My main disagreements with Jesse Schell’s lecture:

1. Right now external rewards are an ‘ooh shiny’ within culture.  We have struck some gold with the vein of behavioral psychology, and now everyone is rushing in believe there is gold enough for eternity in there somewhere.  The mind is being cracked open like some blue ocean market.  If there’s anything we know about these things it’s that they saturate.  With each further achievement system that latches on to our daily lives, the rewards become less and less novel.  After enough of them, the benefits will settle down into the background noise of our daily motivations.  Like any drug, the brain develops a tolerance.  Assuming his dystopian vision comes to pass, those reward system will be background noise – expected within any new system or promotion, but not a bullet point feature.  When opening up a new airline company, saying that you have offer frequent flier miles isn’t going to turn any heads.  We’ve dealt with reward structures that have turned background before, and like other drugs, there will need to be an escalation to get any attention.
2. The escalation won’t be more of the same.  Eventually while spelunking in the brain, something new will come along – another ‘ooh shiny’ that will no doubt be the topic of some future ominous keynote.  If anything, external reward schemes aren’t the future, they’re the emerging present.  If we put all our best minds on sapping this gold vein for all its worth, no one will ever find that minerals like uranium might have their value.
3. Many good game designers ARE working on the problem right now and to say that they aren’t present in the field is a bit insulting.  What’s important is that we push the discourse in the direction that benefits both games AND society as a whole.  We as game designers have the power to prevent this rat-and-pellet scenario by pushing the persuasive envelope in the right direction.  There will be no shortage of marketers cum game designers willing to tweak the spreadsheet pivot a bit more.
4. Reward structures are only ONE of the many neural motivators for gaming, and while the most basic and exploitable with our current understanding, they do not represent the true power of games.  If anything we’ve learned from the last decade or two of ludology it’s that games and learning are inexplicably linked – creating reward mechanisms that are devoid of learning and the introduction of new elements seems backwards.  In the old ‘depth and breadth’ game design metric, achievement systems for brushing your teeth have neither – the entire ruleset is one item long and mastery is immediate.  Sure the ‘game’ is in taking advantage of the system as a whole, not just the teeth part, but without learning and mastery how soon will it get stale?  Most facebook games lose my interest after a short while for this reason – I feel I’ve learned everything there is to learn and the rest is just rote repetition.  We’ve fought to elevate this (to some notable successes) within the Free to play and MMO arenas.  Why does he think our future is to give up these efforts and succumb to age old formulas?

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Schell, but I can’t see this one as much more than fear mongering – stirring the pot.  Based on the amount of ‘check this out’ and ‘awesome video’ tweets and the general lack of criticism, I can’t say he’s succeeded.  In summing up, I think the trend is exactly as he put it – but this is a short term trend (really just the last two years) in a long term history of games.  Remember with Full Motion Video was the future of games?  Virtual Reality?  Hyperbole is dangerous, but the exercise of it for sake of argument is good in that it gets people thinking.  Just because the current trend is moving in this one direction does not invalidate all other work and studies that have come before regarding future predictions.

Source: Matter Feast

• 3 Source – Silicon, Germanium, Diamond, Supercarbons, Rare Crystals and Metals (1cm2)
• 2 Source – Carbon-based Life, Petrocarbons, Fossils, Ferrous Metals, Graphite, Coal, Soot (10cm2)
• 1 Source – Anything Else (100cm2)

Abilities

Differential 3

Synthesize

Consume

Kinesis

Sculpt

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhpn5xkg_44g9fpxwsj

The game becomes more usable and coherent as you go along.

Normally it makes sense to introduce concepts to the player in a nice smooth logarithmic/sigmoid fashion to optimize learning.  A game begins as simple as it can and adds complexity after enough time to digest the previous mechanics has passed, limiting the amount of instantaneous new mechanics.  However, with Little King’s story, nearly every time a new feature was added (especially in the early stages of the game)… I felt like it was a convenience issue or it was long overdue.

Each time a feature was added it didn’t feel so much like a new thing to learn, but a shortcut to a boring or frustratingly impossible task previously.  It feels as if they started with the final game and removed interface and features until they arrived at the beginning.  Some may feel this is a sound design methodology, but I do not.  The beginning experience is the most cruicial to the game – it can be looked at as a subtractive version of the game’s concepts, but it should be just as compelling as later play.  On examining this I noticed even I noticed some conflicting viewpoints on this issue, even within myself.

On one side, the beginning should be representative of the gameplay, pure and enjoyable in its own right.  This is especially true of casual games and seems to come from the casual game part of my brain.  The idea is that there is no immediate ‘end’ which you are going to, you are enjoying the gameplay as it is and as it progresses.  To me, this is the very zen-like concept that attracts me to more mechanics-based and casual games to begin with.

On the flip side, if you’ve designed a game that has a degree of complexity to it, you can’t give it all up at once.  So, like any good school – you introduce a problem, then a skill, and then test for application (designers take note: it’s more effective to introduce the problem before the skill than the other way around).  This method leads to a very ‘tutorialish’ beginning, especially if condensed together (skill-skill-skill-game vs skill-game-game-skill-game-game).

Neither side is wrong, but there’s definitely some nuances in the approach that make it worth exploring further.  As much as I do truly enjoy Little King’s Story, I did feel like I was playing through about 5 hours of a mediocre / frustrating / aimless game to get to a more polished, enjoyable game later – and I didn’t even know that was going to pan out that way through the first 5 hours (not quite like begrudgingly sitting through tutorials).

Regardless of the design method with respect to the beginning (additive or subtractive), one should never skip polishing the beginning and examining it from a ‘what if this were all it was’ viewpoint.

The biggest difficulty I tend to find in discussions on this subject is that people aren’t always aware of what it is they are asking nor do they come to the discussion table with a shared set of definitions.  I am going to attempt to clean up this mess a bit with some simple logical statements and metrics, peppered with just a bit of subjective thought process.  So first off:

What is Art?

Perhaps the biggest culprit is a unclear definition of Art.  If only this were a problem limited to those discussing it as it applies to video games.  The true definition of art has been argued for quite some time (see also Aesthetics).  I’m going to try to pluck off the relevant issues.

Art can mean a reference to a field of study, a technique related to creative skill as relates to aesthetics, a product or work of art, or more colloquially ‘fine art’.  We’re going to need to pick or build a definition.  How about the first line in the Wikipedia entry – it’s gotta be the most relevant, right?

“Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions“.

Yup, games definitely do this!  We’re done!  The answer is yes!   Not so fast.

There is much debate about this subject so it can’t possibly be that simple… Let’s try another definition.  How about Britannica Online’s defintion:

“the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” [my italics]

Well that one seems to fit with games pretty easily.  I don’t seem to be getting very far with this, so I’m going to work on my own definition.   I’ll use existing things that we readily call art as a way of removing away that which it is NOT, leaving that which it is.  Likewise, if the definition excludes things we conventionally call art, then the definition itself will be invalidated.

Is art a physical object?  No, or else music or performance would not be art.  Is it creative skill or technique?  No.  It cannot be simply a technique.  If you go a gallery to appreciate art, this definition works (appreciating the technique), but if you then buy the art, you are not buying the technique.  So clearly it is neither the sum of its materials nor the sum of its techniques – it is neither simply artwork or artistry.  What ties the two together but is wholly neither?  Well a concept does.  Concepts can be equated to thoughts and words.  Are words alone art?  Just a series of words strung together?  No, we do not call this art.  However, words written down or spoken can be poetry, which is definitely art.  So what is the difference between the intrinsic set of concepts floating along and that which we call art?

Well, both written and spoken word have the potential to communicate the concept from one individual to another.  So if I walk up to you and say something, is this art?  The problem here is that the communication is direct.  What if I yell the same words to a crowd, indirectly?  Now this is could be either performance art or the actions of a crazy person (or both).  We are now very close to the great writer Leo Tolstoy’s definition of art:

“a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another”.

I like to call this ‘proxy communication’.  Or in diagrammatic form:

Artist -> Medium -> Audience

Does it really need an audience?  Must a work of art be shown to one other than the original artist?  If an artist paints a work and it is left in their attic, and their house is bulldozed, did the work of art exist?  This is doubly ponderous if the artist is also a mime. Well, here we can satisfy that formula to say that perhaps the artist was also the audience.  But is this cheating?   Well, consider a person talking to themselves (casually like assurances into the mirror, not schizophrenia).  That is direct communication from yourself to yourself.  However, if that same person wrote a diary, and perhaps drew a sketch in a diary to try to express their feelings (to be later read by themselves again long after they do not recall the original feeling), then that is indirect communication and as such we can call it art.

The Law and Order of Subliminal Intent

How about intent?  Do we need to intend on making art to make art?  Do we need to know what it is we are communicating before we do it?  This is an issue of great debate in the past century or so (longer than that, but it’s been heating up), therefore let’s try to find an example that predates the debate.

Marbling (Japanese Suminagashi or Turkish Ebru for example) is considered to be an art form.  Here, clearly the desire to create a work of art represents intent, but the communicated message or the form is not fully under control of the artist.  In a way, it could be said the the medium is communicating back and forth with the artist during the process of creation – a dialogue instead of a transcription.  Modern art methods such as Generative Art wholly embrace this two-way dialogue.  Many are familiar with the works of Jackson Pollock who is quoted as saying:

“When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.”

Jackson Pollock - One: Number 31, 1950

Pollock abandoned titles for his pieces, referring to them by number instead.  He did so because he wanted the viewer to:

“…look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for.”

Then what about the purity of the message or concept?  Is art a failure if the concept is not communicated correctly?  Well clearly, taking Pollock’s work as an example, the message can be entirely hidden from view leaving the audience to interface with the work without much of the artist’s original work’s message – quite likely deriving a new different meaning for every viewer.

Interactive Media

Let us also look at other interactive art media:  take theatre or musical peformance for example.  There are many plays (most of the vaudeville style for example) which require some form of audience participation (by walking amongst the audience, or requesting BOOs and YAYs).  A musicians’ song is a basic medium, but when the audience is asked to sing along, the audience becomes like the artist and contributes to the medium.  In fact both the artist’s emotions and the tone of the piece can be altered based on the audience, resulting in a notably different work.  Improvisational theatre and music, like improv comedy or jazz, take this a step further – the genesis of the work is entirely situated in the environment, the mood of the artists and audience.  So it cannot be said that the audience only receives the medium.

Now diagram looks like this:

Artist <-> Medium <-> Audience

In face, this two-way dialog with the medium from either perspective can be called “engagement”, and it is a major component of video games.

I’m going to go a bit further and bring up a few more forms of modern art.  Interactive Art is one type of art that is highly interactive for the audience.  In fact, examples can be found like the mirrors of Daniel Rozin, that require an audience to function.  His go beyond this and place the audience member as the subject of the art.  This is not different from the process of playing many video games, wherein a proxy for the player (an avatar) is rendered into the game to serve as the subject.

One can go back to the early Dada movement (and also later Surrealism, Pop-art, and Conceptual Art) to see some of the crucial arguments for the audience as a participant.  Dadaism, according to many of its founders, was not art at all, it was anti-art.  It became a way of turning the tables on the audience, offending them into further thought.  In much of Dada,  it can be seen that far more communication and engagement with the medium can be seen on the audience side of the equation, typically in the form of angry art critics, confused patrons, and in some cases police intervention.  Some clear examples of this playful prodding can be seen in Duchamp‘s Fountain, Magritte‘s The Treachery of Images, and Warhol‘s Campbell’s Soup I.

René Magritte - The Treachery Of Images

There have been myriads of art movements and submovements since, and art has been transforming itself from a discipline to an dialogue.  Things we recognize as art now steal from nearly all other walks of life, and can take innumerable forms.  Some fields that are of especially high interest to the video game discussion are Information Art, Systems Art, and Internet Art (thanks Brenda Brathwaite for pointing me specifically to Systems Art).  Sociology has also been making leaps and bounds in the last few decades and has had some notable influence upon art.  Art is now more readily accepted as something that can be collaborative in nature and is no longer confined to the definition of a single producer (artist) and multiple consumers (audience).

By this mark, I feel it is not a leap at all to reduce my previous definition to simply this: “engagement with a communication medium”

Artist/Audience <-> Medium

To define art as any narrower a definition would exclude things that are already accepted as art by historians and much of society (though sometimes begrudgingly).  Much of the linguistics and neuroscience devotee in me feels that a definition of art without reference to Pattern or Metaphor is quite possibly incomplete, but perhaps those are implied in the engagement/observation.

Oh Ricky You’re So Fine Art

Well, games are clearly engagement with a communication medium, so why do people insist that they are not art?  Most likely because one of the common definitions of ‘art’ is actually meant to be interpreted as ‘fine art‘.  So what’s the difference?  Here’s where we start falling into ontological ooze.

Fine Art is a tag meant for art which is primarily created for concept or aesthetics, not utility.  However, this is a gray area.  Definitions of fine art routinely include conceptual art, which has a history as a vehicle for social change (and hence, conceptual utility).  They also routinely include interactive art and forms we’re already seen to be closely related to video games.  There’s also a lot of disagreement as to what classifies as fine art and this tends to be highly subjective.

So what isn’t Fine Art?  Well, other than things that intentionally shun the title (for example Lowbrow works), the ‘not-its’ tend to be labeled as a Craft, as Design, or as Commercial Art.  The term craft is applied to a wide range of artistic endeavors of varying utility and sometimes to a fine art form in the hands of an amateur or hobbyist.  Very often, to me the distinction between Craft and Art seems to lie with whether the medium and materials fit within the doctrine of western art history or not (though that never stopped Conceptual Art).  A range of conventional examples:

• Photography is labeled as a Fine Art, but not in the hands of an amateur (your flickr is not an accredited gallery)
• Fashion Design is labeled as Design, but Haute Couture is anything but utility (primarily aesthetics and concept)
• Architecture can be a Fine Art and/or Design, depending on who you are or who the client is

Often times people say that commercial art and design are driven by the client and by the money paid for the work.  Another argument is that design is art with a time or resource constraint.  These arguments don’t hold well, as Michelangelo resented the commission of the Sistine Chapel, believing it only to serve the Pope’s desire for extravagance.  It is perhaps the thing he is most well known for today, and yet it was money that drove its creation.  The Sistine Chapel was done with a deadline and specifications for a price.  It was not a gift to the world by a humble demigod seeking to further the humanities. And this example brings up yet another ontological quandry:

The Ensemble

What is ‘the work’ in this case?  Is it the fresco?  Dozens of different painters have done fresco work on this chapel.  Is it the paintings on the walls?  Is it the architecture itself?  Is it a collective single work or can it not even be referenced as one?   To steal from one of Ian Bogost‘s tweets: what is a fajita?  is it the meat?  the tortillas?  the combination?

Take a simple case: framed art.  Is the frame part of the artwork or is it auxiliary?  If they are the art together, and the framing is considered a craft and not a fine art, then can the ensemble ever be a fine art or a craft?  Textile art and wearable art are another example.  We may consider the garment design and tailoring fashion design, the act of dyeing it a craft and the final piece and its display case in a museum as fine art.  In the case of Rozin’s mirrors above we see that lighting of the environment in which the work sits is an integral part to the work (without it the tiles would not have the different values needed to create shape).  In most three-dimensional or textural work, lighting can change the aesthetic and even meaning of a work.  Going back to the Found Art movement and Duchamp’s Fountain, you have a urinal constructed not for the purpose of art at all and only its signing and recontexting to make it art.  So a collection of elements, not all which are themselves fine art is permissible in a work of fine art.

This is what I propose that games are as a medium.  They are a collection of things: arts, crafts, and design from a variety of individuals.  People today say the ‘Sistine Chapel’ as if it were a singular piece of work.  Perhaps they are referring to Michelangelo’s contribution, but even so it could not exist on its own without a ceiling to be painted upon.  Perhaps this can be said of game developments’ ‘superstars’.  Much like the many artists involved in the chapel, those involved in a game may feel like their field is the field to which people refer when praise is lavished about the work.  Writers probably feel like if/when their game is labeled as ‘fine art’ that it means the writing of course!  Designers may feel that they are the brain or heart of the game.  Artists may feel they contribute the primary aesthetics.  This is just vanity.  Now that user generated content and community driven games are common, the users are perhaps equally to credit for the success of a game.  The work must be looked on in its entirety – it would be meaningless to declare a game’s 3D art as fine art and the rest of it as a commercial work of design (though out of its context it is entirely possible to frame game art as visual art and display it there as fine art alone, as with most of the other components).

Culture Wars: The Game

In my opinion, the distinctions between craft, fine art, commercial, design, and others are based on cultural homophily primarly.   Fine art is that which is done in the societal context of other recognized fine artists.  Design is the term for those comfortable with the term design and excited about its implications.  Cultures determine their standards and their definitions.  This is not limited to subjectively treated fields such as art.  See how physicist Lee Smolin describes how we ratify scientific “facts” within the scientific community.  Newer generations decide the results of these quandaries as the older ones wane from power.

Gamers are no longer a subculture, the act of gaming is prevalent throughout greater culture.  The generation of gamers being the norm, not the exception is here already.  Therefore it is WE who can set these standards.  If we feel that games are fine art, then we shall declare it as so until the dissenting voices fall to time.

Who exactly are we waiting for to declare games are art, so suddenly we can breathe easily again?

Lastly, when I hear ‘are games art’ cries on the blogosphere… more than half of the time I feel it’s just a baiting tactic to get commenters riled up, and not after any genuine introspection on the matter.  It often feels like the statement that is being posted in today’s 15-minute news cycle is actually more like “are games art.. YET?” – like the stereotypical child in the backseat.

Well, we have a good way of dealing with issues of progress: Metrics.

Metrics

Instead of asking whether games are art now due to some new release that everyone has their pants wet about, we should be setting up a series of metrics that can help us determine whether we are making progress in this cultural push.  Many of these are just simple true/false questions (Are? Can? Is? Possible?):

• Are games capable of making social commentary?
• Can games be timeless media and experiences?
• Can games convey metaphor?
• Are games composed of patterns?
• Is it possible to create a game that is subject to unique subjective interpretation/experience?
• Can a game evoke an emotional response on par with (pick your pet fine art media)
• Is it possible to create a game that stirs intellectual discussion?
• Can games be self aware / meta?  (see: The Treachery of Images)
• Can games convey an experience beyond the ordinary?
• Can games be intensely life-like facsimiles? (Realism)
• Are games considered to be an artistic medium by their creators?
• Is it possible to create a game as a form of self expression?
• Is it possible to sustain a living wage due to the high appreciation of the medium?
• Is the act of working on them creative?  (hello EA lawsuit)

By examining the questions, we further the discourse.  The trick is to come up with questions that are ‘yes’ for fine art and ‘no’ for games.  In addition, more chartable metrics will provide the progress and guidance (qualitative data):

• What ratio of those polled believe that games as a medium are ‘art’? (in the conventional usage of the word)
• If not all games are believed to be art, what is the ratio of games that are considered so (via statistics/polling)?  compared to other media?
• What is the volume of standing work that desires the label fine art or is considered so
• What is the public visibility for appreciation of the medium when compared with others (museums, award shows, etc)
• How many game art exhibitions/museums/galleries are there?
• How many game PLAY exhibitions/museums/galleries are there?
• How much discussion and art criticism is leveled at games
• How do games affect (positively or negatively) society (as conceptual art oft endeavors)
• Who is asking the questions or feels that games should be called art?
• How many attendees at appreciation festivals (IGF vs Sundance)

The other thing we of course need is a lot of work from the development community and the media.  When examining movies, the field it seems that is most often compared to video games (this link I find somewhat dubious..), it is evident that a system of nomenclature exists to highlight art.  Very often the categories of Foreign Film and Independent are considered to be genres of above-average artistry.  An entire television channel (Sundance Channel) is devoted to these genres.  Thanks to digital distribution, games are starting to see a stronger Indie genre as well.  Within films, Action is often considered a genre of low artistry – the works may be more about making a bang and a buck than a statement – but the field of Film is not run over the coals as a ‘commercial endeavor not worthy of a fine art label’ due to this genre.  We will always have games that have no interest in the ‘fine’ label of art, but they are still art, and that can be said of all mediums (yes even painting – that verb is also used when you paint a house).

Conclusion

If this label is something we’re looking to achieve as an industry or as a cultural integration, then most importantly we need to raise the discourse and meld with those who hold the keys to the label: other artists, critics, professors.  Everyone who engages in this discourse can benefit from a constant study of Art History (I believe it should be a requirement for the whole industry but baby steps here), Aesthetics and Sociology (again likewise, especially transformative culture stuff like Clay Shirky).  I don’t say this to be elitist – I think this lingering question is a great excuse for action.  If these labels are a cultural artifact, then we need to integrate with the fine art culture and no better way than to become better appreciators and creators of art ourselves (extending our hands first – not being standoffish to the academic world).

Well that about does it for my rant.

May the art be with you!

Creepy Hot:

• Warioware: DIY – No demo and little to no buzz.  If they called it Mario Paint DS, there would’ve been a fanstorm.
• Tatsunoko vs Capcom – Casshern vs Jun the Swan… that’s some childhood fantasy stuff right there.  Reinvigorated my interest for Capcom fighters.
• Sin and Punishment 2 – Holy hell yes, a sequel to a great and underappreciated game.
• Fat Princess – As one friend put it “this is a reason to own a PS3″.  Very fun, addictive gameplay
• Oboromuramasa – Gorgeous.
• New Super Mario Bros Wii – 4 Player Coop
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Epic
• Mod Nation Racers – One of the most impressive demos all show.  This is gaming 2.0
• Star Wars: The Old Republic – Ok, now I’m starting to drink the kool-aid too
• Scribblenauts – Could be one of the most ambitiously creative games ever
• The Last Guardian – Games are art
• All Points Bulletin – Last.FM streaming, mass customizing mayhem
• Front Mission Evolved – F@#! yeah
• Torchlight – Many agree this is one of the great surprises near the back.  Quite possibly more enjoyable for longer periods of time than Diablo 3

Hot:

• Little Big Planet on PSP
• PSP Go – Most comfortable feeling handheld device ever.  Though getting people to switch is going to be super hard.  Seems like they’re targeting new owners.
• Quantum – Wasn’t expecting much but it looks really great.  Good multiplayer ideas too.
• Metal Gear Solid Rising
• Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth – I cosplayed as him so you can bet I’m excited
• A Boy and his Blob
• Assassin’s Creed 2
• Golden Sun DS
• Alpha Protocol
• Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
• Battlefield 1943
• Bayonetta – Looks WAY more fun than I predicted
• Beyond Good and Evil 2
• Bioshock 2 – Wasn’t a huge fan of the first one (blasphemy I know), but the multiplayer looks fun – you can BE a big daddy
• Brutal Legend
• Brink
• Borderlands – the new art direction took some getting used to but I think it makes the game stand out on its own far better
• deTuned – .theprodukkt
• Food Network Cook or Be Cooked – looks like it might actually teach generation Y/Z gamers how to cook, increasing the chances of civilization as we know it surviving
• Fate Unlimited Codes – wished this was available to play
• Lost Planet 2 – though I did like the cold setting of the previous, the multiplayer fights look quite fun for this
• Katamari Forever – how can you not love more Katamari goodness?
• Heroes of Telara – the trailer for this is unimpressive, but the concept art and monster design is really quite awesome
• Gravity Crash -
• Fragile – XSEED always makes good games, and this one looks to be no exception
• Metroid Other M
• Mini Ninjas
• Saboteur
• MAG
• Order of War – Looked amazing, and I’m normally not a huge WWII kind of strat-gamer.
• Persona
• Sing Star Queen – finally a music game that contains only songs I know
• Zombie Apocalypse – Looks like a really well polished Smash TV style shooter
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled – a true multiplayer classic
• Trauma Team
• Trine
• Trials HD:  Looks pretty fun in that the bloopers will undoubtedly be awesome
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Singularity
• Shadow Complex
• Split Second – Such a great idea, universal studios tour plus racing.  Also the HUD / dials under the car is one of the best UI designs in all of racing.
• Splinter Cell Conviction – Some very impressive cinematic feel to this one
• Wet – a lot of cool flair and possibility here, but the trailer seemed kinda bad
• Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks

Meh:

• White Knight Chronicles – I love Level 5 but something about the demo just didn’t ‘feel’ right
• DJ Hero – If a real life DJ got that wicky with it for that long, I’d punch them in the face
• Natal – Seems to promise more than is capable.  I love that it will advance culture, but I feel that it will take at least 5 years after its release for it to catch up/on
• Pixeljunk Monsters on PSP – not because it isn’t awesome, but why can’t it also come out on PS3?
• Final Fantasy XIV – Final Fantasy 12+2.  Everyone I know’s heart sank when they heard it was going to be an MMO.  Square hasn’t proven it has learned the genre lessons.
• New Samurai Showdown game – Why oh why make this 3D.  I gains nothing from it.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum – Seemed like a lot of style and little substance
• Dragon Age Origins – Don’t see anything new or inventive here.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy – Gameplay felt really shallow
• Pop’n Music – I love this game to death… why give it the Wiimote treatment?  Hard as I try, I can’t imagine that being fun
• Left 4 Dead 2 – Feels weird that this isn’t just DLC and the daylight setting somehow takes something away from it
• Saw – seriously why publish a movie game so late after the movie?
• Spore * – Milk milk milk

• DJ Hero: Note to Activision – don’t reuse the Guitar Hero crowd cheer sound / crowd animations… people don’t cheer at clubs.
• APB: White Dodge Rams, piercings and tattoos oh MY.  Seriously, yes pls
• Shadow Complex: Interesting perspective – here’s hoping Card’s second foray into games is better received
• SWTOR: Those voice overs better be subtitled and skippable
• Splinter Cell Conviction: Realism is getting impressive.  Dark Grey is the new Bright Brown
• Natal: oizys – basically microsoft is claiming to have solved mocap and voice recognition perfectly,  zug – yeah they just threw enough money at it so now it works perfectly
• Natal: dickscanning device (bet you didn’t think about THAT yet)
• Bayonetta: Really pretty accompaniment to pressing X, X, X, Triangle, X, X, Triangle
• Tatsunoko vs Capcom: This will get me back into Capcom fighters… but I will probably only ever play Casshern
• Mini Ninjas: Exploration ftw
• Tales of Monkey Island: Yes!
• Front Mission Evolved: Moar, and gameplay please.
• Many many other games: Oh look it’s another multiplayer first person shooter shooter / racing game sequel
• Everything else: I’m really impressed at how good the game industry has become at making non-interactive movies – now get back to work
• Video Sites: Remember/cookie my goddamn age!!

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Always loved the franchise
• Fat Princess – Looks fun.  Both for myself and my girlfriend always looking for new resource management games
• Pixeljunk Shooter – I love everything this studio does
• White Knight Chronicles - Yet another JRPG? Probably, but not like there are a lot on the PS3 right now
• The Agency - Of course, it’s on my MMO list
• Half Minute Hero - I had an idea similar to this… want to see how they implemented it
• Little King’s Story - looks so awesome
• A Boy and his Blob – remake, skeptical but curious
• Zephyr: Rise of the Elementals – looks to be a fun katamari clone
• Nostalgia – fun/aggravating to see steampunk move into the game buzzword category
• Tatusnoko vs Capcom - not a huge fan of the capcom fighters but this is too interesting as an anime / casshern fan to not check out
• Dragon Age: Origins - I feel kind of obligated on this one as a dice rolling male
• Brink – I usually don’t fall for the ‘not-much-is-known’ hook, but this one has me intrigued
• Singularity - kinda bored of shooters but this looks at least aesthetically interesting
• DJ Hero / Scratch / Def Jam Rapstar – having predicted this for half a century, am journalistically obligated to follow up
• Quantum Theory - really just because the title… I’m a sucker for Quantum related sci-fi
• Alpha Protocol - been following this for a while
• Seven Haunted Seas – Have some friends working on this, looks really cool
  
• Everything Atlus is showing

Strengths

The section in which I glow all fanboy-like.

• Free realms is not attempting to be WoW – This is amazingly important, carving out another playstyle and niche.  When games compete directly in their design and demographic with WoW they mostly serve to remind people why they played WoW to begin with, which doesn’t usually fare well in the long term for the budding MMO.
• Exploration - Ooh shiny gold sparkles!   I feel the MMO market has been underserving at least one major segment, based on looking at psychological data (Daedalus, et al) is the Explorer Bartle type.  Free Realms is one of the few MMOs that gives a real benefit to actually just exploring.  It’s unfortunate that they only really support the literal element of the explorer type and have some major issues even there (which I will discuss later) but it does feel like a genuine effort.  It also helps to give an economic grounding to the convenience that teleporting brings.  Teleport makes grouping and playing together easy, but incentives of collections are thrown to those who go on foot.
• Activity based, not progression based – With the combination of multiple independent jobs, minigames, a card game, racing games, and repeatable quests, the focus is more on what you want to do than who you want to be.  I don’t feel somehow penalized for not eeking out the most optimal progression/XP path while power leveling to cap so that I can participate in the game’s available activities.  I can choose to do whatever I feel like doing at the moment and I’m rewarded for my time – this lends well to the more casual demographic.  In addition, since the game can be played for free there is no urge to “get one’s money’s worth”, so you truly can set your own pace.
• Generally good and inventive minigames - Most of the mini games are not just copies of the popcap/pogo top 10 or classics we’ve seen a million times prior.  If anything they pull from a more modern ideaset – the cooking game for example is a wario-ware / cooking mama type game.  Perhaps the best (and most reused) is a select-many-and-drop game (*cough* Legends of Laundry), however props to them for really nailing the interface and feel for it.  The card game is simple but decent (it’s like a redux of Norrath)
• Combat is treated as a mini-game / activity – Normally I wouldn’t consider this a strength in a virtual world that is focused on providing an immersive experience.  However, in a casual setting that is constantly pulling you out of the world to play minigames it is far more consistent.  Plus from a game design side, it sweeps a whole slew of logistics problems effectively under the rug.  It allows people to play the game legitimately in a non-combat fashion.  It removes worries of asynchronous or asymmetrical aid, loot and xp distribution (mostly) and scarcity issues.  While it may feel a bit like cheating on the designer’s side, it means a whole clientele of players who do not need to be indoctrinated into tapping, loot etiquette, DKP, same-side pull griefing, and power leveling (it may happen but you don’t watch it if you’re not involved).  Loot drops during a minigame (yes even the match-3) seem to have a predilection towards being useful for your current job, allowing you to get better by doing the things you like.
• Mini-achievements and Tickets – Every mini game or combat in Free Realms has on or more primary goals that are required for success, but they also typically have a secondary goal, a bonus goal, and often a few bonus goals that are only available for subscribers (a brilliant ploy if I might say so).  The completion of each of these bonus achievements will typically reward the player in the form of ‘tickets’.  This system is not too unlike WoW’s PvE loot tokens, except that it is omnipresent and microscopic.  You can get tickets for doing just about anything and you get them often.  You can trade these tickets in in bunches of 10, 20, or 30 for a random roll of a treasure chest of low, mid, or high level respectively.  These rolls can sometimes be items of low worth (like a couple healing potions), but when they are so they are generally items of high use.  Since every player can use every item, there is a better chance that the item dropped might be better than something somewhere on your character.  Loot also comes in different random colors so you may get something you already have in a different color, and since there is no inventory size, there is no penalty for carrying around these options.
• No inventory - Again, this feels a bit like cheating during MMO Design 101, but it works with aplomb here.  No need to explain the complex culture of micromanagement, bank systems, alt banks, and most important no ‘prep time’ getting the right things into your inventory (and right amounts).
• You can generally walk away from the game at any time - Maybe I’m not mounting truck nuts on my mounts’ nuts here or showing my carebear side’s stuffing, but being able to get up and get a drink without worrying about being ganked by a player or killed by a respawning monster and losing something (XP, gold, repair, travel time), makes for a completely refreshing experience.
• Not all kiddie - The rounded edged demeanor that is the child-friendly world of Free Realms is sometimes pierced by something shocking, however I’ve noticed that this only occurs within the subscriber content (Medic, Warrior, subscriber quests).  It seems as if the age group for the subscriber content is about 3-5 years older than the rest of the game (discussions of relationships, more serious quarrels, nastier looking weapons, etc).  My favorite is probably the medic weapons – they include a bonesaw (Audition anyone?) and some sort of saw that looks like it was stolen from WoW’s goblin logger robots.  Other than these minute idiosyncrasies, I’d say that Free Realms has WoW’s visual and tonal style, only here it fits somehow more naturally.
• The Movement controls are copied 98% from WoW – Complete with (numlock) and everything.  Of all the things that WoW’s game genetics should pass on to future MMO genre games, everyone else seems to vote for the ! and ? marks.  Me? I vote for the movement and camera controls.  I’ve never understood why so many games that are blatantly going for the American market choose to use anything but this control scheme.  It would be like making an FPS where switching between your weapons are the letters Y,U,I,O and P instead of 1,2,3,4,5 – the possible benefits are outweighed by the loss of familiarity (think DVORAK).  This is the one place where you most want to copy convention, and I feel Free Realms is one of the few to do that to this extent.
• Good pricepoint and business model – With so many games demanding ~15$/month worth of subscription money and justifiable time, one can typically only choose one or maybe two.  The free-to-play market has creeped up around this, filling in the rest of the space and the play time of those without credit cards or enough justifiable time.  Free Realms has hopped in to grab the best of both worlds (which clearly works as RuneScape and Club Penguin will attest), however it bests both by providing far more reasons for upgrading that come at you from every direction, and a robust microtrans system to top it off.
• Streaming Download - No giant pre-download, no long patching times, relatively frequent updates, short waits.  Well done.

Weaknesses

Put on your hardhat – now I throw down the heavies.

• Communication - The minigame-laden world prettymuch decimates social communication and context, to the point where it becomes almost exclusively a solo game experience.  Each minigame is a short removal from the world, but it generally requires your full attention and interface (often removing the chat window altogether).  Any concept of chat continuity goes right out the window as soon as someone pops into a mini game without even so much as an auto-afk to let you know.  Without a omnipresent voice chat or external tool like Ventrillo, I can’t imagine trying to play ‘with’ a friend other than popping together to do a combat minigame together.
• Combat - Is highly shallow, with little challenge or opportunities for learning.  Some encounters are well scripted and interesting but when you only have 0-3 abilities (most of which just do the same things), it’s generally just a keymashfest at best.  Combat also removes the normal game interface, meaning you can’t change equipment, view your equipment, change out your belt loadout, change class, view your quests (to figure out what you’re supposed to achieve in this combat), or just about anything else.  This seems like a major mistake – I understand not switching classes or maybe belt items, but not being able to see quests other than their text log outputs is a real head scratcher.  On the plus side, you can exit combat whenever you feel like.  Too much of the game is combat for it to be acceptable to be this dull.
• Little Class Variance – The class/job paradigm is a little confused in Free Realms.  There are two types of jobs: Combat Jobs and Activity Jobs.  The combat jobs have very little variance between them in terms of abilities or playstyle with the possible exception of the Medic, which is a pay-only job.  It feels like no care at all was put into this department to come up with a unique ‘feel’ for the jobs, or there was an imperative to stretch the game to too many different jobs at the start.  The most clear activity jobs (Miner, Blacksmith and Chef) are really 2 activities spread across 3 jobs, which is fine.  The rest are all fixed to a single activity or minigame and either aren’t explained how they progress, or do so poorly.  The pet trainer job feels tacked on just to add another job, since the pet itself progresses each skill, there are no benefits to the pet trainer class other than unlocking new tricks which will come naturally on the pet’s own progression, and the only way you can improve it is to stand still and do the same 5 second thing a couple hundred times.  Which brings me to:
• Pets – Pets seem like a last-minute push for launch to justify more revenue, not a genuine offering.  While they put a lot of work into the varied animations, colours, and tricks – the pets are personality-less, incentive-less and fall short of their Nintendogs rhetoric.  It feels like a preview of a feature yet-to-come.
• No Danger and Conflict – I understand that this is a kids game, but making a world with combat and no conflict, or danger feels like a hollow offering.  The only creature to give me any form of fear/trouble was the Grave Lord, but I still beat it on my first try at level 12.  Part of the explorer Bartle Type is wanting to ‘explore’ if you can beat something you couldn’t beat before, or the possibility of some hidden secret or treasure for beating a really difficult or out-of-the-way enemy.  Wandering around I often found ‘named’ / ‘silver’ / ‘elite’ enemies marked as really dangerous.  I fought them.  I beat them easily.  I got nothing for doing so (not even an achievement or a ticket or anything).
• No zoning or grouping for quests - It’s amazing how hard it is to find a specific quest, or any and all quests nearby within a list of 30 quests across 8 or so pages, none of which show their ‘more’ to tell you what it’s about without clicking on each.  Whenever I zoned into a new area, I made it a habit of clicking the ‘right arrow’ to change the current tracking quest through all 30 quests just to see which quests were close by.  Only a bug that caused the update of the compass rose / path tracking to fail sometimes hindered even that.  In short, the game was meant to be played one quest at a time in a linear way.
• Lot of missing info  – Buffs and debuffs don’t show what they do or a duration.  Abilities don’t show how much energy they cost anywhere.  In general, a lot of information appears to be missing.  I understand keeping stuff hidden to not confuse the casual user – the ‘more’ for the quests does this elegantly.  The biggest problem:  a microtrans item that increases xp rate (stars) didn’t mention how long the effect lasted for.  I bought it as an experiment – the buff didn’t show either.  It disappeared after exactly one hour.  If I thought that it was going to last longer (as many other XP rate micro items do in other games), since I paid money, I would be very upset about this.
• Very segmented interface - The use of very large icons and text everywhere coupled with an exclusive use of paging systems and a lot of information hiding via slidein/out panels lead to a highly segmented interface.  In general, information isn’t really ‘presented’ in most of the panels, it is sort of dispersed all around and you have to find it.  The job switch dialog doesn’t fit all the jobs on one page, and doesn’t seem to have any sort of logical sort order, so you just have to page back and forth until you find what you’re looking for.  The collections interface has no way of sifting finished collections from unfinished or identifying easy the collections that are nearly complete, nor are they grouped by proximity or concept: one warp stone collection might be on page 4 and the other one page 13.  Most collections don’t tell you what they give you for completing them, but even that information is only accessible by clicking on each in turn.  The quest interface I already talked about above suffers from the same malady.  Items have the right start: two view modes, one which is a simple list form so I can directly see the item power levels – but there still is no way of sorting by this.  With plans for a console release of this game, sifting through pages of things that must each be selected / hovered to find any info will become less acceptable.
• COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT OF A WEB MMO – The website is mostly nonfunctional or empty, with the exceptions being what feels like an incomplete leaderboard and a profile page that tells you a couple numbers.  The portrait feature seems unimplemented or broken, the friend system is typically broken, none of the flash-based minigames can be played standalone on the web, and there aren’t regular updates of feeds of interesting information – just a news feed and a lagged / broken friend info feed.  In short, there is little to no reason for me to go to the website other than the fact that it is the only way to start the client.  Other than the social ‘marketing’ side (they have two twitter feeds and a facebook page), they also seem to be missing the point of the social web / mmo – there are no widgets to show off my character on other sites of mine, no apps to kill time or aid viral acquisition, no user involvement or contests through the social media, no GM rum events, no way of accessing my profile data / xml / feed rss.

Advice

Here is some advice for the Free Realms team.  I should preface these with stating that I am not the game’s target audience – and then follow that by saying that you are probably underestimating your target audience.

• Explain the Maker’s scores more predominantly – I have tried to figure out what they do by trial and error and still can’t quite get it
• Show leaderboard high score, best of friends, personal best on the start and end of each mini game – right now I have no frame of reference for my score
• Fix the missing info, more mouseovers, effects, more buttons
• Provide an ‘advanced’ interface mode that shows smaller icons and fits more on a page and has sort/filter options or just add the sort/filter options to the existing interface.
• Provide a ‘quests near me’ display, ‘track nearest quest’ button or group quests by zone interface in the quest list
• Repeatable quests’ (!) should be a different color, at least after the second time it’s presented – I often want to feel like I’ve completed everything in an area, and it’s difficult to tell since I have no way of knowing if I’ve already completed the quest before.
• Quest type hint in accept would be nice (not easy to tell between instace quests or the 4 types of search/race quests until you’ve actually accepted the quest)
• The youtube video recorder is a great idea but it doesn’t seem well implemented (the files are giant and yet highly compressed / unwatchable once they’ve been double compressed by youtube)
• In and out of game Contests
• Ways of playing minigames outside of the game client (Facebook app maybe?)
• Make some highly difficult areas or enemies (like possibly  unbeatable by a solo player even with microtrans items) – hey guys… remember The Sleeper?
• Look into implementing voice chat for friends to be able to communicate while weaving in and out of solo minigames.
• A way of customizing colours of items for a fee (or maybe a future job tradeskill)
• Residences – I know you’re planning this at some point
• Mounts – I know you’re planning this too
• As you raise the level cap and add new abilities to classes, refactor some of the existing ones so they have a little more variety or flavour
• Add another stat, damage type, or effect (perhaps only at higher level) to allow combat to be more than a mashfest – currently there aren’t many ‘choices’ in combat other than pulling tactics and perhaps item usage.
• More achievements / ticket bonuses!  (combat skill-based achievements maybe?)

Lastly, Congrats on 2million!  Keep up the good work and look forward to more updates!

‘One of those uninspired “cow in the moonlight” walks.’

• Kiseido – A great starting place for all things Go
• The KGS Tutorial Page – A great explanation of the rules with interactive problems (requires Java)
• The KGS Homepage – For downloading of the client for playing Go online and offline
• Sensei’s Library – The wiki for Go knowledge
• The Guided Tours – The best place to start on Sensei’s Library
• Go Problems – For many daily interactive Go Problems to practice
• Go Teaching Ladder – A living archive of recorded games from KGS, commentated by more advanced players
• Wikipedia Page on Go

I’m ‘oizys’ on KGS though I’m not often online.  Hit me up on AIM, twitter, or here if you want a teaching game or a serious game.