Over the last weekend, I took part in my first Extra Life marathon. The charity event is only 4 years old, but has been growing exponentially every year. Every October, gamers ask for donations to support children's cancer research through the Children's Miracle Network and their local affiliates. In return, they pledge to play games for 24 hours from Saturday to Sunday morning (or whenever they can make time). People's reactions ranged from positive to derisive. The easiest cynical barb to shoot back in response is usually something along the lines of "Isn't that how you spend your weekends anyway?" Apparently, some portion of the population still views self-professed "gamers" as so far removed from humanity that we consume one form of media non-stop without getting bored or driven to the brink of insanity, and we can apparently do so without sleep.
Obviously we're not running for boobies, or wearing pink while we play football, but it shouldn't make Extra Life any less of a charity. And the numbers agree: Extra Life received over $1.1 million dollars in donations this year, more than the charity previous 3 years' worth of donations combined. When it came time to make good on the pledge with my two teammates and I, we were excited and proud of the contribution we had made.
Of course, this excitement changed and warped over the course of 24 hours. Fully caffeinated, the early day started with lots of shooters and twitch-based games, but by the end of the marathon, we were playing more passive, casual stuff. Somewhere in the middle we mixed things up and got some exercise in Rock Band. I broke records in Pac Man CE DX. We converted a friend to the world of Minecraft while my girlfriend used it to make serious progress in her blocky recreation of Sunnydale High from Buffy. I revisited some old favorites like the serene music-puzzler Chime and the ever-irreverent ball-rolling Beautiful Katamari. I would take breaks and play something quick and casual on my iPod. I proved that my You Don't Know Jack trivia skills are nearly unaffected by having a fried brain at 3am. We made lots of silly jokes that are probably only funny when sleep-deprived. We bonded playing multiplayer games and sharing Minecraft protips. By the end, my eyes were burning and swollen, joints sore and stiff, and the general punchiness that comes from not sleeping. And our team raised over $1500 for sick kids.
If you were expecting some deep examination and epiphany as to why we play games or why interactive media is important, it's not here. But that's ok. Extra Life reminded me why playing games (especially with others) is fun. Did I feel like shit Sunday morning and couldn't get to sleep? Yes. Did I remind myself why I only play games for 1-2 hours at a time? Yes. But would I do Extra Life again next year with friends? Absolutely.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Feature Creepers
Unlike other games that either expertly weave narrative in with a game's world, or force it in awkwardly like a bad porno, Minecraft gives players freedom to explore, build and survive with zero narrative. And in doing so, they develop their own dynamic experiences. It's been a huge success for Markus Persson (aka Notch) and his studio, Mojang. Aside from the basic “acquire resources, make tools to get better resources” goal, players eventually start setting their own goals, like “map out my world” or “build Castle Greyskull and a Technodrome”. Fans enjoy sharing their creations, mods and stories online, and getting together on multiplayer servers big and small to work together or against each other. Minecraft, prior to the latest 1.8 Adventure Update, has been less of a game and more of a giant sandbox full of digital Legos. But maybe it’s this freedom and personal attachment that has enabled a very vocal, often entitled fanbase to emerge.
One look at the Minecraft forums and its Reddit page shows a mix of people celebrating and criticizing the game. The internet has served as a sounding board for an unprecedented massive Alpha and Beta test since 2009. Millions of people have purchased the game and many are content to play and explore the procedurally generated worlds. Others are taking it upon themselves to act as Mojang’s unofficial co-designers. Fans have suggested new friendly and hostile creatures, and new items. They've criticized everything from the game’s retro-styled textures to how items behave. Sometimes, user-made mods have inspired the designers to implement similar features in later updates, such as in-game maps and pistons (used for making automated secret entrances and more). And then recently, fans joined together on Reddit urging Minecraft’s creators to add snouts to the game’s pigs. No, really. And Mojang fulfilled their request.
That’s where we start to see Minecraft’s fans and their sense of entitlement. Even now as I write this, players like myself have gotten their hands on a test version of the 1.8 update, which adds a ton of new features, including better terrain generation and a sorely-needed combat mechanic upgrade. 1.8 is easily the most feature-heavy update so far. But it took fans less than a day to return to requesting new features. This wasn’t the reporting of bugs in a pre-release version of an update, but asking for literally brand new features despite the sheer amount of changes they had yet to experience. As Louis C.K. said, “everything is amazing and no one is happy”.
I understand that some players don’t understand the complexity and hours of work required to add new mechanics to a game’s overall design and still somehow keep things balanced (or how new features might render fundamental code utterly broken), but I put myself in the developer’s shoes when I see fans receive new material that took weeks or months to perfect. When they respond with a “Meh, here’s my idea for PONIES!”, I die a little inside. Feature-creep is already an issue internally when developers sit down to discuss a game’s design. If unchecked, a game can die before it’s made by high aspirations and a lack of perspective. Content is cut for a reason. I would rather have Mojang’s programmers spend time cleaning up their code to make things run smoother than spend time making sure pigs get snouts that look right in a blocky world. And it gets even scarier when fans start calling developers in the middle of the night because they think they should.
My beef is separate from the times that Mojang’s developers publicly suggest changes to the game or ask for opinions, which is a great way of crowd-sourcing what the team should focus on improving. The designers have generally been urging community feedback and response. And while many games (especially in the PC realm) blur the line between product and service, the fact remains that Minecraft was sold as a product to be serviced in a limited scope until its "final" release later this year (though Mojang will be making tweaks afterwards). In a world where nerds get upset when George Lucas continues to alter his films with each subsequent re-release, it appears that the reverse is expected of games, assuming it’s the players and not the creators who decide what to change.
As games continue to grow as an entertainment medium, developers need to start clearly defining when their game is a product with basic service for technical issues, and when it’s a service (like World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2). It’s often both, but the customer isn’t always right. I think bigger developers know this, but the start-up that is Mojang is slowly learning this. When the feedback is open to the general public, some fan’s good suggestion could easily get drowned out by countless people clamoring for pig snouts.
And fans? I'm sure our enthusiasm is appreciated, but maybe we could all just slow our roll a little bit. That Technodrome isn't going to build itself.
Yep.
One look at the Minecraft forums and its Reddit page shows a mix of people celebrating and criticizing the game. The internet has served as a sounding board for an unprecedented massive Alpha and Beta test since 2009. Millions of people have purchased the game and many are content to play and explore the procedurally generated worlds. Others are taking it upon themselves to act as Mojang’s unofficial co-designers. Fans have suggested new friendly and hostile creatures, and new items. They've criticized everything from the game’s retro-styled textures to how items behave. Sometimes, user-made mods have inspired the designers to implement similar features in later updates, such as in-game maps and pistons (used for making automated secret entrances and more). And then recently, fans joined together on Reddit urging Minecraft’s creators to add snouts to the game’s pigs. No, really. And Mojang fulfilled their request.
I'm sure your Fun Factor is significantly higher now.
That’s where we start to see Minecraft’s fans and their sense of entitlement. Even now as I write this, players like myself have gotten their hands on a test version of the 1.8 update, which adds a ton of new features, including better terrain generation and a sorely-needed combat mechanic upgrade. 1.8 is easily the most feature-heavy update so far. But it took fans less than a day to return to requesting new features. This wasn’t the reporting of bugs in a pre-release version of an update, but asking for literally brand new features despite the sheer amount of changes they had yet to experience. As Louis C.K. said, “everything is amazing and no one is happy”.
I understand that some players don’t understand the complexity and hours of work required to add new mechanics to a game’s overall design and still somehow keep things balanced (or how new features might render fundamental code utterly broken), but I put myself in the developer’s shoes when I see fans receive new material that took weeks or months to perfect. When they respond with a “Meh, here’s my idea for PONIES!”, I die a little inside. Feature-creep is already an issue internally when developers sit down to discuss a game’s design. If unchecked, a game can die before it’s made by high aspirations and a lack of perspective. Content is cut for a reason. I would rather have Mojang’s programmers spend time cleaning up their code to make things run smoother than spend time making sure pigs get snouts that look right in a blocky world. And it gets even scarier when fans start calling developers in the middle of the night because they think they should.
My beef is separate from the times that Mojang’s developers publicly suggest changes to the game or ask for opinions, which is a great way of crowd-sourcing what the team should focus on improving. The designers have generally been urging community feedback and response. And while many games (especially in the PC realm) blur the line between product and service, the fact remains that Minecraft was sold as a product to be serviced in a limited scope until its "final" release later this year (though Mojang will be making tweaks afterwards). In a world where nerds get upset when George Lucas continues to alter his films with each subsequent re-release, it appears that the reverse is expected of games, assuming it’s the players and not the creators who decide what to change.
As games continue to grow as an entertainment medium, developers need to start clearly defining when their game is a product with basic service for technical issues, and when it’s a service (like World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2). It’s often both, but the customer isn’t always right. I think bigger developers know this, but the start-up that is Mojang is slowly learning this. When the feedback is open to the general public, some fan’s good suggestion could easily get drowned out by countless people clamoring for pig snouts.
And fans? I'm sure our enthusiasm is appreciated, but maybe we could all just slow our roll a little bit. That Technodrome isn't going to build itself.
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