Her Japanese name is "Aerisu". There is no 'th' sound in Japanese. There is also no 'l' sound in Japanese, so just mentally substitute an 'l' for the 'r' there. "Aelisu".

Calling her "Alice" is more accurate than "Aerith", and you actually have no basis for the "Aerith" name - not in either version of the FFs, not in any other game, not, in fact, anywhere other than your own heads.

It just sort of bothers me.

Yeah, I don't think I hang out much on Gamespot any more. But I've still got this journal, and the whole reason I've got it was to put down thoughts on games. So here's one:

I don't understand the knee-jerk reaction to sequels.

There's many a game designer (the guy who did Katamari Damacy among them) who loathe sequels because they're just cookie-cutter reproductions of previous games with a couple of refinements. They don't have to be, though: sequels are possibly the best place to shake things up and try some really creative thinking; you have an interested audience, a proven track record and a brand. Part of the reason why the games industry tends not to reward innovation is because games are pretty expensive to produce and purchase, and fouling it up costs both companies and consumers money. With a sequel, designers have a track record of success, a brand they can use to market the game, and probably access to better talent as well. Square Enix in particular seems to be doing this with the Final Fantasy brand - as it's so strong, they can take really creative risks; the last three Final Fantasy games had an experimental, strongly interactive plot (X-2), switched genres (XI) and made substantial changes to the conventions of the series (XII).

So long as one doesn't stray too far from the core of the franchise, a designer has a good deal of freedom to be innovative in a sequel.

A caveat: one should keep in mind when starting a franchise that making changes is often crucial to its survival. Reality television is a good example here - shows that kept the same ruleset in the sequel and tried to make changes later met with much more criticism than shows that made changes for the second series. Similarly, established franchises that made substantial changes later in the franchise, such as Zelda: Majora's Mask and Metroid Prime 2, tend to meet with more resistance than if the franchise, once started, does something very different for the sequel, such as the Jak games.

The criticism about sequels tends to apply only to 'mission-pack sequels' that only make minor changes to the rules of the game and mostly provide new content. It's a safe option, but one that causes problems in the long term once people tire of the game.

I like to talk big about how much I know about game design. But I know that however much I like to talk, there's definitely things I'll never know I don't know. I guess the only way you can really learn whether or not you know enough abou games to really make a good one is to make one yourself.

So, that's what I'll do: I'll make a game, and utterly terrify myself with the amount of work that needs to be done before I'm happy with it. If I succeed, hopefully it'll be good. If not, well, I'll have to find out what I've done wrong.

I've had ideas kicking around for a while now for various games, but the one I find is most within reach is an CRPG idea that I'm going to call for now "Project Dreamers". Project because that's what it is, and Dreamers because that's part of the plot. I hope to God I come with an actual name before I finish.

I'll be developing this using the open-source Sphere engine. The advantage of this engine is that very little of the gameplay mechanics are defined by the engine, so an author gets infinite flexibility as to how they're going to implement battles, levels and suchlike, which I intend to take advantage of (in fact, that's the point) while handling more complicated things like scenes, animation and the like by default.

As I go, I'll post my ideas on the plot (I'm essentially going to satirise the fall-of-the-gods parable so often seen in CRPGs, and I've been doing some research in that direction with regards to the Protestant movement and the rise of the philosophy of modernity), the gameplay (I'm stealing neat ideas from pretty much every Square game ever made) and working with Sphere (which hopefully will be pretty comprehensive once I'm done).

It should be good. I hope you'll join me.

It's the perennial topic here, apparantly - Gamespot is biased towards one group or another. You know, I just can't see these arguments - if you take their 'scores' as representative of a platform and a point in time, they seem to work out okay. In any case, just taking scores themselves is a poor representation of whether or not you'll like a game - I like mediocre platformers, so a platformer that scores 6.5 may still appeal to me.

But I've realised that Gamespot is biased, and I'm pretty sure I can prove it. It's an unfortunate consequence of their review structure rather than out of any real malice, but bias is bias.

Gamespot is biased against independent games.

The Gamespot scores and review system touches on five areas: graphics, sound, gameplay, value and 'tilt', which is a subjective value designed to skew the average depending on whether the low-scoring elements of a game really impact upon the overall quality.

An independent game is, by definition, made without the backing of a major studio. Generally, this means that the developers will have restrictions on the more expensive parts of game development, and they don't need to sell too many copies to break even. This usually means one of two things: the game is exceedingly derivative, or it's incredibly original. The 'original' path is more common, usually because people want to develop games because they want to develop good games, and if they don't need to recoup the costs of advertising, distribution, lawsuits, management junkets, what have you, this means that they don't need to appeal to particular parts of the market who'll never find their game in the first place. Namely, that part of the market that sees gaming as merely a status symbol, a player that looks at the eye-candy over the gameplay, that is actually truly interested in what bimbo celebrities are playing.

First to go: voice acting. Usually. Some indy games do have voice acting (one example, very close to home is plug-plug DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold, which I helped develop, and our voice acting was exceedingly cost-effective for its quality) but if you don't have access to voice actors and producers willing to work pro bono or for peanuts (we did, in this case) it's not worth employing them.

Second to go: Orchestral music. Sure, the Polish Symphony Orchestra sounds good, but you can't afford it, but you can still make some great music without the orchestra, so I guess it'll be okay. Bit bleepy, but this game will kick so much ass no-one will even notice the music.

Third to go: The high-poly models. You can't afford 3DS Max on an indy budget. You probably don't want to do a cookie-cutter 3D shooter in the first place. The focus is on making graphics that are clear, functional, and reasonably pleasing to the eye. You also can't afford to spend years on a 3D engine, or buy a 3D engine from another company. You gotta home-grow it.

So you focus on the gameplay, try and get some replayability or an editor or whatever in there.

Now, Gamespot's review system will mark you down on the graphics and sound department if you're an independent game, unless you have THQ's budget at the least. They might mark you up on the gameplay, unless they don't understand it, in which case, mark down. (Don't worry, indy game: they do the same for any game, not just you.) Value depends entirely upon the game, and is about the only ranking that can never be biased. A game that lasts you for 20 hours and then multiplayer and a single-player editor is better value than the same priced game without those features, and those features aren't expensive to implement. Anyone can run a web server for cheap. So that leaves tilt. Again, this category all depends on whether the reviewer liked the game, if what the game skimped on was enough to hurt it. And you're being judged against games that can afford to have suited men speak with the wrong emphasis and develop a graphics engine fully integrated with a 3D physics engine in five years and not run out of money. They can afford to impress with the eyecandy, so they'll probably be tilted higher. It's fair, isn't it?

Isn't it?

That's two categories you're down compared to the big-budget games, one you're up on, one you can compete on and one that depends on the whims of the reviewer. If he liked it despite your lack of budget, despite your ability to impress with anything but gameplay, only then can you compete on an even footing, as the categories you'll be down on are offset by the categories you're up on. If he didn't, you can't. And an independent game has only one way to impress - the gameplay - over a big-budget title's three - gameplay, graphics, and sound.

Gamespot is biased towards independent games because their rating system, and subsequently reviews, give more precedence to production values over gameplay. Their balancing mechanism, the tilt, is not quite enough to overcome this bias. Their reviews are required to touch on every aspect of a game, and as independent games tend not to try to impress with graphics over big-budget titles, the reviewer is obligated to say something about each facet of the game, even if that facet is not intended to be an important facet of the game.

With a healthy dose of paranoia, the recaps of the Independent Games Festival take on worlds of latent meaning. According to Gamespot, we should be impressed that 'Some [independent games] even offer production values rivalling any mainstream game.' The most noteworthy reason Savage took the IGF grand prize, in the same article, is that 'this rookie developer stepped up to the plate and smacked a home run at its first in-bat, creating a game with production values and polish that rival games made by big name publishing houses.' Apparantly nailing a difficult gameplay concept and providing excellent support for the game isn't as instrumental, and is mentioned further on down the page after the writer assures readers that this game looks pretty.

This year, it seems Gamespot let the IGF write the descriptions for them, which does help the feeling that you expect them at any time to explain that independent games are good because one day these people might be working on real games.

Of course, you've already got to be staring at shadows to expect that to be coming up.

(Let's not get into Gamespot only reviewing boxed titles. While it's another example of bias, as these days nearly every independent games are distributed via the web, it's also clearly an attempt to avoid being compelled to review every RPG Maker 2000 clone of Dragon Quest 1 and Visual Basic click-the-button-fest out there. And that's fair enough.)

I'm a sucker for mediocre platformers. I've noticed something useful in my wallowing - you learn much more about game design from mediocre games than you do from good ones.

In mediocre games, the flaws are much more obvious, and good ideas that are poorly executed can be dissected readily. In a good game, you can see verisimilitude (how much of a world the game feels like) but it's a bad game that shows you what you can get away with by demonstrating when you don't.

Try a mediocre game today. I promise you that you'll be saying, "I wouldn't have done that if I were them."

One of the hallmarks of a good movie is its ability to make the viewer empathise with the characters. This is desirable because a character that the audience has an emotional investment in is one in which they want to know what happens to them. When a movie fails in this, it fails to capture the audience's attention, and so the audience become uninterested in the story. Most forms of story are similar in this way - a book, a television show or even a comic strip lives or dies on its ability to engage the audience.

Computer games are unique in this regard. The main character in a computer game doubles as the player's avatar, their representation in the game world. The abilities and growth of the avatar define how the player can interact with the world, and for the most part the players are directly responsible for that growth. They have made an investment in that character, of time, effort and emotion. (After all, they wouldn't bother if they didn't really care, and the amount of broken controllers in the world attest to how much emotion players can have when things don't go right.)

So, if merely by the act of playing players can have an emotional investment in a character, one of the hallmarks of a good story in other mediums, computer games have a major advantage over anything else as a storytelling medium. This is why players don't mind that stories in computer games are usually hack jobs written by people with no real experience in writing compelling stories, and why even professional authors tend to have problems with the medium - one of the crucial steps in writing a compelling story is not necessary in computer games.

That's not to say you can't screw it up. Star Fox Adventures was marred by incredibly bad writing, which consistently broke the believability of the world and made the main character exceedingly unlikable. I think it was supposed to be witty banter or maybe ironic detachment, but it just didn't work. It was almost like I lhad two different characters - the one I played with, that I liked, and the one in cutscenes, who I hoped would die an excruciating death.

It's not particularly difficult to introduce an element of emotional investment into a game - give players the ability to make an investment into their characters. This can be as simple as in Grand Theft Auto III, where you could make your nameless avatar fitter by having him run, or as complex as Morrowind where almost everything about the character is because of the player. Take advantage of the possibilities afforded by a direct wire into the player's brain, and you'll create a game that stays with the player long after they've finished.

One of the things that has always got me about Gamespot is that, for all their talk about the IGF and how cool independent games are, they really only review boxed games. This disappointed me back when I was a big player of Puzzle Pirates, which IGN reviewed back in 2003. Gamespot, however, is waiting until the Ubisoft retail release in a month or so. Guys, a hint: The game's available now. Just not the box.

What spurred me to write about this, however, is looking at the final box art for Puzzle Pirates. There is apparantly a pre-order bonus of pirate themed playing cards, which for a US$20 game is a pretty good pre-order bonus. It's almost half of the regular purchase price, and they can get away with this because the regular purchase price is aimed to avoid the bargain bin while still not being a total rip-off, because the game content that you'll spend most of your time playing is available for free. But that's not what I'm writing about.

Looking at the box art at http://store.ubi.com/item.jsp?item=PC_PIRATES&category=19, you can just make out a separate little penguin icon to denote the game is Linux compatible. And it is - it's a Java game, tweaked to within an inch of its life to run acceptably, so it's playable on any computer you care to mention. Mac support for Java is horrid at the moment, though, and it can't run some of the game. But they've also got on the box the standard black and white "Win/Mac CDROM Software" block, which leads me to wonder if Ubisoft has ever released a Linux game before. It almost looks like they've had to make up a logo for this one game, and so they put Tux the Linux Penguin on there, because heck, everyone using Linux knows who Tux is. I can almost imagine the phone call from the marketing guys trying to work out how they're going to represent Linux on the box, and the slightly exasperated voice on the other line saying to just put Tux on there, everyone will know what it means, I'll e-mail you a picture of Tux so that you don't have to go looking.

I see that the marketing guys put "Linux" underneath Tux, too, just in case the bloke on the other end of the line was wrong.