I finally got around to installing Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend. I just kept putting it off because personal projects and a lot of other good games were vying for my meagre discretionary time outside of day-to-day work. I loved the look of the game and found the first few hours of game play absolutely enthralling as I made various choices, both moral and banal, to advance the story and determine how my character treated other people.

My room-mate was playing the game too, and her character was much more aggressive and short with various non-player characters in the game so that the attitude of how her character interacted with the world was far different from mine.

And on Sunday evening, just as I am really getting in to the game, and moving towards the “big ritual” I rage-quit during a cinematic.

Yep, I rage-quit a single player game.

This isn’t the first single player game I have rage-quit during a cinematic. Probably my first ever was Half-Life, during the opening sequence that cannot be skipped, that sets up the story, because I have no interest in watching some film school drop-out put his boring ass, directorial debut in to my video game. I took that one back to EB, and when they wouldn’t take it back I left the box on the counter and did a charge back on my credit card.

I don’t play games, emphasis on “play”, to be a passive, non-participant sat docilely at my computer whilst a non-interactive movie plays in the background.

For Modern Warfare 2, from reading the forums before purchase, I understood you could not skip the various movies that play until you had watched them at least once (three times because the stupid game is so prone to crashing on many systems that it doesn’t save your progress).

Ten minutes with a dis-assembler and some NOP instructions took care of that nonsense.

Now I get to play MW2 with no more stupid cinematic sequences along the lines of: “I’m your archetype, gruff voiced Special Forces General here to tell you all about what you need to do. You’re going in there and you’re going to shoot people. And then you’re going to shoot more people. And after that, I’ll ask you to indiscriminately shoot more people. Why? Because it’s an FPS son and that’s what we do. We shoot people.”

If your story/plot/cinematic for an FPS is any longer or contains any more exposition than that, you are seriously fucking over-thinking it.

I don’t need exposition and plot to play Pacman, or Space Invaders, or Tetris.

I don’t need that crap in an FPS either.

Yeah, yeah, very pretty story, bad guys need killing, what was my role again? Oh yeah, I shoot people in interesting ways with high powered semi-automatic weapons whilst running around hallways.

You think the people playing the multi-player version of MW2 give a shit about why they are killing the other players or require ten minutes of exposition on who screwed who?

Nobody cares if they are good or bad. Black, white or yellow. American or Russian or British. My role and your role, in an FPS game, is to kill stuff. Just tell me what needs to be eradicated and give me enough bullets to do the job properly.

But Dragon Age? Ah, that’s a different beast. The cinematic sequences advance the story and are tightly woven in to your decisions. You are presented, at every step, with moral choices that need to be made that shape your character, that determine how the story proceeds, to some degree at least within the confines of what is possible in a badly written branching plotline that ultimately has to be quite linear.

I quit the game, and have no intention of ever returning to it, over a moral choice.

I quit the game because when presented with a moral dilemma. I made a choice that was congruent with my character in the game, with how I wanted to interact with the world. I made a conscious choice to stop the game at that point and effectively initiate permanent character death. I made a moral choice, from the perspective of the game, and the only one I could make. Yes or no? Black or white? Good or bad? Justice or injustice? I chose “No.” I chose “justice.”

My character fought alongside three brave companions. We went in to the wilds together. We slew many beasts and foul creatures together. We gathered the necessary items for the handful of quests laid before us. I was their leader. I made the choices of whether to abandon an injured companion that was slowing me down or heal that person with the rare herbs and poultices available to us. When done with our quests, we all hurried back to town to take part in the secretive joining ritual to become one of the Grey Wardens. The ritual is so secretive they don’t tell you there is a high probability, in this case, 33%, that you could die during it. And they also don’t tell you that after you have been informed you have a high probability of dying, that should you then refuse the ritual, you will be killed.

One of my companions died after ingesting the poisonous blood that is to be drunk during the ritual, and my “trusted leader” stepped over his corpse as it fell, less concerned with his death than if he were a piece of damaged property that was no longer useful.

When my other companion protested this, and fear showed in his eyes, a seasoned knight of battle with a wife and child, our leader gutted him with no more thought than if he were practising his knife skills against a wicker and straw target.

I was bade to drink the poisonous blood that had already killed one of my companions, and as the cinematic began to play. I pressed ALT+F4 and said to myself “No. Here I make a moral choice. Here I change the story. Here is where I draw a line in the dirt. Here I say this is my decision. I will not join a regime, one that proclaims so much goodness against so much evil, that wants to bring justice to everyone, when it conducts such injustices against innocents itself. I raise my blade, and on this spot I will die, but I will die knowing that I stood for what is right and proper, and not because it was convenient.”

When you present someone with moral choices, and put the hype and spin on how wonderful your game is in how those choices can shape and alter the character and the story, but are so lazy that when the choices, for the player, become difficult, and it comes down to “enjoyment of the game” versus “the right thing to do” after preaching “the right thing” for so many hours, you break my suspension of disbelief. You break it so solidly that I have no interest in continuing to hear what you have to say no matter how entertaining you believe it may be.

Some people will overlook the problem, and go on to enjoy it. But if you, as the game designer, find the adulation of the crowd for a flawed product satisfying, perhaps you should consider a new vocation.

In fiction or game design, your world should be consistent and suspend disbelief. If it is not and does not, you are just a lazy hack whose frequent recourse to exploit deus ex machina is laughable. This “device” wasn’t interesting in Greek literature and plays, it is even less so in modern fiction. Fiction which also includes the “detailed and intricate plots” (I find this statement so laughable when I read it on the back of game boxes) found in games.

“Because I said so” makes for a very unsatisfying advancement to the plot. It is, as my old creative writing professor clearly stated, “the hallmark of a lazy hack who will be lauded for his cleverness by the common sheep who bleat because they know no better.”

“But dude, it’s just a game!”

No. It is “entertainment” and all good forms of entertainment, to be successful, to be interesting, to be enjoyable, must adhere to certain inviolable tenets. Anybody who consistently disregards these tenets is forever doomed to remain a “lazy hack.”

It seems, that after reading through the entire plot tree for Dragon Age : Origins, helpfully published online, I can unequivocally state that I would not have enjoyed the game for it’s story. As Dragon Age : Origins is supposedly all about the story, it would have been a frustrating experience to say the least. Glancing at the plot tree there are several “deus ex machina/because I said so” places that do not leave you with any choice but to go along for the ride.

Thing is, I don’t play video games “to go along for the ride.” I play video games to have an interactive experience where I make the choices. If all I want to do is ride, I can visit Disneyland or Universal Studios and be bored to tears because those places are stocked full of non-interactive “because I said so” rides.

Dragon Age : Origins – Enjoyed by sheep.

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Thomas F. from CA e-mailed and asked about how to get in to the games industry.

“I’m about to complete my degree at school and I really want to get in to the video games industry but I don’t see how with all the other people trying to get in too and getting noticed takes a lot of work. I found this list online which gives all the different ways of getting a job. Do you think its even worth trying?

1. You get a job because of who you know
2. Work your way up from Quality Assurance or help desk
3. Create something worthwhile
4. A job straight out of DigiPen or Full Sail
5. Start your own company
6. Attend the job fair at a conference or expo

What do you think? Should I even bother? I really want to make games but nobody will give me a job in the industry to let me.”

And my response:

Somebody won’t give you a job to allow you create video games?

All I read was someone asking for permission to "be allowed in" and lamenting the fact that when real work is required to prove themselves that this "work" is too hard to do.

You do not need anybody’s permission to "be in" the games industry. You are either "in" the games industry because you create video games or are in some way connected with the creation of video games or you are not. It is that simple.

You do not need permission to "be in" any industry, if you are attempting to "break in" by getting a job at one of the larger companies with no practical experience at your particular job then you will start on the lowest rung possible just like any other industry whether you are writing code for the latest and greatest MMORPG or laying down bricks to build a house. If you cannot prove yourself and you haven’t taken the time to prove yourself then that is the harsh reality.

I have always said "Show me a complete game and I will hire you on the spot."

I have hired people with no college degree straight in to a job because they came to me with a completed game. No, the games shown to me were not great, but they were complete. The game proved to me that the person who created the game had the determination to see the job through to the bitter end, and a lot of game development projects do have a very bitter end when you are up all of your waking hours fixing the last few bugs and re-cooking all of the art assets one final time to get everything tweaked just so…

What does it even mean to “be in the industry” anyway? Because you have a title published and on the store shelves? I know artists and programmers that have worked at various very real, very bricks and mortar game companies for five years and not had a title published due to misfortune and bad luck. Does that make them not in the industry? Does “being in the games industry” mean you must work at a legitimate company with a payroll system and managers? So someone needs to tell the chap who makes Pretty Good Solitaire or the person who made Snood or the person who made Dweep or Ethan Nicholas who wrote a tank game in six weeks and sold it on the Apple AppStore for the iPhone that they aren’t in the games industry because they all create games in their spare bedroom/den/basement/living room and work as a one man team.

Whether you are sat up late at night fixing bugs on the latest World War II game franchise with 400 other people in an office complex in Santa Monica or sat alone in your spare bedroom with nothing but a laptop and a can of soda to keep you company in Wyoming it is the same thing. You are "in" the games industry if you can create and deliver. With the ability to create and the ability to deliver, you are in whatever industry you choose to be in. I have the ability to create great cappuccinos and macchiatos but I cannot deliver them so I am not in the "café and restaurant industry." I am most certainly in the “journalism industry” because I write and get published, both on my own websites and in magazines yet I don’t consider myself to “be in” that industry. I am in the games industry because I create games and get them published, both on my own websites and through regular retail channels. I didn’t ask for permission to do these things, I just did. When you create value, and then deliver it, you will get noticed. You won’t be asking for permission to be in anywhere, you’ll be waving your hand dismissively at people telling them to leave you alone.

With the ability to self-publish easier today that it ever was before, with the ability to "create something cool" even easier than that, creating your own games, and getting them published has got to be the easiest (am I making this clear, it’s easy!) thing you could do.

If you create a website and create games for that website, you create value and you deliver it. After two years of consistently creating and delivering I guarantee I would not be able to hire you for my company, I’d be standing in line asking for permission to speak to you whilst you wave your hand dismissively at the executives from other companies.

The people who are worth hiring, who get things done, even when they aren’t working "in the industry", will never be begging for jobs; for everybody else, you’re in the lottery. Either become someone worth hiring or wait your turn for your numbers to come up.

It’s a harsh reality I know, but to be anything more than someone I or any other executive can pick and choose from means you have to stand out and you have to make it worth my time to pay attention to you. If you create and deliver enough value you won’t want to be hired, you’ll consider my company “the competition.”

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Are games engines worth it for casual games?

Should you purchase a game engine to create your latest casual game? Or will you just need to throw it all away once you realise the game engine doesn’t live up to expectations? Will you have to start all over from scratch in 6 months time?

Most game engines are not game engines at all but just a rendering engine with a lot of middleware haphazardly bolted on to the graphics system.

Unfortunately "game engine" is a poor term to use to describe something so specialized.

Imagine if you will someone stating that they have "a car."

We shall call this "car" a "Honda Civic."

And so with this Honda Civic the owner is going to drive off-road across the desert in the Paris-Dakar Rally, they are going to pick up 2000lbs of lumber at Home Depot for a building project, they are going to take their family of five on a two week vacation, including all of the luggage, they are going to enter and attempt to win the IndyCar 500, tow a 30ft horsebox and to cap it all off they are going to shuttle off the entire high school football team at the prom, including their dates.

So any reasonable person will realise, you need specialised vehicles for specific tasks. A rally car, a heavy truck, a minivan, and so on and so forth.

So when people claim to have a "game engine" it is a bit like claiming "I have a car."

Sounds rather ridiculous when you think about it, right?

Nobody would think of attempting to use the Diablo 2 RPG game engine for a vehicle racing game — and if they do they should be shot — and you wouldn’t think of using the Star Wars Galaxies game engine to create a casual puzzle game — and if you do, well… good luck to you.

The generic parts of a game engine, the graphics engine, the audio engine, the A.I. engine, the asset management system, are all re-usable on any project just like parts of a car, e.g. the steering wheel, the seats and the actual engine. These parts are all re-usable in other vehicles, but you need to configure the generic parts in such a way to make them work harmoniously.

So other than the issue with Not Invented Here/Other People’s Code which pretty much every programmer, everywhere, suffers from, it comes down to picking the right tools, and the right "car" for the correct job.

Having said all of this, creating technology from scratch for a casual game is a bit ridiculous as you aren’t delivering value to the customer whilst you are doing that and frankly, the customer that buys casual games doesn’t bloody well care what engine you used. Pick a generic game engine, Ogre, Torque, Irrlicht, etc and create some custom classes specific to your casual game needs. For casual games my company Infinite Monkey Factory maintains a word search game engine, a pinball game engine, a lightweight RTS game engine, a gem drop game engine, a hidden object game engine, and a slew of other niche casual game engines for very specific genres of games. The beauty of having a dedicated game engine for a particular game type is that a prototype idea takes only a few hours to create.

So yeah, get a game engine, I highly recommend it, just realise it won’t do precisely what you need out of the box. A game engine is a foundation on which to build, and not all game engines are created for all game purposes. The "game engine “is the glue that holds all of the other parts together, and it is the glue that is often the weakest part of the whole, the glue is most neglected and can rarely be made generic enough to suit all purposes.

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