Built to Play: Recent Episodes
Built to Crew
How we build video games are reflection of how we view the world. So Dan and Arman dive into why games get made, and the backstories of the people who make them, and the people who play them.
In June 2018, Ben Esposito was on his way to a game conference when he received a email that said his game had been stolen.
The idea he had been working on for six years was already for sale, by someone else. It might have been inevitable. We examine what happens when a bigger company sees an opportunity in your personal small game.
We talk to creator of Donut County, Ben Esposito, the chief operating officer of Noodlecake Studios, Ryan Holowaty and many others about how a French media conglomerate operates and why there are so many mobile game clones.
Music on this weeks episode were thanks to the Free Music Archive. We used "Self-Driving" and "Sentimental" by Sro, "The first person crossing the bridge since a century" by Komiku, "I Used to Need the Violence" and "Rewound" by Chris Zabriskie, "Bargains" by Steve Coombs, "fascinating earthbound objects" by free energy, and "CopperNickle" by UncleBibby.
We're produced out of CJRU 1280 AM in downtown Toronto and made by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
Find out more at: https://builttoplay.ca
It's summer crossover time! Here's a special episode with CJRU 1280 AM's comic book show Radio Free Krypton! Justin Chandler joins us as Arman and Daniel about what makes a great Spider-Man story. How do you make an authentic Spider-Man New York? Just how important is that Parker luck?
This episode was made possible thanks to donors to CJRU 1280 AM. Donate to our illustrious home base.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for the following songs: "BMX Hero" by Pierlo, "Shun-in" by Pleiades.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing. Find out more at: https://builttoplay.ca
E3 this year gave us a window into gaming's future. What's beyond it?
Phoenix Simms joins us for a conversation about game streaming, political discourse and the raddest video games at this year's E3.
You can find more of her work here: https://twitter.com/phoenixsimms
Music on this weeks episode were from Broke for Free, "Heart Ache" and "Warm Up Suit." We found them on the Free Music Archive.
We're produced out of CJRU 1280 AM in downtown Toronto and made by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
Find out more at: https://builttoplay.ca
Gaming's annual grand exhibition, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is only a few more days away. But why does it look like a shadow of its former self?
Brian Crecente at Variety Gaming gives us a window into the organization behind the trade expo.
His story at Variety: Inside the Disarray Facing the Video Game Organization Behind E3
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for the following songs: : "Air Hockey Saloon" by Chris Zabriske, "Southside" by Lee Rosevere, and "Kopeika" by et.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing.
Podcast art from Alex C on Flickr.
We're ranking every video game ever made, and we're clearing out as much of Kingdom Hearts as we can:
- The Uncle who Works for Nintendo - 2014 - Michael Lutz (Matt Ishii)
- World of Warcraft - 2004 - Blizzard (Holly Babaran)
- Bastion - 2011 - Supergiant (Lyle Scott)
- Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety - Software Creations - 1995 (Jon Ore)
- Bayonetta - 2009 - Platinum Games (Ibrahim Faruqui)
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - 2004 - Jupiter (Vivian Ng)
- Super Metroid
- Shadow the Hedgehog.
New additions:
- Kingdom Hearts 2 - 2005
- Re:Coded - 2010
- 358/2 Days - 2009
- Birth By Sleep - 2010
- Dream Drop Distance - 2012
- 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage - 2017
Thanks to OCRemix for the following songs: "Protect Your Kingdom" by Smooth4Lyfe, "Respite (Kingdom Hearts)" by Emunator.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing.
We've been fascinated by Kingdom Hearts since childhood. But is a series worth going back to? We investigate the value of a long derided series by talking to fans who grew up with the series, and adults who are trying to make sense of it today.
Special thanks to Reid McCarter and Astrid Rose of Bullet Points' Blood of Friendship πx: Re: Podcast.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for the following songs: "Lake Eerie Wolves" by Fields of Ohio, "Focus" by A. A Aalto.
Thanks to OCRemix for the following songs: "Protect Your Kingdom" by Smooth4Lyfe, "Respite (Kingdom Hearts)" by Emunator, and "Simply Be-groove-ed" by Tetrimino.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing.
We continued to be haunted by a gamified spirit, as we recount the best and worst games of 2018.
Worst Game We Didn't Play
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Quiet Man
- Fallout 76
- Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
Best Game to Play Between the End of High School and Start of University
- Battletech
- Monster Hunter World
- Hitman 2
- Dragon Quest XI
- Valkyria Chronicles 4
Best Game But From the Year 1993
- Myst
- Magic the Gathering
- Doom
- Star Trek the Next Generation Interactive VCR Board Game
- Virtua Fighter
Dan's List
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Yakuza 6
- Celeste
Arman's List
- Spider-Man
- God of War
- Gorogoa
Music used in this episode: Return of the Obra Dinn Main Theme by Lucas Pope, Destiny from Yakuza 6 - composed by Hidenori Shoji, Memories of Mother (Hip Hop Trap Remix) from God of War - originally composed by Bear McCreary, remix by Rifti Beats, Ressurections from Celeste - composed by Lena Raine
We have a new terrible idea: Rank every video game ever made. We like video games. We like them a lot. So now, we decided to rank them all from best to worst. We're starting with 8, and we'll soon have them all.
Tune in as Dan and Arman discuss the following games (submitted by the following people):
- The Uncle who Works for Nintendo - 2014 - Michael Lutz (Matt Ishii)
- World of Warcraft - 2004 - Blizzard (Holly Babaran)
- Bastion - 2011 - Supergiant (Lyle Scott)
- Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety - Software Creations - 1995 (Jon Ore)
- Bayonetta - 2009 - Platinum Games (Ibrahim Faruqui)
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - 2004 - Jupiter (Vivian Ng)
- Super Metroid
- Shadow the Hedgehog
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR: “THE WHITE” AND “THE BLACK FRAME” BY ROLEMUSIC. IT’S DYING. PLEASE HELP IT.
BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF CJRU IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN.
So everything is broken: What do we do to fix the world we love?
Dr. Kishonna Gray tells us how to identify the legacy of issue facing the gaming industry, and how the gaming community can give us a small window into the future of society. Emma Vossen comes back to teach us a little more about gaming's leaky pipeline.
And heeeeere's part 2 of "Crisis of Toxic Nerds," a multi-part documentary investigating where the toxicity in geek culture comes from, and what we can do about it.
In this part, Radio Free Krypton hosts Justin and Jacob try to make sense of an old beast with a new face: Comicsgate. They speak to comics writer and editor Stephanie Cooke, rapper More or Les, professor Benjamin Woo and writer and PhD candidate Safiyya Hosein about how toxicity develops and the importance of diverse representations in comics.
Originally broadcast on CJRU 1280 AM in Toronto. Written and reported by Justin Chandler and Jacob Dubé. Produced by Jacob Dubé, Justin Chandler and Mitchell Thompson.
RFK-specific fund drive awards can be found here!
In partnership with Radio Free Krypton we're doing two (three) episodes on toxicity in nerdom. Our episode focuses on toxic masculinity in gaming specifically. We talk to talk to Laine "Superphrenic" Yuhas about Dota 2, sexism and her organisation, Desoladies.
Later, researcher Emma Vossen, an expert on gaming and gender, gives us a run down on what it means to be a gamer, and why that sucks for everyone.
PLUS: It's CJRU 1280 AM Fund Drive time! Together with Radio Free Krypton, we have a group goal of $140. If we can pull that off, we’ll do a full bonus episode together! In it, we’ll recap and analyse the new Spider-Man video game. It’ll be a blast, and we really want to do this.
Are Syrian refugees and a love of Spider-Man not good enough? Well, don’t worry, we have a few more incentives.
If you donate $5 you’ll be entered into a draw to win a copy of Monster Hunter World on a platform of your choice. So Xbox One. PS4. PC. You name it.
At $10 we’ll steal a formatting idea from War Rocket Ajax, and rank 7 of your video games of choice. So send us some names, and we’ll tell you if they’re better than Shadow the Hedgehog or worse than Super Metroid. Plus, you get a raffle ticket for Monster Hunter.
At $20 you’ll get all of that, and we’ll read a message of your choice on air.
This ONLY works if you use the B2P offer code. Visit store.cjru.ca to learn more about the program, and make a pledge!
Phoenix Sims of Third Person Space joins us to talk about spec work, women in games, and politics. Plus, everything we actually liked from this year's show. Here's the games we might recommend you check out following this year's E3:
- Bravery Network*
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Ghosts of Tsushima
- Beyond Good and Evil 2
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Wolfenstein: The Young Blood
- Tunic*
*Both of these are Canadian productions! Part of Beyond Good and Evil 2 will likely be made in Canada, but it's Ubisoft. Everything is made everywhere.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for "My Sound" by Drum Kid and "Button" by Chad Crouch. Plus, OCRemix for "Incognito" by DjjD and "Smash and Burn" by WillRock.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing.
By suing two media organizations, Quantic Dream has done something unprecedented. When it comes to their work environment though, it's distressingly average -- with sexual misconduct, shady contracts, and a disregard for the rules. We talk to journalists and a critic who have dove deep into what makes Detroit Become Human tick.
- Mediapart
- Canard PC
- Le Monde
- Mashable's Detroit Become Human review
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for "silent eyes," "building stories," " and "unexplored corridor" by 2 Mello, and "Dream," by Chan Wai Fat, "Button" by Chad Crouch and "Sono Tranquile" by Obsibilo.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen.
If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing. Feel free to comment down below.
This episode contains the following segments: * Our understanding of history can change how we depict it, and who gets to play the hero. We look at Kingdom Come: Deliverance as a case study. We talk to David Perry and Reid McCarter. * Here's Reid's original article in Unwinnable, and Geraldine Heng's book on race in medieval Europe. * Daniel Rosen gives us a look into Yakuza 6, the new adventure of the affable criminal Kazuma Kiryu, and why he's loved exploring its version of Japan.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for "If(you>us)" and "Snooze" by Yaul, and "What Does Anybody Know About Anything," and "Out of the Skies, Under the Earth," by Chris Zabriskie, and "Holy Enough" by Steve Coombs. Also "過去の思い出" by Mewmore.
Built to Play is a product of CJRU in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen. If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing.
We look back on a great year for video games in what happened to be a terrible year overall. Janine Hawkins, David Wolinsky, Yifat Shaik, Taylor Bai-Woo, Gabriel Zoltan-Johan, and Jonathan Ore join us for a conversation about what it means to make money in video games today.
Matthew Gault tells us about a time in his life where Fallout 3 became his second job. And we look at a very very long list.
We talk about what to call imperfection and we play some co-operative storytelling karaoke.
We look back at one of the most influential anthology of games - how its creating new ways to make money.
Games writer Walt Williams likes to crunch, but the rest of the industry may not have a choice.
Jonathan Ore from the CBC joins us again to talk about Nintendo news and the future of the industry
Built to Play brings together the Hand Eye Society, Gabby DaRienzo, David Wolinsky, Ried McCarter and Nadia Oxford to talk 2016
In support of CJRU's fund drive, we did a live episode of Built to Play! Subscribe (iTunes)Subscribe (Stitcher)
We talk to Patrick O'Rourke about Playstation VR. Zach Gage tells us why he's afraid of chess. Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns from Metanet Software describe their pursuit for perfection. Daniel Rosen scoured the web for some of the biggest disasters in dubbing.
To donate visit CJRU.ca
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Erotic Robotics," "Intergalactic Lounge Music" BY Polish Ambassador. OCRemix for "Clockwork Groove" by Eino Keskitalo. WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM THE TURNABOUT JAZZ SOUL COMPILATION ALBUM. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF CJRU IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
Join us live on Oct 17 for our very first live version of Built to Play. We'll be starting at 1 p.m. ET on CJRU.ca or if you live in Toronto, 1280 AM.
In 2015, a top Super Smash Bros Melee player was ready to give up his character to preserve his legacy. Instead he did something weirder
We talk about the Electronic Entertainment Expo floor and card games Subscribe (iTunes)Subscribe (Stitcher)
Preston Dozsa joins us after his week long trip to Los Angeles to play Gwent for 10 hours, and also see the E3 floor.
For some of our E3 Press Conference jostling, follow us on Twitter.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Neon Skies" BY LEE ROSEVERE. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF CJRU IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
We're busy with E3, so here's our full interview with Greg Stolze on Unknown Armies and its history.
BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF CJRU IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
Daniel and Arman talk about why harassment and death threats are never the answer, the nature of game delays and why you should always listen to your Uncle Jackie.
We talk to Nina Freeman about growing up online, her game Cibele, and digital ephemera. Plus, we hear about a woman's experience in high school playing World of Warcraft.
Greg Stolze tells us about why Unknown Armies isn't afraid to make you weaker as you get stronger
Robert Gagno, a pinball master, and escape room puzzle designers reveal what makes them tick
A system with a design flaw, an industry that may be on drugs and a localization that took out some surprising creep
We talk about Mini Metro, the future of virtual reality and narrative experiences for your eyeballs
Built to Play chats with Patrick O'Rouke and David Wolinsky about VR, the word Indie and the best games of 2015
We explore a man's love affair with Galaga, a post-apocalyptic Kingdom Hearts future, and Monopolists discuss one of the most popular board games of all time.
We visit a Malaysian theme park and discuss Internet Ethics Subscribe (iTunes)Subscribe (Stitcher)
In this week's episode there are the following segments:
- Daniel and Arman discuss Ubiland Malaysia. We return to the ancient TWIX-ON. Then we find our way to define ethics on the internet and Machinima's two-year-old advertising crisis. (0:00)
- Colby Dauch tells us about building board games, and what building a board around the world of popular game BioShock Infinite meant for his company. (29:20)
- A preview of things to come (54:55)
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "hey ragdoll" by Boyscout Discovery, "Sunrises" by Adrianna Krikl, AND "the clouds were like lace" BY Ben McElroy. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED, EDITED AND WRITTEN BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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It's our preview for this coming season of Built to Play, all about the feeling an intent behind play. We have a great line up coming, but first we thought we'd sharea little primer with you all about what it means to play.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "La Montage" and "Until Dawn" by Rockit Maxx. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED, EDITED AND WRITTEN BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
We analyse worker's rights, being reassigned as a janitor, Amazon, kickstarter, and the world of Kingdom Hearts 3. Plus we replay an old interview in full. David Craddock tells us about the origins of Diablo.
We do a belated farewell to Nintendo's long passed president and catch up with some WiiU and 3DS games
Breaking down full motion video, non-existent game consoles, plus we follow a level design marriage and the end of a company.
Cult cinema, changing aesthetics and the year of 1972 are all on the forefront of our minds in an episode all about film and aesthetics. Subscribe (iTunes)Subscribe (Stitcher)
In this episode we have the following segments: * We've all seen movies adapted into games, but usually those movies are good, even if the games are not. But in 1991 an Irish studio set out to make a adaptation of the worst film ever made,_ Plan 9 From Outer Space._ (0:30 - 15:20) * Daniel and Arman discuss Nintendo's reaction to the world of virtual reality and then examine how film, comics and animation meld into a Gotham theme park in Batman: Arkham Knight. (15:20 - 34:00) * Blake Reynolds trained as a composer like his idols, John Williams and Koji Kondo. He still composes music, but he's now a game artist who specializes in pixel art. Even in this job, however, Blake's found that his work just doesn't send the right message. (34:00 - 45:00) * Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn describe the aesthetic behind Ebony magazine, Playboy, and why that time and place is so important to the world of Sunset. (45:00 - 57:30)
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Old Movies" by Pianochocolate, "OLCP" by Marco Raaphorst, "水中(Johnny_ripper Remix)" by little Cloud, "Sunset" by Podington Bear, "Third Man Theme Live" by Rat City BRass, "Inspiration" by Box Cat Games. WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM Plan 9, Super Mario Bros., Auro, Star Wars, Blacula, Superfly, and Shaft's Big Score. We also used several pieces of music composed by Blake Reynolds. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
It's out E3 special, as we recap our feelings on the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo. With special guest Patrick O'Rouke, we discuss virtual reality, Shenmue (again) and diverse protagonists.
Graveyards, cyber brains, and beautiful flora make us think about the relationship between stories, cinema and the way we view games.
We go through what we know and what`s to come this E3, dialing through all the conferences
Dan and Arman look at Ninja Gaiden, Shenmue and Heavy Rain, and what they bring to cinematic gameplay
We're all about the things we lose and the things we win when we play games, including Kiva Bay on Papo and Yo, Tom 7 on how artificial intelligence can be a sore loser, and David Wolinsky on the things we say to each other.
In this clip from Built to Play 58, Natalie Neill tells us about the history of the gothic fiction. We enjoyed the interview so much, we thought we'd give you the rest.
Daniel and Arman examine the relationship between the gun and the gunslinger in Westerado. We talk about Konami and the decaying world of Japanese games. We chat with Nick Montfort about his Trope Tank. And Miriam Verburg takes us back to Junior High
Built to Play explores the legal realities of games preservation, the utter nonsense around Metal Gear Solid V and why we love to feel vulnerable.
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Every year or so we release a horrifying blooper reel. Contained in this audio are our numerous follies and questions pertaining to the X-Men and Canadian media. At least there's nothing potentially libellous in here this year. I edited that out.
THEse THEMEs are FROM THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE: "It Was" and "Positive Space" by Cosmic Analog Ensemble, and "Hungaria" by Latch Swing. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE CJRU RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
We examine the modern role playing game as they come out in Bloodborne and Pillars of Eternity and how the games compare
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Built to Play focuses on four space-themed stories all about exploration and self-discovery Space is a weird place to go. It's wondrous, potentially beautiful, but it's not quite worth the price of omission. Send astronauts up to the moon, fly a rover to Mars, speculate about a colony on Venus, and you'll still have the problem that it's mostly empty and extraordinarily expensive. Yet, we still want to go there, as science fiction authors will tell you along with everyone who signed up for the Mars One reality show. Video games have been a part of that fantasy since the medium's inception, andour collective fascination seems to be resurging. That desire for some great voyage beyond our current horizons speak to our innate curiosity as a species.
Games focused around space travel seem to tell us more about ourselves than they can about their setting.It's rare that we'll learn something new about space travel from games. Thanks to Star Wars, most games represent space warfare like a World War II dogfight. Plus, if you're looking for a realistic simulation of a spacecraft, even the most technical games won't show you the extreme scarcity up there. Dogfights are fun, and worrying about supplies isn't, so that's fine, though it does tell you that we aren't truly looking to explore the "final frontier."
We want spaces to delve into fantasies and potential futures. Elegy for a Dead Worlddrives you to explore through creative writing. Star Citizen provides the ultimate libertarian dreamscape. Spacewar!would have been impossible without examining the limitations of computing itself. And sometimes games surprise us in where they go and what they remind us.
In this episode you will hear the following stories:
- Ziba Scott talks about how to get people to start writing and why he's ecstatic about Alf fanfiction. (00:00 - 11:25)
- Travis Day explains economy and fantasy when building an open world space simulator. (11:25 - 21:20)
- John Sharprevisits thehistory of video games, and how its relationship with space travel began. (21:25 - 34:40)
- Dave Shayler and Tristan Donovan tell us how Tetris visited the stars and why even odd space voyages are worth it. (34:45 - 51:30)
Notes: We say Ziba Scott's name wrong, constantly. Sorry about that! It's ZAI-BA not ZEE-BA. Also the astronaut audio in the final segment is from the Soyuz-TM 15 trip, not TM-17. We couldn't find any for TM-17 so we stuck a bit of the earlier trip before we get into the story. Hope that didn't cause any confusion.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Raro Bueno" by Chuzausen, "Waltz of the Stars valse des toiles" by Lee Rosevere, "little cloud (johnny_ripper remix)" by 水中, "Goosedance" by Paperclip Galaxy, "Dark Matter" by Podington Bear, and "Enough of our Machines (johnny_ripper remix)" by son lux, "rush loop" by Adam Wrong. WE ALSO USED "Unanswered Questions" BY Kevin MacLeod, clips from Sven's Space Place, a Movietome Sputnik newsreel, launch of the Soyuz FG, and the Tetris Theme. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
At PAX East we found expert space explorers, monster hunters, attack musicians, and mood setters.
We wrap up our second day of PAX to chat about procedural generation and visual novels.
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Built to Play visits PAX East and decides to talk about roguelikes and their friend in a bind, the MOBA. PAX East is our one big trip of the year. We can't afford planes, trains or automobiles, so we really try to go to a convention where we'll see a lot of new ideas and fascinating approaches to gameplay. One of the big trends we noticed on our first day, however, was gameplay based on two genres, the roguelike and the mobile online battle arena. They like like fairly different genres, but tend to be implemented for the same reasons: People like them, and they make money. That's not to say that these genres have been implemented poorly, but stretching the idea of both a procedurally generated landscape can only go so far, and often results in a more generic experience than a replayable one.
The MOBA by comparison feels more like a blatant cash in as various companies are slightly tweaking the concept of heroes running at each other in an arena to target potential League of Legends players who have yet to pick up the game. There has been some advancement in the MOBA The shooter equivalent the Team Fortress 2 replica or first person arena combat progresses the genre beyond the scope of the top down perspective. But even that seems to be copied frequently and without nuance.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Hundy Mil Tight" BY PODINGTON BEAR. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE CJRU RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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We return to the Vector Festival to interface with the machine, dodge some lasers, and transform into our Sailor selves. Game controllers are often a player's lifeline. A player's familiarity with a control scheme or a controller can determine the difference between success and defeat. Over time we've seen controllers become more standardized, from a simple joystick and a button to the four face buttons, four triggers, and two analogue sticks. We've had good controllers (Xbox 360), bad controllers (Nintendo 64), and plain ugly ones (Atari Jaguar), but eventually they all settled on the same thing. The Wii U's gamepad has screen in the middle, but it's fundamentally the same layout as the PlayStation 2, and its simplified controller makes that clear. These controllers then form a connected language, where a player can move between all modern consoles and not dramatically change the way the games control.
Yet, once controls become standardised they start to lose their nuance. Vibration adds potential, as does the Wii U's screen (not so much the PS4's touch nub) but they're just abstractions made for a select few games, usually focused on action. How do four face buttons and four triggers help you in a game where you're exploring or trying to solve puzzles? Most likely, half the buttons will go unused. Meanwhile there's not enough buttons for a flight simulator or many strategy games.
Sometimes they also lack the precision and exact feel necessary for a game. We used to accelerate cars with the bottom most face button, but the back right trigger feels better. Players have a granularity of control available a trigger that isn't on a buttons and pushing down slowly on a trigger feels closer to pushing down the accelerator. In an arcade you'll often see games attempt to go beyond this, with controllers that include a miniature version of a race car, including a wheel, pedals and a gear stick.
All of this is learned behaviour, however. We know how these controllers work from experience. They are the current agreed upon language for video games. But as today's episode explores, every language has a learning curve and our current language is hardly the only one.
With the necessary philosophical rambling out of the way, on today's episode you'll hear the following designers:
- Kieran Nolan, a researcher from Ireland, talks about_ Control_, a game about the way we interact with machines and the levels of abstraction it takes to play one. (0:40 - 10:30)
- In the news : Sony shrinks. Twitch gets a convention. Gamergate remains horrific. SpeedTree won an academy award. (10:30 - 34:30)
- Sagan Yee, Alicia Contestabile, and Nadine Lessio discuss magical girls, Sailor Moon,_ Punk Prism Power_, and giant plastic controllers. (34:30 - 44:50)
- Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield explain how to explain a field a lasers, why'd they make for a terrible security system, and fighting a human boss battle. (44:50 - 53:20)
We've talked to Sagan Yee and Nadine Lessio a couple times now. The first time we talked to them together was for a game where you physically threw knives at a screen to make decisions. Nadine also worked on another game available at the Vector Festival called Sext Adventure, with Kara Stone.Meanwhile, Sagan's been teaching people about game literacy at Toronto's Reference Library.
Sorry, if we didn't get your call. We were fighting evil. pic.twitter.com/cL3pigmWhB
— Built to Play (@BuilttoPlay) February 21, 2015
By the way, the Vector Festival's _To Utility and Beyond _exhibit is running at the InterAccessgallery until March 21. It's at Ossington and Queen in Toronto, so if you live in Canada, it's basically down the street.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "OLPC" BY Marco Raaphorst, "Algo Rhythm Natural" BY Podington Bear, "Erotic Robotics" BY The Polish Ambassador, "Photosphere" BY Charles Atlas. OUR OPENING THEME WAS "As Colorful As Ever" by Broke for Free. THIS EPISODE USED CLIPS FROM Ocean's Twelve, Terminator 2, Videodrome, and Sailor Moon. We also used "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
We discuss a litany of space themed games, including Mass Effect, Eve Online, Asteroids, and FTL
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Built to Play explores the great beyond with games about the human heart, the future and cosmological afterlife. It's taken us a few weeks to get back into gear thanks to DICE, GDC and PAX East all being in short succession of each other, as people are either at a conference or will be soon. With that in mind, welcome to our first theme of 2015, Space. We're going to explore games and media's relationship to space and how it was almost inevitable that the black background of early video games would be explained as "Oh, that's just space." Not included on that list funnily enough is Space Invaders, which takes place in the upper atmosphere and therefore has no excuse.
Infinity, whether it's expressed as the infinite blackness of the void or the range of infinite possibilities, has often been alluded to by games. In Gravity Ghost,Erin Robinson uses our impression of space as a glimmering and distant wonder to set a stage for a purgatory of sorts, where hurts can be healed and children can be redeemed. Zach Gage doesn't refer to space at all in #Fortune, unless one is lucky enough to have a prediction involving it. Instead, #Fortune reaches into the seemingly infinite output of Twitter and delivers an often random collection of potential events. Both projects attempt to describe something beyond us, the future or death (or maybe both), and trust that we'll like what they find.
With the vaguely philosophical rambling out of the way, on this week's episode you will find the following:
- Zach Gage on sharing, tweets, and his leather box that predicts the future (00:30-11:55)
- We cover the news. Evolve has too much DLC.We cast the Zelda TV show. Peter Molyneux breaks one promise too many, and John Walker attacks. (11:55-37:30)
- Yosef Safi Harb on playing with our heartbeat and howSkip a Beatcan teach you more about your body. (37:30-46:30)
- Erin Robinson on her new game Gravity Ghost and the relationship between space, loss and growing up. (46:30-58:20)
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "if (Johnny_Ripper Remix)" by A K U A, "Buildings Stays Offshore" by Augustus Bro Gallery Six, "heartbeat" by Jake Allison, "red Shoes" by Johnny Ripper, "Nana Veloz" by Crisopa, "Snow Monkeys" by CandleGravity. Our Opening theme was "touching" by Souvenir Driver. This episode used clips from Gravity Ghost, Soda Drinker Pro, and the Wizard of OZ. Thanks to thenudo on Freesound for "Heart-beat" and to Will O Neil for his dramatic reading of his fortunes. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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In an all-news episode, we discuss the end of the Nintendo Club, Persona 5, and Net Neutrality for all. We haven't had a chance to discuss the news for a while, so we thought it's time to catch up on everything we've missed since mid-January. Sony Online Entertainment was bought by Columbus Nova, and renamed Daybreak Game Company, alerting our suspicions. The Club Nintendo is becoming more exclusive to the point it no longer exists. Microsoft expects to believe that people will play Minecraft on the Hololens. Square Enix, against the will of God himself, made a profit. Persona 5 may have the coolest menus in video games. Net neutrality may be a real thing in the US and Canada.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Songe D'Autumne" and "Hungaria" BY Latch Swing. and "Baby Sleeping" by Natalia Svortzova. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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We explore the history and development of one of the strangest entries in the Zelda series to discover how the game became the black sheep of the family. _The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask _is one of the few Nintendo games where the consequence of your failure is planetary genocide. Link, searching for his lost friend Na'vi, is robbed and is then forced to stop the moon from plunging into Termina. The happy mask salesman, who looks eerily like series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, tells Link early on that has "met a terrible fate" and that he has to fix this calamity in three days. But don't worry, he knows Link can do it.
The titular Majora's Mask doesn't play into the game's frightfulness. While Ganondorf may have threatened to rule Link's home with a tyrant's fist, he does not bring about the end of the world. Then there's the subdued colour palette, the off-kilter music, and a three day cycle that can be punishingly difficult if not carefully managed. Link needs to keep his eye on the clock every day because everyone is busy in on their final days, and may need him at various hours.
Daniel Rosen argues much of this difference can be attributed to Eiji Aonuma, and his freshman direction on the series, which has left it feeling dissonant from the rest of the franchise. Plus, he's got his hands on the upcoming Majora's Mask 3DS remake, so it's probably a decent time to revisit it.
Daniel will have more about the game when it goes for sale on February 3.
THANKS TO OCREMIX for the following songs: "Dawn of a New Day" by Docjazz4, FunkyEntropy, Theophany, and XPRTNovice and "Memories of an Ocarina" by Daybreaker. The header Image is from Vincent Bisshop. His work is pretty incredible. You should buy his art. WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and the Ocarina of Time. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ON ITUNES AND STITCHER. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
Built to Play ventures into the harsh outside world to find games that take our mind off the cold. We manage with this with laser tag at Battlegrounds, an ancient English treasure hunt, and the Clash of Talons.
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For those just joining us, this is Part 2 of a series about the history of Metal Gear Solid, from the MSX to the PS4. If you haven't listened toPart 1,we recommend you do that now. This episode still works as a standalone, but we do call back to earlier points in the series. Continue at your own peril. With that out of the way...
We laugh at the most problematic game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. No matter which way you cut it, Metal Gear Solid 2 is the weird one. If Metal Gear Solid is military fiction built on camp but with delusions of grandeur, its sequel is military fiction subsumed by that delusion. The game remains fun, at times, but it has the poorest gameplay, worst level design and easily the most outlandish plot of the series. It's also closest series director Hideo Kojima has come to producing a video game art project.
Metal Gear Solid 2 pretends to be a post-modern masterpiece. The game mocks the player, and goes out of its way to obfuscate its story. It tries to be about the need to break away from well-worn paths, by making you run well worn paths until you can see the ridges in the game's repetitive level design. The fact that it shifts lead characters from Solid Snake to Raiden is almost besides the point when the game introduces the poorly-motivated Patriots, an artificial intelligence bent on creating Big Boss' perfect future because of reasons. The story doesn't have the cocaine-addled madness of Snatcher to bring you along either. It just drags along, occasionally intermixing real life footage with cutscenes to further blur the line between reality and fiction to the point that it's not worth caring about.
The whole effort feels like first-year literature student's attempt at post-modern fiction with a military pastiche. With bad characters, a confusing plot, and stunt marketing, it's no surprise Kojima isn't particularly proud of the project either. Agness Kaku, who translated the game, has faced no end of grief in the years after its release. A project for which she had so many restrictions, it had little chance of crossing the Pacific without complaint. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game so off-track and laughed at, Kojima needed two sequels to make the series feel relevant again.
Which we'll get to next time. For now, this episode contains the following:
- A history of the game's development and it's plot. (00:00 - 16:45)
- Agness Kaku tells us about her translation of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Ghost Babel, and her current feelings on the project. We reference an ongoing libel suit she is currently engaged in. Agness presents her case in more detail here. (16:45- 39:20)
- Metal Gear Solid 2's legacy and why it was originally reviled by the fans. (39:30-47:50)
- "Big Shell West Bristol" by BenCousins with music taken from Metal Gear Solid 2. (47:50-50:40)
Next time: Snake gets naked.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "BUILDINGS STAY OFFSHORE" BY AUGUSTUS BRO GALLERY SIX, "IS THAT YOU OR ARE YOU YOU?" BY CHIP ZABRISKIE, "SCHOOL BOY" BY PIETNASTKA, "SIMON" BY L'HOMME MANETE AND "RED SHOES" BY JOHNNY_RIPPER. FROM OCREMIX, OUR OPENING THEME IS "LIQUID METAL" BY VIG AND OUR ENDING THEME IS "BIG SHELL WEST BRISTOL" BY BENCOUSINS. WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM METAL GEAR SOLID 2. THE FEATURE IMAGE IS BY YHANCIK. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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The Built to Crew explore the world of Metal Gear Solid, tracing the series from its MSX origins to its increasingly nonsensical conclusion. Metal Gear Solid, first released in 1998, is one of the biggest game franchises out of Japan. Its combination of stealth gameplay, cinematic presentation, and charismatic voice acting has lent this series a charm it would have had otherwise. As for all of its moments of brilliance, Metal Gear Solid often feels like a game about the American military made by a film director for a Japanese audience. Which is exactly what it is, in all of its glory.Metal Gear Solid so frequently crosses the line between camp, military fetishisation, and half-hearted attempts at meaning that its hard to make heads or tails of any one part of it.
Yet, it's impossible to deny that it's entertaining. Metal Gear Solid is the kind of game that drives up to your house around 3 a.m. and screams, "Get inside!" without telling where it's going or why. You get in anyway, not because you trust the driver, but because your life was so boring up until this lunatic stopped by.
In the next two episodes, we follow Metal Gear Solid from its beginning to its conclusion, andhow the game intersected with our lives and those who worked on it.
In Part 1: 1987-1998, we trace the origins of Metal Gear Solid and how it affected games as a whole:
- The history of Metal Gear on the MSX, and the rise of its designer Hideo Kojima (1:00-12:30)
- The localization efforts of Jeremy Blaustein, and his time working on Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid, and Blackmore's Bane (12:35 - 30:20)
- Metal Gear Solid's plot, development and legacy, digging at why it became so popular (30:30 - 46:10)
- The novelisation process with Raymond Benson, and how Snake became more like Kurt Russell in the novel (46:10 - 56:30)
This post and the audio file have been updated to reflect a correction regarding Jeremy Blaustein's translation work on Metal Gear Solid. The erroneous statement has since been removed. We regret the error.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR THE FOLLOWING MUSIC. "DARK MATTER" and "Rarified" BY PODINGTON BEAR, "It Was" by Cosmic Analog Ensemble, "Praise Book" by Bleak House, "OCLP" by Marco Raaphorst and we played the full "A Spy in The House of Love" by Noise Problems Selections by live at NP50th. From OCRemix, our opening theme is "Liquid Metal" by Vig. FROM FREESOUND, THANKS TO "diesel truck pass" BY the bizniss. WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM Escape from New York, Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The feature image is Jen Wynne as Meryl Silverberg from Metal Gear Solid by hypersapiens. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
Our end of the year celebrations as we talk about games we didn't play and ones we played a little too much
We talk about Mr. T, World of Warcraft, the Ninendo DS and Bob Tarantino tells us whether it's a good thing there aren't many Canadian copyright suits.
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We confront enemies, war, and clones in our discussion of Battlefield 3 maps and screaming in Spaceteam Built to Play's had a chance to explore the ways games and interactive art can bring us closer together, but like any other medium they also have the power to tears us apart. Not just in the tribal sense either. Conflicts between whether a particular console is better than another are vacuous affairs, and rarely do friendships end over having bought an Xbox One over a Wii U. Multiplayer pits us against each other and while it's usually part of amiable competition, many players don't see it that way. They call the SWAT team on players they dislike. They call other players racial epithets.
But what if a game could make us against a whole region? Since military shooters started taking place in the near future, there's been a big focus on the Middle East and Russia. It's easy to acknowledge that the narratives in these games are frivolous sub-The Expendables attempts at storytelling, but those story maps become multiplayer maps. That's when these games, which have levels in Karachi, Tehran, and various parts of Afghanistan, leave the player to form an opinion about the place they're fighting in.
Sometimes games lead to enemies not because of their content, but because of the people who made them. Cloning someone else's work is an easy way to lose a few friends and end up in court. Or maybe a game never set out to be competitive, but let to screaming matches anyway.
For all of these examples and more, take a listen to the newest episode, which contains the following segments:
- Johan Hoglund of Linnaeus University wrote about the ways in which games can normalize the perception of the Middle East as a place of violence. He recently wrote a book called The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence. Starts 0:20.
- Daniel Rosen brings us stories from the video game industry, like EA's promise to not buy new companies, Target Australia taking Grand Theft Auto V off their shelves, and our PlayStation memories. Starts 11:50.
- Bob Tarantino andConrad Leetell us about the trials and tribulations around game cloning, and how it's changed over the last 30 years. Starts 37:50.
- Henry Smith devised a comedy game that's been giving him strange reviews. "Your game caused me to get a divorce! A++ would buy again." Starts 47:50
Update: Conrad Lee would prefer not to be contacted at the twitter account presented in the show. The link has been corrected to reflect this.
THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR THE FOLLOWING MUSIC. OUR OPENING THEME WAS "Western Chow Yun Fat" by This One. We also used "rest (johnny_ripper remix)" by Alphabets, "Wanna See My Spaceship" by Beatoven, "The Watchtowers of Sandusky" by Fields of Ohio, "Dark Matter" by Podington Bear, and "summer breeze let it out (johnny_ripper remix)" by smoking fox. From Soundcloud we used "Nightmares" and "Under the Olives" by Patrick Ellis. From Freesound, thanks to "photocopy-machine" by tomija. We also used clips from Saving Private Ryan, Star Trek the Next Generation, Battlefield 3 and Spec Ops the Line. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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We learn about learning, as we discuss game literacy, broken games and the world of theatre Built to Play learns about learning in our 50th episode. We don't know how we did it, except through willful ignorance of the heavenly signs and our friends and family. At this rate, Built to Play will never die, although we offer no guarantees.
People often forget about game literacy, like this article did in the previous paragraph. Once you know how to read or write, the expectation is that's the norm. How quickly we forget that near 100 per cent literacy is a recent phenomenon, and only then became fundamental part of our societies. When we run into people who are lacking these skills it can be shocking, and the first arrogant impulse is to blame it on their own lack of interest. It's equally surprising when we see someone who's never used an Xbox controller, or is intimidated by the sheer number of keys on a keyboard. Even between cultures, there's been some confusion. Just as the Japanese read right to left, for them bottom-most face button means cancel, while in North America it means accept. While not entirely detrimental, it's worth noting that even experienced players run into the limits of their literacy, if only to justify why some of us had such a hard time playing Japanese RPGs.
As games and technology become a bigger part of how we express ourselves, it's important to remember that not everyone grew up with a Super Nintendo, and the annual blockbusters, which focus on action and destruction, aren't universally appealing to all people. Some people aren't literate in games not because games aren't suited to them or because they aren't interested in them, but because games can be scary. They're active experiences, and so they need some level of introduction. Without that, games are just graphics on a screen and a gamepad filled with 10 plus buttons which could feasibly do anything.
So this time, we're talking about game literacy with Sagan Yee and her Game Curious program, before discussing ways games can approach more people through performance. Then Jon Remedios tells us about his learning process in designing his own game. Here are our show notes:
- Sagan Yee tells us about the Game Curious program she ran in the Toronto Reference Library, plans for the future, and why games are stigmatised. Special thanks to Al Donato, Cheryl Clarke, Amelia Nelson, and Amala Johnson. This segment starts 0:40 into the show.
- Then in the news, we discuss the end of the G4 television channel, thehacking of the 3DS, and why Assassin's Creed Unity, Halo Master Chief Collection, and DriveClub are so glitched out messes. The news kicks in at 12:50.
- Deirdre "Squinky" Kiai tells us about Coffee: A Misunderstanding, which merges the mediums of game and performance closer than ever before. Hear Squinky explain who's the player when humans are both the instigators and the avatars around 34:00.
- Jon Remediosexplains the progress he's made on his local multiplayer party game, theShoot Shoot Mega Pack, and how he's changed his process over the last four months. We talked to him back at Gamercamp in October, and before that in May at the Bit Bazaar. Hear Jon discuss his work-life balance and the future of local multiplayer at 42:55.
Game Curious on October 18
Game Curious continues every Saturday at the Toronto Reference Library until December 2.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for the following music. Our Opening theme was "Computer" By State Shirt. We also used "The Falls" By Podington Bear, "La ere Gymnopedie" by Peter Johnson, "Big Head" by Orthotonics, "El Rio Dels Ptals" By Violeta Pivnkakkara, "Praise Book" by Bleak House and "The Telepathics of Bomb Shelter" by Fields of Ohio. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
On a spectacularly late episode of Built to Play, we talk about the things that keep us up at night, like taxes, lies, and harassment.* In out post-Halloween episode we decided to touch on real horror. While people are definitely scared of zombified spiders, it's not really the thing we're worried about. There are scarier things out there that we deal with on a day to day basis, some of us more than others. We all fear poverty and one day being stuck on the edge of financial precarity, especially those who have families to support. Then there's Gamergate targets, who have had to either fight off a horde of trolls willing to ruin and threaten their lives, or carefully monitor their statements online. Beyond those two, we all have a personal horror that we have difficulty communicating, whether it's a traumatic incident or a psychological ailment.
As game design tools have become more accessible to more people, we've seen more games that attempt to communicate personal experience. Tools that replicate old adventure game engines and visual novels been particularly useful for this, like Twine, which being primarily text based has a fairly low bar to entry. On this episode we talk to four designers and writers who used these tools to communicate real fears to players:
- David S Gallant on I Get This Call Every Day and the fear in financial precarity. Hear him starting 0:40 into our show.
- Michael Lutz on the Uncle Who Works for Nintendo and why he felt ethically bound to leave his players with hope. Hear him starting 28:30.
- Kaitlin Tremblay and JohnRathiganthan onLights Out, Please and the communicative power of interactive horror. Their segment starts at 41:40. Note Lights Out, Please has been nominated for five Canadian Video Game Awards!
Daniel and Arman also give a sample of our local multiplayer primer,to give you a preview of what we've been exploring on the site. It starts 14:10. You can find the full segment on our multiplayer hub.
This episode was made with the help of the Free Music Archive, with samples from WNYC's On the Media, and CBC Radio's As it Happens and Metro Morning. Our opening theme was "watashi" by Johnny_Ripper. We also used "Summer breeze let it out (johnny_ripper remix)" by smoking fox, "may light (remix by etc)" by SHOMOMOSE, "sister (johnny_ripper remix)" by Sea Oleena, "So This Is How It Ends" by Earsmack, "Oxygen Garden" by Chris Zabriskie, "Toy Cupboard" and "Everything is Broken or Intact" by Bleak House. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW. _*We used to do these long write ups of each episode, but those have increasingly been taking more time to write. So for now we'll have these abbreviated ones. If anyone actually read the old version, let us know. _
We travel to Gamercamp to walk on walls, battle in tent warfare, and defuse bombs. The annual indie game festival Gamercamp came to Toronto back in October, and then after three days promptly left this earth entirely. This was Gamercamp's sixth year, and its last one, for now anyway. Meaning if you couldn't visit this one, tough luck. We had an interview last week with Jaime Woo, its co-founder,if you're curious what happened.
But we knew that you might have trouble making it out to Toronto's Chinatown, so we went instead to try and compete at several local multiplayer games. All of this happened to fit in with this month's theme, Friends and Enemies, so to make things a little more festive, we began the great competition to defeat each other at mostly cooperative games.
I'd tell you more, but we're low on time so we're going to have to cut our show notes short this week. The following is a list of people we talked to on this week's show, their games, and the time when they come on the air:
- Jesse McGibney, art director of Apotheon, 1:00
- Willy Chyr, designer of Relativity, 6:30
- Hamish Lambert, animator on Mouffe, 13:00
- Nick Korneck, designer on Space Bro Justice Rocket, 36:35
- Shawn Pierre, designer of Henka Twist Caper, 44:40
- Brian Fetter, designer of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, 50:35
The festival floor at Gamercamp
Mouffe, the interactive tent, where the quilt is the controller for a screen projected onto the tent's ceiling
Nick Korneck talks to intrepid reporter Daniel Rosen as the game, Space Bro Justice Rocket, highlights what they are thinking behind them.
Daniel Rosen and Nick Korneck high five wearing the cotton Hi 5000s
Daniel and Arman's reward after defeating the tutorial bomb in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
In case you didn't know what Toronto's Chinatown looks like. We have streetcars too San Fransisco
From just outside the Ocho Hotel on the last day of Gamercamp, people celebrate after a round of trivia
Music this week comes from the Free Music Archive: "The Falls" and "Nature Kid" by Podington Bear, "Bacalao Bombao" by minusbaby, and "Run to Canada" by Min-Y-Lan. Our opening theme was "The Libra Lunologists" by Fields of Ohio and our ending theme was "Air Hockey Saloon" by Chris Zabriskie. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIEL ROSEN. IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.
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It's an episode in which we finally stop talking about virtual reality and move on to weeks of playing with pals. We start with the end of Gamercamp. Movie buffs visit film festivals. Bibliophiles browse books fairs. But game players charge into the convention. It's a practice hailing back from the olden times of the Star Trek conventions, to tech meetups in the early Silicon Valley and the mighty heights of the San Diego Comic Con. For the avid fan, there's multiple Penny Arcade Expos in the United States, Gamescom in Germany, and the Tokyo Game Show in Japan. These days there's so many that if you take a look in your own backyard, you'll probably find one.
Big game conventions can feel exhausting though. You're fighting tens of thousands of people in a hall. Massive companies push their way towards you to showcase their newest games. And what if you're looking for local products, games made in your hometown, maybe an experiment or two? Every hub for game design has at least one little event for enthusiasts, like a party a few friends put together for their community. In Toronto, we hadGamercamp.
The final day at Gamercamp after a long trivia night
Outside the Ocho Hotel on Sunday night, which has hosted Gamercamp for the last two years.
Jaime Woo settles in Sunday night after the Gamercamp wraps up and the Ocho Hotel kitchen closes
Co-founded by Jaime Woo, Gamercamp was a games festival created mostly for the founder's curiosity. They heard Torontonians were making games and getting attention for it, but couldn't see the games anywhere. So they made their own event. Their first year, it was just a series of talks in a small theatre on one day, and despite a rocky start they kept at it. Six years later, Gamercamp was the biggest festival of its kind in the city, including an arcade and multiple parties in a single weekend. Compared to even a medium-sized convention like IndieCade, Gamercamp is tiny. Yet, by any measure, it's been a success. Which is why the decision to close up shop came as a surprise to some,and upset a few others.
We brought Jaime into the studio to talk about those early years and why he's decided to end Gamercamp. Tune in a minute into our show for more from Jaime.
Special thanks to Jon Remedios who was not in the credits this week but deserves to be there. And Thanks to everyone who ran Gamercamp the last six years. It's been a blast.
After diving through another round of death threats, we round off with a final bout of scepticism about the future of virtual reality. We've done a lot of talking about the wonders of VR, but we've been sceptical throughout. In every interview we've explored the limitations and the unforeseen complications. Virtual reality could very well be the future of video games and much more, but for now it's unproven beyond a certain subset of players.
So what are the reasons to be sceptical? Let's not think of specific technical details. VR, not matter how you cut it is going to be expensive, and if not expensive, then it's going to be limiting. Moving in a 3D world is challenging just from a control standpoint. You can't see the controller with a headset on, meaning that people need to be familiar with the controls and the controller before they start playing, which isn't inviting to new players. Plus, you need high end hardware to run two screens inside the VR headset, especially as games become more graphics intensive. One way to smoothen these out is adding more peripherals and sensors, like a camera or markers on the wall, but that adds to the price. It also needs a large space for all of this equipment and for you to be doing anything except sitting or standing.
There's another thing that VR needs: presence. Presence is when you are so engrossed in a virtual environment you forget you're in your living room. That's what all the major virtual reality headset manufacturers are competing for, but have yet to master. And without it, Tadhg Kelly believes we're still a while away from VR being a mainstream phenomenon. He's a game design consultant and earlier this year he wrote a column about "the death of VR", and so we thought it would be a good idea to talk to him as we wrap up.
Listen to Tadhg Kelly discuss the idea of a "perfect" VR, why it's hard to achieve, and why 2015 will be the Year of Virtual Reality anyway starting about 38:50.
Thanks to the Free Music Archive for music this week: "OLPC" by Marco Raaphorst, "may light remix by etc" by SHOMMOSE, "So this is how it ends" by Earsmack, "Love Theme" by Dave Merson Hess, "As Colorful as Ever" by Broke for Free, and "summer breeze let it out (johnny_ripper remix)" by smoking fox. Our theme tune was "japanese prog" by Rushus. On Freesound we used "convention crowd noise" by awesoman. Built to Play is a product of the Scope at Ryerson radio station in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was produced and edited by Arman Aghbali and written by Daniel Rosen. If you like the show please subscribe and rate us online. It helps more people find the show and gives us an idea how we're doing. Feel free to comment down below.
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Built to Play dives back into virtual reality through Samsung's Gear VR and by visiting Toronto's VR hub. Almost a month ago, Samsung announced theGear VR, a small virtual reality headset. The idea is Oculus already uses Samsung phone screens for its display. In fact their current display is the exact same as the Galaxy Note 4. So why not just use the phone as the virtual reality headset? Plug it into the Gear VR, and BOOM, virtual reality on the go.
Turns out there's a bunch of reasons why not. Unless the attachment comes with an AC adapter or an extra battery, that phone is going to die within the hour. Not to mention, phone CPUs may be more powerful than ever, but they still pale in comparison to a PC. And that's without getting into the lack of positional tracking.
But don't listen to us. We're a bunch of downers. Listen to E McNeill, better known as E to his friends, the designer of Darknet. He's been working on his virtual reality hacking game since the 2013 VR Jam competition, and will be launching it on Gear VR. He explains the advantages of the platform and dos and don'ts for working on early virtual reality games. You can hear from him 50 seconds into our show.
Then we visit Toronto's VR Meetup to talk to games designers, programmers and startup heads about the potential of virtual reality. Daniel and Arman visited the centre of all virtual reality conversation in Toronto, the almost monthly gathering of enthusiasts in the city's downtown. Usually they meet at a local bar, but this time they visited Verold, a startup making tools for interactive 3D projects on the web. We caught up with our guest from two shows ago, Stephan Tanguay, who manages it.
This session was all about the Oculus Connect, a developer's conference held in downtown Los Angeles. Alternating between keynotes from experts and parties at a Malibu beach house, Connect was a celebration of Oculus' success and its transition from Kickstarter project to Facebook buyout. John Carmack, co-creator of Doom and chief technology officer at Oculus, gave a speech on the power of the Gear VR, speaking for an hour and a half before being booted off the stage.
So we chatted with Blair Renaud, the designer of the cyberpunk adventure game, Technolust about his trip to LA. We also went over his history in the game industry, from his time as a technical director at Rockstar working on the original Grand Theft Auto and how he got back into game design.
Plus, we talk withBernie Roehl, a programmer and lab instructor at the University of Waterloowho's worked on VR since at least the 90s. He goes through the early challenges of the tech and how far it's progressed. And the CEO of Verold, Ross McKegeny, sat down with us to talk about the ways virtual reality could be used for marketing and education.
To hear from all of these guys, about the Oculus Connect, the Crescent Bay prototype and more, tune it at the 33:00 for the second half of the show.
The music from this week's episode came from the Free Music Archive. Our opening theme was "Air Hockey Saloon" by Chris Zabriskie. We also used "Spring Solstice" and "Belfast" by Podington Bear, "Hallon" by Christian Bjoerklund, "Family" by Johnny_ripper, "Detective" by Krowne and our end theme was "State Shirt" by Computer. Thanks to Leadndros-ntounis at Freesound for "Crowd in a bar." This episode was written and produced by Daniel Rosen and Arman Aghbali. It was edited by Arman Aghbali. If you like Built to Play, be sure to recommend it. Reviews help the show like peanut butter helps jam. Feel free to comment and let us know your thoughts below.
It's all news and reviews as we talk FFXV road trips, laughing about Windows 10, Smash Bros, and Persona 4 Ultimax
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On Built to Play, we put on a headset, strap on a pair of headphones, and talk about virtual reality in all its forms. UPDATE: Arman uploaded an unfinished version of the episode. A clean, fixed version has now been uploaded. We apologize for the mistake.
Some people just can't stop thinking about virtual reality. Last week Oculus chief technology officer John Carmack (and the creator of DOOM) got on stage at the VR conference, Oculus Connect, and improvised a speech about the technology for more than an hour.Oculus Connect is also where the Facebook-owned tech firm revealed their newest, and presumably last, Oculus Rift prototype, Crescent Bay. With 3D audio and better motion tracking, it looks like this prototype is the closest we've come to confusing reality with the virtual.
But Arman and Daniel are not these people. They don't have time to keep up with these people and their "headsets." They're far too busy playing the new Smash Bros. So they called up a local VR game developer, Stephan Tanguay, to explain the ins and outs of modern virtual reality.
Stephan has been a fan of VR since at least mid-'80s. He watched the great outpouring of shoddy, ugly and straight-up misguided VR attempts get laughed out of the room. So when the Oculus Rift came out in 2012 as a developer's kit, Stephan was one of the first to use it. He's been waiting for a while to see a form of virtual reality that's easy to create games for, is affordable, and can fully immerse you in another world.
But we may not be there quite yet. Virtual reality isn't like the Matrix. You aren't going to jack in and forget the real world exists. It's a headset that shows you a new environment and, as of right now, has some serious limitations. So far, the games work best if you're sitting down. The resolution is low, and the headset can't use Plus, you're tethered to a computer, so it's not like you can go for a walk.
Courtesy Wikimedia
Stephan's optimistic that all of these kinks can be fixed in the next five to ten years. Until then, he'll continue developing games for the Oculus Rift. It may not be out to the general public quite yet, but when is, you can bet Stephan will be in line to get one. You can hear about the power of virtual reality and its current limitations starting 1:00.
Virtual reality isn't technology alone. Game sound and music have been drawing us to new worlds for almost a hundred years. Victorian arcade machines (which are totally real) would often play music to disguise that they were for gambling. The second video game ever made had sound effects. Music didn't come until later. Early game consoles didn't have the space on the cartridge to have sophisticated soundtracks and relied on the internal sound cards. PC games had a great range of sound years before consoles, but by the time of the Nintendo Entertainment System, consoles were catching up.
A lot of people are willing to stop there. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were still limited to an electronic sound, but these were catchy tunes. People remember the Super Mario theme to this day. Talk toKaren Collins, and she'll remind you that music has gone a long way since the late '80s. We have orchestral scores, sound effects that rival films', and a form of composition unique to video games.
Courtesy Beep/Karen Collins
Karen is the Canada Research Chair for Game Sound at the University of Waterloo. She has a letter from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to prove it. She's also working on a documentary about game sound, called BEEP, tracing its history from the 1890s to modern day. It can be a difficult task. Early composers weren't credited, and old games don't produce the same sounds in an emulator as they did on a console.
To hear more about the documentary and the history of game sound, tune in 32:40
By definition, game music is made specifically for an interactive medium, which changes the way its composed and the way we hear the final product.
Courtesy Winifred Phillips
After talking to Karen Collins, there's one question that stuck the heads of our producers. Game music can be just as interactive as the medium for which it's created. When you switch from a combat scene to a conversation the music changes with it. It doesn't make sense to have a bombastic score during a quiet character moment. So, what does that mean for game soundtracks?
Like a movie score, a game's score is meant to compile the most important background themes in the production. That's not possible in a game, at least if you think of themes as a singular piece of music. In games, music composition can look more like a flowchart, diving in and out of scenes when necessary, and looping back when a scene lasts longer than the track itself. There's also linear music, which is closer to a winding score, but is still distinct. Linear music is music without a real beginning or end. It's music meant to loop, though it can have highs and lows within it.
To learn more about the world of music composition we talked to composer Winifred Phillips. She's an award winning composer who got her start on God of War, but has since worked on Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Little Big Planet 2, and a few licensed games. She's also the author of the book A Composer's Guide to Game Music, which explores the various ways a composer can approach an interactive medium.
Ryan Roth/Courtesy Dualryan
Another thing you're going to miss in a game soundtrack is the holistic sound design. When the actual actions in the game mix in with the music sometimes it can create, as Ryan Roth puts it, "harmonic stuff." Ryan Roth, also known as Dualryan online, is a composer who directed the sound and music in the indie game, Starseed Pilgrim. He's also worked on Electronic Super Joy and the Yawhg. Ryan often attempts this approach to sound design, as he believes it creates a positive feedback loop, teaching and encouraging the player through sound.
So if you're going to miss out on a game's fluidity or harmony, what's the value of a soundtrack? Ryan thinks he has an answer. To find out what it is, jump to 41:00.
OH GOD THERE IS SO MUCH MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE. The following music came from the free music archive. Our opening theme was "Sun Bum" by Monster Rally. We also used Alex Gross' "4AM Party" and "Space Stage" by L'homme Manete. Our ending theme was "Moving Boulder" by L'homme Manete. Plus, "Luke, a True Gentleman Prefers a Touch of Light Jazz," by Proto Dome on OCRemix. We used "Aveline's Escape" and "Society Suite" in 4 Movements" from the Assassin's Creed III: Liberation soundtrack, composed by Winifred Phillips. We also used "an evergreen is forever green - until it dies, of course," from the Yawhg soundtrack by Ryan Roth and Halina Heron, and "Companeros" from the Grim Fandangosoundtrack, composed by Peter McConnell. We used samples of sound from Asteroids, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sokobond, Starseed Pilgrim, and some space virtual reality game no one recognizes. This episode was written by Daniel Rosen, edited by Arman Aghbali and produced by both. If you liked this episode, feel free to comment and please recommend it.
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This time on Built to Play, Daniel visited Xbox Canada and Arman discusses Canadian games and the great outdoors. The Built to Play staff doesn't make it outside often. Sure we can see the outside from the windows in our studio, but we rarely experience it. Just kidding. Our studio doesn't have windows. Anyway, Daniel actually left the studio to talk to play some upcoming Xbox One games, while Arman talked to game designers about why they liked the outside. For Arman, it's baby steps.
At X14, Daniel played Sunset Overdrive, Fable Legends, The Evil Within, Mortal Kombat X and Alien: Isolation. Here's a couple samples of what he found:
Sunset Overdrive:
The problem mostly comes in when your weapon variety starts to show up. I had a flaming gential-themed shotgun, a disc gun that fired vinyl records, and a massive hand cannon called the Dirty Harry. None of these guns really favoured the high speed, far away combat style that the grind-rails encouraged. The shotgun worked great for enemies nearby, and the hand cannon was perfect when I slowed myself down and focused on enemies, but otherwise, the disc gun’s bouncing records was the only weapon that worked at the high speeds the game wanted me to move at.
Fable Legends:
It’s unbelievably fluid, and part of that may have had to do with the fact that it was running on five networked machines, but god damn if it wasn’t impressive. The game doesn’t currently have a five player local option, which could be a problem moving forward, but apparently Lionhead is looking into smartglass support for the villain player.
The Evil Within:
At one point, I walked down a hallway, and triggered a rope that dragged me into a closet full of spinning blades. I tried shooting at the blades to jam them, but of course, the game didn’t exactly highlight the tiny blinking light I was meant to shoot at until after I died. And then I lost about 20 minutes of progress.
Mortal Kombat X:
This is a game where the aforementioned Cassie Cage (...) can kneecap her opponents, shoot them through the head, pull out some gum, chew it, stick it over the bullet hole, and watch as a blood soaked bubble pops out.
Alien: Isolation:
The sound of it approaching was enough to get my knees shaking, and the subtle cutaway when it catches you is probably a thousand times spookier than any gore-shot could have been. The Xenomorph runs around unscripted too, doing whatever its AI feels like, so there’s no way to rely on rote memorization. It’s all about your skill at tracking, avoiding, and using the incredibly limited toolset available to you.
Tune in about 50 seconds into the show to hear us chat about these games and _Assassin's Creed: Unity. _Plus we hear from Nitai Bessette, the level design director, of AC: Unity and Matt Grandstaff, the global community lead at Bethesda Softworks. Daniel also met two designers from Lionhead on the Fable Legends team, the game's directorDavid Eckelberry and the villain's designer, Lewis Brundish.
Or read the whole article here.
The Long Dark - Dawn
The Long Dark - Sunset
Kona - The Letter
Kona - The Station
Kris Krug - Roche Point, North Vancouver, British Columbia
Northern Pix - Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada
For the staff at Built to Play, Canada is probably our favourite place to be. We have free healthcare, moose, and poutine. It's great, and a lot of game designers would agree with us. As we've repeated multiple times on the show, Canada is the third largest centre for game development in the world, right behind the United States and Japan. Which is why it feels odd when we can call so few of those games "Canadian." Games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed are all games made in Canada, but you wouldn't know that from looking at it or playing it or talking to the developers. To be fair to the first two, Mass Effect and Deus Ex both have had levels set in Canada (Vancouver and Montreal respectively), but Assassin's Creed, even when Ubisoft Montreal leads development, never feels like it belongs here.
The weirdest game in the series has to be Assassin's Creed III. This open world assassination game set in the American Revolution was partially planned by Ubisoft, a French company, led by Ubisoft Montreal, a Canadian company, with parts built all over the world. It's clearly about the American Revolution, but it's not made by all that many Americans and while they doubtless did their research, the game feels culturally nomadic. It has very few traces of authorship. No one person built this game and there's no one vision guiding it. So it's not Canadian, but I'd argue it's not very American either. It's a multinational project undertaken by one of the largest game publishers in the world, Ubisoft.
The majority of development studios in Canada are owned by larger publishers, like EA, Square Enix, or Microsoft, none of which care very much about where these games are physically made so long as Americans buy them. So the majority of Canada's big budget games don't feel very Canadian.
Alexandre Fiset felt this weirdness while he was at Beenox, a studio based in Quebec City that's owned by Activision. Beenox makes games starring Spider-Man, sometimes based on the ongoing film series. Fiset wasn't satisfied working on a Marvel hero living in a fantasy New York, so he left the company to start Parabole Games. Parabole recently completed a kickstarter for the game Kona, an episodic series about a supernatural mystery in northern Quebec.
Fiset wasn't alone in thinking about his game as a cultural product either. Raphael van Lierop, founder of Hinterland Studios and designer of the Long Dark, has been thinking about game design as a way to make something local. The Long Darktakes place near the mountains of British Columbia, far north of where van Lierop lives on Vancouver Island. It's a survival game based in the rough Canadian wilderness.
That's a little odd in itself. Two designers wanted to put a bit of local flavour into their games, and both of them based their in the wild. The conception of Canada as this vast land of forest and tundra seems almost like a stereotype. But, as they'll both argue, Canada looks more like that stereotype than Canadians like to admit.
Fiset and van Lierop discuss Canada, the garrison mentality, and why cultural diversity is important for all games, not just Canadian ones. You can hear from them starting 38:45
The Long Dark's survival mode is now available on Steam Early Access. Kona's first episode will be released in April 2015. You can play the demo here.
Once again thanks to the Free Music Archive for access to great bands like Podington Bear. In our Xbox One preview section, we used the following tracks from that band: "Nature Kid", "Moondots and Polkabeams", "Lake Victoria" and "Belfast". We also used "Hedge Schools" by Peter DiPhillips. For the rest of the show we used the following songs from the Free Music Archive: "Wanna see my Spaceship" by Beatoven,"Run to Canada" by Min-Y-Lian, "Detective" by Krowne, "Photosphere" by Charles Atlas, and "Blind Eyes" by Everlone. We used sound effects from Destiny. This episode was written by Daniel Rosen and edited by Arman Aghbali. If you liked this episode leave us a comment, review or subscribe. Thanks for listening!
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In what has to be the longest coherent rant they've ever put to audio, Dan and Arman discuss the ongoing harassment in the video game community. One of the first pieces I ever wrote for Built to Play was the style guide. On the podcast, and in the articles, we should limit our use of the word gamer. We agreed to that rule because it's not a word that makes a lot of sense. Not everyone who plays video games is a gamer, just like not everyone who watches movies is a film buff. Now it's unusable, even in the strictest sense.
Since 'real gamers' began attacking Zoe Quinn for supposed ethical infractions or Anita Sarkeesian for inserting politics into innocent games, the term has become toxic. They've released pounds of personal information online, scared women out from their homes and riddled their social media with death threats. Let's not dance around it. These attacks have been misogynistic, largely targeted towards women who don't fixate on shooters and Nintendo nostalgia.
Some people use Quinn's activities to say all games journalism is corrupt. HASHTAGGAMERGATE! But that fundamentally misunderstands what games writing is. Most articles on sites like Gamespot and Polygon commentate and criticise. Think game reviews or big convention coverage. On the few occasions where they engage in journalism, often it's redistributing content. Here's a trailer a publisher gave us. I found this neat thing on the Internet. That's not a fault of the websites, that's just the job.
The games industry is insular and secretive, so there are few opportunities to do professional reporting. That's true with a lot of enthusiast press, like in comics, music or movies, but especially so in games. The old adage is that anyone can be a journalist. Just point a camera out your window. You have to call someone to be a reporter. When there's no one to call, however, there's not much you can do.
Sites like Polygon, USGamer and Kill Screen still go out of their way to make great articles about game development and the video game community, although few people read them. That's true of all media by the way. The Washington Post's biggest story in 2013 wasn't the Edward Snowden scandal. It was a collection of pictures of a busted Sochi bathroom.
All of this is to say that people who accuse games journalism of being corrupt are missing the point. I hesitate to call anything written on this site journalism. It's definitely not reporting. We're still honest when it comes to our opinions, as I expect most in the industry are. Enthusiast writing serves a different purpose than conventional reporting. They disseminate product information and evaluate media. That lack of diversity is why scaring away strong writers who go beyond that, like Jenn Frank and Mattie Brice, helps no one. They were among the few people who went beyond criticism to question the games they played and the people who made them. 'Real gamers' encourage bias in the industry by making the pool of commentators smaller and the voices less varied.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
I also challenge gamers on whether they are the equivalent of music, television or film enthusiasts. Outside of video games, enthusiasts seem to recognize that their medium of choice is a broad spectrum of content, made for many audiences. Some genres might be dismissed off-hand, like the romantic comedy or pop music, but even then good versions of these make it through to critical appeal. A lot of music fans acknowledged that 'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen was fun and an enjoyable piece of music ephemera. Or that while 500 Days of Summer has its problems, the film tries to take the romantic comedy in a new direction. Being a fan of a medium entails a willingness to dive into its depths and explore all possible permutations of it. It doesn't mean tripping head first into the shallow end to wallow in its most obvious features.
If you enjoy big budget games, go ahead. No one can take that away from you. There are plenty of games made by big publishers that are genuinely great, but no game is perfect. Wolfenstein: The New Order has to be one of my favourite games of the year. It also has some groan-worthy dialogue and has terrible enemy artificial intelligence. Every game merits criticism, from indies to those old Nintendo titles.
People who have such a narrow definition of games need grow up. More people have launched an Angry Bird than have made Mario jump. More adult women play games than teenage boys. Those blockbuster franchises won't vanish any time soon, but as video games become more popular, players have be more accommodating to more kinds of people and more kind of games. There is no sense in attacking people who are trying to make games like Depression Quest, because that's only going to become more prevalent, not less.
So if gamers are people who like the most bland of the bland, and feel justified in ruining people's lives on behalf of a fool's errand, I don't want to be associated with them. Call me a game player. Call me an enthusiast. But please, I'm not a gamer. Gamers are about as self-absorbed as men's rights advocates, who can only conceive of the world in childish black and white dichotomies.
I'm embarrassed to have needed to write this rant. Games are supposed to be enjoyable. Ideally, when coming away from a great game, we should feel enriched. A well-crafted game can engender joy, sadness, hope and occasionally fun. All this does is make me feel disappointed in all of us. Games, and the people who play them, are capable of so much more.
Thanks to writer and community manager Emma Woolley who talked to us about her article on the topic on the Globe and Mail.Note, she didn't play any part in this rant beyond what you hear in her interview. Take a listen for yourself starting 1:30. She comes off sounding far more optimistic than either Daniel or I feel right now.
We used music from the Free Music Archive: "Photosphere" by Charles Atlas and "Lost Radio Station Sings Me Up the Tunnel" by Fields of Ohio. Our opening theme was "The Libra Lunologists" by Fields of Ohio. This episode was written by Daniel Rosen and produced by Arman Aghbali.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE LEAVE US A COMMENT OR SUBSCRIBE. Think before you post, please.
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Built to Play explores new Nintendo games, the tricky world of Dota 2 and why we keep seeing the words "You Died" when we close our eyes. Daniel and Arman visited Nintendo of Canada to play upcoming titles like Mario Maker, Bayonetta 2 and Yoshi's Wooly World. But when it comes to Super Smash Bros. the two land on a bit of a competitive streak. Take a listen to hear more about the relative nudity of Pokemon, Toad's Batman voice, and genius robot design. If you want more in-depth coverage of these Nintendo games check out Daniel's write up from a few weeks back.
You can hear us squabble over whether Bayonetta 2 is better than Smash Bros and if Goku is the greatest fighter of all time starting 1:06.
Daniel finishes his masterpiece in Mario Maker, the Mario platformer level designer coming to the Wii U.
Mobile online battle arena games like League of Legends are easily the most popular games on the planet, so we decided take a look into the fast-growing esport. Also known as MOBAs, games like League of Legends and Dota 2 are becoming a force in esports. The fourth annual Dota 2 championships back in July crowd-funded a $10.6 million prize pool, a bigger prize than the Super Bowl. Twenty million people watched the tournament, with as many as two million watching at the same time. League of Legends is still the most popular game in the genre, filling the Staples Centre in Los Angeles during its last tournament, but Dota 2 outranks it for the sheer amount of money on the table.
So it should be of no surprise that people are trying to start businesses around the two games. In Toronto you could find viewing parties at bars or in movie theatres. Shane Perron ofeSport Gaming Events hosted a viewing party of the Dota 2 championships in one of the city's oldest theatres, the Regent. Entry was $15 for a full day of sports spectating. They host events like this for a lot of different games, including League, Dota and once upon a time Starcraft 2. According to Shane, viewing parties are a great alternative to building their own tournaments since they're expensive and take a lot of preparation.
The International, Dota 2's world championships, viewing party held at the Regent. Courtesy eSports Gaming Events
There's just two big problems. Many video game players don't like paying to watch an event they could watch on their laptops, and on top of that, MOBAs are complicated. They're daunting to approach, and the rules are arcane. It's hard to describe a given match of Dota to someone who's never played it. Our best attempt is a single character strategy game played with a team, like a chess team in a forest. That doesn't get into the grit of how the dozens of characters work, however, and their unique roles in these games.
Shane says that hosting events like this can be sustainable, though it will take time. Hear him describe the viewing party they hosted at the Regent, why he's spent more than a 100 hours in Dota 2 and the challenges facing eSports Gaming Events starting 36:00.
Meanwhile, a game's sounds can hang around long after we finish playing, according to a new study from Nottingham Trent University.
Courtesy Cebula Means Onion
Many players have made the mistake of playing games for too long. Say by accident you stayed up all night to beat a boss in Dark Souls, and wound up seeing the words "You Died" and hearing that evaporation sound over and over again. That's never happened to Daniel or Arman, considering they're absolute masters of that game, but for hypothetical sakes, let's all imagine. You turn off the game, head to bed, and right as you close your eyes, you hear the sound of your soul leaving your body.
This strange phenomenon of lingering game sounds has been studied by the International Gaming Unit at Nottingham Trent University. Everything from the bloop of a portal opening to the ding when you collect a coins can hang around after gameplay, usually after a considerably long playtime. Sometimes it's music. Sometimes it's bullets. It's hard to say what triggers these sounds but they can seem like they're coming from outside of the body, reasonably freaking some people out.
Even more bizarre is that it's not just audio. Visuals can stick around as well, not to mention behaviours based on game logic. It's all part of a group of effects known as game transfer phenomena or GTP. Angelica Ortiz de Gortari is a psychologist and doctoral researcher studying GTP, who explains the sheer variety of lingering noises, images and behaviours.
You can hear her describe her own experience with GTP, why the effects are mostly harmless, and why regardless it's important to study starting 47:00.
We used a ton of music this week from the Free Music Archive, so to everyone on this list, thanks for providing your music in creative commons. In our Nintendo segment, we used "Blanks," "Moondots and Polkabeams," and "Hundy Mil Tight" by Podington Bear. "Night Owl" by Broke for Free is our opening theme. "Hallon" by Christian Bjoerklund, "eeeoooww" by junior85, "Nana Veloz" by Crisopa, and "Sun Bum" by Monster Rally all play during our interviews. We used sound from various Nintendo games, the International 4 novice stream, the CBC, Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 5.
Special thanks to Mark Asfar for filling in for the news on short notice. Daniel Rosen will be back next episode with a vengeance. This episode was written and edited by Arman Aghbali.
If you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave us a comment or subscribe!
Built to Play is amping up the disappointment, as we take on failure. That's a failure to play and a failure to learn, starting with why play video games in the first place.
From Takeshi's Challenge.
We suck at video games, as a species. Yes, some of us are amazing at Street Fighter, and that Chinese team won five million dollars in Dota 2, but on average most of us lose more than we succeed. In Call of Duty, you likely failed more levels than you won. In Super Meat Boy, people come close to throwing their controllers across the room in frustration. Rage-quitting is a word most players recognize and have experienced. So why do we play?
Download here. Subscribe on iTunes.Subscribe on Stitcher. Jesper Juul, author of the Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, says that it comes down enjoying the game's basis, while being able to dismiss it. It's just a game after all. But that's not entirely true either. If people really didn't care about video games, he explains, they wouldn't groan when they lose, or throw the controller across the room after a bad run in Dark Souls. To some extent we want to know that we might lose in a game, if only to prove that we're better than it. It's a matter of how much failure we're willing to take.
Jesper tells us all about being a sore loser in Starcraft, why the New York Post thinks soccer is a dumb sport, and how games rarely ask us to fail. Starts at 26:30.
Courtesy Actual Sunlight
We may lose a lot in video games, but video games rarely give us a good reason to fail. Screwing up in a video game feels like a glitch in the process. Mario saves the princess, even if you jumped into that Goomba, or fell off the cliff. BJ Blazkowicz blows up Hitler in Wolfenstein, regardless if a Nazi shoots you five minutes into the game. The player messed up. The character saves the day. Sometimes, there are exceptions. In Shadow of the Colossus, the hero's victory turns out to be for nought, and he turns out to be the true monster. But pyrrhic victories are few and far between, and outright failures are awkward to create. When the player beats the bad guy, only to discover the world's still ending, it rarely feels right.
But that's not to say people haven't tried. _Actual Sunlight_is about Evan Winters, a 30-ish year old man working in communications. Evan has depression, and continually makes terrible choices. He can't help himself a lot of the time, and ends up stuck in a rut. In Actual Sunlight, you're forced to encounter his decisions, and then succumb to his inability to correct his own mistakes. Evan is in many ways, a failure. Actual Sunlight's designer, Will O'Neill, joins us to talk about how games treat characters who are stuck in their ways, and aren't world-saving heroes.
Will tells us about Actual Sunlight's expression of realism, his own experience with loss and depression, and why there's still hope underneath it all. Check in 40:20.
Actual Sunlight is available on Steam and on its website.
Cardinal Rule restaurant in Parkdale, Toronto back in 2012.
But the future isn't so dim, so long as you're not producer Arman Aghbali at Trivia Night. Our producer is terrible at trivia. He confuses Dirty Dancing with Footloose. He thought the West Wing was about a hospital. He knows David Bowie as the cool science guy from The Prestige. So he went to meet up with some experts, and watched them nearly lose the whole game. But some golden VHS tapes are just worth fighting for. Russel Harder hosts a feisty game of trivia at Toronto's Cardinal Rule every Wednesday night, and the Cunning Stunts were on a winning streak when Arman dropped in.
This short doc was made back in February for a Ryerson University documentary course. It's still fun and about games, so we thought we'd share it with you. Join in the trivia starting 52:00.
his week we used music from the Free Music Archive, including "Spring Solstice" by Podington Bear, "Pause for a Side Change," by L'homme Manete, "Everything is Broken or Not" by Bleak House, "The Beach, The Beach" by Holy Ghost, "Detective" by Krowne, and "The Wrong Way" by Jahzzar. Our opening theme was "Halluzination" by Tozo. Games used: Super Meat Boy, Red Dead Redemption, Actual Sunlight, and Russel Harder's Authentic Trivia. Header Image fromBago Games, the "Atari: Game Over" Documentary Trailer. The show was written by Daniel Rosen and produced and edited by Arman Aghbali. Special thanks to Jesper Juul, Will O'Neill, Russell Harder and the Cunning Stunts.
If you have any comments, criticism or impressions, let us know. We'd love to hear your opinions on the show, plus any reviews on iTunes or Stitcher or written in the sky by a biplane help more people find the show.
Our last episode had no news because this episode has all of the news. Join us as we talk about the fates, fortunes and foibles of the everyone from the province of Quebec to Nintendo's shareholders. First up,Majesco did a reverse stock split, raising their stock price back to $2.56 from between 0.50-0.60 during the last few months. Masjeco is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange which requires a minimum of a $1 value per share, and so the company needed a maneuver that would raise the price before they became a penny stock.
Download Here.Subscribe on iTunes.Subscribe on Stitcher. By using a reverse stock split, Majesco essentially reduced the total number of shares available, raising the market price, but lowering the number of potential investors. Despite all the good the company has been doing with the Midnight City publishing arm, it's been losing money for quite a while. So we explain why it might be smarter to leave the stock market entirely.*
Then in Finland, we assume that Hearthstone is a full-contact competitive sport. Otherwise the recent ruling from the Finnish Assembly, which filters players into the International eSports Federation world championships, that women and men had to compete in separate tournaments would be complete nonsense and sexist. While most know Hearthstone as the Blizzard trading card game where you buy fake cards, slide them on a touchscreen or with a mouse, and take your time to contemplate your next Magic the Gathering cosplay, in Finland it must something entirely different. We're guessing it's like lacrosse but with more fire.
Meanwhile, the province of Quebec has lowered the amount of tax credits available to video game companies.In the June 4 budget, the Liberal government decided to cut the tax credits by 20 per cent. Major studios like WB and Ubisoft are safe until 2019 because of agreements made with prior governments. We talk about how that might impact future jobs and why moving to Toronto so we can be best friends is your best move.
At the same time, Nintendo's having a crisis of its own, as its shareholders seem to fundamentally misunderstand the company's brand and structure. Thanks to an underperforming Wii U and three years without profit, Nintendo's stock has been shrinking. Which has unsurprisingly made a few shareholders angry, asking questions like: Can the 3DS be twice as big and focus on gambling? Can I have some free stuff? Why are we even talking about video games?
Lastly we revisit the world of eSports. We speculate on how to watch the Dota 2 world championships, The International. On a computer is the main consensus. We also do some speculation about the outcome of Evo.
What none of could have predicted is the series of come from behind victories that actually ensued. Louffy won the Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament, well ahead of our best bet, Diago. Justin Wong didn't win the Killer Instinct tournament like we expected, but instead beat Chris G in an amazing underdog victory to defeat the long raining champ. Mango won the Super Smash Bros Melee. tournament, which seems expected for a game about random characters punching each other with motorcycles.
We also talk about our crippling addiction toHashteroids, Sony'sPS Now rental prices, a mysterious rich patron on Twitch, andMighty No. 9's new crowdfunding campaign. And more on this news only Built to Play.
Our opening this week was the usual one: "Big Change" by Slave to the Squarewave from the Ontario Independent Music Archive. The Header image on this page is from Shoryuken.com.Check out their coverage of Evo everyone. Built to Play was written by Daniel Rosen and edited by Arman Aghbali. If you enjoyed this two-parter, let us know! We're experimenting with the format so it's always good to get criticism.
_*Built to Play is not an authorised stockbroker. Do not take any financial advice given to you by fans of Ryse, or other games that replace "i" with "y." _
Built to Play sacrifices the news for another day! We're talking to our guests about Phoenix Wright, ZZT, and the future of E3. If you played something Japanese in the 2000s, chances are Alexander O. Smith translated it. Alex has translated everything from the Final Fantasy series, the novel All You Need is Kill, and the Dr. Slump manga. But here at Built to Play, there's really only one game in his long portfolio that matters: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The game is a visual novel from Capcom and stars Phoenix Wright, a down on his luck lawyer living in Los Angeles, who has to solve all of his cases in only three days. It's a charming and often funny game that relies on its stellar translation, which is far from literal.
Download Here. Subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe on Stitcher Radio. While the translation stays true to the tone and the overall plot, the dialogue can be completely different. And it kind of has to be. The names are Japanese puns and the dialogue is filled with references to Japanese society. The punchlines often don't make a lick of sense in English. So Alex had a lot of room to write his own jokes, and play with the characters.
Though by changing so much, you often run into issues down the line. Gyakuten Saiban, the japanese name of the series, is set in Tokyo, which causes the brunt of the inconsistencies. A hamburger shop mentioned in the early games has to reappear as a noodle stand later on. That's a small issue, but consider that the designers recently decided that the newest game would star Phoenix's direct ancestor, a samurai living in late 19th century Japan.
You can hear more from Alexander O. Smith's translation process, the definition of a perfect localization and how Phoenix Wright was almost Roger Wright, less than a minute into the episode.
Back in good old North America, we talked to the author of the new book in the Boss Fight Series, ZZT. Anna Anthropy tells us about the history of an internet community and its diversity. 1991's ZZT is a weird game to talk about. It's an adventure game built from ANSI characters, all numbers, letters and symbols. It had a limited color palette, and even more limited story. But that's not that part of ZZT people remember the most.
ZZT attracted a large community because it came with a level editor and a simple programming language that let you make your own games out of the ZZT engine. These games would then be shared online on message boards and forums, and covered a wide variety of genres and topics. People continue to make ZZT games to this day, and the most recent copy of ZZT was ordered from its creator, Tim Sweeney, back in 2013.
Anna Anthropy writes about that community and how it inspired her own growth as a designer and a writer. She met people who had the same concerns as her, and just like her, were trans. She says it's like a predecessor to the feminist-minded Twine community, which encourages everyone of every creed to make games.
But ZZT attracted all sorts of people, from teenagers trying to discover their own identity to trolls who attacked other creators. So talking about people who make ZZT game can get a little complicated.
Anna Anthropy tells us all about the history of ZZT, why it matters, and reasons why you should check out ZZT games today starting at 17:00.
By the way, Anna gave us a couple recommendations that didn't make it into the episode, but here's a few: Ned the Knight, Kudzu, and Eli's House. For more, she has a whole list of great ZZT games to play onher website. You can pick up her book at Boss Fight Series page.
Last month, no one could stop talking about E3, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Many have questioned whether E3 is lessening in importance, or if its actually bad for the industry as a whole. We've had 20 Electronic Entertainment Expos since its start, and whether they've been in Las Vegas, Santa Monica or Los Angeles, it's almost always been one of the most anticipated game-related events of the year.
But its relevance seems to be changing as the years go by. Most publishers had nothing concrete to announce at E3. Electronic Arts barely had games to show beyond the concept level. The two big press conferences, Sony's and Microsoft's, were milquetoast, especially as they announced the big new games of two years from now. Meanwhile Nintendo didn't have a press conference. They broadcasted Robot Chicken jokes and two new franchises over the internet.
So to check its value, we checked in with Daniel Kaszor, the editor of the Post Arcade at one of Canada's largest newspapers, the National Post. According to him, E3 probably won't be going anywhere, but with fewer big budget games coming out each year, the demographics are shifting. E3 isn't even the biggest show of its kind anymore. That would be Gamescom in Germany, where the public days attract hundreds of thousands. The E3 of five years from now might look very different from how we know it today.
Daniel tells us about the Post Arcade's coverage of E3, and whether E3 is even all that beneficial to big publications starting 32:40. You can find the Post Arcade here.
We also ran a short rerun of our interview with Nadine Lessio and Kara Stone from the Vector Game Arts Festival back in March. The game they talked about, Sext Adventure, is now out and available to everyone who wants to try it. What did we think about it:
"As part of the Feb Fatale game jam, a 48-hour race to finish a game, they created a text adventure based on sexy phone texts. You contact an anonymous android who attempts to satisfy humans sexually, but instead lapses into existential depression. Our sex-positive reporter, Daniel Rosen, dug deep into the jam game, and discussed with Stone and Lessio society's intimate relationship with technology, the eventual disharmony routed in cyborg theory and dildos."
The tomfoolery starts around 44:40.
This week's music comes from the Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney soundtrack and the Free Music Archive. From the former, we used the song, "Pressing Pursuit - Cornered Witness." From the Free Music Archive, we used "As Colorful as Ever" by Broke for Free, "Blue" by Podington Bear, "Hallon" by Christian Bjoerklund.
Special thanks to Josh Rosenberg who played Phoenix Wright, and Alexander O Smith who said Objection that one time. Capcom please don't sue us.
As always, this weeks episode was produced and edited by Arman Aghbali and written by Daniel Rosen.
Built to Play visits E3 from our living room. We talk about Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, EA and Ubisoft. Plus we discuss our favourite games, like No Man's Sky, Valiant Hearts, Bloodborne, and The Division stage play.
We venture into the history of the beloved Super Nintendo role playing game, EarthBound and the whole Mother series in North America. As part of our localization month, we're going to recount the history of EarthBound' release in North America. That means we're going to look at everything from EarthBound Zero to the fan translation of Mother 3. But first, what's an EarthBound?
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You play as a kid from the suburbs, Ness. Ness lives in Eagleland, and recently an alien crash landed near his house. At the crash site, a bee from the future tells Ness that ten years from now the world sucks, but Ness can change that. He can travel across Eagleland, to the big cities and defeat the evil alien Gygas. The world was definitely not our own, but the monsters were street punks, and to save you had to call your dad. Originally released in 1995, game designer Shigesato Itoi wrote the game to be a bit of an oddity. There were no empires to defeat, like in Final Fantasy. And there was no great wizard to find, like in Dragon Quest. You were just a kid with a bat who wanted to make a few friends and occasionally got homesick.
So you'd think the game would be this great success, like those games were. Well, not really. For that we talked to Jeff Benson. Jeff is working on a documentary about EarthBound called EarthBound USA.Jeff grew up with the game. He played it alongside his father and his brother, and even made an embarrassing home movieabout it.
But Jeff's family was only one of a few who picked that game up. According to Jeff, both the marketing and the price seemed to push people away. For instance, the tagline was "This game STINKS," and all the advertising was based around that one line.
Nintendo of America probably didn't think this one through. Throw 'em a bone. It was the 90s.
EarthBound, at $60, was also a little expensive for the time. Nintendo included the strategy guide in the box, which made the box bigger, and $10 more than the average SNES game. It didn't help that they used scratch and sniff cards that reeked of gym socks to draw kids to stores.
That didn't stop the people who did pick it up from forming a community around it at Starmen.net. Jeff eventually became part of that community, and over time grew so fascinated he's working on a full length documentary all about it. He talks about the game, the marketing campaign, and why he made a terrible home movie about it starting 28:00.
Before EarthBound there was one other game, Mother, also known as EarthBound Zero, that sat dormant for years.
A prototype cartridge of the original Earth Bound. Courtesy EarthBound Central
EarthBound wasn't the first time Nintendo tried to bring over Shigesato Itoi's work from Japan. They'd tried before with Mother, the first game in the series. Mother was Itoi's first major RPG and was a minor sensation in Japan. Partially it's because Itoi wrote really catchy advertising copy. In the 80s, Japanese people quoted his ads like they would a pop song. It was also the first role playing game to not focus on swords and sorcery for the Famicom game console. But the game never made it over to North America, despite Nintendo having essentially finished localizing it. It would have been released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, but with the SNES less than a year away, they didn't have time to market it. So it sat in someone's drawer for four years.
Steve Demeter, better known as Demiforce, is a fan translator who got his hands on a copy of a late prototype of Mother, then called Earth Bound (note the space in the middle). A few prototypes had escaped from Nintendo, and ended up in his lap. That version only needed a some light editing, so in 1998 he copied the game off the cartridge and fixed it up. Then it was just a matter of uploading it to the internet for people to see as EarthBound Zero. To hear more about how he found one of four known copies of Earth Bound, and why he dumped it online, tune in around 35:00.
Games don't usually pop out of aether, fully translated, especially text heavy games like RPGs. Someone has to spend hours translating and editing together the dialogue. For plain old EarthBound, Marcus Lindblom had that job. In 1995, Marcus was a software analyst in Nintendo's game group. Software analyst is a fancy name that meant he worked on the localization team for a couple games. These games didn't require much text outside of the menus. Games like Wario's Woods don't really provide much opportunity for creativity. So when they suggested he work on the localization of Mother 2, Marcus leaped at the chance. Here was a 10 hour long game that needed new jokes and new dialogue.
Marcus teamed up with an ex-Ape employee, Masayuki Miura. Miura translated the game line by line, then handed it over to Marcus who'd make each line more palatable to an English speaking audience. Together they created a memorable translation that referenced the Beatles and included lines like "Aiiiiiie, I screamed 'cause I didn't know what to do."
Courtesy KurkoBoltsi on DeviantArt
But Marcus picked an awkward time to get into localization. There were no tools to make the translation process simpler. Miura would read out each line and Marcus would offer an edited version. Then Miura would copy that into the code. For a while, they didn't have a functional version of the game to see the context either.
As for the length offering creativity, turns out 10 hour games take a long time to translate. By the time Marcus had the job, 10 per cent of the work was already done. Nintendo wanted the project done before June, however, and with most of the dialogue unfinished and items unnamed, he needed to work about 14 hours a day. Marcus took one day off in February for the birth of his daughter, and then worked for the next few weeks non-stop.
When they wrapped it all up, Miura printed out the script for Marcus to read over. Page laid on top of page, it was about six inches high.
And then in June, the game flopped. There was that misguided ad campaign, and EarthBound didn't review well. It was the 90s, and EarthBound's cheery tone didn't sit well with a lot of critics. In a few months the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn would be in stores. Who wanted to play an rpg on their SNES with new consoles on the way? Marcus didn't really talk about EarthBound for the next 10 years. To hear what happened next, tune in around 38:45.
Years passed before anyone heard about another EarthBound game coming to North America, but once a new game existed, people were ready to do anything to see more.
For a long time, that seemed like it would be the end of the Mother series. It didn't sell well. Nintendo cancelled Earthbound 64, the sequel for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. Fans had gathered on Starmen.net but there wasn't much to do. They petitioned Nintendo to continue on with the N64 game but the disk drive was another Nintendo peripheral that just didn't sell.
Then in 2006, Mother 3 landed on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's handheld gaming platform. Fans cheered for it to be released across the pacific, but it was too late. Like EarthBound Zero (and EarthBound to a lesser extent) it came out at the end of the platform's life. The new system, the Nintendo DS, had been out for two years already. Who was going to buy a GBA game in 2006?
Jeff Erbrecht would. Jeff, known online as JeffMan, found someone in a forum willing to share a copy of Mother 3. It was the day before that game was supposed to come out in Japan, but the ROM was real. Jeff immediately set out to translate the game and so that people could play it. The main problem was that he was in tenth grade in an Ontario high school, and didn't know much Japanese. So he teamed up with a few friends online who knew a little more, and became their main programmer.
Clyde Mandelin had the same idea, except he was a professional translator during his day job. He translated anime for Funimation, like Gunslinger Guns. Clyde loved EarthBound and helped to build the community around it on Starmen.net, where he was known as Tomato. He built his own group, bringing together a who's who of fan translators, like Steve Demeter. Jeff's group eventually fell apart due to some laziness and bad blood, so he joinedClyde's.
He again settled in as the programmer, and every night, after he finished his homework, he'd work on bringing to life the last game in the Mother series. It took them three years to finish it, but along the way the Mother 3 translation brought in tons of new fans and a new respect for the series. Or you can hear them tell it starting 50:50.
Courtesy the CAPS LORD.
This week's music came from the OC Remix, the Free Music Archive, and the Earthbound OST. From OC Remix we used: "Twoson Hits the Road" by djpretzel, "The Great Blizzard of '9X" by halc and "Practicing Retrocognition" by sci. From the Free Music Archive we used: Luca La Morgia's "Money Talks," Charles Atlas' "Photosphere," and Candlegravity's "Always." From the EarthBound OST we used: "Sunrise & Onett Theme" and "Buzz Buzz Prophecy." Our opening theme was special! We used "Lonely Summer" by Super Flower from the Free Music Archive. As always, this episode was written by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen, and edited by Arman.
You can find everything mentioned above at Starmen.net, and another incredibly valuable resource, EarthBound Central.
Our header image was from KurkoBoltsi on DeviantArt. His fan art about the Mother series is incredible. Everyone check it out. If you have any questions about the show, want to comment or critique us, comment below or send us an email to mail@builttoplay.ca. If you've heard your music used inappropriately on our show, be sure to send us an email.
We visited Toryuken last week to chat with Justin Wong about the role of small fighting game tournaments. We finish off the Bit Bazaar with N++ and famed narcissist Jon Remedios. And our localization month continues with Steve Demeter reminding us of Radical Dreamers.
As we enter a new theme month, we're talking about translation. That's translating languages and translating mediums. Colin Williamson joined us from Seattle to discuss the process of localization. Colin used to work for Square Enix as a localization expert back in the mid-2000s, and helped retranslate some of the oldest Final Fantasy games, even going back and correcting the work of industry legend, Ted Woolsey.
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Woolsey's work was flawed, though not for a lack of style. He did the translations largely on his own, couldn't communicate often with the design team, and had crazy deadlines to finish them. Colin meanwhile worked in a team, not too far from where the actual designers worked, and he started the translations while the game was still under development. Those circumstances also helped him codify all the language currently used in Final Fantasy games, like "Phoenix Down" over "Phoenix Feather." A lot has changed since Woolsey worked for Square, and Colin tells us all about it, starting 21:30.
Want to learn more about the history of Final Fantasy? Check out our 1, 2, 3 part history specials.
Colin also gave us a couple games that are particularly great examples of localizations. For our own list, take a look at our primer.
On May 8 and 10 we visited the Bento Miso for Comics vs Games and the Bit Bazaar to talk 3D, VR, books and board games. Comics vs Games is a yearly event in Toronto where comic artists team up with game designers to create a video game. This year, the theme was 3D, leading to the virtual reality games Altar and Libraria. Altar, created by designer Daniele Hopkins and artist Gillian Blekkenhorst, allows you to briefly walk around the ruins of an alien civilization. While designer Kyle Dwyer and artist Adam Hines teamed up for the pop-up book adventure game, Libraria.
(All photos from Attract Mode's 3D gallery. Clay models were all done by Ventla are long forgotten Nintendo characters that we can't name. The two prints are meant to be 3D with red/blue glasses. If you have 'em, try 'em.)
Each round of Comics vs Games is accompanied by a gallery curated by the fellows at Attract Mode, a video game art collective. This year they held a 3D gallery containing a selection of three dimensional 2D art, presented with old school red and blue glasses. We talked to Matt Hawkins, a long time member of Attract Mode about why they collect video game fanart, and some of beautiful renditions of Dark Souls and Year Walk, amongst numerous other games. You can hear from him, Gillian and Kyle starting 35:00.
Then at the Bit Bazaar we checked in with Conor McCreery and Elizabeth Simins on the other ways one can turn a book into a game, or vice versa.
Welcome to the Bit Bazaar at the Bento Miso on May 10. Mare Shepard shows off N++ right next to the entrance.
Emily Carroll and Damian Sommer talk about their development process on the Yawhg, one of the first Comics vs Games projects.
Vagabond Dog's Jake Reardon shows off Always Sometimes Monsters at his booth at the Bit Bazaar
Some wares, images, zines, and postcards for sale at the Bit Bazaar.
A volunteer from Snakes and Lattes shows off a version of the Machine of Death card game, based on Ryan North's anthology book of the same name.
There's not just games for sale at the Bit Bazaar. You can get rare chocolates, cider, and sometimes pies on the top floor of the Bento Miso.
Conor McCreery was at the Bit Bazaar, a sort-of independent video game flee market, to show off the new prototype of the upcoming Kill Shakespeare board game. Conor is one of the creators of Kill Shakespeare, a comic where all of Shakespeare's works exist in the same universe. Imagine the Marvel comic book universe, but for Hamlet and Othello. With those sorts of mashups already on the table, their publisher,IDW, invited them to turn the three-volume comic into a board game. Conor tells us about how the game works, how they got involved, and why a Kickstarter does more than raise thousands of dollars. You can hear all about it, starting 51:30.
The prototype version of the Kill Shakespeare board game at the Bit Bazaar.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Simins talked about the power of video game zines at one of the panels at the Bit Bazaar. Elizabeth, an artist who occasionally does a comic for Kotaku with journalist Cara Ellison, told us about zine's appeal and their utility. For those who don't know, a zine is like a small handcrafted magazine made by only a few people. Elizabeth loves their physicality and so do the people who buy them from her, although she admits she probably won't get rich off a zine. Still, they enable her to discuss things like misogyny in games, like in "Ain't No Such Thing as Misogyny." If you'd like to hear more about video games zines, and a few of Simins projects, take a listen at 51:30.
Elizabeth Simins's video game zine that collects her artwork and comics regarding misogyny in games. Courtesy Elizabeth Simins.
We used music from the Free Music Archive and Soundcloud. From the Free Music Archive, "japanese prog" by Rushus, "Sun Bum" by Monster Rally and "Touching" by Souvenir Driver. From Soundcloud, we found "Trance Transistor Radio" by Arai Akino on rachelroh's profile. We changed up our theme this week to "Daniel Kruis" by RoccoW. Built to Play was made by producer Arman Aghbali and feature editor Daniel Rosen. If you liked what you heard be sure to leave us a comment or a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps more people find the show. This music was all taken under a creative commons license. If you feel your music was used inappropriately, be sure to send us an email.
We explore accessible arcades with AbleGamers founder Mark Barlet and U of T assistant professor Sara Grimes, examine user research with Anatole Chen from Xbox's natural user interface platform team. And we look at beautiful environment design with Kate Craig, the brick builder of Gone Home. Plus, in the news, Naughty Dog is leaking professionals, Microsoft boosts the Xbox One with TV shows, and a community manager decides to defend a racist.
Built to Play went to PAX East and came back with short interviews with far out games. We talked to Game Oven about their dancing game Bounden and Jordi de Paco about his point and click thriller Gods Will Be Watching. We took a glance into the fourth dimension with Marc ten Bosch's Miegakure and popped into the diversity lounge to check in on Toronto Gaymer's Samson Romero. Plus spam emails and hat-stacking in Max Gentlemen.
We're discussing lost worlds with Robin Arnott of Soundself, Frank Cifaldi of Lost Levels and lost neighbourhoods with Benjamin Rivers of Snow and Ryan Couldrey, director of the upcoming Snow film. Plus in the news, we talk Amazon Fire TV, the five year old who broke in Microsoft, and the nightmarish GAME_JAM
This week on Built to Play, we talk to Kan Gao about music and memories in To the Moon. Heidi MacDonald tells us which video game character would have the most success on OKCupid. George Buckenham of the Wild Rumpus discusses how to make a sweet game party. Plus, Facebook buys Oculus, 3D Realms wants to make a new Duke Nukem and Iron Galaxy develops a Killer Instinct, season two.
We explore open worlds, looking for games with great environments and were our favourites to explore.
We finally wrap up Vector 2014 on this week's episode! Angela Washko talks about teaching feminism in World of Warcraft. Alex Myers discusses the relationship between games and the military. Plus Skot Deeming, Diana Poulson and Martin Zeilinger reflect on the festival. In the news Disney buys Maker, WB invests in Machinima, ShiftyLook ends, and King thinks they're worth more than Instagram.
We went to the Vector Game Arts Festival and brought back interviews with Rachel Weil on 8-bit politics, Kara Stone on Sexting, and Sagan Yee and Nadine Lessio talk about using a knife to cheat on your boyfriend. Plus in the news the week, Steam sales for all, Nintendo drops Wifi support, and Sony Santa Monica has a big round of layoffs.
Twitch Plays Pokemon madness on this week's Built to Play. Followed by Conrad Kreyling talking about visual novels and the problems selling adult content.
This week, Matt Hammill joins us to talk about Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Kara Stone puts her hand to her heart. Vagabond Dog talks Always Sometimes Monsters, lost loves and relationships. Plus Supreme Commander denies the Holocaust according to its Steam tags, Nintendo dives into free to play and Flappy Bird disappears.
In this episode, Jason Oda joins us to talk about Continue?9876543210 and Peruvian shamans. Then Gerry Pugliese showcases his 500+ paged alternate ending to Mass Effect 3. Plus, in the news: The Resident Evil composer is a sham. Nintendo is contemplating a unified OS. Disney and Square Enix are doing shockingly well. And the new Metal Gear Solid game is potentially a $40 demo.
This week we're looking at the relationship between board games and video games with Larian Studio designer Farhang Namdar, and Colby Dauch, the chief designer and president at Plaid Hat Games. In the news, we're talking about Angry Birds leaking personal information to the NSA, Nintendo's earning response, and the co-founder of IndieStatik sexually harassed a developer.
We're taking a break from video games as we talk card games, documentaries and tabletop RPGs. We have Damian Sommer on Without Question and David Dufrense on Fort McMoney. Plus, as always, we kick off with the news this week and the shocking revelation that all use of the word Candy is now illegal. Except that one.
In the final part of this series, we go through the Playstation 2 and 3 Final Fantasy games, touching on the MMOs and why the future of the series looks as murky as ever, despite its origins
In part 2 of this series on the history of the Final Fantasy RPG games, we talk about the development of all the main Playstation titles, some of the spin offs and our favourite Final Fantasy, the motion picture.
Beginning with the first, and going to the worst, Daniel and Arman recount the turbulent history of the final fantasy series. This is part 1.
Daniel and Arman talked to designer Christine Love about the ISS, Steve Engels about the University of Toronto's game design program, Lennart Nacke on psychology and design, David Craddock on the origins of Diablo and finally scifi author Peter Watts on narrative in games.
This week we talked to Chad Sapieha about the PS4 and Xbox One launch, and we went to the Wordplay festival to talk to Jim Munroe, co-founder of the Hand Eye Society. The designers of Kentucky Route Zero, Tamas Kemenczy and Jake Elliot, talked to us about Kentucky and magical realism. Plus, Atlus announced Persona 5,. Sony had a porn crisis on the PS4. And Double Fine got the rights to Stacking and Costume Quest back from Nordic Games.
This week we talk about the PS4, Xbox One, our bafflement at Namco High, and League of Legends record numbers. For our interviews, we talk about choices. The designer of the Stanley Parable talks about how to market the unmarkerable. Then two locals from Capybara Games, and one from Polytron talk about the best place to go drinking. And Ryan North explains how to build a choose your own adventure game.