There's an interesting article over at The Escapist on the rights of players in virtual worlds — covering a myriad of issues (recourse for theft, ownership of items, DRM, etc) on a global scale, Erin Hoffman has a nice look at some of the issues that have been rearing their ugly heads and what players, companies, and even governments are doing about it. Whatever the resolution ends up being, 'virtual' rights are an increasing problem for parties on all sides of the issue(s) at stake:

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Ernest Adams of the No Twinkie Database of bad game design decisions is back with volume 9 of his "bad designer, no Twinkie!" essay series. Based on a variety of suggestions from readers, Adams outlines a number of bad design decisions — not all of which I necessarily agree with, but certainly provides some fodder for discussion. Unclear outlining of win/loss conditions are an example of a 'Twinkie denying' design flaw:

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Danc at Lost Garden has an interesting post up on themes in games and the effect on game design: while there are definite reasons for the same types of themes and aesthetics popping up in games over and over again, a careful balance needs to be struck between 'skinning' themes and mechanics and putting coherent game play above it all. It's better that a game 'reads' badly from a literary (narrative) standpoint, but makes sense in terms of game play:

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You may have seen a few ad spots floating around Kotaku recently about some new courses coming to AFTRS in 2009. Ads or no, I thought it was well worth digging deeper to find out more details for you -- just as Logan gave up his gig here at the Kotaku desk to take up the dream gig of Game Designer at Tantalus, I'm sure plenty of readers would love to explore the opportunity of making games. And these two courses really do seem to be an excellent way for talented, creative game lovers to go a step beyond the code and artistry (awesome as that is) and aim for a designer role.

Today some brief notes on what I've learned about the courses, and in coming days I'll share some more information gleaned from interviews with two of the key staff involved with the development of the new programs.

The essentials. We're talking Graduate Diploma level studies, with applications due November 7. Courses in Game Design and Virtual Worlds are both full-time over two semesters in 2009. These aren't like courses you can do at a graphics college. You won't be focusing on learning 3D graphics and programming tools. The focus is creative leadership, understanding game mechanics, and prototyping your concepts. More on the basic ideas behind the two new courses in a video after the jump.

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Details are important. Really important. When gamers play a title and something looks off, they notice it right away. No wonder Capcom spent so much time recreating realistic guns and clothes. Capcom had to make the guns realistic guns because, as Takeuchi puts it, many Americans probably have held real guns. About the clothes, he adds:

...the footwear and gloves the main character wears are all based on real items. We contacted the makers of those items to find out all the little details that go into making them, that way players don't have a sense of the game being completely divorced from reality. And that's how we were able to realistically recreate the proper specs for the items used in the game. When you look at the trailer, you see the main character's clothing and all the fibers that comprise it.

We really paid attention to the details. We made it so that the fabric of his shirt actually gives the illusion of breathing like its real-life counterpart; it is also decidedly different from the heavier material that hangs down below it.

Finally! Gaming gets BREATHING SHIRTS. It's about time.

Jun Takeuchi Interview [Capcom IR]

'Matthew Wasteland' of Magical Wasteland has a thought provoking essay up over at GameSetWatch on how we think of games as art — and why it may not work, or what our current limitations are. His opinion is the more we think about this stuff, the more we can work on overcoming current problems — certainly not an unreasonable point of view. My favourite section was on the problem of 'systems as art' (his example is a little gem called The Marriage, which is lacking in context to say the least) — a pretty nice critique of some of the intentionally 'artistic' games that seek to 'rise above' the entertaining masses:

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In a brief look at Mega Man 9, the Wall Street Journal's Jamin Brophy-Warren notes that the game's deliberate flicker and slowdown were added in for reasons other than the retro-feel. They make the game more demanding.

"Why make a game so hard that only the most skilled and determined players can complete it?" asks Brophy-Warren, who then proves the appeal of just such a game. "What makes games such as Bangai-O [Spirits] appealing is that glimmer of joy a player gets from even the smallest achievements. (I only squeaked through the tutorial for Bangai-O, so even mastering the accuracy aspect of the game was an accomplishment for me.)"

The writer talks to Treasure, which developed Bangai-O Spirits, and Capcom's Hironobu Takeshita, and also Jesper Juul, a video game researcher at MIT. ""It's about the feeling of inadequacy," he says. "You get stuck somewhere and feel stupid." That can lead to a sense of triumph if one does eventually succeed."

Hard to Handle [The Wall Street Journal]

Brandon Sheffield has a great interview up on Gamasutra with Yoshi Ono, producer of Street Fighter IV (among other things), on the franchise, the new game in particular, and on the genre as a whole. There's plenty of technical stuff dealing with transitioning 2D games into 3D, but also discussion on why it's a pretty lonely proposition to make fighting games these days and on making fighting games more accessible and less off-putting to a wide audience:

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a nice interview up with Turbine producer Jeffrey Steefel, mostly centered on the Lord of the Rings Online forthcoming Mines of Moria expansion — also discussed are things like how Steefel perceives LOTRO's performance, expansion features, and issues of designing for a licence. While WoW is wide open, not being tied to anything but itself, LOTRO has slightly more constraints in what can — or should — be done. Steefel doesn't see this as a problem, however:

It's actually more of an opportunity than a problem. It's rarely a problem. I've been a sort of creative person for a long time - in this business and then before that as a performer. And you always need some kind of boundary. Start with a blank canvas and say that you're going to make stuff up in this big empty vac cum... it's actually really hard to do. It's good to have boundaries. The beauty of Tolkein is that he's created these exquisitely detailed boundaries that have so much depth and richness inside them, and yet still have all kinds of things which are open for interpretation. I mean, we built Angmar basically from scratch, to our liking, based on very few clues... and yet it still feels as if it belongs in Middle Earth. There's certain things - I can't have flying cars or motorcycles or things like that. But I can have other things which are very exciting and it means, by definition, the world has a consistency, where it feels right. It all fits together. There's not things which just don't make sense.

Interesting interview with some great little tidbits, especially if you're interested in LOTRO specifically.

Jeffrey Steefel on LOTRO: Mines of Moria [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

The Cutter IT Journal is offering their latest issue — on the subject of the challenges of virtual worlds — for free (registration required); the issue includes articles on 'real world' applications of virtual worlds and the pitfalls and promises of such a presence. I've only had time to read the introduction and breeze quickly through the rest of the issue, but if you're interested in the rise (?) of virtual worlds, it looks to have some interesting fodder:

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