Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 150

Alien abduction game To Azimuth returns with an eerie new trailer

To Azimuth, an upcoming adventure game that failed to secure Kickstarter funding during a campaign in 2014, is back with a new announcement trailer. Described as a “Lynchian alien abduction investigation,” the game tells a story about alien abductions and, more importantly, the people who experience them. Like Lynch’s Twin Peaks, To Azimuth is built around a small town and a central mystery: What has happened to Eli Windham?

As a Vietnam veteran and recovering addict, when Eli disappears from his town of Musgrove, Alabama, police assume he’s fallen off the wagon and nobody goes looking for him. Hence, the player takes on the twin roles of his brother Nate and his sister Susannah across two separate and interweaving stories, trying to piece together what might have actually happened to Eli.

One of the recurring trends across real-life accounts of alien abductions is that they tend to be named after the person who supposedly experienced them. The Mcpherson Tape. The Walton Experience. The Barney and Betty Hill abduction. Hoax or not, within the UFO-enthusiast community, these people become celebrities, and some are even able to spin whole careers out of their stories. For instance, The Walton Experience actually served as the inspiration for sci-fi cult classic Fire in the Sky (1993), and Travis Walton still continues to make convention appearances on a regular basis. As interesting as stories of aliens tend to be, in a way, the people who claim to have met them are even more fascinating.

“I’m now much more interested in the human aspect of alien abduction”

This is the mindset creator Zach Sanford went into while making To Azimuth. “People who claim to be alien abductees are often regarded as weird or crazy, but in the stories they tell there is this real pathos,” he said back during the original Kickstarter campaign. “As a storyteller, I’m now much more interested in the human aspect of alien abduction accounts.”

As such, To Azimuth hopes to use its science-fiction scenario to tell a story not only about aliens, but also about a veteran coping with PTSD and those around him who are trying to help. In the announcement trailer, we hear a recording from Eli, addressed to Susannah, wherein he seems to know that the aliens are coming for him. He talks about being ashamed and that the abduction has been “a long time coming.” He tells Susannah that he’s not proud of her. He apologizes to his brother Nate and says he hopes “they’ll leave him alone now.” By the sound of it, for all their otherworldly presence, these aliens and what they represent are all too familiar for the Windham family.

To Azimuth is due to launch in early 2017. You can follow the game over on its website.

Adr1ft and the loneliness of digital worlds

This is a preview of an article you can read on our new website dedicated to virtual reality, Versions.

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Adam Orth is alone. It’s no secret. He tells me as much even as I cross the threshold of Three One Zero, his development studio just off the block-party-turned-retail-orgy that is the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. He’s right, there’s no one there, though half a dozen work stations line the wall to my left, one piled high with Atari cartridges. “We’re a digitally distributed team,” he explains, “so everyone can work from wherever they are.” Through the several hours we’ll spend sitting and talking on an overstuffed leather couch at the far corner of the studio, an inflatable sentry turret from Portal (2007) will be our only companion.

“I thought we could talk over lunch,” Orth will tell me, and I’ll readily agree. But before we amble down the promenade together we’ll do some casual, benign jockeying over why, exactly, I am here. Adam will admit to me that some of his past press engagements have been “brutal,” having been handled with a noxious blend of aggressive and unfocused questioning concerning anything and everything except for his game, the first person and “space catastrophe” simulator he’s named Adr1ft. He’ll caution me, in a friendly and practiced tone, that focusing my article, this article, on what he refers to only as “my thing” or “the other thing” or “the Twitter thing” would do a disservice to the piece.

I’ll reassure him that I agree with him. I do. I’ll tell him that I’m interested, almost solely, in what his game is, what it tries to accomplish, and what it says about games and gaming. With that settled, we’ll return to the topic of lunch. “I thought maybe we’d grab a burger and chat about Adr1ft,” he’ll say. “This is going well,” I’ll think to myself. “This will be fun.”

You can read the rest of this article over on Versions.

Exploring the mind-bending science of 4D in Miegakure

Videogames have always existed as multidimensional. Whether we were bouncing a ball from side-to-side in the perpetually flat, 2D Pong (1972), or playing as fully-realized 3D people, queueing up to learn how to shoot one another. It has always been us: 3D humans, observing multi-dimensional projections from a 2D screen. In a recent development update from Marc ten Bosch’s highly-anticipated puzzle game Miegakure, Bosch speaks of the science behind his foray into the unknown dimension of 4D.

In Miegakure, the player bends reality in order to solve puzzles. In the developer’s scientific-based vlog update on the game, Bosch said, “What you see is a 2D projection of a 3D slice, of a 4D object.” …That sounds like a lot of dimensions. In layman terms, the 3D polygons we are used to seeing in videogames are made up of hundreds of thousands of triangles, the simplest and most manageable shape for sculpting in 3D technology. In Miegakure, Bosch instead uses tetrahedrons (a polyhedron shape with four triangular faces) in the place of triangles, adding an extra dimension to all the objects created in the game: the fourth dimension.

In the 1884 novella, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a lonely square meets a sphere, onsetting its first encounter beyond the 2D world it has come to know. Bosch has been explicit in naming his inspiration for Miegakure from the novella. He noted that players are much like the square in Flatland, as we’re seeing a 4D object within a 3D world and exploring it for the very first time, just like the square’s experience in Flatland.

We’re seeing a 4D object within a 3D world, and exploring it for the very first time

The game’s title stems from the Japanese term, meaning “hide and reveal.” Miegakure is the act of concealment in gardens popularized during Japan’s Edo Period (1600-1854). Hills and trees are often hidden from initial view in what are referred to as “promenade gardens,” contrasting from the Buddhist gardens before it (wherein all is visible at once). This method of “hide and reveal” is at the forefront of Bosch’s Miegakure, made possible by toying with 4D to reveal what would otherwise be obscured in the 3D world.

Miegakure’s implementation of 4D is unseen in the likes of videogames before, which is why it has become so early-acclaimed. In active development since 2009, Bosch’s exercise in exploring the fourth dimension in videogames has yet to foresee a release date. Back in May 2015, Bosch blogged about almost finishing up with the puzzles for the game, but learning about the wieldy mathematics and technology behind 4D, our enjoyment of the game could still be quite far off.

While Miegakure’s 140 puzzles might seem miniscule compared to other puzzle heavy titles, the triple digit number still stirs excitement over 4D’s potential in the gaming sphere —and just how players will learn to wrap their heads around a new dimension. Bosch concluded his scientific explanatory video with a hint of optimism for players’ comprehension of 4D, as he mused, “While you could ignore all of this while playing the game, to me it feels even more beautiful when you know about what is happening.” 

Get all the updates on Miegakure by following along with its website.

The Lobster, a warped fairy tale about our dating obsession

To state a fact in ordinary language is to permit a doubt concerning the statement.

– R.F. “Tody” Hamilton (press agent, Barnum & Bailey)

There is a sequence towards the end of The Lobster in which two characters, initially drawn together by the same physical defect, are trying to find new shared ground. One of them has recently lost the condition that has made them seem compatible, and her partner attempts, through trial and error, to figure out what else they might have in common: Can she play the piano? Speak German? Does she like berries? As their incompatibilities accumulate, the recognition sets in that maybe it is not enough for them just to “like” each other.

But affection, and the expression of it, has little room in the world of The Lobster. Directed by “Greek weird wave” chief Yorgos Lanthimos, the film amplifies Western social pressures to find a mate by imagining a society in which being single is against the law. Those unfortunate enough to not be in a committed relationship are sent to a bourgeois seaside retreat where they have just over a month to find a partner among the other prisoners. If one fails, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

In this arrangement, couplehood has nothing to do with “love,” or anything we might recognize as displays of emotion. Pairing up is an obligation, necessary not only to remain in society, but to – literally – stay human. There is no place for subtlety or ambiguity in this social arrangement; everything is either/or. It’s why the main character, David, performed with expert saudade by Colin Farrell, is informed that his clothes can have no “half sizes.” He is also asked at check-in to choose an interest in only men or women, since the “bisexual option” is no longer available.

The experiences of attraction and courting here become formalized, algorithmic in their beside-the-point specifics; one character, desperate to avoid his animal transformation, begins secretly smashing his face in order to appeal to a woman whose defining characteristic is her frequent nose bleeds. This plays like the ultimate conclusion of eHarmony—snap judgments are made by the unpaired for survival, and nearly everyone is referred to only in terms of their dominant character traits (see: the film’s credits, which describe Ben Whishaw as “The Limping Man,” Ashley Jensen as “The Biscuit Woman,” etc). John C. Reilly’s sad Lisping Man, unable to find a woman who lisps, is left to drift along in his loneliness without the option of finding a person with whom he might connect to on a less obvious level. These people are not allowed to be “people,” in the sense of being able to express complexity and contradiction. Their few traits are decided, and they need to find a way to fit the role, or be eliminated.

it is not his characters that are exceptional, it is the world itself

Similar to previous films directed by Lanthimos, The Lobster is interested in how humans behave when a set of rules is imposed on them. Whether in the violent, isolated familial totalitarianism of Dogtooth (2010), or the warm, mutually accepted fantasy lives of Alps (2011), his work can often feel like an ongoing laboratory experiment in which his characters are subjected to situational variables, the audience placed in the role of researchers taking note on how these experiences differ, if at all, from the “regular” world. Lanthimos’ films have been called “surreal” and “absurd,” but these words don’t fully suggest the sincere curiosity of the work; rather, a Lanthimos film feels speculative, asking precise questions about the limits of what human beings will accept, and how they might react when placed in an unfamiliar experience.

Lanthimos makes films that can feel like puzzles, less so for the audience than for the characters he places inside of them—they are usually in the process of understanding where they fit, what they can contribute, how they can survive in the world and still hold onto their identity. Typically, his people are somehow unusual, and struggling with the culture around them. The Lobster inverts this by placing its characters in a fully invented world. In contrast to the main characters of Alps, who try to remake their corner of reality by acting out fantasies (in their case, performing as the lost loved ones of others), The Lobster provides a world whose rules are exaggerated versions of ours, which its characters are trying, and often failing to fit into. In this case, it is not his characters that are exceptional, it is the world itself. Everyone here is an outsider.

It is also the more totally “invented” quality of The Lobster that makes it feel like Lanthimos’ biggest film in terms of what it has room to say. Untethered from everyday logic, Lanthimos and his collaborators have the freedom of total artifice and imagination to play with. The Lobster has the feeling of a fable, even a parable, elevating its concerns about the dangerous places where social expectation and human emotion collide on the field of love to a nearly mythic status. Even the locations within the film “The Hotel,” “The Woods,” “The City” are referred to with a kind of fairy tale functionality. That the film remains humble, personal, and funny in the face of this ambition animates it with a very human point of view.

But the film is wise to show that the oppressive systems its characters are caught up within are also human in origin. As Farrell’s character is swept into something of a rebellion—joining a sub-class of deserters living in the woods outside the couple’s retreat, known as the Loners—he finds himself trading one regime for another. The Loners take the idea of singledom to a militaristic limit, outlawing any coupling of two people, and punishing romantic affection with disfigurations. In this shadow society, even the gesture of digging a grave for another person is seen as too extreme. Though grim, their ban on people dancing in pairs also leads to some of the film’s most humorous moments. Allegedly an escape from the restrictions of forced coupling, one can’t help but notice that the Loners speak in the same flat, literal, purely utilitarian language as those who would imprison them; its leader (an ice-cold Léa Seydoux) a radicalized mirror to the managers of the Hotel.

in a culture like this one, there no circumstance under which affection can flourish

It is here that David becomes involved, fatally, with a potential partner: Rachel Weisz, who, in a smart turn of perspective, is eventually revealed to be the film’s narrator and, by implication, its true lead. It is their nearly uncontrollable connection to one another that underlines the danger of imposing a set of rules onto emotions. Unable to fit into either the straight world or the rebel world, they become placeless, victims of the unpredictability of feelings and poor timing. The irony that, if they had been sent to The Hotel at the same time, perhaps they could have made it work is aggravated severely by the sense that, in a culture like this one, there no circumstance under which affection can flourish.

And, ultimately, The Lobster suggests that we question if this view of society isn’t too far away from one we may be living in anyway—whether the impulse to formalize behavior is an inherent part of the human experience. Our experiences are messy, the film seems to say, and the attempt to control them are even messier. It ends with the ambiguous resolution to a gesture of sacrifice, and within it the deeper question of whether it is more noble to give yourself up to the culture around you, or to the one you’ve committed yourself to. Is there a workable solution between these two options? The film suggests that perhaps organizing human behavior is impossible; love, on the other hand, makes no sense.

Thumper is also dragging virtual reality into its rhythm hell

Thumper is so fast. Like, holy shit, not even my eyes can keep up with whatever’s going on in the new trailer—how are my thumbs supposed to? This trailer, as you can watch below, is one minute of totally uninterrupted footage of Thumper at its more advanced stages. It’s like pushing your face up against a passing train. What you should be able to see is a chrome-coated space beetle grinding arse-ways against corners, hopping and fluttering above obstacles, and occasionally switching lanes. But what you might only be able to see is a light show moving at 1000 mph.

This whole game is wild. It looks like the cover art for a progressive rock album electrified to life with giant, Dr. Frankenstein-style tesla coils. It sounds like an aggressive band of robots accelerating their instruments toward hyperspeed. It’s a rhythm game made of metal, one that thrashes about at every beat, hanging on to the edge of the world as it shreds a course around it. This, we have been told, is “rhythm violence.”

DROOL, the studio making Thumper, has led with this idea of bringing violence to the rhythm game genre for a couple of years now. It’s the two founders’ defiant breakaway from the safe strumming and party hopping that they worked on previously at Harmonix—on titles like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central. One of the founders, Brian Gibson, seems to be tapping into the loud, searing noise rock of his longtime band Lighting Bolt with Thumper. Marc Flury, the other founder, is the one putting the nuts and bolts on this monster. Together, they’re making a game about a beetle blitzing its way towards its nemesis; a giant, floating, maniacal skull called Crakhed. It seems it was only a matter of time before they confessed that they were taking us to hell.

“That game is going to kill people.”

For that is how Thumper is now being presented—”Thumper will Drag you to Rhythm Hell” is its latest promise. But it isn’t the only game taking us to hell this year. Last month saw the arrival of Devil Daggers, which envisions hell as an abyssal arena that fills fast with flocks of demonic, cackling skulls and bony, flying centipedes. Then there’s DOOM, due out this May, which as its latest trailer shows us, will reboot the classic shooter as it should be: bloody-fisted, full of muscular demons, and fast as hell. Together, these three videogames are bringing us a united vision of hell, one defined by its speed and immediate violence more than anything else. There’s no pissing around here.

But of these three games it’s Thumper that’s daring us to shove our face ever closer to the underworld. Yep, the damn thing is coming to PlayStation VR. “We’ve spent the past few years making Thumper the most intense two-dimensional experience possible. Wouldn’t a VR version just be too intense?” so says DROOL. “Well, we can confirm that not only is it intense, it’s completely overwhelming!” Yeah, I bet it is. Goddamn.

My editor put it best upon seeing the new Thumper trailer and hearing that it would be coming to PlayStation VR. “That is an irresponsible use of virtual reality,” he said. “That game is going to kill people.”

Get prepared for your death-by-screen as Thumper will be out for Steam and PlayStation 4 later this year. Check out more on its website.

The class war and canapes of HITMAN’s Paris debut

I’ve been to my fair share of parties. I don’t mean the plastic-cup-and-pizza apartment hang-outs, or the police-baiting all-night warehouse raves—I mean vaulted ceilings, black tie dress code, and free champagne. Parties where I leant on neoclassical statues while distant arty bass droned on, where tungsten yellow courtyards were transformed into ice-white future bars, and fountains and conversation tinkled nearby. I mean exactly the kind of party that HITMAN offers up for its opening act. It’s a party that is so familiar, in fact, that I was met with an odd sense of deja vu as I wandered through the grand doors of its fictional Paris Museum and into its predictably ornate lobby.

It’s a sense of familiarity that’s not just about the starched shirts and tromple l’oeil, but the sudden sense of aimlessness that greets you when you enter one of these events. You see—and here’s the secret—there’s nothing special about those parties. I mean, there’s the fancy canapes and the free champagne (did I mention that already?), but in reality they operate in a kind of holding pattern. Waiters circulate, guests mingle, drinks flow, and everyone gets bored. I was once shuffled into a vast baroque hall beneath London’s Savoy with hundreds of actors, producers and directors, and couldn’t help but feel I was attending the equivalent of a sports-hall school disco—a big open space territorialized by different social groups; classes and networks that are completely impregnable to someone like me.

This is your playground, these are your toys

That’s because I was always an outsider, finding myself at design events or West End openings where everyone knew the rules of engagement already. What I quickly learned was how to become a chameleon, how to mingle with a purpose. It might be stalking that waiter who brings the good canapes, it might be spotting a Game of Thrones star, or even just listening into the most tasteless and comical conversation you can find. You get to learn the room: That’s where HITMAN comes in. IO Interactive’s bald and barcoded sociopath has always been the ideal outsider, able to dress to fit any occasion, infiltrate any room and walk with the purpose of someone who knows exactly what they are doing.

This first episode of the new HITMAN plays the role well; a grand party simulator, the fantasy of a social chameleon, a masterclass in mingling with a purpose. Let’s forget about the inevitable murder for a minute, and focus on the party. This is not a typical videogame room of repeated guests and bad music-library techno; this is event-industry standard, with all the ebb and flow you would expect. There is the arty bass, the statues, the glowing bars and the pleasant gardens. There are caterers, security, waiters, and stylists. And most importantly there is the flow of politics and people, those trying to chat each other up, and those trying to catch each other out. Layered on top is a wonderfully old-fashioned world of spy novel mystery: back room deals and secret meetings, assassination plots and shady characters. All of it in an elegant vertical organization, from the tired staff idling in the basement break room all the way up to the sunlit galleries that house an auction of international secrets that Spectre (2015) would be proud of. This is your playground, these are your toys. Hunt waiters in the wine cellar or Shiekhs in the study, or just get distracted listening to the rich idiots talking shit to each other.

That basement break room was almost painful to me. Painful because I’ve been there, on that side, propping up the party. I’ve stood in the corners of beautiful rooms with my hands behind my back and watched my entire evening’s wage being eaten by a besuited man in a single bite. I’ve slumped in an airless basement during a 10 minute break, wondering if I have enough time to cram down the supermarket sandwich that’s been sweating in my bag all day. That’s why, when I walked into that basement, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the ragtag group of service staff parked there. And when I heard some rich douchebag tearing the valet a new one about the care of his prototype sports-car he was the first on my hit list. One proximity bomb later and Leopold and his precious car were smoking among the privet hedges. Meanwhile, I was on my way out the gate, strolling along a Paris street, thinking about my first beer of the evening.

Yes, this is an assassination game, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an element of class war to its details, encouraging you to elegantly or comically spoil the days of the rich and famous. Even more satisfying is the fact that my self-motivated hit on Leopold has also marked him as a possible contract for any other players of the game, meaning that he can expect to die over and over in ever creative ways for his somewhat meagre crimes. Hey, what can I say, he had it coming. They all have it coming in the end. HITMAN’s staggered release schedule that sees one location per month being released encourages players not to simply shoot through the story, but to run and re-run this particular party, to learn the patterns and routines of the entire cast of named characters, and ultimately murder them. It certainly seems like an event dense enough to support this style of play. Especially when the hand-crafted “elusive targets” start emerging— one-time-only hits that require the player to ID them from a picture and then assassinate in any way possible. A bodged attempt means they escape forever, while success brings unique rewards. Specific challenges offer expansion too, allowing you to start, say, on an elevated position with a sniper rifle, or already in disguise at the secret auction.

Yet, while this may form the main attraction for some, I can’t help but reload the level again and again just to revel in the textures. From the club atmosphere of the catwalk to the constant activity of the backstage, there’s a magnetic quality to everything going on. And as I tail one character or another, there’s a sense of power and freedom that begs my return. And whether it’s rat poison in the wine glass, an explosive on the chandelier, or a well-placed shot that sees a body bag being dragged off-stage while a fashion designer attempts to get on with his speech, it is all brilliantly reactive. Even when the AI goes off the rails, and Collateral (2004) becomes Weekend at Bernies (1989), the resulting silliness feels authentic to the idea of an assassin looking for a reason to kill. Any reason at all. But my finest moment had nothing to do with leveraging my “particular skills” over a carefully selected billionaire. Instead, it involved masquerading as a similarly bald and stern looking supermodel and taking the catwalk. The roar of the crowd, the applause, all just for walking down a strip of fancy stage, looking down on everyone there. What a turn of events, I thought, from outsider to everyone’s hero. It seemed the true fantasy of any party guest: to be the center of attention for a moment, before fading back into that ever shifting crowd of anonymity.

Design ridiculous death traps so that your friends cuss you

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Ultimate Chicken Horse (PC, Mac)
CLEVER ENDEAVOR

Beneath the friendly veneer of party games like Mario Party and Mario Kart lies the murderous need to beat your friends at all costs. Sure, it’s all fun and games—until someone throws a red shell only to pull up ahead of you during the final lap. In that moment, winning becomes secondary. Nothing matters more than destroying your friend/betrayer. Ultimate Chicken Horse drops all pretenses by inviting you to participate in the game equivalent of cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Before each round, everyone is given a selection of traps and hazards to be laid out on a platforming level. Each player must attempt to cross the resulting death trap in one piece, usually to no avail. The game forces you to ask, what do I care about more: winning or making sure my friends can’t win? With all the fun of a murder-suicide, Ultimate Chicken Horse is not only a test of skill but also the health of your friendships.

Perfect for: Frenemies, sociopaths, actual chickens

Playtime: A few minutes per round

Does eSports Have a Drug Problem?

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel.

In the aftermath of one professional player’s admission to using Adderall, the Electronic Sports League (ESL) is cracking down on performance-enhancing drugs by instituting a new set of standards and tests, positioning the league as a role model for professional sports leagues of all stripes.

When Oakland Athletics homerun slugger Jose Canseco released his tell-all biography Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big in 2005, it landed like a bombshell. The book sparked one of the largest drug scandals in the history of professional sports. Eleven players were questioned by Congress about illegal steroid use. Canseco seemed surprised by the response to his book’s premise that responsible use of steroids was ultimately good for baseball.

Similar naivety hit eSports last year when Kory Friesen, a professional Counter-Strike player better known by his handle “Semphis,” talked about the rampant use of a stimulant that is commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder. In an interview with Mohan “Launders” Govindasamy last July, Friesen offhandedly mentioned that every member of his Counter-Strike team used performance-enhancing drugs during a match in Poland. He wasn’t asked directly or even prompted; Friesen brought it up of his own volition.

“We were all on Adderall,” he said, referring to the amphetamine-based drug. “It was pretty obvious if you listened to the comms [communication between team players]. People can hate it or whatever.” Interviewer Govindasamy nodded in agreement as if Adderall use among players was as common as slurping Rock Star or coffee to get a jolt.

The Electronic Sports League’s (ESL) drug and alcohol policy is clear: Players are strictly prohibited from being under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or other performance enhancers during a match. Violation of that policy is punishable by exclusion from ESL One. Friesen’s teammates and owner of Cloud9 publically denied and denounced the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, but the damage was done.

In later interviews, Friesen said the team used the drug as a means of overcoming a losing streak in recent matches. Adderall, Friesen said in later interviews, was a way back to success, as it can heighten response time and improve reflexes—skills that are vital to an eSports player. Counter-Strike, Friesen’s sport of choice, is a shooter game based on pinpoint accuracy and reflexes. The player who can line up a shot first has an enormous edge.

“we live in a win-at-all-costs era today”

“There is no doubt that we live in a win-at-all-costs era today, and athletes feel a huge amount of pressure to compete at the highest level,” said Ben Nichols, spokesperson for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which recently partnered with the International eSports Federation to curb the use of performance enhancing drugs. Nichols partially attributes the intensity of player’s must-win mentality to the serious cash winners take home. The International, a tournament for the popular game DOTA 2, had a prize pool of more than $18 million in 2015, up $8 million from the previous year.

Shortly after Friesen’s statements, the ESL announced its plans to instate tests and regulations around performance-enhancing drugs on July 22, 2015. Partnering with the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) in Germany, the ESL intends to create an enforceable, comprehensive drug policy that sets a standard for eSports everywhere.

As ESL grows around the world, it’s increasingly critical for the league to protect the league’s integrity, according to George Woo, marketing manager of the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship (IEM), the longest running global sponsorship agreement in the history of eSports. “ESL is pioneering anti-cheating and anti-doping across eSports,” he said. “The league is building a process from the ground up rather than rely on existing rules and procedures used by other sports.”

Educating athletes on the risks of drugs is critical, said Eva Bunthoff, Director of Communications for NADA. “Athletes need to know what happens when they use banned substances,” she said. High doses of Adderall can lead to abnormal heart rate, elevated body temperature and changes in blood pressure. In the worst case scenario, a player ends up in a coma. Then there’s the risk of addiction. According to the FDA, chronic Adderall use can lead to dependence. When the drug is overused, it has the potential for causing vomiting, hallucinations, and circulatory collapse.

Like many of its star players, eSports is young. The industry’s growing pains are not only inevitable, but also necessary in order to remain a legitimate sport around the world. “As eSports evolve and get closer to being viewed as a traditional sport, we’ll have to put the same integrity measures in place,” said George Woo. “We’ll have to grow up.”

Though scandals like these shake up the community, bringing them to light can jumpstart initiatives that prevent eSports from becoming the corrupt world that Canseco painted in his book, Juiced.

Lead photograph courtesy Helena Kristiansson and Intel

Japanese hashtag reimagines videogame covers using adorable clip-art

#いらすとやさんでゲームパッケージを再現する, or as Google Translate tells me, “#To reproduce the game package in Irasutoya’s,” is a hashtag currently making its way around Japanese Twitter. It’s dedicated to taking videogame covers and recreating them with royalty free clip-art, specifically from the Japanese illustration blog Irasutoya. With its soft pastel colors and cute, cartoonish proportions, Irasutoya’s art challenges the hashtag’s participants to take titles such as Dark Souls (2011) and look at them through the candy-colored lens of Hello Kitty.

While the idea of recreating images from games and movies using clip art isn’t entirely new—there’s already subreddits and Tumblrs dedicated to doing so—the more lighthearted and distinctly Japanese art found here puts a new angle on the idea. Take this parody of the seriousness often seen in covers from games like Call of Duty that works by making their protagonists look like small boys playing dress-up instead of stone-faced soldiers. Similarly, masculine power fantasies like Metal Gear Solid’s Big Boss and Just Cause’s Rico Rodriguez instead become a frowning man wearing a medical eyepatch and a small helmeted boy riding a parachute, respectively.

parodying the seriousness of covers from games

I think my favorite, however, might be the Irasutoya version of the Uncharted 3 (2011) cover, which changes Nathan Drake from a stoic man in a bandolier and a flowing scarf to a normal dude in a green polo, very understandably confused at why the plane on fire in the distance is smiling at him. Second prize would go to this version of Banjo-Kazooie starring an aardvark and, of course, an archeopteryx.

The soft pastels and super-deformed proportions found here have been seen before in titles like Slam City Oracles and even Nintendo’s Kirby series, but seeing them juxtaposed with larger, more dramatic games typically focused around war or armed conflict is a hoot. For how cool Nathan Drake is supposed to be, I think I may actually relate to bewildered green polo man just a bit more.

Meg Jayanth’s quest to amplify marginalized voices in videogames

You embark on a wager to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days or less. Your journey might be made on the slow trudge of mechanized camels, aboard whisper-quick copper airships that defy gravity, or even on a certain famous submarine, many leagues under the sea. Your travels might even find you flirting with death. These journeys, and many more, are available to you in the world of Inkle studio’s 80 Days (2014), the world that writer Meg Jayanth built.

As a brown female writer in videogames, Jayanth is something of a rarity and, taking into consideration the haul of awards brought home by her for the writing in 80 Days, she more than deserves the label of ‘unique individual’. This specific individual is one who has been immersed in virtual worlds since she was young. “My parents bought a second-hand PC when I was five years old, and I was obsessed. I had a stack of MS-DOS games on floppy-disks,” she tells me via email. It seems appropriate that our talk about 80 Days is made of messages shot halfway around the world at the speed of information.

The player’s imagination brings the scenes to life, with Meg’s deft language providing the blueprint

Jayanth says she finds herself mostly playing independent games these days, her love of interactive fiction being the hook that keeps her coming back. It’s that interest in narrative that elevates 80 Days; cities and routes shining with life and character, each with their own carefully crafted stories, their own mini-narratives. The game places trust in its words and measured artwork to bring its stories alive. The player is an active component in the game’s machinery, their mind’s eye the tool bringing the scenes to life, with Meg’s deft language providing the blueprint.

The game reportedly has a total script of over half a million words, players seeing but a fraction of this during each playthrough. This makes each playthrough fresh, the player constantly faced with decisions and having to choose between different routes and scenarios: Trans-siberian express or airship? To help out a rebellion or slink away? Cheap and slow, or quick and expensive? These decisions make the player an explorer in the game’s rich world. Talking about the game with friends becomes a discussion of discovery, each person picking up on places and stories they never knew existed in its world.

Photo of Meg Jayanth via Antonio Olmos for the Observer

Jayanth feels that 80 Days addresses the problem with many modern games, where a modicum of choice is offered, but with any meaningful impact stripped from it. “Narrative decisions in and of themselves aren’t enough to make players feel immersed in a world—players need to feel as though the game is responding to the choices they’ve made. That they’re being listened to and respected,” Jayanth told me. “I think the best designed narrative decisions are indistinguishable from gameplay rather than separate or removed.”

80 Days is, of course, based on Jules Verne’s 1872 classic Around the World in 80 Days. It’s a book grounded in its time, whose core story is that of a rich white guy and his valet romping round the world for a wager, walking the boundaries of the British empire—themes of colonialism and discrimination seeping into every aspect. 80 Days takes Vernes’s setting and co-opts it, challenging these themes, and in so doing crafts a new, different world. A world where automata are an emerging technology, where women are free to be airship pilots and mechanics. A world where colonialism is still a cause for concern, but has taken a different direction to that in our own history. With stories of a past world combined with unique technology, Jayanth has drawn comparisons with steampunk, though the preferred term for the style is Victorian Futurism.

comparisons are drawn with steampunk, though the preferred term for the style is Victorian Futurism

However, while the stories and geopolitics of 80 Days are fiction, this invented world has a bedrock built on exhaustive, meticulous research. One of the biggest challenges was finding accounts sourced from the places themselves, untainted by an outsider’s perspective. Every location deserved respect and representation. “The steampunk added another layer of complexity,” says Jayanth, “much of my research involved attempting to ground fantastical inventions or devices in local cultures and aesthetics, and delving deep enough into a region’s geopolitics to be able to play out the consequences of those fantastical changes in a way that felt respectful and engaged with the history and culture of a given place.”

An important part in creating such a different world for Jayanth was to give a platform to those voices normally whitewashed by history, people whose stories have never been told. It’s not that these people weren’t developing their own cultures and experiences, they just don’t make it into our accounts. “History is written by the victors. But all we need to do is dig past the simplistic narratives and scratch past the veneer of easy stereotypes,” Jayanth says. “I want my work to be full of women, people of color, queer people, and marginalized people doing amazing things all through history—because they did.” Their stories have been edited out and forgotten. Jayanth wants her work to act against this erasure, boldly saying “These histories belong to all of us, and we’ve waited long enough to take them back.”  

One option that Jayanth had to fulfill her wish was to make 80 Days a power fantasy for the downtrodden, placing them in the roles previously held by their oppressors. But she isn’t one to take the easy route. The silenced are certainly given a voice in the game, but that doesn’t mean that theirs is necessarily the voice of reason or fairness. They are found living in places both fantastical and commonplace. Some land themselves positions of power, while others are left to labor under a harsh sun. None of them however, from bricklayer to queen, are denied the right to exist.  

Sadly, the issues that 80 Days attempts to reverse aren’t confined to history. Women currently make up about 20 percent of the videogame industry, remaining a clear minority, one whose voices are rarely heard or represented in the medium for which they work. Fortunately, Jayanth’s career has found her in the company of colleagues supportive of improving inclusion and diversity.

“I feel lucky in my experience, and that’s a problem,” Jayanth says. “Many of my female friends and colleagues have faced—and still do face—hostility, indifference and harassment, and I don’t in any way want to diminish that; the wider atmosphere of games doesn’t feel particularly welcoming to women.”

It’s not that people weren’t developing their own cultures, they just don’t make it into our accounts

Meg is one of the select few women who give talks and make it onto panels. In so doing she feels that she is being put on a pedestal. “This is what it feels like to me, being a woman in games: that when I say something—in an interview, on a panel, in a talk, in my game, in a conversation—that I am not just speaking for myself, but also as a Woman In Games,” Jayanth said. That can feel like a constant, underlying and undermining pressure (and that’s not even getting into being a *brown* woman in games). We’re having lots of great conversations about diversity and inclusion as an industry at the moment—and that’s important, that’s hopeful, I think.” Jayanth hopes these conversations will help to usher in a new generation of women, women who haven’t been driven away from following their dreams.

Meg will be taking her message on the road at GDC this year, telling the industry how it can work to create more inclusive games. With this promotion of inclusivity, Jayanth believes we can rail against the prevailing culture, that we can make an impact.  Jayanth’s work on 80 Days has started to chip away at the foundations, and will hopefully be joined soon by the many more works she has to come.