Dread Pirate Flint

While waiting for the reviews of Sid Meier’s Pirates! to come in, I figured out my true pirate name. Aaarrrr!

My pirate name is:

Dread Pirate Flint

Like the famous Dread Pirate Roberts, you have a keen head for how to make a profit. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Currently only IGN have written their review and given the game 9.2 out of 10, so it’s looking good.

Comment trouble?

Question: do anyone have trouble posting comments?

And no, I’m not asking you to post a comment if you have trouble doing so, just send you answers through here, if you can’t post.

The reason I asking is that I’ve enhanced my comment spam filters and are currently adjusting them.

To be or not to be in Liberty City

Looking closer at importance of the story arc in the emergent game world of the Grand Theft Auto series

By Simon Larsen and Henrik Bennetsen

Supervisor: Espen Aarseth
Course: Computer Game Theory – E2004

IT – University of Copenhagen
November 2004

THIS IS AN UNFINISHED WORK. It is only a synopsis that contains many unanswered questions.
DO NOT QUOTE.

See Liberty City and Die

Many games have tried to give the player the feeling of total freedom to roam around a living breathing game world before Grand Theft Auto (GTA), but few have had the huge commercial success these games had. At the same time the game has got mission that you have to complete to finish the game, so it?s basically a progression game.
In this synopsis we will look closer at these two terms progression and emergence games by examining the three last installments in the Grand Theft Auto series: Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (VC) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (SA).

The question that is going to be addressed herein:

• Is the overall story arc vital to drive the playing experience forward because of the nature of the offline single player game that the GTA series is?
• Is the narrative vital to keep the player entertained and the get the player accept the setting?
• Could the game evolve into a game more in the form of e.g. Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Battlefield 1942?
• Or would GTA have had been a more fascinating game as a MMORPG?

Complexity

In any given part of the GTA games you can find periodic systems. If you for example stand still by a way side for some minutes the same cars will start to drive past you and the same dialogue will be spoken by the pedestrians in your vicinity.

Image 1: Four kinds of systems (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 155).

But on the overall scale of the game, nothing will be in a periodic state. There are too many random events occurring. This places the game in the complex system category. It is not total chaos since nothing in the game is completely random (e.g. you will never find Haitian gangs in the Cuban controlled parts of Vice City). It is in complex systems like these that emergence in the gameplay can become apparent.

Sandbox

You could easily write a walkthrough for the GTA games but hat would only cover 50% of the game, and all the different missions can be solved with a variety of different strategies.
There is a very well-defined story arc in the games that the player can chose to follow. The keyword here is chose, since it is not required for the player to do so, although some areas of the game will be locked to the player until certain mission in the story have been completed. Beyond that the player is free to pursuit any action he or she may desire¹. Jesper Juul (2002) defines two different types of games as Games of Progression and Games of Emergence respectively. So what exactly is GTA; a game of progression or a game of emergence? It is both.

Emergression

A new term might be need here: Emergression. Games that are both progression and emergent at the same time, but cannot exist without both being present in the game. In order to keep the player occupied and interested in the game, you will have to have some form of narrative to keep getting the player to accept the setting and drive the emergent gameplay forward. Without the narrative the game would still be highly entertaining but the average player would properly not spend more than 5-10 hours on it. When the first three “unique jumps” have been found and you have played taxi-driver for 10 customers, the game would become trivial and extremely repetitive.

Image 2: The emergence is increasing as you progress in the game (adapted from Juul 2004).

Platform

To avoid letting the game become repetitive you will have to have “a series of interesting choices” as Sid Meier would say or as Rollings and Ernest (2003) calls it “One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment”. The openness of the mission structure is only part of the equation that makes the GTA series such a successful formula. In the future the series might become a platform of gaming, where the game just establish the setting and then let the players live out their inner Godfather or Bonnie and Clyde without forcing any given story on the play. Then we can speak of simulations, as defined by Gonzalo Frasca (2001), when talking about GTA.

The breaking point stated by Selmer Bringsjord (2001) is also the need for a smarter AI. This begs the question: Will GTA develop into a multiplayer game or even a MMORPG? Is playing against other people the ultimate AI?

Player types

Another question is then; do the GTA series include gameplay for all of Richard Bartle’s player types (1996)? Gameplay for the explorers and achievers are certainly there. But what about the socializes and the killers? Well, everyone who has played the game, loves to talk to others how have also played to game² and the killers might find pleasure in killing innocent bystanders and pedestrians, and in the mission that requires killing of certain characters. Then again is it at all relevant to talk about player types in an offline single player game like GTA?

To be or not to be in Liberty City

It is clear that the emergent nature of the GTA games attracts a big crowd of gamers, but would the games have had the same commercial and critical success without the narrative to help the game progress? And this leads us back to the question of whether the narrative really is vital in an emergent game such as GTA? Would the story be apparent in Grand Theft Auto 7? Will it become a MMORPG?

This game series might very well eventually become the final battleground for the death match between narrativism and ludology. And the battle might never be settled. This is why we call for the coining of a new term. We use the term “Emergression”; for games that currently cannot exist without both progression and emergence.

• Are emergression games the future of gaming or a necessary step on the ladder?
• Historical perspective: Traditional games are often emergent, chess etc. Was narrativism a necessary step in the development of computer games, or just a sign of immaturity of the medium (e.g. something needed to ease the marketing of the games)?
• If we look back at GTA San Andreas in 10 years will we find it amusing that it was considered a very emergent game?

A critical look

Are GTA games really emergent? T.L. Taylor brought up the point at a seminar at Copenhagen University, November 2004, that you don’t actually use the emergence to advance in the game. So is this emergence really just a null event in the progression of the game? Something indisputably cool but essentially immaterial; like choosing the color of your car in a racing game.

• Can the game be played in a non-emergent manner and still be completed?
• Is completion the only goal when playing a game? How does this relate to Bartle’s player types?

References

All links checked as of November 2004. Not all are referenced directly in the text.

Books

• Holland, John H.: “Emergence: From Chaos to Order“. USA, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0192862111.
• Johnson, Steven: “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software“. USA, Penguin Books, 2001. ISBN: 0140287752.
• Salen, Katie & Zimmerman, Eric: “Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals“. USA, The MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 0262240459
• Rollings, Andrew & Adams, Ernest: “Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design“. USA, New Riders, 2003. ISBN: 1592730019

Articles

• Aarseth, Espen: “Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse” in Ryan, Marie-Laure (Editor): “Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling“. USA, University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN: 0803289936
• Bartle, Richard A.: “HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS“. 1996.
• Bringsjord, Selmer: “Is It Possible to Build Dramatically Compelling Interactive Digital Entertainment (in the form, e.g., of computer games)?“. GameStudies.org, 2001.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “SIMULATION 101: Simulation versus Representation“. 2001.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “Sim Sin City: some thoughts about Grand Theft Auto 3“. GameStudies.org, 2002.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “Simulation versus Narrative. Introduction to Ludology” in Wolf, Mark J.P. (Editor) & Perron, Bernard (Editor): “The Video Game Theory Reader“. USA, Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 0-415-96579-9
• Juul, Jesper: “The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression“. 2002.
• Juul, Jesper: “Hvad spillet betyder: om Grand Theft Auto 3″ in Engholm, Ida & Klastrup, Lisbeth: “Digitale Verdener: De nye mediers ?stetik og Design“. Denmark, Gyldendal, 2004. ISBN: 8702023687
• GameSpy: “Bored in San Andreas“. GameSpy.com. 28th October 2004.

1. You could argue that the emergent gameplay elements are more apparent than the progression elements, but none are more important one [↩]
2. See GTAforums.com (http://www.gtaforums.com) for an example of this. As of November 2004 the forum had 50,000 active users that is discussion everything from mission solutions to unique jumps. The socializing is ”off-line”, so to speak [↩]

The best year for gaming?

2004 might prove to become one of the best years for gaming in a long long while. So many great titles are being released that some of these are without doubt going to be lost in all the noise.

Just the last few months we have seen games like Burnout 3, Ratchet & Clank III, Paper Mario 2, Pikmin 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo 2, and Half-Life 2.

The interesting thing to notice here is that they are all sequels. And generally there are better, or a least on par with it predecessor. So this year might also be the beginning of the end of original IP. A few years from now we’ll just have Halo 2006, Grand Theft Auto XP, and… wait, what do you mean we already have that?

And the biggest question of them all; what will be Game of the Year?

UPDATE:
Game Rankings have complied a list of the best and worst games of the past three years.

DS looking great

The lucky guys at IGN.com have been playing on Nintendo’s new DS system.

It sounds like a system than you should get… I’m definitely thinking about, although no sure launch date has been set for Europe yet.
But head over to IGN.com and read for yourself.

Star Wars – Episode III – The Game

As Star Wars games go, the one based on Episode III seem to be alright. At least as an action game.

Watch the trailer on the official website. But we’ll properly be terribly disappointed when it finally comes out. Does Star Wars: Obi-Wan ring any bells?

Zoom zoom zoom

From the “I really need something to cheer me up because the American public re-elected the scariest person” -department comes The Zoomquilt. (mirror)

Enjoy…

[via Steve Ince]

Massive spam attack

Again I’m under massive spam attack.

This time it’s so massive that my previous attempts to fend of the spammer have failed.
So I’m trying something new, because this clearly doesn’t work.
As of today I’ll be moderating all comments. That means that it’ll properly take some time before your comment will be posted.

This is by no means the best solution, and I currently looking for a better one, but this will do until then, because this really pisses me off.

Update:
I’ve switched to the newest version of WP with the catchy name: 1.3-alpha-4 (the nightly build of November 2nd) and that seems to work, because it as new anti-spam feature where you simply check of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”. This means that if one of your comments have previously been approved it will appear instantly, otherwise I’ll have to moderate it (the feature is a port of Kittens’s Friendly Comments).
I really hope this works… but it’s just “too close to call” as they say these days.

Updated again:
Sorry about that Kitten (see comments)… I hadn’t seen the new version of the Spaminator. That finally seems to work. As of now all the comment spam are being cought… The first day of testing went very well.

And please, if you experience any problems posting comments, please let me know.

Can’t talk now… playing

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant game…