[Reviews] Comic Book Day 12th October 2011

It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means! It’s comic book day! Normally for people like myself, who don’t live in the US, this used to mean that we’d have to wait a day before we could pick up our comics at the comic book store. But now, with the advent of same-day-digital, Wednesday really is international Comic Book day. Since I’ve got a blog these days I thought I’d do some reviews of the comics I’ve read this evening.

DC Comics

Batgirl #2

Writer: Gail Simone
Penciler: Adrian Syaf

The first third of the comic was a bit lackluster though. I think the pacing was off, though I can’t really put my finger on why exactly. Still, I enjoyed that Batgirl makes some mistakes during her chase of and fight with Mirror. She’s not at the top of her game yet, and that has its effect.

My favorite scene was the interaction between Barbara and her new roommate, Alysia. Alysia’s reaction to seeing Barbara come home while pretty banged up, was very believable. If you saw a young woman come home covered in bruises you would probably think she suffered some form of abuse at the hands of a boyfriend, too. And apparently Alysia is the type of person who doesn’t let something like that go by without saying a word. The scene adds depth to Alysia as a character, and creates the building blocks upon which her relationship with Barbara will be founded. Gail Simone has always been great at adding these sorts of human touches to her characters, and the scenes where she can show off that talent are always a joy to read.

And Gail Simone keeps adding depth to her characters with the revelation of the villain’s origin story. Batgirl #1 was all about setting up Batgirl as a survivor of an incredibly traumatic event¹, and how she’s dealing with Post Traumatic Stress. Issue #2 is all about setting up her adversary, Mirror as, well… a survivor of an incredibly traumatic event, and how he’s dealing with Post Traumatic Stress. The name of the villain, Mirror, is aptly chosen. By the end Mirror goes from yet another gimmicky Supervillain to a person we can relate to, even if we don’t agree with the way he deals with his trauma.

I hate critiquing art, it really puts me out of my comfort zone. What I will say is that I found the faces to be rather inconsistently drawn. Besides that little quibble the art is pretty good, with some very nice set-pieces that give the artists a chance to shine.

Overall, I’m still not going to jump on the “Barbara should remain Oracle” bandwagon just yet. In fact, I think I’ll just keep reading this very entertaining and thought provoking comic for the foreseeable future.

Batwoman #2

Writers: J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman
Artist: J.H. Williams III

One can question the wisdom of bringing out both Batgirl and Batwoman at the same time. Good thing the comics are completely. In this issue, Batwoman continues to research the case of the “Weeping Woman”. All in all that case seems to be a pretty standard ghost story so far. A ghost, who seems to be a play on the Maiden, Mother, Crone triad, makes children disappear. Whether or not it will turn out to be a classic ghost story, or if there’s twist to the whole thing, remains to be seen.

The most interesting storyline is that of federal agent Chase, whose sent to Gotham to find out Batwoman’s real identity. And of course, Kat Kane (a.k.a. Batwoman) has started dating one of the women Chase suspects of being Batwoman. Again, not the most original of story-lines, but at least it’s done with interesting characters.

A third storyline is being introduced during a short scene. Seems there’s some trouble between the Were-beasts and a new gang. I’m not a great big fan of the more supernaturally inclined elements of this series, and these Were-beasts are amongst my least favorite of those. So… I’m not looking forward to that story line so much.

The real joy to be had from this comic is the characters. And to be more precise, the character of Kate Kane herself. Hard-ass with a mischievous attitude, who is not afraid to be a smart-ass in Batman’s face. And yes, I have a soft spot for a woman who is discharged out of the special forces because Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and whose driven to become Batwoman as a result. It makes you wonder if Williams and Blackman will do anything with the recent repeal of DADT. Time will tell, I guess.

Anyone familiar with this series should know the art is amongst the best comics have to offer these days. It does however, seem like Williams has been playing a bit too much Mortal Kombat² recently. The X-Ray images overlaying the bone crunching action are a bit on the nose, expertly woven into the imagery as they are.

So, overall this is not my favorite issue of Batwoman. In fact, I’m not liking where the storylines seem to be heading. But I’ll stick around for now, if only for the great art and Kate Kane.

Demon Knights #2

Writer: Paul Cornell
Penciler: Diogenes Neves

Last month I tweeted to Paul Cornell that issue 1 of Demon Knights made the comic book fan in me cry with joy and the historian in me whinge in pain. That was obviously an overstatement. But having only 140 characters to make your point means an overstatement is sometimes convenient.

What I intended to get across with that statement was that it really was an excellent, and above all fun, comic. But that it’s a shame that the supposedly early medieval setting doesn’t really do justice to the awesomeness of the early medieval period. I guess nitpicking over historical accuracy is something you pick up during a Bachelor degree in history. Maybe I’ll grow out of it in time.

Anyways, on to this month’s comic! On the historical nitpicking side… I really did enjoy the digs the characters make at the Goths. It’s fun to hear characters complain how the Goths act all big and though because they sacked Rome, while in the mean time acting as Romans. It’s a nice little historical touch in between all the magic, dinosaurs and mechanical dragons. Yes, you read that right: magic, dinosaurs, mechanical dragons. This is very much a superhero comic, combining all sorts of weird and wonderful things as only superhero comics can. With the added bonus that it’s also a fantasy comic, giving it much more freedom in throwing that weird stuff in there without fear of unbalancing the feel of the comic (like what tends to happen in Batwoman).

The should be pretty familiar to anyone whose ever played Dungeons & Dragons. A diverse group of wanderers just happen to be in the same inn when that in is attacked by “dragons” (i.e. dinosaurs). In this case the group includes a demon who tends to rhyme, a sorceress (who even runs out of “prepared spells”), a gadget wielding Saracen, a barbaric immortal, a warrior woman who seems oddly proud of her chain-mail bikini, and a pegasus riding knight. This band of misfits it thrown into battle against the forces of an evil queen.

The plot might be simple and could have come from any D&D game, it’s the characters and their interaction that makes this comic fun to read. With both this comic and Stormwatch Cornell proves to be excellent at writing an ensemble cast, and it makes me wonder why he isn’t writing the Justice League.

I thoroughly enjoyed this comic. It’s brainless fun, but it’s wonderfully insane, humorous, brainless fun.

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1) She was shot at point blank range by the Joker in the excellent “The killing Joke” by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.

2) Played too much Mortal Kombat? Yeah, I know… that’s not really possible.

Fighting Games as a spectator “e-Sport”

I love fighting games¹. I often say that all my hobbies have in common that they all involve some sort of storytelling. But there is one exception, and that’s fighting games. This is the only genre of video games where the story is not one of the major factors of why I play them. I’ll leave a full explanation as to why I love these games to another post. In this post I want to focus on fighting games as an “e-Sport”, and more specifically what fighting games are doing right and wrong when it comes to providing a compelling experience for the casual spectator. I’ll explain some aspects of fighting games in very basic terms which might be off putting to those of you who are familiar with the genre. But I also want to take this chance to explain a bit about fighting games to those of you who never played one, or only play them very casually.

What triggered this post was a video by the “Extra Credits” guys on the phenomenon of e-Sports. In case you’re not familiar with Extra Credits, it’s a couple of gaming industry professionals who make insightful (if not entirely unbiased) videos about games, the game industry, and related topics. They’ve been picked up by Penny Arcade TV recently, which is how I started watching their stuff. Here’s the link to the episode in question: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/pro-gaming.
Give their videos a look because they really are very informative as well as entertaining.

The video in question is about why e-Sports haven’t really become mainstream in the US, yet. The reasons they provide are the following:

1. The short live span of games in the public consciousness resulting in lack of longevity and consistency.
   Longevity and consistency means a (sub)culture is allowed to develop around a sport, allowing ancillary disciplines such as training, commentating, and fandom to develop. All of which facilitate the growth of, and continued interest in the game.
2. The lack of accessibility.
   In order to appreciate a sport at a “professional” level, you need to know the rules of the sport to some degree. Which means you need to be give the opportunity to learn these rules and to understand what’s going on by looking at a game in progress.
3. Not designing for the spectator rather than the player.
   The real consumer of e-sports isn’t the pro-gamer him(or her)self but the spectator, and game developers don’t really understand what it means to design games for spectators.
4. The lack of personality in the players.
   People need players they can empathize with, who they can identify themselves with. Those are the players they can cheer on, who they can become fans of.

When looking at these points Fighting games, but more importantly the Fighting game communities, do a lot of things right. We know fighting games can have a lot of longevity (at least,for a video game). Hell, Street Fighter II is still being played competitively to this day. And games like Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Marvel v.s. Capcom 2 have pro-gaming histories spanning over a decade. And even with its three years Street Fighter IV, even though it’s gotten multiple versions during that period, has a longevity that few games can match in this day and age. And we’re seeing the benefits of this already with the emergence of quality commentating in the Fighting game community. And no one can deny that the fighting game community has some very interesting personalities, who bring their own style of play into the games they play and the entire scene that surrounds those games.

What I want to talk about in this post is point 2 of the Extra Credits list, namely the accessibility and enjoyment of the game from a spectator’s perspective. See, I’m a Fighting game enthusiast, but I’m not very good at them. Oh, I’m not a casual player by any means. I play these games a lot, and I’m decent enough at them. But I have no illusion that I’m anywhere near the level of a seasoned tournament player. And I’m too old to invest the time to get at that level. Which is fine. As long as I can improve my game, even if it’s at a snail’s pace, I’m happy. This does mean that, when it comes to fighting games as an “e-sport” I am very much a spectator. A spectator who gets what’s going on, but still a spectator.

To get back to the Extra Credits crew’s points: It’s very interesting that on point 2 the Extra Credits guys mention Street Fighter 2 and how watching high level players playing the game is like watching an entirely different game. Because this is absolutely true. Professional Street Fighter 2 players aren’t playing this game:

They’re playing this game:

What “professional” Street Fighter II players are doing is playing the the meta-game. They’re playing the game mechanics as they actually are rather than playing the game as presented on the screen. In the case of Street Fighter II this means that high level play really does look like a completely different game. That’s because the meta-game diverges greatly from the game as it is presented on screen.

Which brings me to the point I want to make in this post. Which is: the more the meta-game diverges from the game as presented on screen, the less suitable it is as a spectator sport. What fighting games need to aspire to in order to improve themselves as a spectator e-sport is WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. In other words: the closer the meta-game of a fighting game is to what the casual spectator sees, the  more viable fighting games become as a spectator e-sport. The reason for this is simple. The more the casual spectator understands of the game upon watching the game being played, the more enjoyment he (or she) gets from it. This goal is, unless we see a complete shift in the very nature of fighting games, not fully attainable. But that’s not the point. The point is that the closer a fighting game comes to the WYSIWYG ideal, the more accessible it will be to people not entirely familiar with the game mechanics. Modern fighters tend to have less divergence between the meta-game and the presentation on the screen, though.

Now, I’m not saying that spectators of fighting games don’t need to know anything about the rules of fighting games to enjoy the game. Every sport requires some basic familiarity with the rules in order to appreciate the game. Fighting games as an e-sport are no different. But I think that for any game to be an effective spectator experience the rules, at least those rules needed to understand the game on a basic level, need to be clearly visible. In this regard fighting games have a considerable advantage over other genres. Generally all the action and necessary statistics (health bar, timer, and so on) needed to follow the game are clearly visible on the screen. It also helps that each player has one (or at most three) different characters, each of which is a known entity. That is, their move-sets are fixed. Even if you don’t know every move in the game by heart, you tend to get a pretty decent feel of what each character is capable off fairly quickly.

In theory fighting games should be among the easiest games for a casual spectator to understand. In theory. In practice, many fighting games are way too complex for the casual spectator to enjoy. And this is generally clearly apparent when looking at the number of features displayed on screen during matches. Let’s first take a look at Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition to be precise.

Street Fighter IV gives a good benchmark of the complexity you can expect in your average fighting game. Interface wise, besides the two characters, we see 6 important statistics on the screen. At the top of the screen we see the character each player is playing, as indicated by by the portrait and the name of the character, a simple health bar for each side, the timer, which indicates how much time’s left in this round and little markers to show how many rounds each side has won². At the bottom of the screen we have the “meters”, i.e. resources you get during the match (by being hit, or hitting your opponent) which enable you to perform special actions. Here we see the “super meter” (the blue bar) and the “Ultra meter”, which is the circular meter next to the Super meter.

Now, let’s say you are completely new to SFIV and are watching your first ever match. Which rules would you need to know before you can understand what’s going on in this image? First the absolute basics. You need to know that a game of Street Fighter IV is a best out of 3 rounds match. Also, that a round ends when one side’s health meter is completely drained, or if the timer runs out (in which case the side with the most health wins the round). Then we get to the slightly more complex stuff. You need to know what you can do with the meters. Simply put by spending one segment of Super meter you can perform an super special variant of a Special move, by spending two you can cancel a move on the fly, and by spending all of them you can perform a Super combo (a heavy hitting special attack). With the Ultra meter once it’s half full you can perform a Ultra combo, which does heaps of damage. These are the rules as they are displayed on the screen. But in Super Street Fighter IV there are also some rules that aren’t displayed on the screen. Namely the Focus attack (an offensive way to defend against attacks) and the stun meter, which when full renders your character unusable for a while. So that’s 9 rules you need to know, as a casual spectator, to appreciate what’s going on during a match. That’s not that bad. Oh there’s tons more going on, of course. Like what option each player has at any given time, things like set-ups mix-ups, option-selects and all that. But a casual spectator doesn’t really need to know all those fiddly details. Besides, a good commentator is there to provide this information in a way that’s understandable for everyone.

What Street Fighter IV does right is presenting most of the information needed to follow the game clearly, without it getting in the way of the action and keeping the amount of rules you need to know before hand relatively low.  This relative simplicity is one of the reasons why Street Fighter IV re-invigorated the fighting game genre, which is something even the people at Capcom seem to be forgetting. What Street Fighter IV does wrong is that not all pertinent information is displayed on screen, such as the stun meter, and the fact that not all characters have the same amount of health. A few tweaks to the interface could have fixed this easily and made sure that all pertinent information was displayed at all times.

Now let’s look at another game, namely BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2.

I hope you can see why I think this game makes for a horrible casual spectator experience. Compared to Street Fighter IV the screen is cluttered with information in the form of bars and tokens. There are even character specific tokens, meters and doodads being displayed. And that’s not taking into account the various objects that can appear in the actual game area itself during a match. Just to be clear, I have multiple versions of BlazBlue at home and I enjoy the game, but from a spectator’s perspective it’s absolutely atrocious. You might as well put “NO CASUAL SPECTATORS WANTED” in big glowing letters on screen at the start of a match.

Another game that I don’t think its particularly well suited for providing a good spectator’s experience is Marvel v.s. Capcom 3, although not at the same level as BlazBlue. And seeing as this is one of the (if not the) most popular tournament game in the US right now, this might be quite a controversial thing to say. Let’s look at another screen shot³.

At face value this is a very neat and tidy interface. You’ve got two teams of three characters facing off. There’s a timer, and a single meter. No need to keep track of the rounds, because each match only consists of one match. Easy enough. But there is more to the readability of the game for a casual spectator than the interface. Speed of the action, and visibility of what move each player is doing at a specific moment in the match are also important. And, from the perspective of a casual spectator, this is where Marvel v.s. Capcom 3 fails to provide a compelling experience for a casual spectator. Time for another screenshot.

What you are seeing here is Ryu (currently active Player 2 character) being hit by two of player 1′s characters. Anyone with some familiarity with this game will be able to see that Player 1, while playing Captain America, is using Iron Man’s “assist” to do more damage to Player 2′s active character, Ryu. And it is easy enough to explain all this to someone new to the game as a spectator. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the basic rules needed to understand a match of Marvel v.s. Capcom 3 at the casual spectator level are fewer than those of Street Fighter IV. It’s the speed of the action combined with the flashy effects indicating hits and attacks that make the game far less suitable as a spectator experience. Because everything happens incredibly fast and is often obscured by effects, you really do need to have more experience with Marvel v.s. Capcom 3 to be able to follow a match than is the case with Street Fighter IV. Having multiple characters on the screen at one time, doesn’t help much in that regard either. Marvel v.s. Capcom 3 is an awesome game, which is great fun to play at all levels of play. But the things that make it a fun game for casual players (it’s quick, it’s flashy, you get to do cool stuff the moment you start playing) make it less suitable as a spectator experience.

Another good example of how something that makes a Fighting game fun to play but awful to look at as a spectator is Tekken. There is an intricate movement game going on at high level play, which is one of the reasons it’s incredibly fun to play at that level. So I’ve heard at any rate. For the casual spectator, which I definitely am when it comes to Tekken, it just looks like the characters are having some kind of seizure. This makes it very uninteresting, even annoying to watch as a spectator.

Now on to the game which I think probably provides the best spectator experience in Fighting games today: Mortal Kombat (2011). I know there are a lot of things that are wrong with the game (balance issues, horrible net-code and so on) but as a spectator experience, it’s basically unrivaled in my opinion. Let’s take a look at a screenshot for the last time in this post.

The similarities between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter IV are immediately apparent. But there are two major differences that I want to discuss here. First of all there is only one meter bar per character at the bottom of the screen. The fact that there is only one meter has a lot of implications on the way the game is played, of course. But from a spectator’s perspective it also means I only have to worry about keeping track of two bars, the health bar, and the single meter bar. But let us take a closer look at the bar.

Notice how each section of the bar has it’s own little icon. See, there’s three things you can do with meter in Mortal Kombat. Once you have one full section you can spend one section to perform a more powerful version of a special move (indicated by the “E”). Once you have two sections you can spend two sections on a combo breaker, stopping an opponent’s combo at a time of your choosing (indicated by the lighting icon). And once you have a full bar you can do a X-ray move, which are basically Street Fighter IV’s Ultra combos only more gruesome. Also notice that the big icon to the left of the meter shows what the most expensive of those option the player can make at that time. All this means that this is the most easily readable meter I’ve seen in any fighting game (not that I’ve played them all, mind). All the information is right there, indicated by easily to understand little icons. Perfect for the casual spectator. The second difference is that there is no hidden information. There is no stun meter filling up hidden from the spectators ‘(and player’s) view. And all the characters have the same amount of health, which means there is no hidden information in the health meter either. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, though. It’s penchant for teleport attacks makes the action hard to follow if you are not aware what each of these attacks do, for example. And when it comes to the meta-game of when an attack hits a character the game doesn’t apply the WYSIWYG principle nearly as well as Street Fighter IV. But, in terms of readability of the interface for the casual spectator Mortal Kombat really is the best game out there.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of Fighting games as a spectator’s sport. I’ve focussed mostly on the interface side of things, rather than gameplay specific topics. I’m mostly a front-end web developer, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Maybe I’ll team up with my friend @Teb_Tweets some time and discuss how using character archetypes can make a fighting game more accessible to new players and casual spectators.  But I hope I’ve been able to explain what I think works, and doesn’t work, when it comes to Fighting games as a spectator experience, rather than a gaming experience.

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1) With fighting games I mean games similar to Street Fighter 2. That is a game where two players each play one (or more) characters pitched in a martial arts battle. And I am focusing on 2D fighting games, rather than their 3D cousins simply because I enjoy that sub-genre more.

2) I know the screen shot is of a one-round match. It’s harder to find good screenshots of a match in action than you might think.

3) I fully admit I picked this screenshot because it has X-23 in it.

Welcome

Hello there,

my name, or rather my online handle, is Karanov and I would like to welcome you to my blog.

I really don’t have any idea what this blog is going to be about. But every so often I find myself wanting to expound on a certain topic on a public platform. And as Twitter’s 140 characters is a bit short to go into any sort of depth I thought I’d start this blog.

What topics can you expect my blog to cover? Just about anything that interests me, which includes wargaming, roleplaying, video gaming, storytelling, history, science, and more.  Just about the only thing you won’t catch me blogging about will be my job. I’m a .NET programmer by trade, and although I do enjoy my job (most of the time) I don’t really feel like blabbing about it in my spare time.

My first actual post will likely be about some ideas I had about fighting games as “e-sports” from the perspective of a spectator.

In short, this is my all purpose soap box and I hope  I’ll have something interesting to share with the world eventually.

In the mean time feel free to look me up on twitter (@Karanov) and Facebook (Eddie van Dijk).

With kind regards,

Eddie “Karanov” van Dijk