T w e n t y S i d e d

Part three of this series is up at the Escapist. No, I don’t know how long the series will run. Yes, it will cover the shift to Cataclysm. No, I’m not running to the end-game. No, I’m not planning on multi-player content – this stuff is hard enough to put together as it is. Yes, I’m aware that your favorite race / class is so much more interesting than the one I’m writing about – I avoided that one because I thought you wanted to write about it?

I’m really flattered by how many people are comparing this series to Terry Pratchett’s work. In truth, I’ve never read his stuff, although I’m aware of it. (My wife is a fan.) If I had to cite an influence, I suppose I’d have to go with Douglas Adams. Particularly his earlier, more playful work. The first two Hitchhiker‘s books were zany, hectic, silly, and clever. After that his books became darker, stranger, and more philosophical. The Dirk Gently books were even more so, to the point where it was hard for me to enjoy them at first. I’d gone in expecting Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and got something quite different. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the books outside of my expectations.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

A poem, about animal crossing. Please enjoy.

Animal Crossing actually never hooked me. I understand that for some the game is a powerful narcotic, but I found it to be an irritant. It’s more brazen with its time wasting than any “hardcore” game would ever dare to be. People faulted Too Human for the long, un-skippable death animation, but that’s trivial compared to the time wasting exercises in Animal Crossing. Imagine if you had to watch that long animation at every level change, every chapter break, and at the introduction of every new enemy and every new weapon.

The game pisses away little chunks of time here and there, making you sit through repetitious chatter and perform mundane tasks in the service of the town rodents. And then there is Mr. Resetti, who will torment you with a long harangue if you turn off the game without saving. Who devised this idea of punishing players by deliberately wasting their time? It’s one thing to fail to make a game fun. It’s another to make it aggravating on purpose.

True story: A few years ago my youngest was a little too young to know how to use the living room electronics properly. He’d want to watch a movie or something and end up pushing the wrong button. So, we had a rash of console resets until we taught him properly, and my daughters had to deal with Mr. Resetti a few times. The last time, my daughter cried. She wasn’t upset at the last hour of gameplay that had just been wiped out, she was upset at the prospect of having to endure Mr. Resetti again. The thought of paging through his angry rude chatterboxes for several minutes was enough to drive her to tears.

Screw you, Nintendo.

A lot of time is squandered in the game accomplishing very little. In the end, the random number generator has far more creative control over the town than you do. Imagine Minecraft. Now imagine that harvesting ALL blocks takes fifteen seconds, like mining obsidian. And it takes time to craft each and every item. And you can only acquire tools from the NPC’s that live around you, who are all irrational assholes. And you usually can’t ask for what you need, but must wait for their random behavior to bestow it.

I love the art style. I love the concept. I hate how cruel the game is with regards to wasting the player’s time. I’m sure existing fans would defend the time-sink as “part of the game”, but I’m convinced that if you removed all the deliberate time-taxes in the game it would provide an experience that is more entertaining and just as addictive. I don’t think the time tax is required to make the game fun, it’s just something players have learned to tolerate.

As I’ve said, I don’t play the game myself, but I still get angry at it. I’ll walk through the living room and see my kids playing it. They’ll click on the owl that runs the museum to see if he needs a particular fossil they’ve dug up. I’ll pass through to the kitchen, get a drink and some food, and come back into the living room and see that they are still trying to extricate themselves from the conversation, when all they needed was an an answer to the binary question, “do you need this item or not?” They’re just slamming through endless dialog bubbles, all of them stuff they’ve seen a hundred times before.

Whew. Maybe I should have published this post under “rants”.

And also, it bears repeating: Screw you, Nintendo.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I’ve written quite a bit about survival horror in this space. I was always talking about some far-flung future then game designers would “get it” and make a game that set out to cultivate fear rather than just daunting combat.

It’s as if someone read those articles, and made the game according to my specifications.

It’s a good game. It’s a cheap game. It’s much smarter than Dead Space and many times as scary. I like to think that if this thing had marketing behind it, it would be tearing up the sales charts. (But maybe not. The imagery is really disturbing. I find realistic text descriptions of human torture to be a lot more frightening than gross space aliens being splattered by my shotgun in full 3D.)

As always, your mileage may vary. Do give it a look if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.