PAX 2010: Solace

Yeah, you could pretty much replace all the comments in this thread with that comic.

I think it's a sign of emotional maturity to be able to experience something you didn't enjoy without acting like the author has failed somehow by not making what you wanted, as if the entirety of the universe is set up just to cater to your very specific requirements.

I keep being reminded of what Adam Saltsman said in the Infinite Ammo podcast. Like, sometimes a game can just be a cool experiment, and doesn't have to be your opus, or whatever. It's really unfortunate that every time you make something you think is neat, and that you want to make, on the other end there's someone nitpicking and complaining that he clicked on a download link and it wasn't exactly what he wanted.

“The someone on the internet.”

I need less work and more sleep.

I don't believe I'm treating my preferences as incontrovertible facts. I am merely BACKING them with facts. This is what makes them good opinions: I've tested them over and over against reality.

Once again, I invite you to tell me which part of this game I have called a “blight”, and why said mechanics are in fact good. As you haven't done so yet in favor of mocking me, I'm going to assume you can't.

I never understood why people got so mad at “Art Games”. I mean, it's art + game. If you don't like it, what's the big deal?

But then that would imply that I consider this game to be art.

Would a bad painting be considered art? Is a bad book art? Is a bad anything considered art? Then why do we seem to only consider the worst video games to be the best examples of video games as art? Sure, it LOOKS nice, but there's so much more to art than just looking nice. Look at some of these bullet patterns. Look at how they pose absolutely no threat to the player, and even if they did, it's all moot as there's absolutely no penalty for death!

There's zero subtlety to the metaphor of grief being presented here. (Pssst, here's a great chance to tell me I didn't get it) Stages named after the idea they're trying to express, and they stick to a theme. That's just fantastic. That's more than enough reason for me to want to sacrifice challenge and achievement in a genre where this matters above all else. I don't think anyone would've minded if this was an actual game. I'm not going to give the creator the benefit of the doubt and just call him out on the fact that he could not make a good shmup, and instead made an art. Would the message of this game be obscured by a few tropes of the shmup genre? No! One, because it has absolutely nothing to say beyond a cute, but flimsy metaphor and two because it would make it a GOOD GAME.

You don't seem to understand why people are mad, and I'm not sure how to explain this to you.

People aren't mad because you don't like the game, people are mad because you were sarcastic, pedantic and laughed at everything written by everyone else like a spoiled child. You need to realize that the things you don't like about the game are basically just not issues for 90% of people here. It's totally fine for you to not like them; it's even fine for you to say you don't like them. It isn't fine for you to act like there's something wrong with everyone else for not sharing your preferences.

That the game requires installation, or uses a monospace font, these are facts. That these invalidate everyone else's enjoyment, that is an opinion. We understand what you're talking about, but we don't care. It doesn't make us idiots; it means we have other priorities.

Internet arguments always come down to “OH YEAH, WELL YOU TRY DOING BETTER!” but this is not a valid argument. Do I need to be a chef in order to say the steak is overcooked? Do I need to have directed a better film than Con Air to laugh at how bad it is? I can't code video games, but that doesn't force me into a role of stupefied acceptance. I can still express my preferences, as can you.

Let's say that in order to give criticism, you need to have experienced what you are criticizing. In order to give GOOD criticism, you need to back it up with facts and comparisons. I've done all of this, you've done none of this. I may make a video game someday, but it's hardly necessary for me to explain why this one is trash.

After reading this over, I feel I should clarify that the “you” in here is often the general “you” and not you specifically.

Most art games are small experiments or student games. Who's going to put the effort into a large, time-consuming project to create an immaculate art game if, when they take their first few steps, people just shit all over their work for its flaws?

The closest thing we have to a large art game now seems to be something like Braid, which, yeah, it has its problems (vagueness, weak-writing), but it got a lot of things right as well, and on blogs and in forums where people can manage to be more civil than a horde of screaming monkeys, it's opened up a lot of really interested dialogue about how you could do it better. This helps the creator and helps the community. Our concepts and sources of inspiration are constantly growing. Personal skillsets, also, are improving.

Why didn't this game blow your mind? I don't know. As a student project, the author probably only had a semester or less to complete it. He may not have a lot of experience making shmups. He also had to balance making a shmup with something that also fulfilled his artistic goals in a limited time period. Chances are this isn't the sort of thing he's ever done before.

But it's like the one really cool thing he did doesn't matter because he didn't put out a polished game, or because he made some bad design decisions due to inexperience or whatever. And yet the immediate assumption is that the author is personally flawed because he made something you didn't like, or that had problems.

Sometimes even experienced developers with good track records create a quick experiment to see how something works. The inevitable response is still “this is shit and I hate it and I hate you,” because they didn't take two years to put out something they almost certainly couldn't afford to spend that kind of time on.

People on the warpath about art games almost always seem to frame it as, like, everyone is telling them they have to lie about a game to protect the author's precious feelings or something, which is a weird delusion. Keeping quiet about the flaws of a game does no one any good, but neither does just screaming over anything that's wrong. You can be a resource to the developer and the community by engaging in a dialogue about the game. But a dialogue is not one-sided — it isn't just you saying the things you didn't like and shouting down anyone who didn't mind them — it means you and everyone else try to come to a closer understanding so that everything will improve.

Games don't come out of a vacuum. Even as an enthusiast, you can make them better. Or you can get in the way by just unilaterally stating that you hate art games, or ranting incoherently at anyone who tries anything different. It's really your call on whether you want to act like a grown-up and use your time productively, or act like a child and waste everyone's time.

(Also, regarding the subtlety issue, I have to ask you (not the general you, this time) whether you think the game would really be improved if the author made the message inscrutable or asked you to play hunt the metaphor. Sometimes I think one of the big problems in indie art games is that people try to hard to make their message ambiguous or hard to figure out just because they think that's what art is supposed to be like. Often it just winds up being kind of irritating.)

I'm a student, Chris. I know what it's like to be a student. I too have to work in a short amount of time and sometimes I produce work that isn't exactly as good as it could've been if I was given more time. Would you like to see something I made?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bPZSHDZ5_c

Audio is too low. Animation errors are plentiful. Awful compression issues that I couldn't be bothered to fix with the final clip. But this was basically Maya 101, the point wasn't to create the best animation in the world, but simply utilize what we learned to show that we have an understanding of the basics of Maya. I never intended to show this to anyone, I'm kind of embarrassed about how bad it is.

Now imagine a website entirely dedicated to animation decides to feature my work. The bumbling, slipshod efforts of a person that could barely be called a novice. Is it wrong if people ask why we are being subjected to some kids final project for a class when we could be told about much better games out there. In fact, since we all agree there is better animation out there, why are we even bothering with this kid? Why are we all wasting our time judging some kid when there are bigger and better animations out there? In the grand scheme of things, it's shit. If we are willing to concede that he's only an beginner, it's still only able to claim to be half-decent!

But I fulfilled my goals! I can texture walls, I can animate a walk cycle, I synced the movement! And then the critics tell me that this was a waste of their time, and that it should be so goddamn obvious what I need to do to make my animation at all presentable.

And that's why I never paraded my work around online. I had no delusions that my work had some sort of fantastic comedic genius, demonstration of technical ability, or any other sort of raw merit to warrant it being shown around the internet like it was anything more than a school project.

So, why is this any different?

And what if he made this in a year? What about five years? Ten? Nobody forced him to release this game to the public, when is it acceptable for someone to release something that's complete garbage when they're strapped enough for time?

What I'm trying to say is that this game shouldn't be treated like a student's project anymore now that it's out of the classroom. We don't do that to anyone when they release a product into the real world, or at the very least we shouldn't. I have absolutely no patience for some greenhorn parading his sophomoric efforts around like they're worth anywhere near as much as a shmup. The amount of fantastic doujin shmups should more than prove that students and novices are more than capable of making games that can compete with shmups made by bigger, more experienced companies.
—-

See, here's another problem. He never had to sacrifice making a good shmup to fulfill his artistic vision. This is everything wrong with art games. Tell me why this game couldn't be both? That's the question that was asked in the original post, and it's pretty obvious that he's the sort of guy that thinks that only through torturous segments of C+ prose that mean absolutely nothing to the game can we truly feel something at the end of the game where something the relates to the story actually happens in the context of the game.

Sacrificing his artistic vision.,, What a load of balogna! Do you mean to tell me that anyone who has made a shmup that's also a decent video game had absolutely no concern for artistic vision? Watch this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdJ4VYPb5rY&feature=related

Look at how fucking ugly those character portraits are. Then look at how awesome those bullets are. Those giant bullets you just have to squeeze through are awesome. The music is absolutely incredible. The grazing score system is probably my favorite scoring system in any Touhou game, and I wish I could find a video of someone who is really good at this game and knows how to play the graze.

But notice how I never said that the character portraits are being sacrificed for artistic vision. Zun doesn't draw like this because it's the best way for him to express the beauty of the denizens of his little world. He draws them like that because he draws them quickly, and he knows that as long as the little hat or bow or button on them looks good, who gives a fuck. You don't have to make excuses for people who know what they're doing and can create something that's truly exceptional.

And then…

And then someone like you comes along and says that it's fine for games like Solace to be placed against shmups made by the goddamn LEGENDS of the industry because it does a cool thing that you didn't even elaborate on. What did it do, Whitman? It simply expressed an idea very clumsily through a form of entertainment that is becoming increasingly obvious of lacking the potential to express ideas like that.

I forget the name of a sculpture, and that pissed me off, so I'll describe it. It's a procession of men of various ages, all in various states of mourning. A keen eye would note that all the sculptures have the same hands. A keener eye would note that all the sculptures are the same person, in various stages of their life. Each sculpture's is a different age, and in a different state. It's believed that this is expressing how man comes to terms with his mortality. The youngest man seems unphased, because he thinks himself invincible. The oldest is equally unphased, old and accepting of the end. And it's a fantastically constructed sculpture to boot.

Now, how does the flimsy, obvious metaphor presented in Solace stack up against the example I provided? Not terribly well. It failed to blow my mind because there wasn't anything that amazing. It was obvious what the game was about twenty seconds into the trailer, and then the game spent it's time doing nothing along but slowly dragging the metaphor of dealing with grief along without using the theme for anything incredibly clever or amazing. It just did it. It's worth a shrug and an 'oh', not any intense praise. I didn't want cryptic, I didn't want clear cut either. I wanted SOMETHING.

I want the creator of this game to improve by NEVER trying something like this again. This was a failed venture and he needs to know that. Maybe he is capable of making a really good video game, and all he has to do is sacrafice his artistic herp derp. Nobody here is especially excited about this game, and you lot going on about how my tone was a bit rude is so irrelevant I want to slam my head against the keyboard every time I have to tell you all to stop doing it.

And you have some fucking nerve to call me incoherent. Stop trying to make what I saw irrelevant by telling me that what I'm saying is pointless, hard to understand, or rude. I spend a lot of time writing this stuff, and at the very least I deserve to have you guys at LEAST disagree with me.

You're right: “you go and make something better, then” is no response to a valid criticism.

That said, people here seem to be responding to your tone (angry and entitled) with remarks designed to get you to think about the fact that you just played something for free that someone spent many, many hours to make.

It's a bit like if your mom slaved away in the kitchen for days baking you a birthday cake, and the cake turned out poorly, then one of the guests at your party effusively praised the quality of the cake. You could turn angry and rant about how bad the cake is, and you'd probably be right. But as the Dude says: “You're not wrong, Walter–you're just an asshole.”

All right, all right: I shouldn't have said you were incoherent, but I just can't get behind what you're saying here.

The game has great visual design, sound and music design and tackles a difficult topic in an interesting and cool way. And sometimes things can be good without being Rodin, you know?

It's pretty obvious that you don't get why people dig this sort of stuff. It's fine if this doesn't resonate with you, but what isn't fine is to assume it's because of some sort of deep-seated personality flaws or failures on the part of the creators and the people who enjoy it — like somehow the people responsible were like, “We could make exactly the kind of game AshfordPride (from the internet) likes, but we're lazy and that's a lot of work, so let's try to hide it behind some artsy concept. I hope no one figures out our plan!” You're reading a lot of very negative stuff into the personalities of people you don't know. You seem to think it's reasonable, but from where I'm standing it looks like conjecture to validate your anger.

And, you know, saying the team who made it should just give up now on their careers because their student project, which I, personally, enjoyed playing and found promising, isn't the kind of hardcore shmup that you liked… that does sound a little unwarranted.

It's obvious you've got your priorities, right? The bad character portraits in the game you linked and the generic anime style would bother me. I'm probably more visually-oriented and less gameplay-precision oriented. I'm also not that into shmups, as a genre. If you get really into something most people don't know much about, you tend to become a bit inscrutable to other people, and vice versa. I've got friends who vehemently insist that I haven't heard the Beatles White Album until I've heard it on vinyl in the original mono.

No one is suggesting your opinions don't matter because you're rude, but your opinions really aren't that helpful to anyone. I haven't got anything out of this conversation except knowing that if I ever make a shmup, I'm going to have to deal with a lot of very angry people with very specific ideas of what a shmup has to be. I haven't been continuing this conversation because I'm trying to convince you that you should like the game; I'm just trying to explain that people have their rational reasons for liking it.

Acting as if your likes are the only ones that matter makes you look like you have serious entitlement issues. I'm not saying you do, but it looks that way to outsiders. I think you might have an easier time having a productive conversation about this topic in the future if, at the very least, you learned to live and let live.

You're not my guidance counselor, Whitman. Since you're clearly incapable of actually defending this game it'd probably be a more productive use of your time to give this up rather than try to reason out why criticism is wrong.

Before you make an art-game ask yourself this question:
“Is a game the best medium to communicate this message/feeling?

If the answer is yes its probably going to be a great game.

Yeah I know. I'm sure Shigeru Miyamoto and Cliffy B. ask themselves that question all the time. /sarcasm

Video games are not a medium, and execution is as important as theory.

touhou isn't free. i know people pirate a lot, but it's not a free game

“What bugs me about this is that the people who do like this game can't seem to rationalize why they like.”

ashfordpride: why do you like bullet hell games such as touhou? rationalize this please. i enjoy touhou games as well, i imported shoot the bullet from japan, paying 17$ shipping for it, and beat every level, but i'm still unable to rationalize why i like touhou games, and i'd like to see you attempt to do so.

but seriously i don't really think that people need to rationalize why they like something. it's like: if you can't prove why you like something rationally, you don't deserve to enjoy it or like it? or you don't really like it? that makes no sense to me, games are about enjoyment, we shouldn't have to prove why we like something.

(anyway, i do like touhou series better than this game, but that doesn't mean i think this game is horrible, it was just going for something different, which others enjoy, and i've no problem with that)

yes icycalm is the only person in the world that likes good shmups

also icycalm is a rational and intelligent human being

It's because it's a fantastically constructed game that tests the players skill and mastery of the challenges the game is setting forth. I'm willing to bet you like them because they're just such great games in almost every aspect of their construction. What's so hard to understand? This is how games work Paul, we've been over this again and again and again and again and again. To be honest, I'm getting pretty sick of explaining what I want in a video game to you, and can only hope you're quickly becoming sick of asking.

I'll try to make this simple with a vague, easily skewed extended metaphor. I like vanilla ice cream. Vanilla is my favorite flavor of ice cream. I can justify my love of vanilla ice cream by explaining that I like it because, when stacked up against other flavors, this one tastes the best.

And then there are people who like chocolate ice cream because it's brown.

It's such a simple concept, Paul. People obvious are capable of enjoying things more when they can at least demonstrate enough understanding of what they're dealing with to explain why they like it. And you can't just write if off as fun, you might as well be liking something because it's good.

The point is, Chris repeatedly talked about 'something' this game did to make it good. I just wanted to know what it was.

that doesn't really explain much to me: all you say is that the games are fantastically constructed that tests skill.

that is very abstract: how exactly are they fantastically constructed? you are saying little more than the article says about this game: that it's fantastic. but why?

and how exactly are skills tested, and why is it good to test skills in the first place? does the type of skill matter, or is any skill okay to test? is it important to test the very highest level of skilled players, or are games that test less developed and more casual skills okay? i mean, if bejeweled tests the skills of a grandmother just as much as bullet hell tests the skills of you, it's equally challenging for both, is bullet hell better because it requires higher skill levels, even though both players feel that their game tests their skills appropriately?

actually cliffyb is a big fan of experimental and art games, even though those aren't the types of games he makes. but he does play them and enjoy them.

>why do you like bullet hell games such as touhou?

I can't speak for ashford, but one of the main reasons I like STGs and, by proxy, bullet hells, is because I enjoy the discipline. I like having a game I can go back to over and over again and feel myself getting better and better at. I rarely use continues on games I haven't beaten yet, so when I finally break through part of the game I have trouble with, I really feel like I'm doing something that not everyone is able to do. I like experimenting and going at a problem in different ways, and almost more than anything I enjoy failing over and over again and knowing that I can keep trying as long as I want. In real life you don't get any second chances, but in shooting games every time you start from level 1 is under the same conditions as the first time you played. All the changes that take place are a result of how different you are, and many shooters are complex enough that the differences amount to more than just getting another five waves farther.

Of course, there are many reasons why I like STGs and bullet hells, and there are different reasons depending on specifically which game you ask me about. But I think the above can give you an idea of how at least some of my preference for a game genre can be described.

>if you can't prove why you like something rationally, you don't deserve to enjoy it or like it?

Of course not. Nobody can take your enjoyment of something away. Is that some kind of joke? I can't make you not like Touhou any more than I can make you agree with me. But the difference comes when you try to tell someone else you like or, in my case, dislike the thing. If you can't back up your opinion rationally, you can't expect anyone to take your opinion seriously. Opinion is, basically, the personal analysis of facts, and while the opinions may be different, the facts remain the same. You can still have an opinion without being able to express it rationally, but it's worthless to anyone other than yourself. Other people have no way of knowing if your opinion is applicable to them, because even if you both like the same thing, it could be for completely different reasons!

It should be noted that you, Paul Eres, CAN find the facts behind your opinions, especially if it's just your opinions about video games. You don't, either because you don't want to put in the effort or because it would force you to question yourself which could lead to cognitive dissonance. But on a subconscious level your opinions are already influenced by facts, even if you haven't really figured out what those facts are.

>that makes no sense to me, games are about enjoyment,

That's not what the indie community keeps telling me.

>anyway, i do like touhou series better than this game, but that doesn't mean i think this game is horrible

You say it easily enough, yeah, because opinions are like magical butterfly snowflakes that everyone has to respect and you might make someone who liked this game cry if you said you hated it. Maybe you have your reasons not to think the game is “horrible”, because look, “horrible” is a value judgment, and as we've said before the circumstances may show that this game was rushed, or the dev was inexperienced, or any number of things. That's no reason to call the game horrible, because like it or not the guy was doing his best.

But you are still inevitably judging the game. If on your grand list of games this one is in fact far towards the bottom, I think we are on the same page, even if you'd prefer I shut up to keep from making the guy who wrote the article feel sad.

>it was just going for something different, which others enjoy, and i've no problem with that

I have no problem with that either! Some people are super religious! Some people like the Twilight novels! Some people like getting tied up while having sex! And there are reasons behind all of those preferences, even if those people want to think they're self-evident or don't want to consider what they mean. If someone enjoys this game, for instance, it may be because he's not very good at shooting games and really hates the feeling he gets when he loses. Maybe he doesn't like conventional shmups because he thinks pixely graphics and scanlines or anime art is really weaboo and just hates what liking something containing those things would say about him.

And now, as one last charge, let's examine something even deeper than that. Because there's another level to all this, deeper than examining the reasons why I like one game and dislike another. Because the reasons I give for liking STGs are reasons that I LIKE, and the reasons that hypothetical guy who likes Solace has are reasons that I DON'T LIKE. Farther beneath all this, there is a judging of the REASONS, which is something more personal, something more biological. This has nothing to do with self deception or politeness or cognitive dissonance, this level goes beyond and beneath all of that.

But to keep it simple, let me just say that getting through Shoot The Bullet does take something that not everyone has. I'm not even entirely sure I have it. If that's true, it says something to me about you that you might never said directly.

you always write too much to reply to, particularly in this format, so i'll just name a few points.

why do you believe that i don't explain why i like things because i'm too lazy? you're talking to someone who wrote a 200 page book on xenogears and why i like it: http://studioeres.com/hero/episode/games/gamereview_xenogears_part1.html — are you seriously saying that someone who would take the effort to write that much about a game is too lazy to explain why they like games? not to mention all the books and articles i've written about game development, all the reviews i've written for tigsource and other blogs, and having a blog with 8000 entries…

but the main point is that most people aren't games journalists or game developers or game theorists, and don't have time to put as much mental effort into why they enjoy games as you or i have time for, and i don't have a problem with people putting their mental efforts towards things besides explaining why they like the games they like, and i don't hold it against them if they do not

Paul for one thing, I didn't say you were lazy. I said that's one of the reasons why you wouldn't put the effort into figuring out the reasoning behind your opinions. But, as I can see, you have done so, like, a lot.

So why was it so inconceivable that we could rationalize our opinions on bullet hell shooters? Why did you have so much trouble doing it? You've done it for tons of other games and even for specific mechanics. I can only conclude that if you found rationalizing your feelings about these particular games so difficult, it was the result of something personal: lack of interest (apathy, laziness, etc) or fear of cognitive dissonance, just to cite some examples.

>most people aren't games journalists or game developers or game theorists, and don't have time to put as much mental effort into why they enjoy games as you or i have time for,

That's fine. Those people should stay out of conversations such as these, that require a background in video game design theory. I don't dedicate much thought into movies or riflery. That's why I'm not on a film or riflery forum.

>and i don't have a problem with people putting their mental efforts towards things besides explaining why they like the games they like, and i don't hold it against them if they do not

I agree. It's fine, as long as they don't tell me my opinion is as worthless as theirs is.

Paul help me I am being crushed by this formatting.

I never said he wasn't. What I am saying is that his games certainly don't begin with a question about whether his “message” requires a game to communicate. Of course his games have messages if you look for them, because fuck, everything does.

There also are no messages that require a game to communicate, because any communication that occurs in a game does so through the use of media (text, movies, sound) embedded in the game. But rules don't “communicate” anything. Mechanics aren't designed by the creator to teach people what he knows. At most a game “communicates” a response of its mechanics to player-set parameters. It's the observer who ties some sort of direct “meaning” to these results, in the same way that finding my old pair of shoes under my bed could represent renewal.