FunEffect.com

[Veteran console developer Luke Schneider talked to our own Chris Remo about his new indie direction with Radiangames, revealing monthly Xbox Live Indie Games titles starting out with Radiangames JoyJoy.]

With his new one-man indie studio Radiangames, development veteran Luke Schneider is taking on an ambitious business model: releasing a downloadable game to Microsoft's Xbox Live Indie Games service roughly once a month.

The first, set to launch some time in May, will be Radiangames JoyJoy, a twin-stick shooter. It's a genre Schneider says has fallen into stagnancy, and he hopes to reinvigorate it with "unique visual style, fluid gameplay, and lots of customization."

Like Q-Games' PixelJunk series and Arkedo's Arkedo Series games, Schneider wants his individual releases to form a cohesive body of work.

"I hope players will come to identify Radiangames as meaning intense and satisfying action games with a unique visual style running at 60 frames per second," he told us in an interview.

Schneider brings with him over a decade of core game development experience. He served for several years at Volition, where he was most recently the lead technical designer and lead multiplayer designer on 2009's Red Faction Guerrilla.

Prior to that, he was a designer at Volition's predecessor Outrage Games for six years, during which time he worked on various titles including Descent 3.

"Microsoft has given developers an unprecedented opportunity with Xbox Live Indie Games that has thus far been underutilized," Schneider said in a statement, "and I intend to make the most of that opportunity and show the true potential of focused, professional developers and an open console platform."

Schneider has been planning his return to the indie scene for some time. He explained to Gamasutra that he briefly tried his hand at indie development with a Game Boy Advance and Xbox puzzle game in 2003, but was unable to secure a traditional publishing deal. The more decentralized nature of digital distribution, however, has created a better environment for small-scale developers.

The Xbox Live Indie Games service "lets me focus on games, rather than worry about logistics of finding publishers or negotiating with platform holders," he said. "I just get to make lots of small, awesome games as quickly as possible."

Of course, the platform has its own demands, and Schneider has put a lot of thought into those idiosyncrasies. "Like the iPhone, Xbox Live Indie Games sales are very chart-dependent," he told Gamasutra. "If you don't get your game onto the 'top downloads' or 'top rated' charts during your time in the new releases [section], your game is basically dead in terms of sales" -- making early attention paramount.

"There are other critical details that you have to get right," he added, "such as not making a multiplayer-centric game, not over-pricing, and getting the player into the fun right away."

The nature of his accelerated development plan means Schneider can adjust some factors, like pricing and release frequency, depending on early sales metrics. He expects to spend about two months developing each game, with a price point of $1 or $3.

"I know the arguments for pricing a game higher, but my wish is that people try one game in the series, and automatically buy the others from then on out and encourage others to do the same," Schneider said. "If that happens, everyone wins."

[Continuing his new column for GameSetWatch examining the fascinating intersection of gaming and psychology, Jamie Madigan discusses how fiddling with a clock a little bit might actually make your game more fun, through the magic of metacognition.]

While I generally enjoyed Red Faction: Guerrilla, last year's third-person action game from Volition and THQ, there was one type of mission on which I was lukewarm: The delivery missions where you were tasked with hopping in a vehicle and blundering over the Martian landscape to reach an arbitrary checkpoint before an equally arbitrary timer ran out. Meh. Kind of boring.

And it wasn't the first time. As a gameplay mechanic or goal, lots of games require you to complete challenges within a certain amount of time. Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band have rewards for playing set lists within 1 hour and 1 day, respectively.

And sometimes games inverse the formula and challenge you to keep the clock running by staying alive, such as in Left 4 Dead's survival mode. But it's generally the same goal: keep an eye on the timer and play the game, whether the specific task is mundane (driving across featureless plains or repetitive race tracks) or thrilling (fending off hoards of zombies).

Quick Clocks and Annoying Sounds: They Go Together Well

Turns out that recent research by Aaron Sackett at the University of Chicago and his colleagues suggests a way that game designers could manipulate your perceptions of time to make these parts of the game more fun. In one study, the researchers had subjects listen to an annoying sound while they watched a timer tick the seconds off.

For half the people, the timer was sped up by 20%; for others it was slowed down by 20%. Afterwords, subjects were asked the (frankly absurd) question of how enjoyable that all was. The result? Those whose clocks were sped up by 20% actually said the annoying sound was more enjoyable. Well, less terrible. Close enough.

But the phenomenon held true when people were doing something enjoyable to begin with. In a follow-up study, Sackett et al. had subjects listen to popular songs where the digital music player showed elapsed time for the track. In one group, the timer was sped up by 20% and in another it was slowed by the same amount. Again, people found this already pleasurable event even more enjoyable when they thought that time was passing more quickly and found it less enjoyable when time seemed to pass more slowly.

This Reminds Me of a Story About The Morbidly Obese and Crackers

In fact, research on the effects of external cues (like clocks) on internal states (like having so much fun you make a mess all over yourself) is pretty well established. In the late 1960s psychologist Stanley Schachter and his colleagues locked a bunch of subjects in room full of crackers. Well, something along those lines.

Also in the room was a clock, which the experimenters rigged to run either fast or slow. They found that people --especially obese people-- tended to eat more crackers when time was sped up, especially when the clocks (incorrectly) said it was near dinner time. This happened even when dinner time was actually a long time away.

But enough about saltines and fat people. Let's go back to Sackett and his study of how the same idea affects perceptions of fun. He and his researchers ran several more experiments, but the common theory explaining all their results was that when people experience unexpected distortions of time (i.e., time seemed to pass faster or slower than expected) they seek an explanation by turning to what psychologists call "metacognition," or "thinking about thinking."

Specifically, Sackett hypothesizes that when faced with apparent time distortions people turned to the axiom that "time flies when you're having fun" and concluded that because time flew (or dragged) they had fun (or didn't). So much so that it affected how much fun they reported having and how likely they were to switch to other activities. He even did some additional studies where he manipulated the salience of this explanation in subjects' minds and thus increased its effect. Perceptions of time were affecting how much they enjoyed the game, not the other way around!

So How Do You Use This For Fun and Profit?

This has several interesting implications for game design. One devious thought (I have those occasionally) that comes to mind deals with timed game demos. You could tell players that your demo will allow players to enjoy the game for 20 minutes before ending, then cut them off after 15 minutes. According to the above theory, people should think that those 5 minutes went missing on account of all the fun they were having. Hey, they liked your demo more! Free yachts for all the psychologists on staff!

But I can hear you the popping sound of your collective manacles now as you contemplate this base act of fibbing. You sound just like the Human Subjects Review Board when they told me I couldn't have a "clubbed into unconsciousness" condition in the experimental design for my dissertation research. Fine, fine, other applications could rely less on such crass deception. Or clubbing.

Take the driving missions in Red Faction: Guerrilla that I mentioned earlier. Speeding up the clock (after making adjustments to hold difficulty constant) should make that mundane task seem more enjoyable. Same for survival mode in Left 4 Dead or any other game that features a "fend off attackers for X minutes" mission. It would be interesting to see what would happen if you had the game say something like "Hold the enemies off for five minutes," then NOT show a timer and then declare the challenge complete after just three minutes. If the research described above is to be believed, you should have more fun as long as you're not aware of the time compression.

Sure, hardcore gamers armed with stopwatches and preconceived outbursts will probably eventually figure it out, but I'll bet a lot of them don't and never hear about it from others. Or you could sidestep the issue altogether by replacing your timer with an on-screen circle that disappears in tiny wedges reminiscent of the points on a clock face, but at a pace that you control.

Heck, you can even add a little sweeping second hand if your User Interface Design person doesn't have plans for the evening. If a little change in how the concept of time is presented makes for a noticeable change in how much players enjoy those bits of the game, it's worth it.

(Thanks to Ed Yong for bringing this research to my attention in his nifty blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science)

[Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology of Games website. He can be reached at jamie@psychologyofgames.com.]

References: Sackett, A., Meyvis, T., Nelson, L., Converse, B. & Sackett, A., (2010). You're Having Fun When Time Flies: The Hedonic Consequences of Subjective Time Progression. Psychological Science, January; Schachter, S. (1971). Emotion, Obesity, and Crime. New York: Academic Press.

I meant to write about exp., the new zine from Canadian video game journalist and oft GSW/Gamasutra contributor Mathew Kumar, when its first issue debuted last month, but the magazine was a quick seller and every copy was accounted for by the time I thought to commit a post to it.

After a second print run, the 32-page zine is on sale again, featuring experimental articles all penned by Kumar, including "Punch Out!! (A failed poem)", "Metal Gear Ac!d (An absurdly complex DIY boardgame for one)", "Red Faction Guerrilla (A dream of a spaceship)", and more.

He says the pieces are less reviews and critical essays, and instead are intended to "reflect the thoughts had while playing." You can purchase the first issue for $5 (before shipping) through the exp. shop. Kumar adds that these issues will never appear online, so grab a copy before it sells out again!

[Currently writing the 'This Week In Video Game Criticism' series, Ben Abraham is also contributing exclusive GameSetWatch analysis from time to time - starting out with this commentary on unintentional themes in the latest Red Faction game.]

Video game blogger Nick Dinicola noted recently in an essay on 'The State of Social Commentary in Videogames’ that, “as more effort and thought is put into video game narratives, there’s also more effort put into avoiding any social commentary.” Volition and THQ's Red Faction: Guerrilla tries incredibly hard to avoid making unsavoury comparisons to things like the Iraq War, bloody revolutions and other less-than glamorous realities when it comes to struggles for dominance and freedom.

And yet it cannot escape the fact that it is itself a game about violent resistance against an oppressive military junta occupying Mars (the planet, not the confectionary maker). The EDF treat the peaceful inhabitants little better than slaves, are clearly in the pocket of Big Business and similarly appear to be controlling the government, having at the very least the government’s blessing for a pogrom of civilian annihilation.

So why does the game blanche at the thought of examining the serious side of its mindless fun? As we’ve seen more recently with Modern Warfare 2, there is undoubtedly a market for games that deal with serious issues like terrorism, murder and atrocities. Wherever the answer lies, it’s clear that a large number of people working on this game went out of their way to stamp out any kind of meaning or message that the game could be construed as conveying about thorny issues like terrorism and the questionable merits of violent resistance. In our post-modern society.

However, we know that meaning does not rest solely in the hands of the creators, so I’m going to point out some of the things that I noticed that either slipped through the net, or were simply happy accidents of the development process.

Setting up a conflict as being between opposing forces of unambiguously good and evil is one of the easiest ways to pre-emptively put out the fires that could arise from saying something thoughtful about the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. It’s telegraphed from the outset that the Earth Defence Force is unmistakably the bad guys (they even go so far as to kill your brother for no reason in something like the second cut scene just so you’re sure).

There is no grey area, Red Faction good; EDF bad. And once you’re convinced that the enemy is the ultimate evil in the galaxy it becomes remarkably easy to justify doing horrible things to stop them. It’s ‘the ends justify the means’ argument and Red Faction Guerrilla employs it liberally, and only escapes an examination of the very real consequences of this ideology by virtue of its nature as a videogame.

More abstractly however, RFG has a particular quirk with regards to its treatment of the ‘morale’ of the zones of Mars. It tells you how well you’re doing in your efforts to evict the EDF this metric displays an odd inclination that I found rather fascinating. There are a number of ways to increase a zone’s morale; chiefly among them is scoring kill streaks of enemy soldiers, and optional ‘Guerrilla actions’ often also award some level of morale. Basically, killing lots of enemy soldiers is the quickest way to boost a zone’s morale.

This is all well and good when the EDF are still ‘oppressing’ a zone since there’s plenty of soldiers around to beat up on to raise the morale of your own troops. However once you’ve cleared a zone of EDF, their level of control having dropped to zero, they moves out and give over the areas to the Red Faction. When this occurs there’s little action to be had in a zone besides the odd unfinished Guerilla action like bravely destroying some abandoned EDF buildings.

A strange and counterintuitive thing then occurs in the newly liberated zone: morale begins to drop. Wait a minute there Volition – you mean to tell me that since having the people’s necks lifted out from under the oppressive boot of the EDF they are now less happy than before? Could it be?

Have we uncovered a secret statement that Volition are making about that most perverse of elements of the human condition, that is, the ability to find something to complain about in any situation? Have the civilians of Parker, Dust, and Oasis become so blasé and, dare I say, practically bourgeoisie in their newfound freedom that they are actually becoming unhappy? Well, no. But it is nice to pretend.

The real explanation is that, as in life, people occasionally die even when they aren’t being oppressed by a malevolent military organisation. And when they die in Red Faction Guerrilla, morale drops. If it were at all intentional it would be quite the profound statement to be making about human nature.

More insight into the human condition is also revealed, if once again accidentally, by a tactic the Red Faction employs when referring to EDF soldiers. For those who have played along at home, you will recall that most of the time the Faction refer to the EDF as “drones”, and you’d never know that you were actually fighting other human beings unless they occasionally appeared with their helmets off in the cut scenes. The Red Faction employs the commonly utilized tactic of ‘Othering’, often employed by cultures, social groups and other communities to de-humanize outsiders and non-members. By calling the EDF soldiers ‘Drones’ they avoid having to admit that they are fighting other humans – the Red Faction, in their minds at least, turns them into robots.

For the longest time I wasn’t actually sure that they weren’t just robots as you need to be looking rather closely to discern that you are killing hundreds and thousands of fellow human beings. The repetitive, faceless EDF armour-slash-uniform certainly doesn’t help with that impression, nor does their mechanical shouts and death cries. Certainly Volition has gone to a lot of effort to hide the humanity of the EDF from players. After all we wouldn’t want them troubled by petty notions such as empathy or understanding.

At the conclusion of the game, the Red Faction predictably wrests control of Mars from the armoured fist of the EDF, and another strange and contrary happening occurs - The Red Faction becomes the new Establishment and it’s really quite boring. When there’s no one left to fight the game gets tedious incredibly fast. No wonder the EDF wanted to crack heads since it is so dull being in charge of a Mars at peace. Most governments are not oblivious of this fact, as they know how easy it is to use a common enemy to stir up support for a cause that threatens a nation – it’s called the rally effect (or Rally Round the Flag Syndrome).

Before then, however, while the fight is still in progress Alex Mason, the player’s character, becomes the symbol for the resistance by virtue of his near invincibility. You could say that Alex Mason is the flag the Red Faction would have people rally around; his/your death only results in a dip in morale, a mere blip, and while this is almost certainly a product of contemporary game design and accessibility, it’s quite possible to read Mason as a ludic metaphor for the immortal nature of revolutionary ideals. That Volition may not have intended this to be so is largely irrelevant – as I said; the work is out of its creators hands now.

Lastly, and in one of my favourite aspects of RFG (aside from the procedural destruction naturally), the final boss whose name is entirely forgettable and unimportant is no harder to kill than any other elite solder of the EDF. To me, this was such a refreshing change, and it also just happens to be a convenient metaphor for the frailty of man. If Alex Mason is the undying ideals of the revolution then the big bad boss at the end is the face of real humanity. If I wanted to stretch this metaphor to its very limits – and I do – I’d say that in your quest to free humanity, you pretty much end the game by killing humanity itself it.

And that’s one of the most complex pieces of socio-political, even philosophical, commentary in a game ever. What a pity that it was all unintentional.

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's semi-regular link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

As we wander into the weekend, here's another of the slightly less seldom GameSetLinks, rounding up some neat stuff we ran into over the last few days about video games that you might not have seen - starting with an interesting Boing Boing essay on Venezuela and violent games.

Also in here - a look at hardcore sim RailWorks, the making of classic bar game Tapper, a catchy song by a colleague, SomethingAwful goofs wonderfully on those darn indie games, and rather more besides.

Up up:

Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay - Boing Boing
An odd act, and a moving response.

Pretend you are an IGF judge: Part 1 | SavyGamer
Going through this year's IGF entries alphabetically and finding demos, extra info, brief single-line descriptions - useful. Also see a compilation of IGF entry videos by the Tale Of Tales folks.

Gamers will inherit the virtual earth | Ed Stern | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
A nice defence from Splash Damage's Stern: 'Games generate social experiences, often hilariously surreal, and are mainly played in more imaginative and ironic ways than their genre suggests.'

Interview: Paul Jackson On RailWorks | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Awesome niche interview - excellent work, RPS, in mainstreaming things like this.

What the Alternative Press Expo Taught Me About Games - Offworld/Boing Boing
Intriguing Boyer post about how indie media interact.

The Making Of: Tapper | Edge Online
Extremely interesting retrospective on the classic title.

YouTube - Space Asshole
Our own Chris Remo's song about Red Faction: Guerrilla, as showcased on the (now kinda over, aw!) Idle Thumbs podcast. Super cute.

SomethingAwful: 2010's Most Promising Bullshit Indie Games
Hah. AWESOME.

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

As GDC Austin is about to get underway, time to ratchet up the GameSetLinks, starting out with a piece about FarmVille from an outside the game biz -- but notably eloquent and interesting -- perspective. (Hey, 11+ million people can't be wrong... can they?)

Also in here - some more talk on the Experimental Gameplay Project, an interesting discussion on Red Faction: Guerrilla, that intriguing UK Channel 4 education game funding project explored, a notable long-form piece from Daniel Cook which he'll be further exploring at GDCA this week, I think... and rather more besides.

One little chance:

When Falls the Coliseum » Stone age memes: The computer in my underpants
'FarmVille reminds me of the old days where you stood around the water cooler on Monday morning talking about what happened on Bonanza the night before night.'

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 2
Continuing to be super-smart, super-important.

Indie | Experimental Gameplay Project: Bare Minimum | Resolution Magazine
More interviews with the folks around EGP.

Rhizome | Interview with Grace Kook Anderson
'Through October 4, the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach is presenting “WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon”, an exhibition that considers the fantasy environment of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft and its broader cultural impact.'

Red Faction: Guerrilla - Proceduralizing Terror? - News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project
Interesting - I've heard that RF:G devs in no way were going for political allegories, I guess this suggests it's... unconscious/cultural?

In profile: The Channel 4 indies | Game development | Features by Develop
Interesting UK public broadcasting experiment with games, helmed by Wonderland Blog's Alice, that has something to do with the fight for license fee money in the UK right now. It's complicated, politics wise, but I like the results!!

In our latest employment-tastic round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Volition, Namco and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Gamasutra.com - Game Industry Jobs

Day 1 Studios: Level Designer
"Day 1 Studios believes that extraordinary individuals create extraordinary entertainment. To continue our success, we need the best and brightest designers, composers, artists and technologists to share our quest to create revolutionary games. Join us in our Chicago or Hunt Valley, MD locations."

Vigil Games: Senior VFX Artist (Darksiders)
"We are looking for an a highly experienced, professional Visual Effects Artist for our next gen console title. This person will work with the art director and animation lead to define the visual benchmarking and production methodology for the creation of computer-generated FX content, as well as design and create digital effects using 3rd party and proprietary tools."

Volition: Programmer
"Volition is one of THQ’s premier internal game development studios. We are the creators of such franchises as Saints Row, Red Faction, and the Descent/Freespace series. We have most recently released the highly successful Saints Row 2 and Red Faction Guerilla We offer a casual work environment, a comprehensive benefits package, and the opportunity to have fun solving technically challenging problems."

Vicarious Visions/Activision: QA Manager
"The Quality Assurance Manager is responsible for managing 5 or more videogame software projects through the Quality Assurance test process. This involves assigning and managing test leads and test teams, planning and managing the QA budget and review test plans, coordinating with the Production Management Team, and overseeing the entire test effort from beginning to end."

WorldsInMotion - Online Games

Ganz/Webkinz: Flash Developers
"ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT FLASH DEVELOPMENT ?? Now is your chance to join the Ganz team that has brought you such products as Webkinz and Webkinz Jr. You can be a part of developing new adventures !!"

Namco Networks America: Game Designer - PC and Online
"Namco Networks of America is looking for experienced game designers with the desire to create games for the ever-expanding PC casual market. The ideal candidate should possess design experience across a wide variety of game genres, and must be able to design, document, implement and tune gameplay mechanics."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.