Writing and Marketing

Tag: Video Games

Endless Space 2

I’ve never had too much skill at the more complicated sort of strategy games. I’ve not had much luck with Paradox games, for examples. However, I’ve been having far too much of my time sucked up by Endless Space 2, so I figure I should give it a positive review.

Space-based 4X Games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) are one of the oldest genres of video game out there, or rather a subgenre that has a very well-defined formula. One would think that 4X games would have figured out all possible permutations of this approach, but they remain popular and ever evolving.

I’d tried Stellaris but found it a bit much and a little unintuitive. Endless Space 2 has a lot of options, don’t get me wrong. However, it’s presented in such an intuitive manner that I was able to figure out half of it on my own. The other half I quickly learned through trial and error. The UI is very clear, which helps you understand why you made the mistakes you did.

Presentation is a theme with the game, which boasts truly gorgeous artwork, graphics and music. Often the difference between one game and the next is just the polish, and Endless Space 2 sparkles and shines in all aspects. The only blotch I can see is a notoriously bad outsourced DLC, but that’s easily simply skipped.

The game features a variety of colourful and interesting spacefaring Empires to choose from, each with very unique visual motifs and playstyles. And that’s not even getting started on all the more minor races you run into. I won’t spoil them all as part of the fun is discovering all the love and attention that went into every corner of the game.

If you like science fiction, strategy and lovely art, I’d highly recommend it.

Psychonauts

Trailers have been out for a while now for Psychonauts 2, the latest project by cult game creator Tim Schaefer and Double Fine Studios.  This would seem like a good time to reflect back on the first Psychonauts, often described as one of the “best games no one played”, and the subject of one of the most remarkable resurrections in the history of video games.

But first, some background. Tim Schaefer started in the video game industry working at LucasArts, being involved with projects as far back as the Monkey Island series, on which LucasArts built its brand of adventure games. In 1995 he got to work on his own game with Full Throttle, and in 1998 took the adventure game genre into 3D with Grim Fandango.  Schaefer had always been known for his quirky sense of humour and style, but Grim Fandango was perhaps his best display of his work so far. Mixing Aztec Mythology with Film Noir seems like a gimmick, but Grim Fandango is, quite frankly, a masterpiece. The secret was, apart from being hilarious and visually arresting, Grim Fandango was filled with pure heart, with a cast of memorable and engaging characters. The writing was on point, which is one reason I became interested in that game when it popped onto my radar.

Grim Fandango, unfortunately, was not going to be the herald for a new age of 3D adventures – instead it was to serve as something of a swan song to the adventure game genre. As the world moved into the third dimension, tastes were changing, and point-and-click story-based games seemed antiquated.

This was the environment that Tim Schaefer found himself in as he started to create Psychonauts, and, to the game’s detriment, it often does feel like the makers were entering into the world of 3D platforming with a gun pointed at their heads. At best I can say that the platforming involved is serviceable. The game also features a heavy emphasis on collecting items, similar in a way to games made by Rare such as Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. However, in Psychonauts, a lot of this collecting is admittedly more infuriating than engaging – especially since there are plot critical items that require you to collect the game’s currency, without forewarning you that hoarding this cash will be vital later on. Indeed, you need to have been forewarned, or suffered through this problem in a first playthrough, to understand that you need to take special steps to find secretive piles of cash to most adequately prepare for the late game. Certain other in game collectibles are rendered in transparent two dimensions, making collecting them a headache as they often blend into the background, or it becomes unclear as to which angle you should be trying to move at them from.

The platforming itself can be hit or miss. Most infamously, the final level, dubbed “The Meat Circus”, had to be toned down in later Steam updates due to being incredibly frustrating. Even with the changes, the level still combines an awkward blend of unfair design choices with strangely limp boss battles.

The thing is, many people, myself included, absolutely forgive all of these flaws, so engaging is Psychonauts in regards to characters and writing. The artistic design of Psychonauts is delightful off kilter, with the misshapen characters resembling the cast of a colourful cartoon rendered in three dimensions. This abstract approach allowed for the flexibility needed for the incredible variety in level design found in Psychonauts. The story of the game concerns Raz, a psychically gifted child who sneaks into a summer camp for similarly psychic children and works to prove his skill. While doing his best to demonstrate and hone his skills, Raz also needs to deal with a growing conspiracy that is slowly emerging at the seemingly innocuous summer camp.

The absolutely unique part about Psychonauts is that since it is about a psychic, a majority of levels take place not in the camp itself, but within the minds of various characters Raz encounters. While these first jaunts into minds are for the purpose of learning how to use other psychic abilities, Raz soon has to leap into the psyches of damaged or brainwashed characters in order to help them overcome their traumas. This is genius partially because it makes the characters a major part of the gameplay, and partially because it allows for a fantastic array of level designs. Raz navigates dreamscapes that resemble Japanese kaiju movies, kitschy black velvet paintings and a warped view of suburbia through the eyes of a conspiracy theorist – to name just a few. Every mind is filled with a further “micro-cast” of bizarre characters, creating a very extensive list of NPCs for Raz to interact with. Even the characters who you may interact with for only a very short time are highly memorable, with off-beat writing and excellent voice acting leaving a lasting impression.

The cartoonish humour is also notable for the dark and often serious undercurrents to it. The game can be very goofy, by design, but it still is a game about mental trauma, and doesn’t lack for emotion and pathos. Raz himself is motivated by a difficult relationship with his father, one he has twisted within his own mind to be something even worse than in reality. The game walks a thin line but never really ends up feeling meanspirited – all the trauma is treated seriously, no matter how silly it might be, and Raz is willing to leap in to help anyone. The ending of the game has Raz helping the main villain overcome his damaged childhood and making him give up his plans for world domination. Instead of creating a tonal clash, the silly and the dark play off each other well, creating an atmosphere that allows for constant surprise and delight.

Despite being lauded for all these reasons at its release, Psychonauts was a significant failure – the game had a tumultuous history after being dropped by Microsoft and nearly not getting released. Upon its launch it sold abysmally, killing off publisher Majesco. However, it was lauded critically, and developed a steady cult following. The game’s lasting appeal finally paid off when it was put into digital distribution on Steam, becoming a sleeper hit years after it was initially released in 2005. This has led to enough new demand to warrant a sequel, which has also had a long road to being finished, with production being announced in 2015.

In the end, I’d give Psychonauts a thorough recommendation, though you may want to look up some tips beforehand. While gameplay didn’t always end up fully polished, the writing has the same spirit of humour and sweetness that worked so well in earlier adventure games, and in many ways, with off the wall solutions to obstacles, Psychonauts carries their DNA. If you want something unique and strange, it’s worth it. And with the Steam version, it’s much easier to get a copy of it that has some of the worst bugs and issues ironed out. Hopefully the traditions that Psychonauts set over a decade ago will be repeated and improved upon in the sequel.

The Risk of “Games as Service”

The service model is an interesting one, to be sure, and holds a wealth of promise for revenue, and flexibility in game design. The service model allows for monetary value to be extracted over time, rather than in unreliable bursts around release of main products and expansions of those products. Exactly how this is done varies. Previously, games as services preferred the subscription model, seen in popular games such as World of Warcraft and  EVE: Online, with a payment given per month. Current models often do something similar, but attempt to offer more flexibility in payment, in exchange for the possibility of greater payment. This can involve slowly releasing more content in downloadable packages that are purchased individually, or, increasingly, simply having digital ‘goods’ that exist within the game cost additional money. Sometimes these models are mixed, like in the case of a “season pass”, where a one-time amount of money is paid with the promise that later on the purchaser will receive those “digital goods” as the season unfolds. All of these are in general known as “microtransactions” – often the total microtransactions a game will offer over its lifespan will add up to be more, sometimes significantly more, than the original game. Microtransactions are not without controversy, however. Many support them under the idea that by dividing up the cost of the game, players have more power to pick and choose what content they get, allowing them to not purchase a piece of content they feel would not suit them. On the other hand, many game studios take the model of “having their cake and eating it” releasing the game at a full price as well as offering microtransactions at the same time, citing extra costs, despite the cheapening of technology[1]. Some controversy was raised when it was revealed that certain companies were creating finished games, then purposefully removing content to sell it back to players separately for more money, rather than developing this content over time.

All the above is a preamble to the fact that I believe that the games as a service model is an inherently risky one, and Canadian developers for large ‘game service’ companies should keep an eye out for possible shifts in the market. There are a few reasons this is risky. Most dramatically, there may be legal difficulties as far as microtransactions go. The idea of microtransactions was already somewhat controversial due to, critics argued, often mimicking the tactics used by casinos to extract the maximum amount of money from customers who are particularly prone to gambling addiction behaviours, known in the industry as “whales”, with players with more self-control being known as “minnows”[1]. This set up became even more controversial (if possible) when companies began to sell microtransactions in the form of “lootboxes” – where the content provided was unknown and randomized, thus encouraging players prone to gambling to continue to input money in the hope of getting a good result. The straw that broke the camel’s back was likely the inclusion of the lootbox system in the new Star Wars and FIFA soccer games, franchises traditionally popular among children.[2] Already some American states and European nations are making movements towards classifying this kind of monetization as actual gambling, and regulating it as such.[3] Many companies have decided to fight these decisions, and how it players out remains to be seen, though Europe at least is not exactly known for its good feelings towards large American tech companies. Just how much of an impact these kinds of regulations can have remains to be seen – but many of the companies at the heart of the controversy, like Star Wars and FIFA licence holder EA, have significant investment in Canada. If they are forced to make an immediate change to their monetary model, there may be significant disruption in the Canadian market. So far, EA has indicated it wants to fight for its rights to operate as a gambling company without being referred to as so, which may indicate a lack of plan if its investment in this strategy does not pay off.[4]

However, there are less obvious threats in the move towards microtransactions and the live service model. The problem, as mentioned in discussions in class, is that of “service saturation”. Essentially, those interested in the entertainment business tend to seriously look at the growth of video streaming services and question as to what the limit of subscriptions is, as more companies such as Disney throw their hats into the ring. Any given customer will only feel that a certain amount of these services is returning any real worth to them – there is only so much time and money. However, companies in the interactive media seem highly confident that their live service games will not suffer from undue competition, even though certain companies are, indeed, competing with themselves. EA once again makes a perfect example here, where their much lauded launch of Anthem had its thunder stolen by their other product, Apex Legends. Many of the live service games are becoming almost like second jobs, with the most value extracted by the player through daily play. As more and more companies move to this model, players have to increasingly decide which of these services are worth their time and money – and with multiple companies making multiple such services, they are going to reach their limit much quicker. These companies often word the service model as something that will save them from the unpredictability of the “blockbuster to blockbuster” model, where games must gamble on their opening months. However, there is no indication that the service model is any more reliable. Ubisoft, for example, had a great success with one of its Tom Clancy licenced service titles, Rainbow Six: Siege, which started slow but eventually won over a large fanbase. On the other hand, another Tom Clancy service, The Division, was considered much less successful, and instead of continuing, a sequel was made as a second chance to “get it right”.

The thing is, this has all happened in the gaming industry before. The gaming industry is nothing if not a trend chaser, especially in the larger company space. The most similar experience it has gone through previously was the “Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game” craze, based around games where a larger number of players could be active on a single “game world” at once. Running servers is expensive, of course, so the companies operating these games would often ask for a subscription fee per month. Blizzard Entertainment gained a smash hit in the genre with their “World of Warcraft” MMORPG, and a multitude of companies scrambled to copy its success. Barring a few niche examples, they mostly failed. The fact of the matter was that players often already had World of Warcraft, or their differentiated niche of choice. It was not until companies started to offer another a differentiated model (normally microtransactions) that people could be lured away from their subscription games or tempted to play others. In the end, engaging in industry rushes turns into competitions to seize time, attention and money from a demographic increasingly beset by options. These services will have to be significantly different from each other in order to grab attention – but the trend is going towards homogenization, rather than towards differentiation of offerings. Companies copy other companies, with EA’s Anthem release seeming very similar to the earlier Destiny 2 release by Activision[1]. Ubisoft ran into this problem with themselves with the aforementioned Division and Rainbow Six, two tactical military services based on the works of Tom Clancy.

[1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/10/anthem-preview/

[1] https://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-beating-heart-of-a-free-to-play-game/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/02/13/ea-activision-and-others-should-be-afraid-of-hawaiis-new-loot-box-bills/

[3] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-declares-loot-boxes-gambling-and-therefore-illegal

[4] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/09/ea-defies-belgian-loot-box-decision-setting-up-potential-gambling-lawsuit/

[1] https://gamerant.com/video-game-prices-breakdown-514/

Canada Within the Digital Media World

It would  be disingenuous to treat the Canadian video game industry as one that began in splendid isolation, only later being taken over by foreign invaders. In many cases, the rise of the Canadian video game industry in the 90s and early 00’s hinged on the support of these companies entering the Canadian Market. Being from British Columbia, I am well aware of the importance that Electronic Arts plays in the economy of Burnaby, for example. However, many Canadian based developers who are now part of larger American companies did start off as successful companies in their own right; Relic, Radical and especially Bioware are all companies that were successful on their own terms before eventually going for the American merger. By the same token, many studios that are subsidiary to foreign companies have begun to develop their own identities – the Canadian offices of global video game giants EA, Rockstar, Microsoft, Capcom and Ubisoft, to name a few, have all earned themselves recognition for the products they make independently of their parent corporations[1] – if sadly perhaps not enough recognition outside of those who closely follow the industry and keep aware of who actually makes their games.

Mergers with global publishers made sense during these eras. Mostly American (or in some cases Japanese or French), these companies had the edge in the start of the industry, with greater resources and the first mover advantage. Many Canadian studios had talented developers who felt it was in their best interest to get global partners for distribution, as they often struggled to balance costs with sales. On the other hand, there was a healthy innovation community within Canada, particularly in Montreal, that these foreign companies wanted to tap. This lead to the situation of today, where there are essentially two “levels” of the Canadian video game industry – the entrenched large studios that are immersed within the global framework, and the rising tide of independent studios, normally making smaller scale ‘indie’ or mobile games. The assumption has been that the money has been, and will be, within these larger studios. The smaller studios are supported not because they are seen as potentially lucrative, but rather because it is believed that they could not support themselves in the business of creativity without help[2]. They are the small Canadian independent films to the American Hollywood of the global game studios. And yet, the Canadian video game industry is the third largest in the world, behind America and Japan – but it is being treated, both internally and externally, as if it is a bit player in terms of actual cultural impact. Canadian workers make the games, but their foreign producers reap not only the financial rewards, but also the cultural coinage.

This situation parallels many other concerns in other art forms as to the relationship between the American and Canadian cultural landscapes – that being so similar, while also smaller to America, Canada is doomed to be lost in the shadow of its neighbour. This is especially prevalent in discussions about the film industry, but Canada is not nearly the world influencer in film as it is in interactive media. This is something strange, given the wealth of talent outlined above – and also only true if a very “zoomed out” look at the games industry is taken. Indeed, looking at the “video game market” as a whole is something of a fallacy. The consumer markets for games as competitive activities, for games as hobbies and for games as art, while often overlapping, are distinct entities in their own right, and I feel it is an oft repeated mistake to try and view the games industry as a single entity, in the same way, at least in the same way as the film industry. So too, the industry should be seen as occupying different levels, including a growing “indie” game market – traditionally, the “indie” game market referred to those games made for the smallest budgets and teams, but increasingly the divide is more clear in the industry with the “AAA” space and the indie market both growing to encompass most discussion. The importance of this is that the indie game market is where Canada earns much of its respect, with titles such as Don’t Starve, Cuphead and the Long Dark being well received.

[1] https://www.windowscentral.com/here-are-top-canadian-video-game-companies

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/the-evolution-of-video-games-in-canada-1.914304

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