Half-Life 2 puts the player in the shoes of Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist fighting against a hostile alien-controlled government that has all but enslaved the human race. Freeman and his allies join the human resistance in City 17 versus overwhelming odds. Armed with his trademark crowbar from the first Half-Life, Freeman combats the controlling Combine forces and ends the tyranny of the alien-instigated traitor of humanity, Dr. Breen.

Half-Life 2 does an excellent job of instantly throwing you into the narrative and explaining the situation without explicitly stating anything. Unlike most games that take away control from the player during cutscenes or change the camera angle, Half-Life 2 lets the player retain control and never removes him/her from Freeman’s perspective. This causes the player to see exactly what Freeman sees, and as a result, the player feels a connection to Freeman via shared experience. This unique perspective combines emergent and embedded narratives: even though what the characters say is predetermined, the fact that the gameplay view remains the same as it is during combat makes it feel as though it is all happening on the spot. The seamless transition between expository sequences and combat lends itself well to the game’s uncertainty, as players are never certain when a character will get separated from Freeman or when they will be ambushed. Freeman is also a virtual proxy for the player: he is completely mute the entire game, and the player never sees his face through the course of the game. Freeman is essentially a blank slate through which players can project whatever type of person they want to project. This method avoids potential conflict between how the character reacts and how the player wants or expects the character to act, and allows gamers to play as the type of person they would want to play as.

The narrative is never stated outright, but implied through the actions of NPCs. In the game’s opening train station, the maze of chain-link fences resembles an internment camp. Other citizens are shown to be in decreasing mental states or just barely hanging on: one citizen says to “stay away from the water… they put something in it, to make you forget!” and another paces back and forth while wondering why trains are always departing, but never come back. Just before the player reaches the train station’s exit, a guard knocks a soda can over and orders you to throw it away. Not doing so causes the guard to whack you with an electric baton, a staunch reminder of who holds the authority in City 17. In one particularly humanizing moment, a citizen embraces a crying woman who tearfully says that she “just can’t take it anymore.” Rather than explain the game’s premise via a tedious opening scrawl or a wordy monologue, Half-Life 2 showcases its plot with subtleties that provoke a tremendous emotional response from the player and establish the status quo that the player happily erodes over time.

Of course, Freeman can’t topple an entire extraterrestrial government alone. One of Half-Life 2’s major strong points is its well-written and appealing cast of characters. Freeman’s main allies are Dr. Isaac Kleiner, a resistance scientist, Dr. Eli Vance, Freeman’s former colleague, Barney Calhoun, a resistance informant who works with the Combine, and Alyx Vance, Eli’s daughter. Kleiner is a classically neurotic scientist, akin to Doc Brown in the Back to the Future series, whose stilted vocabulary and domesticated headcrab (a primary enemy in the game that attempts to eat your brain) cause the player to revel in his eccentricities.  Eli is a sympathetic father figure who is forced to see his daughter in increasingly dangerous situations, and his feelings make the narrative events much more significant. Barney Calhoun is Freeman’s optimistic best friend, the kind of guy who jokes about Freeman’s signature crowbar and how he owes Freeman a beer.

While these characters could be seen as traditional character molds adapted from movies and literature, albeit molds that are executed excellently, Alyx is a character that completely breaks established conventions. Alyx is Freeman’s main companion, and is an amicable and charming comrade that wins over players’ hearts with her tough-as-nails exterior yet sensitive personal feelings. Her introduction into the game immediately causes the player to treat her seriously: after getting ambushed while unarmed, Alyx single-handedly saves the player’s life. As opposed to annoyingly useless sidekicks that fail to make an impact or even hinder the player’s progress, Alyx is consistently helpful and disposes of enemies with ease. Alyx defies conventional feminine stereotypes in gaming and beyond: she’s not a buxom floozy whom the player is forced to protect for the sake of gameplay variety, but a nimble patriot that the player is thankful to have. Alyx also has believable emotions that are put to the test during the narrative situations. With enemies and combat constantly pursuing the pair, their conversations are limited to brief intermissions in elevators or other transit. Thus, the game’s intense run-and-gun sequences are punctuated by character development that always leaves you wanting more. Alyx’s emotions reach a hilt when the Combine captures her and her father. She is fearless even when she is staring down Dr. Breen himself, and spits in his face when he mentions Alyx’s deceased mother. Alyx’s believability is aided by the game’s impressively emotive facial structures that coincide well with the top-tier voice acting. Alyx is necessary on a mere gameplay level as well: she is particularly skilled at hacking Combine computer terminals, and the player needs her tools to advance in the game’s world.

The teamwork between Freeman and Alyx is essential to the game’s core mechanic⁴of shooting through Combine areas and disabling terminals to get through an obstacle. Overall, Alyx not only breaks the stereotypical female mold, but is also an icon of progressive female characters in video games thanks to her complementary abilities and integral emotional connections with the player. Through making the supporting characters relevant both on a gameplay level and an emotional one, Half-Life 2 enhances the player’s connection with the plot and game environment.

The supporting cast is backed by exceptionally strong dialogue and writing. Half-Life 2’s writing shines in its little touches that highlight its humanity and sense of humor. In a early scene, Dr. Kleiner and Barney talk about the safety of their high-tech matter transporter, and Barney mentions “You mean it’s working? For real this time? … Because I still have nightmares about that damn cat.” Kleiner brushes off the remark, but Alyx quizzically cocks an eyebrow and repeatedly asks “What cat?” (In addition, an Xbox 360 Achievement/Playstation Trophy named “What cat?” is earned after the player purposefully breaks a smaller version of the transporter). Kleiner’s pet headcrab, Lamarr, also provides some much-needed comic relief. Lamarr frequently causes humorous trouble at Kleiner’s office, such as jumping onto Barney’s face (much to his dismay), and having Kleiner chase after him like a doting mother after her toddler. These tiny jokes go a long way in maintaining the player’s interest in the game’s slower moments, and simultaneously differentiate the game from uptight, overly serious shooters while emphasizing the game’s emotionally taxing sequences.

One of the game’s great narrative descriptors is Dr. Breen’s Big Brother-esque broadcasts that cover the landscape with audio propaganda. Through these lectures, Breen attempts to explain the benefits of being controlled by an alien force, while simultaneously revealing his underlying malicious motives. In a friendly yet patronizing manner, Breen says the suppressive fields that prevent human reproduction are only enforced to stop the evils of instinct. “Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress,” Breen says, “Instinct, therefore, must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges: The urge to reproduce.” The fact that Breen is rallying against natural human functions reflects the cold and calculating nature of the Combine and their sophisticated weaponry at odds with the rebellious, underground characteristics of the human resistance. Breen embodies sacrifice and comprising with those who threaten and oppress, whereas the resistance represents standing up for what one believes in despite the odds of success. At its heart, Half-Life 2 is a classic David versus Goliath story, with Freeman and his crowbar replaces David and his slingshot, and the collective Combine representing the brute force and overwhelming size of Goliath.

Half-Life 2 creates meaningful play via its locked-in first-person perspective, through which characters are made more significant and seemingly spontaneous. These charismatic characters reinforce the player’s emotional attachments to their outcomes, and the player’s drive to complete narrative goals is strengthened by this compassion. Although Half-Life 2’s gameplay is frequently praised (and rightfully so), it is the connection between player and Freeman’s allies that separate the game from the rest. Half-Life 2 is a rare game that truly makes its characters feel like the player’s friends, and the narrative thrives on the player’s emotional investment. Half-Life 2 not only changed the video game industry with its physics engine, but also with its powerful storytelling that keeps the player invested until the final moments.

In Half-Life 2, the player steps into the big shoes of physicist-turned-hero Gordon Freeman against the oppressive, Orwellian aliens known as the Combine. Freeman joins the human resistance in City 17 and shoots, eviscerates, blows up and crowbars zombies, giant insects and Combine soldiers. With the help of Alyx, the occasional sidekick and daughter of a fellow physicist, Freeman topples the alien government and their de facto ruler, the traitor of humanity, Dr. Breen (3).

Emergence is a critical trait for any game to be significant, and Half-Life 2 would not be as highly regarded if it did not pull this off well. Emergence, “a modest number of rules applied again and again to a limited collection of objects [leading] to variety, novelty, and surprise, (4)” is featured prominently in the game’s detailed object recognition system. Every single object in this game, whether it is a grenade or a cardboard crate, is given the same physical importance: nearly every object can be picked up and interacted with, regardless of its value in the gameplay. Freeman can play with a child’s tic-tac-toe set or a discarded doll that makes a sickening, distorted giggle when you pick it up. A warehouse may seem unremarkable at first, but the player quickly realizes that they can use the rotary saws on the walls as makeshift ammunition. With the help of the gravity gun, which allows you to pick up heavy objects and propel them at your enemies, a wooden table can become a deadly weapon (3). The sheer amount of usable objects in Half-Life 2 is staggering, and provides a playground where there are thousands of ways to kill your foes. Don’t want to use precious ammunition on approaching enemies? Use the gravity gun to fling a cinderblock at them, or construct a pyramid of crates to shoot your enemies from a higher platform. Even the objects that are too weak to cause any damage to enemies dynamically respond to bullets and collision, creating a chaotic and easily malleable environment. Half-Life 2 breeds a creative form of emergence through an unprecedented level of object interaction and consequence, and boasts a high amount of system outcomes to player actions.

One of the game’s major strengths is the way it subtly introduces a new gameplay object and its many possible features. A ceiling-based enemy known as a “barnacle” droops a long, green tongue just above ground level, and eats anything that comes into contact with it (3). A single barnacle is introduced as players begin exploring City 17’s trashed alleyways, and does not pose much of a threat on its own. Because players are not forced to leave the area immediately, they are given a chance to examine the enemy and figure out the best way to defeat it. The game explains the dangers of barnacles without boring the player through a long explanation. Once the simple rule of the sticky barnacle tongue has been established, the player is free to make his/her own conclusions. These skills come in handy later when, after narrowly escaping the clutches of the Combine, you find yourself in a slippery underground area that is infested with barnacles. Using the knowledge the player has gained before, the player has multiple ways to advance: either carefully avoid the barnacles’ tongues and shoot them before they get a chance to eat you, or thrust an explosive barrel onto one of the tongues and shoot it just as it reaches the ceiling. Barnacles are involved in increasingly complex scenarios later in the game, such as when you are forced to avoid their tongues in total darkness, or dodge their grip while battling stronger enemies. Even these stronger enemies are not exempt from the barnacle’s grasp: a keen player will notice that luring Combine soldiers into barnacle tongues leads to humorous (and ammunition-saving) results (3). The coupled relationships between barnacles, explosives and other enemies create different ways for the player to accomplish a goal, and these types of relationships are constantly present throughout the game.

Along with coupled relationships, the game features context-dependent relationships that can benefit or hinder the player. Hostile insects known as “antlions” are originally hostile, but after defeating the “mother” antlion, the player is given a special phermone-infused grenade that makes the antlions your allies (3). This is welcome fresh air for a player who has just spent the past chapter fighting the antlions, and establishes a new set of rules on how to combat the increasing amount of Combine soldiers. However, antlions that the player has not conquered yet will still be hostile, forcing the player to remain wary of the oversized insects. Some areas feature deadly acidic water that adds to the intensity of the player dodging barnacle tongues or headcrabs, and force the player to create makeshift walkways using a variety of objects (3). In the Citadel, the heart of City 17’s alien operations, the gravity gun is given boosted powers that significantly affect gameplay, allowing players to literally pick up soldiers and fling them at their comrades (3). These different contexts cause the player to use objects in inventive and gameplay-altering ways, opening up the possibilities for what an object can be used for and making sure there is never a degenerate strategy (that is, a strategy that is guaranteed to work. If a player discovers a degenerate strategy, they have no incentive to explore the game’s boundaries).

Through the combination of complex relationships between objects, their environments and themselves, Half-Life 2 easily establishes a sense of meaningful play. Meaningful play, which occurs “when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game, (5)” is accomplished via a satisfying damage indicator and progressing into the game’s emotionally-gripping story. When enemies take damage, they react with a dramatic burst of red or yellow blood (3). A particularly memorable damage indicator is cutting a zombie in two at the waist with a rotary saw, which gives the player an immense feel of power and gratification for their hard work. While the game does not feature a leveling system, players are motivated by the game’s well-written story and character relationships that truly make the players willing to help the human resistance. Shooting down Combine helicopters, for example, earns you the respect of an entire human colony and the ability to advance to your next thrilling objective (3). The player grows attached to Alyx due to her light-hearted nature and adept combat abilities, and the idea that someone would keep playing the game to view the progress of their relationship is not absurd. Half-Life 2 thrives on the quality of its relationships, both object-driven and character-driven.
Half-Life 2 has withstood the test of time, and its gameplay concepts still seem fresh and cutting-edge today. It is a game that actively wants players to test the boundaries of what they can do with what they are given, and rewards the players for innovative thinking. While a second play-through of the game may take players to the same locations, it is virtually guaranteed that no battle will be the same. Half-Life 2 endures as a pinnacle of the first-person-shooter genre thanks to memorable and dynamic enemy-object interaction, the contexts that alter their usage, and the game’s endless possibilities.
Citations:

1 “Games: Half-Life 2.” Valve. Valve Software. Web. 27 Apr. 2011..

2 IGN Staff. “Best Videogames and Computer Games of the Decade 2000-2009.” Video Games, Cheats, Walkthroughs, Game Trailers, Reviews, News, Previews & Videos at IGN. IGN Entertainment, Inc. Web. 26 Apr. 2011..

3Half-Life 2, Valve Corporation, 2007, Xbox 360.

4 Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. “Games as Emergent Systems.” Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. 34-35. Print.

5Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. “Games as Emergent Systems.” Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. 158-59. Print.

3Half-Life 2, Valve Corporation, 2007, Xbox 360.

In Alan Wake, the player controls the titular character as he tries to rescue his wife from a mysterious darkness that seems to corrupt people and objects to do its bidding. Adding to the intrigue are manuscript pages that Wake finds throughout the area that bear his name, but that he doesn’t remember writing. Armed with a flashlight and a gun to kill the “Taken,” people controlled by the darkness, Wake embarks on a journey to save his wife, the town and, ultimately, himself.

Alan Wake’s gameplay is one of the game’s strong points. Shining a light onto shadowy figures and dodging pick-axes is exhilarating, and the game’s misty forests add to the fear of a Taken being just around the corner. Even though the gameplay is solid, it can occasionally get repetitive. While there are different types of Taken that require slightly different tactics, it all basically boils down to shining a light on them and shooting them in the head. The game gives you various upgraded weapons, such as flares and shotguns, but I rarely found the need to use anything other than the starting pistol and flashlight. Although this is indeed a monotonous and degenerate strategy, somehow this method doesn’t lose its luster, and continues to be entertaining even after you’ve killed your 999,999th Taken.

One of Alan Wake’s biggest flaws is its jarring product placement, which is at best a nuisance and at worst a flow-breaker. Virtually every object in the game is trademarked, whether it’s the flashlight or batteries Wake is using (Energizer), his phone service (Verizon, which is ironic considering how often Wake’s calls drop. “Can You Hear Me Now?” indeed) or even his car (Lincoln). Contrary to some gamers who hate all forms of advertising in games, I believe that when product placement is used well it can add to the game’s character. A game like Crazy Taxi, for instance, uses advertising well in the sense that the brand names make the game feel more realistic. In turn, this “realism” is a nice counterpoint to the absurdity of the game’s physics and premise. Alan Wake, however, goes above and beyond what is acceptable. If the town of Bright Falls is supposed to be in the middle of nowhere, why are there 50-foot Verizon billboards on the side of the road? The game’s worst advertising offense occurs during a segment in which the lodge Wake is staying in is becoming corrupted by darkness. In the middle of the escape, Wake encounters a television. Television are littered throughout the game’s environment, and often shows parodies of The Twilight Zone called “Night Springs” that provide some much-needed comic relief. Turning on this particular television, however, brings up a commercial for something called “Mustang Drift,” followed by a 30 second Verizon commercial. And these both occur when Wake is supposed to be trying to escape his imminent death! These ads, even though the game does not force the player to watch them, completely break the flow and atmosphere, specifically the loss of self-consciousness. These ads make you fully aware that you are playing a game, and a greedy one at that. The player even gets an Xbox achievement for watching the ads called “Boob Tube,” which seems particularly fitting.

Another annoyance is Wake’s constant commentary on the game’s events. While he occasionally says something profound about his writing or marriage, he often states the completely obvious. When I’m staring at an old generator that has a power cord connected to it, I really don’t need Wake to tell me “an old generator had been connected to a power cord.” However, the narration is a still a nice cinematic touch to a game that revels in its horror movie mystique.

Although I give Alan Wake a hard time for its advertising and hit-or-miss narration, it truly does separate itself from the rest of the pack through its enigmatic storyline and consistently fun gameplay mechanics. As someone who gets too scared to finish games like The Suffering and Fatal Frame, Alan Wake does a great job of straddling the line between unbearably terrifying and curiously freaky. Alan Wake does a lot of things right, but a few fatal flaws keep it in the dark.

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Microsoft. Google. Bungie. In the histories of many software company giants, you’ll find that they all have one thing in common: they started off in someone’s basement or garage.

Designs for the character Elphie, who appears in Double Cluepon's first game WireWorks.

Just a note: saying that Double Cluepon values pseudonyms over egotism wasn’t an exaggeration. The company uses pseudonyms when talking to the gaming community to avoid creating a cult of personality that too many game developers create for themselves. Azrael, Double Cluepon’s “Chief Imagination Officer,” said that the game is more important than whoever is designing it. “By deemphasizing we who are personally, we want our work to stand by itself,” Azrael said, “I want people to look at or products and say ‘this is awesome,’ and not worry about us. We care about shutting up and making games.”

“A Life-Like Content Channel”

That said, shutting up and making Emerald Kingdom is Double Cluepon’s top priority. In production since around 2009 and “rapidly approaching Alpha staus” according to Azrael, Emerald Kingdom is about the state of humanity after a cataclysm that destroys life as they know it. The game’s title refers to the time period the game takes place in. Jocelyn, an artist for the game, describes the setting as “after the post-apocalyptic world, when people are starting to recover.” The game features a linear storyline that will offer different experiences and quests to the players depending on when they join. “In short an MMORPG should be in some ways, a life-like content channel,” Azrael wrote on Double Cluepon’s blog, “A person born in 1952, having gone through the 60′s will have different experiences than a person born in 1993. Why should a virtual world be any different?” Samael, a programmer, agrees that a rolling story is good impetus to get gamers to play. “They want to get in on the ground floor and see the events as they unfold,” Samael said, “It becomes a badge of pride for the old players and it encourages them to stick around as well as people to come in as soon as possible.”

Sprites: “Deities without being Gods”

Double Cluepon's Art Studio, where Sprites are born. Every great company deserves a great basement.

Some sample female clothing. Notice the lack of plunging cleavage and inaccurate proportions.

Working off the strength of its characters, Emerald Kingdom will also have its own webcomic series called Twin Perrenial, which will help catch the player up to speed in the constantly-progressing storyline. Azrael said that webcomic is meant to have players feel like they are entering the game world, and that the webcomic will be an establishing point of the game. “Twin Perinnial is designed to get players’ toes wet,” Azrael said, “People will have “Ahh!” moments when they play the game after they read the comic.”

Sketches of male clothing. Notice the lack of Cliff Bleszinski-esque bulging biceps.

A World Without Numbers

Even with a constantly moving storyline, in-depth characters and a webcomic, a MMORPG must do more to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Established titles like World of Warcraft dominate the MMO marketshare (According to MMORPG Realm, 62% of MMO gamers play WoW) and show little signs of slowing down. So how does Emerald Kingdom set itself apart? It takes away the one thing that many die-hard MMO players hold dear to their hearts: number-based statistics.

A stereotype about MMO players is that they are overly obsessed about their avatar’s skill or level number (colloquially referred to as “stat whores”). Emerald Kingdom ditches the number-based system in favor of a rating and ranking system. While there will still be cold hard statistics behind the scenes, they will be invisible to the player. This system gives players more freedom to do what they want, when they want, without being locked into a predetermined character class. “The fact that you can make something fun and entertaining without focusing on number was a huge deal for me, Azrael said. “In order for an MMO to be progressive, you need to get rid of numbers.” Unlike other games, Azrael writes in the game’s forums, Double Cluepon does not expect you to kill off your character and make a new one if you want to take your avatar in a new direction. Eleial, Double Cluepon’s marketing director, notes that it’s not about weaning players off the number system, “it’s making them realize that it isn’t necessary.”

Escaping the Brand

Being an indie game company allows Double Cluepon to take risks that bigger studios couldn’t take—wait, “indie?” Scratch that. “Indie” is a four-letter word at Double Cluepon because the team feels like the term is being co-opted by megalith game companies as a brand. “It’s almost like it’s a genre now,” Jocelyn said, “You go to a gaming convention and they have an indie floor and it’s so, so broad… We’re trying to get away from that branding and say ‘we’re just passionate about making RPGs, but we’re not funded by any big source. We’re doing this on passion alone.’”

The well-stocked Double Cluepon bar, where they refuel their passion. "You'd be surprised how often our meetings turn into drinking contests," Azrael remarked.

Regardless of the challenges posed by giant game companies and getting Emerald Kingdom off the ground (for most of the staff, this is the first MMORPG they’ve worked on), Azrael remains confident in his team’s abilities. “We have a lot of people here who are heavily invested, heart and soul wise, into making cool stuff,” Azrael said, “Indie applies to so many things… why would we compartmentalize ourselves? We’re a company that likes making stuff, and we’re gonna do it and we don’t care what anybody else says about it.”

Concept art courtesy of Double Cluepon Software.

The player gathers information by going into towns and talking with the kindly townsfolk, which is mildly helpful at best and completely useless at worst. The townsfolk speak incredibly cryptically (one townsfolk only says, “Hammer… Spectacle Rock… Death Mtn.”), and give you little to no direction as to where to go next. One humorous aspect of the game is that some of the female townsfolk heal you by inviting you into their house: a reminder of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ infamous “Hot Coffee” mod. The townsfolk who don’t attempt to give you any information or heal you say “Sorry, I know nothing,” and one townsman even says the infamous quote, “I am Error.” The text flows so slowly on the screen that talking to people feels like a waste of time, even though it’s absolutely essential to have any sense of what to do next. The townsfolk are all copies of the same few sprite characters, which makes differentiating between people you have and haven’t talked to nearly impossible. This is a particular problem when trying to find the rare townsfolk that lead you to the town’s “wise man,” who gives you magic to help you through the next area. These townsfolk have no distinguishing features other than that they exit out of building as opposed to just wandering the streets like the other (nearly identical) townsfolk.

One of the (un)helpful townsfolk in Adventure of Link

Furthermore, these particular townsfolk often burden you with an arbitrary task before they’ll take you to the wise man: one woman told me that she “lost her mirror,” and after 30 minutes of jumping around like a possessed pogo-stick and fruitlessly asking around, I found it underneath a table. Why in the world would a mirror be under a table, and how did the game expect me to know that? I mean, I guess that’s why she lost it. If Link could talk in any way, shape or form, I would ask that woman how a mirror ended up under her desk. Then I would ask her why everyone on the planet buys their clothes at the same store, and then I’d ask her to “heal” me, if you know what I mean. Do you? I think you do.

The save system is one of the most infuriating I have ever come across. The only way to save legitimately in this game is to lose all of your lives and get a game over, which lets you save your progress and return to the opening castle at the cost of losing your current experience points. Forcing your players to die and lose experience points to save progress is a draconian law that adds meaningless travel time to the experience and only serves to anger the player. The game over screen features Ganon, although Ganon never actually appears in the game. Great.

Although there is a “secret” way to save by pausing the game with the first controller and pressing Up + A on the second controller, players shouldn’t have to “cheat” to save without dying. Even the second method tosses the player back to the starting area, however, saddling the player with tedious backtracking if he ever decides to turn his/her game off. This save system actively encourages players not to gain extra lives: after all, they’ll have to sacrifice them anyway to save! Perhaps the worst part is that, under your name on the file select screen, it tallies how many times you have gotten a “Game Over.” The number is a taunting reminder of how much this game has chewed you up and spit you back out, and adds to the increasing frustration. Of course, in the age of emulators and ROMs, you can sidestep these problems with save states, but that’s just cheap.

That said, there are a few things Adventure of Link does well. The music is 8-bit at its finest: I get the chills hearing the swell of the Legend of Zelda theme, and the dungeon music is particularly memorable and dramatic. The pseudo-random battle system on the world map is a great idea, and the graphics were pretty impressive for their time. However, none of Adventure of Link’s strong points make up for the fact its difficulty stems from annoying and inconveniencing the player as opposed to the player’s skill. Adventure of Link features some interesting concepts, but it is far and away one of the weakest links (get it? GET IT??) in the Zelda catalog.

The “Winners”

• Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)
• Millions of computer users

Boehner may have been outnumbered by Democrats at the table 2-to-1, but by the way the final deal shaped up, you wouldn’t know it. The Speaker got $38.5 billion dollars in cuts, including $2 billion in a short-term stopgap measure running through Thursday as staffers put the finishing touches on his long-term deal (1).  In an interview with Fox News, Boehner said that he and President Barack Obama “understand each other better,” and that Boehner had “developed a process” that will allow him to continue working with the Obama administration over the next two years (2).

Meanwhile, in the virtual realm, a shutdown threatened to furlough scores of people who work for federal contractors, including those who operate websites for the government. The furlough would have lingered until Congress passed a funding resolution — anywhere from a day to weeks. The financial impact potentially could have been in the hundreds of millions of dollars, underscoring the government’s keen emphasis on e-government to run basic operations, say industry experts (3).

The “Losers”

• Congressional Democrats
• Washington D.C.

According to BBC News’ Mark Mardell, congressional Democrats didn’t come off as well as Tea Party activists and congressional Republicans (4):

They look like realists, but they’ve given a lot of ground. These cuts will hurt their natural supporters and undermine plans and projects dear to their hearts. The tactics were quite skilful but I can’t see the strategy.

Congressional Democrats are not the only ones in a precarious position. The D.C. government is “often financially beholden to the whims of Congress,” and against the district’s wishes, Republicans managed to ban it from spending its own funds on abortions or needle exchanges. Yet somehow “the GOP did find the necessary funds to restart the city’s controversial school voucher program,” says Charles Lemos in MyDD, which is both a “boondoggle for religious schools” and a pet issue for Boehner (5).

Excerpts from this story were taken from Politico [(1), (2)], USA Today [(3)], BBC News [(4)], and The Week [(5)].

A Chicago independent record store that also houses over 20 arcade cabinets has reopened after a two-month hiatus, ushering in the New Year with a world record attempt from a video game legend.

What was once a hardware store is now an alternative, independent record store with its own arcade.

Logan Hardware, a record store in Logan Square that sells everything from board games to audio equipment in addition to records, hosted a reopening on Jan. 15 that featured former Donkey Kong world record holder Steve Wiebe. Wiebe taught a class at the store on how to play Donkey Kong before attempting to beat the current world record in front of a live audience.

Logan Hardware owner Jim Zepsy decided his store needed a remodel near the end of 2010. “We thought, it would be nice to grow this place a little more legit,” Zepsy said, “The lighting kind of sucks in here.” Zepsy began renting the building after the original Logan Hardware, an actual hardware store, went out of business in 1996. “Over the last five years, it’s been a time of real change for the record industry in general,” Zepsy said, “… and the extension of that was, we wanted to exist the way we wanted to exist. We didn’t want to pull in a million labels and do things we didn’t want to do. We want to get records into the hands of people.”

A row of arcade cabinets at Logan Hardware. The RoboCop cabinet (third from the left) is the first cabinet Zepsy bought, and the machine that inspired Zepsy's mini-arcade.

Over the hiatus, Zepsy expanded his record selection and rekindled his interest in video games. Zepsy said he “had the bug on and off for a very long time,” stemming from his days of bike-riding to a gas station to play arcade games while growing up in Fargo, ND. Zepsy was inspired to get back into collecting arcade cabinets after watching the movie King of Kong, a film that chronicles Wiebe’s journey to become the world record holder in Donkey Kong. Zepsy started researching arcade games and arcade game preservation, and now does his own repair work on his arcade cabinets (although he has a specialist he calls in when he “really blows a game up”). “It was kind of my weekend fun thing, and I thought that I would really love to share that with people,” Zepsy said, “… It’s like inviting someone over to my house to play a record I really like. I feel that way about my arcade game collection.”

When Zepsy and Wiebe originally made plans to have Wiebe perform a world record attempt in Donkey Kong, Wiebe still held the world record title. However, a week before the event, Wiebe lost the top score. “That’s when it turned from just this fun thing to like, ‘Oh s—, it’s on, he’s going to try,’” Zepsy said, “We got to talking and decided it would be cool to not just play the game here but to teach people how to play.” Wiebe, who is a high school science teacher, told Zepsy that he had always wanted to do a class on Donkey Kong. “We thought we were going to have 30 people,” Zepsy said, “We ended up having 115. A lot of awesome, nice, nerdy people like myself wanted to learn how to not be a chump at Donkey Kong.”

Although the class was successful, Wiebe’s world record attempt proved more of a challenge. Needing more than 1,068,000 points to dethrone current world record holder Hank Chien, Wiebe only got 872,000 points (although Wiebe is still second in the standings with 1,064,500 points from a previous attempt). “It was equal parts inspiring and silly, and also absurd, because people were just watching this screen and gasping when he almost died,” Zepsy said.

A young pinball wizard wails at a machine, while other cabinets blink with anticipation.

Zepsy organizes his arcade cabinet collection in a myriad of ways. Rather than organizing the cabinets by year or manufacturer, Zepsy said he organizes his collection similar to the way record stores organize their products to encourage you to try something new. “I organize by animal main character, brick, blocks, piles and puzzles, driving, flying, fantasy, food and eating, robots, space aliens and other worlds,” Zepsy said, “I geek out on that type of stuff.” The only type of game Zepsy will not stock, however, are gun games. “There’s something creepier to me about handgun games,” Zepsy said, “It weirded me out to see kids playing these games and getting really intense about it because that skill is only used for one thing.” At least with games like Tetris, Zepsy said, you can learn to pack your car really well. Zepsy regards the gameplay of popular first-person shooter games like the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops as one-dimensional. “You might as well be playing paintball with a head set on,” Zepsy said.

Zepsy also runs Chicago Independent Distribution, which distributes records for more than 30 different record labels. As a child, Zepsy would look for behind the scenes photos of bands in the studio. “It was magic to me,” Zepsy said, “… I wanted to see how it was done and I wanted to be involved.” Zepsy’s mission with Logan Hardware is to make available what he can at a fair price, and to support the things he believes in. “I would hope that people start to listen to records like a meal, to sit down and be like ‘It matters,’” Zepsy said, “It matters to have the artwork, and it matters to listen to it all the way through… You don’t have to have a bazillion dollar stereo, you just have to sit down and want to give a s— about the environment you’re listening to it [in], and how you’re listening to it.”

Zepsy does not consider his store a true arcade, but rather a record store with his own personal collection of games in it. “Record shopping should be fun, it shouldn’t be heads down, [with] people staring at you quietly judging your taste in music,” Zepsy said, “… The point is to have fun, and the point is to share what we all like.”

It started with wooden boxes: colorful countertop games with flippers and pinging rings of metal. Today, it is a multi-billion dollar industry, featuring space marines, deadly one-on-one fights, and malleable, interactive fantasies unlike any medium ever before.

Video games in Chicago have come a long way.

Chicagoan companies made the first successful pinball machines: “Baffle Ball,” by D. Gottlieb & Company, and “Bally Hoo,” by the Bally Manufacturing Corporation, both released in the 1931. Seen as entertaining distractions from the Great Depression, pinball machines became a hit, and Chicago soon became a hub for aspiring pinball machine companies. Today, however, only one pinball company is still afloat. As computer technology increased in power and usage, a new media began to emerge: a virtual, interactive story known as a video game. Chicago has been home to many influential video game companies, such as Bungie Software and Midway games. However, true to its pinball past, many video game companies in Chicago have kicked the virtual bucket or have moved onto greener digital textures. Despite this, Chicagoan independent game developers find a way to beat the boss known as “Bankruptcy,” and stay alive through troubling financial times. So, who owns the strategy guide to success in the video game industry? Who knows Chicago’s secret cheat code to survive in a highly competitive industry? In a city where most of the bigger video game developers have faltered (or left Chicago entirely), independent video game developers are setting new high scores by taking risks that bigger companies are too afraid to take and fostering a sense of community. In an era where video games are becoming more and more popular and bigger companies are stagnating in sequels and tired ideas, independents are going against the grain. Or, if you will, against the pixel.

There is no question that video games have turned mainstream. No longer a stereotyped pastime just for basement-dwelling social outcasts, video games are appealing to a broader and broader audience each day. Nintendo’s Wii console, for example, mainly appeals to families, with exercise games like top-selling Wii Fit and innovative, motion-based control schemes. Video game publisher Activision aired commercials for its popular Call of Duty: Black Ops game featuring celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel and Kobe Bryant during primetime television. According to the Entertainment Software Association, the computer and video game industry contributed $5 billion to the U.S. economy last year, and from 2005 to 2009 had an annual growth rate of 10 percent—seven times the growth rate of the entire U.S. economy. Christian Arca, studio director of Chicago-based video game developer Toy Studio, believes that through gaming products aimed toward a large demographic, such as Microsoft’s own motion capture technology Kinect, the Wii and the iPhone, video games are gaining a larger audience. “With Generation X and Y becoming a part of games, it will only get better until 50 to 70-year-olds start looking forward to a game like” – Arca pauses for a moment to come up with a suitably ludicrous video game title — “Bulletstorm VII,” Arca says.

While “Bulletstorm VII,” sadly, does not exist (although video game publisher Electronic Arts is, coincidentally, releasing a game titled Bulletstorm in 2011), there are plenty of games to fill gamers’ hunger for gun slinging and awe-inspiring explosions. One of the best examples of an action-packed shooter game comes from a developer that began in Chicago in 1991, a developer that started in a basement with only two members, a developer with a surprisingly unthreatening name: Bungie Software.

“Bungie” is, by their own admission, a weird name for a software company. In fact, the company treats the origin of the name like a closely guarded secret, a mythical truth that only shamans of the studio know. “There are… penalties leveled at those who reveal the deepest secrets,” Bungie’s website says, in reference to its peculiar name. It is no secret, however, that Bungie became one of the most successful video game developers of all time after creating the Halo series for Microsoft’s Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles. The story of a super soldier named “Master Chief” and the forces of Earth fighting against a threatening alien race and other foreign unknowns, the series revolutionized the first person shooter genre with its lightning-fast gameplay and became the Xbox’s first “killer app” (that is, a game that causes many people to purchase the console just to play the game). According to Microsoft, the first game in the Halo series, Halo: Combat Evolved, sold 1 million copies in four months after its release, and was named “2006 Xbox Game of the Year” by influential video game news and review site IGN.com. According to the NPD group, total sales of the Halo franchise have broken the $1.7 billion dollar mark, and Bungie’s latest Halo game, Halo: Reach, sold more than 3.3 million copies in its first month after release. Halo: Reach received universal critical acclaim from nearly every video game aggregate, and is considered to be in the front-running for many Game of the Year titles. To call this franchise a juggernaut would be an understatement: Halo is now a household name, a title held in reverence amongst names like the Rockstar Games’ violent, parental shocker Grand Theft Auto series and everyone’s favorite Italian plumber, Nintendo’s Mario. However, just a few months before the release of the first Halo game, Bungie moved to Redmond, Washington, leaving a plasma-grenade-explosion-sized hole in the Chicago gaming scene that few companies have been able to fill.

Whereas Bungie moved from Chicago before they could reap the benefits of the Halo series, some companies stayed in Chicago only to feel the sting of a “Game Over.” EA Chicago, a substudio of major video game publisher Electronic Arts and developer of boxing game Fight Night Round 3 and rap/fighting crossover game Def Jam: Icon, only lasted three years before EA pulled the plug. Chicago-based developer Robomodo was hit by layoffs after poor sales of its installments of the Tony Hawk skateboarding video game series. Aside from Bungie, the biggest presence in the Chicago video game scene was Midway Games, a pinball and amusement machine manufacturer (in fact, it was acquired by the Bally Manufacturing organization in 1969) turned video game publisher. Midway brought popular Japanese arcade cabinet games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man to American shores to great success in 1978 and 1980, respectively. These games helped spark the boom of video game arcades across the country. “As a child of the ’70s, Midway represented an icon from the golden age of gaming, when you went to arcades like Dennis’ Place for Games under the El at Belmont and Sheffield or Games Galore in the basement of the Evergreen Plaza at 95th and Western with a fistful of quarters and hoped to get as many minutes as possible out of them in the scary/dark/neon/loud/smoky confines,” DePaul College of Digital Media lecturer Chauncey Hollingsworth says, “Midway’s name used to be on half of those machines’ start-up screens, from Tapper to Defender.” These were the golden years for Midway; however, as arcades themselves began to fall out of favor, so did Midway. Despite the success of newer titles like over-the-top football frenzy NFL Blitz and the shockingly vicious Mortal Kombat series — a series so known for its gruesomely violence that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan mentioned it during the oral arguments of Schwartzenegger v. Entertainment Merchant Association, a case that will determine the legality of a proposed California law that would prohibit a minor from buying violent video games that are potentially harmful to a minor’s development – Midway filed for bankruptcy in 2009. “Midway’s demise comes along with the demise of an entire culture of gaming that we don’t have anymore, one that Chicago used to be at the center of,” Hollingsworth says.

Hollingsworth notes that “Chicago was the pinball capital of the world, and the companies that made pinball machines, like Midway, transitioned into making video games,” Hollingsworth says, “Chicago was a big city for video games… but no longer.”

With Bungie’s move to the west and Midway’s bankruptcy, there is little major video game publisher presence left in Chicago, creating a unique atmosphere of almost solely independent game developers. Hollingsworth sees Chicago as a city that’s great for incubating talent until it is ripe and having a “goliath entertainment company” pull out its checkbook. Citing Chicago’s many successful musicians and video game companies like Bungie, Hollingsworth says, “Chicago’s always been a talent producer. So maybe that’s our contribution? We’re like a really good orphanage, and the big companies on the coasts adopt our babies.”

However, Ryan Wiemeyer, associate producer of Wideload Games and host of the podcast “Question Blocks” on indiecitygames.com, says that while Chicago does not feel too different from other cities, if anything it feels more tight-knit and stable. “The great thing about the aftermath of Midway, is that you still see the people that really had passion, finding a way to work in the industry,” Wiemeyer says, “There were a lot of start-ups that came from the ashes of Midway, and it sounds like their departure from Midway has lead to more profitable and sustainable businesses.” The challenge now, Wiemeyer explains, is showing the bigger publishers that it was the people that made Chicago’s video game landscape great, not the iconic names. Jake Elliot, founder of independent video game developer Cardboard Computer, compares the current atmosphere to the experimental electronic art of the 1960’s and its overlap with video games. Thanks to online communities like Indie City Games — a forum for independent video game developers in Chicago – “a community of independent game developers is starting to gel here too,” Elliot says, “So I think there’s a lot of exciting potential in that convergence.”

Just because there is an emerging community of independents, however, does not mean it is easy to find a job. Arca says that because most of the video game jobs are on the west coast, it is really tough to get a job in the Midwest. “More backing could be put into Chicago’s independent studios,” Arca says, “The stronger the hub you have is, the stronger it could become. I could see [Chicago] as the next big video game city, but it needs the backing.” Of course, it is not as simple as calling up a publisher and asking for money. “Publishers don’t take risks,” Arca says, “It’s all about ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

Even with a publisher’s backing, game development is no cake walk. Wiemeyer says that having a publisher behind you is not a bad thing: you need money to make games. “What stinks is when that’s all you have going for you,” Wiemeyer says. Referring to the layoffs at Robomodo, Wiemeyer says that Robomodo thought they would have Activision’s backing for a few more years, and they were dependent on it. “They didn’t see the carpet was about to be pulled out from underneath them so they weren’t prepared to sustain all those people. It’s a shame, but it happens.” Wiemeyer explains that, while working for someone with a lot of money and holds your fate in their hands is not what people would generally want to do, “it’s how you get funding and it’s the risk of working with a big name and trying to compete in a shrinking market.”

Not every independent video game developer necessarily wants to be part of a bigger publisher, though. Azrael, CEO of Double Cluepon Software, believes that Chicago has the potential to become the “Seattle” of the video game industry. “In the same way Seattle helped spark a musical revolution with grunge and alternative, we have a lot of great underground real indie talent here in Chicago,” Azrael says, “[who are] operating outside of the normal publishing system you see in cities like San Diego, L.A., and parts of Texas.” Operating outside of the normal publishing system is a better idea, Azrael explains, because he predicts that the overall video game market is heading for a crash of sorts, citing the disappointing sales of new games in the popular Rock Band and Metroid franchises. “The larger corporate system has its uses, but… typically innovation is not one of them,” Azrael says, “I think the next wave will be the rise of the indie/underground game developers into a bigger mainstream voice. I think it’s already starting to give the big houses a moment of pause: some of them are trying to set up indie developers, not realizing it’s not that simple. You have to give up some control in order to have true indie houses…and giving up control is not something a stockholder-laden corporation does overnight.” Kevin Zuhn, who graduated from DePaul University in 2010 with a degree in game development acknowledges that it is difficult to get funding, or even just survive, as an independent video game developer. “The big benefit for all that suffering is creative control,” Zuhn says, “You can do bizarre, unexpected, maybe unwanted things with the gameplay, the art, and the story that Triple A titles could never dream of doing. If you want to make a game about a man who eats dirt to grow out his magical back hair, then nobody can stop you.” However, Zuhn says, “corporate support is beneficial, as you will always need to eat,” and that corporations are not always hindering. “Corporations are not blind to the appeal of weird, experimental games, so you can hold on to a lot of creative control if you pick the right audience and the right medium to release the game,” Zuhn says.

The right audience and the right medium are essential to the success of any art form. Although the arcades of the 1980’s and pinball machines of old have gone the way of the Virtual Boy, the new era of independent video games is their rightful heir to the throne of video game innovation. Wiemeyer says that in order to be a contribution to the mainstream gaming sphere, independent video games developers need to counteract the “high cost and low risk” mentality of the bigger companies. “I personally feel that the idea of what a game can be, is stagnating due to the “sameness” of games being developed,” Wiemeyer says.

“So get to work, Chicago,” Wiemeyer concludes.