Dwarf Fortress: Adventurer's Diary - The Killing of Lipi Sharkwhip

Dwarf Fortress distills down to its essence the reason that I play games, the feeling that hooks me the fastest and the hardest; I didn't become an EverQuest addict ten years ago because of other people -- what hooked me was that sense of embarking, of being thrust into an unknown world with only the most basic tools and one's own sense of resourcefulness to get by on.

What gives a game that sense of vastness isn't always graphical, or even geometric. A game can feel vast purely based on the level of detail it provides, the specificity and consistency of its presentation and interactions with the player. And this is what Dwarf Fortress gives you, it's bread and butter -- a ridiculous level of randomized detail, almost enough to lose yourself in. I chose Adventure Mode for this post, which filters the game through a roguelike sieve (as opposed to the more sedentary/simmish Fortress mode). In Adventure mode, you create the world, create a character, and charge out into the unknown...

---

Journal of Kadi Pujapestrat, Human Adventurer
Year 125 of the Age of Myth

Day 1

My name is Kadi Pujapestrat. I ran away from my family to join the circus when I was a child. And today, I am running away from the circus to become an adventurer. I recognize the irony and no, I don't think I'm indecisive. The circus just isn't exciting enough for me.

As I packed my meager possessions in preparation of my journey toward greatness, my trainer stood behind me and told me I was a fool, that I wouldn't last a day out in the world of swords and wolves and starvation. I think he will miss me. I was a great performer, if I may say so myself. But I'm tired of the farce battles, the lions in suits. I want to be an adventurer. I want to see the world, the untamed world, not just the inside of a series of colored tents and the faces of the fat townsfolk. And I want to show everyone in my family that I can do great things. I'm not a side show.

I am starting this journal so I will remember these words if my resolve runs low. I am going on to great things. Great things!

Destiny calls me with its first request. I spoke to a man in the hamlet of Delightstabs (the people here all seem to be very happy), and he asked me to kill a vampire.

A vampire!

Perhaps this task may be a bit much for a first time adventurer, but why am I doing this if not to prove my ambition?

The man said the vampire has killed over 500 in his lust for blood. Of course, I know that must be an exaggeration. Most of them were probably rats, or naive, untrained adventurers. Not like me. I have a sword! A real one, not a rubber one for fighting clowns or anything like that. Not only that, it's made of silver. Creatures of the night fear silver, or that's what everyone says. He'll probably melt the moment the blade touches his pale, sun-starved skin.

Still, I'm not taking any unnecessary risks. I'm not going to face this murderer alone. Any good adventurer has followers, friends and companions who charge ahead to fight, and shout your name enthusiastically after every battle, assuming they don't die a glorious death in your honor. I have recruited such fellows from the fortress Pristinelizard, and they are three in number: a bowman, a swordsman, and an axeman.

The axeman has a particularly frightening look in his eyes. He should make a fearsome ally. That vampire won't know what hit him.

I will give the axeman first watch when we make camp tonight, as we now set out for the capitol, 'Lashprairies', where the blood-sucker is said to be hiding.

***

On our way to Lashprairies we were set upon by wolves. My companions decimated them. I am inspired by their performance, but I worry a bit about the axeman. I saw him bite a wolf's nose off.

I suppose he's just a very enthusiastic axeman, but isn't that what his axe is for? He also jumped into a river to have it out with a Sturgeon on our way out of the fortress where I recruited them all. He's a risk taker, all right. A perfectly fine quality in a follower, but we'll have to keep an eye on him nontheless.

---

What Dwarf Fortress does is combine a love of fantasy worlds -- expansive terrain, numerous myths, various civilizations, and items, items, items -- with procedural generation. In a few minutes it can spit out a world full of ominously named locales, legendarily named monsters, and hilariously named characters. It creates interrelations between all of these things and splatters them all over continents, islands, and underground, leaving you with a realm all to yourself.

As you can see from the above screenshots, Dwarf Fortress's graphics are almost abstract, like absurdist ASCII art in motion. This might be a little off putting initially, but when you wrap your head around what it's doing, it makes complete sense. You see, what the abstract graphics give Dwarf Fotress is a blank slate for the words it will use to describe itself to you. And Dwarf Fortress loves its words.

The game can string adjectives and nouns together and produce something as unusual as an orca-skin long skirt, which can in turn be adorned with a variety of other materials, spikes, hoops, and so on. There's magic in the way that it can name a region of land, "The Hill of Crosses", for example, infusing literary significance into what otherwise would be an empty patch of ground.

The fidelity of interactions with entities and objects in the game mirrors the textual detail -- it is quite deep, and grammatically consistent. Individual characters have complex family trees that track other characters across the world, and their respective achievements. There is an entire sub-system dedicated to wrestling, in which you can grab specific body parts, with context-appropriate options following such as strangling, breaking joints, take-downs, etc. In combat, the game accurately refers to the outcome of events such as arrows piercing internal organs, cutting into various types of flesh, rending scales off dragons -- you name it, and the game seems to think of a way to word it.

---

Day 2

We arrived today in the town and capitol of Lashprairies. I know that our enemy is hiding somewhere in this region, but we still need to sniff him out. After some armor shopping and a sale of the wolf parts we had collected from our encounter, we are in fine shape. The word from the Lasher was that the vampire is to the east; we will find him soon, and show no mercy.

***

We trudged across fields of mud, clay, and sand east out of the city. How far do we need to go? I don't really know. My companions don't seem to tire, but I'm no soldier. I must keep on! The blood sucking fiend is out there, waiting to be stabbed through the heart. For glory!

Day 3

Lipi Sharkwhip, vampire and tormentor of peasants, where are you? These fields of clay are vast and suck at my alpaca wool shoes. Should have bought boots. We will try a spiral search pattern.

***

We can't find him. This is the place the Thresher told me to go. Where is he? I see no caves, no ruined castles, only white sand and reedgrass waving in gentle breeze from the west.

Would he be cowardly enough to hide during the day and only come out at night? Or has he entombed himself in the earth, knowing what fearsome host comes to claim his head?

***

In the evening, exhausted and downtrodden, our bowman spotted a light in the distance. It was not the vampire's den, though; it was an isolated hut, with a family living inside. They invited us in, and, weary from our difficult search, we rested.

On a whim, I struck up a conversation with the family's child, asking if he had seen any vampires recently. To my surprise, he told me that Lipi Sharkwhip the vampire is actually "their master"! Amazing. The night-fiend must be posing as a high ranking official in the capitol. Also, it appears his kill count is up to 572.

The family was good company and the child was very well spoken for a two year old. His parents must be home-schooling him. In any case, we would have wandered for ages without his knowledge, so I am thankful. We shall sleep here and head west in the morning, back towards the keep of Lashprairies, to send Lipi back to hell.

Note to self: refill waterskin at the next opportunity. Getting a bit thirsty.

---

Sure, some of the game systems may misfire at times. Sometimes the quests don't point you in exactly the right direction, and the people you talk to are not going to pass any Turing tests. But, there's no way to generate a world this complex without there being some holes.

A larger problem might be that the basic gameplay, taken at face value, becomes rather rote after you've completed a few quests (Adventure Mode is definitely not as feature-rich for progression as Fortress Mode, with its vast crafting system) and there is not a whole lot you will be explicitly rewarded for other than questing, which without fail involves going out and slaying some troublesome monster.

But even if the game sends you into a dead end from time to time, it also inspires you to make stories out of those dead ends. The problems you will face inspire legends on a personal, intimate scope, in the context of the world it has created for you. The game has a comprehensive legend-tracking system, meaning every monster you kill is entered into its annals, in full title, to be recounted to future generations... or future characters, if you're unlucky enough to experience one of the many possible ways to die in Dwarf Fortress. Burned by lava or dragonfire, drowned, choked, stabbed, thrown, pulverized, or starved -- death is handled in as much fidelity as anything in the game.

---

Day 4

We have lots of wolf meat. I will not go hungry. But I am so, so thirsty. No rivers nearby. Writing hard. Why did I leave my home? Why does this wanderlust possess me? What am I going to gain by killing vampires? Lipi Sharkwhip eludes us. And surely in this state, throat parched, head throbbing, he wouldn't break a sweat killing me.

So, so thirsty. Where do these people get water? Do they even know what a well is?

***

Finally, we traveled far out of the town, and found a river. I must have sat there for hours drinking, resting, gulping... but I fear we're almost out of time. Our quarry surely grows suspicious and may flee to some hole in the ground if we wait much longer. I must confront him.

We march to the top of the keep of Lashprairies, to what fate I know not, but surely knowing that if we meet our prey, either Lipi or everyone in my party shall die this day.

***

It is done. We stumbled into the keep in the evening, intending to search it top to bottom. And at the top, we found him. Now his blood is strewn about the keep of Lashprairies. My companions tore him apart hand and foot -- the final blow struck by the bowman, straight through the skull. He has eyes like a hawk.

Lipi Sharkwhip, scourge of Lashprairies, was hiding in the city as a law-giver. And Lipi was not the only thing rotten in the capitol. His cultists were infesting the keep, all of which we've put to the sword. Lashprairies is freed from an evil tyrant and the glory of our deeds will spread throughout Ashionra for ages to come.

And yet... I feel oddly unfulfilled. I did little more than throw rocks at him during our fight, a fact blissfully missing from the songs now being composed of Kadi Pujapestrat, vampire slayer extraordinaire. The truth is that I was terrified. Of him, of my companions, of the orgy of gore I was witness to, battle-hardened veterans tearing the pale-skinned one apart hand and foot, and allowing me all the glory after.

I feel hollow. The wanderlust is not sated. I think it has grown a bit stronger.

Perhaps I must set out on my own again. Away from the violence. Across The Sumerged Waters, to lands unknown to my kind. Perhaps what I seek lies on the horizon...

---

Despite the game's limitations and inevitable inconsistencies, I still find it oddly compelling. It is expansive. Vast. It has a way of winding bizarre words together in unusual ways. The legend system creates a sense of interconnectedness lacking in most sandbox games. You can scroll across the continent map and see the names of mountains in the distance and wonder what mythical creatures live there, die there, what terrors or wonders are hiding at the edge of the world.

It's a game that rewards the use of one's imagination, of setting your own goals, and wandering a huge system that exists only because you brought it into being, and which no other player is likely to ever know, unless you share it.

Dwarf Fortress seems to be is one of those games that herald a level of detail beginning to approach, at least from the player's perspective, infinite fractal depth. One can imagine games in the near future capable of summoning infinite contextually relevant details that expand out from the player as needed. Examine the ground, see an item. Examine the item, see it is an earring. Examine the earring, see it is adorned with hanging rings of bone. Examine the rings, see they are made of mole bone, with minor fractures and blemishes, the mark of the crafter pointing to a hamlet in...

An earring may seem like a small thing, but the little things are what make a world so big. The smaller the details, the larger the scale. Worlds of such definition are exceedingly easy and enjoyable to be lost in, and I'd like to see more of them, in whatever incarnations they may take.

Hawken

This game looks really cool. I've been following it for a while:



I cut my teeth on mech combat with Mechwarrior 2, so I'm already a huge fan of big, metal machines blowing each other up. Although I haven't played Hawken yet, I can already see that with aesthetics so well developed the game will make an excellent spectator sport, and make for great YouTube fodder. I'm already imagining all the cinematic moments a game like this can generate, especially in a team combat setting.

I also find the design of the game's interface, mechs, and the associated animations fascinating. The piloted machines jitter and swerve in a way that seems distinctly life-like and organic, the spastic shaking / twitching making an interesting contrast to the deliberate, plodding motions of Mechwarrior's mobile platforms. It actually makes me of a (somewhat disturbing) creation by Boston Dynamics / DARPA, this four-legged bot with an intense desire to stay upright:



Games with functional but still visually pleasing animations aren't always valued for that quality alone, and it isn't always mentioned in games that lack it, but I think it deserves its own category of evaluation. Games with strong animation and strong multiplayer are some of the most interesting to watch -- animations made well add to the fidelity of the player interaction, helping both players and observers visually interpret what is going on more quickly and more fluidly.

Then there's the sound -- metal skin crunching, wire tendon snapping, actuators grinding -- I have no idea how the game will play, but I know its going look and sound like a gritty steel inferno, and that's enough to get me excited.

P.S.: Closed beta starts on October 26th. Check out their website for details.

"When I was a kid, I played a whole lot of video games."

When I grow up, I don't want to be the guy who tells his kids that he played a lot of video games.

It may be factually correct. But it isn't the truth -- not for me.

Games have made me scream, believe, try... I don't want to hear you say, when I was young, I played a lot of video games. Don't tell it to your kids, your friends, to anyone. Say that when I was young, my playground expanded into a dimension not previously explored by the youth of the world. My toys were limited only by the scope of human imagination. I learned just how weak the boundary between reality and non-reality is in our minds and how we can bridge that space. I shared the crossing of that bridge with others and was richer for it.

I want you to be creative. I want you to tell them about the parts of the game that made you hurt or laugh or wonder. I don't care if you flew ships or slew monsters or fought wars, or anything else off the grocery list of gaming tropes. I am the future youth and I want to hear about the time you realized that all along, you really weren't calling the shots. About every bug you abused and every object you launched into orbit. About how you came to understand the sordid destiny in store for you. Or the time you reached the end of the world, beyond the boundaries of logic, and looked over the edge.

These are the things we can't articulate properly without thinking hard and remembering. And there are so many games, now, that it is hard to remember the specifics. Please try. You must think hard now, while the experience is fresh. You must put what you experienced to words and keep the words safe so that one day, you can share these milestones with the future, before they are blown away in a wind of technological upheaval.

Because it's not just an illusion. The game is not real, the game is just a system, but that system can now and then access and expose a kernel of truth that you would never have unearthed otherwise. There is some part of the play that touched your mind in a way you can't quite explain -- though you can come close.

So get as close as you can, and say that. Say it loud and say it often and don't forget it.

Follow-up to Creative Process, etc., yadda yadda...

This is pretty awesome.  Way simpler than I imagined, community driven, and it's backed by a serious publisher & content delivery system.


Hooray for the future.

A Jar of Spiders

In Diablo 3 there is an ability that allows you to throw a jar of spiders. It has many names, but most players refer to it simply as Jar of Spiders.

Some people are excited about this ability. "It's fun to throw a jar of spiders," they say. It's certainly novel, I'll give you that. But I am very worried about the implications here.  Throwing jars of spiders is not just novel; the Jar of Spiders concept taps into the deep evolutionary psychology of spider avoidance and multiplies it times a hundred.  We've never considered the ramifications of implementing spider-based weaponry, spider frag grenades if you will. And, heretofore unexplored lethality aside, the understatement baked into the phrase "Jar of Spiders" also lends itself well to memedom.

"Not as clumsy or random as a jar of spiders, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age..."

"If a problem can't be solved by throwing a jar of spiders at it, it isn't worth solving."

"I love the smell of a jar of spiders in the morning."

I see Jar of Spiders going big. Beyond memes, though there are sure to be a great many. Far beyond anything a simple game development company could have imagined. People are more afraid of spiders than of death, after all.

So it starts out small. A bank is robbed, the perp brandishing nothing more than a jar of spiders. Police forces move to utilize CSRS (Compartmentalized Spider Release Systems) as a means of crowd control. Jar of Spider control laws become a nationally charged issue. North Korea develops and successfully launches the first ICSM (Inter-continental Spider Missile).

It just keeps escalating.  Panicked and backed into a corner, humanity loses its cool and Global Spider War breaks out. No one is safe. Have you seen those jumping spiders? Think you're safe standing up on that chair? They're like honey badgers, they don't give a shit. They'll jump right up there.

Before you know it, it's all over, a spider apocalpyse. Humans die out and are replaced by jars of spiders. I mean, replaced by spiders. That live in jar cities. Because that's all that's left. Jars, and spiders.

Just so some damn CM could get his jollies breaking barrels. Do you see what you've done, Blizzard? Do you see what you've unleashed?

Speculation: The Open Market Future of Creative Development

A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast shared by a friend that involved a bleak literary e-future, after the "e-bookalypse", when publishing becomes a bizarre practice of self-publicity and patron-seeking. In this world, publishers are replaced with mafia-esque groups that take advantage of budding or inexperienced authors, roping them into contracts to pump out endless derivative works. The only way out? Seek the funding of a powerful individual interested in investing in your work, a "patron."

A bleak future indeed. An illogical one in some ways, I felt. But is it so far from reality? Would you believe we're entering into an age where you as an individual user can dictate what content is developed before the first word is penned, the first scene is storyboarded, or the first line of code is written?

The industry of speculative artistic creation entered into my consciousness through a website you've probably heard of, called Kickstarter. It's a simple concept; propose a project, find interested investors, and reward them based on their investment level if the project is funded and completed. It works, too, to the tune of a few million in one case.

That case is one of a game developer cashing in on a lot of unsatisfied interest to fund a project that many larger game publishers would see as doomed in the market. And it worked so well that the Doublefine Adventure project is now six times over-funded. So why did it work? Is there more here than the novelty of sticking it to "the man," the big publishers responsible for canning so many interesting titles? And is this a development method that can be maintained?

I believe that in the individual case above, it "worked" because there is is an unfilled niche (the 2D adventure gaming genre), and a moment in time (Kickstarter is still fairly new), that both together have enabled this project to gain a lot of momentum. But I also think it worked because there is trust for the figurehead of the project, who has a reputation, who has roots in the earliest incarnations of the genre.

The ability to preserve that level of trust is what will make or break a new market like this. And I really think we ought to try and preserve it, because the benefits, both to the developer and to the consumer, of seeking investment directly from those who will be your customers are many-fold.

Think of a standard consumer market, where a producer accepts some kind of monetary risk to produce a new product. Then, consumers either reward the investment with purchases, which creates financial success, or scorn the new product, which causes the producer a loss. You create a new line of shoes, produce them, put them on shelves, and the customer either buys them or doesn't.

But if the customer trusts the producer enough to commit to a purchase before any significant investment is made (the shoes have been designed, but none produced), then that producer can do something incredible: they can turn their entire customer base into a focus group, and determine the success of the product before spending a dime on actual production.

I think taking this approach has a lot of promise for creating more awesome stuff in a more efficient way. In a huge way, it puts the decision to greenlight a project into the hands of the people who will actually be paying for and experiencing the content being created. The publisher disappears like a bad dream. It seems too good to be true. So how can we move forward and maintain this method as a tool for creative production, for things like games, novels, or movies?

What is really needed is an online platform DEDICATED to entertainment content development via "currency votes." In the case of gaming, developers would post their credentials, their plan for a new game, and set levels of reward similar to the blueprint established on Kickstarter. If adequate funding is provided, the developer develops. Games are created. And, eventually, user invested capital is paid back in the form of promised content.

Of course, for the average independent content developer looking to get into this game, lacking an invested publisher to provide its (often iron-fisted and destructive) oversight to the process creates a void of accountability. My suggestion for filling this void is something like a basic development roadmap applied to every project, where users can vote at certain stages to either continue or terminate funding. The stages could be marked differently for different mediums, but for the gaming example (please forgive the drastic over-simplification):

1. Design (concept, initial funding)
2. Alpha (engine, assets, refining concept)
3. Beta (playable version, public testing)
4. Release (final polish)

Portions of the initial funding cache would be disbursed at the end of each stage, not as a lump-sum, and progress to the next stage would be moderated by the investors: as the developer released new information on the progress of the project at the end of each stage, a vote takes place on the continuance of funding by those invested in the project. This would provide a form of accountability.

In essence, I'm saying that what Tim Schaefer is doing with the parallel YouTube development documentary for Doublefine Adventure, set to provide constant updates on development progress, is not just a bonus for the invested public; it is ESSENTIAL to maintaining consumer trust in an emerging market where there is currently not much to back up the producer's promise of returns but the a little good-will.

The throwback to Renaissance patronage might not be so misplaced, if we're willing see it at a much larger scale. And if we can make it work at this scale, it will be a step towards a world where the producer can determine what wants to be made before they make it, not with guess-work but with dollar signs -- and where the consumer can exercise something more than a passive, reactionary influence on that process, with interest driving the market directly. The concept excites me.

The Deluge: More Game Than You Know What To Do With

Just to warn you, this one's a bit long. I've been mulling this over for a while.

I believe we are reaching a new epoch in gaming development and consumption: I am calling it "The Deluge." Let me lay out the evidence for this shift. Exhibit A.: my desktop. I have legally purchased and been granted access to more games than I can conceivably play and "complete" within the free time available to me. I have a long list of more I am waiting to purchase when they go on sale. As a result, my desktop is piling up with shortcuts I have yet to touch, and my Steam games list is much the same.

I am a gamer, I play games. Why is the current state of my queue unusual? Well, when I was growing up, I could justify the hefty price of a single game (around 40$ or 50$) only about every one or two months. Games like Descent, Red Alert, Diablo II -- high polish titles from well-established developers. I would play these games over the course of a few months and "finish" them, then move on to the next purchase. It was regulated, scheduled, and sensible. The cost of investment was consistent, and felt roughly matched to the return I was getting in time spent.

Today, that same wad of cash will purchase forty games on your phone, probably around eight on the PC if you time it right with an online sale. And these are not just mini-games. If you are choosing with any discrimination, I can ensure you that a few of them will be gems, games like Minecraft or Braid, that offer relatively polished, and very enjoyable content, often in my experience of a higher quality than the big budget titles currently crowding out the shelves at Wal-Mart.

Things have changed. There has been a massive increase in the availability of good games. So what happened?

Part 1: The Pricing Revolution

Games are getting cheaper. Distribution has been streamlined; digital delivery is becoming the norm, and with it all the expense of production, delivery, and packaging has been distilled into a simple file transfer. I would give most of the credit for this change to Valvle and Steam for bringing it to the mainstream, but they are not the only avenue of online availability now: Impulse, XBox Live, even independent websites -- developers have more tools and more avenues for digital release than ever, very few of which require backing by a major publishing group. Word of mouth has become powerful enough to turn a game like Minecraft, a small independent project, into a financial success very quickly, one that founded a new development studio, with their next game already in development. There are other success stories as well: games like Audiosurf, which started on Steam, turned the game's creator into an established entity.

With smaller teams or even individuals creating and publishing games, the margin for profit is much greater. When there are fewer mouths to feed, you can afford to have a more flexible pricing scheme. Audiosurf's "price" is 9.99$, but it has appeared at anywhere from 2.50$ to 4.99$ to every percentage of discount you can name over the course of its existence. Every week on Steam a few games like it will go on sale at a large discount -- drawing attention to the title on the front page, and at the same time encouraging the growing mass of patrons to check back often for the next deal. Staying aware of the deals on Steam, by necessity, makes you more likely to make purchases on Steam: you are exposed to more content, ergo you will discover more games that interest you.

It's is a simple reality overlooked by major gaming publishers that the human brain likes to feel like it's getting a deal. How the main movers in the industry failed to recognize this fact until now is beyond me, but I suspect it has more to do with the distribution outlets than anything else. I can remember walking into a game store and finding that, although there was a "bargain bin," they were usually picked clean and full of refuse titles. Nothing on the shelves was ever "on sale" -- instead, the prices would slowly atrophy over the course of months, from 50$, to 40$, to 30$, until the game fell into the dreaded 20$ range, off the shelves, and into the rejects pile.

Not only does the price decline fail to grab anyone's attention, it's downright insulting to the product. Instead of achieving "classic" status at retail, games went from "current" to "trash bin." I'm not sure if it was over-development (driven by rapidly shifting hardware power) or just plain ignorance. In either case, Steam has taught us that this is not an ideal model. When you want to grab your audience's attention and chop 50% off of a title released just a few months ago for the next two days only, online distribution gives you the platform to do so.

As a result of the newly adopted distribution models, good games draw more attention and can be more cheaply distributed. That certainly means there will be more games in the market, as the opportunity cost of creating them has fallen. But what about the quality? Without a studio full of experts working horrific hours to produce mountains of hand-crafted content, how are the smaller games appearing in the spotlight going to stand up to public scrutiny? That brings me to the other part of the equation: the shifting source of content.

Part 2: The Content Revolution

Games are getting longer. This is happening slowly but surely, as the technology capable of generating and appropriating content is catching up with the technology for rendering it, and as we expand our conception of what constitutes a game, from start to finish. Evidence for this can be seen in the success of games like the two mentioned above, which either generate or outsource large portions of their content: each incorporates what I would describe as "meta-content."

To understand what I mean by this, I want you to think for a moment of games not as delivery systems for an experience (such as "shooting guys," "saving the world," or "driving a car") but as a system for interpreting content. In other words, I want you to mentally split the primary programming framework of what makes the game operate (the conceptual interaction of the player and reaction by the system) from all of the assets the game displays to give that system credibility. From this perspective, all of that data is secondary to the game's main goal of running a system the player can interact with. All that art, texture, architecture and sound is essential, of course, to making a game "convincing," "immersive," choose your buzzword -- but exactly where the content comes from makes a huge difference in the development cost for the game. And while every game needs that general framework to function, not every game need draw its content from the same sources.

To illustrate with real world examples, I want to compare two games: Bulletstorm, a first person shooter, and the aforementioned Minecraft, a sandbox/exploration game.

Bulletstorm is a high-budget title with rendered cutscenes, a cast of characters and accompanying narrative (voiced by industry talent such as Steve Blum), high powered weaponry, and an innovative kill-score system that encourages the player to destroy opponents in creative ways.

Minecraft is a game about placing and destroying blocks, avoiding environmental hazards, and crafting items from harvested resources.

Both games utilize an array of content to engage the player, drawn from various sources.

In Bulletstorm, I would roughly arrange the content data into these groups:

• Hand-created plot content (dialogue/cutscenes/scripted events)
• Hand-created world content (3D terrain & structures)
• Hand-created entity content (enemies, animations, items)
• Hand-created art content (sounds, textures, and pre-rendered visuals)
• Procedurally generated combat content (dynamic enemy AI behavior in response to player actions)

In Minecraft, the source data could be laid out as:

• Hand-created entity content (enemies, animations, items)
• Hand-created art content (sounds, textures, and pre-rendered visuals)
• Procedurally generated world content (dynamically generated world based off a random seed, of near infinite size)
• Procedurally generated combat content (dynamic enemy AI behavior in response to player actions)

(When I say "hand-created," what I mean is that a human being thought about the context for a given asset as it would be directly presented to the player, and designed accordingly. When I say "procedurally generated," I am thinking of the human designer in a more hands-off role, designing a system to make content presentation decisions.)

Notice two things: first, Minecraft has no hand crafted terrain. All terrain in the game is procedurally generated. Thus, the only development time spent on level design was the time spent tweaking the terrain generation engine. The game can generate an infinite amount of "world" to play with.

Secondly, Minecraft has no plot content. This is where some would argue that Minecraft is not actually a "game," because it does not deliver an overt narrative -- it does not have a beginning, middle, and end. The author himself states that there are indeed plans to add a "non-intrusive narrative" to the game at some point in the future, so clearly it is something he believes would add value. So perhaps asking whether Minecraft is a "game" under the traditional definition is a legitimate question. How do you win? What are the goals? You place blocks, you avoid a grisly death at the hands of zombies (or more often, very high cliffs). Are those qualifications significant? Based on generally accepted norms, games typically challenges the player to achieve some state of completion. Few games are isolated systems that simply respond to input with an appropriate output -- they are designed to entertain the player by directing them towards something.

Here is the other half of the trend: not only are the games changing in how they handle content, but the player's conception of what falls within the boundaries of the game is also changing. Minecraft is only the front-runner of a general trend. It works as a game because, amongst the current generation of gamers, there is a large group that sees meta-gaming, or the pursuit of goals outside of those imagined and defined by the developer vision, as an entirely legitimized part of the gaming experience. Players are more willing to take control away from the developer, to play outside of the game's central direction, and to see games that merely facilitate this form of play as entirely valid forms of entertainment. Meta-gaming and meta-content go hand in hand because of the focus on a player-driven experience.

Consider a more wide-spread trend in a similar vein: the achievement systems which have become so prolific in games today (yes, even in Minecraft). A set of achievements is an easy way for a developer to tack on goals not part of the original game, and entice the player to spend an evening, for instance, ferrying a small garden gnome through territory held by hostile aliens.

Even Bulletstorm, which I contrasted with Minecraft, courts meta-gaming logic in its rewarding of "creative kills" with points you can use for the purchase of ammunition and upgrades, encouraging you to customize your experience and generate your own narrative. It's is a subtle shift, as you can hardly say such achievements or kill-rewards are "meta" when it is the selfsame developer who created them, but it still shows that gamers today ask for the ability to experience play on a multitude of levels. In Bulletstorm, they can be "the guy who saws every mutant in half at the hip" rather than some other type of murderous bastard, and see that brutality rewarded, in a general sense, with currency.

It does bear noting that despite the additional depth this feature adds to the game, the cost of developing Bulletstorm meant that even at its hefty price tag, its sales were not quite enough for it to be considered a success. Compared to something like Minecraft, a game which cost very little to develop, yet which leverages procedural content to give it a depth beyond what could be hand-crafted by any team of developers, the approach of AAA-titles seems out of date -- a high risk, low reward investment.

This brings us back to the original train of thought, which is how all this affects the availability of gaming content. Because developers are increasingly embracing new ways to expand content on the cheap, with things like achievement systems and meta-content, the average game's expected lifespan is becoming longer. When you can eliminate the need to filter additional content through a team of well-paid specialists in level design, 3D rendering, and voice acting, the sky's the limit. And although this may not be accurate for every small independent title -- certainly a game like Braid is full of hand-crafted, linear content, and still manages to efficiently produce a great depth of experience -- the overall trend toward meta-content is an example of how both large and small development teams are creatively using the tools available to them to supply more play time in fewer man-hours.

Which means that I am never going to be able to "finish" and delete all of these shortcuts unless I quit my job and lock myself indoors. For two months. And disconnect my internet.

Part 3: Finally, where does this leave us?

There are more games than ever, they are getting cheaper, to purchase, distribute, and develop, and they are getting longer. Where does this leave us? In a god-damn paradise, actually. Why am I complaining? This is the best time to be a gamer in the history of interactive entertainment. Sure, maybe there are some weak points -- not every smaller project is a hit, and Metacritic is having real trouble keeping up with The Deluge -- but in all, there is more content available to us than ever, and more of us can afford it. Games are more creative and original because that's what it takes to stand out when you're relying on the buzz of conversation rather than the buzz of a marketing engine. And more developers are learning that they can go it alone, come up with a successful independent project, and avoid working conditions like these.

In other words, everybody wins.