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the resonance of great games of the past

In a recent blog post, I was pondering one of the few overlaps I have with Miyamoto-sensei: I don't play games. And, like him, I still love everything about games. if it were not so, I'd pack in my job and do something more interesting, like driving a bus. Which makes you think: why is driving a bus so attractive? I hate being on buses, but driving a bus is a boyish thing to do, kinda like being a sailor, truck-driver or train-driver.

Its the mysogynist in me, but I can't get used to women driving buses ...

Back on topic - why is driving a bus so attracting? Its like a video game, or vice versa, lots of things to avoid, lots of power, lots of 'enemies' (taxis, other cars, etc), lots of targets (pedestrians, cones, etc.). GTA for real would involve buses not naff red sports cars! You just can't get that feel of reality, size and momentum on a computer simulation.

We are all buzz-driven people. We hate being bored, are easily bored, and are always looking for things to create a buzz. A new buzz? This may be why new games don't kick me. I watch them and enjoy watching them, but can't move the hands towards the consoles ...

What I want to talk about is the buzz of the older games. No, I'm not going to do the old fart bit and say Frogger was better than Gears of War. That is clearly rot. What I do want to do is point out that there is so much in the older games that there is little room for new kinds of gameplay in the newer ones. Yes, the graphics, sounds, music, interaction, etc. are better, but the older games seem to have around 95% of what exists in the newer ones.

And humans are t-shirt people. We collect them, the move on. We get bored. Fashions change because we need new experiences.

I have watched my kids grow up, through cheesy pop, to heavy rock, to whatever they find gives them a new buzz. Radio 1 and its ilk are for a group of people who like the crack - often obscene and not possible on private stations - and Radio 2 is for the droll presenters. The music is pap that fills the gaps in chat.

Of course, humans also like familiarity. That's why we get Final Fantasy XIIIIIIIIII being developed. We all live in a safe zone where we get what we expect and feel comfy. For my dear wife it is ITV3 with its endless murders in posh parts of England. For me it is Wagner or Bttehoven. I can actually listen to entire Wagner operas and enjoy them. Because I know what they will provide and it goes on for hours and hours.

So, why do we stand by some old experiences and walk away from others? Why does Star Trek TOS now bore when once it enthralled. Or why does, as a friend told me, Country and Western suddenly appear, bite you on the bum, and you go rabidly for it's twinky zippiness? There is clearly a funny bone being tingled by this new thing.

I can still look at old games and feel the buzz they gave me at the time. The theme tunes and bloops from old games create a huge smile. Its just that the bit of my brain labelled 'video games' lacks a slot that fits GTA, even though I knew it was always going to be a great game.

What fills the gaps when the familiar becomes stale? Life is short, sometimes very so, so it is hard to be exact. I've tried drawing, jazz horn, swimming, cowboy movies and the cover discs on Word. Some new things buzz a little and become an 'interesting I'll get back to it', but few things ever become as hugely hypnotic as games once were.

You see, games have a way of holding your attention that nothing else does. They are all encompassing and engrossing to the point that you'd rather have bum-cramps and bladder pain than hit 'hold' for a few minutes. How many of us have been playing games on a hand-held in a public loo cubicle? (OK, hands down now - and wash them afterwards!)

This 'buzz' thing that games create, even in an echo from decades ago, is as great as a where-were-you-when-kennedy-was-shot, they dig deep into our psyches and carve deep grooves in our memories. WIll these memories ever fade? No, I think not, but perhaps the remembered buzz might do so.

I had a strange thing happened to me recently. I have always loved Neil Young's 70's albums. Perhaps it was because I was listening to his more recent acoustic stuff, but I stuck on Zuma and was, well, bored. I could not believe my response. I felt like I would never enjoy the album again.

So, just when you think you understand entertainment and how it works in memory and the present, the human response changes.

Games are such an insight into how our minds motivate an work. I need to think more on this.

predicting the future

I had a meeting with a chap at Scottish Enterprise West, one Colin Cross, and we got talking about student enterprise. Well, that was the topic of the meet, but we were just exploring ideas as we went along. And we wondered: what's the next great idea?

As we chatted an idea came into my mind. Not that this is the next great idea, just as an illustration of what is involved in creating that next great idea.

I was thinking about Second Life. You know, the AI-free virtual space where you wander around, meet people, etc. Kinda The Sims in cyberspace, and basically as interesting (i.e., not very, IMHO.) The question was going round the old brain: what could you do with Second Life entrepreneurially?

The idea that jumped to mind was: how about a company which creates second life chat and meeting spaces for companies still rigidly stuck in Web 1. It came about as we considered how clunky and unfriendly the world-facing Internet pages of both our organisations are. Don't believe me?: go to www.scotent.co.uk or www.uws.ac.uk and try to have a chat with me or Colin. Impossible.

So the idea is: take a games engine - in this case, Second Life - and use it for communicating between people.

So there we have the nub of much of enterprise: find a gap. However, finding a potential gap is one thing, but how do you turn it into money?

Where we both agreed is that, in creative industries the business plan is not of much use. I'm not implying you jump in and spend all your gathered funds like Alistair Darling going to the bank. (Actually, he was spending OUR gathered funds!)

Its just that a business plan requires a static model to build upon. Creative gap-finding needs more dynamism and eclecticism than a Business Plans For Dummies tome would allow for.

However, this has to be balanced by the fact that enterprise is about making money. Is there a need for a company who creates corporate meeting spaces for staff or staff-customer chats in Second Life?

This isn't a question which can be answered because there is absolutely no such market in existence. Is there a demand for it? Nobody knows as (see former sentence!) There is no clear link between here's-a-market and here's-a-product so here's-a-potential-profit. Life is full of unanswerable questions.

The very essence of creativity in games is risk-taking. I know that EA, Disney, Microsoft and Sony are highly risk-averse, at least in software terms. And even the creation of new platforms is a risk-avoidance strategy as old platforms stop selling.

However, Nintendo have beaten the pants of everyone else by taking risks. They nearly went under and did a Sega. The N64 was not great until Zelda The Ocarina of Time hit the shelves and saved the company. They left that one late! The Dreamcast was a safe seller, but didn't set any heather alight. The DS was a strange little box which did a GBA, again. Dr Kawashima is strange and wonderful. The Wii is very odd, as are its games.

This is not to suggest that Nintendo are woo-hoo-let's-go-for-it people. They are calculating, as far as these things can be calculated. But they also have an extra special factor that balances costs against opportunities, which Sony, for one, does not have.

Microsoft have it, a bit. After all the Xbox was a big risk, but it was never going to risk the family silver if it failed. Apple did it with the amazing iPod, iMac and Macbook. Again there was less risk for them than for Nintendo as Microsoft would have bailed them out again to avoid the monopoly finger pointing at them again. But, Steve Jobs creations are truly awe-inspiring.

So, is Nintendo just Miyamoto-sensei? Is it all this one man who makes a difference? In some ways the answer is yes, as truly as GTA is Dave Jones and Black and White was Peter Molyneux.

However, human and games-related creativity does not end with those bods. Somewhere out there the next generation of games-related risk-takers sits planning great new ideas that can be sold for millions, or billions. What advice can i find from my musings?

Think big thoughts. Count costs. Don't easily dump projects that aren't going anywhere. Perhaps they are going somewhere else. Follow that muse and see what can be done. After all what *is* The Sims? There is no genre for a new kinda game. It has to be created after the fact. All I can say is that you need to allow idea to develop, and this means allowing time and resources for these.

Two wee tales. I once worked for Rolls Royce aero engines in Glasgow. I signed the usual contract when I joined that all RR employees signed: everything I think of everywhere at any time while a RR employee and for 6 months fter leaving RR belongs to RR. Effect: nobody thought of anything until they had been 6 months out of RR. Creativity was non-existent.

A second wee tale. I once had a student who wouldn't get down to writing t can be rolled out. Find sugar-daddies to help you, but avoid the kind of crooks who appear on Dragons' Den as they make more mistakes than successes. Who are these people anyway? They are money-makers, not creativitists. his Modula-2 code for my Software Engineering module. Eventually he spent so much time not doing his coursework, I failed him. He left degree-less and, one year later, his game, Lemmings, hit the stands. One year further on he was a millionaire.

What would you rather have: a degree from The University of Puddleton, or a million-seller game? Enjoy your studies, but remember to keep the main thing the main thing: write games. Keep being creative.

do old gamers just get tired and fade away

I read that Miyamoto-sensei doesn't play games any more. It has even been said that he is responsible for Nintendo's drift away from the hard-core gaming people towards the women and their ilk who like the Wii and Dr Kawashima. Is this a curse - to gradually drift away from games.

I well remember many years ago my teenage son asking me, 'Dad, when I am old, will I like classical music?' I replied, 'Not neccessarily." The relief in his face was tangible! He feared that I, clearly an old fart, only liked classical music because I was, well, an old fart. And so, when he achieved fart-hood, he too would degenerate into liking the naff.

But, I have always loved classical music. It is to me the nearest thing to heaven on this rather cruddy and crummy earth. I was born into loving it, and I still relax and depart the ills and hurts of this life through Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert and Elgar (well, his 'Gerontius', anyway, the rest of his stuff is often pretty pap.)

As we grow oder, some thing do change. But others do not. And here I have to confess ... I used to play lots and lots of games, but now I do not. I have become a non-gamer. Other things come and go. I used to be a prolific programmer, but I woke up and it bored me. I used to play jazz horn, but I realised I wasn't very good (merely good) and so moved on. I tried painting, but I only sketch landscapes now cos I aint very good at people and animals.

Yet, games remain a huge part of my life. Not least because I teach games. And - here's the rub, most games academics I know don't play games any more. Imagine a musician who didn't listen to music, or a painter who didn't visit art galleries, or a footballer who didn't go to football matches, or a theatre critic who didn't go to the theatre.

That's a rich mix, and as I put it together I could see parallels. For there are football fans who don't go to see football matches, and there are followers of Formula 1 racing who have never seen a racing car, and train spotters who never go on trains, and people who buy fishing gear but never get round to going fishing, or people with an expensive personal gym of keep-fit equipment who never use it, etc.

The list of human oddness is endless. We are complex beings. It is simply a fact. As a wise man said, I don't do the things I ought to do and I do the things I ought not to do (try saying that late at night!)

So, I teach games. I get games. I enjoy designing games. I enjoy seeing my students design and create games. Games are for me a medium to learning. I suppose there are French teachers who never go to France.

On the very odd end of the scale I knew someone, studying Arabic at St Andrews University, who was rebuked by her professor, 'My dear, your spoken Arabic is execrable.' Her reply was succinct, 'Oh, but I never talk to Arabs!' And she got her degree with honours.

Strange thing, life ...

games design resources

I've put some I know up at http://jnsak.wikispaces.com/gamedesign. If you know more, please email me, or add a comment. ta.

Games are not narrative

There is a simplistic idea that games are stories, or, as the hoi polloi, the cognoscenti, of the intellectual edge of media studies and the arts would have it narrative. This is wrong on two grounds.

Firstly, it attempts to steal the ownership of games from gamers and game developers, capturing the whole idea of games and games talk and storing it away in musty ivory towers. If they are allowed to do this then games become a late night arts show chat circuit guest, to be wheeled out, mumbled over with touching fingertips by some dude in a strange jacket talking to some other dude in a strange hat.

On their scales - those who are - touch-nose-touch-nose - better educated and smarter than the ordinary run of us - can then claim games as their domain and reduce us to less than their chattering classes. On their scale the greatest book ever written is Ulysses by James Joyce (an unreadable pile of tat that nobody ever enjoys wading through) and the greatest living author is Salman Rushdie (I made it to the end of Satanic Verses; a turgid poser of a tome that was insulting to Muslims, Christians and humanity in general.)

Everyone knows that the greatest living author is Jo Rowling. Why? Because she is the most popular read of our times, has made children read for the first time in decades, has attracted adults back into reading, and tells a good tale well. But, forget the arts rubbish about her striving in a garret, writing her books over a long cup of coffee in a cold Edinburgh coffee house with no means of living. Its a nice movie 'narrative', but she was paid by the government in a grant to write her first book.

I digress. Back to the point. To the arty-farties who would steal games from the gamers, the greatest movie is Citizen Kane. Sheesh - have you ever watched that. What was that about? Eh? Was there a plot, who were the characters, what was the bit at the end about? It was as watchable as '2001 A Space Odyssey'. Poser-tat, all of it.

The greatest movie of all time? Probably Star Wars. With the plot of a John Wayne movie, the special effects of early Star Trek, and the backing of no arty brown-nosers, this movie hit the world like a bombshell and remains, to all ages, a thirty-year-old wonder (I am almost said 'wunderkind'; this pontifical stuff is catching!)

So, No.1, games are not narrative because those who would impose this label upon games wish to steal them from us and store them in their little boxes in their little arty rooms, and, NO, you can't look in the box unless you can say the magic words: narrative, juxtaposition, vis-a-vis, etc. These people are theives of the people's property and should, IMHO, be first up against the wall come the revolution!

So, having stripped the narrative-bods naked, whipped them soundly, and sent them home to bed, what was the second reason, John?

The second reason that games aren't narrative is that GAMES ARE NOT NARRATIVE. There may be, on occasion some storyline in a game, there may even be a long storyline in a big game, but the storyline is not the game. I don't play a game to enjoy the story. I play the game to enjoy playing the game. Its about the gameplay, not the story.

Take Starfox on the SNES. Wow! In my view - YMMV, I concede - the greatest game of all time. There is the 'a long time ago in a galaxy far away' part of the storyline, but that isn't what makes the game GREAT. Its the characters working together in realistic AI ways, the squeekes and bleeps they make, the angry ones when you fire at your buddies, the flying round skyscrapers, the feeling of achievement at each level, the stirring music (better than any of the sh*t* you can hear on BBC Radio 3 of an afternoon or Radio 1 anytime since around 1978).

Its a great game because I enjoy the sounds, images, progress, challenges and activies. To not see the game as a great game is to deliberately, by pre-imposed conclusions, miss the point. You can't think of Starfox as a story about you and your friends conquering the planets through adversity. At the end you enjoy the whizzes, explosions, the feeling of being there. What our virtual friends call, 'presence'. You get this when you are on a phone; you are not here you are 'elsewhere'. Yes, you get this when you read a good book, or listen to good music. But the music isn't narrative, it's notes.

Ah - I hear the arty ones say - you didn't say 'books' there did you. Got you, John. Books are narrative aren't they? Ha! Yes, but only if you reduce your mindset and library to novels. I have lots of great books that I read and use that aren't narrative. I have a great atlas of Glasgow that is used every week. Its a book. It doesn't tell any story. I impose my story upon it (to put that arty spin on it. See, I can do this too.) And I have dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.

Even history books aren't real narrative. They are a taking of historic events and imposing a sensible storyline upon the past. History isn't narrative, we impose our narrative upon it. Academically, this is what is called 'sensemaking'. History isn't a novel. We make it into one for our own meanings.

Back to games. Games aren't narrative because those who would make the field so as posers wishing to put their own narrow intellectualism upon our field, hence robbing us of the real 'fun' of games. The good news is that they can pose on about movies and novels, but, take heart, outside late night BBC4 nobody's listening. And games aren't narrative because they are about that wonderful human emotion: fun. So is great music - from Beethoven's 5th Symphony to What's That Coming Over The Hill Is It A Monster, Is It A Monstaaaaah - and great movies - from Blazing Saddles to Ben Hur.

Its all about fun. But, what is fun? That's for a later blog.