covert.creations

In the age-old world of gumshoe stories, the battered detective lends an unwavering determination to solving the crime. If you’re not a big fan of noir, I will chance on a prediction : you will be. At least, once you see the movie “Brick”.

The backdrop of a suburban highschool provides ample substance for the heated story, and not without plenty of irony. Teens talking as if they’ve stepped out of the forties, spewing a delicious torrent of tough-guy vernacular unheard since Miller’s Crossing. Every archetype is present, but literally translated into a smaller world of highschool seniors. The “heat” is the highschool vice-principal, the snitch with heart of gold is the school nerd, the femme fatale… on and on.

It totally works. The irony of modern young actors curling their lips around these lines is totally hysterical :

Brendon : Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.

Or when he’s confronted by the school heat :

Assistant VP Gary Trueman: You’ve helped this office out before.
Brendan : No, I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.

…

Brendan : No more of these informal chats! If you have a disciplinary issue with me, write me up or suspend me and I’ll see you at the Parent-Teacher conference.

…

Brendan : I don’t want you to come kicking in my homeroom door because of something I didn’t do.

I think thats enough. Hopefully enough to get all three of my readers out to see this wonderful indie film. Does this have anything to do with games? Only in the sense that the director has created an alternate little world in this movie. All of the filmic elements seem to breathe on their own despite being the product of two (or more) sources overlayed. From my point of view, doing this type of mashup smartly is creatively pure. The result stands on its own. In sum, just further proof that little people can do great things.

“WE”.

Yup, thats what its called. Not, “revolution” as we’ve come to know it. But “Wii”. Iconic, unique, and something pushed out and slightly to the left as Nintendo seems to want to do these days.

Do I like it? No! Do I get it? I think I do. Its Nintendo wanting to be totally Nintendo and nothing but. In some dusty city Walmart I bet people try to buy “PS 360s”… so maybe this is the way Nintendo asserts its shelfspace. Something that’s impossible to confuse with anything else.

Prevent brand confusion. Make something unique thats Nintendo. If thats one of their goals, then I believe it’s spot-on. It will serve that purpose justly and reliably. Will we be making fun of the name this time next year?

Doubtful… we’ll all be playing Zelda.

Sturgeon’s Law says, “90% of user-created content is crap”. And its true. If you’ve ever visited Myspace, you’ll see it in action! But in games, its a disturbing fact. Where some people hail “user created content” as the answer to skyrocketing costs in content dev, the reality is countless maps and mods that play “hide the penis”. Ugh. If you’re creating a commercial enterprise out of user-content, you’re going to spend a lot of time sifting through the detritus to find the jewels.

Unless, of course, the content-creation is the game.

Take Garry’s Mod. The point of the game is, well, there is no point. Its a classic sandbox, conceived as a play area for Source engine physics. You don’t so much as play Garry’s Mod, you play with it. And thats sort of my point. User-created content blossoms when the tools to extend or modify the game experience are baked right into its very activity.

So you can expect the usual fruit of Sturgeon within Garry’s, but again, thats the whole point of it. The goofier or more inane, the better!

Spore promises another example. In this game, you customize the behaviour and appearance of your very own species of creature. You play the game by yourself, but as you go, you will discover other players’ creations in your copy of the game as they are silently propagated through a network of the players. Passing around your creation isn’t the point – its totally invisible to you. Yet this demonstrates an effective solution to Sturgeon. The creature tools are in the game, and not as an outside activity.

The whole mod scene is still thriving, as any visit to ModDB will show. Yet, for every Dystopia and Garry’s, there’s a veritable tidal wave of crap. Is this an answer to skyrocketing dev costs? No.

As I’ve said before, the most significant barrier for smaller developers is content. Period. And so the geniuses in charge of Saga of Ryzom promise “user created content” in the form of the Ryzom Ring. Yeah, good luck with that! Turning to the community in hopes of getting a quality, balanced, and interesting game experience is suicide. This is not the answer for live competitive games (MMORPGs in particular) unless you change the activity to support it. The answer is to embed the tools into the game. Make them part of it.

There are more solutions to Sturgeon which I’ll talk about later, yet I suspect more will emerge as the nature of all these games changes.

In the case of Garry’s, well, he just got a deal with Valve to distribute it for-pay over Steam. What a huge win for modders in general. Proof that innovation can pay sometimes. Its a step. And in my opinion, a step in the right direction.