Cliffski's Blog

So there is a BBC TV prog on ‘addiction in gaming’ on the way. Oh JOY. Not that I do not think there is a case to answer, there definitely is. Games ARE designed to be addictive, just ask Zynga, or ask pretty much any game designer who has read widely both on game design, and neuroscience. (like me!). The problem is that traditionally, the mainstream media has handled issues in gaming so incredibly poorly, in such a slap-dash ‘who cares’ fashion, as to make any ‘research’ into the topic on  popular TV to be useless, laughable, insulting and frankly, piss-poor journalism.

Take a look at this image:

Now place your bets which is considered to be an image that represents ‘video games’ to a TV executive. It’s the angry, scary dude with a gun, obviously. Never mind the fact that happy clappy games like habbo hotel probably outsell the angry games with guns by a huge margin. Never mind the fact that gamers are actually interacting, often with other people, rather than passively absorbing the  predictable, mindless drivel of TV cooking programs and property shows. Never mind that the average gamer is no longer a 13 year old boy with poor exam results (Was that ever true?).

What’s more important is for gaming to be held up as something to be scared of. Why? Well here is the bitter, sad irony. Anyone in journalism worth their salt knows that fear SELLS. We are basically hardwired to be scared, to be hungry, and to want sex. Everything else is frankly an afterthought. Advertisers know this, and exploit it to death. Game designers are in kindergarten when it comes to manipulating their audience, take a look at adverts to see how it is really done.

And of course, taker a look at cheap journalism, of the ‘IMMIGRANTS CAUSE HOUSE PRICE FALLS‘ style, or more relevantly, the ‘GAMES ARE BAD’ sort we have got used to on TV.

Newspapers like the Daily Mail or News of the world vastly outsell stuff like new scientist, and it’s no surprise. We all know that a new scientist investigation into ‘does eating 5  a day make you healthy’ that concludes ‘it’s hard to say, it depends…’ won’t sell as well as a News of the world story that ‘FRUIT CAUSES AIDS!!!‘  What is really dissapointing is that the BBC doesn’t need to sell newspapers, or even subscriptions. It’s in the unique position of being able to say “This thing that we thought might be bad, turns out to be not bad”, and nobody would lose their job.

Pity they never do that, isn’t it?

I just can’t make my mind up about in-game achievements. The pseudio-intellectual whiny part of me says ‘they are just like pavlovs dog being trained, don’t give in to that manipulative OCD crap’. The rest of me goes ‘Oh YES! I just scored 47 hits with the flamethrower whilst running backwards, that’s the ‘platinum running backwards with flamethrower achievement’ checked off.’ (High-fives all-round).

I completely see why people get into achievements, and I think I’m being a bit of a grumbly old git not having them in my games. The thing is, people always want ‘Steam’ achievements’, and that gives me slight issues because that means people buying the game direct are not going to get them. I am very much against that, as I like it when people buy games direct.

Tbh, it is LONG past the time when I should be working on game IV, and I am now working on game IV (in-between GSB bug fixes etc), so I won’t be re-visitng GSB any time soon to stick in steam achievements. However, with G4, I shall definitely investigate this. There will be achievements, and if I can find a way to toggle it so that they are steam-integrated (if steam accept my next game) for steam buyers, and hosted and run by my own system externally otherwise, then I shall be doing that.

Other stuff I’ll be defintiely aiming to put in mystical top-secret game IV will be online integration in the manner of the GSB campaign game / challenge system, which I think worked extremely well. This time around, there will be more attention spent on the UI for that sort of stuff, so it should be a smoother experience.

I should probably explain what G4 is at some point, but I’m going to wait until I have something to show, which will be a long time, even if it’s just concept art, or placeholder. I also tend to change my mind in design terms a LOT, so I don’t want to say “It’s an FPS set in napoleonic times where you play a kitten that can time travel!” until I’m sure it really is.