Games Aren't Numbers

A wall clock read eleven twenty-six, indicating that for nearly two hours now Michael had not moved a muscle larger than his tongue. He, along with his rows of co-testers, would have appeared completely idle to a bystander. The two dozen of them sat inside the room’s only furnishings, plastic chairs ergonomically shaped to keep a human body comfortably buckled in and hunched forward indefinitely. Their heads and faces were unseen, locked inside metal cases. Due to the uncomfortable weight of the metal, the cases hung from the ceiling by heavy cables. Tangles of wires were wrapped around these cables like vines. From the metal bottoms, rubber tubes hung to the floor, draining saliva and sweat from their occupants.

Each day everyone sat inside these seats with their heads inside metal boxes and their hands wrapped around control pads. The pads were equipped with a thumb-sized analog stick, a swollen red button in the center, and several peripheral buttons. Day in and day out, everyone sat and tested the latest and greatest technologies. The company would periodically provide their room with new hardware, which they each would use diligently, and then deliver reports of their experiences. These reports would influence future revisions of the devices, and ultimately determine what the final product on the field would be.

Although overhead florescent bulbs brightly lit the room, Michael could only see the pixelated glow of the cathode-ray screen in front of his eyes. The rest of head, from his face to the gums inside his mouth, was covered by a tight, rubbery substance called a Haptic Mask. A grid of microscopic metallic dots covered the mask’s interior, and pressed tightly against the hairless skin of his face and head. Those dots made him feel thousands of tiny fingers scurry across his skin. The feeling did not resemble actual fingers. It was electric, as if energized insects were walking across his head, a feeling similar to pressing skin against the surface of the cathode-ray screen. This was Michael’s job, to watch the screen, press buttons, and feel invisible electric fingers.

There was a language to these simulated touches. The imaginary fingers were delivering important information that Michael needed to complete his work. Right now, only he and a few dozen other testers and engineers could interpret this language, but soon hundreds of soldiers, pilots, scientists, managers, and students would license this technology and its accompanying training course.

One year earlier, a research group concluded that humans were becoming overly dependent on visual data. They argued that this is a problem because of the practical limit to how much visual information a human brain can effectively process at once. Michael’s employer, Arcadia Innovators, or AI, immediately expressed interest in this discovery. Computers, they believed, needed a new method of communicating with their users. It was not until about six months later that AI would find one.

Engineer Jennifer Glen created their new method. After doing work with the blind, she was inspired by their ability to decode braille as naturally as she herself could read written words. By piecing together some scrap hardware, she designed a surface for transmitting tactile sensations through touch. Human skin, she demonstrated, is capable of detecting hundreds of bits of information at once and differentiating between all of them. A face, for example, contains thousands and thousands of nerve endings, providing a massive potential for information gathering. While pitching her prototype to the AI executives, she claimed: if we can create artificial images for our eyes, why not artificial feelings for our skin?

Now artificial feelings ran up and down and all around Michael’s naked skull as he sat inside his Haptic Mask. They were telling him all kinds of important information, so much that he didn’t even feel like he was sitting still inside a case, but rather running and jumping around in another body. In a way, he was. Each tester was in command of a remote controlled robot.

Impulses across his skin told him where his robot’s three legs were standing, how high its pod-like body was elevated above the ground, how far away the closest solid objects were, what direction it was facing, and so on. Michael pressured an analog stick with his thumb to send the robot moving forward. Rhythmic sensations flickered around his head indicating the rise and impact of each of the three feet. He felt signals across his forehead that told him how fast he was moving. By now, he had been reading these signals for so long that their message was visceral; it felt even more real than the pixelated images he saw.

The screen in front of Michael’s two eyes was connected to a single camera on top of his robot’s body. It bobbed up and down with the robot’s walking pace while showing him the plain plywood hallways the robot walked through every day. This camera was strapped to a rifle barrel, which together formed the robot’s “head.” The neck was a multi-jointed hinge, mounted at the very top of the body. It could look, and aim, in any direction.

Michael controlled the hinge with his tongue. The mask’s skin extended into his mouth and wrapped around the muscle. AI had previously used analog sticks and eye-trackers for this function until they settled on the current design. Compared to analog sticks, the tongue was much more precise and flexible. With a simple flick, Michael aimed the camera to glance down a passageway. A round, red and white target was visible beyond wooden barriers, which covered the floor and ceiling. He turned his robot towards the target, crouched so his three knees were nearly higher than his head, and scurried under the first overhanging block. Once clear, he leapt like a spider over a hurdle, lowered his body again to wind up for a second jump, and cleared another one.

By now, almost all of the testers were experts at this course. Michael jumped, slid, climbed, and ran around and between obstacles as gracefully, perhaps even more gracefully, as he could in his own body. At last, he was within range of his target. Without pausing to aim, he fired a perfect bull’s-eye.

Everyone was testing two main pieces of technology: Haptic Masks, and robotic weaponry. The walking tripods they controlled would serve as prototypes for future large-scale models.

Now the clock in the corner of his screen read eleven thirty, time for Michael to return his robot to its garage. He turned and plodded back, watching the walls move past him, feeling the stomping of his feet and the swaying of his body. Through the exit, he walked into the open air, a wide alley between the plywood obstacle courses. One by one, other robots, possessed by other testers, trickled out of and joined him. The stream of identical tripods paraded downhill towards their garage, their home.

At the end of the alley, a scaled wall mechanically slided upward, revealing the garage’s hollow interior. The floor was checkered to mark parking spaces. On the far side of the room, a couple of interns stood idly on a platform, waiting for their robots to park and shut down. Their names were Tor and Thomas, and they worked as engineer students at Arcadia State University. Both had volunteered for internships here, hoping to land a future position at AI. For now though, their unpaid job was to service these machines. Each day the duo would refuel each one’s engine, reload the ammo, polish the barrels, wipe the cameras clear, refill the oil, and hose down the shell. Because they generally stayed out of the garage until after the machines shut down, Michael and most other testers had never seen the men before. Today, for whatever reason, they were here early.

Camera eyes glanced at the visitors, but their robot legs kept walking forward. Michael stared at these men through glowing screen inside his mask. Even after the other testers had lost interest and focused back on their destination, he kept his camera pointed directly at the interns. A series of tingles down his cheeks alerted him that he was approaching a collision with an object outside of his vision, most likely another robot. He did not turn to look at it, but he did slow down. Gradually, he let off pressure from his analog stick, decreasing his speed, and kept staring at the two men. Soon, he was completely still.

Another rapid tingle indicated that something was coming up behind him, and then a harder force pressed into the back of his head just as his camera shuttered and a thud sounded in his ears. A robot had rear-ended Michael, then another, and another. He twitched his tongue to glance backwards and saw three stoic, yet undoubtedly irritated, camera eyes staring back at him as their robot legs scrambled around the blockage. Unapologetic, he turned back to the men on the platform.

These men bothered Michael in a way he could not articulate. While possessing this robot body, Michael had never seen a human. As far as he was concerned, those plywood courses full of obstacles and shooting targets were an entirely different world, existing on a different dimension and a different planet. Seeing these people right now seemed just as strange as if he had seen one of these tripod robots outside in the real world. It was as if, through some cosmic fluke, universes had collided and spilled into each other.

While nothing about these two people was especially unusual, to Michael they seemed completely alien. The way they stood on two feet, moved their arms to scratch a cheek, moved a finger to adjust a pair of glasses, shifted balance of the feet, everything about their movements was unnatural here in the world of robots.

On top of that was their size. Michael never was fully conscious of the fact that his robot body was roughly three feet tall. Everything inside this chamber was sized proportionally, just as kindergartens are scaled for small children. Not only did these two people look out of place, they towered over him.

Now robots were piling up behind Michael, and the commotion caught the interns’ attention. Thomas almost turned to Tor to ask if they should do something, but knew that they could not interfere. These machines were strong and dangerous. Tor could not help but smile at the slapstick nature of each robot jerking its long legs around to get out of the mess.

At the very center of that mess was Michael’s robot, standing still, staring back at them. The rest of the crowd got onto their feet and flowed around him like water around a rock, coming back together in front of him to fill in the space. Tor nudged Thomas, and mouthed something that Michael could not hear. Both men laughed, and kept watching Michael’s robot watch them.

Michael wanted to say something, or even gesture on some way, but his metal body had no arms, no mouth, or any means of communication. With the mask wrapped around his tongue, he could not even talk to himself. He nodded his robot head as an attempt at a kind of friendly greeting, but he could feel that it only looked silly. The men only kept watching and did not react to the nod.

Michael could not ignore them. He had to do something, and there was only one other thing he had left to do, only one thing his robot body could do. He pressed a thumb down onto the large red button, and fired a bullet.

Neither man realized what it was at first, but they both shuddered at the echoing explosion. A small hole was in the wall; the bullet had passed between them. They looked at it, and then back at Michael. Other robots had turned their cameras around as well, quickly deducing which one of them had done the deed.

This was not what Michael wanted to happen. He just wanted to say hello to these strange people. He panicked. This was bad. Shooting people would surely get him into some deep trouble later, which he did not want to think about. He had to do something, but he did not know what. He glanced around at the four human eyes and the twenty-three camera eyes looking at him.

He had to do something, anything to fix this mess. However, every impulse in his mind was funneled down to the one single button he could press. He fired again.

This time the bullet hit another robot, knocking it to the floor. Michael glanced at Tor, and pushed the button again. Tor collapsed as a red plume grew from his white shirt. This was very bad, Michael knew. He had to make it stop, but he did not know how. In this world, there was only one thing he could do, walk and shoot.

The screen in front of his eyes flashed a bright red, and a warning message obscured the input from his camera. An obnoxiously loud beep filled his eardrums. Someone in control had noticed the incident, and was sending every alert they could to Michael. All of the imaginary fingers all over his face and head became claws, and then fiery claws, tearing at his skin, up and down, over and over in rhythm with the flashing and beeping. The machine was rebelling against its user, doing everything it could to make Michael stop.

Blinded, deaf, and overcome with pain, Michael flailed inside his mask and his robot followed his lead. He wrenched his face inside the tight mask, pressing his right hemisphere even harder against the painful material. He tried to scream and thrashed his tongue around his mouth. His hands grabbed their control pads and his thumb squeezed the red button. His robot’s head thrashed and fired madly.

Between the feelings of fiery razor sharp claws, Michael thought he felt his body slam against the floor. Another robot had fired back at him, which Michael could not understand now through the overload of his senses. His metal body lay on the floor of the garage, twitching and shooting.

All of the feelings produced by Haptic Masks are simulated. There never are any real fingers or, in this case, claws. Any feeling, no matter how intense, is always just a feeling. However, hidden in the fine print, is the fact that each stimulation is produced by a very real physical agent. Just as an extremely bright image can damage a retina, and a very loud sound can damage an eardrum, an extremely intense feeling can irreversibly damage skin tissue.

Finally, someone cut the power to Michael’s mask. For a minute, Michael lay in darkness, too shocked to move, and overwhelmed with the lingering pain he still felt.

Redrick, who just moments ago had been in his office down the hall, yanked wires from Michael’s metal box. “Note to self,” he thought, “Remind them that it was my idea to put a kill switch on these things.” His rough hands yanked open the mask and unclipped Michael from the chair. Michael’s limp body fell into his arms.

“Good God, what the hell was that, man?” Redrick’s voice sounded more shocked than angry.

Michael waggled his tongue, trying to speak, but could not form any words. Redrick laid him to the floor.

Michael looked at a blurry ceiling with blurry faces looking back down at him. He thought he heard Redrick say to call a hospital, but he did not remember anything after that.

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Russ Pitts on The Verge has a very nice article regarding Ed Beach, one of the driving forces behind Civilization V and its upcoming expansion, Gods & Kings. However, it suffers from one very serious issue. Occasionally it stops being a work of journalism and turns into an advertisement. This is most obvious near the end with this two-sentence paragraph:

“Gods & Kings isn't just an expansion of Civilization V. It's a re-imagining.”

Is this really the right place for cute taglines? This is embarrassing.

That being said, you should go read the whole article. Despite being a part of the pre-release hype machine, it’s very interesting and informative.

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Idle Thumbs used to be my favorite podcast. It was run by intelligent and cultured people who covered a wide range of videogame material. As of yesterday, they're coming back via Kickstarter and have already raised more than twice their requied funds. This is fantastic news, and I hope that everyone listens to their new podcast, if not contribute to the funding. These are the kinds of people who videogames need, even if they insist that it be spelled "video games."

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“If the subject matter is obscure, the writer’s literary style is even more so, it is not the text of a stable or trustworthy reporter.” –Dear Esther

Judging games by their reviews probably isn’t a bad thing, at least it shouldn’t be. We videogame bloggers take pride in our pretentious contempt for commercial reviews, but reviews are necessary in fostering discussion and bringing attention to each game. I’ve stated this before, but I believe the reason so many reviews are simply cheaply written purchasing guides is because so many games are simply cheap products. If I had to publish a thousand words about every single game I’ve played, you can imagine how much my writing would suffer. The quality of a review tends to reflect the game it describes. You may have given this game a 9/10, but can you actually say something interesting about it?

When a game comes along that seems to inspire the reviewer to write something meaningful, then that makes me pay attention to it. I’ve found a few reviews that represent how much inspiration and discussion can be produced from Dear Esther, which I believe is one of the most important new games right now. Consider the following sentence, which subtly comments on the irony in the game (contrasting “carcasses” of dead ships with the “lush” hillsides) and also mentions the fact that the seemingly realistic graphics, especially in the caves, are at the same time “otherworldly” in their colorful and brilliant lighting.

"I loved gazing at the carcasses of ships battered against the coastline, stretches of lush, green hillsides pocked with intriguing rock formations, and a vast cavern network decorated with legions of dripstones lit by an otherworldly glow."

-Tim Turi, Game Informer

Even IGN manages to produce a great review of the game. This quote illustrates what makes Dear Esther so important, the fact that it blazes new territory and reveals the way to new, currently undiscovered, videogame possibilities.

"You can't help but imagine a version of this game that lets you touch and feel, picking up pebbles on the beach to throw into the sea or leafing through old books in an abandoned bothy."

-Keza MacDonald, IGN

Even this negative review explores exactly how and why the game doesn’t resound with the reviewer. He uses this opportunity to start a discussion on what kind of potential Dear Esther’s ideas have, and how they could be alternatively used for more engaging experiences. The fact that Dear Esther brings this discussion to the table is what I believe makes the game so important.

"So, yes, this game is dull. And, yes, it is a game. There are rules and keys and narrative triggers and all those things we come to expect of a $9.99 purchase on Steam. The problem with Dear Esther is that it never uses its resources as interactive-fiction to good effect.

Let’s break this down to its basics: What does the story gain from being interactive?

For one, you can explore this world with your own eyes. You can also explore parts that aren’t worth exploring: Pathways that lead nowhere, caves with the same assets copy-and-pasted, and dead-ends that will make you curse the game’s painfully snail-paced walking speed."

-Allistair Pinsof, Destructoid (As an irrelevant side note, I have no idea what definition of “ham-fisted” this guy is using.)

This one is possibly my favorite though. It doesn’t explain why Dear Esther is an important game or even a good game, but it explains profoundly and simply how the game is to be appreciated.

"You're presented with the little fragments of narration in Dear Esther, each giving you a little more information on the whole, a slightly clearer picture, with most contradicting something that went before. The 'game' is in bringing those pieces together to form a clear picture in your head. It's about throwing out what you don't want or need, and keeping parts that resonate with you. You'll end up with a picture of a story that's wildly divorced from both what the game presents, and what anyone else ends up with."

-Phill Cameron, Videogamer.com

In the past, I've complained that reviewers lack originality, that every different review of each game simply repeats the same ideas and opinions over and over. As we can see here though, that clearly is not the case. Each one of these reviewers, even ones that gave similar scores, exhibit unique and creative substance in their writing. The fact that their subject is a unique and creative game as well, I have no doubt is related.

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Skyrim is an incredible RPG. I would go so far as to say that it’s the realization of the past decade or two of western RPG development. Everything that defines the formula, all of its techniques and clichés, are no better demonstrated than in this game. If a complete stranger to RPGs asked me what they are, I would only have to present Skyrim as the example. I would love to be proven wrong, and see and even better RPG created at some point, but honestly I don’t think that can happen. There may certainly be better games in general, but a better modern western role playing game? Unless we want to dwell on superficial aspects such as glitches, graphics, and the interface then I don’t think it’s possible.

What I do think is possible is for the genre to evolve. Given that we’ve now reached its epitome, I think that it must evolve. Skyrim may have mastered the modern formula, but there are plenty of things which the formula doesn’t do very well, or even do at all. If we want to talk about all of the possible directions that the genre (or any genre) could go, then the list would be unmanageably massive. I have my own ideas and opinions though, which I will illustrate with some background of my own Skyrim experience.

There might be a few minor spoilers regarding side quests.

In Skyrim, I am a worldly and wealthy lizard man. Shortly following my acceptance into Riften’s infamous Thieves Guild, I convinced the Jarl of Riften to appoint me the title of Thane, declaring me one of the city’s most outstanding members. I purchased a house with money stolen from the Jarl’s own citizens, and filled it with treasures stolen from local burial grounds. This home is mostly kept up by my loyal housecarl, who doesn’t mind guarding my collection and turning a blind eye to my misdeeds. Occasionally I’ll drop in to deposit new loot from a heist, spend the night, and leave. I’ve never spoken to my housecarl or even learned her name. She doesn’t seem to know mine either, and just calls me “her thane.”

I have another housecarl in Whiterun, Lydia. We used to be partners together. Neither of us particularly cared for each other, but I kept her around because I needed a strong fighter to back me up in battle. When I finally got the chance, I dismissed her back to my house in Whiterun. Every once in a while when I have business there we bump into each other, but conversation is kept short.

One day, against my better judgment, I wandered into an isolated tower marked with blood and bones. There I met Illia, my current follower. Having lived in an evil magic cult her whole life, she suddenly had a change of heart and recently decided to kill all of her former comrades. Since I’m in the business of killing people myself, I gladly offered my assistance. After the climatic execution of Illia’s own mother, we realized how powerful we are when we work together. Destruction magic complements my own combat style, so we became an adventuring duo.

When Lydia was around I never wanted to talk to her, so I never tried. Now that Illia, an actually interesting character, is following me everywhere, I occasionally turn and press the “talk” key. I never have anything in particular I want to tell her, or to hear her say to me, it just seems like the friendly thing to do. After all, we did just get ambushed by a dragon, slay it, turn around and see another dragon, run away to a giant’s camp, and use the giant as a distraction while we tore the dragon apart from behind. Wasn’t that kind of awesome, even a little bit? The kind of thing that would cause you to turn to your partner in crime and say something? So I turn to Illia, and all she says is “yes?” And I’m presented with a utilitarian list of commands to give her.

At first I feel like I did something wrong. Surely I pushed the wrong button, or made some kind of mistake, because no conversation is happening. But no, this is all the dialog we’re allowed, or even capable, of having together. I’ve made the mistake of assuming that this NPC is an actual person. An NPC in Skyrim is no different than a particular sword or helmet—any sentimental value or personality I attach to it is purely in my head. The idea that there is any actual friendship between us is imaginary. When I expect the characters to share my emotional attachment to them, I only look stupid.

Of course, they’re NPCs, video game characters. It’s impossible for any character in any video game to share an emotional connection with the player. Everything is false to begin with. But whether or not a friendship is “real” is not the issue, the issue is how a game responds to the player. If I go to Animal Crossing expecting to wreak some destruction, the game will never respond to my intentions, and nothing will happen. However, if I go to Animal Crossing and decide to make some friends and have a happy life, the game will give me a response that acknowledges that. Certainly, Jitters may not be a “real” friend, but when I go to his house he greets me and we have a fun conversation together. He never acts completely like a real person, but that doesn’t matter. Responds to me in a way that encourages my fantasy of friendship, and doesn’t feel contrived or scripted.

Skyrim is not a friendship simulator, it’s an action-adventure simulator. NPCs exist to aid your dragon-slaying and loot-getting. When I first played Skyrim I was in awe of nearly every aspect of it (save the interface). However, the more I play the more conscious I become of holes in the overall design. Not simple glitches or imbalances, but holes in the overall system. The world design, the quests, the skill balance, and the sheer amount of content is amazing. One thing completely absent though, is any kind of adequate social interaction system.

Not that Skyrim necessarily needs such a system, any more than any other game needs any particular dimension. I’m merely using Skyrim as my example. The modern western RPG doesn’t account for a players social personality. But when games go to such great lengths to create worlds alive with characters and stories, I believe that friendship and social relationships are the next step. If there’s one wish I have for Elder Scrolls VI, it would be the ability to make friends and have conversations with characters, maybe even pay them visits or write them letters. I would be fine with this even if it was at the expense of other core mechanics to the base system, like looting and dungeon exploring. Not that I don’t like those traits, but sometimes I want to forget about all my quests and just hang out with my friends in a tavern.

Any claims that this level of immergence is far too complex or otherwise unobtainable, I simply do not believe. My evidence: Animal Crossing exists. I’ve written in the past about how much I adore this game, and I wish I could use another example, but it so perfectly captures a whole dimension of gaming that has been ignored by every other game. Humans are social creatures, and I doubt that I’m the only one who on occasion will instinctively turn to my follower just to talk and then experience immediate disappointment.

Anyway, happy 2012! I've been keeping this blog up for 3 years now.

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