Destroy. Escape. Create. Solve. The four basic motivations that have powered videogames through the ages.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in Gadgets and Gizmos magazine.

The final level in last year's classic Uncharted 2 : Among Thieves was one of the finest cinematic conclusions in the history of videogames, a fitting finale to one of the best games of all time. As the intrepid exporer Nathan Drake, you had to run rings around the game's final boss, while figuring out the way to kill him (your bullets didn't even scratch him), and then make a frantic escape by running, leaping, dodging, clingin on to ledges and get away while the entire building was collapsing around you. It was classic Indiana Jones style high adventure. And it incorporated, in the span of a few minutes, three of the basic player motivations that make up the basic DNA of gaming as a form.

The very first computer game, SpaceWar, established one of gaming's most common conventions - killing the other guy.

Since gaming's earliest days, an overwhelming majority of videogames presented the player with four primary objectives. You kill things. You escape things. You create things. You figure things out. Almost every game from 'Space War' to 'Super Mario Galaxy' to 'Mass Effect 2' has simply featured these four basic motivations in different permutations and combinations. It's a clear illustration of the 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' principle, and a look down gaming's memory lane helps build an understanding of how, beneath all the audio-visual splendour and technological wizardry, games actually force us to keep playing them.


Strangely enough, Pong, the very first videogame, doesn't quite fit into any of these four categories. While it can be argued that the objective of Pong was to 'avoid missing the ball' (as the game's iconic instructions themselves said), this is a bit of a stretch. But the reason becomes clear on a little closer examination – Pong is a representation of tennis (Willy Higginbotham's earlier variant was called Tennis for Two), an adaptation of a real-world sports game. Our study is limited to pure videogames, which leaves out videogame adaptations of sports, board games, or puzzles, which fit into a different evolutionary tree altogether.


However, Space War, the first PC game (which in fact predates Pong) was also the first to establish what is still one of gaming's most popular motivations – kill the other guy. Over 50 years later, this is still the basic thing players need to do in ultra-modern games like Call of Duty : Modern Warfare, Halo 3 and God of War. The simple pleasure of destroying your opponents is what drives a large part of the multi-billion dollar worldwide gaming industry. The implementations have varied through the years – gamers have had to shoot, hack, slash, smash and beat up assorted things which included aliens, monsters, soldiers, pirates, ninjas and multicoloured bricks – but in essence, you had to destroy everything that wasn't you to win the game. It's a very primal survival instinct, and it's not for nothing that combat is pehaps the single most common feature in videogames, so common that many people think all games are violent and there is no other kind of videogame.

Pac-Man's only function was to escape the pursuing Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. And they would always eventually get you.

Of course, this isn't true. Even as early as the late seventies, games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were blazing a different trail. Both these seminal titles motivated the player in completely different ways – instead of the hunter, the player was the hunted. The primary gameplay motivation was escape – you were expected to dodge and avoid your enemies, and reach a point where you could escape and end the level. Sure, you were given tools to destroy your enemies temporarily (Pac-Man's power-pill helped you eat the ghosts, and Mario could grab a hammer and crunch the barrels in Donkey Kong), but they would always respawn and come right back at you. Unlike in Space Invaders or Defender, destroying your enemies was only a means, but not the end itself. You could just as well dodge around them and finish the levels. More games followed that used this formula of escape as opposed to killing – Pitfall, River Raid, Prince of Persia and Super Mario Bros. All featured enemies that were obstacles but not objectives. Running, jumping and dodging with dexterity are more important here than brute strength. The legacy continues well into the present day, with Super Mario Bros remaining one of gaming's most powerful franchises, and games like Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed and Little Big Planet seamlessly incporporating combat and level-navigation in varying degrees to facilitate escape.

Spore is the culmination of Will Wright's design emphasis on creative over destructive gameplay. Wright's games (The Sims, SimCity) are mostly about creative exploration, and largely lack traditional gaming objectives such as 'winning'.

Meanwhile, Will Wright and Sid Meier, with SimCity and Civilization respectively, created a powerful trend in gaming that emphasized creation over destruction. You built and nurtured cities, and indeed entire civilizations that grew and flourished under your care. The motivation worked in an opposite way to the survival instincts that were catered to by killing or escape based games – appealing to a more evolved, sophisticated need to create and care for things. It bust the market wide open – and a flood of games flowed through the breach into the hands of eager fans. Wright went on to create the bestselling The Sims franchise (in which you created and cared for ordinary, everyday virtual people) and the hugely ambitious Spore (in which you saw your beloved single-cell creation evolve into a spacefaring race of super-beings). Meanwhile, the strategy genre took Civilization's lead and ran in different directions, creating a slew of games in which you needed to build things that would give you the power to destroy other things. Awesomeness followed, and superfranchises such as Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, and Warhammer were born.

The Myst series arguably took the puzzle-solving adventure mainstream. It featured devilishly tricky puzzles that many individuals needed to slyly refer to online walkthroughs to solve. Yes, Millenium Internet Cafe users, you know who you are.

An even more sophisticated breed of gamer demanded the need to flex their brain-muscles a little more – and the adventure franchise tapped into this need. Games like Monkey Island, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight and the blockbuster Myst were essentially stories which unfurled as the gamer solved puzzles to advance the plot. While the pure adventure rose, fell, and then enjoyed a renaissance in the casual gaming space, the 'figure-things-out' mechanic has found its way into every other genre – many shooters, role-playing games and strategy games feature 'puzzles' that need to be solved. With the recent release of 'Heavy Rain', adventure games may yet make a comeback into the mainstream.


As gaming evolves and the boundaries between genres blurs even more, the motivation in games becomes more complex, and most games will feature the four basic motivations – destruction, creation, escape and puzzle-solving – in different combinations. And, as Uncharted 2 has shown us, it can be quite the heady cocktail.

Bioshock 2 and the challenge of extending Rapture

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my Game Invader column for the New Indian Express

Rapture is a beautiful gameworld, but rather hard to expand upon.

When Bioshock was first released, it was rightly hailed as an instant classic. However, it was also praised to the heavens for its innovation and gameplay, which was rather baffling. Bioshock's strengths lay in its superb story and breathtaking setting. The visual and sound design were among the finest in the history of gaming, and, as everybody knows, it had the “best water effects ever seen in a videogame”™. The gameplay, however, featured no real innovation (younger gamers – please refer to System Shock 2), the gunfights were cookie-cutter, and the way the game handled player death effectively devalued any real tension the player might have felt during the combat. So while Bioshock remains a triumph of fantastic, atmospheric videogame storytelling, making a sequel was always going to be problematic.

And now, with Bioshock 2, our fears have been confirmed. While the sequel is indeed an excellent game, it simply doesn't blow us away the way its predecessor did.

Because, with Bioshock, the developers painted themselves into a bit of a corner in a couple of ways.

First, they chose surface (story, visuals, sound) over core gameplay. Since the surface was so astonishingly brilliant, this didn''t matter the first time around. But, in a sequel, it was always going to be hard to top that effort, and hence player disappointment was almost guaranteed. Even though Bioshock 2 does feature a great story and impressive presentation, it still lacks the 'wow' factor, because the initial bar was set so high. And, in the absence of these things, the gameplay doesn't hold up very well. Games like Halo and God of War don't really need any major innovations in story or visual presentation, because the core gameplay is so much fun that anyhing else is a bonus. Games like these are perfect for churning out sequels, because fans care only about the gameplay – even small innovations or additional features will keep them interested. Halo 3 is a classic example – I enjoyed every minute of the campaign, although I can barely remember what the story was about.

Second, they created a gameworld that, while being splendid and beautiful, is terribly hard to expand upon. The fiction of Bioshock firmly locks Rapture as a single underground city, the vision of one man, now a complete, dystopian wreck, overrun by lunatics and abominations. While it is theoretically possible to jump through a few hoops and contrive ways to expand the game's universe, the solutions would probably still feel just that - contrived. Bioshock 2, which is set in the same Rapture as the original, still feels fresh yet familiar, but it's hard to see the gameworld sustaining interest through yet another sequel. This is even more important for a game that depends on story and setting to hold the players' attention. Contrast this with the gameworlds created for games such as Halo, Fallout, Mass Effect or Dragon Age – all open worlds which make it easy for the designers to add a planet here, a forest there, a dwarven ruin here and infinitely extend the gamer's virtual playground. While I again reiterate that it's certainly not impossible to extend the world of Rapture, it is difficult to do it in a manner that wouldn't feel forced.

None of this would matter if Bioshock featured gameplay that would stand on its own, without the technical and creative wizardry to prop it up. Sadly, it doesn't. Which just demonstrates that old “gameplay over story” chestnut in emphatic fashion.

Dealing with Death.

by Anand Ramachandran. This Article first appeared in my Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

The iconic death screen from 'Oregon Trail. Never heard of it? Look it up. Now.

Death in videogames is almost as old as the medium itself. A huge percentage of early arcade games had the concept of 'lives' – die three times, for instance, and you'd see the dreaded words 'GAME OVER' on your screen. The concept of 'death' was so ingrained into the medium that even in games where you didn't technically 'die' (you'd just miss catching something, or hitting something) you'd still say things like “I have only two lives left” or “I died”.



Soon enough, most genres replaced the idea of a finite number of 'lives' with the concept of 'health' or 'hit points'. You'd start with, say, a 100 hit points. Whenever you did something stupid, like take a rocket launcher in the face, or fall off a cliff, you'd lose health. When your health was completely depleted, you would die. This was probably done to make games more accessible and forgiving to players – the concept of 'dying' because of a single mistake was pretty harsh. And games were difficult back in the day – a single touch of an 'enemy object', such as a bullet or a spike or the enemy itself, would result in instant death in games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man or Space Invaders. The 'health' concept at least gave players some room for error. Of course, this also made scalable difficulty easier to implement, since the 'degree' of damage could be controlled.



More recently. Many games began to dispense with the idea of 'health' altogether, favouring a damage system where you would die only if you took sustained damage for a period of time. If under fire, the gamer would simply have to take cover for a few seconds, and 'health' would be restored to normal. Halo : Combat Evolved was probably the first game to successfully implement this feature, and today even role-playing games like Mass Effect 2 have followed suit.



It's fairly logical – gamers hate to die. They hate to have to constantly re-load old save games and play through difficult segments repeatedly. Combined with automatic checkpointing systems, these new ways of approaching player death have made games more fun for the average player. In fact, the legendary LucasArts adventure games (Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Full Throttle) did away with the concept of death altogether – you just couldn't die or get hopelessly stuck in a LucasArts adventure. Hardcore gamers scoffed at this, and missed the frenetic tension of desperately clinging on to the last 'life' or miniscule 'health' – playing extra carefully until a reprieve in the form of a 1-UP bonus or health-pack could be found. At least they still have Super Mario Bros.



Now, the recently released 'Heavy Rain' treats death in a wholly new and intriguing way. The game features a parallel narrative technique where the player controls different characters at different points in the game, experiencing the storyline from their converging viewpoints. And if one of the characters happens to die, due to a choice the player makes, the story simply continues – and the death of the relevant character impacts the way the rest of the story pans out. It's very clever and exciting – and could change the way games tug at our emotions. Sure, games like 'Wing Commander' and 'Final Fantasy 7' featured emotional death scenes that impacted the story, but never of a character that the player controlled.



If it works well, interactive narrative would have taken another bold step. If not – oh, well. There's always conveniently placed exploding barrels.

Katrina Kaif's keen mind analyzes the budget.

Here's Katrina Kaif on the budget, from today's TOI.

"The overall Budget is positive for the education, entertainment and energy sectors. Finally, the FM has admitted that India is a nation of moviegoers. Clarification on custom duty for imported cinematographic films will benefit some. It would have been nice if cinema tickets were subsidized.

Entertainment tax in certain states is high. The government must give this a thought. What makes me happy is that the education incentives, especially in primary schools in rural India, will continue. "

Hoo, boy. Where do I even begin? This statement expects us to believe that :

1. Katrina Kaif has a reasonable understanding of how the economics of the energy and education sectors work.
2. Katrina Kaif understands the taxation structure for imported cinematographic films.
3. Katrina Kaif actually said this.

Of course, it's very possible that Ms.Kaif is, indeed, an intelligent and thoughtful young woman who reflects on many aspects of civil society, global economics and existential philosophies whenever she gets some time off from pretending to be a dumb bimbette and making lots of cash.


But consider this TV interview I once saw. The words are not accurate, but the exchange is reproduced precisely as it occurred.

Dumb Interviewer Chick : Do you have any problems with being perceived as just a pretty face ? With how people only pay attention to your looks and not your brains ?


Katrina Kaif : Not at all. I have no problem if people keep harping on my beauty and, you know, don't talk about my . . . you know . . . er . . . um . . . ah . . . er . . . whatever it's called."


Dumb Interviewer Chick " Whatever it's called."


Both nod vigorously.

Katrina Kaif didn't even show enough intelligence to remember the word 'intelligence'. Perhaps it was because she was simultaneously calculating the fiscal deficit.

Shahid Kapur's keen mind analyzes the budget.

Here's Shahid Kapur on yesterday's budget, in today's TOI :

"As the finance minister pointed out, we've had a fairly trouble-free 2009. But, we live in the times of terror and increase in defence capital expenditure was mandatory. I feel that besides giving our border and police forces better amenities like guns and bulletproof vests, we must give them better living conditions. These guys are real heroes and their homes and pay packets need to be bettered. It's the least we can do for them. "

Notice two key features of his message :

1. The use of the term 'defence capital expenditure'.
2. Complete sentences with real words.

Now contrast this with the contents of Shahid's twitter stream, for the period leading up to the budget, and the day the budget was presented. Reproduced here for your reading pleasure. Please click the image for a magnified view. It's worth it.

Note the salient features. Only four tweets even remotely resemble proper sentences :

1. "ishaan to my left"
2. "hey man" 
3. "of course i will"
4. "hey"

Other than pointing out the precise location of Ishaan, and providing a thrilling demonstration of the overuse of punctuation marks, Shahid gives us no evidence on twitter that he is capable of such a lucid response to the budget. "Defence capital expenditure" indeed.

I suspect that Shahid is an extremely articulate, perceptive and intelligent young man who deliberately recruits half-wit morons to ghost-tweet on his behalf. But I could be wrong.

Control Freaks : A brief look at the evolution of the videogame controller.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in India Today's Gadgets and Gizmos magazine.

2010 could well be the year of the motion controller – with Sony's yet unnamed magic wand, and Microsoft's eagerly awaited Project Natal set to make their debuts, to challenge Nintendo's monopoly over motion-control console gaming.

When they introduced the now ubiquitous Wiimote controller back in 2006, Nintendo changed the rules for the gaming industry – exploding into completely new target segments and exponentially growing the size of the videogames market. Sony and Microsoft were caught napping, and ended up fighting for the smaller, more saturated 'hardcore' segment while millions of new gamers gleefully lapped up the Wii, which ended up outselling the XBOX and the PS3 combined by some distance.

Now Sony and Microsoft are finally getting into this game, hoping to get a chunk of the huge numbers of casual gamers – kids, women, families – that Nintendo currently targets. While Sony's offering looked rather uninspiring, reminding us of a Wiimote clone combined with Sony's own PS2 eye-toy gadget, Microsoft's much-hyped Project Natal has the potential to be just as revolutionary and influential as the Wii was. When Microsoft demonstrated their 'controller-less' gaming system at E3 last year, people were blown away. Using a true motion capture system, the control scheme allowed gamers to translate their real-life gestures such as punching, kicking, ducking and jumping into the game environment. It also featured voice-recognition and face-recognition systems, offering gamers a completely new, immersive gaming experience.

So could Natal end up being the next game-changing controller innovation? Or is it doomed to becoame another one-off novelty like the Eye-Toy or Nintendo's Power-Glove? Is the success of a game controller purely due to innovation? Or are there other factors?

For the answers, it would help to take a trip down the memory lane of videogame controller history.

Surprisingly, game controllers have changed very little since the very first conventions were established – early arcade games, after some experimentation with sliders, knobs and all-button layouts, settled nicely into a joystick-button combination, which is still the dominant control scheme today. And it works so well purely because it neatly captures the two most commonly used inputs in all games – directional input and instantaneous input (jump, do this, do that). Interestingly, the first home video consoles didn't have multiple cartridges – they came with built-in games, and so featured highly customised controls, such as motorcycle handlebars for 'Stunt Cycle' and dual joysticks for 'Tank'. Only when the 'cartridge' system of selling multiple games for home consoles became the norm, the need for a common controller that would work for multiple games ensured that the joystick-button combination became the standard. And everyone was happy for more than two decades.

The ATARI 2600 joystick evolved from the ones found in Arcade Cabinets, and handled the two kinds of inout that most games require - directional and instantaneous. It worked remarkably well for many years.



Of course, controllers evolved in small ways. The ubiquitous Atari 2600 joystick featured one Joystick and a single button, and worked remarkably well. Then, Mattel experimented with a disc-based directional input, and a telephone-like number-pad that you could use for multiple button-inputs. There were many alternatives for specific games, such as paddles / knobs, trackballs and steering-wheels, but the joystick remained the dominant control scheme.

Then the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles such as the NES, SNES, Sega Master System and Genesis introduced the gamepad design, which made more efficient use of both hands. The joystick was replaced by a directional pad, which performed the same function of directional input, by using a single thumb (as opposed to the entire right hand), freeing up the other fingers for holding the controller and operating more buttons.

The PlayStation was the first system to introduce twin analog sticks - thus establishing the modern controller configuration. All modern conventional console controllers are merely variations of this basic design.



The next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation, the Dreamcast and the Nintendo 64 introduced analog joysticks, more face buttons and shoulder-buttons. The analog joystick, referred to as a thumbstick, was an important design leap forward – it could, like the d-pad, be operated using a single thumb, and yet offered more precise directional and speed control. The Playstation 2 was the first system to offer two analog sticks and a directional-pad, thus establishing the modern console controller configuration. Microsoft introduced Analog 'triggers' in place of the shoulder buttons for their XBOX console, and basic controller design hit a plateau after that. The XBOX 360 and PS3 controllers are merely small, mostly ergonomic improvements, but the two-thumbsticks / face buttons / analog triggers / shoulder buttons combination is quite the same as the previous generation's.

Then, Nintendo changed everything with their Wiimote, and people were pointing at the screen, waving and swinging their controllers to play tennis, golf and boxing games. Or did things really change that much? Even Nintendo admits that, after the novelty factor wore off, people played a large percentage of games using the Wiimote turned sideways, like a normal controller. Sure, the motion-control is still a huge winner for the Wii, but it hasn't replaced conventional control schemes altogether. And there's a darned good reason for this – ultimately, controlling videogames has an inescapable layer of abstraction to it. So, to most game players, convenience and comfort tends to be more important than innovation or immersion or realism. After a point, they simply don't care, they just need a convenient, easy, efficient way to tell their on-screen avatars what to do. And the basic joystick-buttons combination works just fine for that.

Nintendo's famous Wiimote ushered in the first controller paradigm-shift in years, forcing Sony's and Microsoft's hand. Both companies are set to introduce their own motion-controllers later this year.




Even in theory, the Wiimote is just an evolution of a pointing device that gamers have used for ages – the humble PC mouse. Aiming using the Wiimote and moving with the Nunchuck feels vaguely similar to the mouse-keyboard combo that PC gamers have always used. Sure, the Wiimote is wireless and senses motion in three dimensions, but at its core, it's just an improvement over the gesture-functionality offered by the mouse. Games like Die By The Sword even managed to create fairly effective swordplay mechanics using the mouse input alone, long before No More Heroes arrived on the Wii. Similar in concept? You bet.

Innovative 'music' controllers have played a huge part in creating and popularizing a whole new mainstream genre of rhythm games - an example of how controller innovation can help sell games.




However, this isn't to say that innovation is dead or useless. The guitar and drum controllers for the Guitar Hero / Rock Band games, the turntable for DJ Hero, steering wheels for racers, and the dance Mats for dance games have shown that, when there's a fit, innovative controllers do make a huge difference, and sell lots of games. However, it's important to note that each of these unconventional controllers enhances the fun-factor of the games they're meant for without sacrificing usability or comfort levels. Therein lies the rub.

In the final analysis, Natal will be a game-changer only if it also comes with games that fit well with its motion-capture input scheme. It has to make games easier, more comfortable and more fun to play. If Microsoft tries to shoehorn the controller into existing genres, then we could very well see it recede into the realm of forgotten novelties, and everyone returning to their beloved conventional controllers for another decade.

Alternate ways to deal with the 'Manglik' curse.

One of my friends has just been told the bad news in no uncertain terms. His brutally honest, grim-faced astrologer has informed him that he is 'Manglik'. And hence he would have to marry an earthen pot.

I have nothing against earthen pots – they're cute, unargumentative, and eco-friendly – but I would draw the line at marrying one. No insurance benefits, and the sex would be below par. Not to mention the horrifying prospect of the house being filled with the pitter-patter--plunkety-plonk-oops-crash of little anthropomorphic pots resembling something from those badly animated advertisements seen on Doordarshan during the eighties.

But I digress. The reason for this downright bizarre practice is, of course, to prevent your bride(or groom)-to-be from meeting with a grisly end a few months into the marriage. By marrying the pot, your 'curse' is transferred to the innocent container, which then frees your beloved to live long, prosper, and nag you about your clothes. The pot is then destroyed, ending the curse. Neat.

On closer examination of the practice, I find that our friends in the astrological community have been rather unimaginative in their process design. The things you can marry to redeem yourself from the dreaded 'Manglik' curse seem mostly limited to earthen pots, banana trees and clay idols. Boring.

My question is – why not expand the scope a little and include a number of things that are better suited to bearing the curse of imminent death? Just a quick glance around will provide numerous examples of things that are probably going to die quickly anway, so what's the harm in going a little 'Manglik' on their sorry asses? A sampling :

• An XBOX 360 console
  Everybody knows that Microsoft's crappy hardware quality will ensure a 'Red Ring of Death' just a few months after purchase. Perfect for absorbing any Manglik negative energy.
  
  
• Sania Mirza's chances at the next grand slam
  If lack of survival is what you're looking for, then Ms.Mirza is unlikely to let you down.
  
  
• A Mayfly
  The poor creatures only live for a few hours anyway. And their main purpose is reproduction, so you can even squeeze in a quick one before saying goodbye. Caution – might die even before you complete the ceremony, so make it quick and snappy. Register marriages recommended as opposed to those interminably long circuses we sometimes call weddings.
  
  
• The acting careers of Tushar Kapoor, Dino Morea or Suniel Shetty
  While we admit that their careers are dying a tad slower than is ideally suited for this purpose, there's nothing wrong in helping their demise along with a little Manglik magic. 
   
  
• An answer to any question posed on TV by Arnab Goswami
  A very safe bet – since Arnab takes great care to kill all responses quickly and efficiently, by cutting them off after “Well, you see, Arnab, it's a ma . . .”
  
  
• A social revolution started on Twitter or Facebook
  Nothing is more short-lived than attempts by thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook to rid the world of its evils by starting hashtags and saying interesting things about their underwear. Most of these live for about 24 hours, or until someone links to a funny video where Hitler gets upset.
  
  

Of course. I realize that many of these things are fairly hard to actually 'marry' – but Astrologers are studs at coming up with ideas to solve such problems. If they can cure chronic gall bladder problems by tying coloured ropes around stone idols hundreds of miles away from the gall bladder in question, this can't be too hard. They'll figure it out.

Learning to Floo

Also - the comic is being serialized now on the CIS India web site. For those of you who missed the beginning - you can start reading here.

Here's the latest page, as a teaser :

We'll be updating mondays and thursdays, so do follow. And let us know your comments and feedback right here on this blog.

The need for game appreciation

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express.


All other currently thriving art and entertainment forms benefit from a thriving ecosystem of critique, appreciation and deep understanding. Films, books and music are studied and dissected by an army of critics who look at everything the form has to offer, from the popular to the obscure, and throw light on their many aspects – such as cultural relevance, historical significance, sheer aesthetic beauty, technical excellence and so on. This not only helps us as fans understand and enjoy the arts in broader and deeper ways, it also exposes us to a far wider body of work, and indeed enhances our experiences of these arts.


Why, then, don't we have anything similar for games? Why is there precious little in terms of critique or appreciation of videogames as a bona-fide art form as there is for cinema for instance? We cannot argue that games are in their infancy, because they aren't. Videogames are now well over three decades old. All we have are reviews, which are great, but do not qualify as informed criticism. As Greg Costikyan, the renowned independent game designer and journalist pointed out, a review is a buyer's guide, intended to tell people whether the game in question is worth their time and money. It tells us nothing of the game's cultural context or significance within gaming's canon.


For gaming to gain acceptance as a mainstream entertainment medium and art form, we must make efforts to preserve and celebrate its heritage. A young gamer playing Bioshock 2 today is unlikely to know much about the history of shooting games, and the diverse influences which Bioshock brings together.


We need to look at questions that dig deep into gaming's very soul. How does the history of games that are based on destruction differ from that of games based on creation? How are these games different in what needs and desires they fulfil in the gamer? Where does a game like Spore (which gives you tools to create things that help you destroy other things) fit in to the scheme of things? How do games that let you nurture creations (The Sims, Farmville) differ in basic nature from those which depend on mindless destruction (Borderlands, Doom) to engage the gamer? How do we explain games that lack objectives or winning conditions altogether (The Sims, Flower) ? Are they games at all? There's so much to understand and study and shed light on.


Popular discourse based on questions such as these will only help strengthen the foundations of popular gaming, and create a solid base of knowledge from which who knows what kind of games will spring. The sheer variety of choices available to the public in books, films and music is staggering – and games are nowhere close to offering that much variety. But it's growing extremely quickly, and a better critical understanding will doubtless fuel innovation and experimentation.


We need game clubs where young gamers can play the games which are the ancestors of today's blockbusters. An Age of Empires fan must experience Dune II. A Fallout 3 fan should have the opportunity to play Wasteland. An Uncharted 2 fan should be given the chance to check out the original Ninja Gaiden or Prince of Persia or Donkey Kong.


Music and film fans have access to the hits of yore, the creations that shaped and defined the art through the ages, and to intelligent discourse and critique that helps them experience and appreciate it in context. We must ensure that gaming fans have the same.

Is Bioware the greatest developer ever?

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for the New Indian Express.

By releasing two genre-defining games within a few months of each other, Bioware has stamped their authority on cutting-edge game development, and have staked their claim to being the greatest game development studio of all time, at least outside Japan.


Last year's Dragon Age : Origins was a lovingly, intricately and masterfully crafted classical role-playing game, in the traditions of Bioware's own epic, Baldur's Gate 2. It featured a delightfully rich and detailed high-fantasy gameworld, a role-playing system that was a purist's delight, and some of the best squad-based tactical combat in modern gaming. It raised the bar for swords-and-sorcery RPGs, and is now the definitive high fantasy role-playing game by some distance.


Now, merely a few months later, they've gone and done the same for sci-fi based RPGs with the utterly magical Mass Effect 2.


This is a very different role-playing experience from Dragon Age. While the latter is a very old-school, classical, deliberately paced game, Mass Effect 2 lays down the template for the post-modern RPG – faster paced, more accessible and more cinematic. While Dragon Age : Origins is clearly aimed at veteran RPGers, Mass Effect 2 is the kind of game that can introduce a generation of new players to the role-playing genre, which it in fact completely redefines. While Dragon Age feels like you're in a 'Lord of The rings' type epic novel, Mass Effect 2 is like being in a Star Wars movie.


With the Mass Effect franchise, Bioware achieves what no other developer has managed to achieve in the past decade – simultaneously establish a new set of interactive storytelling and role-playing gameplay mechanics, and create one of the most interesting sci-fi universes in recent times. The Mass Effect universe is fleshed out with the usual top-notch writing, great lore and painstaking attention to detail that are all vintage Bioware. It has the potential to be the Star Wars / Star Trek universe of future generations - no mean feat, and it could only have been pulled of by Bioware.


Make no mistake, with Mass Effect 2, Bioware now owns the sci-fi RPG, and indeed have set the new standard for the 'interactive cinematic experience' that has always been gaming's holy grail. And with Dragon Age : Origins, they own the high-fantasy RPG, and the legions of fans of hardcore traditional role-playing. Indeed, while Dragon Age is the successor to Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect is descended from Star Wars : Knights of The Old Republic, another of Bioware's best games. And with both games, Bioware has broken free of the shackles of existing franchises (Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars) and created completely original universes.


A look at any definitive list of the best games of the last fifteen years will reveal that no other developer has so many entries, with so many different franchises, with the possible exception of that other legendary studio, Blizzard. With the upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, Bioware now threatens Blizzard's stranglehold over the MMO landscape. If anyone can dethrone World of Warcraft, a Bioware-Star Wars combination probably stands the best possible chance.


A Blizzard vs Bioware verdict is too close to call – they're both incredibly skilled, influential and successful studios. They've both created top-class fantasy and sci-fi universes. They've both created games that redefine genres. But one factor in favour of Bioware is that, while Blizzard's efforts have so far been restricted to the PC platform, Bioware has found success on consoles as well.
Greatest ever? Close, but a successful Star Wars MMO should seal it conclusively.