The Name in the Game

Have you ever noticed how frequently characters in video games have completely absurd names? Of course you have, unless you yourself have a name like Wednesday or Apple. At some point early on, game makers must have gotten together and decided to secretly vow to make up as many names as possible. If you think about it, it's a wise PR move. They get first dibs on iconicizing names before the competing media. For every Han Solo in the movies, there are a dozen Clouds, Jaks, Ashes, Links, and Master Chiefs (which, by the way, is less of a name than it is a hyperbolic title). In an effort to document game name convention history and aid future game-makers, I give you my basic tenets for naming a character in your video game...

The Letters 'V', 'Z' and 'X' Are Sorely Under-Utilized
It's a shame, really, and you should seek to remedy this. If you're having trouble, try just replacing an 'S' with a 'Z', a 'CKS' with a 'Z', or, if you're feeling really adventurous, replace an opening 'Z' with an 'X'!
Ex: Daxter, Zelda, Vaan, Jenova

Don't Be Afraid of the Dictionary
The book is full of names for things! Gravitate towards using objects that either sound cool (Edge, Jazz, Rock) or are cool (Steel, Razor, Warp).
Ex: Cloud Strife, Lightning, Toad

Many Cultures Have a Rich History of Mythology. Make it Your Own!
Don't just restrict yourself to names of gods. There are demigods, fairies, heroes, and more! Hey, you could even just use old Latin words that mean something pretty cool.
Ex: Cait Sith, Chrono, Sephiroth

All Your Favorite Words Overused? Combine Them for a Fresh Approach
This makes it look like you put a little more effort into your names. Say you considered naming your heroine Love, but then decided it was too blatant. How about Lovela or Lovehug?
Ex: Squall Leonhart, Rinoa Heartilly

When All Else Fails, Add Some Originality by Mixing up Your Spelling
Those same old names are boring. Spruce them up with nontraditional spellings!
Marcus Fenix, Lara Croft, Jak

Disclaimer: Though I poke fun, I am quite a fan of unusual names. I don't want Larry the hero and Sue the love interest.

Disclaimer: Sorry, Larry's and Sue's. I'm sure you're all nice people.

Words are for the Weak

It is a common practice in narrative games to make the protagonist (the player's avatar) customizable in appearance, name, and traits. Doing so lets the player feel connected to the world and express him or herself. Ironically, though, in order to propagate this feeling of connection to one's character, the developer must keep the protagonist entirely silent throughout the game. After all, nothing says "you have no control" to the player than his avatar spouting whatever it pleases without his consent. A totally silent hero would be comical in film, TV, or real life... or would it? Think of all the benefits of absolute silence! ...can't think of any? Fair enough. Presented for your approval (or disregard), are some examples of the heroics of silence.
Our hero packs up his trusty pack and leaves home and family behind for his daily money fetch quest to pay the bills. He flings the front door open with a mighty shove and ventures forth, when suddenly, a blazing homeless beast stumbles into his path...
Beast: "*hic* Watch where you're goin, buddy!" *hic* "What are you, styupid?"
Hero: "..."
Beast: "Damn right! I oughtta knock you out. Fool." [walks away]
RANDOM BATTLE AVERTED!

Our hero continues onward into the cold tundra of the sidewalk. He feels his knees begin to buckle from exhaustion, but realizes this is just the vibration of his cellular communication item. He answers...
Hero's Beloved: "Gabe, you didn't take out the trash, did you?"
Hero: "..."
Hero's Beloved: "You know, I wish you would be more on top of this."
Hero: "..."
Hero's Beloved: "Just do better, okay?
Hero: "..."
Hero's Beloved: "Love you. Bye!" [hangs up]
MARITAL ISSUE DISSOLVED!

Our hero safely stows the device and enters the Great Hall of his Job. His communication item vibrates yet again! What manner of magic could this be...
Woman: "Good morning, sir! I'd like to tell you about an exclusive offer today from Quest Wireless!"
Hero: "..."
Woman: "Sir? Hello?"
Hero: "..."
[woman hangs up]
REMOVED FROM TELEMARKETER HIT-LIST!

Will our hero prevail? What WILL happen next? Please insert Disk 2...

"I Play Videogame..."

I went to an event the other night that you may have seen at a bar or party near you -- a Guitar Hero tournament -- and was SHOCKED. The growing success of the Guitar Hero franchise has created a huge fan base of people who play socially at parties or bars. As I mingled, I quickly realized that many of these people had never touched a console game before GH. They're gaming every week, but only with the same one game over and over! Ladies and gentlemen, out there, just beyond your computer screen, is an ocean of videogame players just waiting to be forced encouraged to try new games!

Guitar Hero isn't the only cultivator of these one-game ponies. You have your Dance Dance Revolution nuts, your online Snood/Tetris addicts, and even your Wii Sports enthusiasts. "Now, hold on," you might be thinking. "People play those games because they're easy. Those same people would find normal games too hard." I say to you, "nay!" Take a harder look at a Guitar Hero controller or Wiimote. Those things get pretty complicated once you advance beyond novice play. Despite the perhaps daunting appearance of the glut of buttons on, say, an Xbox 360 controller, one rarely needs every single one in order to get started with a game. Think of it, gamers! All those people who destroy you at a Guitar Hero round of Sweet Child of Mine on Expert difficulty may seem like jerks at the moment, but you may have just found yourself some new Halo buddies or Team Fortress 2, well, teammates.

I, for one, am going to try to convert some of these people. My conversations may often end up like an awkward date rejection...
"No...sorry. I can't play Mario Party with you this weekend. I'm shopping for...cereal for my...sick...aunt...Have fun though!"
...but that's no reason to get discouraged! Don't leave potential new gamers to fall back on their party movies like Old School and Zoolander once the Guitar Hero excitement fades. You know it's going to happen sooner or later. Do whatever you need to do to recruit: bring fliers to the next Guitar Hero happy hour; infiltrate the DDR club at your school; wean your spouse off of Minesweeper and onto a wide range of Xbox Live Arcade games; even dare to suggest that someone take the Wii Sports disk out of the Wii and put in a shiny, new game.

Now is a great time to convert the videogame (singular) players. So get out there! Show them that there's more to our hobby than pretending to be a rock star or athlete. You may just discover that your wife loves Shadow of the Colossus...

Lego Everything

Lego Star Wars. When you first hear it, it sounds ridiculous, but developer Traveller's Tales has had a good deal of success with their Lego World-meets-Star Wars series. So much so, in fact, that they are expanding the idea to new games - Lego Batman and Lego Indiana Jones. Fascinating. Who's to say, then, that similar combinations of childhood-toy-meets-classic-film might not also be successful? Let's try a few, shall we?

Nerf Guns + The Godfather = Nerf Godfather
All the violence and danger of the Godfather, without the permanent damage! Just don't aim for the face. Plus, you have hours of film to exploit.

Pillow Fort + Back to the Future = Back to the Fort
Why risk disrupting the space-time continuum when you can just pretend to travel through time? Just hop into your virtual pillow fort, and away you go! Earn upgrades to your fort to add tables, chairs, and more. A game about pretending? Can't miss.

Slip-n-Slide + Field of Dreams = Slide of Dreams
Ray always dreamed of building his own Slip-n-Slide. When a mysterious voice convinces him to risk everything for his passion, he's thrown into an adventure that leads him to famous retired Slip-n-Slider Speedo-less Joe Jackson.

Not to mention other Lego Options, like:
Lego Citizen Kane
Lego Tron
Lego Animal House
Lego Rocky Balboa

Somehow, a game based on a popular license is bound to be terrible, but a game based on TWO popular licenses? Solid gold.

The Halo Booty Call

I've been playing a lot of Halo 3 lately, and, coming from someone who avoided the first two games in the series on principle, believe me when I say that it is fantastic. The how-fantastic-is-Halo issue is not what I'm here to discuss, however: Never before in my gaming "career" [insert your ridicule here] have I played a game that almost all of my friends are also playing. While my huge list of potential online teammates has me more super-psyched than this kid, it comes with a new social complexity I have discovered -- The Halo Booty Call.

Halo Booty Call (n.) "hey-low-boo-tee-call": a phone call requesting a Halo 3 session without any other social strings attached.
example:
me: Hey Dave! How's it going man?
Dave: Uh, good, thanks...
me: So....You moved into your new apartment last weekend, right?
Dave: Yep...
me: Cool...so what's up?
Dave: ...
me: This is a Halo Booty Call, isn't it?
Dave: Yea, I'll be online in 10 minutes. Wanna play?
me: Sure. See ya.

As you can see, this can be rather disruptive to social expectations at first. Normally, when you get a call from a friend, he/she wants to catch up or schedule a double-date. Any invitation to play games used to include at least a conversation over who should bring chips and who should bring soda/beer. Now it's 100% business. This is the sort of thing that could have only been born with the recent advent of online multiplayer.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not trying to spin this negatively. You and I both know that sometimes you just want to get the game going and dispense with the pleasantries. Good friends are still good friends, and there will ALWAYS be another time for chips and soda/beer. Just be ready for it when it comes, accept the Halo Booty Call, and don't try to make it more than it is.

What the Hell, Man?!

Random battles. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, up until recently, they were the bane of an RPG gamer's existence. The premise: it was too complicated and technically demanding for designers to incorporate enemies directly into every area of game, so they were forced to make battles with all non-plot relevant enemies random. The result: frustration. This concept is being phased out in today's games, but let's take a moment to appreciate just how inconvenient this was.

Regardless of what you were trying to accomplish in a game, random battles were a nuisance:

Heading to an Important Destination
Let's say you're late for work. You jog to the bus stop and wait impatiently for the bus that you will soon be blaming for your tardiness. Finally, said bus arrives and you go to get on, but an old lady stepping off the bus takes a shot at your shin with her cane, and proceeds to beat you. Now you're late AND you have to defeat Crazy Marge before the bus leaves.

Great, so you managed to catch the bus in time. Halfway to your destination, the bus reaches a red light. Apparently agitated by this, the driver gets up and, blaming you, tackles you. Now you must find a way to crush Bus Driver Larry and drive the bus to work yourself.

...and so on. See how this could be frustrating? Of course, I'm assuming you win your battles. If not, you get knocked unconscious and wake up back home in bed, even later for work.

Looking for a Fight
So, this time, you're trying to get in a fight. You've been charged with finding 10 hippies and collecting their sunglasses, because your boss is feeling retro. Suddenly, there are no fights to be found. You head to the hippie-dense areas and run around, shouting inflammatory things about how war and hate are A-okay, but with little luck. The best you can hope for is just to run in circles and hope this bothers someone enough to drive them out of hiding to attack you. You manage to pick fights eventually, but it takes you hours just to find 10.

Wounded
You found the hippie glasses, but you're badly injured. Apparently, Birkenstocks pack a punch. Now, you just want to get home and nurse your wounds. You're not in a hurry; you try to be as nice to everyone as possible; you don't want any trouble, but, of course, you hold the door for someone who finds this demeaning, and they slam the door on your forearm and proceed to flail at your face. You flee, but drop 3 hippie sunglasses on the way. Great.

Good riddance, random battles. You will not be missed here.

C'mon, Ad Guys

These days, games are EXPENSIVE to make. Lost Planet cost $20 million to make. That's roughly 33,000 iPhones, for those of you who don't believe in paper currency. So how can developers afford to keep up with the pace with which production values are increasing? I will tell you how - in-game advertising.

I know, I know. For a lot of gamers, advertising is a dirty word. Gamers don't want their pastime corrupted by corporate intervention around every turn. Think of it this way, though. Without advertising, we would have to pay for so many things we take for granted - radio, broadcast TV, Google...pretty much everything needed to survive, except food (which you can get from advertising if you play your cards right). I, on the other hand, embrace in-game ads, and have decided to take it upon myself to help developers tap the full ad potential of their games. Read on for the exploitation magic:

Top 5 Revolutionary Ad Placements
5) Own the Health Meter
This works for any game featuring combat. Why call a player's vitality their "health"? That's been done 1,000 times before. Be original AND profitable by calling it something branded:
Rob: Dude, you hit me with that grenade! I'm on your team!
Andy: Sorry! I thought you were on the other team
Rob: Man, you took my Gatorade Meter down. Now I'm only 59% quenched!

4) Villainize the Competitor
Sure, you could use product placement to get players to admire an advertiser's products, but why not make them hate competing products, while you're at it?
You equip the Adidas cap. -20 coolness points.
You drink the Mountain Dew. You die from a stomach ache.
"Quick! Use your Macbook to fight the virus!" "I can't! It keeps overheating!"

3) Maximize Product Placement
Think a brand is off-limits just because your game is set in Ancient Egypt? Think again. Sure, they probably didn't have Pepsi back then, but the player's don't know that...

2) Create New Lingo
Game set in the future = gold mine. Remember the Smurfs? They said "Smurf" about every 8 seconds. Why not make a brand the hip slang in your alternate universe?
"Oh Rolex! Did you see that??"
"What the Rolex just happened?"
"That guy just Rolexed over that building!"
"You must be Rolexing me.."

1) Sell the Whole Friggin Game!
Why waste time trying to sell off bits and pieces of your game? Just sell off the whole thing! Instead of paying to use a popular license, GET PAID to use a popular brand name with comparable results:
Lord of the Rings -> Lord of the Cartiers
Captain America -> Captain Geico
Halo 3 -> Helio 3
Killer 7 -> Killer 7-Eleven
The Fantastic Four -> The Fanta-stic Four

MMmmmmm... ORPG

I'm getting ready to do it, ladies and gentlemen. That's right, I've decided to shed off my inhibitions and take the big plunge; make a long-term commitment that so many have made before me. Yes, I've decided to play an MMORPG.

For those of you not familiar with the long-winded acronym, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Playing an MMORPG boils down to this: man buys game; man pays subscription fee; man gives up serious chunk of his daily life, adventuring in an alternate reality. Think of it as the popular media frenzy Second Life, but as an adventure game... and not a complete joke. The quintessential example these days is World of Warcraft, which will likely be my selection.

So what's the appeal of these MMORPGs? For many, it is the community; meeting new people from all over; forming groups; adventuring together. For me, it sort of works in the other direction. I'm attempting to justify this uber-dorky venture by restricting my teammates to people I already know in real life.

But who will I be in this alternate world of the MMORPG? I can create my own character and customize to my heart's content. Perhaps I'll be Frumpdig, the lovable yet grumpy troll, who wields half a tree as his weapon/lunch. Or maybe Valandil, the noble elf lord who cares not for jokes or dancing, but loves a good race through the forest. I could even be Glick, the town drunkard who offers hugs for free!

We shall see how this venture progresses. Wish me luck. Addiction seems to be the word of the day in MMORPGs. I'll tie a rope around my waist so I can be ripped away, should it come to that.

I just wrote "MMORPG" 8 times.

Don't Stop a'Rockin'

I used to be quite a stickler when it came to game music. I had friends who, after 40 hours of the battle theme from Final Fantasy VII, decided to mute the game and add their own soundtrack. While I sympathized with their growing hatred towards that 1-minute loop of music, I couldn't bring myself to battle the One-Winged Angel to the tune of Tom Petty's Don't Do Me Like That.For those of you like I am, however, you'd be surprised at how much a difference the 360's custom soundtrack feature makes. You can have music coming out of the same speakers as your sound effects, which make the whole audio experience feel like a brand new package. Of course, there will always be games for which this works, and some for which it doesn't. For example...

Rocks: Playing Crackdown to the sounds of Dr. Dre
Sucks: Playing GTA to the sounds of Alvin and the Chipmunks
Rocks: Playing flOw to the sounds of Pink Floyd
Sucks: Playing Final Fantasy to the sounds of The All American Rejects
Rocks: Playing Gran Turismo to the sounds of The Offspring
Sucks: Playing Smash Brothers to the sounds of Johnny Cash
Rocks: Playing Mario Party to the sounds of Wham!
Sucks: Playing Shadow of the Colossus to the sounds of Ashlee Simpson

...to name a few. So go ahead, mix and match. The possibilities are endless! You'll find some games are even more fun with a new soundtrack.

Do You Know the Way to San Andreas?

As levels in games get bigger and bigger these days -- one part improved technology, two parts "my sandbox is bigger than yours" mentality -- navigation becomes a key issue. Gone are the days of "should I go right, or should I go left?" Nowadays, the question is more often "Is that island more North-East, or North-North-East?"

Designers really have to keep ease of travel and navigation in mind these days, because, let's face it, hardcore gamers are still (though not forever) predominantly male, and men don't ask for directions. I learned of the difficulties of modern-game navigation just recently while playing Crackdown online coop. Thanks to the internet, I can now cause havoc in a huge city along with a friend, but "along with" isn't as easy as it sounds. Take this conversation, for example:

"Which way are we going?"
"That way"
"Which way? Where are you?"
"Behind you. It's that tall building over there."
"Oh...okay..."
"...the one I just shot a rocket towards"
"Oh, that one? [shoots rocket at same building]"
"Yep!"

Or this lovely situation:

"Hey! Where'd you go?"
"I teleported. I'm over at the base."
"Which base?"
"I don't know...there's a tank in front of it."
"I'm at that base!"
"I don't see you...there must be a tank in front of both bases."
"Okay, I'm on my way. Stay there."
"..."
"Are you still there?"
"I exploded and respawned. Not sure where I am now..."

Clearly, the navigation aids here leave much to be desired. Somehow, the traditional map fails to be helpful when your buddy can appear right next to you on a map but be 68 stories above, and radar is useless when you're navigating narrow, winding corridors. I'm not proposing some all-in-one solution; the right tools will vary by game. Just a friendly observation. Now, where did I put my 360 controller? Crap.