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I <3 Japan

I can't imagine that it is even possible that anyone who would end up on my blog would not have already been aware of this.

Gamers Heart Japan is an initiative launched by Victor Lucas and Electric Playground to help raise money to support the Red Cross relief effort in Japan. I'm honored that Victor would reach out to me to help with this, and super happy have been able to have the time and the resources and the assistance to get my segment shot and delivered on such short notice.

To see the hour long video special, with interviews from dozens of the smartest and most talented game developers in the world, go here. From there you are also just one click away from making a donation if your are able.

A Teacher's Primer

Middle of last week, The Globe and Mail published an interesting and well-written article about the Canadian Teacher's Federation (ironically abbreviated 'CTF') calling for a ban on the X360 and Wii release of Rockstar's Bully: Scholarship Edition.

Before getting into it I want to praise the unbiased and seemingly well-informed writing of the article itself by Jill Mahoney and Unnati Gandhi. It is a rare treat indeed to read an article about topics like violence in games, or the banning of games and not be left with the dreadful feeling that the reporter, editor and publisher of the article are in fact terribly biased in favor of the complainant and against games and the game industry. While I don't typically read The Globe and Mail, this article reminds me that I should get off my CNN junkfood diet and start giving a shit about what news media I consume. So there you go; G&M, you've gained a reader.

Now - to the point.

I have not yet played Bully. I never had an opportunity to play the PS2 version and was eagerly anticipating the X360 version. Unfortunately, circumstances have conspired to delay my attempt to play the game, but this will not last forever. Therefore, this is not going to be a defense of Bully by saying 'the game is great, you should play it' - simply because I don't know if that's the case.

This is also not going to be a defense of Bully on principle. I am not going to attempt to champion the freedom of expression of game creators. I'm not going to stand up and say 'you can't ban me - I have rights'. I'm not going to get sucked into the debate on your terms. The simple fact is, I don't need to. Reactionary cries to ban a critically acclaimed game like Bully are doomed to failure and involving myself in the debate on these terms contributes to nothing but a minor validation of the fears of the fearful. I think that with a little bit of effort, I can come up with a better contribution than that.

So, what is it that I or the CTF could contribute? Since I haven't even played Bully - and probably neither has Ms. Noble, President of the CTF, (nor probably have her counterparts in the coalition of teacher's unions in Canada, the United States, Britain, South Korea, Australia and the Caribbean who are mentioned in the article) I wonder if we even can contribute anything? Ought we enter into debate about public access to media that we have not even engaged ourselves? That seems unethical to me - especially given our roles. It is doubly unethical if Bully might in fact actively contribute to broader and deeper societal understanding of the very serious and real issues of bullying. While our teachers are certainly on the frontlines of the battle against bullying - they are not the owners of the issue and they are not the only ones entitled to examine or discuss it. Those who create art or other media such as films, novels or games that engage the issue are also part of society's attempt to deal with the problem.

So, no, I'm not going to defend Bully at all. Instead, I am going to invite Ms Noble and her counterparts to examine it with me, and to enter into a critical discussion of its merits and the difficulties it may or may not pose to students and to teachers who clearly and irrefutably have to deal with the daily reality of bullying in our society. If the concerns of these individuals - our de facto authorities on bullying - are not explored in a game like Bully, then perhaps Bully is nothing but sensationalist junk. On the contrary - if Bully does illuminate the social realities of Bullying within the reasonably defined scope and capability of the medium, then not only is it more than sensationalist junk - it is arguably an important work. Perhaps even a work that students should be playing in school as a part of their education in order to safely explore notions of bullying while having to neither engage in, nor be subjected to it.

So, to Ms Noble - and to her counterparts in the coalition of teacher's unions - I extend an open invitation to play Bully with me, and once we have all finished we can collectively engage in an informed dialogue about the merits or failings of the game. Think of it like a book-club, but instead of reading Jane Austen we'll play a game - and then we'll talk about it. We'll talk about what it says and how it says it. We'll talk about what it means. We'll talk about its contribution - or lack thereof - to our body of knowledge and to our emotional experiences as human beings - as relates to bullying.

As a primer - since you are probably not terribly literate in games - you might want to start doing some homework. You taught me how to read - so now is my chance to return the favor.

Start with Eric Zimmerman's and Katie Salen's book Rules of Play. This is probably the most complete work to date on the subject of games and what they mean. It's being used to teach Game Design in universities, you know. Probably you will even be adding it to your own ciriculum in the coming decade.

For more insight into the growing field of game design as theory, I suggest a couple of small articles that are becoming increasingly central to the development of the profession, art and craft of designing games. These are Doug Church's Formal Abstract Design Tools, and Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek's presentation of the MDA framework. While certainly not applicable to 'reading' and appreciating games, they may help you bootstrap your understanding of this emerging medium and get us to the stage where we can all play Bully together a little bit sooner. If you only have time to read two short articles about the foundations of design theory - these are the two.

For formal discussion of numerous principles underlying game design and to brush up on the critical vocabulary you will need when we enter into discussion, I humbly recommend several of my own past GDC presentations, in particular, one on Intentional play, one on Exploration, one on Immersion, and one on Simulation Boundaries. More important probably than the presentations themselves, is the fact that each of them has numerous suggestions for further and deeper reading should you care to continue. Terminology and concepts introduced throughout these presentations will lead you all over the internet and into the heart of a whirlwind of knowledge about games from some of the smartest people in the world - people made smart by the previous efforts of you and your peers and colleagues to educate a generation of children who invented an entire medium.

I would also recommend you read my own discussion of the state of game criticism - in response to Ian Bogost's critique of (you guessed it) Bully, and - while I have not yet read Mr. Bogost's recent book, well, you might want to tackle that as well. I will certainly read it before we get around to our discussions.

Finally there is probably one remaining hurdle to this endeavour. I am guessing that you are not comfortable playing a game as complex as Bully. One of the unfortunate weaknesses of our medium is the barrier to entry created by the need to actively input meaningful expression into the dynamic system of a game (ie: it's hard to start playing games because you have to actually play them). Fortunately, the game industry has been working hard to lower this barrier to entry and open the doors to new audiences of people who have been up to now intimidated by this barrier.

If you, Ms Noble, are interested in playing Bully with me, say so. If you do not already own one, I will buy you an XBox 360 or a Wii and a copy of the Bully: Scholarship Edition. Once you have your new console, you can can use it to download a host of games either from XBox Live Arcade, or the Wii Virtual Console, and you can brush up on your gaming skills. Both platforms offer a fantastic wealth of titles dating back to the days of Donkey Kong and Pac Man. You can certainly choose a dozen or more different award winning titles of varying complexity and challenge level to gain comfort with the controller and prepare yourself to play Bully.

So there you have it. Since I am interested in the debate, but I'm not interested in the trite and dull perspective that the uniformed are bringing to the table, it's time to turn the tables. I welcome - even actively encourage - any informed debate on the value of games, or even of a particular game. If you want to talk about these issues as informed professionals with potentially conflicting perspectives in need of thoughtful resolution - I'm game. If you want to enter into ideological debate about whether or not Bully should be banned, I've got better things to do - and frankly, I would like to think you do as well.

In closing, I wanted to say I hope you don't think I'm being a smart-ass by throwing out an offer I know you won't accept. I sincerely do not mean it to come across that way. I'm simply trying to challenge what appears to me to be systemic bias and injustice arising from ignorance of what thousands of people working in my industry are trying to accomplish for the betterment of our society. It's easy to shake a fist in outrage, and I have done my share of that. It's harder to invite rational discourse and to work with those with whom you have conflicting opinions in order to do what you know is right - especially when it is unpopular.

I think I learned that from Atticus Finch when I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" in my eighth grade English class with Mrs Uchiyama at Kitsilano Secondary School in Vancouver. Despite numerous attempts made to ban the book over the decades - I am more than proud to say that the debate surrounding it, and the content within it has been formative of my world view. Despite the cited 48 instances of the use of the word 'nigger' in its text - the book taught me not to be racist, but instead to tackle difficult and sometimes unpopular challenges head-on and with courage. So regardless of where the CTF stands on the controversial and challenging issues surrounding Miss Lee's book today, it seems clear that the debate itself makes a difference and contributes to the shaping of who we are.

I hope you do not see this new medium that your children have created as being beneath debate and ban-worthy simply because you don't understand it. Especially not in face of an offer to examine it openly. Perhaps together we'll find out if The Child is father of the Man after all. (Mr Henderson's Lit12 class).

Canadian Game Industry Tax Credits - Gamespot

Emma Boyes, out of Gamespot UK, brings us a well researched and interesting piece on Canada's game development tax incentives.

It looks at the way the Canadian Government has incentivised the game industry, and the way many other countries have failed to, and why. In particular, she looks at the (increasingly tragic) case of UK game development.

She outlines the different kinds of tax incentives available to Canadian developers - from basic R&D credits that have been in place for decades, to incentives for employing digital animators to incentives for sound recording.

Anyway - kinda business focused compared to what I usually put up here, but I think it is a really interesting article and definitely worth a read.

177%

According to this article, recent figures from Invest Quebec show Montreal's game development workforce has grown by 177% in the last 2 years. We're 47 heads short of the 5,000 mark. Awesome.

I don't know what the numbers were when I moved here six and a half years ago, but I was (just over) employee 1000 at Ubi Montreal and there were less than 500 of us in the studio when I arrived. Probably the Montreal dev community was less than 2000 back then.

We're still not at the size of the dev community in Vancouver or the Bay Area, but with 5000 of us, and with so many major publishers launching new internal development studios, if we can maintain levels of growth anywhere near this for another couple years, we'll be the largest game development area in the world easily I imagine.

Harvey Smith Interview

Last month there was a short interview with Harvey Smith in Game Developer that I really enjoyed, though I thought it was pretty short. Fortunately - it was short - as in a condensed version of a much longer (and much more interesting) interview on Gamasutra.

Kudos to Harvey for making a game that says some things that he's feeling, and kudos to Midway for giving him the leeway to say things like that. I think it is critically important - if we want the industry to reach broader audiences - that we let our top creators (and Harvey is one) not only make games about challenging things, but also let them talk about it.

Frankly I'm getting really fucking bored of reading about how many weapons and vehicles there are in next month's AAA FPS mega-hit.

Also - I hope if I ever end up in a position overseeing creative at an entire studio as Harvey does, that I would still have the humility to get my hands dirty if it was needed. That boy's got character.

Virtual Minefields

This amusing story of how Minesweeper was updated for Vista floated across my desk the other day. The post is a year old now, but worth a read. With all the effort we expend trying to expand our audience beyond the rather easy-to-please domain of teenage boys and young men, I wonder how much we consider what would happen if our games we played by hundreds of millions instead of millions.

Minesweeper has that level of reach, and unfortunately for MS, among their hundreds of millions of players, are many who have to deal with landmines in their everyday lives. Sure seems to make things complicated and messy.

Hey UNESCO - What About Us?

I know that it is incredibly old school to read a newspaper while waiting for a BLT in a pub at lunchtime while out shopping, but I was in an old school kinda mood today. Flipping through the weekend 'Life' section of the Gazette, I discovered that the City was hosting 'Design Montreal's Open House', an open-doors day for some 40 Montreal design firms including those representing Landscaping and City Planning, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Architecture, Interior Design and Fashion Design.

Apparently, on May 12th of last year, UNESCO named Montreal a 'City of Design' an honor held by only two other cities in the world - Berlin and Buenos Aires.

So needless to say, while it is very cool that the City is sponsoring this event to bring public interest and attention toward all the different forms of design, and while I'm super excited to see if I can take advantage of this and get out and see some things, I can't help but wonder two things.

First, why in the world would UNESCO not include Game Design - or at least more broadly - Interactive Design, in this list of design disciplines being recognized? When I was in Paris last year, I got to see - and interact with - a wonderful interactive installation that is in front of the UNESCO HQ and L'Ecole Militaire in Paris. They know what Interactive Design IS if they are commissioning an interactive installation of this magnitude. Surely given the strength and importance of Montreal's game design community, we deserve to be included with our fellow professional designers in this. Also, I find it surprising that someone in the field of Landscape Design, Urban Planning or Architecture would not have spoken up about the absence of Game Design given the fact that a little video game is probably single-handedly more responsible for bringing a generalized appreciation of the importance of those fields to the public at large than is any other single source.

Second, as a professional, award winning designer whose work has been experienced by millions of people, and who works for a firm employing a handful of designers who are arguably among the best  game designers on earth - a firm which has likewise won several, if not dozens of important, internationally recognized awards for design... why in the world would I have never even heard of this? Clearly part of the City's goal in hosting this 'Open House' is to increase public awareness of Montreal's importance as a cultural hub for design... but shit... it might help if the designers themselves knew about it.

The article says that the City and the Province want to establish the Open House as a yearly event. Good. So now I have another side mission, which is to get Game and Interactive Design added to the UNESCO recognition and see at least one Montreal game company in included in the Open House for next year.

With all the continual talk about media convergence in face of the sad reality that all games can ever be in relation to film is some kind of bastard step-child, shouldn't we be going out of our way to celebrate the things that make us distinct and different? Especially in Canada? Doubly so in Montreal? Game Design is - not surprisingly I hope - a design field. We should start acting like it and make sure that we are considered and recognized as such by a world of designers who are our colleagues.

I Stand Corrected - partly

Just yesterday I blogged that Patrick Dugan had provided a very insightful critique/analysis of the game Ayiti: The Cost of Life, and I complained that it was "a shame more games are not reviewed or critiqued with such insight".

Next thing you know, Jurie, over at Intelligent-Artifice points to Ian Bogost's brilliant critique of Bully, and the game community's failure provide critical analysis of the game.

Excerpt:

No matter how absurdist the public response to Bully might seem to those deeply immersed in video game culture, the game community’s own responses are framed almost entirely within the language and issues of that public debate. Nowhere do game reviewers, players, journalists, or developers discuss the game’s meaning on its own terms—neither in praise nor riposte. We can understand this state of affairs through the lens of “seriousness.” On the one hand, the public detractors of Bully do take the game seriously, as a threat and a danger but not as a cultural artifact. The video game community, on the other hand, does not take the game seriously at all. It is allowing the legislators and attorneys and media watchdogs define the terms of the debate.

Now, I'm far from being the first to lament the sorry state of game criticism, but this pretty much nails it on the head. In my opinion, there are three main reasons the industry needs to develop and nurture a stronger community around game criticism and analysis.

Reason One: Protection

The first is that such critical analysis ultimately protects us from censorship. It is much harder for a small vocal group of center-leaning democrats to steal away the much needed 2% of the vote by preying on conservative fears about a misunderstood medium when they need to argue their case in face of a huge body of work from professional critics who in fact analyze all of the things these censors claim games do not afford the public. The cry that games are violent and have no redeeming qualities starts to look mighty far-fetched in face of fifty or a hundred thousand pages of critical analysis of those very qualities.

Without that critical analysis, the defence of, 'no there is something meaningful behind all the explicit violence' admittedly looks equally far-fetched. The argument becomes subjective and the Last Defense imparted by First Amendment protection becomes the only defence. It's a pretty strong defence, but anyone who knows fuck-all about games should know that this is not a good strategy. As much or more than anyone, we should know better.

Aside on First Amendment protection - while the US Constitution and First Amendment protection technically only has relevance to Americans, there is a functional dependence on US rulings relating to this issue that impacts the entire North American and European game industry (and to a lesser extent the Asian industry). If the sale of games is restricted in the US, it hits the bottom line of the entire industry very hard. Publishers who hope to sell 50% of their titles to a US market will make different decisions about the kinds of games they make if that market is heavily restricted. So while the rest of us technically can't do anything to impact US court decisions, we can contribute to the critical discussion that could ultimately create the insurmoutable barrier between a few desperate but vocal politicians and their crackpot lawyers, and the US Supreme Court.

Reason Two: Ownership

As Bogost points out, our responses to attacks on a game like Bully - indeed, even our simple reviews of it, are increasingly 'framed in the language and issues of the public debate'. Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, we're the 'experts' here. We're getting sucked into arguments about what games ultimately mean by people who are functionally illiterate in the medium. It is exactly the same as if people who were illiterate (as in couldn't read) were trying to have certain books censored, and we were arguing with them on their own terms - again, claiming First Amendment protection and trying to assure them they are wrong. We shouldn't even have to listen to such people - never mind fight them on their own terms. If the body of critical and analytical material were of the depth and breadth it should be, then our illiterate challengers would be easily revealed as such. Additionally, in the cases where legitimate challengers brought forth legitimate concerns, the debate of such issues would be less subjective, less hysterical, and more compellingly argued with the assistance of critics who indeed know what they are talking about.

Now I'm not claiming we should take ownership of game criticism and analysis so that we can't be criticised. On the contrary - taking ownership of criticism and analysis greatly increases the depth and complexity of criticism, and forces us as game developers to make better games that have something to say. As Bogost points out, Bully in many ways fails to really provide a strongly compelling look at the difficult life of a teenage boy with weak social skills (I'm paraphrasing him - I haven't played it yet). Imagine if we were criticising the implementation of that design, rather than the existence of it? By taking ownership of the dialogue of critical analysis we light a fire under our own asses to make games that do provide important, meaningful, and entertaining perspectives on important things. Diffusing the capability of a bunch of wingnuts to argue with us over what we should be allowed to do is only a side benefit.

Reason Three: Feedback

As I mention above, critical analysis of our games improves our ability to make games. Of the 70 or so online reviews of Chaos Theory linked off of Game Rankings, I have read every single one of them. Additionally, I have read a dozen or more print reviews. Sadly, only about three or four of them even offered a single sentence of meaningful critical anaylsis. Admittedly, these are reviews not critical analysis, and they are intended as such. For the most part, the quality of reviews in the game industry is not too bad; but reviewing and providing critical analysis are two different things.

The point remains, that having worked as the creative lead on one of the most visible titles on the market, I was simply unable to find a range of critical analysis that helped me learn about how successfully the meaning I designed into the game resonated with its audience. It was a year later before I read one single meaningful piece of analysis on the game that was presented publicly, and boy was I happy to see it - and that was only a couple paragraphs about one tiny little element of the game. It's true that I occasionally find a student thesis in some dark corner of the internet, or I am sent an essay, or other peice of critical analysis that looks at certain aspects of my work, but this is excruciatingly rare.

On the other hand, I have had scores of meaningful conversations with friends and other developers about my games. I have learned a lot from them. But there is a painfully obvious bias in critical discussion undertaken with ones friends and colleagues. I would pay a thousand dollars cash to overhear two developers who played the shit out of my game tear it apart over beers in a bar. I am reasonably confident that I would make that thousand back ten times over with what I would learn from such an event.

So - there you go. We need more and better critical analysis of games - of individual games and of games as a medium. Sadly, even though I would love to take the time to write up my thoughts on any of a dozen games I've played this year, I just don't have the time. In fact, I don't even have the ability. There is an entire field there, and virutally no one is working in it. I try my best to help develop a design vocabulary which is useful for designers, and will hopefully - by extension - be useful to critics. It takes me literally hundreds of hours of my limited free time to come up with, research, write and present a tiny portion of this material in a formal way that is ready for other designers or critics to learn from, challenge and maybe even apply. It's all linked over on the right - take it - it's free.

I know there are other people working on this problem, and in fact - thankfully - the number of people working on this problem is growing. I suppose it is a problem that is being solved, but in my mind, the sooner we - as developers - start getting inundated with this stuff the better.

While Bogost's critical analysis of Bully is excellent and insightful - it is only partly that. It is also a critical analysis of the lame state of critical analysis of games. It's too bad he has to waste half his words chastizing us. InterestingLY though - it is the very fact that he has wasted those words, and that I have wasted this entire post on this topic that makes the point most compelling. We are this close to having an explosion in the field of game critical analysis. When Bogost doesn't have to spend half his time lamenting, and I don't have to spend five times as many words reiterating - when there does exist a small but noticable and steady stream of this kind of media analysis, all these wasted words will disappear and be replaced with more criticism and analysis. Bogost and myself and dozens of others will shift from complaining about not having the analysis to actually providing it. It's a tipping point. Once we reach it the slow linear growth of this kind of material that we see now will shift into a period of exponential growth, and we'll have arrived.

The sooner the better.

Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Bad me. I hadn't heard about this game until I read about it on Patrick's blog yesterday, where he provides a very eloquent analysis of the game, its strategies, and the statements that those strategies ultimately make. It's a shame more games are not reviewed or critiqued with such insight.

Thanks Patrick.

I played the game only three times, and got badly dragged into the negative loops each time, though managed to last longer each time. I didn't manage to zero in on a successful strategy as Patrick did (I didn't read his analysis until after I had played it), but am looking forward to going back and seeing if I can do better.

Also interesting is that the game is made by Gamelab - I've met a number a people who work there, including obviously Eric Zimmerman who is way cool, and also Nick Fortugno - one of the three Game Designers listed in the credits. He's a smart guy. I got to talk with him over a few vodkas last year at GDC after the Experimental Gameplay Sessions where he discussed the design behind his game Downbeat. (more info) So congrats also to the Gamelab team for getting this cool game together.

Also of note is the degree of collaboration that seems to have gone on to bring us this game. Gamelab, UNICEF, Global Kids and Microsoft all had a hand in making this game possible. It amazes me how many column inches in both the specialty gaming press and the mainstream press are devoted to covering how evil the game industry is, and how there is little to no coverage of a game like this, nevermind insightful analysis of a game design and it's meaning as Patrick provided.