Entropy

For awhile we were told video games were recession-proof. Some gamers held this up as a kind of trophy. This was good for the executives who were trying to convince their shareholders and potential investors not to pull their money out of a luxury industry during a recession. Parallels were drawn between the role of film during the great depression and the role games could play during this recession.

The predictions were proved true time and again throughout 2008 as hit game after hit game kept the monthly sales figures high. Towards the end of 2008 the analysts went over their numbers again and wondered out loud if video games had really been recession-proof at all. It turned out that while the business of video games was growing it wasn't growing as fast as it would be had it not been for slimmer wallets worldwide.

"Duh," was the overwhelming response to this revelation.

In the wake of the NPD group's July report on console gaming earlier this month a slew of reports appeared on the Internet as well as in the Wall Street Journal. 1up, a great one-stop source for all things NPD, reported that game sales in June saw the largest year-over-year drop in 9 years. The article that got me on the scent was by Tara Foulkrod at The Examiner entitled, Economy hits video game market.

Most of the articles on this topic quote the conclusions drawn by Anita Frazier (one of the analysts of the entertainment market for the NPD group): ": Neither. The recession is not affecting the video game industry proportionally any more than it did from the outset. Recent game releases are above average quality (though I agree, none of them deserve a 90% or higher average score) but aren't as good as the AAA releases from last year. I also don't think that this year's big name releases appeal to as wide an audience as say, Grand Theft Auto, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Metal Gear Solid did.

EDIT: Just found an article via reddit which says that four Ubisoft titles, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Red Steel 2, I am Alive, and Ghost Recon, have been pushed back to 2010. With BioShock 2, Singularity and Bayonetta all pushed back to 2010 it looks to be a long winter for the console stats. Perhaps the stuff that actually looks really good that's still slated for this year like Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Left 4 Dead 2 will bolster the numbers enough to keep the doom prophesying minimal. It would seem that only a runaway success on the Wii will impact sales significantly enough for that, though. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, anyone?

The year is 1992 and we're visiting my mom's childhood friend. In truth, I noticed the PC in the back room the second we entered. It always took me hours to work up the courage to ask anyone hosting my parents whether I could play on their computer. Luckily these folks knew me and sent me on my merry way as soon as the greetings were over. This PC was much better than the old 8088 XT I had at home - it had a colour screen. For a moment I regretted not bringing my own game disks along. I had at least two games that required colour to even run.

The owner of the computer showed me one or two other games before firing up Zeliard. The intro was impressive, I'd never experienced a scene set in a game like that before. Most games I had told the backstory in a minute or less with some scrolling text, if at all.

By the time he had shown me how to get some start-up gold from the king, buy a rudimentary shield and slice open my first giant frog I was hooked. I wouldn't be able to play the game again until 1994 when I discovered that a friend of the brother of a friend also had the game. This time I didn't let it slip through my fingers - I got him to tell me the name of the game I had played 2 years before and I made sure I got my own copy.

To put things in perspective, games like Myst and Iron Helix were already released by this stage. It was the action platforming mechanic that hooked me, but it was the stories that kept me coming back.

In essence, Zeliard is a side-scrolling action game with fairly mild RPG mechanics. Your character doesn't have stats (other than his health bar) that can be improved. Leveling up increased your health and the amount of times you could cast the spells you had unlocked. Monsters only dropped one type of item: the Alma. Almas had to be collected and exchanged in town for gold, which you could exchange for better equipment and consumables. Not every town had the same Alma/Gold exchange rate, though.

And then there were the stories within the story. As you ran through town you could speak to the denizens which may or may not have something meaningful to add to your quest.

Relatively early in the game you are informed that Jashiin had Percel, the creator of the Ruzeria Shoes, murdered in order to steal the shoes from him. These shoes prevented the wearer from slipping on the floors of the ice caverns in the dungeon. In speaking to the townsfolk I came across Percel's widow and she made it quite clear that she didn't appreciate my presence in town. If it weren't for me then the Spirit would not have used her Percel to make the shoes which led to his inevitable death, seemed to be her line of reasoning. When you reclaim the shoes and speak to the grief-stricken widow  again she apologises and extends her gratitude for honouring her husband's memory.

Of course it's nothing on the quality of narrative we've come to expect from good computer/console-based RPGs nowadays and neither was it the best example of in-game story-telling at the time. What it was was my gateway drug. After Zeliard I needed a decent story in my games before I would even consider buying it.

Believe it! Links or it didn't happen, I hear you exclaim?

This is according to LazyGamer, a group of fellow South African gaming bloggers, who got their information from WiiNintendo.net which credits what is widely accepted as the original source of the list (ah Internet and digital age, how you've sucked the fun out of "broken telephone"). Apparently you can type RICKROLL into Scribblenauts which will cause a reasonable facsimile of Rick Astley to be spawned in the level. He even does a little dance.

A video by GamesRadar confirms Astley's appearance (skip to about 1:10) as well as that of many other memes. His use isn't immediately apparent, but over 20 million RickRoll'D must be somewhere around the magnitude of the Power of Grayskull.

Just imagine the endless meme-chains!

You summon, not an ordinary cheeseburger, but I Can Haz Cheezburger. Unfortunately In Soviet Russia Cheezburger Can Haz YOU when you copulate with geese in the event of an emergency because you do what you want coz a pirate is free yar har deedle-dee-dee. Then, after creating Your Mom like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as This is Sparta! Just please leave Britney alone. If you don't, All Your Base Are Belong To Us when Chuck Norris round-house kicks you after he started making trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and Your Mom got scared, she said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air."

For once this link is completely relevant to the topic at hand.

When one hears the words "South African film" uttered together one thinks Mr. Bones and Tsotsi. Perhaps Faith Like Potatoes and Hansie or even the more obscure Catch a Fire, Power of One, and The Long Run come to mind.

It seems as if it's always a comedy of errors, slapstick, or politically-charged drama. We lack proper action films, thrillers, and even crime/mystery movies, though we certainly have the local source material and local talent to pull it off. What we lack is the budget of Holly- and/or Bollywood.

Finally, it seems as if South Africa will be able to boast its own relatively unique science-fiction action/thriller movie. It's called District 9.

District 9 is based on Alive in Joburg, a short film directed by Neill Blomkamp who was born in South Africa but raised in Vancouver. While the cast are South African and the film is shot on location in Johannesburg, it is being produced under Peter Jackson's WingNut Films. The posters and trailer (above) also loudly proclaim Peter Jackson presents a film by Neill Blomkamp. I'm not sure how using Peter Jackson's name as a sales pitch will go down given the atrocities he's perpetrated on mankind in the form of the Lord of the Rings movies and his King Kong remake, but his money and effects studios surely come in handy.

Halo aficionados might know Blomkamp as the "novice" director appointed to direct the now cancelled Halo movie. One might argue that it's thanks to Halo that Blomkamp met Jackson, who was willing to give Blomkamp a shot at expanding Alive in Joburg to a full film after production on the Halo adaptation was cancelled. I think directing a non-adaptation film is a much better way for Blomkamp to make his mark in Hollywood anyway.

Looking at the prevailing themes shown in the trailer (xenophobia/racism), District 9 seems like a pretty thinly veiled allegory. Although it doesn't break away from the obviously deeply rooted need for South African film-makers to tell stories charged with socio-political commentary, it is a science fiction film that promises proper special effects. Here's hoping the narrative was scaled decently from short to feature length.

Here's the original Alive in Joburg short. It's also available for download at Internet Archive (especially for South Africans and/or Oceanians that find the idea of downloading 20+MB only to be able to view it once in the embedded player intolerable). It seems to have been licensed under the Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivatives Creative Commons license so have no fear, the download is completely legal.

Along with Peter Jackson's fancy film studio, District 9 also gets distributed by TriStar (a subsidiary of Sony Pictures) now that it's been upgraded from Alive in Joburg. This means the movie is getting a pretty decent marketing budget as is evidenced by the elaborate ARG that has been built to virally market it. Alien target posters even made it to Supanova in Australia. The official movie website is as impressive as other top-notch international releases (though not very bandwidth friendly) and there's even a good looking and fun, though simple, flash-based game. There's a bit of a stigma when it comes to games written in flash. I challenge you to load this one up (if you have the bandwidth to spare, 8-10MB ought to do it) and at least give it a look. The control isn't that great and it's quite unforgiving but it definitely raises the bar on what can be expected visually from flash games.

It's great having a film concept with local flavour picked up by a notable Hollywood studio and producer, but it's sad to see that despite the film's roots it's being treated like any other international release. According to the schedule on the official website (which should be Sony's official release schedule) South Africa gets the movie a full two weeks after its release (28 August 2009). We'll get it around the same time as Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria. The US, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon and Argentina will see it before we do.

Man, it sucks being a minority entertainment consumer base.

In the spirit of Snail's Gamer of the Week column on Limit Break I just had to share this one.

I'm certainly not claiming that "t1hs freekout's fo'r33lz, yo" but regardless of whether it is or not it's chuckleworthy, if a little disturbing.

Talk about the human cost of MMORPGs.

If everything in this video is as it seems then this kid's mother is doing him a favour by forcing him out of WoW.

It seems that Demigod is finally in a largely playable state and attention can be shifted from getting the game to work over the Internet to the bugs that remain as well as feature requests. At the end of his latest journal entry, "Demigod nears its second month," Frogboy/Wardell talks about the features in the release candidate of the v1.1 patch and in a later thread he discusses some of the points in greater detail.

• Team concede: If it looks like you’re going to lose, your team can vote to concede and end the game so you can go to the next.
• Speed debuffs have a minimum move speed now.
• Better chat handling for better visibility.
• When you sell a minion idol, existing units are destroyed.
• Updated computer AI.
• Random Demigod selection: Choose Random assassin, random general or just random demigod.
• Based on player request, people finishing the game get 40 extra participation points.
• Heart of life has been moved to the artifact shop and its cooldown timer has been double. The effect has been increased.
• GPG and Stardock are also looking into what causes some people to just disconnect in a game as well as why in pantheon or skirmish some people still just don't connect (it's far better than it was but still not perfect).

In a previous blog, Demigod: Short-term preview, Frogboy/Wardell outlined features that they consider high priority. I'm aggregating that list with the high-priority features mentioned that didn't make it into v1.1, as well as the two friends-list features mentioned in Brad's latest blog post.

• High on our list is the handling of replays
• Multiple in-game channels (ETA June)
• Display of a player's experience rating in connection dialog (ETA June)
• Display of a player's disconnect % in connection dialog (ETA June)
• Support for Group Skirmishes/Pantheon (ETA July)
• We absolutely positively gotta make it a lot easier to get friends in. That is, the current people in your game should be able to be popped up with a hot key and be able to add them in (Target: within next 30 days)
• We need to be able to establish groups easily ala Steam or Xfire but within Demigod.  I need to be able to call out to them even if they're outside the game to see if any of them want to play a game (Target: within next 30 days)
• GPG and Stardock are still discussing/debating what 2 bonus Demigods should be in terms of power and scope (ETA not known, working with GPG on this)
• More maps (ETA not known, working with GPG on this)

So there are definitely two "bonus" Demigods in the pipe for those that have been clamouring for more. I'm pretty sure two aren't enough for the DotA-bunnies out there insisting there be 20 or more DGs. Those of us that understand where Demigod's depth comes from will know what it's going to take to introduce two completely unique and balanced Demigods to the game.

The Demigod community over at GameReplays.org has reported on a forum post (which they don't link to) by Frogboy/Wardell that talks about Pantheon tournaments (3 to be exact) with $1000 cash prizes. He also mentions adding clan-based tournaments and open modding but reminds whoever he was replying to that the features are dependant on Gas Powered Games' co-operation.

Refusing to rely only on the promises of features to ensure that Demigod's online player-base remains active, Stardock issued all current Demigod players (whether they play online or not) with a 20% discount coupon for the Impulse store. It seems a little counter-intuitive until you read the part where Stardock will be giving similar coupons to active Demigod players over the course of the next few months. A pity I won't really be able to partake, but I'll write about that later.

For those that are still on the fence regarding whether to get Demigod or not after all this good publicity, Gas Powered Games has given Stardock the release candidate of the Demigod demo as well. Frogboy/Wardell has stated in at least on previous journal that he wanted a multiplayer demo so that prospective players could see for themselves that the multiplayer had been fixed.

Creating the right atmosphere is key to telling memorable stories. As a picture paints a thousand words, so music builds atmosphere in a way words simply can't. Good music can be the difference between a compelling but ultimately forgettable experience and one where a few bars gets you reminscing. The depths (or heights) to which good video game scores move us is attested to by the fact that talented musicians record themselves playing the songs and pet owners teach their Cockatiels to whistle them.

In video games it's about more than the narrative, though (well at least to some). Games have always been about playing and as such music has also been used to augment gameplay by reacting to game events. The simplest implementations are changing the music from the normal background theme to a more dramatic track when a battle is joined. Classic CRPGs like  Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment from Black Isle  Studios and Bioware were among the first to successfully use fluid transitions between tracks depending on the situation your character finds him/herself in.

Left 4 Dead integrates the music directly with the gameplay. Anyone that's played a few campaigns will forever remember the iconic orchestral pieces associated with the coming horde, the vicious witch and the hulking tank.

For this article, however, Left 4 Dead is still to young. This is about music that makes us remember. Bethryn did an article on music in video games entitled Music To My Ears: Epic Game Soundtracks not too long ago. I hope to write something different enough to warrant its own article but I'd also like to respond to it by giving examples of some of my favourite pieces of game music.

While it's come to be expected of CRPGs to have atmospheric music, it has never been their exclusive domain. As has become a hallmark of Blizzard games, StarCraft has amazingly crafted lore. The single-player campaigns of both the original game and the expansion contain a brilliantly told story.

Bethryn's already mentioned Hell March 2 so I thought I'd pay homage to the song that came before. Frank Klepacki's original Hellmarch found such favour with the fans of Red Alert that it was remastered and remixed to be included in Red Alert 2 and Red Alert 3.

There are at least two other theme songs from RTSes that evoke more nostalgia than the classic Hellmarch. Those are the themes from Activision's 1998 remake of Battlezone and the game that put Relic on the map, Homeworld. Unfortunately I couldn't find them on any service that would let me legally stream them.

This is the song played during the baths sequence.

Prince of Persia games hold a special place in my heart. Jordan Mechner's games, Karateka and the original Prince of Persia for the PC-XT were among my first steps into the hobby. I was too young to be able to analyse the game and realise how amazing Mechner's animation quality was or how well designed the levels were. It immersed me and I simply enjoyed it for what it was without wondering why.

Stuart Chatwood's flowing compositions complemented Jordan Mechner's vision for seamless acrobatic animations. His songs reminded me of a time when games were just games to me. There was no industry, no hype machine. A time before the pleasure of gaming became the business of gaming. Was there ever such a time? The period definitely existed in my head and that's all that matters in the end.

The original Diablo is synonymous with atmospheric. Everything about the game worked for the theme. Visuals, sound effects and music all contributed to an overarching sense of foreboding and horror.

I remember being truly petrified in a game for the first time (Phantasmagoria was released before Diablo but I never got to play it). I also remember direct modem-to-modem gaming.

Theme of the mortuary in Planescape: Torment

What is there to say about Planescape: Torment that those that have played it don't already know? For the benefit of those that couldn't and otherwise haven't played it...

Whenever I hear Deionarra's theme I'm filled with an overwhelming sense of loss. Not my own, but hers and The Nameless One's. Within the first few moments of the game it succeeded in making me care about the characters. The more I learnt about them, the more I cared and the more I wanted to know.


Those are the opening lines from William Wordsworth's Lines Written In Early Spring.

When I listen to the songs of my favourite bygone games I remember the late nights I was up playing. I remember good times, happy times, sad times, bad times. I remember connecting to an Internet service for the first time with a dial-up (56k) modem and playing a game with people on the other side of the world. I remember sitting back as my mind was blown, pondering on what can change the nature of a man.

Which scores make you remember? What do you remember?

A week after the above post, Stardock released another patch (and the latest to date, at version 1.01.106 on Impulse) which seems to have finally fixed Demigod's multiplayer. In the few games I've played since the patch I've consistently been able to get into 2v2 Skirmishes (the next Pantheon tournament only starts up sometime later today) without too long a wait.

Time will tell if Demigod's community will survive the game's false starts. Stardock and Gas Powered Games definitely seem to have their eyes on the future of the game. With Stardock's zealous marketing support and the timeous delivery of new content and features by GPG, Demigod might just have a fighting chance at being the game it set out to be, as well as becoming a tournament-viable competitive title.