Welcome!

Welcome, internet traveller, to my humble blog. You must be weary from your journey so take a seat, make yourself at home. This blog is where I really started getting into games writing, and as such you can follow my work from when I first began, up to more recent content. As such, there'll be a range of quality here- I don't delete old posts, even if they're cringeworthy upon a re-read, but hopefully you'll be able to see how far I've come across the years. If you want to follow my other work, you can do so at:

• Vooks
• Hittin' Crits
• My YouTube
• Save Game
• Games On Net

Hopefully you enjoy my writing as much as I have writing it :)

Affordances In Scribblenauts: Enabling Creativity

I've been posting any game analysis assignments from uni on my blog as I get through my degree, and I've just had another one marked which means it's safe to post here now. This one was for a 3rd year unit, so the level of expectation is a lot higher. I managed to get a Distinction mark though, which I'm happy with. We had to pick one of the early course readings, and tie it into a game of our choosing. I wrote about affordances in Scribblenauts, and how the game's entertainment and puzzles draw on the fact that the player knows how objects behave in real life. It had an 800 word limit which was an absolute paaaaain to work with, because I realised I was almost at the word count just after talking about one level, so I had to restructure my piece to instead focus on just a single case study. Evidently I still did well, but I would have liked to get that illustrious HD mark. Anyway, here's my essay, enjoy:

The tagline of Scribblenauts is “Write Anything. Solve Everything” which accurately describes its premise- armed with a magic notebook capable of summoning anything you write into existence, players must utilise creative thinking to solve puzzles and collect magical ‘Starites’ in order to progress through the game. Objects behave the way you’d expect them to in real life- e.g. wooden objects burn, glue can stick objects together, and policemen will chase robbers. There’s a ridiculous number of options to utilise in your puzzle-solving, but the player will rarely feel like they have no idea how to progress. This is because of the game’s utilisation of key design concepts outlined in Norman’s The Psychology of Everyday Things, namely the idea of affordances, conceptual models and mappings. Through a specific case study of one of the game’s levels, we can see how these concepts come together to form interesting, well-designed puzzles that allow players to stretch their creative muscles without confusing them.

source

 The first action level in the game presents you with a Starite in a tree, and the hint “Get it down”. There are a number of ways to get the Starite, some more evident than others. An obvious idea is to chop the tree down with an axe. The reason we think of this solution is because this is how people quickly remove trees in real life. This single scenario brilliantly illustrates all the previously mentioned concepts. Firstly, it illustrates an affordance because the player has determined the properties of the tree and their tools. Norman describes affordances as “the perceived and actual properties of things”, primarily the important ones that determine an object’s use (Norman 1988, p.9). The purpose of affordances is to allow a user to tell how to operate something just by looking at it (Norman 1988, p.9) - this is evident in level A1-1 because the player has seen the tree and identified it as wooden. Wooden objects can be cut with axes. And so the player summons an axe and cuts down the tree.

This also illustrates mappings. A mapping refers to a relationship between two things, but specifically this is a natural mapping “taking advantage of physical analogies and cultural standard” (Norman 1988, p.23) by applying the functions these objects actually have to the game. The player has conjured two mappings in their head- a mapping between the game objects and their real-life counterparts, as well as between the axe and the tree. The player sees a tree, and links it to what they know of trees in real life. By using an axe to cut the tree down, they’ve identified the relationship between two objects- the axe is used to cut down trees because the tree is wooden, and axes cut wood.

Finally, this level also illustrates a conceptual model. According to Norman, conceptual models “are part of an important concept in design: mental models, the models people have of themselves, others, the environment, and the things with which they interact” (Norman 1988, p.17). They allow you to look at an object or system, and mentally work through how it will operate (Norman 1988, p.12). A well-designed system gives you everything you need in order to understand it just by looking at it and thinking (Norman 1988, pp.1, 13-14). The affordances and mapping in the level allow the user to form a conceptual model of how different items will interact with the space. They know they can chop the tree down with an axe, but they may also think of solutions that don’t involve cutting down the tree. They may instead attempt to bring themselves to the Starite, instead of the reverse. They think of methods they normally use to move upwards, like ladders and stairs- they picture themselves in a real scenario, and because of the mapping between the virtual objects and their real function, they know that the scenario will play out in the same way. They understand how the system works, and can act on that, focusing on being creative instead of worrying about complicated systems.

Throughout the game you’ll encounter less straightforward puzzles than this, but the same concepts still apply. By knowing how objects actually function, players can come up with interesting solutions to a variety of puzzles. The player needs to jump start a broken down car- they summon jumper cables and attach them to a power pole. The Starite is stuck in a narrow passageway- the player can glue a mouse to the Starite, and lure it out of the chamber with cheese. There’s so many creative ways to solve puzzles without having the solution outright stated to them because players already know how objects behave based off their own experiences, and their usage is simplified. Objects are simple to use because they don’t possess a number of complicated functions, and because the controls allow you to easily see and use these functions (Norman 1988, p.25). You don’t have to actually know how to drive a car to use it in the game, you just need to know the standard movement controls.

By looking at Scribblenauts in relation to Norman’s concepts, we can see that it empowers players by allowing them to think creatively and by presenting them with logical systems that can be quickly understood. It also shows that while Norman’s concepts were conceived with everyday objects in mind, they are also very useful to consider when designing videogames.

References

Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. Basic Books.

A New Project

There’s no better feeling than setting yourself a project and actually finding yourself dedicated to it and fulfilling it. In the past I’ve tried making mods and things for games I enjoy and usually it doesn’t progress anywhere. However, lately I’ve been having a lot of success with GTA Online’s Content Creator. I started out making a couple of fun races and deathmatches, and before too long I found myself building up quite the collection. I wasn’t getting that many plays due to not having a big subscriber base on YouTube or anything I could utilise to get people to play them and vote them up, but nonetheless I was enjoying myself, while still hoping I could get lucky and have one (or more!) of my Jobs selected to be Rockstar Verified. I made an earlier blog post (which I’ve now taken down since there’s no need for it anymore) where I posted some of my design notes on my maps in the hope that would draw some attention, to no avail. As I kept making more and more content, I jokingly said to myself “Hey, I could probably have a world map purely filled with my own custom Jobs!” But then I thought about it for a second and it didn’t sound like that bad an idea. So I set out to match Rockstar’s output of 105 races and 71 deathmatches (I only counted Rockstar-made Jobs, not Rockstar Verified ones, and didn’t include things like Vehicle Deathmatches or Last Team Standing matches because you can’t make them in the Creator as of yet).

Criticism in Previews

Recently I published a hands on impression of Assassin's Creed IV on Vooks (with a more in-depth preview just uploaded to TGND, which I admittedly did de-snark a bit). It was short because it was going to be combined with other peoples' like how we did our PAX AU  games impressions (heck, I think my ACIV impressions were longer than the impressions I wrote for the other games), so I focused on my key point- that I was one of the people who found ACIII unbearably awful, and that ACIV appears to be the exact same. I backed this up, saying that combat is as brain dead as it was in ACIII (it played the exact same) and that it's unfocused and incohesive, just like ACIII was, with assassinations that aren't really assassinations at all, and mid-battle 'minigames' that decide to pause the action and break the flow of the game. I do actually describe what happened in the demo, I just added why I disliked all of it! Apparently people weren't happy with this! The article got a few negative comments (which apparently never happens on Vooks), and I had a few aggressive subtweets directed at me which I laughed off. Now, this wasn't a crazy Internet outrage, we're a smaller Australian site, but people spoke to me about the review nonetheless. Supposedly I have a bias against the Assassin's Creed series (based off me saying I wish the series would go back to its pre-ACIII levels of quality, even saying I loved the games back then. Go figure!) and my article wasn't objective enough. Well to be frank- no shit it wasn't objective!

I'm Scared of Animal Crossing

I'm scared. I'm afraid to face my responsibilities. I fear that I've done something horrible that I just can't accept. I've abandoned my Animal Crossing town. I couldn't help it. I started missing occasional days, as I'd done most of what I wanted to do in the game, so each daily visit to the town of Scone was just a pleasantry, a chance to mingle with the residents, my wards, my friends. Then I saw the town functioning without me, so I slipped further away. Now most of my time was spent buying and storing turnips before noon on Sunday in order to make a hefty profit and pay off my last couple of house improvements, with the remainder spent checking the prices at Re-Tail. But it didn't stop. Other games began luring me away from my mayoral responsibilities.

Time passed, as I slept inside my house. The villagers began to wonder where their mayor had gone. I decided to venture outside. Isabelle was shocked that I'd been away for so long. The guilt kicked in fast. Weeds and dead flowers were scattered around the town. The villagers all remarked how they hadn't seen me in weeks and thought the worst had happened. My god, I thought I'd only been away a few days. But that wasn't the worst of it. There was a blank space on my map where a friend's house once stood. Angus had moved. He was a stern and grumpy bull on the outside, but I'd gotten to know him well. He'd softened up and I thought we were close. He never mentioned moving. I would have begged him to stay. I couldn't face this town now, not now I'd lost a friend.

Days passed. Days melded into weeks. Weeks turned to months. It's been months since I've set foot in Scone. I fear how it has turned out, what kind of dystopia it's become. I want to visit, but I can't bring myself to do it. What if someone else has moved? What if a new villager has settled in after hearing rumours of a ghost town and has crushed the few flowers that remain? What it weeds have overgrown the fields? I can't bear to look. I can't simply accept these changes and continue on as if nothing had happened. I can't just shake my responsibilities either. There's more to the game I haven't seen. But I can't do it. I'm scared.

Assassin's Creed 3 Critique (Uni Assignment)

After the positive response to posting a DayZ essay on my blog that was done for a uni assignment, I figured I'd keep posting any game-related critiques/essays that I do throughout my degree. This was an assignment that was essentially a review, where we had to critique a game on what it does well and not so well, but more from a design point of view than a typical review (we were also told to write it "without the hyperbole you see in some commercial reviews - so keep it sober", lulz). We had to identify the flaws, and analyse how they were in keeping (or not) with the designer's vision of the game, and how they affected the game as a whole.

When we got this assignment, I knew from the beginning I would write about Assassin's Creed III. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows exactly how I feel about this game. It's my go to example of the faults of the AAA industry approach to game production, and I had plenty of things to say about it. If we didn't have a word count I could have ranted for pages and pages on exactly what the game did wrong, but unfortunately we did, so I had to keep to that.

Hopefully this gives some insight into just some of the reasons I think Assassin's Creed III is a total turd. tl;dr it's a visionless mess

Brainsplat: The Fourth Wall

Brainsplat is a little 'feature' I guess you'd call it that I'll write occasionally and post here. The things I post under this title won't necessarily be arguing a point or be very long and in-depth, rather they'll just be my musings on a particular subject that I feel like writing a short piece on. Often they'll be on my thoughts of a certain design idea or aspect of game design I want to talk a little bit about. It's just my thoughts going 'splat' onto the page for people to have a look at.

The fourth wall has always been something that's interested me. Mostly I've seen it used for humour, like Deadpool whacking people with a health bar in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or characters in theatre performances talking to the audience as a gag. But characters interacting with their audience has so much more potential that can be explored. I remember in the BEN Drowned/Haunted Majora's Mask ARG when players of the game were being called out and 'targeted' it added to the fear and immersion in this game, and it was really cool to see. I recently started reading Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe and Deadpool Killustrated, where the concept is that in an alternate universe Deadpool becomes more self aware, and decides to try and free his fellow fictional characters by killing them off for good so that they won't be forced to endure the everlasting hardships placed on them by their writers. There's a beautiful moment where Sherlock Holmes deduces that he and Watson are fictional characters, but they decide to try and save their worlds regardless. The idea of self aware characters is just really interesting to me, and I think there's a lot that can be done with them.

2013 Game Rankings List

I was playing some games this week (big surprise, I know!) and was thinking about how I'd rank the games I've played so far this year in terms of quality. I thought I'd keep a Top 5 in my head and change it around as the year progressed, and that would be my GOTY List. I was having a bit of trouble remembering all the games I'd played so far, and had an awesome idea. I could keep a ranked list of EVERY game released this year, that I play, and update it as I play more games. This would make compiling my GOTY list easier, and also lets people know which games I actually played this year. "What!? X is on your GOTY list but not Y!? Y was amazing!" "Oh, yeah, I didn't actually play Y..." It will help make sense of my opinions a little. This list will update whenever I play through a new game, so feel free to keep checking back every now and then.
EDIT: Ranking them all is too hard, I'll keep a Top 5, and then just list the other games I've played. Too easy.

I would have put Persona 4 Golden in one of the top two spots, but I did play it last year, so it doesn't really count I guess. It only just came out in Australia/Europe this year, so if you haven't imported it then consider this my recommendation to buy it :P Likewise with Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, it's a re-relase/expansion moreso than a new game. But definitely one you should play!

1. GTA V
2. Animal Crossing New Leaf
3. Payday 2
4. Ace Attorney 5
5. Saints Row IV

Other games I've played from 2013 (not in any order)
Battlefield 4
Pokemon X/Y
The Last Of Us
LEGO City Undercover
Slender: The Arrival
FUSE
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon
Luigi's Mansion 2
SimCity
Dead Space 3
Battle High 2
God of War Ascension
DLC Quest
Tearaway

The Forgotten Pawn

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma for a long time. Over that time I've recruited many pawns- computer controlled party members created by other players. They've helped me out on many occasions, providing information on quests and taking down tough enemies. When I started up a New Game+ after finishing the game, I decided to recruit low level pawns since my pawn and I were strong enough that we wouldn't be disadvantaged by them, and we could get through the game quickly and take on the tough quests and enemies so that when the pawns returned to their masters they'd have much more knowledge than when they set off.

Sim City Beta Experiences