Meditations on music gaming

When I bought Rock Band 2 a few months ago, the purchase was my first foray into the world of music gaming. I borrowed DDR once and dabbled in Guitar Hero at parties here and there. But never experienced the games long enough to ponder the kind of entertainment they provide us. When faced with the Rock Band skeptics who ask "why don't you learn a real instrument," I've always argued that these games offer people the chance to feel like a rock star. Indeed, the game is best when played with the geekiest of friends who have choice songs and abundant enthusiasm performing them.

Yet lately, I've stopped practicing the game on my own. I think Shawn Elliot reflects my thoughts best in a recent blog post:

"As I once said on a podcast, I feel weird when I watch people play Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I'm reminded of how human music is and what it means for us to make it. I think, this is what happens when a culture decides that music-making is strictly the domain of the specialist and that we should stop performing when it becomes clear that we aren't cut from professional cloth."

I've heard this guy mention on a podcast that in the past everyone practiced some form of amateur music. Whether it be singing or some instrument. Interesting how society has changed. I wonder how well I could play now if had taken up an instrument in middle school.

A musician friend in Austin asked me how often I play Rock Band. I answered a few hours a week. He told me if I spent that much time learning a real guitar, I could pick it up.

I'm not saying I won't play Rock Band anymore. Just pondering the possibilities. I'm not quite at the point where I think I'm too good for it. Social get-togethers are the current justification for the time spent on it.

Anyone else having doubts about strumming away at plastic instruments?

I really want to love you.

I really do, PlayStation brand. I mean the intentions are there. You want to make a portable gaming device that has robust media capabilities. Great, I game and I listen to music, I'm in. You want to make a home console with really awesome and reliable hardware and online features matching XBoxLIVE. Cool, I'm in $600. But lately... I'm losing faith.

I saw that the PS3's new firmware is coming soon. Oh good, my smiley face picture sorting needs have so far been woefully unmet by my video game console. Seriously, Sony PS3 firmware team? Seriously? This is what you're spending your months developing? Do you need any ideas for what you could be more useful? I'll give you one right now.

When a friend messages me, I go to my friends list on the XMB. My natural instinct is to press X and go into that friend's menu to check the messages he's sent me.




Ok, I'm here. Where's the "check messages from this user" button? Sorry for small image, but if you look closely the only buttons there are "Create New message", "Compare Trophies", and "Start Chat".

So if I want to see the message list, I have to go back out to the XMB, press triangle to bring up the friend's menu and then click "View Messages".



I go through this process EVERY time I want to check my messages. It's been month since that main friend's page was implemented yet the issue has never come to the firmware team's attention. Arguably I'm being really picky about a small issue like this. Let's look at the bigger picture.

The hardware and software developments of the PS3 and XBox360 this generation have made me realize how different Microsoft and Sony are as companies. Microsoft is the software giant. Windows, .NET, Visual Studio, Office, MSSQL, XNA, the list goes on. MS makes software for and supports a large IT development community. Believe me, I work with the stuff everyday as an IT consultant. I'm pretty sure they know a thing or two about developing software with a specific user in mind. More specifically we can look at the new group chat feature in the New XBox Experience as an example of MS developing a feature based on a specific user need.

When my friends and I were playing COD4 last year we wanted to keep our voice chat to ourselves. The solution? Break out laptops and PSP's to use Skype. MS recognized this kind of user experience and integrated a private group chat feature.

Now Sony is obviously the hardware company. Walk into an electronics store and their brand is on almost every type of hardware. When you compare the PS3's failure rates to the Red Ring of Death debacle, there's no contest. Yet compare the PS3's Home launch to the NXE's launch and you see Sony and MS's roles reversed. NXE was delivered in a timely manner with useful features that made sense. Home was delayed for a year and I can't find a reason to use it.

One more thing, Sony firmware team. I hate the PSP's interface. You wanted this thing to be a next generation Walkman yet it fails to play music as well as any MP3 player with a decent UI. I can't dynamically sort my music like I can with other MP3 players or even the freaking PS3. Where's the damn Shuffle All feature? Why can I only access my music in the static folder structure on my memory stick? I really want the PSP to be my one go to device for portable entertainment. Heck, I'd probably buy more games for it if it took on that role. I'm just going to have to buy an MP3 player. Not a Sony one, though. I just couldn't trust the interface.

What is art?

I've been struggling to write a blog post defining art. I want to define art in order to provide at least a personal vocabulary for my posts here. Yet as I write, I can't pin down a solid definition. I begin arguing that art must have a well defined message and context. Without the message then art becomes a banal sort of "anything anyone creates."

With this conviction I debate a coworker of mine. He's into making film on his free time so naturally, I want to know his opinion. He suggests everything is art. Even things not intended as art can be art to the individual.

I let out a frustrated sigh.

"Yeah, I'm one of THOSE people, right?" he suggests.

I counter by arguing that art needs meaning to avoid being pointless. He argues that meaning depends on the the individual. Then it hits me. I've been writing about personal experiences with all these games. And it's impossible to know whether the creators intended for their audience to have such experiences. So my coworker has a point. And so my search continues. What do you think?

RIP 1up.com as we know it.

If you don't already know, my video game news site of choice has just died. The URL isn't going away but a good part of the staff that really defined the heart and soul underneath got layed off. Here are the nitty-gritty business details if you need to know.

Taking a look at the list of firings is really the depressing part. The people on the chopping block were behind some of the best games industry podcasts. If you've ever looked on the sidebar of my blog you'd have noticed the link to the 1up.com podcasts. This whole thing probably lightens my weekly listening by half.

To top it off, the entire staff behind the weekly videocast, The 1UP Show, was fired as well. What am I supposed to do on Saturday mornings now? Games journalism is an industry where something seemingly so simple as scored reviews are causing controversy and sparking thoughtful debate. To me, The 1UP Show, was quietly shining the light toward a brighter future. It's segments features 1UP staff standing around talking about their ups and downs while playing games. They were reviews disguised as previews and shed and pretension of assigning scores or coming up with yay or nay conclusions. They focused on the details of games, rather than the skin deep review scores.

What can we do but remember the good times and look to the future. If GiantBomb.com is any indication, creative minds propel themselves to good things. I'll be watching.

A true game artist.

My sister showed me this story about the guy who wrote Passage.

"In truth, ambitious game-makers want it to be true that games are polluting the minds of our youth, because that means games really are touching our brains in sophisticated ways, and therefore games have room to grow. Like Passage, they can be art."

This article pretty much sums up everything I've been pondering about games as a medium for art. Read it and see if you can't come to the same conclusion I have.

Consequence: Follow up.

While writing the last blog I came across some interesting reading related to my topic. However, for the sake of brevity and focus, I chose to save them for a follow up.

If you'll remember, I was ranting about gaming as an interactive medium. The interactivity is what makes video games unique from movies, TV, etc. Chris Bateman's article, A Game Has Never Made You Cry, discusses further the separation between telling a story through cinema and gameplay mechanics. For the sake of conversation, he takes the concept of separating the medium of games and cinema to an extreme. That games can only be "systems". Thus, emotionally touching stories in games have only happened on the cinema/movie side of things. Game play itself cannot make you cry.

Whether or not you agree with the thesis and the assumption that a game is only a "system", the article highlights the separation between game play and story I've seen in games. Especially in the JRPG genre, I think there is a reliance on cinema/movie techniques to tell a story that is detached from game play. It works but ultimately the story told through these means does not tap the full potential of this medium.

Consequence

SPOILERS: Warning this blog post contains minor spoilers about Valkyria Chronicles and a Fallout 3. No giant revelations, really, just a vaguely described plot point in VC and a description of a Fallout side quest.

Guilt
Last Tuesday I, as I do every day, arrived at work and opened up Gmail to idle in a chatroom with a few of my friends. Taylor went into a series of inane comments about killing rabbits. Cutting through his attempt at inciting humor, I said this,

"Screw you. People have died under my watch in the wasteland. For that, I am saddened. No justice, no recourse for them. Just a festering cesspool of the worst of human immorality. It's all i can do to hope to be a small positive force."

I know, it sounds corny. But it was all I could do to deal with a heavy sense of guilt I was feeling since the night before.

Where did this emotional outburst come from, you ask? Well, I was playing Fallout 3. My character found Big Town. The guard is a nervous 20 something called Rusty. He tells me Big Town is besieged by slavers and super mutants. Inside Big town, the few, young, defenseless and beleaguered residents asked me to save some hostages the mutants had taken to the old police station. The town's doctor, Red was among the captured. Consequently, in Red's clinic lay a severely injured man. Inspecting him gave me the option of attempting to help him or putting him out of his misery. Unfortunately, my medical skill was not high enough and had to leave him.

Heading out of town I encounter two super mutants. One of them aims a mini-gun at me and I watch my health slide steadily down. Panicking, I run back to town, hoping to get help from Dusty. It works. Except the mini-gun mutant blows poor Dusty's head off. Great. I just got the town's only guard killed. I kinda owe them now.

So off I go to the police station. Kill a few mutants here, kill a few there and I'm happily escorting Red back to Big Town. After I arrive, Red mentions she heard that the super mutants were planning another attack on the town. I decide to stay and use my Small Arms skills to teach everyone how to defend themselves.

Before the attack I decide I want to place some mines just across the bridge that is the one entrance to the town. I'm not even half way across it before the mutants launch their attack, lobbing grenades in tandem before pulling out their over sized melee weapons. The first wave is killed off without any casualties and everyone is standing around. I don't realize a second wave is coming and before I know it, more grenades land around me. In a split second I look over and Red is getting a sledgehammer to the head.

When the dust(or gibs in Fallout's case) settles I see Red's body lying next to the mutants'. I talk to the gathered survivors. "I've haven't felt this safe in a long time." When I mention Red, another survivor says "you did all you could."

No I didn't. What if I had payed more attention and put mines down after the first wave? This town would still have its doctor. I head back to Red's clinic and find the injured man still there. I still can't help him. No one can.

I know what you're thinking. Norman's going crazy over a one dimensional, throwaway character the developers were using for one measly side quest in this game. Yet I couldn't get over it. I felt like it was MY fault she died.

I had the same feeling while playing Valkyria Chronicles. The first time a member of my squad permanently died during a mission all I could do was stare at the screen. My mouth hanging open. Never mind the intentionally sad "dying moment" the developers created. The motherly Lancer who couldn't look after us anymore. The Sniper who wanted to avoid the front lines, cursing me for his death. As sad as those blurbs were, they only enhanced this heavy, almost burning feeling in my stomach. It was guilt. I put them where they were when they died. It was my brashness that killed them. Ultimately their deaths were more emotional for me than the death that occurs during a cutscene in the same game. Sure that death was sad, but it wasn't MY fault.

Consequence
I've taken two things from this. First a bit of insight about myself. Part of mourning is dealing with the irreversible consequences of death.

Second what makes gaming a unique medium from music, movies, etc is its interactivity. When I feel guilt over the consequences of my actions, that is an emotion that cannot be be elicited in a linear medium such as movies. A scripted death is a scripted death. It was inevitable and the viewer played no role in it. However, when death is a consequence of a player's actions it incites more profound emotions. Ultimately, I believe as gaming matures, creators will rely less on the storytelling mechanics of linear mediums such as movies and books and we'll discover what's possible in these interactive experiences.

However, the argument could also be made that I'm just retelling what's part of my personal experience and not what the developer had in mind when they created the game. I'm sure Fallout 3's developers didn't intend to incite such ridiculous amounts of guilt while designing Big Town's quest chain. But that would be judging the experience from a narrative point of view. That Fallout's experience is a series of events plotted out and directed by the developers. There is certainly an amount of design that goes into the environment around this quest chain. However, the open world aspect of this game's "system" means the developer has limited control over what the player ultimately does. Open world games rely on the quality of their "systems" to generate a good player experience. The feature of Fallout's "system" that led to my reaction was consequence. That characters can die and that death have impact on the world.