Cult Followings: Working With the Fans

There are a number of things in the game industry that confuse me to no end.  Perhaps at the top of the list is the Mother series in Japan.  It is a quirky 16-bit RPG series that has gained a huge following in the U.S.  While I have yet to play it, I know a great deal about the series.  While it did see a limited release in the west under the title Earthbound, it seems odd that games like Infamous are getting a re-release collector’s edition less than four years after its initial release, but this quirky series is left by the wayside.  The fans are there and have made themselves known to Nintendo, so why? 

17 years and Nintendo still remains silent on the Mother/Earthbound series

Nintendo claims that there might be legal repercussions based on musical ques and names as the reason for the game Mother 2 or Earthbound not being re-released.  However, this doesn’t stop Mother 1 or Mother 3 from being released as part of a compilation set or on the Virtual Console on the Wii or 3DS.  Yet, Nintendo continues to be silent on this series.  One of the arguments for this is that these games are text heavy RPGs that would require too much time to translate and adapt to the U.S.  And that is a fair complaint.  I understand that a lot of great RPGs and other uniquely Japanese games weren’t released because of translation issues.  Translating the Japanese text and mannerisms to make sense in English would cost a great deal and take a huge amount of time.  However…why doesn’t Nintendo use the fan translations?

This is the only way to play Mother 3 in English...so why doesn't Nintendo just reach out to the fans for the translation and schedule a release of the game stateside?

Here is the meat of our subject today.  Fan power.  Gamers who love games will go to all manner of extremes for them.  Fan fiction, fan art, fan translations, even fan mods and fan sequels.  These extensions of popular games are uniquely tailored to their audience and will thusly appeal to them, more often than not.  The biggest hurdle to these fan creations being released for profit is the threat of legal action from the company that owns rights to the original.  However, what if the game companies, instead of threatening legal action or trying to shut down or ignore these fan communities and fan creations, tried to make use of them?  Market them legitimately?  In fact, mods, or fan created additions, to PC games are how many gamers get jobs in the industry.  Showing they understand the tools needed to make games by adding on to games they already know and love.

And some of these fan creations show real time, effort, and dedication.  Many games never reached the shores of the U.S. because of time, money, or apparent lack of interest.  However, fans who had imported the games loved them so much that they wanted to share them with others and took to translating them.  Many fan translation or localization groups have put forth work purely out of their own interest with no hope of profit.  This is how the Mother 3, Bahamut Lagoon, and the original Final Fantasy 2, 3, and 5 translations were released.  However, fans can go even further.  One intrepid group of young hackers put games from the Satellaview, a Japanese only satellite gaming service, online for all to enjoy, with the caveat that if they were contacted by Nintendo or other companies and asked to remove them, they would.  They also stated that if the games were released stateside, they would take down their website.  What makes this remarkable, however, is that not only was the Satellaview released only in Japan, but many of the games for it had holes in the code which were meant to be filled by the satellite broadcasts.  So, these hackers not only translated the games, but filled the holes in their code, retooled their controls, added in the old music from the broadcast, and released it, for free, so that others could enjoy it.

Zelda on the Satellaview, in English, available to the masses, all thanks to fans

No matter what anyone says about copyright violation or piracy, one has to admire the passion involved in projects like this, where dozens of people spend their own time, without pay, to share the games they love with others.  However, I personally believe that this is an untapped resource for game companies the world over.  Rather than re-releasing some games as many as five times, Square-Enix, why not look at some of your older properties that have gained a cult following but were never released in the west?  If the fans have done their work right, you could offer to buy their translation from them and release your old game to the west, but at full price on a new platform.  It would require some quality control and play testing, but the lion’s share of work necessary to make it viable for a western release would already be done.  However, even given such a unique opportunity to work with fans, most game companies do not cooperate.  In fact, some go out of their way to destroy the hard work of fans.

Most fans respect the wishes of the game companies and agree to shut down their work if they are asked.  And some companies, like Nintendo, agree to look the other way so that the fans can be fans.  However, many game companies take one look at a promising project and immediately shoot it down.  For example, a 3D remake of the critically acclaimed Chrono Trigger was being made by fans and the company who owned the rights to it, Square-Enix, threatened them with litigation if they did not cease and desist.  This effectively killed the project.  However, think for just a moment.  Square-Enix has a propensity for re-releasing their popular titles.  Recently, Chrono Trigger was just re-released for the Nintendo DS.  So…why not simply work with the fans instead of threatening legal action on them?  Buy them off and have them continue their work.  Square recently released a 3D remake of Final Fantasy 3 done in house, a process which had to be unbelievably expensive.  So, if a group of gamers who loved the game are working to create the exact same thing, but are doing it for free…then buy them off and have them continue their work.  Don’t simply waste all their time and effort by threatening legal action.

This is what Chrono Trigger would look like in 3d...if it hadn't been shut down.  Yeah...thanks for that, Square-Enix

Fans of video games, like fans of almost any property, can have an unbelievable drive, love for their medium, and a power to change it.  However, too often, game companies see them as the problem, not the solution.  In my opinion, game companies have forgotten that fans are the force which keeps them profitable.  Without the fans, they are nothing.  Yet, every day the gaming world is outraged at some new form of on disc DLC or DRM which locks players out of games they paid for, or online passes.  Game companies treat gamers more like thieves or free money than lifelong friends.  And that is a major problem.  Fans will continue to love games, regardless of the companies, but if companies don’t understand and respect the power of fans it will hurt them in the long run.  Before being acquired and merged with Activision, Blizzard, for example, knew how to treat fans.  After releasing Starcraft, Blizzard encouraged its piracy to a degree.  Burn a copy, share it with friends, and then they might go buy a copy themselves, or at least share the popularity of the game with their own friends, who might go buy a copy.  While this kind of policy changed after their merger, this should prove that fans have power.  And fans want to be friends to game companies, even if the reverse is not true.

Blizzard used to just spread the love.  Then Activision happened.  And now we get online passes.  Progress...?

And it is curiously true that many times, fans orchestrate the biggest changes in the gaming world.  Gamers modding Half-Life created the incredibly popular Counter-Strike mod that has become a mainstay of Valve’s and which has seen several sequels and spin offs.  Importers who picked up Demon’s Souls, even though it wasn’t planned for a western release showed Japanese developer From Software that there actually was a market for their game in the west, convincing them to release it and its sequel, Dark Souls, in the west.  The Defense of The Ancients mod in Warcraft 3 became so popular that it even spawned an entirely new genre of game, the massively multiplayer online arena fighter, which has one sequel in the works and at least a dozen competitors.  The highly publicized Operation Rainfall brought awareness to the titles Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower, and helped them get out of Japan, into Europe, and eventually to U.S. shores.  Fans have an incredible gift for changing the industry and game companies need to start respecting and making use of their fans, like partners, rather than treating them like thieves trying to take a piece of their pie.

This funny little fan mod spawned an entire sub genre of MMO games

If game companies would open themselves up to fan assistance they would not only find strong potential employees, but might actually get to release some games they would not be able to otherwise.  For example, Vanillaware recently had to cancel the western release of a game called Grand Knights History, due to “lack of resources to localize.”  However, what if fans stepped in and agreed to work with the designers to get this project done?  Some wouldn’t even ask for payment, so long as the game was released.  Fans can be a powerful boon for small companies that need assistance and can be loyal followers for stronger companies who already have their footing, provided they don’t alienate their fans.

Yeah, this ain't making it stateside anytime soon

Perhaps the biggest issues preventing gamers and companies from coming together are legal concerns and profit concerns.  This is frustrating, because gamers are more than willing to lend their hand to help make something they want a reality, but game companies have their own interests to protect.  Legal concerns, such as the rights of the fans making the game vs. the company would be a problem and if any materials or resources, such as the game engine, levels, or characters, were used in other projects by the fans, there might also be a need for litigation.  Game companies are very protective of their assets, most of the time.  And there would also be the issue of compensating the fans for their work and whether or not their work turns a profit for the company.  Game companies, especially the big ones, like Square-Enix and Electronic Arts, have to protect not only their own profit margins, but cater to their investors and shareholders, which would make any project with fan assistance a hard sell, as investors are naturally skeptical of people not on their payroll and who they cannot properly penalize should something go wrong.

Pretty much how game companies feel if a product bombs...and we want them to approve fan games?

            I really do believe that with the right business model, any number of game companies could use work done by the fans and turn a profit, for both themselves and those who worked on it. NES Reproductions, for example, has managed to make a fair profit by releasing fan translated NES games for sale directly to gamers.  They can do this because the copyright on the games and the technology is usually long expired, since the NES and Famicom were released almost thirty years ago.  This kind of business model takes the work of the fans and turns it into something that can be bought and sold for a profit.  If an independent party can do it with properties that have passed their expiration date, imagine what a game company still holding onto the rights for almost a dozen retro titles never released in the west could do.  I have a vision that I’d like others to indulge in for just a moment.  Say, instead of making reproduction cartridges with fan translated or altered games on them, game companies created a digital service, like Steam?  Then, took old games like the Mother series, Bahamut Lagoon, Sweet Home, or any number of other titles they still owned and released them at a fair price, like 10-20 dollars?  If they used the fan translations and gave a cut of their profits to the translators, that’s a tidy amount they had to do basically nothing to make.  Granted, this kind of business model would require a digital distribution service and would take time to set up, but it would go a long way in discouraging emulation and piracy.  As it stands, emulation is the only viable way to play English language copies of games like Mother 3 or Bahamut Lagoon for most people.  However, if the game companies made it easier to get these games off their service, perhaps with a sale or two and built in rewards just to sweeten the pot, emulation would practically die out overnight.  This happened for countless Wii owners who found games they used to emulate on the virtual console for a fair price.  The Extra Credits crew have said time and again, if you provide a better service, people will use that rather than piracy.  Convenience is the key.  A service like Steam or the Wii’s virtual console caters to fans and makes it easier to get the games they want.  Emulation has a lot of legal and computer based issues.  However, when emulation is the only option, then that is what people are going to choose.

How many people would give their left foot for this game to be released overseas legitimately?

            Regrettably, this kind of business model may never see the light of day.  There is a lot of red tape involved in some of these dealings, such as giving proper credit to the fan translators, ensuring they get fair compensation, the compromise between game companies who have had their properties tampered with and the fans who only want to bring old favorites to the masses, and countless other problems.  Most game companies don’t want to adapt to make use of their fans.  And the sad thing is, unlike some of the other issues discussed here, they don’t really need to adapt.  Fans will continue translating, making unofficial sequels, modding, etc. as long as it gives themselves and other gamers joy, while companies will either tolerate them or crack down on them so long as they feel their rights are threatened.  If a company cracks down, the fans may just make the game an original title and release it as an indie game on Steam or some other digital service.  So, while there isn’t really a big loser if these two sides stay separate, I feel that it is a huge missed opportunity for the developers and publishers to foster relationships with their fans that benefit everyone.  Even if fans keep on being fans and companies keep on being companies, imagine what they could do if they came together to work on something they loved?  We could get a third Chrono game, translated versions of games that were never released stateside, genuine fan feedback on changes made to try and modernize old classics…the possibilities are limitless.  Well, even if it’s never meant to be, we can all dream, can’t we?

Dare to dream, people.  Dare to dream.

AAA Illusion: Working to Create an Immersive Experience

It feels like all I do these days at the start of these posts is apologize…so I’m going to stop doing it.  Time’s going to pass, but I hope I don’t abandon this blog, because I think it is important.  With that said, let’s get right into it.

            On my last post, a friend commented on my discussion of games and limitations.  While they could understand my perspective and how limitations were important, they offered an interesting counter-argument and asked that I explore it.  The idea being that, as limitations became fewer and games became more powerful, they could create an immersive experience through far more advanced smoke and mirrors.  Using illusion, the game designers were able to craft an experience that was far more engaging than in previous gaming generations, where people could literally get lost in the game worlds.

If you want to craft an immersive game world, you can't rely on futuristic visors.  You need to rely on smart design choices.

            Appropriate examples of this were games like Skyrim, Dark Souls, or Half-Life 2, which offered rich, engrossing worlds that tried to make the player feel as if they were part of them.  As if they were real.  However, my friend also asked me to comment on one important aspect of these illusions.  They seldom ever hold up.  You see, for all the power of modern gaming, people still like to take short cuts or they make bad design decisions, or they just can’t check games as well as they should.  And this hurts the illusion they’re trying to sell and overall, the experience of the game.

            Two perfect examples of this are the Grand Theft Auto games and the Silent Hill games.  While Silent Hill has always benefited from limited graphics, making monsters more unnerving and the environments more haunting, they can be incredibly frustrating for not selling their illusion.  In almost every Silent Hill game, a good 70-80% of all doors you see will be locked and unable to enter.  Now, this might make sense if it’s late at night and you’re in an office building or what have you…but if the buildings are abandoned or part of some demonic other world, why even put the doors there if they’re just going to be locked?  It’s like teasing the players with worlds they could explore, but can’t because the designers got lazy or ran out of money.

The floor plan for the apartment building in Silent Hill 2.  Note the obscene amount of X'ed out entrances.

            Likewise, in Grand Theft Auto, there are so many places people can go and things they can do, offering an illusion of real freedom, but the least explored part of the game?  The inside of buildings.  So much work is put into making the city look and feel alive however players see so many office buildings, shopping centers, car dealers, etc. and they can approach them on the outside, but often, they can’t go inside.  Same with Prototype or Infamous…there are so many places to explore outside, but the use of a door is a mystery to the main character.  And herein lies a big problem for modern gaming.  They are making design choices that simply aren’t immersive for the purpose of aesthetic value.  In a Silent Hill game, everything is tense because of all the doors and the dread of what could lurk behind them.  And in a GTA game, the city would look weird if it was just a whole bunch of walls with no doors.  Aesthetically, they aid the game’s atmosphere and overall look, however, they also hurt the illusion of a real world the game is trying to make.

Hey, hey!  See all those buildings?  Those windows?  Those doors?  Yeah...you're not allowed into those.

            To further demonstrate this idea, I want to look at three current generation games.  Skyrim, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls.  The first two attempt to create a truly immersive world, but fail for relatively simple reasons, while the third actually manages to create a world that feels alive.  Starting off, Skyrim.  While one could argue about the aesthetic quality of the menus in the game, the user interface, character creation, and various abilities that the game allows players to indulge in, such as smithing, tanning, or alchemy, give it a feeling of freedom, as if the players are in total control of their destiny.  They can go anywhere and do anything.  However, Skyrim, big as it is, has limits.  And those limits tend to be invisible walls.  Skyrim is a game that suffers from the developers simply creating a box and saying, “You can’t go past here, even if you can see past it.”  Forests or mountains will simply have a wall where players cannot move past, even though they can see past it.  This happens far too often in sand box games.  Some can circumvent it, but when people simply choose to indulge in invisible walls, it greatly hurts the immersion.  And the many bugs, while amusing, also hurt the game’s realistic feel.  Seeing a dragon flying upside down or a mammoth floating in mid air might be fun the first time, but if it keeps happening, players will just continually be reminded that they are in a game…not in Skyrim.

Do I even need to say anything?  "You cannot go that way."  Really?!  Tcch...lazy invisible walls

  Xenoblade Chronicles, ironically, fails for almost completely opposite reasons.  It creates a lush, beautiful world for players to explore with tons of details, such as a giant, looming in the background that players will actually get to climb on.  And, more importantly, no invisible walls.  Players can jump, run, and swim nearly anywhere they can see.  Sometimes those jumps will be too much for them and the fall will kill them, but the point is, if their hit points are high enough, they can literally go anywhere.  The environments allow a true freedom of exploration that is free of bugs.  However, where the game fails is in the combat.  While the overall aesthetic is impressive, as character appearance changes with different armor and there are no random encounters, the gameplay is built like a faux MMORPG, which forces players to auto attack, rely on computer controlled AI, and spam their skills without really feeling in control of their character or their party.  The combat makes players very much aware that they are playing a game and this is heartbreaking.  For all the detail and immersive elements in the game, the combat just pulls players out of the experience.  It is sticky, slow, and teeth grindingly frustrating, as it is heavily focused on grinding.  However, rather than having one to one control like in a Dragon Quest game, the designers took control away from the players for this baffling choice of battle system.  There are also several “time saver” features, such as the ability to manipulate time to make it day or night whenever players feel like.  While this may aid in the unbelievably monotonous and boring quests in the game, it really hurts immersion.

See that scenery in the distance?  You can go to all of that.  There are no walls here.  Pity the combat sucks so hard.

 In my opinion, Dark Souls is probably one of the few games to create an immersive, illusory world that players can get lost in and invested in.  Made even more so by the online element.  Dark Souls features a world that, with a few exceptions, such as being warped to a new area, is completely interconnected, with varying shortcuts and ways to get around with no loading screens and, more importantly, no invisible walls.  No intentionally invisible walls at least.  The game does have several hidden walls that players can find however, anywhere a player can see, they can go.  And, they have one to one control over their character in the game.  What makes the game even more immersive is that players can encounter phantoms of other players, who will attack them, aid them, or leave them messages, creating a truly living world with other players who act like real people, sometimes leaving fake clues, helping out of kindness, or who act with malice for no other reason than they enjoy it.  The game isn’t perfect, as players who die of falling can get hung up on certain objects to humorous effect and there are a few spots here and there where, even if you can get to them, they impede your character when they really shouldn’t.  However, on the whole, Dark Souls offers one of the most immersive experiences in gaming, which is important, since there is very little story.  The game relies on its dark atmosphere and crushingly realistic design choices to sell the world.

Look at that level design.  You can go anywhere you can see, including off the ledge if you so choose.  Total freedom.  You know...until the game kills you.

 Now, looking at these three games, some tips can be gleaned.  First, if you’re going to make a game where players can go anywhere, don’t create an overly complicated battle system or one that removes control from the player.  It will only annoy them.  Second, if you want to release a big, immersive, sandbox type game, check it for bugs.  Check it.  And check it.  And check it again.  Patches might be needed to fix the game, but don’t use a future patch as an excuse or a crutch.  Make the game right the first time.  And finally, most importantly, make the game feel organic.  No invisible walls.  In Dark Souls, they have limitations in place but they’re not invisible.  Crevices, mountain walls, deep patches of water that players can see and that any respectably armored warrior would be unable to swim through all dot Dark Souls and they act as boundaries.  They are all visible and players know to test their limits at their own peril.  Skyrim, however, can have players going through a forest and hit a wall, even though nothing is in their way.  This is remarkably easy to fix.  For example: If you want to create a wall that separates Skyrim from other areas in the world, why not put a literal wall there.  Like a border guard that refuses anyone entry and cannot be opened from that side.  It creates a literal wall, teasing players about what’s beyond but also telling them that their goal lies within that wall.  Or, if you have an area bordering the ocean, create several cliffs around the edge.  Allow players to jump off the bluffs, but line it with jagged rocks.  They might die if they jump, but they’ll feel like the world is organic, as if they did that in real life it would have the same effect.  There are countless ways to make a world bounded, but in an organic way so that players do not notice how gamey it is.  Dark Souls may occasionally use warps, but they try to make them seem organic as well, such as having a crow or a gargoyle take players places rather than just a fade to black and a loading screen, something that even Xenoblade falls prey to at times, so that it seems like all the worlds are interconnected.  And while players need control over themselves, don’t let them control their world.  Don’t give them a weather controller or a timer feature.  They might think it’s cool and useful the first time they use it, but more often than not, they’ll eventually forget about it and using it again will only take them out of the game.

You want to create boundaries for the players?  Can't do better than an island.  Invisible walls not necessary.

 There is one other tip I have for game designers.  Put forth more effort.  I know game design is difficult.  Ridiculously so at times.  There are deadlines and changes that need to be made, testing for errors and recording voices or crafting cinematics and far too often the publisher can dictate additions to the game that may not make sense or which are far too time consuming to be reasonable.  However, if you are going to put three years into making a game, you may as well go all the way and make it as polished as possible.  Make the illusion complete.  Even if a room has to be copy pasted from others, that’s better than a locked door or one that’s painted onto a wall.  Now, not all games need to adhere to his.  Games like Culdcept Saga on the Xbox 360 have a distinctly gamey feel to them as part of their design.  They play similar to monopoly with a TCG element added in, so immersion is a non-issue with that kind of game.  However, if you’re trying to use illusion to create an immersive game experience then make sure the illusion is flawless.  Don’t get lazy.  Make the game world feel so real that players are literally scared of looking around them when they play a horror game or so intense that they can hear the birds and feel the breeze in an open world game.  Don’t put in invisible walls to save time rendering cliffs.  Don’t create battle or gameplay systems that are counter intuitive to the overall feel of the game just because it’s popular.  Don’t be satisfied with good enough.  If you’re going to create a world, create it the right way.

Nothing kills immersion like this crap.  Don't be lazy.  Close the gate, make the bridge broken, have a troupe of guards stopping you, do something!  Don't just say "Sorry, can't go this way any longer."

 This can be considered a big problem for modern gaming.  With the rise of technology, games have certainly become more beautiful, but they are also far more time consuming to create and thus, making a cliff or ten for Skyrim could take weeks, compared to adding in a room or two in Silent Hill which might only take a few days with existing resources.  On this, I can’t really offer any advice other than learn from the work of others.  Many games have preceded this current generation.  Some, like Half-Life and its sequel are truly immersive for different reasons.  Look at these games during the conceptual stages of game development and use them as a baseline for how to make the game world more engaging.  You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Learn from past mistakes.  Skyrim, for example, has the same invisible wall problems as its predecessor Oblivion.  If the developers had taken a lesson from their previous game and from fan feedback, they might have been able to rework the map of Skyrim a bit to solve the issue of walls.  Or in Xenoblade Chronicles, if you want a world without random encounters, why not look at other games that avoided them?  Chrono Trigger side stepped random encounters and even allowed players to battle without having to create a separate screen or interface for it.  Dragon Quest 8 and Blue Dragon from the previous and current generations respectively allowed enemies to be seen on the map screens before engaging them.  Developers may not play games as much as gamers do, but they should at the very least know their history and competition.  If their competitors or previous games have made use of a feature like theirs, learn from it.

Don't wanna break immersion?  Then random battles are not necessary.  But...be smart about it.

I know it is easy to say, “Well they should do this, it was better in this game, I’m smarter than you, etc.” and it might seem unfair or ungrateful for me to ask for more effort from already overworked and often underpaid game developers.  However, the truth is, if you want to make something that people have to pay for, you need to provide a better product.  The world is saturated with games right now, from the current and previous generations.  Dark Souls offered me an immersive experience that I managed to enjoy despite its frustration and while it was similar to games I’d played before, it went in a different direction that captivated me.  It was polished and even when I got frustrated, I still wanted to keep playing.  Xenoblade, by contrast, was heartbreakingly beautiful to watch, but was absolutely no fun to play.  The combat was so frustrating and took me out of the game so much that I gave up on trying to finish it because it simply wasn’t fun.  Why should I try to beat a game I don’t want to play, when I have at least five other games in my library that do what it does, but better?  I understand that game developers aren’t perfect.  They can make mistakes or overlook certain things, but at the same time, if I have to pay $50-$60 for a game, then I want my money’s worth.  I want something that I can enjoy, be immersed in, and not be taken out of.  I want illusion.  I want the game to tell me the perfect lie.  And, like with real life, if you’re caught in a lie…you ought to own up to it and have to suffer the consequences.  Above all other things though, I just want effort.  When looking at comic books, the critic Linkara said that sometimes poor design choices are ok.  That a lame idea can turn out great or at least decent in its execution.  And that sometimes, with a little common sense or research, a bad idea can be made better.  He stated that he didn’t want his comics to be re-written.  He just wanted good stories to be told.  He wanted effort.  And that is what I want.  If you’re going to try and sell me a world, don’t put up invisible walls or remove my ability to control my characters in combat.  Sell the illusion.  In this modern era of gaming, you can’t use limitations as an excuse.  Sell the illusion or don’t expect any of my money.