Monday, February 29, 2016

TIF Plays: Week of 2/22-2/26
Gameplay

Welcome to the The Impact Factor's last week of gameplay! Check out below to links of all my gameplay. Be sure to catch me live on Twitch (MegalodonPhD). I stream every Tuesday at 5:30pm PST and Thursday at 6:30pm PST. Plus some special Friday streams, too! You can do me a favor by subscribing to The Impact Factor's YouTube channel, but hey, don't let me tell you what to do! 

To keep up to date with everything The Impact Factor, and me, follow me on Twitter: @alexsamocha

See you all next week!








Friday, February 26, 2016

News & Views
2/20/16-2/26/16

I know this isn’t video game related, but it’s Oscars weekend! Who do you think will win? This is the first year in the past few that I feel like I have only seen a small handful of the nominated films. Oh well. Awards shows are always fun to have on in the background!

Now onto News & Views, a weekly curation of the best video game writing, stories, opinions and more! Check out the links below for the trails of a female eSports champion, how Firewatch calls back to dating during the early internet, undressing Kratos, and how no one really know what games cost.

And of course please check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight
Richard Hooper, BBC

Worth Reading
Zack Hage, Medium

Graham Smith, Rock Paper Shotgun

Oli Welsh, Eurogamer

Janine Hawkins, Giantbomb

Christian Nutt, Gamasutra

G. Christopher Willamas, popmatters

With Comments
Nicholas Deleon, VICE
The middle class is disappearing in nearly all aspects of gaming. The gamedev middle class disappeared midway through the last console generation with the loss of studios like THQ. Just last week we saw the closure of GameTrailers, the middle class of mainstream / old-school games media. And now, as Nicholas Deleon writes, YouTube is losing its gaming middle class too. It’s sad.

Kevin Roose, Fusion.net
I enjoy watching Hafu stream. She really knows what she’s talking about when it comes to Hearthstone’s arena mode. I cannot even begin to imagine all of the harassment she has had to deal with over her many years as a known professional gamer. Though Roose’s interview dwelled too long on the negative, Hafu eloquently paints a horrific picture of being a female eSports champion.

Katerine Cross, Gamasutra
Cross writes an fascinating piece describing the relationship at the core of Firewatch’s experience. It’s about two people who’ve never met, never seen each other, trying to feel each other out through sparse vocal interactions. I never really participated in a romantic relationship in the early internet, but the comparison seems apt. Firewatch continues to provide great platforms for discussion. I love it.

Jason Schreier, Kotaku
The Impact Factor is talking about a sports game? You bet I am! This story is hilarious. Steph Curry’s real life NBA performance cannot be replicated in NBA 2K. That’s insane. He’s too good to be properly simulated in a video game. I think it works to reinforce what I’ve heard from the sports media world: Steph Curry is redefining the NBA. The parallel with that sentiment and video games is awesome. 
The Impact Factor Ep. 43: Tatsumaking Me Angry
Podcast
Welcome to the 43rd episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!

Please send your suggestions and feedback to: impactfactorpodcast@gmail.com

In this episode Alex and Fliss talk about The Division, Destiny, HTC Vive, VR, Twitch chat, Battleborn, Bethesda, Uncharted 4, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Street Fighter V, Survivor & much more!


YouTube page

For articles and reviews from Alex, check out: www.theimpactfactor.blogspot.com
For a blog about Japan, pop culture & more from Fliss, check out:
www.flissofthenorthstar.blogspot.com

Follow Alex @alexsamocha on Twitter. twitch.tv/megalodonphd
Follow Fliss 
@thecfliss on Twitter. twitch.tv/flissofthenorthstar

Intro song:
You Kill My Brother by Go! Go! Go! Micro Invasion, East Jakarta Chiptunes Compilations. Freemusic Archive. (Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike License)
freemusicarchive.org/music/Indonesi…s_Compilation/
Transitions:
News & Views and Perspectives transitions from victorcenusa, Freesound.org (Creative Commons 0 License)
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148785/
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148784/
Experimental Methods transition from Sentuniman, Freesound.org (Attribution Noncommercial License)
freesound.org/people/Setuniman/sounds/143994/

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The Joy of Being Unbalanced
Perspectives
Abstract: Competitive multiplayer games have shaped my gaming identity from as early as I can remember. The advent of downloadable updates created a new era of multiplayer experiences, in which developers could continuously adjust for balance and fairness. A zeitgeist has arisen around weakening elements in multiplayer games that are deemed too powerful, making the dogma of balance center around ‘nerfs.’ I argue this should not be the default approach, as you often lose an intangible fun factor in the process. Some of my favorite competitive multiplayer experiences of all time had huge imbalances that added to the experience and my enjoyment. How do you think ‘balance’ should be handled in competitive gaming?

It’s fun to be unfair. It’s fun to be too powerful. If video games do one thing well, it’s making players feel, act, and look like a force to be reckoned with. And where better to be a headshot-targeting, full life bar KO-ing, make your enemy want to uninstall the game and never return kind of person? Multiplayer.

Multiplayer games were a tremendously important part of my video game upbringing. Some of my earliest and most lucid gaming memories revolve around multiplayer experiences. Whether it was playing Bandai’s Stadium Events on the Nintendo power pad, or two-player Super Mario Kart on the SNES, or the brutal vehicular destruction of Twisted Metal on the PS1, playing competitively with friends (& strangers) shaped how I thought of games. Though I was quick to move onto single player experiences, which now largely define my current gaming identity, I never stopped being on the hunt for the next great multiplayer game. Competing against friends and family made me feel powerful. It was my mastery of the controls, my knowledge of the game, which gave me all the advantage I could ever ask for. Perhaps even more satisfying was defeating the stranger or two in my limited competitive arcade play. It is hard to describe how elated I would feel when my team of Cable, Captain Commando, and Sentinel would pulverize my unsuspecting opponent on the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 arcade cabinet.
 
I was a pretty sick Thumper player in Twisted Metal 2.
For a 6 year old. I think.
Online play revolutionized competitive multiplayer gaming. For the first time you could play against people from around the world whenever you felt like it. It created cultures, and subcultures, of gamers obsessed with bettering themselves in the name of digital competition. So much so that we’ve seen the emergence of eSports as a major entertainment sports industry. You can know how you rank against a game’s global playerbase. It’s a powerful thing, and one that continues to astound me.
 
Competitive multiplayer games are big business these days.
The digital age also brought with it a new era of designing multiplayer experiences: patches. Before we had the infrastructure to facilitate online downloads, a game was what the game shipped as. That is to say, once a game ‘went gold’ and released to the public, development ceased. A feature doesn’t work correctly? An in-game system is too powerful than you meant it to be? That’s just how it was going to be. But for the past 10-15 years, developers have been able to tweak and edit their game, fixing mistakes or adding new content, through downloadable updates known as patches. To say that this dogmatic shift has been a boon for gaming would be an understatement. It’s lead to a world in which games are living, breathing, experiences that can learn from their missteps, and become more content rich and more tightly designed over time. For multiplayer games specifically, however, it has led to certain design sensibilities that I wish hadn’t become so ingrained. ‘Fixing’ multiplayer games has led to a certain collective mindset that I view as not a sum good, and the reason why I’m writing this piece today.

For any game in which one of your design foci is player versus player interactions, you want to create an even playing field. You want your experience to be ‘fair’ to all players. Jane Alabama and Joe Maine should have access to the same toolset to compete. Ignoring for a second prior experience with previous similar titles, the two should be able to achieve the same level of competency in a competitive setting. What you don’t want, according to popular thought, are for certain elements of a game to be unfair or ‘unbalanced.’ Especially following the advent and rise of digital patches, players and developers alike have advocated for maintaining a perfect balance within multiplayer games. No one character, one move, one gun, one ability, should be strictly more powerful than another. Or, at the very least, all options available from the player have balanced risk / reward, strengths / weakness. The call has been to create an ecosystem of fair play, in which players can essentially play with or as whatever or whoever they want and still be able to compete.
 
Patch, patch away.
The idea of creating and maintaining ‘balance’ in multiplayer games has become a zeitgeist, especially in the past few years or so. You can see it in any multiplayer game, be they MOBAs or fighting games or shooters. Most of the discussion about balancing a game, from my observations, generally centers around what is or isn’t too powerful. And once something is identified as being too strong (to the point that the community feels it is unfair), the typical outcry is for the thing to be “nerfed”. Nerfing is the act of making something weaker or less effective. Herein lies my biggest complaint with how fans and subsequently developers approach balance solutions. Creating fairness by lopping the tops off all trees that have grown too tall lessens the grandeur of the forest. Does it make all trees more similar in height? Sure. Do you lose something special in the process? I’d argue that you do. Let me talk more concretely and less metaphorically, though.

As a quick point of disclosure, I’m not attempting to argue that nerf-dependent balancing of multiplayer experiences doesn’t work. It does. Games like Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty Black Ops have developers that chiefly focused their balancing efforts into making sure nothing is overly powerful. When Diddy Kong was running rampant in the competitive scene in Smash Wii U, Bandai Namco and Sora Ltd. responded by making the character weaker. When the M16A3 in Battlefield 3 or the FAMAS in Call of Duty Black Ops were too good at downing your foes, DICE and Treyarch respectively made the two weapons less effective. Did these changes help the competitive ecosystem? It’s debatable, but I (and many others) would say yes. Competitors felt less inclined to learn Diddy Kong or to use the M16A3/FAMAS because they were no longer clearly more powerful than other options. Cool.
 
How many viewed Diddy Kong upon Smash for Wii U's release.
He's not as scary anymore. Is that a good thing?
Street Fighter IV, and all its many iterations, is another title that focused a lot of its balancing updates on reducing the effectiveness of characters that were deemed too strong. Sagat in vanilla SFIV, Yun in SSFIV, Evil Ryu and Poison in USFIV—all nerfed. To Capcom’s credit, however, their balance updates also included character ‘buffs,’ i.e. making things more powerful. Though, for the most part, power increases were generally very moderate compared to the often heavy-hand of nerfing. The goal of this approach was to eventually reach a state in which all characters are viable in competitive play. Now 8 years later, I would say Capcom reached their goal (if Evo 2015 and Capcom Cup were any indication). But even with Ultra Street Fighter IV, which I would say is one of the most deftly balanced games I’ve ever played, something was lost every single time a character was made weaker.

You lose that feeling, that indescribable and joyous sensation, of using something that felt unfair. That felt satisfyingly powerful. The same is true for Battlefield 3 and Black Ops and any multiplayer game. Once nerfed, you can never get back the feeling of power you felt in an un-nerfed world. Using the FAMAS in Black Ops was so deeply gratifying. It fired fast and with remarkable accuracy. It could down players on the enemy team in a split second. It led me to some of the best kill streaks I’ve ever had in a competitive first-person shooter. Even when I was facing off against players using the same over-powered gun, I felt powerful. But then it was changed, weakened, and I never used it again. It felt off. It felt bad and made me feel bad when I used it. The new FAMAS almost felt like an insult to my cherished memories of its predecessor. While perhaps the game overall was more balanced with more players using more kinds of guns, Black Ops lost some of its fun. I’ve had this feeling with increasing frequency with modern multiplayer games. I loved Sagat in vanilla SFIV then hardly used him again. It felt great to pull off Rogue’s infamous Gadgetzan Auctioneer “miracle” combo in Hearthstone, but then that was nerfed. And the nerfs keep coming, especially as more and more players complain about how powerful certain things are online. Well, I’m here to say that being unbalanced (in the right way) can be fun too. In fact, in my experience, it’s often more.
 
LEEEEROYYY JENKINSSS! Time's up let's do thi- Oh wait.
We can't do it anymore. Because it got nerfed.
One of my favorite online multiplayer games ever is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) by Infinity Ward. MW2 is not a well-balanced game, far from it. Certain guns and certain strategies quickly became recognzed as powerful, bordering on cheap or unfair. Underslung grenade launchers on assault rifles could be paired with player-selected abilities to refill ammo and increase your blast radius, giving players the ability to be a one-man demolition crew (explosions, explosions everywhere). Another potent combination allowed players to run around the map at extreme speeds with enhanced melee speed & range, which turned players into warping one-hit-kill knifing machines. Another still made it so just tapping on your aim down sights button with a sniper rifle gave you pinpoint accuracy at the intersection of the crosshairs, transforming players into ‘quick-scoping’ fiends who were effective at all ranges in battle. MW2 matches were a frantic flurry of explosions and snipers and death. And they were so much fun. So many different strategies were rewarded in MW2 because so many things were blatantly overpowered. Even if you didn’t choose to specialize in the tactics I just described, some of the game’s guns were so good you could easily annihilate your competition (UMP-45, FAMAS). I ended up playing MW2’s multiplayer upwards of 350 hours, or 14+ full days. I think a large part of that was because playing made me feel powerful. The developers never took away the fun tools they gave to me.

I came in like a wrecking ball! I never hit so hard (with my "noob tube.")
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (MvC2), and even moreso Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its update Ultimate MvC3 (UMvC3), gave me that same powerful feeling. I suspect MvC2 will go down in history as one of the most imbalanced competitive games of all time. Only roughly 8 of the cast of 56 characters are good enough to be played competitively. Sentinel, Storm, Cable and Magneto were head and shoulders better than the other members of the cast. Even UMvC3, released in the digital age, stayed true to its roots and ended up as an unbalanced game. The top 5 characters in UMvC3 are head and shoulders better than the rest of the cast, though more members of the roster can be made viable competitively than its predecessor. That being said, MvC2 and UMvC3 are exceptionally fun games and my favorite competitive fighters of all time. Powerful, even unfair, strategies can be used by either player. You can dominate or be dominated. Landing your cheap combo or frame trap or projectile spam is so deeply satisfying. You feel good. You feel like you’re almost too good, or at the very least better than that game intended you to be. Nothing about your attacks or combos felt lackluster. UMvC3 revels in having an uneven roster and the game is better for it.
 
You lost the second you chose Iceman, player 2. But MvC2 remains
incredibly fun, and interesting, to this day.
Tentatively, feeling powerful is one of many aspects I’m loving about Street Fighter V. You can take my opinion with the asterisk that I’ve only been playing for a week, but Street Fighter V has a remarkable balance to it. Every single character feels unfair, feels a little too good. It’s awesome. I’ve tried my hand at all 16 characters and each one has some combos and moves and spacing that feel cheap. In my book, that’s perfect. Let’s hope this can be maintained through the game’s lifetime.

As I touched on briefly in my introduction, video games are unrivaled in giving people the feeling of power. Who among us can shoot energy beams out of their hands or single-handedly stop an army of insurgents in real life? A choice few, at best. So much of what has historically worked about video games is giving the player this powerful feeling. I find that too frequent or too heavy-handed nerfs lessens the impact of playing on the player. It sucks to lose the joy you felt using something powerful because it has been removed from the game. Sure, even unbalanced games like MW2 and UMvC3 have their own kind of balance. It’s crucial that no singular element or strategy is too powerful, rather, several exist in the same ecosystem that work synergistically to build a dynamic competitive space. My point remains, however, that nerfing what’s most powerful is not necessarily the best approach to creating a fun, dynamic multiplayer ecosystem.

Whether broken or balanced, each game has its own competitive metagame and there is no one right answer. What works for balancing Heroes of the Storm might not work when balancing Street Fighter V. But be thoughtful about your balance decisions (developers) and be thoughtful of what you post online (community). Nerfing the powerful should not be the default solution. You might just lose a lot of fun in the process.

Monday, February 22, 2016

TIF Plays: Week of 2/15-2/19
Gameplay

Welcome to the The Impact Factor's last week of gameplay! Check out below to links of all my gameplay. Be sure to catch me live on Twitch (MegalodonPhD). I stream every Tuesday at 5:30pm PST and Thursday at 6:30pm PST. Plus some special Friday streams, too! You can do me a favor by subscribing to The Impact Factor's YouTube channel, but hey, don't let me tell you what to do! 

To keep up to date with everything The Impact Factor, and me, follow me on Twitter: @alexsamocha

See you all next week!





Friday, February 19, 2016


News & Views
2/13/16-2/19/16

It’s finally here! I can’t believe I got to spend a couple evenings this week with Street Fighter V! The lab week has been long, but all the rest has been pretty darn great. I hope you all have a great weekend. Onto News & Views!

News & Views compiles the week’s best video game stories, writing, opinions, editorials, and everything in between! Check out the links below for great writing about the eerie reality of commitment issues in Catherine, dealing with the death of a family member through Monkey Ball 2, and how Xbox Live Arcade almost never happened!

And of course please check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight
Phillip Kollar, Polygon

Worth Reading
Michelle Ehrhardt, Kill Screen

Kris Graft, Gamasutra

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku

Matthew Kim, VICE

Alyssa Kai, Medium

With Comments
Ed Smith, alphr
Smith’s piece is a great one, and one both a) I never expected to see and b) we need far more of about the industry. The way games toy with history, cultural and sociological trends is an interesting one. At times, it feels like video game developers are less aware of how a game exists as part of the larger conversation about certain issues. Smith writes about how in GTA: San Andreas the rewriting of the LA riots is problematic. It distorts the truth, which could potentially damage someone’s understanding of one of the most shameful events in recent US history.

Richard Li, Gamespot
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tutorial in Street Fighter V is not at all helpful. Capcom has been doing a great job making guides and other resources for the community, but more tips are never a bad thing! Li runs down nine things to think about while playing SFV that aren’t as simple as what buttons to press when.

Alex Osborn, IGN
I don’t want to imagine a present, or future, of gaming without the Xbox Live Arcade. I write without hesitation that it indelibly shaped the gaming landscape. It changed what we think of as games released for general consumption, and it certainly contributed to the growth and prominence of the indie game scene. I love reading stories like this, and I think you will too.

Thomas Bidaux, Gamasutra
We talk a lot about Kickstarter on The Impact Factor podcast. Is it a net good, despite the many horror stories that come out of the service? Thankfully, we have Thomas Bidaux to answer that question. Bidaux runs down the entirety of 2015 Kickstarter games: the successes, the failures, and trends for the future. Essential reading for those interested in where game development is now, and where it is going.
The Impact Factor Ep. 42: Twitter Beef Wellington
Podcast

Welcome to the 42nd episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!

Please send your suggestions and feedback to: impactfactorpodcast@gmail.com

In this episode Alex and Fliss talk about Street Fighter V, Ubisoft, Watch Dogs 2, Knights and Bikes, Hideo Kojima, Fallout 4, PS VR, Kanye West, Twitch, Tomb of the Mask, Firewatch & much more!

“What not to do when promoting your game on Twitch” by Ryan Sligh

TIF’s Firewatch Review


YouTube page

For articles and reviews from Alex, check out: www.theimpactfactor.blogspot.com
For a blog about Japan, pop culture & more from Fliss, check out:
www.flissofthenorthstar.blogspot.com

Follow Alex @alexsamocha on Twitter. twitch.tv/megalodonphd
Follow Fliss
@thecfliss on Twitter. twitch.tv/flissofthenorthstar

Intro song:
You Kill My Brother by Go! Go! Go! Micro Invasion, East Jakarta Chiptunes Compilations. Freemusic Archive. (Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike License)
freemusicarchive.org/music/Indonesi…s_Compilation/
Transitions:
News & Views and Perspectives transitions from victorcenusa, Freesound.org (Creative Commons 0 License)
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148785/
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148784/
Experimental Methods transition from Sentuniman, Freesound.org (Attribution Noncommercial License)
freesound.org/people/Setuniman/sounds/143994/

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Eye In The Sky
Review
Firewatch, Campo Santo (PS4)

Abstract: Firewatch is a game, a vignette of the human experience, that’s in a league of its own. There are no aliens, no headshots, no fate of the world, not even a focus on one of life’s particular moments. Firewatch transports the player into a snapshot of existence. It takes you to a time and a place and a mindset we haven’t really seen before in games. Firewatch is gorgeous, well-written, well-acted and gripping. The game skillfully touches on themes of love, loss, isolation and paranoia, delivering a mature narrative that has stayed with me. I give it my highest recommendation.

It’s hard to make sense of life. Our world is filled with the unforeseen, the chaotic. Humans are natural pattern finders, hoping to see through reality’s veil and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated events. We like to make sense of everything, discover the purpose of why things happen the way they do. When we can’t, humans often like to escape. Retreat away from the uncertainty. Humans are also social creatures by nature, quick to form bonds and seek companionship. Broadly, Firewatch is about these themes. Firewatch is about characters seeking to both understand life’s tumult and run away from it. Firewatch is also about understanding the human condition and how people react depending on the summation of their experiences. Firewatch is excellent.

Firewatch is the latest in the recent trend of exceptional first-person narrative games. The talent behind games such as The Walking Dead S1 and Gone Home got together and formed Campo Santo, a new Bay Area based studio. When you consider the talent of individuals like Sean Vanaman, Chris Remo and Olly Moss who worked to make Firewatch a reality, it’s understandable that the bar of expectation was set so high. From the earliest trailers I was fascinated with what the fledgling Campo Santo could bring to the table. Luckily for them (and me), Firewatch met and exceeded all my expectations.
 
Firewatch is the best game I've played in 2016.
The year is 1989. You play as Henry, a slightly chubby nearly 40-something who in attempt to deal with, and escape from, personal tragedy has taken a summer job as fire watch deep in the Wyoming wilderness. Several days walk from civilization and dozens of miles from another human his task is simple: sit up in his tower looking for forest fires and report them. His one lifeline, his one human connection, is with Delilah, a fellow fire watch (& his boss) who resides in the nearest watchtower. They communicate only via walkie-talkie, Henry reporting what he sees and Delilah responding accordingly. What was supposed to be a quiet, isolated summer turns into anything but when Henry realizes he is not as alone as he thought. On the surface, Firewatch weaves a compelling suspenseful narrative that touches on the fear of being alone, of being watched, and the thrill of solving mysteries. You follow Henry and Delilah as they try to deal with a series of bizarre, and unsettling, events and piece together what exactly is happening.
 
I fell deep into Firewatch's narrative. It remains compelling throughout
your 4-6 hour playthrough.
But Firewatch is far more than that. Firewatch is about relationships. It’s about Henry running away from his relationships at home and forging a new one with Delilah. It’s about Delilah seeking companionship in potentially unhealthy ways. It’s about the love, life, and struggles of a father and son. Firewatch is also about loneliness and depression. You don’t take a job as a Wyoming fire watch unless you are running from something, Delilah mentions early in the game. Firewatch explorers how you can feel at your loneliest even when you’re close to someone you love. And how even when miles and miles from another living human being, how something as simple as a voice from a walkie-talkie can be all the company you could ever ask for. Firewatch also touches on how we deal with loss and how, fundamentally, people aren’t prepared to face some of life’s harsher truths. Henry is escapism embodied. And finally, Firewatch is about fear. Fear of the unknown and fear of what we wish we didn’t know. Fear of having to deal with what life throws at us, and the lengths we’ll go to in an attempt to create new fears for us to face instead of dealing with those staring back at us.

Ultimately, though, what I love most about Firewatch’s narrative is that it isn’t trying to weave some epic narrative. It isn’t bombastic. There isn’t a clean three-act structure. Many of the plot threads have simple resolutions and are unrelated. Firewatch is about nothing. But in that way, Firewatch touches on everything. Firewatch speaks to many of life’s fundamental truths. Life is disappointments, missed connections. Life is trying to ascribe greater importance to the unrelated, the chaotic, the random. Whereas the game’s predecessors like Gone Home and Dear Ester seemed to have one fundamental message at their core, Firewatch is content to ‘simply’ be a vignette of the human experience. I’ve read the disappointment of many in the gaming community about the narrative’s ‘pay off,’ but I suspect Campo Santo resolved the story in exactly the way they intended. Life isn’t always a feel-good, perfectly resolved, dark secrets revealed page-turner. Firewatch’s narrative felt mature, something I desperately want more of in gaming.
 
Like life, Firewatch has a lot hidden below the surface.
A quiet, human narrative would never have worked without strong characters and great writing, and Firewatch has both in spades. Henry and Delilah are fully realized, nuanced characters with strengths, faults, and a ton of depth. You understand Henry, his life and his motivations, and can shape his personality throughout the game accordingly. The dialogue between the two is phenomenal. The game features deft writing overall. You’ll want to report every single thing you see to try to hear more of the great dialogue. Speaking of that, the voice acting in Firewatch is seriously top notch. Some of the best in gaming. Like everything else, it felt natural, genuine, and reinforces the humanity and the heart of the Firewatch’s experience.

Like other ‘walking simulators’ before it, Firewatch’s gameplay is predominantly first-person exploration. You walk, explore, inspect items, and interact with some basic puzzle / traversal elements. Firewatch, like many of its predecessors, gives players the ability to pick up (& throw) objects in the game. Like I wrote in my SOMA review, this gives tangibility to the world that helps immerse the player. Firewatch is also the most ‘gamey’ walking simulator that I’ve ever played and therefore one I would recommend to anybody. You can freely explore, find hidden secrets, take pictures, open up new movement options, mark places of interest on your map, initiate non-main story dialogue, etc. There’s a lot to do that you don’t have to. The best thing about Firewatch’s gameplay, however, is what it brings new to the walking simulator / first-person narrative genre: interactibility with a contemporary story. Let me clarify. As great as first-person narrative experiences have been, nearly all feature stories whose peaks have already happened. You’re an observer. For Gone Home or Bioshock or Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture or SOMA, it’s mainly about piecing together the past. In Firewatch, everything is happening as you play. You are experiencing the most interesting part of the game’s (and world’s) narrative. Your actions as the player are forming the story. This interactibility is enhanced by the inclusion of dialogue choices. The Telltale pedigree of the team is clear here. Being able to choose what you say, and who you are as Henry, strengthens the present narrative of the game and makes Firewatch a stronger, and thoroughly unique, experience.
 
Small choices like this help to reinforce Henry's and Delilah's personalities.
Dialogue options are a great evolution for 1st person narrative games.
One thing I never expected was how connected I would feel to Firewatch’s world. In the way that I formed a relationship as Henry and with Delilah, I forged a strong bond with the environment itself. I was transported to the Wyoming wilderness. Led by the strong graphic design of Olly Moss, Firewatch’s world is incredible. It’s stunningly beautiful. Your forest playground is colorful, vibrant, and lush. The game’s aesthetic is the perfect mix of the real world with striking graphic novel styled art. The colors and sounds and music ebb and flow throughout. Firewatch is a painting I want to get lost in. On top of all that, Firewatch also builds a great player mental map. Assuming you are not pulling your in-game map up every few seconds, exploring Firewatch’s world very quickly roots itself in your memory. The closest comparison I have is a Souls game. As you progress throughout the game, you get a clear sense of geography. You know how to get from point A to point B by using in-game landmarks. A certain tree or lake or cliff side is as valuable as any superimposed mini-map. This kind of map building draws the player even further into the world, which for a world as rich and beautiful as Firewatch’s, is a very good thing.
 
Keep the map down as much as possible. You won't regret it.

Firewatch is easily my favorite game I’ve played this year. It has learned from the pedigree of first-person story experiences before it, and expanded upon the foundation meaningfully both narratively and mechanically. Firewatch is an evolution, filled to the brim with well-executed and brilliant ideas. Campo Santo did an extraordinary job with their freshman outing. Firewatch is the kind of game that makes me excited for the future of gaming. Go play it. The sooner the better.

I miss my time in the Wyoming wilderness already. It's beautiful.
Firewatch
5/5

Monday, February 15, 2016

TIF Plays: Week of 2/8-2/12
Gameplay

Welcome to the The Impact Factor's last week of gameplay! Check out below to links of all my gameplay. Be sure to catch me live on Twitch (MegalodonPhD). I stream every Tuesday at 5:30pm PST and Thursday at 6:30pm PST. Plus some special Friday streams, too! You can do me a favor by subscribing to The Impact Factor's YouTube channel, but hey, don't let me tell you what to do! 

To keep up to date with everything The Impact Factor, and me, follow me on Twitter: @alexsamocha

See you all next week!



Friday, February 12, 2016

Da
News & Views
2/6/16-2/12/16

Happy weekend and happy soon-to-be Valentine’s Day to all! I know I’m ready to kick back, relax, and enjoy the extra long off time with my fiancée. And the right after the weekend is the long awaited release of Street Fighter V!

As a Valentine’s Day gift you to, News & Views is back and better than (mostly the same as) ever! This week’s News & Views has great stories about short vs. long term progression in game design, labor issues facing the gaming industry, how gaming experiences about isolated protagonists helped one writer’s depression, and much more!

And of course please check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight
Chris Baker, Gamasutra

Worth Reading
Michelle Ehrhardt, Kill Screen

Ian Williams, Giant Bomb

Josh Bycer, Gamasutra

Olivia White, Paste

Mitch Dyer, IGN

With Comments
Mary Kish, Gamespot
I love that game difficulty has such a dynamic range in the modern marketplace. There was a period during which games, AAAs especially, were too afraid to alienate the player (& buyer) by being too hard. That’s not the case today. We have tons of brutally challenging games like Darkest Dungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and Bloodborne. I’m also a big fan of games eschewing difficulty altogether, like the interactive narrative experiences we see in Oxenfree and Firewatch. It is a great time to be into video games.

Megan Condis, Unwinnable
Ugh. This annoying debate. Condis does a great job at explaining why we should not focus so strongly on the ‘games’ part of ‘video games,’ but this is honestly a piece that should never have to be written. Does That Dragon, Cancer offer interactibility while running via computer processors? Then it is a video game. There are no two sides to this debate.

Michael Martin, Playboy
I have followed the fighting game community (FGC) for quite some time and it has been great to follow Rickie Ortiz’s career. She is among the best of the best at Ultra Street Fighter IV. The FGC is often seen as insular and bigoted, but Ortiz’s story is one that gives me some hope. Playing Street Fighter well earns you respect, regardless of how you identify. Very cool stuff.

Michael Martin, RedBull
The FGC’s evolution as an eSport has been a fascinating one. So many other games were quick to adopt the boring self-seriousness of ‘real sports’ with suit-jacketed commentators that offer little fanfare to their play calling. Not the FGC. It fought against the moniker of ‘eSports’ up until it was an unwinnable battle, and to this day retains so much unique charm and personality other eSports lack. Paul “BlaqSkillz” DeCuir is a great example of said personality. This player / commentator mixes comedy and performance art together to be one of the most striking (& likeable) figures in the SoCal Street Fighter scene. Martin’s piece about BlaqSkillz is well worth your time.

Reid McCarter, Paste
My fiancée Justine and I have found our niche in consuming young adult (YA) media together. It’s been a blast to watch Degrassi and play Life is Strange with her. But YA games are not just for us and, as McCarter argues, are important to the gaming industry as a whole. I agree. And I cannot wait to play through Oxenfree with Justine.