1. MIT...professor Henry Jenkins aptly sums up "Moral Kombat"
2. CLM...What happens in Montreal doesn't stay in Montreal
3. OUR...long national nightmare console transition is over, says EA
4. RND...Why, it's as though the seventies never ended

 

In mid-October, we announced that the Level Up staff had taken its talent across the pond to the respected U.K. gaming magazine Edge, in the form of a monthly column titled "Playing in the Dark." It had always been our intent to expand on the topics raised in those columns here on Level Up under the rubric The Edge of Reason, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men. Our other favorite cliché is "better late than never," so with that, today's installment will tackle our very first Edge column, which ran in the November 2007 edition of the magazine under the title "Why It Feels Good to Be Bad" (click here to read the column in its entirety). In it, we pointed out that while videogames have become fairly accomplished at making us feel good about what we're doing, there's a whole lot more they could explore by making us feel bad about our actions. Here's an excerpt of our additional thoughts on whether developers should consider incorporating the concept of social sanction into videogames:

Certain other bloggers have already begun to discuss the issues that our column raises. As we'd written previously in our Vs. Mode exchange on BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the very first presentation of the Little Sister Harvest-or-Rescue dilemma had us so conflicted that we actually called family and friends for guidance. Yet as our playthrough continued, each subsequent harvesting became much less emotionally fraught, making us wonder whether there wasn't more that 2K Boston/Australia could have done to keep us feeling just as tormented upon the sixth Harvesting as the first, if not more so.

Part of the reason most people don't kill or murder in real life is that there are real life consequences: social sanction, ostracism, retaliation, incarceration, capital punishment. In games, there are no real life consequences to in-game decisions made regarding AI characters. You won't be labeled, shunned, jailed or executed. Even the in-game consequences are minor; for all of our whining legitimate complaints about 2K Boston/Australia privileging Rescuers over Harvesters by exclusively bestowing upon them the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid, it wasn't what we'd consider a hefty punishment.

To read our post in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. HMM...No country for old gamers: Kratos vs. Ratchet
2. HIP...hop videogames are on people's minds these days
3. GOW...Storytelling in God of War and "Gladiator," compared
4. RND...Slowing DVD sales: the Grinch that steals Xmas 2007?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat lead multiplayer designer Todd Alderman

When we're conducting an interview with a developer, the bulk of our time is generally spent discussing their current project. But after the voice recorder is turned off and the liquor is flowing, the conversation almost inevitably shifts to videogames made by other teams working in the same genre as that developer. For us, it's always fascinating to look at games through the eyes of those who make them, because they sometimes see things differently than does the typical gamer; the same can be said of reviewers who are very knowledgeable about a certain genre, or people who have become experts at a particular game or genre.

As part of our ongoing quest to take the best conversations that are occurring in the shadows and bring them to light, we offer you the new occasional series Make or Break, which asks prominent developers, reviewers and expert gamers to share with us via email the five key features, details, techniques or flaws that they look for in games in the same genre. One of the best reviewed games of 2007 is Infinity Ward and Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat, and much of that praise stemmed from its superlative multiplayer component. In today's installment, lead multiplayer designer Todd Alderman tells us what he looks for in an online multiplayer game.

1. Fun.

Why It Matters: I know it sounds blatantly obvious and simple, but it's the most important thing to have in your game as well as the most difficult to get right. Great gameplay and good controls go a long way into making a game fun, it's really a sum total of a lot of different pieces that have to be matched just right, but when a game is fun you know it. A good litmus test for knowing if a multiplayer game is fun are the stories that you can tell after you play.

Who Got it Right: Excellent controls, great balance of weapons and racers, and maps made Mario Kart a blast to battle on.

2. Community.

Why It Matters: If you build it, they must come. There have been a lot of great multiplayer games that have died off because the people just weren't there. A great multiplayer game has to be community friendly within and outside of the game. There have to be tools for enhancing the community aspect within the game, be it party systems and private games for the social gamers, or leaderboards and rankings for the competitive folk. Outside the game, you need forums and stats, places for people to talk about all the great stuff within the game. Mod support and developer-to-community relations are also really important. If the community is voicing an opinion and the developer reacts and solves the problem, it makes the game much stronger.

Who Got it Right: The modern multiplayer scene is almost a direct result of the Quake series. Popular gaming web sites, hundreds of game developers (including myself) and even some high profile games were spawned from Quake. Level editors, code releases, and developers active in its game's community made Quake one of the largest gaming communities of all time.

1. NFS...or NSFW? Electronic Arts regrets racy ProStreet promo
2. TWO...faces of Nintendo: Metroid Prime and Mario, explained
3. ANA...rchy in the U.K.: Johnny Rotten, promoting Guitar Hero III
4. RND...Level Up's Xbox 360 correspondent on elections and design

1. EGO...trip: The "gut" of the Level Up staff undergoes analysis 
2. EGO...trip: Not sure whether this is praise or a diss--but we'll take it
3. PRE...tentious charge leveled at Discovery game documentary 
4. BOO...Ebert's at it again, using "Hitman" flick to indict games
5. WHY...oh why did Guitar Hero III, uh, neuter its female rockers?
6. FEE...ling is believing: the elusive property of great games 
7. L&O...Gaming nemesis Jack Thompson's ethics trial proceeds
8. SAD...The bitter, psychedelic twilight of game legend Jeff Minter
9. RED...alert: The Orange Box on PS3 is rough around the edges
10. RND...Ground Zero for the Hollywood writers' strike is a blog?

The headline says it all, folks: no more new posts from us until next week. It's time for us to recharge our batteries, eat some turkey and dig into the slew of games that have been arriving in stores in recent weeks. First up: Harmonix/MTV Games/Electronic Arts' Rock Band. We managed to get in some quality time last night, teaming up with a couple of industry luminaries and their friends in the process. Geoff Keighley, of "Game Head" and "Bonus Round" fame, proved that his dominance of all media extended to the virtual music sphere as he alternated with ease between drums and lead guitar, while Scarface: The World Is Yours producer Peter Wanat demonstrated equal comfort with lead and bass guitar. As for vocals, the only thing that nature might abhor more than a vacuum would be the aural assault that passes for the Level Up staff's singing ability; nevertheless, we did our best to replicate the distinctive voices of Karen O, Billy Corgan and Jon Bon Jovi, among others, over the course of the evening. By the time we finally shut it down (around 2 am, if you must know), we'd seen a million faces few hundred faces--and we'd rocked them all.

From the entire staff of Level Up, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and the safest of travels.

1. BOO...He-Man Woman Haters Club goes completely nuts...
2. YAY...but women (and sympathetic men) take to the ramparts, critically
3. REG...gie's got a gun: a meditation on weapons of mass distraction
4. GEN..eralissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, but game prompts debate
5. STA...y gold, Ponyboy: a list of gaming's most notable outsiders
6. RND...When push came to shove, were these polls self-inflicted? 

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) on Valve Software's Portal, Totilo explored the business that might prevent other Portal-alikes from making it to market while making the creative for why developers should persevere nonetheless. We praised Portal's minimalism. In Round 2, things got more heated as Totilo insisted that Portal had characters and story; we kept it minimal and said no. In today's Final Round, the discussion goes haute middlebrow as Totilo makes his case more forcefully and we rebut his argument with dictionary definitions, category lists and a little help from our friends. Excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: I couldn't cast I/Chell in a movie, that's for sure. But I can tell you some things: she's a she; she's a test subject; she's willing to follow orders only to a point; she doesn't get tired when she runs; she has 20/20 vision; she cared about a companion cube; she was willing to kill her boss/captor. Were these all traits programmed into her by Valve? Were some of these brought into the equation by me? Well, sort of. Did I really bring my concern for the companion cube to the game myself? Or did Valve cull that out of me, essentially grafting certain actions and reactions onto me, puppeteer-ing me? Where exactly, in the spectrum between "Chell"-ness and Stephen-ness, is the character I control defined? And if it's somewhere in the middle, is that not possibly a proof of how a character in a video game is defined differently than one written about in a page or displayed on a TV screen?

N'Gai Croal: The thinness of Chell's characterization is mirrored in Portal's narrative, a word I've been deliberately using instead of "story" to describe the events in Portal. My choice of words prompted reader tilt3daxis to write in my comments section, "I'm slightly confused, N'Gai, about your distinction between story and narrative. Is it simply a matter of semantics or is there something deeper that I'm missing?" As I see it, a narrative is a series of events, one after the other, as in, "this happened, then this happened, and then this happened." A story contextualizes the events in a narrative by including perspective, context, point of view, backstory, etc. Now GLaDOS could be said to provide all of those things...but by her own admission, she lies, so the only events we can trust are the ones we see through Chell's eyes. In other words, all we can trust is the gameplay. We don't even know if we can trust the "facts" described by GLaDOS on the lyrics to "Still Alive." Are there people who are still alive? Is she experimenting on them? We didn't see any other people--even if we want to believe Portal's embedded narrative of the person(s) who scrawled notes and messages and posted photos on walls inside of Aperture Science, how can we be sure that GLaDOS didn't plant that graffiti herself--so how do we know that they in fact exist. Portal, then, is "The Usual Suspects" of videogames, with GLaDOS as its Keyser Sose.

To read the Final Round of our Vs. Mode exchange in its entirety, click on the link beloe. 

1. EGO...trip: Level Up double-dips on 1UP Yours and The 1UP Show
2. Wii...Why does Variety love Nintendo? 
3. $$$...Sony cuts price of PS3 development kit in half to $10,250
4. XBL...James "J" Allard explains Microsoft's entertainment future
5. RND...Reflections on the response to the recent MySpace tragedy 

The Atari 2600 Video Computer System controller

In last week's debut of the Monday Morning Quarterback Highlight Reel, we cited some insightful comments made by Bill Harris over at the blog Dubious Quality. We first became aware of Harris' blog during the February DICE conference, where a longtime Nintendo employee suggested that we check it out, which we did. Soon thereafter, Dubious Quality became an essential addition to our RSS newsreader for the smart and often caustic assessments of the business of videogames and the personalities behind it as delivered by the 46-year-old Austin, Texas-based analyst. [Note: Harris--whose all-time favorite games include Guitar Hero II, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (Director’s Cut) and Ultima IV--does not cover the videogame industry professionally.]

After reading Harris' alternative explanation of why the critically maligned Carnival Games had become a hit--a "fundamental disconnect between how the people who review Wii games play them and how everyone else plays them"--we asked him to expand on his remarks for our guest post series P2P. He agreed, and the resulting essay is a thoughtful look at how Street Fighter II kicked off an evolutionary path for videogame controllers that has contributed to the shrinking of the industry's reach, and why the Wii remote and nunchuk--even as the games built around them continue to confound the critical establishment--are beacons of hope for a stagnant medium. An excerpt:

To read Harris' post in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EYE...of Awesome: Sony shows off nifty Playstation Eye demos 
2. Wii...Why does Variety hate Nintendo? See here and here
3. BOO...Money For Nothing: From Guitar Hero to sellout?
4. WHO...you gonna call? Ray Parker Jr., that's who!
5. YOU...better work: thoughts on videogame couture
6. Q&A...Warren Spector discusses his interview series
7. RND...The secret of The Huffington Post's success

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) on Valve Software's Portal, Totilo opened with a rare business analysis of why publishers would rather seek the next BioShock than the next Portal, then volunteered three lessons that developers should absorb from the latter game. As instructed, we followed suit, but distilled our assessment of Portal to a single phrase: Portal is a triumph of minimalism. In today's Round 2, Totilo takes issue with our lavish praise of Portal's final section; prompting us to put large chunks of his post under the microscope. WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND--BEWARE. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: About the final boss: story and boss battle converge smoothly in this game, as I've stated. And while I can't find much to fault with this game, I'm surprised to see you say that the final encounter in Portal is "rivaling 'Metal Gear Solid 3's sniper duel with The End for my favorite boss fight of all time." That's not praise I was expecting. That good? Really? It couldn't be because of the gameplay. Even though I'm far less enamored of The End confrontation than many others, I recognize the value it provided in letting players try different take-down strategies. Fighting GLaDOS doesn't. You have to remove her orbs. Give her the HAL 9000 treatment. De-evolve her. And fry her. And she's dead. So what drew you in?

N'Gai Croal: By the way, you still haven't managed to convince me that there's a story in Portal. The only thing that we know is true is what Chell we did--GLaDOS, after all, is far too unreliable to trust anything she says--so if that amounts to Portal having a story, what then of Tetris, Bejewelled and Lumines? As for the cake being real, that certainly wasn't Chell's our POV. Who are you going to trust--GLaDOS or your lying eyes?

To read Round 2 of Vs. Mode in its entirety, click on the link below.

We were curious to see how Level Up's readership would respond to Darren Pai's November 5th guest post on the wants and needs of what we termed the 'hardcasual' gamer. As Pai put it in his original email to us:

It seems that games for "hardcore" gamers make the assumption that you have large blocks of time to sit in front of a console. So-called "casual" games can be entertaining for short periods of time, but that's not why I play video games. I want the presentation, the action, the experience of a "big" game. Gamers like myself don't want casual games, we want that hardcore gaming experience redesigned to reflect the way we live.

Pai then went on to offer a list of complaints and possible solutions. We obviously can't share any of our correspondence or conversations with industry figures on this topic, but we do know that at least two top executives at major publishers forwarded Pai's post to people they felt should consider his suggestions. As for our readership, the response was varied. Some, like full-time law student Jomolungma, were sympathetic, writing:

While I enjoy my DS games like Picross, and play Scrabble and WordJong on the PC, I really get the most enjoyment out of the hardcore FPS action games I fell in love with in and after college, games like Wolfenstein and Doom and Quake and Half-Life and Rainbow Six. In order to get that same kind of enjoyable gaming experience in small chunks of time I absolutely must play games that allow for unlimited quicksaves (not unlimited slots, just unlimited number of times you can hit save). Most recently I got a tremendous thrill out of Bioshock and the Orange Box. Those games allowed me to play at my pace and provided really short intense moments that I could enjoy at my own pace. I was also able to complete them in a relatively short time because the story line was not 40 hours long.

To read this installment of "It Came From the Comments" in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. ALL...over the place: see the review scores for Assassin's Creed
2. OUR...must-have game of the year, still just out of reach 
3. HOW...appropriate: Mario's appeal transcends Red and Blue America
4. VSM...Microsoft plays Switzerland in Silicon Knights-Epic Games battle
5. $$$...Five indie game concepts, funded by Kongregate
6. RND...Protest politics meets the sedate world of bridge
   

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November
The Level Up treason and plot
I know of no reason
Why Level Up treason
Should ever be forgot

Like Pheidippides at Marathon and Paul Revere at Lexington, the Level Up staff last week breathlessly revealed to the world the shocking news that beginning in November, the NPD group would halt its yearlong practice of releasing monthly hardware sales figures for the consoles and handhelds manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. Here at Monday Morning Quarterback HQ, we immediately went underground, making covert arrangements for alternate types of data that would help our rogue band of color commentators continue to shed light on the business of videogames. Meanwhile, as we correctly predicted, the intertubes quickly became clogged with the bitter tears of our fellow armchair analysts and partisan fanboys alike; ditto for the voice mailboxes at NPD group as furious forum dwellers stormed the ramparts took to their phones to rage against the machine. For with no justice, how can there be peace?

Having sown the wind, NPD representatives were nevertheless by their own admission wholly unprepared to reap the whirlwind. Even their reminder that the provision of hardware numbers to the general public was always intended to be temporary failed to quell the inflamed passions of the nascent fanboy revolution. To avoid going the way of the Tsars, the Shah or the Matrix, the NPD Group submitted to the will of the people and acknowledged the error of its ways. An NPD official confirmed to us in an email that because of the tremendous response from press and gamers, NPD had secured the unanimous consent of the three console manufacturers to continue giving media monthly hardware sales figures.

1. LUV...Military wives join forces to send videogames to troops
2. Wii...to get jazz hands? Take a look at this clever hack.
3. FAM...Forty-three percent of parents don't play videogames with kids
4. KIA...Speculation mounts on which Microsoft game will be axed
5. CHI...cago blues: a former EA-er's lament; Infinity Ward swoops in
6. HIT...and miss: The highlights and lowlights of videogames
7. PSA...MTV tells us how to correctly pronounce "Totilo"
8. $$$...Thank goodness we get review copies of videogames
9. RND...The rise and fall of a newspaperman, chronicled
10. RND...A thousand words: the two-part story of the Marlboro Marine

To be a critic is to compare and contrast; pick and choose, praise and dismiss. And as 2007 slowly winds to a close, our thoughts inevitably turn towards which game we'll choose as our Game of the Year. With eight weeks left before the new year, our shortlist includes such titles as God of War II, Super Stardust HD, Desktop Tower Defense, BioShock and Halo 3, with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy and Rock Band awaiting extensive playthrough to determine their worthiness for inclusion. Near the top of the list, however, is a game we've already beaten twice: the unexpected critics' darling Portal, from Valve Software, which is the subject of our newest Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer). Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: The victory of Portal is that it is fun just to mess with it. Can you agree with me to apologize to the inventors of the English language for all the misuse we've made of the phrase "sandbox game"? Before Portal I, like many people who play games, was using it to describe open-world games like GTA, Gun and Spider-Man--games that allowed me to veer from a linear path and sample many a hidden side-task. I guess that's sort of analogous to what I did as a kid in my and my brother's green plastic sandbox. But I think what I spent more time doing was just: playing. Picking up sand and letting sift through my fingers. Making mounds of said that I probably thought looked like castles. Smushing those mounds of sand back down. Drawing lines in the sand with a stick. Just playing. Portal has such a strong and clever mechanic, that even though it is a strictly linear game not at all designed with the openness of GTA, Gun or Spider-Man, it's much more like my old green sandbox.

N'Gai Croal: Portal is a triumph of minimalism.

To read the Round 1 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Microsoft exec finds us "a little humorous." Funny how?
2. EGO...trip: Others debate value of game save files after reading our post
3. WHO...is Gordon Freeman, or, death to the silent protagonist 
4. ONE...SimCity per child along with One Laptop Per Child, thanks to EA
5. ACE...Combat 6 pushes Japanese Xbox 360 weekly sales past PS3's
6. RND... Faux pas: John McCain's mom says the darndest things

Even as the fan base continues to grow for Monday Morning Quarterback, our monthly assessment of the videogame biz with Geoff Keighley, the Level Up staff can't afford to become complacent. Because on any given Sunday, one of those young, hungry QBs angling to take our spot could finally succeed. So when we heard complaints from some of our most trusted industry sources that each lengthy installment of MMQB, though highly informative, was simply too much for them to consume in a single morning cappuccino sitting, we took it as a glaring weakness in our game that had to be shored up. After consulting with our coaches, we've added a new weapon to our arsenal: the Highlight Reel, a condensed "SportsCenter"-like list of the Top Ten excerpts, taken both from MMQB and from things said or written in response to our monthly email banter. And to give the whole affair more of a multimedia feel, we're including a suggested playlist of songs, with each track carefully selected for its thematic or titular relevance to a particular excerpt. Enjoy.

To read the Monday Morning Quarterback Highlight Reel for September 2007, click on the link below.

1. GWB...President Bush is a studio gangsta virtual soldier in San Antonio
   
2. MOP...Bungie gives interview, Kotaku plays "Instigator"
3. RTS...Half-Life 2 mod takes Valve's franchise into real-time strategy
   
4. ASS...assin's Creed on Xbox 360 projected to outsell PS3 version nearly 3:1
5. BET...ter late than never--Medal of Honor: Airborne finally set for PS3
6. RND...Do Sony's weapons of miniature destruction threaten Toshiba?

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction creative director Brian Allgeier

When we're conducting an interview with a developer, the bulk of our time is generally spent discussing their current project. But after the voice recorder is turned off and the liquor is flowing, the conversation almost inevitably shifts to videogames made by other teams working in the same genre as that developer. For us, it's always fascinating to look at games through the eyes of those who make them, because they sometimes see things differently than does the typical gamer; the same can be said of reviewers who are very knowledgeable about a certain genre, or people who have become experts at a particular game or genre.

As part of our ongoing quest to take the best conversations that are occurring in the shadows and bring them to light, we offer you the new occasional series Make or Break, which asks prominent developers, reviewers and expert gamers to share with us via email the five key features, details, techniques or flaws that they look for in games in the same genre. First up: Brian Allgeier, a 15-year veteran of the videogame industry creative director who's led the design for the Ratchet & Clank series since its inception. Fresh off the just-released Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Allgeier explains what he looks for in an action/adventure game.

Sometimes being a game designer can take all the fun out of a game. When I play, I often find myself in research mode, taking mental notes on how it was put together and the choices the developers made. I think about the game's overall structure, the moment-to-moment gameplay, and where the developers focused their efforts. Looking at all the strengths and weaknesses, I apply this knowledge to each game I work on with the hope that it will push the envelope, be competitive, and become, well, "fun." I typically look for the following five things that can make or break an action/adventure game:

1. A Beginning with a Bang

Why it Matters: Nowadays more and more games are starting off with a heart pounding opening that gets players on the edge of their seats and keeps them there. Other forms of entertainment like movies, books, and theatre have been doing this for years. A classic example is the typical James Bond movie. They start off with a high intensity action sequence that sets the tone for the film before going into the slow expository scenes that set up the bigger story. Players want to jump into the action immediately rather than getting a series of tutorials in a non-confrontational setting like a boot camp or training facility. While tutorials are necessary to get players started with the basic moves, it does not have to feel like eating peas and carrots before getting dessert. A great opening level can both teach and "wow" players at the same time.

The first level can also serve as a technical showpiece for the game. I find it funny that even back in 1929, films would show off new technology to get the audience excited from the start. For instance the Academy Award winner, "The Broadway Musical," was the first best picture film with sound. It opened with multiple bands in a studio performing a cacophony of different musical styles that showed the audio intensity of what a "talkie" could deliver. In games, many people are motivated to buy them based on g