Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has specific place among my friends. It has huge background from the year of 2006where a bunch of people known to me started IRC channel #e3-pl (IRCNet) to comment live what was happening overseas. Many of these guys you know as current and past journalists of community blog called Polygamia.pl, which is now one of the mainstream online media about gaming culture in Poland. In 2006it was just a bunch of underground-geeks who joined forces for creative synthesis written by some on currently well known pages.
It was the year where Microsoft showed quite impressive Xbox 360 coverage and Sony embarrassed themselves with “if we don’t say that’s Next Generation, it’s not Next Gen yet”. With huge announcements and living sense of community that tradition lasts to the very day and believe me it was really interesting to sit on the channel yesterday evening and chat with the angry mob of hardcore players who complained how boring message Microsoft has brought to them.
And that’s it, my first comment, I’m surprised that many people are surprised by current course both from Microsoft and Sony.
I’m waiting for today’s conference of Japanese giant but I’m not expecting much more than crazy MOVEs with their new controller.
This year the most exciting news as for games for its core audience I’m expecting from 3rd party. This thesis I’ve been spreading around my friends for a while. Why? Well casual, social gaming is a huge slice of the cake that corporate giants want to address immediately. Biggest, current winner in most common gaming media – game console – is obviously Nintendo. So both MS and Nintendo are looking for new opportunities through own innovation but a door opened by the competition.
Hardcore gamers might be disappointed but for most of all what’s left in this actually current generation is new games crossing boundaries. As for new hardware and hardware changes it’s obvious that message is directly pointed at new customers (the Wii-type) or to extend gaming family at household to other members under the same roof.
I’m curious how it will end up after a year or two, as for Microsoft itself I see big chance for it in countries like Poland, where Nintendo has no subsidiary and there is no real distribution of Nintendo related goods. With good business plan next years can reveal Kinect as synonym of casual gaming in such countries. The trick is that not every plan is good.
I’m excited to see the near future, especially that Xbox Live has been indirectly announced to come to Poland. Probably at the end of the year. I hope that with it Xbox Live Indie Games chapter will have also become available to Polish Indie developers. We have many talented guys who will use that chance to test their skills against commercial rules.
Last but not least, Xbox 360 Slim. It looks cool but most of all it will matter only to attract new customers. I presume not so many will replace old ones beside those frustrated by the noise or crash of the system (by whatever reason).
Answering in a single sentence, of course, social games have certainly become still unmeasured opportunity for the industry. Numbers in various dimensions expose the obvious evidence. If you don’t believe then check Zynga’s last year revenue and active player base for games like Farmville, Mafia Wars to name a few. These examples prove that Facebook is great place to put your manageable risk for next development. Social Games have brought massive number of new gamers to the pool, if you have learned your lessons about diversity. Bar has moved in favor to our beloved and desired female audience. If you know or have will to learn how to attract them it’s just another positive argument for you to try your skills in area which is fresh new, still under dynamic development and with accountable space for growth and possible market leadership.
Big players have already realized it. EA’s purchase of PlayFish for about $300M, personally, blows my mind as for start-ups’ potential in this category. Success showing cosmic values. EA known in past to be whale swimming in slow-motion if we refer to innovation, reaction to new opportunities now plays in the first front establishing its own, rapidly growing department dedicated to social and on-line gaming.
Cake is growing and so are hungry mouths of bigger and bigger players in the industry. That’s pretty awesome to observe it, on-live, in just a couple of years. I presume it will continually surprise us in following years. Recent news around Facebook although help me realize that we might actually reach the first base now and games’ rules are changing.
In effect social gaming with much bigger budgets, big players involved and start-ups from past years becoming a multi-million ventures will probably have to review their strategy, size and risk taken for future projects.
One of the success indicators for games like Farmville was platform (FB) that has allowed to spread the word rapidly at minimal or no cost using social behaviors and in fact viral marketing. Facebook is interesting Web 2.0 entity. Scale of its own success brings him only enemies, er.. I meant followers. To maintain its position they have to change dynamically and respond with new innovations, security and privacy improvements (400+ million active users is hell-of-a-database I wish I had for Business Intelligence) and other aspects that may touch a 3rd party developer very painfully if we won’t understand them well or these changes won’t be communicated clear.
I have a perception that it’s not. Seems like in times of gigantic success we started to perceive Facebook not only as social-networking service (for end users), but also as a platform available to 3rd party developers. It’s nothing wrong with that as Facebook is great candidate to be named like that, but not to get lost on the path of building such a platform it has to have all its characteristics. One characteristic, very important in my opinion is technical and business specification not only for the current time but also for well defined future.
Predictability of what can possibly happen in next year or two may help me make my decisions and be predictable myself. Open question if that can be possible with Facebook, I don’t have clear opinion now. Seems like market does not either.
Zynga and other companies seem to believe in platform diversity. Games are hosted on Facebook, MySpace, MSN Games and by its own Dot.Com site. I personally believe that a single hub (or a few to keep things competitive) has now space to grow on all concerns Facebook has built. Sounds abstract but mainly because only Facebook has its proof point how to reach so many folks around the world and unfortunately in their story trigger pulled was not aimed at gamers first.
First let’s check some numbers. Big winner in MMO world is still, undoubtedly, World of Warcraft. Last announcement (2008) from Blizzard reveals peak number of 11.5 (yes, almost twelve) million subscribers.
World of Warcraft census currently shows about 5.6 million active players. Certainly not a peak now, but for a 5 years old game with overgrowing competition in all possible dimensions, it still impresses me. If you consider their business model and potential revenue stream, it is a lifetime worth your envy. I filtered the census’ numbers and have found that European servers have gathered about 2.5M subscribers. Quite a slice from the overall number! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is close to 1/10 of all Xbox 360 consoles in the UK.
Mentioning business model I started wondering it this genre is a good pick for consoles (if developed by third party like Blizzard). If Microsoft released one or Sony released one (or lets say they already have it with Home) it should not a problem. They both have engines to run subscription model and micro payments and the rest is described at the end.
But if 3rd party did one. If Blizzard ported WoW to Xbox, I’d not be so sure MS or Sony were happy. Reason is simple. First, if you imagine massive amount of console gamers playing WoW -> other games would not be purchased and played that often. Retail revenue would have become cut on hardware vendor’s and developer’s charts.
How hardware vendor could possibly react? For example, through smart revenue sharing deal. That would have balanced hypothetical loss. If so, there is a risk for developer, deal would become unprofitable, unbalanced and unfair, good reason to back off. Having only these conditions on mind I rather doubt if we can see in any possible future a successful (in WoW metrics) MMO example on game consoles.
The only possible exception I can imagine would become 1st party development, but only if included carefully in long term strategy. As for long term strategy I rather see that both MS and Sony are focused to chase Nintendo with equally unknown Wii phenomena, and Nintendo is just happy selling massive amount of their hardware. Another reason to doubt in good MMO game on game consoles in reasonable future.
Summarizing my MIX10 experience, main thing I was focused on is of course Windows Phone Series. This is huge thing for Microsoft, long expected inside the company to show that we haven’t overslept the deal totally. Device and OS shows some opportunity and I can’t wait to see how it will it shape and break into the market.
For developers it’s another chance to shine. As I recall, I think one of Capcom’s managers said that new platforms’s begining of the lifecycle is the best time to introduce new brands, IPs and products. Best time for Indies if we reffer it to game development. Best time to introduce new crazy apps if we say – any application is at stake. Microsoft promises to reveal some tools for apps promotion on its marketplace but let’s be honest. Looking at Xbox Live and PSN stores, looking at Apple’s Appstore, when you have countless number of applications it’s just not that easy to highlight yourself as at the beginning.
If you consider to start coding a few things may be important to you. First, hardware specification can help you estimate Windows Phone’s capacities:
Symmetric multi-touch of Capacitive type with at least 4 or more contact points.
Sensors – A GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity
Camera with 5 megapixel or more , flash and a camera button
Multimedia – Codec acceleration
Memory – 256 MB RAM or more , 8 GB Flash or more
GPU – DirectX 9 acceleration
CPU – ARMv7 Cortex/Scorpion or better
Optional keyboard
3 Hardware buttons – Back, Start, Search is a must and other buttons like buttons for Volume and Power.
Phone will support two native screen resolutions:
If I understood the message correctly it seems that MS and its partners prepare to launch two types of devices. Full with 480 x 800 and some mini/small (and presumably cheaper) device with 320 x 480. That still has to be confirmed.
Screen resolution is important for designers and graphicians. As you can easily measure screen proportions are not standard, that’s what you have to mind while preparing graphical content. Zune HD for example supports 240 x 320 and 272 x 480 which means 16:9 and 4:3 proportions (just like TV sets support). On Windows Phone it’s equivalently 5:3 and 3:2.
As you see keyboard is optional so definitively prepare yourself to design touch-screen supported user interface. The only buttons you will have are below three (Back, Start and Search):
Sensors have their equivalent APIs accessible from Silverlight and Xna frameworks. These two technologies are the only ones you can pick up for your development. Positioning is as follows: Xna – strong focus on gaming, SL – any other type of application. Screens and sensors can obviously be used for application control, but interesting thing is that WP7 will have speech recognition module that you can also consider in your development. WP7 will have Push notitication service that will allow you to communicate and send messages to Phone on battery consumption efficient way. As for APIs mentioned already, Windows Phone will support Silverlight 3.0 and Xna 4.0. For gaming, if you invested your time in WritableBitmap based engine written in Silverlight and targetting Web – you can easily port it to Phone without any Xna consideration (as this feature is in SL3).
After Shawn’s lecture I found that most of buffers important in graphics (Xna) are 16bit. So we can predict how many colors will WP7 support and how big structures we can render (as for vertex/index buffers in 3d world). It also matters for texture size so putting it all shortly how much detail we can show on the screen. Xna 4.0 on WP7 will be DX9 compatible but at initial stage and release timeframe we won’t be able to develop shaders freely in HLSL. Instead Xna exposes five customizable Effects for Shading, Environment Mapping, Alpha Testing, Multi Texturing and Skinning. It’s said that future versions of OS/Xna will presumably support HLSL but it’s not said when. Shawn has released very cool demo from his MIX10 presentation where all these effects are presented (with source code). I recommend to check it out, and generally to follow his blog, currently it’s best updated and most accurate resource on anything new in Xna 4.0
As for Game-Dev heat map I can easily find three strong regions: US (and Canada), Europe (mainly represented by UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia) and Japan. Some talented studios and people also live and work in Australia but as for number of titles and teams, it has not that impact as those three I have already mentioned.
Trend in the industry is to cut costs and many managers look for countries that are lets say more cost effective to outsource there more and more work. Common to other industries, but as well for game development we have China where I see Ubisoft like good example of huge investment. India is also worth a notice. Many local companies there offer their creative services to western studios. I also perceive my region worth some comment.
CEE which stands for Central and Eastern Europe hides many AAA ready studios. Some countries like POLAND, Czech Republic, Hungary are now in European Union which makes us predictable and reasonable business partners that are still much better considering cost effectiveness than the core, old Union. Also countries from former Soviet Union (Ukraine and Russia) are more and more visible abroad. Just to mention title I’m expecting to play soon – Metro 2033 – is developed in Russia. Great, atmospheric first person perspective shooter called Stalker was made in Ukraine.
Summarizing game development in Russia and Ukraine I see that my eastern neighbors have found their specialty in shooters and strategy games. It’s little bit different in Poland. As for the biggest studios I wanted to highlight in this post, I see that we do of course great job in FPS space, but we also dare to challenge one of the most difficult genres – role playing games (like The Witcher and Two Worlds).
Current strength in Polish Game Development comes from PC development and current state of these studios is to break in or sustain and grow in console markets. This is fantastic achievement considering the past where I had a feeling that we all the time chase global trends being still late for at least 5 years with skill and experience. Now observing current growth I’m amazed in genre, scale, platform and project’s type diversity Polish companies address.
Warsaw, Cracow and Wroclaw are top three places to live if you consider game development career
We do have great example of promoting own, new IPs (Two Worlds, Call of Juarez, Painkiller). We are good at customizing existing IPs to the gaming medium like in Witcher, which originally was a fantasy novel with a super hero story created by a local writer – Andrzej Sapkowski. We’ve got some recent experience with AAA title conversion and porting (Gears of War PC port for Epic Games). Leaders have already realized potential in on-line communities, Web 2.0 and digital distribution learning fast how to market it globally as well as locally.
New players are establishing their position on the scene but in this article I wanted, indeed, focus on fantastic four of biggest veterans in Polish Game Development that have already presented themselves as high quality developers attractive for a global player.
Company started in 1991 in small Polish town. It’d started as a publisher and software localization company. At the end of 90-ties they broke into gaming industry as well as developer opening a studio in Wroclaw. Crime Cities was first title I considered worth checking at the time. It was something like Quarantine meets Fifth Element as I remember. Not a bad start. Then they made Chrome – FPS with quite a decent engine which has become a base for their further developments. Techland still refers Chrome Engine as technology used in their games.
Most important achievement in their history is named Call of Juarez. Game obviously designed to focus on American gamers. At the end of last year they have released sequel called Bonds in Blood. With this title I’m pretty sure that they received proven track in console space and growth warranty. I’m not surprised then looking at their job openings that they have Dev teams not only in Wroclaw (original location) but also in Warsaw (capitol city). Looks like they have opened a second development studio. Good Job!
CD Projekt is also a veteran in Polish publishing and distribution market. They have started in early 90-ties pioneering CD-ROM based games in the world dominated by floppy discs. In 2002 they opened a branch office called Red Studio with one purpose – to investigate game development opportunities for the company. Brave and important investment in huge team that has learned effectively how to make complex role playing game based on IP that is very well known in Poland – The Witcher. Because of novels’ popularity, expectations in Poland were very high. CD Projekt’s aspiration, though, were even higher. They licensed Bioware’s engine – Aurora – used in Neverwinter Nights and planned to sell that popular Polish IP to the world.
Development was long and many started disbelieving in CD Projekt’s skill to produce complete product. Finally two years ago Witcher hit the stores and got critical acclaim in Poland and worldwide. At the end, Team proved that they were worth consumers’ trust and waiting.
Witcher - Major landmark in Polish Role-Playing
Unfortunately, then some troubles started. Company outsourced console port of the original Witcher focusing its core forces on new initiatives. It failed big time in this effort (porting), I presume from lack of experience in such a process. This is a part of bigger issue which I’ve noticed. CD Projekt looks like they’ve overestimated its new investment capacities (my subjective opinion, I hope to be wrong).
They first presented themselves as big investor and gaming innovator. They acquired another old game development studio – Metropolis, they started on-line store (gram.pl) and digital distribution service (Good Old Games). On Xbox360 launch they started distributing Xbox games (deal with MS), and many more. Then they started closing some of its businesses. They shut Metropolis, stopped Witcher’s Xbox 360 development with French developer (as I already mentioned). Finally they have merged with former Polish stock market giant – company named Optimus, on unclear conditions looking for new funds, I presume.
Regardless of these issues (mainly generated by some troubled time we used to call the crisis) this company has great potential and foresight ability. They quite recently announced that they work on The Witcher second installment, no details up to date on platform and game-play specifics.
With this studio I have personal memories. Somewhere between 1999 and 2001 I wanted to join their ranks. At that time I lacked experience they wanted, but the conversation was very interesting and I still recall it with big grin smile on my face. On their pages you can find that they started operations in 2001. Might be true, but the team existed even before and was known in Poland from strategy games like Polanie and Earth ****. These RTS games have continuations already branded by Reality Pump.
Two Worlds - Oblivion's little sister
These games were offered worldwide but I’m not sure if they (and how) were recognized. For me, first title they have made and that should have not been ignored is role-playing game Two Worlds. Reality Pump took different approach than CDP-Red in their RPG efforts. They have created their own IP with open world trying to compete with such RPG giants like Elder Scrolls or Gothic series. They released the game on PC as well as on Xbox 360 which makes them another studio where developers can learn how to make games for current generation video games consoles. Now they also work on a sequel.
Last but not least – People Can Fly. Behind this company’s scenes you can easily reveal true Polish game-dev legend – Adrian Chmielarz. This guy has very much a similar story to say as Peter Molyneux. he’s just not used to be the same charismatic in old English way as Peter has during his speeches. Adrian started developing games as programmer and was pioneering high quality games development from the very beginning. At the beginning of 90-ties where Amiga, PC established their position as home computers and Nintendo fought its eternal war with Sega in consoles space, first Polish game dev companies were discovering true masterpiece ideas but for 8bit Atari and Commodore and starting to make some old-looking and rubbish titles for PC and Amiga. We were definitely behind the time (thanks to the bloody communism) but not Adrian Chmielarz himself.
With his first company Metropolis Software House (mentioned earlier in CD Projekt’s story) in 1992/1993 he developed adventure game – “Secret of the Statue” – that was not worse than so called “Western” counter-parts. Adrian was experimenting with many genres and sub-genres. Secret of the Status was a first person perspective adventure game with digitized pictures (like Myth). His further adventure game, Prince and Coward, had traditional point and click interface.
In late 90-ties he started moving toward shooters. First was Catharsis, a scroller shooter with 3d pre-rendered environment (below movie):
Then he resigned from Metropolis and in 2002 started new company, People Can Fly. This company quickly marked its existence in the gaming world with Painkiller, true masterpiece horror-like FPS for PC and first Xbox.
With such a proven track People Can Fly was later acquired by Epic Games as its internal development studio. Their first project under Epic’s patronage was to port Gears of War to PC. They succeeded and now they work on new yet to be announced big title. Can’t wait for news!
SUMMARY
Polish game development studios as I already wrote have diverse experience and interests. These companies are leaders in my subjective opinion but not the ony ones in the country. New and not so new companies climb the ladder. Some other examples worth mentioning: company called Farm51 and their game – Necrovision. Tate - scene’s long-timer and I think first Polish company that broke into console development with Kao the Kangaroo, ages ago. Another long-time runner is company named City-Interactive. This studio for long was focused on smaller titles for PC and handheld now according to their strategic shift want to make less titles but with higher budget. I’ve got some pictures from their first Xbox 360 production they’re developing
Yet to be announced City Interactive X360 development. Looking good aye? You can find more pictures.
Poland is definitively growing in game development space and it is more visible worldwide. Being born here I’m personally proud of that.
Latest creation from Quantic Dreams cannot be ignored. David Cage presented himself as great storyteller in his previous game – Project Indigo (Fahrenheit outside US). While playing Heavy Rain, I could hardly avoid comparisons to that previous title. These two games come along with Cage’s redefinition of adventure game with cinematic glamour. Cinematic experience in Heavy Rain popped up another question I asked myself: is still Heavy Rain a game?
In Fahrenheit we had several characters to play with through the story. All of them had some purpose to the main plot and it’s similar in Heavy Rain. Major difference in game play I found, is that in snowy precursor game mechanics were bound to traditional action adventure controls. Balance was only pushed little bit more toward adventure rather action. Action in Fahrenheit was strictly related to some arcade elements blended in and between puzzles and dialogue. Still I had a feeling that I was free to do whatever I wanted at limited stage of scene. In Heavy Rain I have a feeling, that it’s mostly all about the story. I’m not even surprised to see YouTube version of the game. That’s good example of how limited game playability is. My reflection from playing: controls over characters were only a necessary waste of time to trigger new dialogue and choice of action which I rather watched than played. After a while I found no sense to walk around, lurk for some hidden spots.. somewhere. The only exception is one character who makes real investigation with tools that even CSI folks should be envy at.
Arcade elements in Heavy Rain are close to beat-em up mechanics, which is really tough. There is no time to learn these “combos” as next button to press shows up on the screen and you have like a second to push the right one. Honestly, it was really frustrating. This game is about a story. Limited freedom of game-play replaced with really tough control in some “magic” moments is first serious risk I perceive David Cage has taken. People who are not accustomed to gaming but who will like to test current stage of interactive storytelling & drama may fail to finish it because of difficulty. People who seek a game with rich story may actually not find a game in Heavy Rain. Not by their (and my definition). I don’t mind, but I believe many will do. I really appreciate the story. In my humble opinion it is so strong that I dare to compare it to David Fincher’s “Seven” movie.
In one of my previous articles, I described story structure based on a single, main character development from mundane folk to a hero. It’s barely the way David Cage chose for its games, and it’s really fantastic. I have no other examples in gaming, but Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain where you are put in some moment of time, dense with dramatic events and many characters who are involved and engaged almost simultaneously to that plot. In both games terrible crime is chosen to bind characters to the story. Major difference between these games, is that in Fahrenheit player-character roles were competitive to each other. Playing cops and a murderer was a real challenge because they had quite opposite goals. Culmination point was when these goals had blended to a common one. In Heavy Rain, from the beginning, all characters we play have the same goal: solve the riddle and find the bad guy. Shock and culmination point is at the very end when the truth is revealed.
Maturity is another aspect that differs David Cage’s games. In Fahrenheit beginning was really dramatic. Nothing that could not happen in our world was described there. I could easily explain all unreal situations by drugs or psychology, If I only wanted. I didn’t. It was fun to see all those strange moments inspired something where Matrix meets strange cult conjured by Multi-Personal Disorder known very well from dozen of famous movies (like Lost Highway or Fight Club) taken as an inspiration. Dense atmosphere ended fast when I got some jumbo-mambo sci-fi for which even Matrix looks authentic. It’d built a distance to the thriller side of that story and then I started enjoying it as an action game (fight on the roof, what a pace!). Heavy Rain is mature and for adults only story about grim world where terrible crime simply happens. There is no magic, aliens and other stuff that kills the atmosphere of Gotham City’s social failure, but in rainy not dark metaphor. Rain brings sadness not fear, and it’s a feeling that you can’t stop thinking about during the game. As a victim of a serial killer you have occasion to feel how it’d like to get through whole that psychological trauma, you start believing how it could be. Psychological impact on what’s happening on the screen is indeed comparable with “Seven”. It’s first game where I didn’t want to do something which game was expecting me to do to go forward. It was that terrible like in those movies where you moved your head away because you didn’t want to watch something drastic. Power of this story is there just because Cage does not escape from such situations. They make Heavy Rain even more authentic. It’s interesting to experience it, as it’s totally different from all controversial aspects in games we’ve already had. Having sex in Mass Effect or playing a terrorist in Modern Warfare 2 is like eating peanuts comparing to that one scene in Heavy Rain, I don’t want to spoil.
As for hard decisions in game, I found two situations where I wanted to have more time to think of. While playing I killed twice. In both scenes it was so fast that I had no time to reconsider my decisions. In both situation it was not like “kill or be killed” 1sec moment. Game mechanics helped little bit where you have options to push some button and you don’t exactly know what can happen. In both situations I was shocked how fast pressing the trigger was. Then, when it was done and dead body laid on the floor, my first thought was that I didn’t want to do it.
It’s very interesting from social perspective. I strongly believe no-one playing that game is a killer and then you’re put in a situation so strong and serious from story perspective to do so, with exact feeling. I’d not be surprised the find moral questions like what should and what should not be put in games coming from the Press once again. Media like challenges like this and put gaming controversy on the front page. Usually they fail to bring correct message. I presume Heavy Rain is so hard to comprehend, that it will never be covered. If killing in games is a problem considering silly shooters and other games that ignore almost all real aspects of what real death is, then Heavy Rain shows all possible physical, ethical and moral aspects of such. Hard decisions in Heavy Rain bring questions like this often. Playing it and replaying I had one on mind pretty often: “is this really necessary?”. In many cases, for the story, it was.
David Cage has invented very powerful tool to present dramatic and even traumatic stories. For me, Fahrenheit has built very high expectations for the next game from Quantic Dreams. Heavy Rain is even more interactive movie than a game. At the beginning failed to meet expectations built in my mind, I expected game. I changed my opinion and I exactly know why. Maturity and power of the story presented in that game is so tremendous, that with my own high expectations to the game based on Fahrenheit nostalgia, I for sure didn’t expect to see something like this. It’s simply a different thing. Expecting that Heavy Rain will be Fahrenheit 2, new sequel but better was wrong and misleading.
Dreams have powerful impact on many things from our real life to mediums we used to play with as entertainment. From psychological drama to mindful refresh and relax, lucid stories while dreaming, we barely remember them in the morning. That terrible loss and potential hidden meanings were inspiring philosophers, psychologists and entertainers for many years, if not centuries.
Books, movies and games go into dreamworld occasionally and as in first two examples its mostly another art form hard to perform well and so easy to ignore in games I perceive the biggest power of dreams for interactive usage.
I’m not the first one who observed that, in fact I have found many interesting examples of dreams in games already developed, mostly in two scenarios:
SPLITTING WORLDS: DREAMS AIN’T REAL
Dreams by its nature are perfect to give hints and formulate breaks between acts with some important summary and new points in plot yet not revealed fully to give us a reason to stay and ask questions when awaken. In this example role-playing games seemed to be perfect to put dreams in game as specific cut scene in most cases rather to read than watch. Take a look at good&old Baldur’s Gate where without any interaction we were given some clues about the story going forward:
Not so impressive even those times of its origin. Main reason: dreams in BG were only a summary of current achievements. Told well by an intriguing voice of narrator, but completely non-interactive and without any mystery dreams should have.
It’s little bit better in quite a new (comparing to BG) Lost Odyssey, but still has the same flaws even though presentation, including visuals and sound effects, is really well balanced:
In Lost Odyssey, through dreams, we can try to discover some hidden memories from the past. Stories are really well written, but confusing not valuable for the main story at all. After a couple of dreams, I stopped reading them because of schizophrenic lack of useful content. In jRPG I really respect my gaming time. Dreams in their formula inspired me personally only to dwell for new techniques how to present text on screen (as a programmer).
Role-playing games have no monopoly for dreams and fuzzy memories presented in quite a somnolent way. Action games also presented them in many examples. Take Max Payne and its comic book heritage.
Different approach but still passive, unfortunately. Action game like above is really good to show much more interactive usage.
LIVING THE DREAM THAT HAS COME TRUE
How about utilizing dreams not to cut scenes or acts and summarize something with blurred memories and reality hardly real? From previous examples and Max Payne as a bridge take a look at Darkness. Main character is dead, undead, not dead, hard to say. Monsters helping him, all strange things bound to the story and especially alternative worlds in different time and dimensions. That’s all what we could easily call dreams, not an idyllic one. Darkness has them, one of the reasons I love to come back to this game:
Game mood like from famous The Crow movie, but with much more dark magic and horror – dreamworld in Darkness is closer to terrors of Lovecraft’s prose than sissy stories full of banality told us literally in Baldur’s Gate and Lost Odyssey.
Writing so, I may sound ignorant, no point in that. Dreams may vary from joyful sex dreams through, “I don’t need to wake up” and “I won a lottery” relaxations, to “My grandma visited me and warned me” and “I died in accident” or “Somebody killed me”. These different settings and atmosphere of dreams can be used in games, but by its interactive nature it’s much easier to expose fear, drama, regret and other not so clear and positive feelings for which as players we rather like to dwell deeper and ask more questions than stay and relax doing nothing. Sometimes as in the best up to date Call of Cthulhu game, we not only didn’t want to wake up, we hadn’t wanted to fall asleep first place. (WARNING FOR BELOW MOVIE: IF YOU DIDN”T FINISH THE GAME, IT HAS OBVIOUS SPOILERS, WATCHING IS SPOILER FREE UNTIL 1:40)
Great escapes full of drama and not possible in real world I found also in one of my favorite games – Fahrenheit (Project Indigo in US). This game and interactive storytelling offer it has, is one of the best usage of dramatic dreamworld as a game-play medium.
All these examples show, that for this medium visuals and music have to get married fast and furious. I’m waiting for tomorrow’s launch date of Heavy Rain. I presume I’ll have more examples from Quantic Dreams, who named themselves perfectly for this article.
But narration shown in Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain with atmosphere where music, visuals and story come together is not Quantic Dream’s invention. They put a lot of innovation in their games for sure, still I find their precursor from mid 90-ties. I mean game called Dream Web. Take a look at intro where setting is already established:
All above examples remind me only one last thing – my dream. I wish to see more games with interactive dreams blended into game-play. I’m also glad for games that have already showed these dreams coming true.
I really enjoy my time spent on playing Pixel Junk Shooter. I haven’t finished it yet, currently I’m in 3rd stage. I’d beaten two interesting bosses and got addicted to the game mechanics. From developer perspective, meantime, I started asking myself a question: What makes this game so great?
I found this game by reading various reviews and watching movie clips like that one above. First thing I noticed, was how well game mechanics and visuals are connected. Literally it’s just a scroller shooter, but much of its spirit is made by fantastic 2d fluid simulation presented visually in very attractive way.
If you’re a programmer interested in further investigation, take a look at below movie, it shows similar concept:
Above clip shows an application developed by Microsoft MVP Rene Schulte. Rene published .NET Framework sources on his personal pages. He’s programmed basic example of technology that can inspire for Pixel Junk Shooter alike physics in games. The only technical problem left to do, is that in PJS you have different fluids interacting between each other (liquid fire, lava, water, oil, etc). Skill to master by a smart coder, I believe.
Aside of fluids, I can’t stop thinking on Pixel Junk Shooter without connecting it to old Amiga games. Sometimes it’s really abstract but it triggers my imagination for potential sequels.
For example, shooting part of game’s mechanics remind me Cannon Fodder. I dream to play Cannon Fodder with two analogs. It should be so much better and PJ’s Shooter shows that well. In Cannon Fodder though, encounters were more dynamic and not so much was to rescue:
Some of game’s mechanics remind me old games from Psygnosis (currently and for long SCE Studios Liverpool). Take strange combination of Lemmings or maybe rather Benefactor, put it together into a scroller shooter action game with puzzles strictly related to fluid physics. If you take a look at this game this way you immediately start dreaming on more Lemmings/Benefactor alike features. I did, I believe that many ideas should fit well into Pixel Junk Shooter. Imagine situation that little folk you have to rescue moves, and moves in very stupid/uncontrolled way. Imagine situation that you’re bound into a conflict between two sides and rescue good and leave bad guys. Imagine situation, that even though there are two bands of miners who fight/compete for something, you have to rescue both groups before deadly lava will kill them all.
Maybe some of that mechanics will appear in further levels. I’m not sure now, as currently I’m fascinated with maxing up results on these first 15 levels. I’m pretty sure though, that this game will surprise me even more. If not, then it’s definitely worth further experimenting and development.
I’m really glad this game showed up. It proves well my theory of evolutionary design. I’m expecting good sequels and clones of that concept in near future. It’s rather obvious that games where mechanics are strictly bound to physics seem to be 100% success warranty. I can’t recall any example where it was not.
I’m a believer, that each story should have well defined structure. There are many ways to build it, method depends on dimension we want to bring details for. Analyzing and mapping that well defined structure on actual stories, movies and games can help to comprehend it better and use it while building your own storyline.
Hero-centric approach
Many stories are driven by a central persona – a main character. To have that story truly epic, a hero is chosen. Hero who takes a journey first to discover his heroic abilities in a mundane world, then using those skills and with heroic faith mentioned character goes forward to make the world better, rescue the princess and so on, THE END.
There is no better way to structure hero’s journey than using method discovered and named so by Joseph Campbell. In his book “Hero with a Thousand Faces” he defined a theory of so called monomyth. Under this monomyth’s umbrella Campbell described the same or at least very similar structure of many myths coming from different parts of the world and different cultures. Centric part of that theory is that hero, person who sometimes accidentally finds himself on a journey from a mundane life to and epic end.
Hero’s Journey has three big phases: Departure, Initiation and Return. Before Departure starts our hero just like in Fable (games), Frodo in Lords of the Rings (book and movie) has his mundane life, he’d just got used to have. Then first motif appears on the horizon which Campbell named “Call to Adventure“. It’s nothing but the signs of the vocation of the hero. Some may be just built by curiosity, some by personal drama, some just happened and still not much is visible both to the character and the audience watching it on the screen, reading a book or simply playing the game. During next step, a “Refusal of the Call“, our character quickly realizes, that it’s not what he wished to have. Folly of the flight from the god is often described in many stories as great wish to come back to the life before adventure started. Frodo in LOTR had that moment when he wanted to give One Ring to Gandalf. Sometimes it’s just an refusal to agree on an heroic status already given, like modest behavior of Aragorn who didn’t want to discuss his rights to the throne for long. Neo in Matrix also wanted to come back to the “unreal” world shortly after awakening. Manifestations of that refusal may vary as you see. Next step in this theory is a “Supernatural Aid“. Sometimes it’s not literally supernatural, but for sure unexpected assistance that comes to one who has undertaken his proper adventure. “Crossing of the First Threshold” is the first obstacle, a guardian, hero has to “defeat” to enter the realm of magnified power. When he succeeds, he passes the gate to the magical world and he starts believing in his heroic ability. This phase is called “Belly of the Whale“. For Neo in Matrix, that guardian is represented by Morpheus in the martial art combat they performed. Neo entered the passage when he’d started learning all possible fighting techniques with fascination described by single yet powerful sentence “Hit me!”. Funny, the same thing Keanu Reeves said in Johny Mnemonic when his hardrived-head was loaded. Frodo found his guardian in the forest while Orcs had attacked his fellows. Boromir was the the guy who helped Frodo to find his passage. Crossing the river is that magical moment.
Anyway, after crossing the passage, Departure ends and Initiation starts. First moments are hard, our hero is on “The Road of Trials“. Those trials are dangerous aspects gods have put on the road. Neo had to learn how to jump from one building to another. Frodo had to find his way from swamps and other dangerous areas directly to Mordor itself. Moments during trials are really tough. It’s easy to start disbelieving even if hero thought he is the One. To reconstruct, even indirectly his heroic faith “The Meeting With the Goddess” is necessary. Oracle in Matrix made the moment providing more questions than answers to Neo. Frodo met Faramir and during those moments when he helped to save Gollum’s life he encountered that phase. Joseph Campbell, giving analogies to our myths, described it as mythical marriage with the Queen Goddess of the World. That’s why I dare to say, that the Goddess and Campbellian marriage in LOTR is between Frodo and Gollum. When Gollum was “fishing”, Frodo realized truly how strong the bound between them was. Next step called “Woman and the Temptress” Joseph Campbell described as the realization and agony of Oedipus. This is the moment when hero’s life is fully controlled by his Goddess wife. It’s a trap. In Oedipus’ myth, mother and wife concept is blurred. While trapped and in agony hero starts looking for a father, a brother. Helpful hand which Frodo found in Sam, but first he was betrayed by Gollum and almost killed by big spider, Shelob. That moment, reunion, is called “Atonement with the Father” in Campbell’s taxonomy. “Apotheosis” is natural after step. To describe it at the best I’d like to quote Campbell: “Like Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance”. If that father, brother or god himself is the true partner, a necessary ingredient hero needs to become the Chosen One, during apotheosis these last “terrors of ignorance”, masks of the world are gone. Neo in Matrix had found that partner in Morpheus when he rescued him from Agents. Frodo found that partner in Sam. Good thing to train imagination is that in these two examples, different roles were physically suffering. In Matrix Morpheus was on high, interrogated by Agents and hero rescued him. In LOTR hero was deadly trapped and in scenes full of drama he was rescued by his partner. It shows very well that this generic concept works very well even though you as a writer will like to go with different details. “The Ultimate Boon” is a lovely moment that ends Initiation. The ease with which the adventure is here accomplished signifies that the hero is a superior man, a born king. That’s very much visible in The Matrix.
Even so end of initiation looks like end of the story (a happy end indeed), we still have one more part to tell. It is called a Return. With such heroic impact on everything and big success just achieved hero refuses again. “Refusal of the Return” is like avoiding bullets in Matrix. Neo didn’t need a phone call anymore to escape, there was no need to come back to the real world to refresh, reload or get additional aid even though Frodo was still in the middle of Mordor crowded by villains. In fact true refusal of the return in LOTR was when Frodo hesitated to drop the ring to the Mountain of Doom. Responsibility is refused. “Magic Flight” is the moment when hero triumphs and wins blessing of the goddess and is explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir of restoration of the society. The final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. After that hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. “Rescue from without” it is called. Birds did it in LOTR rescuing Frodo from certain death on the top of the Mountain of Doom. “Crossing of the Return Threshold” is coming back from the magical world of heroic ability to the mundane world from the beginning. Hero has to accept it to become “Master of Two Worlds” and experience “Freedom to Live“. Realization of inevitable guilt of life as Campbell described may so sicken the heart that Frodo decided to leave world he’d known. Cycle ends and new adventure may just appear on the horizon or not, helping to build the sequel or forget about the creation.
Studying Joseph’s Campbell monomyth’s theory is really fantastic adventure itself. Reading his analogies in many myths from our history is amazing. Mapping this structure on books, movies and games may be really enlightening. Building your own storyline and being aware of the journey is a benefit worth considering.
Many writers and game creators base their plots on that theory. They don’t need to declare it, it’s obvious and visible. Many have modified the original concept and theory has evolved.
One of the variations strictly based on analyzing movies is Nine Acts Structure invented by David Siegel. In past years it was published on-line, but original dsiegel.com pages are long gone. I found good reference in Internet Archives. Modifications David Siegel made mainly focus on setting two goals. It gives an illusion of nonlinear plot. Steps (or acts) David Siegel described are outlined below.
Nine Acts Structure with two goals (D. Siegel)
Act 0: Someone Toils Late into the Night.
Act 1: Start with an image.
Act 2: Something bad happens.
Act 3: Meet the Hero (and the Opposition).
Act 4: Commitment.
Act 5: Go for the wrong goal.
Act 6: The reversal.
Act 7: Go for the new goal.
Act 8: Wrap it up.
As you can see many aspects are similar, some aggregated but the clue is, that somewhere in middle of way hero realizes that he wanted to achieve wrong goal. That’s the culmination point and then he finds true goal which opens second part of the story.
Conclusions
I encourage you to carefully take a look at these steps and their different variations (Internet search on Hero’s Journey can bring even more references). I have given you some snapshot analysis of Matrix and LOTR. Try with other movies like Avatar for example. Try with games too. Try to build your own story based on this structure, it’s real joy.
In this article I mixed my interpretations with some real quotes from the book, Joseph Campbell wrote. I recommend to get it and read it. My thoughts are based on the 3rd edition published by New World Library in 2008. It should be easy to buy it.
