Blogs - Pabo

This is my full review for the indie game Kyoto. Since there's a 2000 character limit on reviews, I post my slightly bigger review as a blog post:

Although more an audiovisual experience than a game in the traditional sence, Kyoto can still be considered as an example of interactive art.
The entire game takes place in a small scene consisting of a moon-lit rock with some reed and a tree growing on top of it, amidst a quiet lake. It is a very calm setting, with every object being interactive and responding to the mouse as if it were the wind. The great yet subtle graphical effects are probably the most outstanding part of the game. Most of them aren't really noticeable on the first time, which ensures that the soothing atmosphere is only enhanced by them. Everything visual, from the effects to the color palette, makes up for an incredibly calm experience.
The sound only complements this feeling, with the subtle sound effects being the equivalent of the graphical effects, and the smooth soundtrack enhancing the general feeling of the game.

The gameplay is a very basic one: You collect falling stars that appear on the night sky and place them into the scene, to certain objects. Later on, a type of chords make the audiovisual connection more noticeable, and the gameplay generally changes at each stage of the game, as does the environment - although without ever loosing its atmosphere, even in the transition. Though it's not always clear (and never obvious) what to do next, it seems like the experimentation is something the developer wants the player to do, in order to take teh game world in. The game is fairly short, and even a player who takes his time to appreciate the experience (which I recommend you to do) will finish it in half an hour or less.
The question here is, whether it is fair to rate the gameplay compared to other, more traditional games. Kyoto is an interactive audiovisual experience in its own right, and this label is far more suitable than "game". But since this is a game-centered site, I will rate it as a game.

As an experience, I give it a 9/10 (Amazing). This is a wonderful, soothing experience that can be enjoyed by anyone, with some great visuals and audio, and stays consistently calm throughout the whole session. A fullscreen option would enhance the effect even more - and it's odd that the developer hasn't included such an obvious choice - but on the whole the developer should be commended for creating a very strong atmosphere within the narrow frame of this setting.

As a game, I give it a 7/10 (Good). The gameplay is fairly limited, both in overall time and in the gameplay itself, and the game's goal isn't obvious (even at the end). But then again, this might be a good thing, and just playing around and embracing the game's atmosphere is surely more rewarding than progressing to the next stage. It just doesn't have enough content to make this as enjoyable a game as an experience.

+ Amazingly calm atmosphere
+ Beautiful visuals
+ Good audio complementing the visuals
- No fullscreen
- Short
- Limited gameplay
+/- The game's goal isn't obvious

Info:
Game version: 1.0
Platform: Windows 7
Price: Free
Developer: illogictree

In this blog post, I'll explain the review system I wish to use for my reviews on indiedb/moddb/Desura, both for future reference for myself as well as for anyone who's interested.
First of all, I don't want to just be handing out 10/10s or 0/10s, and here's why: From what I've seen, most scores in here are 10s, and the community is giving high scores very easily. While it's nice to cheer the developers by giving perfect scores, it's not very helpful in the long run. The worth of a 10/10 diminishes over time, if most reviews give that score, and an 8/10 is even considered bad in some cases. It's of course difficult to give a proper score, since a plain number doesn't say much about its actual meaning. Should a 5/10 be considered border-fail? Or is it an average?

To solve this problem, I'll write down a description for each score, so that every number has a meaning. IGN has a nice score description, so I think I'll just use that. Here it is:

10 - Masterpiece
9 - Amazing
8 - Great
7 - Good
6 - Okay
5 - Mediocre
4 - Bad
3 - Awful
2 - Painful
1 - Unbearable
0 - Disaster

As I understand this scale, you can't have masterpieces every day. I consider a true masterpiece something that truly stands out from the competition in every way and is either flawless, or has so little and negligible flaws that its content more than makes up for it. This is a game that people will be talking about for years to come, and will stand as a milestone for every game coming out after it.
"Masterpiece" frequency: 1-2 per year, maybe less.
An amazing game is also standing out of its competition, and should surely be a candidate for Indie of the Year. Amazing games do almost everything right and are the reasons I play games.
"Amazing" frequency: 5-10 per year.
Great games are thoroughly enjoyable, and are worth to reach a wide public. Many gamers are listing these games often as one of their favorite games at the time, and any studio developing a great game should be proud of it.
"Great" frequency: 2-3 per month.
Awful, painful and unbearable games should've never been released. They were either rushed or the concept was plain wrong to begin with. They're games that players have to force themselves to play and are another reason for Roger Ebert to not consider games an art form. They thankfully don't appear more than a few times per year, and when they do, they are quickly forgotten.
Disaster games are, put simply, a shame for the developer and the gaming community as a whole. The developer should take a break from making games for a long, long time, and give customers their money back. Disaster games are thankfully rare, but there's at least one every year.

Having dealt with the scoring system, here are some thought about the actual review.
A plain score is meaningless for the developer. It's like having a blindfolded man and saying "hot" or "cold" instead of taking the blindfold off of him and telling him where to look at. Reviews should never serve as a means to let off steam, but should always be constructive criticism. The game's strengths should be praised, and its weaknesses should be addressed with the severity each of them has on the final game. If possible, suggestions should be made to overcome the game's weaknesses. That's another reason why empty, perfect "reviews" are not actually helping the developer.
The personal opinion of the reviewer can never be hidden completely, and shouldn't be; but the reviewer should be open-minded enough to realize that there are people with many different tastes. It's actually better to say "I didn't like this or that", than bashing it in general. Some things are thankfully objective, like bugs or the FPS count, but aspects like the art style or the game setting are up to every individual gamer and should be handled accordingly.
Lastly, the game version should always be included. This tells people what state of the game you're referring to. It's unfair to treat a finished game the same as its alpha version. There should also be mentioned what parts have been played (campaign, multiplayer), and if the game was the full game or a demo.

What do you think? How do you review your games? Do you have any suggestions for me? Feel free to comment below.

A few days ago, the Middle-Earth RolePlaying (MERP) mod was sent a Cease & Desist by Warner Bros. Although the modders offered to remove the Ringbearer questline, or even just work privately on the mod (the latter would have been justified for WB in my mind), WB refused both, and demands the immediate C&D. You can read about the whole story on their site. TotalBiscuit made some good points in his video (third question). There's also a petition to save MERP, so if you want to help this mod, you can sign it here (at the time of writing it has 13,000+ signatures).
The above is just the latest of a number of mods/fangames to be shut down. It's something that has been happening for nearly as long as community mods exist (remember the great-looking Chrono Ressurection?). Why would they do that? Many people would argue that since the mods are free, the companies don't lose any money to a competitor.
Well, actually, they do - indirectly. While people don't spend their money on the mod, it's possible that they won't need another game of the same genre/universe. This is especially the case when the mods seem to be of a better quality than the games the company produces (and seeing the last two single-player experiences published by Warner Bros., Aragorn's Quest and War in the North, this seems to be the case). It's not something the companies should be proud of, but this happens when a game is made for short-term profit rather than out of respect to the original universe. Believe me, it shows in the long run. It's perfectly undestandable that IP holders want to protect their IP. It's like someone who spends years working on a painting, only to have it copied by another painter as soon as it finished, and the other painter sells millions while the original creator barely receives any credit.

But the fact that someone with an inferior product is able to shut down anyone who surpasses it, or just anyone using the product's IP, doesn't sound very right. This is not what IP is for. IP is made so that the creator of something has the authority over it, preventing other parties from messing with anything he/she created in a way that hurts the creaton. But now the situation at hand is that the IP holder - who by the way isn't the original creator of the universe, but that's an entirely different story - messes with the original content in a less respectful way than the modders do, and produces an inferior product at that; the opposite of what the IP laws are made for.
Art, science etc. is like a grid, where nothing is born new; everything has some sort of ancestor, and the grid as a whole advances only when the descendants become better than the previous generation. This is how every single achievement in human history has been made, by building upon something that was already there and surpassing it. This introduces a snowball effect: the more there is of something, the easier it is to create something new, and the higher the probability is that we will get something superior. Thus, creators should always strive to make art as a whole better. There are two ways to do that: Either make something good yourself, or let others improve upon your work. You're either the descendant or the ancestor, and most of the times you're both. What strict IP does is, practically, "sterilize" art, so that there are no direct descendants except the few who come only from one creator, namely the the holder of the IP. It's stopping the grid midway and continuing with only single, parallel threads. But parallel threads meet only in infinite, thus removing every combination with any other IP, which in turn reduces diversity. It's not only less diverse, it's also less robust. A single thread can be removed more easily if it isn't attached to another thread. The art that has shared nothing with anyone else will cease to exist if it is stopped, instead of living on as a part of something else. This is what strict IP does. Now, imagine every single IP holder doing just that. It would mean that we would only be able to work with holder-free IPs, those who have been created long enough ago for the IP to end. Which just sets us many years back on the grid, ignoring any progress which has been made in the last century or so. It'd cripple art, science and any other field. This could be the result of strict IP.

Please note that I'm only referring to "strict" IP. The problem at hand isn't the IP protection; this is something that's needed as well. The above mentioned painter won't have any incentive to draw more paintings, if he and his art aren't protected in some way. IP laws are necessary. But to what extent? And who decides over the extent? TotalBiscuit made a good case: "When you have power, the best thing to do is exercise it only when absolutely needed.", aka with great power comes great responsibility. Someone has to regulate how strict the IP will be. And the one who should be responsible for this isn't the state, but the creator, or in a broader sense, the IP holder. As a creator himself, he should be able to distinguish between safety and greed. This is, I think, the biggest responsibility of an IP holder. Not to enforce the IP wherever and whenever he/she can. But to watch over the IP he's holding and try to make the most out of it, whether it is him who advances it or any other person. This fine balance of defense and openness is what defines a good IP holder, and in this case, Warner Bros has a long way to go.

Hello fellow Linux gamers (and everybody else interested).

I'm sure many of you will have noticed the recent flood of Kickstarter video game projects in recent months, thanks to projects like Wastelands 2, Double Fine Adventure and many more. I personally believe crowd-funding is one of the best things to happen to indie game developers in recent years, freeing them of some of the publisher's pressure.
As a result, more and more projects there seem to be thinking of Linux as a probable platform. There are already so many projects out there, that it's becoming actually pretty difficult to keep track of all games for Linux (Hooray for that!). In order to tackle the problem, I created this thread. Since the Linux Gamers group is currently the (members-wise) biggest group on indiedb after Desura, I thought it'd be best to incorporate it there.
The most important thing is to keep the thread clean and informative, since too much information would just be distracting. I put some arbitrary posting rules in there, to make sure the thread stays as informative as possible, along with the reason for their inclusion (I don't like rules whose use you can't understand). Of course, these are just some rules I just made up, so if you want to suggest something else, please let me know!
I hope this helps us keep better track of the Linux games on Kickstarter, and in turn support Linux game developers on Kickstarter. Let's get started!

Today I came across an interesting post from Fan Studios. In short, it mentions six practices often employed in games as well as in real life.
One thing that immediately struck me was the fact that these steps occur more frequent in games than in real life. The reason for this is, I believe, the "closed world" of video games - meaning that a video game is only an instance of the real world, a finite representation of some core aspects. Operating as a very simplified version of real life, it's of course much easier to try something new/groundbreaking, whether it is good or bad. But approaching video games as a real life "sandbox", a chance to work under safe and controlled conditions on things concerning the uncontrolled and chaotic real world, is a big subject, which I'd like to come back to at a later point.
I'd rather focus on the post's last paragraph. The six characteristics mentioned are indeed very powerful tools, and as such can easily be misused, be it on purpose or not. We've all come across games that use these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent. One might say, "Why is it bad to employ these tactics? I like rewards!".
The obvious answer would be, that the sense of achievement fades away, the more often we achieve something. We might have been happy when we got the first milk from our cow in FarmVille, but after several months of playing the game, the same "reward" feels empty. Collecting the milk has much rather evolved into some kind of compulsive behavior, something we have to do in order to keep going.
But keep what going? It isn't anymore for the sense of building or developing a farm, but rather for the sense of accomplishing something. Next to no time is spent to admire the achievements already made, since there's always the next goal in sight, however small it might be. We're constantly on the look for the next reward, like addicts. Or maybe we are addicted. It is what games have been blamed for for many years - addiction. The point is, we're not addicted to the game itself - we're addicted to the rewards the game shoves down one's throat. We don't really care what game gives us these rewards, as long as we get the satisfaction we seek.
Of course, not all addicting games are addicting for these reasons. There are plenty of games that just thrill us with great moments, good storylines, clever gameplay, stunning visuals, atmospheric music... the list goes on and on. The question isn't whether employing the six characteristics is inherently bad for a game. Games are, like many other things, a mix of various techniques and components. The real question is, when do they cross the line?
Players often enjoy playing a game, even feel the need to come back to it often. Addiction to a game isn't that evil a thing (as long as it doesn't cross the line). People are addicted to all kinds of things. Like books. Or chocolate. Or sports. No, I believe this line is crossed when players don't just play the game for the game itself, but rather for the artificial satisfaction it gives them. When feeling the urge to play it, they just want to get these rewards. When they aren't able to recall any special memories from the game. Because they didn't really have any. Because the just kept going, going towards the unreachable horizon and forgetting anything else on the road. Always looking for the next reward. And never reflecting on the experience.

Hello everybody,

I signed up few days ago and just wanted to say hi. Let me introduce myself.
My name is Elias and I live in Athens, Greece. I'm studying IT at the University of Piraeus - I guess none of you will have heard of it, but I've actually grown to like it. I'm interested in video games - obviously, since I'm writing these words on this blog. My favourite games are hard to name, it's changing constantly. But in general I do like RPGs and strategy games.

Since last year I spent more and more time reading about games, and one day it struck me that I actually read more about games than play them. I don't know if that's good or bad news, but it sure indicates my interest in games from a perspective beyond the player's one. Though there are some plans in my head, I can't possibly realise them without further training, and I hope that training is what I'll do this year. I currently have only some basic Java skills, and trying to work out my first game - a board game for school, inspired by Menschärgeredichnicht. I know, it's not much, but I hope this first project will teach me the basic skills of game making. If such a simple project is already interesting to me, I can't wait to engage in something bigger.
Whatever it may be, I'd like to make it open source - I'm pretty fascinated by the open source philosophy, and since I use so many FOS programmes, I'd like to give something back. I only hope my code will be good enough.
That's it for now. I don't know if I'll continue writing entries (it's my first blog, yeah!), or if I'll ever come up with a game. But I guess I shouldn't bother, since this blog will be primarily read by me. So why write all of this? I suppose it's more about me being able to write down some thoughts, than for any lost soul who's accidentally clicked the wrong blog link and landed on this page. That being said, every "lost soul" is welcome to comment and share their ideas. I'd be honoured to.