Supple Think: July 2007

It’s “Casting a shadow upon my floor”

by alzabo

Posted on Saturday, July 28, 2007
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I have a PS3.

Ok, it’s not mine; it belongs to my brother. But it sits next to my Wii in our living room, hooked up to the HDtv, looming over the diminutive Wii like the Monolith from Auther C. Clarke’s famous novel. The conversations I’ve had with people about having it in my house are far more fun and interesting than actually playing it. Hold on, lets get the clichés out of the way. . .

Boring PS3 Facts:

1: FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS (or soon to be) FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS
2: (lol) BROWN
3: The best game for it is Folding@Home

It’s hard to describe the response people have when they see the George Forman Grill in my living room. My knee jerk response that it belongs to my brother doesn’t quell their ire, I usually have to explain the situation that led to the Grills arrival. My brother got it for $250 and some old car stereo equipment. Even with that explanation, most people still curl their lips and roll their eyes, I can see it written on their faces: “What a rip-off.”

I often liken Sony’s Folly to "The Raven" of Poe.

“But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.' “

I honestly think this every time I see that damned thing sitting next to my TV gathering dust. A proverbial albatross around my neck, placed there for some past mistake that I cannot remember. . .

I’ll level with you, I’ve lost interest in writing this. I care so little about the PS3 that I can’t even be bothered to keep making fun of it.

“. . . And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” I fear the PS3's curse shall be lifted -nevermore.

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"Drilling is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

by K1

Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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"The driller becomes all the poorer the more depth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The driller becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Drilling produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the driller as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." - Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)

"The exchange value of a commodity estimated in blocks is called its price. Fresh air therefore is only a special name for the price of drilling-power, and is usually called the price of drilling; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood."

"The existence of a class which possess nothing but the ability to drill is a necessary presupposition of capital.

It is only the dominion of past, accumulated, materialized drilling over immediate living drilling that stamps the accumulated drilling with the character of capital."

"To say that "the driller has an interest in the rapid growth of air", means only this: that the more speedily the driller augments the fresh air of the capitalist, the larger will be the blocks which fall to him, the greater will be the number of drillers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon fresh air be increased."

"The colored blocks, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “air”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Arcade Mode. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." Article Permalink

The Speed Runner's School of Game Design -- Preamble

by Zen

Posted on Monday, July 23, 2007
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I've been into speed runs for a while now. There's a lot to say about speed runs in general, but for me the best cross-section of the history and awesomeness of the practice is found when you look at the Metroid series.

Every Metroid game included a timer that changed the ending of the game depending on how quickly you beat it. This was actually pretty common practice in the NES days, but Metroid stands out because not only did it tell you what your time was after the credits rolled, but if you were extra speedy the reward was irresistible to my peurile fourth-grade mind: Samus would take off her power suit and reveal her hotness in her underwear. This was honestly better than any porn.

At any rate, speed running of Metroid really took off, especially with Super Metroid. The game was one of the most elegantly made in history, with a world that opened up as possibilities in an intricate environment rather than arbitrary barriers to linear progress. Even better than this, though, is that the developers included a few secret abilities that the player could use to bypass a lot of the game's "intended" progression. These abilities were intuitive yet difficult, and were not at all obvious; most players got through the game without learning them. On top of this, people learned to abuse the physics of the game in useful and consistent ways. These abuses seemed so natural they felt like intended moves, and terms like "spike jumping" and "mockballing" became part of the lexicon not just for speed runners but fans of the game in general.

When the series went 3D with Metroid Prime, it remained surprisingly easy to speed run. While most or all of the exploits seemed clearly unintended, the way players manipulated physics in the game still felt like it was "playing fair" with the game engine. Speed runs were just as interesting as ever, and continue to this day.

However, with the game's sequel the party ended. The developers of Metroid Prime 2 actually built the game deliberately so that sequence breaking, the way speed runners bypass chunks of the game to beat it in impressively minimalistic ways, would be impossible. When a game allows players to accidentally fall out of the sequence and get stuck or confused, it makes sense for the developers to program around it, but in this case it was simply that their vision of the game was completely linear. It was like a direct affront to the speed running community. The challenge was met, and the game was broken just the same, but it wasn't the same as before.

The main difference was that while Super Metroid and Metroid Prime placed certain areas legitimately out of reach to the player, it was possible to get there through arcane and inventive means without the intended ability or item. In Metroid Prime 2, they put invisible walls in place to make it completely impossible for anybody to get there who "wasn't supposed to". This sort of thing is now common practice, and raises the question: how much should game designers build their games with speed running in mind?

Older games were packed with glitches and abusable oversights that made speed running interesting, much like with the first Metroid. Nowadays, though, the idea of a game's design being elegantly open is generally forgotten, and games are "open" in very controlled ways. Developers don't seem to realize that a game can be conducive to speed running without being glitchy. When discussion comes up of whether a game is going to be interesting for speed runs, recent games are usually wrapped in duct tape, holding the player on set paths through brute force. This is usually to keep the game from being confusingly open, but it seems like developers have forgotten how to make a game open while still making objectives clear and progress rewarding.

Not every game has to be open and nonlinear, but this phenomenon got me thinking about how all games could benefit from being made with speed runs in mind, and as someone who's watched basically every speed run ever made I've got a few observations about how design decisions that get in the way of speed running can get in the way of the game's fun even in an ordinary play context.
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Beating the hell out of your ‘stick.

by alzabo

Posted on Sunday, July 22, 2007
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I love arcade games.

When I was younger and living in Japan I would spend an absurd amount of time in the game centers near my High School in Kobe playing vs. fighting and puzzle games. My obsession with arcade games only grew upon returning to Seattle. I bought arcade sticks for home and used them until they were as floppy as a dead dog’s dick and the buttons were less responsive than a Neo cab you’d find in a coin laundry. 100% accuracy is essential for playing well and I would often suffer from sudden flashes of internal rage when my combos would not come out on my busted ‘sticks or at an arcade. I wanted to buy a Japanese Arcade stick made by Hori, but they were expensive and hard to come by locally at that time, so I decided to build one myself. 5 years ago I created an awesome replica of a Sega Astro City control panel, it has Sanwa controls and a comfortable layout that allows for hours of combos and parries. It still works flawlessly today and has travelled to many tournaments with me.

It turns out that my decision of years ago to build my own arcade stick instead of buying a Japanese Hori ‘stick was an excellent decision. Today I attempted to repair my friend Tweak’s two ‘sticks, the first one was a Hori, a 6-button Soul Caliber 2 stick from 2003. It had an obvious patina of love, as the finish had been rubbed off a good portion of the controller and the cord was knotted internally from being wrapped around the controllers over 1000 times over the last 4+ years. The problem was an intermittent connection problem that was caused by a knotted cord that had partially exposed wiring. Once inside the controller, I was horrified. The PCB for the ‘stick was hard soldered to the buttons, making removal of parts or service of the controller physically impossible; despite having buttons and parts that were designed to be replaced by arcade operators in a matter of minutes . Unfortunately, the stick’s cord was even more poorly manufactured, upon vivisection of the cord I discovered that the individual wires were not bundles of 22 or 24 gauge wire, but 6 strands of hair thin copper wrapped around a central nylon strand. I wasted two hours of my life attempting to resurrect the stick, there simply wasn’t enough copper there to make a good contact with butt-end connectors and soldering was impossible because of the nylon. Fuck you Hori, I hope you all die in a fire. Hopefully that fire will be at your company. Maybe it’ll happen when you’re all in an all night meeting discussing what shitty design to put on your next derivative fighting game tie-in controller.

The other stick Tweak brought for repair was the Street Fighter Anniversary Stick. I have dumped on this ‘stick publicly before, decrying it’s lack of accuracy and crappy knock-off buttons (Happ Controls they are not). Tweak complained of not being able to “shoto-sweep”. So I opened the stick up expecting something even worse than what I’d seen inside the Hori, I girded myself for a sea of parts connected to a rats next of daisy chained wiring floating in epoxy or maybe an aborted human fetus. Instead, a sensible layout with connectors that were exactly the same as the inside of a JAMMA cabinet greeted me. There were clearly marked and exposed button’s that are replaceable with high quality brand name parts, buttons connected to PCB’s by 22 gauge wire and spade connectors instead of solder. It was exactly like the inside of my Neo Geo MVS cabinet! Fixing his broken roundhouse button was as easy as plugging in a spade connector that had worked itself loose over the last several years.

In the end, today’s experience humbled me. I permanently lost respect for Hori and gained a lot of respect for who ever made the SF anniversary stick (even if it’s buttons are crappy, they can be swapped by even the most spastic person). I need to get my hands on one, if only so I can use the cool tiny PCB for building a more visually impressive and accurate arcade stick.

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Starcraft Vs Street Fighter, Part one: What Starcraft did right

by K1

Posted on Monday, July 16, 2007
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Traveling to and from our semi-weekly excursion to panda (express), we were able to get going a good amount of topical discussion about games, which leads me to decree panda as the official discussion food of Supple Think. By the way, in case you haven't noticed, this blog is about games. Panda.

One thing that came as a bit of a surprising epiphany to me was how the Starcraft online infrastructure and pro gaming scene and it's successes were kind of like a parallel alternate reality to the current state of competitive fighting games.

When you think about Starcraft and all the popularity it has, it's pretty surreal: nationally televised tournaments with huge crowds, cheering on guys in crazy jumpsuits with their crazy Korean hair, with prize pools exceeding $100,000, Fallout Boy playing in the background and Pringles logos everywhere. Oh, what an enlightened age we live in. For the game to get to that point though, you have to look back into what the game did right. Well for one, it's totally freakin' sweet. Have you played it? So good. Hmm, I guess it would be better to articulate why it's such a good game, you know, writing and all. Oh hey, I'll even bold it just to drive the point that these fancy words show how much I know about game design, here we go:

For a game to be a good competitive tournament game, it needs to have engaging, in-depth gameplay at all levels of skill, from casual to the highest levels of competition, and it should be deep enough for the game to have a long lasting longevity. It should have a way for its players to gage themselves in how much they've learned and grown as a player, and have hints and guides as to how they can become better players. It should be accessible, both in the sense that the primary limiting factor in one player being better than another is their skill and training, and in the sense that opponents and venues should be easily available and not at all difficult to find.

So that sounds like Starcraft, right? It also sounds like Street Fighter, Magic: The Gathering, or even Chess for that matter. It's clear that these are all excellent games, so there's probably a little more to what really sets Starcraft apart.

Is it Battle.net? I say yes, especially considering the innovation it was at the time, but also in what it represents in terms of the company's commitment to the game. That right there, Blizzard's proactive commitment to the Starcraft community, is a key component to Starcraft's huge success. Not only does Blizzard maintain battle.net without monthly fees from its users, they provided a new map of the week for years, kept an online centralized ladder and player ranking system, and provided constant gameplay balance and feature improvement patches for YEARS after Starcraft and its expansion were released, and again without any need for users to pay for any of it.

Now, how fair is it really, to compare an online PC real-time strategy game to (mostly) offline arcade and console fighting games? I think it is perfectly fair, because it's not just the logistics of how a game is supported, it's also about the commitment and faith the developer/distributor has in its game and the game's player base. Starcraft put all the pieces together to become the phenomenon it is today: the brilliance of battle.net (auto-patching, ladder, player rankings, fostering player communities), and the faith that Blizzard had in it's own game to keep on supporting it long, long after the game was considered "old" and most other companies would have moved on.

So what did fighting games do wrong? I'll go over what I know, at least, in part two. Article Permalink

Welcome to Supple Think

by K1

Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007

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