Some thoughts on Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain will no doubt feature in the case study section of my thesis, and potentially become a journal article as well, but in the meantime, I’ll write up some of my initial thoughts on the game. I will follow up with some engagement with the conversation around the game that has sprung up in the blogosphere.

Firstly I have to applaud Quantic Dream for trying something different, and attempting it with a deep conviction that essentially translates to a big budget. No one has attacked a story that could so conceivably happen in ‘real life’ on a current-gen console, in a full length game. That said, the ‘kind of game’ this is remains remarkably similar to their previous title, Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit. If that is a real criticism, though, I’d have to take many other companies to task for much worse transgressions.

Secondly, I have to admit that I generally go into games with an optimistic outlook, despite my purported status as a ‘critic.’ I am not looking for failure, rather I tend to try to look for success, and only see failure when it gets in the way of that success. I also tend to extend my hand towards whatever the auteur is ‘trying’ to do, despite the modern academic tendency to ignore authorial intent altogether. As a creative person myself, I feel there is still room for accepting the expression of someone else, and reacting to that, rather than insisting that everything is (only) what you make it.

With Heavy Rain, I feel like we did make a significant step in the journey of videogames. I don’t know where we are headed, but that’s just the point: the journey’s the thing. There is no end in sight, so I won’t focus on how much closer or farther away we are from it due to Heavy Rain. I’ve had a new experience, having played this game, than I had before. That is enough for me to call it worth playing. I can see what Cage is attempting to do here, by drawing us into this small web of characters. He invites us into the shoes of these four people, to experience a slice of life from their perspective. Not from our own perspective, mind you, from theirs. We are not transporting ourselves into this fictional world, but occupying a role already defined. In this way the auteur is demanding more cooperation from us than we might normally expect from the (largely theoretical/hypothetical) interactive drama form.

We have to accept that in this game, we are not ourselves, nor are we the Space Marine. We are four different, flawed, limited and biased people in turn. These people can only do so much, ie. we have only so many options to choose from. The fact that some are not what ‘you’ would do is not surprising, since you are not Ethan Mars. This is really no more a limiting experience than something like Fable 2 that trades on the openness and freedom of the game world that limits your ability to interact to either a simple binary of dialog options, or violence.

The general conversation surrounding Heavy Rain is fairly well signposted over at The Brainy Gamer. Some of the issues sparked responses in my mind, so here in no particular order, is some of that response.

The game has the power to make you feel afraid/nervous/tearful/anxious/guilty. Dismissing Heavy Rain as a glorified point-and-click adventure grossly understates its impact on an open-minded player. Get on board and take the ride the game wants to give you.

This is probably the one that identifies my general view most accurately. Combined with the real-time feel of the game, you are forced to actually engage with the world on the world’s terms, not on your own, which is an experience much more like real life, where we cannot stop and deliberate nor can we replay the bit we just stuffed up.

There are a number of complaints about the ‘game-ness’ of Heavy Rain, how its not a fair game, or its too much of a game (with the input cues appearing on screen), or whatever… and I ask, what is a videogame? Are we so sure we know what a videogame is meant to be at this point that we can point at anything and say, Yae or Nay? I rather think not. This is more an observation of the players of games and subsequently a study of games themselves, is the notion that Heavy Rain sucks because its not ‘fair.’ Does this draw a line between games, which arguably by definition are supposed to be fair and a ’simulation’ of someone’s life–life being utterly unfair. That said, I think of games such as Civilization IV which are made decidedly unfair by increasing the difficulty level. We like unfairness when we come out on top, because it shows that we are so talented… or whatever. But why shouldn’t you be frustrated by being the main character in a frustrating, emasculating situation? Gamers seem to be outraged by the difficulty of Heavy Rain, which if you read it as pure game, is fair enough considering the weird spikes and the sometimes difficult-to-read interface icons. But, in terms of ’story’ or ‘narrative’ perspectives, its totally appropriate.

There is an imbalance, at the moment, in the assignation of meaning, or importance. Right now, gamers are much more caught up in the rules of the game than the content. Heavy Rain takes the opposite approach, and weights the content more than the game. So we end up with a deeper story than usual, and less robust gameplay. I tried to experience it as such, where the satisfaction would come from the resolution of the dramatic conflict, rather than me ‘beating’ the final boss. Dramatic closure is a different kind of satisfaction than victorious triumph, but not an inherently inferior one. The fact is that Heavy Rain is not a competition, even if it has elements of a game in it.

Finally, a note on the control scheme, and how odd it was. Yes, it was odd, but that is not a bad thing in this case. The game does not allow you to memorize combos or even single functions, ie. the control scheme is entirely contextual rather than robust/portable. So you have to pay attention! You are going to be surprised and caught off-guard rather than charging into some situation being totally prepared. That’s the point.

Ads, Adblocker and Sustaining Content Providers

Recently Ars Technica presented ‘their side’ of the story regarding free websites and ads. Of course, we all know that creating and hosting a website costs money, and most of us know that money doesn’t grow on trees. Advertising on the website can generate a significant amount of revenue for a high-traffic site like Ars, but when those ads are not viewed, they won’t.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.

I must admit, I was one of those people who thought something along those lines, if I really thought about it at all. The problem is almost as old as the internet itself: how do we get people to exchange money for content in an environment where end users have been trained to expect everything for free? Andrew Zolli over at Newsweek has some ideas on the matter and some speculation.

What I see is not so much a lack of willingness to pay for things, as Zolli points out. We–people like myself who are the second wave of the early adopters–are coming of age. We are online almost constantly. We may never have purchased a newspaper for ourselves (and if we have it was probably for a plane flight where we can’t be online). But the important bit is that we’re growing up and we actually are starting to have the money to buy things. Back when I first started surfing, I didn’t, so I couldn’t have paid for things I wanted, now I can.

What is holding us back, I think, from paying for online content is just how fiddly it would be. Imagine having to register your credit card with every news site or blog you visit. Firstly, many people wouldn’t want to do that for safety’s sake. But forget that for a moment, think instead of having to go through the form that would have to pop up between the link on your friend’s Facebook page, and the content of the article you want to read. Wouldn’t happen. But would you kick in $0.05 to read the article if it just ticked over in an account you maintained with your PayPal information? I think some people would.

If we can add a widget to Firefox that allows us to add links to Facebook, Digg or whatever else we use, surely there is a way to click one button to authorize a tiny exchange of cash directly to the publisher. The key is to create trusted links between the content provider and the plugin we use for our browser, which enables us to authorise the transaction without having to type long numbers, fill in forms, or really break the flow of link-to-story at all.

I name PayPal because its the one transaction system I know of that’s large and trusted enough to support this kind of thing, but there could be others. The service should allocate a set amount of funds for this kind of thing, and warn you when you are approaching your ‘cap’ so you don’t suddenly realise that you have spent $500 browsing through Gamasutra and didn’t realise you were paying for every pageview. Alternative options would be a few dollars for unlimited access a month (pretty standard subscription). Pop $5 into your account, surf away at some reasonably small fee per story, and keep an eye on your balance in the plug-in’s toolbar. Think of it like the E-tag systems modern toll roads use. Get a tag, drive through and it debits your account. Top up the account every so often, and off you go.

Overall, the system has to be EASY. iTunes and Steam prove that people are willing to pay (in significant numbers) for content that is available to be pirated illegally, why not for other kinds of content? The trick is, as especially iTunes demonstrates, make it easy.

Questions for further thought: How much would one user’s read of the story be worth? How much are sites pulling in via the ads? Would the paid version eliminate the ads (keeping in mind there are ads on cable TV)? What about printing, or re-reading the same article?

The Phoenix

I am the past, and the future.  I am an echo that travels in both directions.  I am reborn, the Phoenix, the same each time and altogether different.  Sometimes five years, others fifty.  And I remember.  The past is a mantle I wear, one that speaks to me, mocks my helplessness.  The cycle consumes me, becomes me.  I rise, live and fly only to fall again and again.  I flee from the life I led, and will lead again, only to be remade from the ashes.  Always remade, reborn.  Connections are severed, but new ones will replace them.  I think that I must have been human, for I bewilder myself just as they do.  We share the same insatiable desire to belong together.  To fit together.  But they have the guarantee of closure, of a final answer.

I do not return from whence I came, except for now.  This time, I cannot explain why, but I have fled, fallen, and come again.  I circle now, in shadow and secret.  Stalking, I observe.  They are changed.  Though I have been thoroughly remade, they are the ones who are different.  I am who I always was, they have become who they were going to be.  Yet for me, they are only who they were.  The memory stalks me, as I stalk them.  I am their past too.  The ghosts of what once was are my retinue, and I the eternal king of memory.  Of the dead past.

Where they have grown, as humans do, I turn circles.  My fractal personality only repeats itself.

I have not been away long, but I only recognise what I remember.  The names and faces are the same, but the people that carry them have gone far and wide.  I did not witness these changes, I only see the results, through the fog of my memories.  The sometimes, often, opaque fog across my eyes.  I can only detect the traces of the presents that wreaked their effects, they seem like so many fairy tales.  To me the past is more real, the past that I now wear.  The past that is, to them, so distant.

Why have I returned this time?  What connection binds me here?  Of course, the past.  But that past belongs to someone else.  Who I am now and who I was then have never met, though we are one and the same.  How can I hope to return, when the shape of all things has changed?  I do not fit.  I am of a different age, removed from the ravages of their time, I have not worn smooth like they have.

Yet…

Here I am, now.  The past is with me, and affects me.  I did not have the memories then, that I do now.  I cannot be the creature I used to be, for that reason alone.  How have I changed?  My centre feels unmoved, yet some changes must have occurred.  I am older, I have seen things I had not seen.  Heard things I had not heard.  I know what I did not know.

Do I live in the past, or the present?  Do I know myself, or but the memory of myself?  Perhaps this is the reason, I see the changes in others but refuse to admit that I myself have changed.  How do I measure it?  How do I be sure of it?