Cruise Elroy

I started playing video games when I was about five years old, cutting my teeth on MS-DOS and the Sega Master System. The first game I ever played was Alex Kidd in Miracle World.

By contrast, a gamer who is five years old today was born during the heyday of the PlayStation 2. His first Mario game might have been Super Mario Sunshine, and Halo 2 came out before he knew how to read.

What, I wonder, would today’s five-year-old gamer — or any new gamer, for that matter — think of the burgeoning indie scene?

It seems to me that many independent games rely on an appreciation of, or at least a familiarity with, video games of the 1980s and 1990s. Judith’s stark textures and sprites evoke early first-person shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Don’t Look Back counts on the player having internalized platformer conventions (such as timed jumping puzzles and Mega Man-style boss HP meters) so they can be subverted halfway through. Games like You Have to Burn the Rope and ROM Check Fail are probably unintelligible without context. And of course loads of indie games, from Passage to I Wish I Were the Moon, use low-fidelity graphics out of the NES era — which, whether by necessity or as an aesthetic choice, are nostalgic for some but potentially alienating for others.

Do these games resonate with an audience that is new to the medium? Perhaps. They certainly don’t suffer from a lack of availability; all the games mentioned above are free, and most of are even playable in a browser. If some of their effect depends on familiarity with older games, though, the appeal will be limited. We’re staring down the Long Tail of video games, and indies are at the far end of the curve.

The high-level objective of a video game might be described as making pretend life more engaging than real life. The Sims games have to interpret that more literally than most, since you’re not a superhuman space marine but a guy in the suburbs trying to afford a new dishwasher.

The designers’ challenge is to selectively abstract the everyday minutiae of life so that the player can focus on the fun parts. Generally speaking, they do a great job. Instead of shopping at the supermarket, for example, you take food out of your perpetually-stocked refrigerator and pay for it on the spot; instead of calling a plumber, you can just click and drag your toilet from one room to another.

Even so, the annoyances of everyday life inevitably creep in. You still have to pay the bills and clean the bathroom. You still have to use the bathroom, which is amazing to me considering how many games don’t even bother modeling them. And frankly, when faced with the prospect of working late, coming home too tired to unwind, and barely having time to shower and eat before heading off to bed in a video game, one begins to wonder exactly where the escapism is.

It’s there, but as fans can attest it’s not always in the game itself. I once sat behind a young girl on a train who played The Sims for three hours straight. Amazingly, I didn’t see her spend any time interacting with the characters in “live mode” — ostensibly the focus of the game. Rather, she spent the entire time constructing floor plans, deliberating over wallpaper colors, furnishing and decorating all the rooms — and then deleting all her work and starting anew.

I don’t play in quite the same way, but I think that girl had the right idea. I’ve always found The Sims more engaging as a series of sandboxes (home decorator, philanderer, omniscient serial killer) than as a life simulation.

The Sims 3 is still great at the sandbox style, of course, but in many ways the balance has swung back towards more traditional gameplay. This is due in large part to the judicious co-opting of established systems from other genres. For example:

• Choosing a Sim’s traits feels a lot like creating a class in an RPG. Certain traits are mutually beneficial (Family-Oriented and Charismatic, Friendly and Good) while others could make for more difficult characters (Family-Oriented and Evil, Hot-Headed and Childish). For those looking for practical applications, there are also several traits with skill-related bonuses (Virtuoso, Natural Cook, Green Thumb).
• The “moodlets” system, which uses temporary bonuses and penalties to affect your Sim’s mood, works like the buffs and debuffs in an MMO. If your Sim is tired but wants to go out on Friday night, she can have some coffee for a short-term positive moodlet to get though the evening. Or if she regularly comes home stressed from her high-powered job, she can relax with her fireplace and hi-fi stereo system — area-of-effect moodlets that act as a kind of suburban armor.
• When controlling an entire family, the game plays a bit like an RTS. It’s possible to play most of a day with the camera zoomed out to the city level, giving orders to one Sim at work (“Slack Off,” “Suck Up To Boss”) while clicking off items in a grocery shopping list for another Sim, and sending their kid to school. This part is a mixed bag; AJ Glasser at Kotaku wasn’t a fan, and I agree that it’s not the most fun part of the game. I found myself wishing for a faster fast-forward, which is never a good sign.

I have no doubt that there are enough new home decor options in The Sims 3 to keep that girl on the train (and me) entertained. Now I think there is also enough gameplay.

[Part one | Part two | Part three]

Hi there! After an unexpected (and unintentional) hiatus, I’m easing back into the groove with some game music analysis. I figured it was about time to revive the long-dormant irregular meter series, and the Warcraft franchise has plenty to offer.

First up is an Orc theme from Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The snare part is transcribed below:

There are a few noteworthy things here. First, the black noteheads are the famous pattern from “Mars, The Bringer of War,” part of Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets. (”Mars” has come up before in the discussion of “Feel My Blade” from Final Fantasy IX.) Second, if you compare the blue noteheads you’ll see that the last two beats of every measure are slightly different — they mix and match quarter notes, eighth notes, and eighth note triplets. Third, the pattern is a very unusual 29 beats long, owing to the last measure’s extra beat.

Here’s the intro from one of the Orc themes in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness:

This section features a 5/4 timpani ostinato reminiscent of “Take Five,” transcribed above, while the strings and chorus build tension. As you can hear at the end of the sample, the piece drops into 4/4 time once the introduction is finished. (We saw the use of irregular meter as a hook, briefly, in “Dead End” from Final Fantasy VIII.)

The same technique is used in this Orc theme from Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal:

Here the irregular section is fleshed out a bit more. After a similar tension-building section, there is a brief melody played over the 5/4 ostinato before the piece reverts to duple meter. (As an aside: I love the modal ambiguity in that melody, and the tritone in the timpani part is great. This is far and away the most interesting part of the piece.)

In yet another example of the irregular hook, here’s a snip from World of Warcraft’s title screen music:

Once again, the meter returns to “normal” after the introductory section. The takeaway, then, seems to be that irregular meter doesn’t have to carry throughout a piece to be effective — it’s also a useful way to grab attention at the beginning.

One common criticism of Braid is that its story, infamously delivered through enigmatic and overwritten text, seems largely independent from the gameplay. The ending is well done, they argue, but there are too few moments with such an effective synthesis.

I think that’s the wrong approach here. In my eyes, Braid doesn’t attempt to integrate a narrative into the gameplay; rather, it integrates the gameplay into a narrative, subverting the expectation that interactivity will be its primary language. In fact, I’d say that Braid evokes the experience of reading more than playing.

How is that? The most common way to progress through a game is to experiment. Are there any hidden goodies on this level? Let’s explore. What’s this boss’s weakness? Try the available weapons and see what works. Can I gather enough momentum to reach that ledge? Only one way to find out.

Braid, though, doesn’t tend to reward experimentation. Because of the time-bending mechanics, it’s difficult to get feedback from your mistakes and refine your solutions. Indeed, it rarely makes sense to “almost” solve a puzzle; they’re so precisely constructed that coming close can be as useless as heading down the wrong path entirely.

So instead of solving Braid’s puzzles by experimenting, I solved them by thinking: staring through the screen like it was a Magic Eye, absentmindedly tapping Shift, struggling to intuit Jonathan Blow’s intentions. To anyone watching there was little indication I was doing anything at all, let alone “playing” — but after I had absorbed everything, I could usually complete the puzzle in one fell swoop, with minimal frustration.

That is also, in effect, how I read. Interpreting literature is not a fundamentally experimental process. I don’t break off halfway through a paragraph to try out my dozen half-baked theories; I try to hold everything in my head at once and deduce meaning from the whole. It’s part reading comprehension and part sitting around allowing ideas to percolate.

As I tried to unravel Braid’s interstitial text I realized that solving the puzzles and understanding the text required very similar approaches. Their concealed machinations and thematic ambiguities are teased out using the same mental processes, and are part of the same overarching search for meaning. In a way, I was “reading” everything in the game. It’s not the unification of narrative and gameplay that we’ve come to expect, but it’s a refreshing and effective one.

Last night I listened to the conclusion of Wizards of the Coast’s D&D podcast series. After an arduous battle, our heroes Acquisitions Incorporated defeated the evil necromancer and surveyed the treasure still remaining in the half-defiled crypt. Wil Wheaton, through his character Aeofel:

We are totally not taking that treasure. This guy came here from Calarel. Listen, I know this might cost me my job, […] but this guy was sent here from Calarel to defile this tomb and steal from these people who gave their lives to defend this tower and turn back the goblins and bring light to the land. And to steal treasure from this tomb would be an affront to all of the gods. […] That would be a Lawful Good thing to do: close the tomb and seal it and not take anything…

As I listened to Wil’s surprisingly impassioned speech, and the protestations of the other party members, a thought popped into my head: role-playing is when you make poor gameplay decisions on purpose.

That’s not an all-inclusive definition — role-playing is also when Wil swears his Oaths of Enmity in an imaginary language, for example — but I think it’s a fair assessment of its outward manifestation, especially in video games.

When I wrote about Chrono Trigger last year, I mentioned that I tend to include Marle and Lucca in my party even when they weren’t the best options. Marle in particular doesn’t fit my playing style; I wanted to use her slot for a healer, but both Frog and Robo have more efficient spells that can restore the entire party at once.

Having Marle in my party didn’t help me win; in fact, it often made things more difficult. I brought her along based on something that, for gameplay, is entirely meaningless: Crono would have done it. That’s video game role-playing. (Incidentally, this time through I’ve been using Frog instead and the game seems much easier.)

It’s not just RPGs where I’ve exhibited this sort of counterproductive behavior. In the Civilization games, I insist on picking peaceful leaders and building a strong cultural foundation (libraries, universities, Wonders of the World) instead of doing anything practical (creating an army to ward off an impending invasion). I’ve never once come close to a military victory, except on the wimpiest difficulties. Needless to say, I’ve always been terrible at Civilization, though the Culture mechanic introduced in Civ III means that I’m not as hapless as I once was.

Looking further back, it seems I’ve been playing this way my entire life. I used to hold back my bloodied Footmen in WarCraft II so that they didn’t die in battle, though they were faceless, uesless, and easily replaceable. I’d routinely “call” Saria in Ocarina of Time when she had nothing new to say, because she told Link he could talk to her anytime. I’d pay money for a room at the inn in each new Morrowind town because staying at the Fighter’s Guild before meeting everyone seemed an abuse of their hospitality.

Perhaps a more charitable way of framing my definition is that role-playing reflects an interest in story participation in addition to gameplay-defined victory. But from the perspective of the latter, my experience has been that it’s often comically ineffectual.

Music carries with it immense power. Consider the desperation in “Dido’s Lament,” with which Purcell etches his heroine’s name into history through sheer force of will. Or consider the gravitas of “The Imperial March,” Darth Vader’s leitmotif from the Star Wars films: fear and respect in nine notes. Or, if you like, consider music theorist Nigel Tufnel’s infamous demonstration that simply playing classical music in the key of D minor is enough to make people weep.

There are few video game themes with such capacity, of course, and fewer still that achieved widespread popularity and cultural cachet. One in particular stands out, however — an emblem of the medium’s potential for musical expression, and a beacon to light the way towards its realization of that potential.

I am speaking, of course, of the Pony Friends theme.

For all its adulations, there is surprisingly little to unpack here. The theme is thoroughly diatonic, excepting a brief implication of minor subdominant harmony in the penulimate bar. It is based almost entirely on I, IV, and V chords in C major — note the determined avoidance of Tufnel’s melancholy key — and has no rhythmic interest to speak of. And yet its appeal is immediately obvious upon first listen; its power lies in its simplicity. It is, perhaps, the perfect melody.

Here is another statement of the theme:

Here the composer begins to play with expectations. The accompaniment is teasingly familiar — indeed, it maintains the key in addition to the harmonic language — but the melody is delayed by nearly forty seconds. The newly added percussion only heightens our suspense, and our eventual arrival at the melody is made all the more satisfying by the anticipation.

And finally, we have this:

This is certainly the cruelest arrangement of the Pony Friends theme, if it can even be called that. The now-familiar harmony returns once again with its C major tonic. However, the theme itself has been wantonly excised. A new melody takes its place, but it is hardly adequate; it lacks the placidity and purity of its predecessor. I suspect there may even be a secret modulation to D minor somewhere, though I could find none in my analysis. This is a betrayal, pure and simple.

So it is that a simple melody can come to define a game even through its absence — and perhaps reflect an entire medium’s aspirations in the process. Would that all game music was at this level.

In my first Cruise Elroy post I argued that the real legacy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl is its curatorial treatment of Nintendo’s history. It’s high time we peeked inside that museum, and where better to start than with the music?

Here’s the beginning of the Ocarina of Time medley, arranged especially for Brawl:

The two main pieces excerpted here are, of course, “Zelda’s Lullaby” and “Song of Storms,” but right now I want to talk about this little transitory section:

There are actually references to three additional Ocarina songs embedded in this ten-second sample. Let’s dig them out.

First is the coda from “Minuet of Forest”:

Compare 0:08 in “Minuet” with the beginning of the transition section above; the melody from measures 5-6 is played twice. You may notice that the second instance is higher in pitch than the first; this is what music theorists call a sequence.

The second piece is “Bolero of Fire”:

Compare 0:05 in the transition above to the opening motive in “Bolero.” The context is different and the specific intervals have changed; however, the piece is still identifiable because it maintains the same melodic contour and is similarly sequential.

The third reference involves that quick piano snippet at 0:09 — t’s a passing allusion to the piano ostinato in the Ocarina boss battle theme:

The medley ups the tempo significantly, but the allusion is unmistakable — both feature the same chromatic descent, in the same range, on the same instrument.

More to come on Brawl music as I discover more of its nooks and crannies. (If you’d like to read more about Ocarina of Time music, head into the archives!)

Things have been slow around here recently; here are a few quick updates:

• The Vintage Game Club recently started playing Chrono Trigger, and the discussion threads are as lively as they’ve ever been. If you’re interested in playing with us, or even just reading along, now is a great time to join. For my part, I’m still (slowly) working on the Chrono Trigger DS playthrough I started in December and may wade into the discussion towards the end.
• If, for some reason, you want to hear more of my thoughts on Mother 3’s music, head over to Square Enix Music Online — I’ve written reviews for its two soundtrack albums, Mother 3i and Mother 3+. (The short version: definitely check out the former, but pass on the latter unless you’re a big Mother series fan.) Both albums are available from the US iTunes Store should they pique your interest.
• I have a couple of music posts in the works, but I’ve been lax about finishing them. (I blame Daylight Savings.) I’m bored by navel-gazing about my playing habits, though, so I hope to have something new up this week. It may even involve Ocarina of Time, of all games. Stay tuned.
• If you’re at GDC this week, I highly recommend Dan Teasdale’s speech “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band.” I had a chance to hear him rehearse it last week and there’s a lot of fascinating stuff in there. I understand he’s speaking early Friday morning, which is unfortunate, but I think it’s worth waking up for.
• Last but not least, Cruise Elroy turned one year old last Thursday. Thanks for reading!

As I wrote last month, the way I approach games is shifting; I’m more inclined to focus on the things they do well than to dwell on their faults. I recently discovered a corollary: when something does get on my nerves, I’m much quicker to write the game off.

Case in point: After making some decent progress in Beyond Good & Evil I happened upon a tricky stealth puzzle in one of the dungeons. For the first time there was no option to fight — failure meant instant death from a mounted security gun. I died four or five times and then quit the game, exasperated. I haven’t been back.

My issue wasn’t with the difficulty. I had happily played through other difficult parts of the game already, and had much more time on them than at the security gun puzzle. There wasn’t an excessive punishment for failure, either; you lost some health and were kicked back to the entrance to the room. The problem was that the instant deaths were not fun, and once the game stopped being fun I found I had little patience for it to pick back up.

It looks obvious enough when written down, but that’s a much different approach than I’m used to. There are plenty of games that start slow or lag somewhere in the middle, and I’ve always been willing to wait for “the good part.” Hell, there were whole areas of Grim Fandango that I didn’t enjoy playing, but I just kept GameFAQs open in another window and plodded on through. Now, upon encountering the first such area in Beyond Good & Evil, I’ve bailed.

While I’m intrigued by the change, I hope that my new approach isn’t permanent. I’d like to finish Beyond Good & Evil, and I’m interested in other games that seem like they’d require more patience (such as the Persona series). For now I’ll just see if I can recalibrate my threshold for irritation.

While reading about Beyond Good & Evil, I was struck by this passage in designer Michel Ancel’s Wikipedia page:

Ancel aims for a high degree of freedom in his games. He is critical of games that claim to offer freedom, but present limits or invisible boundaries where players do not expect them.

I’m not sure how laudable a goal that is — constraints are, in my opinion, a important part of design — but if Ancel was aiming for freedom, Beyond Good & Evil falls well short of the mark.

A pile of explosives sits on a mine cart in Black Isle; the tracks beneath it extend for about six yards and end in front of a rickety wall. The Pedestrian District is a thinly disguised path, with its later segments cordoned off by guards and lasers. The upgrades from Mammago Garage ensure that each part of the game world is encountered serially. In short, there are limits and invisible boundaries everywhere you turn in Beyond Good & Evil; Morrowind it is not.

I don’t see player freedom as the goal here, though — unsourced Wikipedia quotations notwithstanding — nor do I see its absence as a fault. Many of my favorite games are entirely linear, some even more so than this one. What really stands out about Beyond Good & Evil is its compactness. There are hidden treasures, side dungeons, minigames, and all the other trappings of a typical adventure title here, but they’re all practically on top of each other.

I’ve complained in the past about game worlds, such as Twilight Princess’s Hyrule or No More Heroes’s Santa Destroy, which are largely unremarkable areas punctuated with interesting spots. Beyond Good & Evil’s Hillys, by contrast, makes the most of the space it offers, offering more entertainment per virtual square mile than any other overworld I can think of. (In this light, Jade’s animal photography is a real master stroke; every vista might contain a flock of birds, every inlet a school of fish.)

The emotional size of the game is similarly cozy. Emerging from the lighthouse at the beginning feels very much like emerging from Kokiri Forest in Ocarina of Time, or the prison sewers in Oblivion: Now the adventure begins! The world is your oyster! But the game doesn’t fulfill its implicit promise; the adrenaline rush of possibility is immediately subverted by the hovercraft getting towed to the neighborhood shop. Indeed, excepting the secretive members of IRIS, Jade and Pey’j are on a first-name basis with almost every NPC I’ve encountered. Hillys is, literally and figuratively, a small world.

Frankly, I find this compactness refreshing. There’s very little here that could be called filler; I can scratch my adventuring itch without the enormous time investment these games normally require.

More thoughts on Beyond Good & Evil when I finish the game.