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If mechanics give the player control, and interplay gives a game richness and depth by creating a dialog of action, then counterpoint and how it organizes layers of game ideas is a way of drawing attention to and from intricacies like interplay, which, as a result, further develops and defines the mechanics/functions/actions of a game. Being able to guide/focus a player in this way is a powerful tool because it doesn't compromise the player's freedom. Knowing what the player is most likely going through by what the counterpoint focuses on can be used to highlight specific examples of interplay, teach the player a new technique, reveal a less than obvious facet of the game, even trick the player into falling for tricks that seem "simple" and avoidable. Even so, when a game is built up of layered parts that restrict freedom (as opposed to building options from nothing), the player usually retains the ability to isolate elements form the multi-element whole and tackle th...

I'll keep this one brief and spoiler free. All images are taken from the online trailer of Wall-e. If Wall-e, the fantastic new addition to Pixar's powerhouse of films for all ages, was a game it would be a perfect example of... visual storytelling form fits function characterization through action clean (virtually spotless) design/story telling The dialog in Wall-e is sparse at first. Aside from the lyrics in the music and the audio track from a video feed shown early in the film, Wall-e starts off like a silent film. The crafters at Pixar truly took advantage of the freedom, power, and flexibility of visuals, the heart of films. Instead of bogging down the film with unnecessary explanatory dialog, Pixar let the images do the talking. Throughout the film just about everything the viewer needs to know can be extrapolated from the information easily gathered from the visuals, which are the most advanced and technically impressive computer generated visuals I've ever seen. S...

Recently, comments posted under the "Just Call it a Game" blog entry have spawned yet another tete-a-tete about videogames. A word of warning... this one gets ugly. Normally in a critical-correspondence both parties take turns countering each others points back and forth. Namekuseijin called for me to counter his points. I did in a clear and lengthly manner. And when it was his turn he decided to ignore all of my points, try to change the subject/issues, and attack my character. And that's not even the ugly part. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- namekuseijin said... So, it's a game then. Big deal. It's not the kind of game I'm interested in. More likely your mother will be playing it rather than going to Curves. Although the technology it brings to the table may eventually be put to good use in fighting games, indeed. It seems to me Nintendo focused on bringing innovative hardware this generation, but mostly no goo...

In music, counterpoint was used as a pedagogical tool. Students were put through a strict and rigorous regiment of exercises where they had to create lines of music according to the rules. The rules are incredibly detailed, governing everything from the space between notes, their direction (moving up a scale or down) and how the melody must end. This teaching method is divided into 5 species or levels of difficulty with the last being a culmination of the first four. For our purposes, we don't have to create our own levels of a given game. However, organizing the arrangement of level elements by a criteria that is similar to the one that music students used with counterpoint will be very beneficial. Though these rules are still being formulated, keeping these ideas in mind is a step in the right direction. The beginning and the end of a level must be easily identifiable to define the level. Only use unison (a single game idea) at the beginning and/or end of a level. Unison scenario...

The main theme of Super Mario Bros. is a good way to guarantee some hits on youtube. Mario is famous world wide and this theme helped him get there. Enjoy the variation.

Last night, I exported a copy of this blog as a backup. While doing so, I took the opportunity to gather information on how many words I've written. The Critical-Gaming blog has amassed.... 96,710. words for a total of 180 full pages (12pt font single spaced). Before I started the Critical-Gaming blog, I wrote exclusively on Super Smash Brothers for smashboards.com the biggest online smash community site. One of my biggest posts was titled "What Kind of Smasher Are You?" and was one that asked each reader to determine what kind of smasher they were: casual, hardcore, pro, competitive. The post presented the information and the definitions needed for these gamers to better understand themselves and a common language to share that knowledge with others. This post alone received about 1000 replies and about 30,000 views. I stopped writing for that blog around last December. In the end the numbers looked like... 66,328. words for a total of 125 full pages. But long before the...

At last, we come to Counterpoint; the subject that brings mechanics, interplay, and variation together. In music, Counterpoint is the writing of musical lines that sound different on their own, but harmonize when played together. How the melody of a song interacts with the other lines is the focus of Counterpoint. John Rahn puts it best: "It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal structures that create each of the voices separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony , which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. The way that is accomplished in detail is...'counterpoint'" Notice the words in bold. Though Rahn was only talking about music, his language can easily be apply to videogames with a few tweaks. Here's my version... "It is hard to design an intere...

Over the last week, I've covered strict variation thoroughly . By defining, isolating, and comparing similar sections from a game, trends of game mechanic influences and how these trends are created can be deduced. In this method of analysis, keeping the distinct sections in chronological or "game order" becomes increasingly difficult the less linear the game to be examined is. Fortunately open variation isn't bound by such limiting criteria. Open variation is examining how any combination of game elements differ from one another. The analyst is free to group and compare any number of game elements and how they influence the game's mechanics. Naturally, this freedom will lead to the creation of combinations that may not exist in the game world. That's perfectly fine. This method is well suited for analyzing groups of similar game elements like enemies. Take Neo*RPG's enemies for example. Click to Enlarge The order of mechanics in Neo*RPG are.... 1. Thr...

Last time in Mario Melodies: Variation part.1 , I talked about the different types of variation. Before leaping into open variation , I wanted do a few more examples on strict variation using Super Mario Bros. Remember, the mechanics of Super Mario Bros. are... 0. Idle position (doing nothing) 1. Jump ( a level.2 mechanic ) 2. Run, Duck, Slide, Swim, Throw fireball 3. Starman powerup, Koopa shell attacks Minimum difference: Super Mario Bros. is quantified by the unit brick. This means that all the attacks, level elements, enemies, and players are designed to take up space by the brick. Small Mario is about the size of a brick, and ducking Big Mario is a brick high as well. The shortest jump possible clears a distance of two bricks while Mario's largest jump clear a distance of 5 bricks. Little did I know when I first concluded that Super Mario Bros. was quantified by teh brick unit that the elements in the game are set into a grid system that is made up of units that are as large ...

Repetition sits at the heart of music and videogames. Gamers naturally fall into sync with small repeated moments of gameplay in the same way that people sync with musical choruses, refrains, and melodies. But as a song moves forward, familiar melodies come and go only to return again slightly different. As a casual observer of music, it's hard to understand just how important repetition and changes to the repetitions are. Likewise, a game is just a series of repeated mechanics. Understanding how a game repeats and varies the use of its mechanics is the key to understanding the larger patterns and movements of a game. This is the essence of variation : how a game's elements influence the use of game mechanics over increasingly larger segments of the game. There are many angles to approach videogame variation from. I've broken the gamut of variable game elements into six simple categories. player : character(s), cursor, avatar, HUD level : non aggressive interactive (physica...