Make Them Want. Delay. Fulfill. Repeat.

Players can get a deep feeling of satisfaction from games that literally play themselves. How cool is that?

Last week, I began my discourse on how video games can warp your brain chemistry to bring you pleasure in order to make lots of money and how difficult, delicate, and awesome that process is.

I have eight observations about how video games cause your brain to secrete delicious dopamine. Here are the last four. If you can master this dark art, endless success awaits.

5. Different Genres of Games Provide Different Dopamine Delivery Systems

Role-playing games let your characters earn small improvements, providing a constant flow of drug. Tough puzzle games and Dark Souls-type games hold back your dose for a while as you master a challenge and then reward you in one big flood when you finally succeed.

Open-ended games like Destiny are for the serious addict, who wants a lot of hits over a period of time. Short, self-contained games are for someone who wants a limited supply or likes getting the hits in a variety of ways.

This is why there will always be a market for finite-length single-player story games. They are safe to play. However intensely they consume your time for a while, they end. I'm fine with dumping all this time into Subnautica because I know I will eventually kill the Final Fish and be free.

By the way, part of the genius of Achievements systems is that they create a whole new layer of fulfillment and addiction on top of what the games already provide, and they do it with very little effort. Whatever mad genius in Microsoft came up with the idea of the Gamer Score deserves the Nobel Prize For Awesomeness.

My next game, Queen's Wish. Beating dungeons gets resources. Use resources to buy shops. The shops give you better equipment. Each step provides dopamine.

6. Like All Drugs, You Will Eventually Develop Tolerance

You will always develop tolerance for a drug. You will eventually get tired of walking on the hedonic treadmill.

Most people, as they age, stop playing video games. They sometimes ask me, confused, why they don't want to play anymore. Games used to seem so important.

Part of this is the increasing obligations of adulthood, taking away your ability to spend hundreds of hours in an MMO. I think it's more than that. After all, if you care about something, REALLY care, you'll make time for it. If you were that desperate to play video games, you'd play video games.

No, I think it is that video game-induced dopamine hits are a fleeting and hollow pleasure. Every hit you get makes you less fulfilled than the one before. The sense of accomplishment is an illusion, after all. Eventually, the fun you get just doesn't justify the time expended, and you put down the controller and leave your house.

When the rewards are provides by machines you make yourself, that magnifies the fulfillment. Have this game running on three computers simultaneously to triple your pleasure!

7. Don't Be So Judgmental About This.

Seriously. Dopamine addiction is a problem, but it isn't that huge a problem. Why get so mad about it? You're not trying to cure cancer. You're not freeing an oppressed people. You're writing about video games.

Look. I love video games. I have my whole life. I've dedicated my career to them. I let me kids play them. I think they're terrific, in moderation.

Yet, if you spend a hundred hours playing a video game, I think you should ask yourself if it's the best use of your time. If you spend a thousand hours playing a game, I think that you are making a mistake. If my kids try to get into speedrunning, I will, in a friendly and gentle way, strongly encourage them to not do that.

Look, I don't want to make any big fancy declarations about morality or what other developers should do. Video game writing already has wayyy too much of that. I just try to run my business in a way I can feel good about.

These days, I write games that you can be pretty much done with after 50 hours. That's a lot of distraction and dopamine for your 20 bucks, and then I free you so you at least have the chance to go to the park or take swing dancing lessons. This is how I make my peace morally with what I sell.

All I know is this: Writing video games that provide pleasure without dopamine hits can be done. It's just hard. Storytelling is hard. Generating emotions is hard. Dopamine is the cheat code for compelling game design.

Which brings us back to Anthem.

Now you can carry your addictions on your walks with you! You never need to have a moment of tranquility again!

8. If You Want To Sell a Drug, You Have To Provide the Drug!

This is the final point, and the one that will protect you from ruin.

Almost every game, even the most artsy one, uses dopamine hits to keep the player going. For example, Papers, Please! is unquestionably artsy, but it provides happy-making rewards for each challenge you complete correctly, and there is even a nice score sheet at the end of every day. (Return of the Obra Dinn does exactly the same thing, but it is subtler.)

I think a major skill of a successful game designer is a feel for how to give a player dopamine. How to generate those hits. How to pace them. How to introduce enough variety in other parts of the game to create the illusion of a fulfilling activity.

If people are saying about your looter shooter, "We aren't getting good enough loot," that's not a whine. It shows you are fundamentally failing at your main task. It's like someone at your restaurant complaining that their meal doesn't contain food.

You have to respond by giving them more food. Not too much. Not enough to gorge them. Just enough to make them feel rewarded enough to stay on your hamster wheel.

Make the player want. Hold back what they want. Give them what they want. Repeat forever. This is the art.

This is a touch cynical, I know, but it's how I built a career and a life in this business. Game colleges should have classes called "Addiction For Fun and Profit, Mainly Profit." If you want to sell video games, you ignore this topic at your peril.

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I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror. You can also follow me on Twitter.

I Settle All Video Game Arguments, Part 2: What Is a Game?

According to the rigorous definition of Game that I will provide, creating "dank memes" IS a video game.

One of the painful things about being in the games biz for a long (LONG) time is that you see the same tedious arguments brought up and rehashed, again and again, by new generations. I am writing a series of posts to settle these debates once and for all.

No need to thank me. When I get the Nobel Prize, don't worry about sending the medal. I just want the money.

This time, I settle a question that has tormented academics and Mad On Twitter types alike: What is the definition of a game?

How This Tedious Discussion Started

When the Indie Boom hit, several games of the genre called Walking Simulators came out and achieved huge financial and critical success. I personally enjoyed many of them greatly. (Despite this, I still use the term "Walking Simulator" because I find it funny.)

When they first gained notice, a certain portion of the gamer community was angered by the acclaim for Walking Simulators, sniffing in response that they "Aren't games."

This is, of course, entirely the wrong way to phrase their complaint. What they should have said was, "These games, whatever their good qualities, strip away everything we value in gaming and don't give us enough hours of distraction for our limited dollars, and the fact they are being treated as the future and only thing of value in our medium fills us with resentment."

Whether you agree with that sentiment or not (and there's plenty to say on both sides), it is a statement you can actually debate on its merits.

But this debate, such as it was, was moot. Last I checked, Walking Sims (even really good new ones) are selling modest numbers and games where you shoot monsters in the face are still making billions.

So there was no reason to continue the argument ...

According to my rigorous definite of Game, this IS a video game.

But Then Academia Got Involved.

A lot of people go to college to study videogames, and some try to create advanced critical analysis of the form. Don't blame me. It's not my fault.

I studied theatre in college, which was a fantastic experience. When I was there, I observed that people new to an art form constantly try to attach firm definitions to everything in it.

"What IS a play? What is acting? What is a work of art? What is the explicit definition of joy? And beauty? Dude, my hands are HUGE! They can touch anything but themselves!"

Exercises like this are not useless. It's good, when you’re young, to spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of your art form. Then you stop, because you realize that the nature of art is a very slippery thing. Whatever rule you come up with, someone else will become awesome by breaking it.

Here's the deal with art: Your brain compels you to make a thing, then you make it, then people dig it or they don't. The end.

Despite this, otherwise sensible people still actually spend time trying to define a game. Google "What is a game" and marvel in wonder. It's really quite the thing. A whole bunch of definitions, none of them adequate, because they're all too broad or too narrow or too abstract.

So I'll settle the issue and save everyone a bunch of time. This is important to me because I'm working on a cool new indie role-playing thing now, and it'll be out soon, and I want to be sure I can call it a game so I don't get in trouble with the FDA or whatever.

According to my rigorous definition of Game, this is NOT a video game.

What Is a Game?

Consider the large, highly profitable genre called Hidden Object Games.

Here's how they work. The game says, "There's a squid on the screen." Then you find and click the squid. Then you do the same thing with a sandwich or a skull or whatever.

Is this a game? I mean, hell, I'm not 100% sure this counts as an ACTIVITY.

But it has to be a game. How do I know? Because "Hidden Object Game" has "Game" in the name.

So just clicking a few times makes it a game, and you have to click just to launch the game. Sooo ...

According to my rigorous definition of Game, this IS a video game.

The Answer!

If you're asking, "Is this a game?" it's a game. Sure! Why not? Who cares? It might be a good game or a long game or a bad game or a word processor.

Semantics arguments are lame. Argue about the content. What is a game is trying to do, how does it attempt it, how well did it succeed, and why? That's all that matters.

Wait. You Didn't Actually Define a Game.

So if you're hangin' out and someone starts to discuss with you what the definition of a game (or gameplay, or play, or immersion, or ludonarrative dissonance) is, do what I do!

Step 1: Nod sagely and adopt an expression of extreme concentration.

Step 2: Point over the person's shoulder and shout, "Hey, what's that!?"

Step 3: Activate the ninja smoke bomb you have in your pocket. FWOOOOSH!

Step 4: Sneak into another room.

Step 5: Talk to literally anyone else about literally anything else.

Problem solved!

According to my rigorous definition of Game, this IS a video game.

This Is Ridiculous. By Your Laughable Definition, Photoshop and Excel Are Games. That Is So Broad As To Be Meaningless! But What If You First Define Gameplay To Be ...

OK, you've broken through. My decades of experience have enabled me to have one simple, unquestionable test for how to peel apart interactivity for a productive purpose from interactivity for an entertainment purpose. First, you ... Hey, what's that!

FWOOOOSH!

As An Extra Multiball Reward For Making It All the Way to the End of This Mess, I Will Settle Once and For All the Question: "Are Video Games Art?"

No. Never. Don't be silly.

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If you're intrigued by giant indie RPGs with cool adventures and epic stories, you can wishlist our next "game" on Steam. News about our work and random musings can be found on our Twitter.

I Settle All Video Game Arguments, Part 1: Game Reviews

There was a ridiculous controversy recently because a games journo was bad at this difficult game. All time spent debating it was time wasted. I am writing this so that such time-wastage never happens again. I live to serve.

"You can speak your mind but not on my time."
      - William Martin Joel 

One of the painful things about being in the games biz for a long (LONG) time is that you see the same tedious arguments brought up and rehashed, again and again, by new generations. I am writing a series of posts to settle these debates once and for all.

Don't bother to thank me. Seeing my own face whenever I look into the mirror is reward enough.

First up, I will settle all debates regarding games reviewers: How good should a reviewer be at a game? What topics are a reviewer allowed to bring up when doing a review? Are review scores and review aggregators a good thing? Does anyone still care about game reviews?

So the next time someone gets Mad On the Internet about a game review or mega-butthurt because the newest installment of their fave series gets a 91% when they KNOW it should have gotten a 93%, you can send them to this page and get on with your life.

A thoughtful and useful review of Avernum. Hmm. Let me check if it's still, 17 years later, making me money? Yep!!!

Why Are You Authorized to Settle This Argument Forever?

Because I am old, and that makes me wise. Also, once PC Gamer gave one of my most popular and enduring games a 17% review, literally said it was worse than choking to death on your own vomit, and provided a helpful sidebar with a list of rock stars who choked to death on their own vomit.

Believe me, every possible opinion you can have about game reviews, I have had at one time or another.

(Also, we have a kick-ass new indie, retro role-playing game coming out in early 2018, and I want to make sure everyone's heads are on straight before they start reviewing it.)

The Most Important Fact About Reviews

Think about your friends. (For the purpose of this exercise, I will assume you have friends.) When they recommend games/movies/TV shows to you, you take their personalities into account, right?

For example, there are some people who I listen to when they say a movie is good, and there are others who I won't, because they only like cheesy romantic comedies and Shrek. Or some guy will say I have to play Face Obliterator 5000, and I like him and all, but I'm not a fan of the Face Obliterator genre. Or, while his wife is great, no, I don't want to see the new Benedict Cumberbatch movie. Under any circumstances.

They're good people. We just have different tastes. I don't make them watch the long, depressing foreign movies I like, and they restrict their evangelizing Rick & Morty to me to one hour per day. I only accept recommendations from people when I've found their tastes line up with mine. You're the same way, right?

Pick Reviewers The Same Way

Reviewers are just individual humans, with their own tastes, and no one human can be a perfect, impartial justice machine for evaluating a work of art. Any decent reviewer can say how buggy a game is and whether it runs OK on their PC. Beyond that, it's just, like, your opinion, man. 

If you want reviews, don't just sit there. Find a couple reviewers you like and read them. If a web site doesn't have regular reviewers and just uses a rotating stable of whatever recent college grad is most desperate that week, it's not going to be useful to you. It takes work to find a site that works for you, but that's life.

Fun bonus fact: All awards for art, from the Nobel prizes down to video game awards, are arbitrary and meaningless. If you want to obsess about the Oscars, hey, you do you, but don't pretend they have any value beyond distracting you for a minute.

Are Numerical Review Scores Dumb?

On the surface, yes, evaluating a complex work of art and boiling it down to a single number is dumb. I mean, it's not like critics have an Art Scale, and they can put the last Call of Duty on it and say, "This game weighs 8.3 Arts, and the last game only weighs 7.1 Arts, and that's 1.2 Arts more!!! So this game gets a 93%."

Review scores, in practice, are fine. However, remember, a high or low number is just a reviewer giving an opinion, and if you trust his or her opinions, you're fine. High number means they like it. If a reviewer I trust says, "Yeah, this game is a B-," I know what's goin' on.

Is It OK For a A Video Game Reviewer to Be Bad at Games?

Of course. A lot more game reviewers should be bad at games. Fact is, most people who play computer games are bad at them, and they deserve reviewers who advocate for them and can say, "If you blow 20 bucks on this, you'll die 500 times on the first level and hate it. Don't waste your money."

Look, I love laughing at game professionals flailing at games as much as anyone. Remember when that unnamed Polygon writer tried Doom and showed no signs of ever having played it (or any video game) ever before? That was a hoot.

(My favorite bit is when the player unloads a full shotgun blast into a health pack resting on the ground, in what I can only assume is a post-modern deconstruction of late-stage capitalism.)

But some people watched that video and said, "Wow, I should never buy this game," and were right to say it. So the video was useful after all.

This is why I was a huge fan of Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer series, before it devolved into a series of tedious celebrity skits. Watching someone who isn't fully proficient in our art form and its weird conventions struggling to enjoy it can be painfully useful.

In the end of Ratatouille, a supposedly heroic writer gives a good review to a restaurant whose kitchen is infested with rats. GROSS! Never trust reviews.

But This Goes Both Ways, Right?

Yes. Some gamers have very little money and lots of time to fill. They don't want to spend twenty of their limited bucks on a one-hour art piece, and they deserve reviewers who advocate for them as well.

Is It OK For a Video Game Reviewer to Have Strong Political Opinions?

Yeah, why not? A lot of people only want games that support their particular political opinions. They can use politics-fixated reviewers as canaries in a coal mine. The writers are exposed to bad opinions so that you don't have to be.

Again, you have to pick a reviewer compatible with you. If someone doesn't like a game because it's too politically whatever or has too much of the color blue, use that person or don't. You get to choose what reviewers you watch.

What If I Think a Reviewer Sucks?

Don't read their reviews. That'll show 'em!

(And leave it at that. Don't be an asshole to them because you don’t agree with them. Not reading them is really the only vote you get.)

Review aggregator sites would have you believe every Marvel movies is one of the Best Movies Ever Made. Which, I mean, Marvel is fine I guess, but nobody will remember any of these flicks in 3 years.

How About Game Aggregator Sites? Are They Cool?

So you can go to a place like MetaCritic, which averages 50 different game review scores to take all those accumulated opinions and blends them together to create one number which represents Objective Truth. (Interestingly, Objective Truth is, the vast majority of the time, between 70% and 90%).

Look, is this useful? Kind of. I suppose.

I mean, look. Suppose ten people you don’t like give you their scores for a game. That won't be very useful. But what if you take those ten dumb opinions, blend them together, and take the average? That won't be any more useful, will it? Do you think that if you mix a lot of dumbness together, somehow smartness is made? Does this work with political parties too?

But it's all subjective. If you get value out of MetaCritic, use it. It's no sweat off my nose.

But Aren't Game Developer Payments Sometimes Determined By Metacritic Scores? Isn't That Bad?

All Metacritic is doing is getting some numbers and averaging them together. Yes, taking this random number and paying developer bonuses based on it is kind of shady. But on the list of Ways the Game Industry Mistreats Its Employees, it's like 893 out of 1200.

And if you look at the list of Concrete Things That Can Be Done to Make Developers' Lives Better, "Being mad at MetaCritic" is not on it at all.

My kids don't even know video game reviews EXIST, but they will buy anything even mentioned by this guy. God. Why do I even pretend I know anything?

One Last, Horrifying Truth About Game Reviews

I'm ancient, and even I don't use them anymore. There's no review that can tell me anything I can't get by watching the game on Twitch.tv for ten seconds and checking the Steam reviews to make sure it’s not too buggy.

In Conclusion

Take responsibility for yourself. Accept that the world is full of people different than you and there's space for all of us. As long as they're not punching you in the nose, people are allowed to have dumb opinions in their dumb heads. When choosing who you allow precious space inside your own head, choose someone you trust.

I will trust in the good people of the Internet to take this sensible advice and act with a bit of basic empathy in the future. I consider this entire discussion closed.

One Final Small Bit Of Whimsy

For a games web site, there's a huge advantage to having reviews written by inexperienced, eager people who try to stir up arguments instead of calming them. Those people work cheaper, and their work tends to stir up anger which gets more clicks. Sure, these poor writers/targets get screamed at, but that's what they were hired for. Their employers don't care as long as the clicks keep coming.

In the end, however, we’re talking about video game reviews. In the global scheme of things, game reviews are REALLY unimportant.

Here's what keeps me up at night: How do we know that the journalists covering politics, the economy, and wars aren't being picked in exactly the same way?

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If you're intrigued by giant indie RPGs with cool adventures and epic stories, you can wishlist our next game on Steam. Give it a terrible review if you want. We just need the attention. News about our work and random musings can be found on our Twitter.

No, Video Games Aren't Art. We're BETTER.

Do you think this should fill me with shame? Because it does not.

"When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me. When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me."
- Bob Hope, as told by Patton Oswalt

I used to argue passionately that video games were art.

Then I stopped arguing about it, because why bother? Of COURSE video games are art.

Now I see that it's a waste of time thinking of video games as art. Why would we game designers ever aim that low?

I Don't Want Art. I Want Transportation.

I just finished playing DOOM. Like many, I was amazed by how awesome a game it turned out to be. Penny Arcade had the perfect description for it: "Playable sugar."

DOOM had three of the best boss fights I've ever seen. Punishingly tough and yet scrupulously fair. When I died, I could say, "OK. I know what I did wrong. I won't do that again." When I fought those bosses, I was utterly transported. The rest of the world vanished. When I won, I was sweaty, wrung out, and completely satisfied.

I love literature and theatre. I love great movies. Yet, I can't remember any work of art, no matter how good, that consumed and drained me as much as the Cyberdemon in DOOM.

When I beat it, I felt proud. It is dumb to feel proud about something in a video game. The feeling was real nonetheless.

Nobody considers DOOM a work of Fine Art. Nor should they. Bloggers are not grinding their gears contemplating the True Meaning of DOOM. Nor should they.

It's not art. It's simply awesome.

Why would I ever be unsatisfied with Awesome?

Put this in front of me, and I will be lost until the sun comes up. Nothing else has that power over me. Should I be ashamed of this? Because I am not.

We're Doing Fine Without You.

It always peeves me when some blogger says, "Video games are OK, I guess, to the simple-minded. But they're not enough. They are unworthy. They're [string of negative adjectives], and it is up to me, hero that I am, to FIX them at last!"

Get over yourself. Video games are fine. No, they're not fine. They’re doing GREAT, by every possible metric.

Number of titles? The market is gruesomely flooded. (Gruesomely for developers, I mean. For fans, it's an overwhelming embarrassment of riches.)

Number of fans? Video games are popular to the point of global invasion. Find me a human, and I will find a game that can addict them.

Financial success? We're a 100 BILLION USD a year industry. We're huge and getting bigger every year.

Artistic accomplishment? Creativity? Look up any Best Games list from 2014 or 2015. Video games are breaking new barriers in craftsmanship and artistic expression every year and turning profits while they do it.

Diversity? Pick any demographic group, and someone is making games to cater to them personally. It's one of the great advantages of a gruesomely flooded market. (Of course, not every game will cater to you personally, but that's not possible or desirable. Other people get stuff they like too.)

Video games are taking over the world, and they're doing it in style.

We're winning because we offer something better than art. We offer Experience.

If you don't think Pong is fun, try it with friends. It holds up.

I Understand The Last of Us On a Higher Level Than You

The Last of Us is a truly great game. Many have written about it, including me. I recommend it very highly.

But here's what bugs me. The cutscenes of The Last of Us told a very good story. Those cutscenes, all together, would make a solid B+ zombie movie. But when bloggers wrote about it, they treated the actual game part of The Last of Us as this sort of useless, irritating, vestigial limb.

Without the gameplay, the action, the battle, the fear, the dying again and again, The Last of Us is just an above-average zombie movie. The true greatness of the experience is in the sneaking and the stabbing and the shooting and the dying. (LOTS of dying.)

Here's Why.

Would You Survive the Apocalypse?

It's not a hypothetical question. I mean it. Think about it. Five seconds from now, zombies leap in through the window. Civilization is OVER. Would you make it through?

Well, here's a way to think about the question.

Imagine starting a game of The Last of Us on the highest difficulty level. (Or The Walking Dead. Or DOOM, for that matter.) Go into it blind. Try to play through the whole thing, front to back, without dying.

If you make it, you survive the apocalypse. If you're one of the 99.9999% of people who don't make it, you die. You help make up one of the mountains of skulls that serve as DOOM background.

Try it. It's an amusing exercise. It took me five tries to get through the tutorial of The Last of Us, so I know where I stand.

I had a much older relative once who thought she was immune to video games. Then this infected her. Eventually, she shook free, but she never again dismissed the power of our craft.

Of Course, This Isn't Literal Truth.

Obviously, the skills to win a video game are different from the skills needed to literally survive the End of Days. I know this.

The Last of Us, the actual game part of it, is trying to do something impossible. Like, literally impossible. It is trying to give us a glimmer of a portion of a sensation of understanding the experience of the end of the world. It doesn't succeed, of course. It can't.

But it does come closer to putting us INSIDE that experience than anyone else. We're not watching, we're doing. We are, in an indirect way, mediated through joysticks, living an experience. We are taking part in a compelling demonstration of how fragile our lives are. How utterly inadequate we are to the challenge.

The Last of Us can trick our brains, for a moment, into thinking we're struggling for survival. Similarly, Minecraft can trick us into feeling like we're building something glorious out of nothing. Cookie Clicker creates a powerful sensation of growth and progress, abstract but compelling.

When I write a game, I try to make you feel like you have power. Then I try to make you feel the awesome, terrifying responsibility of having power. When I force you to make a tough decision, for a brief moment, I can reprogram your brain and take your thoughts somewhere they've never been before. This is amazing.

That is, at heart, what the games we make are. They are tools we creators use to compel and rewrite your brains. We haven't begun to come to terms with the power we've unleashed with these toys, these addiction machines.

This is an integral part of childhood now. It will only stop being thus when it is replaced by something even more powerful.

SimCity Isn't Art.

Nor is Civilization. Or Halo. Or Space Invaders. Or Castle Crashers. Or DOOM. Or Super Meat Boy. Or Hearthstone. Or League of Legends. Or Clash of Clans. Or Minecraft. Or Pac-Man. Or Solitaire. Or Pong. Not art. Why would they aim that low?

They provide consuming experiences. They are compulsions.  I'm not going to argue that they're High Art. They aren't. They're SuperArt. They take over your brain and let you get lost in them.

I can see why Artists look down on what we do. They have no choice. They certainly can't compete with us. What we do is irresistible. Authors and playwrights are dinosaurs, and we're throwing the asteroids. We'll let Film and TV survive. For now.

Atari Adventure doesn't look like much. Yet I've seen this silly thing compel people, young and old, for a whole evening. Not an evening many years ago. An evening NOW.

"But What About Games That Do Try To Be Art, Smart Guy?"

They're great. I am a huge fan of video games borrowing storytelling techniques from obsolete art forms. Beginner's Guide. Gone Home. Her Story. Firewatch. All worthy titles that fused game elements with more mundane art forms to create things that felt new and fresh.

A lot of indie games now are movies that you stroll through with the WASD keys. You can make a neat game this way. I’ll probably buy it. Just don't think it makes your work inherently superior to more gamey games. If you're just telling a story at me, well, a lot of media can do that. When I play Overwatch or Dark Souls or Civilization, I am transported in a unique way only video games can provide.

This is my game. It doesn't look like much. Yet, for 20 years, I've gotten fan mail telling me how addiction to my work threatened relationships and livelihoods. Good.

I Am Done Apologizing For My Craft.

I have been obsessed with video games for as long as they have existed. These strange, shaggy, crude, profane, elegant, lovely creations are my life's work. I love them.

However, video games have a crippling self-esteem problem. We are desperate for validation, and this makes us targets for any shyster who wants to take advantage of us.

Roger Ebert says he doesn't think we make art, and we lose our minds. Some people seriously claim games don't deserve the journalism due any industry of our massive size, even while ripoffs and shoddy goods are an epidemic. Academics and print journalism write about us in terms that are condescending, uninformed, and occasionally slanderous, and we cravenly respond,  "A newspaper cares about us! Please act like we're worth something! Please!!!" When you are sufficiently desperate for validation, even abuse can feel like love.

Enough. Developers and gamers are working in a symbiotic relationship to create something entirely new, a craft unlike anything in human existence thus far. We are exploring a new realm of possibility, and I count myself truly blessed that I get to take part in it from its infancy.

I just finished a game called Avadon 3: The Warborn. It's pretty cool. It has a lot of neat scenarios, choices, characters, battles, and just plain good stuff. I made a little world for you to try on for size. I hope you like the little toy I made. I've already started building two more.

Video games are so powerful that they can even disrupt the Magic of Friendship.

We've Only Taken the First Few Steps of an Epic Journey!

Want to pitch in? If you have ideas, suggestions, or feedback, we designers need to hear them.

Don't get me wrong. While our craft is awesome, it's still young. We still have so many ways we can improve. There are so many sorts of things we can and should do (design, technical, storywise) that we aren't yet. We need everyone's feedback to make a great thing better.

But I personally do require one thing: That your criticism be delivered with respect and love for the craft. If you don't like video games, don't play them. Fine. It’s your time. But we're already pretty terrific, and we're getting better. Fast. With or without you.

Stop using the word 'art'. Erase it from your dictionary. It's too weak a word. I want nothing less than to compel you. I am coming to consume all your thoughts, all your attention. I want to absorb you to the point where it threatens your marriage and your livelihood.

Video games should not interest or impress you. We should scare you. Video games are taking over the world. You haven't even seen a fraction of what we can do.

Twitch Plays Pokemon, Self-loathing, and Never Being Able To Predict Anything.

None of us is as insane as all of us.

If you are in any way hooked into the bleeding edge of this weird thing we call Internet Culture, someone might recently have talked your ear off about Twitch Plays Pokemon.

I'm going to talk about it now. So, if you were bored about it by your [child/weird friend/acquaintance you always secretly suspected has Asperger's], you can now do what you wish you could do then: tell me to shut up by closing this browser window with extreme prejudice.

(Pause.)

OK. You are still here. You want to learn what Twitch Plays Pokemon is, so that, for once, you can know about the hip internet thing before it ends and becomes as tired and old as those captioned cat photos your parents send to your aunts and uncles.

My explanation of what is happening will take the form of a Socratic dialogue between me and the voices of self-loathing in my head. Take it away, voices!

I HATE YOU SO MUCH!

Hey, pace yourself there, sparky. We have a lot of ground to cover. Many miles to go before we sleep, and all that.

Sorry, nerd. "Twitch Plays Pokemon"? How is that even a phrase in English? Why should I ever care enough to continue?

Well, I don't know how "interesting" or "significant" it is. I'm sure some kids in some PhD mill somewhere will write a thesis on it or whatever.

But the main reason I think it's interesting is because it is so weird. I mean, thinkers like Isaac Asimov and William Gibson and Neal Stephenson always try to predict the future. Then, when the future actually shows up, we find their predictions to be just sort of weirdly sterile and unimaginative and just kind of off.

What actual humans do when given any sort of resources is always really weird and chaotic. (Except for porn. There's always porn. Now in HD.) Those above world class thinkers never imagined anything close to tens of millions of people trying to play a 20 year old videogame together as a maddened hivemind because why not.

That's because they were people who had it together and could get dates in high school.

I got dates!

They hated you more than I do.

Well played, brain. But you're stuck here with me, so let's describe Twitch Plays Pokemon.

Sometimes, I get into things just for the fan art.

Fine. What is Twitch Plays Pokemon?

Well, it's a channel on twitch.tv. As of this writing (Monday, Feb. 24), over 63000 people are watching/participating and over 27 million have dropped by to watch.

And what on God's Green Earth is twitch.tv?

It's a video game streaming web site. Basically, when you're playing a game, you can also enable other people to watch you play it.

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT?

Beats me, man. Look. The Internet is now as big as human experience. Which means that 95% of it will be stuff you can't comprehend the value of, forever and always. So you'll just have to take the value of twitch.tv on faith.

So people go there to watch cool games like League of Legends and Call of Duty.

Sure. It's a dream come true. Though, lately, the most popular channel by a margin has been to watch people play Pokemon Red, a Gameboy game from 1996.

The confused fellow to the lower left is you. 

What is Pokemon?

Oh, give me a break. You're reading a game blog. You must have heard of Pokemon. At the very least, it's 10% of the cultural DNA of anyone in their 20s. Basically, you catch monsters and they're your pets and you use them to duel other monsters.

Part of the cultural DNA of boys, you mean.

My daughters would vigorously disagree.

But back to the channel. In it, they're not watching the game. The multitudes passing through are also playing it.

So I assumed. How does your little nerd-conclave work?

People type the controls they want to press (up, down, left, right, A, B, start) into the chat window, and the game processes them. This results in a very slow, very chaotic game.

So 50000 people are typing in commands and they're all processed?

No, it's more complicated than that. There are two modes for how the commands are taken: Anarchy and Democracy, and people vote on which control scheme is in place at any one ...

OH GOD KILL ME.

Sorry. You're right. It's boring. I'll sum it up. In Anarchy mode, a few commands are selected at random from what people enter, resulting in slightly directed chaos with lots of weird, interesting things happening. (Assuming you are capable of finding any of this interesting, which I do, but I'm weird.)

In Democracy mode, people vote on what the next move is and a move is taken every 20 seconds. It's more directed, but painfully slow and boring.

It has arguments about politics AND religion? Sign me up!

And how long has this travesty been going?

As of this writing, 10 days and 20 hours, 24-7. It's a global project. When one continent goes to bed, another picks up the slack.

OK. Fine. They're playing an old game in a stupid way. 

It's even worse than that.

How is that even possible?

You see, there is a 10-20 second lag between what happens in the game and what you see on the screen. So when you enter a command, you're not saying what happens now, but what happens in 20 seconds. This means that even if everyone involved was united and smart, some chaos would be unavoidable.

One happy side effect of this is that it's very difficult for trolls to sabotage the project, because having any sort of directed input by anyone is very difficult.

This all sounds stupid.

Oh, it totally is. But stupid things can be interesting and fun.

But isn't it gross to care about something like this, when, say, people in the Ukraine are dying protesting their government?

Haven't you been reading? It's a global thing. I bet a bunch of kids in the Ukraine are playing the game to distract themselves from the terror and uncertainty.

Anyway, that is a dumb standard. Our ancestors fought and died in part so we could occasionally relax and do something frivolous.

Fine. An old game, in a stupid way, and it barely even works. Why on EARTH would so many people care?

Three reasons.

Oh, Lord.

First, it's a big experiment in the fascinating field of collective intelligence. It's the idea that a lot of people giving tiny inputs is smarter than any one person. A lot of research into this idea has taken place, and it is genuinely cool.

Because the most surprising thing about Twitch Plays Pokemon is that it's working. It's slow, but this confused random input is beating bosses, solving side quests, agreeing on what path to take among many possible choices, and generally getting it done. Sometimes the Hivemind even plays WELL.

That is pretty cool.

Really?

We are, after all, dealing with Gamers here.

No. Psych! Loser. What's the second thing?

The second interesting thing is the constant debate between democracy and anarchy. In other words, between slow, methodical success or fast, inefficient chaos. Anarchy is winning. In other words, people as a mass would rather do the thing in the chaotic, slower, harder way simply because it's more cool. That, if nothing else, should give you some faith in humanity.

And the third reason? If it involves fan art, I'm so out of here.

Third, the fan art.

[Sound of running away.]

Sorry, brain. You're stuck in here with me.

Ahhh. It burns us.

Twitch Plays Pokemon has evolved its own weird, funny, sometimes tiresome backstory and mythology. It is in human nature to anthropomorphize things. Elaborate stories about the insanity of Red (the main character) and the relentless voices in his head that drive him on have been crafted. It's actually kind of cool and poignant.

It helps that the chaotic interface results in a lot of painfully self-destructive behavior. Red constantly destroys his own best pokemon, throws away valuable items, and flings himself off of ledges. Twitch Plays Pokemon is truly unpredictable. Tell me, how many things in your life are like that?

Fortunately, there's not cosplay yet, but give it time.

Twitch Plays Pokemon has the XKCD Seal of Nerd Legitimacy.

What is this Helix Fossil everyone goes on about?

It's an item in Red's inventory that gets used accidentally like ten times a minute. Lots of jokes have arisen around this. It's the Cake Is a Lie/Arrow To the Knee of 2014.

Hasn't that joke been run into the ground?

To everyone who has been paying attention, yes, but new folks are hearing about the stream all the time, and it's funny to them. Also, um, how should I put this delicately? The Twitch Plays Pokemon diehards might not be the most socially-aware folks on the planet.

But the whole cobbled-together Twitch Plays Pokemon backstory does include a pretty amusing, made-up parody religion. I suspect that appeals to the demographic of the player base.

And who is doing all this? Shut-in boys, right?

Ummmm ...

ADMIT IT.

The only survey I could find of players is here, and, yeah. Guys. Which is, itself, interesting. I don't know if this sort of activity has inherently higher value to men, and, if so, why. Maybe if Anita Sarkeesian reads this, she can tweet something.

So how will it end?

Nobody knows! It is completely unclear if the hive mind can finish this stupid thing, which adds a pleasing sense of suspense to the whole thing.

But if you want to help find out ...

I don't. Oh lord, I don't.

Humor me.

Internet culture moves fast and is unpredictable.

Fine. What would I do if I cared?

Well, if you want to read the history of the thing and see a lot of surprisingly funny and elaborate fan art, go here.

If you want a live update of what is happening, go here.

The freshest fan art is here. http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/

My personal favorite pieces for fan art are here and here, though you need to know the culture a little to get it.

I still don't see why anyone should care.

Because, try as I might, I can't think of any analogue to this in human history. The duration, the planetary scale, the chaos, the joyous frivolity of it.

Unprecedented? Really? What about Second Life? SETI@home? WIKIPEDIA?

OK, you're right. I got a little overexcited there. How about this? Twitch Plays Pokemon is a reminder that we have not even begun to scratch the possibilities of what the hordes on the Internet can do when something piques their interest. And, sometimes, like with Wikipedia, those things Anonymous spits out can be genuinely valuable.

God. You're even more pathetic now than when you were telling everyone who'd listen about Doctor Who back in the 1980s.

And now everyone watches Doctor Who.

And that's why everyone who reads this should go to Twitch Plays Pokemon and enter just one command. I don't know if this is a harbinger of bigger things or not, but, if it is, don't you want to think you were on the ground floor?

OK. Fine. I went and voted for 'Democracy.' Happy?

Filthy casual. Anarchy or riot!

Everyone who reads this will laugh at you.

I love you, brain.

Virgin.

--

Like all the cool nerd kids, I'm on Twitter.

The Fun of Being Bad. The Fun of Fun.

SOLD!

I've been writing a lot lately about video games that are really well designed and written. Games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Last of Us. First-rate, intelligent titles that are only held back by the fact that, let's face it, they are gigantic bummers.

Let us never forget that video games are games. They are supposed to be fun. They are capable of, in rare, magical moments, providing genuine joy.

I wanted my last article in this little series to be about Saints Row IV, the most efficient joy-production machine I have experienced in many a year.

But I need to make the topic a little broader than that. I want to talk about the most delightful, unique, transgressive pleasure that our young art form can provide: The fun of being bad.

This was controversial once. Simpler time.

The Justifiable Fun of Being Bad

In 1976, a company called Exidy released a video game called Death Race. In it, you control a car and run over little people. You try to crush as many as you can inside of a time limit. When you hit them, they made an adorable little squeak. I played the heck out of it. Yes, I am comically old.

See, the genre of Having Fun Doing Horrible Things is almost as old as video games themselves. There have always been and always will be games that let you have fun being bad. Robbing shops. Running over pedestrians. Generally being a reprobate.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Video games are imaginary. They are places where we enact our fantasies. Sometimes, our fantasies are bad. That is why they are just fantasies.

In real life, I am snappish but basically mild and entirely non-violent person. I have played four Grand Theft Auto games front to back, and I always ended each session with a crazed kill-rampage. No apology is forthcoming.

This Is a Hard Trick To Pull Off

Making a game that makes doing evil things funny and fun is really difficult. Players don't seem to realize how tricky this is. Most people are feeling, empathic creatures. If you get the tone just a little bit off, if you make the suffering just a tiny bit real, if you let the player think for one moment about what the thing they are doing on the screen actually means, the spell is broken.

This is why, no matter how big the world of Grand Theft Auto V or Saints Row IV is, no matter how much you wander, you will never see a child running free. This is why these games, for all of the horrible crimes you can commit, will never depict a rape.

It's a delicate bit of alchemy. One of my favorite Grand Theft Auto missions ever involves repeatedly shooting a guy in a full body cast with a rocket launcher. It was just the right level of ludicrous to be hilarious.

If you can't possibly see how this could be funny, please, I beg you, never watch a Road Runner cartoon. The things that poor coyote goes through will break your heart. All he ever wanted to do was eat.

And then I turned off the Playstation and didn't turn it on again for a week.

So Don't Miss the Point

I have been a huge Grand Theft Auto fan for a long time, so the way the designers have completely lost the thread of what they're trying to do pains me greatly. The most discussed scene in the game involves the long, slow, graphic torture of a prisoner with jumper cables, pliers, a wrench, and gasoline. Here's a video of it! Enjoy! (Skip to 6:50 to really get the good stuff.)

Did you watch it? Of course you didn't. Why on earth would you?

And yet, why wouldn't you? Didn't you hear? Grand Theft Auto V has a 97 on Metacritic. That is basically perfection. It made a billion dollars in like a day. It is, critically and financially, the absolute pinnacle of the art form. Don't you like video games? Why would you not want to see the pinnacle of the art form?

But Anyway

Of course, this scene (and so much of the rest of the game) has been criticized for just general horribleness, to which people who don't get it respond, "But Grand Theft Auto is about having fun being bad."

This misses the point. If you want people to get that jolt of transgressive joy, you have to be more careful about what you make them do, not less. I don't know who, beyond adolescent boys, could ever have actual fun playing that scene. Game-design-wise, it's simply an unforced error.

Video games are maturing as an art form. The stuff you can't get away with in movies and TV? Soon, they won't be permissible in video games either. Civilization inflicts its requirements.

On the other hand...

Yeah, things get a little weird.

It's All In the Little Things

"Like all good stories, the second act begins with a call to action and the building of a robot." - Narrator, Saints Row IV.

Saints Row IV is a rare pleasure. It's a game that knows exactly what it is. It's not about internal consistency or artistic statements. It's about packing as much simple, senseless joy, lowbrow and high, into a game as they it possibly can.

(Disclaimer: It is the only Saints Row game I have ever played.)

It is a game that features:

The protagonist riding a nuclear missile, Dr. Strangelove style, ripping out components to disable it while your friends eulogize you on the radio and the theme song from Armageddon plays. It's pure, ridiculous genius.

A gun that shoots black holes. I can image how balancing Saints Row IV went. The designers sat down at a table, gave it some quiet reflection, and went, "Wait a second. Never mind. Our game has a BLACK HOLE GUN."

Also, the dubstep gun.

In a scene almost impossibly sweet for a game like this, you and one of your friends drive to a mission together while singing Opposites Attract. I've played a lot of games like this, but this is the only time I ever drove more slowly to hear all of the dialogue.

Zipping through the Matrix on Tron light cycles while the evil alien overlord Zinyak recites the Tomorrow and Tomorrow monologue from Macbeth. ("I don't listen to Scottish hip-hop.")

And if none of this makes Saints Row IV sound like a game you'd want to play, that's cool. Tastes legitimately differ. But can't you see how it's the sort of game a LOT of people would want to play? (Excellent pacing, satisfying super-powers, crisp writing, and an overwhelming sense of just-plain-fun help a lot.)

It's a big art form. There's room for drama and humor, tragedy and mystery. But if you want to go silly, and if you want to make a game in which players can pretend to be horrible crazy criminals and still be able to look at themselves in the mirror, this is how it is done.

And, as a special bonus for old people like me who have developed actual human empathy, almost all of the game takes place in the Matrix, so I don't have to feel guilty about running people over in the street.

But You're Not Really Doing It, So Why Does It Matter?

Another point I see made a lot, which I find overly simple and not really thought out.

Yes, on one level, your conscious brain knows it's just an illusion. You "know" it's fake. In one part of your brain. Only one.

You're still controlling it. You're still seeing it. It still makes you feel. I mean, fiction can have incredibly powerful effects on people, and we all know it's not real. Controlling it yourself only increases this effect.

This is why so many people, myself included, could not possible bring themselves to shoot the giraffes in The Last of Us, as desperately tempting as it was. This is why fiction works at all. Yes, part of our brain knows it's not real. That part is the minority.

It's Too Easy? I Don't Even Know What That Means.

The main criticism I've seen leveled against Saints Row IV is that it gets too easy. This is half right. As you develop your incredible arsenal of magic Matrix powers, you become a god pretty quick. However, I really don't like criticizing a game for this.

Difficulty is only one of many things a designer has to set, and there is no right answer. Some games, like Super Meat Boy and Demon's Souls, are selling extreme challenge. Others, like most casual games, are selling a friendlier, more casual experience. There is no right answer! I hate it when reviewers pretend there is one.

Saints Row IV is a crazy, silly game that feeds power fantasies and lets you throw enemy hordes around with awesome brain power. Making it a difficult game would just be wrong for the tone. (And, if you want it to be tough, play it on the hardest difficulty level. There. Was that so hard?)

You want to fail a lot? Fine. Go play Grand Theft Auto V and die ten times trying to land the plane. We'll see who has more fun.

Oh, and one other thing. Trust me. Gamers are far more likely to forgive a game for being too easy than too hard. Most people have only a limited appetite for being told how dumb they are.

The Pleasure of Video Games is the Pleasure of Doing

And sometimes, the things you want to do are bad. Again, nobody is going to apologize for this, nor should they need to. Yes, it feels real, but no, it's not real.

It's one of the hardest things to do right. Some people are better at it than others. Now, if you will excuse me, the new Saints Row IV DLC is out. It's called "Enter The Dominatrix". That is the sum total of all I know about it. Sold. Crass fun is still fun.

The Internet Lies To You. WHEN WILL YOU GET THAT!?!?

My heart is singing a joy song.

Take a moment to Google "iOS 7 waterproof". Do it. It's worth it.

Yes. Someone Photoshopped some fake iOS 7 ads to tell people that a software update would make their phone waterproof. And some other people, who may in fact not be as insightful as they possibly could be, believed it. So now thousands of articles saying that, no, a software update will not change the physical properties of your phone.

Anonymous evil ad maker with Photoshop, I wish I could shake your hand. Here's why.

The Internet is an immensely new, hugely important mode of human communication, but we don't yet know how to use it. People don't understand this about the Internet: It is half lies. At best.

Most people who saw the fake ad read it, smiled, and moved on. A few people, however, believed it. They took their phone in the shower. The device was destroyed. They learned a valuable lesson, in a way that won't soon be forgotten, and all it cost them was a few hundred bucks.

And you know something? Maybe they will be less like my older relatives, who never read anything in e-mail so ludicrous they didn't believe it.

I promise you this. One of these days, someone who trashed their phone will get a message saying vaccines are killers, or a guy in Nigeria wants to give them a hundred million bucks, or that they should quit the chemo for their Stage 3 breast cancer because eating enough lemons will take care of it (yes, real example). Maybe, dare to dream, when this happens they will think about their phone and maybe, just maybe hit Delete. Like they should.

It is a small price to pay for a lesson of such value.

Oops. Sorry. What I meant to say was, it's real. You can install iOS 7 on your iPhone and give it to your kids to play in the bathtub. Go try it. You know it's true, because you just read it.

Avadon Is Out On Steam!

Today, Avadon: The Black Fortress goes live on Steam.

Unsurprisingly, I'm pretty excited about it. After 16 years of being a tiny, invisible, basement-dwelling bottom feeder, for a few precious weeks, I get to act like I'm a real developer. With a real distributor, a nice trailer video, and everything. Yes, there will be money, and that's always nice, but it's the recognition I'm sort of focused on now.

Writing Indie games has provided me with a very good living, and I don't have the right to complain about anything. I wrote games. I sold 8-10 thousand games a year. (Having a big back catalog is awesome.) I was content.

But then the Indie boom took off. Indie devs were getting famous. Many could make a living, and some got rich. Amazingly, people stopped acting like I wasn't a total loser for doing what I do. (This change happened about the time the word 'shareware' disappeared.) After all these years, it was impossible to watch all of this excitement and not want to be a part of it.

And now, thanks to Valve, I'm going to be visible. I'm getting a shot at the spotlight. Avadon: The Black Fortress is a very good game. It's got a great story, interesting, epic battles, and a lot of cool stuff. It's simply a fun game. Will its retro old-school action take the world by storm? Maybe a lot. Maybe a little. And I'll do all I can to be content with what comes.

The Steam Thing does mean that we are embarking on a great experiment, something that we never planning on doing. But, the way the online games market is moving, something that seems like the right choice.

Avadon: The Black Fortress Is $9.99 On Steam

I've written a lot about how I think it's important to not price niche games too cheaply, and I stand by that. However, at the same time, Avadon will be only ten bucks on Steam, the cheapest we've ever made our newest game for PC/Mac. Why?

1. Steam felt it was the best price. I went into this trusting their judgment, because they know a lot more about selling Indie games than I do. When you're an Indie and Steam comes knocking, you don't say no.

2. The whole game industry is shifting. These days, a huge proportion of games online are sold for a low price without demos. People buy games on impulse, sight unseen. That way, if they don't like it they aren't out a lot of money.

In these markets, charging $15 or $20 for games, like I want to, isn't feasible. It's too much money to pay for a game you aren't sure about. If someone buys my game for $10 and hates it, I'm a little unhappy. But $20? I don't want to take kids' allowance money that way.

So I'm charging $10 on Steam and for the iPad. By the standards of that market, it's a hefty price, enough for me to earn my living. It's cheap enough to work as an impluse buy. It isn't the $1 or $2 price that I'm still sure would put me out of business.

This means I need to adjust the prices I charge on my own web site. I have changed the price of Avadon to $20, and in the future we will very likely reduce the prices of our earlier games as well. Our next game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit will start out at $20. If this grand experiment works well, we may make future games cheaper still, though I doubt any new game on our own web site will ever go below $15.

I'm expecting that some of our users who paid $25 on our site will be angry. I can totally understand this. However, all computer games get cheaper as they get older, even games that have only been to a few months. (Check out Best Buy of any other decently sized electronics store if you don't believe me.) Also, until we had access to mass-market outlets like iTunes, we were never going to generate enough sales to survive at a lower price.

I don't like making my fans angry, but, again, when Steam comes knocking, you don't say no. And our future games will be cheaper, so everyone is getting something out of it.

Now I'll sit on my edge of chair and wait to see how Avadon does. Fortunately, there's not much suspense. We're being released opposite Bastion, so hope may not be warranted at this point.

A Question a Lot of People Asked Below:

Why is the game still $20 on our web site?

Short answer: Charging this little is an experiment. I believe that Indie devs who write niche products need to charge more for their work than the more mass market, casual, $0.99 app market. The question is whether a $10 price works. If going onto Steam for ten bucks turns out to not be a good idea (or if they don't want any more of our games), we need to maintain a higher baseline price on our site.

I know this seems odd, but I assure you that it makes sense from where I sit. And, by the way, we are FAR from the only developer who does this. For example, World of Goo is $20 on their site but $10 on Steam. And they are far smarter than we are.