C o D EDestroying the stereotype. Pixel by pixel.

Live Action Role Playing: A closer look.

Exploring Skyrim’s landscape.

Looting the internet for tat.

Alternative journalism.

ISSUE 0120/12/2012

Ben Yahtzee Crosha w/SKY RIM /M A SS E F F E C T 3 / ZE R O P U N C T U AT I O N /C O U N T E R C H A R T S / l a r p i n g i n l e e d s / R A N D O M L O O T / P U L L I N G P I X E L S / i l l u s t r a t i o n / C R A P C O N S O L E S / N E R D S / L I F E S T Y L E / V I R T U A L G E O G R A P H I C / W I R E L E S S R E A L I T Y / S O F T W A R S / n e r d o l o g y / G A M I N G

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People give Bubsy a lot of crap for his stupid one-liners, but my theory is that they’re supposed to be stupid. With lines like, “Is the writers’ strike over yet?”, it’s obvious they were using him to make a statement

on the 90s-animal-mascots-with-‘tude trend. Or maybe they just realised how poorly structured the game was. Artwork by No Marios, print is available to buy from his tumblr site, with many other characters.

2/ /3

RETRO CHARACTERS - BUBSY

WHAT TO EXPECTIn this issue we have:

Dara O’Briain says ‘relax’Comedian Dara on BAFTA’s, violence and Olly Murs. As well as appearing as an advocate for gaming unintentionally, he shares some of his favourite games.

Welcome to Code. Everything from in game environments, art, illustration, ridiculous products and even interviews from some of the coolest individuals who share their years of experience. “But print is dead, especially with all recent content being online” we hear you scream at the page. Well we want to change that. A compact, easy to transport gaming rag, with features you won’t find immediately, unless you trawl the net for them. Instead we have compiled the latest, most interesting news and compiled it into a comprehensive, contemporary publication that wants everyone to read it. We challenge our identity, and try to provide you with the other side of video gaming culture and the fastest growing industry. EVER.

Random LootA review of some of the absurdities and the downright weird products and games available. This time we look at a game aimed at molestation as a form of recreation. Yes it’s Japanese.

Virtual GeographicA feature from the tumblr site of the same name, this issue focuses on the breathtaking, barren and beautiful land of Skyrim.

Tomas CummingsAngry young chap who hates first person shooters and enjoys scouring the net for articles of interest,

Toby Craven-GriffithsOverinked and with a macho inclination to anything with a ridiculous premise. Toby.

Griff Craven-GriffithsAn elusive male who is known for extensive RPG sessions and being a banner waving fanboy.

Tristain CarnegieHater of shit games and known chicken chaser. Likes hunting quail on his days off.

Gallery 1988We interview pop culture poster prince, Olly Moss on his exhibition at the gallery and feature some past exhibition work.

Soft WarsWe let two staff members fight out their differences between first person shooters Battlefield 3 and Modern Warefare 3.

Extra PunctuationGuest writer, wizard, gamer and elequent wordsmith Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw outlines what themes make games so pleasing to play.

Wireless GameplayOur look into the weird, wonderful and often misunderstood world of Live Action Role Playing. We interview several people from Leeds’ society of LARPers to determine how it has gathered in popularity

4/ /5

Is where you engage the player’s sympathies with the protagonists by establishing who they are and why they’re doing it, encouraging the player to push forward with the game to see what happens to them next and see plot arcs get resolved. Pure context gives us things like the Japanese-style visual novel or occasionally something weird and arty like Silent Hill Shattered Memories. But don’t consider context to be solely about cutscenes and dialogue; context can also apply to aesthetics. It can be something as simple as making the enemy look like a scaley growly monster with a pointy face, so you know it must be purged from existence. All games have a degree of visual context except Pong. And maybe Bad Company 2 since I can’t see through the dust clouds.

Shouldn’t need too much explanation; it’s the simple matter of beating the high score, killing your way through the entire horde, or getting 100% completion in Pokemon for the sake of getting 100% alone, you crazy, crazy bugger. It’s on the extreme end of the Challenge category that you find most retro and arcade games, the sort of thing that only nudges the realms of Context with the lightest of touches, such as ‘aliens are invading, shoot them’.

Is that magical land that lies outside the two kingdoms above. It’s the aspect of a game that speaks directly to the animal part of your brain. It’s about the pure visceral fun one has entirely outside of both context and challenge. This, friends, is where you have your Saints Row 3 big floppy dildo passer-by combat. There’s no challenge ‘cos passers-by don’t fight back and like many things in the game there’s certainly no context for it, but by golly is it fun. This is also the category where you’ll find my lengthy sessions of Spider-Man 2 spent web-swinging randomly around the city, with no intention to enter any missions or further the story.

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true potential as a creative medium, emotional involvement in a story and visceral pursuit of betterment propping each other up shoulder-to-shoulder.

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

BEN ‘YAHTZEE’ CROSHAW

CONtext, challenge& GRATIFICATION

DISCUSSES

I hope you’re still picturing that XKCD-style triangle chart because now I want you to imagine Saints Row 2 being pretty much in the middle, and that’s why I liked it. It had challenge, it was certainly very gratifying, and the context of your customised character clawing his (or her or its) gang up to the dizzy heights made it involving. Saints Row 3 you have to imagine being nudged a little too far from the Context point and a little too close to Gratification. So while it is still fun in a ragdolls to the wind kind of way - there’s hours of fun to be had just in running around doing sprinting takedowns, especially the one that ends with your character doing a cheeky swimsuit pose and smile for the camera - it’s no longer fun on the same number of levels. And even if there’s still enjoyment in it, a sequel should always be admonished if it turns out to be less than its predecessor. Because that is a series that is not moving in a forward-style direction.

You know, I have a long-standing grudge against the

CONTEXT

CHALLENGE

GRATIFICATION

which all a game’s features fall are Context, Challenge and Gratification.

If this were XKCD this would probably be the point where I draw a big triangle with the three points labelled as such, then place crosses on the triangle indicating where certain specific games and game experiences lie. But this isn’t XKCD so you’re just going to have to imagine it.

While thinking this over I tried to come up with an example that sits right in the middle of the three, and came up with the slightly odd example of the surprisingly good ending sequence of Halo Reach. When you’re abandoned alone on the occupied planet and the ending only comes after you die, leaving you to hold out for as long as you can within gameplay as a final melancholy challenge. Also gratifying in a sort of heroic tragedy kind of way (and in the killing of the aliens if you’re some kind of massive racist) and of course it would be nothing without context.

concept of awarding review scores to games, because I think it represents everything that’s wrong about videogame reporting by treating every given game like some kind of kitchen appliance whose chopping blades have been slightly rearranged since the last generation and are now therefore precisely 1 point more efficient at dicing sweet potatoes. But if I did finally knuckle under to those bean counters at Metacritic, this is exactly how I’d give scores to games. Three separate marks out of ten for Context, Challenge and Gratification. None of this buggering about with graphics or sound or anything else as consequential as the color of the wallpaper in an operating theatre. Of course what I would definitely not do then is combine the three scores into some kind of “overall” value, because that’s totally fucking meaningless. That’d be like having a meal where the main course was tasty but the dessert was disgusting, so you give it a final review of TASTGUSTING.

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It’s obvious you have a real history with games. What role have they played in your life?

Well they’ve been constantly buzzing round as a ready form of entertainment. On a holiday to England once, I caught my father coming out of Argos with an Atari 5200, or 2600, I struggle to remember. He was discreetly trying to buy it as a Christmas present. I was about 10 or 11. That went all through my early teens. And then in late teens and early 20s that kind of disappeared, so I missed Sonic and I missed Mario. Then when I was a kids’ TV presenter, I rediscovered it all because I bagged a PlayStation from Sony.

From there in on, it’s kind of been buzzing around constantly. I describe myself as “hardcore/casual”, which is that I have the heart of a hardcore gamer, but I don’t have the skills or the time. So I can get as far as a couple of boss battles and then I baulk at it. I just like the virtual worlds. I play lots and lots of games now. Now, I host a lot of awards. In March I’m hosting about seven different awards - including the Money Marketing awards. I don’t pay anywhere near as much attention to that as I do to video games. I’m hosting the Mothercare awards, and I’m not looking at different types of nappy in quite the avid way I’m playing Bad Company 2.

You’ve talked about games ‘blocking’ less accomplished players from experiencing what they’ve paid for. Although that seems to be happening a little less now, which the hardcore aren’t great fans of...

Of course they’re not! It’s so funny, when that routine [about Dara being unable to beat a Gears boss] came out - which was a celebration of gaming - there were a load of people sneering: “He’s obviously rubbish at games.” That was kind of the whole point of it. It’s a very common thing. There was a phrase from Caitlin Moran in The Times - we were talking about anonymous commentary on things - and she said: “You

DARA o’briainnever forget the first time your work is taken apart by SirWankalot27.”

It’s one of those things. Haters gonna hate. You’re always going to get people on YouTube saying how lame something is. But if my nagging has had anything to do with that phenomenon of players being ‘blocked’ from content [dying down], then great. I’d love that. Just a button saying: “You’re not getting this. Why don’t we just let you pass. We’ll stick it in a section called ‘uncompleted bits’ and you can drop back in later. Because this is getting ridiculous.”

I read an interview with you where you discussed Bill Hicks. Although you said you respected him, you also suggested he opened the door for some less witty, less driven comedians, who were merely offensive for offensiveness’s sake. Do you think games have a similar problem?

Yeah. I thought The Onion nailed it with that ‘Headshot 2’ spoof. You press the space bar and just get headshots. There’s a horse at one stage and you pop one in his head. That sort of thing reminds me of Bad Company - but then you just have to admit that there’s something about looking down the scope of a lens and just [makes dampened gunshot noise, complete with hand gestures].

I like the way we’re both silently dismissing other anti-social behaviour in games, by the way - like stealing a car. That’s just a common storytelling point, right? It’s almost like it drags on: “Oh, for f*ck’s sake. I’m pulling someone out of another car.” If anything, I think this year has been an interesting move for games, because they have “grown up” to a certain extent. Look at Heavy Rain - the fact that you could have long periods of pause and there were very few ‘killings’. Compare it to movies in the 1980s, where you’d rent Terminator or what have you and there’s been countless bodies getting gruesomely murdered. Both movies and games have had this [fascination], games just came to it later. I think the gaming industry is developing more mature content, but also has the thing unique where older gamers don’t look down their noses at Mario. Even people who like FPS and headshots don’t look at Mario and sneer. The gaming industry is happy to accommodate Angry Birds and Call Of Duty together.

You’re obviously passionate about the games industry - and have been for a number of years...

It’s true - I am. But I never saw myself becoming an advocate like I have. I remember one games awards show, when an ex-children’s TV presenter bounded on stage and patronisingly shouted: “Hello gamers!!” The likes of Ian Livingstone, Charles Cecil, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft’s UK managing directors were all there. The room fell silent. God. The perception of the strength of the relative entertainment industries should be something for gamers to be quietly happy with that I think, rather than just chasing after [a mainstream audience]. I don’t think the games industry has any need to chase after anything.It’s like when people say: “Hey! How do we get young people to vote?” You kind of think, “fuck ‘em”. If they’re not sufficiently engaged to know that there’s an election on, then they don’t deserve a say in who runs the country. I’d make the same comparison with [gaming] and ‘popular science’ too. Which is: “How can we make it appeal to the cool kids?”Sorry, again, fuck ‘em. Concentrate on the people who get it - who actually want to do this. If you just go after the pretty people in the class, they’ll go: “What, really? Is the universe a little bit funnily shaped?” Then go back to Glee or Gossip Girl or whatever. You have to be careful not to patronise the fuck out of the very people you’ve already attracted, your biggest fans. Because we know we’re all on the same page at the BAFTAs, it should just be, “Hey, what about this bit, or what about this level.” My favourite joke last year was about [X-Factor contestant] Olly Murs. He came on and said: “I’m a big fan of games.” He presented an award to Infinity Ward. They came on and said: “And we’re big fans of yours as well, Olly.” Then they sat down again. I went up and said: “That actually sounded like a joke, but it’s true - Infinity Ward are huge fans of Olly’s. In fact, they use one of his songs as the background music in the airport level.” It got a big laugh, and it was so nice because it’s so specific a joke. Infinity Ward’s table kind of collectively went: “Errrrr.” And I said: “If you don’t like that content, you may opt out.”

TALKS WITH CODE

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10/ /11

M A S S E F F E C T 3 r e v i e w b y G r i f f

I don’t want to spoil anything about Mass Effect 3 for you, so all you really need to know is this: Yes. Yes, you should

get it. Yes, it lives up to the hype. Yes, it’s the ending the series deserves. Yes, it’s an incredible adventure that will terrify you, make you laugh, and more than likely move you to tears more than once. And yes, that character you care about comes back.

As the game begins, the Reapers have made Earth the first stop on their harvesting tour of the galaxy. Their arrival signals not just the end of the world, but the end of every world as they set out to destroy all organic life. Your experience with the Reapers makes you the best choice to fight them, and the Alliance is willing to let bygones be bygones - and give you back your ship - if you lead the charge against the Reaper armada. Your mission in Mass Effect 3 echoes that of Mass Effect 2: Then, you were gathering resources and personnel in hopes of increasing your chances of surviving a suicide mission. Now, you’re doing much the same thing in the hopes of increasing your chances in a face-off against the Reapers ... which is also probably a suicide mission.

You don’t have to have played through either of the first two Mass Effects in order to enjoy Mass Effect 3, as the game does a pretty good job on catching you up on the important people and events from its predecessors without dropping huge walls of text on your head. Saving the Earth is also a pretty easy concept to grasp, so even

complete newcomers to the story should have no trouble embracing the adventure. Even though you can jump in just fine, there’s no question that your experience will be greatly enriched if you played through the first two games. Mass Effect 3 does a masterful job of calling back to the first two games, their DLC, and even the Mass Effect novels, referencing practically every encounter you had or decision you made. The world of Mass Effect 3 feels lived in and worn out, and that effect just isn’t quite the same if you don’t understand the full weight of the experiences that have made these characters who they are. You can understand the basics about Maelon’s genophage research with just a few lines of dialog, but his work takes on a whole new timbre when you’ve seen its effects first-hand.

One of Mass Effect’s core strengths has been its story, which is particularly well crafted in Mass Effect 3, in part because it gets to tie up so many loose ends. Rather than leaving options open for a sequel, the game makes the most of the chance to take the sum of your decisions and show you the outcome. What did you do with the Rachni queen? What did you tell Conrad? Did you dance? It almost all comes back, one way or another, but never in a way

that feels forced. Everything you experience in Mass Effect 3 feels like the natural, organic culmination of your actions - whether you can live with the repercussions or not. Mass Effect 3’s combat kicks things up a notch or twelve, as well, a change that’s not always entirely welcome. The new enemies are daunting (and at times terrifying), but while you could get through Mass Effect 2 with minimal attention to cross-disciplinary styles, Mass Effect 3

seems to really, really want you to coordinate your attacks with your squadmates. Perhaps that’s because it’s easier to do so now that you can use voice commands to control your team (assuming you have a Kinect), but the combat can be frustratingly difficult at times. Your squadmates can be shockingly stupid sometimes, apparently forgetting that they’re supposed to be backing you up in a fight.

The game’s cover mechanic is equally hit and miss, at times letting you roll from point to point with split-second accuracy, and at other times leaving you wide open to assault as you try in vain to take cover behind a wall. The voice controls work fairly well - though there were times that the Kinect seemed to misunderstand me - but it felt odd to be barking orders at my companions one minute, then listening to Jennifer Hale chat them up back on the Normandy. Using the Kinect is fun from a gameplay perspective, but it doesn’t mesh well with the story elements.

“During one particularly brutal encounter, I discovered that my two companions had never followed me into the room and instead were crouching behind some furniture in the hallway.”

DOn your capes and cloaks

ENGAGE WITH THE REALMADJUST COGNITION

NOW ACTIONWireless reality:Live action role playing. Words by tom cummings

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true potential as a creative medium, emotional involvement in a story and visceral pursuit of betterment propping each other up shoulder-to-shoulder.

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true potential as a creative medium, emotional involvement in a story and visceral pursuit of betterment propping each other up shoulder-to-shoulder.

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

12/ /13

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true potential as a creative medium, emotional involvement in a story and visceral pursuit of betterment propping each other up shoulder-to-shoulder.

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true potential as a creative medium, emotional involvement in a story and visceral pursuit of betterment propping each other up shoulder-to-shoulder.

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding the same kind of enjoyment in both those activities. So here’s my updated recipe for a big fluffy video game cake: the three categories into

But recently I’ve had cause to update this imaginary model of mine from a two-man arm-in-arm arrangement to a more sort of three-man ring-a-rosie affair. “Gameplay” was too broad a concept, I realized. How does one differentiate, say, getting all 150 Pokemon (or however many there are now) from smacking passers-by to death with a giant floppy dildo? People can’t possibly be finding

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling

This section would detail profile of a player.

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true

I used to think that at the most basic level every game had to consist of two distinct but essential elements - gameplay and story. Without one of those you either might as well be a film or might as well be a piece of dangling string for a cat to play with. Only with a balance of both do we reach gaming’s true

14/ /15

s k y w a r d s w o r d r e v i e w b y T o b y C r a v e n

You know, a chap could start to feel unappreciated after the usual response I tend to

get from honestly reviewing first-party Nintendo titles. They really do feel like games that it’s utterly pointless to criticise, because the moment I utter anything short of gushing hagiographical praise, Zelda’s army of self-appointed nannies fight each other to put little sticking plasters on the boo-boo.

One complaint that usually gets directed at me at this juncture is that pointing out how samey the games are has become a tired argument. I fucking agree, it certainly has, and yet, the problem hasn’t gone anywhere, so I’m going to keep using it. You wouldn’t tell those Occupy Wall Street to sod off because their complaints are getting repetitive. Yes, I did just compare the Occupy movement’s courageous opposition to corporate injustice to me saying Zelda games are a bit shit.

The other, more common argument I hear at these times is that I’m just automatically biased against the entire franchise, or Nintendo in general. Nothing, I say, could be further from the truth. If I’m biased against anything, I’m biased against games that aren’t fun. Games that I spend thirty hours of my week ploughing through looking for entertainment value and cultural relevance, after which I realise I would have been better off spending the time eating chocolate biscuits and watching The Ascent Of Man.

Yes, I’m biased against motion controls, but that’s just a sub-heading of the broader overall bias against games that aren’t fun. I’ve been trying to figure out a quick, pithy, all-encompassing way to express my reasons for thinking that motion controls are poisonous to gaming,

so I can bring my opinion across in conversation without having to rant for ten minutes, and I think I’ve come up with something I like: Motion controls are a system wherein a game can fail you for something that completely wasn’t your fault. Like smacking an electrified sword because it was horizontal half a second ago and the game only just registered your horizontal swipe. There ya go.

Alright, locking a capable-seeming Princess Zelda in a basement for the last half of the game wasn’t doing much for gender relations but the fighting engine worked well, there was an epic free-roaming world to explore and the cartoony visuals will ensure that it never ages poorly. Link was actually able to express emotion and have a visual personality. The first time I saw Link in Skyward Sword I had to stifle a horrified laugh because his exposed nostrils and swollen lips look like he let a swarm of bees practise amateur plastic surgery.

I even liked Twilight Princess quite a lot, although bear in mind I again played the Gamecube, non-motion-controlly version. It had a slow start and was structurally rather similar to Ocarina of Time, but again the game world felt expansive and detailed with lots of lovely varied locations and dungeons. Even if it wasn’t a revolutionary take on the concept it was at least an elevation, which

is apparently the most anyone expects of Zelda games. The support character, Midna, actually had an interesting arc. I could only think of her with soppy nostalgia as I barely tolerated the monotone creepy-eyed dullard that follows you around in Skyward Sword, endlessly popping out to remind me that my health was critically low while I was busy trying to circle strafe something nasty. And that excruciating is-this-the-emotion-you-call-happiness dialogue in the ending scene made me want to projectile vomit all my innards like a giant party streamer. I mean, at least Navi was enthusiastic, y’know?

So while never quite being what you’d traditionally call a sandbox game, Zelda at its best certainly leans in that direction. Closer to the ‘open world’ model one associates with Metroidvania, I suppose, exploring new areas once you’ve unlocked the ability to go there. And what disappointed me about Skyward Sword is that there was a fairly massive downplaying of that exploration element. The game world felt small with just the three questing locations and rather rigid separations between gameplay areas. There didn’t seem to be as many opportunities as there usually are to go to places in the open world you’d seen before and can only explore now you’ve acquired a certain tool, to find optional treasures and all that. I can’t

even remember any points when you use the whip item in anything except a mandatory story context.

And then there’s the padding. They make you revisit the paltry handful of locations so many times just to get a decent gameplay length out of all this that it starts getting ridiculous. Some dragon can only help you once you’ve brought him a magical healing fruit that can only be found across the map and which not one entity tries to stop you from acquiring. It’s just a fetch quest for no reason. Busywork.

How many times should a hero reasonably have to ‘prove their worth’ before you start to question the local hiring policies?

There were times playing Skyward Sword when I actually laughed. Not in an amused way. I was laughing like how that one lady in the movie Necronomicon started laughing while the monsters were sawing all her arms and legs off. Laughing because it’d all just gotten too absurd for my head. Just as I’m about to run out hookshot blazing, that fucking support character jumps out, stands in my path and reveals as slowly and tortuously as possible that there’s a big monster smashing up the ship in case I hadn’t realised and we were probably going to have to fight it. I laugh because I’m not sure I believe this is happening in reality anymore.

“How many times should a hero reasonably have to ‘prove their worth’ before you start to question the local hiring policies?”

Illustrations by Eva Eskelin

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16/ /17

Triforce tribute

18/ /19

defining the modernI N D I EG A M E

The mainstream videogame industry, like Hollywood, is a production line of marketable high concepts and ‘sure-fire’ franchises. With teams now hitting 200 and budgets in the multimillions of dollars, the number of original and innovative projects seems to dwindle a little more each year. This industrial process has birthed marvels like Uncharted and Skyrim, but it has also brought about a culture in which the genre is king, and where design is by committee.

So, what’s it like working outside of the system? Do indie developers think of themselves as avant-garde artists, testing the boundaries of the medium? Is there a conscious effort to bring subjectivity and expressionism to projects like Limbo or Journey, or are these qualities just the natural by-products of smaller development teams and tighter budgets?

Four leading lights of the contemporary indie scene will help us discover the answers. Robin Hunicke from thatgamecompany is the producer of Journey and a passionate advocate of emotional game design; Jakub Dvorsky is founder of Amanita Design, the Czech studio behind handcrafted adventures Machinarium and Samorost; Dino Patti is the CEO of PlayDead, creator of monochrome

XBLA oddity Limbo; and Brian Provinciano, once of Backbone Entertainment, is now working on much-anticipated NES homage Retro City Rampage. The deceptively straightforward matter at hand: are indie games weird on purpose?

Thatgamecompany’s Robin Hunicke and Amanita Design founder Jakub Dvorsky

None of your games are orthodox or ‘realistic’ in terms of visuals or themes. Is that a conscious decision? Do you deliberately set out to be surreal or expressionistic?

Brian Provinciano My game is hugely expressionistic, but at the same time it’s less about being art and more about being the game I want to play.

Robin Hunicke We’re certainly super-conscious of wanting to make something that provides a fresh perspective or a new experience, something that values

other people’s time and feels handcrafted. Those elements are always in what we make. And when I first played Machinarium and Limbo, I found the same values. We share similar feelings about what quality is, or maybe why one should make a game.

Jakub Dvorsky That handcrafted feel is an important part of our approach. Most of us in the studio came from animation – we are artists, we studied at art school, so we write games in the same way we’d do animated movies. But interactivity is also very important. We don’t think about making artistic games; we just want to make something beautiful.

How about at PlayDead? Limbo has an expressionistic look – did you all focus on art during production?

Dino Patti Not at all! I can only second what these two are saying. At our studio we have only one director, Arnt Jensen. We try to get all of his ideas in and make them work. But none of us think in that way. For us, it’s just about creating something that we think is amazing.

RH It’s really important not to feel like you have to communicate what you believe the game to be. When it goes out there, the players need to really own it. Their experience is what matters.

JD Just continuing what Dino said, it is very important that there is only one director on a project, one creator who is the mind behind the whole experience. Of course, other people help him and can influence the game heavily, but there should only be one author. I am the author of Machinarium but our next game Botanicula, is made by our animator, Jara Plachy. I am helping to make it as good as possible, but he’s the auteur, he decides everything.

But this is all very different to how game development works in the mainstream, where it often feels like everything is arranged by committee.

DP It is about the team also – everyone can influence the gameplay. But it’s really important that one person takes the controls. If nothing else, you get to blame him if it’s bad!

Do you think that one of the problems of mainstream games is that they don’t have an auteur at the centre of it all, that they’re totally democratic? Doesn’t this lead to blander, less subjective games?

DP I think too many triple-A developers ask people what they want and then create it for them. You know: “How many cars should we have? How many guns?” Then they create what they think people want.

BP I’ve seen that so often! One rant of mine is about the game design document. I’ve been at studios where they’ve written 300-page design docs for a

sequel that’s already had eight games in the series. And all it does is list enemy types, and this ingredient, that ingredient... It’s not really going to make a fun game. It’s like trying to write a music design document for a song that just says: ‘OK, it’s going to go up a key here and down here.’ That doesn’t make a good song!

RH It should be about wanting to bring something from within, whether it’s one person or a team. The vision is about communicating between the developer and the player, it’s not about a feature set or what kind of value you can extract from the customer, or whether the idea is emerging from a ‘hot sector’! That kind of language isn’t true to the spirit of creating anything. It’s also about learning and growing – you want to feel that you became a better person because you made something. It should make you feel stronger!

BP There’s a big problem in a lot of the larger companies where they focus so much on ‘features’. They’ll hire such a big team, and they’ll take one guy and say, “OK, you have to build a trading card system for this game”, because they’ve noticed how successful Pokémon is. I’ve seen this happen! And the result has no sense of personal expression – it just feels like it came off some production line. Everything is a checklist.

Do you feel that, in some way, your projects all comment on games and the possibilities of games? That tends to be a feature of more subjective artworks.

“It’s really important not to feel like you have to communicate what you believe the game to be. When it goes out there, the players need to really own it. Their experience is what matters.”

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BP Yes, I mean, Retro City Rampage is essentially a homage. But the missions I’m most proud of are those where I could make fun experiences out of making fun of things! I’d take things like a car-tailing mission, which are normally so boring I have to keep drinking coffee to stay awake. So in the game your character has to keep rushing into coffee shops during the mission without losing the car. It’s silly, but it’s such fun.

RH We’re very conscious of the fact that our games should be experimental, they should be exploratory, they should push at the boundaries. So we’re always playing games, talking about them, discussing the future of games. And as long as we’re working on something that’s pushing those boundaries, we know we’re on the right path. If we’re discussing whether or not a particular feature should remain in the game it will always come down to, well, is it new? Is it fresh? Does it create something people wouldn’t expect? In that way we’re very aware of what games are, but we’re always looking toward what they could be.

JD We are a little more conservative [laughs]. But we are trying to evolve the adventure genre and to think of new puzzle ideas. We think about our games as toys: you should be playing the game not to finish it or to beat it, but to enjoy the experience. So for Samarost 3 we’re adding several interactive toys where the goal is just to play and to enjoy even if you’ve finished the game. Atmosphere is very important to us – sounds, music, playfulness. We think about our games like movies or books – their value transcends the ending. When you finish a book, you can read it again a few years later. That’s what we want.

You mentioned audio there – how does that particular element fit in with more subjective games? Is it an important factor in conjuring a more expressionistic feel for your game?

DP It’s very important. When I worked out the budgets for Limbo, I underestimated everything to do with the sound. We ended up finding this really awesome audio designer, Martin Stig Andersen, and as soon as we realised how good he was, we just put in more money – I just grabbed it from other areas of the budget!

RH We work with a composer almost from the beginning of a project. It’s like Dino said, the sound

budget is so critical, you have to just pull from wherever you can to support it. We work with Austin Wintory on the music itself, and then we have help from Sony Santa Monica and Sony San Diego in terms of designing the soundscape as well as implementing the score in a way that is interactive and reflective of your actions and the state of the game. When we create a moment, a feeling, a huge component of that is the audio. Just recently, we went through a period when the audio tool was being updated so there was no music in the game. It was impossible to evaluate it! You would find yourself trying to fix problems that didn’t exist before the sound was gone. It’s so essential to the design. When it’s not there, the game is just completely broken. I was so moved by the audio in Botanicula – the sounds and the character voices have a handmade quality – it’s so personal, you feel like you’re watching a little puppet show. That creates a real connection. And in Journey if you’re going to be drifting through the air and gliding on sand, you need to have this beautiful orchestral score – hearing real strings and vocal tones that have been manipulated to create a mysterious quality. It’s completely integral to

the feeling.It seems that indie games, perhaps because of

their subjectivity, have a much better understanding of how audio can be exploited to create moods and emotions. It doesn’t have to be about vastly expensive soundtracks.

RH Yeah, I mean there are these low-level systems in our brains, things that have been around for a long time. They connect directly to your heart, your desires and your needs – and games can get to them. If you can create an ambience, through visuals or audio, or with the tactile quality of the game, you can create real emotions in people, in the same way that music is able to bring you through an emotional experience. What’s interesting and scary about that is it’s a lot of power! It’s something we really need to take seriously. It should be used for good!

BP That reminds me of another aspect of design. I strive to make my game a smooth, fluid experience. The idea is that, OK, people might not necessarily notice all the cool features, but if there’s a flow state, they will miss the flaws! Subconsciously it just feels good because they haven’t had those stumbling

moments. That goes back to what Robin was saying about appealing to the unconscious, to the reptilian brain. It’s... invisible polish.

RH That’s a great phrase for it!Is it difficult to communicate all this to the media

during development? It seems like a big marketing challenge.

DP Spending a lot of money on marketing is a waste. We tried to think of new ideas, new ways to get Limbo out there. We used a lot of free PR, showing it to the right people. I actually think it would have degraded Limbo, to put it in a banner ad with some kind of tag line. People wanted to learn more about it, but we kept things quiet until we were ready to talk. That way, when we did come forward, there were people listening.

How about external influences? The mainstream game industry can be insular, often looking only as far as its own past or toward Hollywood or comic books for inspiration. Do you consciously look elsewhere?

JD Inspiration comes from life itself. You’ve got to read books, go outside, do drugs. Just live. It’s no good for game designers just being sat by a computer playing games. That’s sometimes necessary, but it shouldn’t be everything.

RH Yeah, life is short. I just finished reading Cloud Atlas, and it’s been in the back of my mind continuously. I was incredibly moved by the story arc of the book, but also by the way in which it channelled my feelings toward a need for resolution. There was a point I just became incredibly sad. I really felt for one of the characters and the struggles she was having. And I almost put the book down because it was too painful to contemplate. But I pushed through and it was almost like climbing the mountain in Journey. Maybe I just see mountains everywhere now.

BP I feel my game is a voice. People who play it are going to get to know me, because it has a lot of things in there, nods to things I liked when I was a child, nods to friends and things like that. There are also things in the city that are comments on contemporary issues, like the food industry, like social issues in Vancouver. The game isn’t just for people who feel nostalgic about Ninja Turtles. It’s like a scrapbook about me, set in this open world. You can see the layers if you look deep enough.

Do you think, then, that your game environments are more about conveying a mood than a definite sense of place?

RH When I play Machinarium, there’s a dystopian ambience, it is a rusted world, and there’s this alienated guy having all these problems but they’re beyond his control. It’s like the movie Brazil – it’s a feeling of meandering through a giant set of rules, the superstructure of society. I knew it wasn’t made by Americans. There is a sad beauty to it.

JD We’re continuing the tradition of animated film in eastern Europe. But the meaning doesn’t have to be intentional. When you have a very small team, if they are passionate about the game, if they create it as a piece of art, not as a commercial product, there’s often a message even if they don’t put it there. Our games are like fairytales – they’re archetypes, they’re about how we react to the world. A writer writes from his own personal experiences of the world, so somehow whatever he intends, the message comes through.

BP It’s all about passion and ownership. Ownership is the reason I left triple-A game development – I felt like a cog in the machine. I almost wondered, ‘Am I actually working on a game? I’m just sitting here programming. What’s the difference between me working on this and writing a piece of business software?’

Lots of modern art movements make room for the accidental in their work. Is there space for that in game development, too?

RH Absolutely. There are features in Journey, especially visual effects, that came from glitches. There might have been a mistake, or someone tried something that didn’t work and it had a quality to it we liked. That was definitely part of our process. One of the things we’re really excited about is, when the art team and programming team work together to solve a problem, one of them is using the vocabulary of

fine art and the other is using the vocabulary of code. There’s always this weird space between them, a magic place. It’s where the language no longer works – you just have to keep playing with the system to find it.

BP Retro City Rampage as it is was entirely created from an accident. It was always going to be a satire, but originally I was creating something with a more serious tone, like GTAIII. When I was working on the jumps and the collisions, I had to handle what happened when one character landed on another – do they slide off, do they knock each other over? And I suddenly remembered stomping Goombas in Super Mario; I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to stomp pedestrians?’ I was concerned that I’d alienate GTA fans, but I thought, ‘I love comedy, I’m going to roll with this’. I always want to do things other people aren’t doing. I don’t want to keep reinventing the wheel – or rewriting string libraries!

JD Sometimes we might find a small bug or glitch that’s not breaking the game, and that most players won’t even notice. So we leave it there. They’re like little Easter eggs – when a player finds them, they feel happy. It’s a good thing. It’s also important to think about the background of the gameworld, even the stuff that doesn’t get into the game. We know everything about every character in Botanicula, even those with only a small role. We know who they are and how they got there. Then they’re believable, and the players can feel it.

RH I agree. If you know the backstory of why something is in your game and you understand its function on a fundamental level within the world and with the other characters, then there is a quality to that continuity that you can really feel. It’s important not just to add things because they’re interesting, but to really think them through. That’s when you know you’ve created your own universe.

Some sweet INDIE GAMES

CASTLE CRASHERSThis XBLA game is a fully functional multiplayer

or equally good single player campaign, echoing

gameplay similar to Golden Axe. Designed by

The Behemoth, the people who brought you Alien Hominid, except the gameplay mechanic is far

more complex and enjoyable than Hominid.

With a range of weapons that would put Skyrim

a run for it’s money and a whole host of online

content, this happy hack and slash will have you

playing with your mates for a good few months.RETRO CITY RAMPAGEAn arcade style sandbox remixed in 8 bit. Tongue

in cheek humour with a slapstick cast of misfits,

fools and characters similar to the GTA ragtag

bunch of personalities.

Cheap thrills at an affordable price, this game

is cross platform and is a suprsingly good

play, especially since it chronicles the point of

gaming and what games should be focusing

on, gameplay. It really does have it all; context,

challenge and gratification.

RASKULLSA Mario-inspired platformer that allows for

multiplayer options which are so ranged and

varied, it allows the game to take on many forms.

Although this can be considered as padding, the

challenge of online play let alone your mates is

addictive as hell. Seriously.

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K E E P CALM

F U S ROHDAH

AND

...and we will see you next month,