Current computer games can be divided roughly into two groups. 
Unfortunately, these groups don't seem to have established names, so I 
will try to explain what I mean.

In one camp, you have games like Crysis, Portal, Call of Duty, Unreal, 
Left 4 Dead, Assassin's Creed and a bazillion lessor titles that aren't 
as good.

Most of these are big-budget productions, requiring serious computer 
power in order to run. But not all of them. I've seen at least two games 
which run on the Source engine and are free downloads off the Internet. 
And I don't just mean level packs for existing commercial games; I mean 
completely original games in their own right. The tools that Valve give 
away for free apparently let you do that.

Some of these are first-person shooters, but again not all of them. For 
example, in Portal you don't have any weapons at all, other than being 
cunning. Psychonauts is almost impossible to classify at all (unless you 
just class it as "other"). There are various stealth games where the 
object is to collect stuff or infiltrate places without killing 
anything. And so on.

For lack of a better title, I call this group "delta games".

The other group comprises everything else. I call these "alpha games". 
In here you find utterly obsolete stuff like Xenon II or Uridium. But 
there are also brand new games in this category still being made today.

A lot of people seem to think that only low-budget indie stuff falls 
into this category. But PopCap makes mountains of money selling stuff 
like Peggle or Bejewelled. And it wasn't so many years ago that Abe's 
Odyssey was receiving Game Of The Year awards.

A lot of people also seem to think that reimplementing tetris makes a 
great alpha game. Like it's automatically great just because it's retro. 
This is incorrect.

Let's look at tetris for a moment. Everybody has implemented it. No 
computer hardware, programming language or similar platform can be 
considered complete until there's at least one minimal tetris clone 
available for it. But if, like me, you've seriously played a few of 
these, you'll have discovered something: Some of them are fun, even 
today. But most of them are just lame.

Just because it's not a delta game, doesn't mean you can just throw it 
together and everybody who likes other alpha games will automatically 
like this one. It doesn't work like that.

Let's look at Abe's Odyssey again. Basically it's a 2D platformer. You 
know, like Manic Miner or Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario. But unlike 
any of these, it has lush fantasy-world computer graphics and truly 
atmospheric soundscapes. And it has bizarre alien lifeforms. It's an 
audio-visual experience that you keep playing just to see what's on the 
next screen.

It's not even particularly *good*. Getting the "good" ending rather than 
the "bad" one requires 80% completion, which is approximately 
impossible. The collision detection is flakey at best. There's a bit 
where you can't get past a row of land mines without going on a 4-level 
detour. And half the time one of your few feeble powers is taken away 
because it would make the puzzles too easy. But the game looks and 
sounds so amazing, it's so much fun to explore, that you just look past 
these things. [Mostly.]

Yes, it's a 2D playformer. But no, it would have been impossible before 
the era of 24-bit graphics and digital audio playback [not to mention 
harddrives that can hold gigabytes of data].

In short, there are people who think alpha games are obsolete, and 
people who take them seriously. I'm now going to talk about a couple of 
alpha games.



When I bought something or other on Steam, I got a free copy of Peggle 
Extreme. (That'll be PopCap Games them.) It's quite enjoyable to play, 
so a few weeks ago I caved in and bought the full version (known as 
"Peggle Delux").

I'm not actually very impressed. I guess I had assumed that what's in 
the demo is just a taster of the full thing. But no, it *is* the full 
thing. The only difference between Peggle Extreme [free] and Peggle 

that's not completely true; there are a few other minor differences 
(including the other levels each offering you a different "super power", 
which ranges from useful to pointless).

Perhaps most annoying, the demo uses the same three 45-second music 
loops for all its levels (of which there aren't many). But the full game 
uses... THE EXACT SAME THREE MUSIC LOOPS! >_< Jesus, I got so sick of 
hearing them!

Each level does have a different background image, but they're all very 
low-res and utterly boring to look at. If the graphics had been pretty 
enough, this might have been an enjoyable game... but it wasn't. Oh, 
there is a difficulty curve. The later levels do get harder. But they 
get harder and a tedious, boring way, not harder in an exciting and 
interesting way. And even then, it took me 1 day to beat the entire 
game. Oh, you can replay the levels again on a harder difficulty getting 
for an extra badge. But... why bother? This game isn't fun. I'm not 
enjoying myself. Why continue?



Some of you may remember a while back I bought a copy of Osmos. That was 
another game with a nice idea. And, actually, rather beautiful graphics. 
Unfortunately, it too uses only a few extremely short sound loops 
(calling them "music" is stretching it a bit). But most fatally, the 
game is just INFURIATINGLY IMPOSSIBLE! Almost all of the puzzles are 
intractably hard. You can easily spend 45 minutes or more solving one 
puzzle, only to have one false movement suddenly destroy everything in a 
few seconds flat.

I lose count of how many times I've rage-quit that game. It's just far, 
far too hard. I applaud it for being (very) original, and it's quite 
nicely put together. It's just too frustrating to play, unfortunately.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> The other group comprises everything else. I call these "alpha games". 

  The rest of the world calls them casual games.

> Let's look at tetris for a moment. Everybody has implemented it. No 
> computer hardware, programming language or similar platform can be 
> considered complete until there's at least one minimal tetris clone 
> available for it.

  Try to find a tetris game for the iPhone or the Android. I won't hold
my breath.

  (Explanation: There's a copyright troll named "The Tetris Company" based
in Russia which sends frivolous copyright claims to Apple and most other
game providers for any user-created tetris clone. Mind you, the concept of
a game does not fall under copyright, see for example
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.pdf, but that doesn't stop this so-called
"company" from making the claim anyways. And Apple and other providers won't
challenge it because it's not their product, but remove the game
automatically without questions.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 5/3/2011 9:00, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> The other group comprises everything else. I call these "alpha games".
>
>    The rest of the world calls them casual games.

And the first batch is AAA games.

(Thanks, Warp. I was trying to remember what they were called before I 
commented on the first batch. :-)

Of course, there are a lot more dimensions than this.  And I don't think 
Psychonauts falls under the "casual games" category; it's just an older 
top-flight game.

> http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.pdf

That's kind of odd, given "look and feel" lawsuits covering everything from 
greeting cards to windowing interfaces. I would think the entirety of a 
video game (especially a casual one) would fall under "look and feel."

I'm not sure this is talking about video games, given the rest of the 
paragraph. It makes much more sense if you read it in terms of something 
like board games.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Warp escreveu:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> The other group comprises everything else. I call these "alpha games". 
> 
>   The rest of the world calls them casual games.

Not necessarily, unless you consider AAA games from the past as casual. 
  There are also some cleverly cerebral indie games demanding more 
attention than casual players are willing to invest.

BTW, Pac-man was pretty casual:  you inserted a coin, played for 
high-scores or until you ran out of coins.  Most old arcade games were 
like that and at the same time were also pretty hardcore in the 
challenge level.  COD is one such casual game today, except it's not 
nearly as hardcore in the challenge.

>> Let's look at tetris for a moment. Everybody has implemented it. No 
>> computer hardware, programming language or similar platform can be 
>> considered complete until there's at least one minimal tetris clone 
>> available for it.
> 
>   Try to find a tetris game for the iPhone or the Android. I won't hold
> my breath.

Touch interface decidedly demands new play controls, like pulling an 
elastic cord until you can release a bird.  Old direction and buttons 
don't work for touch interface, you don't have tactile feedback for you 
actions.  No, some rumble won't do it.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Invisible escreveu:
> Let's look at Abe's Odyssey again. Basically it's a 2D platformer. You 
> know, like Manic Miner or Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario.

It's got nothing to do with arcade platformers like Sonic or Mario. 
It's much closer to the "realistic" platform style of Prince of Persia 
or Another World/Flashback.

> But unlike 
> any of these, it has lush fantasy-world computer graphics and truly 
> atmospheric soundscapes.

Its lush fantasy-world CG and atmospheric soundscapes are as good and 
dated as those of Sonic or Mario.  Well, slightly less dated since it's 
a 32-bit game and you're obviously comparing to the old 8 and 16-bit 
Mario and Sonic games.

> And it has bizarre alien lifeforms. It's an 
> audio-visual experience that you keep playing just to see what's on the 
> next screen.

Just like good ol' Sonic... :p

> Yes, it's a 2D playformer. But no, it would have been impossible before 
> the era of 24-bit graphics and digital audio playback [not to mention 
> harddrives that can hold gigabytes of data].

It was released for Playstation 1 on CD and no HD.

> In short, there are people who think alpha games are obsolete, and 
> people who take them seriously. I'm now going to talk about a couple of 
> alpha games.

Just like in cinema, there's space for all -- AAA big-budget 
blockbusters, indies, authoral...  Movies began short and fun with many 
pies on faces.  And yet it progressively adopted much drama from 
theather and developed its own media language.  Yet, we still have many 
pies on faces today, despite not being B&W anymore.

> Perhaps most annoying, the demo uses the same three 45-second music 
> loops for all its levels (of which there aren't many). But the full game 
> uses... THE EXACT SAME THREE MUSIC LOOPS! >_< Jesus, I got so sick of 
> hearing them!

Some days I loop some music piece all day long.  ah, the marvels of 
technology.  I believe Sam would take his gun and shoot you if you asked 
him to play it again for the 10th time straight... LOL

so, have you played the damned Angry Birds already after all? :p

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.pdf

> That's kind of odd, given "look and feel" lawsuits covering everything from 
> greeting cards to windowing interfaces. I would think the entirety of a 
> video game (especially a casual one) would fall under "look and feel."

  The look and feel of a product can be trademarked (tradedress). It does
not fall under copyright.

  Look and feel is not about game mechanics, the way a game works and how
it's played. It's how it looks.

  If you make a game that looks like, for example, a Barbie game (including
color schemes, fonts, character design...), the company that owns the
tradedress rights can sue you even if you never use the name "Barbie" or
any of the other trademarked names of the franchise. However, they cannot
sue you from copying the game mechanics of one of their games, if you use
your own original graphics, sounds and code.

  A puzzle piece consisting of four squares is not distinctive enough to
be considered tradedressing, even assuming tetris was tradedressed (which
it isn't).

> I'm not sure this is talking about video games, given the rest of the 
> paragraph. It makes much more sense if you read it in terms of something 
> like board games.

  And why would it make any difference, exactly?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> BTW, Pac-man was pretty casual:  you inserted a coin, played for 
> high-scores or until you ran out of coins.  Most old arcade games were 
> like that and at the same time were also pretty hardcore in the 
> challenge level.  COD is one such casual game today, except it's not 
> nearly as hardcore in the challenge.

  It's not so much about how easy it is to play. Certainly there are
blockbuster-budgeted ginormous multi-gigabyte games which are really
easy to learn and play, and can be easily played in short sessions.
Yet those are seldom classified as casual games.

  Of course the definition of "casual game" is a pretty fuzzy one, and
no single definition is going to cover all possible casual games (which,
at the same time, also usually covers games which are not generally
considered as such).

  Any definition would also have to be take the time period into account.
What was a "big" game 15 years ago (say, Doom) might not be such today.
(By today's standards Doom is a really tiny game in all possible respects,
except perhaps length.)

> >   Try to find a tetris game for the iPhone or the Android. I won't hold
> > my breath.

> Touch interface decidedly demands new play controls, like pulling an 
> elastic cord until you can release a bird.  Old direction and buttons 
> don't work for touch interface, you don't have tactile feedback for you 
> actions.  No, some rumble won't do it.

  That's not the problem.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 5/3/2011 11:15, Warp wrote:
>    The look and feel of a product can be trademarked (tradedress). It does
> not fall under copyright.

In the USA, it certainly did before the DMCA. I don't know about nowadays. 
The whole Apple vs Microsoft think was a look-and-feel copyright suit. Note 
that the original look-and-feel suit that got to the supreme court here was 
over greeting cards. The one guy did a bunch of focus groups and such to 
decide what greeting cards to make. The other guy wandered thru the stores, 
looked at the competitors, and told his artists to come up with similar 
cards. (One of the judges who disagreed with the ruling thought it was a bad 
idea to allow for uncopyrightable phrases like "I love you" combined with 
original art to still be subject to someone else's copyright.)

>    Look and feel is not about game mechanics, the way a game works and how
> it's played. It's how it looks.

Possibly.

>    If you make a game that looks like, for example, a Barbie game (including
> color schemes, fonts, character design...), the company that owns the
> tradedress rights can sue you even if you never use the name "Barbie" or
> any of the other trademarked names of the franchise.

This is true.

> However, they cannot
> sue you from copying the game mechanics of one of their games, if you use
> your own original graphics, sounds and code.

I'm not sure this is true everywhere.

>    A puzzle piece consisting of four squares is not distinctive enough to
> be considered tradedressing, even assuming tetris was tradedressed (which
> it isn't).
>
>> I'm not sure this is talking about video games, given the rest of the
>> paragraph. It makes much more sense if you read it in terms of something
>> like board games.
>
>    And why would it make any difference, exactly?

Because you're trying to apply engineering logic to the legal system. That 
isn't how it works. :-)

I'm just saying that what you can copyright on (say) a monopoly game board 
is probably easier to duplicate without violating copyright than what you 
can copyright in a video game. In monopoly, I can't copyright the layout of 
the squares or the rules. I can copyright what the squares say, the text of 
the rules, possibly the colors and their arrangements on the board. But 
those are easy to change without affecting the play of the game.

It's much harder to imagine you've copyrighted the look and feel of tetris 
but I can still make a tetris game. Basically, there isn't a whole lot I can 
change and still have the same tetris. The pieces still have to be the same 
shape, to fall and rotate, to disappear when they make a line.

Bejeweled might be sort of intermediate. What if they're not jewels? What if 
I change the gameplay to make different power-ups? These are all the sorts 
of things judges would decide, methinks.

One could easily argue, methinks, that the actual real-time interaction of a 
game is part of the "look and feel" of a video game, when it isn't part of 
the "look and feel" of a board game.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 03/05/2011 05:00 PM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> The other group comprises everything else. I call these "alpha games".
>
>    The rest of the world calls them casual games.

I thought "casual games" just refers to all those pointless 
browser-based Flash games that keep bored office workers amused in their 
lunch breaks. (?)

>    Try to find a tetris game for the iPhone or the Android. I won't hold
> my breath.
>
>    (Explanation: There's a copyright troll named "The Tetris Company" based
> in Russia which sends frivolous copyright claims to Apple and most other
> game providers for any user-created tetris clone.

Some people really have nothing better to do, eh?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> The rest of the world calls them casual games.
>
> And the first batch is AAA games.

Well, *I* wouldn't use the term AAA in the same sentence as, say, 
Cryostasis. It implies games which are actually *good*, whereas I'm 
talking about games sharing a certain design idea, regardless of whether 
they're actually any good.

Seriously. Cryostasis was hopeless.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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