I started debating the highly-regarded PSP game “Patapon” with Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal early last week.

We thought we’d be done by now.

Today we are.

In our first exchange we both praised the game, but I went off on my feelings about gamer guilt and why so many games make me feel guilty for playing all or even just select parts of them.

In N’Gai’s e-mail below he explains the the three types of video game imperfections, complains about the game’s grind and suggests a few ways to “Patapon” better.

And then I defend grinding in games. Really, I do.

So when we last left off I asked N’Gai: “Do you ever feel any of that gamer guilt?” He answers below…

(As always, Vs. Mode appears both on MTV Multiplayer and on N’Gai’s “Level Up” blog.)

To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N’Gai Croal
Date: March 30, 2008
RE: Simple Input, Complex Output

Stephen,

I don’t know about you, but my taste in games is so impeccable that I never have to apologize for recommending them. Seriously, though, when I suggest a game to someone, it’s either because a) the recomendee is a non-gamer who needs both accessibility and a strong hook to pull them in (”Rock Band“); b) the game is exemplary (”Rez“); c) there’s something specific about the game that I think they should check out (the circuit courses in “The Club“); or d) I know that the game will suit their particular tastes (insert fanboy-specific genre here).

That doesn’t mean they’ll like it—there’s a certain creative director of high-octane racing games who will never forgive my recommendation of “Every Extend Extra” and “Everyday Shooter“–but I make no apologies for their lack of discernment. (Just kidding…or am I?) Similarly, people suggest games to me all the time, but I don’t always take them up on it. I can remember someone insisting that I play a “Legend of Zelda game — any “Legend of Zelda” game — before deciding that he’d himself had enough of the franchise. Maybe if I wait long enough, all recommendations become invalid.

Your point about imperfections in games is worth considering, though. At what point do we decide whether an imperfection is a bug or a feature—or personal taste? The shooting and targeting controls in the PS2-era “Grand Theft Auto” games? Bug. Organizing spreadsheets Managing your party, items and spells in “Final Fantasy XII“? Feature. Getting together with 100 of your closest friends for a raid in “World of Warcraft“? Personal taste—and not my own.

Many games—even some of the best—simulate certain things well and others not so well. They simulate some aspects plausibly and others abstractly or not at all. Is it better or worse, for instance, that the old “GTA” games had floating, spinning pickups for weapons, health and money, while “Grand Theft Auto IV” will integrate them into the world more plausibly? The gap between simulation and reality—or between simulation and shared fantasy—is where the individual’s ability to suspend disbelief and give himself or herself over to the simulation comes into play.

Back to “Patapon“: is the grind an imperfection? I say yes. It seems like an easy way to pad out a game that otherwise, as designed, isn’t very long. Now, it’s true that I could go back to any open area to mine it for the resources I needed, but it was still grinding nonetheless. And I’m not as forgiving as you on this point because while the songs are pleasant and memorable, they weren’t so good that I would let it slide. Here’s how commenter Ginger Yellow described it in response to Round 1 of our exchange:

The grinding is a real pain. It takes a game that should be a joy, and turns into a chore at times. It wouldn’t be so bad if stone/ore etc. drops were more frequent, or if the tunes in the mini games changed. I still love the game, I always groan when I come up against an overpowered boss because I know I’m going to have to spend the next few hours replaying the same levels.

A much better solution would have been to let me “sell” my warriors back recover part or all of the ka-ching that I spent on them so that I could use spend it on a better warrior. But in fairness to the designers — and to return to the suspension of disbelief point I just raised — they seem to want to make a point about the value of your individual troops. Each class of warrior can only contain so many troops; when you get the ingredients to make a better soldier, you first have to clear a slot in its respective class. And when you clear that slot, the “Patapon” warrior in it dies, in a manner suggesting that the air was removed from its body. (Not to mention that with the death of your warrior goes all the ka-ching and experience points you put into it.) I don’t want to oversell its emotional effectiveness, because I certainly cleared slots when I needed to, but doing so was always a bit sad, and I was generally reluctant to do so, as if I were facing an unpleasant task.

So which came first, the annoying design choice or the emotional engineering to support it? Which values should I favor, the gameplay values of the narrative values? At the end of the day, “Patapon” is a game, so if the designers are going to make a choice that leads to something as contentious-yet-omnipresent as grinding, they need to better support that choice so that players focus on something else besides the grind, besides the end that will justify those tedious means. More tunes and better tunes, as Ginger Yellow suggests, would have helped.

You asked me what I think of rhythm as control. I’m surprised that you’ve yet to mention “Donkey Kong Jungle Beat,” a game that you made play a few years back. That game was a rhythm-platformer, so it was necessarily more freeform than “Patapon.” “Donkey Kong Jungle Beat” was exceedingly well-executed, but I prefer “Patapon” because I feel as though its RTS gameplay better suits rhythm controls than does a platformer. As to rhythm-”Sims” or Rhythm-”Madden,” I don’t think that it’s an accident that both “Patapon” and “Donkey Kong Jungle Beat” are side-scrollers. I’m not sure that this control mechanism would work as well on a traditional 3-D game.

I disagree with your characterization of “Patapon,” when you write of the player’s role “[Y]ou are a composer of a soundtrack or you are a preacher or you are a weather pattern above a civilization. You create mood that compels reaction.” Well, actually, the preacher part is right, so I’ll say that you got one out of three correct. Most rhythm games are variations of Simon Says, in which you’re matching a pattern that the game sets out for you. In the battles in “Patapon,” you are Simon. It’s a call-and-response game: you tap out a beat, and your Patapon army obeys in both song and action. This is what the creators of “The Bourne Conspiracy” game call simple input, complex output, and I think it may be one of the keys to making videogames more accessible to a wider range of potential players.

As gamers, we learn to love inputs of medium to high complexity. But that shuts out anyone who isn’t willing to devote the time to learn complex inputs. “SingStar,” “Guitar Hero,” “Wii Sports,” “Rock Band” — all of these games have radically simplified the inputs, but the output is complex, whether it’s hitting a note or knocking down a set of bowling pins. My editor stopped by my office on Friday as I was playing “Rock Band;” he’d heard about it, but never played it. Forty-five minutes later — having played guitar, drums and vocals on easy for Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” and Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” — he was making plans to buy a PS3 and the “Rock Band” bundle. “Patapon” is more abstract than that, so it might take a bit more work to get someone like my editor to step up to the plate. But that said, the controls are accessible enough that he could get into it. It’s something more developers and publishers will have to consider moving forward.

I’m going to conclude our exchange with one last complaint about “Patapon.” The trailer suggested that there were going to be all kinds of large-scale weapons at my disposal, like catapults and rolling forts. It turned out that there was only one mission that I encountered where there was a catapult. I wanted more. I wanted massive machines that I could unleash on my enemies. I wanted to capture giant beasts and turn them to my side. I wanted to be able to have the tempo of my call affect the tempo of my “Patapon” army’s response—or better yet, the tempo of the entire battle. We’ve talked before about how some games are a rough draft for the sequel, while others spring forth fully perfected. “Patapon” is an original idea, terrifically-executed, with on sizable flaw (the grind), a few imperfections, and large swaths of its possibility space that have yet to be explored. Here’s hoping that they get a chance to tackle all of this and more in another game.

Cheers,

N’Gai

***

To: N’Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: April 1, 2008
RE: In Defense Of The Grind

N’Gai,

I’ve news for you: you’re not “concluding our exchange.” I am. And first up, I’m going to answer all the questions you asked me. Okay. Done.

Now I am free to contend with your criticism of “Patapon,” particularly of the game’s grinding. I felt the same pain you and your reader Ginger Yellow felt. The grind in “Patapon” did occasionally get me down. I’m certain I silently cursed the game’s designers for requiring me to repeatedly grind through a few of the game’s levels in order to gain the resources needed to improve my army.

Let’s consider what a “grind” in a video game is, why we hate them and what it would take not to hate. When we curse a grind, we’re cursing a game for forcing repetitive gameplay, to block advancement without this repetition. But aren’t all games, by their very nature, rife with repetition? Isn’t “Super Mario Bros.” just a lot of repeated hops. Isn’t “Halo” just a few specific styles of engagement repeated and remixed for hours on end? Sure. The grind, however, earns scorn because it forces too much repetition. It crosses a line. It registers an excess. The repetition often becomes too much and turns into a grind once the game has forced the gamer to go backward, to perpetrate the game’s initially un-offensively repetitive gameplay in levels they’ve already run through. Gameplay repetition is changed to gameplay grinding. And that’s when it’s time to get angry.

Except: it’s all subjective, isn’t it? Where is that line between fun repetition and grinding? Why don’t “God of War” games get accused of forcing a grind? Because they don’t? Oh, surely, they do. They require collecting orbs to get powers, some of which you need to advance. Does ‘God of War” get off because they just don’t do it forcefully enough that it’s bothersome?

I sense that you and Ginger Yellow may actually know these things about grinds. You may know that they’re not all bad. Perhaps it’s because you know people who happily grind away in “World of Warcraft” with no complaint. Either nine million people are deluding themselves or grinding isn’t all bad. Perhaps the hint to your ultimate softness on grinds can be glimpsed in your mutual desire for more musical variation during the game’s grinds — a request that suggests grinding would be more fun for you two not if the gameplay was more interesting but if said grind was accompanied by a more interesting soundtrack; simple inputs with more interesting outputs.

So admit it. Secretly you love grinds in games.

No?

Overstatement?

I’m picking on you and G. Yellow not because I think you don’t know what you want, but because I think it’s useful to identify both what it is that annoys gamers about grinds and what gamers believe would make grinding more tolerable. If a grind is really defined by and reviled for its requirement of overly repetitive gameplay, I think all of us hardcore gamers need face the fact that our thresholds for repetitive gameplay are already higher than the average person’s. Shock: what we don’t see as grinds are probably considered to be grinds by more casual gamers. So if you or I or Ginger Yellow think “Patapon” is a grind, what do you think casual gamers make of “Zelda” or “Half-Life“? Maybe they think it’s ridiculous that you have to kill this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy with the same three swords or guns. Maybe they think that’s a grind. And maybe, like you and Ginger on “Patapon,” these casual players they think the grind would be made tolerable with a better soundtrack. Or fewer tedious actions. Less repetition? More gameplay variety? Prettier graphical distractions?

[Let’s pause a second: Are casual gamers more tolerant of a grind with a better soundtrack? By asking that, did I just describe “Guitar Hero“/”Rock Band” in a backwards way?]

Can grinds in gaming be ground out? I doubt it. Games can’t be made to exclude repetition. So we’re really just talking about degrees. How much is too much? How much repetitive gameplay should be required vs. being left optional? The better soundtrack solution is one viable remedy because it distracts a gamer from the tedium of doing the same thing again and again. Another distraction, seen in “World of Warcraft” is the presence of friends, often working on that same chain gang grind that you are. “Brain Age” suggests another solution to the grind “problem,” two solutions in fact: 1) encouraging short sessions, so that what would be maddening if played eight hours straight is pleasant when spread across 365 days and 2) convincing the player, like a good exercise coach, that high-volume repetition is healthy. The grind will make you a better person. Imagine!

I’ve heard some “Final Fantasy” fans claim that they consider that series’ lavish cut scenes as rewards for tolerating the game’s grinding gameplay. That’s a “solution” to the grind problem I can’t endorse. I doubt you would either.

Let’s re-consider whether these grinds we hate can really be excised or if we’d be perfectly happy gamers if they were just accompanied with more pleasantness. You suggested that the grind issue in “Patapon” could have been remedied if the player could sell back soldiers. Maybe. But I prefer your other ideas — the more varied music; the matching of more of “Pataon”’s hypnotic tap-tap-tap gameplay to levels with vehicles and trainable beasts.

So let’s not hate the grind. Let’s consider that it might be a necessary part of games. Or, if not, let’s drill down on a more fundamental level. If we’re going to point fingers at “Patapon,” then let’s point fingers at “Rock Band” world tour and “Devil May Cry” and a whole lot of other games too — anything that requires lots of repeated gameplay to progress. Have we tolerated repetition too long? Is that what we all need to apologize for? Or is that the very core of gaming? Is everything a grind, just prettied up to varying degrees of success?

N’Gai, let’s get on with a new Vs Mode soon. These letters are always good for getting the wheels turning. But next time, let’s talk about a game we really don’t agree on. “Burnout” and “Patapon” have made things too cordial, no?

-Stephen