Weighty Papers: Fully Immersed

I'm on a roll. Like a lizard shedding its skin and prancing around with it for the world to see, I'm unleashing another one of my papers into the Internet jungle. This time I wrote about how different aspects of game design influence a player's sense of immersion. Here's me saying that very same thing, only with more and bigger words:

Many different aspects of a game’s design can have a big impact on the immersive qualities of the playing experience. Some of these rely on embodiment and physicality while others are more focused on the psychological and social involvement of the player. The remainder of this paper is dedicated to highlighting various game design aspects and to examining how all of them together influence a player’s overall sense of immersion.

Using many examples, I discuss how world building and storytelling can influence a player's sense of place by tusing (meta-)narrative techniques. I also look at how a player's sense embodiment is influenced by interface design and player perspective, paying attention to the artificiality of some interfaces versus ones that are integrated into the game world. Lastly, I look at the differences between singleplayer and multiplayer games. In some cases the presence of other people can greatly enhance the immersive qualities of a game, in other cases it completely obliterates them.

Game scholar predators can devour my work here.

Gently Down the Stream: Advances in the Digital Distribution of Video Games

The landscape of video game distribution is changing. Despite its relative youth, the video game industry has known quite a few different distribution methods already – tapes, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and now direct downloading and streaming services.

In recent years direct download gaming has been on the rise. Nowadays, whole games can be downloaded legally without ever seeing a DVD and a thriving market in DLC – downloadable content – exists based on the concept that gamers are willing to pay extra money to add additional content to the games they already own. Small indie gaming outfits as well as major design studios and publishers are benefiting from this shift in distribution. Take for example Good Old Games, a platform that is solely dedicated to the distribution of older games that are currently out of print or otherwise hard to come by. Also, think of the ongoing success of Minecraft, that ridiculously popular indie game that continues to make ludicrous amounts of money for its one man development team (For an interesting analysis of why Minecraft is doing so well click here).

One of the big direct download players is Valve's Steam platform. Steam is a stand-alone platform that offers a direct download store, automatic updating and patching and full access to your library of purchased games with the option to make offline backups. Overall, Steam provides a clean, integrated gaming solution, but as with all platforms of this nature it also breeds dependency. For example, what happens to purchased games when Valve goes bankrupt and Steam is taken offline permanently? (Valve has promised that playable stand alone downloads will be made available in case this ever happens). Also, Steam still maintains staggered international release dates and various product and pricing regions, all of which are minor irritations and can be hard to justify given that all their products are fully digital. Proprietary platforms like Steam allow easy integration of DRM – digital rights management – solutions. The term DRM is often discussed negatively due to specific implementations that impose varying and sometimes baffling limits on the usability of the purchased game. For example, think of the Spore activation backlash or the reactions to Ubisoft's 'always online' authentication scheme. The main problem with these DRM implementations is that the restrictions imposed by the software are in no way counterbalanced with additional added value. This is a pitfall Steam has so far managed to avoid. (Overall, Valve has generated so much good will that they could probably get away with charging 9,99€ for an in-game hat that's purely cosmetic. Oh, wait...)

With direct download services now firmly entrenched in the video gaming landscape, the next generation of such platforms is starting to arrive. Services such as OnLive and Gaikai are designed to be browser integrated, streaming platforms. Both services aim to make gaming more accessible and remove hardware limitations. By actually running the game on the server end, all the hardware a player needs at home is a machine that can handle a compressed video stream similar to that of, say, YouTube. While this may sound like the holy grail of gaming - never worry about hardware upgrades ever again! - it further emphasizes the questions already raised by direct download services. What happens when the service goes down, or worse bankrupt? And what about the payment plan? OnLive was planning on using a monthly subscription model but has announced that these plans have been dropped in favour of pay-per-game model. The question remains however: what are you actually buying? Are you buying the game itself or are you merely purchasing temporary access to the game?

Personally, I’m very curious as to how these services actually work. OnLive is currently not available in Europe and Gaikai is yet to launch, so I haven’t been able to try either. In my opinion, these services will only survive if they can provide an extended gaming catalogue, clear added value and ease-of-use and a reasonable pricing scheme. Ignoring the network latency, video compression and availability issues for a moment, I’m particularly interested in the chosen approaches to in-game (in-stream?) advertising and the integration of these platforms into existing websites. Gaikai’s concept of having a clickable game ad that allows you to immediately try out a game demo followed by the option to actually purchase the game, all without leaving your browser, seems highly conducive to impulse buying and is worth further exploration.

The US-only launch of Onlive has been - as far as I can tell - a relatively quiet one. If succesful as a platform, its existence will undoubtedly further stimulate the spread of casual gaming into the mainstream (think of the mind boggling success of FarmVille). Though Onlive's recent change in pricing scheme may be an indication of their success thus far, I'd love to see some real usage figures. With the launch date of Gaikai fast approaching, it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for both platforms. Will the stream swell into a tsunami of eager gamers, a churning maelstrom of DRM unrest or will it just wither away until it's nothing more than a small trickle? Due to the variety of issues involved here - open versus proprietary platfoms, digital ownership, piracy, DRM, commercialization, Web integration - the future of streaming gaming platforms could remain an interesting topic for years to come. OnLive, Gaikai, I’ve got my eye on you.

Eskil Steenberg's Labour of Love

In a media landscape dominated by online collaboration, DIY content and crowdsourcing, it may seem like the notion of the Renaissance artist-savant really does belong to an age long since passed. The idea that an artist must have a keen grasp of mathematical perspective, optics, geometry and anatomy can sometimes seem distant on a Web ruled by lolcats. What I would like to do is remind you of what a single individual can accomplish with enough skill, determination and the right tools. I would like to talk to you about Love.

 

Love is an online multiplayer game conceived, designed and built by Eskil Steenberg. The core concept of the game is to cooperatively build and maintain a settlement while gathering resources and defending against AI controlled settlements. Even though the gameplay warrants a proper discussion all of its own, I would like to focus on the amazing visual presentation of this game and the technology that lies at its base.



The image above is what the game actually looks like. Steenberg has managed to create a painterly visual style that leans heavily towards Impressionism. The official screenshot gallery is filled with dreamlike images that are quite literally out of this world. Seeing this game in motion is a whole other experience. I highly recommend you watch Steenberg’s demo video and see for yourself how wonderfully immersive and otherworldly Love can be.

Love isn’t just an artistic triumph, though. Technologically speaking it’s an amazing achievement as well. Steenberg has managed to create this game all by himself using an array of incredibly smart self designed tools. The technology relies heavily on procedural generation and adaptive AI routines. Not only does this provide a unique world filled with responsive and adaptable AI’s, it also elegantly circumvents Steenberg’s biggest handicap: he is only one man. Creating a multiplayer game (aimed at around 200 players per server) is a massive undertaking. World building, modelling, texturing and scripting usually consume large quantities of development time. Steenberg manages to avoid these hurdles by making the software do all the hard work. For more details on this I suggest watching the tools demo (the Verse application is particularly impressive).



To me Eskil Steenberg is a shining example of the artist-savant. The man possesses technical skill and artistic vision and manages to combine the two in a beautiful whole. Could one go so far as to say that Steenberg is an auteur in the grand sense of the Auteur Theory? Without a doubt, Love is the product of a man with a singular vision who purposefully twists conventions of style and technology. I don’t recall ever seeing a game that looks even remotely similar to Love and I dare to speculate that uniqueness was at least one of Steenberg’s goals. Technology wise Steenberg deliberately ignored existing tools in favour of creating his own. Does all this make him an auteur, though? In a way, I think it does. The fun part for me lies in what exactly he delivers as his product. Steenberg’s tools are all available as free open source downloads, opening up avenues for further use and development. If anything, Steenberg is not an auteur jealously guarding his secrets. And what about Love itself? The game is an open world, collaborative experience that thrives on players experimenting with the world. It’s a sandbox with endless potential. This is where Steenberg’s Love making is different from, say, Godard’s À Bout de Souffle. Where Godard had a singular vision that led to the unique viewing experience that is À Bout de Souffle, Steenberg had a singular vision that led to the creation of Love, an open world game that allows players to craft their own emergent experiences; it lets the narrative unfold based on the interaction between the players and the world.

So yes, Godard and Steenberg can both be considered auteurs in the classical sense, but they are very different in what they produce. Both are strikingly unique productions, but the difference lies in how the player/viewer engages with the material. The level of interaction allowed by their respective media is the key difference. If all this talk has gotten you in the mood for Love, please try out the free client first to see if it will run properly on your computer.