I Lied.

It has been more than a year since my last post in this blog. 

It must be said that despite my efforts to change the focus from game development to game critique, it was not meant to be. Instead of writing detailed passages about how to get good at other games, I just kept pouring my soul into my notebooks, adding layers upon layers of conceptual design for various games, RPG, board game strategy, family board games and even card games. 

I don't know at this point, if any of those ideas will become a full fledged products, that other people will buy and spend time with, but I'm hopeful. 

However, I will be saying good bye to this blog, for more than a 4 years it served me as practice point in writing, editing, working and failing with social media and many other things. When you grow up you leave your toys behind, but you never forget them. 

I will be moving to a new address and continue developing games 

and bothering other people with my work. 

All the good and new stuff at:

SWS.blogspot.com      

Lucas Arts is dead. R.I.P.

The mighty Jedi has been eaten by Mickey Mouse as Disney acquired Lucas Film and Lucas Arts during the fall 2012. Now Lucas Films, and Lucas Arts have been shut down. Half a year ago while most observers were following media hype and promises of bright new future (as well as Star Wars: Episode 7 and other shiny stuff) somethings should have warned us of inevitable:

1. It's Disney. One of the main competitors of George Lucas and his approach to entertainment, art and life. Lucas was brave enough to borrow from Buddhist philosophy and put that into a working concept for mass media. Can you imagine Lion King or Mickey Mouse thinking and relating to matters of strategy, belief  and philosophy? I can't.

2. Death of master L. George Lucas, as a result of the deal would not be directing, but being a "creative consultant". Artist is a main driver of any film or game production. When artist stops being heart of it, the magic of our connection to the movie, story and characters slowly dies as  more of "same-crap-as-before-cause-it-sells" stuff encroaches  The fact that Lucas was not actively involved in creation of last 3 films of Star Wars actually shows that. Movies became more about lightsabre-action and less about meaning. 

3. Different market priority.  Disney, despite all the promises had a strong idea where the "new" LucasArts will go. This is a quote from Disney's announcement I took from kotaku.com: 

In a conference call this afternoon, Disney's Bob Iger said they will be focusing on social and mobile games and will likely license their IPs for console gaming-meaning you'll see other studios making Star Wars games .

Well, most of the games that made Lucas Arts were traditional PC and console games with rich narrative and established background. They obviously did not fit into Zynga's backyard of casual games and Facebook time-killers.  That's not the product players would expect from such studio.  

So now to the final question on why would Disney buy Lucas Films and shut them down? It's not just about the money. With Lucas Arts gone, but their intellectual property under their control, Disney will become unsinkable giant of entertainment industry. That would improve their position greatly in the face of current financial difficulties and hard-hit entertainment sector. Current cancellation of new project's serves this goal: spend as less as you can, gain as much as you can. Welcome to capitalism, Jedi.
   

Sci-fi is dead.

I'm probably wrong by stating that, but I  have a serious reason. The reason is book of science fiction novel and short stories published back in 1954. I found it and bought it. It smells of old times, a truly old and forgotten era and this aroma brings me a memories I never could have. Memories of world were scientist became the preachers of the new ways of life, new products to consume, new tools to develop and bombs to drop on your enemies.

But most of all, scientist were writing! The stuff they were writing was so different from the established genres and the ways of building up the story that they actually gave birth to a science fiction. That is even despite the fact that similar motifs of progress, technology and incredible achievements were used before industrialization. Suddenly the old fairy tales got a chance of rebirth and what's more important they became believable! If a fairy tale is coming from someone who actually knows how world operates, the fairy tale becomes a prediction, and prediction has a chance to become reality.

But now more than 50 years after the peak of science-fiction this credibility is lost. The world described by previous generation of writers is already here and we are fed up happy with it. We may not fly around galaxy in reality, but there's enough TV show's to give us a clue how it's going to look. Real scientist are doing their day-to-day research and let professional writers to elaborate on "setting", characters and plots. If there is not enough explosions or pretty half-naked scientist we easily may change the channel to find something more like it.

Sci-fi is a mainstream entertainment. It is dead. 

Why? Originally science fiction was answering to the questions and needs of those who was trying to adjust to rapidly changing world and find their own path in the new world. It was half soul searching half explanation of how-to-use-the-world around you for generation whose parents still lived in pre-space age. Author's used it as test bed for ideas, visions and what would happen scenarios. (Of course the usual way of sci-fiing the metaphor wasn't lost.) As the popularity of genre grew, along with profits the need to print something similar to competitor's product attracted writers who used science as a background instead of meaning. This pro-pulsed the trend, which caught up and overtook the initial humble stories by those writing scientist. And now, anyone can write about hyper space jump over galaxy but few know how to fix the kettle.

        


  

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is dead. Why?

By the time you read this it's an old news: Stalker 2 as computer game was cancelled, though "we find it necessary to inform that GSC Game World and Sergey Grigorovich remain to be the sole owners of all the intellectual property rights to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series and the brand overall, including all the trademarks, the game universe, the technology etc. This can be easily verified with the trademark services online.", states company's official website http://www.gsc-game.com/. 

As a rule of our cynical world when king dies, his pants become a major point of profit. On one hand those who did not know about existence of this product will be curious, and hardcore veterans will spent some coin on final "golden" edition or side-line products like table-top game, hats and t-shirts. 

However, I'd like to elaborate why this game came to this sad conclusion, did not fared well on western market in comparison with other FPS games and lost big part of it Russian supporters. 

Starting with most obvious problem of any major game trying to become AAA (world wide) product: development time. Stalker was developed for almost 8 years before it reached people who waited for it. 8 years is enough to see a child walk and talk, and in computer game industry an entire generation of technology as well as clients taste has changed. During development this difficult baby had to refresh its graphics at least twice to be in line with modern shooters and other high-tech games. 

Post-soviet game developers have not yet been among creators of high-end games like Halo or Crysis. (Perhaps with exception Il-2 Shturmovik by Maddox Games, but this lies outside the subject of this post). Both these games have clearly stuck to tested path of FPS-bestseller: simplicity and power with lots of graphical candies and marketing support. Ever since Doom, FPS games have always been about player getting adrenaline high as result of shooting some bad guys (aliens, Nazis, commies, invaders, frags, demons, other players, underline one you prefer), all other things are quite optional, like storyline or surroundings. The trick of any good FPS game is how to justify appearance of another portion of enemies in order to keep player busy and high on adrenaline.

This is where we come to one of the biggest problems of Stalker - unclear concept.

Game was sold and positioned as SURVIVAL/HORROR FPS. However, as a survival it made player eat and take a lot of pills when screen was flashing with danger sings. My first reaction on seeing radiation sing appear was a bit of surprise. How can a human detect radiation without Geiger counter? Do i have a skill for that? Do i have that equipment? If that would be an RPG those question would be answered, but in this case i had to adjust to a flashing screen. It may seen minor but this is where survival in STALKER ends, leaving us with pressing buttons for another med-kit. It may be very FPS style, but its not horror. Later on in the game and its add-ons RPG elements were introduced into the game, but remained minor adjustments, rather than serious rethinking of how game works. 

On the FPS side STALKER does a fairly descent job. It provides you with gun, enemies who ignore head-shots, re-spawning frags and monsters, and impenetrable cover. In close quarters its still a good shooter, and will provide you with adrenaline and entertainment for some time.  

Now if you look at what as player has to do in the Zone apart from shooting at random monsters and walking around anomalies. You are suppose to do quests; find stuff, kill stuff, and get somewhere where your hero supposedly wants to go. This is a clear RPG territory, and luckily by third installment Call of Pripyat they made quest viable and important, not just a notes in the diary you never read or even notice. 

The roots of this idea lies in the free-to-explore-world concept on which STALKER is build. During early stages game developers mentioned that they looked for inspiration to Fallout and Fallout 2. These iconic games are not only RPG, they have a solid narrative base behind every location, quest and personalities. Unfortunately, this where is the weakest spot of Stalker: they gave us freedom, gun and shooting range but forgot why that world exists and what is out place in that world. Despite the great work on humor, endless fan-fictions its still a mystery what does our stalker feels towards Zone, factions and reasoning behind their conflicts.Whats more upsetting on occasion when we get a chance to recruit NPC they fit into profile of unnamed-guy-about-to-die-for-the-cause. 

One of the reasons that group of original Stalker developers formed 4A Games and started to work on Metro 2033 was, as they stated " that Stalker was trying to be everything a game could be". As a result it lacked something important, we may add.

To double the trouble of open world programming, scripting and creating Stalker does not have a major hero. Yes, you read that right. 3 installment and our main protagonist is deaf, mute and unlovable. He is clearly designed to be a focus for our own exploration of Zone, but what is he like? Mystery. There much worse games out there, for example some versions of Splinter Cell and its add-on games by Ubisoft Shanghai, but unlike Stalker, they carry on the day using power of Sam Fisher (or any other hero) charisma. By making hero a living, breathing and relating to world around him even a bad game can survive long enough to make a profit. 

This is one curious situation, to be fare. Despite all aforementioned problems Stalker lived for more than a decade, spawned a book series and recently a board game and some curious cultural activities like films and fan-fictions. Now it should continue its spirit as Survarium, another breakaway project. 

So, the King is dead. Long live the Stalker?