I, Jaen

I first wrote this during what was gamer-gate or itisallaboutethicsinvideogamejournalsm-gate. if you don't know what that is, don't make an effort. It is a deep and depressing rabbit hole.

This isn't really about feminism or equality or whatever.

But it has both videogames and identity kind of. Well it’s mostly about me. Here goes.

All that follows is based on my experience with the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series from BioWare and the great Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda.

And of course Diablo, D&D, KOTOR, Shadowrun and a bunch of MMOs and other RPGs.

As you might have guessed I like RPGs both the digital and non-digital variety. The ones with action and high adventure. I like to kill orks, slay dragons. Blast aliens, stormtroopers, robots and faceless corporate goons.

I’m the one saving the world or maybe just my own ass.

But I have found something that might be a bit peculiar.

When I play any rpg from Bioware I play the same character, Jaen. It should be Jean but I spelled it wrong by mistake and stuck with it.

I’ve been Jaen Shepard through the Mass Effect trilogy. Jaen Hawke and simply Jaen in Dragon age 2 and origins respectively. and Inqusiton.

The character creation in Bioware rpgs is pretty much the same. It has of course been improved over the years but not much has changed. I always pick the same options.

Female. Red hair. Green eyes. In space some kind of scar. In fantasy settings some mystic tattoo. The hair is the shortest ponytail option you can choose. (That must be preferable when fighting darkspawn or Reapers, I guess)

This might seem weird, silly or unimportant to tell you.

So why am I writing this? Well, I don’t know. But I found two interesting things.

1: I don’t know why I always do this.

And 2: I don’t always do it.

So why and when. Well in all Bioware action RPGs. I create the same character.

Those games are 3^rd person and single player. So maybe that’s is part of the reason.

But a bit about my second point before I move forward. When do I play what character? Depends on gameplay and narrative.

Just Perspective

In pen & paper RPGs I always play different characters and classes. When I GM I steal from everywhere. Even myself. My regular RPG group will not get to read this but if they did they might start to recognize some NPC.

In all the MMOs I have tried I never once made that same character. I’ve never been really into MMOs but I’ve tried a lot them. Played WoW, DCU Online and SW: Old Republic. The last one is definitely the one I’ve played the most. I is even from Bioware and it is even fantasy in space.

But no I made a different character. Not Jaen.

There is no reason to play the same character in all RPGs of course. But it is kind of interesting to see when and why you play what character.

In an MMO there is a lot of other players playing. So the avatar is my representation in the game to the other players. It is more a game piece than a character in a story. The avatar is my body in the game, so I choose something closer to my real body. Can seem silly maybe, I am not a Jedi in real life either I know.

I think it is more about how I’m perceived than how I see myself. I don’t want scam anyone or whatever. I’m a guy in the analog world so I’m a guy in the matrix. That’s how it works, right?

In all the Elder Scrolls game I am men too. Not even snakemen or elves. No, plain old humans. Boring me.

Those games are 1^st person so it might just be that I play myself. I don’t know. I play a Norse in Skyrim because that is what makes most sense and is in a way expected. It’s on the cover of the disc.

Back to the first point, Why?.

Perspective. The above example mentions Skyrim being played in a first person perspective. So you don’t really see the character you’re playing. Not even in conversations. Only when you equip different armor and weapons.

In the 3^rd perspective on the other hand you see the character all the time. I play RPG to be something other than my ordinary self. I want to immerse myself in lore and of course kill monsters. If I’m going look at something for 40 hours it is definitely not going to be me and I’d rather have it be woman than a man.

I play a protagonist in a story in 3^rd person in 1^st I play “me”

Just narrative

The race you play give you some kind of bonus, usually. The class of course has a huge impact on the game you play.

But the option to play male or female doesn’t have any impact on game mechanics.

So Jaen, here is my justifications for why I choose the options I do.

In Skyrims narrative you are The hero. Everything revolves around you. Your choices. And you can do anything in the giant sandboxes of Skyrim and Oblivion.

It is a gamespace, game and narrative centered around one word/person: YOU.

In Mass Effect and Dragon Age the narrative is centers on Shepard, The Warden or Hawke. It is a different way focusing the narrative and playing the game.

You control someone else. The protagonist in Biowares epic.

So I create the character that fits and creates the most compelling story for me.

Here we talk about stereotypes. Might be more suited to say archetypes. Stereotypes have a bad rep. The Hero, The One, The Savior  is stereotypes as well. That’s the ones you play in these games.

The Hero is defined by opposition. By whatever (s)he has to overcome. Destroy the Ring. Don’t give in to temptation and overcome your physicality. If we look at Frodo in LOtR.

In Dragon Age Origins I was a female city elves warrior. I’m The Underdog. The Unlikely Hero. The lowest of the lowest.

Of all the peoples in Feralden the city elves are the most oppressed. The women are servants or whores. And a warrior seemed as the most unlikely class for such a person to be. (but honestly I just prefer playing a warrior).

In stories like this the Hero is the unlikely one, weak or whatever. Frodo, Luke and so on.

I pick the Archetype that fits the story for me. (In Shadowrun Returns I’m a human female street samurai called Molly because I love the book Neuromancer¹)

And I think there is a difference in how Skyrim and Dragon Age frames gameplay and story.

Just Me

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I think too much. Put too much into the choices. I can spend a long time in character creation just pondering a name. Maybe it is just personal preference. I prefer the FemShep actor to the male counterpart. I prefer the story where a female city elf saves all of Feralden by sacrificing herself to kill a Demon. I do it’s true.

But it is more than that. I chose in stereo types but not in any bad way. My Barbarian and Monk in Diablo are big muscled men while my Mage and Demon Hunter are women. That makes most sense to my brain. When I play pen&paper RPGs I wanna see a cool story unfold. The character I play reflect that. I identify with stereotypes or archetypes from movies and books. I try to re-create those stories, I think.

When I chose it has little to with identity or gender. It is more to do with narrative and gameplay.

In Biowares RPGs or others framed in a similar way, I control, to an extent, a protagonist in a story unfolding before me. In Skyrim I want to explore and kill dragons or maybe just run around eating things. But maybe that’s just me.

Notes:

1: The book that started the genre we know call cyberpunk. And greatly inspired the original Shadowrun pen and paper RPG. One of the protagonist is called Molly Millions.

Also the book where the words cyberspace and the matrix first appeared.

Bibliography:

Ace, Gibson, William, Neuromancer. 1984.

Ludography:

BioWare. Mass Effect. 2007

BioWare. Mass Effect 2. 2010

BioWare. Mass Effect 3. 2012

BioWare. Dragon Age: Origins. 2009

BioWare. Dragon Age II. 2011

Blizzard North. Diablo II. 2000

Blizzard Entertainment. Diablo III. 2012.

BioWare. Star Wars: Knights of the Old republic. 2003

Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft. 2004.

Harebrained Schemes. Shadowrun Returns. 2013.

Bethesda Game Studios. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. 2006

Bethesda Game Studios. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. 2011

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons. 1974

Stuck in Time

Life is good, A mushy look at an emotional game.

I just finished Life is Strange this weekend and holy shit, what a game. Definately my game of 2015 but I’m behind on all those games, haven't even touched Witcher yet. I just had to share my experience with someone, anyone.
Might spoil some things in this so be warned but I will try not to spoil Life is Strange (I don’t think I did).

I'm still kind of emotional and I'm writing this with the Life is Strange Soundtrack on youtube open in another tab, to keep the mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzU8dGFG9s&index=3&list=FLjep4ePXTpKrrqKA9JRtbJw

I wasn't sure I would like Life is Strange and of a coincident I stumbled onto it, glad I did. This is why I love films and why I play games, sometimes you find something that makes feel something you didn't expect. the best fiction, you take with you... 

I can count on one hand the games that have kept me thinking about them after I stopped playing and/or made me feel something during. I know nearly all games makes us feel something, otherwise why play? The hunt for points, or not dying, beating up friends etc. is exciting and makes your heart pound. But that is not the feelings I mean. Emotion like being content or happy, even sad. 
That is what I like and look for in books and movies, fuck it let’s call it art. If the thing, whatever it is, won’t let go after it is over. Fake (fictional) things that makes feel real emotion.
Off the top off my head here is the rest of the games that made me feel non-gamey things, for context.
Bioshock infinite (Might lose some people here, I got reasons but that is a whole other conversation). Gone home. Last of Us. And Life is Strange of course. 
Must be more I forgot.

Maybe that sounded kind of Emo or cheesy, saying I want to be depressed watching movies or playing games, I don’t, but I like when it happens. A game about high school teenagers wanting to be artist will unavoidable include teenage angst, just saying. 
The game handled it great, even though the writing isn’t always the greatest and there are technical flaws but after the first episode I forgot or didn’t care, I was invested. And by the way teenagers can be over dramatic especially when trying to be poetic. oh boy, I remember. Oh well.

In almost every regard the teenage experience of Max is far and wide removed from my own. Other than being a teenager and not fitting in. I was a nerd before it was cool in the least nerdy school. 
But now I have Max Caulfield’s experience too, hers involving decidedly more super powers than mine.

If you don't know in Life is Strange you are Max Caufield you attend Blackwell Academy back in your old hometown. You reconnect with your childhood best friend, Chloe. Oh and find out you can rewind time. You can rewind to solve puzzles and get more information out off people. After a conversation you can go back and get an outcome you are more comfortable with. Very different than in other new adventure games.

I like these new adventure games, seems like telltale started a trend or resurgence, I don’t know. I didn’t play monkey and those games back in the day. Played all the new Telltale games though.

But the choices in Life is Strange feel like they matter way more than in Telltale games. 

Even though you could argue the choices matter less because you can rewind can and choice something else. That you can see the consequences of your actions and the chose something else makes them more not less. 

That you can change the outcome makes you, at least made me, think “how do I feel about this?”, “is this really the outcome I want?”, “should I rewind?”. 
And some of the choices are gut-wrenching and made me think about what I would do in real life… The biggest choices I actually spend the least time on. I knew exactly what I would/should do or what my Max could never do… 
On the other hand I must have used like 20 rewinds to make sure Frank didn’t get hurt, I couldn’t do that to his dog, Pompidou.

The game is so modest and unassuming in its presentation that when the big twists or bold moves come along the impact is so much more real… 
Every episode stunned me at some point and made me go “holy shit” or “what the fuck”. Through episode 1 I thought I knew what game I was playing and where the story was going. Wrong on both accounts, way wrong on the second.
And the really have big moments and twists. I never saw coming. 

And always guess the murderer in the crime shows on tv.
The mystery jumps back and forth between a Donnie Darko or Groundhog Day vibe and all the way to a Fincher or Twin Peaks vibe. 

But all the episodes also have pleasant relaxing moments. Almost boring but really nice. Not really any other way to explain it, just nice.

One of the greatest moments for me was a sequence like that. 
In episode 3, Max & Chloe is just lying down on a bed listening to a song. Nothing happens and it made me think “should I do something?”, “press something?” I didn’t and I still don’t know if I was supposed to do something. But moments like those are rare in video games, unless you seek them. In a way that’s a bold move. 

lets stay in that moment for a bit. here is why a moment like that can be so strong if you are invested, as I were. (Or skip it, you can always rewind)

In a scene with little or no narrative frame, where nothing really happens we turn from objectivity to subjectivity in our mind. 

Let me explain.

When you watch Die Hard and John McClane runs over shattered glass we feel for him, you might even cringe and curl your toes. We go through a mental excise, a simulation of that event. When shooting nazis or zombies, or zombie nazis, in a Call of Duty the sensation is greater because you actually interact.

That is why action and horror movies and games so exciting. You know it is not real but it still gets you adrenaline going.

In film you constantly come up with proposition from clues in the movie. "The butler did it", "it's aliens", "he's ghost", "she's gonna leave him" etc. You invent a thesis that is either confirmed or rejected. Then you repeat that until the movie end. That is an exciting mental activity.

When nothing happens, it wont invoke the feeling of dealing with a real objective phenomena. so what is left is subjective associations. In a movie scene with the protagonist looking at a nature scene for a extended period of time, there is no action to excite your motor skills or few to no narrative clues to form propositions from. So you associate freely.

In my example Chloe & Max just talks and relaxes, you hear music and the sounds of suburban america and warm autumn light pours in through the window. With nothing to clearly look for or do your brain goes to unconscious associative processes. 

You feel or think whatever you might. If it hits you right then it can be work amazingly.

there a some things the scene clearly wants you to feel. but you bring your baggage to it for better or worse. 

If you want the scene can end as soon as Max & Chloe stops talking if you press something. 

Life is Strange coaxed into not realizing and made me feel... well... content, in that moment. 

And feel for every virtual soul in Arcadia Bay...

Well done.

Another great moment for me, kind of emotional actually, was a text Max (from my game) got from Kate's dad. If you got that text you know what I’m talking about. I hope most of you didn’t get that text though.
The characters also change as you get to know them. I changed my mind about a couple of them.

Even the gamey parts are good, not just annoying QTE’s. of course there is a couple of bad things and stupid puzzles. Especially in the end. But that PT style repeating hallway was pretty cool.
And you actually have to some proper detective stuff at some point. 
Exploring and finding the small details can help you in the social puzzles, so you don’t have to rewind 20 times for a dog. I missed some small clues that ended up have dire consequences.

It might not work for you, you might hate the music, the writing, the setting. You might feel the emotion is forced. But I implore you give it try. If it works it's amazing.

Max & Chloe as weird as it sounds, became real people. And I miss them.
And Pompidou of course … I miss a fictional dog, I don’t even like dogs, life is strange indeed.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJO_RpBnEg&index=1&list=FLjep4ePXTpKrrqKA9JRtbJw). Still gets me. 
And now I’m done.

Ludography:

Life is Strange, 2015. Dontnod 

Bibliography:

Grodal, Torben. Filmoplevelse - en indføring i audiovisuel teori og analyse. Forlaget Samfundslitteratur 2007

Grodal, Torben. Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford University Press 2009

Filmography:

John McTiernan. Die Hard. 1988

Live, Die, Repeat

Edge of Mordor

I don’t have any deep analytically insight or anything. Just some observations on dying.

In video games you usually have more than one life. Or some way of you to not be eliminated from playing. You do something, you fail and die. Then you lose a life and repeat the process.

We’re used to dying in video games. Mario have always had more than 1 life even before his name was Mario.

In Middle-Earth – Shadow of Mordor (SoM) you are already dead.

You play as Talion a dead ranger bound to the spirit of a long dead elf. Talion will not be able to die and pass on before this bond is broken.

In the game that means when you die you are teleported to one of your unlocked spawn point (some elven ghost towers). Some in game time passes and you’re free to return to whatever goal you were pursuing.

You in effect have infinite lives and all of them “counts” and all happened to the same Talion in the same world.

The mechanic of checkpoints and extra lives are linked to the narrative.

SoM Isn’t the first game to do this of course. Connecting dying as a mechanic and a part of the story. In Prince of Persia – sands of time (SoT). You don’t die. If you fail something that would kill you, time is reversed to a checkpoint. Both gameplay wise and story wise.  So it never happened and that is justified in the story.

In Bioshock infinite. The Booker that dies is just one of infinite Bookers from one of the infinite alternative universes. That is way more meta and abstract than SoT and SoM but you get the point.

I think game developers do this to keep the players immersed in the game as much as possible. Loading screens and menus disrupts the flow of the game. And in more story driven games the developers wants the player to feel part of the story. In books and movies the protagonist doesn't usually die and come back multiple times.

With no real basis in research I think that’s why checkpoints and autosaves is more common than the extra lives approach of classics like Mario and Pac-man.

But sometimes linking mechanics and narrative this closely can have unintended consequences. They can grind together and work against each other. That’s going to take you out of the game instead of immerse you.

Here is an example and the reason I’m writing this.

I’m in a cave in Mordor running towards the exit being chased by ghouls. I have to get out before the cave collapses and kills me. I’ve had to repeat this process a couple of times because I failed. Now Talion burst from the cave breathing hard and looks back, relieved.

I am too.

But wait a minute.

Why is he relieved? Well it’s probably scary and very uncomfortable to be crushed by rocks. But Talion is a ghost so there is no reason for him to care. Dying is annoying and takes time out of a busy ork killing schedule but not much else.

Escaping the cave would be easier by dying and being spirited away. But the game doesn’t allow that suddenly.

So in SoM there is a couple of story mission where the mechanics change.

I have been condition by the game to lose and die in a certain way. And actually linked it to the narrative. So the mechanics and narrative supports each other.

But sometimes they change the rules and defy their own logic.

When you notice, it can bring you out of the game. That is not what was intended.

ludography:

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ; Monolith. 2014

BioShock Infinite ; Irrational Games 2013

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ; Ubisoft Montreal 2003

F#!% you BioWare!

DA:I, controls and immersion

The newest BioWare game RPG came out. some time ago now. I sat ready at 23:59. The clock struck midnight and Origin pointed out that Dragon Age: Inquisition was playable. I jumped right in. Excited.

40 minutes later I’m pissed. And I’m not alone.

The controls on PC are terrible. An insult to dedicated PC players. The ones the original DA and Mass Effect was made for. BioWares peeps.

The game was undoubtedly designed for and on console. But come on, you said you were going back to what made DA:O great. We thought that also meant controls optimized for PC. Or at least not the worst control scheme in the series. Oh well.

Why is it such a prob. And why are people so mad?

Controls are important for our enjoyment of a game.

If you go to the official DA:I forum a lot of people are disappointed and angry. Some even got refunds.

http://forum.bioware.com/topic/522595-just-requested-my-refund-did-you/

The user Xralius says:

“I highly doubt as PC users Bioware will ever respect us, but at least that might make them notice us.”

And

“Bioware LIED to its fans when it said it was making this game for the PC first and foremost. That is OBVIOUSLY not the case.”

Yankblan says:

“I sympathize with the PC controls problems, but the game mechanics and devs choices won't be fixed”

So the controls for PC is definitely a problem.

If you look at the forum 7 of threads on the front page is about PC problems¹. Mostly controls. About ¼ of all the threads. One thread is titled: “Entire game designed for consoles, an insult to PC gamers everywhere.” Is maybe a bit too much. Saying “Bioware has no integrity.”

But the top thread, the one with most views and replies is “The controls for this game on the PC need attention”.

Now when I explain what the biggest PC control problem is it might seem like a small thing. But it is not.

You can’t move by holding the left and right mouse buttons or click on things to move to them. Like you do in other RPGs and the previous DA games. And you cannot link controls to mouse buttons, the mouse controls cannot be changed.

But can’t you just learn the new control or use a controller? Well yes and no.

Learning the controls, the new controls, takes time and focus away from the rest of the game. Especially if you thought you knew the controls and didn’t think you needed to spend time on them, again.

Like buying a new bike, being ready and excited to give it a spin. And then finding you forgot how to ride.

You only have a certain amount of brain capacity to engage with a game, or anything else for that matter. Gordon Calleja’s model of Immersion is built on that fact.

It has six different frames: Kinesthetic, Spatial, Shared, Narrative, Affective and Ludic. What they all entail is not important right here. The point is that to be immersed you have to engage with all 6, fully. So if you have to think too much about one, say the kinesthetic, you don’t have brain capacity to engage with something else.

The important one here is the kinesthetic involvement, which is learning and using controls.

Usually good controls should disappear in the mind of the player. You don’t think about games as pressing triangle, circle and square in a specific order. There is exceptions to this, games where the controller and therefore controls are in focus. Games like Guitar Hero or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Here a big part of the game is kinesthetic involvement so it makes sense to spend a lot of brain capacity on the controls. It doesn’t take away from the rest of the game because that IS the game.

There seems to be two schools of thought regarding the controller. One that the controller should disappear in the mind of the player. The second that the controller should be in the forefront of the game experience. Both indicates how important good controls are.

“The controller is what connects us to the game and enables us to play, but it is the part of play that we are least likely to reflect on” (Kirkpatrick, page 111)

That is as long as it works. So when it doesn’t work it messes with our ability to play.

“While a player’s attention might initially be focused on the controls whilst learning to play a particular videogame, after a certain competency is reached this attention shifts away” (Bayliss, page 100)

Until that happens you can’t fully engage with the other parts of the game.

So in DA:I I’m using a lot of energy on walking and running. I’m not appreciating the beautiful vistas of Feralden and Orlais. The narrative is for the most the most part experienced while standing still. One of the big draws for DA:I is the tactical combat and the game definitely not easy if you want to do well. But when you have to think about moving, it is hard to be tactical. You also end up making silly mistakes. Being bad at the game feels like you are being punished more than you made a mistake. And that’s frustrating.

For other PC players it is bad enough. But for me and others that in no way can use a controller it is disastrous. Learning the controls and achieving embodiment is more than a challenge, it is an insurmountable barrier. It becomes almost impossible to reach the competency needed for the controls to disappear and free up brain power to engage with the rest of the game.

If you can’t engage with the game it’s hard to enjoy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

So for now, fuck Dragon Age.

Notes:

Of course BioWare is saying they get it and is going to fix some of the concerns in a upcoming patch

1: As of 20^th of november

Ludography:

BioWare. Dragon Age Inquisition. 2014

505 Games. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. 2013

Harmonix. Guitar Hero. 2005

Bibliography:

Calleja, Gordon. In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation, The MIT Press 2011

Bayliss, Peter - Toward a Sense of Embodied Gameplay

http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/07312.19059.pdf

Kirkpatrick, G Games & Culture. 2009;4(2):127-143. Controller, Hand, Screen - Aesthetic Form in the Computer Game

Hey don’t I know that guy

The secret stars of videogames

Sid Meyers, Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Tim Schafer. We know these names because we care about videogames. And to a degree we have been damaged by our field of study. 

We have been forced to become videogames nerds if we weren’t before. This is another way that, for better or worse, the videogame industry has been co-opted by Hollywood and has become more like the movie industry (in a commercial sense).

They sell us the games using stars. using recognition.

The names I mentioned above will probably not be recognizable by all that play videogames. But most know EA, Ubisoft, Valve, Blizzard and Rockstar. They on the box. It is Sid Meyer’s Civilization.

Not just civilization. This is mostly for the initiated I guess, like film buffs talking about Auteurs[1] like Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Welles. But it can help in selling game as a product. Just look at Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Kickstarter story[2]. They used their fame to make the games they want, and to not be beholden to a big company or studio.

Like the famous directors that get finance from Hollywood to make what they want. Hollywood trust us to pay to see the next Christopher Nolan film no matter what crazy, amazing, convoluted and pretty film he makes. Because he made one of the most successful and highest grossing movies of all time[3].

Stars

Back to games. Now some games try to use the same tactic as Hollywood to reel us in, Stars.

Netflix also did this with House of Cards[4]. Get a famous actor and director and people will come. Make a good show and people will stay.

Now Activision just need to make you buy their product not hang around for multiple seasons. So they give you a dead-eyed Kevin Spacey playing almost the same guy as in House of Cards. This seems like a blatant attempt to get more people to buy the game.

Call of Duty have done this before, in Black Ops they had Ed Harris, Gary Oldman and Ice Cube playing pivotal characters.

It goes back to the beginning also. Using real actors in cut-scenes like the command and conquer series or Jedi knight.

In Toonstruck from 96’ we saw Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame in a cartoon world with a cartoon side-kick voiced by Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson)

And in Red Alert 3 they tried to entice us with pop culture icons George Takei and J.K. Simmons.

But now the technology has become so advances that we can make carbon copies of real actors and put them into games.

Like they did with Kevin Spacey.

Or in games that try to be cinematic or story telling games, like Beyond two Souls starring digitally copies of Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. All done with performance captures as is the norm in triple A games.

There is nothing wrong with that, but having a famous actor doesn’t make a game better and won’t make me more likely to buy it. Though it might work for some, otherwise why go through the trouble?

There are great actors in games already giving voices and personalities to all our favorite game characters. The last of us and all the Telltale games will be remembered more for its great moments than any Call of Duty story. But you probably can’t name any of any actors of those games.

Unknown stars

Here are some more names

Talion, Joel, Booker DeWitt, Joker and Jack Mitchell. You know these people I think, some of them at least. They all have something in common. They are all videogame characters. But they share something else, Troy Baker.

This guy:

The voice and body behind them all.

I’m playing the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Jack Mitchell, the playable character, takes of his breather mask and looks at me. I’m like, hey don’t I know you? And sure enough it is a perfect digital copy of the actor Troy Baker.

I do know that guy. First from cartoons. But after BioShock Infinite and Booker DeWitt I noticed he popped up in all the videogames I looked forward too. Turning up in some of the best games of the last 2 years (or ever: Last of Us, BioShock Infinite). Joel in Last of Us and Booker, Ok now he is going to do The Joker instead of Mark Hamill. Hmmm, all right. So finishing Shadow of Mordor I try Advanced Warfare and there he is again.

He is also one of the main characters in Tales from the Borderlands.

The newest Telltale game.

Now I’m sounding like a total fanboy and a big dork. Well that might very well be true but not the point. My point is that acting and thereby actors has become a big part of games and we beginning to get videogame specific celebrities. And the videogame industry is becoming more like Hollywood.

Many of these actors comes from voice acting not from “real” acting. Meaning cartoons not stage or film. And as with cartoon celebrities you would never recognize these people on the street, unless of course you happen to be a total fanboy or a big dork. Or maybe just academically damaged.

The point is: let’s not be enticed by big Hollywood names in games. Let’s acknowledge the unknown stars that already exist.

The ones that gave us the voices for Joel (Troy Baker), Nathan Drake (Nolan North), Desmond Miles (Nolan North), Commander Shepard (Jennifer Hale) and the countless other characters that have become so important in mainstream games.

Filmography:

Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight, 2008.

Netflix, House of Cards, 2013

Lawrence Shapiro, I know that voice, 2013

Ludography:

Activision, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, 2014

Activision, Call of Duty Black Ops, 2010

Lucas Arts, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, 1997

Virgin Interactive, Toonstruck, 1996

Electronic Arts, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, 2008

Sony Computer Entertainment, Beyond: Two Souls, 2013

Sony Computer Entertainment, The Last of Us, 2013

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Shadow of Mordor, 2014

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Arkham Origins, 2013

2K Games, Bioshock Infinite, 2013

Telltale Games, Tales from the Borderlands, 2014

Sony Computer Entertainment, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, 2007

Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed, 2007

Microsoft Game Studios, Mass Effect, 2007

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[1] Is a theory in Film studies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory

http://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A22928772

[2] http://kotaku.com/tim-schafers-great-video-game-experiment-1228121826

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-adventure

[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/?ref_=tt_rec_tti

[4] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

DayZ

I am dead.

I am lying in an apartment block somewhere in Russia.

I was heading for the roof to have a look around. half way up the ladder I fell.

A glitch. A wrong push of the button. And two broken legs.

I crawled down for flights of stairs. I got all the  way to the door.

Two men approached, they were not there to help.they had guns.and they had bullets.

I am dead..                         

In my most successful and longest-running game of DayZ this is how it all came to close.

The game is still in its early beta so a great deal of things is going to change, hopefully.

The game does not feel complete yet. The game has not been very consistent the times I have played it. And it still suffers from untimely server crashes.

It is constantly getting improved and the things I find problematic might change in the final game.

It has all the seeds to be a great game.

The times I played it though I felt a bit like the undead I was trying to avoid. I couldn‘t quite figure out what or why I didn‘t enjoy the game I have been told was so great.

In this analysis I will try to explain why.

Analysis

 

I am going to use Calleja’ model of involvement in the analysis.

in it there is six types of involvement.

here follows a quick summary of the six types.

1:

Kinesthetic involvement

„freedom of action allowed and the difficulty of the learning curve of the controls involved as a major influence on the players involvement in the game environment“

2:

Spatial involvement

 „The spatial involvement concerns players engagement with the spatial qualities of the virtual environment in terms of spatial control navigation and exploration.“

It is also the process of internalizing the game space and giving players a sense of inhabiting the game world, basically a sense of place.

3:

Shared/social involvement

„The engagement derived from players awareness and interaction with other agents ... these agents can be human or computer controlled“

4:

Narrative involvement

„The engagement with story elements that have been written into again as well as those that emerge from player interaction with the game.“

5:

Affective involvement

„Encompasses various forms of emotional engagement that. Emotional engagement can range from the calming sensation of coming across an aesthetically pleasing space ... to the adrenaline rush of an competitive first-person shooter.“

6:

Ludic involvement

„players engagement with the choices made in the game and the repercussions of those choices.

the choices can be directed at the goal given by the game but also the goal decided by the player or a community of players.

it also encompasses choices made on the spur of the moment without relation to any overarching goal.“

Are you in the zombie apocalypse?

I‘m not sure I am. I‘m going to figure out why.

This is a prioritized list of the involvement types in DayZ.

It is subjective and based on my personal experience of the game.

My experience is limited to four sessions consisting of 3 to 4 hours of gameplay.

And as the game is still in beta my listing could change dramatically in the final game.

I will go through them one by one and explain why I have prioritized them as I have. Then I will see why and if the game failed to involve me.

Spatial involvement.

affective involvement

shared/social involvement

ludic involvement

narrative involvement

kinesthetic involvement

the first is

Spatial involvement:

The navigation and exploration is interesting in the game.

There is no mini map. If you find a map you can look at it, it does not tell you where you are so navigation is handled in a way like real life.

Navigation is hard you can easily be turned around so you have to look at the landmarks and signs. All the signs in Russian which complicates things even more.

A lot of the game have you exploring the countryside. the exploration is necessary for survival.

Your avatar needs to drink and eat. and scavenge useful materials and of course weapons. to defend himself from the undead and the other players.

The game engine makes the world look realistic or enough like the real world and that makes the navigation and exploration engaging. You can spot at building or maybe a crane in the distance and make your way to it. The buildings and the small towns are laid out in a familiar and recognizable pattern. We know how to navigate these things in real life and it makes the game space feel real.

It helps you internalize the game space and involve you in the game.

Some things does break your suspension of disbelief and makes the game feel very much like a game and one in beta at that.

You can walk into the house go through rooms, rummage through the kitchen, bookshelves, and take books and clothes and hopefully food.

Walk down the street into the next house and the interior is an exact copy of the other house.

When you have done this three of four times the houses doesn‘t seem like real places more like similar mystery boxes that can be filled with useful stuff on nothing at all.

A lot of doors in this part of Russia is locked for no apparent reason. Sometimes none of the entrances in the house work. Or maybe only one way in is viable.

In one of my game sessions I followed a road through the woods and apparently literally walked off the map. After running through empty and barren hills for 10 minutes. I walked back, all the way back to the forest and the game space.

You don‘t feel constrained, or at least I did, in your exploration of the game space. I did not realize I had walked off the map which can be seen as a boon and not a disadvantage to the spatial involvement.

I would have noticed if I had walked into and invisible barrier. but would have found it just as confusing. The game space seems real so it is only in the instances where it is not, that I realize how spatial involved I am.

Affective involvement:

It is by the same token the affective involvement is high up on my list.

The game‘s sense of place spills over into affect involvement. the sun on the hills, the insects and birds along with the sleepy seaside towns, the air field, factories and military bases.

It all adds emotional engagement. We know most of these things from real life and to see them abandoned with undead littered around brings the game alive.

There is also moments of adrenaline, when meeting a zombie without carrying a weapon. Or the moment when you meet another players avatar and you don‘t know whether they will be friend, or Foe.

that neatly brings us to

Shared/social involvement:

The interaction with other agents in the game is a huge of what the game is about.

In the zombie fiction the social aspect and group dynamics are important. people together fighting against the end of the world and each other.

In the game of DayZ it becomes part of the game.

The other players will want your stuff, or sometimes they will want to help you to increase their own and your chances of survival. I never met anyone who tried to help me.

Every meeting with another player was interesting, and a bit scary. I only met a group of people once, and they shot me immediately.

But all the other encounters and it would be running away with killing the other player which is not the most interesting outcomes.

The social aspect is a big part of the game as it is and will be an very important part of the final game.

It will be very engaging to survive in the game world with your friends. If you manage to find them.

The only other agents in the world are the undead. And every interaction with them are the same. You either fight them and die or survive or you can just run away.

But always know that the undead can pop up at any time. As long as you don‘t have a weapon that is scary and engaging but as soon as you get a moderately good weapon the thought of meeting a undead is nonproblematic, even trivial.

next is the

Ludic involvement:

Planning is also a big part of the game. The immediate problem that faces the player is getting food, water and a weapon.

Food can be found but it has not really to do with the choices you make. It comes down to blind luck.

The same can be said about water and weapons.

You can also survive for a long time without food and water.

The game does not give you any goals, really. And I never felt I had to make any really meaningful choices.

I just mostly wandered around. And that is not that interesting.

Next I put the:

Narrative involvement

There is no scripted narrative in the game.

It is possible to experience interesting moments in the game. And that can constitute a story, as is clear in my intro.

The spatial and affective involvement could also be experienced as a emergent narrative.

But most of the time when I have played the game, not enough interesting things have happened.

Nothing that could constitute a narrative, or an engaging one.

Lastly we have the:

Kinesthetic involvement

The kinesthetic involvement is not something I would highlight as positive. The game lets you do a wide range of things. But knowing exactly what button to press can be hard and frustrating to figure out. And mastering these controls is not something that would give not a huge amount of involvement or pleasure.

The controls are still clunky and being good at controlling your avatar will not give you a huge advantage against zombies or the other players.

Looking at the game in this way has helped me understand why I did not find the game very engaging.

I feel the gameplay is clunky and not really that engaging. Wandering around the Russian countryside while being hungry and thirsty, is about as much fun as it sounds.

The undead and the other inhabitants of the world should serve to make the experience more interesting. But the zombies is not something you need to plan for and are not that big of a threat.

And other players few and far between and I have always been able to run from them. Except when I broke both legs.

The game mechanics are still a bit difficult to figure out, it is not always clear what you can do and how. That will hopefully be fixed when the game actually comes out.

An End

What I found interesting and engaging was the game world itself. The world is realized very well it feels and looks real, trying to figure out where you are and where you can go and more important where you should go is the most engaging part of the game.

Looking at real map of the place I was walking around with my virtual counterpart was the part that gave me most pleasure.

Just trying to figure out where I was planning where to go.

And the desperate hope of reaching a far-flung part of the world to get that one piece of supply was what kept me going through the desolate and quite frankly boring Russian countryside.