Spore: If Done Well Enough, Perhaps the Best Game Ever

As the title suggests, I was extremely impressed with the videos and commentaries on Spore. The several reasons are listed below.

Perspective. I've always enjoyed simulation games, but Spore seems to take the cake. The idea that you can advance a species from the molecular level to space age is incredible. The inspiration video serves as a great depiction of this perspective, apply a concrete medium to understand something like evolution that for most people exists in only abstract thoughts.

Assortment of Several Games. While the game is created by the simulation master, it does appear to have many types of games built into it. The first molecular stage does look like Pac-man. The civilization stage looks more like an action/adventure game with possible algorithmic stategies built in. The space age appears, on the grander stage, like space strategy game where you have to make sure your resources and "assimilate" different places. It's not to say that the game designer will implement all these genres completely, but it at the very least pays homage to them.

Endless Gameplay. From the looks of it, I believe I could play Spore for the rest of my life and still find things new and interesting about it. Especially considering how the game is called "massively single play," incorporating data from other users' files, the possibilities of interaction are endless. This may be the greatest part of all: the user's strong impact on his or her experience. Instead of following a fine line toward a certain goal, as in most other games, Spore offers the game more freedom to manipulate the game and its code in broader, more desirable ways. Everyone has a unique experience.

I'm not sure this game can meet my expections, because if it did, I might not have a social life anymore.

Novels and Games: Peas and Carrots?

So at the beginning of another one my English classes, I have been having discussions with the professor about the validity of studying games. The basic argument against video games, as I see it, is that video games as a visual experience has so much going on that it can miss the subtleties that the novel's language can achieve.

We live in an increasingly visual society. With the emergence of movies, television, and now video games -- all staples of popular society -- looking at things has been considerably more "important" than reading things.

I, however, would like to suggest that while things have become more visual, reading is still a part of the art.

Visual Art. Like interpretting a painting, video games have scenes that merit examination. Take Okami for example. The beautiful cell shading reflects the mystical and spiritual elements. If the game were built like any other game, it would not leave the same impact on the gamer. It would not have the same quality.

Interface. There are always signs in a game when you are supposed to hit a button. Some games let you have a choice when you want to hit the button (Mario jumping over the chasm). Other times the moment comes so quickly that if you mistime it, you have to start over again. This addition to the narrative, making the gamer physically feel a part of the experience, allows the gamer to feel like a part of the experience.

In my final project I want to explore these and other issues and compare them to how a novel works. I believe our discussion on agency and how the text of the media introduces ideas is helpful.

Game or Not a Game?

This is the what I came up with in class inductively to with the "gameness" of Facade:

Myst is similar to Façade in the way you manipulate the environment and progresses through non-linear puzzles. Myst is a puzzle game. Since Myst is a game, and Façade is similar, Façade is mostly likely a game.

Let me expand on this with some support:

Games--computer games in particular--appeal because they are configurative, offering the chance to manipulate complex systems within continuous loops of intervention, observation, and response. (Moulthrop FP 63)

Any game consists of three aspects: (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the events resulting from application of the rules to the gameworld). Of these three, the semiotic system is the most coincidental to the game. (Aarseth FP 47-48)

Moulthrop's quote concerning "intervention, observation, and response" works well with the principles present in Myst and Facade. In both games the gamer finds themselves intervening, in the sense that their is an artificial, algorithmic pattern occuring and the game tries to manipulate that to progress. In Myst this is largely present in the skilled use of switches, pulleys, etc. Facade has this element in the quick text entries given to the AI. Observation is self-explanatory; both games encourage the player to use his or her surroundings to progress the game. Response comes after the player's maniplulations, leading to the advancement to another world (Myst) or the mending of a relationship (Facade).

Aaseth also has a three part elemented observation to describe the content of a game. All games have rules. Myst, though much more non-linear that other games, does have rules built into the game. A cardinal rule would appear to be the limited ways you can move; you can only walk into the frame the game will allow you. Facade has a similar rule of restriction, allowing only certain entered text to cause a response. Aarseth's use of the word "coincidental" for the material world strikes me as appropriate. Both games use graphical architecture to create worlds (however fanciful in Myst's case) altogether unique. Just as the egg comes before the chicken, so the gameworld comes before the game, giving birth to the ruled experience gamers enjoy.

I'm not convinced to this argument, but I try to engage some critics to support such a way of thinking. It's on that fine border line between game/no game.