#welovegamedevs!

Hard times for game devs... after the whole (very sad) Zoe Quinn affair, only few days ago Polygon reported that “game dev harassment remains as bad as it was a year ago”, when it seemed to reach a fevered pitch. The International Game Developers Association is now creating a special interest group to investigate mental health, even if it decided against support groups. Kate Edwards, the executive director of IGDA said: “We are also exploring methods by which we can educate game players on how they can and should interact with developers”.

Yesterday, on twitter the hashtag #welovegamedevs become trending and thousands of gamers used it to underline their love and appreciation for the developers of their favorite games. The hashtag has been launched by Keith Stuart of The Guardian, who wrote “Maybe everyone should think of a game they really love then tweet the developer and tell them. Tag it #welovegamedevs (I know I'm a hippy)”. The initiative immediately found the support of many and echoed through the internet (see e.g. Gamasutra, Dual Shockers and Crave online). #welovegamedevs become trending, first in the UK and than in the US, showing the best side of the game community and, incidentally, making Keith Stuart cry : “Do you think we can get #welovegamedevs trending? If we do, we win today! (You will also see a grown man cry a bit)”.

PS

If you didn't do it yet, look up at these tweets, both from gamers and grateful developers, it is a “faith in humanity restored” sort of thing!

Real Life Assassin's Creed.

The events of Assassin's Creed: Unity will take place in Paris, center of the French Revolution, but, today, also capital of Parkour. In the video below a team of traceurs show us how the game would look like in real life.

When Mistakes make Bestsellers.

Two days ago a friend of mine wrote me: “check The Red Solstice on Steam, it seems interesting”. I did and it was: an early-access indie co-op game, created by Croatian developer Ironward. And the price is good: $19.99 with a 40% early access discount that makes it $14.99. For two copies. The price is really good. Maybe too good...

Apparently the price was intended for one copy, and a mistake on Steam made it the price for two! The news circulated quickly, also because the mistake was to be corrected the very next day. Many hungry gamers rushed to buy the underpriced game, and the developers had to give new extra keys to their supporters on Kickstarter to make up for the mistake.

Good day for gamers, bad day for developers? Not really: El Oschuro, one of the developers made an announcement on steam, saying that The Red Solstice had been on the Steam Top ten the all week and had 1,000 current players all the weekend. Not bad at all, even less for an indie!

Maybe it could seem that the mistake meant a big loss of money for the developers, but I'm convinced that all the buzz around the game will end up as a very big advertising campaign, and that having a huge lot of people playing a co-op game (that is actually pretty good) will result in a lot more potential buyers in the future.

If so, Ironward will have to thank Steam for the happy mistake...

1000 Days of Syria.

According to Huizinga's Homo Ludens, war shares many characteristics with play. Undoubtedly war games are one of the widest games genres, ranging from chess to Call of Duty, counting thousands of titles. In an age of relative peace it has become clear that enjoying war in a playful way has nothing to do with raising young soldiers, but covers, more likely, a metaphoric function representing everyday struggles against life, at work, at school and in family.

War in games is often fictional, and even when it's inspired by a real war it is represented in a very stereotypical way. That's why the Nazis are so widely exploited in games and fiction: they are perfect example of stereotypical villains in the real world.

Reality is more complicated and real contemporary wars are a very delicate subject that can't be handed lightly. War games set in conflicts still happening would be politically incorrect, disrespectful or even dangerous.

On the other hand games about ongoing conflicts can be very interesting and instructive. It's the case of 1000 days of Syria a text based historical fiction game. The author, journalist Mitch Swenson, has been in Syria in September 2013 and what he saw was so enormous confronted to the lack of interest for this conflict in the West, that he had to do something. That's how 1000 Days of Syria is born.

Says Swenson: “My intention is neither to entertain players with, nor benefit from, the deaths that have resulted from the instability in Syria. In fact my aim is just the opposite. Sometimes the word "game" can be misconstrued into something that seems removed and reductive in the context of real life danger and death. In that way some might say that 1000 Days of Syria should not be considered a game at all, but rather an interactive education. That is for you to decide.”

I played this game, this “exercise in transmedia storytelling, part electric literature; part newscast; and part choose-your-own-adventure” and it literally broke my heart. It is not particularly pathetic, or tragic, if so it wouldn't work. It is simple and sincere and with its clean narrative can make you feel and live the Syrian war. When the game starts you cross the Syrian border. And with “you” I mean the player, not his or her character. What you see after the crossing will never leave you, it will follow you at the end of the game and accompany you in your everyday life, wherever you live. 1000 Days of Syria is an overwhelmingly immersive game or, at least, it has been to me.

Mitch Swenson is reluctant to call hi creature a “game”, word that too often is associated to something opposite to “serious”. In my opinion serious games like this are probably the better way to look and understand conflicts that, even if far away, can be also very close.

I would like to thank Gabriele Ferri for suggesting me 1000 Days of Syria.

How to Game Design part 3.

Some new tips form game designer Andrea Chiarvesio in the new Geek comic!

ibb and obb

Few days ago I bought on Steam the quite new indie game. Created by Sparpweed Games, it is a puzzle platform game strongly oriented to co-op. The graphics are simple and cute and the game is quite relaxing even if sometimes quite hard. The most interesting feature of this game is that it presents a world with a bidirectional gravity: the two players walk on the two sides of the same platform but upside down.

It is more simple to show that to explain, so here the trailer of the game:

This twofold gravitational environment is the basis for pulling together the two players. Cooperation in games is not always so simple to achieve and many co-op games doesn't involve a lot of real cooperation between players. Ibb and obb is different for two reasons.

The first one is that you can play ibb and obb in two with the same keyboard. On-line gaming has the weird feature of making more simple to play with someone far away that with someone near. When you play ibb and obb you are literally sitting aside your friend, and this create a different kind of relationship with the other player.

The second one is that the whole game has been conceived in a way that forces the players to collaborate, to think and care about each other. Even the system of points has been added in a second stage as an additional spur to cooperation.

I've played ibb and obb with my wife and we both loved the way in which it is a awesome metaphor for marriage. I know for sure that this wasn't the idea of the creators (the initial title of the game should have been “brothers”), but nevertheless it's true. While you play at ibb and obb you should always try to see the world from both points of view (e.g. some portals are accessible only for one of the players and not for the other), you have to be ready to help your partner even when it could seem humiliating (e.g. make the other player climb on your head to reach an high step) and most of all you have to trust him of her completely.

Ibb and obb is not an edugame and is frankly fun, but it proves how video-games, so often criticised, can be a valuable human experience and an occasion for personal growth.

Be (more than) Yourself.

The advertising war between EA and the French Army.

Four years ago I used to live in Paris. Living in Paris – along with all the romance – involves a lot of time spent in the Metro the Parisian subway. It is natural, than, that when the Armée de Terre (the French Army) decided to launch a new recruitment campaign they chose the Metro as privileged location for their advertisements. The result was the “devenezvousmemes.com” (become yourself) campaign

“Since when you didn't push your limits?” Ask the posters to any French teenager waiting for his or her train. With us you'll have the possibility to do it.

The image has strongly material features: it looks like drawn onto an uniform, with buttons and badges. The message is that this is a serious call, if you enlist you will become a real man, you will be challenged every day and you will reach the best that you can achieve trough sweat and effort. The campaign (still active today) its reported to have had a certain amount of success and the military were quite pleased.

Since it happened the unthinkable. I remember laughing ten minutes when I fist saw it, astonished by the bravery and smartness that brought to this:

Electronic Arts with two simple words “more than” had just destroyed the military rhetoric. Why do I have to suffer and work to reach my zenith, when I can be far beyond it comfortably sitting at my computer?

The image follow this antithetical discourse: it is an immaterial picture, without any background, but far more bad-ass than the previous one. It seems to say “Do you think that they will allow you to pilot an helicopter and a tank?”.

The military weren't pleased at all, far from it. They asked and obtained that the new announcements were retired within a week and they paused their campaign too. The général Philippe Pontiès explained that this double advertising was dangerous because it was confusing: “war is not a game” he said “In a video-game, even if rules exist, most of the time you can transgress them without harsh consequences. Our project is to explain that we have to avoid this video-games logic if we want to enter in the real life. In the Army we have codes and rules. If we ignore them we put the life of civilians and soldiers in peril, we can fail the mission”.

It is very interesting to see how the two discourses, the military and the playful, compete in today's society.

On the one hand we have the military that, with its materialistic image, says that the real life is not the digital life. That to accomplish ourselves we have to be trained, fit and strong. Our true self lives in the real world and it is not granted, it is an achievement. What would be better, then, that the soldier life to achieve your true self? You will learn that the world is out there, that you have responsibilities, and we would not pamper you. You will live among the others and according to them. This is reality.

The ludic discourse is exactly the opposite. It propose a model in which the digital world can be your reality, a much better reality, if you want it. Why should you be yourself if you can be better? If you can be an hundred of different selves, living adventures in every historic period and every nation or planet without risking anything? Your true self is in your mind, and if you believe it you can be everyone. What would be better, than, that video-games to be who you want to be? We can sell you perfect illusions, and you can be safely and comfortably home. You can live by yourself and still meet a lot of digital (and nice) people. This is better than reality.

Both discourses, as usual, don't let any space for a middle ground: you can be either a jar-head either a nerd, no other choices. But it is fascinating that games, that so often have been accused to raise violence in teenagers, are, in fact, in open opposition against the military. You can like both, but you can't live according to the two different realities that they propose you.

Professor Ortoleva has written a small but awesome book on gamification entitled “From sex to play: an obsession for the 21^th century?”. In his book he reconstruct the history of the perception of sex in modern and post-modern culture, showing how it gained more and more relevance in Western culture. A sort of sexyfication of society that, after reaching is azimuth, is now fading leaving space to the incipient gamification.

If in the sex-centered '70s pacifist's motto was: “Make love, not war”, in the gamificated 21^th century it has been replaced by a new motto: “don't make war, play games!”