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?

Funne Fatales - Women of Indie Game Development

A recent back-and-forth on Twitter spurred a thought: why is no one talking about women in independent game development?

The simple answer is this: game developers want to be recognized as being game developers, not as being male or female. Totally fine. However, this does not change the fact that when people talk about indie game developers, you hear only a few names tossed around: Jonathan Blow, Edmund McMillen, Jason Rohrer, Marcus Persson, etc. In short, the media covers guys. Even as a straight male I find this a bit unfair. The discussion on Twitter tossed around the notion that there are no CELEBRITY indie game developers who just also happen to be women, and this of course is mainly the media's fault, but I can tell you that even as a male indie developer it's tough getting your name out there. For some reason there's still an air of mystery to "girl gamers" and it's exponentially bigger when they make games too, especially their own.

Having run an independent game development startup that has seen its share of women come and go (and even stay!), I can tell you for a fact that they DO exist! Have you played their games? Maybe, MAYBE NOT! If not, here's my first list of indie games made by women that you absolutely need to check out.

Swift*Stitch
Creator: Sophie Houlden (@S0phieH)

I've been a fan of Sophie's works ever since I played The Linear RPG up on Kongregate (another one worth checking out... oh hell go check out all her work!). Sophie is a fellow Unity fanatic and has a very distinct, aliased style to her work. I wouldn't call it pixel art, just not smoothed out. She's combined this aliased style in Swift*Stitch with glow, raycast, and particle effects to create one of the most unique looking games I've seen since Geometry Wars. The game is a strictly mouse-driven affair. Left click to change between vertical and horizontal movement, right click to slow down time. Different colored gates will cause you to change direction or start moving in an arc. The goal of each level is to make it to the end and collect Shinies along the way. You get bonuses for scraping against the wall but not crashing into it (and the sound effect that goes along with it is really satisfying).  It has 7 difficulty settings, each one being a different speed. Playing on speed 1 is cheap, playing speed 7 is maddening, and it defaults to speed 4. Oh, and the music by Aeronic? There are no words to describe it other than FUCKING AWESOME! Seriously, get this game.

5 Games
Creator: Rebecca Fernandez/Convict Interactive (@chainedchaos31, @ConvictInt)

Rebecca is the programmer for Convict Interactive, an indie game studio in Wollongong, Australia and part of the Microsoft Biz Spark program. She has 5 games up on XBLIG. "Bop" is a fighting game based on the tried and true mechanic of jumping on your opponent's head to cause damage. "Triangle Man" is a puzzle platformer involving coin collection and deadly spikes. "High Hopes" is an auto-scrolling vertical platformer which won the 48 Hour Game Making Competition in Brisbane. "Cave In" is an awesome looking, man vs. environment, race-against-the-clock style platformer. "Jurassic Bar" may just be the best game ever because you play as dinosaurs out to eat cave men. What more could you possibly want out of life? Check out her stuff and go drop 80MSP for a game or two so she can keep making games about dinosaurs eating people. Seriously, folks. DINOSAURS EATING PEOPLE!

The Little Girl Nobody Liked
Creator: Deirdra Kiai (@deirdrakiai)

Deirdra Kiai is an indie dev living in Vancouver who focuses on story-based games having to do with life, conformity, subconscious, and (most importantly of all) player choice. She also throws a hefty dose of non-linearity into all her games, and is the only indie developer that I know of who has a sousaphone with a fake mustache attached to it (as if the sousaphone part itself wasn't distinctive enough). "The Little Girl Nobody Liked" gives new meaning to the term "pointer focus." Your decisions in the game are based solely on clicking on either the little girl or the crowd. The more focus you give to the crowd, the more likely it is they will ignore the girl. The more you click the girl, the more likely it is she will ignore them. If you balance it out, she will conform to their attitude BUT in either a positive forward-thinking way or in a negative peer-pressure way. It's a really well-throught-out game that will only take you a minute or two to play, and Deidra gives the whole thing some lovely, soothing narration. This one's a real thinker, folks.

Ric Rococo - International Art Thief
Creator: Nat Marco/Honeyslug (@whenDoWeEat)

Nat Marco is the designer, animator, and self proclaimed cupcake enthusiast for Honeyslug games. "Ric Rococo," a game on which she is credited for level design, is a clever little sidescroller that involves, just as the name implies, art thievery. You are dropped into a museum and are tasked with collecting any number of paintings with a minimal goal to hit on each level. Many obstacles stand in your way, like security cameras and waiting for elevators, so use your time wisely! As it turns out, though, Honeyslug has a TON of games, so I have linked to their Games page for good measure. You can access Ric Rococo from there, as well as any of their other creative works. She has also worked on the upcoming "Frobisher Says" for Playstation Vita, which looks like a fun little minigames compilation with a hefty dose of mentalness. Go check out her stuff, durnit!

So there you have it. Four games PLUS MORE for you to check out. I hope to do another post on this topic at some point and introduce you guys to some more lesser-known indie games from some more awesome indie ladies.