Chris Kohler has an interview with UbiSoft's Yannis Mallat at the Wired blog. In particular, Mallat talks about wanting to create emotional investment in games. In particular, he talks about what I referred to as "parlor tricks" -- ie, reliance on cinematics to give the illusion of investment.

He seems to get it, though in specifically game-design terms, rather than in story terms, talking about "building a relationship between the game and the player."

Here's an idea.

Hire. Good. Writers.

Or am I out of line?

Family's down with a cold, which is another example of bad timing, as we're supposed to head to Anaheim (and fair warning, you follow this link, you'll need a) insulin, and b) to turn down the volume) on Thursday for a Family Get-Together to celebrate my sister's 40th birthday. Hopefully, all bugs will pass before we have to travel.

Finished one script today -- can't talk about it -- and working on squaring away the last of Checkmate 24 tomorrow, so mercuryeric and I can get started on #25 ASAP.

And in other news, I finished my first play-through of Mass Effect this evening. Very good, if flawed, game. I suspect I'll indulge in a long-winded review at some point in the next week or so.

Found this linked at Penny Arcade.

I've been playing, and for the most part, very much enjoying Mass Effect. But, man...if any of you has the version of the game described here, would you mind letting me know where I could find a copy?

You know, purely for research purposes, of course.

Finished Call of Duty 4. Which is to say that I finished the single-player campaign on wussy mode. I am now (again, in my copious free time) playing through on You Will Die A Lot mode, which is a great example of truth in advertising, as that is exactly what I'm doing.

Some wonderful things in this game, in my opinion. The ad campaign, which I'm sure many of y'all have seen, runs on a riff of "times change, weapons change, nations change, soldiers stay the same," and it's actually a fairly clear mission statement of Infinity Ward's approach to the game. Once again, they did a terrific job of creating a game that is fun to play without abandoning at least a token nod to reality. Those who've played it and reached then end of the Force Recon string will understand what I'm talking about; those who haven't and are going to, let's just say that they spent time and energy programming a section of gameplay that is entirely about not being able to do a damn thing, and not only does it work, but it works quite effectively.

I'm a little torn about the ending, but that's just my sentimental side, I think. The biggest problem -- and in CoD 4's case, it's truly minor, though casting back to thoughts of Medal of Honor: Airborne, far moreso -- is the apparent need to make games in this genre feel like war movies, a genre entirely defined, at this point, by cliché. CoD4 managed to avoid this, for the most part, though the ending was depressingly reminiscent of Bad Boys. Thankfully nowhere as stupid.

Crime Bible #2 hits tomorrow, "The Lesson of Lust", and you just know with a title like that, someone is going to be offended, which, I suppose, means I'm doing my job.

In honor of the Coming of The Second Issue, then, I post the following preview art.

By Matthew Clark, from #3, "The Lesson of Greed":

By Manuel Garcia, from #5, "The Parable of the Faceless":

See? Who says I can't share the love?

Happy belated birthday, jonlaw!!! Good Lord, we've known each other a long time, haven't we?

I was going to include my XBox 360 gamercard, but 1) I couldn't get it to embed right, and 2) I thought better of it at the last minute. I may, in future, reconsider my decision -- it's not like I actually go on live to multiplay, anyway.

And no, I don't have enough free time to justify having cracked open Call of Duty 4 yesterday. And I rather proudly managed to keep myself to about 30 minutes of playing before shutting it down for the night, but...damn!

Call of Duty 2 was the first game on the 360 I got into (though I tried, how I tried, to love this one, and apologies in advance for those who follow the link and are assaulted by the music). I loved it. It chewed me up and spat me out, and still I loved it. Tears would stream down my cheeks when I played this game because I was afraid to blink for fear of missing something (Stalingrad, winter, snowing, visibility for crap, and let me just say the smoke effects? outstanding). I died early and often. It was great.

This was the fault of mercuryeric, as he was the one who turned me onto this particular dose of crack. I emailed him after playing the first level and consistently failing to, uh, survive, asking for advice. He wrote back: "1) ditch crappy Russian weaponry for not-crappy German weaponry ASAP. 2) Shoot. 3) Don't get shot. 4) repeat 2 and 3."

Funny guy. Funny, funny guy.

Thing about CoD2 was that it managed to -- at least to me -- be an FPS set during WWII, to be a game, and a truly enjoyable one, and yet to somehow not diminish the horror of the truth. Somehow, and I don't know how the folks at Infinity Ward managed this, they created a game that was at once incredibly fun, and yet never once allowed me to believe that I would, for one moment, have survived the real thing. It's a peculiar compliment, I suppose, but it impressed the hell out of me, and the efforts to remain at least nominally historically accurate were appreciated (unlike in Medal of Honor Airborne with it's addition of, I shit you not, super Nazis).

It's not that MoHA was a bad game -- it looked good, it had some fun gameplay. But it somehow didn't reach that same level of tactile, visceral "reality" (yes, yes, I know, it's a VIDEO GAME) that CoD2 seemed to do with such (apparent) ease, and it certainly, at the end, failed to leave me with the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that COD2 did. To whit: I'm not replaying MoHA; I still play CoD2.

And the less said about the bitter, bitter disappointment that was CoD3, the better (though, it should be noted, CoD3 was not, repeat, not, made by Infinity Ward).

This new one, "Modern Warfare," I'm not far enough into it to pass any sort of judgment (and frankly, I'm probably not one to be passing that sort of judgment anyway, other than to say that "I liked it" or "I didn't", which throws this whole post into question, certainly), but thus far, the franchise's promise seems to be upheld.

And you start the game as a member of the 22 SAS, which has its own cool, in my opinion.