Chris Algoo’s blog

Back when Guild Wars came out, gamers made a huge deal about its lack of grinding (its lack of a monthly fee was also occasionally discussed). This hype didn’t allow it to defeat WoW, but nothing seems capable of felling that dragon. While nothing really changed in MMO World, it did highlight something – people thought of grinding as a problem, and that eliminating said problem is a step forward.

Grinding, in addition to something you do on the dance floor or with unprocessed wheat, is a pejorative term for overly repetitive and un-fun actions in gaming. Say, killing a hundred slimes in Dragon Warrior to save up for that sweet suit of Full Plate, or doing Battlegrounds over and over to gain Honor. The essence of grinding is doing (ACTION) over and over for an unreasonable amount of time until (THING) happens. When it gets bad it can take hours of repetition to gain a single level/piece of equipment/puffy pirate shirt. Note that killing stuff to gain XP is not grinding in and of itself – it has to be extremely repetitive and deeply boring before you can call it that. Some games can actually make leveling fun.

To be fair, there are arguments in favor of grinding. The first is an issue of pacing – if you start the game with everything unlocked, you have nothing to play for. A slow gain of power throughout the game keeps it fresh by giving the player new abilities every so often. Time between new abilities also gives the player a chance to learn how to use them to their fullest – imagine being dropped headfirst into a game that starts with ten different abilities. Grinding can also be good storytelling – the best way to convey that a character is growing in the story is to have him actually grow and become capable. The other argument is, well, routine is nice sometimes. It’s comforting to do a repetitive task until your mind goes elsewhere to contemplate the nature of the cosmos. Like a nightly cup of hot chocolate, a repetitive task can be a pleasant tradition of sorts.

World of Warcraft stands poised at the center of the casual/hardcore MMO divide.  Opponents say that the game is too easy, and that getting to endgame is far too quick. Proponents of the game say that eighteen-hour boss fights are stupid. See, there are punishing, brutal games, and people are ok with that – it actually adds to the charm. Death is a great way to illustrate this – let’s say you die (in a game! in a game.) Prince of Persia has you respawning seconds later, exactly where you were before your untimely demise. WoW makes you take a walk or pay a bit of money every time you die. FF11 conjures a spectral hand to punch you in the kidneys. FF11 is more grindy than most games, exacting a fee of many hours from its players in exchange for items. Death actually causes a loss of experience, causing the player to lose hours of work. In my opinion, somebody should have been shot for that decision, but that’s a valid game design decision for many players, and here’s why. In our hypothetical Game A, there’s no reason to avoid death, since there is no punishment for it. This means that survival isn’t an issue, and that there is no fear of dying. Compare that to a visceral experience like FF11, where a death can cost you valuable hours of your life. In that game, you’re gonna give it everything you’ve got to make damn sure that you’re not going anywhere. These situations create real (simulated) danger, a risk of losing something. Pupils dilate, palms shimmer with sweat and adrenalin begins to flow. This might be the purest way of tapping into the gamer’s flight-or-fight reflex ever devised. Other games do it too, of course. My friend got hugely into Shiren the Wanderer, a Roguelike that severely punishes dying by taking all of your unstored items and gold. Diablo II’s Hardcore mode deletes your character when you die once.

There’s a relationship between the two, of course. The more you grind, the more time you’ve invested into your gear/character. If you’re playing a punishing game with high grind, death really hurts. Basically, to figure out how hard a game is going to be, multiply its Grind Value by its Punishment Value. The higher the result, the more difficult/exhilarating/annoying the game. This even accounts for hypothetical games with light grinding but ridiculous punishments for death, or vice versa. There are no numbers, of course, but this is a good guideline for how “intense” a game will be.

The Gears image, WoW Skills image and the Dead Queen image (which is delightful) are all licensed according to Creative Commons.

In an effort to come up with something interesting for you guys to read, I’ve decided to write about Brawl Fans. Yes, I know, it is now 2006, The Yankees have won the cup, and the Backstreet Boys are wowing the world with their new brand of hip hop trance. But an enterprising bunch of guys has found a way to mod Brawl, turning it into something that I like to call Brawl+. That’s also what they like to call it.

Here’s a bit of words from This FAQ.

Fighting games are about risk/reward. Regular Brawl’s overly defensive metagame has reduced it to a campfest. Brawl+ is here to remove that and bring back the fast paced, adrenaline pumping action that the smash bros series has been known for. To promote a faster paced game and the risky maneuvers that make playing and even watching Smash Bros matches so exhilarating you can expect to be able to combo (and be comboed), actually make use of your tech roll and greatly rely on your ability to DI to avoid being decimated by your opponent. With simply the hitstun code in place, Brawl+ has put every character on an equal ground as every character now has the opportunity to do a sequence of attacks that allow them defeat their opponent. Gone are the games of tag that vanilla Brawl once was. In short, you should expect Brawl+ to be an extremely fun, new experience.

Sounds good to me! But you wouldn’t know it from going to, say, the GameFAQs Brawl board. There resides the tyrannous majority that de Tocqueville warned us about. If you’re not playing a wacky map with all items turned on, you’re not having fun. Ignoring the raging stupidity of trying to define fun, these guys commit the indecency of trying to push that definition of others. These are the sorts of people who say tourney players only play on Final Destination, the flat featureless map of the game. Well, I know some serious Smashers, and I can tell you that that’s only mostly correct.

Melee’s tourney/hardcore scene was upset at the release of Brawl, what with its tripping. Why they be tripping? Well, you try falling down in the middle of a fight. It messes you up, and it happens randomly in the game, and it cannot be turned off. This is bad news if you want to play Brawl as a serious fighting game (which it can be, it’s sufficiently deep that I can’t scratch a real Smash player if I tried), which detractors of that playstyle say shouldn’t be done anyway. Well, screw them. They don’t get the right to tell you how to have fun.

So these asses are saying that Brawl+ shouldn’t be, because it’s changing Brawl. Well,duh. These people are trying to make a serious game out of a game that does everything it can to be otherwise. For standard Brawl, I’m imagining that guy who does wacky thing after wacky thing at a party but can’t hold down a real conversation. Yes, it’s funny and wacky and random, but you want substance after a point.

Or I guess it’s more like today at this point! Tomorrow’s Springfest, a free event in NYC that’s great if you like anime, or video games, or fun.

www.springfestny.com

Check it out! (please?)

The movie was awful.

Bad.

Terrible.

The movie has bad writing (in spades) and bad acting (except for Lana’s excellent ability to cry, and the Bison actor’s obvious hamming it up). The movie also takes the game’s story, kills it, and does things to its corpse that are illegal in 48 states. Gen teaches Chun-li how to throw a Hadoken.

And yet…

The action was good, unexpectedly violent, and Chun-Li shoots someone in the chest with a pistol. She’s also really badass, a treatment of the character that I did not expect but enjoyed without reservation. She sneaks around, taking obvious glee in slamming people’s faces into doors and cars. And she makes fun of Vega’s face.

So, should you see it? No. The bad parts are unforgivably so, an obvious sign of lack of care. Yet the good parts really are fun, and hopefully someone will upload them to Youtube for you.

SPRINGFEST is back! For those of you who don’t know what that is (so most of you), it’s an annual anime con run by an extremely cool bunch of people at Polytechnic University. It’s got games, anime, and a bunch of cool events, one of which is by me. If you’re not doing anything March 14th, come on over!

Here’s what I’m running – I will have several scripts of scenes (three times etc) from anime, games, and other things that the con crowd would enjoy (Shakespeare, perhaps). I’ll hand these scripts to audience members, who will proceed to come on stage and act them out. Don’t tell anyone, but I got this idea from a panel at Otakon, and it should be tons of fun. If you would, dear reader, what are some scenes that are particularly actable?

Allow me to end this message with a bit of light jazz.

NYAF sucked. That wasn’t going to stop me from checking out the NYCC, which you could say is like an Otakon for westerners. Except… it was Otakon, and then some (in scope, not in execution. NYCC did not get Jam Project to perform, to my chagrin). This Con had Western Comics, Eastern Comics (known to some of you as manga), Cartoons, Anime, Video Games, Novels, Webcomics, and… well, a totality of geek culture. Cosplay abounded, as did a few shameful elements of our culture (Hug Me signs and Yaoi paddles ranking high). My main goal for the con was to go to the booths of my two favorite webcomics – LeastICouldDo and Penny Arcade. As ambitious as those goals are, I managed to accomplish them, so I rewarded myself with five apple pies (note – author did not eat five apple pies). Along the way, I learned a few things – for example, Tycho’s favorite author is Mark Twain. Writing this makes me feel like i’m in the seedy world of tabloids – I think I’ll do a story on Britney’s baby next.

I found my way into a Warhammer Online post-con party on Saturday, which was an awesome time. (Dave and Busters is surprisingly good at making cheeseburgers!). I felt like a bit of a fish out of water at first – conversations opened there with “Hi, I’m so and so, what server do you play on?”, and I don’t play Warhammer. Once I learned what a Squig Herder was, things got better. There was Rock Band – the game’s lead (some sort of Jeff) possessed a rich baritone (and one of his favorite games is Zelda. That’s it, I’m applying at the Enquirer). I gave a particuarly spirited rendition of Wanted Dead or Alive – I should really get out to Karaoke more often. I don’t play the game, but the Q+A session at the end was a lot of fun – almost all of the devs were comfortable on stage, and witty. Afterwards, some of the devs and I went bar-hopping – there was a great Southern Rock band playing at Smith’s Bar, and there was a great crazy old man dancing in front of the stage. The White Russian I had was not so great. The overall feel I got from the devs was one of passion, dedication, and a genuine belief that their game is awesome. I’m not sure if my computer can run their game, but I’ll definitely give it a try – passion always produces great products (say that three times fast).

Game Jam was so cool, I’m going to go every year forever. In the aforementioned Jam, you (and a bunch of cool strangers) get 48 hours to make a game. That includes coding, testing, art, music (and hopefully) sleep and showering. It’s rough, but every team managed to make something that could objectively be referred to as a game. I love little games made by small teams, they tend to ooze with character, as I imagine independent films do (why do movies have to take so long?).

So, here’s our game. It involves skydiving out of a plane, destroying everyone’s luggage with a big industrial chainsaw while you look for the one parachute amidst the falling wreckage. Here’s the link – I think you’ll like it.

I’m going to Comic Con this weekend, mainly because the Penny Arcade guys are there. Maybe I’ll run into you.

This week, I (along with several others) will create a game from scratch in 24 hours. I’ve made games before, but never in this sort of setting. Here’s hoping I get to pwn some scrubs

Consistency is awesome. If you do something every day, you’re going to get better at it. My morning exercise is coming along well, but I’m also supposed to be writing 500 words of a book every day. The blank page is daunting, and I’ve skipped out on several days of writing, which is lame. I want to get to 100,000 words as soon as possible, which won’t be very soon if I keep sucking. Do any of you have a suggestion for keeping the words flowing?

What are some things you do consistently?

As you may have noticed, today is not Tuesday. It isn’t even Wednesday, for that matter. It also isn’t Friday (which is a bummer, since Fridays are awesome). It’s Thursday. My bad, guys and gals.

I got some toast this morning with my pepper, onion and cilantro (or maybe it’s parsley) omelet. It was made in one of those cool toasters that’s essentially a conveyor belt over a Very Hot Thing – they heat bagels really well (really warm in the middle, and really crispy on the edges). I was watching the breads and bagels slide slowly down, inexorably moving towards the end where they would fall. Some of the slices of bread would cling to the conveyor belt towards the end, their weight keeping them in the toaster for a few more seconds.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m a slice of toast, and you are too. (I don’t think I’m literally a slice of toast – I don’t think I could afford that much therapy). But we’re all on this conveyor belt for a limited time, and then the ride’s over. Let’s try to get as brown and crispy as we can.

Also, Obama’s Inauguration speech was awesome – the dude’s got at least 20 Charisma. As great as his oratory was, the really amazing thing was the message – he was telling the country to be awesome, to get up and do something great. Let’s do that too.

I’m working on an article about the many reasons people play games, but I also want more people to read that Grinding article – I think it’s pretty good. Time to step up the publicity engine (which is currently three hamsters in a box).

If you had 48 hours and a team, what kind of game would you make? Game Jam aims to find out. The teams are given some contraints around which they must build a game in the space of two days. NYU alumni that I am, I can go to the NYU branch of the Game Jam. This is the first Game Jam ever hosted, which is a bit lame, since I’d like to see some previous winners. But there aren’t any, so oh well. We’re going to be working in XNA, which is Microsoft’s genius game-development language. I call it genius, because it brings independent game development to the Xbox 360. Any developer can run his or her games right on his or her Halo machine! It’s created a huge, wide-open canvas for aspiring console gamedevs. I’m… not sure if anything has arisen from this, but it’s a great idea, certainly worthy of a hat-tipping. I hope the constraints are actually game-interesting, maybe something like “The player must control two entities”, and not something like “isometric camera”. 48 hours seems like a short time, and it is. John Romero had, like, a million years to make Daikatana, and it turned out… bad. We do not have a million years, but we can avoid making Daikatana, God willing. Wish us luck.