Brett's Footnotes¹: Comments

Comment on "On Being a Thug"

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:49:30 -0500

Uh-oh, that's cause for concern. They are clearly pushing an "I did bad things back in the Old Country" agenda story-wise and it feels more than a little forced. He's an improvement but there's a lot of subtlety that's lost.

Tony Soprano works really well because we drop right in on him in the midst of crisis. He has this condition that might be mental, might be physical, but in either case would be weakness so he can not have it, it's a matter of life and death. The stakes are high, but the underlying issue is still really human.

With Niko, there's not a lot of conflict, and it would be hard to maintain any conflict given the fractured lens of the sandbox-based storytelling. It reminds me a bit of the most recent Prince of Persia, where due to branching paths of play, each bit of story doesn't build on any other, and you're left with a relationship between the characters that builds and then falls back completely unnaturally.

In any case, I'll be posting again about GTA IV -- I basically never play things when they are first out any more (Brütal Legend being last year's exception). Thanks for stopping by!

- Brett Douville

Comment on "On Being a Thug"

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:13:15 -0500

I had a similar problem with the extreme violence of the early GTA's. While Niko Bellic was an improvement, I still didn't finish GTA IV or care that much about his story; my favorite title so far has actually been Chinatown Wars, because it contextualized and made a virtue of its characters' shallowness.

But yeah, much as I understand why it's hard to pull off the conflict of a character like Tony Soprano in a video game, that doesn't mean these stories can work without it.

- Chris Dahlen

Comment on "Last Night at Marienbad"

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:26:28 -0500

Thanks for coming back Stephane and commenting. I need to re-watch Adaptation myself, I think Kaufman's a genius and is plumbing a lot of the weird narrative areas that the New Wave looked at fifty years ago or so.

It's true, I don't think there are a lot of games that generate this kind of experience. In a way, the Sims games could, I suppose -- you have an environment through which a multitude of experiences are possible through small changes in the initial conditions. I will have to pop in my copy (never installed! I need to stop buying games in this way!) of Sims 2 to see what's possible there. "Last Year at Simsbad..."

- Brett Douville

Comment on "Last Night at Marienbad"

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:16:22 -0500

You made me want to see it again.

I was re-watching Adaptation recently - one of my favorite movies - and wondered if such a mise-en-abîme was possible in games: games about the process of making and playing games.
I'm aware of lots of platform games that try to subvert their genre, but I can think of no game that provides the experience you describe.

- Stephane

Comment on "Game Design Is Murder, Part II"

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:16:26 -0500

I did have a lot of success, for sure; but it's a lot more tightly constrained than most GMing. The players really can't do just anything they want; they have to do some very specific things each round, and between rounds there are actual scripts which recap. While I did some GMing when I was a kid, I don't remember it well enough to write up any blog posts about it.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "Game Design Is Murder, Part II"

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:15:50 -0500

Seems like you met with a lot of success right off the bat with these things - I learned a lot of game design the hard way by trying to GM - sometimes campaigns I had created myself, sometimes store-bought - and the first attempts went so horribly I'm surprised I stuck with it...but those were my first gameplay focus testing experiences.

- Jamie

Comment on "Game Design Is Murder, Part I"

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:34:01 -0500

Thanks for the memories and all the effort you put into the New Year Eve mystery dinners. Those nights will forever be part of family lore. We all had such wonderful times - the costumes, non-stop laughter and terrific meals are so fondly remembered.

- Dad

Comment on "I Need the Cape and the Cowl"

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:22:24 -0500

It is actually not the theme in the least that bothers me -- I think it's a few things. One, I want to watch Batman go through all that torture (but I don't want to watch from behind his eyes); two, that I'm very used to seeing Batman in the 3rd person always, in this game mostly and in all other media in which he appears, though I guess occasionally he speaks in the first person in comics and what-have-you; three, I felt some discomfort on a couple of levels to psychologically identify myself with him... I hope I'm not nearly so pathological and while I can understand a certain amount of persistent bitter grief, I'm also not likely to go off and start beating the crap out of people as a result. My karate training is purely for my own edification, not the fun of beating people up! Hmmm.. I think I am undermining my argument...

- Brett Douville

Comment on "I Need the Cape and the Cowl"

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:05:33 -0500

I think it was Chris Soares I heard first throw out the idea "Someone should really make a game based on Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum comic" - and although the game ended up quite different from that, it has the same theme, that maybe Batman belongs in there with the supervillains, and that theme came through the most in those scarecrow sequences you didn't like. So - what would you do? Drop that theme altogether, or is there another way you would approach it?

- Jamie

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:03:15 -0500

Thanks Jeff! And thanks for the pointer about Cruise -- not at a point yet where I want to invest in our build systems (next year), but options will be good to have.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:34:30 -0500

Excellent talk. I find it amazing that we have such similar opinions on the role of engineering departments even though we've never work at the same company at the same time. So weird.

Have you looked at the posibility of using the program Cruise by Thoughtworks (similar to Cruise Control, but different enough) to do your build pipelining / tracking? They can give you a lot of automation in terms of how, where, and when things are deployed in the build pipeline, and keep everyone informed of build progress. I've found it incredibly useful.

- Jeff

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:43:37 -0500

LOL. I wonder where that axe is now? I think it's up in the attic. I should bring it down...

- Chris C.

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:12:34 -0500

Thanks Chris! I tried to work in something about carrying around a big axe... next talk for sure!

- Brett Douville

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:22:47 -0500

I finally came back to this and tried again. It's working now so whatever you did fixed it.

Nice talk, Brett. There's plenty of good advice in here, and reviewing it all certainly brought back memories.

- Chris C.

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:19:47 -0500

I just tried to download it in Chrome and it was broken. I switched to Firefox and it downloaded fine. Went back to Chrome, tried again and it downloaded fine. Mark as unable to repeat? :)

- Chris

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:13:51 -0500

Weird, you guys, works for me both at home and at work. Anyone else try it and fail or have it work?

- Brett Douville

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:42:04 -0500

I'm using Chrome and no luck here either. :(

- Vernon H.

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:47:35 -0500

Weird! Both work for me. I recompressed it however and re-uploaded so give it a go.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "My IGDA Leadership Forum Presentation"

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:21:46 -0500

No luck downloading the file, Brett. "Not a valid ZIP archive" when downloaded from Firefox. IE can't even download it, I'm afraid.

Probably user error. Stupid Internet.

- Chris C.

Comment on "Playing at War"

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:24:49 -0500

Glad you liked it, Mike. Come on back and comment again :)

- Brett Douville