JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

Part 2 continues from my last article, a regurgitation of words about the value of a dollar while I digressed to talk about the nostalgia of adventure games, which was meant as foreplay (or for a better word, prelude) to what I really wanted to talk about, Touch gaming (which didn’t mean to sound erotic, but I didn’t know what else to call it, pocket gaming? iPhone gaming?). But the market of causal gaming has simply changed. My DS and PSP has been collecting dust in the dark corners covered by cobwebs (speaking of spiders), while I constantly have an iPhone device in my hand so I have access to too many games, a gaming device I often utilized while I am waiting in line, driving in traffic (okay I am kidding), and mostly when I am doing my business in my bathroom. To tell you the truth, close to nothing on the iPhone captured my attention for more than 5 minutes and my conclusion was that they shouldn’t, as the perfect gaming session on the iPhone falls somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes — which led me to create my first foray into the market, my math puzzler Summation. To tell you the truth Summation existed because of my Girlfriend’s love of Drop7, and Summation was built upon similar ideas (resulting in a very different game) toward the same demographic, some may think it a better game, some not, depending on preference and your inclination toward arithmetic, but hay I am not here to promote Summation, even though that wouldn’t hurt. I am here to talk about what 99 cents can now buy us, that now we view life and society’s everyday goods by how many iphone apps we can actually buy, that a cup of Starbucks coffee is too expensive, and four games of Street Fighter 4 at the arcade is entirely not worth it.

This is what I meant when I said speaking of Spider. Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, wasn’t a game I really want to review, but this is probably the 2nd iPhone game that made me spend more than 5 minutes, this is a very well done game, essentially Castlevania meets Bad Mojo (excpet you are playing a spider not a roach), those knowing me should know that any word that remotely resembles Castlevania is high praise from me. This game isn’t 99 cents but 2.99 to pay for this work of art isn’t expensive. I dont know where we went wrong (probably somewhere along the line of disgruntled developers kept lowering the price of their submission), how did we get to looking at a 99 cent game and thinking that it isn’t worth it while when the App store was still fresh, we (well maybe I should just say I) were gladly paying 10 bucks for entries like Rolando and Enigmo. And yes, I do think High Production game should cost more (Spider could probably have been sold for 20 bucks if it was released the first day the 3G was out), simply because 99 cents is as low as it can get for an indie developer, and an indie developer like me, still got to eat. Unless a developer can make enough sales like developers for Trism and Flight Control, it is almost impossible to live on app development, among the saturated market out there.

There are developers like the dude who developed Dapple (which claims to be a colorblind friendly color puzzle game), which isn’t good at all, which production value could have been slightly better than Summation (yet the gameplay design I question), yet the developer claims to have spent so much money one got to question how much salary he paid himself. He isn’t the Braid developer Jonathan Blow (who actually had an awesome idea), if I paid myself a hundred dollar per hour salary (like how much I would charge as an independent consultant?), on Summation I would have spent close to a million (yes I may be exaggerating).  My point is if you aren’t an idiot, you shouldn’t be losing money on your iPhone game development, like a writer could spend 10 years writing a book and if it doesn’t sell, all he loses is part of his life, or maybe paper and ink (nowadays mostly just electricity). You are never supposed to outsource any of your development unless you have already made it big, what you do is you find people who believe in your work and you share your profit (and glory) with them. This isn’t to say I should give out Summation for free, just simply it is worth what you pay for.

Now, on to actual iphone games. Personally I find that all the ports from existing better systems or games that require a long grinding time (like any RPGs), or games that require precision dual control (like Castle of Magic) don’t really work well,  games like Idracula or Minigore may look good on paper and maybe even fun for 3 minutes but you already see the whole game in 3 minutes. I find that only these genres work well on the iPhone:

– Puzzle game or simple Tapping games (Bejeweled, Drop 7, Parachute Panic) - simple tapping and short game sessions are perfect for these kinds of games. Para Panic is one of my favorite and it has consumed many of my short 2 min sessions in the bathroom.

– Castle Defense (Stickwars, Knights on Rush) - A newly formed genre which combine tower defense (without the towers) and simple action tapping. Tower Defense you could play on the PC, or PS3, but Castle Defense only work on the iPhone.

– Line Drawing (Flight Control, Harbor Master, DrawRace, iDork) - Drawing a path and guiding various objects toward a goal work well on the iPhone. This could have workd on the DS, but the DS is actually less suited for pointless games than the iPhone. Flight Control took off and generated a plethora of clones, like Warcraft and RTS. But these games, while pointless, are fun for that 3 to 5 min session, and they don’t get old.

– Tilt shooter games or unique puzzlers that combines tilt and tap (iFighter, Rolando, various Pinball rolling games) - iFighter was another game that I spent actually more than 5 min for a session and as a 1943 clone it works perfectly on a tilt control. Rolando is a game that looked good on design and reminded me of a certain PSP game, yet I didn’t quite get to enjoy (despite its award winning status). A game like Katamari would have worked perfectly on the iPhone yet the port just didn’t work well  at all.

Of course I don’t mean all apps outside of these genres suck (Spider is a good example), but developers need to work hard to come up with good ideas (this obviously applies to myself as well), to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crap out there.  I don’t see iPhone as an replacement for the PSP and DS, it may not even be a contender in many areas (I will still wait for the next Zelda and Castlevania and Patapon on the handhelds). But sometimes when we have just that 5 minuties of free time and no other gaming machines with us, those minutes of joy are what we are paying for when we purchase these quality apps which are cheaper than coffee. Gaming has changed and the casual market is taking us on by storm. But I still want to play my serious games in front of my plasma TV, so I won’t be looking forward to the next Monkey Island and Mass Effect on the iPhone (and is this Wolvenstein RPG thing a joke?),  iPhone developers should develop games (casual or not, it should only require 5 min)  that would only work if it were on the iPhone., and on no other platform. And that concludes the ranting for the day, onto fighting games next.

After the publication of Pillars and Summation, I have finally freed up some time to write. Gaming has changed is the topic of the day. The value of gaming has changed. 09 is known to many as the year of casual touch gaming, the year of fighters, and the year of adventures. What I am going to start with is what a US dollar means to us gamers. I stopped by the arcade the other day (possibly the only remaining one in LA) because of visiting a nearby restaurant for takeouts. A dollar used to mean 4 (or sometimes 2 depending on how new game is) matches of King of Fighters at the arcade, of course depending whether I kicked ass or sucked (usually the former) a quarter lasted me anywhere from 3 to 20 minutes or more, multiply that by 4 and you get the value of a dollar. But when I was there in this chaotic summer of 09, the value of that has changed, spending a dollar in the arcade was too expensive. What I can actually get with a dollar:

- A third of a cup of Starbucks coffee

- Quality games on my Iphone - example: Flight Control, Para Panic, and … SUMMATION…, and you even get a penny back for your piggy bank, and that covers future content update.

99 cents quality casual games have changed the value of gaming, well not only that, the availability of free online matches at the comfort of home, which you already paid for: Your XBLA fee, your internet, your electricity, your plasma TV, those things…, why should you spend a dollar at the arcade, even though it is lag free, but also the person playing next to you may just smell bad, or wanting to beat you up because of your godly skills. And not to mention, if you had to drive to the arcade (gas mileage? wear and tear? possibility of running into old ladies and their cats and getting sued…). OK you may meet your dream girl at the arcade, but get real guys. You might as well go to the local bar, or pick up a dwarf in WOW.

The year of the Adventure: Let’s start with that first and we’ll go back to the 99 cent crap and fighting goons at home later. 09 is indeed the year of the adventure even though it has started pre 09. After being dead for about 10 years, is Graphic Adventure games actually making a mainstream comeback? I’ll let you be the judge of that. Evidence supporting this:

- The Return of Monkey Island (the holy grail of adventures) and TellTale Episodic adventures making into XBLA and wii-ware

- A lot of adventure games has surfaced (ranges from mediocre to excellent in no particular order), and some are even sequels of games you played 15 years ago: Hata Mari, Memento Mori, Ceville, Mysterious Island, Runaway, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, Simon the Sorceror 4, Vampyre Story… blah blah blah

- A lot of “famous” adventure game designers are back from the dead and created something new or have something on the horizon. For example Jane Janson, Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, Tim Schafer (though he is technically not making adventure games anymore.. smart guy).., the think tank behind Fate of Atlantis (now made Hata Mari), the guy behind the Tex Murphy adventures (and now made some mediocre downloadable game), the guys behind MI3 now making Vampyre Story… Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain…. hmm…, does this count?

- The Advent of Iphone and DS platform which seems adventure friendly (but why would I want to play Monkey Island on the Itouch if I can play it on my 100-inch plasma TV? - and all the DS adventures seem to be stripped of voice acting)

- The Indie adventure game community hasn’t died… yet…, that includes the AGS community, people who are working on the next King’s Quest: the Silver Lining

Well these are all evidence supporting adventure games making a pretty good comeback. But if you think about it seriously, ask yourselves these questions:

- Where are the adventure games when you are at E3 (I tried to locate Monkey Island for 5 hours but to no avail)

- When is the last time you have seen an adventure game make magazine headlines? In fact when is the last time you have read a magazine (admit it, PRINT IS DEAD)

- What attributed to the death of Adventure Games:

1) The Internet

2) The average IQ of people playing games decreasing by .2 every passing second (and mulitple that by 2 whenever a wii gets sold)

The answer is that those problems are still around. The average time to finish an adventure game now is 5 to 10 hours instead of 100 to 300 days like 20 years ago when we actually had to get stuck at these impossible illogical puzzles for days, while the only option to proceed were:

1) To actually use our brain — that or click on every pixel on every screen (and that actually isn’t much considering the pre 1080p days)

2) Snail Mail Scorpia from Computer Gaming Worlds, who was a chick that worked for a magazine and answered people’s letter.

3) Call the Sierra hotline and pay 100 dollar per minute while you try to find your solution to King’s Quest 5

4) Drive to the Mall to buy a hintbook or glance through one if they are not sealed, reading ahead for solutions in case you get stuck again to save another trip to the mall

All of that seems tedious nowadays but that was part of gaming 20 years ago, we did that, and that seemed fun in a way, and that was the legacy of adventure games, we struggled to solve these sometimes illogical puzzles and we found the joy in doing it. But those days are gone now, now why would we bother while all the solutions are 1 click away and even without looking at them, the games are easy enough with the ingame hint system, and most games taking out the verb / action utilization gameplay and only gave you the 1 click do all option, and most games now (arguably a better design choice) will let you view all the hotspot keywords with a press of the spacebar.

And the new generation — they are retards. Kids and damnation. Why should they want to combine Item A and Item B to get Item C.  when they can blow up a a car with their rocket launcher and chain comboing that into another 3 cars, launching that 20 feet up the air, getting ACHIEVEMENT points, so they can brag to their friends. Wait, insult sword fighting, what is that? And CONTRA is too hard, I rather play Halo 3 (watch that video if you haven’t)

Are Adventure games truly back or are they simply making a temporary comeback to feed the old generation’s nostalgia, and will soon fade away? I sure hope is the former, but you got to admit, nobody can make Day of the Tentacle again, nobody can, they probably can’t even make another Loom. What they can do is probably make a kick-ass story with good voice acting and good art and the puzzles are just there to get in the way of the art of storytelling (like the Gabriel Knight series), but that is all they can do, that is probably what upcoming games like Heavy Rain and Gray Matter will be. I want to see more adventure games, I want to see games like Quest for Glory, let’s hope the genre will live on, and not just in our hearts.