I love to write. But for my games, I try to stay sparse on text. I feel games are at their best when you’re interacting and playing them — it’s a tough sell to force the player to just sit there and read your prose.
Brendon Chung on text in videogames. [June 13th, 2012] (via his blog).
Blendo on Quadrilateral Cowboy, Experimental Games
rockpapershotgun.comChung: For me, I’m a self-taught programmer. I never really had any formal training. So I think that learning programming is not something only certain people can do. I think it’s something that anyone can do. You just need to present it to them in a clear and concise way.
Robert Yang on Thirty Flights of Loving
Robert Yang on Thirty Flights Of Loving:
(audio player in full post)
(or click here for a longer version, with the full drunken wander through the streets of Soho)
The 27 homages of Thirty Flights of Loving
rockpapershotgun.comFrom the outset Chung makes it clear that I won’t be able to squeeze Thirty individual references out of him. My dream of titling this feature “Thirty Flights Of Homage” is just that, a dream (but I called it that anyway: take that, logic). Deflated but determined I watch Chung take his first couple of steps in the game before stopping, his voice shooting up an octave and his enthusiasm igniting as he recalls the inspirations behind the first few cap-doffs in the game. It’s here, staring at the plaque on the wall of the game’s very first corridor, I realise that even if we don’t get Thirty exact references out of this, we are probably going to get pretty damn close.
“There are a few different things on this first sign,” he explains.
[The text of the sign reads: NEUVOS AIRES WHEEL OF MORALITY DEPARTMENT
PROHIBITION LICENSE
REGISTRATION KDR-1-56971-081-3
THIS LICENSE EXPIRES: NOVEMBER 16, 1963
By section code 1100.372.7 of the federal code, as signed in extremis by the judicial ruling on Frobvember eleventy-fourth, by the decree invested in the people, the state prohibition shall remain in effect until said counsel is problematic to the point of public trust.
FAILURE TO KEEP THIS ESTABLISHMENT FREE OF ALCOHOL WILL RESULT IN PENALTY OF QUESOMANCY]
First up, there’s a reference to Zork: “Frobvember! Zork has a bunch of fictional dates and this is a nod to that. Also ‘Quesomancy’ – in the Zork universe there’s a mysterious punishment called totemisation and it’s never explained. Quesomancy is my version. Then there’s ‘wheel of morality’, that’s a reference to a cartoon called Animaniacs.”
I can’t help wonder, with so many obscure references packed into this very first bit of text in the game, if Chung is at all wary of alienating players not in on his private, nostalgic jokes. “Some shows use pop culture references as the punchline,” he says. “I don’t find that to be very funny, I think it works for certain people but it doesn’t compute for me. It’s better, for me, when there’s a reference that isn’t the punchline to the joke, it just flavours the joke, adds an interesting dimension. If you want to dig into it, it’s there.”
The homages are to video games (from Heros’ Quest to Saint’s Row 3) and movies, often those of Wong Kar Wai or to thrillers.
