Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 92

An upcoming game about a dog looking for its dead owner

Katabasis, a term describing a hero’s descent into the underworld, is seen often in Greek myth. Odysseus spoke to spirits during his voyage and was frightened by the looming depths. Hermes rescued Persephone from her unwilling marriage to the god of death, granting her half of every year above ground before returning to her husband. The tale of Orpheus tells of his folly in rescuing his wife Eurydice, who died of a snakebite: Hades and Persephone let him lead her out of the underworld on the condition that he not turn to look at her until they were back in the world above. As he reached the surface he looked back, forgetting that she had to be alongside him, and she vanished.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through with dry eyes

Like the legendary Orpheus, the protagonist of Don’t Disturb, an upcoming game out of East Asia, seeks to traverse the underworld in order to bring someone he loved back to him. But there is no Eurydice in this tale, no Hades and Persephone on the thrones of Hell to set conditions and steal the happy ending. This story takes place on the other side of the world, clean of that mythology and the outcome tied to it. Don’t Disturb is Chinese, not Greek. The woman who has gone to the afterlife is old and sweet. You play her dog.

Ever since Hachikō the Akita spent nine years waiting for his owner to come home, the bond between dog and master has proven an impossible, heart-wrenching phenomenon that makes us all want to hug our furry friends a little tighter. If Don’t Disturb is going to spend the whole game tugging that heartstrings, I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through with dry eyes.

It seems that every month there’s a similar story about some poor pup whose owner died tragically, spending its days waiting at a street corner or train station for its master to arrive. The loyalty of these tales is devastating, but the implication of helplessness even more so. They can do nothing but wait. We know that, despite their love, they’ll be waiting forever. So why not rewrite that story too?

We don’t yet know the name of the pretty hound that heads Don’t Disturb, but we do know that unlike his earthly companions, he won’t be helpless. Contrary to the title’s warning, he’ll find his way to the underworld, past death, and he’ll bring her back. Like Orpheus, but with a better ending this time.

You can vote for Don’t Disturb on Steam Greenlight .

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Bear Rodeo is a madcap experiment in videogame physics

Like many people, I’ve wondered what a naked Danny Devito would look like riding a bear as if he were a world-class rodeo rider. It’s human nature. But not many—in fact, only one person—has made it into reality, and he goes by the name punchesbears.

Naked Danny DeVito Power Rodeo 2 (also known as simply “Bear Rodeo”) is the game at hand, wherein Danny DeVito ragdolls his way astride a big brown grizzly bear. The bear’s name is Roscoe and he’s appeared in many of punchesbears prototypes, including one where “DD and the bear… fight/wrestle over a trashcan sandwich.” What he has not appeared in is Naked Danny DeVito Power Rodeo 1, a game which does not exist.

[NAKED BEAR RODEO INTENSIFIES]#gamedev #gameart #indiedev #madewithunity #unity3d #indiegame #animation #physics pic.twitter.com/wdoiCKPKfo

— ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻ (@punchesbears) December 28, 2015

If you’ve heard of Bear Rodeo it is probably through a series of GIFs punchesbears has posted on Twitter, where it’s accompanied with a soundtrack of classical music or Nas (do yourself a favor and turn the volume up to 11 for proper viewing). It’s not punchesbears’s only prototype, a full list of which includes a battlefield with a chainsaw wielding bear and a drunken quest for burritos.

DeVito was naked in the prototype

They’re physics-heavy games, and that’s intentional: “I plan on all of my games using nothing but physics animations. I feel like physics-only animations are an area of videogames that have not been fully explored so I’m trying to push into uncharted territory. I feel like the Captain Kirk of videogame physics… not entirely sure where I’m going, but I don’t care as long as it’s some place new.”

And DeVito? “I love It’s Always Sunny [in Philadelphia],” punchesbears writes. Early game prototypes included a version of “Night Krawlers,” a worm-like game referenced by Charlie and Frank in an episode of the comedy series. “I was going to make Night Krawlers the videogame. An IP lawyer told me that was a very bad idea so I stopped.” DeVito was naked in the prototype, because “I had not yet learned how to model clothing.” From there, punchesbears moved into more physics-heavy animations and the prototypes that he’s known for today. Since an early prototype featured the DeVito character model, he makes an appearance in other games as well.

Accidentally redirected all forces to a single character. Cocaine Bear Sim is ready to ship. #madewithunity #gamedev pic.twitter.com/dtijtRSV1X

— ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻ (@punchesbears) June 21, 2016

And if you’re wondering what Danny DeVito thinks about all this, that’s an unknown: “I’ve tagged Mr. DeVito on several of my tweets in which he was featured. He has not responded yet, but I assume I will get a Cease & Desist from his lawyers at some point!”

You can find out more about punchesbears and his many prototypes at his Twitter and website.

Nas Is Like. Procedural dance testing. Not sure how points are scored yet. Multiplayer soon. SOUND!!! #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/qyU54F4Gfx

— ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻ (@punchesbears) July 2, 2016

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Proteus: Artifact Edition brings the game’s pastoral landscapes into your home

At first glance, there would seem to be nothing more tangible than a landscape. An arrangement of physical objects, spread out before you, traversable, understandable, concrete in every sense. Yet when you start to think of a specific landscape, things start to cloud. What is a landscape if not the play of light on a hillside, the gathering of clouds on a horizon, the mood of the image as seen through your eyes, in your time, with your colors? All of these things are transient, unfixed, perhaps impossible to repeat. A landscape as a formation might be concrete, but a landscape as an experience is a negotiation of the transient and intransient, between fixity and fluidity. This is a relationship that Proteus (2013) seems to understand almost implicitly. Its procedural landscapes, populated by scattered collections of chirruping flora and fauna, droning ruins and obscure shapes, never seem to remain fixed—encouraging wandering as a mode of engagement, rather than just a wobbly path in 3D space.

A booklet of wonderful esoterica

Yet there is an opacity to all this fluid time and space, one that some players might find too confrontational. How does one play Proteus? What’s the object of this exercise? If we have forgotten how to wander, how are we supposed to find ourselves again? The game’s long awaited Artifact Edition is, in some senses, a typically ambling and imprecise answer to such questions. Alongside the game—a simultaneously ambient and intense experience that even its creators Ed Key and David Kanaga might not have expected to make such a distinct impact—this version includes a set of physical and digital accompaniments, hand packed from Key’s back bedroom nestled in the bucolic landscapes of Cumbria.

Primary among them is the Field Guide and Walking Scores: A booklet of wonderful esoterica that shifts between faux-academic musings and John Cage-like diagrams of musical staves and natural orders. There’s a childlike crudeness to the sketches that flower across its pages, one that mirrors the charming colors and shapes of the game’s flat graphics. These, like the thoughts of the fictional Pseudo-Fludd also placed among these pages, suggest not a fully-formed philosophy, but a series of passing notions, marked on paper with the lightness of a daydream or doodle. Not to say that this is a weak or facile set of ideas; more a series of deep thoughts, simply wandered through with the lightest of footsteps: “Sky and the earth and foliage and creatures are all considered in terms of their causal structure in Time, Creation, which is considered as walk, as musical line, as branching tree, as geological survey, as organism.”

That list—a walk, a musical line, a branching tree, a geological survey—feels like a fairly good description of this version of Proteus. Take the included “soundtrack” the Proteus Suites. A series of arrangements built from the digital cacophony of the game’s reactive audio by composer David Kanaga, they feel like the most transient element of the entire package. Without the visual cues that unite them with the game’s landscape, these chirruping sounds meander off on odd vectors, taking you with them, if you stay to listen. These sonic landscapes suggest both possible paths through the game’s own formations, as well as imaginary journeys undertaken in idle daydreams, soothed by unknown creatures. They are a survey of past wanderings, a musical composition for live performance and a score for future voyages.

they suggest a landscape

And then there is the Protean Map, a card game of sorts, designed to facilitate the creation of imaginary landscapes and the journeys that animate them. Perhaps the most tangible and concrete element of the collection—self-contained, able to be shuffled and dealt—these cards are paradoxically little more than a series of suggestive descriptions of places or shapes, events or frames, ready to be arranged to esoteric rules. These rules don’t quite make it clear if we might use them to walk in Proteus, or in the world, but then perhaps it doesn’t matter. Walking a landscape, is, after all, oddly dependent on the walker, not the landscape. For a map, the Protean Map is more of a generative tool, a way of the wanderer inventing endless journeys, laid out across their table like the beginnings of some unknown landscape.

Completing the collection is a “history” book, with images of early versions of the game, and a CD of the game and alternate builds, along with an intriguing collection of musical sketches. These are in a wonderfully messy arrangement, without artifice or airbrushing. Browsing them is a little like looking directly onto Key or Kanaga’s hard drive, and walking among the pieces in search of some of the magic that might have animated this unlikely game. But these pieces, like the rest of the artifacts contained in this Artifact Edition don’t form some singular vision. Instead they point off at oblique angles, suggesting roads not traveled, new ideas, and nascent themes. Like Proteus itself, they suggest a landscape, but refuse to make it completely tangible, leaving space between the broad strokes for new ideas to grow.

It is this openness, and the comprehensive nature of the Artifact Edition, that suggest this is Key and Kanaga’s final goodbye to Proteus: After all, here Key is, gathering all of the remaining pieces, packaging them up, and sending them out into the world to wander for themselves, box by box. As goodbyes go, it’s a beautiful one, and a welcome invitation, to wander a little more among the flowers. Or whatever those tootling yellow things are supposed to be.

If you’re lucky, you can grab the Proteus: Artifact Edition for £39 right here. Only 150 were being sold from July 12th.

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There’s something off about the Overwatch alternate skins

One of the most appealing aspects of Overwatch is its colorful cast of characters, which in total represent a mix of global demographics. Among them are the rebellious Brazilian outlaw DJ Lucio, the meticulous Indian architect Symmetra, stout Russian bodybuilder Zarya, dedicated jetpack trooper Pharah, and idealistic Chinese climatologist Mei. The wide reach of these depictions is undoubtedly a positive step for representation in videogames, but it, unfortunately, isn’t without its hiccups.

A number of alternate costumes or “skins” for characters contain cultural features portrayed in a way that isn’t so praiseworthy. The discussion around these skins and their traits has been scant to date, mostly commented on via Twitter, on Battlenet’s forums, and a fan letter on Giant Bomb East’s podcast.

The line is blurry in Overwatch

It bears mentioning that cultural appropriation is a hot button issue that coincides with diverse media representation. (A video by MTV Decoded and Nightly Show contributor Franchesca Ramsey sums it up). The line is blurry in Overwatch because, in some cases, the skins were based on an exaggerated portrayal that doesn’t correspond with a culture that’s practiced in the present. Furthermore, the fictional characters themselves aren’t able to appropriate when they wear another group’s outfit as an alternate skin, because they lack the agency to take from another culture and oppress the originators (the latter being the prime factor in the discussion around cultural appropriation).

That said, Overwatch’s futuristic setting seems less affected by the historical grievances that influence cultural appropriation in today’s world. In Overwatch, corporate power and the aftermath of the Omnic Crisis seems to have supplanted ethnic tensions and institutional racial discrimination.

It may make sense that Symmetra, a character of South Asian origin, can dress like a goddess native to her region. However, which deity does the Devi and Goddess skins represent? While Hindu deities come in a variety of representations across regions and Hindu doctrines, features of the alternate skin contrast with historical art portraying them.

The identifiable features of the Devi/Goddess skin include an ornate “mukut” crown with a peacock feather pattern, and a revealing dress most resembling statues in South India, but not quite one-to-one. The garland of skulls around Symmetra’s waist denotes Kali, who often wears a necklace of skulls or freshly decapitated heads around her neck. The blue skin tones also denote Rama, Krishna and Shiva, and various depictions of Kali with blue skin. Kali is the likeliest influence to the Devi/Goddess skins. The problem is Kali’s role as a vicious slayer seems out of character for Symmetra’s lore as an architect and her in-game role as support, with abilities such as shielding teammates and building teleporters.

Pharah’s Thunderbird and Raindancer skins are another faulty depiction. The design of the skin’s armor, including the torso, shoulder pads, wings, and helmet denote influence from people of the Pacific Northwest—the Haida people’s totems are the best known in popular culture. Her face paint is most likely influenced by the Mohawk people in Ontario, Quebec, and upstate New York. This is another example of traits from different groups thrown together without regard for their origins. Furthermore, the theme of Pharah’s alternate skin is the only place Native American culture appears in Overwatch.

traits are thrown together without regard for their origins

Roadhog’s Toa and Islander skins appear to be influenced by Polynesian culture. But the similarities among Polynesian groups makes it challenging to identify the exact inspiration for these skins. The sharktooth hook most resembles a fish hook club from Hawaii, though most of its kind don’t come in the shape that Roadhog’s hook does. The Toa’s Clothing most resembles a piece called called a kiekie, a girdle from Tonga with braided strands falling down to the knees. The braiding is wrapped thick to look more like a hoof to match Roadhog’s character.

The tattoos on the Islander skin most resemble Maori body tattoos, which may denote one’s family, status, and accomplishments. While the mask most resembles a Tiki-style mask, and the designers at Blizzard have renovated it into a pig shape to fit the hog theme of the character. Much of America’s conception of Polynesian visual design comes from kitschy and stereotypical post-WW2 Tiki bars. Whatever the developer’s influences were, the similarity with Tiki design elements contribute to the accusation of appropriation.

Zenyatta’s Djinnyatta and ifrit skins are likely inspired by Orientalist depictions of djinn, from which we derived the word genie. Now, influential scholar Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978. The book reviews the artistic and scholarly trend in Europe of exaggerating Asian cultures, especially the Middle East, in a way that enabled ‘othering’ of the region. Othering can exist as either hateful stereotyping or idealistic fetishizing that enables colonization and exploitation. It’s worth bearing this in mind when looking at Zenyatta’s alternate skins.

Djinnyatta’s baggy pants resemble the “harem pant” of French designer Paul Poiret. The pants and vest were influenced by loose pants in Turkey and South Asia, but the inseam in Poiret’s pant was more exaggerated, dropping down to the calf to allow freer movement than women’s clothing of the time allowed.

Many of these cultural costumes exist in a blurry ground between cultural appropriation and direct stereotypes. On one hand, the mixed up traits don’t correspond to a practiced culture. However, many of these designs were derived from appropriative trends and stereotypical portrayals of the past—such as  American Tiki bars, stereotypical depictions of Native groups, and European Orientalist fashion. Replicating the exaggerated features shows a lack of research into these lived cultures, or at least a selective ignorance.

As for skins with Ancient Egyptian or Norse traits, centuries of invasions and conversions have subsumed those cultures into the vague status of the common heritage of mankind. That distinction is not without controversy—institutions such as the British Museum lay claim to artifacts stolen from colonized lands. (2013’s Civilization V: Brave New World simulates this as the archeologist unit and antiquity sites. Other civilizations in the game are never pleased when you choose to extract their artifacts for your museums.)

many of these designs were derived from stereotypical portrayals of the past

But the harm of exploiting deities of defunct religions is separate from misrepresenting living cultures that lack representation today. While Mercy’s Valkyrie skins may exaggerate depictions of Norse culture, it is no longer a widely-practiced one. The descendants of the Norse also have ample opportunity to represent themselves in the global media landscape. Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and South Asians practice a “living” culture, but don’t have as much opportunity. It’s this vital difference that causes issues to be found in Overwatch’s range of skins.

Researching a character’s culture to build a positive and credible representation takes some legwork, but game designers have done so to good effect. For the 2013 reboot of fighting game Killer Instinct, the designers consulted with an ethnographer of the Nez Perce nation to redesign the Native American character Thunder to make a more respectful portrayal than in past games. In a more crowdsourced instance, Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada asked Saudi fans on social media for feedback in designing Tekken 7’s Saudi character Shaheen. Harada in turn encouraged Yoshinori Ono from Capcom to create Rashid for Street Fighter V.

While Overwatch’s diverse cast should be commended, the developers can improve and build on the theme of global cooperation and diverse representation they seek out.  

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The Summer’s Biggest Counter-Strike LAN Imploded in a Major Way

On paper, ESL One Cologne had all the makings of a successful Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) tournament. The in-game production was led by PGL, a company that Dota 2 fans liked so much they begged Valve to retain it for every event after the Manila Major. PGL succeeded at the Manila Major through a combination of innovation, nimble response to fan feedback, and an omnipresent sense of humor. But when the Romanian production company tried its hand at a Counter-Strike major, these factors either didn’t matter or never made an appearance.

The grand finals of ESL One Cologne peaked at 850,000 viewers, roughly 500,000 below the previous Major’s figure. A 37 percent drop-off in viewership from one event to the next is, to put it mildly, cause for concern. Fans across Twitter and message boards expressed dismay; the #DeadGame hashtag, a mainstay of esports discourse, was dusted off and put to liberal use once more. Doom-and-gloom discussions are nothing new to esports, but in this case even the tournament producers acknowledged that their efforts fell short.

It’s an esports Icarus story: PGL grew overconfident, soared from Dota 2 to the fiery skies of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (henceforth, CS:GO), and wound up barbecued. How did things go so wrong? Was the molten demise of ESL One Cologne a freak event, a hiccup along the path of CS:GO’s empyrean ascent, or was it evidence of something more sinister? Is CS:GO, as a whole host of doomsaying Redditors attest, already on its way out?  

a hiccup along the path of CS:GO’s empyrean ascent

One easy scapegoat, trotted out by CS:GO fans and players alike, is that ESL One was doomed by the surplus of tournaments in the months that preceded it. Tournaments in close proximity tend to cannibalize viewers from one another. Whether it’s healthier for an esports scene to have a few gargantuan events or a whole lot of mid-sized events remains up for debate. Is it better to have five events with 400,000 viewers each, or two events with 800,000 viewers each? Technically, the viewer-hours are greater in the first scenario, but the second scenario generates a bigger peak number. And it’s the peak number that gets cited in the Wall Street Journal. It’s the peak number that fans use to justify their esports passion to skeptical coworkers. Therefore, it’s no surprise that peak viewership, for better or for worse, is the metric esports fans prefer to maximize.

Still, ESL One’s failure can hardly be blamed on tournament oversaturation alone, and the truth is that PGL played a key role in the fiasco, most prominently when it came to the in-game observing. Because a CS:GO match spans a sprawling map, and is typically spectated through the first-person view of only one of the 10 players at a time, skillful camera direction is key to legibility. A good CS:GO observer knows where the action is most likely to erupt at any given moment, and repositions the viewpoint constantly, hopping from player to player to capture the most thrilling plays. This element of the broadcast is more art than science, and it requires deep knowledge of the game and countless hours of experience to master. PGL totally fucked it up. The observer missed numerous multi-kills while occupying the viewpoint of someone staring at double-doors on the opposite side of the map. This was probably more responsible than any other factor for viewers shutting the ESL One stream in disgust, and it illustrates the fact that what works in broadcasting one esport—Dota 2 in-game observation, while also important, simply doesn’t require a virtuosic skillset—may not work in another.

the broadcast is more art than science

There’s no shortage of fan theories about ESL One’s ignominious failure. Some point fingers at the recently-released Overwatch, which is accused of siphoning off CS:GO’s players and viewers. Whether esports is a zero sum game or not is a question worthy of an article all its own, but it is true that CS:GO’s player base has leveled off in the past twelve months. In esports, there’s a strong correlation between player count and viewer count, and unless CS:GO’s player base resumes a growth trajectory, it’s hard to see its tournament viewership doing the same. The less ominous explanation is simply that the most popular European teams were eliminated early in ESL One, taking many of their most dedicated fans with them. Plus the event overlapped with the 2016 Euro Cup, which can’t have done wonders for a CS:GO viewer base that skews European.

Questions of cause are one thing, but the real question on everybody’s mind is this: was ESL One a one-off, freak occurrence? Or was it the beginning of an end?  

To answer that question, we’ll have to wait at least until the next major. Esports rise and fall, but it’s never quite clear at the time which direction things are headed.

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The game about female sexuality that Apple wouldn’t touch

La Petite Mort is a smartphone game about timing, communication, and being generous. It’s also a game about sex, female pleasure, and sensuality. As is expected with pretty much any game about female sexuality, Apple rejected La Petite Mort for publication on its App Store on the grounds that it was inappropriate. The Denmark-based developer Lovable Hat Cult, who made the game, told me that even though Apple claimed to show support for the game’s themes of generous love, it still refused to publish a game that explores these concepts through sexual content. However, this raises a question: is it possible to have one without the other?

When you first load up La Petite Mort, you’re taken to a screen asking you to wear headphones. This is because, on top of everything else, this is also a game about music. You’re then given the chance to pick one of four different women, after which you are taken to a heavily pixelated representation of her vagina as a meditative and quiet song—uniquely composed for each woman—starts playing in the background. To finish the stage, you must prod the song to get louder and more intense through a series of crescendos, which involves carefully and conscientiously bringing your partner to climax.

The vaginas are based on pictures taken from real women—all willing volunteers, of course—though they have been abstracted to the point where it’s unlikely you’d recognize what they are without being told first. The game is obviously and proudly centered around mature content and erotic themes, yes, but the message is clear: this is not a typical porn game.

Attesting to this, pleasing your partner in this game is not only about the pleasure of the player, for starters. If you try to go in hard and fast without any sort of foreplay, or only caring about your own needs, you’ll quickly find yourself rebuffed. Instead, sex in this game involves careful, timed, considerate motions that are designed to slowly warm your partner up and serve her needs as she lays them out for you. If you do well, she’ll respond with moans and the music will get louder and more intense, as waves of pleasure light up the pixels surrounding your touch. If you refuse to listen to her, however, she’ll respond by saying “no” or “nuh uh,” and the moment will be over, meaning you’ll have to start over from scratch. Each woman has different needs, and the result is a game where you have to listen to your partner’s feedback to find out how best to pleasure her, avoiding the temptation to be selfish and, instead, encouraging a representation of sex that is about two-way sensuality more than providing a service to the player.

sex that strays as far away from objectification as possible

“One of the issues with sex shown in porn is that it very easily gets goal oriented, especially focusing on the man’s [or as applied to games, the presumed male player’s] pleasure,” one of the game’s creators, Andrea, told me. “In La Petite Mort we have gone beyond that, and asked ourselves the question ‘what if we try to make the player go not only by their visual sense, but encourage them to listen and move slowly?’ This creates an aesthetic abstraction from the focus of only ‘looking’ and hopefully awakens the other senses.”

The result is a game about sex that strays as far away from objectification as possible. The women the player interacts with here are instead full participants in the act, each with their own personalities and differing needs. These are people you need to get to know and listen to rather than, as depicted in games like the Leisure Suit Larry series or Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013), glorified real dolls. Consent is clear, must be consistently and enthusiastically given from both parties, and can be withdrawn at any moment. As Andrea told me: “There is purposefully no guide on how to play and no tutorial. The only way forward is to listen to the evolving music and to touch accordingly. Don’t go too fast, and don’t go too slow, move your finger sensually and perhaps teasingly.”

This method of play as avenue for partnership is an idea that the team members at Lovable Hat Cult has been developing over the course of their entire careers, as seen in one of their earlier attempts to tackle the subject back when they were still working with another developer- the Copenhagen Game Collective. Earlier this year, I got a chance to play one of these first forays into sexuality, a sound game titled Dark Room Sex Game. I saw it while attending an exhibit at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image called “Sensory Stories: An Exhibition of New Narrative Experiences,”  To play it, a friend and I went into a dark room with two PlayStation Move controllers, at which point we were told to swing back and forth to find a mutual rhythm. If we succeeded, we were rewarded with moans and pleasing musical tones, but if not, one of our remotes would cry out in dissatisfaction and we’d have to start over. Eventually, my friend and I found a pattern that worked for us, but before that, I continually struggled to sync up with her. She took it with good nature, but on my end, I felt shame. I hadn’t taken her movements into consideration and had focused only on my own, and that gave us a one-way experience that wasn’t enjoyable for either of us.

Shame is a rare emotion for a game sex scene to show, but it is a normal and common part of sex in the real world. Here, my shame arose from being too self-centered with a partner, and refusing to take her pleasure into account as well. I had underestimated the game, only expecting it to replicate the same player-first mentalities I had seen in other sex games, and I was appropriately taken to task for it. This was a game about sex that wasn’t afraid to make its players feel bad, meaning that I couldn’t get away with seeing my partner as just another checkpoint to clear anymore. Instead, like the real world, I had to talk to her, listen to her responses, and work with her for a mutually enjoyable experience. This wasn’t Grand Theft Auto, where the player is free to abuse other characters to their heart’s content, and only ever be congratulated for it. This was a game where I was held accountable.

as if sex and related themes are not worth exploring in games

Similar sensibilities inform La Petite Mort. “Female sexuality and pleasure is still taboo most places around the world,” Andrea told me when I pressed on the game’s themes. “When a company is trying to focus on something that mainstream porn is still hesitant to touch; female pleasure for women’s own sake, then it is getting banned.”

To be fair to Apple, its policy states that it does not allow explicit sexual content on its App Store period, regardless of whether the pleasure in the game is strictly for the player or for all parties involved, and regardless of whether or not the game could be strictly considered pornography. All of this, however, does make clear that La Petite Mort does not exist simply to titillate, though Andrea did explain to me that Lovable Hat Cult does not intend to directly condemn any games that seek only to do so—”Pornography will and should exist.” Rather, it is a genuine artistic exploration of care, mutual respect, and consent. Sure, it uses sexual imagery to do so, but this raises a question of whether Apple should automatically ban all games with sexually explicit content in the first place, as if sex and related themes are not worth exploring in games at all. This would put games at a disadvantage compared to film or literature, for which exploration of even semi-related themes through sex is common. 50 Shades of Grey, for instance, is available for purchase on iTunes with no issues.

I asked Andrea about her experiences speaking with Apple, at which point she handed me over to another person on the team, Patrick. “We are happy that they took the time to call us and speak with us,” he said. “The guy I talked to was also pleasant to talk to; however, he did use the manipulation technique of building rapport with me by connecting with me as a European.” Patrick explained to me that the Apple representative told him, “For me, and for you as Europeans, we don’t find it objectionable. We are probably very open-minded. But the application needs to be available for a very wide audience.” To this, Patrick responded: “Does this mean that only European women have the right to sexual pleasure and stimulation? And not the American ones?”

He explained to me that, to get the game published on the App Store, Lovable Hat Cult would have had to change the game’s name, images, and sound to the point where they were being asked to “basically make a different game.” They refused, as doing so would have gone against the game’s central thesis of being a celebration of the female sensuality and mutual pleasure so many other sex games ignore, and the team took the game to Google instead. There, they have found more success. It is currently sitting on the Play Store with a Teen rating. Notably, having not even earned a Mature designation according to the ESRB standards Google uses when rating games for the Americas.

You can purchase La Petite More over on Google Play.

 

 

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This speedrun melts Pokemon into primordial goo

The appeal of live broadcasted speedrunning events isn’t always clear. But, first and foremost, these bi-annual speedrun events are showcases of knowledge, skill, and rote memorization. At this year’s week-long Summer Games Done Quick event, which just wrapped up this weekend, there were the obvious, often outrageous displays of frame-perfect gameplay. One runner, Romscout, ran through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in an hour and eight minutes—blindfolded. Sivade35, another absolute virtuoso of play, ran through the entirety of Dustforce (collectibles and all) in an hour and three minutes, breezing past a collection of near-impossible “Difficult” levels that I didn’t even know existed.

The other driving force behind Games Done Quick is the sense of community that permeates the enterprise of speedrunning. While many online forums pride themselves on hype for unreleased games or the ability to churn out fresh memes on a weekly basis, speedrunning is, by its very nature, a hobby that demands collaboration and the open sharing of ideas and information. Throughout each run, the players narrated their whole process, explaining methods for bending and sometimes circumventing a game’s intended mechanics. Many of these players were accompanied by other speedrunners who probably share space on the same leaderboards. They’d talk about each other in relation to other high-level speedrunners they know, sharing the history of moves and level routes, attributing them to their respective pioneers.

it demands collaboration and the open sharing of ideas and information

That’s kind of the inspiring thing about speedrunning: it’s a bunch of people who want to get really good at a specific thing, and lean on one another to spread the information they need to get it done. Many of the runners had their own stories about how they got into speedrunning, and many of them expressed surprise at how easy it was to get started. Whether or not that’s true is tough to know, but it’s easy to tell that there’s a latent desire to spread the speedrunning love. It seems appropriate for a community this collaborative, then, that the crux of their bi-annual event would itself be altruistic. This year’s Summer Games Done Quick event raised $1,298,479.44 for Doctors Without Borders—driving even the rowdy Twitch audience to donate to the cause.

In 2013, I saw Narcissa Wright beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time at Awesome Games Done Quick. It took her 22 minutes and 38 seconds. By exploiting bugs and glitches inherent in the original game, she jumped through walls and warped through space and brandished twigs like they were katanas, making the game think she was doing things that weren’t actually happening. My personal fascination with speedrunning dates back to Narcissa’s Ocarina of Time run and has to do with the way speedrunners poke holes in systems that were once imagined to be impenetrable.

Having already beaten Pokémon Blue Version multiple times myself, I figured that the only bugs to be found in that game were the ones involving MISSINGNO—an infamous glitch that allowed players to duplicate items to advantageous effect. As a kid, I’d heard that secret from a neighborhood friend, who himself had heard from a friend, whose uncle probably worked at Nintendo if the rumors were to be believed. At SGDQ 2016, a player called Eddaket beat Pokémon Blue Version in 33 minutes, dispatching each boss in reverse order. As most people who have played Pokémon probably know, this should be impossible. But Eddaket and some other mad scientists in the Pokémon speedrunning community have found ways to exploit bugs in the game, and, apparently, this feat now belongs to the realm of the possible.

this should be impossible

At one point in the run, Eddaket saves his game and resets his device, then talks to an NPC and somehow has gained the ability to walk through walls. Next, he starts screwing around in the pause menus and can all of a sudden duplicate his items. For the grand finale, Eddaket pokes through a dot matrix soup of glitched-out menu options and somehow emerges with the power to warp to different sections of the game. At this point, everything begins to look like a pixelated mush, but Eddaket calmly summons up each boss one at a time, which effectively gives him the ability to beat the game in reverse order.

These broken speedruns poke at some primal imagination cortex at the center of my brain. To me—a person who’s spent tens of hours playing Pokémon—there is effectively no difference between watching a player carry out some obscure ritual to break the rules of a game world, and watching the same thing happen in real life. And even though I know this is the product of many years’ worth of osmosing ideas and techniques, it’s always a surprise to see speedrunners find new ways of reaching beyond an established world’s ruleset and tapping into some sublime parallel dimension where the impossible no longer exists.

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A bunch of games just arrived to provide a wider representation of love

The second installment of the International Love Ultimatum game jam (iluJam) has ended, gracing us with a variety of games about love in many shapes and sizes. This year saw a slightly bigger turn out with six more entries than the inaugural jam last year. Although the number of entries may be small, many of them have a big heart.

Amanda Cosmos, the organizer of iluJam, was originally inspired by the Pulse-Pounding, Heart-Stopping Dating Sim Jam (PPHSDSJ). She wanted to participate, but when no follow-up event happened, she got the organizer’s blessing to put on a similar game jam herself. While International Love Ultimatum takes its inspiration from PPHSDSJ, it doesn’t have a genre limit, and specifically reminds participants that they don’t have to make a dating sim or visual novel. Cosmos said she didn’t want people to feel limited with just those genres, and that sentiment is true of her feelings towards romance games in general.

snippets of the types of love that you might not find many examples of in more mainstream titles

When I asked Cosmos what her best hope was for romance games in the future she said: “I hope to get more and more varieties and examples made by people who would be considered outsiders. A single game cannot be exemplar of all the kinds of love in the world, and should not be expected to be because that is a lot of pressure, but smaller games can include snippets of the types of love that you might not find many examples of in more mainstream titles. More and more of those characters and relationships existing helps to normalize and empathize with experiences that might not be your own.”

This hope for romance games to show a variety of kinds of love is visible in the entrants to this year’s iluJam. Entries include a puzzle game about being in an asexual relationship, a romantic-comedy visual novel about a person with terminal illness, a simple conversation simulation between two femme anthropomorphic animals, and 20 more games in total. The only dating sim I played from the entrants was All My Bowies, a game full to the brim with delightful David Bowie references, obscure and obvious. One of the most touching entries, Poor Doggie, isn’t even about romantic love at all, but instead about the love a dog has for their humans.

Although Amanda Cosmos told me that she hasn’t had time to play through all the entries for this year’s competition, I hope that when she does she sees that, by organizing iluJam for the second year in a row, she helped get us a little closer to her dreams for romance games in the future.

Check out all the entries to iluJam 2 here.

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Great Cascade gets a new name, still looking to fix open-world games

Upcoming open-world game Great Cascade has been renamed Thousand Threads. The reason for the title change is due to a copyrighted game having a similar name. And so, in order to avoid confusion, Seamount Games changed the name, which is inspired by a quotation from Herman Melville. “Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.”

The title Thousand Threads, then, is perhaps even better suited to the nature of the game. While it’s an open-world game like many others, where it differs is in its choice systems—they are much less visible and obvious. Rather than providing, for example, a morality system, Thousand Threads simply provides a world where you make a series of choices that the AI will remember, good or bad.

“a system of cause and effect”

Steal an item away from its owner to get more money, and they’ll remember you as the thief. They’ll tell their friends as well, and you’ll have to live with the consequences of your actions. And, most notably, none of these consequences are scripted, nor are they tied to a story of branching paths. As Seamount explains: “It’s a system of cause and effect. Characters have unique personality traits, memories, and goals, so they act and react differently. Your actions build your story.”

Alongside the title change also comes a new trailer (which you can watch above). It gives us a better look at the game’s beautiful low-poly artwork, as well as the soundtrack that’ll accompany any adventures across its meadows and mountains you embark upon. When you’ll get to enter this open world isn’t known yet but you can sign up to its newsletter to be among the first to find out. 

To find out more about Thousand Threads, be sure to check out its website and development blog.

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Xbox Avatars acknowledge wheelchair users at long last

Creating digital avatars to represent your identity was a big part of the Xbox 360 consoles, allowing users to customize their online appearance through a stylized caricature of themselves. With the introduction of the Xbox One, this feature was taken away briefly before being brought back with an updated design. And now, Microsoft has revealed that it will be adding wheelchairs as an option for the reintroduced avatars.

Inclusion in our media is important, but society (and games in particular) seems to always favor those who are able-bodied. This is why people with disabilities (and their allies) pointed the oversight to Microsoft on social media over the years, explaining how they should be able to see themselves reflected in the digital world, with more representations of their daily experiences.

Recently, videogames appear to be building more of an awareness toward ableism by including a few more options for players with certain disabilities. Uncharted 4 features a list of accessibility options, like reducing the strain on players by allowing a single button push to repeat an actio,n as opposed to mashing them repeatedly in both quick-time events and melee combat. There are different camera angles as well that help to auto-lock and aim, while multiplayer teams were changed from red and green to red and blue for color blind players. These improvements in inclusive design were in part because of the feedback from a man with a disability who had to have an able-bodied friend finish part of Uncharted 2 (2009) for him after realizing he could not continue playing it.

They should be able to see themselves reflected in the digital world

Improvements can also be attributed to the AbleGamers Charity nonprofit, which is aimed at improving the quality of life for those with disabilities through videogames. They offer consultation to small and large developers by providing a set of practical game accessibility guidelines called Includification, a 48 page roadmap for developers that helps them reach the highest level of accessibility possible for each game. The website Game-Accessibility also reviews titles and rates them based on their accessibility, providing different ways to optimize to suit the player’s specific needs.

For instance, if you have a visual disability, they warn that Life is Strange (2015) will be difficult to play. This comes as a disappointment since Dontnod’s episodic series was one of the few popular games last year to even represent someone in a wheelchair.

But even with better representation and more inclusion, there are still plenty of improvements to be made. Custom controllers are expensive, and not all developers have made their games with them in mind. By including wheelchairs as an option for avatars, Microsoft at least appears to be making a small step in the right direction.

For more information about the AbleGamers Charity click here, and for more information about Game-Accessibility click here.

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