Amnesia: The Dark Descent Message Board

I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent spiritual/ghooooostual successor SOMA, and it didn’t really do it for me. That said, Frictional creative director Thomas Grip’s plans for the wetter-is-deader stroll into the maw of madness are quite interesting, though whether he can pull it all off remains to be seen. Today we continue on from our previous discussion, pushing doggedly forward into Grip’s plan for possibly the longest build-up (five hours!) in horror gaming history, YouTube culture’s effect on horror, procedurally generated scares and why they both aid and mortally wound true terror, modern horror’s over-reliance on samey settings and tropes, and where Grip sees the genre heading in the future.

Agree or disagree, the man has some extremely illuminating perspectives, and you can’t fault him for wanting to break away from the played-out influence of his own previous game. It’s all below.

… [visit site to read more]

SOMA didn’t scare the scuba suit off me, but I did find a creeping sort of potential in its soaked-to-the-bone corridors. Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2 this ain’t. Or at least, it’s not aiming to be. Currently, it still feels a lot like a slower-paced, less-monster-packed Amnesia in a different (though still very traditionally survival-horror-y) setting, but Frictional creative director Thomas Grip has big plans. I spoke with him about how he hopes to evolve the game, inevitable comparisons to the Big Daddy of gaming’s small undersea pond, BioShock, why simple monster AI is better than more sophisticated options, the mundanity of death, and how SOMA’s been pretty profoundly influenced by indie mega-hits like Dear Esther and Gone Home.

… [visit site to read more]

It’s not that I feel like SOMA is poorly made. On the contrary: for a demo of a game that’s at least a year out, the Amnesia spiritual successor practically sparkles beneath its grimy, moss-encrusted shell. I just feel like, despite a very unexpected setting, I’ve been here before. Crept through these halls, turned these nobs, let these tidal waves of otherworldly sound crash into me as I press ever onward, slightly on-edge but no worse for the wear.

… [visit site to read more]

Everyone knows that the scariest things aren’t actually monsters themselves. It’s the horrors lurking in our own runaway imaginations, creatures of such impossible (and impossibly specific) phobia that our only recourse is to head for the hills long before we ever see them. That’s the power of a great horror environment. SOMA‘s Upsilon research facility, for instance, creaks, groans, and whines quietly to itself like a child who’s afraid of the dark. From there, your mind does the heavy lifting. Watch below, and then read about Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional’s core design pillars for its sci-fi madhouse.

(more…)

Level With Me is a series of interviews with game developers about their games, work process, and design philosophy. At the end of each interview, they design part of a small first person game. You can play this game at the very end of the series.

Thomas Grip is creative director of Frictional Games, based in Helsingborg, Sweden. They’re known mostly for the Penumbra (a first person horror game series) and Amnesia (another first person horror game series), and they’re currently working on another first person horror game called SOMA (a first person horror game). Astute readers may sense a pattern.(more…)

We'd expect chat show hosts to be trotting out the next-gen consoles around this time, but Conan 'Clueless Gamer' O'Brien went down the Halloween route with an eclectic variety of PC horror games. He's not too fond of Slender: The Eight Pages, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent fares only slightly better, but asylum misadventure Outlast proves a big hit.

We still don’t know much about SOMA, Amnesia developers Frictional’s next game. But there is a general theme emerging from the teaser videos: the first video showed an engineer attempting to communicate with what appeared to be a H.R. Giger’s CRT monitor. This new video shows the same engineer talking to a disassembled robot. In the game’s fiction, it’s a “standard UH3 articulated robot,” and it “spontaneously developed a desire to socialize from observing human interaction.” It gets creepier. Way creepier.(more…)

I’ve spent the past few days F5ing Frictional’s teaser site for their next game, which has been promising a new sci-fi game from Amnesia chaps. Well, my patience has finally been rewarded. The site is live with a scant amount of data about a thing called SOMA. All the information is based on the game’s fiction, so there’s no context to what we’re seeing. All I know is it’s sci-fi, and the machine at the heart of all this looks like a kid’s TV bad guy: it is an evil monitor. Live action trailer entitled “Vivarium” is below.(more…)

Some games are defined by a single place; others by a single character. Still other games are defined by action, by something you can do in the game itself. In its early goings, the horror game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is defined by a single word: Nope. Read more...

You gotta love horror games with mysterious, haunted mansions. They work so well. You enter the estate, or wake up in a calm part of it, only to find hordes of traps, the undead and a bevy of haunted horrors waiting to overwhelm you. It's still a preferred setting for horror games, action-adventures, and for its parodies—so here are some of our highlights. Released in 1980, set in an abandoned mansion, Mystery House for the Apple II was one of the first video games with actual graphics. The mansions in the first two classic Alone in the Dark games had something terrible in every corner. For me this was the ultimate horror series of my childhood. The Colonel's Bequest: A Laury Bow Mystery is an early Roberta Williams adventure game, with stunning atmosphere and graphics for a 80s adventure game. The 1995 Japan-only Super Famicom horror game Clock Tower had large, terrifying setting in the Barrows mansion. Trapped in an abandoned manor, the surviving Alpha team members in the first Resident Evil has to explore the building and the secrets of the Umbrella Corporation beneath it. A couple buys an abandoned mansion of 19th-century magician named Zoltan Carnovasch in the psychological interactive horror game Phantasmagoria. What could go wrong huh? The evens in the 3DO first-person shooter game Killing Time take place in an Egyptian-themed estate on Matinicus Isle. The horrors of the Brennenburg Castle and its depths are awaiting to be explored in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Dr. Fred Edison's mansion in Maniac Mansion is probably the most famous one, with a strange meteor in its backyard. You arrive to Dr. Nero Neurosis' castle to fix computers in Brain Dead 13 but the not-so-serious game will soon be about escaping. It wouldn't be fair to forget Final Fantasy VII's Shinra Manor in Nibelheim, which has quite a few secrets to uncover. Japan-only horrors, old adventure games, there are plenty of other mystery mansion games out there. Hit the comments with your picks! sources: jeremypamyupamyu, Sierra Chest, anklerocker, AmnesiaGame, FF Wiki, HardcoreGaming101 To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

An official blog post from Frictional Games now says that the publisher's Amnesia: The Dark Descent followup, subtitled A Machine for Pigs, is due out not in "early 2013," as last stated, but in "Q2 2013," which means in April of this year or later. That's another slight delay for the title, which was originally scheduled for release back at Halloween last year.

What's the holdup? Frictional says that A Machine for Pigs was originally planned as "a short, experimental game set in the universe of Amnesia," but as developers thechineseroom filled out the project, it became apparent that the "short experiment" was becoming "a fully fledged Amnesia game." So Frictional has made the decision to do it up right, which means another few months of waiting for fans. Frictional also says pricing and availability information is coming soon, so we'll keep an eye out for that.

Frictional Games' Amnesia: The Dark Descent has sold over a million copies over the past two years. Breaking the math down, Frictional owner Thomas Grip says sales of 1.4 million is the "optimistic figure," since he doesn't think people purchasing multiple copies should count. The game's inclusion with the Humble Indie Bundle and Potato Sack account for many sales and overlap in his estimate.

"Despite that huge number of sales, what I think is more interesting is how good the monthly sales still are. Not counting any discounts, the monthly full price sales lie at over 10,000 units," wrote Grip. "This is totally insane to me. The figures themselves are far beyond any guesses we would have made two years ago. It is also insane, because this number is actually higher than it was around three months after initial launch. That a game can still be going this good two years after is truly remarkable."

Grip concluded his second annual state of Amnesia post by teasing the company's next project, which he says will be a first-person horror game. Grip is hoping to deliver deeper themes with the next project, saying he was disappointed that Amnesia was a "more like a shallow fright-fest." The new game should be available in 2014, but there's no plans to rush it out.

“What the *crag* am I doing? This isn’t fun. No one is forcing me to do this.”

That’s a more or less verbatim quote while playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It was 1:00 a.m. on a weekday, and besides my slumbering dog, no one was in the apartment. I was shouting at myself, and loudly, vainly hoping to verbally deconstruct this torture I was putting myself through. After weeks of reflection, it’s still true. I can’t say any of the five or so hours I spent sneaking, hiding, sweating, and fidgeting would fall under the traditional definition of “fun.”

Amnesia is not a “fun” game. It is, however, addicting in the same way a roller coaster ride is.

Rewind to earlier this summer. In the middle of June, it was time. My fiancee was on a business trip, 2012’s new releases had reduced to a trickle, and I’d frankly run out of good excuses. “Good evening, Amnesia,” I told Steam.

When a thing appears in Amnesia, there are no options but to run, hide, and pray for silence.

One glass of whiskey, two glasses of whiskey, three glas--no, wait, stop. Two is the sweet spot, was the sweet spot. Amensia required a small dose of liquid courage to get the ball rolling, giving enough oopmh to push one over the edge, so that upon inevitable death, you don’t hover too long over the escape key and get any ideas.

For someone who prides themselves on being a horror fanatic, I had seemingly little reason for having not played Frictional Games’ terror, thought I felt like I had a good one: I was afraid of what lurked inside. I purchased Amnesia years ago, when it first was generating buzz, and bought it out of obligation. I had heard the stories, watched a sampling of screeching YouTube videos. Oh, the water level. Oh, the closet scene. Oh, hiding in the dark. Oh, oh, oh. Who would want to indulge in such madness?

In the summer of 1999, The Blair Witch Project was released. 14 years old at the time, The Blair Witch Project was also the first, best example of viral marketing--long before there was a name for it. The filmmakers and marketers were promoting the documentary-style horror film about three kids who head into the woods in search of documenting evidence of a local urban legend and never return, as though it was constructed from bonafide piece of discovered film. Then, so the story went, someone pieced together their journey for all of us to watch. It’s a preposterous concept, but one that plenty of people bought at the time, and as a 14-year-old, I totally ate it up.

(The old website is still creepy.)

I’ll never be able to erase the final image of The Blair Witch Project from my mind. The wall, the screaming, the back-and-forth editing between the two cameras, the delay between the audio and video on the black-and-white camera, and that idiot Mike with his back against the wall. *crag*. The way people spoke of Amensia, I suspected it was to be my video game equivalent of The Blair Witch Project. It wasn’t long before I remembered how I spent the summer of 1999, waiting until the sun would start coming up before sleep came. The crunching of leaves and sticks by animals in the backyard reminded me of the tent scenes in The Blair Witch Project. I was not longing for a relapse.

Fear, I’ve come to realize, is one of my own addictions, one that acutely reminds me I’m alive. When the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up, when it takes me an hour to fall asleep because I’m convinced there could be, might be something in the corner of the room (I have this awful, creepy scene from Communion to thank), I deeply regret everything about this addiction. The moment the adrenaline passes, though, I remember the heightened sense of awareness, adrenaline--it’s enthralling. Knowing my fears helps inform the whats and whys of my own behavior.

One of the biggest realizations I’ve hard since my father passed away three weeks ago was that I’d, in part, been using this addiction to make up for the lack of anything truly horrific having happened in my life, a way of filling in some perceived, misguided gap. I felt a need to counter a sense of guilt, and I turned to to stories and experiences that got under my skin. Horror, whether through books, movies, or games, allowed me to repeatedly indulge this.

Scarier still was acknowledging this part of my relationship with fear was now gone. If I’d broken my contract with the addiction, would I no longer find interacting with fear to be any fun?

It took just 20 minutes with Justine, a short and free expansion to Amnesia released last year, to realize there was nothing to that theory. Though one of the reasons I became so interested in exploring my own fears through various mediums has disappeared, Amnesia’s hooks are just as psychologically damning as they once were weeks ago.

When the camera dropped, and the credits rolled, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer.

There’s a key difference between Amnesia, and all other horror media I’ve encountered: it should be played alone. Though it can be enjoyed with another person, you’re cheating yourself out of the intensity derived from the singular experience. Simply having another person in the room allows you to validate "oh, right, this is a video game," and those brief escapes from the reality of the virtual world are enough to create a regrettable rift in what's possible.

Then again, maybe you think it's crazy to submit yourself to that. I get it. Like I said, Amnesia isn't "fun." By transferring terror to another human being, it's made manageable. Having seen to the credits, I blame no one for the latter, and it’s why I’m somewhat sympathetic to Electronic Arts and its decisions behind Dead Space 3, despite my reservations about its impact on the design as a whole.

I’ve had this conversation with Ryan on the podcast before, but video game horror has the unique characteristic of forcing the individual to engage at a profoundly deep level. In a book, when you turn the page, the story progresses, the killer moves closer, the characters keep running. In a movie, you can bury your head in the pillow, cover your ears, and pretend nothing is happening. When you eventually return, the movie will have pressed on. Nothing happens in a horror game without your involvement, and Amnesia digs its heels in further by removing the power fantasy. When a creature appears, you have nothing but the darkness to keep you safe, and even that’s killing you.

Amnesia works because of what you can’t see. Tthe moment you’re up close with one of the game’s Predator-esque monstrosities, the game loses something. It’s that moment in the water, when you’re being stalked by an invisible thing. It’s that moment when you’re searching through a brightly lit area (almost always a safe haven), a creature appears, you hide in a closet (again, "safe"), and you hear a thing break down the door and, I guess, huff around you. It’s close, close, closer, and you’re confronted with the reality that there’s nothing you can do but wait.

I didn’t watch The Blair Witch Project again until years later, unwilling to wager that I’d emotionally regress. Similarly, I don’t want to play Amnesia again, either, and I’m not especially upset A Machine for Pigs was delayed.

Sooner or later, though, the itch will return, and I’ll want to remember what all this felt like.

Sooner or later, I’ll want to feel that alive again.

Last week, I ran the first half of my recent chat with Steve Gaynor, formerly of Irrational and 2K Marin, and now of indie studio The Fullbright Company – who are working on mysterious, ambitious, suburban-set non-combat first-person game Gone Home. Being as I am an investigative journalist par excellence, I decided that it would be appropriate to spend the second half of the interview forgoing questioning entirely in favour of simply shouting the names of other games at him. Games like Myst, Amnesia, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Journey and Dear Esther. Rather than hanging up in disgust, he offered fascinating, thoughtful replies on the limits of interactivity in games and the sort of scale Gone Home is intended to operate on.(more…)

I'm three hours into Eternal Darkness. This will make sense to those who have played: green.

I’m becoming a broken record at this point, but that Amnesia: The Dark Descent follow-up is coming. I had a very real intention of writing it yesterday, and then a day full of Quick Looks happened. There’s merit to the argument about giving thoughts time to breathe, but I may jump back into the game (I haven’t touched the downloadable add-on, Justine) to remind myself of the terror.

The Penumbra games are also giving me a curious look from my hard drive (the Internet suggets skipping the first game, we'll see), but Eternal Darkness has my attention right now, and, yes, I’ve heard your demands to do something with my playthrough of it.

Jeff and the rest of the Internet have given me some pause about Spec Ops: The Line, a game I was totally ready to write off, but one that apparently does enough interesting things with its story to be worth checking out this weekend. I’d like to do nothing more than play Eternal Darkness on Saturday afternoon, but these types of games have to be played in the dark with headphones, no? Spec Ops: The Line seems like the perfect candidate for an interesting idea another developer will execute on later, which appears to be the curious relationship between I Am Alive and The Last of Us.

So much for it being a slow period for games. I'm buried! Turns out you just have to look around.

You Should Play This

• Spelunky by Mossmouth (Windows, Free / Xbox Live Arcade, 800 Microsoft Points) at www.spelunkyworld.com

Prepare for an avalanche of discussion about Spelunky. We may have the summer’s critical favorite arriving on July 4 for Xbox Live Arcade. You can play Spelunky right now, though, if you head to the game’s website. Developer Mossmouth has been tweaking the Spelunky formula that previously addicted so many for years now, and the fruits of that labor will be available soon. If you’d like a hint of what’s to come, the latest case of a developer kicking you in the balls until you learn to look before you leap, make sure to download Spelunky. Best part? It doesn’t cost a thing!

• Flip’d by Thomas “Chman” Hourdel (Browser, Free) on Kongregate

Thomas Was Alone, which we featured in a Quick Look earlier today, is a great example of the interesting ideas that can spring forth from the design minimalism forced within a game jam. Once that developer realized it were onto a good thing, it fleshed it out. I’m hopeful Flip’d will have the same opportunity, as the basic ideas being explored have enormous potential. In the most basic terms, Flip’d is a first-person puzzle platformer where the player has control over swapping gravity. It’s more or less a first-person VVVVVV, which is easily one of my favorite modern platformers. VVVVVV was stupid hard in a great way, and Flip’d quickly heads in the very same direction.

And Maybe Read These

• "The Problems Behind Silent Hill: Downpour" by Chris Pruett for Chris’ Survival Horror Quest

(That headline is made up, by the way--Pruett didn't write one.) Pruett is one of the most meticulous and dedicated critics of the horror genre. We spent the better part of an hour dissecting our love-and-hate relationship with the genre at a party earlier in the year, which gave me another idea that we’ll have to reivist in October. In his dissection of Silent Hill: Downpour, Pruett does a wonderful job of identifying the specific design reasons Downpour doesn’t work. It’s more than the combat being broken or a nonsense story. Pruett goes way, way, way deep, and ensures I'll never have to write my own thoughts about Downpour down, since Pruett took all the words out of my mouth.

This is Downpour's Big Idea: it is the first Silent Hill game to feature a large, open world for its town. Most other Silent Hill games have featured large outdoor areas, but they've never been really open; they've always been walled off at the edges so that the player is lead along a very specific path. The open world is a significant deviation from the series norm, and it is the core problem with the game's design.

We've reached the trunk of the design, the root of the game's decision tree. From here we can see other branches leading to other problems caused by the decision to employ an open world. Let's follow one down.

I believe that what the developers at Vatra wanted was to make the entire town of Silent Hill a large recursive unlocking space, where the player would criss-cross the map many times, collecting items and solving puzzles on the way, all while progressively widening the available space. Much like the Resident Evil mansion, you might need an item from one side of town to solve a puzzle on the other side of town. Only, the space is much, much larger than the compact Umbrella stronghold. Though you have a map, borders of the space must be traced manually because there are blockades and abysses in the way, not to mention back alleys and side-street shortcuts.

• "The Mirror Men of Arkane" by Russ Pitts for Polygon

My favorite pieces of writing are the ones where I’m humbled as a reporter. Russ Pitts completely knocked it out of the park with this article for Polygon, in which he chronicles the path to this fall’s Dishonored. Too often, this part of the story is relegated to a paragraph or a quote, while Pitts spends thousands of words taking us from the origins of System Shock to modern day. This is the kind of story that makes me sit back, think, and know I need to step up my own game. It’s quite a tale, and makes me all the more anxious for Dishonored--it was absolutely my favorite at E3.

"I literally said it was a slap in the face to Ultima fans and RPG fans," Harvey said. "And I sent it to my boss. I don't know why I did it, but it was the kind of thing I did back then."

Where the list goes after that is anyone's guess, but it eventually comes to the attention of Richard Garriott himself. Also known as Lord British. Also known as the co-founder of Origin and the creator of Ultima. Garriott stops by Smith's work area, sits down on his desk, and asks him about the list.

"He was super gracious," Smith said. "He was like: 'This is very insightful and I regret that we didn't do these [things]. We disappointed people.'"

If You Click, It Will Play

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• on the creators of Dwarf Fortress mentioned earlier this week.
• Despite not being a SimCity fanatic, the logic behind the new game’s design is interesting.
• Nobody talks about PlayStation Minis, but here’s one story where it really paid off.
• This is extreme position about Diablo III’s auction house, but I also worry about its longterm impact.
• Want to read part of the reason I’m interested in playing Spec Ops: The Line?
• Find out what happens when an indie game makes love with heavy metal.
• Between meeting with Pixar and working with Tom Bissell, I’m way curious about Epic Games.
• While this analysis of Kickstarter’s policies on scams is hyperbolic, there’s reason to be wary.
• Yet another excellent Gamasutra piece, this one encapsulating much of the recent conversation about women.
• Speaking of, Eidos Interactive believes the Tomb Rader stuff was blown out of proportion. My message to the developer and publisher would be to not tackle subjects you’re afraid to defend.
• There are lessons games could learn about Apple’s strict approach to the past, present and future.
• Before the weekend arrives, how about this heartwarming tale of a family that made a game?

I promised a nuanced account of my experience with Amnesia: The Dark Descent's endgame last week, but I've been swamped with other, more time sensitive features that have placed that on the back burner. If you want a taste, download this week's podcast, which is basically a rough draft of where I'm going with it, anyway.

The next games in my horror backlog have already been lined up, too: System Shock 2 and Eternal Darkness. These experiences are giving me (and Ryan) some good ideas about what we could do here at Giant Bomb to help "celebrate" Halloween later this year.

System Shock 2 is a weird one, since it's not available on Steam or Good Old Games, and the only reason it's functioning on any modern operating system is because the fans have put in the work. It actually runs beautifully on my MacBook Air, despite System Shock 2 never having being released natively for the Mac--it's using an emulation wrapper called Wine. There's a whole rabbit hole of mods, too, including two-player co-op, widescreen support, improved textures. People love System Shock 2, and I'm anxious to join them by finding out why.

I'm just as curious about diving into some broken games that have gone under my radar, too. I Am Alive has all sorts of problems, but I stuck by my podcast statement that it's a really good game, at least insofar as being a game with truly compelling ideas that fumbles the execution. It was a fascinating experience, one I got much more out of than, say, Lollipop Chainsaw, a game that would run you a hell of lot more if you picked it up at the store.

Hey, You Should Watch This

This will actually be a new feature going forward, but since this week was interrupted by my flight back to Chicago, I didn't have much time to play much of anything. Instead, let's get hyped for some weird games, shall we?

Also, You Should Read These

• "The plight of Metal Gear Online and the limits of videogame preservation" by Patrick Elliot for Kill Screen

Metal Gear Online turned off the lights this week, and that's a fact unlikely to change anytime soon. Metar Gear Online found its niche, and though it wasn't a very large niche, it had its champions, and it's aways sad when an online game makes the switch to permanently offline. It's a tragic fact about video games, one that writer Patrick Elliott explores in this piece for Kill Screen, in which he laments about how games have not taken much time to consider how they'll be preserved as they continue evolving. Sure, the lucky few who are paying attention have a chance to experience everything along the way, but what about when our memories fade, or we want to show our children? In many cases, we won't have any options, and games like Metal Gear Online will be a footnote in history. Also, I'd never heard of Nintendo's Satellaview before reading this article--holy shit!

When the inevitable server shutdown does come, it will fundamentally alter the experience of Demon's Souls. The core mechanics will remain – combat, weapon systems, boss battles – but the experience surrounding them will become irrevocably isolated. When the last summon sign fades away, when the threat of invasion vanishes and the devious interplay between players comes to the end, the game becomes a shadow of its former self. In the darkness, a message appears: My heart is breaking.

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• There's a fascinating story on Kotaku about a player who cheats, and a response from a pissed off developer.
• Ignore the top 25 lists and read the editorial about the medium's recent conversations about sex and violence.
• It's unfortunate this female journalist had such a rough experience at E3. We need to move past this.
• Before you read my take on Amnesia, maybe read about what the developer's have to say about it.
• Most of the big-budget horror flicks that come out of Hollywood are crap. Sinister looks really good.
• Did you know there's a whole series of post-mortem interviews with Looking Glass Studios employees?
• This thoughtful comic summarizes my feelings on the last few weeks pretty well.
• Speaking of video game preservation, there's there's an academic movement to make it better.

This was my face around 1:00 am last night, as the credits finally rolled on Amnesia.

It’s with a huge sigh of relief that I’m able to announce that I’ve finished Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The game had such a profound emotional impact on my psyche that I’m going to table most of my thoughts until I’m able to write them down for a separate story next week, but a great weight has been lifted off of me.

Naturally, a teaser for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was released today. The nightmare begins anew!

I’m guessing the next Amnesia will conveniently arrive for Halloween, but before then, I’m trying to fill in my own horror gaps. I’ve never played Eternal Darkness (I know, I know), so a copy of that is coming via eBay next week, and I’ve had a few recommendations to play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

There’s also the other games from Amensia developer Frictional Games, the Penumbra series. All of them were on sale recently, so even if they don’t live up to the hype of Amnesia, I’m curious to track the evolution of that studio in reverse. I know they have combat, which sounds iiiiinteresting? Dipping into Penumbra lines up with my desire to play the deeply flawed I Am Alive this week. I Am Alive isn’t a good game, but we can learn much from bad games.

Are there any not-so-great games that you’ve been able to appreciate, for one reason or another? Chime in.

Hey, You Should Play This:

• Splice by Cipher Prime

You might remember Cipher Prime's Auditorium Duet as one of the few Kickstarter projects I’ve highlighted on Giant Bomb. I wrote about it because it seemed likely to not get funded, but in the final hours, it did. This is not about another foray onto Kickstarter for Cipher Prime, but another game that’s absolutely worth your attention: Splice. It doesn’t have anything to do with the just okay 2009 horror film, but they do have a common theme. In both the movie and the game, it’s all about genetic manipulation. In one case, you’re left with a horrifying creature, but in Cipher Prime’s game, there’s a serene, relaxing puzzle game. Players are tasked with dragging and manipulating microbe sequences to line up with a set of patterns, and the sequences become understandably more complicated. It’s rather beautiful, too. We’ll do a Quick Look of this next week, but I wanted to give you guys a heads up for the weekend.

And You Should Read These, Too:

• "Websites to be forced to identify trolls under new measures" from BBC News

Given the response to Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter, I’m torn on the anonymity question. Imagine what would have happened if Blizzard had gone through with its plan to out everyone on its message boards? The benefits of anonymity are clear, but are the consequences worth it? I’m used to having everything about me in the public eye, so maybe I’m just used to it, but we all know the vast majority the people who make up the assholes of the Internet wouldn’t act like that if they actually had to associate their name with their commentary. I’ve taken a smug satisfaction from the outing of racists on Twitter, situations where users apparently forgot they weren’t anonymous. In a Facebook world, I wonder if anonymity on the Internet is a dying idea, an idea eventually swept away by the courts.

New government proposals say victims have a right to know who is behind malicious messages without the need for costly legal battles. The powers will be balanced by measures to prevent false claims in order to get material removed. But privacy advocates are worried websites might end up divulging user details in a wider range of cases. Last week, a British woman won a court order forcing Facebook to identify users who had harassed her. Nicola Brookes had been falsely branded a paedophile and drug dealer by users - known as trolls - on Facebook. Facebook, which did not contest the order, will now reveal the IP addresses of people who had abused her so she can prosecute them.

• "High Noon for Shooters" by Michael Abbott for Brainy Gamer

The past has lessons, and I’m glad Michael Abbott is here to tell us about them. Video games are not the first medium to experience a glut of sameness, and while the “I’m tired of shooters” meme seems to rear its head every E3, that criticism felt especially poignant this year. I’m not tired of shooters, I’m just tired of these shooters, and Abbott found an analogy with the western genre in film. For more than a decade, the western dominated the cinematic landscape, and disappeared for a few key reasons: “1) Genre fatigue and homologous products; 2) High cost of production; 3) Public outcry over violence; 4) Narrow target audience.” Sounds awfully familiar, huh?

History could prove prophetic. The second wave of Western filmmakers (Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood) turned our deep familiarity with the genre in on itself, addressing existential questions and examining the nature of violence. These films were radical departures from the Hollywood formula, not because they rejected the familiar settings or the guns or the hero/villain dichotomy, but because they made these the very subjects of their scrutiny.

Oh, And This Other Stuff:

• Warren Spector is tired of the endless parade of violence in video games. Hey, me too!
• Bill Simmons interviewing Lena Dunham about Girls made me want to write my own screenplay.
• Capybara Games talks about how making the right business decision was always a bad idea.
• Remember Gemini Rue? The developer is back with a new game called Resonance.
• If you haven’t read this letter from the spouse of a 38 Studios employee, it’s utterly tragic.
• Wondering when CBS will shell out for this pizza vending machine.
• I haven’t read this Gamasutra feature on the neuroscience of scary games, but it sounds awesome.
• Anyone played the Korean horror game White Eye?

(Thanks to Zaktius for the above).

Just thinking about this sequence from Amnesia is making me sick to my stomach. Ugh. UGH.

I finally pulled the trigger on Amnesia: The Dark Descent. My thoughts on that nightmare will come in a piece after E3, let me make it clear that in no uncertain terms, Amnesia is terrifying.

Can someone give a thumbs up or down on the Penumbra games? Seems all of them are just $10 until the Humble Bundle is over, so maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re any good. At $10, who cares?

Which reminds me that Amensia is in the latest Humble Indie Bundle. That’s going for the next two weeks, and includes Amnesia, Psychonauts, Limbo and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. That's one hell of a package, and I'm tempted to bite a second time. The average contribution, as of now, is just $7.71 (!!!), and paying anything above that also nets you a copy of Bastion. Soundtracks are included for all of the games, in addition to versions for PC, Mac and Linux.

I don’t feel ripped off for having spent $20 just a week ago, though. What’s $20 for the the scariest experience I’ve ever had? I don’t think I’ve been this numb with horror since Paranormal Activity, a movie I knew nothing about before walking into the theater (this was two years before it was released and became a phenomenon, at a tiny theater in San Francisco). Prior to that, it’s definitely The Blair Witch Project, which continues to haunt me.

Hey, You Should Play This:

• Reddup 4: Move Cautiously by a developer I can't say because it's not listed (help?).

It’s been a busy week leading up to E3, so I haven’t been doing much else but waiting until the sun goes down, pouring a glass of scotch, and sprinting through the dark corridors of Amensia. That said, I’ve spent more time than I want to admit dicking around with Reddup 4: Move Cautiously, which puts the concept of player-driven risk/reward front-and-center. You’re dragging an arrow around the screen and must avoid the other arrows, but as you move, the arrows becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. I managed to make it over the 100 mark after a few tries, but the game’s simple enough in the run-up to 100 that it’s easy to become arrogant and suddenly find yourself boned.

• Life in the West by Davey Wreden, who also made the wonderful The Stanley Parable.

Don't think about it--just click. Seriously, though, you should start clicking.

And You Should Read These, Too:

• Vicodin Visions by Tom Bissell for Grantland

This isn’t the first time Tom Bissell has been mentioned, and unlikely to be the last. I’ve been mulling on Max Payne 3 since the credits rolled last weekend, conflicted on the choices Rockstar Games regarding the balance of cover and bullet time, and whether the story was one that needed telling. Bissell spends several hundred words raking Max Payne 3 over the coals for its obvious ludonarrative dissonance (in short, the disconnect between narrative and gameplay), and Bissell’s walks us through (in his seemingly effortless conversational tone) why he thinks that’s maybe okay, even if it’s not really okay, and what that says about the developers, the player, and Max Payne himself.

“Let's also not kid ourselves about what happens even to a sane, well-adjusted person after an entire day of watching faces get shredded by bullets. I played Max Payne 3 in two long sittings. After the end of my first sitting, which lasted around six hours, I went to a dinner party with my girlfriend. I was, she reports, "mouthy" and "agitated" during our dinner, and she wondered what had gotten into me. What had gotten into me was that I was shooting people in the face all afternoon.”

• Why Screenwriters Fail at Game Writing by TJ Fixman

As games became more sophisticated and stories seemed more important, an early idea was to import writers from Hollywood. It hasn’t really worked. TJ Fixman has been a writer at Insomniac Games for years, and become intimately familiar with his role in the development process. In his blog, Fixman breaks down what people think a writer does and how that actually translates. His insights into why games writing sometimes devolves to the point of parody in service of instructing the player is informative, even if it makes you weep at the role of playtesting.

“The primary goal of every game story, from Mass Effect to BioShock to Ratchet & Clank, is to provide context for gameplay. Why am I here? What am I doing? How do I succeed? Why did I fail? The answers to these questions are both critical and unpredictable. At Insomniac we test and rework every level, setup, and boss encounter to ensure the player understands what they’re doing while (most importantly) having fun. Often times, this can mean modifying characters, rewriting VO, or even cutting full levels – and as a writer, it’s my job to make sense of it. It doesn’t matter if your hero wouldn’t go through that door without backup. Those NPCs were cut, and gameplay says he needs to go through that door. Make it work!”

Oh, And This Other Stuff:

• As E3 approaches, Sony appears to be a company at a crossroads. How did we get there?
• Leigh Alexander has filed the best reporting on the downfall of 38 Studios thus far. (Be nice.)
• Christian Nutt breaks down why Street Fighter X Tekken failed to connect the way other Capcom fighters have.
• I still haven't played DayZ, but stuff like this is what makes me super interested in its potential.
• I've become more concerned about the preservation of our medium's history, and it ain't easy.
• Discover the ups and downs of playing games with your kid with Chris Dahlen.
• A horror game where you're a 2-year-old crawling on the floor? Sign me up.
• Activision combat designer Derek Daniels (he worked on God of War) ruminates on productivity.
• The classiest way to exit your Kickstarter and admit it's just not going to work.

Frictional Games proved it knows how to make a game that would scare the bejeezus out of Beelzebub himself with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but there's always room for improvement. Frictional's Thomas Grip has compiled a list of 10 items that can "take horror games to the next level," and (surprisingly) it doesn't begin with "Everything opposite of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City." It does, however, touch on a few points that could have put the "horror" back into that particular survival-horror title.

Grip suggests "minimal combat," "long build-up" and "doubt" are essential to evolve the horror genre, and we've already seen these aspects work wonderfully in Amnesia. Another aspect Grip notes is "no enemies," which he clarifies as follows: "What I mean is that we need to stop thinking of any creatures that we put into the game as 'enemies.' The word enemy makes us think about war and physical conflict, which is really not the focus in a horror game."

Grip's list seems to focus on different approaches to immersion and connecting to players on an emotional, human level before ensuring they won't be able to sleep properly for a few weeks at least. All 10 points are described in full on Frictional's blog.

Perhaps we'll see a few of these fleshed out in Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, a sequel in development by thechineseroom and overseen by Frictional itself.

Maybe when the next Monster Hunter's getting released, 8-4 can explain what the deal is to me.

I’m so glad the news about 8-4 teaming up with Giant Bomb was finally announced. I’ve been sitting on those plans for what seems like months now, but the CBS deal happened, PAX East came out of nowhere, and it felt like things would never go public. Phew!

With Vinny in the office and Drew on his way, we’re finally getting the pieces together. Sure, we’re still a ways from being as prolific as pre-CBS, but we’re getting there. I guess that means I won’t be recording any more Quick Looks, but it was fun (?) while it lasted.

Nightmare House 2 is still sitting on my computer, and I’m hoping to finish that off on Sunday night. Did any of you check that out? I’ve noted a bunch of the other horror mods that people recommended, and I’ll get around to those, too. My fiancee leaves for a few days next week, so the time is ripe for me to play a bunch of terrifying games and go to bed shivering and sobbing. Will I finally play Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or come up with yet another bad excuse?

Hey, You Should Play This:

• Botanicula by Amanita Design

With Machinarium, not only did Amanita Design make a game inspired by old school point-and-click adventures, it made a rather good one. Macinarium was a touching love story (love!), and I’ve been curiously waiting to see what Amanita Design would produce next. Botanicula also involves moving a mouse around the screen and a fair amount of pointing and clicking, but it’s an altogether different type of game. Players are guiding five different creatures, each outfitted with what one might call “powers,” and solving puzzles on a giant tree, in which there is a scary spider eating stuff. It’s weird, but totally feels like the kind of game you’d expect from the studio that produced a robot love story. As of this writing, there’s a wonderful Humble Bundle going on, but it’ll be available on Steam soon, too.

And You Should Watch This And Read That:

• "Attention and Immersion" by Ben Abraham

I don’t spend much time scrolling through YouTube for video essays (most aren’t any good!), but I’m a fan of Ben Abraham’s commentary, so it didn’t take much convincing to load up his latest work. In “Attention and immersion,” Abraham points out how “immersion” is an utterly bizarre word to use when talking about particularly engrossing games. Of course, Abraham now has me second guessing every single one of the words I use while talking about the experience of playing games. While “attention” doesn’t seem to rightly encapsulate the feeling we’re all grasping to describe when we get sucked into a game’s world, a conversation about our gaming lexicon is a healthy one.

• "Why The Halo Movie Failed to Launch" by Jamie Russell, excerpted from Generation Xbox

If there’s an underlying theme to articles featured in Worth Reading, it’s about trying to approach what it means to talk and think about games from a different angle. That said, as a reporter myself, I’m also a fan of a really good story, and learning how the Halo movie fell apart is a good one. Wired has an excerpt from Jamie Russell’s Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood, in which Microsoft’s arrogance about the Halo franchise caused what should have been a surefire hit to become a missed opportunity for everyone involved. It’s a simple culture clash, but one on such a massive financial scale that you can’t help but chuckle as the wheels come off.

Microsoft were aiming higher — much, much higher. CAA’s deal-making matched the software giant’s aspirations. According to the New York Times, Microsoft were demanding creative approval over director and cast, plus 60 first-class plane tickets for Microsoft personnel and their guests to attend the premiere. It wouldn’t be putting any money into the production itself beyond the fee paid to Garland, nor was it willing to sign over the merchandising rights. To add insult to injury, Microsoft wanted the winning studio to pay to fly one of its representatives from Seattle to LA. They would watch every cut of the movie during post-production. Clearly, Microsoft was entering into negotiations brandishing a very big stick.

P.S. Play Far Cry 2.

#amnesia One of the scariest games in recent memory came in the form of Frictional Games' Amnesia: The Dark Descent. And while there's a sequel underway—titled Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs—the indie developer's not the one making it. More »

Amnesia proved, among other things, that atmosphere is one of the most important aspects in a horror title, trumping jumpy music, grotesque character designs and top-of-the-line graphics -- but now imagine Amnesia's panicked, clammy tone coming from a game as dark and beautiful as Dear Esther. Pure terror.

This is what Amnesia developer Frictional Games has charged Dear Esther's thechineseroom with accomplishing in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

"The thing is, if we don't frighten people as much as the original, then we've failed," Dan Pinchbeck of thechineseroom told Gamasutra. "But now we have to frighten people that know what to expect. The big design challenge is: How do we protect the things that make Amnesia great, and how do we evolve everything else to make a really fresh experience?"

Pinchbeck wants players to be reminded of the original Amnesia with each shiver of fear, but to be so enthralled by the new, horrific world that it will feel as if "something has burrowed into your head and is just scratching its nails at you. But you're so hooked. Inside, you're peeling away like bodies from a pile and you just can't stop yourself," Pinchbeck said.

Now that sounds like fun.

Fans have been working around the clock since a new teaser site appeared for Frictional Games' suspected follow-up to the acclaimed indie horror title, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Not only has the blurred image been revealed as a freaky tunnel entrance, with what looks like a limbless corpse (ew), but fans have tracked down the latest hint, which leads to a tower in Seattle called Smith Tower. Inside that you'll find The Chinese Room, named after the furniture it houses, donated from the Empress of China herself. Speculation suggest the new game may have some connection to China and its history.

Fans have also uncovered an interactive feature on the site, which has since revealed the picture above (called "fragment_ebola.jpg"), and a coded series of letters: "P F C I N C M I O I S G G."

Some guess it to mean "GIF PICS COMING," which would suggest more clues are on the way. Research is being headed up on this forum thread, so have at it. Our contribution? The letters above can also be rearranged into "SICCING OF GIMP." You should probably download everyone's favorite image editor posthaste!

Frictional Games, known for the Penumbra series and 2010's fantastically creepy Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is teasing something new. A new website, NextFrictionalGame.com, hosts a blurry image above emblazoned with the Amnesia logo and the cryptic words "Something is emerging." The image also contains a link pointing to a Google map of China. An Amnesia title with a Chinese backdrop? Could be.

The site is indeed registered for Frictional, and the domain information also points to TheDarkSwarm.com -- a possible hint at the new game's title -- which leads to an unplayable browser game and a timer that continuously ticks upward every second. The source code on both sites mention first-person perspective, horror, action adventure and other qualities we've come to associate with Frictional. The Dark Swarm site was registered way back in 2007, and was updated in September of 2011, so it might be unconnected.

Frictional's Thomas Grip told us last year that the studio was working on "an Amnesia-related project." At the time, he said that the project wouldn't focus solely on creating fear, but will hopefully "evoke other, less primitive, emotions as well." If that means it will feature even a few moments without teeth-clenching, panic-sticken fear, we're all for it.

Trouser-colour troublers Frictional Games, makers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, have dramatically unveiled a website for their next game, pulling aside a metaphorical curtain, making thunder noises with their mouths and flicking the lights on and off. Scared? Nope? You’re just made of steel, aren’t you? I’d have thought a website with a blurry image with the word “Amnesia” on it in scary script and a link to a Google Map of China (click the image, if you dare) would have made you curl up into a ball. So what is going on? Well, I’m afraid I know as much as you do, apart from the two little more bits of information contained below this terrifying jump. Dare you? Mwahahaha…(more…)

This week, a few mods that I’ve been monitoring but haven’t had a chance to have a proper go at yet. In some cases, that’s because they haven’t been released yet, in others it’s because the hours in every day are sadly limited, and as well as playing games and writing about them, I very occasionally sleep. I even venture outside from time to time, although admittedly not in the current political and meteorological climate. Too chilly. Too bitter. All too real. Onward to fantasy. Preferably with decent central heating.

(more…)

#amnesiathedarkdescent You guys all played Amnesia: The Dark Descent, right? That whole game "happened" before I came onboard at Kotaku, but I hope that everyone here had a chance to play it and talk about it to the extent that it deserved. Because seriously: scary, rad game. More »

Thomas Grip, project manager at Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games, spoke on "Evoking Emotions" earlier this week at GDC Europe, and explained the intricacies of the game that absolutely terrified those who played it. We wanted to discuss his emotions on the success of the game, which has sold over 400,000 copies --- an impressive feat for an indie dev.

"While we were quite confident that we had a game that was better than any of our previous, we had never expected the response we got," Grip told us when we asked if he was surprised by the success. "The press response was very nice -- both in terms of coverage and grading -- but even more fun and surprising was the player response that continues almost a year after. The amount of videos, images, etc. that players have created in response to the game is just amazing, and several orders of magnitude larger than anything we have had. Sales-wise it's, of course, also overwhelming, and I think especially how good it is still selling even a year after."

We're still not sure what drives players to submit themselves to the psychological assault of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Whatever it is, it seems to affect quite a few gamers, as Frictional Games' Thomas Grip revealed at GDC Europe that the survival horror title has sold 400,000 copies.

It's a significantly higher number than last January, when Frictional reported sales were nearing 200,000, which already handily surpassed the company's "dream estimates" of 100,000 copies. In short, that's a lot of dudes screaming like little babies.

Charity's great and all, but we've found that it rarely affords us opportunities to watch people scream and cry in terror. What's up with that? We need to cause suffering as we're easing it. Luckily, a group of gamers is filling that void this weekend, with a charity gaming marathon guaranteed to make you feel good and make the participants feel scared to death.

Vernon Shaw and his brother Tim plan to take turns in an Amnesia: The Dark Descent marathon tomorrow and Sunday -- while the inactive player and a group of volunteers conspire to scare the player "in every way imaginable." It's the perfect weekend for the more sympathetic sadists in our audience!

Proceeds from the marathon will go to Camp Kesem UCSD, which holds annual camp events for children of cancer patients. The event will be livestreamed here.