The Escapist Posted an Article about the line between exploiting and not exploiting during online games. As a ‘Play to Win’ guy, I had some things to say that I posted on their forums. Here on out is all discussion from their forums, my individual posts seperated by a break.

Also let me point out that I don’t think the article is ‘wrong’. It tries to be unbias and is a decently good read. Anyways I’ll just post my initial response and a few rebuttals.

Hello, I’m Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly, creator of I Wanna Be the Guy, and I am here to disagree!

Actually to be fair I think the article was actually okay and pretty non-bias. Some of the examples were pretty weak (Sequence breaking in L4D2 and boomers using the kill command are the only things that even really seemed possibly unfair). Still, I got a few things to say.

I was an idler for TF2. Grinding was too much work, and I don’t find fun in receiving ‘alternative options’ the more I play. I want my options right away. I’ll decide when I’m ready for them. Now, if I was playing MW2 or something I’d understand. The game packaged as a multiplayer games where you level up and get new unlocks. TF2 on the other hand started as one thing and became something else. Suddenly there were unlocks, and grinding and all sorts of BS. I liked the new content but could not understand why it was not available to everyone from the get go. So when idling became possible, I idled. Then I ran the idler program to save power and CPU cycles.

When my items were removed, I was pissed. Not so much because I was ‘caught’ for ‘cheating’. They definitely had a case that it was cheating. So when I wrote an angry letter to Robin Walker, I did not complain that I was unfairly treated for cheating, I complained that they, and their amateurish unlock system drove me to cheat. The system was bad and myself, and many others cheated to avoid that undesirable part of the game. This should have been seen as a failure on their parts as game designers (I love Valve, but they seem prone to REALLY REALLY DUMB design decisions sometimes, like this or dynamic weapon pricing.)

What made matters worse is you could still use idle servers. The only difference between ‘cheating’ and ‘not cheating’ was cpu and memory usage.

Now I just grind for achievements though, because now the achievements are designed to be easily doable. They actually devalued achievements (not that I care at all, I think achievements are retarded, but I know some people love them) to support the unlock system. It’s all bad and valve should feel bad. And they did, so they made the most useless crafting system ever which only encouraged people to idle more to make hats. GREAT.

Anyways, the other thing I wanted to say….. Developer Intent is bubkis.

As a developer, when you release a game, THATS IT. Thats what the player has to play. Unless you patch it, its over. Trying to figure out what the developer was intending is stupid for a number of reasons. There are probably a number of obviously fair tactics the developers didn’t intend or think about. Players won’t and shouldn’t play in some sterile ‘what would jesus-imeandeveloper do?’ way. They figure out and exploit the nuances.

Games that are interesting are not interesting because the designers perfectly plotted every little detail of the game. That is umpossiblz. Instead, they make games interesting by creating environments where interesting nuances and details will emerge. Whether or not something is a glitch doesn’t exactly matter. Glitches and exploits have often been legitimized in games by the developers, and obviously intended tactics have been removed because the developer went “My god, what was I thinking!”

Straz:
I feeled compelled to mention the care package glitch in MW2.
People who used it used to tell me that it was in the game, and thus a legitimate stragegy.
It got removed, and if the developers didn’t see it as such, it mustn’t have been as such.
Yet they still beleived in it, until it was removed.

Well yeah, but are you saying that just because the developers removed it, that it wasn’t legit? Legit stuff gets removed all the time from games by developers. Developers are not infallible. They jump at things that are harmless and miss things that are horrible and they do so because they are humans with bias perceptions like the right of us.

So while that glitch was in the game it was fair to people to say it was legit. But once the developer removes it, thats it. It doesn’t matter if it was legit or not, you aren’t able to do it so theres no more discussion. Developers may be fallible, but the game code is the final ruling on everything and if they change that, what can ya do?

Frederf:
95% of the time anything that even raises the question “Is this legitimate?” guarantees the answer “No.” Human beings have a persistent habit of desperately trying to justify their behavior.

Quite the opposite in my experience. Unless it involves an external program, 95% of the time if people ask if it’s legitimate, my answer is pretty much always ‘yes, yes it is.’ This isn’t hard, since people gripe about EVERYTHING, and rarely on anything that is a significant problem. Maybe I’m a little bias here because I tend to play polished games. People who play MW2 online might have a different perspective. But REALLY? 95% no? Are you like…. a gaming Nun?

Anyways (and this is a little bit lateral to the discussion since this is single player) I’d like to say as someone who released a buggy game, as a developer, I LOVED seeing what people did with IWBTG. They’d find super obscure bugs and exploits that would make me just drop my jaw in amazement. Very few of these ‘interesting’ glitches got patched. I tired to remove stuff that made you invulnerable or made you teleport (though if you check youtube, I’ve clearly failed at that :P), but tons of other little exploits that were beneficial to the player were legitimized by me often as features. Things like that are part of the ‘lore’ of a video game. Part of the texture of a game that people can talk about, find, and explore. Certain bugs, glitches and exploits very much add to the character of games, often beneficially.

Anyways, for me (lol sirlin.net again), the line is whats in the game. If the game is so broken with exploits that I can’t have fun while playing my best, I don’t blame the community, I blame the developers. Fuzzy rules just lead to people being mad and each other and fracturing communities.

I do think developers should be more willing to speak out. I would have appreciated it if Valve came by sooner to say “No, idling is dumb, knock it off”, and then set to fix the problem. Communications can act as a stopgap solution before a REAL solution is implemented, but at the same time, depending on the exploit, that doesn’t mean some people can’t continue to safely perform it.

katsabas:

Yeah, well, not everyone who plays MW wants to reach Championship level of skill. And while we are on it, if pro players are indeed playing as you reply they are, then the ones that promote fair play will just have to get better.

This is true, but those players aren’t going to be playing clan matches. If you’re getting into clan matches, it’s to create a comparison of skill.

Also, I bet a good percentage of MW players would SUCK at games like Braid and Wipeout HD.

This seems like such an unnecessary and silly jab that doesn’t seem to have a purpose in this discussion and probably isn’t even true if you’re talking about competitive players. Damn dirty cheating exploiters are the people most apt to figure out puzzles and the likes. I don’t even know what the hell you’re getting at.

About the line? Yeah, there is one. Proof? MW2 is full of overpowered equipment which I am not gonna get into at this point. I have seen players using glitches, left and right in this game. First it was the pillar in Underpass. Now, it is one of the exits to the underground tunnels in Wasteland. And even if that is fixed, we have the grenade launchers.

Thats not proof at all! In fact, thats like the OPPOSITE of truth. All that shit is going on — where is the line? No one knows! Where do you draw it? Even if you draw it at glitches the game is STILL broken. Is the line before LEGITIMATE AND INTENDED TACTICS? My god, that’d be terrible! There is no line. The only thing to learn here is MW2 is really really stupid.

katsabas:

I am getting to the fact that due to the sheer number of shooters out there today, it is natural for someone to be adept to them. Try beating Zico in Wipeout HD or getting past Zone 75. Or even finish Braid. Those are games that require an amount of clairvoyance, detail and skill. Shooters teach you 3 things: shoot, kill, teabag.

How, exactly, is not proof? Have you seen any youtube videos about what I am actually referring to? There are quite a few of em. There is a difference between someone with a Care Package, Chopper Gunner, Nuke and someone with a UAV, Predator, Harrier Strike. If you cannot see the line, then hey, that’s who you are. No matter.

What a load of nonsense. Competitive FPS gameplay requires a vast amount of skills. Incredible amounts of situational awareness is required, as well. Subtle details compound the advantages and disadvantages of a situation… and lets forget how open ended aiming is as a skill. Comparing this to Braid? What? Reaaally? Braid was easy. It was a smart, clever, good game, but to say it, like it’s some big, serious challenge is hilarious. Even if it was, thats not important, just as I won’t deny the depth of Wipeout. What is more important is you clearly have not managed to grasp the depth that is possible in FPSs. Instead you just boil it down to three silly concepts.

And yes, that is still not proof. It’s proof because some things are better than other things? So what! So you might say “Lets get rid of all this stuff that is too good”, but you know what a lot of people say? The stuff that is too good IS the game. That is the fun bits, especially since these are part of the game.

The only proof I see is that MW2 is a terrible multiplayer game on any sort of serious level. Maybe you should apply some of that clairvoyance to understanding real game design matters, rather than being comfortable in ignorance. YOU see a ‘line’ and stop there. That is your limitation not mine. I see the line, but then I see the truth BEYOND the line in games I play. Watching people hit this wall is almost cute to me at this point.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kayin
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Heres a bunch of Game Design related posts I churned out on various forums I visit. Lets start with my ‘level design’ post which was supposed to become a full sized article. I’m lazy though.

Tremble ye who look upon this map, for it is the mightiest of it

What makes good level design? Such is mysterious! Many men could point and say “Behold! This level is the shizzle, for rizzle”, and fewer but still many could psay “I like things!” and point vigorously at things which are made of good and things that are made of bad and EVEN FEWER may actually design a stage, have it be good and likely still does not know what he’s talking about. He also does not get to point.

Even I designed I Wanna Be The Guy with no idea what I was doing. I merely had intuition and experimentation to go by, which led to good and bad decisions as I went along, but over time I came upon the understanding of a process. But before I go into my methods, I will raise the first question. Why is Super Metroid so good and why does its map beat the pants off of everything else in it’s genre?

A typical Castelvania Area compared to a typical Super Metroid Area

Super Metroid does a lot of small things very well through attention to detail. It keeps you moving and it keeps you moving in an energetic way. It makes you do platforming that may almost feel like formality when looking at it from a distance and it flows from one area to the next. it is active and varied, pleasing to look at and fluid. So with that in mind I will go on to discuss my building blocks for a level. This can apply to any type of level (not metroidvanias excusively) so I will use broad elements.

Concept

Before you do anything, you generally need at least a vague concept, thinking about what you want to happen on this screen, adjacent screens. You want to know what real challanges you want to have, if any and you want to consider the pacing of the game in it’s entirety when you come ot this point. Sometimes even a passing thought in these areas are all you need.

When you begin placing a level down, be it in game or on paper, there are other things you need to take into consideration.

Movement

Moving is the key thing you do in most games and in platformers or FPSs or anything, I generally think of two general considerations.

Motion

Portable Castlevania’s biggest sin has always been indescript hallways with periodic enemies. No features. No platforms to jump on. No motion but the most basic of motions. Games in the mairo series have traditionally been very good at this. Even tiny touches such as changing the terrain elevation or needless platforms and asymetrical areas makes moving from point A and point B way more enjoyable.

Flow

Flow I think of as distinct from motion. A stage has good flow not when you necessarily do a lot of ‘unnecessary’ ‘motion’, but when the path the player takes flows naturally. In games with winding passageways and complicated maze like structures, flow is important to gently guide the player where he has to go. Super Metroid does this beautifully as their are few times where you have to blindly backtrack. You can proceed through the game almost entirely through a cyclical motion. In linaer games like Half-Life, good flow wll help make the player not feel rail roaded. They are going down this road because they WANT to go down it, not because they have no choice. Playing the original Half Life, I always felt like I had mutliple paths to take that never existed during my first time through the game.

Pacing
pacing often has to be looked at in a macro and micro sense. In the macro scale, you may ask ‘was the last area hard? Does the player deserve a relaxing area? Do I need ot remind the player that this game is hard?”. You may ask if the game is reaching it’s climax and if it’s time to crank on the pressure. On a micro scale, each level is filled with ups and down.Long corridors in Symphony of the Night can get boring with your emotion impeded by ‘walls’(enemies) you have to hack down Even little screens in IWBTG can represent pacing. repeating rooms constantly filled with spikes are painfully stressful and even a few scant free spaces to move around in without fear can be a massive relief to players. On the same point, there are times when you purposely want to give no quarter.

Not Pictured: Quarter

Aesthetic

Aesthetic! Many hardcore gamers say they don’t care about graphics. Thats mostly BS. Graphics do not need to be fancy though by any means. Still, every screen, every panel, every section represents a composition. These compositions must look balanced. Stage design without balanced composition often feels random and arbitrary. Remove the moody atmosphere from the Colony section at the beginning of Super Metroid. Replace all the platforms with just simple boxes. Now it feels like a cheap flash jumping game! Take out the aesthetic screen balance and now the game looks like Cheetahmen II. Terrible aesthetic can even directly damage your flow.

You don’t have ot be an artist and don’t have ot make your levels a work of art, but at the very least you need things to be unnoticable Glaringly bad balance and composition can hurt to look at.

the simple lay out of most of the Zelda screens are burned into my brain.

So… So far I’ve told you a bunch of stuff to look for. If you look you’ll probably find that these things are shown in pretty much all examples of games with good level design. Even Quake 3 maps use these concepts just to make something competitive! But I haven’t told you how to do any of this.

Well as far as I know, the only way to do it is guts and effort. The knowledge of what to look for and what is fun is key to making a good level. You have to test it and feel it. If you know what you’re looking for and keep in mind what makes an area more appealing, you have a better chance to hit the mark.

So what I’m hoping from everyone is that you add our input and insight on good levels. I’ll probably add more based on what I think of and what you say. I want to eventually compile a blog post out of this, so I’ll end here for now. May next time I’ll get into specific cases!

Also recommended reading:
Auntie Pixelante

Now wasn’t that nice, if not a little rough? Then theres a few posts I made on making games in general. A few people asked me for advice for new game developers.

Alright, lemme get some stuff out before I go to bed then.

First off, it’s better to complete something bad then make nothing at all. Your friends might disagree, but you have built up knowledge. This considered, it’s best not to start doomed projects. You’ll learn a little, but will never get the full picture.

So first thing is to not be over ambitious. If you over exert your self, you will never succeed and your effort will be wasted. There is no reason your ‘big’ game has to be your first game. Releasing a decent game of some kind will teach you an infinite amount of valuable things about managing your work and creating the content, as well as the effort required to get things done.

Second thing is to self edit.

Pro Tip: 95% of your ideas are abhorrent garbage

People often wonder how great designers come up with great ideas! The big truth here is generally that their average idea isn’t much better then yours. Well, maybe a little better due to experience, but they started out with ideas as bad as yours! The difference is, they are self critical. They do not hold their ideas sacred. They think about how workable an idea is and, if it is bad, they discard it. They are a better pruner of ideas then you are and the best way to become more like them is to prune more. Many people have idea that sound good, but fail, even theoretically. They are generally afraid to throw out ideas that seem cool, or try and shoe-horn them in just because. Develop the discipline to just say no to your self.

Secondly, great designers find a great idea and they make it shine. They don’t bog it down with excess. What excess is will vary, but they generally will focus on the juicy core. This isn’t to say you need to be minimalist, but the difference between minimalism and maximalism are smaller then you think. I’ll run this down quick…

Minimalism: Cut as many ideas and concepts away as possible without damaging the core idea (Example: Braid, Ikaruga)

Maximalism: Add as much awesome stuff as possible……. WITHOUT DAMAGING THE CORE IDEA (Example: Bunny Must Die, Radiant Silvergun)

So when adding or subtracting ideas to supplement your core concepts, keep this in mind.

Third! Brilliant people steal. A LOT. Originality is the most overrated concept in existence. If you look around hard enough, you should see that there is nothing new under the sun. Nunix said it pretty well earlier in the thread when talking about Idea Theft. REMEMBER THAT. Do not be afraid to steal. That doesn’t mean to just steal and be done with it — then you’re just uninspired and uninteresting to the player. Take the idea, polish it up, show it love and heck, implement it in a new, or heck, just plain well executed way. What games are accused of stealing and being clones the most? Bad games. Don’t be a bad game and you’ll be alright, even if a lot of your ideas are derivative.

The process of idea making, refinement and editing is one of the hardest things to learn. At the same time it is also one of the reasons why releasing garbage is good. It gives you a chance to get real feedback on your work so you can refine your internal processes.

Theres a lot of failure involved in making things, but that shouldn’t scare you. There is a Go adage I like…

Lose Your First 50 Games As Quickly As Possible

There are similar quotes involving painting as well. Failure is a part of learning and the sooner you make mistakes, the sooner you will no longer make the same mistakes again.

I guess thats enough for now, I think I should get to bed! Sorry if this is rambley, writing is not one of my best skills. I could benefit from a little more self editing, in fact. :(

A bit more on originality.

Originality is overrated.

Nothing about originality or innovation intrinsically leads to more fun or anything. I think people confuse themselves. They play a bad game that clearly wanted to cop off of Halo and they’re like “This game sucks! It’s so derivative and does nothing new!”

Well they’re sort of confused. When the game is a tepid mess, blaming the lack of originality is easier then blaming the lack of polish, love and care that didn’t go into the game.

When you play a good game, the slight differences between it and it’s predecessors seems huge, because it’s all dolled up and is well presented in a way that accentuates these differences. It doesn’t make the differences any greater, it just makes you notice them.

And some on game pricing…

I totally agree with Geo. I played VVVVVVV’s demo without looking at the price. Then I was like “Hey this is neat, if it’s priced right, maybe I’ll buy it!”

I saw 15 dollars. I was just like “lol” … I figured 5 might be the higher end, and 10 was possible. But 15? I laughed my ass off. I laughed at the absurdity.

I thought of all the things I could buy. Notably on the indy end of things, Noitu Love 2 is 5 dollars cheaper.

So for 15 dollars you get

for 10 dollars you get

HM. HMMM. HMMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And I haven’t even bothered to buy NL2 yet (one day I will). I just bought Serious Sam HD for 8 bucks. I can get a number of remakes of great games on PSN for less than 15.

VVVVVVV just does not look even close to a 15 dollar game. NL2 looks better than most professional DS games and its’ only 10 dollars. Granted I think it started at 15 or 20 but at least that looks awesome! VVVVVVV also has to compete with a number of FREE games.

15 is just a poorly considered price. He lost my sale and quite a few other sales I’m sure.

The problem I see if an issue of pride. If VVVVVVV was 5$ it almost seems to the average person that it was trying to make less money. Even if a simple game required a ton of effort, charging 15-20$ isn’t going to fly. You’re trying to find the optimal price point, not assess of much your game is abstractly worth on a value of goodness.

Feel that sting? Thats pride, fucking with you. Understanding price as an aspect of marketing and maximizing profits is the important part. This is regardless of quality, effort or production value.

Filed under: Game Development, Uncategorized by Kayin
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Okay so now Google Buzz is going on. Okay fine. Buzz seems kinda harmless. I’m okay with poking over occasionally to see, well, the buzz! This is fine.

But now I have other peoples crap appearing on my Google Reader again. And how do I stop this from happening? By unfollowing people, which ALSO UNFOLLOWS THEM ON BUZZ.

Google. Google, seriously lets get real here. I NEVER, EVER, EVER WANT TO SEE OTHER PEOPLES CRAP ON MY GOOGLE READER. MY RSS FEEDS ARE CAREFULLY CHOSEN BY ME. I DON’T WANT TO SEE CAMERA REVIEWS, OR FUNNY FACE BOOK POSTS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. IF I CARE ABOUT WHAT MY FRIENDS ARE POSTING ABOUT I WILL LOOK AT GOOGLE BUZZ. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK STOP CRAMMING SHIT I DON’T CARE ABOUT ONTO GOOGLE READER. FOREVER.

Thanks.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kayin
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edit: I meant to post this awhile ago. Might as well do so now.

Well, the contest was to be one of the first 500 people to beat the game on hard and report to Penny Arcade about it. I figured 500 people would blow through the game on the first day. Funny enough, by the time I finished hard casually, the contest was still on…. and was still on for a few weeks after!

I don’t just make hard games, I play them!

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kayin
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I’ve always had a strong disdain for ideology. When I was young, I had ideologies but didn’t realize what they were at the time. To 16 year old me, ideologies were things people who were wrong had. I’m a much more balanced individual now, as one would expect when comparing someone to themselves when they were a teenager. The other day, my good e-friend from Hong Kong, garcia1000 (the lower cased name and number is critical to the true garcia1000 experience) shared with me a great quote from Charlie Munger. If you don’t know (I didn’t until he told me), Munger is one of Warren Buffet’s most trusted partners and a very rich man in his own right. Anyways, the quote goes as followed.

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers — many have minds made of cabbage — but it can also happen with political ideology. When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger.

In my mind, I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology. The example is these Scandinavia canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools of the Aron [sp.] Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into, and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology.

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.

I liked this little passage a lot, as it highlights the danger of ideology. The sad part is that these days, we are filled with ideology. The worst of it is political, because that just doesn’t result in a lack of thinking, it creates huge obstacles when it comes to getting anything done. Both sides approach issues by finding evidence to support their ideologies. Even when politicians don’t do this, they are drowned out by people who do. I find my self these days to be a liberal leaning moderate, but I don’t even care if someone shares my viewpoints anymore. Instead, I care about why people have their views. It is intensely unpleasant for me to see people expose points that I hold dear, but do so not because it makes sense, but because they have been suckling on the party koolaid too long.

My friend Paul and I argue about this frequently. I hesitate to call him a conspiracy theorist, but he does hold a very negative view on humanity that lends him to assume the worst. Paul believes in organized, very deliberate undermining of our system of government. Myself on the other hand believe, due to intense ideology, that these problems are not caused by people scheming or trying to play the system, they’re caused by people honestly believing they have the answer to everything because they keep beating it into their head. Even if they don’t at first, dirty campaign tricks, loaded questions and various other techniques beat their own axioms into their head. One thing I love about Paul though is he is not prone to intense ideology either. He disagrees with me, but for all his hate, sees my view and will discuss things under the context of my view and I do the same for him. We do this because our ideologies are not rock solid. We share information and ideas, discuss each others views and, at the end, come out with more information then we had before. We have constructive conversations despite having very different world views.

This is lacking in public discourse. Talking points are repeated over and over again. No one is converting the other side. We are merely entrenching. This is dangerous and scary to me. With how media is now, you can choose a new outlet that spins any story into a flavor you prefer. Our intake of news these days is done in a way that reaffirms what we already believe. We watch shows with people who tear apart the opposition. We celebrate their victories while our adversaries use it to demonize us. We think this is helping, we think this is making a point and exposing the fallacy of the enemy, but really we are just patting our selves on the backs. Nothing is being accomplished outside of the widening of the rift between people of differing opinions.

I wish people in the media would see the value of real discussion and real idea sharing. Instead we are in this feedback loop that pushes or biases further and further in each direction. I WELCOME those who disagree with me to disagree with me openly, honestly and fairly. I am not so married to my beliefs as to think I could not learn something. In fact, I feel feeble about opinions I have that have not been vetted in civil discourse. Again, I wish more people felt this shame over their thoughts and ideas. Maybe then we would come up with more balanced solutions to problems.

Filed under: Talking by Kayin
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The question of videogames and art come up all the time. The question is actually a silly one, since whether or not they’re art is based on definition. So lets ignore that!

So way way back, I played Passage(I’ll be nice to link these stupid games). The game made groan in pain. Boring, with childish symbolism and no sophistication. On one hand I could say it’s a slight bit clever, but it was tepid and hardly enlightening. Apparently some people have had better mileage with it and the game became a big deal.

Really as I see it, people were just proud the retarded child drew a pretty picture.

The real sad backlash of this is what it’s done to the indy community. Between Passage and anything by Cactus, the independant game community gets the message of “If you put no effort into something and make a vague attempt at symbolism, you are clever and art making art!”

That’s not art! and if it is art, it’s TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE BAD ART. Thats the type of art that makes you say “These folks are hacks!” not “Wow look at this sophisticated medium”! They are doing a DISSERVICE to the medium, impressing no one but themselves, creating a circle jerk that produces even less then a real circle jerk! Amazing. Here are two examples I want to go over.

Seven Minutes: So pretty much a vague IWBTG ripoff of sorts, that replaces clever traps and humor, as well as polished ideas with… a vague Adam and Eve metaphor?

So you start in a room with a light in it. Some head (God) tells you not to touch the light(Forbidden Fruit). Upon touching it, GiantHEad tells you what a slap dick you are and if you want to have true enlightenment you will see the world end in Seven Minutes. So thats like, the break of innocence from the bible. So you spend Seven Minute running like hell to get through an ill inspired maze.

So the game is just meh in general. Nothing to cry over! BUT WAIT! if you touch the light and STAND IN PLACE FOR SEVEN MINUTES, GIANT HEAD CONGRATULATES YOU FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT… and… makes you a God with him? It’s really quite insulting.

It’s I Wanna Be The Guy if Cactus made it, pretty much. Only some other dude made it. Maybe is other games are better but he seems hung up on giant heads. Whatever.

Execution: This is a game where you shoot a guy. THATS IT. You load the game up, it tells you to DO THE RIGHT THING. Game starts and you got a gun scope and a guy tied to a post with no context. You pull the trigger and he dies. CONGRATS! You lost! You fag!

So you load the game back up and GASP HES STILL DEAD! Your actions have consequences! He is dead forever! …. or until you edit your registry. Which I did so I could kill him twice. Regardless. So the game is trying to teach you that actions have consequences and permenance. of course, anyone knows this. We are ingrained to know this. This knowledge is one of those things that make us better then lower animals. Kids know this for sure once they break their first toy. We may forget from time to time, but this is not how you remind people.

So what makes this funnier, is… why is he tied up? Did you kidnap him and decide to execute him? Is he a terrorist or something who killed babies? Are you just placing the responisiblity on someone else like a coward? The game is wrought with stupidy. For an unsubtle as Passage is, it’s metaphor at least holds up under some scrutiny.

Real Art

What real art does is not take a slogan, phrase or idea and repackage it in a way that just says it differently. It must support the message. It must support it in a way that makes us realize something new. Art isn’t easy really. Schindler’s List isn’t sad or touching or enlightening because it says “Man it sucks to be a jew during the Holocaust”! It gives a insight through characterization and example. It gives real emotion. Brenda Brathwaite made a boardgame called Train which people slowly realize they’re transporting jews for execution. Now, I’m not sure if that is good (it could easily be hammer-anvil symbolism, but from what I hear the rules are written in a way to try and make people get invested in the act to a degree. Either way I withhold judgement). This game came out of a ‘pseudo game’ she made, which I find more interesting.

Her daughter had learned about the Middle Passage in school and couldn’t quite understand why it was so horrible. Sounded like a pleasent cruise to her! So Brenda made up a little game with prototyping pieces she had laying around that simulated it and had her daughter play. They had little pieces of different sizes, grouped in families. When the ships left, families got broken up between the ship. As time went on in the game, it became clear that there wasn’t enough food for everyone to make it.

Her daughter cried because the game taught her something she didn’t understand by approaching it from a unique angle. Granted this was a quick little game for an 8 year old (or however hold she is), so it’s not quite developed art, but it approaches it from the right direction. The hard part is doing this for intelligent folk and without being totally lame about it. Current Indy Game makers don’t even seem to be trying. They’re either like me, making actual games that are fun, or making shitty pixel art second grade metaphors.

Game maker Zarathustra referred to these as Sadlets (Like applets, only sad!). Please. Don’t make anymore. Either make a real game or have some sophistication. Or better yet, do both! you’ll be a better man then me!

edit: Turns out someone on destructoid beat me too this a few days ago with a FANTASTIC Post on the matter. Lemme thank Logo for giving me these too links, which I highly recommend.

Destructoid Article

Gamasutra Followup

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Before I say anything, lemme preface this by saying that this doesn’t come with some great announcement about BE or anything. As I’ve said on the forums, it’s on hold (actual hold, not IWSTK ‘dead’ hold). More explained in the quoted DA entry.

Naomi, in all her…. transparent glory?

I did this as one of my final projects for my Digital Illustration class. Naomi’s silhouette was roughed out from a few pieces of reference art in photoshop before I livetraced it (a requirement for the project) in illustrator and tweaked it further. As such there is no underlying lineart under there. I’m tempted to try and fill it in to see if it makes any sense, as it could also be a pretty cool illustration in it’s own right I think.

Anyways the project was to make a bookcover. I think, sans my name, this looks more like a game cover, but it works either way.

As a note to anyone who follows my development info but doesn’t read the forms, I’m currently not working on Tower in the Sky. I’m waiting for some tools to mature before I go back to it. It’s still the top project in my head at all times, but the time to go full force with it isn’t know. So consider it delayed indefinitely, but with my full intention to get back to work on it as soon as the situation justifies it. That said, expect news about a new IWBTG project soon.

Filed under: Art, Brave Earth by Kayin
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Just finished another picture! As usual, it includes the accompanying DA post. Had a lot of fun with the coloring. SAI is really much nicer than photoshop for working on this stuff.

Reese Nasaki (formally Reese Dresdner) is the wife of Kayin Nasaki and mother of Cassara Nasaki.

Reese is actually a German veteran World War I and II. During World War I she was gifted with eternal life when she was found fit to spawn a child with Kayin (who could not father children without godly intervention). Kayin, not knowing this fact, left, as he could not stand to be with another woman who would age to death on him.

By World War II, she became an extraordinarily skilled sniper. She eventually ended up switching sides, due to German atrocities, becoming a part of a special SIS unit, dedicated to eliminating SS officers. Near the end of the War, she comes across Kayin, who is stunned to see she is unchanged.

Her first response is to shoot him in the leg so he can’t run away.

From there, she got the live the quiet life, spending the next 60 years in relative piece with Kayin. Around the later years, she became fond of dying her hair (which is naturally brown). In 2000, she gave birth to Cassara.

Reese enjoys reading, particularly about history. She is fluent in a wide array of languages (which Kayin and her practice by playing foreign language scrabble). She is generally quiet and reserved, though she possesses an iron will. She is athletic, loves to be out doors (her favorite place to read), and often drinks over 10 cups of coffee a day.

While drawing this picture, I toyed with the idea of her becoming a highschool history teacher. I think this would be very fitting, but I’m not sure Kayin would like the hours involved! Perhaps a college level instructor would be more fitting!

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So I’m playing Trenchwars and a weasel appears infront of me! The weasel, as I wrote earlier, is pretty terrible and pretty much a no skill ship. But whatever, people deal with it. And so I did, by gunning him down, despite him cloaking. Since my ship can shoot a lot, I was able to follow him around by watching where the bullets hit. This is a pretty typical thing, but I don’t think he liked it very much!

This is the PM log from after that kill.

retskcin: ur shit
Kayin: lol what you’re weaseling and you’re going to cry because someone killed you? D: don’t be 14 and play the game
retskcin: learn to play not be a girl
Kayin: coming from the weasel. lol okay, keep up the vg rage, son
retskcin: i AM rage
retskcin: if you can’t understand that i am who i am and i will what i wann do
Kayin: Oh so you’re an idiot. :| gotcha
retskcin: so is my 12 years old brohter
Kayin: Now excuse me, I wanna play the game and not play “tough guy on internet”
retskcin: i had only enuf money to buy myself thru 7th grade
retskcin: my life is shit
retskcin: i am rage
retskcin: my mother is dead
Kayin: lol
retskcin: say that i called myself a tought guy
Kayin: hahah are you high or something
retskcin: my brothers are i am not
retskcin: i cannot even afford drugs for i spent it all on 7th grade
Kayin: cool story bro
retskcin: ty
retskcin: i hope my life of shit taught u something
Kayin: nah I’m pretty happy and obvious to the suffering of others :(
retskcin: ur life is grand my life is shit, can u stop banging my head with that fact?
Kayin: I lack the ability to relate to your suffering. :(
retskcin: u lack ability period
Kayin: oic!
Kayin: fortunately since I am so happy, I do not require an ego in games I play! I am okay being terrible! :D
Kayin: It’s like a super power!
retskcin: ur super power is to make my life of shit more shit?
Kayin: Thats also a pretty good super power imo
retskcin: i know more than u do about life
Kayin: Thats okay!
Kayin: I get to be famous on the intarwebs!
retskcin: ur shit
Kayin: Man, you don’t even have money. People GIVE me money because they like me so much. :D
retskcin: only shit nothing else
retskcin: u r lying
Kayin: :) I am hapy shit. Like a little poop with a smiley on it
Kayin: No seriously some british kid gave me a grand because of the game I made
Kayin: I recieve mention in the guiness book of world records: Gaming edition
retskcin: quit rubbing it in
retskcin: what is ur name?
Kayin: I was on German TV! I’m pretty happy with my life so far!
retskcin: i taught myself german, english, portuguess, and italian
retskcin: i already knew french
Kayin: Type Kayin IWBTG into wikipedia search! Wikipedia knows my name!
retskcin: how many languages do u know? huh?
Kayin: In fact I sorta made a whole game out of making people suffer!
Kayin: One, and I’m not that great with it! :D
retskcin: see? ur shit
retskcin: i’m better
Kayin: I did not know languages was a measure of personal success! Well, whatever makes you happy! :)
retskcin: u were spoon fed
retskcin: i wasnt feg at all
retskcin: fed*
Kayin: Starving kids in africa weren’t fed either! I feel no reason to compare my self to the infinite suffering of the world. :)
retskcin: my life is worse than africa
Kayin: worse than ALLLLL the AIDS in ALLLLL the africas :(
retskcin: i guess ur suprised for once u aren’t making a comment of my life compared to video games :)
Kayin: I thought I made a comment about your life being worse than all the AIDS in all the Africas!
retskcin: congratz, u learned something. ur shit, and only shit

I found this pretty funny. I’m fairly sure this was a troll attempt. While it failed at the typical troll objective, I found it pretty damn funny. I really can’t be sure how serious this guy is, but I find it enjoyable regardless of the exact context. :)

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So I got two bits to post right now. One is a ’self portrait’ done when I got hit by a DeviantArt meme. Draw your self with whatever you’re wearing at the time. Boy they must be regretting that right about now! I find it to be…. disturbingly accurate.

So humorously I did this while working on a picture of Kayin, the character, which is posted below, along with the blurb I did for it on DA.

Well this took awhile, but I’m happy how it came out! Especially the background, which looked pretty bad when I first started on it! Kayin has been overdue for a new picture and this one I think does him a lot of justice.

Anyways, since I’m an RP fag, I wrote a blurb on the history that went into this picture.

Kayin is a very old character, both from when I designed him originally (14, though he is significantly different at this point) and canonically (born around 400 BCE). Can found himelf in Japan sometime in the early 1500s, also known as Japan’s Sengoku/Warring States period. The details are sketchy because I haven’t done the research necessary to codify the details on his time in Japan yet. What I am fairly sure of is that he finds himself in the service of some near by lord and, once proving himself capable with his ‘barbarian weapon’ (a bastard sword), is able to recieve training in the katana.

Despite being modernly known as a graceful, elegent fighter, that was not always the case. Compared to the average man of the day, Kayin possessed extraordinary strength compared to men of a world that was no longer magically awakened. Kayin’s power-based style at the time was too abusive toward the japanese blades, and he found himself slow to adjust.

Eventually Kayin would recieve a low ranking samurai position (social mobility into the samurai class was high up until the Tokugawa period) which he would maintain for some time, before becoming a drifter again. During this time, Kayin also found one of his several historic wives. Around the start of the Meiji Period, Kayin decided to further explore the world, ending up in the Americas.

Due to his relative strength, Kayin could wield two large swords effectively and would do so until the end of the modern era. Once past the modern era, the relative strength of combatants has become much higher and against more powerful foes, his strength becomes comparatively feeble.

Kayin has used many swords (and practically collects them at this point), but the two swords featured are particularly noteworthy…

Claíomh Solais: Whether this is actually the sword of Nuada Airgeadlámh is questionable, but the blade recieved it’s title due to it’s near indestructibility, extreme sharpness and it’s occasionally emittence of glowing light. Kayin would eventually learn to channel the swords power into destructive projectiles. The sword was lost at the end of the modern era and ended up in the possession of the Cruz family, and eventually became the weapon of Naomi Vos Cruz, who mastered this technique far beyond what Kayin could manage. The blade has outlasted it’s furnishings many times over, so Kayin preferred to use simple, practical and replacable parts for the hilt and handle.

Koutetsu-Kaze: Literally translates to “Steel Wind”. It is a katana of the Dotanuki school. These blades were more robust and slightly larger and heavier than a normal katana. Kayin found this blade to be the best match for his style, as it could endure his harsh techniques. Over time in Kayin’s possession, the blade began awakening magically, becoming practically indestructable and feeling usually light. The Koutetsu-Kaze is Kayin’s primary weapon, second only to the Claiomh Solais while it is in his possession. One issue with the origin of this weapon is, from what I understand, such blades did not exist in the Sengoku period, so it may just be a predecessor, rather than a proper Dotanuki.

This is also the primary weapon of Ogami Itto, from Lone Wolf and Cub!

Filed under: Art by Kayin
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