The Best and Worst of Procedural Generation

Rise of the Machines.

You know, Game design is a really involved process. Every step of the way you are met with complications and tribulations as you attempt to (I love this analogy) build on top of wet concrete. So much development time gets chewed up by iterating and reiterating and shaping and reshaping fundamental design elements, that it can be overwhelming for unprepared development teams. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if one of those main development tasks could he handled by an independent entity. Not a contractor per-se, something more reliable with less overheads. Something like a computer. Instead of dedicating time to make a worldspace you could leave it to an algorithm to... procedurally generate.

Obviously I am being factious. Some game companies do utilize procedural generation in their games and the process is not quite as simple as a set-and-forget kind of thing. At least not if you intend for the final product to be presentable. A lot of work and oversight needs to go into the creation of a procedural generation system to ensure that it is creating content that is viable, bug-free and worthwhile for the player. When developers put in the time to set it up, the result is spectacular. Procedural generation is capable of creating much more than is feasibly possible with a limited workforce or creating the right conditions for potentially endless replayability.

Taking the leap to trusting the work of an algorithm can be daunting to some. Afterall, some of the fun of game design is knowing exactly how everything you've made fits together, like solving a huge, 4d puzzle; when you leave a portion of that work up to a computer, suddenly you add an element of uncertainty to that equation. If the possibilities of your procedural generation algorithm are endless, than how can you be sure to account for everything that could potentially go wrong?  Because of this factor, it is still considered a risky venture to implement procedural generation systems, ensuring those systems are a rarity in the modern AAA market.

Procedural generation does have a very long history in game development, longer than some people think. Not always a successful history, mind you, but a storied one at least. For the purposes of this blog I want to go back to some of the standout games to feature procedural generation and see how successfully they are implemented. That means that for every game I mention there are likely at least 10 more from that timeframe that I have skipped over, intentionally or otherwise. I have just taken the liberty to choose some games that I either have history with or a connection to. That being said, remember when I mentioned how I used to be a huge Star Wars nut? Would you believe that they made a Star Wars game that prominently featured procedural generation? Well they did.

'Star Wars: Yoda Stories' is an old school, topdown action-adventure game from the age before the prequels. Released in 1997, 'Yoda Stories' tells the tale of Luke arriving on Dagobah to complete his training under master Yoda. "Oh", you may think, "like that level from Lego Star Wars 2 then". No, and don't you ever make that comparison again! The game starts as you land in your X-wing and are forced to navigate the confusing locales in order to discover the home of that beloved little goblin. And when I say 'confusing locales' I'm not just referring to that fact that planet is a literal swamp. I mean 'confusing' because the game is ugly as sin and the environments are mind-numbingly repetitive. Once you do find Kermit's height-impaired little brother, that is only the start of your woes. Yoda then proceeds to send Luke on a fetch quest for some useless macguffin that might not even be on the same planet as you. Then rinse and repeat until you're too brain dead to operate the keyboard anymore.

"Sounds like you don't like this game." Why yes it does, voice in my head, well noted. "So why did you bring it up?" Well you see, the environments that the player are forced to roam through seem so uninteresting and boring, to the point where you just couldn't imagine a human being actually designing it, and that is because no human being did. Indeed, Yoda Stories' 'game selling' feature was the fact that it's levels were entirely procedurally generated, meaning that you could play again and again and never encounter the same level twice. (Why you would ever want to play again is beyond me, but the option is there.) This little gimmick would be nice if the algorithm was given enough direction and tools to make areas that felt somewhat distinct, but alas either 1997 programming tools were too rudimentary or the developers just didn't care enough. Whatever the reason, we are left with a game that is historic, but pretty decently awful.

Wait, the same game director who made Yoda Stories made another Lucas Arts published game a year beforehand? And it features another timeless property? Well that game can't be bad, right? Afterall, if it were, there is no way Lucas Arts would have hired him again within the space of a year, would they? 1996's 'Indiana Jones and his desktop adventures' is a topdown, action adventure- wait a minute, this seems familiar. That's right, it is essentially the exact same game with different a different coat of paint. However, this time the creators tried to push the 'procedural generation' aspect even harder then before; slapping possibly my favourite ever splash-text on the boxart: "Literally Billions Of  Possible Games!" Is that right? Billions, huh? Technically correct if you count one rock being slightly to the left as a whole new game. It's just a shame that all of those game's are terrible, isn't it.

Before we speed ahead, let's go back a bit. To a game that birthed on of my personal favourite franchises of all time: 'The Elder Scrolls: Arena'. Long has my love-affair with The Elder Scrolls blossomed. Starting with Morrowind and eventually stretching to every single main-line entry of the series. But none of that history has made me biased, when I first approached Arena I made sure to put all that aside and judge the game from it's own merits. As such I managed to enjoy Arena for the old school, rudimentary, hack and slash that it was. The dungeons became a little unwieldy in the later levels but my overall impression was that it was a solid game that could very much stand on it's on. (In fact, it sort of does stand on it's own; considering how little story and lore the game shares with it's successors.)

One element of the game that I didn't enjoy was the experience of attempting to grind. Many of the end-game locales require the player to seriously beef up before tackling them, which leaves the player in a bit of a predicament. You see, whilst you were able to use the map to travel to story-relevant areas and cities, there is no way to use the map for tracking down optional areas to conquer. Adventurers had to use their initiative and wonder out into the wilderness hoping to come across old ruins. (Or just stalk the town's streets at night, as then they become dripping with hostiles. Apparently, no one ever told the city guard to take shifts.)  The problem with this approach is the fact that the gameworld is big. Ungainly big. As in, before ESO, this game was the only one in the franchise to encompass all of Tamriel. Hearing this might may you think "Wow, how did early Bethesda manage to craft an entire continent?". Well, I featured the game on this blog so you can likely figure it out. The Elder Scrolls Arena utilized a procedural generation algorithm in order to craft it's open world. The result is an open world that would take weeks to traverse (In real time) and a random assortment of side-dungeons that honestly aren't worth the effort to clear. Like many early randomly-generated games, Arena's execution falls a fair bit short of the team's aspirations. Luckily the base game is solid enough that this failure didn't sink the game and now we have Skyrim so I'd say the world is mostly better off.

The next game is legendary enough to likely need no introduction or explanation, but I enjoy self-imposed redundancy, so here we go. 2009 saw the release of the biggest indie title ever, Mojang's Minecraft. Since then, millions of players have been won over by Minecraft's promise of unrestrained creativity where you can make the game whatever you want it to be. (Providing you want it to be a game about building things.) It's social proliferation has reached such a degree where the game has managed to survive being run through by traditional media and still come out the otherside smelling of roses. Minecraft even pulled of the greatest trick any game can pull, being dethroned from it's 'most popular' podium by newcomer Fortnite, only to crawl it's way back 'On The Waterfront'-style in a comeback story for the ages. (Once which everyone tells differently, by the by.

I mention Mojang's opus here because Minecraft was the very first game I played in which I noticed and appreciated the procedural generation element. In Minecraft, the world in which you inhabit stretches out for all eternity. (Or at least until you travel 7784 miles away from spawn. which you ain't gonna do be accident.)  This means that the player can wonder the world and explore it's vistas in perpetuity. This algorithm is one that Mojang have spent the last 10 years perfecting, in order to ensure that the world it generates is always worth looking at. For my part, I still see the odd extreme hill that still blows me away even after all these years. The infinite world also means that the player has access to infinite resources with which to build with. Minecraft is perhaps one of the best examples of procedural generation implemented and executed perfectly. It enriches the game and truly makes it feel endless. (In a good way.)

There is one genre in particular makes use of procedural generation as part of it's MO. Rougelites and Rouge-likes like to change up their playspace each time the player dies in order to keep things feeling fresh. And it's necessary for a game genre built around the concept of the player dying and starting again over and over.  Rougelites in particular often use a 'room-based' navigation system in order to allow for random generation to affect each 'room' separately and string them together into one unique dungeon. The Binding of Issac, Moonlighters, Spelunky and many more all rely upon robust algorithms mixing things up constantly. Randomized layout, enemy placement and item generation assures that no one is ever relaxed when tackling a new run.

This implementation is the similar to the way Diablo and it's successors use procedural generation. In Diablo, the player is tasked with battling their way down through hell and slaying the titular demon of damnation. The kicker is that the plethora of dungeons that the player goes through, are all computer generated, as is their enemies and the hoards of loot said-enemies drop. This is another necessary implementation as Diablo is designed to be replayed over and over as the player engages in the gameplay loop of perpetual self improvement. Diablo-esque games like Path of Exile and Torchlight make use of similar systems in their send up to Diablo.

A few of the examples I have already bought up have been about developers using algorithms in order to circumvent a potentially impossible workload. Although, I think no company embodies this ideal as perfectly as Hello Games with their title, No Man's Sky. NMS is a game that will be forever tainted by the fact that is promised the stars and gave the moon. But to be honest, even in apparent failure, Hello games achieved something spectacular. Describing the size of No Man's Sky is hard, so I'll just quote the official Wiki "The universe of No Man's Sky (is comprised of) 255 unique galaxies, which in turn comprise around 3 to 4 billion regions, each of which contain more than 122 and up to hundreds of star systems. All star systems feature from 1-6 planets and moons, and usually a single space station." One quote from one the developers was floating around about how 'if you were to visit one planet every second, you would die before experiencing half of a single galaxy."

Technologically, No Man's Sky is an absolute marvel only possible through advanced and refined procedural algorithms. The problem is that NMS relies on the generation a bit too much. With all those planets available, there are bound to be a few that aren't worth visiting, the problem is that NMS planets are so similar that it isn't long before none of them are worth visiting. That's a little bit of a problem in a game that is specifically deigned around the idea of exploration. If the player has seen everything by the 10th hour then they sort of lose the incentive to keep travelling. In recent updates, No Man's Sky has shifted the focus from 'constant exploration' to the much more gamplay-sound mentality of 'builidng a home'. Taking a page out of Minecraft's book they've managed to make the game feel much more worthwhile. However, I still play the game as my background for podcast time. (Like the freak I am.)

Here's one that you might not have known; 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' was originally supposed to have a procedural generated element to it just like No Man's Sky. Back when Bioware were still figuring out what the game would look like, the choice had been made that the Andromeda Galaxy would be inhabited by completely random planets created on the spot. That's why much of the game's dialogue revolves around your family having the 'hearts of explorers' despite the fact you only see 5 planets and spend most of your time shooting people on them. Bioware wanted to allow players to colonize whichever worlds that they saw fit to, essentially allowing us to decide the future home of humanity.

This would have been the first AAA game to make significant use of procedural generation had the idea made it to inception. Unfortunately, the idea was left on the cutting room floor after it became apparent that 'the randomly generated planets would not meet Bioware's standard of quality'. Given how those same systems worked out for NMS and The Elder Scrolls: Arena, I have to say the logic is sound. However, I still can't help but think that if a big budget studio were to put their weight behind a galaxy generator we could get something worthwhile; heck, Bioware must have thought the same thing if the idea made it to a pitch room. I think the real reason it was scrapped it because the publishers got cold feet. You can never be sure of how a computer-run development would turn out so EA likely thought it was better not to take the risk. Either way, it's a darn shame that we won't see a space game push the boundaries of tech in such a cool way for a while, if ever.

As I have said a few times in this blog, procedural generation is a risk. When you leave the shape of your creative endeavour to be decided by fate, you either end up simulating the chaos of nature or the soullessness of a computer. Few are willing to put their work on the line like that, but those that are can sometimes change the way we look at games. Minecraft was originally conceptualized as one prebuilt world that players would mess around in, allowing the players some degree of freedom but nothing close to what they have today. With procedural generation in Minecraft, every world feels unique to the player that inhabits it; they don't just become their world's architect, they become it's arbiter. It's a subtle difference but one that completely shifts the player's personal relationship to that world. Now, of course, not all procedural generation systems have that exact effect, but they all lend a touch of uncertainty that cannot be captured in any other way. As we move into the age of the Scarlett and PlayStation 5, I find myself optimistic for the future of computer generated content in games. The better the tech, the better the scope to create something bigger and more diverse than any human brain could ever envision. Who knows, maybe one day we'll get an AI advanced enough to create an entire game by itself. True, at that point the thing will have likely transcended human scope and will hence become Skynet, but at least we'll get one kick-ass game before we all get annihilated by our robot overlords. 

What makes Morrowind so memorable?

By Azura, by Azura, by Azura...

I am unsure if you have picked up this little fact about me yet, but I love fantasy role playing games. I love the high adventure, the worldbuilding, the feeling that you can be whoever it is that you want to be. This is one the reasons why I find myself so drawn to The Elder Scrolls franchise time and time again, they are the quintessential fantasy RPG. Bethesda have spared no effort in ensuring that The Elder Scrolls consistently sets the bar the role playing with every entry. The result of this dedication means that a lot of the older Elder Scrolls games hold up very well to this day. (Well, if you don't mind dated graphics and clunky controls too much I guess.) Go back, try them out, and will be able to experience a piece of living fantasy gaming history.

Oblivion still sends chills down my spine every time the sky turns dark crimson as you approach Kvatch. Skyrim still swoons me with it beautiful world of spacious tundras and chilling snow drifts. Daggerfall still makes me want to gouge my eyes out with that introductory dungeon. But there is one Elder Scrolls game that sticks out from all the others, one game who's importance to gaming history cannot be understated, one with incredibly clunky combat. I am talking, of course, about 'The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind'.

If you haven't heard the story of Morrowind's development yet, just look at any of the interviews where Todd Howard explains it. He loves bringing it up. That is not my focus today, today I want to talk less about the circumstances surrounding the original product and more on the product itself. I want to delve into why we still consider Morrowind a classic despite it's many, many flaws. Full disclosure, I absolutely love Morrowind to an irrational degree, but I will try to keep rational as I go into the game itself.

In many ways, Morrowind was the birthplace for Bethesda's reputation as master world builders. Before Morrowind there was DOOM 2, Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redgaurd. Games of varying quality but none that really shone out for spectacular world design. The first two Elder Scrolls games are fun but the composition of their worlds was more of a technical marvel than a design one. A computer generated waste of randomly assigned dungeons sounds cool on paper and mind numbing in gameplay, and it is. Daggerfall did introduce some of the standard world elements that we now come to expect from The Elder Scrolls, (Like the Dark Brotherhood.) but the land of the Bretons was still a mostly featureless expanse with no distinct elements. All that would change in 2002 when 'The Elder Scrolls Morrowind' would land. Say what you want about Morrowind's graphics, but you remember Vvardenfell.

Maybe that is on account of that fact that Morrowind looks like it was spawned from the shroomed out mind of a Tim Burton tribute team. The isle of Vvardenfell is writhe with oversized mushroom palaces, hulking canton cityscapes and that giant, suspended, crashing moon that the locals decided to turn into a convenient office space. Everywhere you go in Morrowind there is something new and unique to see. Things that you haven't seen in every other fantasy before. That was Bethesda's biggest strength when crafting Morrowind. They were able to create a world that felt almost alien in it's inception, but if you look closer you start to see the real world influences seep into the Dunmer people. Egyptian culture, for example, permeates through the pyramid-like design of the Dunmer's buildings, and their entombing rituals and penchant for elaborate living face masks. That touch of the familiar and foreign lends Morrowind it's implacable charm that lingers in the back of your mind.

Then there is the lore. I have spoken in great lengths about my love for videogame lore, I have even mentioned Morrowind and the litany of world-building literature that you can find scattered around the gameworld. All of this content helps establish the culture of Morrowind in the mind of the player, bringing that world to life. What is even more important then that, however, is to have that lore realized in the game. You could write a hundred books about the xenophobia of Vvardenfell's people and how particularly exclusionary House Hlaalu can be, but none of that is real until you jaunt past your first Ordinator and have him call you "N'wah" or "Scum". Completely unprovoked, that is.( All these years later I still don't know what an "N'wah" is, but I remain deeply offended.)

Lore creates context for your culture and builds structure for it's society. Every significant narrative element that adds up to create the full, involved, story is validated and bolstered by lore. And the historical influences help shape that lore and make it feel genuine. The political struggles between the Tribunal, The houses and the sixth house is almost a background element of Morrowind's story although it's fallout affects a great degree of your interactions throughout the game. Dharmic religions influence the Vvardenfell temples and their teachings. And Christian mythology is represented in the heart of the plot. Afterall, the resurrected Nerevar is know as the Nevarine; no great insight is needed to see how that draws influence from the legend of the Nazarene.

Here's another, weirder, reason why Morrowind is remembered. The combat. Specifically, how terrible it is. It seems strange to credit one the game's greatest failings as one of it's most memorable aspects, but we do tend to remember the things we have the strongest reaction to; and Morrowind's combat mechanics certainly drew a lot of strong reactions from gamers. For those unfamiliar, Morrowind was created by a team of people who were all huge 'Dungeons and Dragons' nerds. They loved that tabletop experience so much that they used it to shape a few of the weirder design decisions in Morrowind. Like that terrible navigation system wherein you would meet a quest giver and they would give you directions to your destination. 'That doesn't seem so bad' you may think. 'In a world before quest markers, directions seem like a sensible replacement.' The problem is that your goal could be on the otherside of Vvardenfell and your client will provide with an onslaught of vague directions on how to get there.(Better get your pen and paper out.) One guy even gives you the worst piece of advise any direction-giver can give: "If you see x, then you've gone too far." Then why in the heck did you even mention it!

I'm getting a little off track. The D&D influences ran so deep that it even infested the combat system. You may ask, how can a tabletop roll playing game be represented in a action adventure video game without being terrible? Morrowind says it can't. In Morrowind you will find that fighting your enemy is not so easy as connecting with the swing of you sword or the shot of your arrow, making contact is step one. Once you hit the enemy the game does a little back end calculation to decided if the sword hit, actually hit. It takes a few factors into account, the most prominent of which being your weapon skill level. If the game so decided it, the attack you just conducted will be invalidated and the enemy will take no damage. That sounds pretty annoying already, but what if I told you that it got worse. You see, Morrowind was the start of The Elder Scrolls tradition of skills that are improved through practise. A tradition that I very much like. This mean that you start the game with no skill and it improves the more you engage in that activity. Unfortunately, this system is almost incompatible with the combat system. Low level players will find that their skill level is so low that only 1 in 15 hits actually registers on the target, but the only way that they can improve the skill to be more reliable is to get in hits. Or sink a fortunes worth into a trainer. The whole practise is pointless because your only reward for going through the trails and tribulations of improving your weapons skill level it to be able to conduct a fight like any other game, where you hits actually register.

If you think all that sounds bad then allow me to enlighten you; that is just the way the game plays now, at release things were even more confusing. Fight an enemy in today's Morrowind and you might notice that little yellow bar appear above your health. That's the enemy's health bar. Standard affair for any RPG ever, you may think; but what if I told you that wasn't always the case. Yep, enemy health bars were added alongside the Bloodmoon DLC. They were absent at release. I can't be sure why, but I believe this may be another bit of the D&D inspiration rearing it's ugly head. Afterall, In D&D you can never be sure of an enemy's health until they fall down or you cast some sort of status revealing spell. (Of course in Dungeons and Dragons there is the universal solution of just asking the DM about how their enemy looks. You may just get a ballpark description but it's better than the nothing Morrowind offers.) The problem with this system, if it isn't obvious, is that it means fighting your enemies was conducted with complete guess work on the player's part. Wiki is any modern players invaluable tool for trying to play the game this way as it will allow you to see your specific targets exact HP. Of course, than you have to go through the effort of calculating your own weapon's DPS and predicting how much you need to wail on them before they stop moving. But that isn't even all, because you also have to take into account missed swings. Because of the asinine skill level system, you don't know that you have missed unless you fail to here the smack sound cue. A sound cue that could just bug out because this is game made my Bethesda. If, by the end of the day, you aren't ready to blow your brains out, then you might just make it through a whole playthrough of Morrowind.

For better or for worse, Morrowind is a game that will forever have a place in fantasy role playing history. Even when Oblivion slowly loses it's luster due to it's eyewateringly garish visuals and Skyrim withers and dies through Bethesda's oversaturation, fans will look back on the third Elder Scrolls with a justified, if confused, reverence. Few truly creative and distinct ventures with the size and scope of Morrowind get realized to today's world, and I think that modern day entrainment is worse off for it. Would today's Bethesda have made Morrowind? I think almost certainly not. Not if they are happy with publishing products of the quality of 'Wolfenstein: Young Blood'. A truly imaginative and original idea might give them all heart attacks. If you've ever looked at Morrowind and thought 'That looks interesting. Dated, but interesting." I'd say look up some video's first, know what you're getting yourself into, and if you still haven't run away screaming, pick it up. You might love it, you might hate it, but you'll definitely remember it.

Just why?

Why are we still here, is it just to suffer?

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just stop dead in the middle of the street and shout "No". I did, just now. There I was, walking home with the shopping not a care in life. I was bopping to some music, as I often do, completely ignorant to the travesties happening in the world all around me every second of every day. But I wouldn't stay that way for long, happenstance would have my head turn to face the side of a bus across the road from me. I saw the advert and looked away, thinking nothing of it. But then I stopped, 'That couldn't have said what I thought it said' I thought, incredulity overpowering reason. I literally did a double take in order to absorb the magnitude of what I had just read. The Angry Birds Movie 2.

All of a sudden I was struck with waves of existential dread. How could this happen? How could we let this happen? We're smarter than this! Apparently not, because The Angry Birds Movie 2 had been on Hollywood's slate ever since August 2016. The last movie's body wasn't even cold before they got to work on it's sequel. I shouldn't have been so shocked, we all knew this was would happen. We knew this day would come. But does that make it any better? Doesn't the fact that The Angry Birds Movie 2 is less then a month away speak volumes about where we are as a species? Is this what Boudica defied the Romans for?

And before you start getting onto me about how 'This isn't supposed to be a movie blog', let me remind you of a more innocent time when Angry Birds was just a low-effort high-yield mobile game. Oh, how blessed those times were. Not that I ever played Angry Birds, teenage me was too much of an insufferable hipster to stoop so low, but I always begrudgingly respected it. How could you not respect a game so popular that they managed to get away with a Star Wars Crossover, and that was after the Disney acquisition! Even before the dragon EA managed to curl it's scaly lips open enough to form the words "10 year exclusivity", Rovio Entertainment had their foot in the door to make the first Disney licensed Star Wars Game. So much for quality control.

Yet even with all the money in the world, no one took them seriously when The Angry Birds Movie was first announced. How many times did projects like this get announced, presumably during a coke-fueled office rave, only to be canned after everyone sobered up the next morning."Oh yeah, I'm sure actual human beings sat around a boardroom and decided to greenlight The Angry Birds Movie." We sarcastically thought. "When there are still genuine heartfelt stories left to be told in the world, Hollywood would obviously rather tell the story of the Angry Birds." In hindsight, there was no way this movie wouldn't get made.

For those who haven't subjected themselves to it and may believe that I'm being harsh, let me reassure you. The Angry Birds Movie is cinematic garbage. Oh sure, it might try to get away with itself, marketing that it is 'just a comedy' and also 'a film for kids'. To that, I would like to propose that neither of those labels count as satisfactory excuses and in actuality are even more damning. Firstly, when did it become generally acceptable for comedy movies to be trash? I know that recent comedic ventures may paint the picture that this was always the case, but one merely needs to go back to the classics to see it was not always so. 'Life of Brian' is genius, 'Airplane' is absurd gold, 'This is Spinal Tap' goes to 11. These movies show you that 'comedy' isn't slang for 'low effort'. Comedy is hard to pull off, it requires empathy, wit and timing. Comedy can be crude, highbrow, dark and cheerful. It can open up your audience and make them vulnerable to other emotions. A great comedy can even make you cry.(For the right reasons) Comedy is an artform when handled correctly. The Angry Birds Movie does not handle it correctly.

As for the 'just for kids' excuse. Since when do we not care about the things we show to our kids? Would you let your kids watch a snuff film? How about Game of Thrones? Or >shudder< season eight? Of course not, we curate what we allow children to see so that we can remain watchful over their developing minds. That shouldn't just apply to extreme content but to trash too. Who remembers the Disney renaissance? Disney have always made their movies for kids but rarely do they half ass projects on account of that fact. Just look at Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King, Pocahontas. (Okay, maybe not that last one.) We also have the movies of Don Bluth to prove to us that children love movies that are allowed to be dark and scary. Just look at 'The Secret of N.I.M.H', 'The Land before Time' and 'All Dogs go to Heaven'. All these movies are remembered, not because they spoke down to kids but because they respected them and treated them like adults. These are the properties that go onto define a generation, not this cynical corporate crap.

But we are no longer in those golden ages. Don Bluth doesn't make movies anymore, half of Monty Python are dead now and Disney is more interested in remaking (ruining) their old movies. What right do I have to call myself an amateur writer when we live in a world so devoid of authenticity that writer and producer John Cohen can win the Jussi Award for best film with Angry Birds. Okay, I'm getting a little bit personal now, I'll admit that. But maybe everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Come on Peter Dinklage, you were in Game of Thrones! Have some dignity Josh Gad, you were in Frozen! (You were arguably the worst part, but still!) Stand up for yourself Jason Sudeikis, you were in... huh, literally nothing good. Okay, maybe he deserves it. (Or maybe he deserves to finally be in a good movie.)

The Angry Birds Movie 2 is not the death knell for creativity, that was sounded long ago. It's just a member of the mourning procession, here to carry integrity to it's final resting place. You may think I'm overreacting. And I am. But you would be acting the exact same way if you just saw a giant billboard of reasons why you, and everything you ever try to achieve, is, and will always be, insignificant. Before you've even had a chance to try, you've already lost. Despite thinking so desperately that you're right, you fail nonetheless. It's frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you to what end? Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the- wait, I'm quoting Thanos, what was I talking about again? Angry Birds? Yeah, screw that movie.

Rockstar: mother of bad timing

Don't rock the boat, baby.

Back during my time in secondary school, one of the most commonly addressed topics among my group of friends was the impending state of the latest Grand Theft Auto Online updates. It's sobering to think that a game that was being actively updated all that time ago is still getting worked on, makes one feel their age, but I suppose that is what happens when you game mode is making so money that it propels your game to being the most profitable entertainment product ever. What's that? Avengers Endgame just made $2.8 billion becoming the worlds highest grossing movie? GTA V is looking at $6 billion. And that figure is from November last year. Yeah, the folks over at Rockstar aren't exactly going hungry.

Back when me and my friends would anxiously discuss every change log, eager for the long-delayed Heist update, we noticed a couple of trends from the speculative YouTube community who kept us all informed on the game. It became something of a running joke about how grasping some of them would get in order to make their content. 'I data-mined the code and I can make out a Z, next update must be zombies!' I'm not even exaggerating, these guys were literally that desperate for clickbait. Even then, One theme in particular was a commonality amongst all of these GTA Online channels, apart from zombies, one piece of content that they all agreed was definitely coming but just couldn't get the timeframe down. That would be the opening of the mythical casinos. After every update, they would assure fans that the next one would be casino-time, and when that didn't pan out, just like your atypical doomsday prepper, they would move the goalposts. Next update. No, next update. And on and on.

Looking back, it was a bit silly that we even pretended to entertain any of these wild predictions. Afterall, GTA Online is a game that features a virtual bank account which can be bolstered via transactions from your real one. These 'Shark Cards' as GTA calls them, ('Microtransactions' as they're know everywhere else.) allow players to inject themselves with a sudden influx of cash. This may be necessary for accessing some of the new content that Rockstar adds which, whilst being ostensibly free to all, always comes with a substantial in-game barrier-to-entry cost. It's genius when you think about it. Free DLC that you either have to pay for or grind towards like it's your day job. But there's comes a catch. When you equate real world value to virtual currency, suddenly adding a virtual fake casino doesn't feel so fake anymore. Who knows what kind of substantial community/interest group/government backlash adding a casino might incur? There's no way that even Rockstar would be brazen enough to stir up trouble like that.

On an entirely unrelated note, have you seen the new expansion that was just released for GTA Online? The Diamond Casino & Resort is the gambling-centric content that all those YouTubers predicted, finally coming to fruition. 4 years late, but better late then never right? In the Diamond Casino players can play all those classic casino games including One-Armed Bandits, Blackjack, Roulette, Horse racing and a wheel of fortune. And I know what you're thinking, "There's no way that this operates like an actual casino." And you would be right. Because you have no physical way of cashing out your winnings into real world money; but you can sure as heck cash in. Diamond Casino games are played through chips that are purchased through in-game money, the same in-game money that one can purchase with real-world money. Rockstar have essentially created a casino with no overheads beyond the cost of server maintenance. And people wonder why gaming is the most profitable entertainment medium in the world right now.

I do feel a little bad for criticizing Rockstar right now, because I just reached the epilogue portion of Red Dead Redemption 2 and am convinced that it is the greatest character-driven story that Rockstar have ever told. I Kinda feel like a hypocrite, praising with one hand and chastising with the other. But I choose to believe that the division that creates games is entirely separate to the division that maintains GTA online so that I feel better about calling this practise abhorrent. Now, I usually try to take a middle-ground stance when it comes to topics but I always get a little bit incensed when it is the AAA gaming industry trying to fleece us for yet more money. I know that video game prices haven't adjusted to account for inflation, but there is a pretty decent reason why. Games used to be vastly overpriced for a very long time. Now the gaming community is in a good place where gaming companies are making money hand-over-fist, Rockstar even made enough to trump the biggest movie ever, and yet they still walk around with the donation jar playing the starving artist.

I've already written a couple blogs about how the gaming world is in a spot of bother with law makers right now. Ever since EA overstepped their mark with monetisation, everyone has been bending over backwards in order to convince lawmakers that what they do cannot be equated to gambling. This is an issue that I am mostly agnostic towards, but I enjoy watching slimy corporate entities squirm in front of politicians. (Otherwise known as 'other slimy corporate entites'. Boom: Unfocused political joke!) What I don't like is the potential for widespread harm for the gaming world that could occur if governments decide to clamp down hard on us. As I've said before, first they'll stamp out microtransactions (Cool, whatever.) but then they'll move onto general censorship. It's just what these types of people do. I'm not endorsing the unscrupulous efforts of these companies by any means, I'm just bracing for the inevitable impact if they fail to self regulate. (Like they most assuredly will.) And in the midst of this minefield, with all the careful wording and kowtowing and attempts to soothe various governmental bodies; Rockstar kicks down the door, swinging their golden phallus around and slapping down a casino, damned be the consequences. It's a move that is just, and I don't use this term often, in incredibly bad taste.

This all comes days after the UK Parliament (That's us.) ruled that lootboxes do not meet the legal definition of gambling as it currently exists. Whether this is their way of letting lootboxes off the hook or telling AAA companies to prepare for a revision is unclear, but you can imagine that EA, King and Activison are breathing a sigh of relief either way. There is still the open case that is rattling around some US senators, but I hope I offend noone by predicting that the American legal department will prove so slow that gaming will have moved onto it's next big, greedy controversy before the lootbox case sees the light of a single courtroom. If the gaming bigwigs can manage to secure both the UK and US in their pro-lootbox camp, then the other big markets of the world are likely to follow suit. Afterall, most of the world either follows America's entertainment trends or tries to mimic them. (looking at you, China.) So even after Rockstar's upset, lootboxes are still likely safe. (For better or for worse.)

None of that makes it any easier for me to stomach Rockstar's audacity for envisioning and releasing this expansion as it is. It just seems so out-of-character for Grand Theft Auto. Rather than satirizing the more avaricious elements of our pro-capitalist society, like the GTA series used to do, Rockstar have instead just chosen to contribute to it. It's as though they've crossed 'The Sims'-Rubicon of losing their roots and becoming the very things that they used to mock. They are now the people they vowed to hate. Oh, just like Red Dead Redemption 2! Maybe this is all going according to plan. Some incredibly intricate plan to mimic the actions of the morally bankrupt so flawlessly so as to appear to be one of their number. I can imagine Rockstar now fiddling with their chin hairs, telling me to "Have some GODDAMN FAITH!".

All that being said, I've never been one to tell people how to live their life. People have been anticipating this casino update for years, I even used to be one of them. As long as no one ends up getting hopelessly hooked and sinking their entire life savings into virtual slot machines (I'm literally going to setup a google alert so I know the exact second when it inevitably happens.) then it's all fun and games, I suppose. Afterall, It's not as though people have the incentive of winning real money to tie them to the slots. (Otherwise this game would absolutely fit the legal definition of gambling and would be shut down before anyone could utter the word "satire".) Instead you just have the chance to win chips, money, unique clothing and Respect Points. (Talk about a kick in the nuts. They literally coded in the possibility for players to win the most useless currency in the game.) It doesn't take away from the fact that Rockstar readily employed the usual casino dopamine-stroking tactics in order to hook players, but it will almost definitely be enough to prevent this virtual casino being as harmful as a real one would be.

That hasn't stopped Rockstar from stepping on eggshells for The Diamond Casino's introduction. Someone at Rockstar seems to have been actually paying attention to recent gaming news, no one important enough to have the expansion delayed a few months, but someone important enough to convince the higher ups to take preemptive measures. Rockstar have blocked access to the new content in 57 countries that we know of. (With no forewarning by-the-by. Way to look out for the consumers, team.) It seems that they still have the presence of mind to try to circumvent backlash when it would hit them the hardest, still working on their empathy though.

You may have noticed that I have been a little bit critical of Rockstar's GTA Online department throughout the course of this blog. Eagle eyed readers may even have been able to pick up on the reason why. But just to be clear, I don't care about The Diamond Casino update. Well, I don't care enough to do anything productive about it, at least. I think it is incredibly tasteless and unbecoming of one of the most legendary studios in gaming, but I don't play GTA Online anymore so what do I care? My issue is the optics this shines, not just on Grand Theft Auto, but on the entire gaming world. This update has essentially flipped the cutis to government bodies who were already gearing to flex their legislative muscles on gaming, and dares them to try something. It is incredibly irresponsible. But then, this is just as much EA's fault for being just as avaricious in their own games. The whole thing is a huge complicated mess and I just can't help but shake the feeling that the consumer is going to get the brunt of the fallout, whatever occurs. So what can we, as concerned gamers, do? Absolutely diddly-squat. We can sit and pray for a miracle where everything works out in the end. But hey, if push comes to shove, we can just steal a boat and head to Tahiti.

Battle on the Battlefronts

These alliterations are getting out of hand...

Up until very recently I was an unquestioning devotee for the fan club of Star Wars. I watched all the films, consumed all ancillary media and played all of the games. I was the obsessed fan stereotype that marketers dream of creating. I didn't care about value or quality, I just saw a product with Star Wars iconography plastered on and I had to have it. It was almost like an addiction, only I didn't want to kick it. As such, It should come as no surprise to learn that I am incredibly familiar with the Battlefront franchise.

I don't just mean I've got the first two, or even the latest two. During my fandom, I managed to purchase every single Star Wars Battlefront game ever released, including the PSP exclusives. Who else has enough history with this franchise to remember the good old times with Renegade Squadron and Elite Squadron? Despite their technical limitations, those game were some of the most ambitious Battlefront games ever. Their Galactic Conquest gameplay was some of the most advanced of the series, their single player storylines bordered on feeling genuinely cinematic and they were the only games that implemented the, much requested, feature of space-to-ground combat. (Although I will admit that Elite Squadron made a pretty big mistake in adding Jedi powers as high-tier unlockable in general customization. It made online battles feel a little bit one sided.) But I am getting off track, I'm not here to big-up the lesser known games of franchise but to compare the reboot with the original and see if there's any hope for the future of Battlefront.

The original Star Wars Battlefront was an absolute obsession for me back when it released in 2004. I remember seeing all of the commercials and magazine ads selling me a game that was supposed to bring the epic battles from the movie to life. Point me to one self respecting Star Wars fan who could fail to be excited at such a proposition. Who didn't want to storm the trenches of Hoth, kill teddy bears on Endor or... slaughter the Gungan army as the Separatists? Sign me up! In all seriousness, there is no way I can accurate convey the giddiness I felt when I saw that purple Gungan shield in the first story mission. You know what I'm talking about: That giant huge purple glowing dome projected from the backs of those giant Elum-looking beasts. (Might be an animal cruelty case to be made there.) It may sound odd to hear that it was those shields that set off the butterflies in my stomach, but maybe it'll just go to show you how much of a Star Wars nerd I was. "Just like the movies!" I cried more than once.

To this day I still maintain that those old Battlefront games hold up. Okay, they may not hold up flawlessly in the departments of graphics, gameplay or general scale, but they hold up in their own little quaint simplicity. And as far as arcadey war-games go, I would actually argue that Pandemic's Battlefront 2 does hold up in the gameplay department. But those games now exist only in the distant past. The much anticipated 'Battlefront 3' would never be released and the bulk of fans would never come to experience the ground-to-space combat that they had been left wanting for. (Partially because non of them bought the PSP games.) Despite reportedly being mostly finished, Battlefront 3 would be cancelled by Lucasarts for reasons that are still debated and the franchise would never be heard from again.

Until 2015 rolled around that is. In October 2012, real-life mega corporation, Disney fulfilled their 'troubling monopolising' quota for the year by purchasing Star Wars for a tidy $4.05 billion. This has resulted in a whole slate of new movies, shows, merchandise and the exclusive gaming rights to Star Wars being sold to EA for 10 whole years. Now, I've made my feelings on this deal very clear in the past, it's baloney. Before 2013 us fans received at least one Star Wars game a year whereas now we are lucky to get one every 3 years. But this deal did broker in one pleasant surprise for us old school (Or perhaps more Secondary School) Star Wars gaming fans; a brand new Star Wars Battlefront helmed by DICE.

It seemed like a match made in heaven. Afterall, DICE are the ones responsible for maintaining the Battlefield franchise and, as a rep for DICE once rather snidely commented, Battlefront was a game that was very much inspired by Battlefield. Pandemic even went so far as to adapt Battlefield's capture mechanics to fit their own game. Fans were giddy, thinking 'If DICE, with their years of experience and huge budget, got ahold of this franchise just imagine how far it could propel these games. To the stratosphere and beyond, surely!'. Turns out that we were being a little bit too hopeful.

Star Wars: Battlefront turned out to be the first game in a distinct downwards trend for the quality of DICE games, and fans that were expecting the world out of this crossover, came away sorely disappointed. Content wise, the game actually featured less to do then the original Pandemic games; and whilst it is true that the new Battlefront's graphical fidelity and impressive sound design is practically incomparable to the original games, no one picks up a Star Wars game just to look around and go "Doesn't it look pretty!" Board posts popped up online with comprehensive lists detailing all the omissions DICE had made when rebooting the franchise: Most of the planets were missing, the clone wars era was MIA, No space battles to talk of and a lackadaisical approach to providing single player content.

The most sorely felt omission to me was that of Galactic Conquest. As a huge narrative-RPG nut, no mode in Battlefront appealed to me more than the original Galactic Conquest. That was because it offered something that Instant battle didn't, it provided context. Context that could transform a random skirmish over Bespin into a desperate struggle to hold back the tide of the Empire. Context that made a ridiculous 10 vs 100 battle (That was actually possible in Renegade Squadron's Galactic Conquest.) into a legendary battle hearkening back to David and Goliath. Context that a turned a simple war game into a rudimentary but arresting tactical experience. DICE did away with that in favour of more online content, their bread and butter. Later they did add some special battles with progressive narratives attached, but nothing could ever compare to the stories that we made up in our heads back when we were provided the tools with which to do so.

Responses were ultimately mixed. People loved the presentation of the new game but balked at the execution. What was the point of playing DICE's fancy new featureless product when the originals still existed. For my part, I was still willing to give them a chance. DICE's Battlefront came at the tail-end of my Star Wars fandom so I was still willing to give the game more leniency than it rightly deserved. I stuck through all of the poor excuses, like how it would require too much workload to design space combat, and played through all the DLC, like that one DLC in which they added Space Combat. After it was all said and done, I had managed to wrangle up some enjoyment out of the game, but it didn't hold a candle to the cherished memories that the original invoked. Too many concessions were made, too many necessities were omitted and there was too little stuff to do. All that would be fixed, DICE and EA promised, with the sequel. Oh, how little we knew.

Straight away EA DICE made it clear that Battlefront 2 was going to right the wrongs of it's predecessor, through oodles of content. Not only were we getting the chance to play the clone wars era once again but DICE were going to add the new era from the latest Star Wars Films. With that came a whole host of new playable hero's, Space combat out of the box, a class-based system like the originals and customization. (And still no Galactic Conquest.) That last one was the real kicker, fans would be able to customize their characters to their liking through a skins system. This was something that people merely shrugged off as an innocuous feature, never suspecting what that system might herald in.

No expansions pass, DICE announced, fishing for applause. Every new map would be available for free for every player, DICE's way of not splitting their own fanbase. I mock them for this transparent marketing move but in truth it did garner some respect from gaming critics. Split playerbases is a problem that has been killing online play ever since COD's heyday so this seemed like a positive move in the right direction. I remember how at the time some people, like myself, were jokingly wondering what they might replace it with. Afterall, EA has a reputation for anti-consumer practises that sacrifice player experience for a few extra bunks. There's no way they could just abandon a potential profitable marketing gimmick without replacing it with another one could they? Unfortunately, we were right.

 I have been playing coy, but I might as well come out and say it. You all already know about it anyway. Those cosmetics that we were expecting in the game, were relegated to be obtained practically exclusively from randomized loot boxes. Yes, you could earn them if you kept grinding through the game like it was your literal job, but the rate of progression was skewered to force players to focus on purchasable lootboxes. This also reflected onto heros who required a ridiculous amount of credits in order to unlock them. Grinding to unlock both Darth Vader and Luke would take several hundred games straight. Several hundred games that could be circumvented with the roll of the virtual dice through lootboxes. It was a bad look to lock so much content behind a in-game mechanic that could be exploited with real world funds, but that wasn't the worst of Battlefront 2's woes.

The cosmetics were bad, but the cards were infinitely worse. You see, Battlefront 2 offered cards that applied buffs to different character classes. These stat boosts were significant enough to really change the tide of combat for the player, and they were the way in which DICE intended to keep recurrent players. Nothing locks players in like providing a worthwhile endgame and DICE thought that grinding for buff cards would be suitable enough. The problem with this was that those buff cards could also be acquired through their loot boxes. This meant that items with tangible game play advantages were being sold to players through a random-chance system, effectively skewing the balance of gameplay towards those who forked out the most on lootboxes. This is a textbook example of pay-to-win and, as I have previously stated, players hate pay-to-win.

Backlash was immediate. Players were up in arms over the fact that EA DICE had the audacity to try to swindle their player base like this. For the first time in a long while, a major AAA studio had stepped too far over the line and they reaped all the chaos for it. Community managers were overwhelmed by the vitriol that their charges spewed over social media. It was around about this time that somebody, likely a overworked intern who was consequently fired, tried to defend the lootboxes on Reddit by saying that they provided players with a sense of 'Pride and accomplishment'. That comment soon became the most downvoted in Reddit's history. 'Nuff said, really.

Things apparently got so bad that Bob Iger, head of Disney, is said to have called up EA to tell them to get their ducks in a row. Whether that story is true or not, what we can say for sure is that Disney were not happy with the fact the EA was devaluing one of their prize cash cows. And so EA stopped publishing foot-in-mouth statements and straight up just removed all that game's lootboxes for a time. The official statement spoke about rebalancing and retooling but the truth was that the company just wanted some breathing room for the whole thing to blow over. It worked for the short term. Lootboxes are currently alive and well in Battlefront 2, but the subsequent government oversight that has ensued is entirely their consequence. But all that is a story for another blog. (One which I published a while back.)

Nowadays, Battlefront 2 is reportedly in a good place. Their staggered-release single player is finally out and whilst it won't win any rewards for storytelling, people seem to like it enough. Post launch content has been steadily provided to the game and balancing has meant that much of the grind that players initially complained about has relented to some degree. Battlefront 2 still feels like an inferior copy of the Pandemic games, but at least the game is not so offensive that it is tarnishing Pandemic's legacy. Anymore. However, All of this nickle and dimming has sunk the gaming community's respect for the Battlefront franchise. Battlefront 2 underperformed for EA and now they are complaining about the whole Star Wars license deal, arguing that they've received the short end of the stick in the deal. I still haven't given Battlefront 2 a try, although that might just be a consequence of me falling out of love with Star Wars as much as it has to do with EA's shenanigans.

Pandemic isn't around anymore, having disbanded back in 2009. But I'll bet that those ex-employees must look at where the Battlefront series has gone with some degree of disappointment. Battlefront 3's loss was a huge blow for the gaming community, it remains one of the most shocking cancellations ever. (Only topped perhaps by Star Wars: 1313.) Everyone wanted the moon for DICE's series revival, but all we got was a pretty launch that ultimately feel short of it's goal. I find myself thinking about the Battlefront debacle more and more as get closer to the end of the Skywalker saga this December. Don't get me wrong, I've long since lost interest in the films, I just wonder what this will mean for the games. More specifically, what this will mean for Battlefront. Given that the DICE deal is ending in 2023, if they don't get a renewal then EA will only have time to make one more Battlefront game. But will they even try? The headache that Battlefront 2 has caused reverberated around the AAA gaming community, perhaps EA will just chose to shelve the title for good going forward, as one last 'stick-it' to the fans. Honestly, I wouldn't put it past EA. So maybe this is the end for Battlefront, or maybe DICE will give it one last shot next E3. I do know one thing for certain; if they do drag the Battlefront franchise out once more, they darn well better bring Galactic Conquest with it!

The Chinese Room

Mind over machine matter

In the past I have covered topics with very tenuous links to the world of gaming. I just think it is nice to mix things up every now and again. With that said, this topic is going to be one that very much stretches the definition of 'gaming blog'. Don't take this blog to mean I am finding myself feeling limited with my chosen specialization, nor that I am running out of topics to cover. I love gaming, always have, always will. But I also find theoretical teach unassailably cool. So don't be surprised if you see more blogs come out-of-left field like this one. Now I've got that out of the way, let me ask you: Have you ever played: The Turing Test?

It is a very cool indie-feeling puzzle game by a relatively small studio called Bulkhead Interactive. (Note I said 'indie-feeling'. The game itself was actually published by Square Enix. Good for them.) In the game you are put into the shoes of an engineer called Ava Turing (golf clap) as she wakes up late from her cryosleep. The rest of her team have already alighted to their destination, the moon Europa, and forgot to leave contact details. Ava, alongside the your helpful AI assistant T.O.M travel to the planet only to find that her team already set up their prefab base but in a very peculiar alignment. (Almost like every room was designed to be a puzzle.) As you travel through these 'challenge rooms' it becomes clear to Ava that this complex has been set up in such a way as to prevent a computer from breaching it's depths. The puzzles are meant to only be solvable by a human mind. I won't go too much further in the events of the story, but with a name like 'The Turing Test' you can likely take some educated guesses.

I played through that game a year or so back and it proved to be an enjoyable enough puzzle romp, but something about the concept stuck in my mind and it isn't just the fact that the entire plot is bogus. Seriously, the fact that the entire complex is built to keep out an AI makes no sense. afterall, the game's puzzles all require logical deduction in order to solve them. What's that one thing that computers are infinitely better than humans at again? Oh that's right, logical deduction. Or maybe the architects were relying on the fact that the AI in question is unit-based and therefore lacks the ambulatory movement required to trudge through the base. Although that is made moot by the fact that almost every room is fitted with an open circuit camera. And some of those cameras even have guns attached, for some reason. It just makes me think that someone failed to think this whole thing through...

But I digress. The real reason that 'The Turing Test' has wormed itself into the back of my mind for so long is because it introduced me to the concept of 'The Chinese Room'. Before I had heard of that, I always had trouble wrapping my head around 'The Turing Test'. (The thought experiment not the game.) Now, far be it for me to refute an idea proposed by 'the father of modern science' Alan Turing, but I never found his 'test' satisfactory. Even by 'thought experiment' standards I can't help but find it questionable to conclude that if a computer can fool someone into thinking it's a human than it has established some form of artificial intelligence. Of course the idea itself is more nuanced than that, but not much more. So when I heard about John Searle's critique, which he formed in the shape of his own thought experiment, I found myself intrigued.

In 1980, John Searle had his paper "Minds, Brains and Programs" published by Cambridge university's peer-reviewed scientific journal: Behavioural and Brain Sciences. (Great name for the journal, by the way. Really rolls off the tongue.) In this paper the philosopher refutes the possibility of what he refers to as Strong AI (What is now known as general AI): "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense (as) human beings have minds." He opposes the idea that if you can create a computer that acts like a human sufficiently enough to pass The Turing Test then you have effectively created a mind. To explain this stance he created: The Chinese Room.

The Chinese Room is a thought experiment that was devised to answer the question, can an AI machine experience information in the same way that humans do? Or, can AI truly 'understand' in the same way that humans do. It is conducted like this: You are placed inside of a room with nothing but a rule book and a bunch of boxes with Chinese symbols on them (Any language that you do not understand could substitute here.) The rule book tells you how to process those symbols. At some point someone outside the room feeds you a batch of Chinese symbols on a little piece of paper, you work through them and return another batch of Chinese symbols. Unbeknownst to you, the test operators call the little batch of symbols that they put in 'questions' and the ones they receive 'answers'. The rule book is the 'computer program', the boxes are the 'computer database', and you are the 'computer.' Or the central processing unit.

That is the setup for The Chinese Room. It is that simple. But what is the point of all this? Well, eventually you will become so effective and efficient at writing these responses to the observer that your answers have become indistinguishable from the writings of a native Chinese speaker. But at the end of the day, you still do not understand Chinese. All of your understanding for Chinese is for the formal syntactical objects. But the essential part of the mind, it's defining characteristic, is it's ability to hold mental contents as well as syntax. It allows us to attach meaning to things that we see and experience in the world. In summary, The Chinese Room argument is that programs exist entirely in syntactical entities, whereas minds have semantics. Therefore the two can never truly meet.

As far as John Searle is concerned, a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding or consciousness despite how advanced that computer may be or become. This relates to The Turing Test by telling us that the ability to fool a human observer is not grounds upon which to declare general intelligence, but rather just grounds upon which we can commend the ingenuity of the algorithms author. The logic is very sound when you consider the computing technology that is available for the public today. Everything, from phones, to drones to computers are dependant on an input in order to produce their output. However, some argue that whilst The Chinese Room argument might hold water for today's tech, it fails to address the tech of tomorrow.

You may have heard of some of the amazing game-playing AI's that bored technicians throw together now and then. I'm not talking about that one AI that beat all the world champions at DoTA, or even about Deep Blue, the iconic chess playing AI who bested a grandmaster or two in it's time. No, I'm referring to an AI who's achievements topped even theirs. AlphaGo. Go is one of the oldest and most complicated strategy games ever devised. Dating back to 4th century BC China (at least), Go is an adversarial game wherein it is the goal of each player to surround their opponent's units. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but honestly I've watched 5 tutorials and I don't understand it. But I'll tell you someone who does seem to understand it, Google's AlphaGO does!

AlphaGo is an AI that was built with the lofty goal of mastering the game of GO. I call this lofty because many consider GO a game so complex that it eclipses even Chess. There are thousands of possible strategies that have been devised in 2.5 thousand years that this game has been around, and much of those strategies require empathetic decisions as much as logical ones. Yet Google persisted to train the AI with deep learning algorithms with the intention of pitting their baby against world champion Lee Sedol. The results were impressive to say the least. AlphaGo beat Sedol in 4/5 games. Expert onlookers commended AlphaGo's playstyle, remarking about how they saw the computer execute strategies that had never been seen before. This was a computer that was built in order to complete a task but was left to it's own devices to figure out how to do it, and it created unprecedented techniques in order to do so. Some would say that this means that the game of Go might posses more inhuman knowledge to it than human knowledge; implying that AIs like AlphaGo and Deep Blue display levels of strategic planning that would require super human levels of 'understanding' to pull off.

Other philosophers would disagree with such bold statements. Philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz for example. He may not have been around to see the modern age of tech, having died in the 18th century, but as with any good philosopher his words still ring with relevance. When talking about machines, Gottfried comments "Supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill." He raises this hypothetical in order to highlight that "Upon examining it's interior" we would "Find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in simple substance, and not in compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for". His conclusion is somewhat similar to Searle, no matter how advanced the operations of the machine become you only need to see the workings to see that the machine is merely "Parts which work one upon another", and not some undiscovered blueprint for the mind. Those who believe in the computational theory of the mind might take umbrage with this line of thought, but there are are a few more direct critiques I want to focus on right now.

Some people have taken to refute The Chinese Room in the only way philosophers truly know how, to out logic them in their own theory. Some people insist that strong AI is only a matter of time and that The Chinese Room doesn't debunk this assertion but rather bolsters it. (From this point responses get very "Nu-uh" sounding, so you're going to have to bear with me.) Philosophers argue that whilst the person in The Chinese Room does not understand Chinese, the system as a whole does. This is supported by the assertion that the human mind does not create intelligence but rather causes it, like a machine of its own. Searle pooh-pooh's this with the argument the even the system could not make the leap from syntax to semantics. Even if the person in the room memorized all the formal rules and processes to the point where he answer questions without help and even facilitate conversation, thus becoming the system all by himself, he still would be unable to understand Chinese. He only carries out the rules and can't associate meaning to the symbols. Were you to stop feeding him an input, he would be unable to provide a coherent output.

Then there is the argument that, instead of manipulating Chinese symbols, we could envision a computer that simulates neuronal firings in the brain of a Chinese person. The computer would operate in the exact same way as a brain and therefore that brain would understand Chinese. Searle merely incorporates this theory into his thought experiment by saying that he could introduce water pipes and valves for our poor room dweller to represent neuronal firing. The person in the room would have instructions to guide water through the pipes to imitate the brain of a Chinese person, but they still stubbornly refuse to take a language course. Those are the sorts of conclusions you come to when you argue with semantics.

For my part, I happen to find the Searle's original argument compelling. There are no computers that come close to operating on the same level that our brain do, but I have to concede that doesn't mean there never will be one. If we could understand the exact workings that would be required to create a mind then we would created such a machine already. As it just so happens, AI developers are hard at work on figuring that out right now. Admittedly, we're not quite there yet. All those incredible AI feats that you see on the news are almost always the result of deep learning algorithms. Impressive stuff, but very methodical and logical, nothing that transcends the bounds of current tech.

I suppose that's what were all waiting for, that turning point when humanity discovers the secret to creating life. Mechanical life, but life nonetheless. Is that even possible? Who knows. Until the time comes, this train of thought remains the domain of the philosophers and Elon Musk's of the world. But that still doesn't take the fun out of amateur theorizing. Ultimately, I like the feeling of comfort out of accepting that The Chinese Room is valid, but that nagging part of me can't help but remind me that it is the height of naivety to believe in one's distinct supremacy. What do you think?

In Defense of: In-game lore books

Read all about it.

This subject is a weird one. It's one of those 'Blogs I'd didn't think I'd ever have to write' kind of situations. Let me explain. I like lore. A consequence of being such an ardent fan of high fantasy role playing games, I suppose. (I became use to reading hours worth of text in order to flesh out the story behind the peculiar shape of that pond over there.) Lore gives me the opportunity to immerse myself in the fictional world's I play in and come to believe in the people who live there. I've likely said this before but immersion is the make-or-break for fantasy, if I'm going to invest one iota of caring into your narrative you better be sure to immerse me first. This is achieved by establishing a solid main story and expanded through the use of expository lore books scattered about the place to answer those questions that you never thought to ask.

So maybe someone can explain to me why it is that people seem intent on abolishing the practise of in-game lore books altogether. Every now and then, I come across another one these baffling articles where critics tear into in-universe written works. 'It's lazy' some say 'It takes too much time to read' conclude others. For some reason there are people who seem to think the act of reading should be relegated only to the medium of books and nothing else. These are the same kinds of people who gawk at the fact that cut scenes still exist, claiming that they are the product of indolent storytellers. (I'll touch more on that subject at a later date. Can't get too worked up now.)

Let me start by making one thing abundantly clear; there is nothing wrong with the basic concept of in-game lore books. I'm not going to claim that they are all high-art or the pinnacle of story telling, but I will say that some lore books fit perfectly into their world. As for the complaint that taking the time to sit back and read some lore, 'detracts from the action', I would have to refute that maybe RPG's just aren't your game. If you are so bloodthirsty that you cannot stomach a peaceful moment of reading, perhaps DOOM might be more your cup of tea. Although 2016's DOOM does have lore entries in it as well, Egads!

I'm being a little bit unfair. I realise that some people object to being forced to sit down and read, and to be honest, I do to. I would prefer to read when I want to and stick my sword in someone's guts when I'm more in the mood for that. But the important thing to remember when it comes to lore books, (Or at least for those that are implemented properly) is that they are entirely supplementary to the core narrative. Rarely do game developers seriously expect their audience to sit down with a pen and paper and study their texts. Lore books are meant to be flavour material for the world just like world clutter and artwork. That's why these large RPG makers employ studios dedicated to managing all of this lore work, because it doesn't need to be handle by the core Dev team. So unless they've encountered a game that has literally held them hostage on the page, I find their arguments a little bit silly.

To demonstrate what I mean, let's focus on game series that is just dripping in excess lore; The Elder Scrolls. Ever since 'The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind', Bethesda have been dedicated to making the land of Tamriel seem as real as possible by fleshing out the world with lore books. These lore books have increased in number in every entry to the point where there is enough reading material in these games to fill a library. (That library would be full of 6 page long books but it would still be full.) Bethesda even had to form a lore department to make sense of it all and, crucially, to be capable of pronouncing the names of Dwarven ruins.

The Elder Scrolls' lore is undeniably expansive, but do you know what else it is? Entirely optional. The Elder Scrolls games are all open world RPG's that are developed with the core idea of player freedom. You are allowed to go practically anywhere and forge whatever story you so choose. Because of this, it is impossible to localise your lore writing efforts into crafting exposition that is relevant to the player and their situation, because they could be doing literally anything. As such, the lore team just try to flesh out as much as they can about the world around you through a variety of different lore books. You have history books, play scripts, nature books, written notes, journals, theology books and, my favourite, story books. This approach also allows the lore writers to focus in on the specific region in which that game is set, helping to establish cultural themes in the works. 'The people of Skyrim are considered brutish dullards so lets make some books that riff on that idea'. 'Dark Elves are considered irritable so lets try to capture that in this letter'. It's just another way the team at Bethesda make their world feel unique, diverse and lived in.

On the other end of the spectrum to that 'write about everything' approach is much more targeted and specific use of lore books in games like Deus Ex. The world of Deus Ex is a very complicated one, despite very much resembling our own. The transhumanist dystopia that we see presented in 2000's Deus Ex did not spring out of our world overnight, there is a lot of history explaining every step of the way. Not all of this history would make sense to include in the main character's dialogue. Imagine how clunky it would be if Joseph Manderly just said "Hey Denton, did I ever tell about the history of augmentations?" (Sheev would have to file a lawsuit.) Instead Eidos utilises little datapads that offer snippets of insight into the wider the world.

This is different from Bethesda's approach because Eidos takes advantage of their relatively linear narrative progression. As the player gets further into Deus Ex, they might start to notice the clever way in which datapads they find will elucidate matters that are about to become very relevant in the main story. Like the introductory pamphlet on UNATCO you receive briefly before you go to speak with UNATCO's director, a.k.a your boss. Or that strange datapad that brings up the topic of 'Grey Goo' before you are tasked with deciding the technological path of humanity's future, for which it would be prudent to take the 'Grey Goo' theory into account. By hooking the expository lore into the wider narrative, Eidos provides the player with the opportunity to dive into the complex issues around them with some understanding about the matters at hand. That goes a long way to making that player care about the stakes of the story.

Those were examples of games that utilised lore to great effect. But that doesn't automatically mean that all properties know exactly how to use it, just look at Destiny. Whenever anyone has a complaint about lore entries in gaming it feel inevitable for Destiny to come up. And for good reason. Destiny is set in a science-fantasy future wherein resurrected human beings known as Guardians protect the remnants of humanity from hoards of alien pirates, space wizards, and a dark entity so abstract that the writers dropped it for the sequel. Destiny is a game with narrative problems. Huge, gaping, narrative problems. Despite being originally marketed as a high-concept Halo successor, Destiny ended up as a shallow, feature light, time waster that has consequently negatively tainted the moniker of 'Looter shooter'. And the way Bungie handled the lore is a big reason for this.

The main purpose of lore in gaming is to create the illusion of substance in your fictional world, thus aiding the act of immersion. As such, the method the player uses to acquire and read that lore is a little detail that is incredibly important for the final effect. The Elder Scrolls gives you lore in the form of books and parchment, like one would expect from a medieval fantasy world. Deus Ex uses holographic datalogs, just like I expect we'll all be using in our sci-fi transhumanist future. Destiny used an app. On your real life smartphone. That means in order to take a look at the lore that you unlocked, lore that we just established exists to immerse the player, Bungie expected players to stop playing the game and bring up their smartphone app. That is literally genius levels of misguided. I'm not even mad.

Unfortunately, that isn't even the worst of it. I know that this particular part of the blog will piss-off hardcore Destiny fans but I have to be honest, the actual content of the lore is pretty weak too. Now I've already bought up how I appreciate it when exposition is conferred onto the player in way that doesn't feel clunky or ham-fisted. I like it when we learn about the world through in-game stories, history books and datalogs. But one thing that all lore needs to be, despite the format on which it is presented, is coherent. (And ideally not pretentious.) I want to have some idea about what you're telling me without feeling the need to pull out a pen and paper and start analyzing the text. Yet that's exactly how I felt whenever I looked at the lore logs on the Destiny companion app. Aimless digressions, obscure fables and stories that seem to exist for the sole purpose of playing the pronoun game. Lore like this doesn't make me care about the world anymore. Lore like this makes me want to stop playing video games.

All of this culminates up to Destiny's biggest issue. Bungie seems adamant to smother the game in lore to avoid maintaining a story. All the cleverly placed, targeted datalogs in the world isn't going help if your world isn't interesting to start with, and Destiny's world is dull. The problem isn't that the concept itself is weak, I actually think there is huge potential in an epic science-fantasy series. Star Wars managed to turn their epic science-fantasy into a ludicrously successful franchise. But they didn't do that by bringing out the extended universe books before they established a solid story with likeable characters. Destiny has no likeable characters. And if you're about to say 'What about Cayde-6?', I'll remind you that I said 'characters' not 'sarcasm recepticles'. (We've got enough of those in Britain already.) What remains is a hollow world without a heart that no one really cares about beyond 'How can I improve my DPS.' And that does not make a solid foundation for a series. Unless your 'Borderlands', in which case it absolutely does.

Lore isn't a concept that is either butchered or mastered, by-the-by, there are some games who pull it off to a merely satisfactory degree. Just look at Bioware darlings; Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I know right, "Are you about to diss the narrative prowess of one of video gaming's premier storytellers?" Yes I am, but only when it comes to lore. The original 3 Mass Effect's and the Dragon Age series are both exemplary examples of their respective thematic genres. Both boast gripping narratives and complex characters that develop in surprising and meaningful ways. The level of comradeship and rapport that you establish with your team in both franchises is the closet some us will ever get to having actual friends. And yet both games have problems when it comes to lore.

First is their presentation. Neither series makes the error of relegating lore to a companion app, (Still can't believe they did that.) but they do shuffle away lore pages into the game menus, requiring players to pause the action in order to read about the world. It is a little bit immersion shattering for the casual player. Heck, I love the games and even I sigh everytime I have to scrolls through menus and tabs to read that book I just picked up. Then comes the content. Again, not pretentious drivel like Destiny, but just bad enough. Mass Effect's lore is the better of the two, full of the technical details that lend some credibility to the technological foundations of their sci-fi world. But just read what I wrote again; The lore features 'Technical details'. This means that there are those times when you'll find yourself struggling to keep your eyes open as you read the opening sentence to the 'Biotic barrier' entry for the eighth time, somehow understanding it less with each re-read.

Then there is Dragon Age's lore logs, >Sigh<. I love Dragon Age, I really do. And there is a lot of really good, interesting lore pieces in these games. The entries about the fundamental laws of magic are essential for anyone interested in that part of the Dragon Age universe. (Even when the games themselves do proceed to break those laws. Especially the one about teleportation.) My problem isn't with these interesting entries. My problem is with the lore entries that are poetry. You read that right. Poetry. And song lyrics. Arguably the same thing, definitely as bad as each other. It is such a shame for a game that features so many exciting storytelling elements, diverse characters and believable world building, to include this kind of lore too. It's as though Tolkien came back to write a brand new epic fantasy but he insisted on inferring the worst parts of Lord of the Rings in there as well, for posterities sake.

I shouldn't have to explain why 'poetry' and 'song lyrics' make for bad addendums onto your lore, but here we are. Firstly, songs are fine for lore. Actually, songs are great, They are a fantastic way to confer the culture of the world to your audience whilst telling them a story. You learn so much from songs. How do these people sing? What kind of instruments do they use? What would these people sing about? It add a layer of mystery whilst simultaneously unfurling that enigma for you to hear. It's effect on world building is... indescribable. That is just the magic of music, I guess. Song lyrics are just words. Fancy rhyming words, but words all the same. I have no idea how the tune goes, what the rhythm is or what the tempo should be. When the player is given song lyrics they've basic just been given a confusingly parsed story, and as I've said, cohesion is important. Poems are much the same, only the morale is usually even more obscure. I'll admit I'm saying this as someone with a very muted love for poetry but I still doubt I'd like this practice even if I was a poetry aficionado. Actually, I might like it even less if I was also judging the quality of those poems. Ultimately, the lore suffers due to an inherent lack of cohesion, like I keep writing. All that said: 'Sera was never' is still a jam.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with the core concept of in-game lore books. In fact, I would argue that it is one of strengths of the gaming medium that we can dive into and explore non-essential aspects of the surrounding world without derailing the plot. You couldn't go into the history surrounding the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D in the middle of 'Captain America: Winter Soilder', even if that could be helpful for understanding some of the finer details of the story. But you can take the time to read about the swordsmanship of Serkonos in Dishonored 2, because Video Games can be as long as you need them to be.

Accepting the wider fictional world of you story doesn't exactly delineate the plot, but it does go a long way to help enrich it. Immersion is a game of give and take; the audience give their trust into the world that the writers have envisioned and in return those writers give little reasons why that trust is well placed. That is all plot is, the creators side of the transaction. If lore books are a useful tool for conducting that transaction then I think that they should be championed not ridiculed. So if you're one of those people who scoff at the idea of reading in games, I would urge you to take a look at the material again and see if the narrative value those words contain outweigh the time cost of a couple minutes. You may just change your tune.