Drawing Parallels

I spent ten years in community and school-based theatre. During my time as an active thespian, and particulraly with my last director, I was exposed to the “I Want” statement. The basic premise is that with each line spoken, the character the actor is portraying wants something. For example, in the Stargate SG-1 episode “Singularity” when Dr. Jackson says to Teal’c “What happens when you dial your own phone?” his  “I Want” statement reads “I want to explain to Teal’c why Carter and O’Niell are having trouble dialing out of the Stargate, and why we can’t reach them. “I Want” statements help actors understand their character’s thought process, and how to deliver the line. They justify each and every line, instead of simply being words coming out of your mouth. Hit the jump to see how this all links to video games.

Empire: Total War Critique

The Total War series, brought to you by The Creative Assembly, is a series of real-time strategy games, each strongly rooted in a single historical setting per game. Before Empire, The Creative Assembly released Shogun, Rome, Medieval, and Medieval II. The games never progressed past the mid-1600’s, and finally TCA developed Empire: Total War, to take place after 1700. In a noted book on military tactics and strategy, Of the Art of the War (not to be confused with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War), the author makes a distinction between Strategy (Wars), general movement, population control, and Tactics (Battles), moving individual units within the situation of a single conflict. The Empire: Total War is a two-sided coin, both sides represent one of these combat types. One side is the turn-based War strategy, positioning units by territory, building out facilities and tech trees within those territories, managing the taxation and happiness of a territory’s population, and utilizing agents for and against other nations. The second side to Total War is the real-time unit tactics within a given battle, positioning lines of infantry, maneuvering groups of cavalry, and using cannons to slaughter.

Suspension of Disbelief

I’ve found a common thread running through the major complaints about a lot of TV shows these days, and not just the ones grounded in science fiction. I hear, all too often, “that’s not possible” or “that’s not how that works” or “you can’t do that”. This ends up being a fundamental problem with a person’s ability to enjoy the show.

For example, a lot of complaints about shows like House or Bones stem from their lack of fidelity to medical and forensic practices. To which I say “bollocks, these aren’t pieces of education, they’re pieces of entertainment. They’ll break the rules of reality to enhance the enjoyment of the piece.” More fantastical examples, like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica come to mind, and many of these vein of shows simply create their own rules of the universe that sound vaguely like our own. Again,these shows come under fire for breaking their OWN laws of the universe. People, the writers MAKE the rules of the universe, they are GOD in their universe. They make the rules. Roll with it (unless of course it’s a complete reversal). Some of the shows based in the modern day take the most of this flak, Dollhouse and Fringe come to mind. Again, these shows are based around psuedoscientific concepts that could never possibly happen in our time. Let it go, have fun.

So, ultimately, all I’m asking is for people to sit back, and enjoy the show. Stop being so critical of the science, it’s entertainment.

Things I Learned at GDC2009 (Abridged)

A summary of the notes I took while I was at GDC attending various seminars and round tables. Not very organized, but do enjoy.

For the full version, go to my post on the Ringling Game Design Club blog.

Duplication of Efforts

I do so adore You Tube. Honestly and truly. It has eliminated the need for my parents to email me 5 meg WMVs, and can instead link me to the video on You Tube (wait… they still do that). I can watch concerts, and see innane videos of teenagers doing dangerous things with diet coke and mentos. I can even pull just about any clip from any episode of Family Guy ever.

My problem with You Tube, however, is that incredible REDUNDANCY of videos posted. I stumble across an interview of Dwayne Johnson at the UK Premier of Race to Witch Mountain, and in the “related videos” section, I saw the exact same content at least 10 times over. So when the statisicians look at the Internet and see that we’ve transferred over 270 Exabytes, even though global data storage capacity is 230 Exabytes, I know where all that excess is coming from. Well, part of it. I’d just like to see a little more efficiency in video uploads, tidy up around the place every once in a while, don’t get the pipes clogged. Is that so much to ask?

A Redaction

I’d like to redact an earlier post regarding my formerly ill opinion of Powerpoint Slideshows in general. After seeing many well-executed slideshow presentations at the Game Developers Conference last week my faith has been restored in the power and utility of slideshow presentations.

Thank you to all the people who spoke with well-utilized slideshows, you have restored my faith.

-Ozz

OnLive

I’ve seen a lot of buzz around about this new service, OnLive. The basic premise is to move all the heavy-duty processing of playing games from a person’s home computer, to a server, and stream the output of that processing to a client’s woefully underpowered PC. They’re taking the concept o cloud computing to a new level. In principle I like this, giving high-end gaming to the masses… in principle.

My major concerns with this, however, range from the standard “What if the server goes down?” “what happens to my saved game information if the service fails?” to something even more technical. If this service becomes incredibly popular, what happens to the general bandwidth use o the Internet? Can everyone make the bandwidth requirements to effectively utilize this service? Will people now have to put up a sack of cash for a faster and more powerful internet connection?

We’ll see where it goes. I like the idea, but I’m worried the tech might not be up to spec.

RE: YouTube’s New Layout

Personally, I think it’s brilliant. I spend so much time streaming video off the internet, and just now started turning my monitor upside down. The change in quality is ASTOUNDING, absolutely incredible. I highly encourage everyone to turn their monitors upside down when streaming video, you’ll thank me for turning you on to such a wonderful concept.

Quick GDC Notes

So, I went to the Game Developers Conference last week, and I had the time of my life. Yes, I did a little bit of fanboying, but I spent most of my time in sessions and seminars. I could never put a price on such a high concentration of knowledge over such a short period of time.

Some quick notes for next year:

• Wear. Walking. Shoes.
• Get swag early, most of the apparel sells out by Thursday, and the Stuff sells out even faster.
• Get to the Convention Center early, I missed some opportunities to network because I was walking into Moscone a half hour before the first session started.
• Wear. Walking. Shoes.
• Bring a power strip to the hotel. Normally, I bring one if I’m going to a new place and I know I’ll be making heavy use of electronics. I thought to myself “this seems like a relatively modern hotel, it should have enough power outlets for four people.” No, it did not.
• You can’t switch out of networking mode until you walk in your home door. I was on the shuttle to the airport, and met someone who went to the conference, including three people on my flight out of San Francisco.
• Thursday is Kilt Day at GDC. I will celebrate next year.

I had some great food while I was there, of course. Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Italian. Such a refreshing change from the wide variety of stuff I cook for myself.

I’ll have a more full report by Monday.

-Ozz

Lord of the Rings: Conquest Critique

Lord of the Rings: Conquest Critique

Since I was 11 years old I was a fan of the Lord of the Rings books. The world fascinated, and inspired me. I have never, however, played a Lord of the Rings game that filled me with that same kind of fascination and inspiration. Lord of the Rings: Conquest is, sadly, no exception.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest was developed by Pandemic LA, of Star Wars: Battlefront fame. According to source close to the development team, the original intent was to not make a Battlefront clone. Instead the development team set out to create a game similar in principle, thought significantly different from the previous game. As is often the case in the industry, the original intent of the game, and the final product vastly differ. Unfortunately, Conquest ends off feeling like nothing more than a Lord of the Rings skin over the traditional Battlefront formula, all while stepping backward from what made the base game fun.