Epic EVE battle, Critical games criticism, indie developer self-publishing

• I've never played EVE Online, and I don't even really understand how it works, but I find it fascinating. Last week saw the biggest battle in the game's history. This breakdown from The Verge is headlined like a real-life dispatch from the frontier of mankind's space-faring endeavors: Largest space battle in history claims 2,900 ships, untold virtual lives
  

Update, 9:18PM ET: The battle is over. After more than five hours of combat, the CFC has defeated TEST Alliance. Over 2,900 ships were destroyed today in the largest fleet battle in Eve Online's history. TEST Alliance intended to make a definitive statement in 6VDT, but their defeat at the hands of the CFC was decisive and will likely result in TEST's withdrawal from the Fountain region.

• Also last week, Microsoft confirmed that the retail version of the Xbox One will function as developer kits and the Xbox Live Arcade will allow independent developers to self-publish games. From the Game Informer article:
  

In a conversation with Whitten, he told us that the commitment to independent developers is full. There won't be restrictions on the type of titles that can be created, nor will there be limits in scope. In response to a question on whether retail-scale games could be published independently, Whitten told us, "Our goal is to give them access to the power of Xbox One, the power of Xbox Live, the cloud, Kinect, Smartglass. That's what we think will actually generate a bunch of creativity on the system." With regard to revenue splitting with developers, we were told that more information will be coming at Gamescom, but that we could think about it "generally like we think about Marketplace today." According to developers we've spoken with, that split can be approximately 50-50.

• Kris Ligman at Gama Sutra reports that self published games will also be available on Xbox 360. This HuffPo post aggregates links and provides an overview of the Xbox One/Self publishing story.
  

Another difference between the Xbox One and Xbox 360 is how the games will be published and bought by other gamers. Indie games will not be relegated to the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace like on the Xbox 360 or required to have a Microsoft-certified publisher to distribute physically or digitally outside the Indie Marketplace. All games will be featured in one big area with access to all kinds of games.

• DevWithTheHair argues that freemium is hurting modern video game design:
  

If anything has hurt modern video game design over the past several years, it has been the rise of 'freemium'. It seems that it is rare to see a top app or game in the app stores that has a business model that is something other than the 'free-to-play with in-app purchases' model. It has been used as an excuse to make lazy, poorly designed games that are predicated on taking advantage of psychological triggers in its players, and will have negative long term consequences for the video game industry if kept unchecked.

Many freemium games are designed around the idea of conditioning players to become addicted to playing the game. Many game designers want their games to be heavily played, but in this case the freemium games are designed to trigger a 'reward' state in the player's brain in order to keep the player playing (and ultimately entice the user to make in-app purchases to continue playing). This type of conditioning is often referred to as a 'Skinner box', named after the psychologist that created laboratory boxes used to perform behavioral experiments on animals.

• Grey Matter Gaming posted a thorough piece as the first part of a series on The Publisher-Developer Money-Go-Round and the Boom of the Indie Industry:
  

It obviously isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that, not only do financial considerations influence a game’s structure and content, financial outcomes affect a studio’s likelihood of survival in the industry, based upon the machinations of its publishing overlords. Activision killed Bizarre Creations, Eidos ruined Looking Glass Studios, EA crushed Westood, Pandemic, Bullfrog, Origin Systems… well, the list could go on, until I turn a strange, purple color, but you get my point. And, when 3.4 million copies sold for a Tomb Raider reboot isn’t enough by a publisher’s standards, you can’t help but feel concern for a developer’s future.

• Doctoral student Stephen Slota writes how video games can enhance learning and problem-solving:
  

This relationship between environment-learner-content interaction and transfer puts teachers in the unique position to capitalize on game engagement to promote reflection that positively shapes how students tackle real-world challenges. To some, this may seem like a shocking concept, but it’s definitely not a new one—roleplay as instruction, for example, was very popular among the ancient Greeks and, in many ways, served as the backbone for Plato’s renowned Allegory of the Cave. The same is true of Shakespeare’s works, 18th and 19th century opera, and many of the novels, movies, and other media that define our culture. More recently, NASA has applied game-like simulations to teach astronauts how to maneuver through space, medical schools have used them to teach robotic surgery, and the Federal Aviation Administration has employed them to test pilots.

• Alex Law at Nightmare Mode posted a great article titled Player-Character Dynamics, Identity, and Sexuality in Video Games:
  

The relationship between the creator, the product, and the audience, are all important contexts to consider during media analysis, especially with games. This is because the audience is an active participant in the media. So if you are creating a game you always have to keep in mind the audience. Even if you say the audience doesn’t matter to you, it won’t cease to exist, and it does not erase the impact your game will have.

Similarly, if you are critiquing or analyzing any media, you can’t ignore the creator and the creator’s intentions. Despite those who claim the “death of the author,” if the audience is aware of the creator’s intentions, it can affect how they perceive the game. Particularly, if you consider the ease in which creators can release statements talking about their work, you’ll have an audience with varying levels of awareness about the creator’s intentions. These factors all play off of each other–they do not exist in a vacuum.

• DROP OUT. HANG OUT. SPACE OUT. chimes in on Warren Spector's call for better games criticism:
  

When we talk about any medium’s legitimacy, be it film or videogames or painting, it’s a very historical phenomenon that is inextricably tied to its artness that allows for them to get in on the ground floor of “legitimate" and “important." So if we contextualize the qualities that allowed for film or photography to find themselves supported through a panoply of cultural institutions it was a cultural and political economic process that lead them there.

[...]

Videogames, the kind that would be written about in 20 dollar glossy art magazines, would be exactly this. When creators of videogames want to point to their medium’s legitimacy, it would help to have a lot of smart people legitimate your work in a medium (glossy magazines, international newspapers) that you consider to be likewise legitimate. Spector concedes that ‘yes all the critics right now are online’, but the real battle is in getting these critics offline and into more “legitimate" spaces of representation. It’s a kind of unspoken hierarchy of mediums that is dancing before us here: at each step a new gatekeeper steps into play, both legitimating and separating the reader from the critic and the object of criticism. 

• Pop Matters looks at how fatherhood is represented in Heavy Rain, The Walking Dead, and The Last of Us:
  

All three games define fatherhood around the act of protection, primarily physical protection. And in each of these games, the protagonist fails—at least temporarily—to protect their ward. In Ethan’s case, his cheery family reflected in his pristine home collapses when he loses a son in a car accident. Later, when his other son goes missing, the game essentially tests Ethan’s ability to reclaim his protective-father status.

• Sam Barsanti at the The Gameological Society explains how the much-derided final act of BioShock actually drives home one of its most important themes:
  

No video game grants absolute freedom; they all have rules or guidelines that govern what you can and can’t do. The sci-fi epic Mass Effect is a series that prides itself on choice, but even that trilogy ends on a variation of choosing between the “good” and “bad” ending. Minecraft, the open-world creation game, is extremely open-ended, but you can’t build a gun or construct a tower into space because it doesn’t let you. BioShock’s ending argues that the choices you think you’re making in these games don’t actually represent freedom. You’re just operating within the parameters set by the people in control, be they the developers or the guy in the game telling you to bash his skull with a golf club.

BioShock’s disappointing conclusion ends up illustrating Ryan’s point. A man chooses, a player obeys. It’s a grim and cynical message that emphasizes the constraints of its own art form. And given that the idea of choice is so important to BioShock’s story, I don’t think it could’ve ended any other way.

• The latest "this week in videogame blogging" post at Critical Distance includes The Last of Us as exercise in emotional manipulation, analyzing Saints Row the Third through the lens of thematic self-sabotage, and a "Let's Critique" commentary for Dishonored.