PAX Special Report.

Went to PAX today, which was quite fun. PAX, for the uninitiated, is the Penny Arcade eXpo, one of the biggest video game conventions in the US. I can tell we are close when I spot a little kid, maybe 7 or 8 that has what appears to be a fox tail hopping down the sidewalk. “Future cosplayer of America,” I say. I know that gaming has become much more widespread, but there are an awful lot of the stereotypical chubby, nerd glasses-wearing, socially awkward, acne-pocked gamers in the crowd. There are a lot of these people. Thousands. It was held at the Seattle Convention Center and had a high enough attendance that the main lot filled up and my partner Sara and I had to park in “Freeway Parking” which is aptly named due to the fact that it is under the freeway. Some poor guy has the job of sitting in the entrance of the parking garage with the constant roar of traffic overhead.

We wander around looking for the area to buy passes and end up being approached by a couple Asian guys who offer us scalped tickets at a discount. We get tickets and I lead us boldly into a room that I believe is the Exhibit Hall but is in fact, according to the event map, the “Line Up Room”. This is very accurate since the room is one giant queue. I’m not sure what is being lined up for. We leave the line up room and I skulk over to the information desk to ask for directions to the Exhibit Hall specifically asking how I get to my company’s booth. Sara all the while has been trying to explain to me where things are and what we were almost in line for. The guy at the Info booth gives us directions. “Did that make sense to you,” I ask Sara. I am suffering from overstimulation and we have not even reached the truly crazy areas. The Event is bedlam. There were actually enough guys dressed up as the Joker to fill up an asylum. There were also quite a few Stormtroopers and at least one Power Ranger. Sara says to me “Do you want to get a picture with the Stormtrooper?”

“No I want to get a picture of people taking pictures of the Stormtrooper,” I respond.

“Aren’t you kind of short for a Stormtrooper,” she says.

“I wonder how many times he has heard that today,” I reply.

My girlfriend is a total Star Wars nerd. [Editor’s note: there was also a really tall Darth Vader].

Walking towards the main exhibition area I spot the Mini Bosses booth completely unmanned by the Mini Bosses. The Mini Bosses are a video game music cover band. “When I was in The Post (an indi rock band) I got a copy of their demo from the guys at Secretly Canadian (an indi rock label). This was before they were even a blip.” Nobody really cares about this story when I tell some random dude that is near their unmanned booth. “They haven’t been here all day,” he says, “they are off playing games.”

The exhibition hall is packed full of nerds. There are also many stages where people play Rock Karaoke Band Hero Revolution with various amounts of aptitude while people watch on with various amounts of enthusiasm. I find the human zoo almost as compelling as the games. [Editor’s note: the Editor’s brother noted that the Wall Street Journal estimated PAX attendance this year at 50,000. That’s a lot of nerds.] I snap some pics with my iPhone and realize that nobody is going to pay any attention to the iPhone. When I am out and about I often end up talking with other iPhone users but with so many nerds with so many gadgets I am entirely invisible.

We wander thru the exhibition hall and I snap blurry pictures of people playing music games, swing by the company’s booth, and track down some projects I’ve worked on to see if people are enjoying them. I stop at a booth selling NES carts for $3 each and several classic consoles as well as one of the table top Pac Man games from the 80s that look like a tiny arcade machine. I price it but it is a little high for the condition it is in. I think I should take another picture but get distracted and snap more blurry shots of people playing another music game.

We pass the Mega 64 booth just as the Mega 64 guys are going to give a talk so I click a picture of their empty booth. “All the booths I am really interested are empty,“ I lament. This is not really true. I think I’m a bit overwhelmed and feeling slightly agoraphobic. “Let’s get out of this area,” I say, then promptly am distracted by the Mercenaries II demo area and stare glassy eyed as some guy climbs up a tower in the game and assassinates several Cubans. ”This guy needs to blow some stuff up; he’s not making it look very exciting,” I whisper to Sara. She is palpably bored staring off toward the Lord of the Rings MMO demo booth. This is probably one of the few places where there is a healthy outlet for the borderline sociopathic urge to see more grandiose displays of carnage. I grab her hand and we head out toward the sky bridge.

“Do you want to meet Will Weaton,” I ask?

“Ohhhhhh, I love his blog,” she squeals and we start toward the back of the line.

“Are you in line to see Will Weaton I ask a girl dressed as what I believe is a Naruto ninja.

“Yeah, I think the end of the line is over there," she says pointing to the other side of the sky bridge. Once we get there we are informed that the line is closed but perhaps due to just how expertly Sara can act crestfallen the line supervisor lets us in line when we wander by a few minutes later while we are trying to find a quiet spot to call Sara’s brother.

“Meet us in front of the Exhibition Hall in the line to meet Will Weaton,” we say.

“Who is Will Weaton?” He asks.

“Wesley Crusher from Star Trek,” Sara response with an implied duh.

In unison we volunteer by way of explanation “He has a really great blog.”

We stand in line until an officialish looking guy in a PAX shirt tells us that Will is done and we won’t get to have him sign anything.

“Could I just tell him how much I like his blog?” Sara asks.

“No, he is tired and needs to go back to his hotel, or play some games or something,” we are informed.

Perhaps inspired by all this blog talk I decide to go to the panel on how to get people to go to your gaming blog. Sara and her brother decide to meet me afterwards and head back into the Expedition Hall while I go to the Walrus Theatre which turns out being the corner of the atrium where the escalators are located. I learn there that most successful gaming blogs have several posts DAILY and they stress that you have to have regular posts and that you can’t skip posts just because you are busy. I turn red with shame. The power point demonstration is one of the most obscene, absurdist, displays of information sharing I have experienced using a Microsoft Office product. A man is panties is chosen from the audience to wear a robot head and strike a pose whenever anyone says Destructoid since members of the panel are all bloggers on Destructoid.com. Somewhere on the internet are NSFW pictures of a man in red panties wearing a robot head.

I met back up with Sara and her brother at the ITT Tech booth. That is right ITT Tech has a booth at PAX. I find out that they played Guitar Hero and Sara who does not play videogames played it and enjoyed it. “I need photographic evidence!” I exclaim. We push thru the crowd back towards Activision’s small collection of Guitar Hero stages. Sara explains that ITT tech was hosting some sort of murder mystery crime solving contest but it was not actually any fun and involved a lot of work. I almost say something disparaging about ITT Tech but then felt sorry for them since they are almost within a stone’s throw of both Nintendo and Sega. It must have been like being a chimpanzee on prom night, to coin a new phrase. By the time they were able to take the stage for a rendering of Pat Benatar ‘s "Heartbreaker" I had the opportunity to hear both Jimi Hendrix and Aerosmith butchered by people armed with their tiny plastic axes.

“I am done,” declared Sara.

“Agreed,” I agreed.

In the car Sara told me about how her brother talked to the exhibitors and that when one of them offered that she try out a game she coolly replied, “I don’t play games.” I’m sure they were thinking “Then why the ass are you here?” As I tucked Sara into bed to return to the computer to finish this distinctly handheld free entry (I didn’t even make it to the handheld lounge) she says “I had a really good time at PAX,” and it was true. If you are a gamer PAX is totally awesome, if not it can still be a lot of fun. It is really strange and somewhat overwhelming however the energy there is really good. It is really about a bunch of people getting together to share what they are passionate about. Sure there are a lot of companies with dollar signs in their eyes but it still has a positive vibe. If you have not gone before but have thought about it go as soon as possible. PAX is becoming really huge and may soon lose the feeling of community that makes it unique.

Korg DS-10.

I obtained a copy of the Korg DS-10 sequencer synth software for the Nintendo DS. This software is not currently available in the US however, since the DS is region free, the Japanese version plays fine on any DS. I have not yet fully explored what it can do however it is very easy to use out of the box. Rather then writing about the software I decided to just video it in use.

Starting out with the default pattern it is very easy to build up and experiment around with the sequencer. I played this thru the external speakers that my music equipment is hooked up to however the video camera itself is pretty low quality. It does show more or less how easy it is to use.


Once you have recorded a few sequences you can string them together into a song. Keeping things video game themed I call the following "Mario Variations". This was recorded directly from the DS speakers.


For under $70 this is well worth importing. It qualifies as a musical instrument rather then a game or toy. Very cool! I totally want to start a musical group that performs entirely on DS. Along with Jam Session and homebrew programs like Protein and Nitro Tracker it's totally doable. Surely there are enough DS armed music nerds in the Seattle area to start this group? Who is with me?

Mid Week Links: Secret Heroes of the Internet Edition.

Who is Reirom?

Says my source, "He's a Brazillian guy named Reirom. He just posts in gaming forums. He doesn't have his own site or anything. There's not much info about him on the interwebs. He's most known for leaking Halo 2 onto the interwebs before it was released."

Bellow is Reirom goodness.

Check out his game reviews here.

http://www.forgotten-gamer.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=107697&st=0

Need more?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8Xf6cPdwM

Unfortunately there is not a whole lot more then this...

http://stackmaster.tripod.com/reirom.html

He totally needs his own review website! Hell, he needs to review handheld games for iamhandheld!

Five simple things for which all handheld games should strive.

Though i am handheld is primarily concerned with providing reviews of hardware and software on a variety of handheld systems, on occasion it’s useful to discuss what in general makes a quality handheld game. Some older systems were not capable of having some features discussed here and are somewhat exempt due to age. The question of age also tends to dictate the expectations of game design. What was acceptable design ten years ago may not be considered good design today. Additionally, in order to have a useful discussion of game design in general terms, a certain familiarity with the systems discussed is needed. To that end, I will attempt to limit my discussion to current generation systems and games.

This week I’ll focus on five simple elements that can make or break a game. These are very general and most of them can be applied across the board to the majority of games and systems that are on the market today.

Short Bursts of Game-play:

Short bursts of game-play are desirable for a very simple reason: handheld games are often played when a person only has a few minutes to play. Not all handheld games have to follow the rule of short bursts of game-play. However, unless there is a compelling reason not to have short play sessions, as a rule, handheld games should strive for this. Games that simply and seamlessly enforce short play sessions are fairly common, but some do it better than others. There are several ways to accomplish enforced short bursts. One of the most direct tactics is to have games that have levels with a specific duration such as the music game Elite Beat Agents on the Nintendo DS. Since all levels are put to music, the length of a single level in Elite Beat Agents is generally going to be close to 3 minutes, the length of a typical pop song. Slightly less effective are timed or stage based games that encourage fast completion such as any of the Sonic games. An interesting subset of handheld games are the micro game-play games that have short stages and encourage quick play such as Wario Ware on the DS and WTF on PSP. It is not impossible to create a short burst styled game that has great depth and a non rushed feel, such as Picross, but some game styles simply cannot fit into the quick play mode. Games such as Syphon Filter, while stage based, encourage the player to work their way slowly thru levels. Most RPGs are by their nature time-sinks and often encourage extended play sessions. For these type of games design concessions do not need to be made if the developers offer a quicksave feature.

Quicksave:

There is nothing worse then the lack of a quick-save feature on a handheld game that is not designed with short play sessions in mind. As mentioned before, handheld gaming is theoretically going to happen on the bus or in the car during the few minutes of downtime people frequently encounter. Often I find that my DS has run out of batteries after a day in sleep mode or I’ve wanted to watch a video on my PSP but realized I had left it in hold mode. Lack of some type of quick-save is nearly inexcusable on a handheld. There are several quick save options available to designers and at least one of the options should be included in every handheld game. The first and simplest, from a player perspective, is a save anywhere quick save option. Put simply the player can press “pause” at any point in time, save, and at a later point in time, power their system back on and begin at the exact point at which they saved. With some game designs this can create undesired consequences allowing players to retry tricky parts of the game with no punishment. This can effect enjoyability, challenge, and, in some cases, replayablity. The classic Super Mario Brothers 3 ran into this problem when it was ported onto the GBA. In the original the player could only save at specified points such as after finishing a castle. If they used all their lives before the next save point they would get a game over screen and could continue at the last save point. In order to preserve the old school game play Super Mario Brothers 3 used a slightly more complex type of quick save option. Super Mario Brothers 3 has a regular save at the specified points from the console original and a true quick save at any other point. The player is allowed to save and quit their game at any time, but they may load their quick save only one time, which prevents the player from being reloading their save from any point.

Considerably less acceptable is an automatic stage or checkpoint based quick save that happens automatically after completing a stage. It can be as simple as when the player finishes a stage or whenever a player completes an objective. A particularly good model for this type saving are any of Valve’s console games such as Half Life or Portal which automatically save whenever the player makes significant forward progress. This type of saving assures a player that they can turn off their handheld and not lose any significant progress. Auto saving this way can be fairly discreet and have minimal game impact but will often not save frequently enough for the very short session that can be typical on a portable system.

Design for the system:

Designing a game for a specific system may seem fairly obvious, but my experience is that this is not always the case. This is primarily an issue in the case of games that have the primary sku on a more powerful system or a system with differing control options. In many instances games get ported to handhelds without adequate concessions being made for the system. Games such as Call of Duty DS or Metal of Honor on PSP are somewhat decent despite the system they are on. The PSP does not have a second analog control stick and yet fairly straight ports of Playstation 2 first-person shooters are fairly common. The DS suffers from being one of the less powerful systems to frequently receive ports of high profile console games it cannot do justice. Racing games such as Burnout Legends that require very fast 3D processing simply do not work on the DS. Very realistic games such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory look so low poly and poorly textured as to look simply awful. The DS can do 3D quite decently as has been shown by Mario 64 DS, but this is because the models and environments are cartoony and can therefore look good with a lower poly count and very simple textures.

The second part of designing for the system is aimed squarely at the Nintendo DS. The DS has the touch screen which offers unique gaming opportunities. Fantastic first-party games such as Metroid Prime Hunters and Legend of Zelda on the DS manage to use the touch screen excellently as the primary user interface. Using the touch screen in similar ways as a mouse is used on PC games can create very intuitive gaming experiences. This model is useful however it does not take into account the tactile experience of stylus based play. The iPhone holds the potential to change the way that user interfaces in gaming are thought about in an even more dynamic way. We have not seen the effects of the iPhone yet however the fact that the only user interface is the touch screen means that the game designers will be forced to make very conscious decisions about how a game is controlled.

Portable games can be fantastic when games are designed with the limitations and possibilities of the system in mind.

Leave the gimmicks:

The flip side of the touch screen is the fact that many games include unnecessary and flow breaking touch screen sections. Switching between traditional plus pad and stylus control always breaks game flow. There is no convenient way to hold a stylus and use a traditional control scheme comfortably. The only thing I dislike more than unnecessary stylus controlled portions thrown into games is the rarer random microphone sections. Portable games are in general played in public and I in general refuse to play games with microphone support.

Design Big:

Handheld games often suffer from tepid design or are shovel-ware. Others are quite often so small and stripped down as to feel insubstantial. Games such as Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories, God of War, and Daxter show that full, complex, big, and compelling games can be brought to handheld systems. Games such as Final Fantasy IV, and Advance War: Days of Ruin have proven that even the less powerful DS can play host to some deep and compelling game-play and storylines. Final Fantasy Tactics A1 is an excellent game with some terrible writing and a throw away plot. It feels as though, if it had been designed on a home console, the story would have been dealt with a bit more thoughtfully. This is quite the opposite with the somewhat similar Jeanne d’Arc. Jeanne d’Arc has a similar quality of game-play but has an epic plot that makes the entire experience bigger. In many cases it is little things such as writing or music that seem to be overlooked. Games need not be epic in order to be designed big. Even simple games can have big design. Space Invaders Extreme, Loco Roco, and Tetris DS are excellent examples. They are all very simple games at their core but are given a full, big presentation with thoughtful game-play and attention to detail. Just because a game is handheld it can be complex, thoughtful, beautiful, exciting, or innovative. In some ways big design can be equated with a game having a unique and clear vision.

None of these five things will alone result in a good game. However, many games that have these shared elements are highly playable and stand out as excellent games. I would venture to guess that even games that nail all five elements can still end up bad games. Ultimately what matters is whether the game is fun.