A Future of Polygonal Friends: Final Comments

This piece is split into three parts (Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here), and was written for the Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table. 

Thanks for taking the time to read 'A Future of Polygonal Friends'!

 

This was actually an idea I'd had for a long long time, inspired by an article I read in EDGE magazine, talking about AI in games. My initial angle was actually to talk about how we can design better and more empathic NPCs on the whole, but when I saw Critical Distance's Blogs of the Round Table request ('Blogger Jam' would be a way better title, no need to thank me), I set out to take my article concept out of the realm of Notepad musings, and into a properly published format.

And wow. This essay is way too long, hardly ideal for putting on the web. But I felt that to explore the idea in a way that doesn't make people frantically sprint after my own leaps in logic, the first half was necessary. Plus, since this is written with other media bloggers in mind, hopefully those that stumble across this will make it to the end (clearly you have, or you wouldn't be reading this!)

Honestly, I struggled a little reworking this to fit the theme in a way I felt was complete. Writing about AI and good storytelling are both simple enough, but how do you link the two without sounding like an idiot, vague, or a vague idiot? Then I realised the potential was in AI characters telling their own story separate to that of the protagonist's, intersecting when and where the player wants, and there being consequences for those decisions. Story telling and character design need not act at odds to developing AI, but can work with it.

Forgive the large number of Non-AI examples used in the first half; I feel like examples of good design and dialogue without an emphasis on AI would be an important contrast to AI-based solutions. I won't apologise for making fun of Tropers, Power Ranger fans and Katawa Shoujo fans though; y'all are just asking for it.

A Future of Polygonal Friends: AI & Emotional Attachment (Part 2)

This piece is split into three parts (Part 1 is here, Final Comments are here), and was written for the Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table. 

In the previous part, we covered the following:

• Great video game stories need a varied cast.
  • But games often have identikit characters that only feel superficially unique.
• To give characters depth, they need unique and varied dialogue.
  • But dialogue reacting to context is very uncommon.
  • Characters that say little or repeat often are very jarring.
  • Dialogue trees are a possible solution, but have limitations.

Those issues can be solved with some experienced and skilful writing, but there’s a way to both alleviate those flaws, and progress in interesting directions – the inclusion of AI.

What does AI entail? 

Artificial Intelligence is essentially a system of search engines. Put that way it’s not particularly glamorous, but that’s the truth. Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950s, and has been the target of obsession by both engineers and science fiction writers of varying quality.

While a lot of our modern technology already has a measure of AI to make our lives easier (even the Auto-Correct on your phone is an AI), we romanticise the idea of social, humanised machines that can be our best friend – or cruellest enemy. And autonomously at that. This is definitely relevant for video games – any character action that’s designed to happen in a way out of the player’s control – however slight – is the result of AI programming.

Narrative writing and AI are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s a reasonable point of contention – “How can something not controlled by the player be part of the story?” Most games keep story and gameplay as separate concepts – since if the story is places out of the players hands, there’s the chance that they could actually miss out on the story – a scary thought. However, with a little experimentation, and some advances in how we can program and utilise AI, we can blur the line into something unique.

What makes ‘em tick: AI and interaction

NPCs don’t mean a whole lot if the player can’t interact with them. In the vast majority of games, this details ways to fight or kill them. Not a whole lot of design is required to make a to-be-killed NPC 'convincing', as long as their demise is satisfying enough - but for NPCs that exist outside of a need to be mowed-down, the bar is suddenly set a lot higher for responses to player input. Hell, even major names in the games design industry are starting to recognise how important, yet how undervalued NPC AI is.

This is largely down to empathic reasons. We as humans intrinsically know how rational people react to certain situations. If we help someone they're grateful, if we tell a funny joke they laugh, etc. So, when a character - especially an NPC in a game with a narrative focus - behaves in a way that isn't rational human behaviour, it's jarring. When used intentionally it can create an effective unsettling mood; but often occurrences are unintentional, and it breaks whatever 'immersion' the player might be having with the setting.

The problems I’ve brought up in the previous part are closely related to this jarring feeling. Homogeneous characters don’t feel convincing when we know how people can vary so much in real life. Characters with unchanging disposition feel like the Terminator (with maybe fewer homicidal tendencies), and ones with unchanging dialogue are just that much more two-dimensional.

AI can definitely be handled badly. 2005's Façade was a breakthrough in AI and interactive drama, but its open-endedness was its downfall (to ignore the bare bones graphical presentation). Harassing the confused AI became something of a Youtube fad.

AI and Character Design 

Building on the concepts brought up before, this matters to character design diversity since people with different backgrounds are obviously going to think differently. It’s one thing to have a game character act uniquely within the plot, but when it comes to general gameplay, they often behave just like any other ally or enemy. It’s common in RPGs where you can give instructions to AI allies that different allies will act in the same way if given the same instruction (discounting things like different equipment load outs).

The Sims is the all-encompassing example about AI’s effect on character design. Any given character in the game is a bundle of personality traits and quirks, which manifest themselves in any action a Sim will take, even in subtle ways. The Sims 3 raises the curtain a little on how this process works – the player can select five specific personality traits when making a Sim, so the effects of these choices are more obvious. And with the 63 different Traits to choose from (and that's not including the expansions!), you’ll be hard pressed to get two Sims alike by chance.

Charismatic, Dislikes Children, Neurotic, Perceptive, Schmoozer. Me in a nutshell, really.

Applying this to characters out of the player’s hands is definitely an interesting direction to go down. Party members that are different in every way, right down to how they deal with a problem would make them so much more distinct. If these personalities were randomised from game-to-game, no two players would have the same experience.

AI and Character Dialogue 

AI matters to dialogue variety because no one maintains a single way of speaking. We change how we talk depending on who we talk to, or just how we’re feeling at the time. It’s jarring in a game to do something that upsets a character, only for them to go right back to a neutral attitude afterwards.

Animal Crossing, while very simple from a technical perspective, tries very hard to use dialogue and AI effectively. There are only 6 different personality ‘types’ in the game, which over 200 possible villagers can use, but you only ever deal with up to 10 of them at a time, masking the potential repetition. There’s an incredible amount of dialogue, tied to the weather, the time of day, if it’s a special holiday, if the villager is happy or sad… the list goes on. They will even talk to each other, and let you eavesdrop.

To create variation within a single conversation, dialogue trees function perfectly fine in a very controlled way, but the content of a dialogue tree doesn’t often change according to any context other than ‘state of the main plotline’. What’s more, dialogue trees only work if the player is present. Gaming narratives are often incredibly solipsistic – nothing can happen if the player isn’t there to witness or directly affect it, and that’s not how a believable world can function.

The Witcher 2 at the very least uses its dialogue trees in a way less transparent to the player, and with some neat consequences. The small, but incredibly important decision to not display whether a dialogue choice is 'good', 'evil' or otherwise tied to a game mechanic (which many games are guilty of) means that the player isn't so easily yanked out of the narrative when making a decision. What you do decide on ends up having further-reaching consequences than just the next line of text, as characters remember how you treated them, and will pass on the word of how much of an asshole you are to their peers.

Taking a cue from Animal Crossing’s book, and having conversation dialogue triggered by the state of the game world, and using Witcher 2's system of making sure your decisions are remembered down the line, will obscure some of the ‘branches’ of the dialogue tree from the player’s view. Guy Hasson put forth a theoretical way of managing dialogue trees that operate through more than just what the player does.

For those that don’t warrant complex dialogue trees, there are still solutions to give them variation. Here, randomisation is the key – Procedurally Generated sentences. What’s that? Well, since sentences (in any language) have a logical structure, having a computer construct unique utterances from word and phrase banks will save you from ever hearing a “Welcome to Cornelia!” more than once. It’s a solution that rules out voice acting (it’s hard to get artificially constructed voice sample utterances sounding convincing without some heavy editing and knowledge of phonetics), but it still has a definite future in RPGs.

AI and the ‘Simultaneous Story’ 

Animal Crossing and The Sims use AI in a way that creates robust characters, but they can act freely in a game with no overarching narrative. This isn’t to say that those games should adhere to a plotline (the spinoff Sims games that do are… tepidly received), but the big ‘future of video game AI’ lies in the combination of the two.

The key to more convincing, immersive worlds is that it doesn’t expressly revolve around you. Other characters doing their own thing independently of you are only the start. If these characters actually acted out their own stories incidental to your actions, it would be an implementation of subplots on a scale that books and movies definitely can’t match.

It’s an old title, but The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a very well-made example of a ‘simultaneous story’. Almost every character in the game has an intricately detailed life and schedule. Thanks to the strict three day timeframe the game takes place in, the NPCs can be given pre-programmed daily schedules, so their lives can unfold out around the player.

This is where the line between story writing and AI crafting is blurred a little. With the technology available at the time, having the characters act uniquely and randomly would be too much for the poor old N64, but by framing the NPC actions around set narratives, the amount of AI coding was a lot less intense, and the player has the ability to visit the same events again and again from different perspectives (as they learn more about the plot as a whole).

The Dead Rising titles all function on an in-game clock, with game events tied to it. Plot events will happily occur without you if you aren’t there to intervene, resulting in missed plotlines to major changes like characters dying. The first Dead Rising was incredibly strict with its time limit, making it nearly impossible to see absolutely everything in one run (you are, after all, a reporter – not a superhero). It's a shame that then, for the most part the survivors you encounter are there to be escorted to safety, and not too much else.

AI and the Visual Novel 

I feel like a side mention should go out to the Visual Novel. As the name suggests, it hugs a lot closer to literary storytelling, and for the most part forego AI in its entirety. Likewise, Point ‘n’ Click Adventure games are the text adventures of yore with a graphical polish. This gives them a lot of flak from consumers and critics – how could a genre survive when, in terms of technology, they are so undemanding?

Interestingly, that may be their strength. They are the Dialogue Tree to the extreme – everything is precisely controlled and scripted. But with that, it also means that there is so much more room to write their plots and characters as carefully as possible. They have no veneer of complex gameplay, and often can’t hide behind flashy graphics. The Ace Attorney games and the Monkey Island series contain some of the most complex characters in gaming, at least in terms of background detail and motivation. If any genre is to go the distance in creating deep and empathic NPCs within a narrative, you bet it’ll be a Visual Novel or an Adventure Game.

That, however, doesn’t mean that AI can’t make them more robust experiences. What the characters do when the player isn’t talking to them is just as important as the face-to-face chatting. Christine Love proved that with the background-running social networking in ‘don’t take it personally babe, it just ain’t your story’. Dating Sims corner the market on major characters that interact with the player in ways other than dialogue trees (meaning statistically, not carnally you pervert), but NPCs having a ‘memory’ for what you do and say would be both a lot more involved, and avoids simplifying the nature of relationships to “Choose dialogue option B”.

The future of AI

So what's happening next in the world of video game AI? Well, if you have the free time, take a look at Prom Week, a cute flash game that takes up the idea of generated conversations, and lets you experiment with them, reminiscent of The Sims, but with actual dialogue. Designed by Mike Treanor and a small crew of game designers from Santa Cruz university, it constructs sentences to feel unique, based on context, and how interacting characters feel about each other. The game challenges you to set up the characters to certain goals, but it's still relatively easy to orchestrate the right outcomes since the behaviour feels so genuine.

Prom Week is about its AI system through and through, but you only need aspects of its concept to bring an old game somewhere new. Imagine if LA Noire remembered the reputation you made for yourself; carrying out your investigations kindly, with ruthless efficiency, or like an Actual Cop.

The biggest AI breakthroughs are going to take a long time, and it might take even longer to use them to craft a game world that tells a really great story. A game where the subplots both operate independently of the player, but are also organically reflecting the player choices is a risky, big budget venture. And NPC that truly feels like a person when held up to the cold harsh light of gameplay may never even happen. But I remain hopeful. One day then, my enjoyment of video game stories won’t feel so sordid.

Read on to Final Comments.

A Future of Polygonal Friends: AI & Emotional Attachment (Part 1)

This piece is split into three parts (Part 2 is here, Final Comments are here), and was written for the Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table. 

Introduction

Some people read Playboy for the ‘articles’. Some people watch films for the celebrity roles. I play games for the story writing and characters. It’s my dirty secret.

The quality of script writing in games can barely even scratch the quality of what would constitute a ‘good’ film or novel, but I have a major soft spot for when a game wants to spin me a fable, or endear me to characters. Because writing a decent script for a game is apparently so damn hard, the industry focus is elsewhere; AAA titles push heavily for graphical fidelity and larger worlds to explore.

I feel that the next big step for games is improving how they tell a story – and that’s not just a plea for the industry to wean me off my addiction to charmingly ineffectual narratives. There are so many ways to go about stepping up the storytelling in games, critics could write (or argue) about it for months, but here I’m going to focus on character-driven storytelling.

To support a great character-driven narrative, you'll need... well, great characters. But if the only properly fleshed-out character is the protagonist, a player will have a hard time getting emotionally invested. While a well-written character in a story or a film can feel believable just by just watching them, video games are an interactive medium. We can prod a character, and we watch how they react with scrutiny.

In those cases, traditional writing can only take you so far – it’s the Artificial Intelligence of a game character that breathes more life into them.

But before I talk about what we can do with AI, there are some key topics aspects to cover first, more to do with writing skill than technical – and will use some examples from games where AI isn't a factor. It will also bring up potential writing and design problems that we'll come back to in the second part. All in good time.

Variety is the spice: Character design of the cast

It's very easy to formulate a cast of characters for any video game setting. The number of RPG characters with almost predestined personalities to fit in with their profession; the hardened crew of soldiers in any FPS (don't forget the token black one!); the full rainbow of 'sexy' feminine personalities the hero can bump uglies with. When you’re trying to get the character design process out of the way so other aspects can we worked on (which is a terrible idea by the way, but it definitely does happen), falling back on a familiar pattern to construct a cast is a tempting idea.

The laziest pattern is what I like to call 'Super Sentai casting'. Did you ever watch Power Rangers as a kid? Or maybe you're an adult child and are still watching it – whichever. In every series they have a cast of around five, and their characters are the result of some kind of MadLibs-by-committee, something like this:

___ is one of the ___ youths with attitude, representing the colour ___ and the legendary ___. Their general passion is ___, and they're the ___ of the group.

Pretty ridiculous. What's more ridiculous is that video games, even ones that are meant to be heavily character-focused, still write their cast like this. Take Katawa Shoujo (lit. ‘Cripple Girls’):

___ is one of the students at a school for the disabled. She suffers from ___ but wants to ___ in spite of this. Her ___ reveals her 'true beauty', and you help her with ___ so you can eventually get up in dem guts.

What these MadLibs designs lead to is a homogeneous cast. Everyone being of the same demographic leads to pigeonholed personality traits to set them apart. (The Japanese Otaku culture has a huge number of words to describe these personality tropes).

Even otherwise good games can fall victim to it. Persona 4’s main cast is all very similar in age, background, and role in the story – though that’s partially down to thematic reasons, and they are instead humanised by putting their insecurities at the forefront. ‘Tough, but Kind-on-the-inside’ Kanji isn’t an especially complex character, but the struggles he has with his sexuality are very human and identifiable.

It means that in the end, you’re asking people to empathise with an idea; a cluster of memes and implicated cues, rather than an honest attempt at making something human. Chicken Nuggets compared to an actual chicken. This works out okay in some situations – and for some people – but some stories just cannot be told effectively with a hollow or homogeneous cast.
 

The very best game casts have characters from all walks of life, so not only are they unique physically, but their experiences and world views are also in contrast. It can even help improve games that are otherwise lacking.
 

For example, take Lux-Pain for the DS. A Visual Novel, it wasn’t incredibly well-received due to haphazard mechanics ideas that don’t go anywhere, the cheesy premise of a high school-aged secret agent investigating mysterious goings on, and an absolutely god awful English translation. And yet, its wide and varied cast gave it some serious charm. You encounter students, teachers, shop keepers, even television personalities – and underneath the… unfortunate dialogue, there’s some simple but passionate backstory and character motivation.
 

Shunichi Inagaki is just your average nightclub owner – he's not even connected to the mystery Lux-Pain revolves around. But he's still appears, going about his daily business. As you talk to him, you find out about his family, his relationships with other members of the cast – and if you take the time to read the dossier files that slowly fill in as you play, he's rather ham-fistedly implied to be gay. Appreciated, though not artful. As friendly and relaxed as he is, not even Shunichi manages to escape the bad translation.
 

The translation team was apparently a group of around 10 in India. It shows.

Bioware’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect series get huge fan followings for their cast alone. In both the Grey Wardens and your interstellar crew, you are partnered with casts so diverse, they aren’t even all human. On a level, that feels like a slightly cheap way of adding cast diversity, but it does give scope to including perspectives that can’t be (safely) attributed to human culture.
 

The lack of diversity in video game casts is very much a social problem, and game designers limit themselves – or try to diversify and fail – for a few reasons. Maybe they’re not confident in writing characters of a demographic different to themselves. Maybe they don’t have the time and resources to design complicated casts (in which case they should probably manage their budget better). More likely, they’re fearful of what might happen if they don’t pander to the less-than-liberal consumer base that aren’t interested in characters that don’t fulfil their power- or sexual-fantasies. Or the TV Tropes crowd who can only process media that’s heavily compartmentalised.
 

The quality and diversity of a cast is only going to change significantly when social attitudes change, and the ETA relies heavily on your optimism.
 

Words, words, words (and actions): Dialogue style and variation
 

A problem that affects all media is dialogue diversity – it’s not uncommon to have a work where all the characters speak in a manner very similar to that of the writer. The writer knows how they sound, and so by writing in their own ‘voice’ as it were, it’s easy to write in a way that’s (superficially) convincing. But when too many characters sound similar, the suspension of disbelief falls apart, and no one sounds convincing.
 

In practice, this only really affects games without voice acting – with the dialogue voiced, characters will naturally vary linguistically (unless all characters are voiced by the same actor, but that would just be silly). So in a way, technological progress in game design has solved this one. But there are obviously still instances where games can’t afford – or just don’t need – voice acting, so bearing this in mind is still important. 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors has a wonderfully varied cast – and a very good story in general – but due to the game’s philosophical (and pseudoscientific) themes, all the characters know a whole lot about prosopagnosia or Ice-9 for reasons not always explained, and sound very similar when discussing it.
 

Who would think that this lady had just explained 5 minutes worth of 'morphic resonance'?

Furthermore, it’s not just how a character speaks, but how often. It’s difficult to love a character who doesn’t communicate with you very often (not that it stops fans from writing smutty fanfiction about them, but still). ‘Communication’ need not require dialogue (an obligatory mention to Ico and Journey here), but even then, a limited range of expressions can leave conversations one-sided, and characters feeling flat.
 

A game could have a wide range of NPCs, and have them be story relevant, but if they say precious little, or worse, are prone to repeating the same thing often, then it drags you out of the experience; the grand play ruined by a cast member repeatedly yelling about mud crabs.
 

Catherine handles dialogue incredibly well. It has a lot of dialogue with characters that are incidental to the overall plot, and they continually change what they have to say over the course of the game. Obviously they have a limit, but the game sidesteps a situation where the player unintentionally causes dialogue to repeat by marking when a character has said all the useful information they have to offer.
 

Limited or repetitive dialogue is eased in many modern games by having dialogue trees in major conversations (which has definite flaws; I’ll elaborate in the second part). At the very least it ensures that the major characters don’t just exist to spout the minimum of dialogue to push the plot along, but it would be a total failure of pacing to employ this with every single character in a game, along with taking way too much effort to implement.

Okay, that covers the ground work. In the second part, I’ll be talking about AI as a concept, how it relates to the above, and where we can go from here.

Read on to Part 2.

Tales of the Abyss (3DS)

This review can also be found at The Yorker.

Namco Bandai are notoriously bad at releasing their titles in Europe. Localisations can be a lengthy and expensive process, but often many EU releases of all but the biggest titles are just the US release reworked to run on PAL systems. Yet inexplicably, when it comes to titles that could remotely be considered 'niche' - Japanese RPGs especially - a European release seems rarely on the cards.

The best example of this for Namco Bandai would be the original release of Tales of the Abyss on the PS2, back in 2006. It got a release in the US, and widely positive reviews, but Europe never saw it. 6 years later, they've decided to re-release it on the 3DS under their own publishing, and this release was apparently worthy of seeing our shores. But even though that the official release date was back in November 2011, very few copies were printed. it's only in the last 3 months that enough copies are printed that it's reasonable to obtain a copy.

So, a little context on the series itself. The Tales Of games have been around since the SNES, all of them solidly made Action RPGs, set in vaguely-but-not-significantly related worlds.

Tales of the Abyss is specifically set in the land of Aulderant, where magic and monsters reign supreme, two major kingdoms are in conflict, there is the threat of an all out war on the horizon and-- okay, none of the setting is particularly engaging; all that needs to be known is that Fantasy Politics are a major theme.

You play as Luke fon Fabre, son of the Duke of Lanvaldear. You are also a selfish, spoiled, and arrogant manchild. Due to your political importance you have not left the castle for the last 8 years; so a co-incidental accident that teleports you far from your estate is your first true breath of fresh air.

Likewise, the character role is refreshing. With the majority of Japanese RPG releases being rather derivative in terms of setting and character design; a protagonist so carefully designed to make the player loathe him is an interesting change from the norm. Fortunately, while he's a big focus for the main plot, you're not required to play as him in battle.

Battles strongly remind me of old arcade beat-em-ups, there's an emphasis on setting up combos with your team mates, dodging the bigger telegraphed attacks, and knowing the limited abilities of your character inside out. And since Tales of the Abyss is an RPG, if that all sounds like too much work for you, you can get enough levels to steamroller anything in your path.

Aesthetically, Tales of the Abyss is quite pretty. The models are clean and colourful, the voice acting is well performed (but with English-only voice acting, if that matters to you at all), and the music is composed by JRPG music veteran Motoi Sakuraba. Where the problems lie is in whether you have played any of the recent Tales Of titles before. While they all tell their own stories, they are all mechanically extremely similar, and aesthetically identical, right down to the music.

Whether this is a problem for you as a player largely depends on how you like to consume your media. If you're looking for a unique experience, Tales of the Abyss definitely does not provide that. If you own another Tales Of game, you own this one. However, it's still a lengthy and robust RPG for your 3DS, and if you can get a hold of a copy, it'll breathe at least 60 hours more life into your handheld.

Gym Class Heroes - The Papercut Chronicles II

This review can also be found at The Yorker.

I caught Gym Class Heroes with their second album, As Cruel as School Children, and it worked out well for my 15 year old self. It took a stance just on the fringe of what ANGSTY TEENS would listen to, kept a cool mix of rap and rock (because who didn't have that foolish dichotomy in high school?), and did a neat job of being relevant - though I can only chuckle at the references to My Space in 'New Friend Request'.

©Waner Brothers, Fueled by Ramen

Though since then, while Gym Class Heroes haven't exactly gotten worse, the image they portray has changed. The Papercut Chronicles II is in direct reference to their first album in 2005; but I don't quite feel like that callback is apt, this is the lead vocalist Travis fitting into his mainstream role.

Things start out strong - skipping over the intro track, 'Martyrial Girl$' has a guitar and drumline aggressiveness and tension that reminds me of the sound direction for No More Heroes; punchy with a bit of grit, but not about to drive off those who wouldn't be a fan of something too thrash-y.

The problem starts for me with the track, immediately following, 'Life Goes On'. All sense of aggressiveness is lost, and it all goes in the direction of a love ballad - but with none of the funkiness, they managed to give that concept in the past. Even worse is that the style is pretty much repeated with a later track in 'Ass Back Home, which feels incredibly weak.

Speaking of which, how did you feel about Maroon 5's 'Moves Like Jagger'? Did it make you cringe and despair like me? If so then you'll absolutely love 'Stereo Hearts', which features Adam Levine's once reasonable, but now grating crooning. The common theme between these three songs is the unnecessary guest artist. They all feel compromising, and the strength of these songs are considerably weakened as a result.

Indeed, 'Solo Discotheque' and 'Holy Horses**t, Batman!' are much closer to what I like about Gym Class Heroes, with 'Holy' being an amusing little ditty about scepticism over religion. Not exactly profound, but the funky bridge it has makes up for that.

'Lazarus, Ze Gitan' is the most hip-hop influenced, but the subject matter leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's another one of those songs where the male singer is all jaded about relationships, because no one's ever good enough for them (but they're so lonely, damn it!). That, coupled with the previous track's Nil-Nil-Draw being a pouty break-up song ("But you're too dumb to understand; I could have any girl," says the chorus) makes Travis sound like a big jerk. And who knows, he may well be.

It's cliché to say that a new album has none of the flavour that you once loved in a previous work, but I don't know what else to say here. While I will come back to 'Martyrial Girl$', my love for Gym Class Heroes has remained firmly in 2006.

Chiddy Bang - Breakfast

This review can also be found at The Yorker (whoops, I overlooked mirroring this one...)

It's been a while since I listened to an album with honestly interesting sampling. One of the things I love about hip-hop (and music inspired by such) is beat-making in original ways. A lot of instrumental hip-hop goes heavy on the piano and brass samples, which are excellent, though not as common as it used to be.

©Regal

Thankfully, Chiddy Bang's Breakfast, the duo's first full album after a mixtape in 2010, has funky and creative beats from the start. The intro is a cute little soundscape with piano backing that reminds me strongly of Nicolay's work. But that's contrasted hard with 'Breakfast', the punchiest discussion of a mealtime you'll ever hear with booming 808s and a solid demonstration of Chiddy's rap skills - clear and rhythmic without resorting to painful half-rhymes or hashtag rapping.

Beat-wise, 'Handclaps & Guitars' is what is says on the tin, with this weird Owl City-ish chorus, and 'Mind Your Manners' has an odd but catch voice sample from Icona Pop's 'Manners' (which may prove grating for some) and a sweet-as switch in the beat at 1:43.

'Ray Charles' was one of the Singles for this album; definitely a solid choice. It might be a bit of an unfortunate choice for Chiddy to compare himself to the famous jazz pianist based around just his shades-wearing habits and weed consumption - but the track as a whole sticks to its amusing and silly theme.

'Does She Love Me?' has its groove set firmly in a romantic sentiment from its opening bar, and it's by far my favourite track on the album. The the quiet synth chords and the ooohing chorus is an aural dream come true, juxtaposed by lyrics about romantic frustrations, just in case you were tempted to think Chiddy Bang has gone soft.

Things slow down a little after this point. The beat to 'Run it Back' struggles to compete with 'Does She Love Me?', although the chiptune aspects to it interesting (if outclassed by a later track I'll get to). Out 2 Space doesn't do it for me, alas. It's just lacks a catchy element, though the space-y feel is spot on.

There's a seemingly out-of-place Interlude for track 10, but its melody gels with the following track, 'Talking to Myself', which has a solid bassline groove coupled with violin plucks and a light piano, of all things. However, that pales in comparison to the penultimate track, 'Baby Roulette'.

It competes for the accolade of 'best track' with 'Does She Love Me?', losing out just slightly. It's slow, goofy beat is heavily chiptune based, and would find a happy home in an episode of Adventure Time, strangely paired with a rap about avoiding university pregnancy. The chorus cracks me up ("I hope you know that I'm for real / My love is super-sized, ain't no Happy Meal"), and the whole thing just puts a smile on my face. It's a shame then, that it's followed by one of the most boring tracks on the album, '4th Quarter'. It's loud and repetitive, and could have been removed entirely to give Breakfast a way stronger ending.

Chiddy Bang definitely impress with their fun sampling and use of chiptune, and Chiddy's rapping is well-crafted with a neat habit of staying in theme with the track's title. The general content doesn't go much further beyond discussing marijuana and sleeping with pretty ladies; but I can forgive that - not all hip-hop has to be politically inspired, and either way Breakfast is very refreshing. Consume it today.

Patient Zero - Curse and Regret (Promo Material)

I wrote this as promo copy for a musical friend of mine, Patient Zero, the album's fully open to the public now, so go check it out!

http://patientzero.bandcamp.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/artistk

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Many may know Patient Zero from his collaboration with the Internet video group the Yogscast - ‘Dwarf Hole (Diggy Diggy Hole)’ took both YouTube and iTunes by storm. Following on from that great success, and to continue his long line of album releases; Patient Zero’s new album Curse and Regret is hitting iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Spotify this July.

For those not part of the scene, electronica and trance can be intimidating genres. At first blush the sound may be hard and clashing, but Curse and Regret offers some solid tunes that even newcomers to the genre will fit right in with.

To be specific, Curse and Regret is Electronic Body Music (or EBM); think Trance with Industrial sensibilities. However, precise pigeon-holing only gets you so far - Patient Zero takes on the genre from multiple angles and it works for the better; keeping things fresh.

‘Humanity Will Lie’ is a strong start with a solid club vibe, and fun, distorted vocals that are a running theme through the album. There’s a finely-tuned balance between lyrics that exude dark humour, club hype, and just a touch of campness. You may well find yourself singing along with the simple chorus of ‘Raise those Horns’ or the upbeat and poppy verses of ‘The Band Played On’.

For those who want something more experimental, ‘Eins’ goes down the route of a sample-based track (remember DJ Shadow’s Entroducing?), with the cheeky decision to build the vocals out of porn samples and a cut from a sex-negative sermon, for an amusing contrast.

For more down-tempo vibes, there’s ‘Take my Death Away’, with its airy and futuristic vibe; or the piano-based instrumental of ‘The Burden of Distance’ that both work wonderfully as a mellow middle to the album.

Those who have been anticipating a follow-up to ‘Dwarf Hole’ need not hold their breath any longer - ‘Dig It’ brings back samples from the Yogscast for a more punchy feel than its predecessor with a retro video game feel. Your Minecraft sessions need never go silent again.

Curse and Regret will be available from the 20th of June via the aforesaid locations, as well as Last.fm, Google Music Store, Myspace Music, and of course Patient Zero’s Bandcamp site - where his previous albums and singles can also be found. For more information on Patient Zero’s music, as well as news and updates, visit http://doctorzero.tumblr.com/ .

Metric - Synthetica

 This review can be found at The Yorker, here.

I initially found out about Metric though the film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, where they composed one of the many guest songs (the film is, in part, about Canadian indie bands, after all), 'Black Sheep'. I adored this track - it was energetic, but only on the cusp of being aggressive; with seductive vocals by lead Emily Haines, and a chorus that makes you want to air guitar - if you're a cool person like me.

Their 2010 album, Fantasies, was of a very similar sound to 'Black Sheep', and I became a solid a fan of their work. So coming to Synthetica, my expectations were very high, but I was expecting something rather specific. Not to demand that my favourite artists should deliver the same experience with every album, but in a Summer holiday state of mind, an album like Fantasies would be just what the doctor ordered.

Thing is, Synthetica is a rather different pill to swallow.

The message is clear from the opening track, 'Artificial Nocturne'; the album is a lot more low-key. The vocals and drums are still pride of place, but the quiet, slightly distorted synths and the droning guitars are sedately menacing; it's a pleasant surprise.

The following track, 'Youth Without Youth' is closer to the sound I'm familiar with, but it falls short with the lyric repetition that shows up fairly often in Metric's songs being performed in an irritating monotone. From there, things go back to the chill vibes, with 'Speed The Collapse'. The rippling guitars in the background are decidely Muse-ish, with a chorus that actually makes me think of Blackmore's Night, which makes for an interesting overall tone.

'Dreams so Real' sticks out as my favourite of the album - It grabs me from its opening riff, more square wave than guitar string, the chanting repetition of "Shut up and carry on; the scream becomes a yawn" is relaxing in some unnerving way. It's only 2:40, though. I'd love an extended version that builds up a little more.

'Lost Kitten' is fun and kitschy in a twee, coquettish way (right down to an introduction of xylophones and finger snapping), but it feels it would be better suited to an advert for iPhones or UniQlo than my music collection. 'The Void' hits you with a really annoying synth distort, and doesn't really manage to redeem itself afterwards. It's also rather cutesy, but nowhere near as endearing as 'Lost Kitten'.
As the title track, 'Synthetica' is solid- a more traditional Metric sound. The vocals are more languid than say, 'Help I'm Alive', but it fits perfectly with the rest of the album's tone, and that kind of consistency is a positive in my book.

'The Wanderlust' is very much an oddity, built upon distant, watery piano - and out of nowhere, male vocals from Lou Reed on the chorus, evoking a folk rock-style sound. It took me a few listens to get into it, but its uniqueness won me over.

It's worth mentioning that there are 5 additonal bonus tracks (available on Spotify and via iTunes preorder, at least) that are synth-heavy 80's-ish versions of melodies from the album. It's an odd addition, but I honestly like it a lot. It reminds me of the 'Exogenesis' tracks on Muse's The Resistance - in fact, the album as a whole reminds me of that divisive endeavour; especially since Synthetica is a big drift from Metric's normal sound.

It would be all too easy to take Synthetica at first glance and go "It's different; I don't like it", and maybe the more relaxed and less punchy composition honestly isn't for you - but there's no denying that this album is solidly made and will fit snugly in the collections of those who open to a little Shoegaze in their lives.

So hipsters, basically.

Speculation Augmented - Games & Exploring Social Impacts of Technology

Introduction

While the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is generally lauded as the yearly platform for games publishers to announce their major products, among the journalists and fans that attend and observe every year, there's a general air of scepticism as to whether we actually get any game-changing news from year to year. Nerds are difficult to impress.

So to that end, when I watched the conference for Ubisoft, I wasn't expecting the world.

Then there was a trailer that caught my attention.

YouTube:Watch Dogs E3 Announcement Trailer

What's Watch Dogs? And Why is it Awesome?

What impresses me off the bat is the strength and the relevance of the concept. The idea of a central information database for a country feels far-fetched, but your life having a digital paper trail is a very real concept. That your habits and secrets are available to those who have the access (legally or otherwise), is a little scary.

Watch Dogs is exploring that idea from the point of view of what would arguably be the enemy. The nameless hacker you play as can work out who someone is and who they're connected to at the push of a button. Imagine someone who could jam you Wi-Fi access, tap your phone, and generally ruin your day at his whim. It may be something you've never considered before; it may be something you're well aware of, and take security precautions for.

But is that kind of criminality a more difficult pill to swallow than the standard gunplay of Saints Row or Grand Theft Auto? The demonstration gameplay at its core functions in a manner very similar to the Hitman games:

YouTube: Watch Dogs Gameplay Video

Where the potential for Watch Dogs lies is not necessarily in what gameplay features it offers, but how it uses gameplay in conjunction with its theme, and how that could affect the story. For example:

- What if you are contracted to kill or gather data from an innocent person? Killing faceless NPCs is one thing, but what about once you know their name, their profession, or their family?
- What happens when there are other hackers interfering with your mission? The gameplay trailer shown at E3 has an additional scene that suggests that multiple players can play in the same game world - and not necessarily co-operatively.
- What happens if the public start rejecting the ctOS? The game will become a lot harder if certain people are outside your database, and the backlash against having their privacy invaded could end up being dangerous!
- Will there be an Alternate Reality Game element? ARGs are getting increasingly popular, both to advertise and to make a game's setting more immersive and impactful on our own world.


The game producer, Dominic Guay, was interviewed by Rock Paper Shotgun, with additional information on the project.

The novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is an easy read discussing the nature of Internet security and surveillance; very similar to themes to Watch Dogs; the book is free to download.

Other Games that get Speculative

It's a little uncommon still, but Watch Dogs isn't the only game to explore speculative technology in game mechanics or in story. Differing from books or films, games can explore topics like this in a way where the player can interact with it. If implemented correctly, a player can explore a concept as they explore the game world - forming their own opinion on the topic. The following games each have a technological aspect that has a factual or realistic basis, and I'll cover briefly if/how the gameplay reflects these concepts.

This is going to be the main comparison point to Watch Dogs, at least in terms of genre and setting. Human Revolution is set further in the future and more is far-fetched (no one's going to wear clothes like these in 2027, c'mon), but human augmentation isn't too outlandish. We have already achieved prosthetic limbs and cybernetic eyes - though the actual social problems that may manifest with commercial transhumanism are a while off.

In a gameplay sense, Human Revolution doesn't deal with social implications of augmentation too heavily. The opening section, which has you as a yet unmodified person makes it quite clear how easily someone can die to gunfire - interesting considering most FPS games imply otherwise. Though after this segment, you as the player don't have to struggle too much with your mandatory mechanisation other than choosing what upgrades you want. It's mentioned that augmented people have to take regular (addictive and expensive) medicine to keep their bodies from rejecting the augmentations, but this is a dilemma the player never has to struggle with. There's a plot reason for this (which I will hold out on for spoiler's sake), but it dulls the impact of such a problem for the player.


Errant Signal discusses possible flaws in Deus Ex Human Revolution's Transhumanism themes.

Extra Credits does similar, with a different interpretation (From 2:00)

Technically, all of the Metal Gear Solid games discuss nanotechnology to some degree, but MGS4 has it as a much greater focus. The game has many fake advertisements that it plays during cutscenes - one features commercial consumable nanotech as part of a fitness and weight loss scheme.

Beyond that, in the war-torn settings of the actual gameplay, all participants are monitored and regulated through their technology - everyone (and everything) is ID tagged, and nanotechnology has made sure all soldiers are administered an optimum dose of performance-enhancing drugs. Funnily enough both of those ideas are entirely achievable - anyone who owns a touch-and-go style rail card, dealt with security tags on goods or have tagged a pet in case they get lost should all be familiar with RFID tags.

That's not all though; there's also another central theme of Privatised Military Companies (or PMCs) - businesses that wage war outside of what a country's government orchestrates. Different to just mercenaries, it means that companies that dealt in weapons research now also deal in security - and every item of equipment used in warmongering is accounted for, and arguably controlled by a CEO somewhere. PMCs eventually had cheaper operating costs, and in short time, war stopped being tied to governments and became a full-blown enterprise - the most lucrative economy on the planet.

From a gameplay perspective, you're motivated to combat the PMCs primarily because the 5 largest are owned by the series' main villain, Liquid Snake. However, depending on the type of player you are, you may be motivated differently; the knowledge that the 'War Economy' is responsible for an environment where child soldiers are increasingly common, and weapons and security research are put above the likes of heath care and education is a disturbing thought. A fantasy where you can combat that kind of eventuality first hand is very powerful.

Reflecting an environment where all the PMC equipment is under heavy security, the weapons dropped by PMC soldiers require registered ID to work. These can be cracked fairly early on, but it's a nice touch. Furthermore, Snake has a head-mounted scope that can do all the traditional shooting game features, like zoom and low-light vision, but it can also identify guns and detailed health readouts of other soldiers in the field. This feels like a gameplay abstraction to begin with, but the scope is actually reading the nanomachines in subjects for their readouts; which I find intensely clever.


Sebastian Alvarado on Gamasutra has a discussion of Metal Gear Solid's nanotechnology, split over two articles - Part One & Part Two

To make it clear, there are two games that go by this name - an old DOS title, and a current-generation First Person Shooter by the same name. To cover the FPS first (since it's likely the more widely available of the two), the plot details a world economy not too dissimilar from Metal Gear Solid 4 - instead of nanotechnology; 57% of the population are 'chipped' allowing them to interface with technology wirelessly. The companies that produce the technology for this are so massively globalised, geographical nations now mean little. While neural implants feel like a long way off; globalization is a big deal; and in more than just technology.

The gameplay of Syndicate (2012) is surprisingly uninspired. Your role as a corporate minion gives a backdrop to a world where none of the big industry names play above the board; but being tasked with just shooting up everyone in an office block doesn't feel so impactful beyond how violent you can be. Your Chip activates the ability to scan your surrounding and view things in slow-motion; but it definitely feels like a firm video game abstraction, rather than any real concept we can relate to. The ability to hack into the chips of others allows for possession - the first hacking ability you gain is to force your target to commit suicide, taking the idea of digital privacy to a horrifying extreme. I'm quite glad that nothing like that will be possible for a long, long time.

The 1993 MS-DOS title on the other hand (also released in parsed-down versions for the SNES, Genesis and , um, 3DO) puts the player in the position of a corporation executive. The nature of the game world is still the same, and you still focus on completing company assassination and espionage missions; but the change in perspective lets the player experience the moral quandaries of a corporation like this in a way that doesn't directly deal in killing people. You are responsible for outfitting your agents, orchestrating their method of operation (this includes telling them to hijack the chips of bystanders), and as you play, it becomes increasingly clear that the company you represent essentially deals death in the name of profit. That can be a tricky realisation; especially juxtaposed with Metal Gear Solid above; where companies like that are the enemy!


As it turns out, neural implants are already used to treat epilepsy - so although remote interfacing with computers is definitely a long shot, brain chips are very believable! iO9 breaks down an article on recent research in the field.

Missing the Mark

Where there are games that focus successfully on exploring the social impacts of their setting, there are many who don't quite use their concept to a full potential.

The technology here isn't so much gameplay-defining, but with the unique/annoying control system the game has; utilising it made it more memorable.

Agent Norman Jayden's investigation technology - the Additional Reality Interface (ARI) - was a few years ago something fairly fantastical from the point of view of people not on the pulse of tech research. But with the announcement of Google Glass this year, the idea of Augmented Reality, and being able to have all your data quite literally at your fingertips is a lot easier to imagine.

That said; the Crime Scene Investigations done in the game are entirely far-fetched. Being able to make detailed Cause of Death analysis from just a glance from your super-glasses is definitely a suspension of disbelief. What's more it features in the story surprisingly infrequently. To compare it to Watch Dogs, both games show that their respective technologies can gather information on the fly - notice in the gameplay trailer for Watch Dogs the data stream even shows how hostile a given person might be - but the instances of ARI are very self-contained, and largely used in the safe space of Agent Jayden's desk.

I have a soft spot for the Battle Network series (Could you tell? My username gives it away a little), but it's worth noting that a world where most commercial technology has ever-improving A.I. is reasonable. On the other hand, a world where you can convert DNA into A.I., or make anti-virus use a national sport is decidedly less feasible, but that's the nature of the shounen genre for you. Despite this, the social applications for improved A.I. is entirely fascinating, and something I've mused upon in the past.

The series of course discusses the social impacts of its technology (though not in a way that believably parallels real life), but it's not reflected in its gameplay. While the game mechanics for the Battle Network games are very impressive; they work almost entirely without context from the game world (with the exception of the 'Navi Customiser', which feels very much like a modular programming tool).

On the other hand, the follow-up series, Mega Man Star Force has an unusual mechanics quirk that I enjoy. In-setting, there is a concept of 'Brother Bands' - people who link their PDAs to each other as friends. Characters throughout the series  talk about Brother Bands more or less interchangeably with the idea of friendship... except Brother Bands have the mechanical ability to give you additional bonuses in battle. As such, it's like if you became stronger in proportion to the number of Facebook friends you have.

Call me crazy, but that makes for a rather good metaphor. Why yes, of course you don't become physically stronger if you make a lot of meaningful internet relationships, but how about socially? In life, who you know can be just as important as what you know, and social networking (both casual sites like Facebook and professional sites like LinkedIn) give you access to more information and more opportunities, provided you make the right friends. As someone who's on the road to becoming a journalist, this is salient; and I'm sure this is just as much of a reality for those working freelance in game development.

What about future games?
While I refrain from talking about it; I find that art (or hell, media in general) has to mean something to be particularly impactful. This doesn't necessarily require something as overt as a life-lesson, or so cliché as to be directly educational, but to provoke some thought and discussion. One of the best ways to create some consideration is to allow links to be drawn to everyday life; and it's something video games are entirely capable of doing.

As discussed, it's not really quite enough to simply bring up a possible technological concept; or just mention in passing how it can affect us socially - integration into the gameplay itself will force a player to consider a topic. By the end of MGS4, you'll definitely have an opinion formed about nanomachines or PMCs; but Heavy Rain won't leave you with many thoughts about the practicality of Augmented Reality.

This concept need not only be limited to speculative fiction - integrating your theme into your gameplay makes the experience more cohesive as a whole, and will help a game's setting and design feel less like window dressing.


This article can also be found at Digital Haven Entertainment (Formerly PixelxCore), here. Please visit this version for better image contrasts and formatting.

Four Great Video Game Composers

This article can also be found (with additional entries by other writers) at The Yorker, here.

It can sometimes feel that soundtrack composers don't get a lot of credit. Unlike with the general music industry, there's comparatively little focus paid to those who write the soundtracks for film & TV; and maybe even less for games. But if you take the time to look (or get totally immersed in video game nerdery like we do); there are plenty of composers for video games, old and new, who create tunes with aplomb; getting the tone and emotion of a title in a sweet spot that just couldn't be obtained without their work.

Masafumi Takada

Tending to work alongside the unorthodox auteur developer Suda51, Takada has lent his talent to many of the early games produced by Grasshopper Studios, such as Killer 7, No More Heroes, and Flower Sun and Rain. His style is often very atmospheric and heavy, but with such quirky titles that he's worked on, there'll occasionally be tracks that are suddenly upbeat and energetic. These days he works outside of Grasshopper Studios, mostly doing low-key Japanese only titles. His most recent work surprisingly features in Kid Icarus: Uprising!

Masashi Hamauzu

Generally when thinking of the music in the Final Fantasy series, long-time veteran Nobuo Uematsu comes to mind. But the more recent titles in the series have a different lead musician - Hamauzu. Cutting his teeth on other Square Enix titles (Notably SaGa Frontier II), he then collaborated with Uematsu on Final Fantasy X, showing a more lighthearted and instrumentally varied style from his collegue. After Uematsu left Square Enix to follow his own projects, Hamauzu took over as lead composer and put together the beautiful soundtracks of Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2. He now has his own music studio, Monomusik.

Shoji Meguro

Differing from the two previous composers I adore, Meguro has a single, veru distinct style - but it's so solid and catchy, I can't help but love it. He's worked closely with the RPG giant Atlus ever since 1996 with Revelations: Persona - and has consistently worked on games within the Shin Megami Tensei series (and a few outliers) since then. His style is very rock-heavy, but he also has a strong love for using brass and piano in his songs, resulting in songs that are closer to hip-hop beats. A special mention should be given to his work in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, where his normal approach is reworked into a menacing, militaristic soundtrack that fits the game's tone perfectly.

Virt (Jake Kaufman)

The independent game design movement hasn't just been a great opportunity for coders and artists - but also musicians. Virt A.K.A. Jake Kaufman started out doing fan remixes of existing video game tunes on OC Remix; but he soon found a professional home with developers WayForward - and he's been getting his high-quality work out there in a subtle way ever since the Game Boy Colour. Special mentions go to the music of Shantae, which was just as technically detailed as its graphics; BloodRayne: Betrayal for being stylistically different from his other work; and Mighty Switch Force for being bombastically funky. There's often a lot of compilation work between indie game musicians, which are also worth a gander.