Over the last two weeks, I've been tweeting quite often about a certain project on Kickstarter. It's a game called "Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey" and, if it doesn't ring a bell at all, I want to tell you why I'm so excited about it.
I've always loved video games, for the same reason I love -- and practically devour -- books: they tell me magical stories, take me to incredible places and allow me to do impossible things. The first game I ever played was "Chequered Flag" on ZX Spectrum 48 that my parents gave me when I was 7 years old. Since then, I've watched the history of video games unfold and it has been a fascinating journey.
Right now, the gaming industry is in a state that I find pretty disappointing: there's a bunch of big players that are mostly staying within the bounds of their franchises and churning out sequels following their tried, true and increasingly tired formulas. My prime example is Ubisoft. They won my heart with "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" and "Assassin's Creed". Then they broke it with "Assassin's Creed III". To be precise, they didn't break it all at once: they chipped away at it until it broke. It was a blow to me when they abandoned the beautiful "Prince of Persia" reboot in order to squeeze out "The Forgotten Sands" like another bowel movement, but what really eroded my respect for them was the way they kept stretching Desmond's story in the "Assassin's Creed" franchise until it felt like I stepped in a piece of bubblegum. Another example is Bethesda, although this one is much more positive, because they haven't (yet) pissed all over their players. The worst thing they've done is the progressive dumbing-down of "The Elder Scrolls".
Truly different games are rare and precious and if I had to single out a few, I would certainly start with "Shadow of the Colossus" and "Heavy Rain". Both throw away most of the conventions held dear by other games and come up with something unique. The former tells a pretty minimalistic story in a profoundly haunting way that leaves you in a pensive mood. The latter combines the best of reading books and playing video games: it's incredibly rich and immersive like a good book, but interactive and with a flexible story like a good game.
On the bright side, extreme innovation is not required to get a great game. Sometimes a brilliant execution of old gaming formulas will do the trick, such as Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption" and "L.A. Noire". What makes these games exceptional is the way they explore profound themes through rich stories wrapped in engrossing gameplay.
This is why I'm so enthusiastic about "Dreamfall Chapters". For those of you who don't know the history behind it, it's the third and final part in the saga that started in 1999 with "The Longest Journey", a point-and-click adventure. The second part came out a whopping seven years later in the form of a third-person 3D adventure called "Dreamfall". Both games feature not only exquisitely rich and memorable world-building, but also excellent storytelling, with memorable characters and thought-provoking motifs, and beautiful graphics. And now, in 2013, Ragnar Tørnquist and his team at Red Thread Games are working on the final leg of a truly epic journey, wholly deserving of being called the longest: "Dreamfall Chapters".
Now, let's step back a bit here and focus on one important fact: how much passion, patience and balls does it take to stick to a dream over the course of 14 years? For that alone, I would have been inclined to back "Dreamfall Chapters", even if I hadn't played or heard of its prequels.
That, however, is not the primary reason why I'm trying to do all I can to promote "Dreamfall Chapters". The real reason is because I know Ragnar and his team are going to produce another masterpiece that will not only bring enjoyment to countless players across the world, but will also bring a breath of fresh air to the gaming industry.
Here's why I trust the Red Thread Games team: I first played "Dreamfall", without even having heard of "The Longest Journey". I played the whole game and enjoyed it immensely, without having any idea that it's a sequel. I never felt lost. There was never a "something doesn't end up" moment or "am I missing something here" feeling. And yet, when I discovered "The Longest Journey" and played it, not only it fit perfectly, but it transformed "Dreamfall" for me. So far, I've only had one other experience like that: when reading Discworld books by Sir Terry Pratchett. If you've read Pratchett's work, then you know how high a praise that is.
By all means, don't take me wrong: I don't claim these two games were perfect. "The Longest Journey", for example, had one of those "dude, wtf?" puzzles that old-style adventure games were so criticized for; just look up "the longest journey duck puzzle" on Google. "Dreamfall" had a totally superfluous combat system that makes a game of "Pong" feel like "Ninja Gaiden" in comparison. Yet, despite these imperfections, these games were -- and remain -- some of the most enjoyable adventure games out there.
So far I've covered why I trust the team, but I haven't really given much details about why I believe this to be so important. So it's another adventure game, albeit an excellent one, so what?
I'm very passionate about games. Apart from enjoying them as a player, I'm also one of those few adult programmers who hasn't outgrown the dream of making them. For me, it's important not only what games are made, but who makes them and how.
Ragnar Tørnquist left Funcom and founded Red Thread Games in order to make "Dreamfall Chapters". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Funcom at all, but the fact remains that a well-known game designer and one of the iconic figures of game development industry left an established, stable studio and went indie to make this game. And it's not any game, it's the long-anticipated finale to a saga that has, despite any imperfections we might find in it, earned its place in the history of video games.
I want to see it succeed and I want it to be a huge success. Apart from being a work of art, it will also challenge the status quo by showing that it really is possible to make a masterpiece without clinging to the old publisher-developer structure. And, as a bonus, it will contribute to Linux and Mac gaming scene and bring back some of the glory to PC gaming, wresting a bit of power from the tightly controlled walled gardens of the console world. All in all, it should be an important step in a journey even longer than "The Longest Journey": the journey through the history of gaming.
If you're still with me after all these words, then I hope I've convinced you to at least go to the Kickstarter page for "Dreamfall Chapters" and look at what you find there. And after that, if you feel moved to back the project, then so much the better.
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Friday, March 23, 2012
My Playthrough On Your Fridge Door
Two days ago, I decided to take a brief break at work. Since I was still gloomy from having finished Mass Effect 3 that weekend, I went surfing the Web to see what's new on that front and stumbled upon a couple of articles that inspired me to write a new post on my blog. Only two days have passed since, but it seems much longer.
To be honest, I didn't expect to succeed at generating any kind of discussion about this. Most people, perhaps predictably, responded with a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "Yes, you're just audience, so shut up!" Finding that there were people who agreed with me was quite gratifying. Finding that there were people who disagreed and wanted to discuss it, however, took me completely -- and pleasantly -- by surprise.
I don't blog much. To quote Snoopy, "there's no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don't really have anything to say" and I usually don't have much to say that other people haven't already said more eloquently or elegantly. To find myself blogging for the second time in one week is a new experience. I'd like to thank all the people who took their time to comment and to converse with me in various forums: thanks for inspiring me to write more.
Enough of meta-blogging. Let's get to the meat of the discussion: over the past two days, I've seen a few valid and interesting counter-arguments to my claim that players aren't merely an audience any more. I'd like to address those arguments here. (By the way, if you haven't finished Mass Effect 3 and don't want spoilers, be careful when following links from here.)
Let's start with the one that's easiest to refute and take it from there.
No, it's not. I agree completely. Maybe some day, playing certain kinds of games will become an art form, but right now, playing games is definitely not art.
Thing is, I never claimed it was. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the day when there are games that allow players to use them as a medium for their artistic expression. But for now, what I claim is that playing games -- at least some games -- is an act of creativity. I also claim that players, by playing the game, complete the creative process the game developers initiated.
Although not as strong as "playing games is art", this claim still sounds weird. The reasoning that rejects this claim tends to fall into two categories. The first centers on:
Arguments in this category reject players' participation in the creative process because said players are restricted to a finite and rather limited set of options, rigidly established in computer code by game developers. As Michael Rohde neatly put it:
To put it differently, if you're given a small set of Lego pieces, you can still put them together in a unique, creative way. In case of Mass Effect games, the sheer combinatory explosion of possible choices to take in the game is at least comparable to a box of Legos. Even though those choices converge on an extremely small set of final outcomes, the act of making those choices deliberately is no less creative.
That's the second problem with this argument: by focusing only on the creative aspect of the game's fixed assets, such as the story or the cinematics, it misses the fact that these assets themselves serve as a vehicle for players' creative expression. What each player in Mass Effect 3 creates is the character of Shepard and his or her arc. Aleksander Adamkiewicz expressed this nicely in his comment on a related Gamasutra article:
Still, even this might not be enough to accept the players as creative agents. There's still one more category of counter-arguments to tackle:
My son's fifth birthday was in February, when most of his friends are out of town on vacation, so we threw a party for them last Saturday. This year, the main attraction was a magician. At one point, he invited my son on stage to "grant him magical powers", so he can "assist" the magician.
Asking for a volunteer in the audience and inviting him or her to participate is a standard part of a good magician's repertoire. However, this act of participation does not turn the audience member into anything more than audience. Their participation does not promote them to the status of the magician.
Why, then, do I argue that the act of playing a videogame can promote a player into a creator?
The crucial difference is in the intent. The magician doesn't intend to truly empower you, while a good game designer strives to do precisely that. Game developers have been acknowledging the players' desire for creative expression for years. One small example is Burnout Revenge, a game whose Xbox 360 version turned six years this month. A notable addition in the Xbox 360 edition of Burnout Revenge is the Burnout Clips feature, which allows you to create video clips of your offline races and share them with other players.
A much more important example is Little Big Planet, along with its sequel. The sequel, in particular, is the best example of a game whose sole reason for existence is to allow players to create their own content. Its single player campaign, unlike the one from the first game, is primarily a showcase for the new game mechanics you can use in your own levels.
And let's not forget other, much older "build your own stuff" games, such as Sim City. Sid Meier took this idea and turned it into an art form, if you'll pardon my choice of words, with his Civilization games.
Okay, I'm digressing and I'm sure you get the point. Let's get back to the game that sparked this whole discussion.
Was there intent to empower in Mass Effect? I would say that if there wasn't, BioWare is the luckiest company on the Earth. That kind of repeated serendipity is difficult to believe in.
Yes, I dare say that Mass Effect was deliberately designed to empower the players to build their own Shepard character in their heads.
Is this an act of creativity? I believe it is. If you see a reason why it shouldn't be considered as such, feel free to drop me a comment.
More importantly, has this creativity been deliberately encouraged by BioWare? I don't see any room for doubt here.
Incidentally, this is precisely why so many players are so upset about the ending. Like I already said in my previous post, the ending completely invalidates the players' choices. Yes, we're all used to our choices finally converging on a small set of endings, as in the previous two installments. However, for various reasons (which I won't reveal in order to avoid spoilers) the ending(s) in Mass Effect 3 are different: players' choices, instead of converging, are simply discarded and ignored.
People who have children are very well acquainted with one amusing fact about creativity: the vast majority of little kids completely suck at drawing. That's perfectly normal for their age, though, so we ignore that fact and we praise them for their creativity and stick their doodles on the fridge door or on our cubicle wall. It's not because they're great works of art. It's because they matter to us, because our own children drew them.
Similarly, most of players' creations in games that encourage creativity are, well, the digital equivalent of a five-year-old's "crayon art". It's up to game developers to define their stance towards our creations.
Am I wrong to believe that they should try to be like proud parents, indulgent and encouraging? Only time will tell. In the mean time, let me know what you think.
To be honest, I didn't expect to succeed at generating any kind of discussion about this. Most people, perhaps predictably, responded with a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "Yes, you're just audience, so shut up!" Finding that there were people who agreed with me was quite gratifying. Finding that there were people who disagreed and wanted to discuss it, however, took me completely -- and pleasantly -- by surprise.
I don't blog much. To quote Snoopy, "there's no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don't really have anything to say" and I usually don't have much to say that other people haven't already said more eloquently or elegantly. To find myself blogging for the second time in one week is a new experience. I'd like to thank all the people who took their time to comment and to converse with me in various forums: thanks for inspiring me to write more.
Enough of meta-blogging. Let's get to the meat of the discussion: over the past two days, I've seen a few valid and interesting counter-arguments to my claim that players aren't merely an audience any more. I'd like to address those arguments here. (By the way, if you haven't finished Mass Effect 3 and don't want spoilers, be careful when following links from here.)
Let's start with the one that's easiest to refute and take it from there.
Playing Games is Not Art
No, it's not. I agree completely. Maybe some day, playing certain kinds of games will become an art form, but right now, playing games is definitely not art.
Thing is, I never claimed it was. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the day when there are games that allow players to use them as a medium for their artistic expression. But for now, what I claim is that playing games -- at least some games -- is an act of creativity. I also claim that players, by playing the game, complete the creative process the game developers initiated.
Although not as strong as "playing games is art", this claim still sounds weird. The reasoning that rejects this claim tends to fall into two categories. The first centers on:
Finite, Limited Universe of Expression
Arguments in this category reject players' participation in the creative process because said players are restricted to a finite and rather limited set of options, rigidly established in computer code by game developers. As Michael Rohde neatly put it:
[...] you are playing code, you are not helping write the story line, you do not have the ability to write unique aspects of the game. You are navigating a trail with finite endings.The problem with this argument is that it's ultimately quantitative in nature. Just because English language has a finite number of ways of putting its words together in non-gibberish ways, doesn't meant that writing a sonnet -- a rigidly defined and limited form in itself -- is not a creative act. We have Shakespeare to back that one up.
To put it differently, if you're given a small set of Lego pieces, you can still put them together in a unique, creative way. In case of Mass Effect games, the sheer combinatory explosion of possible choices to take in the game is at least comparable to a box of Legos. Even though those choices converge on an extremely small set of final outcomes, the act of making those choices deliberately is no less creative.
That's the second problem with this argument: by focusing only on the creative aspect of the game's fixed assets, such as the story or the cinematics, it misses the fact that these assets themselves serve as a vehicle for players' creative expression. What each player in Mass Effect 3 creates is the character of Shepard and his or her arc. Aleksander Adamkiewicz expressed this nicely in his comment on a related Gamasutra article:
[...] I always thought Shepard was an empty vessel for the player to fill with their interpretation. [...] I never found that Shep undergoes any character development in the narrative of the game, yes he underwent a development -in my head- but not in the game itself.That is precisely the allure of Mass Effect series, the characteristic that sets it apart from so many other adventures and RPGs. I posit that almost all players go through this "Shepard-development in their heads". Some do it more consciously, more deliberately than others, but everyone who's playing the game for more than "shooting stuff" does it.
Still, even this might not be enough to accept the players as creative agents. There's still one more category of counter-arguments to tackle:
The Question of Intent
My son's fifth birthday was in February, when most of his friends are out of town on vacation, so we threw a party for them last Saturday. This year, the main attraction was a magician. At one point, he invited my son on stage to "grant him magical powers", so he can "assist" the magician.
Asking for a volunteer in the audience and inviting him or her to participate is a standard part of a good magician's repertoire. However, this act of participation does not turn the audience member into anything more than audience. Their participation does not promote them to the status of the magician.
Why, then, do I argue that the act of playing a videogame can promote a player into a creator?
The crucial difference is in the intent. The magician doesn't intend to truly empower you, while a good game designer strives to do precisely that. Game developers have been acknowledging the players' desire for creative expression for years. One small example is Burnout Revenge, a game whose Xbox 360 version turned six years this month. A notable addition in the Xbox 360 edition of Burnout Revenge is the Burnout Clips feature, which allows you to create video clips of your offline races and share them with other players.
A much more important example is Little Big Planet, along with its sequel. The sequel, in particular, is the best example of a game whose sole reason for existence is to allow players to create their own content. Its single player campaign, unlike the one from the first game, is primarily a showcase for the new game mechanics you can use in your own levels.
And let's not forget other, much older "build your own stuff" games, such as Sim City. Sid Meier took this idea and turned it into an art form, if you'll pardon my choice of words, with his Civilization games.
Okay, I'm digressing and I'm sure you get the point. Let's get back to the game that sparked this whole discussion.
Was there intent to empower in Mass Effect? I would say that if there wasn't, BioWare is the luckiest company on the Earth. That kind of repeated serendipity is difficult to believe in.
Yes, I dare say that Mass Effect was deliberately designed to empower the players to build their own Shepard character in their heads.
Is this an act of creativity? I believe it is. If you see a reason why it shouldn't be considered as such, feel free to drop me a comment.
More importantly, has this creativity been deliberately encouraged by BioWare? I don't see any room for doubt here.
Incidentally, this is precisely why so many players are so upset about the ending. Like I already said in my previous post, the ending completely invalidates the players' choices. Yes, we're all used to our choices finally converging on a small set of endings, as in the previous two installments. However, for various reasons (which I won't reveal in order to avoid spoilers) the ending(s) in Mass Effect 3 are different: players' choices, instead of converging, are simply discarded and ignored.
Does Any of This Matter At All?
People who have children are very well acquainted with one amusing fact about creativity: the vast majority of little kids completely suck at drawing. That's perfectly normal for their age, though, so we ignore that fact and we praise them for their creativity and stick their doodles on the fridge door or on our cubicle wall. It's not because they're great works of art. It's because they matter to us, because our own children drew them.
Similarly, most of players' creations in games that encourage creativity are, well, the digital equivalent of a five-year-old's "crayon art". It's up to game developers to define their stance towards our creations.
Am I wrong to believe that they should try to be like proud parents, indulgent and encouraging? Only time will tell. In the mean time, let me know what you think.
Labels:
creative process,
creativity,
game design,
games,
mass effect
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Are Players Just Audience?
Part 1: Sisyphus
Over the last weekend, I finished my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3. For the moment, it looks like it will be the only one. My immediate reaction was that of vague disappointment. I felt dissatisfied, but I couldn't put my finger on why. It took me a bit of introspection to come to the same conclusion I later saw in countless blog posts, tweets and articles: the ending completely invalidated all the effort I had put into the game.
All those hours of chosing my answers carefully, pondering what I would do if I had to face a situation like the one Shepard was facing, wondering whether I was being consistent and, in general, carefully crafting a character and learning more about myself in the process -- all that effort was for nothing. The game gave me three options, all of them cataclysmic and none of them even remotely satisfying. Under my guidance, Shepard had achieved what no sentient life form had ever achieved before, but it didn't matter, the choices were still the same. One of those choices went completely against every major decision I have ever made, since Mass Effect 1, but that didn't matter, the choices were still the same. And after I took one that looked the least unpleasant, I was treated to a cinematic that opened new questions while providing no answers whatsoever and left with no closure and a bad taste in my mouth.
Later, I sat down to read about other people's reactions. A small part of me still wishes I hadn't done that. Up until then, my misery was based only on my own experience. And then I read about other endings. Nominally, there are sixteen of them. In reality, it's 90% the same ending, with variations in small details. In other words, it wasn't merely something I had done in this playthrough. No matter what I did, no matter how many times I played the game again and again, I would never get a significantly different ending.
They say that misery loves company and it turned out to be true in the end. While finding out about other endings made things worse, I was strangely comforted by the fact that I wasn't alone and that other fans were speaking up about this and voicing their -- or rather, our -- outrage. Further reading brought small glimmers of hope: official Bioware responses could be interpreted in a way that left open the possibility of changing the ending.
I wasn't going to write about any of this. Others have done that more eloquently and I've never acquired the taste for shouting "me too" in the crowd. What changed my mind was Ken Levine's reaction. And then Ben Dutka over at PSX Extreme took it to another level. And suddenly I couldn't stay silent anymore.
This argument wasn't unexpected. On the contrary, it's a fairly standard line of defense and usually it's completely valid in certain aspects. Usually, but not anymore. Videogames have changed that and people like Ken Levine and Ben Dutka are either not aware of it or don't want to accept it.
Before I get to what has changed, however, I'd like to go over the things that haven't. It's not just my flair for dramatic. I want to clear the air first. As a geek, I have a natural distaste for bullshit in all its forms and I want to make certain things clear to both my readers and the people out there who are making their righteous statements about artistic integrity.
Ben Dutka is right, up to a point: we don't have the right to walk up to an artist and demand from them to change their work. Or rather, we don't have the right to have that work changed just because we demanded it; whether we demand it or not is merely a question of etiquette, not of rights. We have not been granted any intellectual ownership rights by purchasing the work of art or anything of the kind. We've been granted the right to experience that work of art. Whether we enjoy it or not is immaterial.
The problem with that attitude is that people use it to hide from the rest of the ugly truth: art has never been able to stand completely on its own. It's not just an independent fact, an axiom. It's the product of a process in which there are several crucial roles. If we don't acknowledge this, we're simply not being honest.
Part 2: Apollo
A work of art needs an Artist to make it and an Audience to appreciate it. Otherwise, it's simply a tree that fell in the forest with nobody to see or hear its fall. The cold, hard, ugly truth is that the Artist needs a Patron. Either that or a Day Job, but we'll get to that in a moment. The point is that the Artist, like any other human being, needs to earn a living.
Patrons used to be reasonably wealthy people who would commission Artists for specific projects, e.g. "Paint my wife, dude, I need something to hang in my new home!" Over the time, the business model shifted. The patronage became crowdsourced and the Middlemen stepped on the stage. Nowadays, the Artist will typically go to a bunch of Middlemen for help with any and all of the following: getting the means to create a work of art, gathering an Audience for a work of art, putting the Artist together with other Artists to collaborate on a work of art and, ultimately, getting paid for a work of art.
The rise of Middlemen wasn't the only consequence of patronage being crowdsourced. Art and entertainment started overlapping a lot more than before. The Audience demands what Kurt Cobain sang: "Here we are now, entertain us!" You want the patronage? Deliver!
Like it or not, but the fact remains that the most famous modern Art is inextricably entangled with Entertainment and Business. Sure, you can still adamantly refuse to compromise your artistic integrity. If you're very, very good, you might be able to get away with it. If not, you still have a perfectly valid option of practicing your art as a hobby. The stereotypical image of "Starving Artist" comes from people who refuse to accept this reality and try to be professional artists without an impressive track record and with rigid artistic integrity.
Ben Dutka can lament this reality as much as he wants. He can warn us that it leads to Art degenerating into "some hideous, mutated, mass-generated assembly of likely sophomoric compromises". Guess what? We've already arrived there. That place is called Hollywood. The last Hollywood movie I myself have seen that stuck out as memorable work of art was "Inception" and even that was watered-down art.
Do I want videogames to degenerate into Hollywood-like decadence? Hell, no! Things are bad as they are: just look at Assassin's Creed and how it's getting stretched beyond recognition, worse than the "Wheel of Time" used to be before Brandon Sanderson took over. No, thanks. I'm all for artistic integrity. But let's not pretend that things are not the way they are.
And, by all means, let's not allow the defense of artistic integrity to become the reason for the Middlemen to further crush it and suppress it. Get it in your heads, Artists, those Middlemen have the power to crush your integrity and they will not hesitate to use it, because that's how they make their living.
Mass Effect 3 has the potential to become the textbook argument for publishers to impose their will on artists: "Yeah, we let you guys do your artsy-fartsy stuff in Mass Effect 3 and look how that turned out. Look at this sales chart. Look at it, damn you!"
I'm sorry you're sad, Ken Levine, but you're also wrong. Leonardo da Vinci was told to paint the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. He could have decided to paint the lake behind her, instead, but he didn't. He did the work he was hired to do. Was he "disappointed in the emotional feeling" he got because he "didn't really create it"? I guess we can't find out because he's not around to give us an interview, but I look at La Gioconda's smile and I doubt it.
Part 3: Orpheus
None of that, however, was my main point. All of the preceding discussion applies to the traditional artistic media. The videogames have changed the equation and that's really the bone I want to pick with Ben Dutka.
I think the fact that video games are interactive, and the fact that gamers have more control than ever (customization, user-creativity, etc.) has confused things but the fact remains, a story is a story. It's art, regardless of the medium.I take issue with that claim. It's the same logic that RIAA and MPAA use in their claims and in their fight for SOPA and PIPA: "Nothing has changed." Everything has changed, Ben, and it's time to face it.
You cannot be a game designer without learning one important lesson: you are not telling a story, you are helping your players create their own stories. One of my most favorite books on my non-fiction bookshelf is "Game Architecture and Design", by Andrew Rollings and David Morris. I still remember the sense of wonder and realization when I read the following words:
Even puzzle games like Tetris in one sense tell a story and are thus "dramatic" to an extent.Reading those words, I flashed back on all the times my buddy and I would get together and excitedly discuss the game of Descent II we just played over the modem; I remembered the Elven Runes website where people would post their logs after an exciting session of MUME. The image these words painted in my mind was surprisingly vivid: a bunch of people gathered around a fire at night, swapping stories. For a guy who has never had an actual campfire experience, that image was most alluring and the realization that this experience is, in a sense, what videogames bring to countless players around the world was... mindblowing, to put it mildly.
Just what role does your story play in the game you create? That's not a new debate. Just ask Ernest Adams what he thinks about it. Still not convinced? Digital Worlds has a post about the whole debate.
Here's the bottom line: we, the players, participate in the creative process and our participation is crucial because it's the final step. The players complete the creative process.
And that, Ben, is what gives us the right that no other audience had before: the right to demand that our role in the storytelling and creative process be honored and respected.
Do I have a legal right to demand a satisfying ending for Mass Effect 3? I don't think so, although at least one person disagrees with me.
Do I have a moral right? I believe I do. I paid BioWare and EA what I owed them. But whether they like it or not, they owe me, too.
Yes, Ben, I want to set a precedent, no matter how dangerous you think it is. I want BioWare to recognize the fact that their audience is not just an audience anymore: we're minor artists ourselves. We're storytellers. We watch the tree fall in the forest and then we go and build our houses from it.
To people like Casey Hudson and Paul Barnett, these creations might not be as important as their own artistic integrity. But the least they and the rest of BioWare could do is not tear them down.
So what'll it be, guys? What kind of designers are you?
Labels:
creative process,
creativity,
game design,
games,
mass effect
Thursday, July 24, 2008
"Encryption Chip" Will Not End Piracy
Nolan Bushnell is full of it. There, I finally got that off my chest. It's arguably acerbic and rather rude, but it needed to be said. You have no idea how hard I've tried to avoid saying it. After all, he's the founder of Atari and a historical figure unto his own. He deserves certain respect for that.
The first time Nolan Bushnell claimed that the "encryption chip" will end piracy, I exercised due restraint. His statement reverberated all over the Internet, causing reactions that ranged from mild skepticism on one end of the spectrum to derision and disgust on the other.
So why am I writing now, more than two months later, if nobody believed him in the first place? In other words, why am I beating a dead horse? Partly, it's because he did it again and it pisses me off. Mostly, though, it's because I'm rather interested in copy protections and security; it's sort of a hobby of mine.
The most important lessons you learn in those two fields is that no protection is perfect and every solution spawns a new class of problems. This means that there will never be one final (technical) solution to the issue of piracy; there is no silver bullet. The experts from both fields are locked in an arms race with their adversaries. Once you've learned that, you'll have no problem recognizing that Nolan Bushnell is really just flogging his merch.
However, the issue runs deeper than that.
Copy Protection and Security
When I referred to copy protections and security I said "two fields", even though one can be considered a subset of the other; after all, copy protections are supposed to prevent the unauthorized use of software. Even though this is technically true, there are some drastic differences between the two.
An important difference is the level of cooperation from the users. When it comes to information security, the users actively cooperate with the protection systems, because it's in their best interest. You don't give access to your bank account to all your friends, do you?
On the other hand, copy protections often clash with the users' interests. Some of these interests are illegal, such as downloading a commercial game for free. But other interests are quite legal and legitimate. You added more memory to your computer? Odds are you might have to reactivate your Windows.
Another important difference is that a copy protection has to protect an application that lives on the user's computer. Unless we're talking about an MMOG, there's no server counterpart that executes a critical piece of code, without which the game can't work.
When you put those two things together, it becomes obvious why you can't make a perfect copy protection: you're relying on cooperation from a user that has complete control over his copy of your content or software. If that user doesn't want to cooperate, the best you can do is delay him. Even unbreakable ciphers won't help you, because sooner or later you'll have to decrypt the content and, when you do, the user will nab it.
But what if you could alter these conditions? You could make sure that there's a critical part of an application that executes somewhere where the user doesn't have control over it: that's what MMOGs do. The other option is to take away the control from the user.
Trust Controversy
Enter the "trusted computing". The first time I heard of it was back when Microsoft was touting Palladium. Back then, it sounded like a bad pun: a company found guilty in an antitrust lawsuit is proposing to build a "trusted computing platform" for its users. The irony was not lost on anyone and it provoked some enlightening responses from security experts.
Then, since nothing really seemed to happen and we didn't all suddenly wake up in some digital equivalent of 1984, I lost track of this topic for a while. I forgot about it until Nolan Bushnell started his TPM hype. A quick search engine query revealed that TPM stands for "Trusted Platform Module" and that it's the central component of "trusted computing".
What, then, is the so-called "trusted computing"? It's a technology that encompasses the following concepts:
So, the core idea is to make computers more secure, by ensuring that no "untrusted" code has access to your stuff. At least, that's supposed to be the core idea. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of confusion about the word "trust" in "trusted computing". Specifically, who is supposed to trust whom?
If you read Bruce Schneier's essay on "trusted computing", you'll notice that there's a good deal of controversy and confusion surrounding the issue. As one commenter so aptly put it, the only one not trusted seems to be the owner of the computer.
All Your Base
Each of the five concepts of "trusted computing" addresses a real security problem:
Another interesting aspect of "trusted computing" is that it actually raises the stakes when it comes to information security: imagine a worm that successfully exploits a bug in the supposedly secure OS code to install a "trusted" rootkit? Talk about irony.
Pirates vs. Ninjas
Getting back to the original topic, does this mean that Nolan Bushnell is right? Is his "stealth encryption chip" really going to send all the pirates to the Davy Jones's Locker? Not by a long shot! Remember, if the software in question does not have some critical code running on some computer under control of some "authority", you can eventually break its copy protection.
When it comes to policy enforcement, the most important part of the "trusted computing" is the remote attestation. This is the way to ensure you won't tamper with the policy enforcement code. Incidentally, it requires you to be online. Now back up a couple of months and remember what happened when BioWare tried to pull that trick on its players.
If you believe that pirates can't hide behind this forever, think again. There are numerous valid reasons to resist the attempts to introduce an artificial dependency on Internet connection into software and all those reasons boil down to one: the connection is not always available, yet the artificial nature of the dependency means that the software doesn't actually need it to work properly.
Besides, people are not yet convinced that "trusted computing" will actually make things better. Plus, there are all sorts of concerns about privacy and also about practicality of the whole approach. Still, the Trusted Computing Group has been formed, the commercial motivation is there and "trusted computing" will keep rolling, until all doubts and concerns have been dealt with, one way or another.
What, then, is the worst blow "trusted computing" could deal to pirates? Indulge me a bit, as I let my imagination run wild and explore a "what-if" future.
Crack Dealers
Back when I was a little kid, learning what makes the cute, little Spectrum 48 tick, pirates were selling games on audio tapes. Today, pirated games are free. They are cracked for free, by enthusiasts; they are uploaded for free, on sites that survive on advertising or donations; and they are downloaded for free. I can still see some pirates in the streets, selling CDs and DVDs, but I'm sure they won't be buying any Ferraris with that money.
Fast forward to the time when "trusted computing" is in its full swing. To crack protections, pirates need very specialized software, maybe even some hardware, and a lot more effort than before. More than ever, piracy is something that only the select few can do.
However, it is also more lucrative than ever. As the usage policies are enforced more rigorously, the multitudes who used to obtain their entertainment for free now have to go and buy it. The big companies take advantage of that and the prices are even higher than before. You can buy an overpriced game directly from its publisher; or you can take a chance and go buy yourself a pirated copy from a local "software crack dealer". It's illegal, sure, but it's a lot cheaper and you can afford to buy a lot more.
Suddenly, pirates are not your everyday enthusiasts anymore; instead, they're rich criminals. They have bodyguards with guns. They have shady lawyers. They have money laundering enterprises and fake fronts and lots of connections. They know powerful people. In your efforts to eradicate a problem, you managed to make it mutate into something worse.
If this seems improbable and exaggerated, that's okay: I don't believe it's likely to happen. My point is that you should always be on the lookout for unintended consequences. It would be nice if, just for once, we asked ourselves where we're going before we get there.
The first time Nolan Bushnell claimed that the "encryption chip" will end piracy, I exercised due restraint. His statement reverberated all over the Internet, causing reactions that ranged from mild skepticism on one end of the spectrum to derision and disgust on the other.
So why am I writing now, more than two months later, if nobody believed him in the first place? In other words, why am I beating a dead horse? Partly, it's because he did it again and it pisses me off. Mostly, though, it's because I'm rather interested in copy protections and security; it's sort of a hobby of mine.
The most important lessons you learn in those two fields is that no protection is perfect and every solution spawns a new class of problems. This means that there will never be one final (technical) solution to the issue of piracy; there is no silver bullet. The experts from both fields are locked in an arms race with their adversaries. Once you've learned that, you'll have no problem recognizing that Nolan Bushnell is really just flogging his merch.
However, the issue runs deeper than that.
Copy Protection and Security
When I referred to copy protections and security I said "two fields", even though one can be considered a subset of the other; after all, copy protections are supposed to prevent the unauthorized use of software. Even though this is technically true, there are some drastic differences between the two.
An important difference is the level of cooperation from the users. When it comes to information security, the users actively cooperate with the protection systems, because it's in their best interest. You don't give access to your bank account to all your friends, do you?
On the other hand, copy protections often clash with the users' interests. Some of these interests are illegal, such as downloading a commercial game for free. But other interests are quite legal and legitimate. You added more memory to your computer? Odds are you might have to reactivate your Windows.
Another important difference is that a copy protection has to protect an application that lives on the user's computer. Unless we're talking about an MMOG, there's no server counterpart that executes a critical piece of code, without which the game can't work.
When you put those two things together, it becomes obvious why you can't make a perfect copy protection: you're relying on cooperation from a user that has complete control over his copy of your content or software. If that user doesn't want to cooperate, the best you can do is delay him. Even unbreakable ciphers won't help you, because sooner or later you'll have to decrypt the content and, when you do, the user will nab it.
But what if you could alter these conditions? You could make sure that there's a critical part of an application that executes somewhere where the user doesn't have control over it: that's what MMOGs do. The other option is to take away the control from the user.
Trust Controversy
Enter the "trusted computing". The first time I heard of it was back when Microsoft was touting Palladium. Back then, it sounded like a bad pun: a company found guilty in an antitrust lawsuit is proposing to build a "trusted computing platform" for its users. The irony was not lost on anyone and it provoked some enlightening responses from security experts.
Then, since nothing really seemed to happen and we didn't all suddenly wake up in some digital equivalent of 1984, I lost track of this topic for a while. I forgot about it until Nolan Bushnell started his TPM hype. A quick search engine query revealed that TPM stands for "Trusted Platform Module" and that it's the central component of "trusted computing".
What, then, is the so-called "trusted computing"? It's a technology that encompasses the following concepts:
- Endorsement key is a cryptographic key pair unique to one computer. The chief use for it is to prove the computer's identity.
- Secure I/O makes sure that the communication between the user and their software is secure and cannot be intercepted or altered.
- Memory curtaining protects those parts of memory that contain sensitive data (such as cryptographic keys) from unauthorized access, even by the operating system itself.
- Sealed storage binds data to the specific platform -- both hardware and software -- so that you cannot access it from any other platform.
- Remote attestation allows authorized parties to detect changes to the platform configuration in order to make sure that they meet the expected parameters; in other words, to prove that nobody tampered with the platform.
So, the core idea is to make computers more secure, by ensuring that no "untrusted" code has access to your stuff. At least, that's supposed to be the core idea. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of confusion about the word "trust" in "trusted computing". Specifically, who is supposed to trust whom?
If you read Bruce Schneier's essay on "trusted computing", you'll notice that there's a good deal of controversy and confusion surrounding the issue. As one commenter so aptly put it, the only one not trusted seems to be the owner of the computer.
All Your Base
Each of the five concepts of "trusted computing" addresses a real security problem:
- Endorsement keys would be used to mitigate spoofing concerns in secure transactions by establishing the identity of each party involved.
- Secure I/O is supposed to avoid security breaches through techniques such as keylogging.
- Memory curtaining would make sure that sensitive information, such as cryptographic keys, is not allowed to "leak" somewhere where it could be extracted by malicious parties.
- Sealed storage would do a similar thing for sensitive information in non-volatile storage.
- Remote attestation could help network administrators easily detect intrusions and attacks on their machines.
- It would use sealed storage to bind that data to a particular application or set of applications that you're allowed to use on that data.
- It would employ memory curtaining to make sure you cannot extract that data directly from memory.
- It would use secure I/O to make sure you cannot intercept it on its way somewhere else.
- It would use remote attestation to report if you tamper with any part of the system.
- And it would clearly identify you as a "culprit" to whoever is interested in enforcing those policies, if it possessed both your personal information and your endorsement key.
Another interesting aspect of "trusted computing" is that it actually raises the stakes when it comes to information security: imagine a worm that successfully exploits a bug in the supposedly secure OS code to install a "trusted" rootkit? Talk about irony.
Pirates vs. Ninjas
Getting back to the original topic, does this mean that Nolan Bushnell is right? Is his "stealth encryption chip" really going to send all the pirates to the Davy Jones's Locker? Not by a long shot! Remember, if the software in question does not have some critical code running on some computer under control of some "authority", you can eventually break its copy protection.
When it comes to policy enforcement, the most important part of the "trusted computing" is the remote attestation. This is the way to ensure you won't tamper with the policy enforcement code. Incidentally, it requires you to be online. Now back up a couple of months and remember what happened when BioWare tried to pull that trick on its players.
If you believe that pirates can't hide behind this forever, think again. There are numerous valid reasons to resist the attempts to introduce an artificial dependency on Internet connection into software and all those reasons boil down to one: the connection is not always available, yet the artificial nature of the dependency means that the software doesn't actually need it to work properly.
Besides, people are not yet convinced that "trusted computing" will actually make things better. Plus, there are all sorts of concerns about privacy and also about practicality of the whole approach. Still, the Trusted Computing Group has been formed, the commercial motivation is there and "trusted computing" will keep rolling, until all doubts and concerns have been dealt with, one way or another.
What, then, is the worst blow "trusted computing" could deal to pirates? Indulge me a bit, as I let my imagination run wild and explore a "what-if" future.
Crack Dealers
Back when I was a little kid, learning what makes the cute, little Spectrum 48 tick, pirates were selling games on audio tapes. Today, pirated games are free. They are cracked for free, by enthusiasts; they are uploaded for free, on sites that survive on advertising or donations; and they are downloaded for free. I can still see some pirates in the streets, selling CDs and DVDs, but I'm sure they won't be buying any Ferraris with that money.
Fast forward to the time when "trusted computing" is in its full swing. To crack protections, pirates need very specialized software, maybe even some hardware, and a lot more effort than before. More than ever, piracy is something that only the select few can do.
However, it is also more lucrative than ever. As the usage policies are enforced more rigorously, the multitudes who used to obtain their entertainment for free now have to go and buy it. The big companies take advantage of that and the prices are even higher than before. You can buy an overpriced game directly from its publisher; or you can take a chance and go buy yourself a pirated copy from a local "software crack dealer". It's illegal, sure, but it's a lot cheaper and you can afford to buy a lot more.
Suddenly, pirates are not your everyday enthusiasts anymore; instead, they're rich criminals. They have bodyguards with guns. They have shady lawyers. They have money laundering enterprises and fake fronts and lots of connections. They know powerful people. In your efforts to eradicate a problem, you managed to make it mutate into something worse.
If this seems improbable and exaggerated, that's okay: I don't believe it's likely to happen. My point is that you should always be on the lookout for unintended consequences. It would be nice if, just for once, we asked ourselves where we're going before we get there.
Labels:
games,
hype,
piracy,
tpm,
trusted computing
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Piracy is Here to Stay
"With great power comes great responsibility." Wise words, Uncle Ben, but someone at BioWare wasn't listening. For those who hate following links, the short version of the story is that BioWare was going to implement draconian anti-piracy measures in Mass Effect and Spore for PC. In the end, they won't be doing it, but it wasn't for the lack of trying. Indeed, I tend to agree with Penny Arcade when it comes to predicting the next step in the war on piracy, a war that has a long history of going overboard.
What's interesting is the widespread reaction among the gamers:
So what is it that makes us perceive and react to piracy in such a different way? Let's take a look at some of the factors involved. Be warned, though: there's no magical happy ending to this story. Whether the hero defeats the villain and gets the girl remains to be seen.
Thou Shalt Not
Back where I originally come from, some 15 years ago, shops didn't have any shoplifting prevention mechanisms besides humans and, if the shop was large enough, mirrors. We all knew shoplifting was wrong, that it was stealing, that it was crime. We also knew that getting caught would have serious repercussions. Yet there were kids who did it. Not out of necessity, either. They did it for fun. It was challenging. It was a game.
Where am I going with this? There are several points I'm trying to make here. First of all, crime has a lot to do with perception. Sure, there's law, with its letter and its spirit and a bunch of lawyers and politicians to play with it. If you break the law, you're a criminal and that should be it. And yet, none of those kids saw themselves as criminals.
Second, it's in people's nature to do as they wish and rules be damned. You can try to educate them, to impress upon them that such behavior is wrong, but there will still be those who will do it and for a variety of reasons, too.
It might sound like I'm trying to justify piracy, theft and crime in general. I'm not. I'm trying to point out that they will always exist and that reasons for it are not as monolithical as we would like to believe. After all, it would be a lot simpler if people committed crimes because they're evil, but the world doesn't work that way. And if we want to do something about a problem, we have to understand the cause.
Can't Touch This
Every time I rent a DVD, I have to watch one of the MPAA's anti-piracy videos. There's no way to skip it, of course, so each time I'm freshly reminded of the first and foremost difference between stealing and piracy: intangibility. In order to steal a car, a handbag, a television or a DVD, just like in the video, you have to reach out and grab something tangible. There might be a lot of objects like that one, but there is only one of that particular object and it's not yours. Taking possession of it is clearly identifiable as a crime.
Things are not as intuitive with music, movies and software. Sure, if someone invites me to their house to watch a DVD with them, it's not a crime. They're sharing their property with me of their own will. If they offer to give me a lift in their car, it's the same sort of thing. But you can't copy a car like you can a song, can you? You can't parody a car, either, or quote it.
Intellectual property is a complicated and muddled concept and requires an equaly complicated and muddled definition of fair use. With the massification of the digital content and media, things got even more complicated and muddled, which brings us to the chaos we're living nowadays.
And chaos it is. How else would you call it when in one corner you have people who demand that all the digital content be free, as in free beer, and in the other corner you have giants like RIAA suing random individuals?
The Age of Middlemen
So far we've looked at some of the factors causing the piracy. But what about the effects of it? Organizations like MPAA and RIAA are claiming that they are losing money. Publishers like EA are complaining about the same thing.
Let's get one thing clear from the start: developers need game sales to survive. They develop games for living and their money comes from sales, just like your money comes from the job you're doing. There is no doubt that if you install and play their game on your computer without buying it, you're using the products of their work without them receiving your money for it.
Notice, however, that I haven't mentioned publishers in previous paragraph. What does RIAA stand for? Recording Industry Association of America. The keyword here is "recording". The people RIAA represent are those who make money by selling sound recordings of music. That used to be very straightforward: they used to sell records.
Vinyl records are a bitch to duplicate. As long as they were the medium for sound reproduction, the recording industry could control the music industry by controlling the medium itself. The advent of magnetic tapes brought the first crisis. The big guys freaked out, tried to defend their territory and lost. That was the major turning point in the history of copyright.
Evolution
Notice how MPAA is making a lot less fuss than RIAA? You know why? Their industry kept evolving. Sure, nowadays you can watch DVDs on your HDTV in your home-theater, but nothing beats seeing the very first screening of the long-awaited movie in your theater of choice. Besides, everyone and their grandmother will have seen the movie before it comes out on a DVD.
The first important factor here is that movie industry still has a meaningful experience to offer to their customers, beyond merely distributing the medium on which the content is stored. The second important factor is that there's ample segmentation. You can choose how much you care about a movie: will you go to a theater or buy a DVD? Or you might rent it before deciding whether to buy it. Or you might just wait for it to come out on cable. Plenty of options out there.
RIAA, on the other hand, got stuck. They just sat there while their golden goose spread its wings and flied away. Well, they didn't just sit. They kicked and screamed and made a hell of a fuss. They're still doing it, in fact. But they failed to adapt and are paying the price for it.
It's something I realized when I went to a Dream Theater concert in March this year. These guys didn't only play their instruments and sing their songs. No, they staged such an impressive multimedia spectacle, that I didn't even mind the fact that they didn't play most of my favorite songs. After a show like that, which in itself must have made them a pretty penny, they could've sold me their newest album without needing the middleman at all.
Or could they?
Eye of the Beholder
Piracy, like I said, has a lot to do with perception. You can call it culture or mindset or education, but the fact is that I don't know many people here in Chile who buy their music. If you look at it from their point of view, the reasoning is simple: why should they? It's out there on the Internet, for free. We all use MP3 players these days, so why should anyone pay for an overpriced lump of plastic that later you have to insert in a drive and rip and transfer to your player before you can listen to it comfortably?
Musicians, that's why. People who make that music need the money. Then again, the record industry screwed things up on that front too. The public perceives them as people who take huge cuts of profits and exploit the authors. It doesn't make piracy right, but it makes it justifiable in people's eyes. We come again to perception.
And perception is a lot bigger problem than most of us would like to admit. Could Dream Theater really have sold us their music directly, without going through the recording industry? Why would we buy it, when we're so accustomed to getting our music for free?
Detox: Rehab or Jail?
A habit is formed. How do we break it? MPAA seems to think the answer lies in the propaganda. The effects remain to be seen, but I personally doubt it will have any significant effect. RIAA, on the other hand, thinks the answer lies in the law enforcement. We've all seen how that's working out so far and I think we can agree that the idea is laughable.
What about software? Specifically, what about games? The software industry in general is not as monolithical as recording or motion picture industry. For example, applications targeted at big corporations don't have to worry about piracy too much, but their target is not as big as the home user market. Each type of software has its own worries, but games are in a particularly hairy situation.
The problem with the games industry is that it resembles the recording industry. As the saying goes, the developers make the game and the publishers make the money. They're not limited to being middlemen, though. Often they also finance the development, which gives them a bit of versatility when it comes to surviving the paradigm shifts. However, the fact remains that the online distribution channels will be making the publishers' role as middlemen increasingly obsolete as time passes. Of course, online distribution brings its own middlemen, as casual game developers are discovering.
Safe Hex: ACME Copy Protection
So how does the software industry fight piracy? We geeks tend to believe that everything can be solved by technology. Thus the copy protection mechanisms.
Now, wiser geeks know that technology is not an answer to everything. As Fravia used to teach, there is no copy protection that cannot be broken. The one time I thought I found an exception to that rule was when I used Kali. I was wrong, of course. The program itself is just a client for the centralized service and, as such, it can be copied as freely as you want. It's semantics, I know, but it's important.
The reason why it's important is because that solution doesn't apply to most games. The most notable exception are the MMOs. Incidentally, it's a pretty important factor for the popularity of this genre among the developers.
The rest of the genres have to choose whether to use copy protection mechanisms or not. If they do, they have to decide how strong to make it. Unfortunately, strong often means "problematic for the legitimate customer" along with "difficult to circumvent". This is what creates reactions of outrage, such as the reactions to the abortive attempt to "secure" Mass Effect and Spore.
No Silver Bullet
Okay, so the neither the propaganda nor the law enforcement nor the technology solve our problem. What's the answer, then?
Unfortunately, nothing worth doing is ever easy. First of all, there is no silver bullet. There's no magical solution to this mess. You can bet that the real solution won't bring you quick bucks and instant happiness.
I'm no expert on these matters and I can't say with certainty how to deal with this. However, I have a hunch and I'm willing to bet it's a good one: nurture the market.
Take the situation here in Chile. For one thing, games are outlandishly expensive. It's not just the price itself, it's how that price compares to people's earnings and other products. Second, there are too few stores selling games and their selection usually leaves a lot to wish for. There are too many obsolete games and too many crap games and too few hot items. Third, the same comments apply when it comes to renting games. Still, there are people who buy games. We do it because we like those games, we appreciate the effort it took to make them and proud to own them. But there's a lot of room for improvement.
What about countries like United States? Adapt. MMOs are just one trend. The Sims games are innovative in that they introduce a social component and allow people to create whole communities around them. Episodic content is another idea that has yet to be fully explored. Who knows what interesting new idea will come along next?
Above all, nurture the market. I don't know any comic book fan that opted to photocopy a comic book instead of buying it. They love comic books. They're quite fanatical about them. Games need the same kind of fans. And they sure as hell won't get them by treating their customers like criminals and making games even harder to install.
And Yet It Moves
So, what, piracy is here to stay and we have to learn to deal with it? Is that it? All this writing and I have no groundbreaking solution?
Yes, that's more or less it. I did warn you at the beginning that the future is still uncertain. Yet I'm sure it's not a dark one. Consider the fact that Sins of a Solar Empire has no copy protection and doesn't seem to need one. Consider the fact that casual games are successful enough to make Rockstar VP nervous.
Are "hardcore" PC games a dying market, then? Not at all. There will always be market for them and, if the industry does its homework, it won't be just a niche market. Though the lessons to learn may be hard, failing to learn them won't be fun, neither for the industry nor for the gamers.
What's interesting is the widespread reaction among the gamers:
Not only does this not make me want to buy the game, this makes me want to download a pirated and cracked copy even moreFunny, isn't it? I mean, when someone mentions using RFID for shoplifting prevention, you'll hear all sorts of privacy concerns and doubts about usefulness of such a system, but you won't hear people say they'll go shoplifting in protest.
So what is it that makes us perceive and react to piracy in such a different way? Let's take a look at some of the factors involved. Be warned, though: there's no magical happy ending to this story. Whether the hero defeats the villain and gets the girl remains to be seen.
Thou Shalt Not
Back where I originally come from, some 15 years ago, shops didn't have any shoplifting prevention mechanisms besides humans and, if the shop was large enough, mirrors. We all knew shoplifting was wrong, that it was stealing, that it was crime. We also knew that getting caught would have serious repercussions. Yet there were kids who did it. Not out of necessity, either. They did it for fun. It was challenging. It was a game.
Where am I going with this? There are several points I'm trying to make here. First of all, crime has a lot to do with perception. Sure, there's law, with its letter and its spirit and a bunch of lawyers and politicians to play with it. If you break the law, you're a criminal and that should be it. And yet, none of those kids saw themselves as criminals.
Second, it's in people's nature to do as they wish and rules be damned. You can try to educate them, to impress upon them that such behavior is wrong, but there will still be those who will do it and for a variety of reasons, too.
It might sound like I'm trying to justify piracy, theft and crime in general. I'm not. I'm trying to point out that they will always exist and that reasons for it are not as monolithical as we would like to believe. After all, it would be a lot simpler if people committed crimes because they're evil, but the world doesn't work that way. And if we want to do something about a problem, we have to understand the cause.
Can't Touch This
Every time I rent a DVD, I have to watch one of the MPAA's anti-piracy videos. There's no way to skip it, of course, so each time I'm freshly reminded of the first and foremost difference between stealing and piracy: intangibility. In order to steal a car, a handbag, a television or a DVD, just like in the video, you have to reach out and grab something tangible. There might be a lot of objects like that one, but there is only one of that particular object and it's not yours. Taking possession of it is clearly identifiable as a crime.
Things are not as intuitive with music, movies and software. Sure, if someone invites me to their house to watch a DVD with them, it's not a crime. They're sharing their property with me of their own will. If they offer to give me a lift in their car, it's the same sort of thing. But you can't copy a car like you can a song, can you? You can't parody a car, either, or quote it.
Intellectual property is a complicated and muddled concept and requires an equaly complicated and muddled definition of fair use. With the massification of the digital content and media, things got even more complicated and muddled, which brings us to the chaos we're living nowadays.
And chaos it is. How else would you call it when in one corner you have people who demand that all the digital content be free, as in free beer, and in the other corner you have giants like RIAA suing random individuals?
The Age of Middlemen
So far we've looked at some of the factors causing the piracy. But what about the effects of it? Organizations like MPAA and RIAA are claiming that they are losing money. Publishers like EA are complaining about the same thing.
Let's get one thing clear from the start: developers need game sales to survive. They develop games for living and their money comes from sales, just like your money comes from the job you're doing. There is no doubt that if you install and play their game on your computer without buying it, you're using the products of their work without them receiving your money for it.
Notice, however, that I haven't mentioned publishers in previous paragraph. What does RIAA stand for? Recording Industry Association of America. The keyword here is "recording". The people RIAA represent are those who make money by selling sound recordings of music. That used to be very straightforward: they used to sell records.
Vinyl records are a bitch to duplicate. As long as they were the medium for sound reproduction, the recording industry could control the music industry by controlling the medium itself. The advent of magnetic tapes brought the first crisis. The big guys freaked out, tried to defend their territory and lost. That was the major turning point in the history of copyright.
Evolution
Notice how MPAA is making a lot less fuss than RIAA? You know why? Their industry kept evolving. Sure, nowadays you can watch DVDs on your HDTV in your home-theater, but nothing beats seeing the very first screening of the long-awaited movie in your theater of choice. Besides, everyone and their grandmother will have seen the movie before it comes out on a DVD.
The first important factor here is that movie industry still has a meaningful experience to offer to their customers, beyond merely distributing the medium on which the content is stored. The second important factor is that there's ample segmentation. You can choose how much you care about a movie: will you go to a theater or buy a DVD? Or you might rent it before deciding whether to buy it. Or you might just wait for it to come out on cable. Plenty of options out there.
RIAA, on the other hand, got stuck. They just sat there while their golden goose spread its wings and flied away. Well, they didn't just sit. They kicked and screamed and made a hell of a fuss. They're still doing it, in fact. But they failed to adapt and are paying the price for it.
It's something I realized when I went to a Dream Theater concert in March this year. These guys didn't only play their instruments and sing their songs. No, they staged such an impressive multimedia spectacle, that I didn't even mind the fact that they didn't play most of my favorite songs. After a show like that, which in itself must have made them a pretty penny, they could've sold me their newest album without needing the middleman at all.
Or could they?
Eye of the Beholder
Piracy, like I said, has a lot to do with perception. You can call it culture or mindset or education, but the fact is that I don't know many people here in Chile who buy their music. If you look at it from their point of view, the reasoning is simple: why should they? It's out there on the Internet, for free. We all use MP3 players these days, so why should anyone pay for an overpriced lump of plastic that later you have to insert in a drive and rip and transfer to your player before you can listen to it comfortably?
Musicians, that's why. People who make that music need the money. Then again, the record industry screwed things up on that front too. The public perceives them as people who take huge cuts of profits and exploit the authors. It doesn't make piracy right, but it makes it justifiable in people's eyes. We come again to perception.
And perception is a lot bigger problem than most of us would like to admit. Could Dream Theater really have sold us their music directly, without going through the recording industry? Why would we buy it, when we're so accustomed to getting our music for free?
Detox: Rehab or Jail?
A habit is formed. How do we break it? MPAA seems to think the answer lies in the propaganda. The effects remain to be seen, but I personally doubt it will have any significant effect. RIAA, on the other hand, thinks the answer lies in the law enforcement. We've all seen how that's working out so far and I think we can agree that the idea is laughable.
What about software? Specifically, what about games? The software industry in general is not as monolithical as recording or motion picture industry. For example, applications targeted at big corporations don't have to worry about piracy too much, but their target is not as big as the home user market. Each type of software has its own worries, but games are in a particularly hairy situation.
The problem with the games industry is that it resembles the recording industry. As the saying goes, the developers make the game and the publishers make the money. They're not limited to being middlemen, though. Often they also finance the development, which gives them a bit of versatility when it comes to surviving the paradigm shifts. However, the fact remains that the online distribution channels will be making the publishers' role as middlemen increasingly obsolete as time passes. Of course, online distribution brings its own middlemen, as casual game developers are discovering.
Safe Hex: ACME Copy Protection
So how does the software industry fight piracy? We geeks tend to believe that everything can be solved by technology. Thus the copy protection mechanisms.
Now, wiser geeks know that technology is not an answer to everything. As Fravia used to teach, there is no copy protection that cannot be broken. The one time I thought I found an exception to that rule was when I used Kali. I was wrong, of course. The program itself is just a client for the centralized service and, as such, it can be copied as freely as you want. It's semantics, I know, but it's important.
The reason why it's important is because that solution doesn't apply to most games. The most notable exception are the MMOs. Incidentally, it's a pretty important factor for the popularity of this genre among the developers.
The rest of the genres have to choose whether to use copy protection mechanisms or not. If they do, they have to decide how strong to make it. Unfortunately, strong often means "problematic for the legitimate customer" along with "difficult to circumvent". This is what creates reactions of outrage, such as the reactions to the abortive attempt to "secure" Mass Effect and Spore.
No Silver Bullet
Okay, so the neither the propaganda nor the law enforcement nor the technology solve our problem. What's the answer, then?
Unfortunately, nothing worth doing is ever easy. First of all, there is no silver bullet. There's no magical solution to this mess. You can bet that the real solution won't bring you quick bucks and instant happiness.
I'm no expert on these matters and I can't say with certainty how to deal with this. However, I have a hunch and I'm willing to bet it's a good one: nurture the market.
Take the situation here in Chile. For one thing, games are outlandishly expensive. It's not just the price itself, it's how that price compares to people's earnings and other products. Second, there are too few stores selling games and their selection usually leaves a lot to wish for. There are too many obsolete games and too many crap games and too few hot items. Third, the same comments apply when it comes to renting games. Still, there are people who buy games. We do it because we like those games, we appreciate the effort it took to make them and proud to own them. But there's a lot of room for improvement.
What about countries like United States? Adapt. MMOs are just one trend. The Sims games are innovative in that they introduce a social component and allow people to create whole communities around them. Episodic content is another idea that has yet to be fully explored. Who knows what interesting new idea will come along next?
Above all, nurture the market. I don't know any comic book fan that opted to photocopy a comic book instead of buying it. They love comic books. They're quite fanatical about them. Games need the same kind of fans. And they sure as hell won't get them by treating their customers like criminals and making games even harder to install.
And Yet It Moves
So, what, piracy is here to stay and we have to learn to deal with it? Is that it? All this writing and I have no groundbreaking solution?
Yes, that's more or less it. I did warn you at the beginning that the future is still uncertain. Yet I'm sure it's not a dark one. Consider the fact that Sins of a Solar Empire has no copy protection and doesn't seem to need one. Consider the fact that casual games are successful enough to make Rockstar VP nervous.
Are "hardcore" PC games a dying market, then? Not at all. There will always be market for them and, if the industry does its homework, it won't be just a niche market. Though the lessons to learn may be hard, failing to learn them won't be fun, neither for the industry nor for the gamers.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Assassin's Creed
How can you know whether a game is good without playing it? You can't, really. It wouldn't be fun if you could, right? Fortunately, there are people out there who play games and then tell you about their experience. Some of them do it professionally, some of them just because they think the world really needs to know about those games. Assassin's Creed is one of those games that are good enough to make me want to join the latter group. However, unlike most such games, it also has defects that appeal to my inner ranter. Perfect blogging material.
Just to make it clear, this is not a traditional review, rich in detail and sprinkled with screenshots. My goal is not to give you a detailed description of what you experience as you play Assassin's Creed. If that's what you're looking for, then I recommend the Gamespot reviews, for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. What I'm focusing on here are the strengths and weaknesses of the game. The idea is to help people who never played it before and people interested in game design.
Still with me? Okay, let's delve into Assassin's Creed.
Stunning Visuals
You know how games always look a lot better in reviews and trailers than when you actually play them? I expected the same to happen with Assassin's Creed. To say that I was surprised is a huge understatement. This game is simply beautiful.
My PC has a dated CPU -- the installer warned me that I don't fulfill the requirements -- but my nVidia 7900 GTX more than compensates for it. Even so, I can't configure the graphics to maximum quality and detail. Or rather, I could if I didn't mind playing a slideshow instead of a game. As it is, the graphics are still stunning.
Everything is richly textured and beautifully illuminated. Each city has its own personality. The devastating aftermath of war in Acre makes itself evident not only in its burned houses and damaged city walls, but it also permeates the very atmosphere of the city, thanks to the greyish lighting that stands in contrast to golden colors of Damascus and Jerusalem.
The animations flow smoothly and every now and then you'll get a very dramatic angle that showcases your prowess at swordplay during a fight with guards. Of course, sometimes the game will get it wrong and you'll get a spectacular shot of a tree or a merchant stand between you and the camera.
Another excellent detail is the blurring effect the game applies when you lock on a target. It's supposed to make you feel like an assassin focusing intently on his victim and it does a great job.
Parkour
When I first saw the word "parkour" my reaction went along the lines of "huh?" It turns out that most of us know of it as "free running". It also turns out that it's not the same thing at all. I won't pretend I'm an expert and, for that same reason, I won't explain the difference. You have Wikipedia for that and you can blame them for any eventual error in it. Suffice it to say that the gameplay of Assassin's Creed incorporates parkour in a most enjoyable way.
I remember that one of my friends once proposed to make a game about free running. We shot down that idea for various reasons -- where the hell were we going to get money for an AAA game anyway? -- and one of them was the fact that we thought it wouldn't be interesting on its own, that it needed something more. I still believe that, especially after playing Assassin's Creed. There's something immensely satisfying about ending your crazy race over rooftops with a spectacular pounce and stab that brings your hapless victim down with a startled, strangled cry.
By the way, if you're into game development, I highly recommend reading this Gamasutra article on parkour in Assassin's Creed and Crackdown.
Music and Sound Effects
When I heard that Jesper Kyd composed the soundtrack for the game I had high hopes and I wasn't disappointed. I personally think that he didn't outdo his work in Silent Assassin, but the score is still great: subtle enough not to intrude on your experience, yet dramatic enough to establish the appropriate mood.
I also liked the way NPCs contribute to the game's atmosphere: preachers, beggars, merchants and passers-by all have something to say and they do it in a way that successfully recreates the bustle of a living city. Of course, they have their limitations. If you start paying a lot of attention to them, you'll find them repetitive; but if you focus on your mission, like an assassin is supposed to, they'll provide a rich auditive tapestry to serve as a background.
Good Plot
I firmly believe that games are essentially stories created, in part, by players. Whenever you find yourself gushing with enthusiasm while you describe a match of Unreal Tournament to your friends, you're telling them a story. That said, games don't necessarily need a plot. But if you're going to play an assassin, it's good to have something to motivate you to kill your victims, right?
I'm usually quite critical about plots. It comes from being a fan of books in an age where most people read only newspapers or technical books, if that. I am glad to say that Assassin's Creed has a rather good plot. It's interesting and it's not shallow. Not one among the characters is what he or she seems to be at the first glance. There are layers to be peeled and they reveal that the world around you is not black and white, even though it would be a lot easier on your conscience that way.
Altaïr himself, the character which you control, is a decidedly unpleasant person at the beginning, not likeable at all. You might think it's dangerous gamble to do that to the character with whom you're supposed to identify, but it works out surprisingly well.
Major Cliffhanger
Few are the works that can get away with a cliffhanger. Endymion pulled it off and lived to tell (the rest of) the tale. Assassin's Creed tried to pull it off and excelled at pissing me off. And everyone else, judging by the reactions.
Yes, it's true that almost all of the mysteries that plagued you during the game are resolved at the end. But that's not enough for a satisfying ending. I don't know about people at Ubisoft, but I like closure at the end of the game. It doesn't hurt the sequel at all, just look at the Sands of Time. Here's an idea, Ubisoft: go read Jim Butcher's article about story climaxes. Just in case it doesn't help immediately, the ingredient you're missing is what he calls "resolution".
Cheesy Dialogue
Like I said, I'm a fan of books. That makes me spoiled when it comes to things like plot, dialogue and character development. I'm aware of that and I try to keep it under control when I'm criticizing a game. After all, games are a different medium and one of the worst kinds of game designer is the failed writer.
That said, I have to draw the line somewhere. In case of Assassin's Creed, I drew it here:
To be fair, I should state that not all of the dialogue is cheesy. Al Mualim has some excellent lines and his voice, Peter Renaday, did a very good job.
In-yer-face Interface
Just as I started with the most gushing praise of the best features, so I kept the worst for the last. Many reviews complain about the repetitive nature of the gameplay, but I don't find that to be such a big problem. Solving it would have been quite costly and the developers did their best to mitigate it by offering the player a variety of investigation missions and giving him the liberty to choose which to play and which to skip.
The worst problem, however, comes from some monumentally bad decisions that were perfectly avoidable. All of them have to do with the interface, but the crown jewel among them is the decision to give the player the freedom to move during the cut scenes.
Picture the following situation: After doing lots of investigative work that helped you decided where, when and how you'll assassinate your victim, you finally have him in sight. He's talking to someone else and nobody is paying any attention to you at all. You're free to move, so you start creeping towards his back. You're in position, the moment is perfect and you press the button. And nothing happens. You press the button repeatedly, muttering "stab him, dammit!" It's useless. You're in a cut scene and nothing you do will have any effect. The developers gave you a completely useless freedom and the only thing they achieved is to confuse you.
And they took away a number of very useful freedoms from you, such as the freedom to skip a cut scene or a tutorial. It's an old lesson, but people at Ubisoft haven't learned it. They didn't let you skip the cutscenes in Prince of Persia and they don't let you do it in Assassin's Creed either. Come on, people, it's a Twinkie Denial Condition!
They also took away your freedom to load and save as you wish, which is another Twinkie Denial Condition. While I appreciate that the game saves automatically whenever I finish a task or get to a checkpoint, I still hate it that I have to let the guards kill me if my assassination attempt didn't go the way I wanted, so that the game will reload the last save.
Then there's also the matter of quitting the game or switching the profile. To exit the game, I first have to exit to the Animus, then exit from the Animus, then "quit" the game, then select a profile (which one? doesn't matter, I want to quit) and then finally exit the game. Oh, and I have to confirm that I wish to exit, just in case I went through all that work by accident. Yes, I know this is probably only a PC issue and that the PC version suffers a lot more from not being properly adapted to keyboard and mouse, but it's still incredibly annoying. The keyboard and mouse problem can at least be solved, by plugging in a gamepad.
Conclusion
Don't get me wrong. I loved Assassin's Creed and I can't wait for the sequel, even though Philip Shahbaz will again be Altaïr's voice. I mean, let's give the guy a second chance, right? Seriously, though, I loved the game. Despite the obvious and perfectly avoidable problems, I recommend it warmly.
And if Ubisoft learns from their mistakes, the sequel should be even better.
Just to make it clear, this is not a traditional review, rich in detail and sprinkled with screenshots. My goal is not to give you a detailed description of what you experience as you play Assassin's Creed. If that's what you're looking for, then I recommend the Gamespot reviews, for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. What I'm focusing on here are the strengths and weaknesses of the game. The idea is to help people who never played it before and people interested in game design.
Still with me? Okay, let's delve into Assassin's Creed.
Stunning Visuals
You know how games always look a lot better in reviews and trailers than when you actually play them? I expected the same to happen with Assassin's Creed. To say that I was surprised is a huge understatement. This game is simply beautiful.
My PC has a dated CPU -- the installer warned me that I don't fulfill the requirements -- but my nVidia 7900 GTX more than compensates for it. Even so, I can't configure the graphics to maximum quality and detail. Or rather, I could if I didn't mind playing a slideshow instead of a game. As it is, the graphics are still stunning.
Everything is richly textured and beautifully illuminated. Each city has its own personality. The devastating aftermath of war in Acre makes itself evident not only in its burned houses and damaged city walls, but it also permeates the very atmosphere of the city, thanks to the greyish lighting that stands in contrast to golden colors of Damascus and Jerusalem.
The animations flow smoothly and every now and then you'll get a very dramatic angle that showcases your prowess at swordplay during a fight with guards. Of course, sometimes the game will get it wrong and you'll get a spectacular shot of a tree or a merchant stand between you and the camera.
Another excellent detail is the blurring effect the game applies when you lock on a target. It's supposed to make you feel like an assassin focusing intently on his victim and it does a great job.
Parkour
When I first saw the word "parkour" my reaction went along the lines of "huh?" It turns out that most of us know of it as "free running". It also turns out that it's not the same thing at all. I won't pretend I'm an expert and, for that same reason, I won't explain the difference. You have Wikipedia for that and you can blame them for any eventual error in it. Suffice it to say that the gameplay of Assassin's Creed incorporates parkour in a most enjoyable way.
I remember that one of my friends once proposed to make a game about free running. We shot down that idea for various reasons -- where the hell were we going to get money for an AAA game anyway? -- and one of them was the fact that we thought it wouldn't be interesting on its own, that it needed something more. I still believe that, especially after playing Assassin's Creed. There's something immensely satisfying about ending your crazy race over rooftops with a spectacular pounce and stab that brings your hapless victim down with a startled, strangled cry.
By the way, if you're into game development, I highly recommend reading this Gamasutra article on parkour in Assassin's Creed and Crackdown.
Music and Sound Effects
When I heard that Jesper Kyd composed the soundtrack for the game I had high hopes and I wasn't disappointed. I personally think that he didn't outdo his work in Silent Assassin, but the score is still great: subtle enough not to intrude on your experience, yet dramatic enough to establish the appropriate mood.
I also liked the way NPCs contribute to the game's atmosphere: preachers, beggars, merchants and passers-by all have something to say and they do it in a way that successfully recreates the bustle of a living city. Of course, they have their limitations. If you start paying a lot of attention to them, you'll find them repetitive; but if you focus on your mission, like an assassin is supposed to, they'll provide a rich auditive tapestry to serve as a background.
Good Plot
I firmly believe that games are essentially stories created, in part, by players. Whenever you find yourself gushing with enthusiasm while you describe a match of Unreal Tournament to your friends, you're telling them a story. That said, games don't necessarily need a plot. But if you're going to play an assassin, it's good to have something to motivate you to kill your victims, right?
I'm usually quite critical about plots. It comes from being a fan of books in an age where most people read only newspapers or technical books, if that. I am glad to say that Assassin's Creed has a rather good plot. It's interesting and it's not shallow. Not one among the characters is what he or she seems to be at the first glance. There are layers to be peeled and they reveal that the world around you is not black and white, even though it would be a lot easier on your conscience that way.
Altaïr himself, the character which you control, is a decidedly unpleasant person at the beginning, not likeable at all. You might think it's dangerous gamble to do that to the character with whom you're supposed to identify, but it works out surprisingly well.
Major Cliffhanger
Few are the works that can get away with a cliffhanger. Endymion pulled it off and lived to tell (the rest of) the tale. Assassin's Creed tried to pull it off and excelled at pissing me off. And everyone else, judging by the reactions.
Yes, it's true that almost all of the mysteries that plagued you during the game are resolved at the end. But that's not enough for a satisfying ending. I don't know about people at Ubisoft, but I like closure at the end of the game. It doesn't hurt the sequel at all, just look at the Sands of Time. Here's an idea, Ubisoft: go read Jim Butcher's article about story climaxes. Just in case it doesn't help immediately, the ingredient you're missing is what he calls "resolution".
Cheesy Dialogue
Like I said, I'm a fan of books. That makes me spoiled when it comes to things like plot, dialogue and character development. I'm aware of that and I try to keep it under control when I'm criticizing a game. After all, games are a different medium and one of the worst kinds of game designer is the failed writer.
That said, I have to draw the line somewhere. In case of Assassin's Creed, I drew it here:
Rafiq: He must be stopped!I don't mind a certain amount of cliché in games. I don't require voice actors to be perfect. But some of Altaïr's lines are way too cheesy to tolerate. It doesn't help that Philip Shahbaz, the voice of Altaïr, seems to have exactly one tone of voice. I guess it's supposed to sound arrogant and menacing, which suits Altaïr's personality admirably, but even so, you cannot apply it to everything you say. Sooner or later, your players start perceiving you as sulky instead of menacing.
Altaïr: That's why I'm here.
To be fair, I should state that not all of the dialogue is cheesy. Al Mualim has some excellent lines and his voice, Peter Renaday, did a very good job.
In-yer-face Interface
Just as I started with the most gushing praise of the best features, so I kept the worst for the last. Many reviews complain about the repetitive nature of the gameplay, but I don't find that to be such a big problem. Solving it would have been quite costly and the developers did their best to mitigate it by offering the player a variety of investigation missions and giving him the liberty to choose which to play and which to skip.
The worst problem, however, comes from some monumentally bad decisions that were perfectly avoidable. All of them have to do with the interface, but the crown jewel among them is the decision to give the player the freedom to move during the cut scenes.
Picture the following situation: After doing lots of investigative work that helped you decided where, when and how you'll assassinate your victim, you finally have him in sight. He's talking to someone else and nobody is paying any attention to you at all. You're free to move, so you start creeping towards his back. You're in position, the moment is perfect and you press the button. And nothing happens. You press the button repeatedly, muttering "stab him, dammit!" It's useless. You're in a cut scene and nothing you do will have any effect. The developers gave you a completely useless freedom and the only thing they achieved is to confuse you.
And they took away a number of very useful freedoms from you, such as the freedom to skip a cut scene or a tutorial. It's an old lesson, but people at Ubisoft haven't learned it. They didn't let you skip the cutscenes in Prince of Persia and they don't let you do it in Assassin's Creed either. Come on, people, it's a Twinkie Denial Condition!
They also took away your freedom to load and save as you wish, which is another Twinkie Denial Condition. While I appreciate that the game saves automatically whenever I finish a task or get to a checkpoint, I still hate it that I have to let the guards kill me if my assassination attempt didn't go the way I wanted, so that the game will reload the last save.
Then there's also the matter of quitting the game or switching the profile. To exit the game, I first have to exit to the Animus, then exit from the Animus, then "quit" the game, then select a profile (which one? doesn't matter, I want to quit) and then finally exit the game. Oh, and I have to confirm that I wish to exit, just in case I went through all that work by accident. Yes, I know this is probably only a PC issue and that the PC version suffers a lot more from not being properly adapted to keyboard and mouse, but it's still incredibly annoying. The keyboard and mouse problem can at least be solved, by plugging in a gamepad.
Conclusion
Don't get me wrong. I loved Assassin's Creed and I can't wait for the sequel, even though Philip Shahbaz will again be Altaïr's voice. I mean, let's give the guy a second chance, right? Seriously, though, I loved the game. Despite the obvious and perfectly avoidable problems, I recommend it warmly.
And if Ubisoft learns from their mistakes, the sequel should be even better.
Labels:
assassin's creed,
game design,
games,
review
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