Showing posts with label fract. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fract. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Levels to Look Out For, June 2012: "Future of the FPS"

I don't normally theme these posts around anything, but these three indie FPS experiments share so much DNA that it's impossible to ignore. They're all very grounded in digital / virtual / "futuristic" aesthetics, but they're confident to sometimes let that futurism be incredibly alien. Also, I'd hazard a guess that few of these designers have worked on many FPS games in the AAA manshoot tradition, but these "outsiders" are the future of the FPS.

(Coincidental but shameless plug: if you pick up a recent issue of PC Gamer UK, there's a "Future of the FPS" feature I wrote, though I guess it's already inaccurate now, seeing as I've neglected two of these beauties...)

Dirac by "Orihaus"
Descriptions offered so far seem intentionally cryptic and foggy -- a multiplayer co-op wandering survival sim (?!) with an emphasis on atmosphere over gameplay, set in a stark Mordor-Tron world, with a little help from Structure Synth. What grabs me most is how the forms are so mechanical yet still incredibly abstract and inscrutable. You always see generic sci-fi corridors with gubbins and doodads embedded in the walls, and they're always encoded as "electrical panel" or "fuel pipes" or something. They're obsessed with being knowable because supposedly that's good design; I think Dirac shows how nice just a shape can be. (Unfortunately I missed the last multiplayer playtest, but there's another open test coming up on May 20th at 8 PM EST, just meet in #merveilles IRC on esper.net. Check the TIGSource thread for the most recent schedule.)

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Against Puzzles?


(I was going to do a "Radiator 1-3 is done" post for April Fools, but it hurt too much...)

We had a public playtest of me and my teammates' VVVVVV-FPS thesis project, "Souvenir," with a bunch of New York City junior high / high school students -- and I don't know if you've ever been to a New York City public school, but these kids generally speak their mind (to put it mildly) and they're ideal playtesters. I also had a few interesting conversations with them. One of them asked what the goal of the game was, so I started trolling / engaging them:

Well, when you go out for a walk, do you have a goal? No, you just walk because you like walking.

"Yeah," she said, "but if all you do is walk around, it gets boring after a while. I'll stop playing." Well, that's fine, then stop playing.

"Plus," her friend says, "I'd just play it once. And then it would gather dust on my hard drive." That's fine. Play it once and delete the game then.

"But like, if I wanted to walk around, I'd just go outside." That's fine. Then go outside!

They're so young, and already they're perpetuating the same messaging from massive industry interests: that the "realism of games" competes with the realism of reality, addictive games are better games, clear goal structures are best -- and retention, retention, retention. That's just one way of thinking about games, and they've already locked themselves in that mindset. They've been indoctrinated.