Modesty Studios

I read an article on the Escapist about How Game Stories Suck because the protagonist doesn't change. It got me thinking about the role of characters in a game and narrative. Why don't game characters change? Dual Role In my narrative heavy games, I sometimes feel there is a disconnect between the narrative character and my avatar. The narrative has set up this character to seem like a certain kind of person. However, as I begin playing, the character is no longer like that. For example, when playing a game like Legend of Zelda, Link is set up to be heroic, courageous, and trusted. However the actions the player performs as Link are hardly heroic . The cover up of course is that the game narrative ignores certain player actions. Particularly in Role Play Games (RPGs). A game character has two roles in a narrative style game. The story character and the game character. Most games play these off as separate entities. This disconnect reduces the effect of change or perceiv...

How many stories do you know where there is a male protagonist out to save his kidnapped girl? There are quite a lot and I think it's a tale as old as time. Men are expected to defend their women. However, why does the story feel so alienating in a video game? The Analogy As I said the "save the princess" story is very old and deeply rooted in our culture/instincts. In animal terms, it is the story of winning females away from a rival and gaining exclusive mating rights. It speaks to our basic nature of males proving themselves to a female by show of strength. And there is something in us that accepts this. Women want strong men who can defend them. Men feel the need to show off their strength to impress said woman. Where the analogy falls apart is that in a story, the attention is always split to focus on one party or the other. If the focus is the captured princess (a la Sleeping Beauty/Snow White), then the Prince is not given much of a personality. He's just...

Wow, several months without a post. So bad! But things have been busy at work so I can't really complain. Plus I picked up a couple extra hobbies. :P In that time, I've also FINALLY gotten on the bandwagon and connected my PS3 to online play. Yay right? Currently only playing with co-workers as I hate playing with strangers. A co-work also gave me his old wide-screen HD TV. So now I can actually see what I'm playing! For PS3: I'm playing 2 games on and off: Sacred 2 and Valkyria Chronicles. (Not to be confused with Valkyrie Chronicles...which I screw up all the time. XD). Sacred 2 is a basic MMO - plot game where you collect quests, complete them and get stuff. I find the gameplay uninspiring and a little awkward since this is apparently a port from PC to console. :P Valkyria Chronicles is fun...when I get to actually PLAY. Sweet sister there's a lotta cinematics. (Thankfully they're all skippable...but there was a line I'm glad I didn't miss: "YOU...

Recently I finished playing two titles that I would consider very "girly". Meaning that the theme is something that would appeal to a female crowd between 9 - 12. The two games are Bella Sara Horse Adventure and Champion Dreams: Born to Ride. Horse games basically. Part of the purpose of buying these games was to do a bit of unofficial market research on games with horses. The other reason was guilty pleasure, I love horses. There were a few things I "learned" about these games since they are games marketed for girls. Girl Marketing In both games the main character was a female. One was an adult(Champion) and one was a pre-teen (Bella). Horse care or "caring" seems to be a common theme in a girl-themed game. (Baby sitting games, vet games, Sims, wow...isn't that just like handing us a baby? Er...baby doll. XD) Both games also has a collection element and a dress up element. (Both again guilty pleasures). I'll discuss the two games separately for a ...

Dang, two months and no posts? Well what can I blog about now? Well how about I write about various game makers eh? Thanks to the internet and programmers with energy for side-projects (or in some cases main projects) there are a plethora of game making programs for people who can't program but want to make a game anyway. Now there' s no way I could know or list them all but I'll make an effort to list what I do know, have used and like. Things Beginners Should Know You know that the favorite advertisement ploy for free engines is that "no programming is necessary". That's only HALF true or not really true at all. No programming is necessary but SCRIPTING is. And while some engines will provide you with shells to work within you still have to learn the script language to make things work. And heaven forbid you design a game that relies on the ADVANCED stuff. Not really a complaint but a heads up for any n00b who finds a programming-free engine and starts p...

Jus t a light hearted thought bubble for now. I was just browsing some game blogs and saw something mentioning World of Warcraft. And I was just thinking back to this time last year when I was actively playing. I want to go back to it. But I have one problem... ...actually there's more than one problem...it's more like 20... I have too many unplayed games! Somehow I managed to buy a ton of games this year thanks to peer pressure (in a sense) and actual titles that interested me and nostalgia. OMG did nostalgia bite in the bum this year. I BOUGHT Oregon Trail 4 and was this close to buying Super Solvers Treasure Trove. On top of that I now have co-workers who want to play MMOs with me and I just don't have the time thanks to hobbies. Plus I have a long list of games that I still need to finish. The List of Game Titles (if I can remember them all) Age of Wonders 2 (PC - my coworker gave this to me. D: Why do they keep feeding me!?) Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (PC - why!?) K...

There's this trend I notice in media that tries to obviously incorporate a religion's teaching into something popular. Be it comics or games, it always feels forced to me. I would know I've tried making a comic like that. Serious Games are often met with the challenge of teaching something. Some methods work better than others. And since I've now studied the theory behind it...I've learned which ones don't really work as well. As expected Christianity (Puritan-Protestant Christianity) usually is the subject being preached in the game. So let's do a short bit of history and then figure out if its really possible to make a FUN game with religion as its theme...or just a good one. Old Testament Style The few examples of Christian games I know of are from the Angry Video Game Nerd's Review of Bible games. These were basically reskinned games based on popular or unpopular Nintendo games. They took well known bible stories like Noah and the Ark and made a pl...

The look of a game is its selling point. In our market society, we judge a book by its cover so we judge a game by its looks. I've often complained about the looks of characters in some genres. So let's talk about graphics and realism. History Lessons When looking back on some of the earliest computer games, graphics were always the added bonus. For the most part the graphics were iconic. This means they were symbols or like hieroglyphs. The icons represented something else that we can translate in the context of the game situation. As the graphic abilities of computers advanced the less iconic graphics needed to be. They did not need to be abstract shapes to represent a player or an enemy. It could vaguely resemble what it was suppose to be. The semblance of what the game environment is and what we recognize as real are slowly becoming closer. The uncanny valley is all we have to watch out for. On the Trail Perception is what graphic style or visual style changes most in ...

Oh Bioware you feisty badgers. It took me a lot of time to get through some of this game before I could say I had a good first impression. It's a better impression than Kingdom Hearts. But I've played a few of Bioware's titles by now. One thing that sort of bugs me about Bioware games is that every title while has similar style game play always has different movement controls. For example, in NWN2 you can right click somewhere and the character will head to that spot. But in Knights of the Old Republic (KoToR) you can't do that. Dragon Age (DA:O) you can again. Must be something they reserve for fantasy games. *shrug* Granted every franchise should have its own control scheme but my beef is (and it's a small beef) that I will play K0ToR for awhile using NWN2 controls and screw up. But essentially it's still a dialog tree with some point and click battle systems. The battle systems are all different but it's mostly background differences. NWN2 follows D...

I've written nearly all of the script. I'm at least in the third act. http://lineofheroes.wikispaces.com/ The next step will be all the artwork. Backgrounds will be the most difficult. DESERT AREA -Open Desert -Pasture -Village Exterior -Village Interior -Sacred Ruins/Trial Grounds -Sacred Realm -Oasis CAPITAL CITY -City Streets -Back Streets -School Exterior -School Foyer -Bed Room -Kitchen -Throne Room -Temple Interior -Temple Secret Chamber -City Gate MOUNTAIN KINGDOM -Mountains Exterior -Mountain Hall Interior -Temple Entrance -Temple: 1 tunnel; 1 Corner; 1 Sacred Door; 1 Locked Door Room; 3 tunnels -Temple Djinn Room SEA KINGDOM -Beach Exterior -Castle Interior -Temple Entrance -Temple: 1 tunnel, 1 corner, 1 Sacred Door; 1 Locked Door; Djinn Room FOREST KINGDOM -Forest Exterior -Village Gate -Hidden Village -Temple Entrance -Temple: 1 tunnel, 2 tunnels, 1 corner, 1 Sacred Door; 1 Locked Door; Djinn Room AIR KINGDOM -Air Temple Gardens -Melek's Home Interior -Temple Ent...