Archive for July, 2005

Regarding the furore sorrounding the GTA minigame unlocked by Dutch modder Patrick Wildenborg. the alsoran decided to track down a clip of the actual sex-scenes. Have you seen it? HAVE YOU SEEN IT? Talk about a case of overblown media hype. The recent, excellent God Of War has a sex minigame that makes this look as bad as the alsoran’s first drunken sexual forays.

Obviously the minigame was never taken to a completed stage, with tearing and unfinished weighting on the nude female model’s skin, as well as simple blocked out pose-to-pose animation throughout, and excessive crashing between CJ’s hand and the girl’s breast.

Given the media-baiting connotations of offending minigame’s name “Hot Coffee“, as well as the GTA series’ history of fooling the media into doing their bidding (beginning with the original’s Max Clifford-engineered theft scadal hoax, and lately with a witnessed account of Rockstar’s excessive marketing budget) the alsoran concludes that there is a high probability Rockstar fully intended that the game be shown, even in its unfinished state. Perhaps Wildeborg is even another Kent Paul.

On a more serious note, the alsoran welcomes the re-rating to Adult Only if it allows developers to include more adult themes (and by “adult”, he means dramatic story-driven real-life hardships, as well as important social comment, not more T&A). This will have a great impact on sales given conservative stores like Wal-Mart’s reluctance to sell AO games, but what truly discerning gamer buys their games from Wal-Mart anyway?

As an aside, at the time of writing, the top 3 FAQ hits on cheat-code site GameFAQs are:

GTA: San Andreas - PS2
GTA: San Andreas - PC
GTA: San Andreas - XBox

Thinking back to a question raised by Ed Hooks in his recent workshop: “Are videogames art?”, at the time the alsoran answered him “games can be art, but most are crap”, immediately following up with reference to Ico. For example, film is considered an art-form, yet still the vast majority of the medium is, like games, crap.

After a brief discussion, it was concluded that only a handful of games can even be entered into the possibility of “games as art”: the aforementioned Ico, Rez and the upcoming Okami to name a few. However, the alsoran believes that in concentrating on the visual style, (only one aspect of game design, yet created by the ostensibly-named “art” department), we ignore other areas that contribute to the overall impression left on the player that may be considered an artful experience.

Playing through Zelda: Windwaker again, one can easily see that puzzle design, when done well, is an artform in it’s own right, displayed best in the classic Tetris.

Similarly, sound design is equally important in creating anexperience we may consider to have artistic merit, in the film industry as well as games. Thinking back, this was one of the main (and often overlooked) factors that set the expansive exploratory ambience in the original Tomb Raider. Who would argue that John Williams ambient Star Wars background tracks are not also works of art?

To define an artful experience, as opposed to one of design, one must look beyond individual aspects that create the whole. The alsoran offers that, just as he favours songwriting that is written with honesty and comes from real-life experience over pre-fabricated and formulaic pop trash, film that is created only in search of that magic dollar can never be considered art when set beside classics of the medium that serve not only to entertain us but also offer an experience that makes the viewer that little bit more enlightened than when they entered the theatre.

The same can be said for the medium of games. Though we have a long way to go before these examples of artisitc merit become more that just a drop in the ocean of licenses, sequels and rush-jobs to make the next financial quarter.

Imagine a racing game where the cars grip the road with almost glue-like quality, that can accelerate to maximum speed in the blink of an eye, where races are dull affairs essentially comprising the movement of a weightless metal block from A to B in the most efficient manner possible.Doesn’t sound like much fun does it? That’s because the primary challenge, (and therefore gameplay), of a racing game centers around the relative unwieldiness of the car. This challenge can be further expanded upon by offering multiple vehicle-types, all with different handling characteristics, as well as a variety of road surfaces with which the vehicle traction can be affected.

So what relevance does a driving game bear on the subject of animation? Analogies aside, relative unwieldiness, created by inertia, is one of the most basic and often overlooked avenues of character driving with which we can improve that all-important fun-factor that games strive to produce.

Though touched on earlier in the article Player Control: Fast vs Slow, inertia does not deal with the speed and responsiveness of animations themselves, but instead with the movement of the character through the gameworld, which is closely linked to the animator’s driving animations.

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