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The Game Within The Game

Microsoft may have popularised in-game achievements but reward badges, both in single titles and across multiple games, have been around for ages. My first proper full-blown obsession with a reward system was in the game City of Heroes.

City of Heroes is a superhero-themed Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game that launched back in April 2004. Its badge system arrived several months later as part of the second free update of the game. It was a seemingly minor inclusion at the time, alongside the more headline grabbing embellishments such as power re-specification, the much requested inclusion of capes and two brand new game zones, but the reward system was arguably one of the most important additions ever made to the game. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know how important a role in gaming history the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 will ultimately play but it seems to me that we will look back on this as being the open world generation. This style of game may have been introduced to the mainstream in the days of the PS2 but it’s become incredibly popular during the current console cycle.

Games like Crackdown, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Faction: Guerrilla have all featured large, expansive playgrounds as have RPGs like Oblivion and Fallout 3. Titles such as inFamous, Prototype and the outings of more traditional characters like Spider-Man and The Hulk have been set in sandbox environments to more effectively showcase the super-powered abilities of their protagonists.

The developers of these games have tried to create worlds without walls. Of course virtually all game spaces are finite; there are always some obstacles or boundaries that prevent you from falling outside the game world into the abyss. Open world games, though, try to give the player realms so vast, so detailed and realistic that they forget they are inside a digital cage.

But the bigger the developers make the worlds, the emptier they can potentially feel, particularly from a narrative point of view. Open world games bring a whole host of problems when it comes to storytelling. Read the rest of this entry »

My name is Strident and I’m a badgeaholic. An achieveomaniac. A trophy junkie. Whatever you want to call me, I am obsessed with reward systems in games.

I wasn’t always the same. In the old days, in the time before achievements and trophies, I could quite happily play games just for sheer pleasure alone. Now I’m older, my time seems more precious and those on-screen notifications of each new accomplishment allow me to kid myself that I’m doing something productive when I’m gaming; even though those points and trophies have no real-life value. So why do gamers get so obsessed with accumulating virtual rewards? Systems, like Microsoft’s Achievements, speak to the inner collector in many of us, prodding our hunter-gatherer instincts into life.

As a child you spend your time being constantly rewarded, or at least being asked to seek rewards from society. Good behaviour earns stickers and treats. Outstanding or landmark performances bring certificates and awards. Whole organisations, like the Scouts, are based around completing specific targets in order to work towards badges. After just a few years of life you quickly amass a collection of paper, cloth and cardboard that forms a physical representation of your accomplishments. Read the rest of this entry »

Video games are regularly criticised for their depiction of women. All too often female characters are simply over-endowed, empty-headed eye-candy; there to be gawped at or act as the swooning love interest for the muscle-bound heroes.

I guess it’s not really that surprising. Video games as a medium are still in their infancy. The majority of titles are, at their heart, action-adventures aimed at a largely male audience. Strong female characters weren’t exactly a feature of many “blockbuster” action-adventure films back in the day.

In fact current video game writing reminds me very much of the James Bond films of the sixties and early seventies especially when looking at the way female characters and ethnic groups are treated. You could probably write a whole article comparing elements of the recent Resident Evil 5 game with the 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die.

So how can we develop and write strong female characters? How can we lift videogame writing out of the 1960s? Strangely enough a trip back to the 1960s could be what’s needed. A journey back in time to look at an old TV programme, originally broadcast in black & white in the United Kingdom called The Avengers. Read the rest of this entry »

Well actually that’s not true. But it’s a slightly better title for a blog post than ‘I have completely indifferent and ambivalent feelings towards the lead character and any of the supporting cast in Nintendo’s most popular videogame series’.

I don’t spend hours chuckling at grown men running around in plumber costumes on You Tube. The Super Mario Bros theme tune isn’t set as my ringtone. I don’t get warm fuzzy tingles when I see pictures of crocheted mushrooms and knitted turtles on the Internet. In fact it takes a Wikipedia search for me to find out I should be calling them Goombas and Koopa Troopers.

I understand why you guys love him. I really do. It’s just a passion that I’m completely and totally unable to share. Read the rest of this entry »