[Games] Morale Choice: Any Room for Middle Ground?

For the better part of a decade it seems that morale choice has been increasingly seeping into story-driven video games. The first exposure I personally had to this new construct was the Knights of the Old Republic series, which I found to be a brilliant re-imagination of a series simultaneously debasing itself in film. The magic trick these games pulled off particularly well as that both good and evil paths drove towards the same ends: destroy the Sith. If you were a good, little Jedi, you sought out the Sith to save the galaxy and be the hero. If you fell to the dark side then you hunted down the Sith with the intent of toppling your rivals. While I thought this method of devising the story was masterful, one thing always bugged me: why wasn't there a middle ground option of running away?

Certainly the most obvious answer is that it breaks game progression, which is a fair enough reason. Another perhaps even more pertinent reason was, as one of my friends explained to me, that when one has sufficient means to stop an evil there ceases to be a middle ground option. It took awhile for me to think through that statement, but there is evidence of this logic in the American legal system. For example, if you are a licensed medical professional you are duty-bound to do things such as perform CPR if the situation arises. To not do so is a crime, despite any potential fears of being sued should something go awry.



So what video games tackle the notion of middle ground? Well, Fallout 3 certainly offers that option, complete with achievements for reaching various milestones with neutral karma. After playing that game through as the hero, though, I'm not sure I see how there was much room for middle ground in that game, at least not what I personally consider middle ground. I freely admit that in a system where all actions have a mathematical positive or negative karma value associated with them that players can make their karmic sum equal approximately zero. I do not believe, however, that giving the downtrodden fresh water one second, then shooting a shopkeeper and looting their store the next is a "neutral" disposition in anyone's mind, no matter how the numbers work out.

One major reason why I don't really see much of a neutral path in Fallout 3 was that despite this being post-apocalytia, every person for themselves, my character was never that close to folding. I had a rough patch in the very beginning, but once I got my house in Megaton and didn't have to pay for healing I was on easy street. I believe I finished the game with over 10k bottlecaps and near fully repaired version of every weapon and armor. I never once came remotely close to being done in by radiation. My point is by no means to toot my own horn, but just to present the argument that under these relatively lax conditions how "good" can it then be considered to handout fresh water to random people? I needed it out of my inventory anyway and it was that or dropping it. Had I truly been at death's door, living from Rad-X to Rad-X, where that pure water really meant something to me, then it's a good deed to give it to someone else, and consequently then it's karmically neutral to keep it for myself.

So is there really room for neutrality in video games? I believe that there is, but it's likely going to require some strides in the art of game design before we truly see it come to fruition. Currently the path I see would be to ratchet up the difficulty for pursuing the path of good, but who knows. Hopefully someone much smarter than I will come along with the magic bullet.

[Games] Fable 2: "Will you choose the path of good or evil ... or a different game?"

Fable 2 has been on my "maybe" list for a while now, so when it dropped to $10 from GameStop this past week I finally gave in. It took a little bit to get into, but once I got to the first town after the prologue I started to really enjoy it. I immediately set out to maxing out my blacksmithing, wooing townsfolk with heroic poses and finger pointing, getting married, and buying property. After quite a few hours of these shenanigans I sat out to finally advance the story.

The objective was straight-forward enough: proceed to finding a person of interest via a brightly marked trail, ultimately taking me into a dungeon. This dungeon, however, proved a little tricky to navigate, as I imagine most dungeons are, and in my zeal to run up an incline I wasn't suppose to I got stuck in the environment. After 5 minutes of frantically moving every which way I could imagine in an attempt to free myself then 15 minutes of Googling to find a solution to no avail, I decided that my best bet would be to exit and reenter the game. This, however, turned out to be a monumentally dumb idea, though, because this saved my game in this broken state. Googling for advice about this new and improved predicament, however, did reveal an answer: I was screwed and would have to start over.

My first thought was "this is why you make multiple save files, doofus". Upon reflection, however, I didn't remember being presented with such a choice, unlike just about every other game I've ever played. Double-checking I found out, sure enough, Fable 2 intentionally avoids the use of multiple save files in a single playthrough. So much for this game being all about choice, eh?

I'm gonna use my power of choice to choose not to play this game again.

[Games] Final Fantasy: A Request for Alternate Apparel

Looking over my games collection recently I was reminded of how much I enjoyed playing through Final Fantasy XII. When I think back to Final Fantasy XII, one of the first things I remember vividly about that gaming experience was the character of Fran. I appreciated almost every characteristic about Fran: the voice acting, the devilish red eyes, the long white hair, the backstory, the aesthetics of a lanky figure wielding a polearm, etc. The one aspect I didn't particularly care for, though, was her outfit.

I'm not contending that her outfit is offensive or that Square Enix shouldn't have designed this costume by any means, but for me personally I'd rather not watch my main character run around in a g string for the several dozen hours of my gameplay experience. I also understand that the underlying mechanics of JRPGs currently differ from that of Western RPGs on the user customization. Western RPGs are moving in the direction of allowing players more control over their characters' gender, appearance, personality, backstory, etc., while JRPGs, and particularly the Final Fantasy franchise, have been holding the line against these sorts of cosmetic customizations to their characters. While I personally relish carving out the details of my video game RPG characters, I can see the argument that giving the user too much control over customizing their character (and the narrative especially) makes game development significantly more difficult and expensive.

All understanding to the hardships of game development aside, I do not understand the management decision to not allow such a simple customization as allowing the player a few alternative outfits for their characters. First off, I know that Square already has a mountain of conceptual work already done for their character appearances; no studio worth its salt these days wouldn't, especially for a triple A title. All characters have at least a few iterations of ideas for their characters look before settling on their canonical character representations. I'm also not proposing a plethora of choices, or granular choices necessarily, but 2-4 different, overarching costumes to select from would be nice. While this would require the studio to convert the concept sketches to 3D character models, as well as implementing some mechanism in game for switching appearances, this seems like a small development cost for the user satisfaction it would provide.

I think a great example of where this was done was Mass Effect 2. I was ok with the character of Jack, but had a similar dislike to Jack's default flashy appearance as I'm citing with Fran's. After all, bare skin isn't so great at absorbing laser fire, or so I hear. Bioware, however, built in an alternate outfit that was a bit more to my liking. There was only one alternative outfit, I had to earn it, and it wasn't available until the middle of the game, but there was an alternative and I was grateful for it.



So yeah, Square, you don't have to give us the world, but could you let us cover our characters' bums, please? Some of the areas you make us go are rather chilly, after all.

[Games] Kinectimals

Kinectimals looks like a game for people who don't own pets or whose pets don't like them. I don't think this game is going to move 360 hardware, nor do I think it will convince children they don't still want a puppy.

[Games] Down the Rabbit Hole of the Used Games Market

A few weeks ago on IGN Girlfight the topic was raised of Electronic Arts move to strip out online multi-player as a separately purchasable feature (free to those buying new). The latter part of the debate moved into the legitimacy of the used market and the morale issues surrounding it. A key argument expressed was that used games sales fail to yield revenue for those that produce the game in the first place, which particularly in the games market have a crippling effect on the smaller developers. As a software developer myself I have to say this discussion gave me pause and forced me to reexamine my thoughts on the topic.

There is certainly a ring of truth to the argument. The simple reality is that if you don't give a company money for their product they don't have as much money to pour into future versions of said product. However, if we assume for a second the logic that all consumers should avoid contributing to the used games market a great many questions are immediately evoked. Should I not lend out games to other people? Should I not rent games? Should I not donate games to Goodwill? Do I need to buy 2 copies of a game if both my spouse and I want to play it? Why not donate money to smaller, independent game studios? By treating this one argument as an axiom we've called all property rights surrounding video games into question, and it's quite a rabbit hole.

I haven't really encountered this notion as much with music, although it's no longer as germane today with digital sales being what they are. Even when it was relevant, though, I don't think it was as big of an issue because for groups you really liked you bought merchandise from and went to concerts. The game markets are gradually coming around to doing these side elements as well to add to their revenue streams, and I think it's a very wise way to go. I certainly indulge in these side markets with games I really like such as Mass Effect, where I have all the DLC, a t-shirt, and a lithograph. Even for Castle Crashers I have a Red Knight sitting on my desk at work.

So the verdict for me personally: it's all business. Is it fair for EA to separately charge for multiplayer functionality? - Yes. Is it fair for them to charge $100 for a game? - Yes. Is it fair for people to sell their physical copy of a game? - Yes. Are any of these things wise? - I don't know. These are all things, however, that are fair for consumers and developers to do, devoid of applying morale "right" and "wrong" to them.

Phone Interface Foible

Using my wife's cell phone to find a number last night I discovered a rather large design issue in its interface. The top-left button has an icon "<-", yet it is not a Back button, as I've been convinced it should be from over 15 years of web browsing. How is possible that anyone designs an interface like this? I have to imagine every single person who has anything to do with designing cell phone interfaces has been browsing the Internet for at least 10 years. How is it possible that no one thought that the average citizen would recognize this symbol and its positioning as a Back button?

What does this button do instead, you might ask? It dials the contact. My scenario with this feature was browsing contacts, clicking the wrong contact from the list (taking me to that contact's detailed info page), immediately clicking what I thought was the Back button and accidentally dialing the contact. This scenario occurred twice before I actually got the contact information I needed.

The only way to make this feature worse would be to have it automatically dial 911.

[Gaming] A Need for Achievement Progress Feedback

In my attempt to finish out the final achievements in Final Fantasy XIII over Memorial Day weekend, I ran into a frustrating predicament. One of the last achievements is to handle all accessories and weapons in the game, requiring an obscene amount of money (and hence time) to upgrade. I worked most of the day finishing out upgrading all the items, selling off the items as I created to get more money back in order to keep upgrading. After triple checking lists on the wiki to make sure I had crafted all the items, I headed to the robot in Oerba to get my achievement. To my horror, instead of the achievement, the robot said "there are still items out there you've yet to acquire." Argh.



After turning the 360 off in anger, I came back a few hours later to see if I could figure out where things had gone awry and salvage the situation. No dice. Final Fantasy XIII has absolutely no indicator of progression for this arduous achievement. I also recently ran into the same issue with achievement farming in Red Dead Redemption, specifically the one for exploring all locations on the map. I thought I had explored all the areas, but I was mistaken. The big difference between these two games: Red Dead Redemption has exhaustive statistics, including how many areas in each of the 3 major territories you've explored out of the total. In other words, with an online map of areas in Red Dead Redemption I was able to narrow down the locations I still needed to find in a matter of 30 minutes in order to get my achievement.

Square Enix should take a note from Red Dead Redemption's notion of statistics to make it easier on gamers who wish to get the most out of their games. There is already a lot of bad press on Final Fantasy XIII, and I appeared to be one of the rare few that truly enjoyed the game. I hate to walk away from the game on a low note.

[Politics] Science is Opinion?

I'm not sure how we got to the point in society where scientific principles are something the lay person believes they can have an opinion on. You certainly didn't see this back in the big space exploration days, with Joe Shmoe decrying that crazy Buzz Aldrin and his "moon landing" story. Ok, admittedly there were a few people that denied the moon landing, but we generally called them paranoid schizophrenics or possibly crazy Uncle Steve.

The most obvious victim of this scientific normatism is global warming. It seems every week here lately I encounter someone that chortles whilst denying that global warming could possibly be real because it's been really cold this Winter. This generally causes me to reevaluate my relation with that person and decide whether I should lose my composure on them or if I should just smile, nod, then never speak to them again. The frequency of this conversation has caused me to ponder how this came about, and I've come up with a few reasons:

1. Science as Politics - The science of global warming has somehow ended up in the lions' cage of the American political arena, and as such people reason it must have bipartisan stances. "If Al Gore says it, and he was a Democrat, and I'm a Republican, then I must not agree" seems to be a logic I see applied; Nay Nay. The world is getting warmer, period. Whether we humans have a significant amount to do with that is the debate, not whether it's happening at all.
   
2. Everyone is an expert - I think there is a sense that because the weather is so observable and such a frequent topic of conversation people feel reasonably qualified to weigh in. "I can discuss the weather with my hair dresser and people I bump into in a diner." The leap is then made from feeling qualified to say "It's cold outside" to "The world is not getting warmer". This also stems from...
3. Myopic Viewpoint, a.k.a. "America is the World" - When people attempt to take what's happening "right now" as proof one way or the other, they generally only consider what's going on in America, at best. This precludes what's going in areas like Greenland, which is experiencing vastly different weather currently. The presence of global warming cannot possibly be rationally evaluated without a global viewpoint.
   
4. The Real 'Experts' are Idiots - The public views meteorology as inaccurate. Frankly, it is. People therefore presume "If these guys can't dial it in further out than a week, how can they possibly predict years into the future?" The error in logic here is that the study of global warming doesn't at all resemble that of weather prediction.Temperature trends are determined the same way trends are in almost every other field of study: take a set of past measurements (in this case temperatures) and project out where they will be based on trends over the past several years.This is a well vetted technique. In this particular case their are decades of data; it's pretty accurate.
5. Parsable vs. Observable Difference - The overall global temperature change that's being discussed is very minute. It's not something where your gonna step outside and notice that it's 5 degrees warmer every day this summer than last, and if you are seeing that, that's not global warming. The trend that's being discussed is statistical; it's small but will accumulate up over time such that in 50 years there will be an observable effect.
   

[Dogs] PETA hates breeders

So, PETA managed to get through Westminster security this year and stage a protest, holding up signs that said “Mutts Rule” and “Breeders Kill Shelter Dogs’ Chances.” Having gone the route of getting a rare breed dog from a breeder I'm often asked, with varying degrees of disdain, why I opted to go that route versus getting a dog from a shelter. My answer is that my wife and I did a lot of Internet research, quiz taking, and visiting to find the breed of dog which best matched our lifestyles. This usually quells the inquisition, with only the hardest of core pursuing beyond that. This has prompted me to learn the life lesson that people don't like the breeder vs. shelter decision being compared to that of having your own baby vs. adoption.

I certainly understand peoples' frustrations, though; I don't like the fact that shelters are as prevalent as they are myself. I by no means encourage people away from shelter dogs either. However, it's a tad irritating that people's ire in the situation is directed at people who celebrate dogs instead of the people that actually cause dogs to end up in shelters. Admittedly, it's hard to track down all the irresponsible dog owners who don't fix their dogs (because of the minor expense, apathy, or naive feeling of "keeping them natural") that ultimately leads to unintended litters, in turn creating the majority of dogs in shelters. However, since when is it acceptable to attack a tangentially related party because you can't get at the actual culpable party? I'm gonna let you think that one over.

As for how PETA should go about tracking down the real responsible parties, might I suggest Wal-Mart as a more apt protest location? I'm just throwing that out there.