I'm in the middle of reading the article "Way of the Gun" and it's giving me lots of ideas for my presentation on racing games.
"Explorative Linearity": The difference between FP and Third Person perspectives in gaming is crucial, because as the author says, having a FP perspective can be narrow and confining, you can never be sure where your enemies are at. I'm pretty sure that there's a toggle feature within "Burnout" that allows the player to change from FP to ThirdP and back again, although I personally prefer the ThirdP perspective.
The author also mentioned something about "Doom" and how its popularity was attributed to its simplicity, and I agree. Keep it simple and let the player find the interest and meaning. I think the same can be said for simmulated racing because if there's too much going on in the background tracks, then the player can get distracted. If there is a very busy background, it's almost preferential to have a FP perspective, sort of like putting blinders on a horse, it helps the player focus on the track.
Semi-realism is cool too. The more realistic the cars are, the crashes are, the more popular the game will be overall. And, as I've blogged before, the crash sequences within racing games are extremely important, they almost reach the cinematic level of cut-scenes because they take you out of the game for at least 10 seconds to show you something spectacular.
Music within racing is great too, it adds to a feeling of tension. Using pop music within racing is a relatively recent phenomenon, I think, and although it's fun to listen to for a while, it also has the drawback of making the game seem outdated (that is, as soon as those songs are no longer popular) within a few years.
I have to remember also, to say something about the level of AI within the rival racers. How much variation in behavior can you as the player expect from your rivals within a racing game? When I played Super Mario Brothers as a kid I memorized the pattern of movement of my enemies so that I could get through the entire game without ever having taken a hit, but that was because the bad guys moved the same way every time. However, no two races are the same in games like "Burnout" so memorizing the course isn't enough. I know that I can set the difficulty for the tracks, but is it even possible for a begginner to win their first race? No, probably not, because the player doesn't know what to expect yet. So, practice is necessary to win, not just a dependence on "stealth" (dodging the attacks of other drivers and innocent bystanders).
But "Burnout" is different once again because the game encourages you to side-slam other vehicles for Boost points, which you'll need if you want to get ahead. It's like your being encouraged to act like a bully (pushing other cars around) but you have to keep your cool at the same time (not seriously crashing your car and waisting time in an awesome cut scene).
Monday, February 26, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Myst Online
Who saw the commercial for Myst Uru Online? It was on last night. We may have talked about this in class, like everything else I mention, but what the heck.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Personal notes for simmulation presentation
In class last week I wrote down some notes that I thought might pertain to the presentation by Betty, Dan and I.
Somatic: to physically simmulate an action. dictionary.com and wikipedia were my only references, and they only gave a biological description of the word. I was thinking that I could incorporate the idea of somatic action to the player of a racing game, and how the player is literally replicating a physical action that needs to be done in order to operate the car.
There is also a certain amount of editing involved on the part of the player because it is necessary to choose the make, model and color of the car, as well as the race track and the number of opponents. In fact, the player controls pretty much everything within the racing except for how the race will turn out.
We also talked in class about how the majority of the console-based games we will and have discussed, are of Japanese origin and are inspired by Western culture. The racing game is different; it is the original if not the only game of Western, more specifically, American origin, and it is inspired by the real events of a huge American sub-culture (Nascar). Football games like Madden are also examples of simmulated games uniquely attributed to American culture.
correct me if I'm wrong.
Somatic: to physically simmulate an action. dictionary.com and wikipedia were my only references, and they only gave a biological description of the word. I was thinking that I could incorporate the idea of somatic action to the player of a racing game, and how the player is literally replicating a physical action that needs to be done in order to operate the car.
There is also a certain amount of editing involved on the part of the player because it is necessary to choose the make, model and color of the car, as well as the race track and the number of opponents. In fact, the player controls pretty much everything within the racing except for how the race will turn out.
We also talked in class about how the majority of the console-based games we will and have discussed, are of Japanese origin and are inspired by Western culture. The racing game is different; it is the original if not the only game of Western, more specifically, American origin, and it is inspired by the real events of a huge American sub-culture (Nascar). Football games like Madden are also examples of simmulated games uniquely attributed to American culture.
correct me if I'm wrong.
Lost and Myst
I just finished reading Dr. Jones' chapter on Lost and Myst, and I have to say that I'm very pleased with myself. I read it under 90 minutes and I liked it a lot, Lost is my favorite TV show, so really everything made sense. I've also recently read Our Mutual Friend, and played Myst, so the whole article cemented those common threads I'd already started to unravel on my own. I'm also very glad that Lost isn't just someone's imagination, dream, or purgatory.
I liked learning about the paratextual qualities of the show, although I've never taken part in the Lost Experience game just because I've been afraid that I'd get too involved in it. Stuff like that takes a lot of commitment...plus, what would happen if the show ended this season, and all of the hype created by the paratextual content would suddenly stop at a dead-end...or would the paratextual aspects of Lost live on even though the show no longer exists. I'm sure that viewers of shows like Firefly were the reason that Whedon made the movie Serenity when Firefly was canceled suddenly without any plot resolutions. Will the creators of Lost be compelled to make a movie out of the show as well? I hope not. I'm thinking about going to the University of Hawaii for grad school, so it would be better for me if the show were still in production. Maybe I can get a cameo...
I liked learning about the paratextual qualities of the show, although I've never taken part in the Lost Experience game just because I've been afraid that I'd get too involved in it. Stuff like that takes a lot of commitment...plus, what would happen if the show ended this season, and all of the hype created by the paratextual content would suddenly stop at a dead-end...or would the paratextual aspects of Lost live on even though the show no longer exists. I'm sure that viewers of shows like Firefly were the reason that Whedon made the movie Serenity when Firefly was canceled suddenly without any plot resolutions. Will the creators of Lost be compelled to make a movie out of the show as well? I hope not. I'm thinking about going to the University of Hawaii for grad school, so it would be better for me if the show were still in production. Maybe I can get a cameo...
Friday, February 9, 2007
Added thoughts to Car crash scenario.
I've been thinking about the section of White Noise I quoted last week and how truly American a car crash really is, if only for the reason that our culture is inextricably tied to cars. The character named Murray says "I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism." This is true in that the car itself is what embodies American optimism, not the crash. The production of the car and the invention of the assembly line was what propelled the Industrial Age into the twentieth century, so why shouldn't we as Americans admire anything that has to do with cars (manufacturing and the money it brings) even if it is in the form of a crash.
So, with video games, what is the most spectacular part of the game; not the race, but the crash. And every racing game to come on the market has boasted bigger, better, and more realistic crash scenes than ever before. From my own experience I'd have to say that Burn Out is a game that is fun to play even when I crash, which I do often, because the cinematic quality of these scenes really does deserve the adjective 'spectacular'. The car looks like it's been hit by a semi, but it stays in the race, it never gives up...it continues on that "long tradition of American optimism."
So, with video games, what is the most spectacular part of the game; not the race, but the crash. And every racing game to come on the market has boasted bigger, better, and more realistic crash scenes than ever before. From my own experience I'd have to say that Burn Out is a game that is fun to play even when I crash, which I do often, because the cinematic quality of these scenes really does deserve the adjective 'spectacular'. The car looks like it's been hit by a semi, but it stays in the race, it never gives up...it continues on that "long tradition of American optimism."
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Quote from "Cybertext" by Aarseth
This quote from the introduction to "Cybertext" got me thinking about racing games. Aarseth says:
"A reader, however strongly engaged in the unfolding of a narrative, is powerless. Like a spectator at a soccer game, he may speculate, conjecture, extrapolate, even shout abuse, but he is not a player. Like a passenger on a train, he can study and interpret the shifting landscape, he may rest his eyes wherever he pleases, even release the emergency brake and step off, but he is not free to move the tracks in a different direction. He cannot have the player's pleasure of influence: "Let's see what happens when I do this." The reader's pleasure is the pleasure of the voyeur. Safe, but impotent" (Cybertext, 4).
When a player plays a racing game, he/she has a direct influence over a vehicle, and the plot is decided by the player as well; whether or not he/she wins the game is dependent on the actions the player takes during the race. Someone can be a spectator at a race track and enjoy watching the cars wizz past, but for the gamer, the experience is entirely different because he/she is now the one who is doing all the wizzing. :) A simmulated game, like racing games, are different from adventure games or puzzle games because there is no one final outcome. Every racer plays differently, some never make it to first place, but usually all adventure gamers make it to the final boss. The story may change in an adventure game, but the plot is always the same. However, in racing games, and other sims, there is no plot but what the gamer sets for himself, that is, whether or not he wants to finish first on every track, or just play with friends and not keep score. So, if as Aarseth says, that the reader's pleasure is safe but impotent, and adventure games and MUDs are the potent opposite of a text, then...sims should be the most potent of all? I'll try to make more sense out of this thought later.
"A reader, however strongly engaged in the unfolding of a narrative, is powerless. Like a spectator at a soccer game, he may speculate, conjecture, extrapolate, even shout abuse, but he is not a player. Like a passenger on a train, he can study and interpret the shifting landscape, he may rest his eyes wherever he pleases, even release the emergency brake and step off, but he is not free to move the tracks in a different direction. He cannot have the player's pleasure of influence: "Let's see what happens when I do this." The reader's pleasure is the pleasure of the voyeur. Safe, but impotent" (Cybertext, 4).
When a player plays a racing game, he/she has a direct influence over a vehicle, and the plot is decided by the player as well; whether or not he/she wins the game is dependent on the actions the player takes during the race. Someone can be a spectator at a race track and enjoy watching the cars wizz past, but for the gamer, the experience is entirely different because he/she is now the one who is doing all the wizzing. :) A simmulated game, like racing games, are different from adventure games or puzzle games because there is no one final outcome. Every racer plays differently, some never make it to first place, but usually all adventure gamers make it to the final boss. The story may change in an adventure game, but the plot is always the same. However, in racing games, and other sims, there is no plot but what the gamer sets for himself, that is, whether or not he wants to finish first on every track, or just play with friends and not keep score. So, if as Aarseth says, that the reader's pleasure is safe but impotent, and adventure games and MUDs are the potent opposite of a text, then...sims should be the most potent of all? I'll try to make more sense out of this thought later.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
What is a car crash?
This passage from "White Noise" by Don DeLillo is about car crashes. Because Dan and Betty and I are working on racing games, I thought that this passage might shed some light on why we enjoy the spectacle of a car crash.
"How is your car crash seminar progressing?"
"We've looked at hundreds of crash sequences. Cars with cars. Cars with trucks. Trucks with busses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters. Trucks with trucks. My students think these movies are prophetic. They mark the suicide wish of technology. The drive to suicide, the hurtling rush to suicide."
"What do you say to them?"
"These are mainly B-movies, TV movies, rural drive-in movies. I tell my students not to look for apocalypse in such places. I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old 'can-do' spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, 'I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene.' I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency towards grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream."
"A dream? How do your students reply?"
"Just the way you did. 'A dream?' All that blood and glass, that screeching rubber. What about the sheer waste, the sense of a civilization in a state of decay?"
"What about it?" I said.
"I tell them it's not decay they are seeing but innocence. The movie breaks away from complicated human passions to show us something elemental, something fiery and loud and head-on. It's a conservative wish-fulfillment, a yearning for naivete. We want to be artless again. We want to reverse the flow of experience, of worldliness and its responsibilities. My students say, 'Look at the crushed bodies, the severed limbs. What kind of innocence is this?' "
"What do you say to that?"
"I tell them they can't think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. It's a celebration. A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. I connect car crashes to holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth. We don't mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. These are days of secular optimism, of self-celebration. We will improve, prosper, perfect ourselves. Watch any car crash in any American movie. It is a high-spirited moment like old-fashioned stunt flying, walking on wings. The people who stage these crashes are able to capture a lightheartedness, a carefree enjoyment that car crashes in foreign movies can never approach."
"Look past the violence."
"Exactly. Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun."
Heartless, but I can see the truth in it.
"How is your car crash seminar progressing?"
"We've looked at hundreds of crash sequences. Cars with cars. Cars with trucks. Trucks with busses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters. Trucks with trucks. My students think these movies are prophetic. They mark the suicide wish of technology. The drive to suicide, the hurtling rush to suicide."
"What do you say to them?"
"These are mainly B-movies, TV movies, rural drive-in movies. I tell my students not to look for apocalypse in such places. I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old 'can-do' spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, 'I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene.' I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency towards grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream."
"A dream? How do your students reply?"
"Just the way you did. 'A dream?' All that blood and glass, that screeching rubber. What about the sheer waste, the sense of a civilization in a state of decay?"
"What about it?" I said.
"I tell them it's not decay they are seeing but innocence. The movie breaks away from complicated human passions to show us something elemental, something fiery and loud and head-on. It's a conservative wish-fulfillment, a yearning for naivete. We want to be artless again. We want to reverse the flow of experience, of worldliness and its responsibilities. My students say, 'Look at the crushed bodies, the severed limbs. What kind of innocence is this?' "
"What do you say to that?"
"I tell them they can't think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. It's a celebration. A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. I connect car crashes to holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth. We don't mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. These are days of secular optimism, of self-celebration. We will improve, prosper, perfect ourselves. Watch any car crash in any American movie. It is a high-spirited moment like old-fashioned stunt flying, walking on wings. The people who stage these crashes are able to capture a lightheartedness, a carefree enjoyment that car crashes in foreign movies can never approach."
"Look past the violence."
"Exactly. Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun."
Heartless, but I can see the truth in it.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Paratextuality
This is a response to Dr. Jones' question regarding paratexts and how it influences our game play.
Personally, I have always relied on help from my peers (and occasionally my mother) for help in choosing a game, learning how to play the game, getting help when I'm stuck...I wouldn't play video games at all if I couldn't play them with someone or know someone I could call on. Some of the most lively conversations I've had were about a a video game. Commiseration is always a good way to bring people together.
Even if you're a lone gamer, you still feel compeled to tell somebody about how you finally beat that one boss, and how awesome it felt when he keeled over and died. The lone gamer knows that nobody else cares, but the experience just wouldn't be worth as much if it were not shared.
Personally, I have always relied on help from my peers (and occasionally my mother) for help in choosing a game, learning how to play the game, getting help when I'm stuck...I wouldn't play video games at all if I couldn't play them with someone or know someone I could call on. Some of the most lively conversations I've had were about a a video game. Commiseration is always a good way to bring people together.
Even if you're a lone gamer, you still feel compeled to tell somebody about how you finally beat that one boss, and how awesome it felt when he keeled over and died. The lone gamer knows that nobody else cares, but the experience just wouldn't be worth as much if it were not shared.
Wednesday Night's Play Group
Our first gaming session was held last night, and it was a lot of fun. Betty, Dan, and I played a few games on Dan's XBox360: Burnout, Crash Bandicoot, and Table Tennis. I think that we all enjoyed playing Burnout. I love racing games in general, your attention is always fixed on the game. In RPGs there is a tendency for gamers to walk away from the game for a while to get a clearer perspective on their tricky situation, but with racing it isn't possible to distance yourself from the events taking place on screen. In fact, the gamer is drawn into a racing game more so than if it were an RPG, or even a dreaded MMO (and we all know how fixated MMOers can get).
The gamer is sucked into the hand-eye coordinated action of playing a racing game, it envelopes them. They don't notice that their tongues are sticking out of their mouths and slightly to the right, and they aren't aware of their commentary as they narrowly miss a head-on collision. Have you ever been in a situation where you're in a friend's car and while the two of you are having a conversation the driver suddenly says something crude and out of context? Well, I know that when I'm racing I make noises, grunts, and I suck air in through clenched teeth for long intervals of time.
A racing game is really the only kind of game that absorbs my attention completely. I get excited when I race because there isn't just a goal, there is a time constraint and other rivals that I have to beat. It isn't good enough that I made it to the end, it has to be before everyone else does. Some friends of mine back in high school would get together for gaming parties, but it wasn't the friendly atmosphere you would imagine. They each brought a TV and a gaming console to one guy's house and set up FF7. Then they would all load the game at the same time, and race to see who was the one that finished first. FF7 is a game that could last for well over 50 hours if you wanted to unlock everything, but my friends had done all that, they knew all of the game's little secrets. The real challenge lay in who knew it the best, and therefore, who finished first. The same thing goes for racing games. If you know every inch of the track, then you are the one who will finish first.
But besides the social context of gaming, I truly enjoyed Burnout. It handled well, the tracks were interesting but not too distracting. The more you play the more cars you can unlock, and the details on these cars are amazing. The crash scenes look real, and in this game you're actually encouraged to crash because it increases your level of boost power. Also, if you get into a big crash, the restart time isn't as delayed as it is in other racing games; you're back on the track within five seconds.
We also played Crash Bandicoot racing and that was definitely harder. You were racing toward a goal but you could also use boxes that unlocked helpful tools for either offensive or defensive use. Now the point isn't that you need to know the track well in order to gain an advantage, rather you need to know how to distract your rivals by throwing bombs and banana peels.
The last game we played was purely for fun: Table Tennis. It brought me back to my Mortal Kombat days of button mashing madness. I had no idea how to hit the ping pong ball, but I somehow succeeded in beating both Betty and Dan. I rule.
The gamer is sucked into the hand-eye coordinated action of playing a racing game, it envelopes them. They don't notice that their tongues are sticking out of their mouths and slightly to the right, and they aren't aware of their commentary as they narrowly miss a head-on collision. Have you ever been in a situation where you're in a friend's car and while the two of you are having a conversation the driver suddenly says something crude and out of context? Well, I know that when I'm racing I make noises, grunts, and I suck air in through clenched teeth for long intervals of time.
A racing game is really the only kind of game that absorbs my attention completely. I get excited when I race because there isn't just a goal, there is a time constraint and other rivals that I have to beat. It isn't good enough that I made it to the end, it has to be before everyone else does. Some friends of mine back in high school would get together for gaming parties, but it wasn't the friendly atmosphere you would imagine. They each brought a TV and a gaming console to one guy's house and set up FF7. Then they would all load the game at the same time, and race to see who was the one that finished first. FF7 is a game that could last for well over 50 hours if you wanted to unlock everything, but my friends had done all that, they knew all of the game's little secrets. The real challenge lay in who knew it the best, and therefore, who finished first. The same thing goes for racing games. If you know every inch of the track, then you are the one who will finish first.
But besides the social context of gaming, I truly enjoyed Burnout. It handled well, the tracks were interesting but not too distracting. The more you play the more cars you can unlock, and the details on these cars are amazing. The crash scenes look real, and in this game you're actually encouraged to crash because it increases your level of boost power. Also, if you get into a big crash, the restart time isn't as delayed as it is in other racing games; you're back on the track within five seconds.
We also played Crash Bandicoot racing and that was definitely harder. You were racing toward a goal but you could also use boxes that unlocked helpful tools for either offensive or defensive use. Now the point isn't that you need to know the track well in order to gain an advantage, rather you need to know how to distract your rivals by throwing bombs and banana peels.
The last game we played was purely for fun: Table Tennis. It brought me back to my Mortal Kombat days of button mashing madness. I had no idea how to hit the ping pong ball, but I somehow succeeded in beating both Betty and Dan. I rule.
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