Games studies case study research

Virtual worlds don’t exist: questioning the Dichotomous approach in MMO studies

By Vili Lehdonvirta

(Accessed 25^th Nov 2010)   http://gamestudies.org/1001

Real world vs. Virtual model

His study involves how the players’ boundaries are broken in both real and online. I did find it somewhat difficult to comprehend some of the study itself.

Relationships with people online ‘can be as deep and meaningful as those acted out face to face’- it’s become much more socially acceptable, it doesn’t limit itself to MMOs however, sites like facebook are also similar in that aspect; it’s just more commonly thought of when you hear ‘online friends’ or something along those lines.

He examines varieties of ‘dimensions’ when it comes to online play; virtual space vs. Real space, population, identity, relationships, institutions, economy and law and politics. Mentioning the, where space ends and the other begins, as I read it, it became apparent as to how hazy the border between the two is.

Population in real world can be easily generalised, it’s explained how ‘elusive’ the concept is- population problem with virtual being, how much the amount of play ‘qualifies as “active participation” ‘ which depends on the service being looked at.

Identity is one of the biggest problems in online gaming as “virtual worlds give you freedom that no one has on Earth: the freedom to be who you want to be. (Castronova 2006)”, but Lehdonvirta explains that even with that, the players identity and their avatars are never disconnected as most of the players values, attitudes etc. Are brought over to their virtual self.

Drawing real life into games

Virtually all games in the industry take reference from real life in some way, whether it be imagery, historically etc., it’s the basis for all of it. For example the ‘Call of Duty’ series uses not only real places but real historical/current moments; meaning the creators needed to take an extensive look into the events of WWII and every country’s appearance in both Japan and Russia for the ‘World at War installment’

One thing Square Enix’s  ‘Final Fantasy’ series draw from is mythology, from a wide variety of different cultures; for their summon designs. One of the most used I noticed was reference from Norse mythology, for instance the different Gods: Odin, Gilgamesh, Quetzalcoatl, Fenrir and Bryhindlr; designing them with their background story in mind; like Bryhindlr, used in Final Fantasy XIII is designed as a flaming warrior, very poised posture; which fits this god in particular perfectly as she was a Valkyrie (Battle Maiden), who refused Odin’s advances; angered by this he dumped her atop a flaming mountain so no one else could be with her without having to go through the fire; well interpreted design I think. Another thing taken from Norse mythology for these games was the tale of the Battle of Ragnarok. Really only the name used as far as I can see, it’s given as a name for Airships and also a powerful weapon throughout most of the instalments.

Design for Odin for Final fantasy IX (creativeuncut.com :viewed on 25th november 2010)

Only examples but does show how massive an impact games concepts take from real life.

On an interesting side note- While still on the theme of using real life in games; Real life drawing from games. Apparently there has been talk of the military/ scientists are actually taking a page from Hideo Kojima’s ‘Metal Gear Solid’ Series, with the exoskeleton concept. Near enough skin tight, pretty much making you super human. It’s surprising that a game is making this much of an impact on such a logical area in life.

Snake in his Octocamo suit

(creativeuncut.com viewed on 25th nov 2010)

Games and exercise

Since the rise of the games industry, there has been an obvious correlation with this and the fall of exercise, with this there have been a fair few attempts from industries to combat this. One of the most well known to date is the Nintendo Wii, gaming system; one of the first of which to involve the use of the player having to move to play the game.  Admittedly there’s only a focused amount of games that require the player to actually exercise, most popular being Nintendo’s own games, the Wii sports series and the Wii fit game. Predominantly the Wii fit is one of the best games for exercise, including a variety of exercises for different abilities ie. Yoga, Balancing, aerobics etc.

Wii sports, do use the same concept, however the focus is family gaming; also looking into promoting more connectivity between players.

An earlier form of exercise in games is the dance mat, named ‘Dance Dance revolution’ (Dancing stage in Europe and DDR for short.) by Konami. These are a series of games available for the Sony playstation 1 and 2, and also for arcades; the DDR games were released in the late nineties and were extremely popular. The difficulty had a wide range so anyone could play; being a fan of DDR I find it is a very fun form of exercise and good for coordination and rhythm. Also the series are, like the Wii fit game are great for parties and groups. In fact there is a whole culture revolving around the dance mat.

The attempt to remedy the problem the gaming industry seems to have caused, is frankly very commendable; but unfortunately I can safely say these kinds of games wouldn’t entirely appeal to the more hardcore gamer, at least on a regular basis. It doesn’t have the depth usual games have

Playing project Zero

Sam, Jade and I decided to record our reactions while playing project zero after watching some youtube videos of other people’s reactions while playing the same game; which wasn’t intended for research for contextual just for laughs. We noticed how different our responses are with different scare moments, screaming one minute but laughing at ourselves right afterwards.

Which I came to notice that playing horror games in groups is less scary somewhat but has a much more entertaining feel as opposed to playing by yourself, there’s no comic relief from everyone else in the room to relieve the tension from having the pants scared off of you. A certain scare use the game uses frequently is the camera filament (which alerts you to ghosts, enemy-red or hint-blue) suddenly glows red and a ghost pops up somewhere in the room; literally just to scare you. This video in particular is a perfect example of the scare ploy.  >

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=138864802831790

The lack of a soundtrack made the whole of the gameplay feel so much scarier, by lack of soundtrack the music was more like sound effects, which changed depending on the room you were in. Worse still was that the music changed for whenever a ghost came into the room; all 3 of us found the blind lady ghost one of the scariest, the screaming in the background along with her disappearing.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=138872422831028

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=138874229497514

The ‘Project zero’ series its one of the few ghost horror games in the industry, which I find surprising since ghosts are one the most staple things you would think of is ghosts.

The game itself strongly uses atmosphere which is a given with the enemy being a non physical entity there’s a constant fear of a ghost phasing out of anywhere at anytime during the game; particularly with and interesting fact: apparently the longer you stay wandering around in the same room the likelihood of a ghost appearing increases; but going into another room also holds a good chance of a ghost scaring the pants off of the player. In short they’ve made it so nowhere is safe from torment. Including the rooms with save points, which are generally safe if the save glows blue; red not only means a ghost is there by you cannot save until threat is eradicated. Removing a safety blanket for the player makes the game even scarier for them.

‘Behind the curtain of terror’

On the disc of the game ‘Siren Blood curse’ came a making of video, of the creators being interviewed about the process they had gone through to make the game. 

 Using an easily relatable but overlooked idea; the fear of being placed in an unfamiliar culture; a really interesting use of such a normal reaction to being somewhere unfamiliar to yourself. In this case most of the cast are American, visiting this Japanese mountain village.

In terms of horror games in particular usually the more realistic it feels or how influential the atmosphere is, the scarier it is for the player. The sound production in particular used real time sound effects for the atmosphere. Fear made from what we cannot see but only hear. What really made me appreciate how much effort really went into the sound design area was that all of the sounds were recorded live, and even more so was that “over 2000 variations of weapons hitting different objects.”

An unusual feature that the team chose to go with was a “Hollywood presentation style” for the game which actually wasn’t like a typical Americanized horror; Hollywood in the sense of a film, with the camera angles. It was made to seem like the audience was watching a television series, with the suspense after each episode (level) ended and teasing the audience with a preview for the next episode.

The art director- Isao Takahashi “...used to rent old 70’s and 80’s horror films.” As he really liked how the old 16mm film created the noise on the film; finding something scary about the noise, he drew inspiration from the old horrors by adding these undesirable effects to the game for realism; lens flare and viginetting It was easily noticeable that lighting and textures were a strongly vital part to the scare factor in the game.  There was also a challenge creating realistic looking water, as the setting was mostly flooded or rainy areas; additionally so as they were trying to recreate typical Japanese summers; muggy so the water needed to show this humidity which from what can be seen in the game was achieved really well. Another feature was the weather conditions how the trees sway in the wind and more so the worse the weather; especially the thunder and lightning, creating perfect lighting in the environment around the area.

What I found most interesting was that their aim was “We wanted everything to look as real as possible” that all the props in the game were actually made, used real people for the characters and even the monsters. It isn’t often seen at all for games to have to audition real people to actually be actors, they took photos of everyone in their character designs at every angle; aiming to make the 3D models to look as real as possible “You lose all the details, like imperfections of the skin...” “We wanted it as real as possible” I’d never really thought of actually using real people in the games design process, assuming that it left little room for a variety of design ideas.

It was pretty much like treating it as a CG film, they recorded every little facial expression for the people. Even motion capture was used; more impressing was that they used it for the monsters. “Used dancers for their movement...” “...able to achieve movements not normally seen.”

Along with the characters the project siren team went out to the mountains and mountain villages in Japan “took our favourite SLR cameras..” Taking well over 50,000 photos for reference, which as many as it may seem is probably average for game development.

The idea for the monsters designs came straight from insects “insects usually seen as disturbing...”; one of the lead artists managed to find a silkworm and study it for both its appearance and habits.

The opening cutscene for Blood curse,  was the only live action scene in the whole game; they rented a location for the filming, which took all night to film. “...lots of retakes.” As interesting as it is to use real cutscenes and so forth there was the problem of the weather and the fact that some of the lighting wasn’t quite right hence a mass of re-takes.

http://gamesweasel.com/blog/platforms/ps3/siren-blood-curse-review/

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/review-siren-blood-curse-ep-4-12

http://www.thaibiohazard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=9121

Generation change of games

Over the recent years with the Xbox360 and PS3 being about it seems to have become apparent that in terms of game play the length of games have become considerably shorter since the release of the new-gen gaming systems; I’d imagine that the massive improvement in graphics compromises the lengthiness of the game, possibly?  Or have some games become easier for players?

Not meaning to say that all recent games are now too short; but I remember when I was younger, the amount of time that was spent plying just the one game. For example the first long winded game I had seen was the original ‘Tomb Raider’ game, watching my grandparents spend a year to actually complete it and with help too; even it still prove a challenge to beat. 

However with the more recent ‘Tomb Raider’ game; ‘Underworld’ there are a lot of a factors that make the game easier for the player for instance the items glow, making them more obvious to notice, or the tutorials on the first few levels (a tutorial was available in the original game- ‘Lara’s home’ level; but was entirely optional.) The length of the game is noticeably shorter though the length could be strongly by the gamer themselves and the difficulty of the overall game.

Here though there is an almighty difference in the dynamics of fighting, as unbelieveable as it is to see Lara kick a tiger in the face. I do still prefer the simple original style.

However, saying that; length of the game, depending on the genre may not need to be such a strong feature, like arcade games; but to make up for it there usually need to be some re-playability value to it, which is another thing that seems to be lacking as of late.

Play testing- Descision making

‘Siren Blood Curse’ PS3, Japan Studio.

‘Siren’ was chosen as it involves a lot of thinking you way around the levels as opposed to straight forward side scrollers

Over the span of 2-3 short missions 104 decisions were counted. Some were deciding to hide away or face the enemy, pausing, looking at the map, picking weapons, turning the torch on and off, yelling even deciding to put the disc in the gaming system... etc.

 However we caught onto something interesting during game play; ‘Every time you press a button you making a decision’. If that case is true then the tally made would be considerably higher then wouldn’t it? You are deciding everything that character will do, what your preferences are on the menu; the list seems to be nigh on endless.