Continued practice

I’ve been continuing to practice my Photoshop/painting/drawing skills. Below is the latest version of the picture I’m working on whenever I get the time. My main learning focus with this image is creating a coherent image and getting better at shading. Tonight I also added some kind of creature – this is an area where I really need a lot of practice. That’s also the reason I chose to create something quite simple. The legs aren’t that great though so I’ll probably have another go at them.

Full version of Calm released

The full version of Calm is now released on Android Market. The experience features twice as many backgrounds as the free version (24 to be exact) and it is also free from ads. You can check it out here.

Photoshop practice

I’ve begun to practice my Photoshop and painting skills again. I quite enjoy working with graphical content even though I’m very much a beginner. I found this truly great tutorial which I followed yesterday. I was quite happy with the result (and all the things I learned!) and this evening I decided to have another go at it. This time I tried to be somewhat more independent though and not rely too much on the tutorial. I think it worked out quite well and I’m really looking forward to continue my practicing. Here is the result:

Update on Calm

So, as you probably know, Calm has been released for Android. At the moment the only version available is the free version. It contains 12 backgrounds and also ads at the top of the screen. I’m currently working on the non-free version that I hope will be released in the not too distant future. The first iteration of this one will probably contain three times as many backgrounds which makes for a somewhat more varied experience. I’m also looking at different ways to add some interaction to the experience but that will probably be a later implementation. Below you can get a glimpse at some of the new backgrounds that I’m working on.

Calm is finally released!

Yesterday my little experience Calm was released on Android Market. You can read more about it here or head over to the marketplace. The experience is free (with ads) at the moment though I plan to release another version for a small amount of money (and with more content). Please check it out and get back to me with feedback!

Long-awaited update

It’s been quite silent here for the last few months. The reason? Well, there’s just been a lot going on. This stuff has been both work and personal (most of which have been great). It’s as simple as that. But now the Christmas holiday is on (ever though I still have much going on) and thus I can finally post an update again! Hopefully the Russian bots (they seem to make up 95% of all visitors to my site) will be happy.

So, what is going on? Well, I’m currently working on a small experience for Android devices. The working-name is Calm and it will (hopefully) be released during the first half of January. Work is going quite well and I plan to release two versions (one free with ads and one without ads). When the experience is released I’ll tell you. Until then!

Sjörök released!

After much work and many a months the first-person experience Sjörök has finally been released! Read more about it here or head over to http://2hourlunchstudios.com/ and download it as donation-ware. Please note that the game is only available in Swedish at the moment (though I am quite certain that people not speaking Swedish can still enjoy it).

A discussion of choice

The concept of choice and how they are treated in videogames is quite interesting. The following text contains some rambling on the subject. Hopefully this text will contain several different strings that both you and I can continue to pull.

With interaction follows choice. Therefore games always contain an innumerable number of actions to take. I’m not only talking about the evident and narrative choices found in many role-playing games but the fact that every interaction is indeed a choice. This could lead to very interesting experiences. Of what I have been able to discern however it has hardly been explored. Instead choices are quite often treated very simply and disconnected from the rest of the interaction. In the following text I intend to discuss two aspects of choice and consequences in games.

The first one regards what could be called immediate consequences. This is simply when consequences take place immediately after the choice has been made. It is a quite common way to treat choices and can be found in many role-playing games (but absolutely not exclusively). The reasons for treating consequences this way are several. It can be easier to write and construct the narrative, the consequence is made more obvious and the player can easily reload the game if he/she is not happy with the outcome. By making the consequence so obvious it is also given the power of seeming truly important – this is the moment when I must decide. I do not criticize this kind of approach; it can indeed be quite interesting when it comes to portraying the “point of no return” but also other kind of choices where a consequence for some reason must follow immediately. The problem is that this approach seem so very much more used than the delayed consequences. These are the consequences (at least the more profound ones) that do not show themselves until several hours later. The interesting aspects of this approach are several. First of all the player will not really be able to reload and choose the “correct” choice – the true consequence will not be known until much later. This gives the choice a more existential basis because we cannot truly know what will happen. We choose and then have to live with that choice. It also creates a more interesting journey through the game because there are always consequences waiting to unfold instead of a series of immediate choices and consequences.

My second aspect concerns how evidently choices are presented in videogames. Either you are given a choice in a dialogue or there is some kind of quick time event/flashing symbol on the screen indicating that you must choose! This is a CHOICE! No doubt this approach has its uses but I would like to see more games placing the real choices in how we act when we play the game – without pointing to the fact that this is a choice while that is not. As a player we quite quickly learn how to discern what will have consequences from that which will not. It would thus be interesting to work with this notion – do not tell the player what will have consequences (and what will not). Instead let the player choose through his/her interaction and not through separate choice situations. This would make choosing a more integral part of the interaction with the game and the player would have a harder time figuring out what is and what is not a choice. The latter thing is interesting because it will hopefully make the player constantly reflect on his/her choice instead of just entering reflection mode when the game clearly states that this is a choice. Think now. The player can probably not, not even at the end of the game, be exactly certain of where the game actually registered his/her interactions and where not. The game thus becomes an experience with constant choices – choices based on action.

There are some games that have applied this more interactive form of choosing (the term is somewhat wrong, choosing a dialogue answer is, of course, also form of interaction) and personally I always find it more interesting and direct. I get the sense of a true connection between action and choice, thus the entire foundation on which the game resides (interaction) becomes far more profound.

To wrap things up, let me just say what I’ve tried to discuss during the entire text. Choices and consequences in videogames could be handled in much more interesting ways. The fact that games are based on interaction (which in turn is choosing) could, I believe, be used to create really interesting experiences. Hide the choices, include them in the interaction and let the consequences appear much later to create a stream of constant action and reflection. When we reach true reflection – then we have achieved something truly special. And in the end, isn’t that what to want to?

On the vindication of refleixe violence in games

The discussion on violence in videogames seems to be an never-ending topic. Along with sex (this depraved and horrendous human act!) violence in videogames is always the focus during an innumerable number of debates. Often these debates are so polarized and unintellectual that they are quite uninteresting – and that goes for both sides. On one side we have people how are all to critical towards videogames, with no more evidence than clinical studies that seem to say very little of the “real” world. Sitting opposite to them we have the game defenders – bent on defending their beloved media come what may. These debates are, of course, not the only ones but unfortunately seem to be the one most prominent.

So, where do I stand? Well, let’s make some things clear. First of all – videogames affect us. We feel them, we are moved by them, we are influenced by them. To claim the opposite is quite strange – why else would we play them? They make us happy, sad, angry and confused. In that sense they work just like all other experiences in life. This seems to be forgotten sometimes. Yes, people can get quite angry by playing games. However, people get just as angry by watching soccer, looking at a film or playing boardgames. Does this mean we become so filled with rage and devoid of empathy that we go out and hurt other human beings? No, there seems to be no conclusive evidence on that point. On the contrary – to some extent we need these different feelings – to live is to feel. It is however important to remember that we must be able to reflect on these experiences. Because of this fact I firmly believe in age limits (even though I do not believe that they have to be draconic or exact). Young people may sometimes have a harder time to filter and reflect on what they are seeing and what they are doing. This means that explicit content may be percieved as very disturbing and uncanny. Of course older people may as well find content to be disturbing but has often a better ability to reflect on this. So, to put it simple, I believe the following: violence in videogames? Yes. Age limits? Yes.

Now, let’s look at the nature of violence. How is it portrayed in videogames? I would like to be bold enough to divide the portrayal of violence (mainly in films and videogames) into three categories: stylized-harmless, reflexive-realistic and unreflexive-realistic. The lines between these distinctions can often be quite blurry but I think that they will help to structure my line of though.
The first one is either characterized by an over-the-top aestethic; think bold colors, extreme amounts of blood and a cartoony feel (stylized) or violence with a minimum of blood, gore and displays of fear, pain and so on (harmless). Examples of stylized violence would be Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) and Mad World (Platinum Games, 2009). Older James Bond movies, like Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979), and the different Mario-games would count as harmless.
The second one, reflexive-realistic, is characterized by being realistic (and thus feeling very disturbing and disgusting) but also having some kind of reason for it’s realistic portrayal. There could be a multitude of reasons, for example trying to show the horrors of warfare or the extreme terror of violence. Some examples worth mentioning could be American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998) or Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998). The exact definition of reflexive can be hard to pin-point but it a combination of a multitude of elements (story, acting, music, themes) that together form an (from the creators point of view) intended experience. Now I would think that my last category seems quite self-explanatory. The unreflexive-realistic is a portrayal of violence that does it’s best to seem realistic but lacks the reflexive aspect. The only goal seems to be to create a depiction of violence that is realistic but without any though of what that actually means and how it might be percieved. I find that many modern FPS-games (and some films as well) end up in this category (and as you’ve perhaps guessed I’m not too happy with that). The graphical direction of videogames, at least when it comes to FPS-games, seems to be an ever-increasing photorealism. The human beings depicted look, act and move more and more like real humans. The thing is – they also die like real humans. To be honest there have been situations in videogames (and trailers for upcoming ones) that have disgusted me with their portrayal of violence. Disgust isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I said before, we need to feel all kinds of emotions. The problem is that this disgust doesn’t come from an experience where I feel that violence and killing is terrible – no, it originates from the combination of realistic violence and “fun” gameplay. Characters all around me drop dead but I’m just having a good time shooting these very lifelike enemies.

So, to try and wrap things up, do I believe that this unreflexive violence will turn individuals into people who like to hurt other human beings? No, absoutely not. On an direct, individual level I don’t think they are bad for us and I have no intention of placing myself in the “moralist category”. I do however believe that the norms, beliefs, ideas, concepts (and so on) in societies are made up of a huge number of influences. Different cultural expressions and experiences are both made up of and make up these ideas and concepts. We cannot believe that the experiences and portrayals of different aspects (be it love, violence, sex, work or whatever) doesn’t matter. In some sense everything matters. What I want is basically to see more reflection in the portrayal of violence in videogames. Why do we need this photorealism and why do we have to portray violence in such a realistic way? If we can answer that then we can also try to match the rest of the game with this purpose. If we want the show the brutality of war – then let’s try and make it not fun to shoot enemies.
In the end what I would like to say is basically the following: Please, try and reflect more on how you portray things. I’m quite certain this would make videogames much more interesting.

I Am Legend

I took the time to watch I Am Legend (2007) yesterday and I must say I found it better than I expected. Especially the first half of the film impressed me while much of what I enjoyed disappeared during the second part. So, why did I enjoy it? First of all the desolate and lonely atmosphere was delivered quite effectively. This is one of those films where the term “sound of silence” seems quite appropriate. The abscence of sounds really ephasize how desolate the city is while also making the viewer much more focused when something is actually making noise. The silence becomes substantial and almost threatening. This combination of an abandoned city and a lonely survivor (who is slowly going mad) felt quite much like a combination of 28 Days Later (2002) and Robinson Crusoe (1719). To me there was also something quite beautiful about the city being retaken by nature; plants and trees cracking through the pavement and animals living amongst the ruined buildings. Will Smith was also quite convincing in his role, perhaps the best performance I’ve seen him do, though to be honest I haven’t seen him in too many films. All in all this sums up the first part of the film. Atmospheric, engaging and good acting.

Then came the second part. I can’t say I found it terrible though not at all as interesting as the first half. Why is that? Well, first of all I didn’t enjoy the “zombies”. One reason was that they were computer animated – I would rather have seen them as actors wearing make-up. Sure, they weren’t supposed to look like traditional zombies, but the CGI created a gap between me and the world of the film. I also didn’t like the fact that the zombies had some kind of “intelligent” leader. This was mostly hinted and didn’t play a very large part in the movie. Still, I found it as an attempt to try and create a more individual antagonist where a individual antagonist wasn’t needed. The horde of zombies was enough. Lastly I had some issues with the hinting at God and some kind of saving providence. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind religion in films and I have no issues with intuition or the sense of some higher being or fate. These are quite natural aspects of how we humans work, especially perhaps in a situation like the one in the film. What I didn’t like was the fact that in the end it didn’t feel as if this belief was situated in the character expressing the providence but it felt more like a general appeal: “In God We Trust” (with all it’s political and cultural implications).

All in all I Am Legend was a quite enjoyable film. No masterpiece but it certainly had it’s good moments.