An Economy of Rules (part 5)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
some considerations
The rules of surface are motivated by considerations on the lower levels. Craft puts pressure on surface through the mastery of tools; a master of craft will be seen as someone who uses the “correct” tools, and so their surface will be defined by the tools of craft. Structure determines the relative importance of certain relationships, so it determines which of the elements would best be served in the surface presentation. Idiom affects surface through its influences on structure and craft, and also, as I discussed with the anime RPG, idiom often pulls in certain rules of surface by referring to idioms which are specific to certain elements.
An Economy of Rules (part 4)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Rules of idiom
The rules of idiom are rules about the genre of a game. A game falls into a genre when it satisfies the idiomatic characteristics of that genre.
A Real Time Strategy (RTS) game might be described idiomatically in this way:
| 1) Activity takes place in “real time”. |
| 2) The playfield is preexisting according to some set of parameters. |
| 3) The production of units (the pieces which the player or a computer can manipulate) requires the consumption of playfield resources. |
| 4) There is a set of direct dependancies which determine which units may be produced based on the current state. |
| 5) There is conflict between opposing sides. |
| 6) Combat between units of different types is non-symmetric. |
conversational spam
Found on Bryan-Mitchell Young Popular Culture Gaming: EA University!
Conversational comment spam. Three guys, “Paul”, “Steeveguy”, and “Kidrock” have a content-free exchange in an oh-so-subtle attempt to promote some websites.
I’ve pasted the fakey conversation below.
Indies
Andrew@GTxA promises to write more about the controversy surrounding the Independent Games Festival last week.
While the concept of /independent games/ seems relatively straightforward, I’m having a hard time finding something to compare it to. Independent games aren’t independent in the way that independent film is independent — at least in terms of subject matter and audience. Independent film is free to deal with less popular subjects, like, say, drug addiction, while “mainstream” cinema brings us Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
A small handful of exceptions aside, there’s no distinction to be made in regards to subject matter or audience in the computer games industry. Here’s a mainstream FPS, here’s an independent FPS. Here’s a mainstream puzzle game, here’s an independent puzzle game, same subject, same audience. What, exactly, is “independent” about the independent sector of the mushrooming computer games industry?
Nintendo Cartoon Hour
“Oh, God, what a beautiful day!”
A fun little animation based on old computer game graphics, from the creative minds at The Lonely Island:
Quicktime: nintendo.mov
Real: nintendo.rm
MPEG: nintendo.mpg
Looking at “Grow”
Michael posted a link to the Grow Flash game. [grandtextauto.org: Grow]
It is an interesting game that essentially boils down to a logic puzzle. You have twelve elements that need to be selected in the correct order, though there are certain incorrect subsequences that produce interesting results.
Detailed spoilers inside.
RTS musings
I’ve been thinking about RTS games recently, in part as the idiom of choice for my next rules essay. Although I haven’t played any of the latest generation of RTS games (the ones which require a monster system with a 3D video card, i.e. the ones that won’t run on my 4 year old laptop) I get the sense that they’re still the same beast, half resource management, half balance between offensive and defensive strategy.
One of the shortcomings of the genre is the shallowness of the [in-game] production infrastructure. The construction of units is simply a matter of consuming resources. Some games incorporate some kind of maintenance cost, some small amount of resource consumption per time unit or an overall limit on the number of active units. But changes to the battlefield don’t really have any effect on active units — if, in Starcraft, the enemy destroys my barracks, I don’t lose any active marines, I only lose the ability to produce more marines.
data recovery
I slotted an old Zip disk the other day and discovered a cache of lost VRML files. I don’t feel like going through and thumbnailing them right now, but people are free to browse through them here.
On a sad note, I got my rejections from the SIGGRAPH art gallery today. Of course, the rejection of my work is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of my work, a fact I was reminded of three times.
Ultra Rare Holo Foils
I recently bought a full set of Neopets cards on eBay for $85. It’s a collectable card game, like Magic: The Gathering, only the monsters in Neopets are cute and colorful fantasy animals.
A full set of Neopets cards consists of 234 cards, of which 30 are ultra rare holo foil cards, 66 rares, 60 uncommons, and 78 commons. The difference between the rarities comes from the fact that you get a different number of each type in a package of cards, so that you get around 1 rare card for every 2 uncommon cards, and 2 uncommon cards for every 4-5 common cards. Cards come in booster packs, each of which contains 8 cards, and the boosters have a suggested retail price of $3.49.
(updated)
An Economy of Rules (part 3)
Part 1
Part 2
Rules of structure
Proposed structure rule: Nonlinear plots are better.
In the old Scott Adams Adventure game, there was a dragon sleeping in the woods. If you wanted to get rid of the dragon, one possible solution was to take the wine bladder and fill it with swamp gas, then use the bladder as a bomb to blow up the dragon.
It turns out that you don’t want to do this, because the resulting explosion will also destroy the dragon eggs, a treasure you want to collect. But the game lets you do it anyway, with the result that you can’t win the game.