Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 are illuminating comparison cases. They are AAA games, came out within a week of each other, and are large open-world games where the player has a high degree of ownership. They have very different play styles (one a run-then-gun shooter, the other an action-RPG with the needle pointing towards RPG), and, most interesting from my perspective, very different authoring styles.

Around the time of the inauguration, my friend Benji and I were talking about forms of government, and it got me thinking about government from a game design perspective. Many of the ideas contained here came from him. (He works on MMOs, and spends a lot more time than I do thinking about how people interact in large groups.)

If you really think about it, the Founding Fathers were, in many respects, game designers. They were creating a complex system of interactions, hoping to make the system as balanced as possible, ensuring less powerful players (states) were able to have as much fun (power) as the bigger ones, and so on. Most interestingly, they had to take human nature into account, anticipating loopholes and exploits. At the same time they wanted the system to allow for a great deal of expression and user-generated content (new laws) without the chaos that would come from everyone having a direct say. The Constitution reads like the rules of a board game — spelling out exceptions and conditions for interpretation, and very carefully constraining the problem space.

The bottom line is that when the time comes to once again create a new system of government, I think it should be a group of game designers (in particular, a group of MMO designers), rather than (or in addition to) a group of lawyers. I can imagine the following kind of discussion:

As I play through Far Cry 2 (not as much as I would like — need to find more time to explore its systems and environment), I’m struck by the problems of communication to the player and how best to flag a game’s affordances in a way that is understandable but not immersion-breaking.

Far Cry 2 has gotten a mixed reception so far¹, but “mixed” isn’t really the right way to put it. Nobody seems sure what to make of this game, and I think I’ve stumbled on what makes it so disjointed (for me anyway): the low-level experience is immensely rewarding, but the high-level one feels a bit empty.

I strongly dislike the trend of labeling even the most minor shortcomings as FAIL or EPIC FAIL. This dislike is partially influenced by the distaste I find in rushing to judge something as a failure and otherwise derived from the poor grammatical execution of making a verb into a noun. So I avoided the temptation to title this post in such a fashion.

But I definitely thought of it.

Right, so I was going to post my gaming thoughts here, starting with GDC 2k8 reactions. I didn’t, mostly because I kept planning this über post in my head and, like with so many creative tasks, the longer it got put off the bigger it seemed until I stand here nearly a year after my last post with nothing to show for it but shame.

So my new resolution is to write at least one post per week, regardless of length. Let’s see if I can stick to that one, eh? (I will now post a few things in rapid succession to make up for the first several weeks of this year in which I posted nothing. I’ve had them in the tank for a while.)

I’ve always loved karaoke, but was disappointed with singing games because they seemed overly focused on precision, thus missing out on the glorious looseness of a live performance. It could also be that I found it very difficult to get my friends to gather around and sing into a video game. Rock Band, at least, has been a big help with the latter issue, and has also let discover the wonders of drums. Extraordinary. But I digress.

My team and I play Rock Band fairly regularly at work — that is, we come in on weekends since there are conveniently large rooms and no neighbors to bother at our office. Occasionally we have guests come by — friends of the team who want to see what this game is is all about. In deference to our guests, we typically start up with some of the easier songs, which means I’ve gotten very good at singing “Say It Ain’t So.” (Or more precisely: I’ve gotten very experienced at singing “Say It Ain’t So.”)

Which brings me back to karaoke. Rock Band contains a number of songs that were previous karaoke standards for me. “Say It Ain’t So” is a song to do after screwing up a previous song, to get the audience back on your side. “Creep” is good if you’re feeling a bit emo and don’t want to push your voice. Et cetera. Unfortunately, Rock Band, especially at the higher levels, demands a certain amount of conformance in how you want to sing the song. It makes sense, since I’m not sure how else you would judge a vocal performance, but I very much missed the ability to improvise a bit or, with Weezer, sing along with the guitar part.

Recently, I went out to a local watering hole that is known for being a quality karaoke venue in Los Angeles. My friends and I were celebrating the Giants’ victory in the Super Bowl, and after the requisite “We Are The Champions,” I signed up to sing “Say It Ain’t So.” I had already nearly blown out my voice screaming at the television, and wanted to do a song I knew cold.

It wasn’t until I had the microphone in my hand that I realized those Rock Band sessions had been excellent practice for a live performance. I knew the structured lines of the song so well that I actually felt more free in singing it. I could go off on my own for a little bit with the confidence that I could find my way back. It was like someone had taken the training wheels off my bike, and I could now go faster and turn more sharply. The audience ate it up.

Most importantly, I could sing along with the guitar part that comes right after the bridge. Which is really the whole point of the song.

It reminded me of those years I spent doing theatre — how it would take weeks for the actors to get off-book, and only then could the real work begin. I’ve known all the words to that song since high-school, but didn’t really know it until I had been forced to match Rivers’s performance note-for-note multiple times over the course of several weeks. This also highlights one of the biggest problems I’ve had with music games, dating back to Parrapa the Rapper and its ilk¹: They don’t train you to be a musician; they train you to be a repetition monkey. You don’t get the glorious feeling of creating something live, you’re just re-creating².

But it sure makes decent practice for the real thing.

¹ To be fair, I adore Parrapa the Rapper.

² Re-creation —> recreation. This is an etymology I must investigate further.