I have a son who’s nearing 3 years of age and doesn’t talk yet. No – don’t worry, this won’t be a daddyblog, I’m just putting down a basepoint here. He’s facing the challenge of picking up 2 languages at once, and to make matters more interesting, the two languages sound really similar, yet are completely different beasts. Does he communicate, then? Oh hell yes. He understands bloody everything told, and in a way, he talks back with clearly understandable feedback towards us. I had no idea kids could reach such levels of empathy and living-along and whatever terms you might want to coin here. Body language is on such textbook-case level it’s almost bordering on eerie. There’s clearly a communicative level of emotions and empathic level of emotions, and they mesh together perfectly. So, while his brain is figuring out the very basics concepts of spoken communication, he’s developed an interim way of communication, and it just now opened my eyes to something quite curious. It might be yet another textbook example for some people, but I’m not educated on that field. My cherry just got popped on this field, an hour or so ago.

The basic eye-opening moment required an additional “ooh..” moment stemming from thinking up an example from polar opposite. I know people who are highly educated and use their brain on levels of analytical depth that’s alien to me, and on daily basis, they use vocabulary no “ordinary” person has to ever face. They are also somewhat detached on personal level of communication. Everything is questioned and referred and quoted for wise words of masters of relevant field. Everything said is important, not mundane. To me, something feels missing when I listen to them.

Maybe lack of words does not mean lack of communicative abilities, it just drives the communication through emotional and empathic pathways. Body language. Slightest twitch of some hidden muscle somewhere which is registered by an ever-observant lizard brain hidden under our clever superbrain capable of analyzing things down to quantum levels.

Using and knowing too many words leads to reduced level of empathy and that curious “automatic” communication. Go even further with words that are inherently “too sophisticated” and “out of my league” and you end up emotionally distant from the ones who are listening to you. You become an alien most people can’t connect with anymore.

Now, games.

First, games that draw you in and make you ooh and aah on the vague feeling of intimacy of the world itself. ICO and Shadow of Colossus come to mind as first examples. They connect with you, which means they’re able to communicate with you even though they are not something you’d talk and converse with. Yet, they manage to deliver the very feeling of soul of the gameworld in a way you accept with open arms, with your defenses down. They pull your walls down, fullstop. Does this remind you of other such games? Which ones are they? Do they have lots of dialogue, or do they have a distinct lack of it? ICO has minimal dialogue, and even then it’s fictional language..

Second, games that feel deeply interesting and urges you to dig deeper. Clear notion of a traditional story, lots of little details, carefully constructed world and everything connects with everything else. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl comes to mind. Half-Life. Witcher. Bioshock. Fallout 1 through 3. Tinkering with things, objective-based gameplay with new dialogue, diary notes and events presented along the way. They tell you things through words coming out of NPC mouth, or by text. Possibly lots of it. Depth of the world is achieved by presenting you with a barrage of information your brain begins to click through, creating coherent forms and shapes that define the world. World is couraged to observed as realistic, open for literal interpretation. Very, very much like reading a book, except you have to fight and solve your way through the pages of it. No “automatic” flow as such.

So, there’s two different ways of communicating to the player what world he or she is in, and how he or she should take it in. They’re very probably better kept separate, and not mixed up. Further from the middlegrounds, better the impact. Mixing them up might tickle up an irrecoverable “that’s not right, dunno why but it’s just not right.” -reaction one can’t justify even if asked. It’s the automatic bits of our brain that dictate how we feel about things, and games should always feel just right with no apparent reason. Apparent reasons come through analytical thinking, feeling of just right comes from clicking with the game, and that’s empathy.

“It was a grizzly scene, possibly a murder-suicide pact – I don’t know what the fuck happened”

A very descriptive quote. It creates vague notions of how it might have happened, what did happen and leaves us curious, and shocked. Evoking empathy and mystery. Very standard event in entertainment industry, yet handled in so many different ways. Most of the time, it emotionally impacts us when we are passive in front of television and let it all wash over us, allowing ourselves to be smothered with scripted-to-detail flow of it.

How on earth do you communicate the emotional magnitudes of such event to a player who sits comfortable on a sofa with a piece of knobby plastic in his hands? Throw blood on screen? Meh. Five-eyed tentacle monsters the size of skyscrapers? Bah. Basic videogame tropes, and they have lost much of their impact. Only games that manage to pull a good left hook on the player are those with something new and plenty of borrowed. Dunno about blue, we really don’t have to go to color grading here.

Do you do it by player character narrative? A voice of the character you’re playing? But it doesn’t sound like you! Are you audience or player character or something in between? It’s a detachment from gameplay in itself. Basic narrative voice? Basic, works, but has to be played beforehand really really well so it won’t become one of those annoying gameplay breaks. You know them, I know you do. Most of the time we get to see a fancy CG clip with near-Hollywood production values. How does that work, then?

“Ah damn you, stupid cutscene,” *clickclickclick* “AND WHY CAN’T I SKIP THE DAMNED arfg meh” *foreheadslap* and off you go, distracting yourself by clicking around a random pornsite in teh intarwebs, ruining your life forever, cocaine, etc.

Developers poured sweat, blood, money, tears, long hours, lost marriages, haggard faces and years worth of therapy sessions to those cutscene / narrative break moments and what do you do? You throw a tantrum, you selfish prick. Have you no heart or sensibility to those starving and homeless? No, wait — it’s not your fault! My apologies. I should have added narrative design to the list of good sacrificial traits us developers have, but then I wouldn’t be writing yet another blogpost that stinks of a bitter lemon a very fat and unpleasant tourist has sat on for hours.

Exhibit B:

Developer conclave, the masters with tallest chairlegs, sits silent under a pendulum axe that swings nigh-on their worried brows.

Lords of their realm are not pleased with their latest offering, the majestic tour de force through worlds imagined by their masterminds, and they have summoned a wrath on their homes. A Mandatum carved in black obelisk has been tossed amids the conclave, and lest they follow it, they will be banished from their realm.

Their gods are gods of coins, and coins they need to create worlds, and worlds they need to create to summon more coins for their gods. Vicious circles surround them, and the Mandatum has words that glow red:

“Sequel must be made, and Sequel must replenish the faith of all who follows us; Sequel will set us up as lords of imagination, and this world will follow us to those we create. Sequel must have thriceworth explosions, ten sacks more guns, and in hearts, it must taste bitter and sorrowful, yet caring and full of springtime hope”

Conclave has banished the scary-speaking and shallow designers, for they were aliens to them. They have new ones, young and snappy and filled to brim with new ideas, yet new ideas worry conclave, who already shit worry-shaped bricks out beneath their lizardly tails.

“How do you, young and snappy and filled to brim with ideas designer minds, would approach this quest? How, shall we reform our words, will you fulfill this bloody Mandatum we have received from the angry skies?”

The new designers, their hats full of their head, with their heads too big for their hats, reply:

“We shall rethink teh whole thought of moving pictures, teh very soundness of it. We will bring you a new prince of emotions, of new pedigree of teh empathy itself!”

The conclave, as if made of one mind and of one body, buries its many heads in its colourless hands, and shits some new bricks.

Designers scurry amidst the trained monkeys, peering over their hairy and scrawny shoulders, asking this and that. They are like mosquitos, sucking a drop of ideas from there, another from elsewhere, and so it goes. They look at the world monkeys are creating, on deeper level than mere head-lines and key-words and idea-boards.  They see the ethereal and surreal and unreal character take his babysteps, reaching out to his buddies amidst the ravages of war, in the torn land. They are empathic creatures, and they are moved.

“Something is here. Something wicked has cometh. Be still, my heart! What is it made of?”
“It is sad. No, it is hopeful, but has not found resolution yet. It is a story in itself. How do we tell teh story with no words like teh words we are written in?”

They confer. They look back at old moving pictures, and see how moving and marvellous they are. Yet, they were not of the same world, in the end – they were of another. Detached.

How to attach them? Something new is needed. Did they not have the world already, a beautiful world that interacts with you, a world that touches you back and reacts when you shoot at it? Their eyes opened up, and they sang a song.

Hi-ho, world is not of heartless  personae-less AI-animatronics;

Hi-ho, world creates the stories it weaves it leaves for us;

The AI-animatronics teh monkeys have bred are teh answer, thus;

[chorus] Me so horny, ahunka-hunka-hunka!

Wait, did I just wander towards context-sensitive AI and world and .. oh, drat. No, forget all that for now. I won’t go there, partly because I still like to entertain the idea of presenting you dear readers with gameplay blogread breaks that possibly annoy you to no end, and if you’re a game developer, you probably deserve it anyways.

So. Cutscenes?

On my part 1 of this probably neverending quest against wrongful cross-use of different storytelling media, I was rather annoyed at how media for passive audience gets treated in media for audience that dictates action and is hardly ever passive. Did I say cutscenes are inherently bad by nature if they are in games? Hell no. They can carry the story forwards, and if they are long and interesting enough, they do turn the player around into passive audience mode. It’s just the introduction and preparation and other cunning juggling of mindgames that gets forgotten, or gets acknowledged with “.. but it’s C priority, look at the schedule and just forget it already.”

Let’s juggle with some ideas. Let’s follow that white C priority rabbit down the hole nobody ever goes.

Traditionally, as mentioned before, cutscenes get slapped in where the transition from place / gameplay event / level to another occurs. It’s introductionary clip, a thematic booster or a plot forwarding device. Nothing wrong with that! It’s external stimulus within the game, as it comes automatically and with no player interaction required. One inherent problem might lay in the natural fact that it’s made to match the game world. It looks the same, it has the same colors and same art direction, even if it has higher production values and better looks than the game itself.

Scenario 1: Marshall Blueberry Got The Twitches

Player trots down an alleyway after clearing it free of giant cockroach combatant drones. It narrows down ahead, but we can see it opens up to a T junction alley between city blocks ahead. Right as the player is about to step to that crossing alley,

something loud and yellow and black and blue screams past his eyes, blurry and totally out of this world. Viewpoint suddenly shoots away, world on screen turns into caricature comic book representation of Your Mind On Cockroach Drugs, with more angles and corners than there can logically be, with colors dancing and the cockroach recon convoy passing our players location, who now is seen curled up in fetal position. We are watching him from high up, as if in astral experience. Loud cacophony fills our ears, wild vivid colors only drugged up demo coders can come up with fill our eyes, and with a quietness that comes so fast it sounds like a bang,

everything returns normal. Black frame or two on screen, regular colors of the world fill our view, everything is 90 degrees tilted. Your character is still on the ground, and you SO did not expect that moment. Oh, right, there was some gas tossed your way during the last skirmish..

Yet, cutscene it was. Thematic, maybe – or if the convoy had some wild caricatures of doomsday machines being transported, it could have been a plot forwarder as well. With good luck, it left the player eager to move along and figure out (allowed to figure out, really) what those drugged up, psychedelic hallucinations actually meant. And most importantly, it threw the player off the safe stand, reinvigorating him. It gave him something fresh to chew. It’s a game, you can go ahead and run with scissors at hand!

It doesn’t have to be the same static looking world you live in, you bitter monkeys.

Scenario 2: TVTropes edition!

Player trots down a grey alleyway after clearing it free .. you know. The same basic premise, right? Just as our hero is about to put his foot into the alleyway, we snag the viewpoint with a reflex snap towards right, where a BLOODY HUGE MASSIVE CRAB TANK AIEE–
(cue War Bonds Are Good For You -jingle and video reminder)
Hello folks, have you been feeling downwards lately? Have you not considered – or have you considered, but never dared to try the radio-activital water enhancer? With pellets of pure uranium carefully hand-casted into cement base, you only dip our Radium-O into your water tank and it will be filled with reinvigorating, life-energy boosting ATOMS OF THE FUTURE for you to drink! Available now from Lol-Mart!
(cue War Bonds Are Good For You -jingle and video reminder. “Returning to live action now!”)
–we snag the viewpoint with a reflex snap towards right, where a BLOODY HUGE MASSIVE CRAB TANK AIEE is shooting past your eyes and oh shit that’s big, those are hardened orbital bunker buster nukes on that platform, and oh wow I’ll just wait this one out, I know I’m gonna run into these baddies again–

And so on. Player is very, very used to all kinds of media. He watches television and movies. Television more than movies. He probably has watched television more than he has played games. He bloody well grew up with it. It was his nanny when he was a toddler. We took a step out of the box only to find old familiar things in new context, but somehow, as it was all so very familiar, it didn’t annoy .. And it was part of that world! Atomic age, with gigantic cockroaches with nukes that go to orbit. Cutscene itself did not serve gameplay function, other than slip a bookmark into the players memory about what he’s done and seen before. He’ll remember that moment, and that’s depth in itself, in a world filled with cliches seen bazillion times.

So maybe it wasn’t exactly out of the box. Maybe it was more like beating and kicking the box into different shape, but it doesn’t matter. Only as long as you can see the box, tiptoe around it, have some whacks at it and generally see ways to make things that go into the box and out again, you should be fine.

- If it’s a radically different cutscene, make it radically fast change because it’s not in balance with regular gameworld.

- If it looks like the ordinary gameworld, present it in much slower fashion as it’s heavily balanced. As mentioned, unbalanced you can whack into the weirdwoods as hard as you can, and it’ll be better for it.

Scenario 3: Daily grind

Our hero is about to embark on the crossing alley, and world pauses for split second. You hear DVD whirring to life. Screen comes back alive, but from a different viewpoint. There’s a big-ass tank-like monster with chipped armour, viewed from almost ground level to emphasize the big guns and bolts and stuff covering it. Lots of shiny bits, flares, DOF tricks with camera that shakes and rattles. A tank tread rolls menacingly towards the camera, which cuts to another angle right when the heavy metal descends on it. We’re shown the full size of convoy now, from aerial perspective. Sound is muffled, a cloud drifts under the camera to further emphasize scale. It’s all very movie-looking.
Cut back to player viewpoint, with player control. If he walks now, he’ll die under the machines. So he waits, watching. Pre-scripted convoy doesn’t care about him, its only function is to hint at future developments of this world war against bloody big insects with guns.

Sound familiar? I won’t even go there anymore, lest this blog gets banned from teh intarwebs for all the cursing.

Traditionally we suffer from too much safety, stay too sheltered and make familiar decisions. Things end up too “financially sound” and “marketable” and “it’s what others do so it’s what players want”. There’s no need to make the whole game artistically different and clever and celshaded whatnot with “unique art direction” with “extravagantly brave colours”. Just include the salt that goes on top of the same goo others are cooking. Little pinch is enough to remind people of the proper flavors.

There’s so much more to be said, regarding generally descriptive moments inserted in the middle of gameplay et cetera, but this is already bordering on too long post. I do smell the part 3 coming in nearish future, possibly with the notion of fading the cutscenes transparent to the player, or something. Until then, do leave comments if you have anything to add or argue.

That funny man-animal who uses my character sheets as insulation between soda and desk, Alvan, hit some excellent points on storytelling and then casually threw the awfully hot ball to me.

Cutscenes, he said. Why on earth do games rely on cutscenes, he asked. Bloody good question, and while I have no literal facts as such, I can only speculate and rant – but since speculation and rant makes better entertainment than mere facts, nobody loses. Also, the subject matter itself is based on things that are difficult to quantify unless you’re Dr. Phil, and even then you might get into arguments.

Exhibit A:

You make a game, say, FPS action wonderfest of sort. It’s basically based on you shooting things. A conclave is formed, features written into stone, weapons of war decided and armies constructed on little patches of paper. But — what now! someone is suddenly startled, points to the sky and calls out – “It’s well advisable to know why you’re shooting!”. You present this groundbreaking epiphany to the masters. From behind the curtains of management a loud “Oh, a backstory is needed, then!” sounds and echoes down the hallways. “A world with a reason, with personae our hero can feel at ease with!”

Klaxons wail, loudspeakers shout go-words! Trained monkeys scurry to their tasks, attending meetings and pushing tasklists and making schedules, everyone with a glowing sense of importance inside their hot and bothered hearts. We are creators of worlds, rulers of immersion, masters of gameplay!

Amidst the scurrying and goal-oriented teamwork, sudden plea is heard behind numerous concept art sketches and level design ideaboards: “How do we progress the story, how do we, pray, tell the player what happened, what his character feels beneath his forged iron carapace, what will happen now? Please, masters, tell us!”

Masters flinch, designers are summoned, and hidden under the shadows of their hoods they confer.

-This iss the best way. Trusst me. A movie within the game. Many moviess. Moving picturres carry worrds. We giev our art to massters of moving picturss and they do us moviess. We put moviess between levelss! Where loadingbarr goes!

Masters stand proud, a path has been found and it is golden, and it will bring them numerous coins of gold.

Designers go on about their business, designing core gameplay, weapon balancing, character perks, progress curves, everything their soon-to-be laid golden egg is made of.  A writer is hired, a professional master of words and worlds. He waves his hand over the vistas they have created and behold, a world is born! He writes it down, and he sees it is all good. He collects his coins and goes home to breed and procrastinate some more.

The golden words are spread out to all who make the game.

“This is our world, this is how it must feel like! It is .. Quite blue!”

Trained monkeys nod and add some blue, anxious to see what their world will be like in the moving pictures that bring their gameworld to life. What will it tell them? They concentrate on getting the best mesh topology for their characters, most cleverly blended IK animations and making sure there are no otherworldly invisible collision objects laying around. Reset XForm buttons are pressed, with sweat on forehead and no hands that dare swipe it off. Production is at full blast, and everything depends on this game. It must be the new benchmark in its genre! Hands clench in fists, manhours crunched.

“You have to have the best shaders! You have to tighten up graphics! Wait – that looks good, give it a name! Now, have our swiftest courier to take it to our marketing department!”

The big wheel rolls on.

Movies arrive from the golden lands far across the distant waters. Everyone is gathered in the big hall adorned with fantastical mechanic devices that illuminate the great wall with moving images and fill their eager ears with sound. The movies are good. They watch them all – twentyone of them – at one go. It is a beautiful, war-torn story of lost cause hovering above a brotherhood of men, who only wish to be brothers regardless of color or stature – to bear the burden with your mates in their chipped armours.

Lights flicker back, audience is thrown onto their feet, cheering and applauding. Their Game now has a story, a movie within their play, and movies tell stories! It all makes sense and it all feels so very good.

Game becomes gold, and is shipped to far-flung countries and coins change hands.

Reviews come in.

“Graphics are ace, and DOF and Shaders and Lens Flares are amazing feats of technology! Other than those and nice cutscenes, it’s a basic shooter. 6/10″

Wail, gnashing of teeth. Does not the acclaimed critics understand their words, their story? Are they blind?

No, they are not. You are blind, you wacky bats. You just made a point of having neatly structured levels, clever AI and gave places the same names as your precious and expensive cutscenes have. How did you treat the cutscenes? Are they movies of their own? Connected to gameplay moments player just experienced? Probably somewhat, but it is my humblest of opinions that cutscenes serve no storytelling value from the games point of view if A) the gameplay itself is not treated as part of the same story arc present in cutscenes, and B) the player experience is forgotten.

“No, the experience is there! We made sure the gun recoils realistically and walls topple majestically! Our end bosses are bigger than the end of universe! Surely the player experiences it all!”

You silly clown. Did you prepare the player for the cutscene? Did you stop and think about players role in game, and in cutscene? Yes, his role in cutscene. You strip his soul with gunplay, drive him mental with interactivity, make his eyes sore from effects and his mind dented with immersion, and then there’s AI that’s more natural than your grandmother and WHACKBANG you snatch it all from his hands. You force him into invalid cripple with no limbs. Passive audience, away from all that action and control and hoohaa. Did you consider the gameplay levels as storyarcs? Did you build up the tension, introduce twists, give the player a resolution, a wind-down moment, did you design the gameplay cool-off to force him to bloody stop and relax, leaning back on his seat with his hands off the goddamn gamepad so you can present him a pre-chewed bit of storytelling, fit for the state you just left him in?

No, of course you did not, you monkey.

Cutscenes suffer from their own history. When they were new and snazzy, they were selling points themselves. Remember Diablo 2? I remember more people talking fervently about the CG intro than the game itself, before it was on the shelves.

These days, awesome graphics are  a baselevel expectation. You don’t sell the game with cutscenes alone. Yes, people want stories and immersion. Yes, cutscenes can work in conjunction with the progressing game world, but more often than not, they are more or less slapped between levels with some shared graphical assets to tie them into the level you just played or will play anysecondnow. Your AI buddies that couldn’t find their way out of doorway suddenly become lipsynched and motion captured marvels that put Hollywood to shame.

Now that I got to the whole damn point, I’ll take a cool break and write more tomorrow when I’m awake again. How does it feel, to get cut off just when it got interesting? Hoping for a comfortable arc here? A coherently constructed story? Hahaha.

Just a quick addendum or example or derivate or something to this. How is audio used in Left 4 Dead?

The video game Left 4 Dead is begging to be mentioned when one talks about creative ways of using diegetic and extra-diegetic sound in games. The survivor side of the game plays with high reliance to soundscapes, sound cues and music. So much in fact that you could say beyond the very basics of survival, everything in the game boils down to listening to what’s happening in the game.

L4D uses both character level and player level audio to support the game play. The very basic soundscape of L4D is made of player level music (well, more like long synth chords, most prominent at start of levels, to open up the level) and character level ambiance sounds of the environment like crows and sounds of thunder. This creates a very strong base mood for the game.

The second way sound happens is through the sounds of the player characters. First of all, they produce the sounds that you’d expect – when you shoot a shotgun, you hear a shotgun sound. When you move around muck, you hear squishy footstep sounds. But beyond these, the characters comment on the environment actively, even without the player telling them to. When they get attacked, they scream for help. When they notice one of them is low on health, they tell the other character to heal up, etc. This is fully happening on the character level. The player can intrude on the character level and command his character to say some of the pre-scripted things, for example to call out that there is a boomer ahead, around the corner even if the character is unaware of it. There is a player level audio bit to some of the character actions as well – getting attacked by a special infected will cause a dramatic song (again, mostly synth chords) to boom out from the loudspeakers. Also, worth mentioning that the characters’ dialogue sometimes dips into the metadiegetic level of story-within-a-story when they reveal things of their past or when their comments tell the story of the infection, as well as telling the player what the character-level story is (in the “We have to follow these tracks to an abandoned military base” style). (thanks Kham for pointing that last one out)

One of the ways people grief when playing Left 4 Dead is to make their character repeat some stupid line of their repertoire like “PILLS HERE” every second or so, causing the other players lose their ability to keep the character level separate from the player level, falling into disbelief of the whole character level of the game in the progress. Not to mention it’s annoying as hell when someone keeps shouting “PILLS HERE” in your ear.

The third way, of course, is the other actors of the game besides the player characters. The helicopter flies above you and use a megaphone to tell you to head to Mercy Hospital. A gas station explodes with a thundering roar. Infected people whimper and moan. And then there are the special infected. Each of them having a distinct sound following them. The smoker coughs, the boomer gurgles, the hunter snarls and then screams when he’s moving. The witch cries and sobs, and the tank roars. And when you hear the multitude of gnarls a horde of normal infected generate, you know there’s a lot of nasty heading your way. These are all character level sounds. When you turn your head in the first person mode, you notice the sounds move left to right and right to left, allowing you to pinpoint a boomer hiding behind the corner a long time before you see it, or hear the witch getting closer as her sobs grow louder. And spotting the specials before they are upon you is really the only way to survive on the higher difficulty levels, when things get tough in the game. On top of those, the witches, tanks and hordes also have a player-level musical theme, that emphasizes the mood of the situation – with the witch it’s a surreal melody that gets piano hits when the witch is almost agitated and turns into a panicing cacophony when she’s out to get you. With the horde, you get a couple of creepy chords a moment before the screeching starts and the masses start flowing. And with the tank, it’s a very doom-inspiring track that makes the player scared enough when the big bad things is coming.

There is a fourth level of audio in the game, if you happen to get into a team that is doing it. The game supports voice communication between the players via microphones. As any conversation between real people, this sometimes is just silly chatter to lighten up the mood. Sometimes it’s completely unrelated to the game, and sometimes it’s a repetition or extrapolation of something the characters could have communicated on their level. For example, a player might say “a hunter got me” to the microphone, even if the audio cues of the character level in the game could have given the same information to the other players (the characters shouting “A hunter got Francis” and Francis screaming “Get it off me”). Thus, there is a player level communication going on about the game as well as the communication that happens via the detour of the character level. And then there is singing. There always needs to be singing to the microphone. I have no idea why.

Sound is half of the experience in movies, they say. Probably even more in other media, such as music video. Or radio, if it still exists – haven’t checked.

Sound is also a key player in how we experience our surroundings, draw context from and get important clues we don’t even realize. Like today, when I was happily exhausting the contents of my bladder the way guys do – standing up – and the blasted light went out. There I was, hands full of a tap that wasn’t going to turn off after all the coffee, and I couldn’t see anything. Blind as a bat. Turns out you can aim by sound rather well, and like bats do,  easily differentiate between different materials by the way they sound when .. Well, eventually, I fumbled my way back into light, in a fresh state of mind of having seen – or heard – things in new light again. Learning is a wonderful thing, and often keeps cleaning ladies getting butter on their bread.  Also, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s the key difference between the car I’m borrowing and my own (..at shop. Thank you, France), as I keep feeling curiously lost with the current car. After my wild mild water park adventure, I realized it’s the sound – too quiet and what I hear is too differently connected to the overall tactile feel, and I’m subconsciously expecting the connections from my own car. All wacko.

All this, in turn, made me wonder about audio backgrounds in games. Half-Life series are excellent in this regard concerning atmosphere, and just about everything from DICE concerning sheer intensity and psychological pressure. If you have a buddy with Battlefield: Bad Company, get him playing it and listen. That’s not a game you hear anymore, if you stop looking at it.

I’d probably get massive (and good) creeps if I was playing some Fringeish/XFilesish/Madsciencegonebad RPG with a soundtrack that took cues from Half-Life – lots of ambient creaks, rattles, scurrying sounds, everything that makes you jumpy of the next corner. How’s about it, Alvan? Ever thought of ditching music in favour of “ambient surroundings” with music coming in only at few key points where it serves intensity and emphasis, and even then on top of said soundscape, not replacing it?

In the bright future, tabletop RPG sessions are built hardcore, with a sound mixer guy who knows GM by heart and adjusts, mixes and changes the aural soundscape constantly .. Be the player group walking from thicker woods to a husky meadow, or surprise ambush by 500ft squirrels that murder light itself — the sound is always there, describing things and changes in local surroundings with language you never realize listening. I said it first.

Lately, thanks to a three-week long sick leave, my “human interaction” has pretty much been virtual. That in practice means MSN/IRC, Facebook, Left 4 Dead and City of Heroes. I also logged on to Second Life after a pause to collect my weekly free money.

On IRC, I “hang out” on about a dozen channels these days. There’s one that’s actually quite active, but sadly, the activity is something that doesn’t really concern my life a lot anymore – it’s the channel for my old main subject’s student group. Then there’s a “nowplaying” channel, where music I listen to gets pasted on, in real time. Pretty much like last.fm does. Sadly, haven’t found a spotify-mIRC plugin, so not much of the music I listen to these days actually gets pasted there. And it’s very rarely someone listens to something there that grabs my attention. Then there are a couple of “legacy” channels – channels that used to be active, but have gone into some form of a hibernation in the past years. I join the channels, and hope someone would talk about something, but the best they can do really is paste a couple of links and not really comment on anything. Some of the channels I’m on are only about organizing games these days. RPGs or Online Games, depending on the mood and time. But there is nothing really interesting to chat about there either. And on the rest of the channels, people hang out because it would be impolite to leave the channel as the two or three other people you know would take offense. Some of these channels are silly to the point that the people on the channel won’t talk to you on the channel, but start a private conversation, killing any hope of some conversation happening on-channel.

In case it doesn’t show, I’m thinking of quitting IRC.

On MSN the situation is actually much better – While there’s only a handful of people I talk on it, the conversations are much better. Even if there’s not a community feel to the conversations, they at least seem to exsist. But there are a lot of dead contacts there as well. I don’t even know why I have half of the contacts I do, anymore.

Facebook, as Larsa put it the other day, is something that you thought you would hate, but is actually quite great when you got into it. For me, it’s not that important, except for the few people I keep touch in through it. There are of course downsides to every coin, but mostly it’s a very “cute” system of staying in touch with people without actually staying in touch. Or to internet-stalk your ex-girlfriends, if you’re into that sort of thing. The only thing that really bothers me about it is the careless way some people seem to regard their own personal information. Somehow there’s been an abundance of memes going round that, when seen by wrong people, can be used for malice. Like provide the reader with information like “your mother’s maiden name”, something that is used quite commonly as a user verification question.

City of Heroes has seen some turmoil in the past few weeks – the EU offices are being shut down and moved to the US, something that might cause horrors to the EU players. But that’s something that only time will tell. Meanwhile, a small group of people that I know only through the game provide me with lots of great humor and good cheer. The group of us (all many-year veterans of the game) do a couple of hours of teaming every now and then and catch on on the latest gossip. Stories of what has happened to one another (who has gotten married, who has been in a drunken bar fight this time) and to those that we haven’t seen online in a while (but someone in the group happens to know in real life). Compared to the other communication channels, the fact that I haven’t met any of the people I play these days with in real life makes it quite unique compared to the others.

Which leads to Left 4 Dead, another game I’ve been playing actively. The main difference between CoH and L4D crowds for me is the fact that there is voice chat in the game. The people I play with vary from those I know in real life to those I’ve never met. But not having to rely on keyboard to expres yourself, and the game being very action-oriented, changes the communication quite a bit – most of the things said are very much related to the gameplay, which leads to text that’s very, very shallow – I have no idea what’s going on in the other players’ lives, whereas in CoH someone might curse his girlfriend’s cat or other small things that are in no way relevant to the game, but are quite intimate.

I also mentioned Second Life. I’ve been a user for so long that they’re actually paying me to log in every week, but I’ve never really “got” the environment. I guess it’s all those flying obscenities that man can imagine that keep me distant from it, but I must admit, there are some good things here and there – “specs of light” as one might say. One is a garden decor store a friend of mine runs there – a shop full of very “normal” things for sale. It’s almost unnerving to see someone sell a well-crafted rock when you’re mostly used to seeing … well, unnerving things. And another thing I’m going to have to buff is the Second Life Shakespeare Company, that try to provide some meaning to the damn place.

None of these really beat human interaction on a “real” level. A phonecall from a friend usually means a lot more than him pasteing you a link of people walking across a road.

In preparation for the upcoming Dollhouse, I watched Eliza Dushku’s previous series, Tru Calling from DVD and as usual, some thoughts arose.

For those who don’t know what Tru Calling is about or don’t have the muscle strength to click on the link about, the show’s sort-of-premise is “Cute girl relives days, to prevent nice people who died and asked her for help not to die.” Funnily, that’s fact only maybe in the pilot. What makes the show very watchable in comparison to other series with clear-cut formulas is the fact that the formula is there only to be broken. It is specifically indicated in a few episodes that when things happen the “Cute girl relives days, to prevent nice people who died and asked her for help not to die” way, they happen off-screen. The main character relives days and saves people, mostly on Mondays and Thursdays. But when we get to see it on screen, there is some variation to the pattern.

It might be something small like “the guy who needs saving isn’t a good guy” or “it’s not about saving just one person” or “It’s about saving not only the person, but your own life also”. The writers are very aware of the core concept and know how it can be explored. And what they were planning doing with it was quite awesome as well. Shame it never got explored better. But in a world where even the best shows tend to get stale because they don’t have the guts to explore the show’s concept more often, Tru Calling was really a nice exception.

And yes, not to disapoint the eager, I will go on to a gaming tangent on this one as well. Puzzle games are really great at this. You are given a set of tools from the start. You start by solving the simplest possible obstacle with the one tool you’ll end up using most. And level by level you are presented with new problems you can solve using those tools. Usually the end levels need you to wrap your head around every concept you’ve learned and possibly understand how certain basic rules you thought existed in the beginning are broken. It’s a shame that games outside the puzzle genre rarely use this to their advantage. Or it might be so that once you include that pattern to your game, the game gets classed as a Puzzle game. Portal being a good example of the latter.

Would be interesting to see this pattern expand to other games. In MMOs, this can be seen when people do things like “Let’s try to complete this instance with sub-optimal group setup” and in some games, people are giving themselves restrictions on what they can do so they have challenges. Typical way games seem to raise the bar these days is just increase number of enemies or make you smash things with bigger reaction times. But very rarely you end up with a situation where you find yourself constantly exploring the awesome things you actually can do with the resources you could have used from the beginning.

This piece started out as an innocent “oh haha ur so rite fringe is sooo good lol” -comment on Alvans earlier post, right before it went on a binge and never returned home. It went out the window and came back as regarding videogames (surprise!) and how they somehow manage to fumble it all and be very videogamey, or in some cases, draw you in and leave you bleeding for more. Mostly, what makes them tick the way they do – for me, anyways.  And how this text will recklessly stumble right through the confines of whatever it’s supposed to be wedged between, oh, it’ll never apologize.

Notice I’m not treating all games under the same ideology, just those heavy on story (or depicting a notion of one, even if there’s none).

Context! There’s this thing called .. well, that. If I perform an action in a depicted world and it doesn’t reflect there, I get annoyed, miffed and irritated to bits. Example: You have this wonderfully graphic character you’ve paid attention to, guided him/her through the world that has presented him/her with new skills and whatnot. Then you walk against a wall and there it goes, stupid mindless videogame avatar doing a videogame walkcycle, standstill and unaware of the bloody brickwall scrubbing his face.

All of a sudden, your character is reduced into a representation of player navigation mistake. Ta-ta, it was nice seeing you, miss Believability and mister Immersion. Sorry about the stale wine. Oh, and if I change the world, I expect the change to be permanent and propagate with ripple effects, depending on how it affects other things / NPCs / whatnot connected with it in the gameworld.

Immersion in faked out world built using stiff-at-best mechanics is a bitch to implement. Mainly it becomes a swamp that has no bottom – as you hone in some important detail that colors the world that much more, it creates a dependency or requirement to do another to support it, and so forth. You’ll start to realize how much you miss on the real world when you begin breaking things to their elements. Just a moment in your own time, even if you’re not doing a thing. It’s insanely complex, and you can’t simulate it.

You just have to try your best to fool the player to think he’s immersed, when you’re just really drawing his attention away from flaws.

Walk, walk, walk, nothing out of ordinary, walk to a staircase and if your eyes are keen and lively, you might notice your character grab the handrail casually .. Or strum his fingers against the radiator in a room if he’s close enough. Glance at something, being natural. Something surprising happens – look! Nothing to act by, just birds taking to flight. Tilt your head slightly at a sound of distant rock falling. Little things your character should be doing. What you’d do. Context-aware.

Okay, bit thin cookie-cutter examples considering the depth of subject matter. However, it’s still about the context and how living and breathing the world around you seems. Everything should happen within context of the world and surroundings, and there should be parts of the world represented to the player even if they’re not important, or even required. As you, the player, observe the world, the world should observe you back, unashamedly. Giving you context when you don’t expect.

Think of the very moment your character is in. What’s happening in the world that doesn’t give a flying wack about your character, a pebble beneath the bedrock trying to make a change? What sounds does that world make? What defines the local space around him at that very moment? What does it look like? How it all bounces off of him? What gets sucked in? What’s the string that connects YOU there?

Say. How about a character that reacts to the player? Not a blind representation of your actions, but more like companion. Did you guide him to a thorny bush? Is he pissed off? Wait, what, did he just throw a rock up in your direction and shout obscenities?! Well, at least he still follows your mouse clicks. Maaaybe.. If you promise to behave. You find yourself in some strange semi-conversation, just without voice. Oh, you do get commented on, so tread carefully. Especially since it’s multiplayer. Other players companion character trots by, laughs with your char about the idiotic failure you, the player did just some time ago. Semi-public shame! But you’re so immersed in the living commentary of your actions in the world that you just stare, bewildered. Then you hear the other character taunt affectionally his player, as if he was a puppydog who just wasn’t housetrained yet. Characters momentarily take over and become the players themselves, just from outside perspective. It all becomes delightfully confusing, wondrous and profoundly different.

Would that create the necessary string between the player and world? Or something completely different? Could it be possible to build some multilayered insanitychains on tabletop RPG using this idea? I expect Alvan to wear some feathers and run to the woods to meditate on this.

Now, why the hell did I focus on character issues only? Why not hints of context and surroundings in Web2.0 where you, the social browser, need to know there are other people present, not just minute “lol my cat hiccupd” lines and some bling on screen? It’s not just games. How to drive advertisements deeper into people now that they’re so accustomed to them? Hell, these days marketing guys need to come up with  bloody big campaigns to launch a new advertisements. Jeeves, could you let me know at what point do we need to start figuring out how to sell ourselves the idea of real world around us? You know, with people becoming so superficial, shallow and black/white? What has made them so distant from it?

Meh.