A brief history of Hong Kong in Heavy Smog (pt.1)

Special Corporate Authority Zone of Hong Kong (HK-SCAZ, Hong Kong, Xianggang, HK CorpZone, etc.)

The Zone came to life in the wake of the Chinese Civil War, after a time of great turmoil, that saw the city flooded with refugees from the northern reaches of the former People’s Republic.

During the early 30s, Hong Kong had seen a time of stable prosperity and – slowly receeding – growth due to the largely friendly competition with the neighboring Special Administrative Region of Shenzen.

When the Civil War broke out, Hong Kong at first stuck with the Shenzen Administration and thus with what should remain of the People’s Republic in the north.

But as the rampant chaos in the years after the war ebbed off, the Hong Kong government as well as the powerful corporations and financial institutions of the Zone grew more and more disappointed with the People’s Republic’s handling of the civil war’s aftermath.

This was the time, when the first secessionist memes took hold amongst the local upper tiers of Hong Kong society.

But China likewise appeared ready to abandon Hong Kong in favor of it’s posterchild Shenzen any time in these days. The latter saw a much stronger support by PLA troop placements and a much stronger financial backing from Beijing.

Also it seemed that Shenzen’s administration rooted most of the arriving refugees from the north through to Hong Kong’s New Territories, leading to thousands of homeless and displaced people flooding the already overcrowded city state.

The breaking point came in 2042, when the newly founded SEADA offered Hong Kong support in exchange for a formal memberchip, which Beijing did not allow the local government to accept.

The background deals that took place at that point haven’t been properly disclosed to the public to this day, but the results were clear. Hong Kong seceded from the People’s Republic, with the military and financial backing of the South East Asian Defense Alliance and full support of what would become the founding corporations of the Corporate Council.

A short period of aggressive saber-rattling between the People’s Republic and the SEADA ensued, but thankfully no violent action was taken by any of the two sides. Hong Kong was quickly able to introduce a new, radically different form of government, making it the world’s first nation being governed directly by it’s stock market and the companies and corporations involved there.

The following year saw the city state just barely steering clear of a full blown state of war with China due to clever diplomatic maneuvering by both the newly formed Corporate Council as well as SEADA diplomats. Ever since then, SEADA forces have been permanently stationed in the city as peacekeepers, with a deal in place that SEADA will lend military support to the small state should any military threat endanger it.

With the successful secession, the real trouble just started. The city was still overrun with countless refugees. The Bionic Fund had been forced to file for bankruptcy, resulting in the gigantic construction site of the Bionic Tower Beta grinding to a halt.

The city was expanding at a breakneck speed. The enormously numerous skyscraper sized housing projects could barely keep up with the number of people coming into the city. Despite the Bionic Project having failed, the city headed for the first big arcology boom, which saw a great deal of heavy reconstruction urban reshaping in the central districts. Most of Hong Kong’s most iconic megabuildings were constructed in that time, between 2045 and 2051.

That time also saw the reconstruction and repossession of the artificial island and the gigantic ruinous stump situated on it, when a collective of small Japanese financial institutions bought up and radically reshaped what was left of the Bionic Fund and it’s visionary building projects. The newly reborn Bionic Fund presented the troubled Corporate Council with an intriguing proposition: The Fund would take care of the city’s huge refugee problem, by building a whole new city district to house the displaced people on the barren artificial island surrounding the tower – in exchange for a certain rights of limited autonomy from the city.

Since the refugees were posing a huge, so far unsolvable problem for the city officials, they gladly accepted the offer – creating an autonomous region within the city state.

The Bionic Fund kept true to it’s proposition, and quickly erected block by block a whole new city on the artificial island, while managing the whole bureaucratic processes that came with the refugees. By 2047, only half a year after the proposition had gone through, “Bionic Village” welcomed it’s first inhabitants from the northwestern reaches of the former People’s Republic. Three years later the city had grown over most of the artificial island, housing about half a million refugees. Bionic Island is a cesspool of violence and racial tensions, it’s inhabitants coming from all over the world, mostly from Chinese splinter regions and eastern Africa. The Bionic Fund provides new arrivals with shelter and some very basic needs while they run through a rough process of integration that usually provides a menial job either on the island proper or in the greater area of Hong Kong Macao itself.

There have been persistant rumors circulating the net, about the collective of Japanese financial institutions actually having been an expanding Yakuza cartel in disguise, which is something that has yet to be proven by anyone.

Alternate Earthdawn: A small frame of references

Now for some references to what I think Alternate Earthdawn is supposed to feel and look like.

Movies:

The 13^th Warrior:

Really great Earthdawn movie. Vikings double as Trolls, Banderas as a Troubadour (really) in action, displaying even the language learning talent that works by just listening to people talk.

Gladiator:

Rise and Fall of the Theran Empire. Just read some stuff as Earthdawn related, and it all comes together quite nicely.

Beowulf (animated):

This one’s got it all. Horrors, Heroes, Legends.

Books:

For Horrors check Steven King. He’s been an sometimes obvious influence on some of the bigger ones.

Also: Clive Barker.

The Conan short stories are pretty good for setting the overall tone of the time, even though magic is much less common and nearly always evil.

The Conan comics made in the 00s are pitch perfect visual reference material. Just add a boatload of magical glowing stuff and the non-human races and there we go. That’s what my Barsaive looks like.

Children’s / young adults books on antiquity, Roman cities, etc.

The Dinotopia books for an incredible visual sense of wonder.

Francois Place’s Phantastic Voyages books for children (these are REALLY good at taking historical references and playing with them).

Some selected Shadowrun sourcebooks can also be plundered for ideas.

I’m still eyeing Bug City for a major insect spirit themed scenario in Barsaive.

Obscure historical references:

Dwarfs:

The Throalite Kingdom is the Babylon of Legend. Underground. I’m constantly picturing them with knotted beards and Babylonian tiaras instead of the usual medieval dwarf stuff we know from Tolkien.

Orks:

Obviously the Orks bear some traits of Bedouins and Tuareg, but also of Mongols and other nomad people. Their cities tend to be styled a lot like typically Arabian settlements.

Obsidmen:

There is little to add. The Stone People are enigmatic and alien to begin with, though their mystical lore is strongly rooted in Native Australian concepts, which is no change or reinterpretation I applied.

Elves:

They’re broken. Tragic. Sad. But not very clearly based on any graspable historic reference.

Though I like the idea of them being rather an Ancient Indian style culture visually rather then pagan Celtic. Indian style in shape but without the flood of colors.

Then again, the traditional Celtic style does still fit into the puzzle.

Trolls:

There’s nothing to add to Earthdawn’s Trolls. Ten feet tall, naturally horned vikings in flying dragon-boats.

Nothing to add there.

T’skrang:

The official T’skrang feature oddly mashed up Japanese names, but that’s pretty much it. Though I do picture them having some rice-field style plantations along the shallow slopes of Snake River where they work wearing large, conical hats.

So the T’Skrang Lizardpeople bear some few east Asian elements, but in general remain rather alien.

Windling:

The Windling people don’t really need any cultural adjustment.

Also they don’t seem to have much of an individual culture beyond some basic Windling villages.

Human:

I very much like the Human tribes introduced in the “Denizens of Barsaive” books.

So there is little to add, short of the Humans being the best blank to work with.

Theran Empire:

This one is a bit tricky. The Therans have a strong Roman feel to them, but rather with dark, vibrant blue colors than the deep red I associate with Rome for some reason.

Also I picture Kilas, their flying fortresses, being triangle shaped, giving their turbolas… I mean firecannons an optiomal firing range.

The Theran Navy (airships that is) is very strongly Roman in look & feel.

A typical Theran city is layed out like a typical Roman city, but with a Mayan-style step-pyramid in the city’s center instead of or just in front of the Forum.

Music:

Armenian Duduk music.

Various movie soundtracks, chief among them Harry Greggson-Williams’ Kingdom of Heavens score, among Hans Zimmer’s Thin Red Line, Gladiator and Peacemaker.

When GM’ing I use a big playlist with suitable material from Gregson-Williams, Zimmer and James Newton Howard, picking up one suitable piece a time.

Alternate Earthdawn

By and large the most fantastical, wonder-riddled (and Horror-riddled) fantasy setting I know.

I love FASA’s (now RedBrick’s) Earthdawn fantasy setting like none other. It’s one of these systems I spent years playing, years GM’ing and even more years just thinking stuff up.

When dealing with the broad wealth of source material that’s come up over the years, I discovered that the background stuff tends to be a bit wonky when it comes to cohesiveness.

Also as with nearly all RPGs which have a lot of background stuff, there are some elements in there I’d rather dismiss, and some I just plainly don’t like.

To those unfamiliar with the setting, I suggest a quick look at Wikipedia.

What you need to know is, that Earthdawn might at first glance appear like your usual Elves, Orks and Dragons fantasy shtick, while it’s actually a LOT more and by far not “usual”. Most clichés about those fantasy races are somewhat present, yet with some interesting, unique twists. Also, Earthdawn is a proper, post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, without taking place in the far future of our civilization no less.

One of the things I’ve always disliked somewhat was the starting point in the world’s timeline the game suggested. Usually campaigns take place in Barsaive about 100 years after the Scourge was apparently over, and the world safe for return from the Kaers (don’t let the jargon scare you!).

Then the Theran Empire returns, saber rattling ensues and the Empire gets it’s ass handed back by the suddenly strangely united Barsaivians, left to lick it’s wounds until some time later in the Metaplot when the “Barsaive at War” campaign modules come into play.

Me I thought the period around the Empire’s return to it’s former outward province of Barsaive was a lot more interesting, since the world is a lot better moldable in that time. So I took some liberties with the official canon, and pretty much disregarded a lot of the official timeline, starting my campaign 50 years after the Scourge ended, just at the time when the Therans come to reclaim their province.

So the first campaign we played over a year and a half pretty much dealt with the diversion from the normal timeline. Let me explain.

The Theran Empire returns, claiming it’s province back in 1449TH (after the founding of the Dwarf Kingdom of Throal, the culturally dominant people in Barsaive), but unlike the official version, they do so more carefully and not with the all-out shock and awe tactics described in the basic rulebook. What happens is that the western parts of Barsaive accept Theran rule for the time being, creating a larger part of Theran occupied lands. The Dwarf Kingdom of Throal boldly rejects the Empire’s claims, forming a pact with the remaining free realms of Barsaive. In 1450 the forgotten city of Parlainth – the former provincial capital of the Theran Province of Barsaive – returns into the world with a thundering boom, only to be found devoid of human life, riddled with Horrors, Treasure and long lost knowledge. Three full Theran Legions march into the westward reaches of the province, accompanied by an armada of Airships.

A short time later reports of ghostly legions strike fear into the hearts of the free Namegivers of Barsaive. Huge numbers of Theran Legionaries appear out of nowhere, are seen marching through the countryside, and disappear into thin air. The armies of the Dwarf Kingdom are put on high alert, a Theran Invasion apparently imminent.

In the southern city of Travar T’skrang riverboat crews tell of a flying mountain they saw over the plains.

The free people of Barsaive brace for war – but nothing happens. The eastbound Legions stop in their tracks, set up camp in the grasslands west of the city Kratas, and then without so much as a single battle fought return to the Theran controlled province of Vivane in the southwest.

In early 1451TH reports of apparent Theran slaver ships in the vicinity of the forgotten city of Parlainth strike fear into the local mountaindwellers. It soon becomes clear that Parlainth is once more under what appears to be Theran rule.

A band of heroes though, returning from Parlainth, tells a different story. Parlainth they say is now housing a huge military encampment. Two Theran Legions, uncounted airships and a small number of flying fortresses the heroes report having seen there.

The official revelation comes some months later, when an official emissary from the Protectorate of Parlainth. The new state, as the Dwarves come to know, has formed out of a rather large splinter group of Theran military, after their leader, the Arbiter General of the Legions of Thera unsuccessfully attempted a coup against the Theran Senate and decided to go into exile.

Parlainth represents a dangerously large, dangerously close military power to the dwarfs, so an uneasy truce is forged. The newfound protectorate actively seeks help from a largely renowned school of Horror Stalkers, to fend off the remaining things lurking in the depths of the ruins of the once proud city they now call home.

It’s is this Barsaive in which the campaign I am about to design will take place, a Barsaive in which more diplomacy and more political sides are present then usual.

There is the (proper) Theran Empire in the southwest, the occupied province of Jerris, the Dwarf Kingdom, the young City of Thieves, who’s chief Galthrik One-Eye just came into power, the warring T’skrang Aropagoi, the enigmatic Blood Elves, the mischievous Deniarastas clan of human mages from the northwestern city state of Iopos, and of course the newly risen Protectorate of Parlainth, which is slowly expanding it’s circle of influence into the northeastern jungles and the Caucavic Mountains.

There are two most striking differences, one is of course the split of the Theran Empire into two fractions, and the lack of a Barsaive-uniting war against the Theran threat. So playing in this alternate timeline starts at 1452TH, rather than 50 years later.

Also there is of course more to the Protectorate and it’s leader, but that’d be too many details for now.

This is supposed to be a big sandbox for the players to be let loose in, without preoccupations, and the possibility to join or fight any of the various factions. Of course the campaign scenarios I’m writing will provide a lot more context than just this, but this is the backdrop in front of which they are supposed to be acted out.

Something of a Teaser / fictional covertext

Orks.

My people.

We have been the preferred slave race of all the other Name Giving Beings in the world for time memorial.

It was my kind the Universe bestowed with the shortest of times to live on the world. It was my kind the Universe bestowed with the most plentiful of children. With strong arms, with strong backs, but with the shortest of tempers.

There are some who say this was why the other Namegivers thought us to be predestined to do their bidding.

There was a time, a time legend tells about, when the People of Orcenkind were united and strong. There was a time when the other Namegivers of the world trembled before our strength. A time when our strength was ours to wield, the fruit our backs carried ours to reap.

Those were the days of the great Ork Realm of Cara Fahd. These days are long gone. Yet they live on forever in the dreams of my kind. The promised land, the lost land, the land where we once could be free of the shackles of fate.

There are some who say there is a way. A way to return. A promise the Passions have sworn to keep. There are some who said to have seen it in their dreams. The time will be soon they say. The time of the Great Gahad is close they say.

Should they speak truth, the world will tremble once more, for the days of Cara Fahd then are no longer days of the past, but days of the time to come.

Wanted: Original Gangsta

There’s a popular counter-all argument when it comes to discussing a story being original or not, that goes on the variation of “There are no new stories to be told”, “Everything has been told already” or even “Ever read the Gilgamesh epic? Every story told after that copied it.”

If that’s true, why bother. Originality cannot be had. Everything is a re-telling of a retelling of a retelling anyway. Stop the press, etc.

When dealing with a lot of the stories of games, this ever too often seems true. Heard that one before. Maybe in parts from different places, but originality often times isn’t something to accuse games’ stories of.

Origin story of origin stories?

Question is though, does this matter?

Story matters, no doubt about it. But when a story is told through a new medium, the experience it gives to the consumer alters significantly.

Sure I wouldn’t bother playing a game that had a actually 100% original story (if that’s even possible). But then again, playing rather than reading (or experiencing rather than watching for all that matters can even make an “aw, not another damn alien invasion!” plot fresh and exiting.

It’s ultimately all a matter of execution though. Half-Life’s plot is fundamentally uninspired. Things go boom, green things go “y, hello thar!”, shit goes “zomg fan!”. Etc. pp.

It’s the spot-on execution of the game that’s wrapped around this story that makes it, and it’s sequels into the epics they are.

Same goes for the Halo franchise, which does indeed have a pretty good story, but again, one that is hardly original, channeling Banks, Card and Niven, throwing core elements of their work in the blender and add a taste of Cameron for good measure.

Video game stories tend to do that. Amalgamations of other media.

We have come to accept that it seems.

But as mentioned before it doesn’t really seem to matter (yet?).

Amalgamation and emulation of genre defining texts works quite well for a medium where the story itself is on the hand not the center of attention, and on the other hand where the story can be said to be the result of the center of attention. Which in this case would be gameplay.

And here the question is, if gameplay is the factor in gaming that constitutes story, do games need to emulate other forms of text? The benefits of this emulation are obvious, more people can relate to tried and true concepts. Everybody knows what “an orc” is. Everybody knows the concept of “a zombie”. No big explanation needed. Drop people into a Tolkien inspired fantasy world, and they’ll immediately know what to do.

One of the problems I see with this loss of originality is the inherent loss of subtext. Sticking with Tolkien, taking orcs and elves out of the context of his works usually leads to the loss of his Great War allusions and metaphors. Little more than a big “elves love trees” survives the transition.

There are exceptions of course, Bioshock does manage to bring the objectivist agenda across (even if grossly simplified), and Halo renders complex, hard sci-fi themes into something that’s easily consumable by “the masses” while still retaining the better part of the source material’s chewy bits.

Still the danger is there that games as a medium get caught in the “meta trap”, which means that all that games do is emulate other texts and genres directly, without bothering about these texts sources and subtexts, resulting in an entertaining but ultimately shallow blur of concepts.

It sure would be nice to have an openworld gangster game (see how I left out “movie”?) that takes hints from real world police and criminals rather than from fictional ones. Or World War II games that go into historical contexts rather than trying to again imitate Spielberg.

These things wouldn’t have to go all the way of a simulation, mind you. This is not a plea for more realistic games. If anything, it’s a plea for more originality. For games that look at a certain text from another medium, and don’t imitate it, but look at where that text is coming from and draw their own conclusions.

James Cameron’s Aliens has been made into a game a quadzillion times.

But rarely has there been a game that covers the aspect of the movie’s underlying Vietnam themes, the rape fantasies underlying the Xenomorph, and the critique of capitalism that’s running through the first few Alien movies.

Then again…

There are already games out there clinging close to “military studies” and major league sports for example. A good example of a game that navigated close to “true”, non-derivative source material rather than a source genre would be Clover Studio’s Okami, where Japanese mythology was given a truly unique twist. Games like this one are a rare breed though. Also they usually don’t sell too well, for whatever reason. Orcs, elves and space marines seem to be hugely better marketable than less easily recognizable concepts.

H² – The Big Two of Shooting Things

John117 being commemorated at Harvard

A common discussion among gamers of different creeds (read: PC vs. Console Wars) is which of the platforms is more suited to play first person shooters.

Whether it’s the quick flickable mouse + WSAD combination of the PC or the seemingly slower gamepad is at the centre of the discussion most of the time it reappears in the wild of the internet.

Since such discussions are eventually fruitless since they’re essentially a matter of taste, I’d like to approach this topic from a different angle, by taking a good, hard look at the two platforms H-initialled champions, Half Life² on PC and the Halo series on the Xbox consoles (yes, I am aware of the Killzone and Resistance franchises, thank you, no they’re one console’s champion not consolekinds champions of the genre).

So, first, innovations. Both games, both franchises were seen as genre defining when they arrived. So what is it that makes them, if it’s actually true that is?

Halos innovations work on the user side on a very basic level: Input. The pad is perfectly mapped for the fast paced shooting-stuff gameplay, and comes with some new twists, basically the buttons that have a close combat attack and a grenade toss mapped to them, enabling the player to use indirect fire and close ranged attacks without having to switch over to a melee weapon or grenade first.

Also Halo popularized the harsh limitation on the arsenal a player could carry around with him.

Halo it seems was from the ground up constructed as a very tactical game, where the player input goes beyond just running around and shooting stuff in style.

He's a REAL DOCTOR with an PHD in KICKING YOUR ASS! (Not verbally. Guaranteed.)

Half Life²’s innovations worked and work on an entirely different level.

Being the inherently more conservative of the two, Half Life² was much more about the experience than the game part itself. Which is not to say that playing Halo with it’s breathtaking alien “artefacts” would not be an experience, it’s just that Half Life² (and the original Half-Life for all that matters) through it’s prominent interactive narrative that let’s the player choose what to be shown and told to him works more on the narrative- than on the ludistic level.

Half-Life²’s innovations are the introduction of new gameplay elements on the world building level, level design, set pieces, polish and particular weapon types that interact with a certain level. Also of course very PC specific technical innovations, the incredibly flexible – in hardware hunger terms – source engine, the addition of “realistic” (well…) physics as a world sided gameplay element, and of course the gravity gun.

The latter is probably one of the few innovations that Half-Life² managed to make into a “must have” for games following it, since the other innovations it produced were a lot harder to copy.

At the very core, Half-Life² is still a very conservative game, the very basic gameplay being not too different from that of the genres forefathers, basically still a variation of Quake with incredibly clever level design, cooler guns and bad guys – and “interactive” cut scenes.

Whereas Halo is seemingly the more conservative narrative, it’s story being told with a strong reliance on cutscenes, of the two it’s the more progressive game (franchise).

Verdict? Well, there’s not really one to be had.

Still I think both games in their single player configuration represent quite well the predominant way shooters are handled on the represented platform.

I am aware that both games are present on the OTHER platforms as well, and that since consoles are in general stronger in shaping the platform-spanning genre that Halo’s innovations can nowadays be found in lots of rather “PC-centric” games, while Half-Life’s interactive narrative is time and again inspiring console games to mimic their approach.

This last issue is good for illustrating the way the genre of FPS is taking in term of platform specifics..

And that it’s ultimately really down to personal preference, since the line between “typical PC” and “typical console” FPS is blurring more and more.

Unnecessary Roughness? – A brief look at violence in gaming

Really?

Essentially, violence is everywhere in gaming. Some games approach it carefully, others just go ahead and quite literally throw it into the players faces. Most games that feature any kind of conflict offer violence as the only solution to it. And with the increase in graphical capabilities, the brutality of the violence depicted is increasing from year to year. Or so it seems.

In some instances, it appears developers are consciously turning the brutal-o-meter of their creations up. Whether that happens randomly or maybe by choice is unclear to me. Sometimes it seems like a stubborn reaction to the public condemning the work of developers worldwide as “murder simulators”. You want brutal slaughterfests, FOX-news and friends? Fine, there. There you have it! Slaughterfests. Happy now? In some instances that seems to be the attitude behind the design decisions for some of the most and most hotly debated violent games out there.

Additional detail, or gameplay element?

The Manhunt 2 controversy seems to be the picturebook example to this. In my country, the first game is banned from sale. Which surprisingly doesn’t happen to as many games as one might think.

The developers, Rockstar, already were front center in the media’s attention, the GTA series delivering one global scandal after the next. So it seems like Manhunt 2’s atrocities were quite deliberately placed as flame-bait for the media.

While other games completely slip under the media’s radar since they never proved to be involved in a big scandal while being just as brutally violent as the ones that don’t. No kid (yet) shot up his or her school while having a copy of Condemned: Criminal Origins at home. While I think the game clearly is a lot more violent, brutal and dehumanizing in the depiction of its enemies than, say, GTA. Monolith gave the violent-o-meter of what’s possible to pull off and get away with successfully in a game a good yank.

Ultimately, I’m aware that approval or disapproval of this sort of brutal video game violence essentially is a matter of personal taste. Personally I doubt that I’ll ever shy away from a game I’m interested in because of it’s content of brutality.
Some people like splatter movies, others don’t. It’d be wrong to construct a moral judgement about a person liking or disliking one or the other out of that.

But then there is a question oftentimes asked by the people not approving of violence:

What benefit does gore and brutality bring to the gaming experience?

Essentially, violence, brutality and gore especially are nothing but added flavour. A coat of painting over the gameplay.

Thinking of the gore-fest Dead Space, the core gameplay would be possible in it’s entirety without a drop of blood, without anything menacing or brutal. Your “gun” could shoot pink, fluffy hearts instead of death rays, and the enemies could be friendly Care Bear-like creatures. This wouldn’t change anything about the core gameplay.

There are however examples, where a basic level of violence is and will always be part of the action. Condemned would still be something of a boxing game, just without the splattering blood and enemies teeth flying around. Interestingly, most shooters can be made more abstract, since the player could just shoot something that’s not harming the enemies, causing them to withdraw or sit down, while most games based on hand to hand combat would still retain the action of physically touching somebody.

Not quite the same as Condemned, yet both have punches to the face as a central gameplay element.

And there are games, where violence is contextualized into being more than just a coat of paint, where being brutal actually is part of the overall narrative, or where it’s expressively not desired to be brutal, although the possibility is given to the player.

Games like Chronicles of Riddick actually benefit from being nasty, even though games like this specific example tend to up the general trend of higher levels of brutality across the board.

And it’s the games where this higher, extra level of violence is NOT contextualized that put gaming in genral in a bad light. I’m somewhat hesitant of naming names and pointing fingers, since I personally tend to like most of the games that would come to mind now and have no problem with them sporting a red, gibby coat of gore.
But still I must admit that the extra violent flavour added to so many contemporary games doesn’t really work towards their benefit.

All coat of paint - no substance? Postal has made a name for itself being the most notoriously, unnecessarily violent game in existence.

And just to add this to the whole topic of gaming violence, the cartoonish side also shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s another one of those arguments oftentimes heard in the discussions about violent games, that it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint the exact necessary, acceptable level of it in a game.

Even the Mario games are essentially violent, since all conflicts are settled with fireballs, or stomps to the head.

As I said initially, most games that revolve around conflict resolve conflicts with violence.

Pretty much the only exception from this would be RPGs, or games actually featuring RPG like options to choose from how to handle a given situation.

Maybe it’s even possible to argue that violence is a basic component of most kinds of entertainment, and that due to technical difficulties it’s become the predominant solution to most conflicts presented in gaming which involve an active antagonist, and not just an abstract one like puzzles.

Gore is a nice addition if it serves the narrative context, and more of a unnecessary detail when not.

Still I would rather prefer a gory game that is just brutal for brutalities sake in an uncut form, just as with movies.

Maybe the developers did include the added violence for the wrong reasons, but if they DID include it, I want to be able to experience it, so I can come to my own judgement.

Which is essentially very much a German problem, but since Australia started banning brutal violence too, we’re no longer alone with this issue.

Undesireable Elements – an overInterpretation

Disclaimer. This IS a deliberate overinterpretation.

Their existence itself is a form of pollution. They’re everywhere, they harass the upstanding citizen, kill, steal, plunder. They were strange, color coded uniforms, and give every neighborhood they’re in a bad name. They don’t fit into the image of a clean, nice, orderly cityscape.

Sucker Punch’s recent open world superhero-shtick inFamous features a kind of enemy design that seems to feed on a middle-class person’s view of less desirable elements in metropolitan areas.

The enemies are easily readable as representations of specific types of menacing appearing “others” than us white urban middle classers. Or even worse, country middle classers. It’s common knowledge that we, as a species, perceive the areas we’re not living in as immediately more dangerous than the ones living there. A “bad neighborhood” oftentimes is just “bad” for the people NOT living there.

Within the fantastic reality of the game world of course that is a different scenario. Here the bad neighborhoods ARE bad, and in dire need of a hero to rescue them. The state has failed, the cops are no match for the criminal elements – enter the vigilante.

Closer examined, the firstly encountered “Reapers”, a street gang gone totally nuts, could be interpreted as the violent immigrant youngsters populating so many western cities these days.

A member of the notorious Reaper-Gang

Seen through the predominantly white, somewhat posh middle class eyes of course. They’re uniformly clothed, and totally de-humanized. One looks like the other, only once you’ve grown accustomed to their appearances you might be able to pick up subtle differences between the individuals.
Not that it matters, since they’re all evil, and hell bent on harassing the good, upstanding people.

Their uniform otherness makes them more menacing. They all look the same to our eyes, their humanity hidden somewhere beneath the cheap hoodie, which provides the darkness to hide their faces in.

Another example are the Dustmen. Dressed in garbage bags, walking hulks of trash and scrap, also apparently an offense to the upstanding citizens’ noses, they seemingly embody another undesirable element often times found in big cities: The poor and homeless.

At first glance they sport a greater individual variation between the character models, but still they all look the same, and just as the Reapers, they appear even less human in nature.

If there’s any moral to this, it’s seemingly that immigrants and homeless people have no place in our civilized western urban centers, since once there is so much as the tiniest breaking down of order, they will immediately come crawling out of the sewers, and take control.
Only that in reality there would be no lightning charged superhero there to save us.

Of course as stated above this is a deliberate overinterpretation. I just found it funny how easily it’s possible reading the game this way, and – given that the developers are situated in a Seattle suburb probably falsely so – reading these things as expressions of some poor rural guy’s fear of big cities.

Endgame – Why we keep playing on

There are plenty of reasons for us to play games. Most people, me included, just play for the fun of playing itself, but there is more to get out of a game than just your typical “gamer’s high”. Which is a good starting point for this whole idea – what are the most effective direct reward systems in games themselves?

“Gamer’s high” is a bit hard to tackle, since it’s a highly subjective thing. Mostly it’s presenting the player with a challenge, and then let her beat it. For me this works best if I have a part in actively figuring out how to actually pull it off. The bigger the challenge, the better the “high”. God of War and Shadow of the Colossus pull this off nicely, they introduce us to seemingly impossible tasks which can be overcome more easily than initially perceived.

Upping the percieved player power by presenting seemingly insourmountable odds - God of War's Hydra

The more skilled a player though, the harder it is to get to that point. Some players might just find that kind of fulfilment on Doom’s nightmare difficulty, or on the upper tiers of Tetris. The reward here is immediate, and mostly it’s the gameplay itself that constitutes it.

Simply put, “winning” the game is the most widely spread, most traditional reward mechanic. Closely related to that is gameplay as reward. Since “winning” the game often times isn’t as important as actually playing the game. As in the player overcomes a huge challenge and then is presented a new twist on the established gameplay, some new exiting level, new enemy types – and of course new challenges to overcome. These two reward mechanisms are probably the most broadly used ones, and they tend to intertwine with others.

Character improvement as found in most Roleplaying Games is basically just a slight change of the established gameplay, items and upgrades too. But I would like to look at those as a separate entity of player rewards, since they in themselves are a lot more graspable.

The player character gets better at doing whatever he does in a game, usually this goes hand in hand with a certain part of the game becoming a bit easier, which usually is needed for some upcoming challenges. The Metroid games would be a perfect example for that – although they are not really roleplaying games, character improvement is a central part of their reward techniques.

Suit upgrades reward the player with new game mechanics.

Character improvement in itself is something that could be filed under the greater category of “unlockables”, which in itself is a rather large category that could in theory contain everything related to “progress” in a game. But usually I would only file improvements under unlockables if they are not directly related and needed in a game’s progress, and just represent a fun treat, like Silent Hill’s silly magical girl costume, the camouflages and masks of the later Metal Gear Solid titles, or the Nazi zombie mode of the latest Call of Duty.

But those are all gameplay related rewards, a lot of games feature unlockables that are just small treats, totally unrelated to the game itself, sound tests, artwork galleries, developer commentaries. While aimed at the overachiever crowd of gamers, these don’t really translate back into the gameplay experience directly.

Which is also something a rather recent development in the field of player reward does. Achievements usually have no in-game feedback whatsoever, also feeding into the overachieving crowd, just handing out little treats one at a time. Which is not to say that doing interesting and entertaining things with achievements isn’t possible, I am just personally a bit weary of them, since some games just tend overdoing them, handing the player achievements for starting the game the first time for example.

Something I have not yet touched upon entirely is the element of plot. Story driven games work in a similar way to all other story driven media when it comes to “rewards”, which in this case would be experiencing the plot of the medium. There are however a lot of different approaches to how games can use story as a way to reward the player. The most obvious one being the traditional cutscene, which in recent years has become less and less of an accepted “reward” it seem, which in itself is an interesting topic, but none I would like tackling in the context of this article.

Other methods include feeding plot pieces to the player via text snippets, audiologs and in-game encounters, which arguably keep the game flow more steady, without inviting the player to put the controller down, becoming just a passive spectator.

Due to my own lack of exposure to the genre, I can’t comment on the techniques employed by MMO titles, though I would be surprised if those were differing a lot from the aforementioned ones.

Whichever one of these techniques is the most effective is usually up to the individual player. To me, the most effective method is one that encourages experimentation within the actual gameplay and rewards that immediately, the most prominent example being Crackdown’s upgrade system, that encourages the player to explore as much of the gameworld in any direction as humanly possible to hunt for minor boosts for the player character. Here the translation is immediate, each of the agility orbs increasing the jump capability of the character a tiny bit.

Crackdown's hidden Orbs feed directly back into the gameplay when discovered.

Other games rewarding the player in a similar manner are mostly found in the realm of roleplaying games, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series being a front runner for rewarding the player immediately with stat upgrades whenever he does something successfully. Pick locks, the character gets better at picking locks, be acrobatic, the character gets better at being acrobatic, thus adapting the gameplay to the player’s taste, one step at a time.

Ideally, player behaviour should also directly feed back into the plot, but implementing that is quite a hard thing to pull off it seems, since there are rather few games doing that, but with improving technology, and the eventual shift from graphics obsession to plot improvement, I am rather sure that we will see such mechanics at work in the near future.

X-Box 360 Suspended mid Air, Oil-Rig style

This is just a short, quick entry to show how I, paranoid of my console RROD’ing, try giving the console as much air as possible. Nothing has happened so far, so fingers crossed.

Two blocks of wood that used to seperate part of an Ikea-bed, and four hard-disc decoupler-pods serve as suspension for the console.

This is to keep the console's underside away from the ground, giving it as much as air as possible while keeping it level and stable at the same time, while also leaving as much of the console's surface free for heat dissipation.