The Medium is the Massage

One of the wonderful perks of being a game developer is the potential to play games both on and off the job. I just finished Half Life 2 recently, and have almost nothing but praise for it. When you're in a related industry, it's difficult to not take a critical look at other people's products. Unfortunately -- and it's a trend I see changing -- I haven't played as broad a range of games as I would like, so I don't have nearly as much basis for comparison as some, but Half Life 2 is a superbly designed shooter. I am a huge believer in the cohesion of a game's design - visual, auditory, 'gameplay' (which is a ridiculous term - far too nebulous, but that discussion is an essay in itself - many of which have already been written, but I digress. I only use it for convenience.) elements should all coalesce into an elegant whole. For what it provides, Half Life 2 does a great job of integrating all these elements. I was thoroughly entertained by puzzles that made appropriate use of the game's impressive physics system.

There is one particular design aspect that stood out to me that I thought worthy of mention; for those worried, there will not be spoilers warranting concern. It's a well realised, but far too unexploited fact, that we have many unique opporiunities in game design. Games' inherently second-person structure gives a huge sandbox for playing with many aspects of human psychology, they can bring players a wide array of feelings in a relatively very low consequence environment. Towards the end of Half Life 2, the player is put in an interesting situation where they are completely deprived of anything with which to defend themselves; deprived of facilities they would think necessary to finish the game (an expectation that has been built up implicitly by use throughout the game). Feelings of dependence have broad applicability - it certainly isn't exclusive to drug addiction - it's a powerful force and should certainly stand out in a game designer's toolset. In Raph Koster's excellent book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design," (which you should read, if you haven't already), he argues for incorporating elements that we can more easily relate to from a modern society. Though such feelings of dependence are quite timeless, I would argue that they serve as a great example. Now, Half Life 2 certainly wasn't the first game to make use of this, and I certainly don't know what did, but I clearly remember the same feeling towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty with Raiden (its third person perspective afforded a different, but appropriate exposition too).

Another issue that has garnered a nice amount of discussion recently is the use of moral introspection in games. For some good commentary, I would guide the reader to N'Gai Croal's 'Level Up' post and its associated comments: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/11/29/the-edge-of-reason-time-for-social-sanction-in-videogames.aspx. The 'Morality Play' isn't something new (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_play), and according to Roger Ebert it has died out (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030404/REVIEWS/304040304/1023), but our medium certainly brings interesting new uses to it. Maybe I will have more to say about that after completing Bioshock (which, from a preliminary evaluation, looks absolutely stunning).

Jumping in to movie-land a bit more, I must say that Quentin Tarantino is an excellent film director. I just watched Kill Bill recently, and noticed an excellent piece of composition. Research tells us that motion attracts attention (http://www.indiana.edu/~vdim/Animat/1Intro/intro1.htm), after seeing this movie though I would be more inclined to believe we lend attention to things which we expect to or currently convey the most information. In one scene of Kill Bill, the view is split in two, on one side there is an entirely dynamic viewpoint, and on the other you have an almost entirely static scene. I found (and I certainly don't claim to be scientific in this at all, this is completely anecdotal - either more research needs to be done, or I need to get more up to date with progress) that my attention would be attracted to the static scene, as the dynamic view was progressing in a far more predictable manner, and I was far more curious as to what surprises would arise from the static environment. Of course, the use of such a technique should be strongly tied to context, but it shows that clever composition of imagery can be used to evoke the desired response from the viewer, or in our case the player. It is yet another tool that can and should be exploited in more games.

Finally, I was recently introduced to the genius of "Zero Punctuation" - an aptly named Escapist video blog which I shall happily plug; check it out.