Previous Vs. Modes had gone so smoothly.

But as I alluded to in the intro to the first round of this latest debate between me and Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal, this one was a little rocky.

We planned to talk about what we found so intriguing about recent short games: the “Super Stardust HD“s and “Pac-Man Championship Edition“s of the world.

Somehow, though, we spent time debating my wild theories about making photo-realistic “Pac-Man” games and “Space Invaders” with really, really, really good A.I. What you see at the end of today’s round is consternation. Do we pull through and start talking about specific games? Stay tuned Wednesday.

But for today, I invite you to click through and explore this second round, as N’Gai and I debate whether this short-game renaissance is going to die soon and whether games can really go the way of YouTube. Much telling-each-other-we’re-wrong ensues. And we still keep the 500-word limit! Wonders never cease.

(All rounds of this, including today’s, also appear at N’Gai’s “Level Up” blog.)

To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N’Gai Croal
Date: August 6, 2007
Re: Are Small Games Being Sent to Die?

Stephen,

Your small games theories are giving me a minor headache.

In your first entry, you wrote, “The only games that achieve mainstream success are those that can be played casually–narrative is unnecessary and maybe even a detriment.” How are you defining casual? Because games like “Madden” and “Gran Turismo” are extremely hardcore: “Madden” for its slew of options and its requirement of split-second decision-making; “GT” for its unforgiving driving simulation that privileges rigorous braking and handling over reckless acceleration. You’re combining two axes: one of mechanics or accessibility (the hardcore-casual axis) and another of play session duration (the short-session game-long game axis.) So while there’s some overlap, let’s not conflate the two.

When you say, “I don’t think the PS3 and 360 were engineered to run small games,” you’re taking a narrow view of the two consoles. Both were designed with networking and downloadable content in mind, upon which Microsoft did a lot of pioneering work on the first Xbox. Look at the original file size limitations for arcade on 360; look at Sony’s slate for Playstation Network. These systems were clearly engineered to support small games.

You wonder why many of these newer short-session games like “RoboBlitz” and “Super Stardust HD ” are graphically rich; it’s because they’re trying to stay competitive on high-end consoles. A $10 game doesn’t necessarily get a pass on its graphics. (In Sony’s case, a lot of its graphics emphasis has to do with the company pushing its 1080p/True HD talking points.) Small games don’t get magazine covers; they don’t generate many headlines; and other than a few exceptions–like “flOw” during the PS3 launch window and Microsoft and Namco’s “Pac-Man CE” event in NYC–these games don’t get much marketing or PR support. You and I both know small games developers who’ve been told by Microsoft PR to curtail their own promotional efforts. We also know that Sony PR wasn’t even aware that they had a small hit on their hands with “SSHD” until we forwarded them the NeoGAF thread; separately, we only got access to a review build of “Blast Factor Advanced Research” a day or two before it shipped.

This nascent small games revolution is triggering a gold rush mentality as veteran studios and startups alike chase The Next Big Thing. Just as “Geometry Wars” revived the twin-stick shooter, we could see a renaissance of rail shooters; light gun games; graphic adventure games; turn-based strategy games; even text adventure games. Experimental games like “Braid” (rumored to have been picked up by Microsoft) and “echochrome” could find a home and an audience. WiiWare could open up radical new uses for the Wiimote, the Balance Board and the Zapper. But without a committed, creative approach to PR and marketing, it could all disappear without a trace.

Cheers,

N’Gai

P.S. “Vs. Mode: The Movie” sounds intriguing. You could be Anakin Skywalker to my Obi-Wan Kenobi; Clarice Starling to my Hannibal Lecter; Antonio Salieri to my Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Think about it.

***

To: N’Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: August 6, 2007
Re: Small Games Don’t Need PR

N’Gai,

Sorry about your headache.

Correct my conflations of casual and short session if you want, but let’s look at the point I arrived at: the oddity of a game like “Super Stardust HD,” a decidedly non-cinematic, non-epic game beautifully benefiting from the power of Cell.

This simple, arcadey, short-session experience was rendered with technical muscle that I do believe was designed with things more like “Final Fantasy XII” and “Metal Gear Solid 4” in mind. Whether this game was made to advertise 1080p or not is less interesting to me than the potential ramification of its existence: the effect it and similar games could have in showing the promise of small games that are built, as “SSHD” is, on technology that is, arguably, luxuriously over-powered for the current ambitions of small game designers.

I ask you again, what kinds of amazing small games could we get with the power of Cell? What kind of Deep Blue A.I. could you program into a Cell-based “Space Invaders“? How about a photo-realistic “Pac-Man” on 360?

I think the current gaming moment presents a special opportunity for high-end small games. Yes, such a technological opportunity already exists on PC and, no, small games developers and publishers don’t capitalize on it. But I’d go back to “SSHD” and how creatively successful it is and suggest that, hey, maybe an appetite–consumer, creative and financial–can be cultivated for high-end, high-tech small games.

Ah, but you rightly point out that this could be a fleeting moment, that the small games resurgence may abate. It may, but we disagree on the needed safety measures. I don’t think the continued success of the movement requires creative PR and marketing. After all, PR and marketing have had relatively little to do with the surge of popularity in small entertainment outside of games. YouTube clips and downloadable songs get popular without the help of “the man” thanks to the viral hype of “the many.” Such viral success occurs in those fields because the platforms involved are open. Theoretically–and maybe temporarily–anyone could create something and anyone could share that creation with anyone else.

Could it happen for games? With the right open platform, sure. But maybe you think the console makers wouldn’t allow for open platforms. Probably not, but there are ways they can emerge almost even despite Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft’s closed nature: 1) web-browser-based (so, not exactly high-end) small games coded for play on consoles, as seen via WiiCade, which, combined with the right community features, could do the trick and give every console-owner access to a broad palette of games; 2) more promising, to me, Sony’s “LittleBigPlanet,” which, if dynamic enough, has a decent chance of housing the next user-generated “Donkey Kong” or next “Tetris,” albeit rendered with cutting-edge graphics.

Consider the high-end small game with me for a bit. And then let’s talk about, I don’t know, what’s better: small games that make you twitch or small games that make you think.

-Stephen

***

To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N’Gai Croal
Date: August 7, 2007
Re: Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?

Stephen,

Why are you hung up on which games the Cell processor was designed for? A console is a fixed platform, so developers can take advantage of all its power and features knowing that anyone who owns that console is a potential customer. The same isn’t true of the PC, whose dizzying array of configurations forces many developers to target the lowest common denominator. You’re also failing to acknowledge the importance of the network and what it was designed for. Microsoft didn’t start out with full movie downloads, and Sony didn’t start out with large-scale games. They began with short-form content: trailers, demos and small games. Before digital distribution on consoles became possible, small games for those systems tended to be party games like “Mario Party,” collections like “Namco Museum,” or adjuncts to a larger title like “Geometry Wars.” Why? Because retailers and consumers–to say nothing of a publisher’s sales and marketing departments–would resist an individual small game being sold in stores.

So what happens when you combine powerful CPUs and GPUs with built-in networking and online services on a fixed platform? You get something like “Super Stardust HD.” The hardware makes the graphics and physics possible; the network gives the developer and publisher the opportunity to reach an audience and recoup their investment. This is not an accident. It’s not an oddity. It is the logical outgrowth of the feature sets of the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

You’re also rather sanguine about the importance–or, according to you, the lack thereof–of PR and marketing in nurturing the success of small games on consoles. Sure, YouTube videos and downloadable songs have become hugely successful. They’re also free, whether they’re just being given away (YouTube) or pirated (downloadable music.) The companies behind “flOw,” “Mutant Storm,” “Castle Crashers” and “Blast Factor” aren’t charitable ventures. If they and their publishers can’t turn a profit on small games, the funding for these titles will eventually dry up. So unless you’re talking about a very different business model than paid downloads, even with demos and free trials, small games still need marketing and PR just as do their bigger counterparts. They’re competing for everyone’s attention in an increasingly crowded entertainment landscape. To pretend otherwise is myopic. You can’t spell viral marketing without marketing; and while word-of-mouth is even more necessary for small games than for disc-based titles, publishers’ marketing and PR departments still have an important role to play. Right now, they’re not doing a good job.

Flash games and other browser-based games are a nice thought, but I think their natural home is on the PC, not PS3 or 360. But they could see more success on Wii because its gestural controls are still novel. “LittleBigPlanet” is intriguing, but if you need to own the game in order to play the user-generated content, then the game’s sales will be the gating factor on the spread of its user’s creations.

Back to the games: why do you like “SSHD”?

Cheers,

N’Gai

***

To: N’Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: August 7, 2007
Re: Answer The Question

N’Gai,

Do you agree that, be it “accident” or “logical outgrowth” that SSHD feels like one of the first of a potential new strain of high-end small games? That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to engage on.

-Stephen

(to be continued…)