Taipei Gamer

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Exception Driven Game Play

2010-12-19T23:58:00.003+08:00

Rampant Coyote has an excellent post on exception driven game play in RPGs which ties in rather nicely with my series on randomness in RPGs(and not for the first time). It's a must read if you often find modern PC RPGs lacking compared to their less refined ancestors.

PS3 Mahjong

2010-04-11T02:46:00.002+08:00

There's a nice summary of PS3 mahjong games on Hardcore Gaming 101. He includes some helpful links to translation guides.

Japanese Wizardry Reboot

2009-08-04T00:39:00.002+08:00

Read all about it at 1Up.

L/N Review: Armored Core For Answer

2009-06-13T01:49:00.027+08:00

Review of Armored Core For Answer
developed by From Software
for the Playstation 3
and released in North America in September 2008.

The charmingly titled Armored Core For Answer is From Software's most recent entry in their venerable mecha franchise and the second Armored Core release for current gen consoles. For Answer is a considerable improvement over its predecessor Armored Core 4, which introduced a faster paced but no less complex style of gameplay to the series. Part simulation, part action game, the Armored Core series demands commitment from the player and For Answer is no different. Player excellence requires both a fighter pilot's nervous system and a foolproof understanding of the scientific method.

The single player game consists of the player taking a customized mecha -- or AC in the game's parlance -- through a branching path of missions, unlocking more and more AC parts as he progresses. By the time the player has completed all of the missions, he will have played through the story mode multiple times and unlocked hundreds of parts with which to customize his ACs. More time will have been spent in the hangar fiddling with his ACs' multitude of components and conducting test simulations than will have been spent completing story missions. There are so many interacting parts and variables, so many possibilities, that real experimentation is required to understand how they all fit together. Hypotheses are formed, tested, rejected, and further refined until specialized engines of destruction are created for any potential scenario. The player can create optimized snipers, heavy tanks, lightning fast melee specialists, missile boats and more in countless variations. Proper planning in the lab will make some of the nail hard missions doable and may even make those coveted S Ranks attainable. And then, it is time for Hard mode.

When it comes time to actually pilot an AC, the speed of the ensuing action will be a shock to almost anyone who hasn't played Armored Core 4. But despite the frenetic pace, For Answer is still a simulation. An Armored Core is a machine with certain functions and capabilities, all of which are mapped to the control pad. There are three different varieties of boost, for instance. Normal boost is the standard mode of movement and doesn't consume any energy unless the AC is completely airborne. Quick boost is a rapid dash/dodge which consumes a chunk of energy. Finally, Over boost can be likened with piloting a drag racer and rapidly depletes both energy and kojima particles(KP). The consumption, power, and recovery rates of all these forms of movement and energy depend on the parts equipped, of course. The player must integrate all three types of movement while managing the resources they require. Energy reserves are also shared to power weapons and other functions while KP is also used to fuel the AC's shields and a few Kojima-powered weapons.

Movement and resource management are definitely the most complex parts of piloting an AC and are key to combat strategy, but they aren't the pilot's only concerns. An AC can be equipped with up to five weapons: left and right hand weapons, left and right back weapons, and a shoulder weapon. Spare weapons can also be stored to use if a hand weapon is depleted of ammo or is otherwise no longer needed. There is an array of weapon types powered by traditional ordinance, energy, and even Kojima particles. There are assault rifles, machine guns, bazookas, grenade launchers, energy blades, missiles, sniper rifles, plasma cannons, rail guns, and more. Thankfully, ACs have a degree of auto-targeting and lock-on with most weapons. Without auto-targeting, the high speed of combat would would make it almost impossible to hit anything.

The end result of all this complexity is that For Answer is one of the few games which really requires the player to dedicate two fingers on each hand to the controller's triggers. The game's button mappings are completely customizable, but the player should never have to take his fingers off the main boost buttons or left/right fire buttons. Although awkward at first, with practice the game's controls actually become quite natural. The initial awkwardness is due more to unfamiliarity than any design flaw.

Mechanically, then, the gameplay is excellent. The missions themselves are also nicely varied, without too many frustrating moments. Past Armored Core games usually had a few relatively unexciting but hard missions with strict time limits. Thankfully, in For Answer the hardest missions are those where the player must face off against one or more opposing ACs. The most prominent missions however are those where the goal is to eliminate one of the gigantic moving fortresses known as Arms Forts. These missions are quite dramatic, but unfortunately -- at least on Normal Difficulty -- are a bit anti-climatic. Most of the Arms Forts can be taken out with a few swipes of a melee weapon once within range.

Aside from the main campaign, there are also numerous 1 vs 1 arena battles against AI opponents. These will serve as good practice before venturing online. Online there are team and survival battles with up to eight players. Between matches, players can chat and trade schematics. Overall, the online experience is much improved over Armored Core 4, although there are still instances of lag in certain circumstances.

The narrative of For Answer is sparse to say the least. As in previous games in the series, For Answer features a completely silent protagonist. The plot unfolds through mission briefings, in-mission communications, and brief cut scenes between chapters. These elements combine to beautifully capture the moral ambiguity of war. There are numerous factions, none of which except for one is clearly good or evil. As a mercenary, the player will work for almost all of them and it will likely take multiple playthroughs for the player to piece together the goals of each. The understated and biased mission briefings contribute greatly to the moral fog of war. A mission targeting 100 million civilians sits innocuously next to the mission to save them. Moral judgments on the player's part must be made in a vacuum of emotion, because there are few emotional cues in the business of war. The few scenes which do draw on human emotion are quite poignant as a result. Aiding the narrative further is a beautiful musical score, solid presentation, and sometimes dramatic imagery. The mecha designs are unique and quite evocative.

Armored Core For Answer is one of the deepest games around. The hours will while themselves by with the player lost in its systems. The music and creative design will suck him in further and the plot will sustain interest and never fall flat. For Answer is one of the high points of the series.

On a normally distributed scale from 3 to 18, Armored Core For Answer scores:

17 for Ludology
15 for Narratology

For an explanation of my L/N scoring system, read my posts on the theory and the implementation.

Street Fighter at Seven Thousand Feet

2009-05-21T05:09:00.005+08:00

I love travel writing and this gaming related piece at Bitmob is no exception. Ah, sipping fine Darjeeling tea while playing street fighter in a shack in the Himalayas. Romantic isn't it?

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: RPG Design: In Defense of ... Hit Points

2009-05-21T03:31:00.000+08:00

Another great post at Tales of the Rampant Coyote. This one discusses the pros and cons of "hit points" in RPG design. The comments are especially interesting and include discussion of pen and paper classics like Rolemaster and Cyberpunk as well as new electronic games like Dwarf Fortress.

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: RPG Design: That Which Is Not Forbidden...

2009-05-08T02:11:00.002+08:00

Very interesting post at Tales of the Rampant Coyote which ties in directly with my concept of player input variance and open-endedness in RPGs. In discussing two of Gary Gygax's published pen-and-paper adventures:

But both Tomb of Horrors and Necropolis left a lot up to interpretation by the Dungeon Master (the person who "runs" the game). And I try and run my games by a guiding rule which, lamentably, tends to be ignored in more recent editions of the game, and ignored by players who are used to computer games: That which is not expressly forbidden is fair game to try.

And the conclusion:

The problem is that - for the most part - RPGs aren't made as anything resembling simulations. That's too difficult, and it is too hard to put the player on the kinds of rails that many designers prefer. So spells have very particular, extremely limited uses, and tend to be more of the "blow crap up" variety. Spells that provide knowledge, hints, or "intelligence" are subject to exploit in single-player games, as the information they provide to the player is persistent, even when the player reloads the game immediately to 'restore' the expended spell.

Our worlds are just too restrictive to allow this kind of play. But do they have to be?

They definitely do not have to be so restrictive. One way to deal with the issue is through random procedural content. Another is by limiting the ability to save/reload. Roguelike developers already care about these issues. I'm just waiting for the mainstream to catch on and it makes me very happy to see someone else talking about it.

Randomness and the Black Swan in RPGS(Part 2)

2009-05-07T04:22:00.003+08:00

In the last two entries of this series I discussed the role of randomness in RPG task resolution mechanics. I also demonstrated the current shift toward increasingly deterministic resolution systems in electronic RPGs, and I explained why I felt this was a bad thing. Now it is time to don the mantle of chaos once again and discuss the other major set of RPG systems influenced by randomness, content generation systems. I will also introduce a couple of conceptual tools which may prove useful in my analysis.

In most P&P RPGs, randomness exerts its influence from the very beginning, at character creation. Anyone who has played any edition of Dungeons and Dragons is familiar with summing the results of 3 6-sided dice to determine a character's ability scores like strength, intelligence, etc. Hit points for both players and monsters are also determined by rolling dice. These are all simple ways in which randomness feeds into the content generation systems of RPGs. Simple randomness ensures that all orcs aren't exactly the same. The inclusion of this type of randomness also means that one player's 3rd level fighter may be more powerful than another player's. However, the greater the number of attributes with randomly determined parameters, the more likely most characters will trend towards average overall and the more likely most characters will excel in some area.

Random character generation was one of the first random elements of P&P RPGs to be removed from electronic RPGs. Aside from licensed D&D games and roguelikes, few electronic RPGs still have random elements in their character generation systems. In many electronic RPGs there isn't even such a thing as character generation. This is entirely logical for story-based games and games without much in the way of randomized content generation. But, when the challenges to be met aren't predetermined, why shouldn't an RPG utilize randomness from the very beginning to vary the game experience?

But when most people think of random content generation, they think of randomly generated environments, encounters, and rewards. All of these elements were present in D&D in the 1970s. In general, every encounter area was expected to have an associated wandering monster table. The DM made periodic wandering monster checks, and if one occurred, the appropriate table was consulted. This allowed the DM to generate encounters on the fly while the party was travelling long distances or camping. Wandering monster checks could also be used to punish players for making foolish decisions like making a lot of noise in a dungeon. The AD&D Dungeon Masters' Guide included encounter tables for all types of wilderness terrain and dungeon levels. There were also tables to generate treasure on the fly for these and other encounters. Each monster type had an associated treasure type with an associated set of tables for randomly determining what treasure a monster of that type might have in its possession. There was a very slight chance that even a weak creature could have a powerful magical item.

With the release of the AD&D Dungeon Masters' Guide in 1978, random content generation was taken to the next level with the inclusion of a complete system for randomly generating dungeons. Level layouts, environmental details, tricks, traps, treasure, and enemy encounters could all be generated on the fly by the DM. The inclusion of such a system says volumes about the way at least some players played P&P RPGs. It is also some indication that, at least for some players, the mechanics of D&D were fun in and of themselves.

Of course, it should be mentioned that the Dungeon Master's Guide explicitly states that the content generation charts contained therein are not to be taken as Law. The DM can freely ignore any result he feels will unbalance the game or which he simply doesn't like. However, potentially unbalancing random events are ameliorated somewhat by the flexibility of a game played between humans. If the players suffer a stroke of bad luck and encounter a high level wandering monster they have a practically infinite number of options available to them, limited only by their creativity. They can scatter in all directions, they can describe in detail their attempts to hide or escape, etc. The DM can then reward quick thinking and good ideas. Contrast this with early electronic RPGS where the only option besides fighting was selecting RUN from a battle menu and it is easy to see why the range of random encounters might have been restricted.

Now I would like to introduce two concepts: content generation variance and player input variance, hereafter referred to as CGV and PIV. CGV is a measure for the range of output possible by the content generation system given a fixed set of parameters. CGV is easy to quantify in a video game because it is essentially an algorithmic function with specified parameters. PIV is harder to quantify because it always involves human input. Sometimes, such as with menu systems, the human input is very restricted, but many modern RPGs are much more open ended than that. In addition, PIV is also a result of the way in which human input is processed and translated into game actions. PIV takes into account randomness within the game's task resolution systems(see Part 1 for more details), for instance. So, PIV is defined as the range of results from all possible player actions in a given game situation. PIV will remain a fuzzy concept, but will suffice for our purposes. A P&P RPG played between humans will be considered as having maximum values for both CGV and PIV.

Next time I will continue the discussion of CGV and PIV. I will discuss how they relate to one another and how they have changed over the years in RPGs.

On My Absence and Dungeon Crawlers

2009-04-16T05:20:00.006+08:00

Just as I was starting to make some headway on this blog, posting semi-consistently, I started to experience some significant RSI in my hands, which led to me avoiding computers and video games for almost a month. I'm feeling a little better now and will hopefully get back to working on a couple of posts I had planned, including the continuation of my series on randomness in RPGs.

My RSI was also ill-timed because I had just received the English-friendly Asian version of Demon's Souls, FROM Software's spiritual successor to King's Field. I've only played about 2 hours so far, but the game is great so far and appears to have developed quite a cult following in the West. Lovers of action-oriented dungeon crawlers should definitely give it a try.

Speaking of dungeon crawlers, The Dark Spire was released today for the DS. It is even closer in spirit to the old style of PC dungeon crawlers than was Etrian Odyssey. Isn't it odd to see Japanese developers fuel a renewed Western interest in one of the West's oldest genres? An entire generation of gamers weaned on anime and Final Fantasy are experiencing these games for the first time. I can only hope that this is a sign of even greater things to come and not just a flash in the pan.

Taipei Game Show 2009

2009-02-16T23:43:00.005+08:00

Well, it is that time of year again! Time, that is, for my yearly Taipei Game Show roundup. No longer being in Taipei, I experience TGS through the same vehicles most of you do, the blogs and Flickr streams of sweaty young men more interested in the booth babes than the games. Game Watch, however, comes to the rescue with what looks to be actual journalism, albeit in Japanese. The big news in Western media outlets this year was Sony's meat-space Playstation Store.

Randomness and the Black Swan in RPGS(Part 1.5)

2009-02-13T07:35:00.007+08:00

Before looking at the random generation of game content in Part 2, I want to elaborate on a point made in Part 1 concerning combat mechanics: "The point of this comparison is that predictability isn't necessarily more fun because it is "balanced", sometimes it is just boring. And if it would be boring in a pen and paper game, then fundamentally, it is probably still boring electronically. It is just dressed up in a such a way that people put up with it."

Admittedly, I glossed over all the elements which can compensate for predictability in a electronic RPG's combat system. For one, the game can require the player to manage an assortment of abilities/skills in a real-time situation where tactical decisions must be made quickly and the player has to adapt to evolving situations. This is the approach taken by most MMORPGs, and some, like World of Warcraft, do it well. I still argue that too much predictability is a negative, though. Few encounters in such a system are unique and there is a very clear delineation between encounters the player can handle and encounters he can't. It is common for a player to find himself in a situation where if he draws/lures one enemy he will win fairly easily, but if he draws two he will die. This type of certainty reduces the depth of decision making. The challenge is moved firmly into the realm of player execution.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy 12, which I used as an example of predictable combat, seems to recognize that its base combat mechanics aren't very interesting on their own. Recognizing that the opportunities for complex decision-making in Final Fantasy combat are fairly rare, the developers automated the system. The combat in Final Fantasy 12 plays out in real-time according to simple, player-assigned AI rules controlling each character's actions. The player can pause the action and intervene if necessary, but this is rarely required outside of boss battles. Instead, the player takes satisfaction from tweaking his party's AI until it is as self-sufficient as possible.

The lead developer of Battle for Wesnoth, an open source turn-based strategy game, explains why his game has a substantial random element in its combat mechanics here. He makes a number of excellent points that apply just as well to role-playing games:

In Wesnoth we want a player to plan out a complex situation, to estimate carefully the possibilities. To have to work out a good strategy. If a player can simply rely on all sorts of assurances that their units will hit, they don't have to do any of this. Sure, there will be a certain amount of fun to planning out a situation where you can set up a cool 'domino effect' of enemy units going down as you attack them. But this is nothing to do with the skill of planning out a real strategy in a dynamic situation where you have to consider all kinds of contingencies.

...

Trying to "slide down the scale" of luck would simply make Wesnoth less interesting, in my view. Suddenly the difference between a two attack unit and a four attack unit would be trifling instead of critical. Not near as much planning would be necessary. Simply, in my view, Wesnoth would become less fun.

The point I want to make in this post is that although predictability can be compensated for, especially if the combat system plays out in real-time, an infusion of unpredictability into the system can make it even more interesting.

Randomness and the Black Swan in RPGs (Part 1)

2009-02-04T01:57:00.007+08:00

Raph Koster wrote an interesting post on the connection between games and the ludic fallacy as discussed in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's bestselling book The Black Swan. For those unfamiliar with the book, a black swan is an unpredictable but highly impactful event. Raph ends his post with a question:

"Rather than just bemoan this, I'll instead issue the challenge: what is the fun game that features black swans, phase transitions, and the catastrophic 100-year flood? How do you sculpt a system that does this without chasing away the newbies?"

This is an interesting question, and one which has a simple answer if not constrained to electronic games: pen and paper roleplaying games. The presence of a human game master lends unpredictability, surprises, and ad hoc creativity that electronic games can't hope to match. However, even ignoring the human element, the mechanics of electronic RPGs have been straying ever further away from unpredictability in a misguided pursuit of balance. Since long before I had the Black Swan framework to hang it upon, I have been thinking about the role of randomness in roleplaying games.

Roleplaying games typically draw on randomness for two different major functions. The first is in their action resolution mechanics. The second is in their content generation systems. Both of these got their start in the earliest pen and paper roleplaying games. The earliest electronic RPGs, existing primarily to recreate the tabletop experience, inherited both of these random elements. As electronic RPGs have diverged from their pen and paper roots, the role of randomness has steadily diminished. The results of this process are manifested most clearly in today's MMORPGs and JRPGs. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, even within the early pen and paper tradition, randomness has been afforded varying degrees of importance.

Let us begin by comparing the combat resolution systems of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Rolemaster. In AD&D a typical orc has 1d8 hit points and an armor class of 6. A first level fighter with no bonuses will hit an armor class of 6 with a roll of 14 or higher on 1d20(the standard die used for attack rolls in AD&D). At tenth level, the same fighter only needs to roll a 5 or higher to hit the orc. With a standard longsword, the fighter will do 1d8 hit points of damage to the orc if his attack succeeds. So, the first level fighter will hit the orc 35% of the time and it will take anywhere from one to eight successful blows to kill the orc. According to my calculations, the chance the fighter will kill the orc with his first swing is just under twenty percent(0.35 * 0.5625). However, if the fighter had a strength of 18/00(the max a human fighter can have naturally), he would receive a +3 bonus to hit and a +6 bonus to his damage roll. In this case, the fighter would have almost a fifty percent chance to kill the orc on his first attack. Clearly, there is a large random element to combat in AD&D. Bonuses from high ability scores and special abilities and equipment do reduce the relative importance of the random rolls, but these bonuses are usually fairly small. The main constraint to AD&D randomness is that the range of results is clearly defined. If a player's character has 10 hit points and an enemy is attacking him with a longsword, the player knows that his character can't be killed in one blow unless the opponent has some damage bonuses from strength, magic, etc.

In Rolemaster, however, things aren't quite so simple. The attack roll in Rolemaster is an open-ended d100. Normally, results range from 1-100, but on a natural/unmodified roll of 96-100 another d100 roll is made and added to the result of the first roll. This second roll is open-ended as well, so a natural 96-100 will result in a third roll, and so on, ad infinitum. The upper bound of an attack roll in Rolemaster is infinity. Unlike AD&D, the attack roll determines both whether a hit occurred and how much damage was inflicted, with one exception. The final attack roll result, plus the attacker's offensive bonus and minus the defender's defensive bonus, is indexed on a chart for the weapon being used and cross-referenced against the defender's armor type. The result is a number indicating the amount of damage inflicted and possibly a letter indicating a critical hit. Most combat deaths in Rolemaster are either direct or indirect results of critical hits; combatants tend to die in sudden and dramatic fashion and not as much through attrition. There are five degrees of critical hits, A through E, with E being the deadliest. When a critical is indicated, a separate d100 roll is made on the appropriate critical chart. Crticals can result in broken bones, bleeding, blindness, loss of consciousness, and even gruesome death. Even an A critical can kill on a natural roll of 100. Combine the lethality of critical hits with the fact that even the best armor usually can't reduce the probability of a critical hit to zero, and you have a system where any blow can kill. The genius of Rolemaster is that it allows players to manage risk by using any portion of their offensive bonus as a defensive bonus instead. It is rare for players to take a purely offensive stance unless their opponent is stunned.

Now let us draw a comparison between these older pen and paper mechanics and a modern console RPG, Final Fantasy 12. The damage equation for wielding a spear is:

DMG = [ATK x RANDOM(1~1.125) - DEF] x [1 + STR x (Lv+STR)/256]

Notice that the random element ranges from 1.0 to 1.125. Vaan at 50th level, wielding the best weapon in the game(ATK 150) against an enemy with a DEF of 50 yields:

DMG = [150 x RANDOM(1~1.125) - 50] x [1 + 50 x (50+50)/256]

The end result is damage ranging from 2053 to 2438, a fairly narrow range compared to the pen and paper systems. Also notice that successful attacks are the default. Instead, certain equipment like shields provide a chance block an enemy's attack. There is also a small chance to score a critical hit, which results in double damage. As you can clearly see, combat resolution in Final Fantasy 12 is much less random than even AD&D.

To see for yourself how much things have changed since the early days of roleplaying, just compare the combat of a grind heavy MMORPG with the commercial MUD Gemstone IV. Gemstone IV's game mechanics are derived from Rolemaster(in fact, earlier versions of the game licensed the Rolemaster rules and the Shadow World setting). You will not hear Gemstone players using terms like DPS(damage per second) when discussing combat strategy. You often hear complaints from MMORPG players concerning the grind necessary to gain levels, but in fact every MMORPG battle is a microcosm of the level grind. This is especially true of the large raid bosses. You can find a very brief excerpt of a Gemstone IV battle here. I was caught in an invasion of high level plant creatures into my low-level hunting ground and killed. Another player who attempted to rescue me was killed as well. The point of this comparison is that predictability isn't necessarily more fun because it is "balanced", sometimes it is just boring. And if it would be boring in a pen and paper game, then fundamentally, it is probably still boring electronically. It is just dressed up in a such a way that people put up with it.

But even the relatively unpredictable and complex combat mechanics of Rolemaster fall short of the conditions needed for Taleb's black swans. Even without knowing all the bonuses involved, the player can roughly estimate the risks. Looking at the attack charts, the player can see what results are needed to generate critical hits. With transparent mechanics, black swans are by definition impossible because the possibilities are known beforehand. With regard to task resolution mechanics, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is the generation of game content which can really benefit from black swans -- like the plant invasion which killed my character in Gemstone IV -- and this shall be the topic of my next post in the series.

More on Mirror's Edge

2009-01-21T12:50:00.005+08:00

1UP continues to prove itself in the wake of the UGO buyout by bringing us this postmortem interview with Tom Farrer, a producer for Mirror's Edge. Interesting tidbits include the reasoning behind their decision not to allow players to customize the controls and the admission that the animated cutscenes were not a complete success. On the latter point, the cutscenes were one of the few negatives I discuss in my review, and it appears that the decision was at least partly driven by the animation workload required to do them in-engine. It isn't clear whether or not there was any internal discussion on the merits of handling all cutscenes from a first person perspective.

L/N Review: Mirror's Edge

2009-01-09T23:26:00.004+08:00

Mirror's Edge is a unique flower, a first person parkour game which is both innovative and retrograde. The game, like its Eurasian protagonist Faith, is fearless, unafraid to strive for realism and unafraid to admit, when all is said and done, that it is just a video game.

First, the innovation. Games which do new things mechanically are usually at least interesting. Generally speaking, unique mechanics either indicate the designers' willingness to rethink the appropriateness of accepted methods in realizing their game's concept or a concept that is so unique that there are no standard practices. It is often the first scenario which really demonstrates a team's commitment to innovation. Sometimes it is harder to trail blaze when a good road is already in place. The Mirror's Edge team deserves a lot of credit for building a system unique to their game. It would have been easy to create a parkour game based around canned animations and quick timer events, but they didn't. Instead they crafted a unique first person adventure, a platformer in a first person shooter's clothing. They also took the unorthodox approach of condensing a multitude of functions into two non-face buttons. With just three buttons the player can perform a complex array of free running maneuvers, without having anything handed to him and without ever being confused about which context sensitive action a button press will perform.

The level design, at first blush, is linear and doesn't allow for exploration of alternate routes. This is a novice mistake, however, due to the new player's preconceptions and poor understanding of the game's objectives and mechanics. The construction of the levels is actually one of the better realized aspects of the game. Just like in real life, it takes experience to understand the possibilities in parkour. The types of hidden routes available to Faith are of a much subtler nature. These are tricks that primarily serve to save time and maintain flow, not bypass large sections of the route. Their existence will quickly become apparent to anyone who spends a little time in the time trial mode racing against the ghosts of more experienced players. Mirror's Edge trains the player to see the game space in much the same way as traceurs learn to view the mundane landscapes of urban life. In Mirror's Edge an office building looks like an office building, bland on the surface but budding with possibilities for a runner as gifted as Faith. It is up to the player to recognize these possibilities.

The realistic approach to level design sometimes results in a lack of signposting in the environments, an absence of clear pathways and direction for the player. This is alleviated somewhat by 'runner vision', which is an optional system which colors certain key objects a bright red to aid in navigation. It is also possible to point Faith in the direction of the goal by pressing the O button. Unfortunately, both of these methods are a little lacking in execution. Even with them there are situations where the path forward is far from clear. While this can sometimes frustrate, especially when pursued by enemies, it is consistent with the game's goal of teaching the player to think quickly.

None of this would work if Mirror's Edge didn't also break new ground in portraying movement from a first person perspective. Mirror's Edge is a game requiring skill and expert timing and so the user feedback has to be informative enough to allow for precise judgements of position, momentum, distance, and angle. The game succeeds through a combination of visual and aural clues: the sound of footsteps and breathing to indicate speed, the bounce of the first person camera, the position and movement of Faith's appendages on screen, and so on. The game conveys everything the player needs to know through its first person perspective.

For a game as innovative as Mirror's Edge, it is also surprisingly retro. Mirror's Edge is a game that requires the player to master its mechanics, and in order to demand mastery it mustn't be afraid to punish poor play. In other words, Mirror's Edge is hard. The portions of the game where Faith is confronted by enemies are particularly challenging. Faith is fairly clumsy with weapons and can only absorb a small amount of damage. Her best chance against any enemy is to disarm him as quickly as possible(utilizing proper button press timing in the closest thing the game has to a quick timer event). Once disarmed, Faith will immobilize the enemy and can use his gun until the clip runs dry. The shooting controls, however, are a bit clunky and emphasize that gunplay isn't Faith's strong suit. In fact, if the player utilizes a little lateral thinking and attempts to avoid direct confrontation as much as possible -- the game constantly preaches avoidance -- the confrontations with the police will be much easier. Unfortunately, players who stubbornly attempt the same approach over and over are likely to do so dozens of times before finding success in some of the more challenging set pieces. Luckily, checkpoints are spaced frequently enough that the player isn't punished for experimenting with alternate strategies, but it isn't always obvious when the player is trying to do something the hard way either.

The story mode, although challenging, is quite short. The plot is forgettable, but the characters and environments are well done. Faith is an intriguing character with a great deal of aesthetic appeal, especially compared to the typically over feminized video game heroine. Plot development, when done in the form of in-game, first person sequences is executed brilliantly. But for some reason the developers chose to break the first person immersion into Faith's character by including poorly done animated sequences between chapters. These sequences are nothing more than a lazy approach to plot development. The story mode would have been greatly enhanced if the developers could have found a way to present the entire story from Faith's perspective.

Successive replays and speedruns of individual story chapters are worthwhile endeavors, but the time trials are where the game's longevity is truly found. Mirror's Edge is a game centered around its mechanics and level design and it is the time trial mode which brings these elements to a laser sharp focus. Dispensing with the sometimes frustrating combat elements present in the story chapters also plays to the game's strengths. The presence of online leaderboards and the ability to race the ghosts of other players' successful runs makes Mirror's Edge one of the best racing games ever made. The ghosts are indispensable for quickly learning many of the game's advanced techniques as well.

Aesthetically, the game has a clean and unique look. Like any good graphic work, Mirror's Edge is immediately recognizable. The music is also excellent, especially the title track "Still Alive". The only real blemish is Faith's voice actress. She isn't terrible, but she's certainly not strong and unique enough for the character.

Mirror's Edge is a triumph of both skill-based -- almost arcadeish -- game design and simulationist immersion. It applies retro gaming sensibilities to a first person parkour simulation and succeeds, both as a game and as an immersive experience.

Mirror's Edge(PS3) rolls a

for Ludology

and a

for Narratology

For an explanation of my L/N scoring system, read my posts on the theory and the implementation.

Mahjong in Yakuza 2

2008-10-30T02:46:00.002+08:00

English speaking mahjong fans might be interested to know that Yakuza 2 has a pretty nice mahjong mini game. As far as I know, it is the only English version of mahjong out there on consoles. The mini game is standard 4-player mahjong with Japanese rules. There are several different tables -- with different skill levels -- that you can play at and it even includes a rule and scoring reference. You visit the mahjong parlor during the early parts of the game's main storyline, so you'll have to play for a few hours before you have access to it. There may be other mahjong parlors that you can play at later in the game. I'll keep you posted.

The Gaming Press: The Positives

2008-08-19T00:09:00.005+08:00

Since I lashed out at the incompetence of the gaming press in my last post, I thought I should balance things out a bit with something nice to say. After all, duality is healthy.

The good news is that the situation is improving. Although hobbyist sites still tend to be the best overall, several mainstream sites like 1UP, Eurogamer, and Gamasutra are actually quite good. Not even sites like Kotaku are completely bad, they just aren't as consistently good as I think they should be. I believe some of the improvement is a result of hobbyists transitioning into professional jobs after gaining some recognition. Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield, who started insertcredit.com and so I assume falls into my hobbyist category, conducts the best interviews in the business. I'm sure there are others like him.

The biggest problem is that some of the most visible media sources are some of the worst. IGN really is terrible. Most of the print magazines aside from Edge are primarily PR mouthpieces, as are pretty much all TV programs about video games. The gaming press as a whole is probably at about the same level as your average small town newspaper. But there are some really bright lights here and there, and that gives me hope.

Misinformation

2008-08-16T23:43:00.014+08:00

The general incompetence of the professional gaming press is kind of a pet peeve of mine. The competitive nature of capitalism suggests that the standards for entry into such a 'dream job' would be fairly high. Unfortunately, that is clearly not the case, as this Kotaku interview with Suda51 and Shinji Mikami once again demonstrates. The interviewer, who presumably was paid for this and claims to be a huge fan of both creators, makes several big mistakes which could easily have been remedied by a little research. The interviewer's lack of research is compounded by the fact that he presents the interview in a synopsis format, filtered through his personal misconceptions, instead of the typical transcript format that you usually expect. So, for the record, I'd like clarify the major mistakes.

The very first sentence demonstrates the lack of research:

It might seem weird that Japanese independent studio Grasshopper Manufacture is partnering up with US powerhouse publisher EA; but it seems weirder to me that wacky, artsy Suda 51 is pairing off with serious, horror-loving Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame.

In fact, Mikami and Suda51 collaborated in a similar fashion on 2005's Killer7. The two have also made public appearances together in Japan since Killer7, so a new collaboration doesn't seem surprising. Furthermore, Mikami's last game was the comedic action title God Hand, hardly a serious horror game. Further-furthermore, God Hand's soundtrack was composed primarily by Masafumi Takada of Grasshopper Manufacture.

What do Suda and Mikami think about the possibility of too many horror games? Not much, really. They like horror too – and more horror can only be good. Bear in mind though, that Suda is an action man first and foremost. So whatever we see from the dream team is going to be a blend of action horror; with Suda as the action and Mikami as the horror.

Let me borrow Suda51's own words from his(and Mikami's) recent interview with 1UP, probably conducted at the same press event: "I mean, Grasshopper has experience in creating action games, but Mikami is one of the top three action game creators in the world." The last three games Mikami directed are God Hand, Resident Evil 4, and P.N. 03, all action games and only one has horror elements. Mikami is more than the creator of Resident Evil.

I understand that the game industry is too big for one person to know it all, but preinterview research should be mandatory for any professional. Far too often it seems, gaming 'journalists' don't take their jobs seriously. The fact that this interviewer is a fan of these guys makes it even worse. I'm continually surprised when I, with a full-time job in a different industry, know more about the video game industry than the professionals.

Please, avoid this interview and read 1UP's instead. In fact, if the Kotaku interviewer had read 1UP's interview before writing his synopsis, he could have avoided a lot of errors.

L/N Review: Bioshock

2008-07-14T03:46:00.011+08:00

"In real life, there is no such thing as a gradual descent from civilization to savagery. There is a crash -- and no recovery, only the long, drawn-out agony of chaos, helplessness and random death, on a mass scale."

-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution", Ayn Rand

Bioshock is a video game about such a collapse, and for those familiar with the game, the irony of beginning my review with such a quote from Ayn Rand will surely not be lost. For Bioshock is about the collapse of a pseudo-Objectivist utopia called Rapture, established on the bottom of the sea by one Andrew Ryan(notice the similitude). The player is thrust headlong into the chaos -- for the crash is already well under way at the start of the game -- when his plane plunges into the sea near Rapture's aquatic entrance.

The opening segment of Bioshock does a fantastic job of introducing Rapture and it's ego maniacal founder. As the player is taken down into the city in a submersible, a loudspeaker drones:

I'm Andrew Ryan and I'm here to ask you a question:
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?

No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor.
No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God.
No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I
chose the impossible. I chose ... Rapture.

And indeed, Rapture is something magnificent. It is perhaps the best realized setting in video game history. The attention to detail lavished upon every aspect of the place is unparalleled, from the characters, to the music, to the numerous pieces of pop art and advertisements, to the general depiction of tragedy. Even better is the way that Rapture is presented to the player for the player to explore, but only if he so chooses. In Bioshock, the setting is the narrative, and it is up to the player to immerse himself in it. Yes, objectives are conveyed to the player through radio conversations, but hardly anything else is pushed at the player. The majority of what the player learns about Rapture will be through discovered voice diaries and the player's own keen eye for details.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Rapture is who lives there. Or perhaps more insightful is who doesn't live there. Rapture was created as a place where the greatest of mankind could strive without the artificial limits imposed by government and religion. But who does the player find there besides thugs, a stripper, some engineers necessary for Rapture's infrastructure, and a few brilliant but unstable scientists and artists? There were certainly some talented individuals that came to rapture -- most of which the player has to kill -- but a place like Rapture is destined to attract only the most ambitious or the naive. Many commenters have described Bioshock as a critique of Objectivism, but really it is a critique of all utopias and the human vices which cause them to fail.

Unfortunately, the narrative has very little impact on the actual gameplay. Unlike in Bioshock's spiritual ancestor System Shock, the player doesn't actually need to understand exactly what happened in Rapture. Nothing that the player learns can significantly impact his chances of success. Perhaps there are some clues to the locations of hidden stashes of useful items, but nothing significant stands out. This seems to be an intentional design goal, given the developer's stated ambition of creating a straightforward first person shooter that anyone can complete. It is clear that they didn't want anyone to ever get lost or become stuck in a certain area, and requiring players to pay attention to environmental clues just wouldn't be compatible with that goal. By default, there is even a smart little on-screen arrow which guides the player to each sequential objective. The decision to make the game completable by as wide an audience as possible was one that had consequences for almost every aspect of the game's design.

Bioshock also aims to be a game about morality. Bioshock's narrative themes deliver on this promise with its tales of human fallibility and the dangers of ideological extremism. Bioshock, however, doesn't really deliver on its key moral decision as hyped by numerous pre-release interviews. This decision, for those who weren't already aware, amounts to whether the player should harvest, and thus kill, or rescue the genetically engineered Little Sisters. It is here that the design goal of creating an easy to finish game conflicts with a narrative goal. Essentially, the developers needed to liberate the moral decision from gameplay consequences so that choosing the harder road of doing the right thing didn't actually make the game harder. The moral choice would carry so much more weight if the player were legitimately tempted by the prospect of the power to be gained from harvesting the Little Sisters. In fact, the hint of an unspecified reward for rescuing them pushes the curious player in the opposite direction.

Although lacking in puzzle solving and exploration, Bioshock is a well-executed shooter in terms of its basic mechanics. The weapons feel weighty and the action is suitably kinetic. The player also has quite a few options, including special powers called plasmids, a variety of weapons and ammo, passive status boosts in the form of gene tonics, a camera to "research" opponents with, and the ability to hack mechanical devices like security cameras, gun turrets, etc. Bioshock is not a game, however, which really requires the player to use more than a few techniques. Each weapon may be upgraded separately in such a way that they are all viable. With regard to plasmids, most major encounter areas are home to pools of water and conspicuous oil slicks so that players favoring either electricity or fire attacks are both accommodated. There are even ammo types which can serve as a substitute for plasmids if the player prefers gun play. So the player is free to use whatever methods he likes, but at the expense of ever feeling clever more than once or twice for making use of the obvious environmental aids.

The photography and hacking subgames are fraught with their own, more serious problems. In the case of photography, it just doesn't make any sense and doesn't lend itself to deductive reasoning. All players would probably like to easily bypass those security cameras, which can be done by taking enough pictures of them, but under what logic would it make sense for the player to even try this? The player is only told that researching enemies by taking their picture will increase the amount of damage done to them, which makes little enough sense as it is. The hacking minigame is even worse because it is harder to ignore, not very challenging, and incredibly tedious after the thirtieth or fortieth time.

The greatest flaw in Bioshock's gameplay, however, is the vita chambers, respawn points where the player instantly regenerates after dying. The player can immediately jump back into the action without having to reload a saved game. The consequences of failure are thus dramatically reduced, making ammunition the most important resource to conserve instead of the player's own life and limbs. Once the player realizes that firing a grenade and missing is a fate worse than death, kamikaze tactics ensue. The vita chambers also seriously inhibit the negative reinforcement necessary to push the player to improve his skill with the game. Will the player learn from mistakes that lead to his death? Will he explore the wealth of options available to him if it isn't necessary to achieve success?

Bioshock's lack of consequences for death also diminish the game's climactic battles with the Big Daddies. The leviathans take so much effort -- and ammunition -- to bring down that it is here that the player is really likely to use those kamikaze tactics. What should be a thrilling battle becomes a tedious war of attrition. One must wonder if the incredible resilience of the Big Daddies is a direct result of attempting to create an epic battle in an environment where death is no obstacle.

Bioshock is a wonderfully immersive experience. Everyone with an interest in games needs to experience Rapture, just to see what the medium is capable of in terms of writing, setting, and narrative. Unfortunately, after playing the game for 10+ hours, the player's experience will likely be marred by the developer's desire to ensure that everyone will finish the game. The end result is that one impediment to completion, difficulty, is merely replaced by another... boredom.

Bioshock rolls a

for Ludology

and a

for Narratology

For an explanation of my L/N scoring system, read my posts on the theory and the implementation.

On Tetris

2008-06-16T07:50:00.011+08:00

A commenter to one of my earlier L/N posts asked what N-Score I would give Tetris. It is an interesting question and one I considered myself when I first began thinking about L/N.

To begin with, the N-Score would depend on the specific version of Tetris being reviewed. Any version of Tetris with a decent soundtrack and nice, crunchy sound effects would score somewhere in the average range of 9 to 12. A lack of, or low quality, sound effects or music could bring the N-Score below average while a truly excellent soundscape could pull it a little above average. Remember, I score games relative to their concept, so a complex narrative isn't a requirement for a puzzle game like Tetris. However, there are a number of things that a Tetris game could do to earn a significantly better than average N-Score.

For one, a dynamic soundtrack could do a lot to improve the "narrative experience" of Tetris. If the music matched the state of your current game, whether frantic and tense as you play on the knife's edge of defeat or triumphal and celebratory after landing a well set up tetris, you would certainly be more immersed in the game.

A Tetris game could also take a few cues from mahjong games and add opponents or antagonists that you play against. Instead of pieces dropping without explanation from the top of the screen, they could be positioned and dropped by an animated character. Tougher opponents would drop them faster and with different algorithms.

A Tetris game which did both of these could potentially earn a very high N-Score. So really, high N-Scores are not limited to certain narrative centric genres. Any game which maximizes the artistic and narrative potential of its concept can earn a high N-Score.

L/N Implementation Details

2008-06-15T01:24:00.038+08:00

In an earlier post I described a dual metric for reviewing video games called the L/N system. That first post details both my philosophy of assigning quantitative scores and the qualities to be measured by each metric. Now it is finally time to discuss the specifics of my implementation of the L/N system. I say 'my implementation' because the L/N concept itself only applies to the what and doesn't extend to the how. Other reviewers are encouraged to develop their own implementations of the system.

A Problem of Scale

Probably the most common set of complaints I see regarding quantitative scores relate to the scale being used, which is almost always linear. Sometimes there is confusion in interpretation because the scale used is numerically linear but semantically nonlinear. For instance, the difference between a 6 and a 7 is greater or less than the difference between a 9 and a 10. Another common source of misinterpretation regards what constitutes an average score. Percentile scales and 10 point scales are particularly susceptible to this type of misinterpretation. Many readers will interpret a 7 or 70% as an average score even though it is well above the median score of 5 or 50%. The print magazine EGM recently moved from a 10 point scale to a letter grade scale to mitigate this sort of ambiguity. To avoid confusion, the scale used should be numerically and semantically consonant. The numerical mean should match the semantic mean and the relative numerical differences should be consistent with their semantic interpretation.

Another common complaint related to numerical scales is that the differences between scores often seem arbitrary. Percentile scales, for instance, are much more precise than any reviewer can justify. Having too much precision in a scale will undermine it to the point that readers will begin to question the accuracy as well. Linear scales compound the precision problem because the greatest works are often much, much more impressive than the average, but extending a linear scale far enough to adequately represent that may make the scale appear to be overly precise.

My Solution

So, I want to avoid linear scales and use a nonlinear one that gamers have an intuitive grasp of. It is also best if the scale is not easily confused with a linear one. My solution is to use a scale based on 3d6. Yep, the very same scale used to measure ability scores in Dungeons and Dragons(for those not in the know, D&D players generate their characters' ability scores by rolling three 6-side dice and summing the results). The biggest numerical advantage to using 3d6 is that it is distributed normally, i.e. the graph of possible values is a bell curve. The major non numerical advantage is that it is familiar, and even if you don't know what a normal distribution is, you probably realize that rolling an 18 is quite a bit harder than rolling a 17. The scores themselves will be represented visually by images of three dice. This serves to add another layer of information based on the specific dice chosen to represent the score. A 13 could be represented by 5-4-4 or 6-6-1, for example. A score of 6-6-1 would indicate potential greatness brought down by one or more serious flaws.

To provide a little more detail, the median score is 10.5. Since I'm obviously only using whole numbers, this means the average score ranges from 9 to 12. Scores within this range account for roughly 48% of the population. Less than half of one percent of the population would have an 18. Of course I am not going to assign scores with the sole aim of fitting a probability distribution, but the distribution does help define the relative difference between scores.

Guidelines For Assigning Scores

Now that I have defined the scale, I'd like to put forth a few guidelines I will follow when assigning scores. A number of questions have been raised by readers so far and hopefully these guidelines will paint a clearer picture of my scoring criteria.

First, context is important when scoring a game. The very highest scores are reserved for those games which are both incredibly well executed and groundbreaking in some way, and innovation is meaningless outside of the context of when the game was released. The original DOOM would score higher than the many clones which followed, even though some may have been just as well executed. Technological context is also important. Were a new 16 bit console game released today, its technology-related aspects would not be compared against current gen consoles.

In addition to historical and technological context, the concept behind the game is also important. Many reviewers already rate games relative to their genre, but I would like to be explicit in my belief that reviewers should take it a step further and make an effort to divine the developers' specific ideals and goals. I am a firm believer that not all games, not matter how excellent, will appeal to all players. If the very concept of a game and what it is trying to achieve doesn't appeal to a player, then they probably will not like it. A game should be judged in light of these factors. However, this doesn't mean that the concept itself is beyond reproach. Lack of ambition, for example, will certainly prevent achieving the highest scores.

For determining the N-Score, a useful guideline is to consider how interesting the game would be if you were watching someone else play it. This doesn't perfectly capture my concept of the N-Score, but it is still useful to consider because many elements measured by the N-Score can be appreciated by someone other than the player, such as music, art design, story, etc. There are some crucial differences though. Player immersion is something that the N-Score should be concerned with, but immersion is hard to measure if you aren't the one playing. The visual feedback provided by video games in response to user input can make the user feel like a hero in ways that movies and other passive media cannot. This type of immersion isn't captured by the L-Score because the visual feedback often has little or no impact on actually playing the game. It is a complex topic, but hopefully these examples clarify the concept of the N-Score.

And with that, I believe I have written more about my video game review philosophy and metrics than any mainstream gaming web site or print mag. Kind of a shame considering that I haven't written a single review and they've written thousands.

EDIT: Added a paragraph on 'concept' to the guidelines.

EDIT: Eurogamer actually has a fairly detailed description of their scoring policy. It doesn't address the same problems as my system, but at least it provides a detailed semantic description of their scale.

A Defense of Game Review Metrics

2008-06-09T08:30:00.017+08:00

The subject of video game reviews turned out to be a hot topic last week. In addition to my post Reviewing and Scoring Video Games, there was a column on gamesetwatch by Simon Parkin and an interesting article at PopMatters by L.B. Jeffries. Jeffries makes an excellent point in distinguishing the majority of game reviews today from the type of real criticism that the industry could use a lot more of -- reviews are targeted towards consumers making purchasing decisions while criticism is targeted towards the game makers themselves. According to Jeffries, most reviews today don't go beyond "this game is/isn't fun" to explore the why's which could help game developers make better games. Parkin also has a few points to make concerning consumer oriented reviews. Parkin contrasts video game reviews with consumer electronics reviews, noting that an objective measure of quality isn't possible for games in the way that it is for consumer electronics. Instead, Parkin says, game review scores are really a measure of how well a game lives up to its pre-release hype, although consumers still view them as an objective measure of quality.

In reading the comments to these articles and others, I've gathered that many people agree with Parkin's point that attempts to objectively rate games are fundamentally flawed. While I agree that pure objectivity is impossible, there are a number of reasons why quantitative metrics are still worthwhile:

1) Quantitative metrics allow for searching and sorting. If a reader finds a critic he often agrees with, he can quickly find all games that the critic rated highly without having to skim the text of every review.

2) Quantitative metrics allow for algorithmic processing and analysis. Even though "wisdom of crowds" aggregating sites such as metacritic are often flawed, one shouldn't condemn the entire concept. Metacritic has a lot of problems, but most are related to the site's implementation. A critic's review scores could even be used to rate the critic himself. The potential applications are endless.

3) Multidimensional metrics provide a framework for the reviewer, hopefully improving consistency when assigning scores. Flaws in games are naturally more apparent when the game is judged from different perspectives, reducing the likelihood of a reviewer reflexively handing out a perfect score to a flawed game merely because it does some things better than any game which came before it.

Futhermore, enough people like review scores to prevent them from going away anytime soon, so we might as well spend a little time thinking about creating better metrics.

Out of all the critics of game review metrics, the group I most respect are those, like Jeffries, calling for more insightful criticism and less consumer oriented reviews. I also consider this to be a very real problem, but it doesn't entirely preclude the use of metrics. Certainly there are many focused pieces of criticism which wouldn't have anything to gain by applying a numerical rating, but more macroscopic pieces which analyze the entire work could still gain a lot from quantitative metrics. I, for one, plan on writing reviews that utilize both metrics and, hopefully, insight.

Reviewing and Scoring Video Games

2008-06-01T12:31:00.011+08:00

I've been considering writing a few game reviews for my blog, which inevitably leads to thinking about scoring systems. Assigning a concrete score to any creatively produced work isn't something to take lightly. If a grade is assigned, it naturally creates an aura of objectivity and carries the weight of perceived authority. In many cases, the grade assigned carries more weight than the content of the review itself. The final score also opens the critic to criticism as well. If the critic desires the air of authority that concrete scores engender, he must take as much responsibility for the score assigned as he does for the content of his review.

It is for all these reasons that a critic should think carefully about any scoring system that he adopts. It is vital that the system used is consistent with the critic's philosophy of judging the medium in question. For me, the act of assigning a score of some sort is important because I believe that works of art CAN be judged objectively. I wouldn't bother with criticism at all if I didn't feel that this was the case. The challenge is to devise a scoring system which is informative enough to allow readers with their own varying predilections to make their own interpretations of quality without sacrificing the objectivity and finality of assigning a 'final' score. It is difficult to do this with a single, one dimensional metric.

In the old days game magazines would rate games on graphics, sound, difficulty, etc. Breaking the score down to this level of granularity is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, I might not be an expert in every category I might determine is necessary to judge. I feel much more qualified to judge a game's graphical quality than I do its sound design, for example. Second, it is important for a critic to take a stand on excellence, to make a final judgment. A myriad of small judgments certainly doesn't carry the same weight as one definitive score. And finally, the metrics used to describe one work's greatness may not paint an accurate picture of another.

Speaking of video games specifically, academics in the field of game studies can be roughly divided into two different camps, the narrativists and the ludologists(the wikipedia entry for ludology has a brief description of the differences for the uninitiated). I have yet to see a game scoring metric which synthesizes the current academic discussion on games. Therefore, I am proposing the use of a system which consists of two scores, one measuring the game's excellence from a ludological perspective and the other rating the narrative as it applies to the game. For lack of better terminology I will refer to these as the L-Score and N-Score, respectively. I am personally more of a ludologist, but that doesn't obviate the importance of narrative elements. After all, people play games for different reasons.

The L-Score is the score which is most closely related to the uniqueness of the medium. I have argued before that games are different from art because they aren't simply admired, they are also played. It is the interactive nature of games which ludologists emphasize, and so one can think of the L-Score as a metric for gameplay and game design. Mechanics, systems, and level design are the key components measured by the L-Score.

If the L-Score is a measure of a game's design, then the N-Score is a measure of its artistic achievement. The narrative, in this case, is defined rather broadly. It consists of the game's music, writing, visual style, sound design, overall setting, etc. All of these factors influence the player's involvement in the game and are therefore important even if they don't have much of a direct impact on the actual gameplay.

There may be some overlap between the components measured by the L-Score and the N-Score. For instance, the sound design in a first person shooter may provide an increased level of information and awareness to the perceptive player. Such a feature could be considered relevant to both the N-Score and the L-Score. Likewise, in an exploration intensive RPG interesting environments may be necessary to realize the goals of the game's design, making those environments important from a design perspective as well as an artistic one. Despite any overlap between what is being measured by the two metrics, each metric is still able to stand on its own.

All games are scored relative to what they are trying to achieve, with the very highest scores reserved for true innovation. The traits that make a good RPG are simply quite different from those of an action game, and so the game's concept must of course be in mind when considering the quality of the game's design. Similarly, when judging a game's narrative it would be silly to expect the same level of exposition from a shmup as from an RPG. The narrative of a shmup is less about plot and more about evoking a certain feeling through music and visual presentation. Genres which are more narratively focused will in some ways be judged to a higher standard. The fact that many story-focused RPGs require 40+ hours to finish places a huge burden on developers to create a consistently strong narrative and interesting setting. A five stage shmup should not be punished for having less content(unless more content would make for a better shmup.)

There has been a lot of debate recently concerning game review scores, with several print magazines altering or eliminating their review scoring system(EGM and Play, respectively.) I believe the main reason for dissatisfaction with most current game review metrics is that they no longer accurately reflect gamers' increasingly sophisticated view of the medium. Games are simply more complex than other forms of consumer entertainment, and as video game consumers continue to become more sophisticated they will demand more sophistication from video game critics. The solution is for video game critics to draw from the emerging field of game studies. My proposed L/N scoring system is the first step toward applying game studies research to video game review scores.

Solitary Pursuits

2008-04-03T11:55:00.009+08:00

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the coincidental appearance of the article The Lone Adventures of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! on GameSetWatch recently. An excerpt:

But even those kids, who plodded through the game until their 9 PM curfew, had a leg up on the lowest caste of D & D players - the people who played by themselves. And I was one of them. How do you play Dungeons & Dragons by yourself? Well, you roll a character, give it a name, and you follow the module room by room, fighting, looting, fighting, looting, slapping on new gear, and fighting again. You don’t need a DM; you just need a long, slow night that needs killing.

And I was one of them as well! The entire article is so relevant to me it is almost surreal. Just days before I was describing to my wife how for me the typically communal D&D was an entirely solo venture. I related to her how I'm sure there must be a lot of other dorks out there who did the same, but not really caring for the social aspects, must have existed in their own isolated bastions of geekery. The article goes on to discuss the various game books designed for solo play, in particular Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series. Of course, that series is one of my favorites.

The really coincidental part is that the weekend before this article appeared, I committed myself to replaying the old Fighting Fantasy classic of yore, Deathtrap Dungeon. And here today, on this very blog, are the fruits of my labor:

Taipei Game Show 2008

2008-01-28T03:04:00.000+08:00

It's 2008 and once again the Taipei Game Show is upon us! There's coverage up at wikinews and ImpressWatch(igs, sony, ms, funtown, unalis, softworld). And finally, toddintaipei's photos.

Update: Impress Watch has added a table of contents page for their Taipei Game Show coverage. They've also added some general Taipei gaming coverage, including lots of photos of shops, etc.

Bioshock vs. System Shock

2007-12-15T04:49:00.000+08:00

In closing my last post on cognitive games, I proposed comparing the 1994 PC classic System Shock with its spiritual sequel Bioshock, released this year. Both are great games, but are representative of two different philosophies -- and perhaps even eras -- of game design.

To begin with, Kieron Gillen did an excellent job describing just what is so great about Bioshock in a recent article for Eurogamer. I'd encourage everyone to read his article. In fact, I was inspired somewhat by his comparison of Bioshock with System Shock 2. Since I have not played the second System Shock, I will ignore most of the specific points Gillen made in his comparison and draw my own. The main point to be taken from Gillen's article is the excellence of Bioshock's narrative and setting, especially the way in which the game's setting drives the narrative. This is important because placing the narrative within the environment is a useful technique for providing narrative without detracting from the game's interactive nature. As Gillen points out, the more observant and curious the player, the stronger the narrative becomes. In this sense Bioshock's narrative, at least, fits my description of a cognitive game, and Bioshock probably does this better than any game to date.

Where Bioshock falls down compared to System Shock is the way the narrative is tied to the actual gameplay. Both games are littered with recorded messages from their settings' past inhabitants, but while these messages do an excellent job of driving Bioshock's narrative, they have very little impact on the game itself. In System Shock the player needs to listen carefully to these messages in order to figure out what to do. They are clues not only of what happened on the space station and of the people who once inhabited it, but also of what the player must do in order to win the game. Exploration fuels the narrative which then fuels the gameplay itself. Whereas in Bioshock the player only needs to keep pushing forward. With the exception of a few simple fetch quests -- the necessity of which are broadcasted to the player loud and clear -- Bioshock doesn't require exploration and there are no significant puzzles standing between the player and the final credits. As an illustration, I actually played Bioshock with the 'objective arrow' on for most of the game, despite my love of self-guided exploration. Before you cry foul at my apparent hypocrisy, the reason I did this is because I quickly realized that there was no real point to floundering about lost in Rapture when there was always one place you were supposed to be going. The arrow will guide you through almost every part of every level in the proper linear order, and with no nonsequential puzzles in the way or clues to discover, there is no real point in not using it. Either way, you can still take your time and explore the scenery to find hidden item stashes and narrative bits.

The lack of puzzle elements and required exploration alone is not enough to disqualify Bioshock as a cognitively demanding game, however. Bioshock was always billed as a shooter first and foremost and its action elements are more important to it than action elements are to System Shock. Unfortunately, although Bioshock has a great deal of depth in this area, it once again fails to meet my cognitive criteria. A big reason is Bioshock's implementation of vita chambers. Without real consequences in the game, there is less incentive to explore the actual depth that does exist in Bioshock's combat. Furthermore, most of the tactical options that do exist are either too heavy handed to be satisfying(oh look, another huge oil slick to lure enemies onto and set on fire) or impossible to derive deductively(does it make any sense that taking pictures of security cameras would eventually allow you to walk right past them undetected?). To be sure, there are a lot of weapons and skills in Bioshock, but are there many reasons to use one over the other besides running out of ammo?

System Shock had a better implementation of vita chambers because each chamber was inactive until you found it and flipped a switch nearby. This created a mini objective for each level and required you to explore carefully for a good portion of each level. So even though System Shock was not as combat intensive as Bioshock, its combat was still a more challenging experience.

Bioshock is not alone among recent games when it comes to its flaws. In fact, it is quite representative of recent trends in game design, only most recent games don't have such an exquisitely crafted setting to make the whole experience still worthwhile. Games today are targeted at a more casual audience and so developers are focused on creating games with shorter learning curves and less challenging gameplay. These types of games are still entertaining, in much the same way as other forms of pop entertainment, but after 6 to 8 hours the experience becomes stale. From reading forum posts online, I gather a lot of people felt this way about Bioshock. The game just got boring and repetitive to play by sometime around the halfway point. But at the same time, many gamers don't feel that a game is worth the initial $50-60 without 15+ hours of content to play through.

So should fans of cognitive games be without hope? Not entirely. The audience of casual gamers is expanding, but that doesn't mean the cognitive niche is shrinking. The days when cognitive games top the sales charts may be over, but in absolute terms I think they will continue to sell as well as they always have. The differences will be in who is making them and in how much money it costs to make them compared to the sales leaders.

Cognitive Games

2007-12-05T01:20:00.000+08:00

As I've begun to think more about the types of games I most enjoy, I've realized that the games I like best are those that require an investment from the player. It seems that the games which demand the most often have the most to give back. Of course not all demanding games are richly rewarding, but for the most part games that are demanding seem to perform the unique role of games as learning tools better than those which aren't. The enjoyment an individual derives from games compared to other entertainment media depends in part on how much they enjoy the learning aspect of games, and the purer the game, the more it relies on learning.

I call games which stress learning cognitive games. There are two broad categories of cognitive games, complex games which demand the player to learn complicated systems and interfaces, and games with relatively simple mechanics but which require total mastery of those mechanics. In the case of the simple games, the learning process is often more akin to learning to play a sport than it is to the process of learning a complex game. I enjoyed both types of games starting at an early age.

My first exposure to complex games was through pen and paper role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. P&P RPGs are usually quite complex because their rulesets need to be able to handle an extremely open-ended game and thus adjudicate an endless number of possibilities. Of course, the game master is there to make judgments on how to apply the rules, but the fact that D&D has been so successfully translated to computer simulations which lack human game masters is a testament to the game's complexity. In fact, the computer RPGs which are directly based on P&P systems are probably more complex on average than those which aren't.

In addition to ridiculously complex RPGs, during the 80s and 90s computers also held host to numerous other cognitively demanding games, including turn-based strategy and war games, flight simulators, real-time strategy(RTS) games, and various simulations. Most of these games had thick paper manuals and complex controls which took advantage of every input device the PC had to offer. These are games which required study, and people like me were happy to spend hours poring over the manuals and devising strategy when not actively playing.

Console games, on the other hand, tended toward the simple variety, but there were still cognitively challenging games. Tetris and other similar block puzzle games have very simple systems that are easy to understand but demand faster and faster mental processing and reaction from the player as the difficulty increases. Many side scrolling platformers and action games likewise have fairly simple mechanics(alther much more complex than Tetris) but require dedication from the player to acquire the necessary hand-eye coordination to complete the game. And to provide one more example, fighting games like Street Fighter require the development of timing, coordination, and dynamic strategic thinking. And with each game employing different systems, skill in one doesn't translate 1:1 into other games no matter how superficially similar they may seem.

The one characteristic all cognitive games have in common is that they punish you for making a mistake. Negative feedback is necessary to enforce learning. The trend these days is toward positive feedback in the form of rewards or unlockables, and although those can be useful and fun, I still think cognitive games need negative feedback. If the game is so lenient that the player can progress the narrative even while playing badly, he probably isn't even aware that he is playing badly. Imagine learning to play chess against a computer AI simulating a typical 10 year old. Despite the depth and potential complexity of the game, you would be unlikely to appreciate the finer points without a more challenging opponent. Perhaps one reason competitive multiplayer modes are so popular is because in the modern narrative-focused game that is the one mode where failure, and thus learning, is unavoidable.

I've recently been playing three games which I consider to be good examples of cognitive games, Armored Core 4, Virtua Fighter 5, and System Shock. The telling point to be made here is that System Shock is over ten years old and the other two games are continuations of series which began long ago(Armored Core 4 is actually the 12th game in that series). Are games today less cognitively demanding than the games of old? Are new franchises of cognitive games likely to find mainstream success in today's commercial environment? The recently released Bioshock, a spiritual sequel to the System Shock series, is an excellent subject for analysis, but one which I shall have to tackle in a later post!

Why is Sony the New Microsoft?

2007-04-02T11:50:00.000+08:00

Over the last year Sony's Computer Entertainment division has taken a severe beating in the media and on internet forums. Some of the negative press was surely deserved, the launch of the Playstation 3 was delayed by 6 months after all -- even more for Europeans -- and when it did finally arrive it was with an almost unprecendented price tag. Disappointed consumers aside, the ridiculous magnitude of Sony's PR nightmare really strikes me as irrational, a groupthink wagon train of a scale that could never have existed in the pre-Web 2.0 era. Why does everyone suddenly hate Sony? When did Sony become the new Microsoft?

Part of the explanation lies with the old Microsoft, Microsoft itself. It launched its next gen console about a year ahead of the Ps3. In the zero-sum wargrounds for console supremacy, several million of Time Magazine's person of the year quickly found a reason to pick a side. And a substantial number did just that, once again demonstrating the ugly gremlin in the gearbox of human civilization.

Sony, as a company, has a recent history blighted with arrogance and consumer-directed antagonism, including ridiculous claims about the computational power of the Ps2, attempts to force consumers into proprietary Sony formats(mini disc, memory stick, UMD), experiments with copy-protected CDs, etc., etc. This is the rational part of the explanation.

The facts on the PS3 however, tell a different story when viewed objectively. The PS3 is probably the least proprietary game console in history. Let us catalog all the ways that the PS3 exceeds Micorsofts's Xbox 360 in terms of openness:

1) The big one: Sony has endorsed 3rd party operating systems on Ps3. A full suite of Linux media center apps is just a matter of time. The Xbox 360's media functionality is hamstrung by Microsoft's desire to sell PCs with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 -- a good portion of the media functionality is centered around a PC in the home running the OS. The PS3 also supports the DLNA standard as a compatible client.

2) Storage devices. For once, Sony actually got this one right. PS3 supports all generic usb storage devices, standard 2.5" hard drives(which can be easily swapped out by almost anyone), and the 60GB version also includes built-in support for a plethora of flash memory formats(compaq flash, memory stick, SD memory cards, etc). Microsoft requires the purchase of official memory cards($49.99 for 512MB) and hard disks(a 20 giger will set you back $99.99). If you buy the $300 Xbox 360 you are forced to pay another $49.99 if you want the ability to save games!

3) Free online service. The Playstation Network is entirely free, unlike Microsoft's Xbox Live service. Furthermore, Microsoft is attempting to leverage Xbox Live to introduce non-free proprietary online play to PCs via their new Windows Live initiative. So far, PC gamers have shunned the service. The only game I know of which requires Windows Live for online play is Microsoft's Shadowrun.

4) Less restrictive region encoding. All Ps3 games are region free, only some 360 games are. Microsoft does not require any form of region encoding, but does allow publishers the option to use region encoding. Blu-ray movies, although still region encoded on the publisher's option, are divided into only three regions.

I expect that part of the reason for Sony's relative good behavior is the increasing importance of software, and Sony, unlike Microsoft, doesn't have its fingers in that pie. Sony wants to sell you Blu-ray. In order to do that they are going to sell you an open platform. Microsoft wants to sell you Windows Media Center, an online service, memory cards, hard drives, probably IPTV, and on top of all that they're throwing their support behind HD-DVD just to spite Sony.

It is time to stop reviling the PS3 and get back to hating Microsoft! I grew to love the Internet that hated Microsoft; has the composition of the Net changed so much in the last 5 years that a Microsoft-hating Net is now impossible? The Microsoft haters weren't always right, but at least they had legitimate grounds for complaint. The Playstation 3, in contrast, has done nothing but arrive later and more expensive than it's competitor.

More from Taipei Game Show 2007

2007-02-13T22:45:00.000+08:00

Final set of links from the Taipei Game Show:

GameWatch explores Taipei and finds, among other things, Guang Hua Market, some new maid cafe, and a giant Gundam store called Gundam Base Taipei. I wish I'd known about the GBT! Or maybe it's new. They took a lot of nice pictures of familiar places, but now those familiar places have PS3s.

Taoyuan Nights has tons of great pictures from the event and some good commentary as well.

There's a youtube video of the WoW booth, though I haven't watched it yet due to the complexities of running Flash on Linux in 64bit Firefox(read: not possible and I refuse to go 32bit).

And finally, ridiculous booth babe pics in some forum.

Taipei Game Show 2007

2007-02-10T11:51:00.000+08:00

Taipei Game Show 2007 began festivities on Feb. 8. Boy, browsing pictures from the event really brings back old memories!

Check out coverage(and pics!) from Impress Watch, The Daily Bubble Tea, and IslaFormosa.

DigiTimes also has some more, ah... news-like reporting on the event.

Video Mahjong

2007-01-08T01:39:00.000+08:00

I've been playing a lot of mahjong lately, mostly of the electronic variety since it is kind of hard to get a group of Americans together to play mahjong. Luckily for me, there are many great electronic versions. MAME(the multi machine arcade emulator) should be any electronic mahjong enthusiast's first software acquisition. Once you've installed MAME, the excellent Mahjong in MAME site has everything else you need, other than roms, to get started: rules, controls, mahjong game reviews, etc. The site is more or less essential if you don't speak Japanese since most of the mahjong arcade games originate from Japan. There are also some interesting differences between japanese rules and the traditional chinese game.

There are also many versions of mahjong for game consoles, provided you can play japanese imports on whatever system you may have. I have Minna no Mahjong for the DS(which is region free), but I wouldn't recommend it to the non-Japanese capable. One nice thing about the console versions is that they often allow you to play standard 4-person mahjong while most arcade games are 1-on-1 versus affairs.

The only other mahjong game I have played outside of emulation is Devilish Mahjong Tower( 麻雀惡魔塔) for the megadrive. Devilish Mahjong Tower is a product of the Taiwanese company C&E, Inc. and is a 1-on-1 versus style mahjong game where you face off against all manner of aliens in a cyberpunk future! To the death! As you can see, I am somewhat enamoured of this game. The best thing about it is that it is in Chinese, a surprisingly hard thing to find considering that mahjong is a traditional chinese game. And, as you can see, the game is also the source of my Blogger avatar.

Still alive

2006-12-24T03:31:00.000+08:00

Quick post just to indicate that I am still alive, although no longer in Taiwan. Despite my return to the States I plan to resume posting, but I'll be focusing more on gaming and less on Taipei. However, I am still studying Chinese and I do keep up with events in the region, so Taiwan related posts are not outside the realm of possibility.

Guang Hua Computer Market

2006-05-05T17:42:00.000+08:00

The otaku(to borrow a word from Japanese) mecca of Taipei is, without a doubt, Guang Hua Market. Just don't go expecting Akihabara, OK? This is Taiwan, man, so expect a little grit with your geek paradise. Expect a bajillion scooters and even more people to perpetually throw themselves in your path, forever screwing with your meticulously planned approach vectors. Expect food stands selling corn dogs. And heaven help you if your idea of geeking out is having a milkshake at some posh maid cafe somewhere.

What you should expect to see are motherboards, lots and lots of motherboards. You will also see a lot of mp3 players, graphics cards, power supplys, computer cases and case accessories of every description, many PC games in Chinese, a few in English, Japanese console games, manga, dvds, AV(wink, wink, nudge), books on computers, recordable media, and everything you could possibly need to connect X to Y. To illustrate this last point a bit better, let me relay a personal anecdote or two. Exhibiting the foresight I am know for, I brought my Saturn PS2 pad(this is a PS2 controller in the form of an old Sega Saturn controller, perfect for arcade style games) with me to Taiwan. I did not bring my PS2 and had no method to connect this to my computer, but I had a hunch Taipei wouldn't let me down. Guang Hua delivered in about 10 minutes with a PS/PS2 to USB converter. It works like a charm and has led to much emulation goodness on my PC. For a more serious challenge, I also decided to look for a way to run homebrew code on my Nintendo DS -- I hate paying shipping on stuff like this and the hunt itself is kind of fun. Once again, Guang Hua delivered with a Passkey2 for less than $30(I already had a gba flashcart).

Getting to Guang Hua is pretty easy, but there is some confusion due to the fact that they tore down the building that the market was previously housed in. They are building a nicer building, set to open in 2007 I believe, but for now you can find the market in a temporary structure on Civic Blvd. near Xinsheng Rd. If you hop off the MRT at Zhongxiao Xinsheng station, just walk north till you get to Civic and hang a left. Guang Hua will be a little ways down on the left. There will be about a thousand scooters out in front of it and you may even see the ad in the image on the left there(by the way, if you are wondering what the Taipei Game Show -- last held in February -- is like, just take that picture and multiply it by about 100,000. That'll give you an inkling).

Oh, and I also bought a new copy of ESPGaluda for PS2 at Guang Hua for about $24. Holy hell it was sweet when I bought that! That game is like $60-65 on the import sites, if you can even find it. It has this nice sticker on it that says, "OFFICIAL PRODUCT. Pricing and 'For Japan Only' mark printed inside the case are not applicable. MADE IN JAPAN." It has another sticker which says, "DVD video inside the package are exclusively for Japan Market." Yeah, it seems like this is the official Japanese version, which comes with a dvd, only repriced for Taiwan.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, GuangHua, videogames, otaku

Chinese Learnin'

2006-05-01T21:42:00.000+08:00

Wow, I've been studying Chinese here for two months and this is the first post to mention it. Naturally, the factors which bring me to finally broach the subject aren't entirely positive. The crux of the matter is that after two months of going to class for 2 hours a day, my ability to conduct basic activities in Chinese has only marginally improved. Perhaps I'm expecting too much progress, too quickly, but I honestly think that I could have made just as much progress listening to Pimsleur(or any other high quality aural learning tool) for 1 hour a day and working through the book myself. My current problems with my classroom environment, as I see it, are threefold.

First of all, I'm in a class that isn't perfectly suited to my level. I've had probably the least experience with Chinese of any student in the class, but too much experience to get much out of the pure beginner's class(At least, so I thought. I'm starting to regret the decision to move up to the next class. After all, I don't think I could do much worse.) Since virtually all classroom discussion is conducted in slightly-too-difficult Chinese, a lot of the immersion is lost on me. Immersion only works if the input is comprehensible and for me a lot of it isn't. I don't feel like I'm necessarily alone in this because I haven't noticed any real improvement in my classmates either. I could be wrong on that account, but I do know several of my classmates have expressed disappointment of their own. I don't completely blame the school for this; it is difficult to construct a program that works for everyone when most people don't enter it at the introductory level. I think they could make a little more effort in forming classes of equivalent students though. They could make a good approximation by simply separating western students from the Japanese and Koreans; although I would miss the cultural diversity quite a bit if they did do this.

Second, Chinese spoken in the classroom barely resembles what I hear on the street. I guess this is unavoidable in the beginning due to students' limited vocabulary and the need to speak a little slower and with proper pronunciation. Also, most spoken interaction is between fellow students, and we all suck at Chinese. Part of the problem here is the organization of our text. Topic wise and vocab wise, it isn't ideal for students actually living in a Chinese environment. Personal anecdote: I still don't understand what people are saying to me when they ask if I want something 'here' or 'to go'. They don't construct the question the way I would, that is for sure(and unsurprising).

Third, the class moves way too fast and there isn't nearly enough repetition. Perhaps I could overcome this if I studied more outside of class, but I still think way too much is being crammed into this class. In addition to flying through the text, the instructor supplements it with extra materials including tons more vocabulary. I ignore as much of this vocabulary as possible unless it seems particularly useful. The end result is that I don't have a solid grasp on anything that I have covered in this class that I didn't have some exposure to before. The grammar patterns I learned from Pimsleur during my evening commute back in the States are the ones that flow most naturally for me. Before coming here, I took a class back in the States that met once a week for 2 hours. We spent more time going over the text in class(the same text I'm using here) and the gap between classes allowed for plenty of time to digest vocabulary before the next class. With only 20% of the class time(plus a little Pimsleur), I probably made 50% of the progress that I am making in my current class. Also, the teacher of that class would correct pronunciation mistakes fairly frequently, something which rarely happens here.

For those who are curious, I'm studying at National Chengchi University, or Zhengda, as it is often called. Aside from my personal circumstances, I'm pretty happy with the program here. I even like my teacher despite it all. I'm also not sure if my experiences are really representative of Zhengda as a whole. I choose Zhengda because people seemed happier overall with Zhengda than with the better known program at Shida. Perhaps I just suck at foreign languages or am lazy. I really don't know because I have little to compare my current experience with. I do recognize my complaints as being fairly common among students of Chinese here in Taiwan however, and this leads me to believe that the methods used are not ideal.

Tags: Taiwan, Chinese, Mandarin

Disconnected

2006-04-25T12:50:00.000+08:00

Taipei: urban, fast-paced, glittering neon on an asphalt foundation. There's something different though, a shared bucolic memory still impressed into the culture, memories of harder times still lingering in an older generation. Organization is on a smaller scale, recalling a rural past. The modern equivalent of village markets lie huddled in the shadow of looming high rises. Office ladies in high heels and Gucci buy breakfast on the street, served by women who don't have the time to look so nice -- their family business is open morning to night, seven days a week. In the early morning old men and women practice qi gong, revering nature and spirit from a concrete slab.

In America, a Survivor contestant is subject to an epiphany: that fish, as in food that you eat, are the same fish that swim in oceans and aquariums. Same season, but different episode and everyone is freaked out when the young, Taiwanese born girl eats the leftover scraps of their chicken feast -- scraps being any part you can name with a word more specific than breast or wing. I laugh at them, but even so, I grew up on a poultry farm and wouldn't suck the eyeball out of a bird's head if you paid me. How many generations am I removed from someone who would?

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, Survivor

Mahjong Movie!

2006-04-24T22:53:00.000+08:00

I'm totally watching some mahjong movie with Andy Lau! He just won with "18 Unique Wonders!" Please comment if you know the name of this movie!

Update: Google has the answer: Fat Choi Spirit.

Tags: mahjong

Taipei Gamer Sidequest: Zhongwen RPGs

2006-04-17T20:02:00.000+08:00

Yeah, that's right...Chinese RPGS. The stated purpose of this little voyage, the Main Quest if you will, is to learn me some Chinese. But there's a lot more to any good RPG than the main quest. You gotta get out there and explore! Talk to the people and all that jazz! Today I finished up a little quest that I'd been hoping to complete for a while now.

It all started on Yahoo Auctions Taiwan. I finally decided to take the plunge and create an account. Completing this stage mostly involved much copying and pasting of Chinese characters into various electronic translation tools. This culminated in me receiving an automated SMS with a special code to enter online to verify my phone number, something I hadn't anticipated. Luckily I had bought a phone and a prepaid sim card a couple weeks ago. Once that was done, I was in. I just had to find Zhongwen RPGs. Actually, I had already found two for the megadrive. I just needed to bid. Click here to take a look at one of them. For a good laugh, scroll down a bit till you see the 3 tabs -- the rightmost one should read "問與答(1)". Go ahead and click on that one to see how I operate when I'm looking for Zhongwen RPGs. For a really HUGE laugh, copy my question into Google's Chinese-English translation tool(ignoring the fact that this is traditional Chinese and the tool is for simplified). Now, my Chinese there is babytalk and I can see one error right away, but still, Google's translation is pure nonsense!

Reasonably satisfied with the seller's response, he gave the address of a McDonald's where I could meet him to do the exchange in person, I went ahead and bought both of the Zhongwen RPGs he was selling. One of them was the fabled Beggar Prince. The other one, the one I linked to above, I had tested out on an emulator. To put it succinctly, I was floored. The sprites were about twice the size they usually are in these type games, there appeared to be tons of characters, and combat played out on the same screen as movement. Holy hell it was awesome! I might not have bought either of them if that game hadn't struck me the way it did.

Moving on, after a few brief emails, the seller sent me his phone number and told me to call him. I was a little nervous about this, but I was even more afraid of not fulfilling my contractual obligations and getting thrown in the slammer. So I called the dude up this morning, but all I get is a bunch of Chinese and some music. He calls me back a few minutes later, and damn, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Somehow I pulled it together though, and I was able to tell him that I would go to that damn McDonald's and I would call him when I got there. It definitely worked a lot better when I did the talking and just asked him yes or no type questions.

So, off I was to the McDonald's in Xinzhuang City, at 303 Xintai Rd. Xinzhuang, although I guess it isn't technically part of Taipei, is still basically in the Taipei Metropolitan area. The MRT, however, doesn't go all the way out there yet and I had heard it was kind of a shithole out there in the Western suburbs. Well, I would soon find out. I hopped on the MRT and took it as far westward as it would take me, to Xinpu. From there I hailed a taxi and showed him the address. Over the Danshui we went into a very noisy and crowded Xinzhuang City. About four bucks later, I was standing outside the McDonald's at 303 Xintai Rd.

To make a long story short, I met the seller there, he was a fairly young guy on a scooter, and got my two Zhongwen RPGs for 600NT(about $18). Smooth transaction. A++ seller. 很好! After that, I snapped a few pictures of Xinzhuang -- definitely overcrowded, but not nearly as bad as I had feared -- and grabbed some lunch. Then I started looking for a bus to take me back, and then decided I might as well just walk all the way back to Xinpu. Unfortunately I was blocked by a bridge that was absolutely not safe for pedestrians. So I gave up on that plan, walked back the way I had came and found Bus 802, bound for Xinpu.

I feel like a damn resourceful bastard to get these Zhongwen RPGs.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, gaming, videogames, Chinese, Beggar Prince

Super A'Can in Da House!

2006-04-16T19:21:00.001+08:00

I now have in my posession a Super A'Can. Even though I'm not keeping it, it is still kind of exciting. If only I had a game for it. Then I could "test" the system before parting with it. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any A'Can games for sell here, making it quite likely that I will never actually play the system.

Here are a few pictures:

Tags: Taiwan, Super A'can, gaming, videogames

Celling a Revolution

2006-04-07T21:21:00.000+08:00

There's been a lot of debate on gaming websites over the technology behind the next gen consoles, specifically the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The general consensus, which is reflected in this recent post on kotaku.com, is that the PS3 is possibly more powerful, but dramatically harder to program for due to the idiosyncrasies of the PS3's Cell processor. By far the most damaging claims against Cell are those made by John Carmack, programming god(I don't dispute that, by the way). While I don't have any experience developing console games(I am a programmer though, so I have some qualifications), I'd still like to talk a bit about why I'm a lot more excited about the PS3 than the 360.

Read more!

Improvements Over the Past

Before I delve into Cell, I want to discuss one huge improvement, from an ease of development perspective, that the PS3 has over the PS2, the PS3's use of OpenGl. With the PS2, developers(or a middleware company) had to do their graphics programming on the metal because the PS2 graphics hardware did not support a high-level API like OpenGL or DirectX. Microsoft's Xbox, on the other hand, was essentially a PC with Nvidia graphics hardware. Xbox programmers wrote their graphics code in a high level language like C++ with calls to the DirectX API. The only exceptions to this were the vertex and pixel shaders, which were written in a low-level assembly language targetting the Nvidia GPU. In short, graphics programming was much, much easier on the Xbox.

This time around, Sony has adopted the PC/Xbox model for the PS3. The PS3's RSX GPU, also developed by Nvidia, will be accessed through a subset of OpenGL, an open API similar to DirectX. Shader development will be done using Nvidia's Cg language, a high level replacement for the specialized assembly language used in the past. All access to the RSX GPU will be through these high level methods. Carmack himself once praised OpenGL as being superior to Microsoft's DirectX, and indeed, id Software's most recent game, Doom 3, used OpenGL. Although DirectX has improved, lots of developers still prefer OpenGL.

So the vast majority of PS3 graphics programming will be done in a high level API from a high level language. With regard to graphics programming, the Cell processor will only be used for nonstandard(ie non-polygonal) tasks like raytracing, volume rendering, and particle effects. RSX, through the use of vertex and pixel shaders, can even take on some of these nonstandard rendering tasks, but the approach used will depend on the developers. This brings the PS3 in line with the Xbox 360 and high end PCs from a standard graphics programming perspective.

Types of Multiprocessing

The big difference between the 360 and PS3 are in their different approaches to processor parallelism in the CPU. Both consoles use a CPU derived from IBM's POWER series of processors(hereafter referred to as a power processing element, or PPE). Both consoles use PPEs that were developed by IBM, and in both cases the designers have pared down the chip logic that was designed to extract instruction level parallelism from executing code. The 360's PPE, codenamed Xenon, makes up for this by having three separate PPE cores, each capable of two simultaneous threads of execution. So, the chip designers have traded automatic parallelization of one or two threads for the capacity to execute many programmer created threads simultaneously. Although Xenon has a great capactity for parallelism, the basic programming model is the same one used by nonparallel machines that execute multiple tasks concurrently, like a single processor desktop PC.

The PS3's Cell processor, on the other hand, only has one PPE(also dual threaded) but has additional computational resources manifested in 7 synergistic processing elements(SPEs). Each of these SPEs is a specialized vector processor with its own 256KB local memory. Main memory addresses are coherent throughout the system, with communication between the SPEs and main memory handled through high bandwidth DMA which can be initiated from either the SPE or PPE. Management of DMA transfers between the SPE's local memory and main memory is a primary source of Cell's added complexity for developers. The SPEs can be considered a form of multiple instruction multiple data(MIMD) parallelism with both distributed and shared memory.

Both processors also make use of single instruction multiple data(SIMD) parallelism in the vector processing units in their PPEs. And of course, the Cell's SPEs are basically SIMD vector processors.

Xenon's Approach

Xenon's approach to parallelism is the most commonly used high-level model and is generally what is referred to when people talk about multithreaded programming. In this scenario, parallel threads of execution share memory and must execute synchronously with respect to one another. If shared memory isn't locked while one thread is accessing it, another thread could stomp all over it and disrupt the first thread's computations. Methods to deal with process synchronization are provided by the OS, which is also responsible for scheduling when -- and on which processor -- threads execute. This level of abstraction reduces complexity for the programmer but is one reason that debugging multithreaded programs is so difficult.

Despite the ready availability of multiprocessing hardware(hardware that can actually execute multiple threads simultaneously instead of faking it like a single processor machine does), it is only recently that multiprocessor machines have become commonplace in the desktop market, and most of these new machines are only dual core. Until now, multiprocessing has remained confined to network servers where extracting increased performance through multithreading is relatively straightforward. For now at least, the primary benefit to the consumer of using a dual core machine is the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously without a loss of responsiveness, not the increased performance of individual applications.

I see little reason for believing that the fundamental difficulties of multithreaded programming will change with the advent of the 360. I would say that multithreaded programming is probably just as difficult now as it was ten years ago and most of the performance improvemets have come from advances at the hardware level. The challenge for 360 developers will be to keep as many threads as possible executing simultaneously. To do this they will need to avoid both conflicts between threads and waits in accessing data from main memory.

The latter problem is now the primary performance bottleneck for data-intensive applications like games. Memory latency has simply not kept pace with advances in processor speed in recent years. Xenon's response to this challenge is to give the programmer some control over how the Xenon's L2 cache is used. On a thread-by-thread basis, the programmer can set aside portions of the PPEs' shared 1MB L2 cache for use as a buffer between a thread running on a PPE and the GPU. In short, this creates a form of local storage for the GPU that can be used to prevent the GPU from having to pull geometry data from main memory(see the references for more information about this). Although this fine-grained control will add another level of complexity to 360 development, in the long run it should make it much easier to achieve good performance.

Cell's MIMD Approach

Cell's MIMD approach has more in common with applications in distributed computing than it does to conventional multithreading. In fact, this common misunderstanding on gaming websites was the primary impetus for this article. The increased complexity resulting from Cell's 7 SPEs is quite different from the complexity of managing 6 simultaneous threads on the 360. The way that threads running on SPEs will interact with one another is likely to be quite different from how threads interact on the 360's PPEs(Note: it is possible to program Cell so that it behaves similarly to a shared memory multiprocessor like the 360). Fundamentally, Cell is an attempt to address the problem of memory latency mentioned above in the discussion of the Xenon's L2 cache by giving developers direct control over both the cache -- SPE local memory -- and process scheduling on the SPEs. The Cell Broadband Engine Tutorial says it best:

The reason for this radical change is that memory latency, measured in processor cycles, has gone up several hundredfold in the last 20 years. The result is that application performance is, in most cases, limited by memory latency rather than by peak compute capability or peak bandwidth. When a sequential program on a conventional architecture performs a load instruction that misses in the caches, program execution now comes to a halt for several hundred cycles. Compared to this penalty, the few cycles it takes to set up a DMA transfer for an SPE is quite small. Conventional processors, even with deep and costly speculation, manage to get, at best, a handful of independent memory accesses in flight. The result can be compared to a bucket brigade in which a hundred people are required to cover the distance to the water needed to put the fire out, but only a few buckets are available. In contrast, the explicit DMA model allows each SPE to have many concurrent memory accesses in flight, without the need for speculation(CBET; 14).

The Cell Broadband Engine Tutorial mentions seven possible programming models for Cell. To illustrate Cell's flexibility, I'm going to briefly discuss three of them here:

Functional Offload Model(Remote Procedure Call): Here the SPEs are used to perform specific tasks on behalf of the PPE. The developer simply chooses which tasks he desires to run on the SPEs and replaces those function calls with stub functions which manage the process of calling the procedure on the SPE. A special compiler is provided which creates the PPE and SPE code from an Interface Definition Language(IDL) file(CBET; 127-128).
Streaming Model: "In the Streaming Model, each SPE, in either a serial or parallel pipeline, computes data that streams through. The PPE acts as a stream controller, and the SPEs act as stream-data processors"(CBET; 133).
Shared Memory Multiprocessor Model(Xbox 360 mode): Because memory addresses are coherent between the SPEs and the PPE, a shared memory model is possible. SPE local memory can be utilized as program and data cache. Since each SPE has 256KB of local memory, that is a pretty nice cache(CBET; 134).

My gut feeling is that there is greater room for advancement in both tool quality(optimizing compilers, etc.) and programmer skill with the MIMD approach. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but I certainly think that history indicates that there isn't likely to be a breakthrough in conventional multithreaded programming techniques. Furthermore, the flexibility of Cell gives developers more than one programming model to pursue in their attempts to keep the SPEs busy.

Cell Weaknesses

The SPEs are optimized for single precision floating point operations, which are issued 4-way with a 6 cycle latency. The latency for double precision is 13 cycles, of which only the last 7 are pipelined. So, no instructions of any kind are issued for six cycles after a double float operation is issued(CBET; 60, 62). This would seem like a significant hit for Cell's other target application area of scientific computing. Perhaps IBM is planning further revisions to address the need for higher precision floating point.

A performance issue with greater relevance to gaming is the ability of Cell to run AI code. The SPEs have limited branch prediction logic(as do the PPEs for both Cell and Xenon for that matter), which should reduce performance on branch-heavy AI code. And of course, the fact that AI code is generally neither SIMD parallel nor floating point doesn't make an SPE the ideal place to run such code. However, SPEs are at least flexible enough to run AI code, so they may be used for it anyway just because there are so many of them.

Finally, there is the added challenge to programmers of having to explicitly manage DMA transfers between the SPEs and main memory. Use of certain libraries and compilers could reduce the amount of micromanagement necessary, however.

Increasing Importance of Middleware

Along with the last generation of consoles, the complexity and scale of game development has risen sharply. This has led to an increased dependence on third party code by many developers. For instance, witness the widespread adoption of Unreal Engine 3 by many next-gen game developers. The presence of high quality middleware like UE3 means that not every studio has to be stocked with Cell and Xenon experts to make quality games. On the downside, all of this middleware could lead to less technological diversity between games in the next generation. Even worse is the possibility of less distinction between consoles, if a few middleware companies come to dominate the market and don't do the work necessary to fully exploit the hardware of one console or the other. Hopefully, competition between middleware companies will at least prevent the latter scenario.

Overall, the middleware trend should most favor the PS3 because, if the past is any indication, it will probably be the market leader. As the market leader, the PS3 should have the most games and thus the largest market for middleware. This could nullify the advantage of Microsoft's supposedly superior first party development tools. If there is a performance difference between cross platform middleware packages, expect the PS3 to have the better support.

Performance Battle / Room To Grow

In a console war such as this, the bottom line is console performance(At least for Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo seems to have opted out of the performance battle). Every developer is going to want to push the hardware, so what matters is the relative difficulty of writing optimized code. I do not doubt that the 360 is an easier platform to create relatively unoptimized games, although I think the difference is often exaggerated. The PS3, on the other hand, will require more experimentation and research up front. Once this is done, however, I actually think it will probably be easier to create optimized code on the PS3. PS3 developers will reap long-term rewards from being forced to program the SPEs at a lower level and possibly from advances in software technology.

Most pundits also agree that the PS3 has a higher performance ceiling. Over time this will be a significant Sony advantage. If the past is any indication, it is clear that Sony intends for the PS3 to have a long lifespan. A high ceiling for maximum performance means that PS3 games should steadily improve throughout the PS3's life, keeping consumers satisfied. We saw something similar with the PS2. Despite launching ahead of the Xbox and Gamecube, consumers have remained satisfied with the PS2 in part because of steady improvement in its games.

Conclusion

There is more than one way to look at programming complexity. Sometimes abstractions that make certain tasks easier make others more difficult. Specifically, abstractions in programming languages/models can often be a double-edged sword, and nowhere is this clearer than in runtime performance. The Xbox 360 adopts the traditional abstractions of multithreaded software development. This model is familiar, but is very difficult to program efficiently. The PS3 opts for a fundamentally lower-level model which could potentially put fewer barriers between software engineers and theoretical performance potential. The PS3, powered by the Cell processor, should overcome the obstacles presented by its unique architecture and easily take the performance crown in the coming generation.

References

Ars Technica: Inside the Xbox 360, part I, part II
IBM's Cell Broadband Engine Resource Center
Cell Broadband Engine Tutorial(CBET, downloadable from IBM's site above)

Update 1: Fleshed out the following sections: Improvements Over the Past, Increasing Importance of Middleware, and Conclusion.

Tags: PS3, Xbox 360, Cell, Xenon, gaming, videogames

VIP Cinema

2006-04-07T19:52:00.000+08:00

Now this is how an evening at the cinema should be! Taipei's Cinemark theatre at the Core Pacific Living Mall is a dream come true for film connoisseurs like myself. No longer do you have to rub shoulders with the unwashed masses parading out to the theater in droves to see tripe like Ice Age 2. Never again will you be pulled violently from your morbid ponderings by their raucous laughter. Now you can sit in silent reverie while contemplating the post-modern significance of vampire-on-werewolf action in Underworld: Evolution. Finally you can admire without distraction the exquisite costume design, from blood-matted fur to Kate Beckinsale's skin tight, zippery leather jumpsuit.

To see for yourself, simply go to the ticket window and buy a movie ticket for one of the VIP movies. If the movie you want to see isn't being offered on one of the two VIP screens, then you just aren't avant garde enough. Proceed to the normal theaters with the rest of the riffraf. Once you have your VIP ticket, take a trip over to the balcony where you can sneer down at the simpletons as they buy popcorn on the other side for their pedestrian movie-going experience. Feel free to head over to the VIP entrance 20 minutes or so before the movie start time. You can have a seat at the bar while eating your free popcorn and watching previews on high-def televisions. When the young lady behind the bar informs you that it is time, you can enter the theater. You will know for sure that you have made the right decision when you see the faux leather seating with classy wood veneered armrests. Also, before the movie begins, be sure to take a moment to reflect on the achievements of your civilization, focusing primarily on the fact that there is a 10 story, deathstar-like 'Core' suspended in the mall above you. And finally, use your new-found sense of superiority to derive even greater enjoyment than you thought possible from your $10 movie ticket.

All kidding aside, I actually thought Underworld was a pretty good movie. And for the record, I had no choice about the VIP. If I wanted to see Underworld, then it was going to be as a VIP.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, movies

Comments Published!

2006-04-06T18:00:00.000+08:00

I was talking with a friend of mine and he let me know that I hadn't moderated his comments. It turns out that he wasn't the only one! I had somehow forgotten to tell Blogger to email me when I had new comments. So, my apologies to all the wonderful comments that I had neglected to approve. On the bright side, my blog is finally starting to show some signs of life!

Taiwan Beverage Hall of Fame: First Inductees

2006-04-05T19:40:00.000+08:00

One of the little things I really enjoy about Taiwan is the wonderful selection of beverages available in the convenient stores which dot the island. Any activity a human being can undertake is better with a beverage in hand, kind of a score multiplier for Life if you will(Needless to say, given the convenience of obtaining beverages here in Taipei, my chain combo is ridiculously high at the moment).

Given my love of tea/coffee/soda/juice, I thought I'd start selecting a few of my favorites for special commendations. The theme of this first round of inductees is 'Bottled Refreshment'.

Starting on the left we have two coffee drinks, somewhat similar to the Starbuck's bottled frapicinos you can buy in the States. I think I actually like the taste of the Starbuck's version better, but these are much cheaper and... voluminous. Also, they aren't as sweet so you can get you're caffeine kick without feeling like you have to skip breakfast.

Next up is Kirin something-or-other black tea(紅茶). That something-or-other is probably describing the delicious lemony taste. The tea is fairly sweet, but unlike soda goes down smooth. If you aren't that familiar with Kirin, you may not know that they are a Japanese beverage company which produces much more than the beer they sell in the U.S. In Japan especially, you can find all types of Kirin drinks.

After Kirin we have an unsweetened green tea, which I just tried for the first time today. I liked it a lot, better in fact than another green tea I was going to put on this list. Overall, I just thought this one was smoother and had less of an aftertaste. I'm a huge fan of green tea in general, but back home I mostly stick to drinking it hot since all the bottled brands are expensive and loaded with either sugar or sugar substitutes.

The last two inductees are relatively sweet green and black teas. They are pretty much my standard choices, along with Kirin's offering above, when I want a tea with a little sugar.

Well, that's all for 'Bottled Refreshment'. In later editions I hope to discuss Taiwan's many tea stands and coffee houses.

Taiwan, Taipei, beverages

Welcome to Taipei!

2006-03-30T16:57:00.000+08:00

Welcome to Taipei, foreigner. We hope you'll find the bus system safe, convenient, and easy to use!

I like Taipei a lot, but the bus routes can be just a tad hard to figure out sometimes.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei

Convenience Stores

2006-03-22T18:37:00.000+08:00

I know it isn't that original or anything, but I wanted to write a bit about convenience stores here in Taiwan. Taiwan has the highest density of convenience stores in the world with one store per 2800 people(Japan is Taiwan's closest competitor with one store per 3000). In practice this means that most city blocks here in Taipei have at least one, and it is not unusual to see two competing stores almost side- by-side. There are five main chains that I see here: 7-11, Family Mart, Hi-Life, OK, and Nikomart. But they are really all about the same; two convenience stores of roughly the same size will carry basically the same products, regardless of the name on the sign.

There are differences between what a Taiwanese convenience store will carry compared to one in the US though. In addition to all the drinks and snacks, you can buy computer games in convenience stores here. They also sell things like usb hubs, mice, magazines that aren't targeted at truck drivers, and fairly expensive bottles of liquor. Oh, and boxer shorts. Now, if you happen to be out and about in the city and suddenly need a new pair of boxers... well, I'd say that is pretty convenient. Selling computer peripherals is pretty convenient as well, especially if you use a computer as much as the Taiwanese seem to. The fact that Taiwan is still primarily a cash-based society has even opened up the opportunity of allowing you to pay your bills at convenience stores.

In short, convenience stores here allow for a lot more possibilities when it comes to 'convenience store runs.' Not only are the ubiquitous beer and cigarette runs accounted for and present -- this isn't just speculation on my part, I have witnessed the execution of a Taiwanese beer run by Taipei high schoolers -- but you also have 'Oh shit! My electric bill is due today' runs, 'Hell! My World of Warcraft game card expired and I'm almost 60' runs, and my personal favorite(though I don't know exactly how common among the natives) 'Damn I need some green tea and dorritos' runs.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, convenience stores

Final Fantasy Fans

2006-03-21T22:46:00.000+08:00

So, I was roaming my new stomping grounds today in search of mahjong . That's right, mahjong. Specifically, mahjong that I can play on my Nintendo DS. I eventually settled on a Japanese -- What!? The Japanese make mahjong games!? -- effort titled Everybody Loves Mahjong(I think). It's pretty cool, but that is not really the point here. The point is that I wish I had had my camera with me.

But first, some background:

Final Fantasy XII is another Japanese videogame, one which was released last week in Japan and which will sell many, many more copies than Everybody Loves Mahjong, no matter how much the Japanese love mahjong. The Final Fantasy series is quite popular in Taiwan as well. It was on store shelves here in Taipei last week selling for upwards of 70 USD(ELM was about $26) . What I'm trying to convey is that yes, Final Fantasy XII is popular, but hell you can buy it already so calm down! Got it? Alright.

So, back to the mall, there were lots of PS2 demo stations setup with Final Fantasy XII. One of these had about 12 kids(actually, they were all probably in their early twenties at the least) crowded around it watching another kid play the game. Some of the dudes were standing there with what I would consider appropriate expressions and body language. That is to say, they looked kinda bored. Good for them. There was one kid though that made me wish I had a video camera, or had at least brought my powershot. He was kind of standing with his weight tilted forward on the balls of his feet, shifting back and forth. He was damn excited. You would think by looking at him that Taipei had been offered a franchise in the NBA and in their inagural year the Taipei Tai Chi Masters had made it to the finals, and he was watching overtime of game seven right then and there. And then, when one of the characters unleashed one of those super mega attacks that Final Fantasy is famous for, you should have seen him! Wow! I don't know though, maybe they were watching some kid beat the game or something. I have no idea, but it doesn't seem like it should be any more exciting than, "Hey, that was pretty cool."

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, gaming, videogames, Final Fantasy

More Retro Game Shopping

2006-03-19T20:24:00.000+08:00

In a previous post I covered the game shops and arcade at Wannian Plaza. Since posting my findings I have not been sitting idly by, sipping oolong tea while gazing out my apartment window. Oh no, unsatisfied with my findings at Wannian, I have continued my search! And I am happy to report that I have found quite a few nice game shops. Details below:

Location

All of these shops are located in Taipei City Mall, an underground shopping mall running beneath Civic Blvd near Taipei Main Station. Check out the map here. I haven't explored the entire mall, but the shops I've found are all in the area around mall exit 5. One easy way to get there from the MRT station is through the Station Front Metro Mall on the west side of the station. Take exit 7 from the Station Front Mall and walk north along Chongqing Rd. to exit 5 of the Taipei City Mall. Walk down the steps and you should see one game store almost directly in front of you. This shop has a lot of new releases, but if you walk east a little ways you will see several other shops selling a variety of current and classic releases. There are also some shops to the west, but most of the good ones that I found are to the east.

The Goods

Several shops were well stocked with retro games and consoles. All the classic consoles were there, though not in large numbers. One shop even had the Super A'Can! I eventually bought a Japanese Megadrive 2 and two games -- Shadow Dancer and Elemental Master -- for around $80. Not too bad, although Shadow Dancer was pretty expensive at $30. One vendor had Panorama Cotton, but at a price of nearly one month's rent, I had to pass. Between the various shops they had most of the classic Megadrive games, which is one reason I went with the Megadrive over a Saturn. They had some pretty good Saturn games, but most of the great ones are just too expensive. I think I will stick to the Megadrive for now.

Overall, the shops here beat the ones at Wannian in every way. The only thing missing is a good arcade. I'm planning on heading back here to try and score a copy of Under Defeat when it is released later this week.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, gaming, videogames

Xbox 360 Launch

2006-03-17T14:46:00.000+08:00

So the 360 officially launched yesterday here in Taiwan. I was vaguely aware that March 16 was the day but honestly didn't care that much. The fact that most of the shops have been selling imported consoles since the Japanese launch kind of steals the thunder don't ya think?

Fortunately, another blogger out there has picked up the slack and took some pictures of the launch party held last night over in XinYi.

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, gaming, Xbox

Taiwan Weekly Famitsu

2006-03-11T20:43:00.000+08:00

I bought a few Taiwanese videogame magazines the other day. Since I'm the Taipei Gamer, I had to do it even though I can't read them. I bought three of them and I bought them at a convenience store. They had several others that I didn't buy because hell, three magazines that I can't read is enough. I can read the titles of two of them though, and one of those it turns out is a translation of the mightiest of all Japanese videogame magazines, Weekly Famitsu. I'm going to start with that and maybe talk a bit about the others in later posts.

Taiwan Weekly Famitsu

Well, what can be said. It's basically a translation of the japanese version. The issue I have is dated March 17. Considering that I bought it around the 4th, that seems a bit late(or early). I have always hated that about magazines by the way. A subscriber to a monthly magazine should get the March issue sometime in March, preferably. But he'll generally get the March issue in mid-Feburary and be completely done with it by March as he awaits the April issue. When you consider that the content of the March issue was most likely prepared in January or earlier it is doubly annoying! I've read lots of magazines and believe me, magazine editors are not that prescient. Back to Taiwan Weekly Famitsu, it appears thinner than the Japanese version, not that I know all that much about Weekly Famitsu, but I believe theTaiwan version has a lot less ads. I see a number of articles that seem familiar because I occasionally read articles about what articles there are in this week's Weekly Famitsu; that is the kind of grip this magazine has on the denizens of the internet. I can only assume that these articles are just straight translations of what's in the original version. I can spot some local content though. There is Taiwan's 'Top 15 Selling Games' list, Taiwan's 'Top 15 Most Wanted Games' list, and Taiwan's 'Top 20 Games' list. The last two are voted on by the readers, I'm sure. It is also worth noting that Japan's top selling/most wanted lists are included as well. This is because videogame players everywhere are obsessed with Japan. I am reproducing Taiwan's lists below because they are illustrative of Taiwan's gaming culture and because I want to engender a love for Taiwan in the world's gamers via this website.

Read More

Taiwan's Top 15 Selling Games For Week of ...

Monster Hunter 2 (PS2)
Something 3 (PS2)
Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (PS2)
Monster Hunter Portable (PSP)
Dynasty Warriors(PSP The Best) (PSP)
Naruto Something 3 (PS2)
Ridge Racers (PSP)
Some DS Racing Game (DS)
Some game by Banpresto (PS2)
Another DS game (DS)
Black (Xbox)
Something 4 by Capcom (PS2)
Naruto Something 4 (GC)
Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2)
Tourist Trophy (PS2)

Taiwan's Top 15 Most Wanted Games

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC)
Dead or Alive 4 (360)
Something 5 by Capcom (360)
Some Microsoft RPG (360)
Something by Capcom (PS2)
Some RPG by Sega, maybe Phantasy Star Universe (PS2)
Some Pokemon RPG (DS)
Ninety-Nine Nights (360)
Final Fantasy III (DS)
Another Century's Episode 2 (PS2)
Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3)
Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
Resident Evil 5 (PS3)
Mother 3 (GBA)

Taiwan's Top 20 Best Games

Final Fantasy X (PS2)
Something 3 by Capcom (PS2)
Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)
Dynasty Warriors 4 (PS2)
Ninja Gaiden (Xbox)
Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
Something MX by Banpresto (PS2)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Easter (PS2)
Something that looks like Dynasty Warriors (PS2)
Resident Evil 4 (GC)
Dragon Quest V (PS2)
Resident Evil 4 (PS2)
Devil May Cry 3 (PS2)
Something with a long name by Banpresto (PS2)
Final Fantasy VII (PS)
Something by Tecmo (PS2)
Dynasty Warriors 3 (PS2)
Something by SCE (PS2)
Something 4 by SCE (PS2)
Kingdom Hearts (PS2)

OK, maybe that wasn't as useful as it could have been. But hey, it's better than nothing and you can at least see the trends if not always the specific games. PS2 is big here, as you can see. Keep in mind that Famitsu doesn't cover PC gaming, a big part of Taiwan's gaming scene.

Tags: Taiwan, gaming, videogames, Famitsu

T.A.I.P.E.I.

2006-03-11T20:16:00.000+08:00

Forget what you think you know. Forget that "Taipei" is the (bad) Roman transliteration of the Chinese name for the capital city of the Republic of China, 台北. You also might as well go ahead and forget those two characters each have a meaning of their own in the Chinese language. It's all wrong.

Today, I went to Taipei 101. Not only did I go there, I went to the 89th floor. While there, I learned a lot -- well, a little -- about mass tuned dampers, the symbolism inherent in the design of the building and it's communications infrastructure. Most importantly, I learned that Taipei is actually an acronym.

Technology
Art
Innovation
People
Environment
Identity

So that's why they used a 'P'!

Also, 101 symbolizes both binary code and "better than 100%".

Tags: Taiwan, Taipei

BoA and Yuna

2006-03-06T19:28:00.000+08:00

BoA: A Korean pop star who sings in Japanese.

Yuna: Leading character in Square Enix's videogames Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. In FFX-2, Yuna is a bit of a pop star herself.

I'll be damned if they don't look alike.

...and then I found this. (You can get a higher quality version here.)

McDonald's

2006-03-06T18:51:00.000+08:00

It is about 6 o'clock and I'm hungry as hell. I just left the coffee shop where I was studying and am on my way back home. There's a McDonald's right by my apartment so I decide to drop in; I'm feeling a bit too tired to put in the effort necessary to 'eat local'. I place my order and while waiting for my food I notice that there's a little green box on my tray.

Looks like I just ordered a Happy Meal.

Taiwan Basketball

2006-03-04T22:42:00.000+08:00

Basketball is really popular here. There's a cable channel that shows bball like 24 hours a day. At least, I have never seen anything other than basketball on that channel. I just finished watching an exciting fourth quarter between Taiwan Beer and the Dacin Tigers in the um, Super Basketball League(SBL). It's sort of like NCAA ball, but without dunkin'. I haven't watched the channel enough to know if all they show is Taiwan basketball, or if they show Mainland ball as well. It is definitely all chinese though.

It's also hilarious to watch. Here's a sample transcript:

Announcer 1: <really fast chinese>
Announcer 2: <more really fast chinese>
1: <rfc> turnover! <rfc>
2: Woah!
1: Wow!
1: <rfc>
2: <rfc>
1: <rfc> Wah!
...

I'm starting to get some of the lingo down though. I know 2-pointer and 3-pointer. And the English that gets mixed in is kind of funny.

Oh wait! Now they're showing highlights of the game set to Green Day!

Tags: taiwan

Wannian Plaza (萬年)

2006-03-02T21:29:00.000+08:00

This will be my first travel guide entry for gamers visiting Taipei. So far, in my two weeks here in Taipei, Wannian Plaza is home to both the best arcade and the best console game shops I've found.

How to get there
Wannian Plaza is in Ximending, a well known Japan focused and youth oriented district in Taipei. The easiest way to get there is by MRT. Take exit 6 out of the Ximen station(on the blue line) and you are in Ximending. You may feel like you just stepped into Tokyo. That is the general vibe of the area. Before you exit the station though, take a look at the station map of the surrounding area. Wannian Plaza is shown on that map. Aim for the Northen end of the building, where you see the dot on the map. You could walk right along the road on the southern end and not realize you are basically right next to the Plaza. All the signs are along the northern half of the block.

What to do
Once you've found the plaza, you should see some signs detailing the contents of each floor. The first three floors house a variety of clothing/fashion vendors. Not to much of interest there from a gaming perspective. Tom's World arcade is on the fifth floor and the fourth is where most of the gaming, manga, and anime related shops are. On the tenth floor is a Net Cafe, you might be interested in that. I think seven has KTV, while eight and nine have MTV. I had never heard of MTV before this, but it appears to be a place where you can rent a room and watch a movie, sort of like KTV. So in this case, the 'M' stand for movie. There is no relation between an MTV joint and the popular music channel.

The Arcade
Tom's World Arcade is half decent. Tokens are 5NT each, with a credit costing 3 tokens on most games. So roughly $0.50 US per game.

Here's what I saw there:

Numerous SNK fighers, including: KOF2003, KOF2002, KOFXI, SVC Chaos, and Samurai Spirits(not sure which one)

Metal Slug 5

Mario Kart GP

Raiden II and III, as well as some other Raiden game

Several Strikers 19XX games

Some unidentified 2D fighters I had never seen before

Outrun 2

House of the Dead 2

Soul Calibur 2

Virtua Fighter 3

Some DDR games

Many other racers and shooters

Some other stuff

So, nothing compared to some of the arcades in Japan, but not exactly bad either. I just wish they had a larger variety of shmups.

Console Gaming Shops
The Game shops on the fourth floor carry a number of recent and retro titles. The Sega Saturn, Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD, Dreamcast, Megadrive, and the Super Famicom were all represented with at least a few games. I didn't see many retro consoles there, however. The selection of current releases seemed decent, but be aware that the Gamecube and Xbox are not very popular in Taiwan. I did see a few games for those systems, but not many. Today, I bought Age of Empires(US) and a used copy of Jump Superstars(JPN) for my DS. My copy of Jump Superstars is in pristine condition and was only about $27. Much, much better than paying $49.99 plus shipping to PlayAsia or LikSang(This isn't a dig at either of those online retailers by the way. I will continue to use them once I return home to the US, and I'll be grateful to have that option.)

Conclusion
If you are a gamer and are in Taipei, then you should definitely head over to Wannian Plaza. I'll try to visit a few more times before I leave to make sure I give a well rounded impression. My main disappointment was the lack of retro consoles available for purchase. Maybe I'll have better luck in future trips.

A Tale of Two Characters: 是 and 美

2006-03-01T17:32:00.000+08:00

Rain gently patters the asphalt, the foreground of a busy intersection framed by green, mist ensconced mountains. I'm looking out the second story window of a starbucks. Four large chinese characters, a pharmacy's vertically oriented signpost, occlude about ten percent of the light which would otherwise strike my retina. I can read two of them. One is the verb 'to be' and the other means 'beautiful'.

The building housing the pharmacy is to my left and is constructed from brown brick. It looks solid. On one side are white framed windows, three per story. On the side directly facing me the windows are black and so close together they might as well be one big window. Two little ledges of white tile, stained grey by pollution, trisect the building into three floors. Nestled close to the ledges, electrical conduit wraps the around it like an anaconda but somehow doesn't detract from its beauty; if a plain brown building holding a pharmacy can be said to be beautiful. And why couldn't it be beautiful? The pharmacy it shelters serves a useful purpose for a lot of people, and I expect its upper two stories are home to a family or two. If a tidy green lawn with a white picket fence can possess a sort of beauty, born of peacefulness and simplicity, then so can a plain brown building on a busy corner in Taiwan.

Takin' Out the Trash

2006-02-23T19:42:00.000+08:00

It was with some trepidation tonight that I took out the trash. Considering how long it took me to find the officially sanctioned garbage bags, hell, considering the fact that there are officially sanctioned garbage bags, I had reason to be a little nervous. Luckily everything went smoothly. There were plenty of other folks streaming over to the 3 garbage trucks and numerous trash bins spread out a block or so away from my apartment, so it was easy to just follow along. Just as I had been informed, today they were collecting plastic bottles, metal cans, and styrofoam along with the general trash we were all carrying in our blue Taipei City trash bags.

The waste collection system in Taiwan is an interesting case study in public policy. Taiwan, being an island, doesn't have an abundance of space for landfills, a fact that is further complicated by the high population density. The government's solution is to tax waste disposal(and thus creation) by requiring collected trash to be placed in official garbage bags. These bags are relatively expensive, but are only necessary for nonrecyclables. Recyclables can just be dumped into the appropriate bins. This system encourages both recycling and reuse and appears to be pretty effective.

One slightly annoying side effect of this legislation is that there are very few public trash bins in Taipei, and those that do exist are very small. It is annoying to have to cart around all your trash, but it is a necessary measure to prevent people from 'cheating' by dumping all their trash into public bins.

Taipei Game Show -- Pictures

2006-02-23T15:20:00.000+08:00

Since I was too lazy to take my own...

Here's one guy's babe focused photoset.

Kotaku's coverage.

Sheesh, I wish I had some pictures of the games.

A Pirate's Tale

2006-02-23T15:13:00.000+08:00

Man, I've never been so happy to have windows on my computer. I bought it, with no OS installed, about three days ago. I refused to pay $100 for Windows and just assumed Fedora Core 4 would install easily. That was not the case and FC4 was the only OS I had brought with me. I spent about two days trying to find a Linux version with a 2.6.14 or higher kernel that would install from floppies. Debian is about the only distro left that supports this installation method and they are too damn conservative to have released any floppy install images using the 2.6 kernel.

During this time I was also looking for software pirates. I mean, they had to be here, right? Hell! This is Asia for God sakes! I wandered around the GuangHua computer shopping district for hours. I hung out around the exits and tried to look suspicious. I explored every nook and cranny. I took unlabeled staircases and walked down back alleys. My problem was that I did all of these things with the Sun still hanging overhead. In Taipei, it turns out, software pirates only come out at night.

I remembered this guy who approached me one evening on my way back to the hostel and tried to sell me binoculars...or porn...or I guess both. He had a bluish grey hatchback with peeling paint backed into a side street. Standing by the open hatch, he accosted passers by with binoculars in hand and an array of cheap porn on display from the inside of his hatchback. Tonight, it was about 7:30 PM and I headed straight to where I saw that guy. If he didn't have a pirated copy of Windows XP, he must know someone who did. And I was right. He didn't have it but he know who did. And he was right down the street. After a little bargaining, and with exactly six fewer 100NT bills in my wallet, I walked outta there with the English version of Windows XP Professional SP2 in my expansive coat pocket.

Taipei Impressions

2006-02-23T09:31:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been in Taipei for just over a week now and am starting to get settled in. If I had to describe Taipei in one word, it would be "busy". There are people everywhere, and they are all doing stuff: like fixing the sidewalk, or performing maintenance on escalators, or pushing trolleys loaded with boxes to their shops, or handing out fliers, or selling food from sidewalk stands, etc. It's pretty crazy.

The MRT(subway and train system in Taipei) and trendier areas feel like Japan. There are other places that feel like a city on the Mainland, slightly dirty and chaotic. Occassionaly the city even reminds me of Bangkok. So far, I appreciate the variety.

Gaming Life in China

2006-02-01T12:16:00.000+08:00

IGN has a new column(IGN Insiders only) on gaming in China, similar to their long-running Gaming Life in Japan column. Unfortunately, at least in this first article, the writing is pretty typical IGN. At least it will bring some deserved attention to Chinese gaming. And even if the verbal content is terrible, there should be plenty of nice pictures of ogle, including the obligatory babes section. It just wouldn't be IGN without it.

And by the way, the spotlight of the inaugural Chinese babes section is the Taiwanese pop group SHE.

Orz

2006-01-27T09:56:00.000+08:00

The Leaky Pen has an interesting post on little bit of l33t speak and internet culture that western gamers may not be familiar with, "Orz."

It's also nice to know that 好人(hao ren), meaning "good guy," is the chinese equivalent of the japanese word otaku.

Visa

2006-01-25T04:50:00.000+08:00

I'm the type of guy who has difficulty with the execution of even relatively simple bureaucratic tasks like renewing a drivers' license. So I was naturally a bit nervous about my capacity for convincing a foreign bureacracy half-way around the world that I should be allowed into their country for six months. Approximately. Because of course I couldn't say the exact date in which I planned to leave said country. Add to that the fact the I conducted this little operation over the mail with only about three weeks until my departure, and you have a recipe for stress.

In order to make things a little less stressful for others, I'm documenting the process I took to get my visa.

Step 1: Find the the TECO in your region by going here.

Step 2: I suggest calling them to verify the requirements and processing time.

Step 3: Gather the necessary documents. Here's what I needed:

Passport valid for at least another 6 months.

Application Form

Two 2"x2" passport photos.

Copy of your airline ticket. I used an e-ticket with an open return date. Be careful with open return dates though -- you should give them a good explanation for why you need such flexibility.

Money order for $100 for each visa you are requesting.

A return envelope for them to send your passport back to you. I strongly suggest you use express mail for both the return envelope and to mail them your application materials.

If you are applying for a visitor visa(which doesn't allow employment in Taiwan), you will need to send a copy of a bank statement showing sufficient funds to live in Taiwan for the duration you plan on staying. They contacted me by phone after they received my application and asked for me to fax them this information.

If you will be studying in Taiwan, you should send them an original copy of your letter of acceptance from the school or university as well as a letter indicating your plan of study(you've probably already sent a study plan to the school you applied to).

Step 4: Mail it and pray for success!

Super A'Can

2006-01-11T03:13:00.000+08:00

Another Taiwanese contribution to videogames is the Super A'Can. Virtually unheard of in the West --and perhaps anywhere outside of Taiwan-- the Super A'Can is a videogame console roughly equivalent to the Super Nintendo in computational power. It was released in 1995 with a game library which grew to at least 11 games. Unfortunately, most of its games are considered to be of poor quality. Follow the link above for more info and screenshots of some of the games.

Beggar Prince

2006-01-06T01:20:00.000+08:00

If you're the type that consistently trawls the web for gaming oddities, as I am, you may have heard of the recently released Beggar Prince. For those that haven't heard, Beggar Prince is an RPG for the Sega Genesis, the first commercial release for that platform in the U.S. since 1998. Originally released in Taiwan in 1996 by C&E Inc. as Xin Qi Gai Wang Zi(I'll have to do some more research to find the chinese characters), Beggar Prince looks to be a pretty standard Japanese-style RPG. And now a U.S. company by the name of Super Fighter Team has brought the game to an English speaking audience in the United States.

For more information on Super Fighter Team and why Beggar Prince was chosen for localization, check out this preview/interview at Sega-16.com. Also, a review of a non-final build of the game received a score of 3.5/5.0 in Hardcore Gamer magazine. I think I'll look around for an original copy once I arrive in Taiwan, provided a used Genesis is pretty cheap over there.

Commitment

2005-12-31T13:45:00.000+08:00

Well, it is almost official now. I just booked passage on China Airlines from LAX to CKS in Taipei, bringing me one step closer to justifying this blog. It was a bit more hair-raising an experience than I would have liked. Things started out innocuously enough on china-airlines.com, but then events unfolded which led to me calling New York, a sure sign that Hell's bindings were hanging a bit loose. Thankfully, everything is mostly ok, except that Taiwan's best Corporately Governed company may charge me an extra hundred bucks later on down the road. Not that big of a deal, really.

Of course, arranging my transport wasn't the first bit of work I've had to do to plan this expedition -- I like the sound of that! -- it was just the first that carried any significant financial commitment. I've already done a great deal of research and completed the Twelve Labors of National Chengchi University, hopefully verifying to their satisfaction that I am not infected with a hideous virus or pernicious bacteria, am not financially destitute, can write lucidly in English concerning my reasons for desiring to study there, etc.

With the Labors complete and a date of departure established, I can begin to concentrate on the good stuff, like deciding which subset of all the crap that I have stored here in America I should bring with me across the Pacific. Now that is an interesting problem, and one I will discuss in greater depth in later posts.