What Games Are

Bleszinski's Paradox [Xbox One]

The honorable Cliff Bleszinski weighed in on the furore surrounding Microsoft's decision to reverse course on how Xbox One would handle digital-rights-management, and lamented about what's been lost in so doing. He writes passionately about the commoditization of the used games trade, and how many developers link their own lack of success (financial especially) with the predatory practises of retailers. If only, he seems to suggest, the gamer universe had shown a little more foresight and realized that in the long run a fully locked-up console could have been a good thing. And that's ruined now.

The problem with this line of reasoning is very simple to tease out: The row over DRM is not about the freedom to digitally trade. It's about value for money. Outside of certain academic groups who consider the implications of such things, nobody on Earth cares about being able to trade their digital wares. Your iPad is likely stuffed to the gills with apps and games that you will never be able to sell, and yet you don't really care. Your Steam account probably has a library of hundreds of titles (many unplayed) that are likewise tied to you forever. But you don't really mind because you got them cheaply.

The consistent factor in determining whether a digital market succeeds is if it offers radically cheaper prices. Then it seems worth the trade-off. If you can get ebooks cheaply, buy music by the track, get games at huge discounts or apps for free, it's worth buying in. That's why the mobile game sector gives games away for free and does phenomenally well. And the prospects for where that approach to the business can go is why the maker of Puzzle and Dragons is valued as highly as Nintendo (although that valuation is likely exuberant).

The problem for the console industry is that it's caught in a paradox. Designers like Bleszinski want their world to go digital for a multitude of empowering reasons, but the business people who do the math want digital to happen while retaining retail (or near-to) prices. Selling a disc-based brand new Call of Duty for $59 and a digital version for $49 maybe makes sense in their world. Selling it for $9, on the other hand, breaks their business.

This is why the recent meme about how Xbox One's scheme was all about reducing console game prices rings hollow. Microsoft, the company that sells full priced games on Live years after they're only $5 new at retail, is not in a position to do that. EA cannot realistically refactor its entire business model around selling $9.99 games without losing a lot first. Nobody wants to admit it, but for the console sector to get to a digital place it has to climb down a very steep cliff first (no pun intended), and nobody - not even Sony - is able to.

Meanwhile the customers, used to these crazy prices and maximising their dollar by trading games (in effect paying what they can afford via swapping and topping up), are not keen to pay a whole lot more than they already do. They can't afford it. Now you see why I think microconsoles are a much bigger deal than they appear to be: they're climbing up rather than trying to avoid rapelling down. Similarly you see I think a whole gang of indies coming out of the app space with the idea of skilling upwards is much more interesting in the long run. 

For now, absent all other choices, customers have chosen not to change. They won't be shifted until someone makes a radical case to them based on price. Call of Duty for $9? Sold.

When Marketing Stories Collide [Xbox One]

(image by Tuomas Korpi)

In what will probably go down as one of the most-tweeted blog posts of 2013, Don Mattrick (Microsoft's executive in charge of the Xbox) spelled out a big reversal (Twitter calls it #Xbox180) with regard to its used game and digital rights management policies. Where before the plan had been to de-emphasise disks and turn sharing into kind of digital lending affair, now it's back to the more old school model.

This is of course in response to the company's disastrous E3 performance and the utter gazumping that Xbox One suffered at the hands of Sony. Yet the question is now is whether Microsoft has gone far enough. The XBX1 may be less unpopular, but that's not the same thing as popular. The Kinect requirement, for example, is not popular. Nor the fears over how much RAM the system's three operating systems will require. The installing-games requirement is not popular. The attitude to self-publishing and the de-emphasising of games over other media content are not popular. And the price is not popular.

Many would say that the difference is one of listening versus dictating, between fact and rationale. Microsoft regularly manages to rationalise itself into failure by becoming bewitched by grand narratives. To Mattrick's credit, his employer's usual course in these situations is to barrel on regardless, but reality has prevailed on this occasion. The marketing story wanted to go one way, the platform story another, and when that happens the marketing story always (eventually) wins. 

Yet the damage is already done. After Sega misread the 3D generation and then scrambled to add power to Saturn, it looked like a follower rather than a leader. Many of its games were comparatively underwhelming as they had been built for different parameters, and the company never recovered. After Sony had its own PR nightmare 10 years later with the PlayStation 3 it took long years and deep pockets before the audience finally stopped calling it "SonyLOL" and bought in.

Once you upset the tribe, forgiveness is very hard to come by.

Have We Hit "Peak Mobile"? [TechCrunch]

My latest post on TechCrunch asks whether mobile gaming has reached a point where it is no longer a simple business. With the layoffs at Zynga and Tapjoy, are looking at some canaries in the coalmine? Are we at the point where even the plugin business (monetisation tools, sharing etc) have too many competitors and are about to have a cleanout? Are we entering a phase where relationships and partnerships with platform holders will matter most? Most importantly, will the audience for mobile games follow a line where it becomes more sophisticated and interested in deeper content, or will it remain strictly lightweight and novelty-driven?

You can read the full post here.

Who On Earth Is The Xbox One For?

I imagine I'll have some more structured thoughts to share soon, but my initial worry about the newly-announced Xbox One is that I have no idea who it's for. Much as Microsoft's ill-fated attempt to start new conversations in user interface led to Metro, Xbox One seems intertwined with a media-center ambition. If only, it seems to ask, we can convince people we have enough features, then maybe we can get them over the hurdle and own the living room.

It probably looks very compelling on a slide or internal strategy memo, but I personally think "owning the living room" has long been proven to be strictly the domain of executive fantasies, akin to the love affair with virtual worlds or gamification. It's based on a faulty premise that people want a living room computer or hub, an idea to which they consistently react with apathy. In the cold light of day such hubs always fail the marketing story test, and on a simpler level, they're just a pain. 

Nobody, it turns out, cares. 

Mechanics Are Bigger Than Games

When we talk about "mechanics", as we often do when talking about games, we often do so at cross purposes. I rarely use the term as a result, preferring something more specific like action or rule, but the fact its that most people don't. At best they often say "action mechanic" or "rule mechanic", and at worst they confuse mechanics with dynamics.

C'est la vie.

One of the useful things I find when thinking of mechanics in small, exacting terms is considering its application beyond games. This question came up on Twitter the other day when Jurie Horneman offhandedly asked whether interactive fiction has mechanics. To which I answer yes.

In game design terms, an action is the application of verbs intended to cause one or more unscripted state changes in the game, like moving an avatar or placing a word. I see no reason why the same can't be said of posting a tweet, or making a choice in an adventure. The other two kinds of verb usage are the same. A nudge, where the player uses verbs to cause a scripted state change, is like flipping the page in Flipboard. A query, where the player uses verbs to find more information about something without causing a state change, is the same as a right click.

Limiting ourselves to only thinking of mechanics in terms of "game" may be a misstep. Often the most delightful actions, nudges and queries are to be found outside of games (Flipboard again) but may have equally fun uses inside them. Why worry about whether they are game mechanics? Worry instead about whether they are worth doing.

Formalists and Zinesters: Why Formalism Is Not The Enemy

Prior to emigrating, I found myself vigorously defending Raph Koster on Twitter. It started as a result of this article, in particular this quote from Anna Anthropy:

"Videogames have been one of the most exclusive communities i've ever encountered," she said to me via email, "some dudes, like Raph Koster, insist that when he says dys4ia 'isn't a game,' that's not a value judgement. That's bullshit. the attempt to label games like dys4ia as 'non-games,' as 'interactive experiences,' is just an attempt by the status quo to keep the discussion of games centered around the kind of games it's comfortable with—cus if there's one thing existing videogame culture is good at, it's making a certain kind of dude very, very comfortable."

I've noticed a recent uptick in this "certain kind of dude" argument. On the one hand it's about the acceptance and treatment of women, minorities and other groups within the game industry - and rightly so. On the other it's about the perception of patriarchy. It's saying that a "certain kind of dude" oppresses creative people with his view of an industry organised around keeping him happy, and he uses the definition of "game" as an exercise of power. 

This assertion is far more contentious because it conflates three different discussions. The first is political and asserts that passivity or apathy are actually forms of complicity. The second is to do with market preference, asking why is it that the white-dude market buys certain kinds of game endlessly while ignoring greater diversity. This point lays the blame at the feet of the industry, whereas the industry maintains that market dynamics are evolutionary and so the industry chases the market rather than dictating to it. 

The third discussion is about critique. To many formalists (myself included) many new kinds of interactive art are either not games, or not very good when thought of as games. Many are gamelikes, gamified systems, limited, persuasive, personal interactive stories. Some are virtual worlds. Some are more conceptually interesting than playable. Many are reliant on knowing the author's intent.

In creating a "game" not meant to be played or won, its creator is saying something. To then call that work something other than "game" can seem like an attack directed at its creator. Particularly for the group that could loosely be termed "zinesters", "game" has become a highly charged art-politik battleground that has to be won. Increasingly zinesters have taken to folding formalism into the patriarchy, complicity and "certain kind of dude" debates to paint all with the same broad brush.

Not only is that yet another attempt to win the debate over games through equivocation, it has the effect of dissuading some otherwise-interesting voices from engaging. Some, like Raph, continue to try such as with this open letter in which he discusses the debate and its personal side (an indie developer he respects crossed the street to avoid him at GDC) only to find himself yelled-at once more on Twitter. The question for zinesters is this: Is yellers and name-callers essentially all you are?

Because if so, zines will inevitably flame out.

The Reviewers Are Wrong About Ouya [Microconsoles]

 

The subject of my latest column on TechCrunch is essentially that microconsoles have a perception problem, leading them to be reviewed in the wrong context. The full article is available here.

Why Microconsoles Are A Big Deal

There are two remarkable observations to make about the microconsole phenomenon. The first is how quickly the idea has come together, and how companies like Ouya have realised that the time is right for hardware and software to come together and disrupt all that we know.

The second is how much the main / regular / grown-up / established games industry is not getting it. The reactions I keep encountering this week at GDC vary from wait-and-see to outright bafflement. What, I keep hearing, is this "microconsole" thing I keep hearing about? How is it supposed to compete with the might of MicroSonyTendo? Who would want to develop games for something like this until it reaches critical mass?

This is how the industry typically reacts to new ideas. Five years ago the industry was equally baffled by the idea that Facebook games would be a very big thing. It had much the same reaction to smartphones, or tablets. Most developers and publishers tend to develop a fixed understanding of the gaming universe, as though how the market is today is somehow how it was always meant to be, and how it will be for all time. And then it changes.

To me, microconsoles represent a very big change. They're small boxes with big ideas, low prices, common operating systems, developer empowerment, free-to-play economics and so on. They're compelling to me because they take many ideas from the app world and say "Why not on TV too?". They're compelling to developers (especially indies) because they promise to get out of the way of the conversation between game maker and customer.

And as for the customer? You don't think $99 and free games is a compelling argument when stacked up against $3-400 and very-not-free games? Think again.

Real Money Gaming Is Really Boring [TechCrunch]

For me, the questions around the gambling industry - and the possibillity that cash gaming may become legal in the United States - is less about morals and more about how dull that news is. As a sector, gambling is so conservative in its products (i.e. the games) that there's just very little to get excited about, and a key example of how behaviorism alone leads to uncreative design. 

That's the subject of my article this week on TechCrunch. 

Choose Fairness Over Balance [Game Design]

 

If a game feels unfair then few players want to play it.

What players see happening in the game and how they interpret it can often be at odds with what the game maker knows goes on under the hood. Fairness is subjective: a game is only fair if its players believe it to be so. To the player it really doesn't matter how the game engine does what it does, whether it's actually balanced or full of hacks that break balance in their favour. They only know what they see and what they think they see. That can be very hard for the maker to understand. 

Designing for fairness sounds like a simple principle, but because it's about feelings rather than facts it's actually very complicated. Particularly for multiplayer games.