything new or different with it until now. This week, in a long overdue article, I delve into why this is and how it may be fixed.

First, we need to have a discussion on the zombie apocalypse and what it does. A zombie apocalypse is exactly what it says on the tin, it is a fantasy apocalypse scenario where, due to either supernatural or biological/scientific influences, the dead are somehow reanimated, causing the collapse of society as a whole and ushering in a new world order. This is a subset of the post-apocalypse setting, where the world as we known it is fundamentally changed and significantly set back due to some catastrophic incident or scenario (like zombies). In these types of settings, there are not very many types of plots that a writer can utilize. The only overarching plot lines that this kind of setting can support are typically as follows, but could include more.

1. The “Fight for Survival” where an individual or group has the goal of making it by from day to day. Typically, this will involve finding some kind of shelter, gathering food, water, and supplies, and dealing with threats to one's safety or supply cache.
2. “Rebuilding Society” where the individual or group has typically finally etched a permanent/semi-permanent existence in this new world and decides to start rebuilding what was lost, forming cities, cultivating land, banding groups of people together, and establishing infrastructure and government. This is all done in the hopes of bringing back some semblance of law, order, and stability that was lost in the apocalypse.
3. The “Power Fantasy” in which the player is thrust into an apocalypse and told to just go wild and kill as many things (living or undead) as they possibly can. The protagonist has a large skill set and great physical prowess and/or a large arsenal of weapons and gadgets that can handle a wide variety of situations. The plot will generally be bare-minimum or fall into one of the previous categories and will exist for no other reason that to give the protagonist an excuse for racking up a large kill list.

Compared to other types of settings, this is a very small list, even when compared to other settings that are often used, like sci-fi or fantasy. Those settings allow for plots involving political intrigue between nations, world-spanning adventures, and even plots on a smaller scale like murder mysteries and revenge stories. This lack of plot types in itself is not really a significant problem. The true issue is one that lies within the sphere of video games: the plots are almost exclusively of the “Power Fantasy” variety. Out of most of the modern day games that involve zombies that come to mind, there is a disproportionately high number of zombie-murder-shotgun simulators. What my mind calls forth when I think of zombies are the likes of Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Resident Evil, Dead Island, and the zombie mode in the Call of Duty franchise. In all of these games, the zombies are nothing more than an obstacle that players point and shoot at until it falls over. This is what leads to a feeling of being overused and overplayed. It is not that we are using the same setting over and over again, but that we are doing it with the same general plot and narrative structure as well.

Fast forward to The Walking Dead, and now we no longer have a Power Fantasy. Instead, the designers at Telltale chose to embrace the source material and use the “Fight for Survival” plotline with a well developed and realistically written cast of survivors. This enabled them to focus on small scale, highly character driven, personal, stories where the player and his party are forced into desperate situations and experiment with the gameplay, where players are forced to make painful choices and bear the weight of those choices. Emotions run high and players can often be brought to tears when faced with the events that are unfolding in front of them. The shift away from the standard Power Fantasy refreshes the setting, making it new and interesting. Players never plow through tons of zombies. Whenever the zombies come, they are presented as a genuine threat and the best course of action is always to retreat. All these characters are trying to do is stay alive and see tomorrow. This is where most zombies games get it wrong. Designers forget that there are other plots they can use in this setting and go for the standard power fantasy. These other plot types can add a weight and emotional backbone to the game. There is nothing wrong with a good Power Fantasy, but gamers want more than that. As they say, variety is the spice of life.

But Power Fantasies are easy to craft. All designers need to do is create a hoard of mooks and some weapons to fight them. It takes more work than it does to think up of quality writing and good gameplay mechanics that reinforce the other two plot lines. Aside from the Fallout franchise and the flash game Rebuild, which focus on the rebuilding of society in a post-apocalypse, and The Walking Dead, where the daily struggle for survival is on display, one would be hard-pressed to find post-apocalypse games that are not strictly in the realm of Power Fantasy. (And yes, I am very much aware that there is a very strong case to be made for Fallout being a Power Fantasy. You do not need to tell me.) I would petition game designers to branch out every once in a while and break the mold. Do something different from that which we have all seen before and show the creativity in all of those development studios. I know that game designers are more than capable of experimenting with new concepts and/or reiterating on old ones in interesting ways. I just wish that they would show off the capability more.