Rated M for Real Maturity

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Last year, I wrote about my largest disappointment with the Nintendo Wii: that while it has made great strides toward bringing video gaming into the mainstream, the resulting games have placed narrative complexity and thematic maturity as low priorities. This year, Sony took a gamble on Heavy Rain, a mature, complex thriller that considers story, character development, and adult themes more important than action and titillation. It is mature in that it deals with adult issues and situations without gratuitous vulgarity and sexuality. It is the first M-rated game that I have played which is mature both for the fact that it is inappropriate for children and for the way that it honestly wrestles with difficult, adult problems.

Heavy Rain is a thriller. The story follows the lives of four individuals who each have an interest in tracking down the Origami Killer, a serial murderer. A father, an FBI agent, a private investigator, and a journalist are all working against the clock to rescue the latest kidnapping victim before they die. The story is interesting, if somewhat cliché, and some of the motivations and story hooks are less compelling than others. All told, the plot is serviceable, but not the most impressive thing about the game.

What really blows me away about Heavy Rain is its ability to explore complex emotions and difficult decisions. Over the course of the game, I felt a number of emotions a game has never made me feel before: guilt, gratefulness, hopelessness, and hope regained. I felt concerned about a stranger’s baby. I have no children in reality, but in the game I felt prepared to do anything to save my son. And there was no sign of a simple, black and white moral choice anywhere in the game. Every moral conflict was a complicated one. Every difficult choice felt desperate.

The other major success of the game is its accessibility. Typically, games with mature content and thematic elements are designed with a hardcore video game audience in mind. But the controls for Heavy Rain are easy to learn, and the difficulty settings are based around how familiar the player is with the PlayStation 3 controller.

Heavy Rain has the most impressive quicktime events I have ever played in a game. The action can be chaotic, but it is usually clear what button the player is supposed to push. Best of all, an error in button pushing or joystick moving doesn’t result in an instant failure and the need to restart. Each missed cue results in some small error on the part of the character on the screen; just like in reality, a person can make a few mistakes and still succeed overall. It lends each action sequence an air of legitimacy, and the characters remain human.

One of the other major features that sets Heavy Rain apart is the fact that there is no such thing as a game over screen: every failure remains. Character death is possible, but the story continues without them. Every in-game possibility leads to its own ending. This is a bold move for video games, which typically rely on a lot of replaying and frustration around difficult sections. Unless the player goes out of their way to replay a section of Heavy Rain, they will never need to do so.

Heavy Rain has its fair share of flaws. Sometimes the on-screen options are frustrating in their limitations, leaving very little room for player freedom of choice. The characters are a little too stuck in their ways of thinking, which can be frustrating to the player who thinks of a better solution. And, strangely for a game so focused on story and character interaction, the writing and acting can be weak at times. Oddly, the weaknesses in the acting come mostly from the voice work; the digital characters created for Heavy Rain are the most convincingly real human beings ever seen in a video game. But none of the game's flaws counteract the fact that Heavy Rain is a leap forward for maturity in video games.

It is my sincere hope that Heavy Rain will show consumers and game designers how much more potential there is in the video game medium than they saw before. Heavy Rain is an eye-opening experience; it shows that dramatic, compelling gameplay can be found in everyday experiences and emotions, and that we don’t need to play superhuman characters to triumph in the face of adversity. Heavy Rain is a triumph, in that it opens up to a wider audience without sacrificing its ambitions or the complexity of its themes. I can’t wait to see what comes next. 

Difficulty Needs More Curves

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

“You are dead.”

The familiar words glowed on the screen in front of me as I took a deep breath. It was the twelfth time in a row that I’d been crushed, without mercy, by an unstoppable rock wall. I wanted to go to sleep, but I didn’t want to leave this section unconquered. I was ready to hurl my controller through my television screen. Just to shove my face in it, God of War asked me whether I wanted to lower the difficulty to easy. I considered it, weighing the pros and cons of giving in and losing some of my gamer credibility, when I noticed the caveat. Changing the difficulty would only affect combat.

Well, I wasn’t dying in combat. I mean, that happened from time to time, but mostly I died in the platforming or the speed-based death traps. There was no option for me. I’d just have to try again. And again. And again.

There’s really no excuse for that. For some reason, most platforming games have no difficulty option. And yet, playing God of War, it became clear to me how difficulty changes could be implemented into platforming and puzzle sections of games. Almost every time I died in God of War, it was because of the speed of the challenge: rapidly rotating blades, swiftly approaching walls of stone, or a timer that filled a room with spikes. I just didn't have enough time to think, or run, or jump, or push that block where it needed to go.

The solution is simple: when the player turns the difficulty down to easy, all these elements can just be slowed down. The turning wheel of blades goes more slowly, making it easier to navigate. The walls of stones move in to crush less often. The timer in the spike room takes just a little bit longer before destroying everything present.

Changing the difficulty in video games rarely affects the entire game. Maybe it makes enemies harder to kill, maybe it makes them deal more damage. Occasionally it changes their artificial intelligence. But there are always challenges that go unchanged, whether that be the navigation of a maze or the traversal of a platforming section. Providing a challenge for the players that want one is an admirable goal, but as the audience for video games grows, new solutions are needed to make great games like God of War approachable to new players.

Timing-based platforming is easy to change; slowing down the moving platforms, spinning logs, and falling ceilings will give the player more time to consider their options. Precision platforming and other challenges aren’t as easily changed, but we can’t fix everything at once. With more consideration and innovation, making video games accessible to a larger audience doesn’t require that those games be over-simplified.

Going forward, difficulty changes should, like this timing-based solution, cater to players seeking a challenge as well as less experienced, casual gamers. When everyone walks away with the level of challenge that they want from a game, the result is that video games reach a wider audience without alienating the hardcore. This benefits not only game designers hoping to meet with greater sales numbers, but the medium as a whole. When the same games can provide a satisfying experience to the person who has never played a game before as well as the professional gamer, video games will become a more prominent form of entertainment. Accessibility is a problem that video games do not share with other storytelling media like movies and books. Making video games accessible to anyone will help to make newly released and classic video games just as much a topic of conversation as the worlds of film, television and literature. With simple changes and creative thinking, challenges can be changed to fit any player, opening the world of video games to a wider audience.

Henry Hatsworth, the Fifth Beatle

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is the video game equivalent of the Beatles: it has something for everyone. Well, the Beatles have a video game coming out today, so I guess that’s probably the video game equivalent of the Beatles. Maybe Henry Hatsworth is more like the fifth Beatle. You know, the elderly, adventurous, tea-swilling, robot-battle-suit-wearing Beatle. No, not Ringo. Regardless, Henry Hatsworth has all the elements needed to bridge the hardcore/casual divide, showing a great diversity of ideas and gameplay styles.

The plot of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is rather simple and absurd: Henry Hatsworth is an aging adventurer, seeking a legendary outfit made of gold, which has only been worn by the classiest of gentlemen. In the process of finding it, he unlocks the puzzle realm, which deposits all sorts of strange creatures into the world. Only by finding the whole golden suit will he be able to close off the nefarious puzzle realm! Weird stuff, but it fits with the odd aesthetic of the game.

What makes Henry Hatsworth so fascinating is that it/he serves as a diplomat between the hardcore and casual gaming communities. The game plays both sides, quite literally, using the DS dual-screen layout. The top screen is for the hardcore gamer: Henry Hatsworth travels the world with saber and pistol in tow, platforming and fighting monsters. There’s a combo system, special attacks, and challenging jumps to be had. Just to guarantee the affections of the hardcore, the very fact that this portion of the game takes up the top screen gives it the sense of priority and importance the hardcore gamer feels they deserve.

And then the bottom screen, devoted to the casual gamer, is a block-matching puzzle game. It’s on the user-friendly touch screen, it’s very simple to control, and the mechanics are quickly understood. Switch blocks, line up three or more of a kind, make them disappear. It can be done with the buttons or the stylus, it’s simple and fun, and it has a few flashy surprises.

The rest of the game is just unique ideas and touches of madness. Enemies defeated on the top screen enter the puzzle on the bottom. If you don’t erase them there, they return to plague the titular adventurer. There’s also a super meter that, when full, causes Hatsworth to drink some tea, shout "Good Show!" and transform into a ridiculous super robot.

We’ve spoken in the past about games that build bridges between hardcore and casual gamers. Some games build small highway bridges that freeze before the rest of the road. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is London Bridge. Good show!

Beyond Hardcore and Casual

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

“[Video games] do not represent two discrete populations, [casual] and [hardcore]. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that [the world] rarely deals with discrete categories... The [entertainment] world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.

While emphasizing the continuity of the gradations between exclusively [casual] and exclusively [hardcore video games], it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of [casual] and [hardcore subjects and qualities] in each product... An individual [game] may be assigned a position on this scale, for each [facet of its design]... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist."

- Kinsey, Alfred, et al. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948). pp. 639, 656
(Modifications to original text by the author.)

While the terms “casual” and “hardcore” have served some purpose in the past, dividing groups like soccer moms from LAN partiers, browser games from console titles, and socially acceptable games from nerdy pastimes, the lines between casual and hardcore have become increasingly jagged. World of Warcraft, a roleplaying game full of orcs, elves, and magic, now boasts over eleven million monthly subscribers, making it a more popular place to live than Belgium. On the other side of the gaming spectrum, PopCap, makers of Peggle and Bejeweled, recently released a “casual” game in the tower defense genre, a genre that gained popularity in user-created maps for notable “hardcore” real-time strategy games like Starcraft and Age of Empires II. It is clear that the current situation requires more intricate language: it is no longer sufficient to classify games as either casual or hardcore, since few are exclusively one or the other.

There is a concern in the more traditional video gaming circles that the rise of so-called casual gaming is diluting the more proper, traditional games that we have come to know and love. The next Mario-branded title from Nintendo, for example, is adding a feature that allows the game to play itself if a section becomes too difficult. The latest Prince of Persia introduced a mechanic which removed player death from the game entirely. It seems like everywhere we look some beloved franchise is getting simplified or modified to appeal to a wider, more casual market. But the amalgamation works both ways: the aforementioned PopCap title Plants vs. Zombies shows how more nominally hardcore qualities like collection, strategy and zombies can make for a wildly entertaining title that appeals to a casual audience.

Obviously, we need a better way of talking about the differences in the audiences, subject matter, controls and content of the modern video game. Flower developers thatgamecompany attempt to solve the problem of classifying their own games, designed to appeal to any group of people, by calling them simply “core games.” If we accept this as more than a marketing ploy, this raises our classification options to three: casual, core, and hardcore. I’d like to take this just one step further. I present to you the Bullard-Bates Scale:

While this is by no means a solution to the complexities of classifying the wide spectrum of game types released in a given year, it does solve a few of the major issues. With the Bullard-Bates Scale, we can attempt to navigate the differences between BioShock, a fairly well-written, complex shooter with philosophical underpinnings, and games like Halo 3, which present entertaining but less profound experiences and an almost competitive-sport-like online experience. We’ll place BioShock at about a 5, and Halo 3 at a 3. Super Mario Bros. lands at around a 2, for being more on the accessible side and light on plot (both traditionally casual attributes), while Braid might end up at a 5 for having more complicated mechanics and themes at work. Peggle is a 0. Plants vs. Zombies is a 2. Wii Sports Resort is a 1. And so on.

Obviously this system is far from ideal. Any system is, in fact: as soon as we attempt to quantify an experience, to reduce it to its component parts and judge them numerically instead of experientially and intellectually, we infantilize it. The Kinsey Scale, which dealt with heterosexual and homosexual self-identification and activity on a scale much like this one, is also a gross simplification of a very complicated issue. But while it does oversimplify, it also illustrates that there is more complexity to the situation than a mere binary state.

So let’s blur the lines and mix things up a bit. There isn’t just one big group of hardcore gamers whose interests are pitted against a huge group of casual ones. There are just people, who like different things and are attracted to different themes and styles of play.

So if casual and hardcore are insufficient terms, if even the Bullard-Bates Scale doesn’t quite cut the mustard, what’s the solution? Simply put, video game reviewers and journalists should be clearer about the qualities of the games they are covering. Instead of reviewing a game as either casual or hardcore, elaborate on the accessible elements and the complicated systems. Instead of assigning a numerical score to a game, tell the viewers and readers how well it succeeds both intellectually and mechanically. As the Joker famously said: “This [industry] deserves a better class of [reviewer]. And [who’s] gonna give it to [us?]”

Immaturity and the Wii

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

The Wii has started an interesting phenomenon: while almost singlehandedly turning video games into a more widely-accepted form of entertainment, it has simultaneously lowered the bar for video game narrative and maturity. The most successful games on the Wii are those with little to no character development, narrative thread or control complexity. There are piles of mini-game collections, cutesy children’s games, and sports titles that sell extraordinarily well to the casual gaming crowd. Hardcore gamers, however, feel left for dead. One of the major complaints voiced by hardcore gamers is that so few games for the Wii are rated M (for mature).

A few developers have listened: No More Heroes, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Madworld and House of the Dead: Overkill have all attempted to win over the hardcore Wii audience. From the sales numbers on these and other M-rated games on the Wii, however, it seems that Mature-rated content is not in high demand on the most family-friendly console on the market. So if hardcore gamers keep demanding these more mature game experiences, why aren’t they selling?

While I can’t address why others aren’t buying these games, it’s easy for me to explain my own reservations. I, too, crave more mature games on the Wii, but I haven’t bought any of the games listed above. Before I’m blamed for keeping the Wii bereft of mature titles, allow me to explain why Mature-rated titles are often just as immature as their E (for everyone) compatriots.

Sure, MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill are not games for children. They are brutal, bloody, and filled with explicit language, but they don’t look like games for adults either. While there may, in theory, be some commentary about society’s fascination with violence present in these games, this does not counteract the problem that they are still games built entirely out of that same savagery. What plot is present is undecipherable amongst the missing limbs, splatter effects and profanity. In fact, the games bear passing similarity to mini-game collections: players shake their remotes to rip off heads instead of chopping trees, and aim carefully at an enemy’s groin instead of at a pretty pink balloon.

Maturity in games goes far beyond simply making the content unacceptable for children. Games like BioShock, Half-Life 2 and Fallout 3 resonate with mature gamers because they have more than brutality and gore on display. There are social themes, philosophies, and profound ideas present. There is choice and consequence. To make a truly mature game on the Wii means more than adding buckets of gore and a few hundred f-words, though that will earn it an M rating. It means adding depth. It means adding thought.

Multimedia Mission Creep

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Over the past few years, video games have made huge strides toward becoming a widespread and socially accepted form of entertainment. What was once the hobby of a few basement-dwelling troll people has expanded its influence to include frat boys, grandmothers and everyone in between. This can be attributed partially towards the steadily evolving popularity of the genre, but the sudden surge has been more a result of a massive shift in focus for the game industry. This shift has been lead largely by Nintendo, and its focus on casual gamers.

In a way, casual titles like Wii Sports are an evolution of the earliest casual games. Like the computerized version of Solitaire, the title takes well known and well understood games that we play with our hands and gives us a well-translated version of the same game on a screen; it draws people in because it’s familiar, fun and simple. Wii Sports bowling, tennis, and so on are all played in a similar way to the real games.

But there’s another strange trend that accompanies the boom in the casual gaming market. There are more and more products being released for what are nominally game consoles that are barely recognizable as games. Also in the world of phenomenally popular Nintendo titles, Wii Fit shines as an example of a product that fails to justify itself as either a game or a non-game. Is it a video game or a workout program? You don’t achieve high scores, like in a video game; you simply lower your “Wii Fit Age,” which measures your overall health. And you don’t really get the exercise that you would from an actual exercise routine since the game only tracks your movements and activities through the balance board, which is an imprecise tool to say the least. Wii Fit lives in a strange in-between world, trying to provide value as both entertainment and tool. To me, it seems a silly, useless product. To the rest of the world, it is already the 5th highest-selling video game in history.

As gaming becomes more popular, these strange, mutated offspring of video games are also gaining ground. One example for the Nintendo DS is Personal Trainer: Cooking, which contains recipes, a shopping list and videos on different cooking techniques. Essentially, for many people, video game consoles are becoming more than just gaming machines. The Xbox 360 recently added the ability to play Netflix movies with an internet connection. The Playstation 3 was originally marketed as the center of a home entertainment center with Blu-Ray, which was considered a risky move before it came out, and either its lack of focus or its high price has caused it to lag behind the competition.

On the other side of the equation, the iPhone is meeting with huge success as a multi-faceted platform: besides making phone calls, connecting to the internet, giving directions and storing music, it’s becoming a viable and popular gaming machine. Some analysts have proposed that we are approaching a one console future, when we will leave the squabbling between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo behind us. But what Sony is attempting with the Playstation 3 and what Apple is succeeding at with the iPhone hints at a one-piece-of-technology future.

I suppose that what ultimately makes me nervous about this amalgamation of interests is an already apparent lack of focus. Getting to watch Ghostbusters on my Xbox 360 whenever I want to is great, but Microsoft’s wholly-owned game properties have been mostly disappointing. The motion controls on the Wii are fun and exciting, but I still find myself annoyed when they’re thrown into a game just because they can be. The Playstation 3 looks like a great gaming machine, but they spent so much time and money on Blu-Ray and proving its importance that the console is still positioned as a machine that is too expensive and severely lacking in unique content. And who wants to get a telephone call in the middle of playing a video game, only to have to take the call on the same machine?

Some of the results of this cross-saturation are great: I’ve been having a blast making little tunes with the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer, which is essentially just a keyboard and drum machine, presented in stark black and white on the DS. I also appreciate the idea of bringing non-gamers into the fold with products like Wii Sports. Still, I want my deep, compelling, graphically luscious games in the future, not just non-games and casual titles. Do you think I have anything to worry about? Will the next round of game consoles and multi-purpose phones have even more scattershot features, or will they work on refining the ones they have now? I guess I see the advantage either way.

The question ultimately boils down to this: do you want more variety or more depth and care in execution? Is it possible that we can have our cake and eat it too, or is the cake a lie?

Hit Reset

Hi there! Like Daniel, I was introduced to gaming with Mario and Duck Hunt at a friend’s house. Unlike Daniel – and, likely, most people reading this – I failed entirely to grasp Mario’s reasonably simple controls: I held the controller in my hand and behaved in a way that I hoped Mario would emulate, eschewing buttons in favor of full body performance art. When I wanted Mario to run, I’d jog in place; when I wanted him to jump, I’d jump. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the basic conceit assumed by Mario (and nearly every game to follow), which is to say, I couldn’t translate athletic feats into appropriate combinations of buttons. I’m glad we weren’t playing Tekken. It would’ve been ugly. My tastes have evolved since then, while my skills, sadly, have remained more or less unchanged. I am a kind of remarkable canary in the gaming mines – I am sent in to new games to discover new and exciting methods by which a character can be murdered. Zelda 64 was the first game that really drove home my inability to perform basic virtual functions: using a joystick to “walk” in a straight line became an integral part of gaming, and I could not muster enough coordination to do anything but weave and bob like a drunken tourist in search of his hostel. Lava was a hazard, as were cliffs, and enemies requiring “speed” or “accuracy” or “doing anything while running” became impossible obstacles. So now, I appreciate the quality of many new games – Left 4 Dead is stunningly addictive, and everything I’ve seen of Mass Effect has impressed me – but I really only play games consistently if they require a minimum of digital dexterity. The Civilization series holds a special place in my heart, as do traditional Japanese RPGs. Portal was incredible, but watching me play it was like being trapped in a theatre showing a snuff film on a loop. Anyway, I’ll be writing my take on being bad at good games, which I hope will serve as both warning and entertainment to gamers with hardcore tastes and casual skills. Want to know where you’ll die – repeatedly – in the newest Metal Gear? Want to find out when friendly fire isn’t so friendly? Ever wondered why a rocket launcher isn’t considered a “melee” weapon? I’m your man! So let’s hit reset and try again!