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"Often, on a Friday or Saturday night in the cottage on the tiny Orkney island where I lived alone for two winters, I wanted to be on a crowded dance floor in small clothes with sweat running down my back. I felt like an old woman before my time, beside the fire with a blanket over my knees, and missed the throb of the city and of nightlife. Lately, I’ve learned the German word “Fernweh” (literally, “distance pain”) which describes the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else, like a reverse homesickness (“Heimweh”), a longing for a place that isn’t where you are. I was struck by the word because I know how it is to be uneasy and never quite at home." Amy Liptrot, in Berghain.
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"We made a commitment to real choreography. I basically drew a line in the sand and said, “If this interface is going to be great, and we're going to make a dance game that's gonna be transformative, you have to be able to dance 'Crank That' by Soulja Boy.” That’s the bar for a good interface."
GTA: West Side Story
04 October 2010
At some point in the pub after Playful, I got rambling about dance, and choreography – I forget why – and I blurted out the phrase “GTA West Side Story“. And when you name the game, you have to explain it.
This is a belated explanation.
I’m a sucker for good choreography. I’ve never really got on with musical theatre, or films of musicals, but god, good choreography is just fabulous. And in this age of fragmented, hyperlinked video, I can point you at some. I found this a few months back and was blown away:
This is the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather. I’m not even a big fan of tap, but blimey, they can dance; there’s a lightness of touch and a terrifying strength all at once. I also love how it exhibits one of the great elements of choreography: it’s not always about people performing identical actions, but rather, sympathetic ones; their feet are locked in step with one another, but their bodies act sympathetically.
And then there’s the big finish, which is just showing off.
Anyhow: West Side Story is a funny one. Although I don’t care much for the main love story in it, it’s just great musically.
A lot of people have a problem with the dancing. It’s understandable: these guys are meant to be street-gang members, and yet they break into dance a lot. I can only explain this by with the golden rule, it seems, of musical theatre: you just have to get over that. That’s how people move in this musical (just as they express their innermost thoughts by singing them). Once you’ve got over that – just look at this:
As a piece of choreography – movements set to music – isn’t that marvellous? The basketball sequence!
And I keep thinking about this, not because I’m a good dancer, or because I like the act of dancing, but because: wouldn’t it be marvellous if, when you were walking around, everyone else knew the dance too – could snap in time with the music in your head?
And that’s where a game about choreography – and gangs – comes in. GTA: West Side Story.
In a nutshell: you recruit a gang by getting them to join your chorus, which tags along with you, and acts as strength-of-numbers when it comes to rumbles, not to mention looking awesome. It’s a bit like the way in Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2‘s Pacifism mode you end up with a massive chain of diamonds following you:
except the diamonds are thugs, and they’re not out to kill you; they’re out to dance with you, to back you up.
So you pile through the city, with your own private gang, lockstepped, scissor-kicking as they turn corners.
Of course, not everyone can be in your chorus – in every movie musical, there’s always background talent that isn’t part of the chorus: and so part of the skill of the game is only “chaining” other gang members, who can definitely be part of the chorus – ie, they know the music, they know the words. Try to chain with a “civilian” and you’ll lose some of your posse. How do you identify a potential recruit? He’s the one doing something in time with the soundtrack – playing basketball, snapping his fingers, combing his hair. (Other civilians do these things too – but out of time).
And then there need to be rumbles: fighting as rhythm-action, dance-offs between rival gangs. Somewhere between Streets of Rage
and Space Channel 5.
It’s the video to Bad made game.
But, like all the best music games, it’s best when it’s not about competetive or combative elements; when you’re just about making pretty patterns, catchy, finger-snapping rhythms, and strolling around the turf you own.
Whilst dancing.
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"In the 14 months since [TeamFortress 2] shipped, the PC version of the game has seen 63 updates – “that’s the frequency you want to be providing updates to your customers,” [Newell] adds. “You want to say, ‘We’ll get back to you every week. The degree to which you can engage your customer base in creating value for your other players” is key, says Newell. “When people say interesting or intelligent things about your product, it will translate directly into incremental revenue for the content provider.”" Great write-up from Chris Remo of Gabe Newell's DICE talk.
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"This is a sort of thorough, empirical, sociological study of art students at two British art schools at a very interesting moment, the late 1960s (a moment when, as the book says, anti-art became the approved art, bringing all sorts of paradoxes to the fore). I find it fascinating that such a subjective thing as developing an art practice can be studied so objectively, but then I find it amazing that art can be taught at all. The book shows the tutors and students circling each other with wariness, coolness, misunderstanding, despair, appreciation." Some great anecdotes and observation.
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"Busker Du (dial-up) is a recording service for buskers through the telephone (preferably public payphones hidden in subway stations). Audio recorded will be posted to this audio-blog and made available to all who cherish lo-fi original music. Try it out at your favorite subway station or street corner." Dial-A-Song comes full circle.
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"Poole – HAL 9000 is a fictional chess game in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie, the astronaut Frank Poole is seen playing chess with the HAL 9000 supercomputer… The director Stanley Kubrick was a passionate chess player, so unlike many chess scenes shown in other films, the position and analysis actually makes sense. The actual game seems to come from Roesch – Schlage, Hamburg 1910, a tournament game between two lesser-known masters."
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Lovely demo – some interesting interfaces that feel quicker than current alternatives, as well as experimental ones that, whilst slower and clumsier, represent information a bit better. I mainly like the form-factor, though – but what's the unit cost? These things get a lot better the more you have.
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"Something like: Trying to create a reading list that gives the best introduction to everything. This may change." Phil is trying to collect the Good Books in many fields. It's an interesting project, for sure; it'll also be interesting to see how it pans out.
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I was a little excited from the ongoing Offworld love in, but Oli Welsh's review suddenly makes me insanely excited about Keita Takahashi's new plaything. Why is it that all the reasons for me wanting a £300 PS3 are £3 PSN titles?
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"…the biggest consequence [of a universal micro-USB adaptor] will be the ease of transferring data/content from street service provider to consumer, and consumer to consumer… There is a place at the edges of the internet where the level of friction makes content and data grind to a halt. It's largely unregulated. And it just got seriously lubed."
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"30 Second Hero is an action RPG which consists of really short battles that require no interaction, as players race against the clock to save the kingdom from an evil wizard's wrath. As indicated by the title, you only have thirty seconds to level up your character sufficiently for the final battle, although additional time can be bought from the castle at the cost of a hundred gold pieces per increment of ten seconds." Hectic; the entire early JRPG genre (FF1, et al) condensed into a minute-long rush. Grinding as poetry.
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"I was convinced that it was a spoof. As if there’d be a genre called Donk. Everything is wrong about the video. The knowing subtitles over subtle Northern Accents. The presenter’s slight grin when he’s chatting to folk. The funnily named shops. Everything. There’s no way I’m falling for a prank like that. It reminds me heavily of the episode of Brass Eye where they whang on about Cake (the made up drug). And all the characters and the interviews look like they could be setups or clever edits." But no, it's real. Iain Tait discovers Donk.
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"…with that sad note from Sarinee Achavanuntakul, one of the most enduring (if illegal) tributes to gaming history came to an end." Home of the Underdogs is no more; just gone, like that. It wasn't that it had the best games or the worst games, or that they were illegal, or free; it was history, and childhood, and the smell of cardboard and boot disks, all wrapped up in one giant cathedral to Good Old Games. Most things I played on my old DOS machine were there. A shame; I hope they're elsewhere. This is why we need proper game archives.
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Tweaking a game five months after launch to make it both more playable, and also more realistic; understanding that realism is key to NHL09 fans, and delivering on that as an ongoing promise.
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"Warcraft’s success has always been substantially due to the extraordinary physicality of Azeroth, to the real sense of land transversed, of caves discovered, and of secrets shared. Players old and new bemoan the endless trudging that low-level travel requires, but it’s crucial for binding you to the world." Yes. Despite QuestHelper, I'm always in awe of the new areas. I just wish more people were playing the game as slowly and badly as me. Another beautiful One More Go, and one that resonates a lot right now.
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"Far Cry 2 is about you and death. Of course every single person you meet wants to kill you. Of course you spend about as much time fighting the environment as other persons. Of course you are clinging to the barest scrap of health and well-being; Even the malaria is trying to kill you."
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"I spent 10 weeks last Summer as an intern on the strategy team of Transport for London's (TfL) London Rail division…. My general task was to help London Rail start to make use of the oceans of data spewing out of the Oyster smartcard ticketing system, but I spent the bulk of my time working on a project that came to be titled Oyster-Based Performance Metrics for the London Overground. I've posted my final report and slides and outline for the presentation I gave to TfL executive management." Some interesting data and information here.
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BioWare now have a blog. It looks like it's going to be full of good stuff about games and, especially, writing for them. Can't wait.
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"The international conference “Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games” unites scholars who all study a corpus that has been left out up to now: horror video games. Considering the relatively slow progress of generic studies among the recent surge of academic interest towards video games, this event represents a major first step."
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Science doctoral candidates attempt to communicate their thesis subjects through the medium of dance. The winners get time with a professional choreographer to make the whole thing better, and to see it performed by professional dancers at the end. Crazy, wonderful.