T w e n t y S i d e d
Because there is simply not enough poetry in videogames.
Scratch
A few weeks ago I talked about learning programming, and I commented that I didn’t know what little kids were taught these days as a sort of “my first computing language”. At the time, I felt like kids should start with something linear and straightforward. Scratch has re-aligned my thinking on the matter.
Scratch is an interesting programming language (or pseudo-language, depending on how pedantic we’re feeling today) that can be used to teach freshly weaned babes the intricacies of software engineering. Well, no. But it packs a lot of ideas into a fabulously simple and straightforward system.
Stolen Pixels #107: Left 4 Dumb, Finale
An awful lot is going on today. It’s the 4th anniversary of The Escapist. Congrats to all my friends who have worked so hard on it. Here’s to selling off the whole thing to Ziff Davis and the lot of you retiring like kings!
Just kidding. I’d rather you continued to amuse me once a week than got rich. Priorities.
Today is also the final entry in the Left 4 Dumb series.
The Escapist originally began by releasing their issues as a PDF each week. In honor of that, they’ve made a special PDF issue for their 4th birthday. It has a special Stolen Pixels, which is only available in the PDF. Also, they also interview that one oddball reviewer they’ve got. You know, the Scotsman who lives in New Zealand or whatever. What’s his name? Backgammon or something? I forget. Anyway. They interview that guy.
Kivi’s Underworld:
Final Thoughts
Link (YouTube) |
You get skill points as you go, and you can invest those points to provide very modest improvements to your performance in combat. The inventory system is reduced to three slots for holding temporary powerups. During the process of clicking on things to make them die, you’ll sometimes find these little powerups that give a boost to damage, or healing, or speed, etc. Most of the decisions you’ll be making are when to put these to use. As you go, you’ll rescue other characters. You can play any unlocked level at any time, with any of the characters you’ve found. Each character has a single special ability, which is unleashed with the right mouse button. You rack up a score as you go, based on how well you do and how much treasure you hoover up. All told, you can play the entire game using nothing more than the mouse and three keyboard buttons. Finally, there are a series of achievements you can unlock for things like beating a level without dying, or beating a level without using a powerup.
The greatest weakness of the game is that expectations work against it. I looked at the game and expected “Diablo” style play, and was then frustrated by the lack of character development, inventory, or complex spells. But that’s not what this game is trying to be. It just looks like one of those. It’s a short lunchtime diversion. A quick round of scoring points and bashing stuff up for fun. It’s closer to Swarm than to Fantasy-Themed Isometric Hack-n-Slash III. In keeping with this “quick round” mentality, the game starts almost instantly and is basically free of any sort of loading-screen nonsense.
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When I review a game I usually have a laundry list of things I would have changed or done differently. I really enjoy this part of the review for indie games, because in most cases I know there’s a good chance the designer will read the review and will likely get some sort of benefit from it, even if they disagree with my conclusions. But I don’t know that I can do that here. Nearly every suggestion I could make would drag the game away from its intent. There are layers of strategy and depth and complexity that could be added, but none of them would fit within the scope offered by Kivi’s Underworld. Most of them would center around making the game more complicated, because that is what scratches my particular itch. (Besides, Steven Peeler did solicit suggestions for his next game, and I had my say there.)
Despite the game falling pretty far out of my personal Venn Diagram of features, I still manage to find the game to be a rewarding diversion. As a nice bonus, the multiplayer expansion was recently released. I’m excited to see a nice, integrated multiplayer solution in the hands of an indie developer.
Mario Marathon
Here is a group of gamers raising money for Child’s Play by playing Mario, non-stop. They are playing until they 100% the following games:
- Super Mario Bros (done)
- Super Mario Bros 2 (done)
- Super Mario Bros 3 (done)
- Super Mario World (done)
- Mario 64 (In progress)
- Mario Sunshine
- Mario Galaxy
They’ve already beaten all of the games, and now they’re going back and getting all the stars. The marathon is now over 50 hours long. Here is the streaming feed of their adventure:
I love how the feed shows both the group playing and the game footage. Last year Desert Bus for Hope ran a similar marathon, but the game and the team were in different feeds. (Although to be fair, once you’ve seen 30 seconds of Desert Bus you’ve seen all sixteen hours of it. Still, I wanted to see both at once anyway.)
They’ve completed 445 out of 599 levels / stars / whatever. What strikes me is that this might not even be the halfway point. Certainly they got all of the low-hanging fruit on their first runs through the games. Some of these bonus levels will be a devil to beat.
Obviously the information in this post will begin going stale the instant I hit “publish” on this post. I don’t usually like to write about things that will link-rot in hours or days, but this was a fun idea, amusing to watch, and for a good cause.
Good luck to the team.
MC Lars – Download This Song
Here is some nerdcore rap:
Link (YouTube) |
Normally I would nitpick the lyrics, particularly the stuff about “leveling the playing field” and music being a “service”. This sounds like the usual pirate boilerplate justifications, except it’s not, really. MC Lars isn’t smashing the old system by taking, he’s doing so by giving. If the old label-driven model is to be overthrown, this is how it needs to happen. The new paradigm won’t be brought about by fans ignoring copyright and downloading what they want, it will come about when artists abandon copyright for something better.
Nine years ago I read a bit by Courtney Love about how artists make money. She ran the numbers and showed how a successful artist could wind up making very little, or nothing, from their record sales. Other artists have drawn a similar picture of how the industry works. (I’d link to them if I could remember them at the moment.) Unless you’re huge, you make your money touring. Love seems to be suggesting (I think) unionization. Well, that was what she was suggesting in 2000, anyway.
I don’t think unionization (or any sort of collective effort) would be possible, nor do I think it would really adress the root of the problem. The number of people willing to do “anything” to get into show business means that artists aren’t going to have a lot of solidarity. The artists just don’t have any power over the labels. You can hold out and demand a better deal, but there are a thousand starry-eyed kids in line behind you. Love is suggesting they try to leverage labels to get a better deal, but if they had any leverage they wouldn’t be signing these awful contracts in the first place. Lack of leverage, not the contracts, is their real problem. The contracts are just a symptom.
You might nitpick her numbers, but unless she’s off by an incredible margin the picture she paints is clear: Profits from record sales are absorbed by the label. For an artist, the entire process of cutting a record and getting it on the radio is really only a means to an end: To get people to come to your shows, where you’ll make the real money.
Love (and other artists from my generation) are trying to overhaul the system. But MC Lars and the coming iGeneration that grew up on the net is simply circumventing it. If selling albums makes you no money, then why do it? If all you want is promotion, why not just give away what the fans are “stealing” anyway? Note that if this model were embraced, it wouldn’t really hurt anyone except the labels. Artists would make just as much money as before, with the added benefit that they would retain copyright over their own music instead of surrendering it to a label. (Which means they could license it to movies and television commercials as they pleased, and keep the proceeds.) Consumers would get the music for free. And labels would either find a way to make themselves useful, or vanish.
Dave Kusek, author of this book and co-inventor of MIDI music, shared this bit of trivia about MC Lars:
According to Tom Gates, “It's pretty amazing what a 22 year old kid did from a dorm room. Just in one territory: He's going back to the UK for the 5th time in one year opening for Simple Plan and then will go back in March for his first headline tour…this all without tour support. We're about 6 months from his new genre busting (it's called “nerdcore”) and he's going to make ten times as much bank than he would have if had signed to a major. Then you add in the costs of what he's spent to do this and it just all points to the future, especially when you compare it to what majors spend on developing artists. $7,500 recording costs (powerbook+protools studios) vs $250k major label. $400 photo shoot vs major label $15k photo shoot. $7,000 video vs $50k major (directed by the guy who did Eminem and just really likes Lars). Art $0 (he did it and artwerks laid it out) vs $10k major label. Recoupability takes on a whole new light.”
He’s making more money by not signing with a label. His lyric from the song is that, “You don’t need a million dollars to launch a career.” He proved this by launching one from a laptop. This is an important moment. He’s not on a label yet he’s making money and touring. Since this is ostensibly what would-be artists are after, this is going to look very attractive to them.
Despite what the lyric claims, he’s not leveling the playing field. He’s playing a completely different game, the rulebook for which hasn’t quite been written yet.
Experienced Points: RIP, The Last Great Indie
I never saw this coming, and I’m still stunned. “More like Doom” is not the direction I would have chosen for the Fallout franchise. In fact, my desires run in the polar opposite direction. Still, I’m experiencing a giddy fanboy anticipation wondering what sort of Frankenstein monster technology we’ll have once we get done stitching these companies together. Perhaps it’s the programmer in me overcoming the gamer in me.
From The Archives:
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
The Loot Lottery
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
Grand Theft Railroad
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Could Have Been Great
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
The Best of 2016
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.