Don’t forget to vote for your favourite Guybrush-ne’er-to-be (“Special Edition” is currently in the lead)!

My question is, which of these discarded Guybrushes would have been your favourite?

For a completely different type of comparison, you can check out our earlier post that juxtaposes old and new cover artwork from the game.

When I linked these to a friend, he instantaneously called the new art “’special.’” Yeah… yeah: Even the poor little monkey responsible for numbering the sequel got a visual keelh… uh, overhaul.

If nothing else, contrasting the original with this all-new interpretation goes a long way in illustrating the amazing talents of the man behind the original cover, Steve Purcell. Steve, you’re awesome.

In “Guiding the Player’s Eye”, Matthew “Gangles” Gallant directs our attention to the complexities of orienting the player in a three-dimensional world by illustrating, via a generous amount of example screencaps, Valve’s use of various visual cues:

The best approach is to guide the player organically, catching their eye with elements that fit seamlessly into the game world. In this school of thought, Valve is peerless.

I do think that Valve have succeeded, overall, in building a more lasting foundation of expectations by utilizing these various methods, also simultaneously educating players more about flow, timing and guidance, in turn furthering players’ trust in the company’s ability to make and implement gameplay-related decisions.

The chief role of guidance, after all, is to generate the very important feelings of empowerment and control, even reward. In his recent article, “Visually Directing the Player”, Joshua Nuernberger (Boryokudan Rue, La Croix Pan, Resonance) discusses these very same concepts, albeit from the point of view of the 2D adventure developer:

I would define it as using visual elements on screen as to give the player a specific direction to reinforce their gameplay goals. For example, a giant arrow pointing down a hallway telling the player to go this way, not that way.

The point and click adventure genre has always been both extremely reliant on and innovative with audiovisual cues (which side do we position pixel hunts on?), and to have a developer explain his or her own take on the topic makes for interesting reading.

Finally, RPS’ John Walker connects the dots, pointing out that Nuernberger is effectively giving out “the same advice Valve has been shrieking at anyone who’ll listen”. To recap: “Guiding the Player’s Eye” available at The Quixotic Engineer, and “Visually Directing the Player” at A Hardy Developer’s Journal.

Where does the real enthusiast figure in all this? Always on the defensive?

What really befuddles me are the gloriously indistinct, contrary messages being sent out. Times Online recently caught my attention in posting two articles that could not be further apart from each other in register: Rob Fahey, from A New Challenger Appears, was gloriously able to squeeze through the article “Violent video games won’t corrupt anyone”:

Decades of research, often funded by groups with a vested interest in proving the “evil” of video games, have failed to prove a link between game violence and real-life violence. Is the issue, then, that we still consider video games to be for children, regardless of that huge, red 18 rating sticker?

Only a mere week later, though, Times Online publish the report, “Computer games fan ‘planned school massacre’”:

A 13-year-old computer games enthusiast is facing charges of attempted murder after police said that they had thwarted a plan to shoot dead his teachers for giving him poor marks.

A computer games enthusiast? Not a frustrated school kid, an angry student, a young misguided boy? Clearly what’s happening here is that first-hand experience and expertise – even if it stands at an arm’s length in the form of Fahey, for instance – simply does not get utilized; perhaps such sociocultural insensitivity towards gaming and gamers does not yet reach and touch a large enough portion of the audience to materialize in a response?

It’s not just the old guard that keeps on purporting these mistaken identities, overstatements and half-truths, either: Our very own games journalism tends to revel in sardonic reportage, gleeful misappropriation and biting commentary, often utilizing an insider perspective shielded by innate irony and negativity. What in the world is being done here, for instace? GotGame’s Sean Ryan briefly wrote about this in his piece, “Video Game Journalism: Contributing to Gaming’s Bad Image?”:

That being the case, why … is our own enthusiast media advocating this gross portrayal of our beloved hobbies by reporting these same stories? I agree that these stories should be told if they are in fact relevant to our niche sub-culture, but wouldn’t it be wise for video game journalists to exercise the appropriate filters? Otherwise, they’re just as guilty for giving credence to sensationalism.

Sometimes, when a new sorry excuse of a study or a report appears, I feel as though my own ability to properly discuss these topic has been marred somewhat by years of misunderstanding, ignorance and neglect. All I instinctively know is to throw the defence switch, fully aware of the fact that it’s not nearly enough. I do remain confident, nevertheless, that we will soon all benefit from the tacit knowledge and expertise of the generations of today – that is, the kids – who are much more equipped and accustomed to dealing with the intricacies of the medium. You go guys and girls!

A few months back, we brandished our interest towards BWF Game’s little-known upcoming Source engine project, Salvation. Just goes to show how swift the turnover rate is in the gaming business these days: Over the course of mere months, the game has now been rebranded as Scivelation, and instead of the previously utilized Valve tools, is now built on Epic Games’ Unreal III Engine.

“Set in the distant future, Scivelation’s universe is a world born out of the ashes of conflict and misery. An oppressive global dictatorship, known as the Regime, has risen to power after the aftermath of the Apocalypse; aggressively seeking out and eliminating any opposition to their tyrannical government.”

For me, the rather obscure mash-up title – Griffin McElroy already lamented the lack of a proper pronunciation guide – recalls the word skive (also rarely spelled as scive, according to the OED), which means “To evade a duty, to shirk; to avoid work by absenting oneself, to play truant.” Whether this is BWF Game’s intended meaning remains to be seen, of course, but with the player character taking “his or her place amongst the ranks of the resistance” in the narrative, this interpretation of the title does not seem an immense stretch of imagination for me.

After the jump, I have set up a modest comparison of screenshots between the two versions (Source and Unreal), and some more analysis about the game.

While Joystiq have set their expectations relatively low, positioning the game somewhere in-between Stalin vs. The Martians and X-Blades, we’re more hopeful in terms of the project’s offerings: As outlined in our post for the earlier iteration, we found the game to contain some potentially controversial subject matter not often seen in video games, and actually a little miracle that Scivelation is yet to garner publicity due to a  “…narrative turbocharged with Christian metaphor and a bleak, religion-oppressed dystopian setting.”

Beyond the controversy, what strikes me as most intriguing about the new press release is how strong an impression the game’s engine leaves on the look and feel of the game. Below, you can see the Source iteration – a crisper, sharper, visually more arresting (though Half-Life-ike) version:

And here, three all-new screenshots from the Unreal Engine version. While the graphics have received a next-gen overhaul of gloss, detail and sheen, they also interestingly suffer from darkness and murkiness often associated with its new engine.

Scivelation is slated for 2010, for “PC and next-gen consoles” – make of that what you will!

Revision Comparison

Some players might have missed the debacle altogether. Me? In response to the news, I envisioned a future scenario wherein Beyoncé models for a revised Alyx in Half-Life 2 EP3. I was desperate to commentate on the topic right there and then, but ultimately decided against it. Phew. Now, despite the fact that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters have barely been cast out to light, however, I am bold enough to suggest that an intriguing pattern has emerged, that a trajectory of design can be seen in the way Valve and Turtle Rock Studios have designed the various characters of the Left 4 Dead series.

In this text – which is just as much a history of the games’ development cycle as it is an analysis of the concept of “character” in the gaming medium – I will first navigate us through a series of dates, occurrences and currents that ultimately affected the make-up of the casts of both games. I will also attempt to explain and pinpoint decisions related to the series’ art direction. Since we’re broadly three months removed from Left 4 Dead 2 release date of November 17th, you’ll have just about enough time to read through my admittedly thorough assessment. Thanks for reading!

GameSetWatch’s Thomas Cross in fact previously touched upon the characterization of the Left 4 Dead cast last January, albeit from a slightly different vantage point: In his article, “Making Storytelling Look Natural”, he concludes that “Each [Left 4 Dead] character has a recognizable personality, if you take the time to learn them”, adding, “And yet these are still horror movie archetypes, it’s just that they’ve been given a slightly different stage this time round.” While I do wholly agree with his assessments, the focal point of Cross’ article is decidedly on the “hows” than the “whys” and the “whats”, which I rather choose to focus on in this article instead.

Since there exists a bidirectional relationship between characters and the narrative (or “stage”, as Cross calls it) encompassing them, if these characters are not instantaneously classifiable, positionable and relatable (as per our pre-existing societal knowledge), players can have difficulty in properly perceiving the story as a whole. This is especially true of the gaming medium, where avatar readability has been a chief priority for designers and artists – and justly so. For obvious reasons, it is preferred and encouraged that players reflect and transport their own personalities onto avatars as successfully as possible. Rather than fleshing out our avatars, though, there is a common, shared tendency to either aim for instant audiovisual accessibility and/or customizability. If developers chose to, of course, they could also attempt to round out characters in games’ narratives.

This, however, was not originally meant to happen in Left 4 Dead.

Old Characters

Valve employees have let out that Turtle Rock Studios, the original developer of the series, were not “…thinking in the same story-based way that Valve thinks”. Though Turtle Rock Studios ended up being fully assimilated into Valve in January 2008, it’s nevertheless more than probable that the creative intention to include a narrative as well as more storytelling sprang up relatively early in development, definitely before the actual acquisition took place. After all, as early as May of 2007, Michael Booth described Turtle Rock Studios’ relationship with Valve as going “far beyond being an engine licensee or distribution partner. … Valve would say the same thing.” On August 4, 2008, Doug Lombardi characterized the acquisition as “a piece of paper that makes things official.”

Old Louis

Nevertheless, even later in the production, it also became apparent that dialogue-oriented cutbacks would have to be made. There has been mention of considerable omissions – after all, it has been confirmed that a full storyline for the game exists (and can be found hypothesized in the Steam Forums), including a “…dictionary with different terms for areas and infected that describe how the Director will handle things in [a particular] area.” In an interview with Eurogamer, Doug Lombardi further clarified the reasons for these cuts, stating that “[Valve] saw a number of reasons to pull back with the first game, primarily because the replayability suffers with a scripted sequence” and that they had “much more dialogue amongst the characters originally, and that was really getting in the way of people understanding the co-op nature”.

The forthcoming Left 4 Dead 2, on the other hand, is to delve deeper into establishing visible narrative progression, unlike the first game, where most storytelling is relayed by the spray-filled walls of the game’s safe houses. Though an ingenious way of sending information transparently to players, the downside to these sprays is their inherent disconnection from the members of the cast as well as their personalities, rendering the sprays largely unsuited for character growth. In relation to this, Lombardi has promised that Valve will “bring more story to [Left 4 Dead 2] in terms of the players’ dialogue” instead.

“Not only are we telling the story of these characters, but we’re telling the story of this world, we’re seeing how things fall apart, and a new way of interacting with the infection” – Chet Faliszek

Old Zoey & Francis

This admittedly long-winded history lesson serves to clarify to us three major points present in the Left 4 Dead development timeline: First, the original Turtle Rock design of Left 4 Dead did not contain as much story as it does now. Second, relatively early on, Valve’s influence on the game nevertheless resulted in a proper storyline being implemented. Third, late in the development, playtests indicated that players reacted disappointingly to a more fully fleshed narrative, and some upgrades to these elements were thus once again scaled back. A fourth point, if we were to discuss the future now and not later on in the article, would be the return of the deeper storyline in the forthcoming sequel.

All these stages ended up influencing the characters’ make-up, and in this light, it’s perhaps easier for us to see the motivations that drove Valve to brusquely revise important player models so late. Above all, the changes can be seen to be a direct response to the needs and requirements of the arising situation: When storytelling was to be omitted, the team sought to find a way to keep the cast accessible and understandable to players of the game. With less story to round and flesh out the characters, something else had to be done to maintain this relationship. As a result, the revised survivors could be seen to be intentionally designed to be more easily identifiable and recognizable out of the box.

Old Francis

In this sense, the revision is closely connected to the characters’ primary function as players’ avatars: The now erased, first cast of characters was, for the lack of better description, damaged goods (Take a look at how adorable Francis looks on the left); Without the cut storyline elements functioning as padding, this type of character conceptualization ultimately made the less iconic cast harder for players to quickly define, classify and relate to. After all, storytelling in games still primarily relies upon a foundation laid down by other media: Literature, theatre, the movies.

In the classic arts, “actors” are used to play “roles” that in turn represent “characters”, by displaying personality through movement and action, and by emphasizing traits: Outwardly looks, responses, use of language (both bodily and verbal). The concept of the (Jungian) archetype, especially in the extended meaning found in literary criticism as referring to recurring generic motifs, is very useful here. In the realm of literature and theatre, the role of the archetype principally as a narrative method is relatively clear-cut, but in the gaming medium, the archetype-as-avatar relationship causes additional factors to consider: In designing avatars, developers have to take into account functions beyond the aforementioned types of characterization.

This is because characters in video games have functions in the programmatic rules of the game, especially so if we perceive games to be “limited formal systems”. In this case, the characters’ role as agents for narrative exposition of the overarching storyline is secondary to their primary function as player avatar, as vessels for player interaction inside the “game world”. Valve, in turn, have displayed a very deep commitment to primarily function-based avatar art direction that takes into account shape, form and lighting – right down to codified principles. They are effecting visual design that is philosophically oriented toward maximum functionalism: Portal, for instance, had a distinct, stylized aesthetic informed by playtesting and feedback; To quote Lombardi again, “the first iteration [of Portal] was much more lush in terms of graphics…and people were having trouble identifying the pathways… We had to make it this sparse environment to get to the gameplay.”

Valve designer Jason Mitchell’s paper, “Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2”, was an astonishing explanation of the multitudinous rendering processes that went into the graphical design of Team Fortress 2. (For a concise explanation of “illustrative rendering”, a video was released). Similarly, it is no accident that Valve are planning on publishing a comic book adaptation of Team Fortress 2: The primary source of inspiration for the graphical look of TF2 was early 20th century commercial illustrators – Cornwell, Leyendecker, Rockwell. Advertisements are, at least in theory (so diluted, the postmodern TV spot!), designed to convey as much information as possible in the least amount of space and time. This idea, of maximum potential identification, heavily factored into the art design of Team Fortress 2. Elaborate techniques were applied “so that players are able to easily identify other players in the game, and assess the possible threat”; Characters were designed to possess “…distinct silhouettes that can be easily identified”.

New Concepts

During the aforementioned 2008 E3 reveal of the new survivors, Gabe Newell’s presentation briefly read: “Taking the lessons learned from Team Fortress 2 about read hierarchy and providing useful and immediate information via character design.” This is where the team’s specific focus on readability, identification and distinction bled into the final stages of Left 4 Dead development, and had as much effect on the characters as did the process of cutting down the storyline. This is not at all surprising considering Valve’s “cabal” development model that puts great weight on spreading, sharing and mobilizing innovations as well as individuals. When this particular methodology of design, of visual distinction and identification, was applied to the Left 4 Dead cast in the form of the revision, a distinct collision of the role and function of “character” arose, causing the upheaval I referenced at the very beginning of this article.

From an avatar-, character-oriented point of view, after all, there are obvious differences in-between the two games: Firstly, each character in Team Fortress 2 is a distinct base-level representation of abstract class (or “role”, rather, should we get into a semantic discussion); It’s acceptable and even desired for these avatars to be visually generic, exaggerated and archetypal because the very meaning of the word “class” is the same as the word “genus”. Left 4 Dead’s characters, however, are derived from a less programmatic register, from everyday society: Instead of being absolute base-level manifestations, the four survivors are slightly higher-level: We have Bill, a Vietnam veteran; Louis, an assistant manager at a retail electronics store; Zoey, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family, and Francis, a tattooed biker. Intriguingly, as stereotypical as the characters are, it is nevertheless possible to further compress, if you will, the characters into lower-level archetypes.

I would personally affix the characters the following tags: The Wise Man (in Jungian terms, again…), the white-collar everyman, the newbie and the lonely ranger. (Feel free to correct me in the comments!)

As We Know Them

Now, as a distinct look and feel had already been established for the characters, some players had already identified (with) the characters. Semantically speaking, the revised cast of characters no longer represented the exact same “person”. Yes, one could potentially argue that all Francis did was lose a few pounds and shave, and that Louis got a hot TV makeover, but what about Zoey? Herein lies a perfect collision of the two aforementioned types of character function, of character-as-narrative-vehicle and character-as-avatar-as-game-mechanic.

All in all, we can conclude that the revised cast of Left 4 Dead 1 fulfilled two separate design-related needs: On the one hand, the developers had to find a way to narrow the narrative gap now present between players and the characters due to cutbacks being exacted on the game. On the other hand, Valve’s general, company-wide art direction had been simultaneously moving towards a more functional implementation. These two sides melded, blending appeal with function, ultimately creating a slightly more iconic set.

Teaser Cast

Finally, to steamroll the entire article into Left 4 Dead 2. Beyond promises of more dialogue and narrative exposition, we can already see for ourselves how the cast, this time, is decidedly less archetypal and consists of higher-level stereotypes; The mere existence of Coach’s religious leanings and Rochelle’s taste in music tell us this much! There also exist early indications of interpersonal schism (not in small part due to the inclusion of Nick), which obviously means that the characters’ position and function as avatars is no longer as strictly dictated by player identification alone. To briefly reiterate, the reasons for this are the following: Firstly, Left 4 Dead is now an established brand. Secondly, players are aware of the gameplay mechanisms and no longer need to be introduced to it. Thirdly, Valve have artistic ambitions to produce more storytelling.

L4D2 Posters

As briefly illustrated in my earlier post on the topic, the posters of the sequel’s campaigns already exhibit a larger degree of interpersonal relationships and personality. It is also evident that the roles affixed to Coach, Rochelle, Ellis and Nick are higher-level than those assigned to Zoey et al: A high-school football coach, a news reporter, a mechanic and a conman. As we did with the first game, here too we can assign a compressed, lower-level set of stereo-/archetypes to match the four. They might be, for instance, the teacher, the heroine, the kid and the cynic. The very fact that I am struggling to distil the characters into lower-level stereotypes tells us that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters are going to be more fully rounded than those of Left 4 Dead.

What you’ve just read is an interpretation of the overarching processes and phenomena – the whats and the whys – that had an effect on how each these three casts ultimately turned out visually, narratively and functionally. At this juncture, I do want to emphasise how great a share of things outlined here are nothing new in itself, as it is only natural for us to expect many of the aforementioned upgrades and improvements from a video game sequel – these are the very things that we expect sequels to be and to do. Despite these facts, it remains nevertheless both intriguing and therapeutic to attempt to map out the various processes and mechanisms that go into game development in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the functions and features of the characters we play as.

In closing, I offer a thought: I always play as Francis, for deep down he loves life, the hating just a façade; how else could he smile so, in the face of a zombie apocalypse?

This seems to be about to change in Left 4 Dead 2: In the two campaign posters revealed so far – Swamp Fever and The Parish – there are marked differences compared to the previous game.

As we know, there is little to no interpersonal narrative progression in the first game, for reasons elaborated in the forthcoming article. To name an example, though, Valve’s Jason Mitchell revealed that potential “romantic tension between Zoey and Francis … did not playtest well”. But as has been promised in several interviews, this is about to change. My question is, then, does the manner and style of character positioning illustrated below foreshadow the storyline of the game? What the posters do, most certainly, is reveal to us principal features of the characters’ personalities:

Here’s my twopence worth psychological analysis of each character, based on nothing but the posters and the posters alone (for substantiated information on the characters, you could visit Zombicidal): Firstly, there is specific physical interplay, not seen with the other characters, between Coach and Rochelle; Coach, always at the back, seems reserved, mindful and slightly unsettled. Rochelle, active and courageous, is at the front, but also seems to find solace and relief in having Coach – not the other two – covering her back.

Ellis and Nick, then, are more rogue, with Ellis always the most expectant and the keenest on making progress. Nick is wary of his company just as much as he is of the overall situation.

My argument is the following: Based on the original set of posters, even if personality-oriented conclusions could be made, not nearly to the same degree and distinction as based on mere two posters out of five. I may have taken a jump-start and my analysis may be unsubstantiated, but there is no denying the implications are there. Are you looking forward to more character interaction in Left 4 Dead 2?

I’d also like to attempt to propose the answer to two questions: First, do either manage to capture your interest? Second, do the demos succeed in their utilization of demonstrative methodology? Difficult questions that I hope to address in my post. Read on, and check out some more comparative screenshots after the jump!

Earlier, we established that the game is set around the ominous Quiet Haven Hotel, where Joe and Lucy Davis take shelter overnight. Over the course of the new 2009 demo, however, the player is positioned in the shoes of Agnes, another visitor at the eerie hotel. Agnes, having run away and fallen asleep in her room, dreams “…a strange dream that soon turns into her worst nightmare.”

Enter “Scandinavian rock god” Vilde Veihlo, Agnes’ favourite star. This ghost-like, floating rocker guides Agnes with a series of obscure clues, and Agnes, smitten with her dreamy idol, obliges with great gusto, at times worrying how she’s portraying herself in his presence. As difficult as it is to grasp the full implications of her actions in the demo, it remains clear that she is fulfilling some sort of predetermined role in the finer fabric of events transpiring in the area.

Mind you, both Agnes and her dream seem perfectly ludicrous at first: She tends to act rather childishly, and remains calm and unperturbed even when she finds herself locked in her room – all too willing to embrace the quite horrific conditions (a fresh grave right beneath her window!) and implications laid out in her dream-state.

With neither Agnes nor Veihlo – or anything else, for that matter – established when actual gameplay begins, it first felt as though a lack of surface might end up being the demo’s ultimate downfall. But having completed the demo, I begun to realize how it was not so important that either character be there, but be there together, acting out their roles; Secondly, whoever her dream guide really is (whether it is Agnes’ own consciousness, or someone else’s) seemed to know how to best lure Agnes into fulfilling her task, as Veihlo is suited for the mere fact that she is so taken by him. It’s made clear that she objectifies and sexualizes Veihlo, even when she thinks he’s dead.

Overall, the demo’s short narrative remains schizophrenic, jagged and violent – ultimately enticing, but also hard to take at face value without better knowledge.

Now, this finally leads us up to my second question, relating to the nature of the demonstration at work: I truly came to wonder whether it’s a) fair or b) useful to present such a splintered facet of the game as a demo? I am very much intrigued by the situation, but remain uncertain whether this is because I know very little more than I did before I started, or because the game is truly that interesting?

This profoundly relates to the relationship of absence and presence of information in the game’s narrative, and to conclude, I have no answer – not without playing the game fully first. The bottom line is that where the trailer seemed utterly focused on its machinegun-like slideshow of horror, the demo begins with a surprisingly meditative and verbose pace, offering little hint of what may come. This leads me to think there may be sudden versatility to the game.

Secondly, the game’s official website presents to us a far broader array of locations, characters and situations not touched in any manner or degree in the demo, and as the game has several playable characters, it remains to be seen whether Agnes has a fleshed-out role in the game, or whether she’s more of a bait designed for the demo. Overall, the demo does remind me of Yahtzee’s Chzo Mythos series, especially its last two parts, Trilby’s Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice. This is as strong a recommendation as any.

Against this backdrop, the old demo is somewhat relegated to a footnote, and Michalski is probably not very pleased that I should bring it up anyway; still, it’s very hard not to feel some intrigue with the possibility of analyzing and comparing old and new material from the production cycle, for the sake of science…

That being said, the Downfall demo of 2007 opens up in a completely different manner: The apparent (…after the new demo, I’m not so sure any more…) main character of the game, Joe, is being interrogated by an anonymous police officer, and it appears he has been taken in for manslaughter.

Joe then proceeds to narrate his side of the story over some quite startling imagery that manages to touch, over the period of a few minutes, eating disorder, child abuse, involuntary imprisonment, insanity and cannibalism – quite a change of pace, both with the clarity of narration and with its delivery. The actual gameplay of the demo only lasts for a fleeting moment, but does quite perversely raise the question of how much is it even necessary to have gameplay in a demo, if it’s primary function – to develop interest – is attained?

Ultimately, I was left wondering whether the old demo could be considered somewhat of a spoiler, or whether the two games (are they somehow separate? What, if anything, changed during the game’s progress from a demo to a full-fledged release?) are even that related to each other; only a play-through will tell!

Hydrophobia-Cryostasis

According to Alec Tractenberg of 1C Publishing, the game’s protagonist – meteorologist Alex Nestarov – will go face to face with “zombie monsters”, “dynamic fractally generated frost” and “hydrodynamics”. 

Hydrophobia, on the other hand, remains elusive: Although the game is still slated for an undefined March ‘09 release, it remains to be seen whether Blade Interactive can actually bring the game out in time; there has been no new footage or news since a short E3 2008 teaser trailer. Now, the question remains – which of the two aqua-tastic titles titillates your taste buds more?