There’s been countless talks and takes about the supposed lies and the aggrandising marketing (a baffling concept!) behind No Man’s Sky’s reception, but very few, as far as I can tell, about the game itself. I’m more interested in thinking about what made the game become what it is, as opposed to what shaped the perception of it into players’ minds before and after the release. Indeed, No Man’s Sky is very explicit when it asks of you to traverse an infinite universe, but, in a less obvious way, you’re also expected to navigate a fascinating set of contradicting decisions and goals. It shares the characteristic with most games out there that venture onto unexplored design planets, but what sets it apart is the scale of its experimentation. It deviates from norms in so many ways that to pick one as a single dominant influence on its nature would be reductive; I’m left to mentally wander among the question it raises, as if the experience extended to headspace after the screen turns black. How to make the limitless feel graspable? How to align the expectations of millions with a personal vision? How to make a marketable game blockbuster out of an un-game-like nature? Faced with that network of highways headed in opposite directions, the team at Hello Games opted to scribble down their own uncertain path, slaloming between hard choices – leaving me unsure of what they were going for.Read more…

I’ve been working on several long articles for some time and I was a bit frustrated that in the meantime, my blog saw no activity. Luckily, the opportunity to talk about something presented itself a few days ago, when Brendan Keogh mentioned QTEs in a tweet. I replied half-jokingly that maybe it was time for us to reconsider the accepted truth that ‘QTEs are bad’ – and a small discussion emerged, which somewhat surprised me! But it also prompted me to think more seriously about what I meant, and to elaborate on that initial suggestion.

Quick Time Events, in the past, – I was about to write ‘traditionally’ and, indeed, it isn’t unlike a tradition at this point – have been mocked, ridiculed, for a whole lot of reasons. The most obvious one is that they’re perceived as ‘lazy’; when the character is about to perform a spectacular action, instead of developing the systems to read and interpret a series of inputs from the player, developers just assigned the whole thing to a single button press. Another criticism is that they lessen player agency (you rarely have any choice but to agree to the prompt to continue playing, and have no say in the result) and offer cheap, unfought-for, instantaneous gratification (which, if you’ve read anything about gamification, you’ll know makes for ‘lower enjoyment in the long run’). They’re also just plain stressful sometimes.

The question I ask myself now is: are those things actually inherently bad?

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I’ve recently finished Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. I hadn’t when they were initially released; you might be thinking, ‘this was a huge oversight!’ and indeed, you’d be right. So I finally made time for them and played through their HD versions, on PS3. And now I’d like to talk about one very specific aspect of SotC that I found particularly interesting.

First of all though, let me just say: man, this game aged poorly. I mean, I assume it did, since this is the first time I’ve played it; but considering the love it got and the nostalgia it continues to induce, the logical conclusion for me is that I’m missing some context. That it was such a technological feat for its time must be a big part of it, and I can’t possibly feel what one must have felt when witnessing those very big structural beings come to life back in 2005. (It’s interesting to ponder the importance of technology in the emotional impact that cultural items can have, but this is a discussion for another time.) Today, the colossi certainly retain their majesty, but their existence, their motion, never left me dumbfounded or incredulous. Running and jumping atop gigantic beasts has become kinda commonplace in games.

Now you must be thinking, ‘this guy is incredibly jaded’ and, well, no (maybe); the thing is, Shadow of the Colossus frustrated me in many ways, and I want to talk about them, but it’s hard to criticise something that you know is beautiful, that you respect, even though like I said I did find the experience miserable at times. And I also don’t want to sound like I’m negating the love that so many people have for it. I feel a bit like I’m thrusting a sword that I have no right to yield into the heart of a magnificent creature.

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Tale of Tales just published a blog post about the disappointing sales of their latest title, Sunset; you can read it here. I would never claim to have the knowledge and insight required to know why this happened the way it did, but I do have some guesses which I’d like to share – if only to have them discussed and refuted by people more competent than me.

In the post, ToT say one of their ambitions with Sunset was to reach out to a wider audience than they had been addressing previously; they explain one way they chose to do that was by conforming to the ‘gaming rules’ that more mainstream works abide by. They list a “carefully constructed context of conventional controls, three-act story and well defined activities” as examples of choices that would supposedly make Sunset more palatable to gamers. This was, I think, misguided, in the sense that those are abstract and invisible things related to mechanics and structure; theme and visuals will always do a better job at seducing, especially when the people you’re trying to seduce have been swimming in shallowness for years. Look at the reddit comments about the aforementioned post: the amount of people suggesting Viscera Cleanup Detail as superior alternative to Sunset is eye-opening. “It has blood all over the floor, so obviously it’s better.”

And as ToT outline right after talking about the concessions they made, working on Sunset still was enjoyable, because the theme meant something to them; and sadly “whatever [they] enjoy is never, ever, what the gaming masses enjoy”. I don’t actually think it was possible for Tale of Tales to make a game that would capture the hearts (and wallets) of a large enough portion of gamers. Knowing that, the question they might have been better off pursuing is, ‘how to make something that people who already like our games will like even more?’ (Or at least, how to make it financially viable?)

But then, there’s still the matter of reaching out. People who enjoy ToT’s games form a very tiny niche within the huge landscape game ‘enthusiasts’ (anyone who might regularly visit a gaming-related website, for instance); which in itself is a niche within the general audience of players. Tale of Tales’ fans are people who appreciate their radicalism, within a field that generally loathes any kind of deviation from the norm. ‘Reaching out’, then, would mean somehow breaching through the layer of pre-emptive antipathy, instead of trying to cater to it. Of course, if you’re trying to talk to those who aren’t familiar at all with how games are played, you then face a whole lot of other issues and technical challenges.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be too harsh – there are probably lots of people who have fair reasons not to be appealed by a game like Sunset. I mean, people like different things, and I don’t want to sound like I’m saying ‘if you don’t like the game, you’re wrong and you should die’. The videogame industry is what it is, and of course it’s going to attract people whose sensibilities differ from Auriea’s and Michaël’s. On an individual level, that’s okay. But still, if we’re at a stage where ToT can’t exist, then there definitely is something wrong somewhere, and we should all – regardless of sensibilities – do everything we can to fix it.

Until the wider change happens, what you can do is help Tale of Tales by buying their games and supporting Auriea and Michaël on Patreon.

I finished Bloodborne two days ago, and very much liked it. It’s an interesting game in many ways, some of which I’ve been wanting to write about since I started playing. I’ll eventually talk about the story – I’ll let you know when I start venturing into spoiler territory, in case you haven’t finished it yet. Before that, though, I’d like to have a look at the game’s most advertised new feature, its main differentiator when compared to its predecessors: the gun mechanic.

When you start the game, you’re given two and half tools for killing: one fairly large cold weapon that has two equally murderous forms (you can usually trade swiftness for reach and/or brutality) and a firearm. When it was revealed that this shooty, noisy device would go into the protagonist’s left hand instead of the expected shield, many players were surprised, worried even; I know I was. The safety provided by holding down the left trigger to hide behind your shield in Dark Souls (the previous game from Bloodborne’s developers) allowed for a slower, more measured play style, and that was exactly what I loved about it. Bloodborne, on the other hand, seemed to be all about constant side-stepping and frantic shooting – twitchy, nerve-racking, focused on precise timing, and indeed without a moment to rest. There is a shield you can equip in Bloodborne, but its in-game description reads like a design note from director Hidetaka Miyazaki, directly addressed to the player: “Hunters do not normally employ shields, ineffectual against the strength of the beasts as they tend to be. Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.”

What’s interesting about this note is how it almost explicitly reveals why guns have replaced shields in Bloodborne. The developers felt there was a problem with Dark Souls that they needed to fix – passivity – and the firearms were their solution. Let’s fictionally go back in time and pretend we’re attending the early design meetings for Bloodborne… it probably went something like this. The starting point was the removal of the shields; that much is obvious. However, shields did come with a mechanic that didn’t encourage passivity at all: parrying. To parry in Dark Souls, you opt not to keep your shield up, and instead try to raise it right when an attack is about to hit your character; it’s risky (half a second too late and the attack does hit) but if done successfully, it staggers the enemy, leaving them vulnerable to a powerful riposte. That’s the kind of gameplay mechanic that requires so much focus and concentration that you can usually feel it affecting your whole forearms, as they tense up waiting for the exact right moment to press that button. It’s anything but passive. How, then, do you keep it without the shields? What kind of combat-oriented tool could complement a main weapon and allow instantaneous parrying, but not passive protection?

The answer’s definitely not ‘guns’. Daggers, maybe, or some sort of steel gauntlet… but not guns. That doesn’t matter, though; let’s call this mysterious parrying device the Tool X for now.

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TO: Nathan Chad Georgia Fraser Peter Matthew Goldie Tim Alexander AJ Hugo Claire Danielle Ben Ian Mat Kevin Alex Mat Brendan Mandy Stuart Michèle Anthony Chris Maize Kevin Darshana Nico Tom Katelyn Aaron Ben Alex Jesper Josh Amani Sam Christian Thomas Evelyn Jess Luke Brendan Chris Harry Benjamin Dan Louie Dominica Hong Terry Trent Izzy Max Jamie Barnaby Sophie Zane Nina Ryan Greg Michael David Harrison Susan Andrew Monica and everyone whose name I have forgotten (sorry!) or whom I haven’t had the chance to talk to

SUBJECT: Freeplay 2015

MESSAGE: How can I put this in a way that doesn’t sound too dramatic or hyperbolic? I don’t think I’ve ever, ever felt so welcome in a community. In my entire life. Immediately after I landed in Melbourne last Wednesday, things got crazy (as my fantastic hosts can attest) and they never truly went back to normal. The festival’s been awesome, and lots of people far more important than I have already expressed far more eloquently the immense respect for the organisers one is bound to feel; but beyond the talks, the workshops, the fete… what really made this special for me was the sense of suddenly being surrounded by such great people. It takes a lot for me feel like I belong somewhere, to overcome the ever-present social uneasiness; I would never have guessed that after just one week, that anxiety would be no more than a faint murmur, essentially forgotten. That’s not my doing. It’s thanks to everyone who went out of their way to extend a hand, to introduce me to friends, to take a bit of time to chat and get to know each other… You have no idea how much it means. I hope Freeplay continues to thrive, and that in the following years I get to meet more of the kind and talented people who have contributed to its conviviality, which I can’t help but think is at the very heart of the event. I know I will do everything I can to become part of it, so that maybe, in the future, I can also show disoriented foreigners around.

Hi! Welcome to my… website. blog. thing. Not sure what to call it yet.

My aim with it is to have a place that acts as a hub of sorts for everything related to me. So I’ll be blogging here, in this section, and you’ll also see my professional information on the other side; and there are also my latest twitter posts in the widgets on the right (unless you’re on mobile) and maybe stuff from other platforms will also invade in the future. I won’t open any comment section, so that’s another way in which it’ll interact with the rest of the web: I’ll find some other service to host the conversation around my posts, if there is any.

Regarding the actual contents of the blog, I’ll try to keep the posts relatively short – you might see a long ‘essay’ once in a while, but mostly I want to be able to publish quick, semi-random thoughts that deserve a bit more elaboration than tweets can afford. I will also try to post my impressions on various cultural items I come across, when they warrant it. I suspect it will all stay mostly in text form, but who knows.

It’s still very much a work in progress. Some things might not work optimally, others might outright break; please send me a tweet or an email if anything of that sort happens. (Here is where I would usually paste a link to those things, but hopefully the website will do its job.)

Anyway. Looking forwards to actual posts. I hope you are too! ^_^