Design Theory 03: Who can be trusted?

Firstly, the image accompanying this is a new, updated Airship game sprite sheet!  Nothing in their hasn't been posted in some of the newish screenshots, but this is just a big spread of all o' em!

Anyways, I'd actually like to talk about critics in the industry that actually know what they're talking about.  This is rarer than you might think, but lets start out with why I (and so many others) dislike the way the "Big Name" critics (IGN, Gamespot, GamePro, Gametrailer, etc.) handle reviews, and also why the way consumers view these reviews is flawed.

Lets start with a nice analogue.  I recently saw the film "The Adjustment Bureau", and enjoyed it.  It's different, it deals with some high minded concepts, and my personal favorite, it pulls a "District 9" and falsely represented itself in trailers and commercials.  I actually like this because it tricks people into watching films they might otherwise pass off.  But I digress, upon getting home, I checked Metacritic to see its score, and was unsurprised to see it landed an aggregate of 60.

This isn't too unheard of.  The film was "above average" but not by much, and I had a rough idea what these reviews might say before I even read them.  It's not a film for everyone, but thats part of the charm here, I didn't necessarily want to see a film that appealed to as large a cross section as possible.  But heres the thing, my friends and I enjoy plenty of average range films.  Not so much with games...

When a AAA release comes out, if its not greeted with 9/10's or higher you get two things: One group saying that it was terrible, and another saying it was reviewed by an idiot.

That's a really broken review model.  I've seen folks say that 7/10 is complete trash, and that 8/10 is only barely average.  Only 9.0 or higher is even worth your consideration.  But the worst part of this is, they aren't completely wrong.  The average review score for video games is WAY higher than 5/10.  Thats not right, not everything can be "above average", because those games should now be considered the average!

This isn't something thats going to change any time soon either, though a few sites have attempted to change this. 1UP notably abandoned number scores for letter grades, though this is still skewed by aggregators such as metacritic, and Kotaku (which, by the way, has suffered from Gawkers terrible redesign, but thats a different rant altogether) simply lists pros and cons, though some editors handle it better than others.

As a result of this broken review system that both consumers and critics are equally responsible for, I've found myself more interested in critics that actually spend time debating minutia of game design, or broad concepts inherent to genres or the industry as a whole, that then use games as examples of these.

There are two that fill this niche, and although I'm sure there are more that I'll add as time goes by, at this moment these are the only ones I really follow religiously:

Sessler's Soapbox:  http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/tag/301/sesslers-soapbox/
Extra Credits:  http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/articles/Extracredits

Adam Sessler is one of the closest things to a "face" the gaming industry has.  In an industry with no actors, it's even more anonymous than the directors or music producers for film.  You might associate names with products, but thats about it.  He's also the only thing that could possibly redeem any aspect of "G4tv", a channel that still claims to be for gamers, but somehow ends up filling its schedule with week long marathons of C.O.P.S.  He's knowledgeable, he's passionate, and he isn't jaded into thinking that things are perfect in the industry right now, but he's not so cynical that he thinks its ruined either.  Reasonable.

Extra Credits features a group of three game industry veterans doing short, 7-10 minute shows that really aim for the important aspects of the industry.  They don't shy away from the hard hitingt issues, like LGBT representation, piracy, and sexuality in games.  They aren't up in arms about it either though, and touch upon the issues with enough lightheartedness to make it entertaining, but enough brevity to understand the seriousness of the topics.

Lastly, EgoRaptor, a prominent flash cartoonist with a great sense of humor, recently released his first 15 minute show about game design, title "Sequelitis":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM&feature=player_embedded

It's an impressive piece of discerning talk that covers one of my favorite game debates,the argument  of linear vs. non-linear game play, using the examples of Castlevania and Castlevania: Simon's Quest.  A great piece of work that I hope to see followed up even more than his animations.

So, there you have it, my list of trusted reviewers and critics.  This isn't to say I don't trust anyone else, or am constantly casting a "shifty eyed" stare their way, but these are the ones that I generally agree with, but always respect.

"Airship Game" progress!

Gods!  Temples!  More GUI stuff!

I'm not really sure how I feel about the Wind Goddess up there, I might be working on her some more.  Apologies for not updating sooner, my laptop's fan went out, meaning that any kind of prolonged use would have ruined it.  I had to wait for a week or so before I got a replacement fan, and I've been ridiculously busy as of late as well.  I should have more free time soon though, and then I'll be getting straight back into this!

GUI progress in "Airship Game"!

 Woo! So much progress since my last batch of screenies!

So, here we get a few good screenshots of the current GUI.  As you can see, it's still a work in progress, a lot of elements are unfinished or missing, but this is a good start.

At the top of all three screens we have the health bar.  Pretty standard.  To the left of the health bar we have the in-game clock.  This is important, because different structures have different build times, and this allows the player to build settlements, and have a rough idea of when they will be finished so that they can go off and attend to other things.

Underneath the health bar is a bar that changes based on what the player currently has selected.  So, for instance if the player is in combat, the game displays the efficiency percentage for the repair, mobility, and weapons systems of the ship.  These percentages are based on the number of living crewmembers, but more on that in later posts.  This bar also displays the number of resources the player has when building, or the amount of "mana" (I'm not calling it that in the finished product)  the player has when calling on gods to perform miracles.

On the right side of the screen we see the Mode Selection bar.  Currently, the only mode that shows anything is the build mode, and you can flip through pages to display more unit types.  The "Magic" mode will eventually show the available miracles to a player, and the combat mode will allow the selection of various weapon types.  You can also minimize the Mode Selection bar.

I will be updating as often as I can on this project, and when updates take too long I'll probably end up talking about design ideas in minutia.

Also, I think I might have a few more followers from a few sources, if thats the case, please post and let me know what you would like to hear about!

Screenshots from "Airship Game" project!

These are a series of screenshots from a small project I'm working on. It's two things, one, its a way for me to make pixel art in a goal oriented environment, and two, its kind of my pipe dream project. This is the game I would make if I didn't have to worry about money, exposure, or anything like that.

So in this game, the worlds are procedurally generated. In other words, random ,with just enough rules to make it make sense. You fly around in your airship, and colonize floating islands while harvesting resources, paying homage to ancient gods, and deal with the various horrors that occasionally come up from the depths through currents.

The eventual idea is that the enemies have routines. Some get hungry and snack on smaller ones, others might be interested in stealing your resources, or eating your settlers. None are specifically going after you just because they can, they have some basic logic. In other words, do something like build too close to an anthill, and the ants will start going after your settlements.

The other idea is that your basically confined to relatively small maps, and that you are trying to turn these things into stable colonies as soon as possible, to move onto later maps, with greater challenges and rewards.

These screenshots show most of the art assets in game, all drawn by me, on my laptop, with a mouse. The biggest ones (not counting the cloudy backgrounds) are only maybe 100x100 pixels.

Like I said, pipe dream project, but I think thats the fun part, if it never gets finished, its not a huge problem, but at the moment, if I could complete any project with no worry of money or recognition, just do what I wanted to, this would be it.

Sample images!

Heres a demonstration of several different elements from that project I posted a screenshot of earlier. We've got a Jellyfish animation, various terrain, birds, and a turnaround of an airship.

I dont really know if I'll ever finish this thing, but it is helping me flesh out my pixel work!

Shhhh! Secrets!

Well what could this pretty screenshot be of...

...a new game perhaps? Maybe it has airships, and floating islands...and...jellyfish...? Hmm. So interesting!