"I have a great idea for a game." This is, of course, the kind of statement that makes a professional snarf his drink. ("Snarf (v.): To choke on in such away as to emit a substance or liquid through the nostrils.") Any game designer worth his salt has a cabinet full of great ideas for games that will never be published, for a variety of reasons. Ideas are not the problem; finding commercial ones, and having the skills to take them to professional, polished production, are the issues.

I think I will write up a number of mine here--the ones I think are interesting but impractical for some reason. Not all at once, but periodically, as the fancy takes me.

GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR is a game that simulates the entire Eastern Front of the Second World War in a fast-action, arcadish game playable in 20 minutes or less.

Most of the screen is filled with a map of the Eastern Front, from Karelia to the Caucasus, and from Berlin to somewhat east of Moscow and Stalingrad. No units are represented on screen; instead, a long snaking line indicates the current front. When the game begins, the front line coincides with the international borders (post the division of Poland) between the Soviet Union and Germany and its puppet states (including Finland, of course).

Perpendicular to the front line are army group boundaries; on the German side, this distinguishes between Army Groups North, Center, and South, with a separate Army Group for the Finnish front. On the Soviet side, it divides what they called Fronts. You can choose to play either the Nazi or Soviet sides, but it is a two-player game (and the Nazi side is probably more interesting to play, since you are initially on the offensive).

The Nazis win by taking Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad; the Soviets win by taking Berlin.

The force composition of an army group may be checked by clicking in the area that comprises the army group; this tells you how many infantrymen, artillery pieces, tanks, and combat aircraft exist in that army group, along with their morale and current orders. Current orders may be changed with a number of simple gestures: E.g., to order an attack in a particular direction, click in the army group area; drag to an objective; and release. To order a defense, click, drag in a parallel line along the front, and release. To order a retreat, click, drag toward the retreat objective, and release. To order an encirclement, click on the Army Group; then click on an objective; then "loop" around that objective with the mouse, and the Army Group will attempt to attack with two pincers to encircle and isolate enemy troops in that area.

The Army Group composition window can also be used to remove forces from the Army Group and place them in the reserve, with a set of sliders to the left of the numbers that indicate force composition. "Reserves" are listed in a window at the left-hand (when playing the Germans) or right-hand (the Soviets) side of the screen, at the middle of that side. In front of the reserve box is a gun, looking something like the gun from Snood. To place reserves into an Army Group to reinforce it, select the unit type (infantry, artillery, tank, aircraft) in the reserves box, then aim the gun toward the front you wish to reinforce, and hammer on the space bar to shoot unit after unit into your Army Group/Front.

Combat occurs continuously and automatically, taking into account the relative orders of Army Groups/Fronts and strength along the line. Essentially, the game calculates attacking strength versus defending strength at each pixel (or some larger unit) along the line, and deforms the line accordingly--moving it east as German attacks overwhelm Soviet defenses, and vice versa. A fairly complicated combat algorithm is used internally, taking into account different unit types, defending terrain, weather, and supply state--which, except for the mix of unit types, players have no direct control over (but can determine by examining various icons or other features on the game map).

At various times, certain special events may occur (Hitler orders some number of troops withdrawn to face the Western Allies after the D-Day invasion; lendlease shipments arrive to provide additional resources for the Soviets). These may pop up windows and require the player to take some action (e.g,. the Nazi reserves are not sufficient to fill Hitler's withdrawal order, so the Nazi player must decide which army groups to take the remaining units from). In general, however, the basic ethos of the game is that the Eastern Front was the only real determinant of victory and loss in the war, and everything the Western Allies did was basically irrelevant).

A small box at the side of the screen (in what would otherwise be Black Sea) reports total casualties on both sides, including civilians and those lost to Nazi deathcamps and Soviet execution as the game progresses. The numbers flicker rapidly like the old National Debt Clock, so that the final digit is simply a blur and, by game-end, tens of millions of people have died. No distinction is made between Axis and Allied losses, nor does this number have any effect on ultimate victory.

The basic look of the game is black, white, and red, with a large swastika or hammer and sickle at the upper screen indicating the player's allegiance. Music plays continuously throughout gameplay--Nazi music such as the Horst Wessel Lied and the Panzerwagenlied if the player is playing the Nazis, Communist music such as the Internationale or The East is Red if playing the Soviets. When a major objective city is taken, a black-and-white cut scene--either a Nazi rally or a military parade in Red Square--is played.

At the end of the game, the player is treated to a similar cut scene, followed by text that describes his fate. E.g., if playing as the Nazis, "Victory" means that "History will record this glorious day as the true beginning of the Thousand Year Reich, since anyone who might describe it differently will soon be a lampshade," while "Defeat" means that "You are tried and executed as a war criminal." For the Soviets, "Victory" means that "The Nazi menace is smashed, and the inhabitants both of glorious Russia and half of Europe are now condemned to half a century of repression at the hands of a Communist slave state," while "Defeat" means "You are condemned to a concentration camp, and your emaciated corpse is ultimately covered with lime and interred in a mass grave of your compatriots."


Why I Will Never Develop This Game: I think I actually have the programming skills (modest though they be) to do this, although I'm a little worried about the math involved in determining the movement of the front line, and in particular, about treating pockets. I think I could figure it out, though. It is, however, a minimum of a six month development project, more likely nine months to a year, and I can't imagine how I could possibly justify spending the time to do it. I am not independently wealthy, I have bills to pay and children to support, this would never sell at retail, and I can't imagine it would do well as a shareware product either.

Reasons I'm Attracted To It: Even now, most computer wargames persist in adopting the boardgame paradigm of hex grid and counters. Why not do a wargame that looks like a map from a military atlas? Also, wargamers rather snottily view their games as "serious strategy", and I like the idea of a frenetic, arcade-game-like wargame that rewards interface mastery and fast action rather than strategy. How much actual strategy is there in running the Eastern Front, after all? It's mostly a matter of calculating resources and deciding what objectives to pursue, which this game would allow. And =certainly= these fellows were under severe time pressures, even if it was a day-to-day thing, rather than a second-to-second thing. Finally, I like the pessimistic, but simultaneously over-the-top operatic tone; this was a war of enormous clashing forces, of entire nations mobilizing for war, of casualties beyond anything we can reasonably conceive today--and yet the two contestants were equally vile, and in both cases, their ultimate objectives equally repugnant. Ultimately, we can only thank Hitler for being so incredibly stupid as to waste the enormous resources of Nazi Germany in a futile attempt to defeat the Reds. Conceivably, the Western Allies might have prevailed, on the strength of America's enormous materiel production (and the atom bomb, of course), but the cost, not least in lives, would have been inconceivable.
posted by Greg at 11:40 PM

I first heard about A Tale in the Desert at a workshop in Munich last year; recently, they announced their formal launch, and, having gotten a little bored with Toontown, I decided to give it a try.

I've only been playing for a week now, so this should be taken as "initial impressions" rather than a comprehensive, informed view.

First, this is in many ways the kind of MMG I've been looking for. Not that I was specifically looking for a game that replaces the "kill monsters to get better to kill monsters" treadmill with a "use craft skills to create stuff so you can get more craft skills to create bigger stuff" treadmill--but I was looking for games that depart from what's become the basic paradigm for MMGs. A Tale in the Desert certainly does that.

What do I mean exactly? Just this: Games like Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camelot are fundamentally the same. They all rely on character rather than player skill. They all use the old Dungeons & Dragons paradigm of race and character class and level. They are all set in semi-Medieval fantasy worlds. They all have guilds and chat and socials implemented with slash commands. They all have magic. They all involve character advancement through player-versus-environment combat--kill monsters to get better to kill bigger monsters.

According to Daniel Manachi in the Themis Report, experienced MMG players spend much less time in their second and subsequent MMG than in their first--UO originally claimed that the average player lasted 12 months or so, these days MMGs are lucky to retain players for 7 months. Surely this is at least partly because the novelty offered by a new game pales quickly, since it's pretty close to the old game.

Mind you, I'm not saying all MMGs are identical; clearly, they are not. World backgrounds and specific details vary, and each game does work at providing some distinctive characteristics--the depth of craft skills in UO, the busy feeling of the world in EQ, realm combat in DAoC, the story and original background of AC. But they are pretty similar.

Even the games that depart from the Medieval environment adopt the same basic paradigm of killing stuff to get better: Anarchy Online is science fiction rather than fantasy, but its nanotech feels a lot like magic. Toontown may be based on Disney animation and it may justify killing its business robot "monsters" by saying "they can't take a joke" and replacing swords with vaudeville gags--but even so, it's the same basic thing.

This isn't the only way to run a MUD--and for all their vaunted originality ("play in a virtual world! we're building Gibson's cyberspace today!"), MMGs are basically just MUDs with a graphical client tacked on. In the world of text MUDs, we have Pern MUSHes that are primarily about politics and dragon raising; bondage MUDs that are largely about, well, you know; MUDs that reward roleplaying rather than hack-n-slash; and so on. Oddly, no one has really tried to take any of these paradigms to MMGs. Essentially, almost everything out there today is a graphical version of dikuMUD, the most popular of the text-based hack-n-slash MUDs.

A Tale in the Desert is clearly different--and that's exciting.

First, there is no combat in ATitD. None. Not PvP, and not PvE either. Okay, fine. So what do you do instead?

You grow flax.

I'm being only slightly facetious, and if that sounds dull, well, it isn't, really. The first thing you do on entering the game is to collect some resources--sand, mud, and grass. You learn how to dry grass into straw. You visit a school, which teaches you how to build a stone blade from slate--so you go find some slate. With the stone blade, you can build a gizmo to plane wood into boards. With the boards, you build a brick rack, which lets you make bricks from mud, sand, and straw. This is enough to make you a "citizen" of the game.

What next? Well, there are a half dozen schools of different disciplines--every starting player begins fairly near a School of Architecture and a School of Art. From these, you can learn additional skills; each skill has a cost. Costs are in the form of stuff you make. E.g., I just learned "small construction project management," which required me to give the school two canvas and some rope. Canvas and rope is made from flax. You can get some free flax seeds from the School of Art; by planting the seeds and letting the flax "go to seed," you can harvest four or so seeds per seed planted. By planting flax and weeding it instead of letting it go to seed, you can harvest flax as a resource. Harvested flax can rotted in water; rotted flax can be separated in your flax comb into straw, tow, and twine. (But wait, you need to learn flax processing to make a flax comb, and you need boards and bricks and thorns to build one--better go find a thorn bush.) Tow can be spun into twine at a small distaff (and luckily a nearby clan has dedicated a small distaff to public use--very nice of them--so I don't have to build one myself just yet). Twine can be spun further into rope--or, using a loom, can be woven into canvas.

You with me so far?

Essentially, the core mechanic of A Tale in the Desert is a materials-processing tree tied to a tech tree and a list of skills. You gather basic materials to build gizmos that let you transform the basic materials into more complicated materials so you can learn more skills and build more gizmos and even more complicated materials...

Yes, it's a treadmill--but it's a different one. Which brings us full circle to "growing flax."

Dull, right?

Well no, not really; for one thing, flax is beautiful, nice purple flowers. And the process--plant, water, watch the beds like a hawk because you have only a few seconds after weeds sprout to weed the beds, or the plants go to seed, harvest--happens relatively quickly, and is at least as interesting as attacking a gnoll, then sitting back for twenty seconds while the chat line tells you how much damage you do and take, then clicking on the treasure to pick it up. In other words: When you come down to it, MMG combat is pretty dull, too, because you don't really do much other than decide what to attack, when to flee, and occasionally what spell or special combat skill to use. There's at least as much interactivity, and at least as much interesting 3D animation, in growing flax as in fighting an MMG battle. The fundamental secret of game design isn't "violence sells," whatever the critics of games might think; it's "give players interesting stuff to do."

ATITD does so. Damn, I need some nails to build my tent. And I don't have iron-working yet, and as far as I can tell, nobody in my area of Sinai is forging metal. And where do I find a flywheel to build my potter's wheel? At least the Blizzard clan has some sheep and might trade me some leather...

Layered on top of the skill-tech-craft treadmill are the Disciplines--seven of them, each associated with one of the different kinds of Schools. Each discipline has a series of tests, and I can progress in a Discipline by passing tests. This gives me a nice title, visible to others, and is supposed to reflect my progress toward spiritual perfection. Building that tent is the first step toward building a Small House, which lets me pass the first test of the architecture discipline. Someday I will be a perfect master. (Well, probably not; I do have work to do, and never got beyond 12th level in EQ, so I'm not likely to last that long--but you get the idea.)

And some other nice features: The available skills are limited when the game begins. Each school has an associated University, and each university is working on developing new skills. Once a skill is developed, people throughout the game can learn it, and new gizmos and materials and techniques are available to our entire civilization. You can contribute to research by going to a university and donating materials to them. Ultimately, there are a series of tests the civilization as a whole must pass for Pharaoh to be victorious in his ongoing struggle with the Stranger, a shadowy figure. And it all has to be done this calendar year--or Egypt as a whole loses, and the next game of A Tale in the Desert begins. (Which I like; persistant worlds are cool, but maxing out is boring, and I like the idea of the game coming to a definite conclusion.)

Some other features I like: One of the tests you need to pass to advance in the discipline of Leadership is to get other players to build you a "mentor shrine." When you join the game, you're asked to look for a mentor--and it's quite likely that more knowledgeable players will show up at your spawn point and offer to mentor you. Later on, when you have the skills, you're supposed to build your mentor a shrine as thanks. Handholding newbies is a vital thing for any MMG to do--it's one of the key factors that determines whether or not players stick around. ATITD has thus built an incentive to help newbies into the game--a very clever thing to do, particularly as it reduces the workload for the game's community management people.

And another thing: In classic MUDs, players could make suggestions to the wizards (the game operators) about things they'd like to see. In some games, a formal system of proposing and voting on changes exist--not that the wizards always implement what the player base wants, since they don't have infinite time, and may have their own opinions. No commercial MMG does this, though, mainly for cost reasons, but also partly because of the often-contentious relationship that exists between the player base and the developers. But ATITD does; there's a formal system for proposing and voting on laws. The developers (as "Pharaoh") comment on the laws before the vote closes ("the Such-and-such law is well worded and will be implemented if passed; the So-and-So law will be partially implemented, as follows, but these other clauses won't be")--and Pharaoh reserves the right to veto any law he finds objectionable.

Very cool.

Are there flaws with the game? You bet. To start with the obvious, it can be sluggish, particularly in areas where people have built a lot of gizmos (lots of 3D models to render on the landscape). The UI--well, perhaps it would be too much to say that it sucks, but it's certainly different from most other game UI, and therefore non-intuitive. Moving does not involve the arrow keys, but clicking on the landscape; turning involves neither mouse movements nor arrow keys, but positioning the cursor at the left or right window edge. It's true that most MMGs have a plethora of hotkeys to memorize, and ATITD doesn't--but a =few= hotkeys for repeated activities would have been nice. (And why can't I turn the damn camera with the arrow keys?)

For another, ATITD, for me at this moment, is producing what I call "goal frustration." All games provide goals for players to pursue; in some cases, as in chess, they are explicit ("checkmate the opposing king"). In some cases, as in SimCity, they are not explicit--but the game provides a huge variety of potential goals for players to pursue, and they tend to choose one and go for it ("build a city that relies solely on mass transit"). In the case of RPGs and MMGs, one implicit goal is always provided--improve your character--but the world and its inhabitants are also used to provide other goals (fulfill this mission for a reward; help your guild gather the resources to build a guildhall; destroy the evil Albionese).

Because RPGs and MMGs do not have explicit goals, players sometimes become frustrated, because it isn't clear to them what goal they should be pursuing at the moment. In a game of D&D;, you and the other player characters may be sitting around an inn, grousing about how boring things are, and wondering what the hell you should do next--in this case, the gamemaster is doing a bad job of providing you the next goal (or giving you a choice of interesting goals), and if he has any brains, will have a bunch of orcs show up and start bashing heads. (Self-preservation is a good goal.)

When the next goal isn't obvious in a tabletop RPG, it's the GM's fault--and his responsibility to fix the situation. In an MMG, there ain't no GM--but the same kind of thing can happen. In this case, it's the developer's fault--they should be ensuring that everyone always knows what to do next (or what possible next goals exist to pursue).

Why am I experiencing this problem now? Because it's pretty clear I need iron working to get to the next level. And the first thing I need to do is figure out how to mine iron ore. But none of the nearby schools provide any advice; an iron mine is clearly a construction, but I can't find anyplace that teaches how to build it.

What ATITD needs is a Civilopedia, like the one provided in Civilization 3--an in-game guide that shows the connections between the skills, gizmos, and resources, and says "visit the school of whatsis to learn iron mine construction." Or whatever. In fact, every MMG should have such a thing, although none does; they get away with the lack because of the existence of fan sites. If I were playing EQ, and had a similar problem, a quick web search would turn up the answer. Unfortunately, ATITD has only a few thousand players at the moment, and while they are a few fan sites, none of them seems to have an answer to my question. (ATITD.net talks about iron mines, but not how to build one, goddamn it.)

I'll solve the problem, of course--if I can ever find my damn mentor online again, I can ask him. Or maybe some other player will let me know. Or in worst case, I can wander the land of Egypt and visit every school and university--one of them must have the answer. But right now, it's frustrating, and frustrating your players is never good design. (Challenging, yes; frustrating, no.)

Still and all--if you're interested in MMGs at all, you have to check this out.

Oh, and the basic info: 24 hours of gameplay or 1 month of realtime for free, $13.95/month thereafter (with some features, like voting, not accessible until you subscribe). Free downloadable PC and Linux clients (no, there ain't no Mac client, you silly Apple dweebs). English and German-language versions. 400Mhz machine minimum (and it can be sluggish even on my 800Mhz box).

If you see Unamit, give me a tell. And if you don't have Old Egypt seeds yet, I'll happily give you a couple. Unlike Nile Green, you don't need to water it.

(Oh, and here's a screenshot of me growing flax.)
posted by Greg at 11:30 AM

So apparently Sega is to merge with Sammy, Japan's largest pachinko company. They also make arcade games, redemption machines, and the like. This solves Sega's financial problems for now, although in a way it's a shame--I'd been rooting for a Microsoft takeover, which would have solved a lot of Microsoft's problems in supporting XBox with exclusive content. But at least this keeps one more major publisher in business.

In other news, apparently Sovereign is dead. I can't say I'm surprised; I never could see how the game could possibly work. Essentially, it was intended to be a massively multiplayer RTS game, with your position persisting in the world--and subject to attack by other players--even when you were offline. Although the Verant/SOE guys gave a good rap ("you can go into button-down mode so you defend better, or turn the position over to a friend"), I'd still expect to sign on the next day and find my stuff in ruins. The only people who'd really do well in that environment are obsessives, willing to be online most of the time, and go online quickly when alerted (via email--or SMS?) that someone was attacking. I have to believe that's a much smaller audience than that for more conventional MMGs, where at least when you're offline you're safe.

Fatbabies also updated today.
posted by Greg at 10:38 AM

Alltel recently launched their Boomerang label service--SMS-enabled mobile phones aimed at a teenage demographic.

One of the games that comes pre-installed on all Boomerang phones is Boomerang Magic, an SMS game of wizard duelling I co-designed with Kevin Maroney.

It's a two-player, head-to-head game of magical duelling pitting two wizards against each other--in SMS, a pure text medium. Basically, each turn you cast two spells, each spell represented by a single character.

Doubtless most players will imagine a resemblance to Magic: The Gathering, but actually, it's more reminiscent of the old M.A.R. Barker mage duelling game from TSR, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

I'm pleased with this largely because doing anything interesting with SMS is challenging, and I think Boomerang Magic qualifies.



posted by Greg at 6:47 PM

First, let me make clear that for NDA reasons, I'm going to have to stick to publicly released facts, and will not be providing any kind of analysis about N-Gage, and its potential level of success in the market. Other people are welcome to comment, but I'm going to stick to the facts, ma'am.

The following is data drawn from other sources on the Web (for GBA) and from the N-Gage FAQ now available at the Forum Nokia website. (I don't vouch for the accuracy of the GBA information--I'm not a GBA developer, and places on the Web have known to be wrong. I welcome correction there.)

Processor Speed:
    GBA: 16.7 Mhz
    N-Gage: 104 Mhz

Screen Resolution:
    GBA: 240 x 160
    N-Gage: 208 x 176

Color Depth:
    GBA: 16-bit
    N-Gage: 12-bit

RAM:
    GBA: 32k work; 256k extended work; 96k video; 16k sound
    N-Gage: Not announced, but multiple MEGAbytes

Specialized Graphics Hardware:
    GBA: XY scrolling, rotational scrolling, sprite scaling/distortion, alpha blending
    N-Gage: none (but the processor is a lot faster....)

Sound:
    GBA: mono, multiple voices, 8-bit
    N-Gage: mono (MP3s and FM radio are stereo, but games can't access them), no hardware mixing of voices, 8- and 16-bit

Cart/MMC Size
    GBA: up to 32 MB
    N-Gage: up to 128 MB MMC

Battery Life
    GBA: 15 hours
    N-Gage: 3-6 hours during gameplay

Backlighting
    GBA: No (but yes for SP).
    N-Gage: Yes

Multiplayer Connectivity:
    GBA: Through cable, purchased separately, up to 4-player.
    N-Gage: Through Bluetooth, up to 4 players locally; through GSM/GPRS, any number of players (at higher latency).

Other Media:
    GBA: None.
    N-Gage: Plays MP3s, FM radio, email, SMS messaging, MMS messaging, voice telephony, WAP/XHTML browsing, plus the usual Symbian OS calendar, phonebook, etc.
====

Although both "mobile game devices," these are very different platforms. N-Gage has no hardware support for graphics effects, but compensates by having a much speedier processor. N-Gage is =optimized= for network access, supporting both Bluetooth and air network access over GSM/GPRS. (Meaning, for US readers, that only T-Mobil and Cingular could [at present] support N-Gage here--and T-Mobil is the only announced partner.) But this also means that N-Gage potentially supports multiplayer gaming styles that GBA does not.

N-Gage also supports voice telephony, playing of MP3s, and text messaging, as well as Symbian OS's usual PDA features; in principle, you could replace a raft of electronic devices--PDA, mobile phone, mobile game device, and MP3 player--with a single device. You'd be making compromises, though--N-Gage is awkwardly formatted for a mobile phone, and iPod is still a far cooler MP3 player (although you can buy an MMC card holding up to 128 MB separately, which gives you a nice loft of music).

Two major unknowns: Launch price (N-Gage is likely to be pricier than GBA, but by how much is unclear at present), and titles (Nokia announced several yesterday---see www.n-gage.com) but exactly what will be available at launch at shortly thereafter is not yet public.



posted by Greg at 9:38 PM

This from Digital Media Wire:


Nokia to Introduce Video Game/Cell Phone Hybrid Device

London -- Mobile phone maker Nokia on Wednesday plans to unveil a mobile phone that doubles as a handheld gaming device, a multi-billion dollar market dominated by Japan's Nintendo, Reuters reported. Nokia's first product, called N-Gage, will be similar to Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, the top-selling mobile gaming device on the market. Nokia will begin publishing games for the device on "wafer-sized memory cards," with Sega coming on to publish a "Sonic the Hedgehog" title for N-Gage.

I can't comment further, but I'm leaving for London in moments, and will be able to say more when I return on Thursday.

posted by Greg at 6:06 PM

Recently, doing a technical review of a book Chris Crawford is writing, I took issue with his definition of videogame. He defined the term to mean "a console game."

That certainly isn't how it was originally used; it was coined to refer to this new breed of games appearing in bars and arcades everywhere, that relied on electronics to project an image on a screen--quite unlike the conventional pinball games and arcade amusements of yore. They were different, or so it seemed, because they involved video; they were video games, which, in the manner of all two-nouned English terms, ultimately became conjoined, until they were videogames.

When the first home game devices appeared--actually not the first, since Magnovox Odyssey predated Pong, but the memory of the press is fleeting--the games they ran, too, came to be called videogames.

Even before Pong, of course, people at academic computing centers had programmed little games for their amusement and the amusement of their friends; but these, by and large, ran on devices either attached to paper teletypes or monitors that displayed only text. Because the salient characteristic of these games was that, unlike an earlier generation of board and card games, they ran on computers, they were termed "computer games."

The first rash of games for "microcomputers" (that is, home computers), too, were mainly text-based, though some began to play with graphics--but they remained "computer games," at least for a time.

For many years, the two remained pretty distinct; even the development communities saw little movement between each other. In the US, after the Atari crash, computer gaming (and a greatly lessened arcade) was all that remained of digital gaming, and the first generation of computer game developers came to their fame. Then Nintendo proved that Atari was not the end, and the rebirth of console gaming began.

As the graphics capabilities of home PCs improved, the distinction between console and PC games began to fade--though even now, some distinctions can be drawn between them. E.g., you find few platformers on PCs, and strategy games basically don't work with the limitations of a console controller. But for all intents and purposes, today there are four main home game platforms: PS II, XBox, GameCube, and PC.

"Videogame" has, for the prevailing culture, gradually become a term that encompasses all digital games; Grand Theft Auto III is a videogame, and so is Quake Arena.

Oddly enough, the reverse transition has occurred in the academic community; academics look at digital games, and realize that it's the processor, not the use of visuals, that distinguishes digital from non-digital games. Consequently, they tend to eschew the term "videogame," and use "computer game" to describe both console and PC games.

And in the industry itself, you almost never hear anyone talk about "videogames." They aren't videogames, after all; except for the occasional cut scene, we almost never use video. We use images rendered on the fly--and the images are the surface of the game, the interface, the cotton candy. The meat of the game, the heart of it, is in the underlying code. These are games that run on processors, not on magnetic tape; algorithm and interactivity is what they are.

Instead, the industry tends to talk about the platform; there are console games, and there are PC games. And the PC is really just another platform--with its own peculiar characteristics, to be sure.

"Videogame" is a term that deserves to die; it actually says nothing about what the games it describes actually are. It won't die, of course; it's too widespread in the prevailing culture. But both the academics and the industry are right: video isn't what digital games are about. Indeed, given the visual crudity of the original videogames, it's hard to believe that even non-gamers could have thought that "video" was the single factor about those games that needed mentioning. But of course, the prevailing culture has never understood the game qua game.

Still and all, if you care about games, expunge the word from your vocabulary. We play games--and digital games are not so different from paper games. You can slice games any number of ways; by the platform on which they run: by genre; by visual style; by audience appeal; by artistic intent; by culture of origin; by medium. In all these cases, you can make fine, informed distinctions between different kinds of games, and the terminology you use to draw those distinctions can be enlightening. The term "videogame" has no such dignity; it draws a crude and indefensible line between games with graphics (like say, Pong) and games without (like, say, Zork)--or with graphics that don't show up on a screen (like, say, Risk). A peculiar line, indeed, when you realize that Pong has more in common with table tennis than with, say, Final Fantasy X.

If we are to understand games, we must learn to make meaningful distinctions. The term "videogame" makes none.


posted by Greg at 10:58 PM