...or "Your indie art is not a game".
Loved uses platforming as an inelegant metaphor for domestic abuse.
I have a radical opinion in two parts:
Why do I have such a stupid opinion, you might ask? Because while computer games are manifestly art (in that they can have aesthetic, intellectual or emotional value beyond their primary purpose), typically their efficacy is not a product of them being games. The music, graphics or story within a game can inspire some level of emotional response, but this is nothing unique to the game itself. A game's interactivity might predispose us to respond more emotionally to these constituent media, but will it provoke only a limited range of emotions from the manipulation of its interactive components alone. This is the barrier that designers, as artists, must overcome; the real artistry is in creating a game than inspires a sophisticated emotional response through how it is played.
Majesty of Colours is a game abou...wait, it's a game?!
To state the above is to implicitly draw a line between 'Games' and 'Interactive Art'. There are many examples of mixed-media art presented with a digital interface, most of which I find quite juvenile. Whilst I'm just about willing to concede that a branching poem accompanying a picture of a faux-8 bit style sea monster is art, how can a piece of software that merely displays other fixed media be meaningfully called a game? How can its success be an accurate measure of the suitability of games as an artistic medium?
To be frank though, I can't see how any of this is important. Developers have enough trouble making games that aren't WW2 shooters and I'd sooner see less of those than have designers panicking that their latest RTS doesn't work as a metaphor for apartheid. Though if you do feel compelled to make a piece of software that plays Ave Maria as you pilot Fearne Cotton's head over a field of weeping children tied to burnt trees, please don't label it with the G word.
Jordan.
What says 'oppressive dystopia' better than a small frog?
It would be fair to say I have a fanatical dedication to the work of Bullfrog Productions, frequently citing them as the greatest game designers of all time, making unauthorised t-shirts from their logo and waging a one-man guerilla war against Electronic Arts (EA) for buying them out and running the studio into the ground.
Bullfrog specialised in two, complementary genres of game: Real-time strategy and Business management and you can perhaps guess with which of the two I have the greater affinity (clue: I'm a huge nerd). Unfortunately the 'God sim' died out in the 90s alongside Bullfrog and we might never again enjoy the satisfaction of creating a functional theme park in the face of rampaging swarms of vomiting children.
All is not lost, however; Bullfrog left us a template for the future in the frankly excellent cyberpunk action/strategy game Syndicate and the following is a selection its features that today's games are in dire need of ripping off.
Setting
Syndicate is set in an urban dystopia where vast corporations ruthlessly oppress the population, conduct morally questionable research and criminal action to advance their profit line and global trench-coat supplies are dangerously low. So far, so cliche, but how Syndicate handles cyberpunk differently is to cast you in the role of the genre's most powerful agents, the megacorporation.
An early mission. Agents cleaning a car for pocket money.
The human population in Syndicate are ants, good for their labour or body parts only, even the men you send into combat are ultimately replaceable resources. It's an intoxicating conceit and importantly a transparent one for the game's player, framing the game's conflicts in a purely abstract form and not requiring any sentimental narrative that would break the darkly comic setting. It's interesting that later Peter Molyneux would devote so much of his time attempting to get players to care about his fictional characters in the Fable series when even the most empathetic player is inclined to view non-player characters in a largely economic sense.
While not providing much in the way of emotional depth, the setting does afford the player the opportunity to indulge in an evocative power fantasy. That isn't to say the game fully exploits the depth of the setting; Syndicate mostly uses it to excuse its sparse presentation and get guns into the hands of robots; but more games should consider the realm of cyberpunk fiction as a source for inspiration. The time has come for a satirical poke at contemporary corporate arrogance and the grim aesthetics could provide a much needed change to the stream of clean, high-tech space operas that favour the post-Mass Effect shelves.
Immersion
Even though the game has no story to speak of, it uses a number of clever tricks to draw you into its world. The first choice you face in the game is the name and logo for your corporation, it's a small piece of customization but one that conveys a sense of ownership and responsibility for what's to come.
The missions are set in living cities: they teem with innocent pedestrians, violent gangs and far-too-trusting policemen. Cars roam the streets, ready to be hijacked or to mow down the unwary operative. Buildings, rendered in an obvious homage to Blade Runner, explode convincingly and the hapless public will run away from your bloody firefights; fleeing most satisfyingly. Syndicate presents a more convincing model of a city under siege than Grand Theft Auto, years before DMA had the nous to stop churning out unending streams of Lemmings.
Three quarters of my squad are killed on the easiest misson because I was taking a screenshot.
Outside of the combat sequences you manage your corporate empire through taxation of conquered territories. You develop new technologies by funding various programs in your research department. Weapons and items you find in the field can be sold for a profit and the people you kidnap can be brainwashed into becoming new agents. Whilst there is no choice in the missions available, they are all carefully themed: eliminate some competition, kidnap rival scientists, assassinate troublesome idealists; it all builds towards the feeling that you're playing with a consistent world.
Whilst it would be fairly naive to assume that developers could get away with such a paucity of story nowadays, Syndicate shows that creating an effective game world is a massive step towards engaging your player. Today's developers should take a leaf out of Bullfrog's book, convincing details can make a dead, empty sandbox into vibrant and fun playground.
Action
Syndicate is an insanely difficult game. Aside from the path finding issues, the fact that you can be shot from off-screen by an enemy agent you can't see, the way the scenery prevents you from seeing behind and inside buildings and so on, the game is still legitimately difficult. That's not to say the game is unfair; you are provided ample tools to defend yourself and almost always have the advantage of surprise, however, the slightest mistake is always punished in the most brutal fashion. Your agents will repeatedly die and when they die they will explode. Even the most successful mission will be trailed in the blood of innocents caught in your crossfire, and this is a good thing.
It may look like all of these are from the same level...that's because they are.
I will not sit here and rant about the state of modern console gaming, suffice to say I believe games are getting easier, and to their detriment. Syndicate is a game that rewards care and cunning, and the bitterness of every defeat only enhances the satisfaction of every victory.
Syndicate also features some of the most vicious AI in the history of action games. It's no surprise to hear how the game was originally developed as a multiplayer game and the AI was designed to replicate the strategies employed by human players; enemy agents will frequently outflank you, close in fast when you're armed with long-range weapons, and hold off when they have the better ground, all to great effect.
Equally though, the enemy are gifted with no special advantage; your agents are capable of acting as independently as you choose; in a crisis they can be pumped with a cocktail of custom drugs: boosting their speed, accuracy and even improving their intelligence. This system introduces another level of strategy as you manage your agents' medication and acts as an intuitive way of controlling the friendly AI. In populated areas your troops can be doped up, holstering weapons unless threatned; in combat, they can target individuals or lay down suppressing fire, and activating 'Panic Mode' in the middle of an ambush will send them into a chemically-induced blood rage, protecting you at the cost of the civilian population (and your tax dollars).
The later Theme games would feature a more developed management system, annoyingly.
This combination of fast, explosive action and surprisingly competent AI is something that today's games still struggle to achieve. Bullfrog's use of simple game mechanics, a sensible interface and some smoke and mirrors combine to create an experience that is as challenging as it is exciting...and of course it helps that it's ball-bustingly hard.
So fucking what?
So fucking this: a new Syndicate game is currently in development at Starbreeze Studios and if done right it could be the greatest strategy game to date and the swansong that Bullfrog deserves. Unfortunately it's being described as a "reinvention" and, if the recent trend in resurrected franchises is anything to go by, will be a generic, over-the-shoulder squad shooter with pointless celebrity voice actors, a boss fight and that stupid cover system that Gears of War did.
Still, maybe someone will have the good sense to give the socially retarded, power hungry, cyber-fetishist proto-Alan Sugars of the world the game they deserve and rip off Syndicate good and proper.
Jordan.
On the grounds that I'm paying for this web site, I have decided to actually start updating the bloody thing. However, being a design whore I'll probably end up changing the layout 155 more times before I actually finish that Syndicate article. Also, being a revisionist, all of this might disappear into a nearby alternate dimension upon subsequent review.
In other news (and as further evidence of my masochism), I'm trying to implement some kind of tag system in case I accidentally post some content. You can't click the tags yet but they're definitely there...maybe.
Jordan.