61 Frames Per Second : oddworld

Less Than Perfect: Jak and Daxter and The Flawed Character

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

On last week’s GDC ListenUp special, the three amigos John Davison, Garnett Lee, David Ellis, chatted with God Of War creator David Jaffe about the dominance of empowered supermen/women as protagonists in videogames. Their discussion started around the difference between Western and Eastern tastes in protagonists. The American palette leans towards the militaristic hero archetype, the one man, muscle bound army who, plagued by existential angst or not, can solve every problem with brawn. The Japanese audience prefers youthful androgyny, characters either brimming with naïve confidence or crushed under the weight of responsibility for civilization. The ListenUP crew went on to lament that there is seemingly no place in either culture for the Peter Parker/Spider-man archetype, characters who are empowered, but deeply flawed, whether by insecurity or another humanizing debility.

They’re right of course. I can point to a selection of flawed, humanized characters in games; Oddworld’s Munch and Abe are iconic inhuman outsiders made relatable through fragility and Ico’s horned protagonist is so memorable because of his incompetence and weakness. Gaming’s more literary canon, the adventure genre, is also populated by relatable humanized leads like Farenheit’s Carla Valenti and Lucas Kane or Dreamfall’s Zoe. But these icons make up a significant minority in the world of character-based and narrative-driven videogames. If Peter Parker and his alter-ego are the most profitable fictional characters in contemporary media, why are characters like him so under-represented in videogames? Why are our game protagonists so rigidly defined by complete empowerment? Where are our emotional, and our actual, cripples?

Amidst the game industry April Fool’s detritus, Sony quietly announced their first Jak and Daxter game in some years. Only a handful of screens were released, but they indicate a blend of aesthetics from the franchise’s history; the verdant greens of The Precursor Legacy coupled with the wizened, gun-toting hero of that game’s sequels. Chances are Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier on PSP won’t explore this emotional territory, but I’m fascinated by the potential of Jak as a character. Jak originated as a plucky silent protagonist, wide-eyed and young, looking for adventure and finding the opportunity to save the world. He was a distinctly Eastern sort of hero in a Western game. Jak 2 transformed him into an angry, violent anti-hero, given greater power through weaponry and a corrupting inner force to go along with a newfound voice. With his return on the PSP, developer High Impact Games has the opportunity to take the road less travelled. An older, wiser Jak, maybe even a weakened one, who has come to terms with a violent past catching up to him. They could inject what would otherwise be a typical flight of character fancy with true emotional heft. Let Jak understand weakness in addition to pain, and make the game something wholly original.

That won’t happen of course. There’s no profit in it. But the example should hold true for other game makers out there. The road to making affecting game characters and stories doesn’t end with making them look real. It ends with making them feel real.

Related links:

Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
Linearity is Not a Dirty Word
Finally, Some Info On Dreamfall Chapters

Up All Night: Blackthorne

John Constantine — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Blizzard doesn’t need to make games in a timely manner. They finish games when they’re finished. This is because Blizzard are masters of their craft. They are unimpeachable purveyors of the best the medium has to offer. Got something bad to say about the Warcraft trilogy? Best keep your trap shut, pal. Think World of Warcraft is a cunning way of enslaving free minds? Keep it to yourself. And heaven forfend if you question the merit of Starcraft, Diablo, or either of those series’ impending sequels. Indeed, Blizzard are new gods for the 21st century.

But this was not always the case. Once upon a time, Blizzard made trash. Fun trash to be sure, but trash nonetheless. That is to say, once upon a time, Blizzard stayed up all night.

Of the multiple Up All Night candidates from Blizzard’s catalog – and believe me, The Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force are prime subjects – none are so deserving as Blackthorne. Blackthorne is raw 1990s, distilled into a collection of pixels, and preserved for all of time. The plot is a tangle of violent sci-fi fantasy tropes, so if you’re curious about the nitty-gritty of Blackthorne’s story, please consult this handy synopsis on Wikipedia. All you really need to know is that you play as a longhaired dude named Kyle Vlaros, aka The Blackthorne. Kyle does not wear a shirt. Kyle wears jeans, a tanktop, sunglasses, and a shotgun. The jeans are for comfort, the sunglasses are for looking cool, and the shotgun is for shooting everybody. This goes for the monstrous aliens who serve the evil ruler of Tuul, Sarlac, as well as the peaceful subjects Sarlac has enslaved. I found it to be pretty shocking the first time I accidentally shotgunned a helpless prisoner in the head way back when. But when I realized I could shotgun them over the shoulder – I’m pretty sure blind shooting, recently popularized by Gears of War, originated in Blackthorne – I couldn’t help but be manically amused.

Joking aside, Blackthorne is a good game, albeit a remarkably cheesy one. If you’re a fan of platformers in the vein of Flashback, Out of This World, and the early Oddworld games, track it down. Of course, if you’re a Blizzard devotee, you probably already have.

Previously on Up All Night:

Doritos Dash of Destruction
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
Cannon Spike
Parasite Eve
Trojan
Dark Sector
Ex-Mutants
Nightmare Creatures
Bad Dudes
P.N. 03

Where's the In-game Advertising?

Cole Stryker — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:26:00 GMT

Reuters reports that marketing types aren't quite as enthusiastic about the prospects of in-game advertising as they have been in the past. This new marketing channel has been hyped for over a decade now, but it's shown little growth, certainly not the explosion that was predicted around the time that Munch started drinking SoBe.

Projected growth estimates for in-game advertising vary, with several experts suggesting that ad spending there will top $100 million this year, and grow to around $1 billion in 2011.

That may sound like a big number, but when you place it within the context of $150 billion annual advertising spending, it's peanuts. The figure should be alot higher, considering that video games are now supposed to be bigger than film.

Sports games continue to lead the pack, probably because advertising is so prevalent in real world sporting events that its inclusion within video games does little to affect immersion.

"I have been saying ever since we took over Take Two that I thought in-game advertising was a very limited opportunity that applied mostly to the sports business, and I remain of that belief," he said. "It's a detail. It exists, it can be profitable, we'd be happy to have it. It's just not going to move the dial."

I find this tough to believe. Advertisers just need to get more creative. Just look what Guitar Hero is doing for music sales.

F**k Your Future: Mirror’s Edge, Blade Runner, and the Future City

John Constantine — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The image above is a little bit of Deus Ex 3 concept art from Eidos Montreal, the crack design team who broadened our sexual horizons with Fear Effect and taught us that controlling sociopathic murders is boring as sin with Kane & Lynch. I can imagine the dialogue between the artists and producers when this image was submitted for approval:

"What do you got for us today, concept artists?"

"Check dis!"

"This isn't Deus Ex! This is just a screencap from Blade Runner with the guy from Deus Ex 1 smoking in front of it!"

"I'm fired aren't I?"

"No! It's perfect! That’s all these nerds want anyway."

I kid. There is no Deus Ex without Blade Runner, after all. While its influence isn’t quite on the level of Aliens, Blade Runner’s vision of a nightmare cityscape in the far-flung-but-familiar future is a close second. Its towering super-skyscrapers and dank alleyways are the aesthetic meat of beloved games like Shadowrun and Snatcher, but you can also see them in mid-period Contra, Flashback, Abe’s Odyssey/Exodus, and even recent blockbusters like Mass Effect. Then again, it’s not just games. Syd Mead’s Los Angeles has been the template for depicting the urban landscape of the future in all media for close to twenty-five years.

I’ve been curious for awhile now as to what the next popular conception of the cityscape is going to be. The Blade Runner type came on the heels of the ultra-slick Logan’s Run-style, cities of spires all white and sterile that typified science fiction from its 1950s heyday through the 1970s. This may not be the most academic logic in the world, but since sci-fi literature gave us our Future City model post-WWII, and sci-fi film bore its successor, I’m looking to videogames to create the next archetype.

If you’ve been reading 61FPS regularly, you probably won’t be surprised to hear me say that I think Mirror’s Edge features the most likely model for tomorrow’s City of Tomorrow. Edge’s nameless city has the same whitewashed sterility that was the hallmark of the 60s/70s future city but twists the model by coating it in streaks of primary color and keeping the architecture familiar. The buildings, subway stations, and shopping centers recall today’s Montreal but with a consistent modernist bent. Edge’s dystopia is also a recent institution. The story constantly reminds the player that the totalitarian government responsible for the city’s current shape hasn’t been in power long, and so the omnipresence of architecture-as-construction-site provides a fine narrative metaphor: you play behind the future city’s façade of perfection. Whether or not this model fully captures the zeitgeist of 2008 and beyond remains to be seen, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing Edge’s city more often then Blade Runner’s, especially in games, going forward.

Note: Forgive my hate against Eidos Montreal. Yeah, Fear Effect and Kane & Lynch suck, but they made Soul Bubbles. They’re alright.

(Link: Gamereactor via Kotaku)

Related links:

The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games
Mirror’s Edge: Everything You’ve Heard Is True
Trailer Review: Mirror’s Edge
The Eternal Question: Why Is Super Mario Bros. Fun?
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming