Proprioception! Yes.

And now a spot on excerpt from Clive Thompson's Games without Frontiers, read the article here.

Clive:

Why does this game get its hooks into my brain so effectively? Why does it feel so much more visceral?

I think it's because Mirror's Edge is the first game to hack your proprioception.

That's a fancy word for your body's sense of its own physicality — its "map" of itself. Proprioception is how you know where your various body parts are — and what they're doing — even when you're not looking at them. It's why you can pass a baseball from one hand to another behind your back; it's how you can climb stairs without looking down at your feet.

Most first-person shooters do not create any sense of proprioception. You may be looking out the eyes of your character, but you don't have a good sense of the dimensions of the rest of your virtual body — the size and stride of your legs, the radius of your arms. At most, you can see your arms carrying your rifle out in front of you. But otherwise, the designers treat your body as if it were just a big, refrigerator-size box.


Mirror's Edge, in contrast, does something very subtle, but very radical. It lets you see other parts of your body in motion...

When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you're vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you're looking at your thighs as the world spins around you...

My Thoughts:

I could not agree more that the game activates, or at least messes with one's sense of proprioception. Two nights ago I wanted to show the game to some friends, I gleefully demoed it for them using my HD projector (6 foot picture). After about five minutes I paused and asked if anyone else wanted a go. Alas they all looked as though they were about to vomit (likely for the same reasons Clive felt sick). I however was fine. They all passed on playing, and asked if I would turn it off. The following night I played for at least 2 hours straight without any motion sickness. Towards the end of my session I could feel my concentration slipping, my moves were getting sloppy, it was time to give it a rest. I kept playing though, for about another 10 minutes, at which point I did experience the aforementioned wave of nausea. I'm I'm wondering is whether there is a link.

Could it be that a high level of concentration, and the suspension of disbelief required to put yourself in Faith's little red shoes, counteracts the disembodied feeling the game imparts on passive watchers and possibly less easily engaged players? When I am playing does my body believe that what I see is actually happening? Is it weird that I close my eyes each time I fall from a building, closing my senese to the experience of death?

Man, I love where games are heading, proprioception and all...

Read the rest of
Proprioception! Yes. »

Your Super Mutant Crushed my Moral Compass

I recently stepped outside my own virtual house and realized there are a lot of people writing about video games out there. I've really enjoyed Leigh Alexander's blog and her recent posts of Fallout 3.

Rabies vaccine anyone?


I haven't played Fallout 3 (or Fo3 as I've learned to refer to it as) for a few nights now. The after- shocks of my experience are still fresh in my head, and I think I know why. F03 leaves such a distinct resonance in one's consciousness is because it is as much about moral anarchy as it is about the post apocalypse. Despite our youthful mild anti-establishment tendencies I think most of us cling to the notion of a predictable world.


Even amoral video games (where violence is the only rule) are still predictable. An alien in Gears of War is never going to thank you for not shooting first (at least not yet). There are very few games that don't offer a solid moral framework, either a positive or negative one. Even the most crude FPS, take Duke Nukem for example, offers a sense of moral direction "I'm gonna get those bastards for shooting up my ride". Fo3 isn't predictable like this, even in the case of super-mutants (generally amoral killers) there are exceptions to the rule (named Fawkes).

Like Leigh, it took me a few hours to get out of the vault. I was paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision and ending up ruining my game. I obsessed over every action, every decision. I very quickly developed a rigid notion of who my character was, and what she would or wouldn't do. Once I was out in the Capitol Wasteland, even though I had decided to be 'good', I found myself trespassing, stealing, and starting fights resulting in murder. For a while I would reload my game each time I 'screwed up'. I slowly realized the moral unpredictability of the game made playing consistently (either as a good or evil character) very hard. More than any game I've played Fo3 creates a sense of cognitive dissonance, where as the player you find yourself at odds with yourself as a character. It's a very strong feeling to have, as though in a rage you slugged your best friend. I think this is where Fo3 succeeds so well: the feelings of cognitive dissonance it engenders resonate perfectly with the virtual world it presents. In truth there isn't any possible way to 'screw up' the game, simply because there is a complete lack of an established moral framework, just like a real post-apocalyptic wasteland.

My advice? Stop thinking it over, and play like you've got nothing to lose. I think that's what the vault dweller would do.

Read the rest of
Your Super Mutant Crushed my Moral Compass »

Get Yours Now

As Real as Your Life DVDs now on sale here in the All Games store.



Rock.

Read the rest of
Get Yours Now »

Rachmaninoff's Edge

A few days ago I downloaded the Mirror's Edge demo on my PS3 - I had been looking forward to seeing what the game actually played like after watching the trailer months before. I was instantly attracted to what looked like a very 'in body' experience, where the physicality of movement is communicated well. This is a rare feat even in current gen games.


It requires a precise blend of graphic, audio and camera work. Gears is one of the only recent games I can think of that hit the mark in this regard. The idea of capturing the same sense in a first person perspective could theoretically take the perceived physical intensity even further. As soon as I started the demo I knew I would like it. The controls were intuitive and before I knew it, I had forgotten the controller all together. Apart from a couple of sequences that required repeated attempts to complete, I flew through the demo with an intoxicating level of grace.

I immediately wanted Mel, my girlfriend, to try the game. She's a former athlete, a definite kinesthetic / visual person and despite her lack of experience with video games, I imagined her taking to Mirror's Edge with nearly the same ease I did. It seemed to intuitive to me. I finally got her in front of the game. Like any good supervisor in the QA department I did my best to keep my mouth shut, and supress my impulse to hit the (X) button for her as she sat passively waiting for the instructions to advance themselves.

The results were not what I expected. Just the act of looking around and walking using the two analog sticks on the PS3 controller took her a few minutes to get straight. She's just not used to the interface, which I personally sometimes forget exsists at all. In the end she got the hang of it, but after about 15 minutes of struggle we decided to can it and watch a movie.

This test made me realize how much overlap there is between games in terms of control schema - I knew exactly how Mirror's Edge would operate before playing the game. And when the game says, hit R1 to punch, I don't have to think about my fingers, I just think 'R1'.

Though I lack any substantial musical talent, I presume it is something like playing a musical insturment. When I play piano, I have to count out the scale to find the next key. By reading music I can theoretically play Rachmaninoff, but it would be at an absolute zero pace and end in total frustration. Mel's lack of familiarity with the game controller resulted in a similar outcome. I very much take for granted my baseline facility with games. Of course there is always a learning curve for each new game, but once you know the instrument and genres of music, playing is a whole lot more fun.

Read the rest of
Rachmaninoff's Edge »

Three Weeks in the Wasteland

So there is a reason for my lag in posts. Two days after my last post a friend gave me Fallout for my birthday. Not the fancy new version from Bethesda, the original from 1997, which despite my claims as a hardcore gamer I had never actually played. For those of you familiar with the game it's no surprise I quickly become obsessed with getting my own set of power armor. It had been a while since I had picked up an older game and actually got into it without my contemporary standards of graphics and audio getting in the way. It's a testament to how engrossing the process of sculpting a virtual identity is, and how much fun having experiences as your creation can be. I was totally hooked, even after getting my power armor at a premature level 9 character.

The Brotherhood of Steel wants you!

The game succeeds on a so many levels and should serve as a model for anyone trying to design a virtual world that feels both fantastic and believable at the same time. The balance of consistency and variety makes the game both rewarding and challenging. Establishing this sort of flow in an RPG, let alone in a turn-based rpg is an impressive feat. If you haven't played it, it's worth experiencing simply to see how much the design has informed later games. I wound up playing until I beat the game (probably a total of 20 hours spent). I know I didn't explore the whole world, or even take on the majority of side quests, but I played enough though to feel like a genuine fan of the game by the time my copy of Fallout 3 arrived via post...

I was a big sucker for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - despite some short comings in animation and NPC AI the game was genuinely immersive, and proved that hanging out in town talking with relatively lame NPCs is actually a lot of fun, and definitely less taxing than killing orcs or skeleton warlords . When I found out that Bethesda had taken on Fallout 3, I realized how much potential bridging the best elements of the Fallout universe with Bethesda's RPG model and the Gamebryo engine they employ.


The resulting game is exactly that a swirly mix of an Oblivion style world (expansive, dangerous, full of underground dungeons and fun loving towns) and the aesthetic slant of Fallout (1950's paranoia satire, turn based combat, post nuclear wasteland). I'll write a full review when I finish the game of course. For now I'll close with this thought. If you want a quick education in the history of the industry, the Fallout series showcases the evolution video games have undergone in the past decade. More importantly though, the series shows the that underlying design elements, that make an RPG engaging, haven't fundamentally changed. At the heart of both these games is the process of building a virtual self through design and through action.

Read the rest of
Three Weeks in the Wasteland »