Concluding 2014: My Experience in the World of Gaming

As many of you experience during this festive time of year, it can get rather busy roaming around the land visiting family and friends to exchange gifts, eat a lot and have a hangover.  Naturally, this has affected my ability to put time aside for writing which I’m getting around to fixing while trying to figure out what’s happening for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations and watch the Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2014 (I know, a glamorous life I must live…)

That being said, I can’t put it all down to extenuating circumstances as I have had the last couple days available to write; with the intention of creating a small piece on man-made mountains and their appearance as antagonists in games coinciding with previous posts on a similar fashion.  As it is the end of the year one can find themselves in the mind-set of ‘I’ll wait until January to start anew’ alongside the range of resolutions many people make, so to give the above topic a proper post alongside actually writing something, I’m going to write about some games I liked playing this year.  This isn't going to be a quantified list as I don’t think that this will be more of a streaming conscious than anything, but I hope you find the explanations interesting at least.  I should also say that these games aren't all releases of 2014 but more of a retrospective on my time spent gaming over the past 12 months. 

 *Images are from a collection of screenshots I've taken over the last 12 months*

Path of Exile

I had briefly played this game through a number of betas, but with its entry onto Steam and Torchlight 2 elite hardcore mode getting a bit annoying to achieve I saw a chance to return to the title.  I played roughly during the months of January-May and got a great deal of enjoyment from the mechanics of the game from start to finish.  The skill gem system was a totally new experience for me, as I naturally built up an array of spells, abilities and auras to use across my cohort of exiles in a number of different ways.  This was further expanded through links and augments that mutated said skills to explode, split, fear, stun and more to the point where a skill could look considerably different on use.  The bartering system was enjoyable to partake in as well, as I didn't look up guides for it and naturally experimented with items to see what would come of them.  If I was to level a complaint, I’d say that the armour sets felt a little bit too samey during my playtime (which could be down to the aesthetic choice of the exile environment) but regardless it was a really enjoyable free to play game that doesn't look to nickel-and-dime you to have an enjoyable experience. 

 Firefall

One of my first posts was about this title and since then I haven’t gone back to it.  Now I've had time to look back on it I can say I still hold the idea that it’s an enjoyable game and would be great if it wasn't so repetitive in the gameplay through the mission board system.  The big events grabbed me alongside the smaller ones that scattered the landscape and if it focused more on these akin to something like Guild Wars 2 I feel like it would have kept my interest for much longer.  That being said, it was a game that was developed for a very long time and maybe it was never going to truly work as they had envisaged.  To end on a good point thou, getting around the environment was really fun especially the glider / kite system. 

Wolf Among Us

This game came out in October 2013 but I didn't pick it up until the Summer sale of this year which by then was in its finished state with all episodes available of season one.  I had briefly played Telltale’s The Walking Dead on my phone in the spring and liked my first try of a visual text-adventure (I’m not 100% of its genre but that’s a close approximation) so as it was cheap I thought I’d give this one a go.  I instantly played through episode one and loved the gameplay, playing through the rest of it over a period of a week in the late evenings so that I wouldn't be disturbed.  I wanted to figure out where each fable came from and what sort of life they were living, alongside the possible outcomes of my actions as Bigby Wolf.  I tried to answer dialog options how I think I would act in the situations presented alongside remembering to use the ‘silence is an option’ mechanic from time to time.  Alongside the gameplay, I really love the aesthetics of the Wolf Among Us particularly in the options menu and title/credits of each episode.  The running title of Bibgy walking through the streets of New York with its purples blues and blacks looks brilliant and a particular frame of this became my pc wallpaper from July to October of this year.  This game may not have the direct human connection of the previous Walking Dead for some, but for me the Wolf Among Us was a greatly enjoyable experience for me that have me more open to narrative games in the future. 

Game of the Year 420 BLAZE IT

This year I’ve looked to try new games whenever possible to try and broaden my horizons in the medium.  Sometimes I end up in some weird places and this is one of them.  I won’t put an image up, but just download it and embrace the crazy that this is. 

Civilization V: Brave New World

I originally bought Civ V on release and got a lot of enjoyment from it; harking back to the series’ second installment I use to play on the PlayStation as a much younger self.  That being said, picking up Brave New World during the summer sale filled me with renewed interest in the game.  The addition of trade routes, religion (I skipped Gods and Kings), spies, ideologies and the revamped cultural victory added so much depth for my play style as I prefer to go for non-combatant victory conditions.  Recently, I’ve got more and more interested in the finer details as I attempt to play on the higher difficulties of immortal / deity and I’m not being put off by the losses.  There are 4x’s that are much more in-depth, but Civ (like many others) has that personal connection and I hope that this series continues to remain strong into the future.

The Stanley Parable

Very few games have made me genuinely laugh in my life, but the Stanley Parable’s standalone release this year was brilliant in being mundane on the surface but hilarious underneath.  I played the earlier source mod for this during my time at university thanks to it being featured on Extra Credits “games you may not have tried” many times, but the recent release added a bunch of new possible ‘endings’ to the parable.  To those who aren’t aware, it’s a first-person narrative-driven game where a narrator takes you through a story.  What that story maybe, is pretty much up to you and I hope more people get to experience this fascinating and enjoyable experience. 

Warframe

I've played this for around two years and this year it’s clocked up a sizeable amount of my time gaming, but somehow Warframe remains to be a game I enjoy playing nearly every day.  Being involved in the game for this length of time, it’s great to see how far they've come from when I started playing; from around 6 game modes to 20 with improvements to the former as a means to continue to make the experience varied.  Alongside being my most played game this year, it is also a free to play title that allows the player to decide what level of investment they want to take.  Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, as its free give it a try and you may enjoy what you see. 

Transistor 

Although I did dismiss the list idea at the beginning of this post, if I was to quantify the games I played this year Transistor would probably take the top spot.  This has been the only game since Skyrim that I’ve bought on release and I completed it in two short bursts of playtime; but the time I had with this game was both an aesthetically wonderful game and narratively fascinating experience.  On the surface, Transistor follows Super Giant Games previous title (Bastion) in terms of the narrative progression of an isometric combat game where a smooth-voiced narrator takes you through the world.  Upon playing Transistor, you can see how the combat has some more dynamic rpg-like mechanics and through this get a greater understanding to people who exist in this world.  Even thou I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure on the story; the journey itself was interesting enough to keep me wanting to find out more with some particular sections of the game getting a genuine response from me.  With all that being said, it is backed up by an amazing soundtrack which features a mixture of slow beats, calming melodies, high-octane melees and chilling songs; in particular The Spine and Smoke Signals somewhat fall into this last category in my opinion.  I’m looking to play through the game again next month and I know it’ll draw me back in.

To bring this all to a somewhat conclusion, I think that 2014 has been a year for me where narrative driven games have raised higher up on my interest level.  I briefly talked about my shift of gaming habits in the ‘monogaming vs. polygaming’ post but my general media habits have changed quite a bit.  These days I watch very little TV or films because I don’t feel invested in the story or potential plot.  What these narrative games have given me is a way to enjoy stories in a medium which I feel has the potential to go further than is conceived generally.  I hope that going into 2015, I get to enjoy a larger mix of narratives in games and in turn find some interesting connections to architecture that I can write about.  Other than that, have a great New Year’s and amazing 2015.  

Antichamber - Perspectives, Viewpoints and Voids

This week has brought up some unexpected events that have kept me rather busy.  Although I like to push for the beginning of the week publishing, I do take priority on IRL tasks.  I’m looking into organising a staggered topic next week (as in mid-week release) to make sure they aren't too closely published.  With that out of the way, onto a game I started playing again this week…

*This will feature minor spoilers regarding the progression of Antichamber from a mechanic PoV.  Avoid the subject on Block Manipulation if you’re looking to read with spoilers in mind.*

Antichamber by Alexander Bruce is a first person puzzle game which conveys a totally new way to consider mechanics via viewpoints and perspectives in my opinion.  Its ability to confuse and mind-bend is fantastic; taking concepts you would be accustomed to in traditional puzzlers and juxtaposing it within its ‘modernist’ aesthetics (Modernist as in architectural imo).  I originally picked up this title in early 2013 putting around 4 hours into the title making slow progress; to a certain point where my thoughts couldn't comprehend any direction of specific mechanic to act on.

To briefly define the types of mechanics, I would say there are two main forms it takes on; room viewpoints and block manipulation.  The rooms as a puzzle work in terms of how you enter / look/ move/ leave a space, creating a multitude of possibilities to the user.  For example, an early room features a ‘gallery’ space with cube exhibition pieces in a 3x3 manner with gaps between them.  As you look around the exhibitions, the objects change from faces; to abstract sculptures and paintings; to moving pieces and a hidden passage.  The great thing about this passage is that logically, it pushes you into the middle of the gallery space, but in truth it’s an entirely new space with a multi-coloured maze.
The second mechanic (blocks) comes into play when the player receives a block manipulator a short while into the game.  This originally has simple applications akin to something like portal (taking object from point A to B) with blue blocks; evolving into a mix of geometric creation and multiplication in the green phase; and extruding blocks into shapes / passageways with yellow.  There is one later stage (red) which I haven’t got it yet, however at the time of writing I am very close to attaining the power and may add an addendum to this piece.
By bringing together these two forms of mechanics, it allows the player to experience a new way of thinking and put focus on the finer details rather than the larger pictures (possibly macro vs. micro in some roundabout way).  One can naturally do this in architecture and many have when it comes to judging our spaces and the play of interaction between them.  This can be represented in a couple ways in architecture, in particularly perspectives and voids.

Perspective can be thought in both a theoretical and practical way, but naturally they come together to form a similar understanding.  On one hand we have the tools of architecture (Sections, Plans, Elevations, Isometric, and Axonometric) which give us clear understanding of what they intend to be e.g. a front elevation shows of the façade of a building.  The other hand presents the idea of feeling / emotion / general thoughts when we look at an object from a number of different viewpoints.  A couple examples of this would be the English country garden and its folly’s or the Holocaust memorial site in Berlin, Germany.  The latter example I feel has a particular corroboration with Antichamber; as the Spartan, blocky pathways present a number of different viewpoints and perspectives creating a number of different thoughts for the user.  With this being said, if I was to add to Antichamber, I would like to play with the idea of light as the memorial does to possibly add a new layer of mechanics.  Although perspective is at the forefront of this experience, the minor details granted through the play of voids makes it brilliant to study.

One may naturally see voids as ‘non-space’ that does not dictate design or consideration and to some extent they would be correct.  In our everyday lives, we interact with voids as a means to get from point A to B.  Such examples like underpasses, alleyways, corridors, etc typically fall into this category where the edges of ‘places’ intersect with each other.  However, we interact with these voids and as such create spaces from them, whether it is interactions with other people or the area around you.  Graffiti (although generally given a negative social impact) is a great example of the interactions of voids and places like London’s South Bank have benefitted greatly from the user of this art form.  Theorists like Michel Foucault discuss this matter as a means of ‘other spaces’ in which he states:

“We are in the age of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, the near and the far, the side by side and the scattered.  A period in which, in my view, the world is putting itself to the test, not so much as a great way of life destined to grow in time but as a net that links points together and creates its own muddle.”

If we are to take a theory like this, one can see a connection to Antichamber with its rooms and connections between them.  On the surface the connections are a mix of stairwells, elevators and corridors; but on reflection expand into multi-layered sections where walking creates one outcome and jumping creates another.  Antichamber is of course a very abstract example, but it can be something to study in the architectural and gaming world to produce interesting ideas with areas which may not get a lot of attention.  To use an even more up-to-date example, P.T (Silent Hills Playable Teaser) I feel plays with the idea of voids and perspective to create its eerie horror that brings the player into a world of uncertainty and fear.

Like with many things in our subconscious we don’t give them a second thought, but the practice of non-space can be something to open a world of new design possibilities in both the real and digital world.  In your own journeys, take a moment to consider these places between buildings and think about what it means and how it interacts with its surroundings.  I hope you enjoyed this piece and please feel free to discuss theories / suggestions.

References
Antichamber – Alexander Bruce (2013)
Foucault, M. (1967) Of Other Space: Utopias and Heterotopias

Receiver and the Discussion of Combative Design Theory (form:function)

These past couple weeks have been rather busy with ‘IRL’ stuff so naturally things like this have been pushed to the side.  That being said, I enjoyed a little game over the weekend that I want to talk about in regards to a relatively modern architectural design choice. 

Receiver is a very small indie-fps title from Wolfire Games created as part of a 7 day fps game challenge which looks to create quasi-realistic gun mechanics.  Whereas in a conventional fps the reloading mechanics are a single button press; receiver includes individual bullets, magazine loading, checking the chamber and releasing the hammer to name a few.  It’s a rather confusing experience when you initially load in, but after around 15-20minutes the gunplay was making sense and it becoming rather enjoyable. 

Alongside these mechanics there is RNG based level design, item placement and enemy locations that keep you on your toes as you navigate your surroundings.  One may call this a ‘roguelike’ in terms of its permadeath and random starting loot, but I feel it’s more towards a tactical shooter by its combat mechanics. 

While playing this game, I got a feeling of a couple schools of thought in design and play on the concept apparent in Receiver.  Firstly there was the age old ‘form vs. function’ theory that discusses the relationship between aesthetics (form) and mechanics (function).  In architecture, this can sometimes be the nature between an engineer and an architect but certain eras in architecture have gone one way or another e.g. Brutalism tends to be on the side of ‘function’.  Receiver is a game of pure mechanics in its gunplay while its aesthetics are rather spartan in its night time city-scape and plain rooms.  Not to say that this is a bad thing as one should remember this was made in 7 days…

The other feeling I got from this game was a kind of Deconstructionism / Victorian industrial ideology that turns the ‘function’ side of the debate into its own aesthetic.  A couple examples of these traits include London Paddington Station; Lloyds building in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.  Each of these examples uses the structure, the framework and the stuff that is usually hidden away behind walls in conventional buildings to create their own pieces of art and design through architecture.  Looking at these examples, one can see a correlation of Receiver and typical fps games through the use of the reloading mechanic; as the simple press of a button (usually R) is now a fully-fledged mechanic to take into consideration.  There are games that have played around with the reload mechanics in the past (one of the more famous examples being Gears of War) but I feel this is the most literal and by proxy the closest to the above architectural theory. 

To be honest, I grabbed this game on the Humble Store end of summer sale for free, but you may find it interesting to review in how minor aspects of design can be created into a new format.  Outline theories you may want to look at include symbolism, discussion of ‘space’ and usage of signs in culture but overall I hope you found this discussion interesting. 

References / further reading

*Receiver, Wolfire Games (2012)

*Eco, U. Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture

*Barthes, R. Semiology and the Urban

*Bachelard, G. Poetics of Space

Self-assessment: mono-gaming vs. 'multi'-gaming and general thoughts

A couple months ago I attempted to start a new rule for my gaming time; to allow time to play something new every day regardless of platform for at least 15 minutes.  The reason behind this was a personal drive to try new games coming out, try genres that I wouldn’t usually touch and break the mono-game mentality. 

For those that aren’t aware of the term, mono-gamer/ing relates to the focus of your gaming time on a single game.  Usual examples of this include competitive games (like Dota, LoL, Starcraft 2, CounterStrike, Call of Duty) and social games like MMO’s (World of Warcraft, Eve online, Guild Wars 2) or Facebook games (Farmville).  My experience of mono-gaming has featured most of these titles (in short wow->hon->dota2->gw2) and my time was really enjoyable.  The thing is everyone has a point (which they may have not experienced yet) where they start to consider the amount of time one has invested into a game and what other things you could be doing.  People have different reactions to it, some will go to the polar opposite type of game / hobby whereas others will find something similar, but the sentiment is usually the same. 

So, a couple months ago I stopped playing Guild Wars 2 (MMORPG) and found myself not really knowing what to do with my free time.  What I ended up doing was going back to Warframe (F2P shooter) and this started to fulfil the allotted time.  The thing is, playing one single game over all others has become less of an enticing action to take as more varied games have come out and I’ve got the financial backing to try out games.  The steam summer sale was kind of a catalyst for this, but since then I’ve been playing lots of different games.  These games include Don’t Starve (survival), Path of Exile (dungeon crawler), Electronic Superjoy (platformer), Hawken (mech shooter), Rogue Legacy (rogue-like), Sanctum TD (tower defence), Transistor (action-RPG), The Stanley Parable (non-specific), and many more.  As well as this, I’ve been trying more mobile games and seeing what the platform can create unique to the tech. 

While I’ve been doing this, there has been only short bursts of time where I’ve stuck to my ‘try something new every day’, but I feel that I’ve fit into a nice happy medium of new-to-old game time investment.  For example, today I tried Max Gentlemen for 20 minutes but played Warframe for 5 hours.  Trying new experiences is all good in getting you thinking about new experiences and the sorts, but it’s reasonable to have a core-set of titles that you can enjoy irrelevant to context.  That being said, this is a mentality I’ve tried to take on in other interests I have both on and offline. 

In Architecture, I was aligned to a specific mind-set for a long period of time which dictated my thoughts on the medium.  Heidegger theory, Brutalism design era and the architect Tadao Ando were my go-to topics for 2-3 years during university; but moving from architecture to history allowing me to express my thoughts in lots of different ways (see intro to this blog) and improve my own knowledge and interest.  My career path possibilities have expanded due to being more open to different areas of the heritage sector beyond archiving / curating even to the point of considering the possibility of freelance / self-employed status. 

Anyway, I was just thinking this over after finishing my Warframe session tonight and wanted to write it down.  It can sometimes be good to write about your thoughts to allow you to make more sense of what you think / how you want to implement something.  Take the time to think about your own gaming habits and how it fits into other facets of your life.  You may find it interesting = )