giwake

game developer, I think?

  • they/them

i make games and music, sometimes.

profile picture by @thewaether!!!

moving to https://bsky.app/profile/giwake.bsky.social


SLIMEPATTERN
@SLIMEPATTERN

i've been playing CRINGE! by mark klem and some other 1994 doom wads over the past few years. and it's become very clear to me over the past few years that the FPS genre (and maybe games as a whole im just woefully underread so i dont rly wanna comment) around 96ish and before just had a radically different set of values about what was good or bad. like the idea of what fits within the modern accepted overton window of game design, whether that's in fan communities or in mainstream design. i also think about the stuff in Spear of Destiny, Marathon, Memento Mori, System Shock (1994), or Serenity/Eternity/Infinity. for example, it's very clear to me that the authors just simply did not think it was an inherent Goodness to have the game be beatable always.

and i don't mean in some skill level testing type of way, even though that is one form of it. memento mori and spear both throw you into situations where your life or death is down to the will of the RNG several times, and i don't think it's an accident. CRINGE! subjects you to required secret after required secret and so forth. marathon's Colony Ship For Sale's obtuse puzzle progression is notorious but it's not some aberration, the game has a few other parts like that. system shock lets you softlock yourself in all sorts of ways, is notorious for its hitscanners, and also presents you with a button that lets you laser the earth to death and game over, if you so choose.

a lot of people like to talk the talk about how game design hasn't progressed linearly through time. like i hope i dont need to reiterate that "oh they just didn't know what they were doing back then" is nonsense? because it is absolutely nonsense. but despite wider acceptance that that's nonsense, there's still this lack of willingness to actually contend with this stuff. to actually gaze upon being trapped in a tight corridor with a baron and only a shotgun and the only thing that can save you is mostly just the luck of how much it decides to attack, and how high it rolls on its damage rolls, despite the level giving you 200/200 health/armor right before.

it's an old cliche in games discourse to say that snakes and ladders isn't "actually a game". yet it's one of the most successful of all time, in a way that makes Call of Duty seem as obscure as, say, Monstrum for the amiga. i'm not sure that "successful" is worth praising, but it appears notable. i'm not sure i can say anything new, anything worth saying, about snakes and ladders.

but there's something to be said for the emotional and storytelling impact of the idea that BJ Blazkowicz, protagonist of Spear of Destiny, might just fucking die. because he's in World War 2. it's cartoon ass world war 2, but still. it's world war 2, you just fucking die there. there's something, completely bizarre about the year-2023 attitude of an fps game compared to that. the modern attitude where you could make it through world war 2 or citadel station or whatever the hell is going on in CRINGE! without relying a lot on luck, no matter how badass you are.

i think about also just. how much we narrow the emotional palette that we have available to us as artists.

i feel like a lot of times if i try to bring up that there's other ways of making or perceiving art, i get this kind of reaction like i'm being a weird snob. and i don't really have an actual defense other than to say: idk it's weird to call me a snob for me saying "hey this can be good too".

there's elements of this kind of design in the more popular FPSes of that previous era like Quake, Duke3D, Doom, and Wolf3D as well. for example the early parts of Wolf3D episode 2. but i think like, familiarity and just how well-tread they are in the general discussion has maybe made me not really evaluate this in those cases. but i bring it up to point out that it wasn't exactly an unpopular thing. it, to me, demonstrates that this has been a shift in the allowed "overton window" of games.

the obvious implication is also that there's stuff that could be a valid "overton window" fitting completely different types of games.

and that we haven't really properly come to terms with any of that culturally. like for example we get a lot of retro-styled shooters and of course the neverending parade of doom wads, but none of them are willing to go full 1994 in terms of what they value. and to a degree it would be impossible anyway. we are who we are and we can't go home again (and other cliches). but there's a lack of conscious awareness and acceptance about any of this too.

i dont know if i have an overarching point here, it's just, been on my mind, for quite some time

now playing: Abul Mogard - Slate-coloured Storm


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in reply to @SLIMEPATTERN's post:

you're right that we can't fully go back to that sensibility of game design - however it does give me pause for thought on different ways i could design the FPS projects i'm tinkering with. maybe it doesn't always have to be "fun".

i remember playing some of those doom wads when they were new! memento mori and particularly mm2 left a strong impact on me, even if they don't terribly stand up well as 'good' level design. lots of experimentation, and people coming up with things as they went. while i know this is a more general discussion on the merits of valid game design, i do think a lot of modern pwads follow a sort of difficulty design that is accepted as fair by the community, which can be really hard but are not quite as tied to luck so much as knowledge.

one thing i keep coming back to in my theory of design is that 'game over' as a concept doesn't make any sense to me, ubiquitous as it is. the only time the game is truly over when the player stops playing, not when any particular timeline of the game ceases. people dust themselves off and get back to it all the time.

we need to not be afraid of understanding and caring about the importance of that agency on the part of the player.

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