Tag: video games

Video game company Double Fine—based out of San Francisco—recently came under scrutiny for publicly pitching game ideas as part of their Amnesia Fortnight project but not including any women (or non-white men for that matter) in their slew of presenters. This was at the same time that Twitter users blew up the #1reasonwhy tag to call out sexism in the industry. Sexism, mind you, that is not surprising nor unknown. And this is naturally a problem in many fields.

One of Double Fine’s female employees put forth her thoughts on the matter:

We have a lovely forum thread discussing this, here. But I will also answer it with my own thoughts.

—-

Why? Because of a few reasons.

One, many of us were too busy (ex: I am in office admin, so my responsibilities continue into AF).

Two, many didn’t have an idea.

Three, many weren’t interested in leading a game.

You also have to understand that we, the ladies of Double Fine, don’t think of ourselves as separate from the guys. In fact, we don’t identify as “the women of Double Fine” unless we are joking around in the bathroom (man, we never run into each other there, though, it’s super weird when another lady is in the bathroom. We have two for 11 ladies) or until someone asks us questions specific to our gender, like this one. It isn’t offensive to be asked such questions, but nor is it offensive that we aren’t constantly aware of our gender and how it separates us from the guys. We are Double Fine as they are Double Fine. It isn’t that no women pitched ideas, but that 42 out of 65 employees did not, and it so happens that 11 of those 42 are of the female gender.

We aren’t disappointed. We are still making games to the degree that satisfies us, which is all we need to be doing—making ourselves happy. Tim and Justin and Isa made it absolutely clear that anyone and everyone could pitch an idea. Would you rather they send an email to the ladies requesting one of us pitch an idea? Pushing us outside our comfort zones? I think not. I hope not.

(Please note, these are my personal opinions and thoughts on the subject. I have not sat down and had long discourse with the other ladies about their views, but I know that it is the general view of the ladies, and also know that we are all confident and strong enough to kick down proverbial [maybe real?] doors if we were dissatisfied).

We are Double Fine as they are Double Fine.

The original non-rebloggable response is here.

A big problem in video games is keeping up to date with the latest gameplay designs and technologies. Problem for me, anyway. You’re expected to play the latest and greatest which can each range from a couple of hours to dozens of hours. I look at the new stuff and get consistently drawn backward instead. Games like Legend of Zelda (Majora’s Mask and Link’s Awakening, not the ‘save the princess’ crap), Pokemon Red/Blue, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus. Of the new slew of games, only the quiet, serene experiences like Limbo, Braid, World of Goo, and Journey are of interest to me. Shooters bore the fuck out of me. I can only play something like Assassin’s Creed or Dishonored once before I’m weary of the type of game. It’s a strange place to be in. Nostalgic for the fond memories of past games and eager for new and different approaches to game design.

I think I’m just tired of working at the big publishers. It’s a highly corporate culture focused on the bottom line more than good, intriguing games. I don’t blame them, big as they are. Need to pay all those people working for them. Just makes me want to work at a small game studio even more. The first company where I worked was absorbed into Activision. EA, Microsoft, and now I’m considering Apple if I can’t get in at the small studio where I’d like to work. Behemoths whose only purpose in my life is to give me money and a nice name to tack onto my resume.

Comes the day I may want to start my own small operation. Something independent where my decisions make or break it. My calls, my writing, my creative drive.

A man can only dream to have that kind of pressure.

A big problem in video games is keeping up to date with the latest gameplay designs and technologies. Problem for me, anyway. You’re expected to play the latest and greatest which can each range from a couple of hours to dozens of hours. I look at the new stuff and get consistently drawn backward instead. Games like Legend of Zelda (Majora’s Mask and Link’s Awakening, not the ‘save the princess’ crap), Pokemon Red/Blue, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus. Of the new slew of games, only the quiet, serene experiences like Limbo, Braid, World of Goo, and Journey are of interest to me. Shooters bore the fuck out of me. I can only play something like Assassin’s Creed or Dishonored once before I’m weary of the type of game. It’s a strange place to be in. Nostalgic for the fond memories of past games and eager for new and different approaches to game design.

I think I’m just tired of working at the big publishers. It’s a highly corporate culture focused on the bottom line more than good, intriguing games. I don’t blame them, big as they are. Need to pay all those people working for them. Just makes me want to work at a small game studio even more. The first company where I worked was absorbed into Activision. EA, Microsoft, and now I’m considering Apple if I can’t get in at the small studio where I’d like to work. Behemoths whose only purpose in my life is to give me money and a nice name to tack onto my resume.

Comes the day I may want to start my own small operation. Something independent where my decisions make or break it. My calls, my writing, my creative drive.

A man can only dream to have that kind of pressure.

Video game company Double Fine—based out of San Francisco—recently came under scrutiny for publicly pitching game ideas as part of their Amnesia Fortnight project but not including any women (or non-white men for that matter) in their slew of presenters. This was at the same time that Twitter users blew up the #1reasonwhy tag to call out sexism in the industry. Sexism, mind you, that is not surprising nor unknown. And this is naturally a problem in many fields.

One of Double Fine’s female employees put forth her thoughts on the matter:

We have a lovely forum thread discussing this, here. But I will also answer it with my own thoughts.

—-

Why? Because of a few reasons.

One, many of us were too busy (ex: I am in office admin, so my responsibilities continue into AF).

Two, many didn’t have an idea.

Three, many weren’t interested in leading a game.

You also have to understand that we, the ladies of Double Fine, don’t think of ourselves as separate from the guys. In fact, we don’t identify as “the women of Double Fine” unless we are joking around in the bathroom (man, we never run into each other there, though, it’s super weird when another lady is in the bathroom. We have two for 11 ladies) or until someone asks us questions specific to our gender, like this one. It isn’t offensive to be asked such questions, but nor is it offensive that we aren’t constantly aware of our gender and how it separates us from the guys. We are Double Fine as they are Double Fine. It isn’t that no women pitched ideas, but that 42 out of 65 employees did not, and it so happens that 11 of those 42 are of the female gender.

We aren’t disappointed. We are still making games to the degree that satisfies us, which is all we need to be doing—making ourselves happy. Tim and Justin and Isa made it absolutely clear that anyone and everyone could pitch an idea. Would you rather they send an email to the ladies requesting one of us pitch an idea? Pushing us outside our comfort zones? I think not. I hope not.

(Please note, these are my personal opinions and thoughts on the subject. I have not sat down and had long discourse with the other ladies about their views, but I know that it is the general view of the ladies, and also know that we are all confident and strong enough to kick down proverbial [maybe real?] doors if we were dissatisfied).

We are Double Fine as they are Double Fine.

The original non-rebloggable response is here.

Stream of video game consciousness.

When I was a kid I was playing video games on my NES and Sega Genesis alongside the rest of my friends whose parents couldn’t afford or didn’t understand computers. The absence of this new advent provided a sort of innocence via ignorance. There was no Internet. The digital media blitz that kicked in toward the end of the 90s and has only intensified since then was beyond comprehension. There was simply TV, video games, and playing outside. We had little and enjoyed it.

I sat down to talk to my fourteen year-old brother about six months ago. There’s a fourteen year gap between the two of us and my interaction with him is usually limited to talk about video games, updates on his classes, and advice on how to handle the teenage shit we all had to deal with.

He’s fifteen now. A quiet, reserved kid. Moody as any kid that age.

I asked him a vital question: “Do you have Skyrim?”

“Yea, Cris [another brother of ours] bought it. But he won’t open it. He doesn’t want to play it yet because he has a bunch of other games to finish.”

“Well, don’t you want to play it?”

“Kind of. But I just, like, watched most of it on Youtube because I couldn’t wait.”

“Oh. So you’ve watched the whole game?”

“Yea, pretty much.”

A travesty. Watch a video game online? What about the experience of enjoying it? The memories of playing through a difficult dungeon or saving a traveler out in the countryside? To me, it was the equivalent of skipping a great book to watch the shitty film.

I bought him a copy anyway.

I have to wonder if I would’ve watched something like, say, a video game playthrough channel on TV when I was a kid. Just sit there and watch all the video games I couldn’t play. We did buy plenty of video game magazines, but they were different from outright watching a playthrough on Youtube. They just revealed tidbits and mentioned the good parts. The experience of playing the game was still reserved for one person and perhaps some friends to experience on their own. If we didn’t own a copy of it or our parents didn’t want to buy it, then we had to wait. And wait.

And maybe, someday, we’d get to play it.

Stream of video game consciousness.

When I was a kid I was playing video games on my NES and Sega Genesis alongside the rest of my friends whose parents couldn’t afford or didn’t understand computers. The absence of this new advent provided a sort of innocence via ignorance. There was no Internet. The digital media blitz that kicked in toward the end of the 90s and has only intensified since then was beyond comprehension. There was simply TV, video games, and playing outside. We had little and enjoyed it.

I sat down to talk to my fourteen year-old brother about six months ago. There’s a fourteen year gap between the two of us and my interaction with him is usually limited to talk about video games, updates on his classes, and advice on how to handle the teenage shit we all had to deal with.

He’s fifteen now. A quiet, reserved kid. Moody as any kid that age.

I asked him a vital question: “Do you have Skyrim?”

“Yea, Cris [another brother of ours] bought it. But he won’t open it. He doesn’t want to play it yet because he has a bunch of other games to finish.”

“Well, don’t you want to play it?”

“Kind of. But I just, like, watched most of it on Youtube because I couldn’t wait.”

“Oh. So you’ve watched the whole game?”

“Yea, pretty much.”

A travesty. Watch a video game online? What about the experience of enjoying it? The memories of playing through a difficult dungeon or saving a traveler out in the countryside? To me, it was the equivalent of skipping a great book to watch the shitty film.

I bought him a copy anyway.

I have to wonder if I would’ve watched something like, say, a video game playthrough channel on TV when I was a kid. Just sit there and watch all the video games I couldn’t play. We did buy plenty of video game magazines, but they were different from outright watching a playthrough on Youtube. They just revealed tidbits and mentioned the good parts. The experience of playing the game was still reserved for one person and perhaps some friends to experience on their own. If we didn’t own a copy of it or our parents didn’t want to buy it, then we had to wait. And wait.

And maybe, someday, we’d get to play it.

You lose ‘em in the first five minutes.

One of the game design tools that I’ve been researching is Adventure Game Studio. This tool is essentially a adventure game editor complete with libraries and default scripts that handle a lot of the back-end stuff such as saving/loading, graphics processing, and pathfinding. This allows the creator to focus on the artwork and design scripting, and is particularly helpful for someone who has no fondness for programming. Like me.

I’ve only just started with it so I can’t write too much about it’s inner workings. What I did take note of is something I found while browsing through some of the games that have been created with AGS. It’s a game called Prodigal, which comes with high praise in its description and the promise of an intriguing horror-themed story. This goes a long way with me since most adventure game fans and creators focus on wacky comedy and scenes out of medieval times. In other words, more of the shit that was original in the late 80s and early 90s. Prodigal looked like something that strived to be different.

image

So I felt content in my choice of game. It seemed like a good way to check out AGS’s potential for the kinds of games I’ve been bouncing around in my head. Namely, games driven by the story and character development. I loaded the game and was immediately prompted with a question: did I want to view the intro?

I mean, yea. What kind of question is that? Who wants to skip the beginning of a story? It turns out I did when the intro kept going… and going… and going. I didn’t time it, but by the end of the intro sequence I just wanted everyone to shut up so I could get to the game.

image

It started with a click on an icon. It led to a game launching. It turned into a fucking snooze. It continued.

It’s possible that I’m marred by years of focusing on the present in my narratives. I prefer to forget the setup and get to the meat. The action. Even if the action is a conversation that’s already in progress. Allow the player the chance to observe for himself and understand as the action unfolds. Explaining everything in detail is the kind of nonsense that happens when developers think their audiences are morons.

Even if they are, let’s not assume our audiences are morons.

image

Make it quick or let the backstory unfold during the course of the game.

There are a multitude of ways to begin a story, and none of them them matter if the first impression is full of long-winded and uninteresting dialogue. Let the action—the gameplay in which the player is engaged—guide the introduction. And if you must start with a lengthy introduction scene make sure it doesn’t cause the player’s cursor to hover the exit button.

image

And by this point I officially don’t care.

To their credit, the guys who developed this game do demonstrate that creepy atmosphere that is mentioned in the description. My heart rate jumped a few beats when the strange noises from the woods kicked in. I’m also intrigued and impressed by the difficulties that must be involved in creating a decent adventure game, let alone an interesting and entertaining one.

I just wish they’d skipped the unnecessary exposition to avoid losing the player before the game even begins.

You lose ‘em in the first five minutes.

One of the game design tools that I’ve been researching is Adventure Game Studio. This tool is essentially a adventure game editor complete with libraries and default scripts that handle a lot of the back-end stuff such as saving/loading, graphics processing, and pathfinding. This allows the creator to focus on the artwork and design scripting, and is particularly helpful for someone who has no fondness for programming. Like me.

I’ve only just started with it so I can’t write too much about it’s inner workings. What I did take note of is something I found while browsing through some of the games that have been created with AGS. It’s a game called Prodigal, which comes with high praise in its description and the promise of an intriguing horror-themed story. This goes a long way with me since most adventure game fans and creators focus on wacky comedy and scenes out of medieval times. In other words, more of the shit that was original in the late 80s and early 90s. Prodigal looked like something that strived to be different.

image

So I felt content in my choice of game. It seemed like a good way to check out AGS’s potential for the kinds of games I’ve been bouncing around in my head. Namely, games driven by the story and character development. I loaded the game and was immediately prompted with a question: did I want to view the intro?

I mean, yea. What kind of question is that? Who wants to skip the beginning of a story? It turns out I did when the intro kept going… and going… and going. I didn’t time it, but by the end of the intro sequence I just wanted everyone to shut up so I could get to the game.

image

It started with a click on an icon. It led to a game launching. It turned into a fucking snooze. It continued.

It’s possible that I’m marred by years of focusing on the present in my narratives. I prefer to forget the setup and get to the meat. The action. Even if the action is a conversation that’s already in progress. Allow the player the chance to observe for himself and understand as the action unfolds. Explaining everything in detail is the kind of nonsense that happens when developers think their audiences are morons.

Even if they are, let’s not assume our audiences are morons.

image

Make it quick or let the backstory unfold during the course of the game.

There are a multitude of ways to begin a story, and none of them them matter if the first impression is full of long-winded and uninteresting dialogue. Let the action—the gameplay in which the player is engaged—guide the introduction. And if you must start with a lengthy introduction scene make sure it doesn’t cause the player’s cursor to hover the exit button.

image

And by this point I officially don’t care.

To their credit, the guys who developed this game do demonstrate that creepy atmosphere that is mentioned in the description. My heart rate jumped a few beats when the strange noises from the woods kicked in. I’m also intrigued and impressed by the difficulties that must be involved in creating a decent adventure game, let alone an interesting and entertaining one.

I just wish they’d skipped the unnecessary exposition to avoid losing the player before the game even begins.