So the summer convention season is over, and the kids have returned to school. I don’t have much to say today, other than I hope all of the kids around the world have fun, and I hope all of the educators are looking for ways to integrate games into their curriculum.
Have fun, kids. Enjoy it while you can!
EDIT: I guess I do have one more thing to say. I had a talk with one of my children about success, and I think we have come to a mutual acceptable: success is growing up to get a job that includes recess.
I just returned from GenCon, and I have to say that this was my best show yet. I broke bread with some good friends, and sold some art to some of my best customers.
Similar to the lead-up to Origins, I tried out some new things for this year’s show. First, I decided to bring mousepads and posters this year, and had reasonable success with them. I made enough sales to cover the cost of the full print order, and I will be able to order replacements for them.
I’m getting more and more repeat customers. This is a good thing, as it forces me to constantly produce new content so that they have something new to enjoy. When going to the same show year after year, repeat customers do a great job of keeping the fire under my butt to produce more work.
To all of my repeat customers out there: Thank you.
I was also able to make contact with another artist who makes custom playmats. After discussing it with him, I think I am going to be able to sell custom playmats of my artwork in future shows. I think this is going to be an exciting opportunity for the fans of my work, particularly those who also play collectable card games.
So far, I’ve never had a decrease in sales, year over year, at any show. Like Origins, I got a solid commission coming out of the show that put me over the top. That’s not to say that I made much, but the trend is still going in the right direction.
I wanted to do a quick follow-up on the story of To the Moon. Specifically, I wanted to write about how much of a motivator this story was for me.
The patient in To the Moon had a less than perfect life, and the objective of the game is to explore his memories and try to re-create a more perfect life for him. As one looks at the actual life story, it’s very easy to see one’s self having a similar life. The character didn’t embrace his ambitions and grab hold of life. Instead, he simply meandered through it and tried to get by. Though he eventually got a different set of memories, they were artificially created, and not real.
I recently saw a TED talk from Kelly McGonigal (the sister of Jane McGonigal) about the benefits of stress. Check it out:
I brought up that video because of the point that she makes at the end: seeking goal fulfillment is better than seeking to minimize discomfort. This is true even if the goal fulfillment creates a life of added stress.
To the Moon serves as a reminder: if your life isn’t going the way you want, you have to take the actions necessary to obtain your goals. The decision to guide your life rather than coast through it is not one that you make on one specific occasion. It is a decision that you make every day, and with every action. If you want a different life, get out there and create the life that you want! You won’t be able to rely on some machine to change your memories; you have to make the changes yourself in the real world.
In the coming months, there may be some announcements on this site of changes in my life. When those changes happen, I want to look back and remember that To the Moon was the catalyst.
And that is why games matter!
One more thing: The image shown today is the latest piece that I am presenting at GenCon during the coming weekend. I attend GenCon each year, and I encourage you to come by the booth.
I decided to take a break from the more violent games to tackle a few small indie titles. I started with To the Moon.
My first experience with To the Moon came from the Games Only Podcast. After providing a thorough review, they played a song from the game at the end of the show. This song hooked me, and reinforced my desire to play the game. You can give it a listen here.
The basic story of To the Moon is as follows: A man lays on his deathbed, and his dying wish is to go to the moon. He has hired a company that connects a machine to his brain and goes back through his memories to find the motivation to go to the moon. From the point where his motivation is strongest, they re-construct for him a lifetime of memories where the motivation endured, and the patient finished his life achieving what he wanted to achieve. As the doctors – and the player – experience the memories, you get to see why his life turned out the way that it did.
In To the Moon, you work your way backward through the patient’s memories. Games and films that play the story in reverse provide a fascinating and unique sense of discovery. It shifts your focus from “what” to “why.” Simon Sinek has a great TED Talk about this very topic here:
The mind is motivated by “why.” If you take a small child and tell him or her to do something, the first word out of his or her mouth is often “why?” This doesn’t change as we go into adulthood; our desire to understand the world around us is rooted in the questions of why.
When you watch a story that goes in sequence, the question you ask is usually “WHAT is going to happen next?” Yes, there will be things that happen through the story that might have you ask “why,” but the explanation for those things will generally only come through flashbacks or through references to prior knowledge.
When you watch a story backward, however, you find yourself asking “why” for nearly everything that takes place. This forces you to stop thinking about events and start thinking about meaning, and heightens your awareness of everything happening in the storyline.
To the Moon is one of few games that I think would be enjoyable to a non-gamer. My wife doesn’t tend to like playing games, though she does enjoy watching them to get the full story. In over a decade of marriage to my wife, I can’t remember ever calling her over and making her sit down and play a game. The whole experience of the game is beautiful, but a lot of it is missed if you don’t experience it yourself. So with that in mind, after completing the game I made her play through it. She loved it.
To the Moon is an emotional rollercoaster. I think, in the years to come, this is one of those games that I will look back upon fondly. As I played through it, I experienced joy, loss, regret, giddiness (especially during the horseback riding), frustration, sadness, and excitement. I laughed, I cried, I covered my mouth in shock, and a smiled. A lot. And I think you will, too.
So I spent the week completing Uncharted and Uncharted 2, almost completely back to back. I’m not going to go into an in-depth review of the game here; there are a thousand sites that did exactly that years ago. I just want to get down a few thoughts about the experience.
Unlike people that played the game at launch, I had a certain amount of expectations for the game based on reviews, videos, comics, and so on. I remember that my first experience with main character, Nathan Drake, came in the form of this Sony commercial about the gamer “Michael.” I found it interesting that the character was interesting enough to be memorable, despite the fact that I hadn’t played the game yet (Warning: this video may induce a LOT of nostalgia).
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Uncharted is what I would call a “complete gamer’s game.” It contains a broad mix of platforming, shoot-em up action, puzzle solving, survival horror, and story-driven adventure, all wrapped within gorgeous scenes and set-pieces. Such a game can be difficult to piece together for a broad cross-section gamers, but Naughty Dog tied it together beautifully.
It’s likely that Uncharted had some mechanical flaws that I would notice only after completing Uncharted 2 (similar to the way I noticed the limitations of Batman: Arkham Asylum only after completing Batman: Arkham City), but I can’t think of any at this time. The game provided just the right blend of all of those elements I described above.
I suppose the only beef that I had with the game was the fact that, regardless of how old a tunnel or tomb was and how much they emphasized that this was the first time in centuries it had been opened, the villains miraculously arrived there (sometimes ahead of you) so that they could shoot at you. It wasn’t the worst flaw, but it definitely got my attention.
Uncharted’s Nathan Drake is neck-and-neck with Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft in the race to become this generation’s Indiana Jones. The character has just the right amount of charm to be entertaining, without becoming too cute by a half. I think this is an exceptional game, and one that will ultimately matter in gaming history. If you get a chance, give it a try.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Many of you may not remember when the first Metal Gear Solid game was released on the PS1, but I remember it vividly. I was just returning from my first deployment in the Navy, and we had stopped in Perth, Australia for a port call. While I was there, I picked up a copy of playstation magazine that contained a playable demo for MGS1. For the months that followed I played that demo over and over, exploring every corner, trying to squeeze everything possible out of those first two stages. The demo was simply amazing, and I was psyched to sink my teeth into the actual game.
While I enjoyed the actual game, I found that I was bothered by three things:
1) Snake couldn’t jump. This game was released at about the same time as Tenchu: Stealth Assassin. Tenchu had a similar stealth feel, but allowed you to jump all over the place. It seems like a small nitpick, but I remember being annoyed by this at the time.
2) Unlimited enemies. Another thing that annoyed me was the seeming infinite number of enemies that hunt you down in MGS.
3) Outlandish villains: I think the main thing that I didn’t like about Metal Gear Solid was the villains. While the battles were fun and memorable, I found that mixing magical powers, psychic characters, cursed hands, etc., was too jarring for me. When I played Metal Gear, I expected a realistic, military style game; instead, I got Shadowrun-lite.
Now, you may wonder why I’m writing about Metal Gear Solid in a post entitled “Uncharted 2.” The reason is simple: Uncharted is the game that I always wanted Metal Gear Solid to be. It had all of the stealth, the controls, the platforming, and the realistic storyline that I wanted in MGS.
Uncharted 2 took the concept of putting an interesting action game into beautiful set-pieces and cranked it up to 11. I spoke with a co-worker about the game at lunch after I had beaten it, and the first thing he asked me was “what did you think of the train?” He knew, as I do, that the train sequence was gorgeous; I even found myself looking up online videos of the sequence so that I could just take time to look at the set pieces without needing to concentrate on the game.
Unlike films, which rarely have sequels as good as the first one, I’ve come to expect that the sequel to most games will be better than the first. I think the reason for this is how closely the emotional expience is tied to the mechanics. As the game mechanics become better, the disconnect between player and character diminishes and the players get a stronger, richer experience.