Glitch has me hooked!

Glitch is an MMORPG with all the fun things like cooking and crafting and without combat. It's an environment to figure out and play around in, milk butterflies and petting trees along the way, all from within your browser. The art style is cute and funny, paper trees talk in haikus, and every once in a while giant crows called rooks attack, and little glitches fight back with the power of their imaginations and donations to the giants (gods). You can play music for other players, as well as hug and splank them (it's what it sounds like).

To learn skills, your familiar and pet rock reads them for you. Even when you're logged out, the timer to learn skills keeps ticking. Instead of being tied to level, your skills are limited by how long you've been playing and adding skills. Level affects other things, like... hit points? You get money and favor with the giants for leveling, so it's a good thing. It sounds really weird, but trust me, it's fun! It is, however, highly addicting for the procrastination-prone like me. I have one more invite, so let me know if you want to join!

Utah Indie Game Night September 2011, part 3: Completed Games

For the last part of these series of posts covering indie game night, here's a quick rundown of the finished games I saw and played a little at home:

-Cardwood is a short experimental game Vazor made in two days. I played through it, and I'm not sure if I understand everything that's going on, but I like it. I like clicking on the buttons while I'm reading and trying to figure it out.

-Tile Factory, over on Kongregate, is a machine-building game with a factory theme. You have machines that duplicate tiles, conveyor belts, barriers, spray-painters, etc. It has a good tutorial and also tons of things that people who are really into building games like sandbox mode. Jon's working on a sequel which will have user-generated levels (and he's looking for an artist). Here's a screenshot:

-Frayed Nights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon is a first-person party-based RPG in 3D. From the little I've played, I'm impressed with the depth of the combat (your rogue can disappear for a while and surprise the enemy) and the humor (to restore MP you can take an insta-nap potion). The game has an interesting mechanic where progressing through a dungeon gets you star points that can be used to regain health etc., but these points go away if you exit the game and load it later--incentive for a longer play session. I also like how your party members are actual characters who talk to each other, and their character designs reflect their personality. Also, battle seems to be dice-based, kind of like D&D? It's the accumulation of years of work by Rampant Coyote, and it's for sale over at his site, along with a free demo. Go play the demo and see if you like it! Here's a screenshot; the pus golems are the first monsters you meet in the temple to the god of acne and boils:

-Link REALMS is an isometric MMORPG in open beta, also a game that has been a long time coming. I believe I saw it last October and I can tell you that the enemy AI system is really cool and ridiculously complex. It has an Oblivion-like leveling system, so you choose your specialties based on what you do, not some arbitrary race or class. I like that kind of system but it does have the drawback of being somewhat grindy (okay, this spell has to fail how many times before I get to level 5?). I haven't been able to fully explore the world yet, but it looks like there are cooking and animal husbandry systems along with magic and mauling and clairvoyance (!). Take a look at their wiki to see if they implement your favorite skills. The click and drag system of inventory leaves me feeling a bit disorganized, but it works. They're still working out a few bugs, but it's highly playable as long as you can figure out the double-clicking and targeting stuff.

all I want to know is if I will be punished for killing that puppy

There you go! Two browser-based games for playing on your work break and two bigger games for multiple-hours-investment-fun, made right here in Utah.

Utah Indie Game Night September 2011, part 2: Games in progress

Here's some information about the games in progress at the Utah Indie game night. Obviously, I haven't been able to play through each game, and most of my blurbs focus on the superficial. That's kind of how demos go. I'll have another post for the completed games (the ones I can play from the leisure of my home).

-Faerie Alchemy (play video; company) is falling-block puzzle game. Three or more adjacent suns turn into a leaf, leaves turn into blue pyramids, with new elements gradually adding themselves (the chain effect reminded me a little of Primrose). Ben had added some shiny effects that aren't in the video, and it looks very pretty. The game is pretty playable in both casual "this feels right" and intense "I'm thinking about every block" ways of playing. Ben's hoping to release it on iPad and then everything else.

-Multifarious is a game for mobile devices that is a tricky multitasking game. After balancing a ball on a seasaw through the magic of accelerometry, the game adds more and more tasks (touching the screen to jump at the right time, etc.) until you mess one up. Kind of like a cooking game, in that you have to keep track of multiple things at once, only a lot harder. I'm pretty sure this is their blog.

-Cthulhu Island, a Crysis mod, is a horror game with really good lighting (you use a flashlight to find your way, there are fires and things, it just looks good). I admit I am a complete sissy when it comes to horror games, and just watching someone play this game is enough to scare me. Josh and Michael have been working on it for years, and if you ever wanted an opportunity to slay Cthuhlu cultists, this might be your best chance.  Screenshot:

-March to the Moon is a top-down shoot-em-up with abilities and experience, set in a bar where you kill lots of rats to start out with. Curtis has been working on the graphics and it looks good (you can wear a skirt and hats!), and he's been working on balancing the abilities so it should be possible to get past the fourth boss. He's planning to sell it on XBLA. Here's a screenshot from a previous build:

-Bullet Train Hill is a delightful little puzzle-platformer where you're jumping around on top of a bullet train, so the wind affects your jumps. I liked the levels I played, and I'd like to play more. Chris hopes to make use of the concepts in another game.

There were a few games I didn't get much information about. Smote is an old school action-RPG, from the looks of it, and has online multiplayer. I'm very curious about how that is or will be going. There was also a UVU flight simulator, which has local Utah geography, which I think has the potential to be uniquely Utah.

Utah Indie Game Night September 2011, part 1

About every other month, the Utah Indie Game group meets in person. My husband wants to work on a game to bring at some point, but for now we just looked at the games people are working on.

Tracy Hickman of Dragonlance fame came and did a presentation on plot structure (some of it seemed straight from this Dramatica theory). We came a little late; Greg describes his lecture in a little more detail. It was interesting, but his complaints about games not doing anything new with narrative in the past 20 years did not seem accurate. Specifically, he said that games lack "impact characters" that players have an emotional connection (and story) with. I think ICO has a pretty clear impact character that you have to drag along and that many players felt emotional attachment to. From the little I've played of Dragon Age: Origins, it seemed like my party members were constantly feeding me their opinions of the choices I made. I agree that games could use some work on narrative, but I disagree with Hickman's complaint.

Afterwards we talked and played games people are working on. There were lots of games! The room looked a lot like this:

Link REALMS 

Playing Vazor's experimental text-based game, Cardwood

In avoiding a megapost, I'll post about individual games in the next post.

Alternatives to grinding

Repetitive elements in games (e.g., grinding) make players feel like they've "earned" their triumphs. Making a game take a long time to beat seems like a cheap way to make players attached to their progress in a game. A better way to make players attached to their progress might be to a) make gameplay really difficult, b) create engaging characters, or c) have players come up with their own story.

Making gameplay difficult doesn't have to make a game frustrating; I think Portal's puzzles are sufficiently difficult to make players feel smart and that they're really learning something (they're learning to think of physics in a different way). I'm sure there's a way to effectively teach more complex tasks through games, and I think learning is a ritual worthy of repetition and the challenge is enough to make it interesting. Adam and I have long discussed a kanji-learning game where instead of pushing A, you're reviewing kanji through flashcards. You can still get the boring/comforting thing, but maybe with a bit more brain involvement (also, if you want to help make this game, I only know so much about computer art).

Creating characters that you care about can only go so far. It's usually only part of the picture that makes a game addictive, and loving or hating characters seems to effect some players more than others. And if there's a character everyone likes, it only makes ending the game more painful (but impassioned fans make for good discussions?).

The last option, having players come up with their own story, is the emergent gameplay that characterizes Rohrer's art games (you're imagining the story based on what you're doing; no one is telling you in words what just happened). It feels different from playing a game where the story is in your face. It feels like you're doing the story instead of it happening to you. I agree that emergent narrative is one way to use video games to tell a story that no other medium can replicate. The types of games with emergent narratives are fun to explore and figure out their rules. But sometimes all I want is an interactive story that someone else made up. I would, however, like to see a Dwarf Fortress that is a little more user-friendly.

Interactive Ritual

I've been thinking about video games and their growth from other interactive mediums. Perhaps spurred by Alternative Ending's apology for RPGs and desire for more emergent narrative, although I'm not yet sure how much this discussion will have to do with her discussion.

Interaction has been and still is a part of human rituals. So far I have categorized these interactive rituals into three categories, defining a ritual as an action that is performed multiple times in the same way, usually with pre-scripted parts, and interactive where the participant does something. I feel like there should be another classification for where the participant can do multiple things which in turn affect the outcome of the ritual, but I don't know what that word is yet:

Social rituals (require more than one person):

-Oaths. The marriage oath, swearing into court, and the presidential inauguration all require the participant to accept or reject the situation, with different consequences either way. 

I really just wanted an excuse to put in a picture of a Russian orthodox church.

-Call-and-Response.  Common in camp songs and some Christian-type sermons. The leader says one part, and the audience answers theirs or repeat what has just been said. 

-Call-and-Action. Traditional storytelling that has the audience do actions in certain parts would fall here, as well as children's finger plays. Singing with actions, like jump-rope rhymes and clapping songs might also go here. If you say/do the wrong thing everyone else will probably keep going or stop. 

-Daily living. Includes greetings, exchange of goods, pouring a drink for someone else, etc.

-Other. Everything I haven't though of yet.

Individual rituals:

-Counting off. Including counting your money, plucking daisy petals, etc. to come to a conclusion.

-Bodily rituals. Going to the toilet, eating, etc.

-Daily living. Washing hands, Sometimes combined with social rituals for extra effect. Includes quirky things like you always put your keys in your right-hand pocket, read before bed, etc.

-This is getting ridiculous and I need to stop thinking about it.

We can think of video games as rituals. In Portal for instance (forgive my constant references to this game, but I'm writing my thesis on it so it's on my mind and readily available, mentally), the structure is that of call-and-action. GLaDOS says the same things every time you play the game. If you do something other than the scripted event of an action that leads to beating the game, you just can't continue. There is no way to complete the game and not fight with GLaDOS (well, short of modding the game I suppose). But an essential difference is that the first time you play a game, you don't know what's going to happen, so it doesn't feel like a ritual. It's only on replaying a game that you feel that it is a ritual and become comfortable with it. Most games with a linear flow follow this feel.

Games with multiple endings are still a sort of ritual, or at least a set of different rituals which you have to figure out. Creating a level in Little Big Planet seems like it's not a ritual, unless you're creating the same level over and over again. Open-world games have breaks from the structure of ritual, but still within the rules and confines of the game. I also wonder how ritual works in games with procedurally-generated content or in sandbox games. Certainly exploring the dungeon levels in Persona 3 time after time seems like a ritual, even if the floor pattern is a little different each time. When playing Minecraft with zombies the first day seems to play out the same: make shelter for the night by digging materials. And I don't think ritual is a bad thing; I think it's important to acknowledge that part of the experience of playing a video game is rooted in very old experiences. Gameplay elements which become ritualistic in one playthrough of a game (like grinding in RPGs or digging in Minecraft) hold a special quality which both bore and comfort us. I hope to follow this post up with some more awesome, but this might be as far as the idea goes.

Ah, grinding. Oh, I forgot to mention FF6. Here is this screenshot I stole off the internet anyway.

Edit: Because I'm a budding archivist, I'd like to link over to Digital Ephemera's further discussion of this post and interactive ritual in games. 

Handmade Minecraft Cookbook

I like fan art, especially unusual fan art. I took a bookbinding class last fall, and I made a Minecraft cookbook for my little brother to go along with a copy of Minecraft for last year's Christmas (it turns out my older brother was more interested, oh well). I used a coptic binding, which is the older type of binding we learned. I dyed the paper for the cover with a lemon teabag (rooibos is also great for dying, and it gives a redder color).

 For the inside paper I used a map harvested from BYU's map discards.

 I should have spent a little more time reviewing my calligraphy skills for the title page. Oh well.

 I ended up rushing to put in the recipies, so I did them in plain ballpoint pen with tic-tac-to type grids.

Not bad, for an amateur like myself. I put pictures of some other book projects I did on my personal blog. Now, if only I had a huge blade so I could cut binder's boards at home...