Comeback after reading this here: http://kotaku.com/5127816/developers-respond-to-nintendos-hint-system-patent

It seems that people are reacting very poorly to just one of the myriad of possibilities this patent could mean to gaming. I may agree with the hardcore street cred reaction, since, in a way i avoid strategy guides for this very reason; TO KEEP MY CRED. Yet, i’ve got a feeling it is a small, knee-jerk reaction, that makes me feel ill against this type of functionality/” new paradigm”.

It’s no surprise that very few people react negatively to the fact that Nintendo is going to patent something that might be as unnecesary to patent as Amazon’s one-click. It looks to be one of those patents that more than anything, seek to restrict others from a simple implementation; nesting on patents to sue the first person that does the idea. I strongly disagree with patents being used litigiously. Given how many patents Nintendo has violated (1, 2, 3), and how many other companies’ ideas from which they’ve benefited (atari, sony, SGI), it seems contradictory that a patent would be awarded to those who violate other’s patents. It’s like Apple accusing Microsoft of stealing from them, when they stole everything from Xerox, makes their case easily disregarded by people other than mac zealots – though i love macs

Outside of the legal ramifications of patents, people do not remember under which legacy concepts or other historical trends they part from or follow when growing their industry. And boy, is it apparent when talking with younger people; not because of a youthfull arrogance on their part (I should note), but actually because of a lack of recorded history on our side. Videogame history is going to suffer from the same blunders that plagues film history; bad archiving due to bad vaults, recreating wheels all over the place and just being plain forgetful.

You may remember – back in the day – Nintendo had their hint line, which if you wanted to, you could have a nintendo game assistant help you through the game… for a PRICE (something like 25c per minute). This was also before the days of tutorials and the net. And as a matter of fact, it still exists. Today, I’m willing to bet a paycheck that the majority (over 80%) of players have looked up a walkthrough or a gamefaq at one point of their lives. It’s ok if people wont admit it… i can hear their Machismo yell, “NOOOO, I have never, EVER, bought a strategy guide or read through a walkthrough, or used a game genie, etc., that’s for sissies!”

Right!

I’LL ADMIT IT! I called Nintendo’s Powerline for a rented Super Metroid cartridge without instructions just to find out where to place that damn megabomb; i’m SO ashamed… really 8-|

I didnt do the "for dummies version"; it has less guilt.

Now, I’m not saying that cheating is ok. In competitive leagues, where people look to set standards and raise the performance bar year after year, cheating is always and should be always frowned upon. This is mostly because cheating seeks an to gain an advantage that wasn’t appropriated through simple self improvement AKA PRACTICE. It could be said that steroids and drugs form a part of this lack of standard ideals in the sports world. Tying the two together, for example, it would  be considered cheating to use Ritalin or Adderall when playing a game such as an FPS or RTS against someone or against a group. So in that case, having a player that plays better than you beat the game FOR you, when your score (achievements, Trophies, or the like) ranks you higher against others in terms of ability; cheating, guides, etc. sets up an unfair and untruthful environment for the years that record may govern. It also artificially raises the competition level and makes people distrust the medium, thus neutralizing the scoring body of officials.

HOWEVER, i dont opine that, when used for personal recreation, these aids are bad for anyone, nor that they hinder the medium in any way; especially when implemented as equalizers such as assistants for the handicapped, elderly or casual players, etc. People tend to forget all the advantages they have today compared to the arcade heyday. Back then, the pressure to get good at a machine was both a social showcase and financial limitation. Today we have: guides, the net, in-game hints, easy-med-hard modes, in-game tutorials, practice mode, AUTOAIM, etc. which should remind people to be careful when using any of these for emasculating accusations (cause it seems that mostly males complain about other males, gaming hasnt matured out of this primitive behavior).

Lots of these behaviors come from school. Kids in highschool (and many adults) still think that even after graduating highschool cliff’s notes are a bad thing; that audiobooks deduct IQ points from your license IQ stats as if someone were keeping track.

Complainers should understand that the benefit of reading through the entirety of the experience is still palpable even to those who have already “skimped” through some pages. In other words, seeing the Romeo & Juliet before reading the play should not impair the experience of learning to read Shakespeare, and moreover, reading it would allow the reader an extended understanding, not a reduced one. I believe that if they made a Cliff’s note that was better than the book, then teachers would assign those too, just as if they made a movie that was better than a book. As a matter of fact, books that sumarize Don Quijote as interpreted by a character reading the book have gained fame and are even accepted as their own literature. Moreover, some movies serve as good enticers or companions to the books they’re based on… these opportunities add to the subject matter, why couldnt the Autopilot Patent add as well? why do people think it automatically subtracts? I understand that mediums have certain requisites, like vision for movies; hearing for music, but seeing a game vs playing a game isn’t so extreeme as the previously mentioned.

The self oppressed are indeed a loud bunch. And by self-oppressed i mean those who use other’s standards too close when forming an opinion of themselves. Shortcuts (such as Cliff’s notes, autopilot, etc) that harm no one might actually indicate the player’s intent on being selective of what you want to enjoy. One of my colleagues insists on playing games with cheats for this reason, “i want to play the game how IIII want to play the game, without restrictions or limitations by the designers”. It’s usually kids that think that they can see all the movies that exist, play all the games that come out… then, when they reach adulthood, they learn to become selective and picky about their choices, so they can have time to enjoy other things like dating, etc. This pickiness is a part of what shapes their personality; what they’re into. When being too picky, pickiness leads to snobbery. But aren’t all enthusiasts battling this? the choice between being a snob or not? In truth, people eventually realize they don’t have the time to read all the books in the world. They have to form generalized opinions about what it is they KNOW they like; you wish you could, but you dont have enought time to stop and smell all the flowers…

my suggestions about welcoming this patent whenever someone implements it:

• It can be monetized, just as guides are bought: you could buy and download the autopilot. After all, it will cost development time to craft the autopilot system. It would be like buying a Cliff’s Notes plugin.
• This could be used to help the handicapped; it will be a gameplay equalizer. I dont buy a game for the challenge, i buy it for the entertainment; otherwise, people would buy I wanna be the guy for $50. If you dont believe me, go here and beat this game. The difficulty in some games makes people of VARYING abilities
• This could make a rental of a bad game a bit better.
• This feature could be unlocked after an achievement is attained, making the autopilot initially unavailable; perhaps available only after the game is finished.
• This could increase value to a game that has multiple characters, where it would take lots of time to play the game as every single character.
• Consumer demand will make or brake this feature. Not all games in the PS3, which has waggle, utilize this because of the Wii’s popularity. XBOX refuses to allow mouse support in their console, which would arguably make lots of the simultaneously developed PC-XBOX games easier to produce, more unified, and easier to play. I Disagree with M$’s insistance, but their success isn’t dictated by this peculiarity.

The talking heads freak out first. I’m not initially an optimist on most days, but this really made me look into it with a bit more study. I hope you can see benefits where there are some and potentially avoid the pitfalls wherever they are; on this patent too.

Purum

I wonder: why don’t people, when playing game characters, walk around the game’s city and ponder about that person eating an endless bowl of soup in the corner cafe with the same depth as they do about the man and the couple found in Edward Hopper’s masterpiece?

After all, they repeat almost the same amount of times…

All art forms have their zeniths, apexes, summits, peaks, etc. and games are no exception. Most submissions to any art form are valleys (low points) or simply messettas that keep the status quo (dont add anything new). The stars and superstars, in the form of the artist that “sells” the art to be something Genius in of itself, or it could be the piece itself, preserved for humanity’s benefit, are found and needed for any art form to be legitimized. Games are trying, to say the least, to gain some of the before mentioned: art, and worthy artist of teaching everyone else. A couple posts ago, I mentioned “THE A LIST” of games. And like a critic that has eclectic tastes in music, never knowing how to categorize something Pop/commercial like, but able to categorize weird tastes, our list is bound to be made up by weird critics and their tastes. However, it feels weird to know that many people (non critics) will continue their existence completely ignorant of those beautiful sparks available in games, just like there are many that ignore other great examples in other media. I’m one of them… I can see the growing list of important books i’ll never get to read pile up next to my bed… And I also have that list of books that “i should pick up” but wont… “I’m a slow reader”: a fact and excuse at times. That’s not really that dissimilar to how bad many of an older generation say they’ll be at any game.

Imagine the current generation of old people loving the wii… One of the reasons may be because using the arm as a whole as an input device requires less precision than using the fingers, and therefore offer more “usable precision” based on the design of the recognizable movement by the computer and therefore less performance precision. Many of our elders have lost that motor precision, one required to do simple things such as spoon feed themselves, etc. On the wii, its analogue of the simulated movement is “more” accurate, and thus requires less learning or practice to achieve. A stab/hit/swing was something that a person that is now 78 might have been learning how to pretend to do as a child playing cops and robbers in the backyard, whereas pressing a button that is mapped to stabbing is something that a person need to grok in their head in (possibly) the following number of steps a) the animation, b) the direction the orientation of the character shows onscreen, c) the resulting action collision test, etc. I can definitely say that the range of motion available to the parent appendage of my hand (the forearm) needs less coordination than the root of the hand (wrist), complexity is increased when considering the control of each finger in all degrees of motion, in effect, as the tree of degree’s of freedom branches. I cant believe that developers refuse to consider a person with arthritis; they may have less pain on their shoulder than on each finger… you are 5 times more likely to receive an injury on any finger than on the upper arm, since the fingers are more versatile and more frequently employed by its MASTER.

I suggest that we always consider the motor handicapped and ask the same questions we do when designing for less hardcore audiences… will easy, med, or hard be enough for them to enjoy a game? What about me as I get old and lose motor function due to the natural process of aging? Will I need special calisthenics in order to beat level 1-1 in Super Mario Brothers? can I compete in tetris? am i relegated to only play games like Myst (not used pejoratively)?

In other media, these problems seem to have som form of solution. For example: glasses (hearing aids… first row, etc) help people read books or see better, nurses help by reading to the blind, but when it comes to games, there’s nothing to assist playing games yet. In fact, most games pride themselves with being difficult… hardcore is an unfortunate composite word used by our industry. These devices, invented due to a “handicap” or old age, or whatever, when used to help those who typically cant enjoy the art with normal means… are equalizers.

What about game systems or storytelling devices used in games? can they evolve so that the comprehension level remains steady or grows with age? A boy reads a book, views a painting, watches a play and may not understand the subtext, but as they age, this ability only improves… games seem to neglect this (as so many other things) as they also seem to be locked in a perpetual teenage frenzy. Which leads me to this question, who is going to have the valor to make games for an aging gamer market? And, are they going to ignore that the aging gamers consider fewer games to factor less importantly in their lives, especially because they aren’t being cultured by the creators or market to expect more mature -Older- topics?

Still, bringing the human condition to games and using games to help the human condition is a worthy problem to solve… how to empower this medium with the ability to speak to humans and help humans use games as a tool for themselves. I have noticed that the more “civilized” cultures are the ones that empower those less fortunate with “equalizers” that allow them to enjoy a better quality of life. Maybe there is no solution. hell, there isn’t a standard agreeable definition of what love is… maybe it’s unsolvable at most development budgets, even Blizzards, or the games that solve it, just wont be accepted in the current market. And sadly, a many seniors who’ve figured out a thing or two about a thing or two wont be able to participate on adding their wisdom to society through games. Considering that many artists did some of their most important work right up to the moment they died of old age, which ones are contributing with their sage like wisdom, by stating it in game form to their young-lings.

I don’t know exactly how I will feel when I’m older and My hands aren’t able to do the juggling it used to do when I was younger. Maybe  I’ll feel like Michael Jordan at age 80, who’s only way to relive dunking the ball will be by looking at his old videos… only a memory. This doesn’t happen with other mediums, what can we do about this?

Braid seems to belong to the category of HEAVY(as said by Marti McFly) games I can recall before Braid: Passage, Portal, The Marriage, bioshock, alice, Ico, Oddworld (stranger especially), Grim Fandango, Civ, Deus Ex, spore (the preview), Cloud, Phantasy Star 2. Yeah, I’m name dropping, listing my pedigree, whatever… but although I’ll swear by them, these aren’t necessarily my favorite games, just games that I feel can live and breathe outside the video game realm. They should be stored in the vault of human achievement, yeah, the one that stores all our artistic merit.

I’m certain that I’m not alone in this feeling. We sometimes use HEAVY games just for chitchat, even with people who can’t stand or understand video games, which of course, bores and annoys them. My parents and friends, are a perfect sample audience of those that are annoyed to no end by my insistence (other mediums do the same with their supporters). Even some epiphanies Ive had about life are directly atributable to games They wont EVER care about in the most remote sense. And I want to emphasize EVER… they will die without even understanding the hand-holding bond those games create between an important story topic and some amazing gameplay.  Of course, there are many games with little lovely moments that show this flirting courtship. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if the total sum of this union amounts only to the occasional booty call to help others witness this relationship, most people I know wont grok the connection. Others that play games to study them, speak about games as if they just read the first printing of romeo and Juliet, or THAT episode of General Hospital, etc. regardless of where the example comes from, the same passion and excitement pours out of their shared thoughts. So, I’m pointing out the range between examples of the same “genre”… in games I don’t know these are set yet. In SAT fashion, Romeo and Juliet is to General Hospital as ____________ is to Super Mario Brothers… Braid seems to fit this.

Braid adds words to the answer; that solution space.

Braid is something like a diagonal sidestep, if that makes any sense. It doesn’t try to be super popular, but it know how “polished” it is. Topic wise, it takes the untrodden path in contrast with the topics used for most games today (war/politics, sci-fi, fantasy, etc). So it steps aside from the conventional, “safe”, genre. As these topics exploited in OTHER artistic mediums(regretful loss, remorseful memories); Braid in turn, ends up delivering a very psychologically introspective game, with a lot of “applicability” to one’s self… taking that forward step by showing how the mechanics used in this game are IMPORTANT to the storytelling, not just the story. Superficially, I think Braid’s analogue would be The Beatles’ In my Life (with mellower music); beneath the surface, apparently, it has a lot to do with undo-able hell.

In My Life’s lyrics are easy to “get” and easy to experience. Who hasn’t wished they could  go back to their childhood places? Like Mitch Hedberg says: “I wish i could play little league right now… they’d back the fuck up!” We all want to revisit, conquer those losses, and relive the wins… While playing Braid, I actually wondered if this game was Autobiographical; kinda saying, “Wow, Jon! it’s as if you wrote that song for me” and he could turn into an acerbic John Lennon and treat me like John Lennon treated a fan that shows up at his house in the “Imagine” documentary without offering them a sandwich. I actually hope in a way it wasnt; making it simply an example of some good, creative writing that reaches inside me, not just Braid being Jon’s experiences packaged and resold – which it isnt. A director that only direct autobiographical stuff usually has issues when directing other people’s great scripts… heard Ebert say that once and it made sense.

If, in games, you need to play the game in order to get the message, then it definitely states that games are contributing significantly to the art world, and that the voice (its quality, inflection, accent, etc) is as important as the message. If my dad can “get” it without experimenting or playing with the design choices, then the gameplay is superfluous to the message Braid is attempting to deliver, and a movie such as The English Patient, or in this case, a song like In my life would suffice for that artistic topic, e.g. I can tell you how star wars starts… ends, but the experience (Empire strikes back!!!!!! especially) MUST be viewed.

Braid has that message found in those places, only because it is a message that will continue to reappear throughout human history, or as long as human beings are able to experience a sense of loss. It’s no wonder why new songs still talk about “baby, i love you, i miss you, forgive me” (also mentioned in Braid). But it goes a bit further than that. I can totally skip parts in Braid. I can’t do that as easily in other mediums. Maybe in paintings. I can block out a portion, never ask anyone and draw my own conclusion about that white spot next to that Jesus figure and go on my merry way and wonder what that flat cloud of white meant (was it finished, was it intentional). In songs, I can replace, “rape me” in my head with “rave me” if i never bothered to look up the lyrics, or Jimmy is actually kissing this guy (Purple haze) and I’ll continue to think that… fine! But most of these occur because of a mistaken observation on part of the user done by ACCIDENT… mostly, hardly ever intentional. Either Braid actually invites me to randomly access bits of info, or just frankly doesn’t care. It certainly allows me a freedom I wish people and life afforded me, to actually be selective about my bad memories. Like they say, “those with a clean conscience, have a bad memory”… and the fact that this game allows that, that alone, helps the interactive medium have a unique say.

It Ends

But underneath it’s belly, after its conclusion, “The Princess” feels as perverse as “The Precious”. I’ve read some Internet blogs that say how it’s like this or that, trying to derive it’s true definition. I wonder how much the truth actually matters.

So, It’s all Peachy?

DO I have some complaints? yes… one would be that only Braid and the Princess, and maybe the effects on the background seem to have anything to do with the actual story. The monsters are too generic… Psychonauts had the “figments”, objects that had agency into both gameplay and story and storytelling… very few things in Braid have much to do with that… though I feel it’s my lack of perception that blocks that awareness. Replayability is low… save for speed runs. I would like to “perform” this game in front of others to see how they feel the story, but since the story is delivered in text, it would be “stiff” for the delivery of that performance to stop in front of those books and have the viewers read it. Oh, and the mechanics are too good to be left in only those levels, not saying that the game is short, but i wanted more (I think Jon intended this, so kudos).

I’m sure we can all agree (if you made it this far) that this “dissertation” feels longer than Braid feels to play, and still, Braid will provoke you to think about it this long… even long after “finishing” it. Like Harvey says and I love reading, “Amazing. Braid is Amazing.”

I read a quote that goes to the tune of this:

“I don’t know exactly what weapons will be used in WW3… but I do know that WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein

It was on Chris Blanc’s shirt. There was a picture that had one of Einstein’s pictures wrapped around a mushroom cloud. I was at work… made me think…

I’ve always thought and said to myself (cause its important to speak to oneself to see how dumb what you’re saying might be) that “one should always want to be quoted”. “Free is a great condiment!”, when I find coins while I walk, “I’m getting paid to walk too”. “One should have an opinion about everything one should have an opinion about”… there are others, but I’m still banging them into shape… that last phrase is not intended to be one, and if used by someone, it should not be while answering the following question: “do you have a lover?”

So, I was jealous of Einstein’s great intellect and quotable legacy. Carrying the title of being a genious will make people search for evidence of that genius that may have been overlooked by others; somewhat like an archaeologist searches for “newer” clues about a site that has been studied over and over again. Without a doubt, Einstein had great thoughts, and great ability to prove these thoughts. Whether he simply theorized or thought, great thoughts. And I’ve always wanted to have something to contribute to humanity and the universe, thought I’m not so aware of how to achieve that quest; and moreover, I’m not sure they knew exactly how or even if they knew they did either.

I admire other sets of geniuses. Those from every sector of human endeavor… holly shit molly! It sort of makes you not even want to attempt anything. But the search, that’s mostly fun! I heard it once said that scientists must not fall in love with their ideas… Feynman (The Great Explainer) also mentions this everyonce in a while; and it may well be that the exchange with others is its own payoff.

For example, a long time ago, I wrote a lot of poetry… most of which is not releasable, though I call it practice. Today, I write songs, and I must admit that the reduction of words/emotions/feelings into verses is a great effort. As time has passed, Ive noticed that doing said effort becomes useful when talking to others. sometimes as conversation starters, or even during a conversation; to distill their message into its essence, or even to quote them further.

So, all this effort of trying to contribute to English (a language which will not last forever :-0 ) comes from trying to have what others have shown to have, genius! and maybe all if this effort, if I ever do something worth while, what ever it is, can ultimately be called “my envy given a voice”… you know, for the fun of it.

“Teach when they lose, win when you teach” – Keyvan “me”

Purum