Category Archives: Gaming

Reality is Broken

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I just finished reading “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal.

The book was really quite good. I enjoyed the insight it provided into the nature of video games, why we play them, and why we play games in general. But also how to incorporate more game like activities into our everyday lives.

I learned quite a few things from this book.

First, games have a set of definable characteristics. We don’t always notice them while we play, but they are there anyway. They help to define any good game. If we apply these criteria to any activity, we can make it a game.

Second, games have really taken up our time. The stats for world of warcraft are amazing. World of Warcraft players have collectively logged 5.93 million years of playtime. That’s just over 50 billion hours, and the game only launched in 2004.

The number of hours children spend playing games before age 18 is staggering, and potentially useful in the future, since all these young children are master gamers by the time they reach adulthood.

Third, building games is hard work, yet game designers take things very seriously. Halo 3 contains 54,000 pieces of audio and 40,000 lines of dialogue. 2,700 of those audio bites are footfalls. Depending on who is stepping on what. That is impressive.

Finally, people who are against video games don’t understand the benefits that games provide. It’s not just about wasting or not wasting time. It’s not that gamers are looking for escape from the real world. These people are looking for a challenge, fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment that our day to day lives just doesn’t provide for us. It’s not that our daily lives can’t provide this, it’s just that they don’t. (Yet.)

The solutions outlined in the book are very broad and can be applied in many ways to many fields, which is exactly what we need to do. Have a lot of people start to apply these “fixes” to reality so that we can begin to have more fulfilling lives without needing to virtually enhance our existence.

If you are at all into video games, or want to look for ways to better engage people in the real world, this book comes highly recommended from me. This book might also be helpful for anyone headed into game design, though the main focus of the book is not how to design games.

You can check it out on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850

I read the Kindle version.

Also, McGonigal’s TED Talk can be found here: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Skyward Sword Soundtrack

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For the most part I have been very impressed with the Skyward Sword soundtrack. While it contains many Zelda-esque sounds and themes some themes and melodies remind me of Super Smash Brothers and even Final Fantasy.

Here, listen to Ghirahim’s Theme. (Slight Spoiler Alert.)

The first time I heard his theme played I couldn’t help but think it sounded a lot like this other theme I once heard.

This second song is a bit more foreboding and arguably more epic. If you don’t recognize it, it’s from Final Fantasy 7 and it’s called “Those Chosen by the Planet”, though it might better be remembered as Sephiroth’s Theme.

While the two pieces do offer some definite similarities, Ghirahim’s theme is also reminiscent of Ganon’s Castle theme from Ocarina of Time.

Again, a side by side comparison shows the two are certainly not copies, but a lot of the same feeling and style is there.

As soon as Ghirahim’s Theme switches from the foreboding beginning to the melody at around 13 seconds in, I can’t help but hear Final Fantasy 7 there as well. It’s maybe not so much in the notes as it is in the style. I can’t find any tracks to back up my claim here, but that’s what think of when I hear it.

I really enjoy the changes that the Skyward Sword soundtrack brings. The classic House theme is still abundant and the secret unlocked jingle is (over) used. The fact that the music doesn’t sound like a midi mix down is a huge improvement over other games such as OOT.

EPILOGUE
In my small amount of research for this post I ran across a few things of interest. First is that the Zelda Overworld/Hyrule Theme has really evolved over the past 25 years. I hope to put together a side by side comparison of the songs as soon as I have a chance.

Also, the Stolen Materia theme from Final Fantasy 7 is very Pikmin-esque, at least at the beginning. I attribute it to the staccato nature of the instrumentation.

More Accurate Dialogue

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I’m thoroughly enjoying Skyward Sword right now, though my personal dialogue and the game’s dialogue tends to be rather different. Almost need to do a riff track for the game.

Kukiel’s Mother: My daughter is missing! Can you help me find her?

Link: Good news and bad news. Good news is, I found your daughter, hiding out with the town monster. Bad news is that I may have stabbed her in the face with my sword… Only once though… And it wasn’t entirely on purpose… You know what? Actually, I’m going to tell you that the monster did it. Because now that I think about it, it’s probably better for me to tell you that someone else is responsible and I really don’t want to take blame on this one.

10 Problems in Mario Kart Wii

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I love Mario Kart. (I really love Mario Kart Double Dash.) But every time I play Mario Kart Wii I find myself severely disappointed. I yell at Nintendo. I threaten my console. I unclip the stupid safety harness from my wrist and whip my WiiMote at large plate glass windows. Here are ten reasons Mario Kart Wii can make my blood boil.

1. Poor track selection. I felt the tracks in the game were only mediocre. I liked the inclusion of tracks from older games, but they left out some of the best tracks. They also missed out on a huge opportunity to have downloadable content, where they could add more tracks.

2. No HD. Welcome to the future.

3. Restrictive item selections. You’re current race rank limits the items you are able to get, and the effectiveness of the item.

4. No chat options for multi-player. I know Nintendo want’s to be child friendly. I know Mario Kart brings out the worst in people, it’s a competitive game. But when I’m playing I really want to be able to communicate with the other people racing. “Nice trap!” “Great placement!” “Take this!” “Not this stage again!” I don’t even care if we could only use canned responses, the multiplayer needs communication.

5. Multiplayer Track Selection is terrible. Everyone votes and the selection is random. Seems fair, until you play the same track 3 times in a row. There are some tracks that never get played on. Why can’t the tracks just be cycled through so you can play on all of them? (Oh, you don’t want to play on all of them? See point #1.)

6. Multiplayer Setup is final. If you want to play multiplayer you need to choose a character and a kart before joining up. You want to change kart? You have to quit and rejoin. Want to change character? You have to quit and rejoin. Want to switch from Manual to Automatic mode? You have to quit and rejoin. Also, see point #7 & 8.

7. Character/Kart set up is timed. You have a limited time to choose your character and setup. I don’t know what the time limit is, but it’s like 30 seconds. If you don’t choose in time, it chooses what you have currently selected. What’s worse, after the setup is complete, you often have to watch the end of another race while you wait to join. I couldn’t choose my character while I wait for the other race to end?

8. The home button is disabled in multiplayer mode. You want to quit multiplayer mode? You have to finish a race and select “Quit”. At any other time there is no way for you to pause or back out. Need to leave the room for something? Don’t like the stage your on? Feel like quitting? Turn off your system.

9. Auto disconnect for AFK (AFC?) players (even if one player is playing). I understand, if a player is AFK, they don’t need to be taking up a slot on the race track. But what if I’m playing with a friend and he leaves to use the bathroom, or make a sandvich, or take a nap? Halfway through lap 1 both of us are disconnected. Why not just kick the person who is away and let me keep playing? Also, why do I have to back out to the menu to switch from one player to two player mode for online play? (Hint: see points #6 & 8.)

10. The rating system is fickle and unintuitive. I can understand that if you drive “better” you get a better rating, but isn’t that what the gold, silver and bronze trophies are for? What constitutes “better” driving? What if I get hit by lightning during a jump and fall in the lava? Does that count against me, even though I can’t control when another person uses their items? Do I get more points or less points if I hit other people? I can’t play the game if you don’t tell me the rules. (Disclaimer: I love the card game Mau, but the goal of that game is to discover the rules.) To make matters worse the rating system consists of three stars, two stars, one star and then letter grades. Why have letter grades at all? Why not just have a one-five star rating system? Or why bother with stars, why not have A-F for grades? I don’t get it!

All together my endeavor for good wholesome fun is completely thwarted by Nintendo and their poor decisions. I’ve been angry at video games before. (Donkey Kong Country, Team Fortress 2, Other M…) But I never remember being frustrated by a video game MENU, at least, not until I played Mario Kart Wii.

That’s my story. What has Nintendo done to ruin your life?

User Experiences on XBox Live

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[Begin Rant]

My Brother once had an xBox live account but let it slide due to budget restraints and wanting to buy some totally awesome things that may or may not include a seven foot long sword.

Anyway, over the holidays our foreign exchange student suggested that he, my brother, my cousin, and myself play some Halo. So we try to start up a firefight match. All of us log in and after getting everything set up, we are informed that we have too many people to play firefight. So we play some multiplayer instead. But this isn’t good enough for four gamer buddies on vacation.

Now my cousin does have xBox live, and he also happens to have a promo code for two free days of xBox live Gold. So he brings his xbox and sets it up in one room while my brother signs into his account, enters the promo code and then downloads a whole years worth of updates for his system.

Some time later we are ready to begin. My cousin sets up a match, I join as a guest on his box while my brother and exchange student try on my brother’s box. The second a guest a logged in on my brothers trial account they get kicked out of the game. For some stupid reason a two day xBox Live Gold trial doesn’t provide 100% of the functionality of a Live Gold account. (Great way to test it out and see if it’s worth your money, right?)

Having no choice but to get an actual account, the foreign exchange student offers to pay and heads upstairs to get an xBox Live account for my brother. Since he was paying he decided to add it to his profile, and after putting in all his information, he realizes that he doesn’t have a postal zip code and xBox Live won’t let him sign up.

Again denied from our gaming ambition, I offer to put my credit card in. So I put in my credentials, unknowingly, into the foreign exchange students account. Upon finishing all the entry I am told by Microsoft that his account is not eligible for xBox Live. (I’m not sure why, they didn’t say. It might have been his age.) Also, Microsoft won’t let me take my credit card info out of his account via the xBox.

You’d think. You just might think that they could have told the account wasn’t eligible before they had me enter ALL MY DATA IN. You’d think.

By this time my brother has finally grabbed a USB keyboard to help with data entry and after logging into his account I am able to put all my info into Microsofts system again and purchase three months of xBox Live for $9.99.

Overall this was one of the most time consuming and painful consumer experiences I have had in quite some time. Not to mention that I now have to get two people to log in to the Microsoft xBox Live account and remove my credit card info. (Sorry, Microsoft, it’s not that I don’t trust you (though I don’t, [You can thank Sony for that]), it’s that I don’t need my younger brother and a Chinese exchange kid to have my credit card on file.)

Would it kill these companies to make this process any less painful? It’s killing me.

Video Game Music

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I listen to a lot of video game music. My iTunes library consists of 7000+ video game songs (11 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes, and six seconds)* including OSTs, Remixes, OCRemixes, ZREO Orchestrations, and more. Most of the music is from games I have played and enjoyed, some is from games I have never even heard of (until I found their soundtrack). I enjoy the music in part because it is mostly without lyrics (a musical feature I find distracting during certain activities like writing.)

One thing I enjoy is listening to the different styles for each game. It’s almost like a fingerprint. I consider myself a meager video game music connoisseur and my bother and I sometimes play games where we need to guess which game the music is from. MegaMan has a very distinct musical style, much different than Zelda. Metroid, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Halo, Final Fantasy, the list goes on, are fairly easy to distinguish between musically.

Of course some of the games are similar in music as well. Some remixes blend and shift the musical style and make it hard to pinpoint. Other times a single song from a game will have qualities that point towards a different game all together.

Take Nayru’s Song for example: (This version is from ZREO Music.)

Often when I listen I am not looking at the song information and when I first heard this song I assumed that it was either from Metroid Prime or one of the sequels. Only recently did I notice that the song was from Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons.

Originally I thought the music was somewhere from Metroid Prime 2′s Light Temple, since I had distinct imagery in my head when I heard the piece, but upon further investigation it appeared I was wrong.

MP2 Light Temple:

Out of curiosity I hunted out other potential doppelgangers for the song.

MP Chozo Temple: 

MP2 Sky Temple Gateway: 

MP Phendrana Drifts Chozo Temple: 

None of the songs were quite as close as I had originally expected, but there are definitely some similarities. Many of the Metroid songs have high pitched flowing melodies. with deeper undertones and harmonies. The only thing that the Zelda piece is missing is a strong beat, and perhaps using voices to sing or chant the lower parts.

Part of the confusion might come from the re-orchestration provided by the ZREO team, because when I went back to listen to the original it wasn’t quite as Metroid-y.

Still it is very interesting how different games present themselves musically and have a specific audio branding.

*Notes:
1 – I only have about 9609 songs in my entire library, if that gives you an perspective on my listening habits.
2 – I use to have more video game music but I recently deleted a few soundtracks I was beginning to find annoying, such as the mario golf and mario tennis songs.

*EDIT:* Due to conflict between the MediaElement.js plugin and the Jetpack plugin the audio tracks were not showing up when I first wrote this post. Before publishing I disabled MediaElement and went with the Jetpack version, but that only uses flash and doesn’t have an HTML fallback. Today I had some time for research and discovered an alternative tag I could use with MediaElement.js and now the audio here should be playable on all devices, including iOS. Just thought you’d like to know.

Apathetic Dictionary: Fanboy

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Fanboy, noun: an enthusiastic devotee who is continually irritated about inconsequential changes.

Examples:
Gamer: I see they are coming up with a new Final Fantasy game.
Fanboy: I know! It’s going to be awesome, but they changed they changed the name of my favorite character and now all the hair styles are the same, which is SUPER irritating.

Gamer: I hear they are remaking an old Final Fantasy game.
Fanboy: Oh, I just can’t wait for it to come out. The only problem is that they upgraded the graphics so it’s not going to have the retro feel, so it’s almost like ‘why even bother?’

Gamer: So they are bringing an old Final Fantasy game to a new platform, complete with all the old graphics and everything!
Fanboy: Yeah it should be pretty good. Except they are using the American version and not the Japanese version, which is pretty much the same, but some of the characters have different colored hats. And I heard they are fixing all the typos from the original, which I’m sure is totally going to ruin the experience. That and it would be cool if they upgraded the graphics to HD.

See Also: Nintendo Fanboy

Nintendo Fanboy, noun: an enthusiastic devotee of Nintendo products and owner of at least 8 copies of The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.

Driving, Leveling, Real Life and MORE

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Throughout my life, there are times when I really wish I could know what level I am at. I’ve been wearing the same hat for close to 8 years. Before that I wore different hats all the time. Am I a level 10 hat wearer? Maybe. I don’t know. How can you track these things? What level IT guy am I? What’s my geek level?

I have a brand new 2011 Ford Fiesta and have just passed the 6000 mile mark. As I watched my odometer slowly rise, I realized that in this one area of life, there is a finite and state saving counter. It just slowly works it’s way upwards, to no particular end… just like EXPERIENCE POINTS!

Experience points determine your level, but what system of leveling does one use for driving a car?

Turns out, World of Warcraft has an excellent leveling system which converts rather conveniently to car milage. (At least, up until level 60, then it gets a bit questionable, but is still usable until level 70, where we reach a million miles however, it is rather rare to get to 300,000 miles on a vehicle, so it starts becoming rather irrelevant.)

Here is a chart of levels and experience as found at www.wowwiki.com

Now, it is fair to say that the level of your car does not represent your level of driving skill. Like a character in Warcraft, the car will level independently of it’s driver. You are basically leveling up your car like an item.

My car is new (like starting a new character…) so I’m sure all of you have much higher level cars than myself. What level are you currently at? What do you wish you could level up at in real life?

Super Smash Bros Melee – Maximum Points in Adventure Mode

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I’ve always enjoyed playing video games but very rarely have I taken it upon myself to go hunting for glitches or cheats. Usually I head to gamefaqs.com when I need help or am looking for cheats, but there is one cheat that I found, which I have never seen on gamefaqs, which I have never heard anyone talk about, which I discovered, completely on my own, and quite by accident.

Now, it may be that no one really cares, I honestly don’t blame you if you don’t. By now it’s been about 10 years since I discovered this glitch and if no one cared when the game came out, no one really cares now.

The game is Super Smash Bros Melee, and the cheat was getting the maximum amount of points on Adventure mode with single player.

The procedure is rather simple and outlined in the YouTube video embedded below.

On the first level you must do everything in your power to get a negative score. This includes dying once or twice, using a single attack for most of it, and a huge amount of shield breaks. Usually I would race through the level and sit at the end and shield break for a few minutes, then end the level, making sure I don’t end on any of the special point inducing times.

At the end of the level the point counter starts at 0 and begins racing up until it reaches your total points for the level. if you’ve done things correctly, your score is negative, so the counter will never reach your score and will continue until it reaches 999999999. (You can press A to skip the count up and it will still give you the maximum points.)

Now all you have to do is finish the rest of the adventure!

Metroid Hat

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HatI made myself a Metroid hat a few years back and the more I wear it around the more comments I keep getting on it. (Sometimes older people give me strange looks and it takes me a moment to realize that they are looking at my hat. [I'm like, 'what did I do?'])

If you’re looking to make your own hats or plushies, here are the resources I had at my disposal and the things I learned.

I found the instructions at http://www.metroidhat.com/. The instructions are a bit difficult to find, but if you click two links you’ll find the metroid hat instructions.

Fleece comes in many varieties and colors. I usually shopped the bargin bins which would only be a couple dollars for my fabric. I typically did my sewing by hand, so it took me a few hours to get everything put together. If you have access to a sewing machine you can whip these things out in under 20 minutes.

Cutting the pieces and getting them exactly the same size is always a little bit of an issue if you cut everything by hand. I had a scissors, not a cutting board so that made things a bit harder for me. I was thinking about getting a die made, so I could use my parent’s die cutting press to cut out the pieces. I never did get a die made, but I was told it would probably be less than $100 if I ever wanted it done.

Everyone tells me I should make them and sell them, but I don’t have much interest in adding another project to my list. It was fun while I did it. It kept me occupied and gave me something to show for my work. Besides, it’s really a niche market.

If you would like to see photos of my work you can check them out on my flickr page, or check out my project page here on my blog: Metroid Hats and Plushies