Closing the Windows

Since the mid nineties, the warmth of Summer has shown down upon the PC development world. Windows has been the open platform to develop for. Sorry, Linux, you've just never had the market share. But like the Starks say, Winter is coming, and we must close the Windows lest we freeze to death.

Windows 8 is a closed system and we must all freak out. You won't be able to download applications from Steam or websites, only from the Windows store. Mature applications are banned. Microsoft takes a cut of all app sales. Mice and keyboards are being abandoned. The environment is impossible to navigate. The end of the PC is night! At least, this is what the pundits will tell you.

The one thing everyone is forgetting is that there are two versions of Windows 8: the desktop Intel/AMD compatible 32/64-bit version (x86), and the ARM-based 32-bit version just for tablets (aka Windows RT). ARM processors are the same ones that can be found in Android tablets, and it is this version of the operating system that is causing such a ruckus. It is a closed system, and will only be available as pre-installed software on Windows RT ARM tablets. No OEM will be made available, so if you want to hack it onto your Android tablet you'll have to go through some dark avenues to do so. Software for this version of Windows will only be available through the Windows Store, similar to the Apple App Store or Google Play, and executable programs from that scary place known as "the internet" will not be installable. This version will lack support for legacy applications. Microsoft has also stated that games with a PEGI 16+ or ESRB 17+ rating will not be allowed on the OS.

Then we come to the standard version of Windows 8, the powerhouse for x86 systems, the one for your desktop, laptop, and even eventually tablets (like the super duper version of the Surface Microsoft is putting out next year). Other than the new UI, this is Windows as you know it. It's an open environment, keyboard/mouse based, with all (read: most) of the features you've come to love from Windows over the years. You'll be able to install Steam on this one, so all your M-Rated games will be ready and waiting if they're compatible.

The 64-bit version of Windows 8 should be the standard version everyone is reporting on. Were that the case, though, there'd be no story. The closed nature of the ARM-version is much more compelling from a blogosphere standpoint. People want to read things that confirm their anger. Well, I am here to lay some truth on the situation. The ARM version exists so Windows RT can punch its way into the tablet market while reducing risk and increasing revenue on Microsoft's end. The actual standard version of Windows 8? It's boring. It's a touch-based environment for non-touch-based technology. Microsoft knows that this is not the version that has people excited. In fact, read any blog and it'll say that while people hate using Windows 8 with a mouse, it shines on a tablet. Even I'll admit, I hate the new UI on the XBox 360, but I can tell it would be a whole lot less frustrating if I had a Kinect. What they have created is a superb touch-based environment, but creating an environment that is perfect for both touch-based and mouse-based users is extremely difficult. They're very different inputs.

At the beginning of the Windows 8 development cycle, Microsoft had said that the classic Windows UI would be in there for us dedicated mouse and keyboard users. It had a start menu and everything (even if you had to regedit it in)! A couple months later they took it out, and created a sort of hybrid modern UI/classic UI setup that errs on the side of confusing. To most, it was an odd choice. To me, it made perfect sense. To reiterate my above statement: The standard version of Windows 8 is boring. The tablet version is exciting. They want you to focus on using Windows with tiles, not icons. Unfortunately they didn't quite go all-in on the tile UI, so we'll see how this hybrid setup goes with the general audience.

Microsoft is pushing Windows into the tablet space, but to put all their eggs in one basket so soon after the brilliance that was Windows 7 would be to abandon all their current users. They know they can't do that. They also know that the majority of PC's still are using Windows XP, an operating system that is more than 10 years old, but that gets the job done for schools, libraries, businesses, and the government. Heck, Microsoft isn't ending support for Windows XP until 2014. In order to entice an upgrade, they've priced Windows 8 dirt cheap, but with that upgrade comes a few concessions... to Windows 7 users. To Windows XP users, it'll be a brand new world. So really, the market for Windows 8 consists of people/organizations in need of an upgrade from Windows XP, and people interested in a Windows 8 tablet. Current Windows 7 users will, for the most part, stick with Windows 7. They should stick with it too, as it's only a couple years old, and there is no major piece of underlying technology in Windows 8 that should force the average user into an upgrade. Plus, any developers focusing on desktop applications can still target Windows 7 as their platform and anyone running the x86 version of Windows 8 will be able to run it too, so no worries there.

The only area for Windows 8 that should cause some nervousness is new computers. We all know that the new Dells, HPs, Sonys, etc. will come with Windows 8 preinstalled. This could be frustrating to some users, but I think at this point we should be used to it. Some people still have laptops running Vista. These things happen. If you need a new laptop but the idea of switching to Windows 8 bothers you, you can still buy Windows 7, and you'll be able to for a while. In fact, Windows 7 will probably run amazingly well on Windows 8-focused hardware (unless it's a touchscreen, really), so don't be afraid to downgrade! Microsoft is a good business, so they will probably just nod and say, "We understand. Thanks for your money." Or, if you now officially hate Windows, you can go to Linux and then take it one step further and install Open webOS 1.0 on top of it. It's up to you.

I think what is making the general public nervous is that blog writers are not differentiating between Windows 8 (x86) and Windows RT (ARM). At least, not in the headlines. In doing so, it makes it seem like independent developers will no longer be able to distribute their applications via their own websites, or services like Steam, or play their music on iTunes, or run any legacy apps on any platform on which Windows 8 is installed. This is politics stuff and they need to STOP. In truth, these are the concessions made for Windows RT due to the architecture of ARM processors! Not differentiating between the Windows 8 and Windows RT is nothing more than a scare tactic blog writers are using to make the general public nervous about Windows 8.

"But Dan!" you say, "What about the app store restrictions?" Well, let's think of it like this. The average user on a Windows 8 desktop (x86) goes to check out some Windows 8 games, sees yours, and downloads it. Except, it doesn't run, because it's built for Windows RT. Or vice versa. That divide could cause a lot of consumer confusion and end up with Microsoft being slapped with another anti-trust lawsuit. Make no mistake, Microsoft setting up their own marketplace for apps in Windows RT is a good thing. It protects the consumer, and it protects them. Sure you may not like it, but the underlying technological differences between RT and 8 could cause serious frustration among the average consumer if they didn't (not that they won't have other frustrations). As for the other restrictions... well, at this point, it doesn't matter. Not like you're going to be playing Gears of War on your Microsoft Surface any time soon. Windows RT has an uphill struggle in the war for the tablet market, so that's where Microsoft is is hedging their bets. In order to do so, they need an app store filled with Angry Birds, not with porn. Like I said, the majority of Windows 8 sales will be coming from users looking for an upgrade from Windows XP, and the other half will be coming from the tablet market. New PC's and upgrades from Windows 7 will be a sliver of Windows 8's market share.

In conclusion, what do I think about Windows 8? I'm conflicted, and have been from the start. As a desktop man, it doesn't fit my needs. Windows RT, though, seems exciting at first, and then you see the initial app store restrictions (which would get lifted with time, don't forget). We're yet to see what kind of a market share it will grab, and whether Windows 8 x86 or Windows RT will be more successful. Oh, and once the first tablets with Windows 8, not Windows RT come out? BOOM, there's your legacy support. Some of the Windows may be closed, but others are open as they always were. Winter hasn't come yet.

UPDATE 10/16/2012: Microsoft has revealed the final pricing for Windows 8. Back in July, upgrade pricing was aggressive, as I mentioned in this post, at $40. A price like that would definitely be enticing to the old XP crowd. But now the final pricing has been revealed, and it looks like an upgrade will be $70, with the full version priced at $100-$140, depending on the version. This puts the cost in line with previous versions of Windows.

This confuses me somewhat. As I had mentioned, it seemed like Win8 would be ~$30 cheaper in all departments. The $40 deal would run through January, but I can't find any info on it that's more recent than posts from July. It seems that this deal has changed somewhat. Microsoft's new deal is to upgrade a new Win7 PC to Win8 for just $15 through January. Of course that ends up being a $500+ investment, and once the deals run out, the upgrade cost shoots back up to $70.

Windows 8 could be a harder sell than I had previously predicted. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone using Windows 7 upgrade to it at those prices. XP or Vista... maybe? But Windows 7 will remain at the same price as Windows 8, or possibly even get a price drop, so I'd say you're better off with that.

Stealth Jam, Day 3: The Mistress Lives

The only level I was able to add today is also the biggest challenge in the whole game so far!

Well, when all was said and done, this is what I was able to implement into Moonlight: Mistress of Mischief on the last day of the Stealth Jam:

• Moonlight's sprite! Still needs Up and Down-facing sprites though.
• Moonlight's Takedown, for instantly killing enemies. You need to be right on top of a guard to kill them. Hit Space to slash your knife while you are not in a box.
• Two animations for Moonlight: Idle and Takedown. (the Takedown came out cooler than I expected)
• Floor tiles, which makes the turrets MUCH more visible!
• Horizontal Guards (which, at the moment, can't attack, though they're supposed to. Yay bugs!)
• Turn points for Guards. As of now, to prevent heavy lifting on AI development, guards will work just horizontally (white knights) or vertically (black knights, to be implemented). At some point there will also be knights who can hunt you (red knights) as well as hopefully many other kinds of baddies! Teleporters, magic snipers, maybe spiders that pop out of boxes when you try to hide in them?
• Three animations for Horizontal Guards: Idle, Attack, and Dead.
• Level 3 had an odd glitch where you would die for no reason so I rebuilt it from scratch.
• Level 4 is the last level of the Stealth Jam build and introduces moving enemies. There are a LOT of boxes for you to hide in and block the turrets should you need to. The Red Door is your way out, but there is no visible key at the start of the level. HMM WHAT TO DO?!
• Moved the score back to the top middle, but visibility on it could be better.
• Lives changed to an icon of Moonlight's face with an X3, X2, or X1 next to it as planned.
• Knife icon with selector around it. This area will be used for other items in your inventory as I add them, as well as controls for choosing items.
• Invincibility/invisibility period of 3 seconds after death. This was implemented to prevent any guards who end up near the Spawn Point right after killing you from killing you repeatedly.
• Key Spawners. This is actually the feature that excites me the most. There is a tiny line of code in there now that states "Are all the enemies gone? Then spawn key at key spawner." With these I now have even more options for level flow as certain areas can be blocked off until a group of enemies is defeated. I can probably think of more ways to activate key spawners later on. Needless to say they'll work well for boss battles.

Level 2. I showed this one earlier today, but this is how it looks with the new spritework.

Well, that's all for me today. Make sure to check out the latest build! It still is only for Windows. It is also still free, but considering how easy this game is to develop that may change at some point, ya know, when I have more than four levels.

Stealth Jam, Days 1 + 2: Creating Moonlight

I'm no stranger to Game Jams. I'm a huge fan of them as they allow me to practice my programming chops, not something I get to do very often these days. As I am also a developer of a stealth game, when I heard a Stealth Jam was coming up, I couldn't wait for the opportunity to make something COMPLETELY different from Children of Liberty. As much as I love the kids, they really have been eating me alive the last three years and it feels great to make something fresh.

Epic title screen, inspired by Apogee's Hocus Pocus.

Thus, I am creating a game entitled Moonlight: Mistress of Mischief. I decided to look back to my shareware days for inspiration, to a game called Crusher by William Soleau. The goal of that game was to collect bits and pieces of treasure scattered around a randomly generated castle, while crushing monsters via blocks you could push. You had a limited resource for survival, Oxygen, and if that ran out it was game over. There was also dynamite you could pick up should you need to explode a block in your way.

This game gave my mom nightmares.

Immediately upon starting Moonlight, I knew I had to do away with the resource for survival. As this is a stealth game, the goal should not be on frantically searching for a tank of oxygen (or in the sequel's case, a candle). No, the goal of Moonlight is to clear each room of treasure to the best of your ability.

I am yet to get Moonlight's sprite done, so for now she is a smiley face.

There are three kinds of jewels, Small, Medium, and Large, which are worth 1, 10, and 100 points respectively. The only enemy type so far is a turret which shoots in 1 of 4 directions, but can only see you if you move within two tiles of it. You can also hide in crates and move around (they even shake a bit when you step inside them!). Turrets will not shoot you while you are in a crate, and crates can even be used to block turrets completely or obstruct an enemy's view. This is probably the closest Moonlight will get to Crusher's original crush-to-kill mechanic. However, you cannot pick up treasure while you are hidden in a crate, so it's not like you can just run around willy-nilly and get all the treasure with little effort. There are also traps which hold crates in place should you run into one while skulking around.

The Red Key and the Blue Key make a triumphant return, along with their new friend the Yellow Key. All you need to do to open doors is step on a key, and all doors of that color open at the same time. This allows me to do many things in terms of a level's design. One, I can control the flow of up to 4 or 5 separate areas, which is a lot in a 608x480 space (640 pixels -32 for the UI on the left). Two, I can create gated puzzles which, though optional, can really test the player's stealthy skillset. Finally, I can lock off the exit, meaning that the goal of each level, and in fact the only way to progress, is to find the correct colored key which leads out of the current room. There are also gray doors I have added in as extra details to show blocked off passageways. Originally, I had wanted to make the game free-roaming like Crusher, but went with a linear game instead.

The first level has no danger, but instead teaches the player to appreciate treasure and how keys work.

Right now, treasure collection is the most important part of the game. After all, who doesn't love collecting treasure?! Before the Stealth Jam is through, though, I'd like to add a few more things, and change a few others.

1. Moonlight really needs a sprite. I'll do my best to do her justice.
2. I'll be returning the scoring system to number-based instead of bar-based. I had thought it would be neat to watch a bar fill up as you collected treasure, but there's a real disconnect with your progress. It'll look better to have the actual amount of treasure you've collected displayed prominently top-center.
3. Moving enemies. The turrets are fine and all but their use is limited, especially in terms of level design. Getting some real enemies in there who can at least move back and forth and shoot at you when they see you will be key to making this game awesome and truly stealthy. On that same note:
4. Takedowns. If you can get up behind an enemy, you should be able to stab them and kill then. Similarly, I may also put in Crate Takedowns, which would hold the crate where it is like its been trapped but with the bonus of you having just taken out an enemy!
5. Nicer looking life icons, maybe just Moonlight's face with an X3, X2, or X1 next to it to save space on the side for an eventual inventory.
6. Sounds. I love SFXR. If you've never heard of it, you should check it out!
7. MUSIC?!
8. MORE LEVELS! Mainly because I've made them really easy to make so I can crank out 1 or 2 more by 5:00pm tomorrow.
9. Scoring system. This could be neat, based on how many gems you collected out of the total in the level and in how much time. However, considering how much more I need to get done, I may put this off for a future update.
10. Decide on a platform. As of right now, the game is a basic Windows executable. However, because of its simplicity, I could easily see this working on mobile, in Flash, in XNA... Multimedia Fusion has so many exporters now my choices are pretty much endless. I'll leave it as a Windows game for now but with the plan of porting it everywhere when it's done.
11. So much more I want to do. Items, different enemy types, different environments with modified gameplay (slippery floors in an icy world anyone?), long ranged attacks, a shop to make use of your stolen goods, the scoring system (as mentioned), tons more levels... but unfortunately I have less than 24 hours remaining in the Stealth Jam, and not nearly enough time to implement all this.

Please try out the game and let me know what you think. There are only three levels right now but, despite that, if you go for every treasure, you should get a good 10 minutes of game time out of it. You'll need a Windows PC and that's about it.

David Perry Challenge #003 - Metroid

Metroid is a fully open and explorable 2D platformer released for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom back in the mid-eighties. It has since gone on to be one of Nintendo's premiere action/adventure properties, with award winning games such as Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo, and the Metroid Prime series on Gamecube and Wii. Furthermore, the series protagonist Samus Aran become a shining example of a strong, female protagonist in games (pathetic attempt at deeper narrative in Metroid: Other M on the Wii aside). It also takes half the credit for establishing the “Metroidvania” genre, a type of platformer with open worlds as opposed to linear corridors, along with Castlevania. Despite this, Metroid is not a game that is as fresh today as it was twenty-seven years ago. Though amazing for the time and beloved by those who remember playing it upon release, game design as a philosophy moved so far beyond Metroid in such a short time that what may have been acceptable shortcomings or even respected rules back in 1985 stand out as serious flaws today.

Though the environment tiles are highly detailed, the backgrounds are just flat black due to the NES's shortcomings and the already unstable framerate.

To understand just what is flawed about Metroid and why it is flawed, we need to look at a game with similar problems: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. The first issue is that of control or lack thereof. Under normal circumstances, there is nothing wrong with Samus Aran's run, jump, or shoot. The controls are loose and maybe a little slow but nothing that can't be learned in time. It is the interruption of these controls that cannot be excused. Each time an enemy hits Samus, she is knocked back several tiles and player control is briefly revoked. Due to this, the player will often find themselves hitting other enemies or falling into deadly pits. The high number of enemies at any moment, which slows the game's framerate down considerably, also does not help this issue. Due to the extremely limited range of your shots, and the fact that most enemies take at least four hits to kill, getting hit by enemies and thus knocked back is almost inevitable. By 1987, in Castlevania II, players were already complaining about knockback from hits and so, as a general rule of game design, knockback in extreme forms was discouraged. One need not look further than the original Mega Man for proof that knockback did not have to be as extreme as the forms seen in Metroid or Castlevania and that it could still be an effective deterrence from running into enemies.

Swear to God, this just came up coincidentally when I searched for "Metroid Screenshot."

The pits are another matter entirely, as they hinder the player's ability to jump. In most games, you fall into a pit and you die. In Metroid, if you fall into a pit you are tortured, quickly losing health over time until you either die or escape. With enemies dive-bombing you the whole time, pits become frantic moments of frustration with the player unable to jump or shoot effectively, at least until you've found bombs which allow you to hit enemies in the air and bounce on the explosions.

Finding these things is almost like cheating.

My biggest issue with the game, though, is the lack of feedback. Items you find are complete mysteries until you discover their use for yourself as there are no tooltips or demonstrations. Missile doors don't open unless you shoot them with five missiles, and yet there is no sense that your shots are having any effect on them at first. There is no map of the world and so it is incredibly easy to get lost or have the sense that you are on a wild goose chase for items that may or may not exist, the purposes of which are uncertain. Hidden passageways containing important items, like under a normally torturous lava pit, also do nothing but confuse the player without proper visual feedback to the change in rules.

In Metroid, finding something rewards you with a tune. You are never shown what your reward is until you figure it out for yourself.

Several of these problems were eliminated in future iterations of the Metroid series. In Metroid II on Gameboy, Samus's shots traveled the full distance across the screen, making enemies easier to hit. Super Metroid was much faster; had greatly reduced knockback; unlike the original Metroid on NES, enemies did not take four or five hits to kill but just one or two, keeping the pace of the game fast and tight; and save states, as opposed to Metroid's 24 character password system, were a very welcome change. It is good then that Nintendo learned what they needed to for future iterations, and learned it quickly. Metroid is a prime example of how fickle game design is as a philosophy, and how in just a few short years a game can go from being a masterpiece to a goulash of mechanical missteps.

Consoles are no longer Consoles

People these days talk a lot about how the next console generation will be the last console generation. They are wrong. The era of the XBox, PS2, and Gamecube was the last console generation. What we have now are not consoles. They are entire home entertainment systems contained in a small chassis. Other than the ability to receive phone calls, your smartphone and your entertainment chassis are pretty much the same thing. Everyone wonders when the next "console" generation will come out, and many were disappointed about the lack of announcements at this year's E3. Well, I hate to tell you, but it won't be for a while. Why? Contracts.

Let me break it down for you. Sony and Microsoft have contracts with many different companies to deliver media on their systems for a price. XBox alone has Netflix, ESPN, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video, DVR capabilities for Verizon and Comcast, and contracts with dozens of different production companies to stream and sell movies and music via their Zune service. With a new console, they would have to double up these contracts to get the same services on next generation hardware. Furthermore, the price of these contracts would go up. A more expensive console means the service providers would want a bigger piece of the pie. The apps for delivering all this content would have to be rewritten to be compatible with next generation hardware. The cost of a new entertainment chassis would be at least $699, or the price of a cheap computer.

It seems, though, that Microsoft may have a leg up on the competition in the form of Windows 8. Windows 8 was only briefly mentioned at their E3 press conference, and what was mentioned was the fact that XBox 360 games will be playable in the operating system. Also remember that Kinect is now compatible with Windows and Windows 8 uses the Metro UI, the same UI found on XBox 360 and Windows Phone 7. What this says to me is that the next XBox will be a Windows 8 computer, one with an app store where Microsoft can let these companies program their own executables. Unfortunately there will be no way to guarantee all the services at launch of the new XBox that are available as apps on the 360, but if it does just ship with Windows 8 then all those services will be accessible via their websites anyway.

One other bullet Microsoft will have to bite with a Windows 8-powered next gen XBox is that the platform will have to be more open. They can do their best to close it off, eliminating access to the registry, command prompt, control panel, etc. but they won't be able to do anything to stop developers from distributing apps over their own websites, or competing services like Steam. The only way they could would be if it did not have Internet Explorer installed from the start (which it will, what with it coming out on 360 this fall) or blocked installation of programs without some kind of digital approval stamp, much like what Apple is doing for OSX programs now. No matter how closed they try to make it, at its core it will be Windows 8-powered, and someone will find a way to gain access to the full Windows buried deep inside. At that point, there'll be no stopping it from becoming the rumored Steam Box.

So where does this leave Sony? Well, pretty much in the dust, unless they team up with Microsoft to create a Playstation-certified Windows 8 VAIO which, believe it or not, is a definite possibility. Heck, we've heard rumors that the next XBox will have a Blu-Ray drive. Since 360 games will be playable in Windows 8, they'll just all become PC games. That would just leave new, specialty Blu-Ray games to be playable in the system's drive, ones that would only be compatible with this system. Yes, I understand there is a lot of conflict here, mainly between Playstation Network and Xbox Live, but are either of those going to matter when you have Steam games running on your 60" TV? Don't think so.

In the end, the PC is going to be the winner, just as it has been for every console generation. At the beginning of a console generation, everyone thinks the PC is dead. By the end, PC game sales have embarrassed console game sales (cough Diablo 3 cough); they end up with more services, openness, usability, and power; no contract requirements on the end of the manufacturer; and PCs do not become outdated as quickly as consoles (with the exception of laptops built to be weak like netbooks).

Windows has won the console war. Deal with it.

Oh, right, Nintendo. Yeah, um, whatever.

Thank God I Make Crap (And So Can You)

Today marked the end of 38 Studios and the second end of Big Huge Games, whom 38 Studios bought a couple years ago when they were going under. It's been a tumultuous week for Curt Schilling's company, with the news that they couldn't pay back their $75million loan from the state of Rhode Island, and now every employee getting pink slips. Sometimes business management is so bad it's inexcusable.

Cough

Which brings me to why I'm here. I mean, I'm in the same boat right? I run a company that makes games. Am I going to completely fuck over the hundreds of people I work with too?

The answer is NO and here's why. First, I work with about four people. We're small, close knit, and we're doing this out of love for the game we're making, not out of a desire to enter a market we know nothing about. Second, when we started out, we'd already made games and we found other people who'd made games to help us and determine the creative direction of the project, not just writers and comic book artists (protip). Finally, I'm not that guy. I keep my budgets at small as possible for a reason. I haven't had that many people play my games, Children of Liberty's Kickstarter wasn't anything to brag about, and its current alpha funding isn't doing so hot either (though it's on sale, 50% off for #becauseWeCan week). For this reason I keep my expectations on Earth.

Furthermore, when I started out, I didn't dive into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. The MMO market is dangerous, and has been since 38 was founded. At any given point, there are about three subscription-based MMO's that make money: World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and a "MMO of the Month" (Age of Conan, Rift, Star Wars: Old Republic, take your pick). I started out with really small games, ones that hardly anyone has played. But you know what? I am fine with that. I am also fine with the fact that I have 4 or 5 gigs worth of unused prototypes. Like I was telling a friend of mine, I consider it my sketchbook. The only way to get good at any kind of artform is to keep making the art. 38 launched one game, which was already in development at Big Huge. Schilling bit off more than he could chew and the taxpayers of Rhode Island are going to have to eat the rest of it.

Don't let this discourage you from going into game development, even if you have no previous experience. Just don't have newbie ambition. If you're starting a company, you don't need to make an MMO. You can be as indie as you want, have a small team, and still make awesome games. The tools are available, even if you're poor. Or, if you're rich and want to get into game development, why not help fund some indie studios that can show you the ropes of development in return?

David Perry Challenge #002 - Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario is a puzzle game created by Nintendo in 1990. The game has you lining up pills of 3 different shades to clear viruses on the puzzle board. It's a very simple premise that ramps up the difficulty as the game goes on. Few puzzle games manage to create a perfectly straight difficulty curve as the game goes on. Dr. Mario does.

The primary resource in the game is the pills which Mario throws onto the board. Each pill has two halves, and each half is black, gray, or white. On the NES the colors are Red, Blue, and Yellow, probably one of the earliest examples of colorblind-friendly gameplay. This means each pill can be one or two colors, with six total variations. The game avoids falling into the tropes of Tetris or Match-3 by adjusting how the game is scored. Instead of awarding the player for just making matches with pills, players are only rewarded for making matches of four or greater that include the viruses scattered throughout the board, each of which is also black, gray, or white and the size of half a pill. When all viruses on the board have been cleared, the levels progress, and four more viruses are added to the board. While this does double the number of viruses on the board from the first level to the second, after that it actually becomes a smaller percentage increase per level (50%, 25%, 12.5%, etc.). This may seem like diminishing returns on the difficulty, but it gives the game value for your time spent playing and the board does start filling up pretty quickly. It allows the game to be elongated while never feeling like the player's time is just being milked.

The original Dr. Mario on NES is an early example of colorblind friendly gameplay.

To mix things up, there are also three speeds at which you can play the game (Slow, Medium, and Fast), two different songs to listen to while playing, and you can start at any level, from 0-12. However, starting at a higher level will not give you a higher score by default, so the challenge becomes a matter of survival instead of high score. Starting at a higher level is a great way to train for marathon sessions of the game, to help you get used to the higher pressure of a board that is nearly completely filled with viruses.

What makes Dr. Mario so much fun is its simplicity. All of its systems are on the surface, clear as day to the player. There is no back-end trickery, no subtle balance adjustments if you're doing too well (or too poorly), and no random powerups that throw the game for a loop. It's an old enough game too that your high score isn't even saved (on the Game Boy at least), so it's up to you to want to improve, not an online leaderboard laughing at your pathetic attempts to reach the Top 10.

In case you thought I only emulated it, here's proof of having the real thing!

There have in fact been many Dr. Mario games released, the most recent of which being Dr. Mario Express on the DSi. Yet, none of the future Dr. Mario titles have messed with the formula. Why fix what ain't broke? There have been some minor tweaks, though. For example, in the original Dr. Mario you would only see the next pill before it came onto the board. In the DSi and Wii versions, you see the next three. Dr. Mario on the Wii also had online play, a welcome (and rare) addition for any Nintendo game.

Dr. Mario on Wii features competitive online play for the first time in Dr. Mario's history.

Nowadays, with the introduction of microtransactions and online-gated gameplay (i.e. blocking out the player from enjoying the game if they are not connected to the internet for purposes of preventing piracy), I fear that a lot of the magic of Dr. Mario could be easily lost. Imagine if you dropped a dollar on the game and all of a sudden your next ten pills were “wild cards” that would make matches no matter where they went. Where would the challenge be in that? What about the fun? What I love so much about Dr. Mario is that it reminds me of a time when games were games, when developers weren't afraid to teach you all there is to know about a game in the first 30 seconds and that little bit created an infinite amount of replayability. If developers nowadays care about the gameplay, and not just about milking their players for all their money, they should take a serious look at Dr. Mario and revel in its simplicity. They should take note of how the formula for the gameplay hasn't changed in over twenty years, and yet it and its followups are amazing. That is truly saying something, and Dr. Mario is a truly great game.

David Perry Challenge #001 - Mirror's Edge

Today I bring you the first of the 100 game challenge, Mirror's Edge from Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment and published by EA in 2009. Video footage comes first and my 1-page writeup follows. This will be the format I follow every week.

Week 1: Mirror's Edge (DICE/EA, 2009)

Mirror's Edge is a first-person free runner designed with the intent to create a high stakes experience in an adrenaline-pumping setting. The use of high-contrast colorization - which itself contrasts many of the releases of the current generation's use of brown, dull materials – creates easily navigable pathways with the use of red-shaded objects to guide the player's eye. Combined with the design choice to have bullets unable to hit you when you are going over a certain speed, Mirror's Edge is tediously calculated simulation of a game. It's smoke and mirrors, a highly glossy prototype, but nothing more.

This is not to say that it's a bad prototype. Quite the contrary, Mirror's Edge successfully posits the thesis that a game which takes place from a First-Person view can be used for more than just shooting guns. The parkour mechanics go beyond the basics of running and jumping to include two different kinds of shimmies, wall-runs, 180 degree kick spins, zip-lining, and vertical climbing. The visuals are incredibly striking, with the outdoor having a strong emphasis on blues and indoors favoring greens. In order to finish the RGB trifecta, Reds are used sparingly in order to guide the player toward what they need to grab onto or run at next. It's a simple technique that eliminates some confusion in an otherwise highly detailed and sometimes confusing world.

However, the game is not without its faults. While the parkour mechanics are solid for the most part, a lot of it feels like a pixel-hunt. It is easy to gloss over your goal half the time or miss a jump because your “Death Dot” cursor happened to be off from where you were supposed to have it. While a “Death Dot” in many games can be a blessing of precision-based shooting, here it only serves to hamper the experience. The purpose of free running is just that - to be free in your running – and yet more than once I found myself unable to get through a section the way I wanted to. Even though it looked like a wall would be ideal for wall-running, or the gap between platforms easily jumped over, the section was specifically designed for you to shimmy across the ledge on the side. It is moments like this that force the realization that the player is being led; that any sense of agency they have in the game world is an illusion, and the whole game has been laid out to be played in a specific manner. Do it any other way and you will not only die but will have to replay the current section countless times before you are allowed to continue.

While Mirror's Edge makes itself out to be an open world, it only leads the player down a linear path. It's possible that this “illusion of freedom” motif mirrors, as it were, the game's totalitarian narrative. Any freedom one is led to believe they have is actually a carefully constructed ride, with ups and downs, glimpses of choice, and much like the game's high contrast aesthetics, shimmers of greatness. The game's challenge come from finding the path through levels laid out by the designers, not by creating your own as the game would have you hope would happen. The skill comes in the form of precisely timing and aiming your jumps (a slow-motion mechanic is included to assist in this endeavor and disarming enemies, though it almost seems as if it too was at one point included in the ride and was changed to a button-press at the last minute). While you can take enemies guns and shoot them, the game in no way encourages this behavior. Gunplay is a sloppy, slow, throwaway mechanic. Being that this is from the studio that brought us Battlefield, we know damn well that they are capable of forging solid first-person shooter mechanics. The gunplay is all part of the simulation. The player is given the illusion they can use guns, but that use comes at the cost of usability. In the end, it is a better choice to just throw the guns away. Even the bullets flying at you are all part of the ride and are themselves an illusory threat. There are a few tense moments to be found here, but once you realize just how shallow the rabbit hole actually is, the tension wears off quick.

There are some good ideas in Mirror's Edge, but they are all at odds with each other. The mechanics are shoehorned into an expressionistic use of narrative-as-gameplay, yet the gameplay itself can do nothing to alleviate the feeling that the roller-coaster is too well constructed. We are still safe.

Game Challenge - An Introduction

I have started a new channel on Youtube called "Don't Start" to hold all the videos for the David Perry Challenge. I have also posted the first video, outlining my goals for the challenge.



As it stands, I will playing games on the following systems:

• PC: 20 games
• XBox 360: 20 games
• PS2: 20 games
• NES: 10 games
• SNES: 10 games
• Gameboy: 10 games
• HP Touchpad: 10 games

I already have the list of games I want to play set, though I will not be revealing this list beforehand in case of any of it has to change for whatever reason.

Now, the tricky part. I am poor. Quite poor. Sentence fragment. In fact, I straight up can not afford to do this challenge, and I want to do it right. As I work in the game industry, I have not ever nor will I ever pirate games (Abandonware is another matter altogether, and I love Abandonia.com). I am wondering, since this is basically a combination of a thesis and a bit of a creative endeavor with the Youtube channel, if a Kickstarter would be a smart way to go to help me do this challenge right (I would need probably close to $1500, more if I expand the channel to include other kinds of videos). My other alternative would be to source games from the community and my friends, to see if anyone would be willing to let me have some of their old cartridges. However, I do have games in the list that are a download-only affair (like the ones for the Touchpad) so those will still eat into my available funds. Thankfully I have two years to get this all done, so hopefully by that point Children of Liberty will have sold a few more copies (won't you please help a starving indie out?).

I'd like to do some other stuff with this channel too. Podcasts, Let's Plays, News, maybe even bring in some other content creators so I still have time to work on Children of Liberty. Additional content depends on if other people want to contribute videos and if my development time permits me to be doing anything else. If this starts interfering with my development time I will have to put the challenge on hold, but with my current goals I should be able to do it.

Please make sure to Subscribe to the new channel as the first of my 100 games will be up some time next week(ish), and one a week from that point on!

David Perry's Game Design Challenge

Over the last several days, I have found myself utterly bored by my current game collection. Nothing has really sparked with me, I've had no desire to load up anything too in-depth or too frantic, so I find myself playing The Binding of Isaac over and over and over again, to the point where I have added another 20 hours of playtime to it and have only beaten it one more time (ugh). It's time for a change.

Enter David Perry from Gaikai, who has challenged students to play the Top 100 games on their platform of choice as listed as Gamerankings.com. For me, this would be the PC, however if I can manage it I would also like to throw in some NES/SNES, Gameboy, XBox 360, and PS2, so howabout the Top 20 games from each? I most likely have experience with a good 50% of this list anyway, but that's good because I don't have the money to buy all of these games. However, I have the money to buy a few, and my goal is not to play one a day but one a week. I will then make a video a week (yes, a VIDEO dammit, my own, more intellectual version of a Let's Play) detailing what makes each game fun, what design/graphical tricks are used, and what design patterns stand out to create the core experience of the game.

Over the weekend I'll be loading up on full games/demos for PC, as well as trolling around ebay for some classics for my NES/SNES hybrid machine, my old, dusty Gameboy Pocket, my underused PS2, and my 360 aka "The Netflix Machine."

Long story short, Mr. Perry, I may not be a student but I accept your challenge anyway!

The Takedown Tribunal: PAX East Stealth Games Panel

I'm probably in here somewhere, unless I was eating lunch.

I seriously cannot wait for PAX East. Besides being the first convention where I will be an exhibitor, I am also on my first panel! The panel's name is "The Takedown Tribunal: Three Indies Talk About Their Upcoming Stealth Games." Join myself, Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games, and Nels Anderson of Klei Entertainment as we discuss Children of Liberty, Monaco, Mark of the Ninja, and what makes stealth games great! Here's the panel description:

The Takedown Tribunal: Three Indies Talk About Their Upcoming Stealth Games

Cat Theatre
Friday 9:00pm - 10:00pm

Do you love lurking in shadows, stabbing guards in the back and/or stealing the stuff they're supposed to be protecting? We do! Stealth games have a vocal and passionate following, but among developers, they're notoriously difficult games to create. Even experienced AAA studios with hundreds of developers and multi-million dollar budgets will avoid stealth games in favor of more clear-cut genres. However, at least three small independent developers have thrown caution (and their sanity!) to the wind and set out to not only make stealth games, but rather non-traditional stealth games. So now we want to discuss the genre we love with an audience passionate, or simply curious, about these new takes on stealth. Andy Schatz's IGF award-winning Monaco demonstrates through 4-player coop just how well a heist can go with a good plan and how much can go wrong with a bad one. Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja takes stealth action into 2D with style, flair and blood (and ninjas). Boston locals Lantana Games' upcoming 2.5D platformer Children of Liberty takes an historical approach to stealth, detailing the story of four young spies in the events leading up to the American Revolution. Matthew Weise, MIT's GAMBIT Game Lab's Game Design Director and the creator/host of a podcast documenting the history of Looking Glass Studios (creators of Thief, one of the most important games in the stealth genre), will moderate.

Panelists include: Nels Anderson [Game Designer, Klei Entertainment], Andy Schatz [CEO, Pocketwatch Games], Dan Silvers [Resident Game Designer, Lantana Games], Matthew Weise [Game Design Director, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab]

Remember, the panel will be on Friday, April 6th at 9pm in the Cat Theatre. Hope to see you there!

Also be sure to stop by Indie Alley to play the latest build of Children of Liberty. With any luck (and a lot of crunching over the next month) all four characters will be playable!

Lay Off the Layoffs

There is a culture which permeates all game development, both AAA and Indie: the culture of the Launch Layoff. You know how it goes. Your game launches one day, the next day you're out of a job. This has been happening for years, and it's time for it to stop.

It used to be that we would see a powerhouse indie studio rise up from the ashes of a fallen AAA studio, but the days of "for every one of us who falls, two more will take our place" are fading. Yes, there are a lot of indie studios still, but it seems many people have become complacent in the cycle of Get Job -> Make Game -> Lose Job.

This is not the fault of the employees. It is the fault of the entire industry for making us believe that Layoff Culture is and needs to be the norm. There are a few key steps that companies could take to prevent this from happening. Whether or not they will is up to them.

1. Smaller Games: Not every game needs to be Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto. Games are getting huge, so huge they're almost worth more than the current $60 price tag, and raising their prices will be the only way to keep producing games of this caliber. Developers need to be willing to work on smaller projects, much like indies do, that can make their money back at more reasonable prices or, if remaining at $60, will be successful enough to allow the hardworking team to keep their jobs.
2. Smaller Teams: The days of skeleton crews for Pre and Post Production need to be over. A team of 100+ employees is too big, and obviously (for a powerhouse studio) 5 people is too small. Keep it reasonable, 10-20 people. Contract out whatever work you can and keep your overheard low. Aim to come in under budget so your team can keep their jobs when the game's done!
3. Begin Preproduction Earlier: It's true that there are some jobs that aren't needed in the preproduction phase, and it's easiest just to layoff the current modelers, sound designers, etc. when your company enters the preproduction phase and hire new ones on when the game's been greenlit by the publisher. My solution: begin preproduction of the next project earlier so that the post-production of one game and major production of the next begin at the same time. Yes, this is expensive, especially for big teams, and for small teams the focus needs to be on the current project. Small teams, however, have no need to just sit around and lollygag in a preproduction phase. So, this brings me to my next suggestion:
4. Eliminate Preproduction Entirely: Very few forms of art have a "preproduction phase." The only two I can think of are movies and games. Movies need them because they need their sets scouted and/or built beforehand, they need to find their cast, they need the script written, etc. Games are much more iterative and can be built in real-time. Concept artists, animators, and modelers can work simultaneously to have a character designed and brought to life in a matter of hours instead of weeks if working separately. AGILE techniques can be used to bring a game to life in realtime instead spending months writing up a design doc that details every little bit of production, only to have that doc get trashed down the line because it can't keep up with what's actually happening in the game's development. Games don't need a huge preproduction phase, they need a quick and dirty proof of concept, a prototype that shows core gameplay, and that's it. The less time spent in preproduction, the more money a studio has to come up with new ideas for potential publisher pitches.
5. Publishers Need to Take Risks: The only reason new IPs are tough to come by is because publishers want sequels. Franchises mean money thanks to name recognition. Give developers the chance to stretch and experiment after a game's launch and there will be many great surprises in the video game industry. This, however, also means publishers need to greenlight potential flops, and that is okay. It's not a venture if it's not a risk, and the best way to learn - for publishers, developers, and everyone else - is to fail.
6. Crowdsource Your Idea: If you're not under publisher control, there's no reason to wait for publisher money anymore. I've talked in-depth about how the publisher model is not dead, and also how not all Kickstarter games will be successful, but while it's still a viable option there should be nothing stopping your team from saying, "Are the people interested in this game?" and actually asking them that very question. Why predict when you can survey, and why just get a bunch of "Yes" answers when you can get actual dollars? Don't think that Kickstarter is the only option either. If you run a company with a well-recognized name and plenty of media coverage, you can crowdsource your games on your own website.

What this all comes down to is NO MORE SITTING AROUND! You want to make games for a living? Make games and don't STOP making games! The money thing will take care of itself in time. Take a page from the indie playbook and just dive right in.

The Publisher Model Is (Sadly) Not Dead

First of all, I would like to start this post my congratulating my friends at Double Fine on DECIMATING their Kickstarter goal in less than a day. Way to go guys!

ROCK THE FUCK ON, DOUBLE FINE!

For those unaware, Double Fine have raised over $1.3 million in just over a day on Kickstarter. This is record shattering, especially considering they were only looking for $400k to make a game by Rocktober. Based on this and a few other outliers, many now believe that the traditional publisher model is dead.

Oh how they couldn't be more wrong.

Still alive!

If developers begin relying solely on crowd-funded sources for game development, we haven't gone anywhere in terms of progressing the power over what games we're "allowed" to make. Let me explain. Right now, the process goes something like this. You prototype a game, you show that prototype to a publisher, they shoot you down, and you go back to the drawing board; or they LOVE your game and give a bajillion dollars. With crowdfunding, just replace "a publisher" with "the internet." Considering the number of trolls and "TL;DR" types on the internet, it's not exactly an ideal place for business pitches.

Don't get me wrong, I love Kickstarter. I ran one myself almost a year ago to fund Children of Liberty, and it was successful, making $5944 out of a $5000 goal, or 118% of what we wanted (minus the Kickstarter and Amazon fee). However, a full commercial game cannot be made on $5000 alone, and we knew it, but thank GOD we didn't ask for more. I've never gone into this before, but I'd like to show off some of the metrics from our Kickstarter, if you don't mind bearing with me for a bit.

This graph shows what our funding was over the course of the 60 day period during which we ran our Kickstarter, from March 10, 2011 to May 10, 2011. The first 48 hours were immense and we made just over 50% of our goal (thanks, families!). However, after PAX East, it tapered off. Over the next 6 weeks, we made just over $1000. That's $166.67 a week, not even McDonalds money.

(The saddest part of this is that this tapering period also included our extremely unsuccessful grassroots campaign around Boston to find backers, which you can read about at Boston Indies).

A question many people have asked me is, "Why didn't you shoot for more?" Three reasons: one, this was our first Kickstarter AND our first commercial game, so naturally we needed to play it a bit on the safe side or we'd make $0; two, we'd had zero coverage on the game up to this point, so no one had heard of it or us; and three, we had a very specific use for the $5k we wanted off of Kickstarter: Unity Pro. We knew the game was going to need to be heavily focused on the use of shadows both aesthetically and mechanically, so Unity Free was not an option.

One thing to keep in mind is that at the time we ran our campaign, Kickstarters were not considered news. Kotaku had not yet started their weekly Kickstarter-based column to help indies out. Few people retweeted or shared the link who were not close friends or family of ours. By the end we made our goal, but it was cut close - too close. We hit our goal on May 3, one week before the end of the campaign. This was also the around the time Kickstarter decided to feature us on every page imaginable on their site that would help us out: Project of the Day, Video Games, and Boston at the same time. You couldn't browse around the site without finding us! However, we still made under $2000 from direct traffic on Kickstarter itself. Most of our traffic was still coming from our Facebook and Twitter, so thank you so much to the gracious fans of Lantana Games!

And damn if it ain't lookin' pretty now.

Luckily for those running a Kickstarter in 2012, things have drastically changed. News sources are now TOTALLY WILLING to cover Kickstarters, just make sure your game is cool. The other thing that's changed is now, thanks to Double Fine, people are willing to shell out a lot more money a LOT more quickly to the most awesome of ideas.

This brings me back to my original point though: the traditional publisher model is not dead, not while there is one Double Fine Adventure Game to every 100 Children of Liberties. $5000 is not our entire budget, and if it was we most certainly would not have moved into Unity Pro; or been able to bring on our awesome animators Mike, Ricky, and sound guy Rob, all of whom are giving the game an incredible atmosphere.

Indie developers still need publishers, not necessarily for funding the game's development, but definitely for everything else: PR, distribution, localization, etc. All of these things cost a LOT of money, money that is certainly out of range for most indies. Many indies see all publishers as intrinsically evil though. There is this stigma that if you have EA backing you in some way that you're no longer "indie." Well guess what guys? EA  Partners distributes Shank, a very indie game and a personal favorite (oh and buy Shank 2 on Steam now!). Can the average indie afford $100,000 in development costs, $20,000 in localization costs, $50,000 in PR, and more money for console testing, legal fees, and everything else on their own? Hell no. Can they get there with a Kickstarter? I'm going to have to be a pessimist here and also say no. Maybe you'll get your full development costs off of Kickstarter, but don't bank on getting enough for the rest. I've never revealed Children of Liberty's full budget, and I won't until it's done, because even though it's more than what we got off of Kickstarter, it's still head-scratchingly low.

This shit's rarer than oil.

If anything, there is now room in the ecosystem for indie publishers, companies willing to shell out for PR, distribution, and localization of independently developed games while only asking for 10%-15% on royalties; companies who would be willing to help new developers get their games tested and out the door onto services like Steam, Desura, and included in The Humble Indie Bundle and IndieRoyale; who then take all the money they've made off of one indie project and use it to help fund the next indie project. Is that too much to ask for?

Kickstarter is awesome, but it is not the new mold. Double Fine is an outlier, a shining example of what to aim for, much like Minecraft's sales numbers. Keep in mind, though, we cannot all be Tim Schafer or Marcus Persson. Some of us are still going to get laughed at when we hand out postcards with our Kickstarter info on it, only to scrape up a few measly bucks from the bowels of the world wide web, sometimes not coming anywhere close to our intended goal. Some of us will give up because, hey, we gotta eat, and others will trudge forward until the game's done. Either way, guess what? The model's the same. Kickstarter or publisher, you're putting the future of your game in someone else's hands.

Final Form Bosses

We've all seen them, and we all hate them. You've been playing a game for ages and have been introduced to an antagonist whom you can't wait to beat, only to discover that while it IS the last boss of the game... it's not quite what you were expecting.

That's right, they made the boss bigger in a cheap attempt to intimidate the player. If this isn't the game mechanic version of a Deus Ex Machina, I don't know what is. Think about it. Throughout the game, you've accumulated vast amounts of power, even more than what you've seen from the main villain. So what is the developer to do in order to make the boss challenging? "I know, let's inexplicably make them 10 times bigger and more powerful! Oh, and while we're at it, make them look NOTHING like the main villain we've seen all game."

The concept of the Final Form Boss, as I will refer to it, can be traced back to the SNES days. Back then, while it was normal to have all character sprites be of the same size, enemy sprites would often be bigger, especially in JRPGs. Enemies in such games were more likely to be unanimated but highly detailed paintings. Of course, final bosses couldn't be the same size as the player in combat, even if we'd seen them at that size for the entire game, and thus their in-battle designs would show only modicum of similarity to their more common form.

As technology has improved, however, the Final Form Bosses have not gone away. In fact, they remain as prevalent as ever, and I must ask... why? Is it so much to ask that we pick on someone our own size?

The need for Final Form Bosses is almost inexcusable now. As I mentioned, the need originally came from the fact that basic enemies were just highly detailed but unanimated sprites. Now we can have it both ways: detailed AND animated. It's the best of both worlds, and yet what do we see time and time again? Giant god damn Final Form Bosses.

Things are starting to get a little bit better, though. Batman: Arkham City has a fight against a regular-sized Joker. The bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution are proportionate to Adam Jensen. The Assassin's Creed series hasn't jumped the shark quite enough to throw a 6-story Templar your way. There is some hope in this area, but not a lot. No matter what, though, bosses still have one major problem: patterns.

Developers still feel the need to give bosses attack patterns so they can be more easily defeated. When this is against a Final Form Boss, you feel empowered, like you've accomplished something. When you do this against a boss who is around your height, weight, and polycount, you feel... ripped off, like you were almost expecting another player to be controlling that boss; someone who can think like a human instead of a gigantic machine.

It is a strange discrepancy. We can forgive Final Form Bosses for being big and dumb because they're too big to be anything other than pattern-based. Get a boss around our size, however, and they still act big and dumb because the programmers only have so much time on their hands. What's a designer to do?

Well, for one, size can indeed equal intimidation, but if you want a big final boss then give us a big enemy to begin with. Making them suddenly go "I'M BIG NOW!" is a lame device meant to scare away lesser players and, let's face it, it's 2012. We're all smarter than that now.

Yet video games will always have the stigma of the Final Form Boss attached to them. We expect the biggest monster of them all to come at us at the end of the game, to test our mettle, and use every last bullet we've got to take them down (or some cheap, introduced-at-the-last-second uber weapon that is only used to defeat them). To that, I say nay. Though I do wish to test my mettle, I do not wish to do so at the cost of fighting a form of the main antagonist I wasn't promised. Monster Mega Smith? Please. Mecha Hitler? For fuck's sake. Let me fight with whom I was promised a fight or I want my $60 back.

Let's Just Settle This Already

Guess what folks? This is a post about breasts. But it is also a post about robot penises.

You know Adam's smoking that cigarette for a reason.

In short, this is a post about how I am fed up with everybody in the media criticizing game developers for how they design their characters.

I just finished reading an article over at IGN on the debate about the size of Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth's breasts and the merits of the game's story, as if one has anything to do with the other. Each paragraph in the article can be summed up by alternating between "Ken Levine is a genius" and "Ken Levine is an asshole for giving Elizabeth breasts."

First, let me clear up the confusion on the personnel involved. Ken Levine did not give Elizabeth big breasts. The talented concept artists, modelers, and animators at Irrational Games gave Elizabeth big breasts. Okay? Okay! Ken Levine is not the entire company.

Caption 1: Ken Levine is not JP.
Caption 2: JP wanted a robot penis WAY before Adam Jensen got his.

Now let's talk about this article directly. While the author, Colin Campbell, claims to not be the biggest feminist on the planet, the article itself absolutely caters to the lowest common denominator of feminist readers by hitting all the necessary bullet-points:

• The artist is not to blame
• But yet the artist IS to blame
• Why does this character need big breasts in the first place?
• Lara Croft

Let's face the facts here. This is a VERY diverse planet and each person is a snowflake. No two people look 100% alike, thanks a little thing called genetics. The same thing goes for video game characters, thanks to a little thing called copyright infringement. No woman in real life wants to be generalized because of the size of her breasts, so why do we feel it is okay to generalize fictional women for the same reason?

The criticism leveled against game developers over the last couple of years for their choices regarding bust size, I feel, goes against every feminist sensibility ever laid out. If we were to judge real women for their breast size in real life the same way we feel comfortable judging female game characters, every single online so-called "journalist" would have been fired for sexual harassment. Last I read, looking at breasts actually strengthens human hearts. So why all the bosom hate?

No, not these breasts, but these are also high in protein and therefore good for you as well!

The size of a character's breasts should have no bearing on their being a positive or a negative role model, and yet it does. "The bigger the breasts, the bigger the slut," is the attitude I keep seeing regarding female characters in video games. Alyx Vance is a character I often see referred to as a "positive female character," yet I'd hardly call her flat-chested. Jade from Beyond Good and Evil is another, yet her midriff is prominent. Since these are the only two characters who I commonly see referred to as positive, let's take a look at some characters who have been criticized for their figure, yet should be judged by the quality of their character:

• Lara Croft has made countless archaeological discoveries, contributed to the scientific community, is a philanthropist, is completely self-reliant, and has fought DINOSAURS for crying out loud.
• Aida in Unreal 2 was highly intelligent, an ex-marine, willing to make extreme sacrifices, and was a hell of a pilot.
• Femshep was immediately criticized because she was blonde. What the fuck is wrong with you assholes? Shepherd has stopped Rogue Spectres and Collectors, a couple of Reavers, SAVED HUMANITY, and you're going to judge the first public female portrayal of this character based on her HAIR COLOR?! How is BLONDE a negative portrayal of women? Someone tell me this, please.

If you want to talk about sexism in the portrayal of women in videogames, look no farther than your own mirror. None of this is the fault of artists. Do they create idealized figures? Sure, but this is something artists have been doing since the Renaissance. If you really want to push the discussion on female characters along, get over their bodies already. What do you care what they look like and what they wear anyway? Real or fiction, a person's actions should speak louder than their looks.

Here is my parting thought: a soldier returns home from war. This soldier saved five squadmates in a 3-day firefight, hold up in a tower with nothing but a sniper rifle and barely enough rations. Calls for evac were ignored for days because the zone they were in was too hot. Finally, thanks to the efforts of this one soldier, SHE and her injured squadmates were able to be rescued via helicopter extraction. She returns home to her loving friends and family. She also happens to be a smokin' hot blonde with D-Cup breasts. Do you find that last part offensive? And if you do, my only question is... why?