Braid

Created by indie developer Jonathan Blow featuring art from webcomic artist David Hellman, Braid is a puzzle platformer that has been met with multiple industry awards with many critics considering the game a masterpiece. Released for XBLA in 2008, Braid has since been released for the PlayStation 3 console and Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Check it out on Steam!

  
I've had Braid sitting in my Steam library for a long time now, half completed. I remember getting the game in a bundle, completing the first couple worlds with ease, and then being frustrated with some of the later puzzles. I don't really know why I decided to pick it back up. For the sake of completion I guess; it's sort of akin to finishing a half-read book, I suppose.

If you're even only remotely connected to the indie game facet of the video game culture, you've probably heard of Braid- one of the indie games featured in Indie Game: The Movie. This game has been met with pretty much universal acclaim.

a variety of mechanics to play around with

What is Braid about? Think Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but with an infinite ability to rewind time and you've got the baseline mechanic for Braid. The game allows you to initially just correct mistakes in your platforming adventures, but the game quickly fans out to explore variations on the rewind mechanic. There are six worlds in total, each with its own theme and twist. For example, time may sit still until you move or you may be introduced to the ability to slow time around a small area. The intricacies of the different mechanics are all explored with only a minor amount of instruction as players work them out for themselves.

this screenshot on steam is heinously misleading

It's this ease of players learning the initial mechanics that seems to contradict the difficulty that I discovered in trying to find new ways to exploit the mechanics. For the most part, I didn't have too much trouble with the six worlds, but there were just some puzzles that I had to look up a video guide on how to complete. These puzzles usually contained moments of "Oh, I didn't know I could do that," so in ways, the puzzles are only limited by your imagination to a degree.

Out of the entire Braid experience, the most curious thing was probably the story- its contents and presentation. Braid storytelling is broken down in chunks. As you unlock more worlds more of the story becomes available. The tidbits you read before entering a world coincides with the theme of the world, but for the most part everything is going to be vague and convoluted until you reach the epilogue in a kind of Memento-like presentation.

the atomic bomb conspiracy

Although Braid's story is pretty much up to the eye of the beholder, here is one interesting  interpretation. In retrospect, I wish I knew some interpretations behind Braid's story before playing through the game to be able to better appreciate the minor nuances and intricate hints in the storyline. After finishing the game, I only had a shallow interpretation that I had played through a romance story when there was so much more. I originally thought that Braid had small replay value, but I'm thinking that replaying the game with someone else's interpretation in mind may offer a new experience.

With Braid you don't really know what you're looking at until the end, in which a lot of things start falling into place. Braid's intertwining of mechanics and storytelling is paramount, but hidden and at the same time ever present. The game has been criticized for being overpriced and I'm going to have to agree. You'll get around three to five hours of gameplay from Braid. Unless you're a a diehard supporter of indie development, you're probably better off purchasing Braid from a bundle or when it's on sale. Whatever the price, Braid is a sure indie game classic- just remember that you don't have to like the classics to be a fan of the genre. 

Take a look at Jonathan Blow's upcoming 3D puzzle game, The Witness!

Game preferences and the Bartle Test

Ben and I were talking one evening and the topic shifted to FEZ (the indie game phenomenon featured alongside Braid and Super Meat Boy in Indie Game: The Movie) and its merits. Whereas I saw a variety of worlds and puzzles to be discovered and explored, Ben saw a slow, repetitive, and rather engagement lacking experience that bogged him down. As I thought about the reasons behind his dislike for FEZ, I wondered about the mechanisms behind how we choose if a gaming experience is engaging and thoughtful and how we mold these experiences for ourselves given the chance. In other words, what motivates us to continue playing a game?

I thought this kind of question reflects personality psychology's trait theories, a series of models that aims to pin down certain stable conditions that describe someone as a whole. Here's a model based on two spectrums, emotional stability and introversion/extroversion:  

click to enlarge images

These can get a lot more complicated. Psychologist Lewis Goldberg proposed a five-dimensional model; Raymond Cattell came up with one using sixteen different factors. Looking at the above diagram, we can definitely attribute these personalities to gaming personalities: extraverted players may have a higher affinity towards social games whereas introverts prefer single-player experiences; more emotional players might prefer an engaging story whereas more emotionally calm people may be happy with a simple casual puzzle game. 

Writer, professor, and game researcher Richard Bartle described player preferences in a similar fashion to trait theory in his paper "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs." This paper was written in 1996 and pertains mostly to MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and MMORPG's, but I feel like we could try and apply this to other game genres. Take a look at the foundation for Bartle's ideas:

which are you?

Bartle's characterized players into four groups named after the four suits in a deck of cards, labeled for their respective traits: hearts (socializers), clubs (killers), diamonds (achievers), and explorers (spades). Each describes a drive or motivation a player seeks in a gaming experience: hearts love the social aspect of games and helping others; clubs can't wait to show their 1v1-me-bro skills and their abilities to read an opponent; diamonds glitter in the best gear, bathe in achievements, and adorn the top-score or top-time listings; spades dig around for secrets and hidden passages, leaving no stone unturned. It is this amalgam of the four that I feel succinctly and fairly describes a gamer. 

All of these areas have overlaps with the other groups in some way or another. For example, diamonds may seek the top of the leaderboard in a game like StarCraft where 1v1 reigns supreme and is home to clubs. The spade may also belong to a guild where he or she shares information about the latest patch and where all the good loot can be found in a newly released area. We are a composite of all four suits with emphasis on different areas depending on what kind of game we're playing. 

Let's apply Bartle's model to two games outside of MUDs and MMORPGs and see what happens.

Team Fortress 2- If my friends and I were to make a top ten or top five favorite games of all time, I'm willing to bet Team Fortress 2 is going to be on there. The hearts love to play with friends in this multiplayer setting; clubs want to show that they are the best on the server; diamonds are trading away for the latest in hat fashion; spades are looking for the latest hints and clues towards the next update (or they're looking for map exploits).

SpaceChem- Probably my most favorite game. Hearts might be busy on the forums discussing the latest technique and helping people with some of the puzzles; clubs are lined up at the tournaments ready to show their SpaceChem wits; diamonds want the highest efficiency rating possible; spades are delving into the newly released player-made puzzles working out new techniques and tricks.

Team Fortress 2 and SpaceChem are completely different games and rightfully have different areas of emphasis to different people. For me, Team Fortress 2 emphasizes the heart and club- I want to get better at the game but I find it boring without playing with friends. SpaceChem invokes my inner spade as I search around for new ways to complete the puzzles. 

another handy chart

FEZ called upon the spade in me like in SpaceChem; the curiosities and fine details leave me wanting to look for more secrets and areas within the game. As for Ben, he mentioned FEZ's platforming lacking urgency or skill, so maybe his diamond facet was dissatisfied. Whatever the case, this all illustrates that our alignment in the spectrum isn't tied down to one or two suits: our alignment and preferences changes from game to game, genre to genre. 

The next time a game pops up in your mind, think about what lead you to like or dislike the game and try applying Bartle's model- you might come to some interesting incites. But how does a game manage to alter your alignment across genres? Why don't hearts stay hearts and clubs stay clubs across all games and genres?- after all, one of the defining assumptions in trait theory is that traits are relatively stable. And if they don't change for you, why is that? These are some interesting questions we can look into later on.

What we can learn from Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme

please let me explain

About a week back, Ben sent me a message over Steam with a link to a game on Steam Greenlight called Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme, disgusted and confused. Then, I looked at the top banner which boasted: "This game has been Greenlit by the Community! The community has shown their interest in this game. Valve has reached out to this developer to start moving things toward release on Steam." My first impressions were Why and How. It was obvious that we had to play the demo at our about-yearly reunion at Mark's. We've watched universally panned movies and played questionable games; let's add to the list, why not.

Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme is about men who get turned into women and the wacky adventures that ensue, presented in the form of a graphic novel. The demo available on Desura speaks for the game. I didn't like the game, Ben didn't like the game, Mark didn't like the game; let's just leave it at that. If the game had a message to convey, the developers failed monumentally at delivery. But I don't want to discuss the the merits/demerits of the game, rather what we can learn from a game like this from a consumer vista.

This game raised $27,000 from a goal of $5,000 on IndieGoGo and is now asking consumers for $24.99 on Desura for the full game. I've already commented on the content of the game, but here's a different perspective: the developers have shown with full transparency what the game is and how the end product will look. It is completely up to the buyer's decision ("is the game worth $24.99?") and there are people out there who say "Yes, it's worth it." Those people then fork over $24.99 and then ogle at women with crude anatomical deformities- and they're happy for doing so. Or they should be, otherwise I have no idea why anyone would hand over the money for something like Gender Bender. The point is, the developers have fairly shown what the game is without concealing any of its apparent flaws. From there, it's all fair game for the consumer; it's a practice that should be praised.

Now, is it business ethical to ask for $24.99 for a game of Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme's quality? I feel that if you're going to be buying a game like Gender Bender, $24.99 is a complete scam when content of equal or greater integrity is floating out around the internet for free (what I'm really trying to say is that porn is free on the internet). Chances are, if you've found Gender Bender, you can find better (or worse) for free. With that, it's your own fault for buying the game.

Scrolling through Gender Bender's Greenlight page, you'll find a majority of people commenting that the game is offensive and/or should have never been brought to Greenlight or even created. Controversial and offensive games are not something new; they've been around since the early days of video games. Just about any game you can think of probably has some speck of controversy brought forth by someone nit-picking the game. While Gender Bender isn't the Citizen Kane of video games, it certainly isn't the Ethnic Cleansing (a game where you kill ethnic minorities) of video games either. The game certainly isn't a step forwards in the depiction of women and transgendered people in video games, but I don't think it's necessarily a step backwards either.

If you don't like the game, don't buy the game. It's a simplified demonstration of the power of consumer efficacy within the video entertainment industry. The games that we buy say something about us and also sends messages to the developers within the industry. Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme is easily passed off as just some offensive game that boils women down into objects, but the way we handle and respond to games like these also say something about us as consumers. We have all the right and ability to voice our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the game just as much as the developers have the right to make the game in the first place. Our vote with our Steam wallets will send them a clear message.