New Feature! Best comic of the week.

Ok, so this is my only feature. So far. But it had to start somewhere. This week was a tough one, as Invincible came out, and I'm a big fan of that book. The new Blue Beetle is also darn good: I love the banter in that book, and it features an old Firestorm villain, Typhoon! I was big into the old Firestorm, so that was a nostalgia kick for me.

However, the best book of the week goes to:




Starlord! I remember, when I was young, I bought the very first Star Lord in a giant-sized format. It was weird, because it had God in it (later redacted and made into the "Lord of the Sun"). In any case, this issue is great. It's the first of a four part miniseries, and features five other nearly forgotten Marvel heroes from the misty past, including Bug, from the Micronauts, and Mantis, who will provide a pivotal role when these guys eventually meet up with the Quasar/Moondragon group . This is just a team building book, but Giffen writes it so well that it remains interesting even if there isn't a lot of action. Thumbs up and congratulations for being the first "Best Book of the Week"!

How's that for content?

A case for better localization

This is an interesting study: it seems that, when faced by people that we know are of a different culture, our mirror neurons become less active. Basically, your brain makes it harder on you to learn from people you know aren't part of your culture. The impact this has on games may be a factor in why some games do not go over well in different countries than the country in which the game was made, especially foreign countries that have a high level of xenophobia. If it is harder for a Japanese person to learn from a game where the tutorial is being taught by an obvious American, then the chance for a disconnect could be greater. As always, the two core game design principles are:

1. Never make the player feel weak.
2. Never make the player feel dumb.

Both these rules can be translated as "always make the player feel powerful and smart." Games are fantasies, and the bulk of humanity prefers to fantasize about being in more control over their lives. Sure, you can have instances where the player is overwhelmed by the opposition, but you can still create an environment where the player knows he is overmatched, but still thinks his avatar is powerful, and has the potential of becoming even more powerful as time goes on, whether through pure player skill, or through in-game mechanisms like character growth and such.

In any case, if the player can't learn to control the game because his mirror neurons refuse to learn from a tutor who obviously does not come from his culture, then the player may start feeling stupid. Which then leads to him putting down the game and telling his friends not to bother with it, either, which is exactly the opposite of what you want your players to do.

Hope that made sense. I'm a little fuzzy today: my wife, the slave driver ;-), is having me read the new Harry Potter out loud to her until late at night. Like most of America, with this book I think the main drive behind rushing to finish it isn't so much that we're curious about what happens to Harry (which is a big factor, admittedly) but that we want to finish it before somebody starts spoiling the ending for us before we're done. So, until I finish reading this 800 page monster, I'm going to be a little sleepy.

Scientists find that repeated use wears down brain

Another reason why grinding in MMOs is bad for you...

Back to Comics

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!

The season of tie-ins cometh!

Idly paging through the upcoming months of DC comics, it looks like DC it attempting to suck every dollar from their customer's wallets in the next few months. Instead of just having one Countdown comic, it looks like they're expanding to no less than four. The Sinestro war also is too big for just the two core Green Lantern books, so they're adding a third book to that, as well. Finally, the comics starring the heroes we all wanted to see more of from "52" are starting to appear, as well.

Here's a taste of the new comics coming out in the next few months I now have to decide whether to buy or not:

COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE
COUNTDOWN PRESENTS THE SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER
BOOSTER GOLD
BLACK ADAM: THE DARK AGE
INFINITY INC.
TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS PRESENTS:

One of the things that worries me is quality. I'm not too keen on the current quality of "Countdown". Can spreading it out to several books make things better? We'll have to see. Hopefully, this cover from JLA Classified isn't a hint where DC art is going as they expand the number of books coming out:



AAAARRRRGGGHHH!

Find your DC solicitations here

What four items are you thinking of?

Cognitive researchers find that the average person is only aware of about four items at a time. People of higher mental ability can think of more, but lets stick with the four. When playing a game, how many of those four are dedicated to your game, and how many to other stimuli outside of games? Does each separate HUD element take up a channel, or does the entirety of the interface just take up one? Gets you thinking about exactly how much of the game the player is actually paying attention to...

I'll bet you that the story is the first thing to fall out of the player's attention rack when he has to worry about all the game mechanics that are requiring his attention in order to live.

Three Post Combo!

Three posts in one day! I may become a blogger yet.

Mostly, I wanted to comment on the previous post. Those movies are an excellent example of how important good voice talent is in making an entertaining product. Most of the voices are good approximations of either the movie or cartoon voices of those characters. They are cleanly delivered, and recorded at a good level so you never miss a word. They're acted well, with no deadness or monotones, no mouth noises or stutters. They're so good, in fact, that it makes you forget that the action figure's mouths aren't moving whatsoever, or that there aren't really any body movements that are reflecting the content of the dialog. In a game, where facial animations and body language are just now getting good enough to use without people cringing too much, having that level of quality voice work is essential to bring your dialog from noticeably crappy to seamlessly transparent.

...and one more thing

These short movies are pretty darn funny...

Sinestro Corps: a giant video game?

I've been reading the current Sinestro Corps story line in the various Green Lantern line of comics. To sum it up, Sinestro, an old foe of Green Lanterns everywhere, has teamed up with some heavy-duty villains to create his own version of the Green Lantern Corps.




Besides all the interesting, cool recruits that make up the regular corps, he also has Superman Prime, the Anti-Monitor, a new Parallax, and the Cyborg Superman (who brings his own army of manhunters) along for the ride.

Pretty scary. The big question that's been flying around has been "How are the Green Lanterns going to take care of those guys all at once?"

The answer, it seems, is that they are taking a gimmick from the game industry and making each of the heavy hitters a boss monster.

In Green Lantern #21, Hal Jordan, the classic Green Lantern, is targetted by the Sinestro Corps as being the most dangerous enemy they have. So, what do they do? They teleport him to Qward (in the antimatter universe..try to keep up here) and have him face off against the new Parallax, Kyle Raynor (formerly the replacement for Hal, then given godlike power, and then recently possessed by the Parallax spirit... I'm sure you can follow that...)

There are some flunky Sinestro Corps flunkies behind Parallax, but no sign of the dual supermen, the Anti-Monitor, or Sinestro himself. What does this remind me of? A boss monster fight.

When we worked on Justice League Heroes, the plot was similar: Brainiac gathered a bunch of supervillains together, and the player had to first defeat low level minions, then defeat the big villain at the end of the mini-arc. This is a good way to stretch out a video game, but in a movie or comic or book, it always comes off kinda false, like those Bruce Lee fights where all the goons stand in a circle, and waiting for their turn to rush in individually and get a nunchuku facial served fresh from the master himself.

Of course, this is only one comic: maybe the series won't have each member of the uberteam split up so they can be dealt with singly. We'll see. I wish we would have been able to see more of the group dynamics of the uberteam. I'm thinking that, by far, the villains in this arc are much more interesting than the heroes.